The problem is that when you “google it” … ask the Internet if humans or mammals absorb any oxygen through their skin, you get an interesting result, an oft repeated phrase: “No. Human beings cannot usefully absorb oxygen through their skin.” Which is not really an answer to that question, is it? I wasn’t asking about “usefully.” Jeesh.

I’m pretty sure that the answer to the question “do humans absorb Oxygen through their skin” — which is clearly a yes or no question — is “yes.” But perhaps this leads to concerns that some of the dumb-ass humans will misuse this information thinking that we actually breathe through our skin in any meaningful way. Imagine the stupid Darwin-Award wining tricks people might think up to do with this factoid. Nonetheless, while “the widely held mis-belief” that humans “breathe through their skin” is a potentially dangerous concept, it is also simply true that all typical normal living eukaryotic cells respirate. Even plant cells “breathe” in O2 and “breathe” out CO2. So the answer “no” isn’t really acceptable.

In truth, the best answer to the question “do humans breathe through their skin?” is probably something like “Please re-phrase that question so I know what strange and inappropriate things will happen in your brain depending on the answer”

To me, a conference or convention has always been a workplace. And, to some extent the Internet is too. I’ve sat on enough committees, had enough diversity training, and been involved with enough academic (mostly) disputes (hey, I was part of the Most Dysfunctional Department in the Universe for a few years!) that I tend to see human interactions gone bad in the light of mediation, HR rules and potential intervention, policy, and so on. This is why I am not real sanguine on the idea of working out how young men can go to conferences and a) not act like idiots and at the same time b) get laid anyway.

On the other and, some “Conventions” seem to be big giant parties, and I don’t pretend to know much about them. We have a local “CON” here in Minneapolis that I have attended as a “Visiting Pro” (in my case, Scientist) at the request of the Skepchicks for a few years running, and that is a bit of a party. But that was still work for me, not in the negative sense but in the professional sense. Also, since the CON is nearly an hour drive from my house and it is always on a holiday weekend, I don’t partake int he Buzzed Aldrins. Well, maybe one.

The point is, even at party like venues, there are people who are not really just partying, or at least, not all the same way. While you’re getting drunk at some bar, the bartender and the serving staff are not at a party. They are at work. and the other people who are busy partying as you party are not necessarily partying as you party. As it were.

When the whole Elevatorgate thing happened almost one year ago, I became first aware of it sitting where I am right now, and a friend of mine was sitting across the room on my couch gulping down black coffee. We were both reading blog posts and emails that were flying around pertaining to Rebecca and Stef and Elevator Guy and all that. And I turned to my friend and said “The Internet needs an HR department. And fast!”

A few weeks ago I finally got around to writing a blog post that specifically used that phraseology in the title: “Does the Internet need an HR Department?”

In the last couple of weeks, Stephanie Zvan has spearheaded and organized an effort to ensure that conferences in the Skeptics world either get out and dust off, or if necessary (and it often is) create, a set of guidelines pertaining to harassment at conferences. That effort is making real progress.

And now, Jason Thibeault, the Lousy Canuck (which I can never say out loud because where I grew up “Canuck” was the C-word) has a post linking many of these things together, concepts and actions and throwing in some data-like observations, urging that we figure out how to move this conversation forward.

I don’t have a lot to add at this point. I just want to point out, and point you to, efforts to get the job done of professionalizing our movement and dragging it kicking and screaming or otherwise into the late 20th century.

I’ve written about this before (Shut up about everything all the time unless what you have to say is HITLER!!!!) and it relates to the previously discussed topic, as Godwin-Scaping is a way to tell someone to stop talking. Richard Dawkins told Rebecca Watson that her comments were not about the repression of women by Islam, therefore she should shut up. Numerous Nuclear Power Apologists have told Ana Miller and me to Shut Up about Fukushima because more people die in automobile accidents world wide every day than were killed by radiation at that power plant. Recently, Rebecca Watson wrote about how being told to “not feed the trolls” might sound like friendly and helpful advice (and may even be meant that way sometimes) but it is actually just another way to tell people to shut up.

I’ve also referred to this as the “Watch the Monkey” strategy, as invented by the famous lawyer Johnny Cochraine. Well, for him, it was done with a glove, but South Park saw it differently:

And, during the early days of Elevator Gate I was told numerous times by many people that the discussion had been worn out, used up, was over and done with, had gotten boring, or needed to stop. I still hear that from people.

However, last time I checked, Rebecca Watson is still getting obnoxious emails including rape threats, and other bloggy colleagues and friends of mine are being told that this or that person would like to “kick them in the cunt” or other such niceties. So no, it is not done. It is not done until all that stops. Stopping this will probably require the transformation of our species to one that reproduces with parthenogenesis and the males mostly die off, because it is mostly the males laying on the crap that requires addressing, though it is not always the males calling for the conversation to end.

