Why PZ is not a believer

PZ Myers has offered eight fairly solid reasons for not believing in god. Here is number 8:

There are always better explanations for unexplained phenomena than god: fraud and faulty sensory perception cover most of the bases, but mostly, if I see a Madonna appear in a field to bless me, the first thing I'd suspect is brain damage. We have clumsy, sputtering, inefficient brains that are better designed for spotting rutabagas and triggering rutting behavior at the sight of a curvy buttock than they are for doing math or interpreting the abstract nature of the universe. It is a struggle to be rational and objective, and failures are not evidence for an alternative reality. Heck, we can be fooled rather easily by mere stage magicians; we don't need to invent something as elaborate as a god to explain apparent anomalies.
I would tweak this eighth response. I don't think most believers have a generally malfunctioning ability to perceive, and I wouldn't attribute their willingness to believe to fraud, at least not fraud in any traditional use of that word (where intent to deceive is key). Rather, I suspect that the elaborate hyper-sensitive cognitive machinery that allows us to detect potential allies and facilitates the formation of social bonds with them is rigged to dim the perceptual abilities of 90% of us, based on perceived threats to social relationships we value. Thus, as I see it, the perceptual machinery isn't completely broken. Rather, it dims only when competing social cravings slap the "toxic" label on evidence that seems to be inconvenient to the formation or maintenance of a social group. This cognitive function dims our abilities to see and hear based on whether the things we might see or hear could damage treasured social relationships. It seems as though some sort of rough and ready mini-brain screens the world for our bigger better brain (at least in 90% of us). That mini rough and ready brain functions as a paranoid secretary who won't let calls come through to the boss because the secretary is over-protective. I discuss the connections between social cravings and inability to appreciate evidence, as well as some of the science that guides me in my views, in a series of posts I titled "Mending Fences."

Continue ReadingWhy PZ is not a believer

Pressure, Temperature, Volume!

Warning - Science Geekery ahead! Am I the only person in the world who gets that we can control for Boyle's Law? While reading a (Science Fiction) book, by a very respected author*, I encountered a scene where a character brews some coffee. Yum! I love coffee! But my delightful anticipation was immediately spoiled by the character's complaints about how the low ambient pressure makes for lukewarm coffee! Seriously? Have people never heard of these amazing newfangled devices called pressure cookers? Heck, Europeans have had little stovetop espresso makers for many many years, that are essentially little one-shot pressure cookers! With the correct setup such equipment can produce strong, hot coffee regardless of the ambient pressure! Whenever I come across such obvious stupidity it kills the story for me. Get the little details right, people! Let me enjoy my stories and enjoy my coffee (regardless of ambient)! * in defense of the Author, he is an older American, so can be excused for not really understanding the difference between coffee and the pale brown caffeinated beverage that shares that name in the States.

Continue ReadingPressure, Temperature, Volume!

An outrageous prediction regarding millions of illegal foreclosures conducted by banks

We now know that many of the “foreclosure experts” who were signing many thousands (perhaps millions) of affidavits that allowed banks to kick delinquent homeowners out of their homes were utterly unqualified to understand the sorts of technical information they were spewing while under oath. In short, the banks were allowing and requiring incompetent employees to lie under oath in order to allow foreclosures to go forward:

In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says. In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.

Even under the assumption that many or most of these homeowners were actually delinquent, this is incredibly disturbing. Richard H. Neiman, New York's top bank regulator and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel, a federal bailout watchdog, has expressed concern:

"In recent days, it has become apparent that a number of mortgage loan servicers have submitted affidavits or other foreclosure documents that appear to have procedural defects," the Conference of State Bank Supervisors said in a statement. "In addition, many affidavits may have been signed without a notary public being present.

NPR has provided a more detailed description about the kind of people who served as “robo-signers”:

ARNOLD: [T]his GMAC employee told him that even though he was supposed to be certifying the accuracy of the documents in a homeowner's file... Mr. COX: He said he that doesn't look at them. He doesn't bother to go search them out in the computer to look at them. ARNOLD: And Cox said the sheer volume of foreclosures appeared to make doing a thorough job impossible. Stefan testified he's signing between eight and 10,000 documents a month. Mr. COX: That works out to be about one a minute. Some of those loan files contain a hundred or more documents. ARNOLD: Housing advocates call employees like this robo-signers. They say they barely have a chance to glance at all the documents that they're asked to sign.

