yet another secular humanist with all the answers
Archives for the month of: March, 2008
And so I listened [to the radio] until I heard that there is a drink of some kind, I think it’s called Pepsi-Cola, for people who think young. So I said, all right, that’s enough. I’ll think about that for a while. First of all, the whole idea is crazy. What is a person who thinks young? I suppose it is a person who likes to do things that young people like to do. Alright, let them think that. This then is a drink for such people. I suppose that the people in the research department of the drink company decide how much lime to put in as follows: “Well, we used to have a drink that was just an ordinary drink, but we have to rearrange it, not for ordinary people but for special people who think young. More sugar.” The whole idea that a drink is especially for people who think young is an absolute absurdity.
Richard P. Feynman. 1998. The meaning of it all [lectures delivered in 1963]. Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books. p. 86-87
Did I mention?–advertising is wrong.
The reason is simple: advertisements are lies. They don’t tell the truth. They are misleading. They do not inform you of the actual qualities of the advertised product. Instead, they tout qualities that the product does not have. And the idea is to convince you, based on qualities the product does not have, to buy the product.
So it’s not just lying, it’s fraud. It’s theft, and I think we ought to be asking ourselves why we put up with it.
My favorite advertising slogan is “Coke adds life.” Sounds like a good thing! Who wouldn’t want some extra “life”? But this life that Coke adds is not well defined. And what could it really be? How does a sweet, carbonated beverage add life to anything? The only things Coke can actually add to my day are
- carbon dioxide
- a taste in my mouth
- sugar
- caffeine
- a container I have to discard or recycle.
Which of these provides the “life”? Only the caffeine has any possibility of enhancing my physiological state, that’s certain. But you can get caffeine in lots of products. Imagine a new campaign for Pepsi: “By the way, Pepsi adds life too–obviously.” I doubt the Coca-Cola people would be understanding about that.
Or imagine calling them and saying, “I want a refund, because contrary to your claims, I haven’t noticed any extra life in my life as a result of drinking Coke.” Would that be a silly gesture?–and if so, why? Hasn’t the company made this specific claim for this specific product? Is it supposed to be OK with us that the claim is unmotivated and completely false? Is it OK with us that practically all ads are completely false? What does that say about us, that people can lie to us all day long and we’ll still do what they suggest? Shouldn’t we stop trusting them?
When I first took up this topic I was more lenient than I am now. “Of course there are some ads that are not outright lies,” I was thinking. “They do tell you something about the product. Take BMW’s ‘the ultimate driving machine.’ Well, it’s actually true that they are kick-ass cars. Maybe we can forgive them a little exaggeration.”
I now think differently. The cars might be wonderful, but they are not any kind of ultimate. The word does not mean kick-ass, wicked, or fabulous. It means the end–that is, the absolute extreme of whatever scale you’re using. You can’t exaggerate “really good” and get “ultimate,” any more than you can exaggerate “sick” and get “dead,” as in Mark Twain’s famous joke. Therefore, to call BMW’s cars “the ultimate” is not an exaggeration, it is simply not fucking true.
Think about almost any ad you’ve seen. They do not tell the truth. They make promises that cannot ever be fulfilled. They are tricks. Instead of giving you the information you need to make intelligent choices, they try to trick you into choosing their stuff. The most reasonable response to such a maneuver is probably to never buy anything from those scam artists, ever again. They should be held responsible for their lack of scruples.
Advertising is the second most evil industry ever invented. When you think about advertising, if you don’t feel like screaming, you’re not doing it right.
OK, so there’s this guy Surinder Sharma, a “tantrik.” And there’s Sanal Edamaruku, the current president of Rationalist International, a secular-humanist organization based in New Delhi. They’re on television. Sharma claims that he can kill people without even touching them–with black magic. Edamaruku challenges Sharma to kill him right then and there. Cut to the chase:
During the next three hours, India TV ran announcements for The Great Tantra Challenge that called several hundred million people to their TV sets.