And now a word from George Carlin:

(Hat Tip: Jaf)

The American Civil War was fought over slavery, and we are still talking about it because there is still racism over the very issue. I don’t think conversations like Elevator Gate end. They simply become parts of other, newer versions of the same conversation.

This specific issue can also be considered against the broader backdrop of “Codes Of Conduct – Sexism, Skepticism And Civility Online.”

Can you think of any counter examples? Aren’t we still discussing what people were whinging about in the Old Testament? Isn’t #Occupy closely related to some of the issues brought up in the Code of Hammurabi? We really should always be suspicious when someone comes along with the “we’ve had enough” argument, even if, as I suggested earlier, it is meant well. And, half the time, it isn’t.

And now … The Damage Richard Dawkins Did

I was at a local event recently where a group of sex-positive third-wave feminist women had traditionally used a certain amount of overt sexuality to raise some money. They had been doing it for a few years and had gained a certain reputation and a certain following. A friend of mine who knew of their work but did not know them personally joined in during this most recent event and volunteered to work the door, as it were, to help to relieve some of the visitors and participants of a little cash (this was a fundraiser). I was not present for that part of the event but some of the people involved, who had been involved for several years, later said to me that they felt my friend had gone a bit over the top in her performance. I asked for a description of what concerned them, and when I heard it I had to laugh a little. You see, over the years, these women have changed their own act from a more to a less sexy parody version of themselves, toning it down and calibrating, for a number of different reasons. The young woman who joined them this year had calibrated her own approach to their reputation and not to their current approach. She was a blast, as it were, from the past, and that was a little shocking.

It seems to me that there is a spectrum of sex positivity along which sex positive third wavers exist, and that not everyone is in the same place at the same time. The disturbed and disturbing universe of Elevator Gate seems to involve, to some extent, the pitting of people in one place against those in another. I’m seeing this mainly in places outside the immediate discussion of Elevator Guy and Rebecca’s talk, etc., but this does really seem to be happening. Have a look at this piece by Greta Christina. Greta discusses the potential outcomes when outspoken people are far from each other in their calibration of what is acceptable, what they expect of each other, and how they are willing to view other people.

It pisses me off that, in order to be taken seriously as a female intellectual voice, I have to hold back my sexuality. Especially since it’s such a no-win situation. Women who are too sexual aren’t taken seriously, and women who aren’t sexual enough aren’t taken seriously. Women who are conventionally attractive get valued solely for their sexual appeal; women who aren’t conventionally attractive get dismissed for their lack of it. Women who are conventionally attractive are assumed to be dumb bimbos; women who aren’t conventionally attractive are assumed to be either bitter or desperate. Women who are conventionally attractive get trivialized; women who aren’t conventionally attractive get treated with pity and contempt. We can’t win.

We could, if we want, stand on different parts of the multi-dimensional spectra of sex positivity and scream at each other for doing it wrong. Or, we could do what Third Wave Feminism is supposed to do: Recognize diversity and work with it, like it, love it, deal with it. And have those conversations.

And now, on to the next part in this series: Knowing when to shut up!

When Rebecca discussed a range of topics from being bothered by clueless gents to sexual abuse to rape, some of her critics scolded her for linking these different things together, and insisted that when she mentioned something about a guy asking her over at 4 AM for coffee being clueless that she was accusing him of rape. Even Richard Dawkins got that wrong and he is known for being smart and stuff.

This is one of those things where WikiThinking can muddy the waters. There are two named fallacies of argument discussed in The Wikipedia that people will refer to when someone discusses a range, or spectrum, of behaviors. One is the Slippery Slope argument. The other is the Godwin Principle. The former is only sometimes a fallacy … there are slippery slopes and there are times when people worry about slippery slopes that are not real. Either way, it does not matter. The spectrum of behavior exists, and it is a matter of discussion as to whether being fast and lose at one end of the spectrum makes it harder for society or individuals or whomever to deal with the other end of the spectrum. It is worth discussing. Presuming that because one senses that there is a slope that therefore there must be a slippery slope fallacy is sloppy thinking.

And you know what sloppy thinking can lead to if you are not careful. It can lead to a very slippery slope indeed! Down which we will surely slip!

The second WikiThink, the Godwin Effect, is, first of all, a joke and not a fallacy. I think it is very funny that many people don’t get that. But even if we want to take seriously for a moment that a discussion can be derailed by comparing your interlocutor to Hitler or comparing some bad thing or another to The Holocaust, I still don’t think this applies here. Rebecca Watson, Richard Dawkins, and a lot of other people including me and I’m guessing you are concerned about female genital mutilation, wartime rape cultures, and we are also concerned about lower level forms of misogyny and sexism. Is distraction by first world problems counterproductive? Is being dickish towards each other desensitizing and thus counterproductive?

