Michael Prescott's Blog

A militarized world

On  the excellent new blog "Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature," there's an interesting essay by Greg Nyquist on Rand's apparently declining influence and popularity. Nyquist suggests several reasons for the decline (and some commenters, including yours truly, add a few more). Among other things, he notes that

Islamic terror has created a world which is not compatible with the sort of individualism advocated by Rand. The full truth of this, of course, has not hit home yet: that will require a second major terrorist attack against America, one that features 100s of thousands of causalities. The world we are heading toward is a militarized world, where security has become more important than "individualism" or freedom.

Sadly, this is probably true. Perhaps this explains why I favor extreme measures of coercive interrogation, such as waterboarding, in order to extract as much information as possible from captured terrorists and minimize the risk of another attack.

Some on the left argue that since millions of Americans die every year from non-terrorist causes, we are overstating the risks of terrorism. From a strictly actuarial standpoint, this is true, but it misses the point: American society is not going to be profoundly changed just because X number of Americans die in car crashes or slip-and-fall accidents. But if we are hit hard by terrorists, hard enough to lose a big chunk of  major city, then our whole way of life will be irrevocably changed. We will enter "a militarized world," as Nyquist says. (To those who think we are already a militarized society, I can only say, "You ain't seen nothin'  yet.")

I'm not particularly interested in getting into another debate over this. Congress has worked out a compromise that allows us to continue using coercive interrogation, apparently including waterboarding. (News reports on this important detail have not been entirely clear, but most of them say that the bill outlaws only "mutilation and rape" of detainees, which would leave waterboarding as an option.) The issue seems to be resolved, at least for now. Captured terrorists will still be subject to very harsh treatment. This is perhaps unfortunate, but the alternative is the militarized world that Nyquist foresees.

Believer beware

I'm planning to wrap up my experiment in blogging before too long, because after hundreds of posts, I think I've run out of interesting things to say. (Some people might argue that I ran out even before I started.) But one thing I've been meaning to do is post a few cautions for those who, like me, are interested in the whole subject of the paranormal. For most serious students of this subject, these cautions are probably unnecessary, but perhaps they will prove useful to some people.

Bear in mind that I do think many paranormal phenomena are genuine. Nevertheless, there is sometimes a fine line between open-mindedness and naïveté. With that said, here are some things to remember.

Most professional mediums are fakes. Virtually all professional mediums who operate out of storefront establishments, advertise in the Yellow Pages or classified ads, or work on 1-900 telephone lines, are fakes.

Most ghost stories are urban legends, embellished over time as they are told and retold.

Most -- perhaps all -- cases of hypnotic regression in which past-life memories are recalled are bogus. Hypnotized patients have a known tendency to confabulate.

Most "channeled" information is bogus, originating either in the subconscious or in a deliberate attempt at deception. Even supposedly channeled books that may have worthwhile moral and spiritual insights - Testimony of Light, The Book of James, and Jane Roberts's "Seth" books - often lack the evidentiary material necessary to confirm their authenticity. (One noteworthy exception is Swan on a Black Sea by Geraldine Cummins.)

Even people who have developed legitimate paranormal powers are not necessarily any more morally, spiritually, intellectually, psychologically, or personally advanced than the rest of us. In fact, it is quite common for such people to be at an arrested state of psychological and spiritual development, stuck at the level of narcissism, egotism, and emotional instability. This is one reason psychics and mediums are so difficult to work with in a scientifically controlled environment. As University of Arizona professor Gary Schwartz has said, working with mediums is like "herding cats."

There are just as many extremists among believers in the paranormal as there are among doctrinaire skeptics, and the qualities of self-righteousness, closed-mindedness, anger, judgmentalism, credulity, and blind stubbornness are found on both sides, probably in equal measure.

The reality of certain types of psychic phenomena does not logically entail the validity of other unorthodox beliefs. Studies of psi and the afterlife have nothing to do with the lost continent of Atlantis, UFOs, ancient astronauts who built the pyramids, Bigfoot, Jungian archetypes, homeopathy, 9/11 conspiracy theories, the Illuminati, Dan Brown, the "face" on the planet Mars, the doomsday clock encoded in the Mayan calendar, global polar shifts, Velikovsky's theory of "worlds in collision," alien abductions, the Bible code, weeping statues, and... well, you fill in the blank.