These fraudulent foreclosure cases are hitting the courts all over. And they should, because many of these homeowners were lied to on the way in (about "yield spread premiums" and exploding ARM's and hidden penalties), and now they (and the courts) are being lied to on the way out. In fact, based on my personal experience as a consumer lawyer, the lies on the way in, and the shodding servicing, led to the foreclosure. Here’s a synopsis of a lawsuit filed Oct 1, 2010 by Center for Responsible Lending:

Five Maine residents filed a complaint today against GMAC Mortgage, LLC (GMAC) on behalf of themselves and a class of Maine homeowners, alleging that the company routinely and systematically files false certifications that it has a right to foreclose on Maine homeowners, and false affidavits when asking courts to enter foreclosure judgments.

The homeowners complain that GMAC files these false documents knowing that the courts in Maine will rely on them in deciding whether foreclosures can go forward and in allowing GMAC to sell their homes. Depositions of GMAC employees revealed that they do not verify the truth of information necessary to give GMAC the right to foreclose when they sign these court documents and that these improper practices have been in place since at least 2004.

This situation is horrendous. It justifies impolite synonyms for banks: house-jackers. Banksters. If you cringe at this language and consider it overbroad, ask yourself whether "innocent" bankers knew of this problem and whether they often discussed it at the country club with the evil bankers. And they didn't step up and report it. Consider also that the banks so often preach the importance of the “letter of the law” when slapping huge fees and penalties on home-owners, even when the homeowners are only a day late with their payments. Now here are those same banks, absolutely unable to establish a chain of title necessary for a foreclosure, but they utterly don’t give a rat's ass about the letter of the law, because this archaic rule (letter of the law) is now a burden to the banks. From the perspective of the banks, the solution to the problem that they can't figure out how to establish their case in the context of the convoluted system that they themselves created, is to systematically lie under oath. Over and over and over. And now that the banks have been caught by the national media, and because the media is paying attention, the politicians also need to pay attention to this problem, and everything has become awkward for the banks. Very Inconvenient. They might have to pay big money to send thousands of lobbyists to Congress to fix this problem. And then they will have to jack up their rates and penalties and other tricks and traps to pay for those lobbyists. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingAn outrageous prediction regarding millions of illegal foreclosures conducted by banks

Republicans are not fiscal conservatives.

Increasing numbers of voters point to the growing federal deficits as a major issue for deciding their votes come November, 2010. If those voters took a look at which of the two major parties is responsible for the current deficit situation, they would not vote for any Republican, anywhere. After all, it was Karl Rove and Dick Cheney who said; “Deficits don’t matter” (and see here). But, for those which find themselves concerned over ever growing budget deficits and see them as a threat to the financial security of America at large and their children and grandchildren in particular, deficits do matter. And it’s Republican Presidents who were in charge during the creation of most of the current deficit. Since Richard Nixon, the tax cut and spend policies of successive Republican Presidents has accounted for the vast majority of the US outstanding national debt. The total percentage of US National Debt accrued under Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II is over 73.2 % of the amount which has been incurred since the beginning of the United States. Ronald Reagan won the Presidential election in 1980 by claiming that the national debt was at an “all time high of $1 trillion.” Imagine that! In 1980, the entire national debt was at only $1 trillion! Now the national debt is $13.64 trillion and climbing each second. Bill Clinton added deficits totaling some $1.6 trillion. If we add up all the national debt prior to 1980 plus Bill Clinton’s $1.6 trillion, we get $2.6 trillion. If we include $1.3 trillion arguably attributable (which since the federal fiscal year of 2009 began on October 1, 2008 before Mr. Obama was even elected but, let’s be generous to our tax cut and spend Republican friends!) to the Obama administration, all of those add up to a total of $3.9 trillion. That leaves $10.74 trillion to Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingRepublicans are not fiscal conservatives.

A terrifyingly wonderful gift

At TED Stacy Kramer tells a three-minute story about an unwanted gift that thoroughly enriched her life. In an earlier wordier post, I explored this same idea, but perhaps it's now time to add Stacy's type of gift to my list of "bad" things. Bad things often open good doors--I'm certain of this. Obstacles often provoke us to pick better solutions that we otherwise would have--perhaps this idea is sometimes captured by the term exaptation. Thus, in our wild and wacky world, down can sometimes be up, and it often has nothing to do with George Orwell. In many cases, it's part of the natural order that unveils itself only piece by piece to short-sighted human animals like you and me.

Continue ReadingA terrifyingly wonderful gift