The point is this: When we discuss the kinds of problems that range across spectra of severity (or likelihood or any other measure) it probably is a good idea to be sensitive to the effects of pooling different things together or even just mentioning them all in the same talk, and it is very important to keep track of what people are actually saying about which parts of the spectrum. Rebecca Watson said “guys, don’t do that” in a fairly off the cuff informal way about being clueless, not about wartime rape or female genital mutilation. I believe she speaks more severely about the latter. As we all do. It is respectful of the seriousness of some of these issues to keep that straight, and it is offensive and counterproductive to accidentally or, worse, willfully confound and conflate these things.

You must have seen both the slippery slope argument and the concern over Godwining used in inappropriate ways. Perhaps contributing, in the comments, an example or two will be helpful.

And now on to the next topic: Sex!

When Rebecca commented about Stef McGraw’s commentary in her talk at a the CFI Student Leadership Conference, at which Stef was in attendance as a student leader, there were those who complained that this was unfair; Rebecca has a big presence and a resounding voice on the Internet and in the Skeptics and Atheists communities, and for good reason. Therefore, when she speaks critically of a person or a person’s ideas, where that person has less of a voice, who is less well known or less well established, that could be seen as somehow unfair, or at least, uneven.

On the other and, Rebecca certainly has not only a right, but in her role, a responsibility to speak out and she was in fact responding to public comments Stef had made.

There is an irony here which has been pointed out a few times: Rebecca was speaking as a leader in the skeptics community to other leaders or future leaders in the skeptics community. She was not speaking as a notable star before her fans, but rather, as an established representative among emerging representatives. Saying it yet another way, the Rebecca-Stef differential in power was surely less than some insisted it was, and was transient in any event.

And, all of this is significantly diminished in relative importance by the two or three remarks made on Pharyngula (PZ Myers’ blog) by Richard Dawkins. Whatever differential in bigness of voice may have existed between Rebecca and Stef is miniaturized by the colossal size gap between the voice of Richard Dawkins and pretty much everybody else.

I think it is perfectly reasonable, and actually rather important, to discuss this differential. The effects of different size voices in our variously overlapping communities are rather obvious and they matter. At no point should someone like Rebecca, in relation to Stef, be asked to quiet down, and at no point should Richard Dawkins be told to shut up either. The insistence that Rebecca was wrong to disagree with a mere little person is just another form of silencing and it should not be tolerated. But, having said that, we can all recognize the differences in strength and reach of voice and what effect that has on our overall goals and on functionality within the community.

Face it, there are big people and there are followers. Not everyone can be classified into either category (actually, most people probably can’t be) but there is enough of a fan-phenomenon that bigness of voice can have some fairly absurd effects. There are followers of various well read blogs who will pretty much go along with whatever Simon says (Simon is a variable, you fill in the name). I have seen Simon make a remark that is tongue in cheek, or simply mis-stated, or perhaps intentionally vague, only to have the followers embarrass themselves by going along with it or being confused about what was meant.

The bigness of the voice matters. I did not particularly feel that Rebecca crossed some boundary when she remarked on Stef’s remarks. I think the accusation that Rebecca had screwed this up was little more than post-hoc hate mongering. But, the problem referenced is real and worthy of discussion. How do people like Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and Rebecca Watson mitigate against the negative effects of their bigness? How do they even identify it? How do we deal with this as a community? I assume this all falls in the category of basic privilege checking, which some people are already good at, others perhaps need to improve.

Well? How do we address this? (Place your answers in the comment section below.)

And now, on to the next issue…

When Elevatorgate happened, the ensuing Universe Known as Rebeccapocalypse was shaped and determined by a number of early events that have caused the final result … well, not the “final” result, but the result that we are stuck with as of this writing … but had those first few days of Internet activity been a little different things might have come out a different way.

Here I would like to do two things.

One is to suggest that the horrid stinking gaggle of frothing winged monkeys that get their marching orders from Franc Hoggle and a few others have a point … actually two or three points. The other is to explore five issues (including these points) that came up in the early days of the Rebeccapocalyptic Universe and that could have become nice, interesting little galaxies of conversation but instead became stinking useless black holes orbited by the aforementioned frothing gaggling winged monkeys.

Before I take a step further into this mess I want to be very clear about something: This is in no way an effort to reach a hand across any sort of chasm or to build any sort of bridge, and in no way should any of the things I say in this regard be interpreted as either a) even an iota of respect for the Hoggle gang and what they stand for and/or step in and/or eat for their stinking trollish breakfast; or b) even a tiny withdraw of allegiance to my esteemed and wonderful colleagues in the blogosphere (you’all know who you are) who are almost always right when everyone else is almost always wrong. This is not a reconciliation. This is, rather, an exploration of missed opportunities to have some important conversations, opportunities that were ruined by the middle-school level sniping and backbiting that ensued early on. This is not an attempt to invite the winged monkeys to the conversation. They are not welcome. If you are a winged monkey reading this now, please go away.