Even if psi and the afterlife are fully proven -- and I believe that certain forms of psi have been satisfactorily proved -- we still are not obliged to accept any particular belief system. We are probably obliged to reject reductionist materialism, but we are not obligated to replace it with any particular substitute. So far, in my own examination of religious traditions ranging from Christianity to Buddhism to 19th-century Spiritualism, I have not found any that I would consider entirely satisfactory. It is quite possible that no single belief system can encompass the miraculous complexity of all levels of reality. And yet there is never any shortage of people trying to sell you on their particular shortcut solution to the ultimate philosophical questions of life.

In short: believer beware.

Waterboarding redux

Though I probably shouldn't wade into this controversy again, I can't help it. While prowling the Web for more info on waterboarding, the harshest of the coercive interrogation techniques used to interrogate recalcitrant terrorist prisoners, I discovered a comments thread in which at least three people claim to have had personal experience being waterboarded. How is this possible? All three say they were trained in the SERE program (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape), which prepares Navy fliers for the possibility of being taken prisoner. Navy pilots apparently must take this course before they can fly in a combat zone.

Of course, I can't verify that these people are who they say they are. Anybody can claim anything on the Web. But if their stories are true, then the US Government has been waterboarding its own military personnel for years as part of its official policy.

And yes, it is very unpleasant. One of the SERE trainees, "Grendel," writes:

The water goes up your nose and you choke/gasp sputter, and yes - you think you're going to drown. That's the point. That's what makes you talk. It is a mental exercise however since you actually can't drown - the water can't travel uphill to your lungs since they are above your nose/mouth geographically [i.e., you are on a slanted board, with your head below your chest].

It's a terrifying experience.

"RetA6BN" writes,

I too went through SERE school in 1975 and as the SRO, was subjected to the water board three times. Even though I understood that this was training, I don't believe I've ever experienced a more terrible ordeal. As Grendel said, you really feel as if you're drowning.

And "Dan in Michigan" says,

I went through SERE and had plenty of time on the waterboard. There is no cellophane over your face [as sometimes claimed]. Seems like the CIA is trying to sound like it isn't so bad, it is. In SERE, as they do it, one guy has his hand around your throat as they drown you, he is either a doctor or a corpsman monitoring your pulse. The only thing I had going for me is the knowledge that these guys were not trying to kill me. Absent that, it would be terrifying.

Again, if these statements are true, then waterboarding is part of the training that our own Navy pilots receive.

If so, then people who object to waterboarding under any and all circumstances, even when it may be the only way to extract information on an upcoming terrorist attack, are saying that we cannot do to captured terrorists what we routinely do to our own military personnel.

What kind of topsy-turvy moral universe are we living in, anyway? Are we seriously going to be so deferential to the well-being of terrorists, who want to kill us all and have openly declared war on Western civilization, that we will not use measures against them that are part of standard military training procedures for our own servicemen?

Certainly waterboarding should be used only in extreme circumstances, when information is urgently required because a threat is feared to be imminent. And it should be used only on those prisoners who are realistically likely to have the pertinent information we seek. This means that more than 99% of the time, for more than 99% of prisoners, it would be off-limits.

But for those few critical times and those few high-value prisoners who are the exception to the rule, severely coercive techniques like this simply cannot be ruled out. I honestly do not see why there is any debate about this - especially when the "torture" method under discussion is reportedly used against Navy pilots by their own trainers.

New Age happy-talk about peace and harmony is all very well, but at some point a society does have to muster the will to survive ... that is, if it still wants to survive.

Art for art's sake

For the past six years, ever since moving into my condo, the wall over my living room sofa has remained bare. I knew something should go there, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted in that pivotal spot.

But that's all changed now. Last night I was looking through some old magazine articles when I saw a particular piece of art from my all-time favorite movie. "Heyyyy ..." I said slowly as the great idea dawned, "I wonder if that's available as a print."

A little Googling revealed that it was. The price is a tad high, but I've ordered it anyway.

I will mat and frame it, and then my living room will be complete.

Here it is.

I know, I know - now you want one! But I got mine first.

The Middle Way

A correspondent emailed me with some thoughts on the Buddhist Middle Way after reading my critique of the book Choosing Reality. I found his comments very interesting and would like to post them here:

With regards to B. Alan Wallace's Choosing Reality, I haven't read this particular exposition of Middle Way philosophy, but I would like to address a few points with regards to what you have quoted in your related blog entry.

