Lee Moller's Blog, page 8

Trumpocalypse; David Frum; 2020; Harper Collins; 199 pgs, notes, index

David Frum is a Canuck, and the son of Barbara Frum the well known journalist. He is also now a US citizen, a  conservative, a one time Republican, and the author of Trumpocracy.

Trumpocracy was written in the first year of DJT's evil reign.  This latest book was written over the  intervening  years. I read the first book because I wanted to read a conservative view point. Ditto this time around. Like all books about Trump, one is constantly reminded of his past sins… sins that tend to loose their identities in the avalanche of additional malfeasances.

"The rooster that took credit for the sunrise was outraged to be blamed for the sunset." 
A nice pithy line.


Fun Fact: One of the Trump success factors that Frum points to is the Sinclair Broadcasting Company. It is Trump friendly and owns  40 percent of the US TV market.  This where many Americans get their news.

They and the Trump acolytes praise the  only president to never crack 50% approval in a reliable poll.

Frum was critical of the Mueller report which never lived up to expectations. They made five errors that assured failure. One: Mueller was only interested in prosecutable crimes. This meant no investigation of Trump possible debts to Russia. Two: He seemed to feel ignorance of the law was an excuse  (this  saved DJT Jr in the Trump Tower meeting). Three: He narrowed his investigation to the 2015/2016 election cycle. Four: He looked a people near Trump, but not Trump himself who refused to testify. And five:  He refused to promote evidence that  Trump could not be prosecuted for and therefore could not respond to (because he was the president). The upshot was we learned very little about Trump and his entanglements. 

Frum spends some time discussing the Republicans tendency to cheat. Voter suppression, stack the courts,  and gerrymandering being the primary means. The Republicans feel they are good and right, therefore whatever they do to maintain power is good and right too. Kavanaugh helped decide that the gerrymandering, an undemocratic and evil practice, was State business.


Frum discusses the "deep state". Like many things Trump, it is the opposite of what it should be. In the  old days, the "deep state" were those with secret power who used clandestine ways of  thwarting the government.   Under Trump, it means the opposite: the legitimate use of power to thwart Trump.
     
As much as I hate to admit it, occasionally Trump is right. The only example I am aware of was the large numbers of  asylum seekers at the US southern border.  It is a fact that most of them were not legitimate asylum seekers under international law, and letting them onto US soil to apply for asylum would have  many negative consequences.

Frum is basically upbeat. Trump must go, and the US must react to this near disaster. He offers the following solutions: Publish tax returns; Kill the filibuster; Make DC a state; Adopt a modern voting rights act; Deter gerrymandering; and Depoliticize the cops.

He argues that better immigration control can unite the nation. He also goes on to argue that the US must address climate change. His suggestions are worth reading, and are far more plausible than AOCs Green New Deal (AOC argues for more state ownership which puts the regulators and the regulated under the same roof). He also argues that China needs to be handled better. They have not been playing the game according to the rules.  


Fun Fact: The Grand Old Party (GOP… Republicans) is younger that the Democratic Party.


In his final words, Frum argues that the GOP is so out of touch that it must reform or die. He makes no bones about Trump. He absolutely deserved impeachment. And he absolutely deserves to feel the full weight of the law when he leaves office. 

America can come out of all this a better nation. The first step is to remove Trump from office.

Like most books of this type, this was a quick and easy read.  It is insightful and hopeful at the same time as it is gloomy and reflective of the nation's exhaustion.  

2,000 Years of Disbelief; James A. Haught; 1996; Prometheus Books; 324 pgs, bibliography, index

I have always enjoyed a good pithy observation about religion. For thousands of years, very brave men and women have stood up to the BS and said "I do not believe." This can get you killed, even today. Here is a sampling of the books contents: quotes from great thinkers and skeptics through the ages. A Prometheus book, of course!

Euripides (400 BCE): 

He was a wise man who originated the idea of God.

Plato (300 BCE): 

He was a wise man who invented God.


Tacitus (100 CE): 

Christianity is a pestilent superstition.

Lucretius (99-55 BCE): 

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592):

Man of simple understanding, little inquisitiveness and little instructed, make good Christians.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626):

The more contrary to reason the divine mystery, so much more it must be believed for the glory of God.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679):

Religions are like pills, that must be swallowed whole without chewing.

Theology is the kingdom of darkness.

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677):

[Believers] are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a ridiculous way of expressing ignorance.

John Locke (1632-1704):

Every sect , as far as reason will help them, makes use of it (religion) gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, "It is a matter of faith, and above reason."

People who are born to orthodoxy imbibe the opinions of their country or party and never question their truth.

Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755):

If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.

Voltaire (1694-1778):

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

Sect and error are synonymous.

Most of the great men of this world live as if they were atheists.

Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place?

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

David Hume (1711-1776):

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

If there is a soul, it is as mortal as the body.

By priests I understand only the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.

Denis Diderot (1713-1784):

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest.

Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1974):

The various forms of worship that prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Hitherto the weight of supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

William Blake (1757-1827):

Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.

Claude Helvetius (1715-1771):

A man who believes he eats his God we do not call mad; a man who says he is Jesus Christ we call mad.

Baron d'Holbach (1723-1771):

Ignorance of natural causes created the gods, and priestly imposters made them terrible. 

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662):

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809):

All national institutions of churches, whether Christian, Jewish or Turkish, appear to me, no other than human inventions, setup to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Priests and conjurors are of the same trade.