The issues I’d like to bring up are a little complicated, and while there is overlap, they are also fairly distinct. For this reason I want to address each one in a separate blog post in what I hope is not a futile effort to keep the conversations that might ensue each on their own track.

First, I’ll touch on the question of power and relative power (on the Internet, mainly) vis-a-vis the question of whether or not Rebecca Watson should have commented about Stef McGraw‘s comments. I don’t want to speak about that event so much as the overall question of how differential levels of fame, infamy, or exposure shape our conversations. Then I want to talk about the question of spectra. Dawkins berated Rebecca for addressing something other than female genital mutilation. People have berated Ana Miller and me for addressing something other than Carnage on the Highways in our Fukushima Updates. And, most interesting, Rebecca got into trouble for actually addressing things like female genital mutilation while at the same time addressing lesser crimes against humanity while at the same time addressing annoyances. It is as though we expect the peas to get into the mashed potatoes and at the same time know that if they do the dinner is ruined!

Third, I want to talk about calibrating and recalibrating things. Years ago, on the Internet, I used the word “bitch” (in reference to myself … I was feeling bitchy about something). I was taken to task for using a sexist word. Now, we have men using the words “cunt” and “twat” to insult and threaten women, and screaming about how the use of these words makes them feminists. Calibration? Probably not. More relevant to the present discussion is calibration of sex positiveness. Should there have been a skeptical nude calendar? What if that was attempted in, say, 1880 to support getting the women’s vote? What if women went into the street today and burned their bras? Would only the EPA notice? This is a touchy subject because I will actually be suggesting that people change over time, in part because of experience and in part because society changes. I would hope the Skeptics Movement has at least some degree of fluidity and evolvability and that skeptics can recognize and understand this.

Another issue I’d like to touch on is the ways people tell other people to shut up. For example, there is the method whereby you sigh and go “Oh, I’ve had enough. So everyone else must shut up now,” or some version of that. Or one can issue a call to not feed the trolls. I’ll probably talk about a few different ways to tell people to shut up or to otherwise hijack the conversation, and tie up a few other loose ends as well. Like for example, if it really was Richard Dawkins who used the term “Muslima” to tell Rebecca Watson to shut up. Or was it the Zombie Richard Dawkins who said that?

I’ve suggested this before, and it may be worth repeating: Imagine that Rebecca Watson, Stef McGraw, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Barbara Drescher, Stephanie Zvan, All the Skepchicks, Me, all the other bloggers, and most of the commmenters on our blogs discussing Rebeccapocalypse all worked for the same big-giant company and this entire discussion happened at work. Imagine what the HR (Human Resources) department would be required to do, would want to do, would want to avoid. Imagine how they would handle the current discussion, and what they might do to avoid future difficulties like this from arising, by following best practices and following the law to the greatest degree possible.

Imagine that.

And now … “Power and Presence on the Internet and Elsewhere”

[This is a repost, originally published here. You may want to glance at the comments on the original. It is possible that I struck a nerve.]

This has to do with the idea of a fetish. It is likely that I’m using the word “fetish” in a different way than it is usually used in modern English parlance, so some definition is appropriate. Here’s some material from various dictionary sources:

Fetish

Fetich Fe”tich, Fetish Fe”tish, n.[F. f[‘e]tiche, from Pg. feiti?o, adj., n., sorcery, charm, fr. L. facticius made by art, artifical, factitious. See {Factitious}.]

1. A material object supposed among certain African tribes to represent in such a way, or to be so connected with, a supernatural being, that the possession of it gives to the possessor power to control that being. [1913 Webster]

2. Any object to which one is excessively devoted. fetichism

(From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48)

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

fetish

n 1: a charm superstitiously believed to embody magical powers [syn: {juju}, {voodoo}, {hoodoo}, {fetich}]
2: excessive or irrational devotion to some activity; “made afetish of cleanliness” [syn: {fetich}]

From the Urban Dictionary:

Fetish

2. A sexual fixation or obsession with a usually non-sexual object. EX. socks, horses, monkeys, pain, bondage.

---

The two definitions that commonly come to mind for most people are probably the sexual fetish (the object or, perhaps incorrectly, the noun referring to the practice of fetishizing the object) and the more general term for talisman or object with magical powers.

None of these definitions are the ones I want to use here, though the meaning I’m using is reflected in the WordNet second definition. But even that is not accurate.

When modern anthropologists use the term “fetish” we often mean something that is very much of interest to skeptics, because it has to do with getting things wrong. In particular, it may be that a fetishized belief is a special category of how to get things wrong that, because of the psychology (or if you prefer, anthropology) of how it works, requires a special skeptical approach.