Yes, the philosophy in question does posit that phenomena are brought into existence through conceptual designation:  what this means is that for something to manifest as a functional object, it requires a designation to be applied to a valid basis.  For instance, a flower's valid basis includes qualities such as shape, colour, scent and so forth -- attributes which are not intrinsic, because they rely on other factors of causation.  It follows that everything which relies upon something else for its existence must necessarily be interdependently related, and this even includes the mind itself.

I think an issue here is with the understanding of what "designation" entails.  Another commonly used synonym for this process is "imputation".  To reiterate, our mind (the subject) is "imputing" our perceptions simply through the cognition of valid bases (the objects), but mistakenly so, as though they are independent externalized objects.  This separate mode of being is what Middle Way philosophy refutes.  Imputation itself isn't necessarily a problem, it's the way in which we do so that is of concern.

Even if we may have some intellectual idea about this process, it doesn't stop us from actually apprehending and experiencing things otherwise, due to our habitual mode of perception, and we further entrench ourselves in a world of fractured conceptuality, rather than seamless actuality.

In this way, animals and insects also conceptualize and designate quite profusely:  they apprehend in a certain way, which is nonetheless mistaken due to very heavy perceptual filters and biases -- and this can be  seen as the main reason as to why their minds are functioning in a more limited manner than ours.  As the saying goes, "fifty-million blowflies can't be wrong!"

What "designation" doesn't mean is that we can somehow choose what we like and call that reality; on the contrary, this philosophy refutes such an affair, outright.  I honestly don't have an answer for what Wallace is trying to get at here.  Perhaps I am misunderstanding, too.  All I can think of is that there are other Middle Way exegeses which are valid even though they might postulate in different manners, or that there are more nuanced approaches still.  If followed, the latter would certainly affect how our reality is perceived, simply due to its refinement of appearances.  But again, to suggest that we may choose how reality functions on a whim and fancy is utterly absurd!

Middle Way is not just about mincing words and playing mind games; there's no point in squeezing one's mind to believe that this philosophy has some kind of value as a cosmic joke, or perhaps as a convoluted koan.  If this philosophy is accurate, what it is suggesting is that the way in which we usually perceive things only serves to hamper and undermine our mental faculties, which, if corrected, allows for unprecedented power and scope!

In any case, you'll have to excuse me for the long email; I hope that I have not confused you even further.  :)

I've got half a mind ...

Dr. Casey Blood's excellent book Science, Sense and Soul reports an interesting experiment on so-called split-brain patients -- that is, people who have had their corpus callosum surgically cut, effectively cutting off communication between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

The experiment took advantage of the fact that visual stimuli perceived by the left eye are processed by the right hemisphere, and vice versa. So in these patients, what is seen by the left eye is known only to the right side of the brain.

The other salient fact is that the left hemisphere is responsible for speech, while the right side is incapable of verbalization.

Dr. Blood reports:

In this experiment, different pictures were shown to the two sides of the brain.... The right, nonverbal, side was shown a winter scene. From among four choices of pictures -- a snow shovel, a chicken, a leaf, and a pen -- the left hand, controlled by the right side, pointed to a snow shovel.

The left, verbal, side was shown a picture of a chicken's claw. The right hand, controlled by the left side, chose, from among the same four choices, a picture of a chicken.

This was just as expected, showing that each half of the brain was intelligent. When asked why the nonverbal hand pointed to a snow shovel, however, the split-brain patient -- via the verbal side, which was not aware of the winter scene sent to the nonverbal side but was aware of the "nonverbal" hand pointing to the snow shovel -- said, seriously, "Oh, that was to shovel out the chicken coop."

An association was manufactured by the verbal half in this example ... to preserve the appearance of rationality. The question is, how much of our own daily thinking involves these manufactured, spurious associations, even though the two halves of a normal brain communicate quite well? More than we suspect or wish, I would guess.

There is one other point that this experiment illustrates to the mystic. The information that the nonverbal side had was correct, but because the information did not go through the rational, verbal apparatus, the verbal side did not trust the nonverbal information. In just the same way, we rationalize away -- ignore, distort -- intuitive information because it does not come through our rational, verbal apparatus. [pp. 146-147]

It is indeed interesting to consider how much of our thinking is bound up in in rationalizations that have only a superficial appearance of logical analysis. Like the author, I suspect that we often exert considerable mental energy in finding reasons to explain or justify to ourselves the things that we already know (or think we know).

