Sunday, August 14, 2011

Moral secularism

As a follow up to the previous post on morality, this was an unintentionally hilarious USA Today article about how secular moral judgment is so much better than religious moral judgment. I'll leave it to the truly interested, but here is just a sample of the specious reasoning:
Should we be afraid that a morality based on our genes and our brains is somehow inferior to one handed down from above? Not at all. In fact, it's far better, because secular morality has a flexibility and responsiveness to social change that no God-given morality could ever have. Secular morality is what pushes religion to improve its own dogma on issues such as slavery and the treatment of women. Secular morality is what prevents ethically irrelevant matters — what we eat, read or wear, when we work, or whom we have sex with — from being grouped with matters of genuine moral concern, like rape and child abuse. And really, isn't it better to be moral because you've worked out for yourself — in conjunction with your group — the right thing to do, rather than because you want to propitiate a god or avoid punishment in the hereafter?

Nor should we worry that a society based on secular morality will degenerate into lawlessness. That experiment has already been done — in countries such as Sweden and Denmark that are largely filled with non-believers and atheists. I can vouch from experience that secular European nations are full of well-behaved and well-meaning citizens, not criminals and sociopaths running amok. In fact, you can make a good case that those countries, with their liberal social views and extensive aid for the sick, old and disadvantaged, are even more moral than America.
Sweden and Denmark are secular? The Church of Sweden was the state church until as recently as the year 2000 and the citizenry still pays a "church tax" which can be as high as 2% of their income. I don't think now is a good time to talk about how secular the Scandanavian countries are with the recent religiously motivated massacre in Norway. In fact, that massacre is a cautionary tale for all moral zealotry, religious or secular.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Facebook espionage

This was an interesting NY Times article about how the U.S. government is looking to expand it's intelligence and counterterrorism groups into social networking:
As social media play increasingly large roles in fomenting unrest in countries like Egypt and Iran, the military wants systems to be able to detect and track the spread of ideas both quickly and on a broad scale. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative proposals to help build what would be, at its most basic level, an Internet meme tracker.

It would be useful to know, for instance, whether signs of widespread rebellion were authentic or whether they were being created by a fringe group with little real support. Among the tools the successful seeker of government funding might choose to employ: linguistic cues, patterns of information flow, topic trend analysis, sentiment detection and opinion mining.
It's an ambitious goal, but I wonder if this type of thing is more art than science. If someone could accurately predict future trends with a $42 million piece of software (the amount the U.S. government is putting up to sponsor research in this area), then I'm sure that someone would be putting the software to a more lucrative, business or stock related use. The only people who seem likely to volunteer to do such an ill-fated project are the ones who either (1) know that they'll never come up with the software anyway, but don't mind getting paid to spin their wheels or (2) double agents who know that they'll come up with the software and will sell the U.S. government out. But that's the problem with big government is that the bigger it gets, the harder it is to tell what's going on -- right libertarians?

A better use of funds might be to hire young sociopaths to monitor social networking sites and push people into doing one thing or the other. Of course, they could always go "bad" and engage in behavior counter to official policy. Easy solution! Just hire sociopaths to monitor those ones, and so on.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Reality TV casting call

I was asked to post this:
I am working with a major production company and TV network for a show about people who are living a double or secret life and need help getting their life back on track. We are very serious about finding the right people and we will handle all applicants with the utmost respect and sensitivity.

As your blog deals with lying and deception I was wondering if you would mind sharing this message with your network. For more information about the project please go here: http://www.doublelifecasting.com

Please feel free to respond with any questions.

DOUBLE LIFE
Do you feel like you’re living a lie? Are you keeping a secret from
your family and friends that is causing your life to spiral out of
control?

Do you want to make a change and are you ready? We can
help. From the Executive Producer of the acclaimed documentary
series, “Intervention” comes a new series about people who are living
double lives.

We are searching for people who are tired of keeping their secret
from their family, friends, and loved ones. We are only looking for
people who are genuinely interested in finding healing in their lives.

The goal of this transformational series is to help people rebuild
and heal fractured lives. This is a documentary series that is non-
exploitive and will treat each participant with extreme sensitivity.
Participants will be offered the choice to consult with a therapist
during production.

*If you are interested in applying, please send us an email at
doublelifecasting1@gmail.com or if you are unable to email call us at
818.728.4147. Please briefly tell us about yourself, the nature of
the double life you are leading, who you are keeping this secret
from, how it has affected your life, and why you want to stop
living this lie now.

Please include your phone number, as well as the city & state
where you live. Please attach 2 jpegs of yourself.

We look forward to hearing from you. Many thanks!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Changing it up

From a socio reader:
I really like to change up. I change up constantly and when I do, I change everything. The funny thing is the people closest to me see it sometimes (I like to stay at the person I was when they first met me so I seem consistent). A good friend of mine that I put in charge of my well-being told me that when I speak to people I change personalities almost to every person I talk to. Sounds like I'm a fake person. So be it. I guess that's why i like to talk to people on a individual basis instead in large groups. Sometimes I think i dont know who i really am. I do know though. I'm a game that's constantly running.

Have you ever been passionate about what you hold to be true? Have you ever developed your own ideals that you value so much that the people around you start to believe in them and adopt them for themselves?

My close friends I put through a lot of shit. When they first hung out with me I would mirror who they needed me to be so they saw me as a leadership figure then I would start hammering in my value system that's helped me survive out here in the struggle. It's not a morality system but more of the dos and don'ts of the game.

People say I'm very black and white and they are right. I want things done and I want them done my way. I will go pretty far to get my way.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Handling sociopaths

The same guy from last post also suggested some ways to deal with sociopaths. Things that don't seem to work are"Insight-oriented, emotion-based therapy should not be provided for offenders. Making punishment more severe, or trying to "scare 'em straight" are also ineffective." Things that seem to work better are: "Effective programs [which] teach offenders something useful -- academic, vocational, social or personal management skills. Effective programs are firm but fair." He also mentions the possibility of pharmaceutical solutions in the future, including possibly lithium for violent offenders. His main suggestions, though, are for people that deal with sociopaths:
If they knew how to recognize psychopaths, and how psychopaths operate, people might better protect themselves and reduce the harm psychopaths cause.

An important part of such education would emphasize that people should not trust their intuitions and impressions of strangers, and should rely instead on reputations earned over time. The more that people did that, the harder it would be for psychopaths to exploit others. Theoretically, at least, young women comprise the group that would benefit most from such "anti-psychopath" training.

The idea that psychopathy is not a disorder but is instead an adaptation leads to this notion of "anti-psychopath" training which is a way of reducing the environmental niche for psychopathy. What else would make that niche smaller? Theoretically, psychopaths should thrive when resources are scarce and when there is a lot of social instability so that people frequently have to deal with strangers.

Thus, a typical North American urban environment may be just the place to foster psychopathy not because that environment causes psychopathy directly, but because such an environment provides a large niche for its expression.

Conversely, social policies that increase social and economic equity, and enhance family and community cohesiveness, while decreasing social isolation and anonymity might be exactly those that make it difficult for psychopaths to prosper. Over generations such policies might actually reduce the incidence of psychopathy.
This sounds like an argument for conservatism to me. Anyone else?

More on "America's hidden infection":

Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.