Let me illustrate with an example.

Purchasing goods that are labeled as made from recycled material can be a fetish. The consumer is not using a rational calculus with each purchase, or even a rational rule that “recycled is good” but rather has oriented semi-obsessively towards the term “recycled” and assumes it is always good, and that the label “recycled” is always meaningful and always discriminates among products. As a rule, going for the recycled product sounds like a good idea. If one uses this as a guideline then the planet will be a better place. But, what if this is actually a bad idea in some cases, and should be avoided? Consider that possibility for a moment.

If your immediate reaction to the idea that perhaps we should not always buy the product that says “made from recycled materials” is negative or you think I must be crazy, or perhaps the thought occurs to you that I’m a right wing neocon post Earth Day apologist for industry with some lame argument about how recycling is actually a bad thing, then you might be fetishising recycling. Not because it turns you on sexually, or you think the recycling bin has magical properties, but rather … well, you think the recycling process is a magical solution to our environmental problems and you know that if you engage in it you will feel satisfied. So maybe it is a little like talisman use and sexual gratification. But with plastic bottles.

Have you ever seen, or purchased, recycled toilet paper? Of course, I don’t mean toilet paper that was plucked, used, from the sewage system and converted back into nice clean toilet paper. I mean toilet paper that was made from paper fibers that were recycled from some other use of paper. Very rarely is toilet paper ever labeled as “recycled” because people are generally pretty stupid and will avoid buying something that the think is used toilet paper. There was a time when only one or two brands of toilet paper made the claim that they were made of recycled paper, yet many brands were partly or wholly made of recycled material. The decision to buy the paper that says “recycled” would be correct, but the decision to avoid the brand that does not say “recycled” would be incorrect much of the time. But it is the word “recycled” not the recycled paper itself we are going for.

Today, there are numerous brands that signify that they are recycled, but the correlation remains imperfect. This means that you need to check with a consumer guide of some kind to know if your toilet paper (or tissue or paper towels) comes from recycled product, rather than relying on the labeling. So, this is probably not a good example today, but just ten years ago there was no correlation between whether something was labeled as recycled and whether or not it was, in fact, recycled.

Water use is similar. All use of water from piped-in sources demands energy and thus has a carbon footprint of some kind. But the amount of energy (or other resources) one saves by feeding your dehumidifier water to your plants instead of tap water or growing cacti instead of bushes in your yard depends enormously on where you live and how water is managed in that particular area. Yet, highly environmentally conscious people are more similar to each other in their water conservation methods than may be appropriate. In making that statement, I assume that most people make choices in what to spend their energy on to lower their impact on the environment. Crushing your recyclables may cost you a lot of hours per year that you could have spent on caulking your cracks. Given that the way most recyclables are handled, crushing the does nothing useful other than making them fit in your own recycling bin, so this time consuming behavior may not be worth it. (Consider getting a larger recycling bin!)

Food fetishes (and I’ll have more to say about this later as well) can probably explain a lot of what might be considered illogical behavior. Many individuals strive subconsciously to classify all foods into the category “wild” vs. not. Once a food is determined to be wild, it won’t taste good. A person may love Cornish game hens, believing them to be not wild, but reject all other birds (save turkeys and chickens) because they are “game,” We will be able to identify this as a fetish if a person rejects the food as tasting “gamy” without actually trying it. Musical tastes, tastes in movies, theater, other areas of life may follow similar patterns. I listened to a tirade recently about how terrible all Woody Allen movies were from a person who had seen two of them. Seeing one bad movie made by a certain director may be a clue that all the other movies are bad. And/or that experience can be converted into a determination that movies one has not seen are bad. Using the badness of one movie as a clue is rational. Concluding that you did not like movies you have not seen is rationally impossible, but common, and it is fetishized behavior.

Many will argue with the earlier points I discussed, claiming that one can in fact maximize one’s effort in each and every area of personal environmental action … using minimal water, recycling everything, never buying anything that is held in a container, and so on. That could be true. Or, it could be a matter of fetishizing this subset of personal environmental action (limit water use, recycle, buy only certain products, bring your cloth bag to the store instead of using paper/plastic). So, given that these examples will only be reasonable to a handful of people, let me offer some different examples from, say, Cabin Life.

Here in Minnesota it is common for families to own cabins out in the wilderness, typically on a lake, typically up north. If you visit a cabin owned by people who have had cabins for decades, and who practice the old ways (and assuming the cabin is not just an out of place 5 bedroom 4 bath 2-floor suburban home, as many are these days), you will find quite a bit of fetishized behavior. You will find some of these behaviors in people’s regular homes as well, but not as often.

