The immoral mind of Marc Hauser

It’s a serious blow to the “morality evolved” crowd when one of its chief proponents, Harvard’s Marc Hauser, has been found to have engaged in scientific misconduct in attempting to find evidence to support his theories of moral evolution:

Marc Hauser, a prolific scientist and popular psychology professor who last summer resigned from Harvard University, had fabricated data, manipulated results in multiple experiments, and described how studies were conducted in factually incorrect ways, according to the findings of a federal research oversight agency posted online Wednesday.

The report provides the greatest insight yet into the problems that triggered a three-year internal university investigation that concluded in 2010 that Hauser, a star professor and public intellectual, had committed eight instances of scientific misconduct. The document, which will be published in the Federal Register Thursday, found six cases in which Hauser engaged in research misconduct in work supported by the National Institutes of Health. One paper was retracted and two were corrected, and other problems were found in unpublished work.

Although Hauser “neither admits nor denies committing research misconduct,” he does, the report states, accept that federal authorities “found evidence of research misconduct.”

According to the federal findings:

-Hauser fabricated data in a 2002 Cognition paper that was later retracted, which examined monkeys’ ability to learn patterns of syllables. He never exposed monkeys to a particular sound pattern described in the experiment, despite reporting the results in a graph.

-In two experiments, researchers measured monkeys’ responses to patterns of consonants and vowels, a process called “coding” their behavior. Hauser falsified the coding, causing the results to pass a statistical test used to ensure that a particular finding was not just a chance result. Colleagues coding the same experiments came up with different results. Hauser “acknowledged to his collaborators that he miscoded some of the trials and that the study failed to provide support for the initial hypothesis,” the report said.

-A paper examining monkeys’ abilities to learn grammatical patterns included false descriptions of how the monkeys’ behavior was coded, “leading to a false proportion or number of animals showing a favorable response,” the findings stated. In an early version of the paper, he falsely reported that all 16 monkeys responded more strongly to an ungrammatical pattern than a grammatical one. Records reviewed by investigators found that one monkey responded in the opposite way and another responded equally. Hauser claimed that the behavior was coded by three scientists, when in fact he was the only one who measured their behavior. Then, when the manuscript was revised, he provided a false numerical description of the extent of agreement among multiple observers in coding behavior, despite being the only observer. All issues were corrected before publication.

I’ve read Hauser’s Moral Minds twice, and while it is head-and-shoulders above the likes of Dawkins and Harris, I did not find his arguments particularly compelling, for the most part, not that I wasn’t above citing them in my incomplete debate with Dominic.

Can you spot the criminal?

Who needs judge and jury when they can simply hire me to look at people and distinguish the innocent from the guilty. Of course, I am a superintelligence:

Your score is 90%

The interesting thing, according to the paper that inspired the online quiz, is that women are actually worse at identifying rapists than pure chance would indicate. This tends to support the complaints of lower-rank men that most women are unable to distinguish between predatory wolves and protective guard dogs.

Is evil all you can do?

Greatheart claims that voting is the full extent of his capabilities:

God doesn’t care about my pride, He does care how I conduct myself while on this earth. He will not judge me based on how others treat me; He will, however, judge me on my behavior. My vote is the only weapon I have against the evil at work in this country, so I will use it.

This raises three questions. First, why does Greatheart think his vote is the only weapon he has? Was the vote the only weapon possessed by George Washington or by the apostles? And does he truly believe God wants men to support what they know to be evil in the name of fighting evil?

Barack Obama is certainly evil. But there is no question that Mitt Romney is also evil, in fact, it is entirely possible that he is more evil than Obama. We know how Obama will govern, mostly in absentia. Whereas neither Mitt Romney’s governance of Massachusetts nor the way in which he violated party rules and used his power to silence dissent at the Republican National Convention indicates he will be a lesser evil than Obama.

Amateur hour

The Democratic Party belatedly realizes that attempting to appeal to less than two percent of the population is not a winning electoral strategy:

Embarrassed by Republicans, Democrats amended their convention platform Wednesday to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected.

Democrats had approved a platform on Tuesday that made no mention of God or Jerusalem. Instead, it expressed “unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

As a general rule, aggravating Christians and then pissing off Jews is not a viable election strategy. The closer the Democrats come to becoming the Atheism+ party, the more they ensure Republican dominance of Karl Rove’s dreams.

