In the course of one of the usual discussions over at PZ’s place on religious weirdness we have observed, we got to talking about Joseph Smith and that hilarious ‘Book of Abraham’ fiasco of his. My observation on this was that what’s at once kind of funny and scary about what Smith was. As in: the guy wasn’t even that good a con man, by many measures. Hardly the smoothest operator at all. You really do get the impression, in retrospect, that he just wasn’t that terribly bright.
And yet, he still got the game going, founded himself a religion, set himself up as a prophet. And his thing is still going today.
And, predictably, there are true believers for whom even the really quite incontrovertible evidence you get from that particular incident (and it’s not even the only one you’d think should be able to seal the deal) still isn’t enough to shake ‘em off Mormonism. They make excuses for it—say Smith was, see, directly inspired by some angel—the fact that it turns out that the stuff from which he claims to have translated to his newest bit of silly turned out to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Egyptian funerary texts which didn’t really say anything like he claimed them to say isn’t a problem—see, the angel just provided those to give ‘im something to do with his hands while he was being inspired…
The other observation I drew from this—tho’ it’s by no means the first time I’ve said it, nor is it exactly an original observation—is that probably, generally, to pull what he did, you don’t have to be particularly smooth. The fact is, there are things people want to believe—about themselves, about the world. Fill that need, and essentially, they do most of the work of fooling themselves for you…
All of which adds up to: you could probably almost create a religion by accident. And you’d really be playing with fire if you started doing experiments on live subjects and in the real world to find out just how easy it is. Cue Randi’s somewhat frightening experience with ‘The Great Carlos’—a ‘medium’ he and a friend concocted just to see how far they could take such a game (not to mention as something of an object lesson to anyone watching)…
The verdict on how far you can take it? Alarmingly far. The real kicker: when Randi and the friend he’d engaged to play the ‘medium’ (one José Alvarez) played out their punchline, and Alvarez explained it was a hoax, it wasn’t real—and even demonstrated the methods by which he’d faked ‘possession’—there were still people who refused to believe it wasn’t real. They made up explanations to fit: Alvarez was being forced to confess, and so on…
I got to thinking, it’s funny, but it reminded me of one of the first things you learn, working anywhere near computer security…
Which is: do not fuck around with self-replicating code. Or, at the very, very least, be really incredibly careful with it, and do not ever let it get near the wilds of the net. An early experience with the Morris Worm—an (allegedly—or so it is claimed by its creator) experimental and intended-to-be-benign worm that wound up seriously messing up the net is generally brought up as an object lesson. The author did get expelled from Cornell, and did get charged and convicted…
Sadly, however, it’s a little less practical to slap those who convince others they’re hearing voices to which everyone should be listening with some community service time, probation, and a fine… Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s computer systems is illegal. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s wetware, not so much…
Anyway, my point: no, we can’t jail you for it (or not unless your donation structure badly abuses tax law, anyway)… Nonetheless, decent people just don’t do this shit. Because it has a way of making a mess of things. And a way of getting away from you. Sure, I’m sure it’s tempting, sometimes—easy money, even, if you pull it off… And I’m pretty sure that was much of Smith’s motivation, for example (and rather more obviously, Hubbard’s)….
But you can’t shut it down. Contagion and dispersal, I’m afraid, have a way of making that impossible. Any idiot can set a beast like that loose. Catching it again, hell, you might as well as dump a glass of dioxins in the ocean, with the expectation that later, you’re going to track down each individual molecule, and pluck it back out.
So no, ethical hackers do not create religions.
And yet, he still got the game going, founded himself a religion, set himself up as a prophet. And his thing is still going today.
And, predictably, there are true believers for whom even the really quite incontrovertible evidence you get from that particular incident (and it’s not even the only one you’d think should be able to seal the deal) still isn’t enough to shake ‘em off Mormonism. They make excuses for it—say Smith was, see, directly inspired by some angel—the fact that it turns out that the stuff from which he claims to have translated to his newest bit of silly turned out to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Egyptian funerary texts which didn’t really say anything like he claimed them to say isn’t a problem—see, the angel just provided those to give ‘im something to do with his hands while he was being inspired…
The other observation I drew from this—tho’ it’s by no means the first time I’ve said it, nor is it exactly an original observation—is that probably, generally, to pull what he did, you don’t have to be particularly smooth. The fact is, there are things people want to believe—about themselves, about the world. Fill that need, and essentially, they do most of the work of fooling themselves for you…
All of which adds up to: you could probably almost create a religion by accident. And you’d really be playing with fire if you started doing experiments on live subjects and in the real world to find out just how easy it is. Cue Randi’s somewhat frightening experience with ‘The Great Carlos’—a ‘medium’ he and a friend concocted just to see how far they could take such a game (not to mention as something of an object lesson to anyone watching)…
The verdict on how far you can take it? Alarmingly far. The real kicker: when Randi and the friend he’d engaged to play the ‘medium’ (one José Alvarez) played out their punchline, and Alvarez explained it was a hoax, it wasn’t real—and even demonstrated the methods by which he’d faked ‘possession’—there were still people who refused to believe it wasn’t real. They made up explanations to fit: Alvarez was being forced to confess, and so on…
I got to thinking, it’s funny, but it reminded me of one of the first things you learn, working anywhere near computer security…
Which is: do not fuck around with self-replicating code. Or, at the very, very least, be really incredibly careful with it, and do not ever let it get near the wilds of the net. An early experience with the Morris Worm—an (allegedly—or so it is claimed by its creator) experimental and intended-to-be-benign worm that wound up seriously messing up the net is generally brought up as an object lesson. The author did get expelled from Cornell, and did get charged and convicted…
Sadly, however, it’s a little less practical to slap those who convince others they’re hearing voices to which everyone should be listening with some community service time, probation, and a fine… Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s computer systems is illegal. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people’s wetware, not so much…
Anyway, my point: no, we can’t jail you for it (or not unless your donation structure badly abuses tax law, anyway)… Nonetheless, decent people just don’t do this shit. Because it has a way of making a mess of things. And a way of getting away from you. Sure, I’m sure it’s tempting, sometimes—easy money, even, if you pull it off… And I’m pretty sure that was much of Smith’s motivation, for example (and rather more obviously, Hubbard’s)….