Here’s the key that holds all of the following behaviors together as fetishes: They don’t make sense when you actually analyze them, even if they are “based on truth” in some way. In some cases, the behavior itself is a waste of time. In other cases, a particular behavior on its own makes sense, but some principle is being applied inconsistently. Some of these items will be familiar to you, others not. And, you may know of examples I’ve not included, so please add those in the comments.

1) When you go to the cabin, don’t bother closing the curtains or blinds of your home, but when you leave the cabin to go home, make sure you close all the curtains and blinds. The rational is that sunlight fades rugs and upholstery. The reasons we know this is a fetish and not a sensible act are many:

a) No one ever skips closing drapes or blinds on windows that don’t face the sun at all.

b) The rugs and upholstery at home never seem to fade.

c) There is a down side: People know the cabin is empty. An empty cabin is much more vulnerable than an empty home in town, for obvious reasons. In fact, we often avoid closing up the home in the city in this manner … we leave some curtains open, leave some lights on, etc. so people think we have not left. But the cabin is endowed with numerous signals that it is abandoned when we leave it behind.

d) There is another down side: With no sun (UV light) streaming into the cabin, mold spores which are normally killed by sunlight can have a field day. There are a lot of reasons that cabins tend to be musty. This is one of them.

2) Turn on the water heater after you turn on the pump. This is probably not a bad idea if there is no cost, as it is the case that a water heater with no water in it should not be turned on, but the importance attached to this sequence is almost always overdeveloped. If the pump is turned on first, water will be forced into the heater and it won’t burn out from being empty. The reason that this is a fetish is that the water heater is never empty. There are only two ways it can be empty (short of someone emptying it): a) It is broken and leaking; or b) It was installed incorrectly so it siphoned out when not in use. So, when you first occupy your cabin after winter, make sure you run the pump first. The water heater may have been emptied out last fall to avoid cracking, or maybe it cracked during the winter, etc. But on a day to day basis, acting as though it is broken or as though the plumber came by and emptied it out when you were not looking is fetishized behavior. You can turn both switches on at once, and if you accidentally turn the pump on second by several seconds, the world will not end. But if that makes you nervous, you’ve fetishized the sequence of the circuit breakers.

3) When you pull in the row boat for the end of the season, remove the plug from the back of the boat, turn the boat upside down, and then put the plug inside the cabin, preferably some place where it will take you a week to find it next spring. This is fetishized behavior. The propose of the plug is to allow the water to drain out of an up-righted boat that is on land or on a lift. Once you turn the boat upside down, that drain hole is not needed. Just leave the plug in the hole so in the spring when you put the boat back in the lake you don’t accidentally sink it. “But wait,” you say, “what about the idea that if you leave the plug in your boat, someone can steal the boat more easily?” Well, the answer to that is “The plugs are two dollars at the hardware store. The boat thief knows this.” You should leave the plug in the boat. If the boat is upright and out of the water, pull it but don’t bring it into the cabin. The plug should be tied to a string that keeps it attached to the boat so no one can walk off with it. But no, nobody does that. Every year, the search for the plug commences anew.

4) When you leave the cabin, certain things must be unplugged or the cabin will explode even though the power has been turned off. I love this one because it is so complex yet so simple. What things do you unplug, what things do you leave plugged in? Many people leave the TV plugged in but remove the plug on their coffee pot. Yet, the TV is actually drawing electricity while it is plugged in, and all that complex circuitry, especially in the old clunker TV you put in the cabin because the TV is not that important, can short circuit at any time. But a drip coffee pot with an off switch and an automatic shutoff is going to sit there, plugged in, and do no harm. Most people will leave a clock radio plugged in but unplug, again, the coffee pot. I’m not sure of the current situation, but I read some years ago that old beat up clock radios are the cause of a disproportionate number of electrical fires.

If you go into someone’s cabin and inspect what is left plugged in vs. not, it may well be explainable with this model: In the old days (and still, in some households) coffee is made in a percolator. Some plug-in percolators need to be unplugged or they will cook the coffee until it turns to varnish. Or at least, that was true in the old days, though not so much these days. So, we fetishized the percolator, and by extension, all coffee pot related things. I know people who unplug automatic one-cup-at-a-time coffee makers, which are by default turned off (or have a switch and an indicator light) but leave the toaster oven or microwave plugged in right next to it. (This is common in office kitchens as well as cabins.) In short, if something gets classified as related to making coffee, unplug it. Everything else, leave plugged in. That’s a fetish.

4) Food taboos having to do with fish. Ever since I was a kid, I was told to not eat rock bass because they have parasites. It was rather interesting to discover that the “bass” I had been catching, cleaning, cooking, and eating for two or three years from one of our favorite camping spots were rock bass. The bass were supposed to be wormy. But they never were. After moving to Minnesota, I’ve heard the same thing: Rock bass have worms, don’t eat them. Well, I checked. Rock bass and perch tend to get certain parasites as the season goes on. They are harmless to humans and rarely noticeable, and more importantly, it seems that this is an issue for fresh water fish generally as summer progresses, and not a special trait of rock bass. What is widespread is not worms in rock bass, but rather, rumors of worms.