Mailvox: a requested arbitration

You know you’re dealing with a very special individual when you find yourself longing for the simple pleasure of swatting away the usual anklebiters. And what is with my critics and their absolute obsession with the human posterior? Anyhow, Corona Rabbit requested arbitration:

CR: I would like to know who deleted the CoronaRabbit posts under “True libertarians won’t vote Libertarian”.

VD: One of the blog administrators authorized to do so, who did so correctly as per the rules I established. It’s not that hard. When you are asked a direct question that is relevant to the topic at hand, then answer the fucking question. If you can’t follow a few very simple rules of this sort, you can’t be part of the conversation here.

CR: How very snappy. If you are not available to act as arbiter, then you should not have conversations on your blog. Or rather, you can, but then please rename your site to: Home Of The Ass Flies: We Suck Asses Daily.

Are you aware that I ASKED you to look at my posts, and those of Josh, in order to resolve this very thing? I stated that I was WAITING for that resolution. Here is the thing, Vox: Josh DEMANDED that I comply with the reply-rule. I saw no need to reply to his bullshit. Still, given his DEMAND, I then asked that YOU make a ruling on whether I was right about Josh being a filthy fucking play-debater.

Surely I am allowed to do thusly? Apparently, it seems, not. More than that, I was not necessary that I respond: my response to his question (the first version, before he changed it) had already been given, before he even asked. But let me give you the sequence: that is, if you actually do give a fucking damn.

[LONG AND TEDIOUS REFRAIN OF COMMENT THREAD]

So do tell me Vox, did I have to answer Josh’s “Question”? Given that before he changed the question, I kind of already had? I was under the impression that the sort of things Josh did were very big no-no’s. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now. Who the hell erased my last posts? I had classically cursed Nate in the last one, and was rather happy with it. Oh, and bought all the little wockers before the Lord: this is the real world, after all, where the Living God walks around. Read Lev 19 (KJV) for a refresher if you are in the mood.

I was not in the wrong here. Not 100% in the right, fine, but in terms of honesty and truth this was shameful. And do let me point out that Nate, the self-proclaimed Mr Awesome, had apparently read the posts… and then proceeded to proclaim judgement on the side of Josh. Apparenly I had managed to offend his unholiness with my lack of demonic glibness. (The act which led me to, in the absence of ANY fucking arbiter, to bring the Living God into the game.)

I am waiting for a reply. Not that I care, you understand. Not that I think you will act with any more integrity than the animals did. I would just like you to formaly chose the way of the devil. “I like my universe neat,” sayth the Lord.

THE REQUESTED VERDICT

VD: You very much need to learn to stop trying to tell other people what to do in their own house. Josh was correct. You had an obligation to answer his question and instead of doing so, launched an obnoxious and foul-mouthed series of idiotic comments. Moreover, it is utterly stupid to expect any blogger to act as an arbiter 24-7. That is absolutely ridiculous and you should be embarrassed to have even raised the point. Nor does failing to arbitrate between commenters on demand somehow transform a blog into an echo chamber. That doesn’t even make any sense.

It is 100 percent clear that you did not answer a serious and relevant question. You even admit it, you are simply attempting to justify not doing so. You claimed: “I DEEMED IT ANSWER ENOUGH. GIVEN THE CLASSICAL LOGICAL FALLACY JOSH WAS UNDOUBTEDLY KNOWINGLY COMMITTING, I SAW NO REASON TO TREAT JOSH WITH ANYTHING BUT DESERVED CONTEMPT”.

You were wrong. The various other aspects are irrelevant. You still have to answer the question. If Josh was committing a logical fallacy, you should have pointed it out to him, identified the specific logical fallacy committed, and then answered the question.

What could go wrong?

One of the minor problems with being forced into a centralized data system is that you have to assume that the centralizer is as careful with your data as you are. Which, of course, is seldom the case:

Apple faced a major embarrassment on the eve of the launch of its new iPhone when hackers published a trove of sensitive information about 1m Apple devices online. The hacker group AntiSec, an offshoot of the Anonymous and Lulzsec collectives which last year targeted Sony, News International and others in a high-profile wave of attacks, said it had obtained the database of Apple device-identifiers from an FBI agent’s laptop.