Casey Blood, by the way, is a physicist who became interested in mysticism -- specifically Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism -- and spent many years studying it. In the process, he investigated the science of neurology in order to formulate a theory about how the higher mind may influence and operate through the nervous system. His thoughts on this and on the possible relationship between quantum physics and mystical cosmology are unusually lucid, presented without any of the the vagueness and obfuscation ordinarily found in such discussions. Whether or not his interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct I cannot say, but it is certainly thought-provoking. And it is explained in language that even an uninformed layman like me can understand without the slightest difficulty. In fact, it's probably the clearest exposition of the wave/particle duality problem I've ever read.

I highly recommend his book.

It's a festival!

Here's an amusing news item from the Times of London. It seems that three researchers investigating the paranormal were allowed to present papers at a recent "science festival" (is this anything like a psychic fair?) in Britain.

Naturally, the ignorant, intolerant skeptics went on the warpath, outraged that anyone would dare to question the conventional wisdom. To hear them tell it, even to give contrarian views a hearing is to open the door to a new Dark Age.

As the Times explains the matter,

The disputed session featured research from Rupert Sheldrake, an independent biologist who is funded by Trinity College, Cambridge, that claims to have found evidence that some people know telepathically who is calling them before they answer the telephone.

Other presentations came from Peter Fenwick, a doctor who thinks deathbed visions suggest that consciousness survives when people die, and from Deborah Delanoy of the University of Hertfordshire, whose work suggests that people can affect the bodies of others by thinking about them.

Actually Fenwick's work involves near-death experiences, not deathbed visions (a separate phenomenon), but what the hey, it's close enough.

Reaction from the upholders of scientific orthodoxy was predictably silly:

“Work in this field is a complete waste of time,” said Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. “Although it is politically incorrect to dismiss ideas out of hand, in this case there is absolutely no reason to suppose that telepathy is anything more than a charlatan’s fantasy ... If telepathy were a real phenomenon, evolution and natural selection would have developed it into a serious ability. That has not occurred in this case ...”

So it's only "politically incorrect" to dismiss ideas out of hand? I always thought science was about an open-minded pursuit of the truth. Well, actually, no, I haven't alway thought that. Lately I've come to think that science is mainly about the pursuit of tenure and government grants. And power, of course. 

As far as the natural selection argument is concerned, Atkins might just as well say, "If musical genius were a real phenomenon, evolution and natural selection would have developed it into a serious ability. That has not occurred in this case, so musical genius is nothing more than a charlatan's fantasy." (Or choose any other human ability that is rare or hard to develop - the ability to run a four-minute mile, perform complex mathematical equations, influence people through charisma, etc.)

Sir Walter, a geneticist and cancer researcher, said: “I’m amazed that the BA has allowed it to happen in this way. You have got to be careful not to suppress ideas, even if they are beyond the pale, but it’s quite inappropriate to have a session like that without putting forward a more convincing view. "

More convincing to whom?

Lord Winston, the fertility specialist, said ... "I know of no serious, properly done studies which make me feel that this is anything other than nonsense. It is perfectly reasonable to have a session like this, but it should be robustly challenged by scientists who work in accredited psychological fields."

Most scientists working in "accredited psychological fields" know nothing about psi. But they do know how to uphold the status quo. As for the first part of Lord Winston's statement, I am sure it is 100% accurate. He does not know of any serious, properly done studies. That's because he almost certainly does not know anything about the subject whatsoever. He still "feels" it's all nonsense, though. And isn't that what science is really all about? Lord Winston's feelings?

The [presentation of paranormal research papers] was organised by the Scientific and Medical Network, an organisation with about 3,000 members dedicated to “exploring the interface of science, medicine and spirituality”. The Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, said it “lies far from the scientific mainstream and the list of speakers reflect this”.

We certainly don't want any people or ideas outside the mainstream! That way lies innovation, which is always dangerous and to be avoided at all cost.

I take away two things from this otherwise forgettable item. First, study of the paranormal must be becoming a tad more acceptable, given that the three researchers were allowed to speak at all. Second, "science," at least as currently practiced by the present crop of technocratic, materialist elitists, is not going to examine or resolve these questions.