That does not sound like a fetish. It sounds like people just getting something wrong. But it is a fetish because it is part of a larger pattern of food taboos having to do with fish. It is my hypothesis that any given fauna of fish must be sorted out by humans into those you can eat vs. those you can’t eat. It does not matter too much which fish go in which category, though there will often be reasons, and sometimes those reasons will make sense, other times not. Here in Minnesota, we don’t eat rock bass because of the worms, and we don’t eat eelpout or bowfin because of the taste. In Europe, eellpout are prized because of their excellent taste, and in the southern US, bowfin are routinely part of the diet. In Central Africa, visiting tourists pay extra to fish for Clarius (a large catfish) and find them tasty. The locals don’t mind touching the fish (they are the ones who get to clean and cook them) but won’t eat them becuase they are considered unedible.

The bowfin and eelpout taboo in Minnesota is related to two things: 1) A confusion between the two fish (many people think they are the same) which makes any taboo against one a taboo against another, and the strange practice of the eelpout to wrap itself around the angler’s arm, snake like, when caught. Which, I’m pretty sure, hardly ever happens. The Clarious taboo in Central Africa has to do with the idea that Clarius feed on dead human corpses. Well, they probably do, but so do other fish that are not taboo, and usually there are not that many dead human corpses laying around. The parasite loaded rock bass is a case of one fish taking all the blame for a general phenomenon. People won’t avoid perch in August, but they are about as likely to have parasites as rock bass. Yet, everyone’s got a story about the wormy rock bass.

As I said above, I think this is a fetish in that we humans have some sort of a need to restrict fish or other aquatic food. Aquatic food is somehow considered dangerous, but we still want to eat it, so we blame a subset of the foods for something (being creepy in some way, usually) and avoid them, but eat everything else. A famous example of this, of course, is the specific set of Kosher restrictions from Leviticus.

… These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. … And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you … They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Imagine a cabin-culture version of Leviticus.

These ye shall close tight on the day of your departure; Whatever covers ye fenestrations. Ye shall disdain the plug of the boat even soever when it is tipped asunder or pulled from the sea. That which draws fire from the wall to prepare the strong water shall be disconnected, while you will shun the disconnection of all other items, but to fire the water before moving it with the pump shall be an abomination unto you. The fish that acts like a snake or all other creatures of the sea or lake or stream that resemble it shall be an abomination, and all creatures with a red eye shall be considered infested with myriad worms and shunned, as though an abomination unto you.

An whole ‘nuther category of fetishes has to do with the basic hydraulic theory of the human body (or mind) vis-a-vis health.

5) If it is a vitamin, it is good, and more the better. Vitamins are, of course, good (as are minerals) but supplements may be useless since they are not metabolized, excesses are not stored or used, or some cofactor is not present for them to be useful. But their goodness is attested to in enough places that all-are-good and more-is-better, two aspects of any good fetish, are widespread beliefs. Of course, once you are convinced, as a skeptic, that vitamin supplements are a scam, you might not thing vitamin supplements are ever good. I’m fairly sure the APS still recommends pre-natal vitamins, for example, though I recently witnessed a self proclaimed skeptic suggest that they would not be. Similarly,

6) Vaccines, as highly manufactured chemicals injected into the body are always bad. It is interesting that in Central Africa, anything you inject into the body is good, no matter what. You can sell people vials of pure water, or vials of anything, as long as they can can inject it to cure disease, restore youth, enhance virility. In Western culture, perhaps, the relevant fetish is that anything we inject is automatically dangerous, even if recommended by a doctor. It is a little hard to reconcile why a long list of manufactured chemicals is really good no matter what on one hand (vitamin/mineral supplements) but always bad on the other hand (carefully researched and highly regulated vaccines). But again, fetishes are not about thinking, but rather, about having a rule that is a bit more stark, more colorful, more strident than the average guideline.

A fetish is a thing that people do, but shouldn’t, not because they have done the calculus wrong, but because they’ve not done a calculus at all, but that thing … the thing they do or that they avoid … has a feature, or a signal, used to make the decision. All things garbage must be ensmallened, even if most of it is not going to a landfill. Anything related to coffee at the cabin gets unplugged. Coffee machines at home, don’t bother. If you can unscrew it from the boat, do so. Snake like fish taste bad (in Minnesota … in Louisiana, they taste good). These are all links between specific traits and specific behaviors where there may or may not be an identifiable reason for the link but there is always a lack of context appropriate calculus.

