It Was Only A Matter of Time…

I got a bad review…It was bound to happen. To be honest, and after the primal gut reaction faded (which took some time, I’ll admit), I’m kind of glad it happened. It still doesn’t feel good from an emotional level, but rather I realize, from a rational level, its necessity. Here it is:

“On Giant’s Shoulders:

Those in the know will appreciate that Newton’s famous quip was intended as an insult first and a pithy saying second. It applies only in the first case to this self-regarding nonsense. Far from providing a ‘rational’ guide to anything the book merely trots out old knowledge without so much as a smattering of original insight, commentary, or critical thought to be seen. The result is little more than another purposeless blog transferred to ‘paper’ with no obvious justification and little to recommend it. Save your money for a book considerably less random and more rational.“

Pretty hard-hitting. Upon reading it, I had 2 options. Ignore it and pretend all was dandy dory, and in time hopefully forgetting it was ever there, or learn from it. I chose, as hard as it is, to learn from it (or try very hard to with all my biases).

So, if anyone has read my book — all 7 of you — I’d like to ask a favour: tell me what you disliked about it. Either as a comment here, or as a proper review on Amazon (if it’s especially hard-hitting and you feel I might delete your comment — which I won’t, I promise, but the choice is yours). It can be as hard-hitting or soft natured as you like; use a pseudonym, or not; whether you are my friend, offline or online, or not, please tell me what you disliked, perhaps even hated, about Random Rationality: Expanded. (No comments about the 1st edition: I hate it just as much as you do! Trust me.)

I want to learn, even if that means getting my ego bruised, battered, and burned at the public stake in the short-term: indulge thyself at my expense.

What do the Creationist & Anti-GMO Platform Have in Common?

Creationists and the Anti-GMO crowd (hereafter referred to as anti’s) crowd share a foundational base; one amusing to explore, no less. Creationism, or Intelligent Design (ID) as it is known in some circles where they pretend to themselves it is a scientific theory, has been notorious at setting up evolutionary straw men that they can then easily knock them down to the delight of other believers. (A straw man argument is where you intentionally misrepresent an argument so that you can take down the ‘straw man’ argument without taking on the actual argument to the benefit of your ego and ignorance of your audience.)

Random Rationality.

Allallt had some nice things (and valid criticisms) to say about my two books. As well as a better name for S3, which I totally would’ve done if I had known. R2D2!! God damn it, why didn’t I think of that?!

I’ve met some truly gifted folks on WP, and I hope one day, I get to meet them all in person. This is what the Internet is all about. 🙂

Thanks for your kind words Allallt. I hope to repay your help one day.

Allallt in discussion

A blogging buddy, Fourat Janabi, has written two books now. And you need to read them both! They are called Random Rationality (R2) and Science, Statistics and Scepticism (S3). If I’d had my way the second book would have been called Dutiful Diligence (D2 – giving the name R2D2 – but I should have voiced that a lot earlier than now). You can colour me biased here, as I had a small hand in the writing of both these books, but they are amazing concise books that give your mind a run for its money.
As the name would suggest, the first book–Random Rationality–is a somewhat disjointed but eloquent look at many of the controversial subjects we talk about today: what the hell is politics anyway?; What’s the big deal with drugs?; The Universe and Nothing; God? The book is forceful, thought provoking and great. It is the inspiration for…

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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Man has had to fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to. Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.

The Freebies Hundredth…And The New ‘Lowdown’

1-0-0….This is my 100th post! So to celebrate, I’m giving away Random Rationality: Expanded and S3: Science, Statistics and Skepticism free for the next three days. Get’em while you can

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The below links will take you to the Kindle store where you can get them free until the 22nd June:

Get Random Rationality: Expanded for free – [The UK edition is here]

What people thought of it:

Author Catherine Tosko wrote of Random Rationality: “This book is as good as (the oft-quoted by Janabi) Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot.”

Writer Ryan Culpeper wrote: “It’s very informative, witty and well written. The author took a risk by committing to such a hefty scope, but he pulls it off quite eloquently.”

Get S3: Science, Statistics and Skepticism for free – [The UK edition is here]

Pigs, GMOs & Bullshit

Again, the Internet contends with another negative take on GMOs, like Seralini’s rat-cancer study from last year. This “study” by Judy Carman involves following pigs fed GM and non-GM feed over 22.7 weeks and trying to find something, anything, wrong at all with the GM-fed pigs while ignoring everything that showed no effect or a positive effect. I don’t have time enough to go through the study, so I’ll briefly summarize the findings of Mark Lynas’ take on the study, as well as another from Weed Control Freaks to show you the pseudoscience indicators:

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1st Warning Sign: The results were published in a journal not indexed by PubMed with a low-impact factor.

What this means: Scientists don’t take the journal seriously, it has no credibility, or both.

Connecticut legislature makes anti-science history

Once again, the progressive contrarian hits the nail on the head. The fall-back line of the antis (as Mark Lynas refers to them) is that 64 other countries also have banned them (or not yet approved them) GMOs, therefore, we should too! But, again and again, the obvious goes in one ear and out the other; it matters zip ditty nada how many other countries banned them. Mooney finishes off his post with a brilliant argument to conclude: 74 countries also have laws against homosexuality, so should we follow their lead? Should we restrict free speech and woman’s rights because Saudi Arabia, and who knows how many others, have done so? No, they have bad reasons for doing that, as do these 64 countries that have banned GM.

It doesn’t matter who said what when under any circumstances past, present–and future. The only thing that matters is what evidence is given for that position and given that evidence, is that position then justified? The fact that this legislature had Jeffrey Smith, a former yogic flying instructor testify instead of a molecular biologist, biochemist, or science organization doth bring shame, and hopefully a pox, to their house. As Christopher Hitchens would say: “For shame!”