The encounter took place under the open night sky. The tantrik and his two assistants were kindling a fire and staring into the flames. Sanal was in good humour. Once the ultimate magic was invoked, there wouldn’t be any way back, the tantrik warned. Within two minutes, Sanal would get crazy, and one minute later he would scream in pain and die. Didn’t he want to save his life before it was too late? Sanal laughed, and the countdown begun. The tantriks chanted their “Om lingalingalingalinga, kilikilikili….” followed by ever changing cascades of strange words and sounds. The speed increased hysterically. They threw all kinds of magic ingredients into the flames that produced changing colours, crackling and fizzling sounds and white smoke. While chanting, the tantrik came close to Sanal, moved his hands in front of him and touched him, but was called back by the anchor. After the earlier covert attempts of the tantrik to use force against Sanal, he was warned to keep distance and avoid touching Sanal. But the tantrik “forgot” this rule again and again.
Now the tantrik wrote Sanal’s name on a sheet of paper, tore it into small pieces, dipped them into a pot with boiling butter oil and threw them dramatically into the flames. Nothing happened. Singing and singing, he sprinkled water on Sanal, mopped a bunch of peacock feathers over his head, threw mustard seed into the fire and other outlandish things more. Sanal smiled, nothing happened, and time was running out. Only seven more minutes before midnight, the tantrik decided to use his ultimate weapon: the clod of wheat flour dough.
I won’t spoil the “surprise” by telling you how that “ultimate weapon” worked out. Read the whole thing. It’s a riot.
I see in the Economist that the European Union is going to spend two million euro on “the largest-ever scientific study” of the biological causes of religion.
I predict that “Explaining Religion” and all similar projects will make the problem of religion worse, not better. This is because such projects assume what they should be checking. And these assumptions are exactly the same as religious apologists have been pushing on us for ten thousand years.
Am I exaggerating? Here are some quotes from Where do religious thoughts come from?, an official pamphlet describing the project.
Where do religious thoughts come from?
It seems plausible to me that we have religious thoughts because people around us keep using religious words. I don’t see why we would need a more exotic hypothesis. They don’t have to arise from subtle, mysterious, magical, beautiful features of our neuroanatomy or whatever. We have religious thoughts because other people deliberately stuff them into our heads.
Even among professed non-believers, religiously-oriented intuitions and feelings shape our natural responses to people and events.
They do? I would hate that! But which of my intuitions and feelings are “religiously-oriented”? What does that even mean?
Religiosity can confer palpable benefits in terms of mental and physical health, as well as support pro-social behaviour.
Here are some of the broad, unexamined, inexcusable assumptions I’m talking about. None of these effects have been demonstrated. How could they, when the investigators have no idea what “religiosity” is? They think it’s a way of thinking or feeling. This is demonstrably incorrect. A religion is a social arrangement, like a club, a village, or an army. It has almost nothing to do with anyone’s “belief” in any “god”. Religious clubs and villages and armies talk about their “beliefs” and their “gods” a lot, but we have to be careful when we interpret such data. All they indicate is that someone is talking. Obviously, such speech-acts do not constitute evidence of any deity! Less obviously, they also do not demonstrate the existence of any belief. People’s descriptions of their own religion could be mistaken or misleading in an infinity of ways. But as soon as the topic of “religious belief” comes up, scientists, even very bright ones, drop their guard, and are taken in, again.
According to present knowledge, some central aspects of religious thinking and behaviour are recurrent and stable across humankind, while others vary significantly between traditions and cultures–sometimes even running counter to the normal current.
Let me get this straight. All religious people have certain thoughts and behaviours in common, except for the ones who have opposite thoughts and behaviors? This is not “present knowledge,” it is centuries-old hand-waving.
Leading experimental psychologists and biologists have suggested that man’s universal religious consciousness–
His what?
–results from innate characteristics in the evolved cognitive architecture of the brain. In contrast the differences stem from variable priming of the cognitive mechanisms through creative thinking, memory and acquired expertise.
More hand-waving.
Available evidence points to an early emergence of religious thinking and behaviour in childhood…
I wonder how that happens? There is some kind of clue in the word “childhood,” if I could just put my finger on it. Wait–I got it! Their parents teach it to them!
Can I have a share of those two million euro now?
I am the guy in the center of this photograph. It is part of a CBSnews.com photo essay on today’s fifth-anniversary protests against the war on Iraq. It was taken about four hours ago, as we walked in a slow, silent circle in front of the White House. This was part of an all-day march that started at Arlington Cemetery.