The hackers claim this is just a sample from 12m records, which they say include the full names, street addresses and mobile phone numbers of owners of Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. Several security researchers verified the published data are genuine, but said they present little risk to the people involved as long as the other details are not released.

Antisec should go ahead and release the whole kit and kaboodle. Perhaps the fanbois will finally learn a salient lesson concerning the wisdom of trusting Apple, Facebook, Google, or any other company attempting to utilize the walled garden model.

If you’re an Apple user who wants to find out if your device was compromised, The Next Web has created an online tool that lets you do so if you know your UDID.

The top 13 percent

The Pew Research Center takes only 11 questions to demonstrate why 74 percent of Americans shouldn’t be permitted to vote.

I got 11 questions correct, along with 13% of voters. Two of them were a little tricky because one has to go with the candidate’s current public positions as opposed to what one tends to suspect their real positions on the subject are and what their probable actions will be. I went back and forth on two of them before finally concluding that it was a news-related quiz and correctly electing to take them at face value. However ludicrous that might be….

True libertarians won’t vote Libertarian

Karl Denninger explains one reason why:

From Ron Paul’s July 2012 Campaign finance disclosure:

Cash on hand: $2,497,183.28
Debt: $0.00

From Gary Johnson’s July 2012 Campaign finance disclosure:

Cash on hand: $14,264.95
Debt: $296,201.47

It really is this simple folks. Ron Paul does not believe in fractional reserve lending nor does he borrow against nothing (and since both campaigns are incorporated, there is no “there” there when it comes to campaign “assets” nor can either individual be personally attached to cover obligations) — that is, he walks the talk and has ZERO campaign debt.

Gary Johnson, on the other hand, specifically and personally rejected, to my face, “One Dollar of Capital” (the repudiation of lending against nothing) in February when I was in his guest suite in Orlando, in front of a bunch of other Libertarians and campaign workers. His statement was that getting rid of the ability to create credit out of thin air would “harm the economy.”

Irrespective of what he may now tell you in sound bites in an attempt to try to seduce you to vote for him he has borrowed against hot air to the tune of 20:1 when compared against his cash balance in his own campaign, which means that by his own actions he doesn’t believe in sound money and sound banking — his own campaign is a financial bubble!

Some have noted the irony that I, supposedly one of the Internet’s leading libertarians, does not support or belong to the Libertarian Party. Some have used this to claim I am not a libertarian. I, on the other hand, have always insisted that a number of the Libertarian Party’s policies are expressly anti-libertarian.

I think their choice of a standard bearer in the 2012 election tends to lend support to my perspective on the matter. So, who am I supporting this year? Ron Paul if he runs third party. Otherwise, no one. I don’t vote for evil, no matter what letter appears in front of its name. To quote Mr. Denninger: “I will not be complicit in the furtherance of destruction of our nation’s freedom.”

Blogger and the Apple Vay

You vill have it our vay. You vill not have it your vay no more, hein? Your vay is old and schlecht. Our vay ist neu and gut and you must to use it so zat alles ist in ordnung!

The old Blogger interface will be removed in the coming days.

We’ve made many improvements to the new Blogger interface.

You can upgrade to the new interface at any time.

The thing is, I don’t want to upgrade to the new Blogger interface. I tried it. And I disliked it. So I went back to the old one, only now they are taking that option away from me. And for what? So Blogger’s engineers can feel as if they have something to do? How does forcing all their bloggers to use the new interface benefit Blogger in any way?

Now, the new interface isn’t absolutely awful, so I’m not going to drop Blogger over it, but it adds absolutely nothing as far as I’m concerned. It’s not as if I’m a Luddite, as I use the new Blogger template at Alpha Game and even tried twice – and failed twice – to use it to recreate the functionality of this blog. But I truly do not understand why so many technology companies insist on not only fixing things that are not broken, but forcing their users to adopt the “New and Improved” versions.

This is especially problematic when the forced upgrade actually breaks the product and there is no way to go back to the previous version. The last Kobo upgrade actually bricked two out of the three eReaders. Apple can get away with this sort of thing because it was run by an insane perfectionist. But I suspect disaster eventually looms for any company that forces upgrades, because it is an excellent way of creating the possibility of losing all of your customers simultaneously.