Recently, I have been receiving highly critical spam comments. Here is one typical example:
What a waste of time. You’re [sic] poor english [sic] made this article hard to read. Learn to write.
I have to admit I am puzzled by the psychology of this. One form that spam comments take is to give an effusive but generic compliment (“Your blog is great!”), presumably to flatter me so that I won’t delete it. It never works but I can understand the strategy.
But I am totally baffled by what the spammer hopes to achieve with an insult.
(For previous posts in this series, see here.)
In a recent paper (Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain, Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, & John-Dylan Haynes, Nature Neuroscience, vol. 11, no. 5, May 2008, 543-545), researchers used the more sophisticated modern technique of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to measure brain activity. The paper is not available online without a subscription but you can read a news report on the results of their paper here.
This experiment was designed to meet two key concerns about the Libet studies: that the time interval between act and the precursor unconscious brain activity prior to act was too small to definitively rule out measurement errors, and that Libet’s team had not shown that the early brain activity was a predictor of a specific decision.
The fMRI studies find that our decisions as to what actions we will take originate in our unconscious neural activity and only later informs our conscious mind of it, thus providing strong evidence against the existence of free will. The paper describes what the researchers asked their test subjects to do while they were hooked up to fMRI measuring devices.
[Read more…]
And if you think that it is an exaggeration, read this description by Ted Rall about what people are going through.
One of the major thinkers on US foreign policy whose pre-9/11 book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire made the concept of ‘blowback’ a key element in understanding why the US is in such a predicament, died on Saturday.
Steve Clemons reflects on his legacy. He says that Johnson started out as an establishment figure and strong supporter of the Vietnam war but later became on of the biggest and most influential critics of the drive towards creating and sustaining the American empire. As Clemons says, “Many of Johnson’s followers and Chal himself think that American democracy is lost, that the republic has been destroyed by an embrace of empire and that the American public is unaware and unconscious of the fix.”
(For previous posts in this series, see here.)
The idea suggested by Benjamin Libet that what we call free will is not the popularly assumed ability to decide all our seemingly deliberate (as opposed to instinctive) actions but consists of the more limited ability to either let the predetermined action be completed or to veto it may be unsatisfying to some but its implications are worth exploring in case it turns out to be true. What this model says is that I have no control over what I decide to do in any given situation but I do have control over whether that decision is actually carried out. In other words, I cannot control my thoughts and decisions but I can control (within a limited range) my actions.
[Read more…]
Jerry Coyne has a post with photographs describing the devices used by the Catholic Church in Colombia to torture heretics into making confessions during the inquisition that lasted from 1610 to 1821. It is sickening what they did and the article is not for the squeamish.
But of course, all this was done in the service of a loving and merciful god, so it must be good, no?
There is no question that factory farming treats animals inhumanely. Yet Johann Hari points out that in Britain at least, there is one redeeming feature in that system in that the animals are required to be stunned before they are slaughtered, thus making them numb and presumably sparing them considerable pain as they are killed.
Yet there is an exemption for even this minimal requirement, granted for (surprise!) religion:
You are allowed to skip all this and slash the throats of un-numbed, screaming animals if you say God told you to. If you are Muslim, you call it “halal”, and if you are Jewish you call it “kosher”.
…
Atheists who criticise religion are constantly being told we have missed the point and religion is really about compassion and kindness. It is only a handful of extremists and fundamentalists who “misunderstand” faith and use it for cruel ends, we are told with a wagging finger. But here’s an example where most members of a religion choose to do something pointlessly cruel, and even the moderates demand “respect” for their “views”. Their faith makes them prioritise pleasing an invisible supernatural being over the screaming of actual living creatures. Doesn’t this suggest that faith itself – the choice to believe something in the total absence of evidence – is a danger that can lead you up needlessly nasty paths?
As has been said by many people many times, it takes religion to make otherwise good and reasonable people do bad things.
It turns out that machines similar to the TSA’s porno scanners are being used in mobile vans by private companies. So these private companies are taking these images of people on the streets and in their vehicles without the victims being aware of them. These devices can also apparently penetrate walls so it may now be possible for total strangers to peer into people’s homes.
Via Juan Cole, I came across this rap video inspired by John Tyner’s memorable phrase “Don’t touch my junk!”
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