Another anniversary. Another hundred thousand ruined bodies strewn across the ground. Another three hundred billion dollars spent on houses and cars and planes and yachts for your business buddies, the world’s most successful merchants of death. (They charged us three million dollars for each of those hundred thousand murders — far more than such a service is worth.) Another year of continuous, limitless, shameless mendacity from your mouth and the mouths of those around you, all day long, 365 days in a row.
Mr. Bush, as we begin our sixth year under the miserable burden of your many colossal and foul crimes, I would like to remind you of the traditional punishment for traitors: hanging.
Yes, you have escaped so far. You may be safe for years to come. Perhaps you will elude justice to the very end; some hideous, evil men do manage this. But it is just possible that as the dark thrall lifts, as the nation emerges from your evil spell, attention will at long last be turned toward finding the true cause of the staggering misfortunes that have overtaken Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United States of America. It might just happen that a large number of highly influential people start to figure it out, and realize how terribly they were misled for so many years, and become very, very angry.
You are the cause of all this pain. I blame you personally. You were, in your own sophomoric language, “the decider.” You are at fault, and you deserve the consequences. Charles Manson was given life in prison for plotting to kill ten or twenty people. On a similar scale, the punishment you might deserve is literally unimaginable.
So I don’t know what other people think about this problem. But, speaking only for myself: I would settle for seeing you hang.
Update, 18 October 2008: I am now using pure 151-proof Everclear to refill my cleaner cartridges. I add no perfume, no lubrication. It works great. See the comments for more on this topic.
Update 2, 16 January 2010: My charger/cleaner stopped working, so I threw it away. The shaver still works. I can charge it by plugging it in, and I can clean it by running it under the tap. I should have tried this at the beginning.
You love your new shaver, but you can’t stand the idea of paying $6 apiece for those little (non-recyclable) refills. And you know that all they contain (besides a trace of perfume you don’t need) is 170 ml of SD alcohol 40-B, which is just denatured alcohol, which costs just $6 a quart at any hardware store. So, can’t you refill your own refills? Yes, but you have to be careful.
- Denatured alcohol is highly flammable. Plus, the flame tends to be invisible. Keep away from flames and sparks.
- Denatured alcohol is poisonous. Keep away from children.
- Ingredients vary between brands — see below.
“Denatured” is a old-fashioned term meaning that the alcohol’s natural drinkability has been removed. Of course that’s not a material substance or attribute, and therefore cannot be subtracted. Instead, other things are added: usually methyl alcohol (the poison kind), a little Bitrex — and, unfortunately, various other things, depending on the brewmaster’s personal style. Some brands have acetone, benzene, or toluene in them (for stronger solvent effect) and you totally don’t want any of those things near your face. This means that many or most of the products out there labeled “denatured alcohol” are not acceptable for this project.
But, since I had several much more pressing things to do, I reviewed all the relevant Material Safety Data Sheets I could find. Klean-Strip S-L-X Denatured Alcohol, made by W.M. Barr & Co., is listed as 50% ethyl alcohol, ~49% methyl alcohol, and ~1% methyl isobutyl ketone. Absolutely not drinkable, but not nearly as toxic as some of the others. I scored some at Home Depot.
Here’s how to refill your own Pulsonic cleaning cartridges. First, of course, buy a quart of the right kind of denatured alcohol.
- Push the surprisingly-difficult-to-find release button. Pull out the used cartridge. Don’t throw it away!!!1!!
- There will still be some fluid in it. There will also be a sludge of cut-off whiskers stuck in the paper filter on the bottom. Use the left-over fluid to rinse out this “chad”: cover the two holes with your thumbs; shake vigorously; pour into a sink or toilet. Repeat with some fresh alcohol if the thing still seems gross — but, heck, it doesn’t have to be clean as a whistle.
- Fill the cartridge with fresh alcohol and pop it back into the base unit.
You’re done! You’ve saved money and protected Mother Nature from excess plastic! Skip shaving for a few days. You’ve earned it.
Say we were ready to spend a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq. (It’s been more than that already.) And say there were about thirty million people living there. (Fewer every day, but these are ballpark figures.) We could have given every single person in Iraq thirty-three thousand dollars. Do you think they would have “hated our freedom” then?