And that's okay. Not everything has to be given the coveted stamp of approval of our lab-coated masters. The day when Peter Atkins and Lord Winston get to determine the truth of our deepest metaphysical mysteries would be a new Dark Age, indeed.

Hat tip: FriendsCommunities

All aboard for waterboarding!

Today I got an email from a friend upset about the Bush administration for various reasons. I started to reply, but figured I would just get into a pointless argument. Still, I like what I wrote, so I'm posting it here.

I realize, of course, that I may just be initiating even more pointless arguments. But the beauty of blogging is that I don't have to respond to comments if I don't wanna.

As Karl Rove would say: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

You're not for waterboarding? Even after ABC reported that the method got info out of detainees that prevented several major attacks? Man, I'll tell ya - I'd rather make a few terrorists suffer than lose another few thousand lives. Before you get too worked up about those nasty American voters, consider the possibility that most of them feel the same way.

See, the thing is, you believe that people support Bush because they love him, admire him, and think all his policies are terrific. A few do. But I think most of us support him even though we think he's made some big blunders, sold out conservatism in many ways (immigration, education reform), and can't articulate a sentence.

Why do we support him? Because we have the impression that the other side is not serious about protecting us from the terrorists. That's really all it is.

The Dems are against profiling passengers at airports, against the Patriot Act, against NSA wiretapping, against data mining, against tracking international phone calls, against tracking international banking transactions, against holding prisoners at Guantanamo, against using "torture" methods like belly-slapping, shirt-pulling, cold rooms, and loud music, against waterboarding even when American lives are at stake, and against pretty much every other anti-terror policy and practice that has been implemented or suggested since 9-11.

That's why Bush's numbers are going up. It's not him. It's the other side. If the Dems had come out in favor of a tough, serious response to terror, they would be crushing the GOP right now. But they are creatures of the ACLU, which thinks terrorists' civil rights are more important than preventing the detonation of a nuclear bomb in downtown New York. I live near New York. I say, Screw their civil rights. Put Jack Bauer in charge. Waterboard the hell out of the bastards, and slap their bellies all you want, and pull their shirts, too. We can eschew real torture techniques, like cutting off fingers or hooking up genitals to car batteries. But at least let us something other than harsh language.

(Last line is stolen from the great film Aliens, when the troops are ordered to remove the ammunition from their weapons before going after the monsters. "What are we supposed to use, harsh language?" one soldier asks.)

Even so, the Dems may still win the House. There is enough dissatisfaction with Bush to make this possible. But they would have beaten Bush himself in 2004, replacing him with a Democrat in the White House, if they had figured out that most Americans care more about the lives of their children than about the comfort of fanatical Islamists who want to kill us all. It's not a hard lesson to learn, but they keep missing it.

Makes me almost think they want to lose.

New book alert

I just received word of a new book titled Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, which should be of interest to some readers of this blog.

The comprehensive 832-page book, coauthored by Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson, appears to be a major shot across the bow of contemporary reductionist neuroscience. According to the publisher's description:

Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates--empirically--that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James.

Emily Williams Kelly has described the project in an email message which was forwarded to me. Here is an excerpt:

The book is basically a generalized and all-out assault on mainstream physicalist/reductionistic theories of mind/brain relations. It makes use of parapsychological data, but it is not a book about parapsychology per se. Rather, it treats psi simply as the tip of the spear, one member of a large set of interrelated phenomena all of which point in the same general direction - namely, to the failure of contemporary materialist accounts of the mind. We took F. W. H. Myers and William James as the launching points for the book (and Myers's 1903 2-volume classic, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, is included with our volume in CD form). We think our book inflicts serious damage on conventional materialist views, and that in doing so it opens a promising middle ground between the highly polarized and emotionally charged fundamentalisms - both religious and scientific - that dominate public discourse today.

Please feel free to forward the attachments or even this entire message to anyone you think might find the book of interest - whether friend or foe. (This is not for our personal benefit, incidentally, as we have assigned all royalties to Esalen Institute's Center for Theory and Research, under whose auspices the book was developed.)

The table of contents is found here. Reviews are here. The book sounds highly worthwhile ... but couldn't they have come out with an abridged version for the lazy among us?

While you were sleeping

Here's the remarkable story of what appears to be a breakthrough treatment for comatose patients. And it involves something as simple as taking an ordinary sleeping pill!

Why am I not seeing more about this in the mainstream media?