There are fetishes within skepticism as well. We saw this with cranberry juice, where many reactions by skeptics about the effectiveness of cranberry juice to limit chronic urinary tract infections had more to do with the fact that cranberries are a “natural” item (a plant, in this case) than with the available data from several studies. Skeptics fetishize many things. If a blog post were written with a title indicating some sort of concern or question about the safety of a vaccine, how many skeptics would NOT approach that blog post with the presumption that the writer of the post is a vaccine denialist? Is it really true that vaccines are universally safe and there is never, ever a question about them? No. It is true that most anti-vaccine rhetoric is part of the anti-vax movement and is bullshit? Yes. So one can see where it comes from. But automatic reactions to dog-whistles is, or at least can be, a fetishized behavior.

For something to really be a fetish, it may need to be more than just an automatic (and typically inappropriate) reaction, or the misuse of a cue or clue interpreted in the absence of thoughtful rationality. It needs to be something where the symbol itself (the fetish) is hypertonic. Bowfin are not really snakelike and don’t wrap around people’s arms, but they are long and thin and the snakiness is the key signal of this particular food taboo, so even a little snakiness is a lot of snakiness. The danger of the coffee pot looms and the imagination conjures a burning building, while the clock radio silently and innocently mocks us from the corner of the bedroom. These are not electronic devices existing along some spectrum, but rather, they are minimally evil vs. indifferent, if not evil vs. good, when fetishized. The assumption of what will happen when you turn on the water heater before the pump is a disastrous smoky explosion followed by a rapidly spreading fire, while to actually get even a small disaster one would have to work extra hard or circumstances would have to be very unusual. One imagines the thief, huddled against the cold late in the fall when few cabins are occupied, about to drag your boat into the water, and seeing no plug, and storming off frustrated and angry. “Drats!!! Foiled again by those clever cabin-dwellers and their plugs!!!”

The fetishized behavior is more often than not one side or the other of a simple dichotomy. After all,

…this is the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth … To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten.

]]> https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/12/05/the-fetish-in-relation-to-skepticism/feed/ 7 5633 https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/10/02/541/ https://gregladen.com/blog/2011/10/02/541/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:30:39 +0000 http://freethoughtblogs.com/xblog/?p=541 Continue reading Being Skeptical of Skeptics’ Skepticism →]]>

…I have spent a great deal of time reading blogposts and comments on skeptical sites on the Internet, and one important fact has become readily apparent: that many in our community aren’t aware of one of the most important things a skeptic should know.

I’ve seen opinions stated without any factual substantiation. I’ve seen self-styled “experts” make derisive comments about others’ lack of knowledge about a topic, only to find out that it was they who were, in fact, ill-informed. Why? Because too many of us don’t know what we don’t know.

That’s Skepticism and Ethics

Yeah, I was disappointed the other day when I posted information that I had a great deal of confidence in (having two sources including one inside) that medical doctors on the scene wanted a woman at the South Pole research station to go to a real hospital, that the current conditions there were actually allowing some flights in and out (though rarely) that the turnaround time to get a flight in place was at least a few weeks and none were in the loop so regardless of conditions the woman could not be airlifted at all, and finally, that the decision to not take this very expensive but only moderately risky (no riskier than previously carried out supply flights) action were being stonewalled by a private corporation.

And the response I got were a number of people who said “you simply can’t fly in or out of the antarctic now, it can’t be done” and/or “there is nothing medically you can do for a stroke victim anyway” or “it’s the pilots who make these decisions so let them decide.”

One can certainly agree or disagree as to whether or not a flight if this kind should be made, but not on the basis of what was being said by these commenters who had the opportunity to click the provided link and read all about it. This is annoying, but especailly annoying because my blog post was a request to get people to sign a petition to urge the US government to consider the issue and put aside the interest of noehtyaR Corporation (spelled backwards here so they don’t find this discussion … I have it on good authority that they are trolling for mentions of their corporate name in connection with other key words to make efforts to control the discussion.)

There were three kinds of commenters who responded to my humble request for help for a good friend of mine with “sketpical” statements calling the whole thing into question (again, incorrectly and without reference to the relevant facts):

1) Regular commenters whom I know to be skeptics, who were just being sloppy. I believe they likely learned from this situation. These are commenters who in the past have never been shy to disagree with something I’ve said, and those disagreements have often sent me back to the books to check on my argument, and although I’m very rarely wrong (obviously!) occasionally I may have been though I don’t remember

2) Individual(s) hawking some kind of crazy medical revisionism serving their own shady purposes.

3) Individual(s) whom I can’t identify but whom I’ll guess (and it is only a guess, and a bold one at that) are agents of Neohtyar Corporation who are repressing me.

That discussion is going on here. Please go there and click the links, especially the one to sign the petition!

And read S&E’s post!

Thank you very much that is all for now.

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