Contrary to popular belief

Today’s post is a version of an op-ed that was quickly and roundly rejected by the Hartford Courant with a curt,  No Thanks, response.

The Connecticut legislature made history recently when it overwhelmingly approved a gmo labeling bill. They made history by giving credibility to the anti-science views of crackpots, frauds, and charlatans.

In 2012, the Assembly’s GM labeling task force had one Jeffrey Smith testify.  Readers of this blog are well acquainted with him. He is the go-to-guy and is considered an “expert” on gmos. Unfortunately he is not a scientist and has no agricultural experience. He is considered a joke among the scientific community.

His bio and resume are vague. What is known is he was a member of the Maharishi Natural Law Party in Iowa, whose solution to the national crime problem was “yogic flying.”

In 1996, the Daily Illinni wrote, “Smith presented charts with evidence of a correlation…

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Sharing is Caring:

“In a very real sense human beings are machines constructed by the nucleic acids to arrange for the efficient replication of more nucleic acids. In a sense our strongest urges, noblest enterprises, most compelling necessities, and apparent free wills are all an expression of the information coded in the genetic material: We are, in a way, temporary ambulatory repositories for our nucleic acids. This does not deny our humanity; it does not prevent us from pursuing the good, the true, and the beautiful. But it would be a great mistake to ignore where we have come from in our attempt to determine where we are going.” — Carl Sagan

Not All Scientific Statements Have Equal Weight

The title of this post: “Not all scientific statements have equal weight” was written by Carl Sagan in his brilliant book Broca’s Brain. It is a statement you should write on a post-it to keep by your monitor as you browse, if that is your cup of tea, the online intellectual fight on such nerve touching issues as the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMO), evolution vs. creationism, climate change, and many other topics that are, at the end of the day, empirically verifiable. It should sound in your brain after each and every scientific claim you read on the Internet. (In Carl Sagan’s voice too.)

The ‘Appeal to Nature’ Fallacy

There is this notion that has been bugging me lately: the notion that nature is all-knowing, all-wise, acts as a mother to us, and that we should abide her infinite wisdom and abundance. It is otherwise known, to scientists and philosophers, as the appeal to nature fallacy. This notion, which is more of a feeling really, has serious shortcomings. One—and really the only one I need, and want, to address—is that it can only express itself through being lucky enough to be born at the top of the food chain, and it must then, by definition, in being expressed, fail to acknowledge the grim, short, and painful subsistence lives of almost every other member of every other species on this planet, even that of pre-civilized humans.*

This fallacy is, to repurpose to my own ends, a quote from comedian Bill Maher, ignorance masquerading as wisdom, which would, in any other age but this, be punished by nature itself with astonishing brutality and swiftness.

As the singer Gary Numan put it: “If nature is proof of God’s amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genus at its most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage.” Rob Hart put it another way: “Nature is not on our side. Most of it is trying to kill us. Nature abounds with neurotoxins, carcinogens, starvation, violence, and death. It is technology that makes our lives so comfortable.” He neglects though to mention virus’, bacteria, and genetic disorders. (I’m sure I’ve missed a few too.)

One of the few benevolent acts of nature toward us was, albeit unwillingly, the gift of intelligence, which has allowed us the opportunity to wrest ourselves free one step at a time from her invidious grasp. That intelligence, after 250,000 long, brutal subsistence-lived years, has recently born such fruits as GM food, medicine, and sheltered lives free from her (it’s) wrath, yet is being met with scorn and ridicule by those who adhere to the “nature rocks” mantra.

I’m not saying that just because appealing to nature is bunk—it is—that therefore synthetic things are automatically better. That would be guilty of the same fallacy, reversed. No, rather it is to say that we must take everything on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes natural stuff is better, sometimes it’s not; but to presume that just because something is natural that it is better is to arrive at that conclusion devoid of reason, logic, or evidence, regardless of how prevalent it is in society. As Vasil Deniador said (well, Isaac Asimov really said it, as it is his fiction book) in Foundation and Earth: “Common belief, even universal belief, is not, itself, evidence.”

The appeal to nature fallacy will help us with nothing and take us nowhere, and should be confined, for once and all, to the dustbin of history. Of course, it won’t be; at least not yet, but it should be.

With that, I’d like to conclude with a quote from Science Based Life: “Surely, if we have learned anything about our advances in other areas like medicine, agriculture, and public health measures, the way forward is with science, not backwards with an assumed beneficence of Mother Nature. The “unnatural” advances of humanity are some of its greatest achievements. Surgery, vaccination, conventional agriculture, electronics, and engineering (genetic or otherwise) have us living longer, healthier lives. If organic foods really aren’t as nutritious, if natural can also mean dangerous, if genetically modified foods have no scientific reason to be labeled differently, we simply cannot afford to continue making the naturalistic fallacy. What is best for us, what is healthier or safer or more nutritious, is something that falls out of proper research, not common sense.”

* – It was only 200 years ago that a day old baby had a life expectancy of 37 years. Go back 400 years, 2/3s of all children in Britain died before the age of 4, but it’s natural, so who needs vaccines, hygiene, and plentiful food, right? Go back 2000 years, and the average life expectancy drops to 25 years.

P.S. Recall that average life expectancy indicates that 50% of the population died before that age, and the other 50% after, not that everyone dropped dead at said age. Once one hit 15 years of age so, average life expectancy usually increased to between 45 to 60 years. But that is little consolation to the half who died young, and the majority of them who died as children.

P.P.S. I think this is the shortest post I’ve ever written. I guess that shows how few words are needed to show the appeal to nature fallacy for what it is. (That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it!)