But you can’t shut it down. Contagion and dispersal, I’m afraid, have a way of making that impossible. Any idiot can set a beast like that loose. Catching it again, hell, you might as well as dump a glass of dioxins in the ocean, with the expectation that later, you’re going to track down each individual molecule, and pluck it back out.
So no, ethical hackers do not create religions.
03/01: A good point from Phil
Phil Plait makes a good point about evidence-based science’s view of alt-med. Noting that one Steven DeKosky, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and lead author on a recent study that has found ginkgo biloba generally doesn’t do what a lot of its proponents claim it does described himself as ‘disappointed’ in the result, Phil writes:
Quite.
I’d add, that, generally, there’s any number of fantastic claims made about the universe by apparently rather dodgy characters which I’d be reasonably pleased to find out were actually true. The folk claiming alien visitations, for example, hey, if they had something solid enough I could be confident there is some hack that gets us around the lightspeed barrier to travel, damn straight, sign me up.
But there’s no point in putting the cart before the horse, which is all so much of this generally turns out to be. As in: there’s really not much point in insisting just because it would be nice if it were true that somehow this makes it true…
Note, by the way, this is frequently essentially the argument made by religions. Imagine a universe without our god, they’ll say… Now wouldn’t it suck? No hereafter, no god-given purpose to life, yadda yadda…
Funny thing, slightly off the topic of this: a lot of what they seem to think would suck, I don’t so much agree about anyway. Especially, a propos of that example, I’d rather not have some divine autocrat telling me what my purpose is in life, thanks. I’ll find one for myself far more happily…
But this is beside the point here. The point being: what sanity is there in arguing this way in the first place? Would you go up to a man and tell him: ‘Look, just imagine there’s $5,000 in your pocket right now, since it really would be nice if there were, wouldn’t it?’
Well, okay, actually, I bet there’s people who would argue just that, they’re that addled (looks pointedly at Deepak Chopra). But again, getting back to it: the world doesn’t work that way. What we want and what is, there’s really no particular relation there, I’m afraid. And what those of us who do get all cranky when people start saying stupid shit they can’t back up with evidence are saying isn’t ‘We don’t want what you do’… That may or may not be the case—and whether we do, incidentally, is quite irrelevant.
It’s just ‘We can see you’re not thinking too straight here, and you’ve got no case’.
Different thing. Very different thing. Keep it in mind.
DeKosky is dean of a prestigious medical school, and says he’s disappointed. Of course he is. Despite what a lot of the alt-medders (and antivaxxers) say, doctors really do want what’s best for their patients. If ginkgo had panned out, then that would be another weapon in doctors’ arsenals to make us healthier, and make us healthier for longer in our lives. But it didn’t work, so he was disappointed.
Quite.
I’d add, that, generally, there’s any number of fantastic claims made about the universe by apparently rather dodgy characters which I’d be reasonably pleased to find out were actually true. The folk claiming alien visitations, for example, hey, if they had something solid enough I could be confident there is some hack that gets us around the lightspeed barrier to travel, damn straight, sign me up.
But there’s no point in putting the cart before the horse, which is all so much of this generally turns out to be. As in: there’s really not much point in insisting just because it would be nice if it were true that somehow this makes it true…
Note, by the way, this is frequently essentially the argument made by religions. Imagine a universe without our god, they’ll say… Now wouldn’t it suck? No hereafter, no god-given purpose to life, yadda yadda…
Funny thing, slightly off the topic of this: a lot of what they seem to think would suck, I don’t so much agree about anyway. Especially, a propos of that example, I’d rather not have some divine autocrat telling me what my purpose is in life, thanks. I’ll find one for myself far more happily…
But this is beside the point here. The point being: what sanity is there in arguing this way in the first place? Would you go up to a man and tell him: ‘Look, just imagine there’s $5,000 in your pocket right now, since it really would be nice if there were, wouldn’t it?’
Well, okay, actually, I bet there’s people who would argue just that, they’re that addled (looks pointedly at Deepak Chopra). But again, getting back to it: the world doesn’t work that way. What we want and what is, there’s really no particular relation there, I’m afraid. And what those of us who do get all cranky when people start saying stupid shit they can’t back up with evidence are saying isn’t ‘We don’t want what you do’… That may or may not be the case—and whether we do, incidentally, is quite irrelevant.
It’s just ‘We can see you’re not thinking too straight here, and you’ve got no case’.
Different thing. Very different thing. Keep it in mind.