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing, it rests on no principles, it proceeds by no authorities, it has no data, it can demonstrate nothing.

One good school master is of more use than a hundred priests.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826):

In every country, in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the depot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

James Madison (1751-1836):

Religious shackles and debilitates the mind and it unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded purpose.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821):

I am surrounded by priests that repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay hands on everything they can get.

Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822):

If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced.

The educated man ceases to be religious.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873):

God is a word to express, not our ideas, but the want of them.

The ne plus ultra of wickedness is embodied in what is commonly present to mankind as the creed of Christianity.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865):

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882):

For my part, I would as soon be descended from [a] baboon … as from a savage who delights in torturing his enemies … treats his wives like slaves … and is haunted by the grossest of superstitions.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902):

I found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of women.

I have been to many of the ancient cathedrals -- grand, wonderful, mysterious. But I always leave them with a feeling of indignation because of the generations of human beings who have struggled in poverty to build these alters to an unknown god. 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):

I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895):

I have no faith, very little hope, and as much charity I can afford.

The Bible account of the creation is a preposterous fable.

The foundation of morality is to … give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond  the possibilities of knowledge.

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910):

On may say with one's lips: "I believe that God is one, and also three" -- but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899):

Who at the present day can imagine the courage, the devotion to principle, the intellectual and moral grandeur it once required to be an infidel, to brave the Church, her racks, her fagots, her dungeons, her tongues of fire--to defy and scorn her heaven and hell--her devil and he God.

The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith!

The church has always been willing to swap  off treasures in heaven for cash down.

Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of  thought, at least, you are without a chain …. Surely it is worth something to feel that there are no priests, no popes, no parties, no governments, no kings, no gods, to whom your intellect can be compelled to pay a reluctant homage.

Mark Twain (1835-1910):

Faith is believing what you know ain't so. (Pudd'nhead Wilson)

Man is the religious animal. He is the  only religious animal, He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself  and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914):

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with his life of sin.

Clairvoyant: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to the patron -- namely that he is a blockhead.

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900):

Jesus died too soon. He would have repudiated his doctrine if he had lived to my age.

Pierre Laplace (1749-1827):

Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis. (He was asked why his book Celestial Mechanics did not mention god.)

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870):

Catholics and Protestants, while engaged in burning and murdering each other, could cooperate in enslaving their black brethren.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885):

There is in every village a torch: the schoolmaster-- and an extinguisher:  the priest.

Emile Zola (1840-1902):

Civilization will not attain its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

Elbert Hubbard (1815-1915):

… All religions were made and formulated by men … What we call God's justice is only man's idea of what he would do if he were God.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950):

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

Clarence Darrow (1857-1938):

Every man knows when his life began… If I did not exist in the past, why should I, or could I, exist in the future.

H. L. Mencken (1880-1956):

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

God is the immediate refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.

Theology: An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.

The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to effect that religious opinions should be respected.

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980):

Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992):

I have never in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural.

Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991):

If people need religion, ignore them and maybe they will ignore you; and you  an go on with your life. It wasn't until I was beginning to do  'Star Trek' that the subject of religion arose again. What brought it up was that people were saying that I would have to have a chaplain on board the Enterprise . I replied "No. I don't".

Human Errors; Nathan Lents; 2018; Mariner Books; 216 pages, index

The errors referred to are design flaws in ourselves. I have always found this topic interesting. We think of ourselves as the peak of creation on Earth, but this is far from the truth when the details are examined. We are not the best at anything except thinking. All of our other traits speak more to a humanity being a jack of all trades, rather than being especially good at anything in particular.

Some of the issues discussed were familiar to me. The most common example of a design flaw is the human eye. It has two problems: myopia and wiring. Many of us are near sighted because our eyes are not the right shape. But more interesting is the wiring of the eye. We have our photo receptors at the back of the retina. In other words, the light we see must punch its way through a cell to get the receptors on the other side, a process that introduces distortions and dimming of the light. In addition, the wiring is also on the wrong (front) side, again blocking the light. All the wiring comes together at one place and then plunges through the retina to get to the optic nerve. This results in our famous blind spot. At some point in our history, nature flipped a coin on eye design when the design chosen did not matter. Then we evolved and discovered our mistake. Mollusk eyes do not have this flaw. Evolution can develop very complex structures. It is very good at that. But when it makes a mistake, it has no capacity to undo the error. Rather, it introduces workarounds or just tolerates the inconvenience, as long as it does not hamper reproduction.

Our hands and feet a full of useless bones that now just cause trouble. Our knees are very susceptible to injury, as any athlete who has blown his ACL will tell you. Our spine is designed for a creature with four walking legs. It started to change when we became knuckle walkers, but back aches are common, and for some, debilitating. The shape of our spine is a kludge stacked on two more kludges. Our air hole and our food hole are side by side, making choking to death possible. We breath in and out through the same hole. This is very inefficient in that stale and fresh air mix all the time. This is called tidal breathing. Think of breathing exclusively through a hose. If the hose is more than a few feet long, you will suffocate. Birds do not have this problem, which allows them to maintain a much faster metabolism. Beating wings is hard work that requires gobs of oxygen. Our brains and hearts are well protected, but one good punch to the throat and you will die. Our sinuses too have not caught up with upright walking. They now drain up, which causes blockages, running noses,  and infections.

But my favorite example is the RLN (Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve). When we were fish, our hearts, lungs (gills) and brain were all up front in the head. The RLN, which now controls the voice box in us, had a short trip to make from  the brain and it did so by running past the heart. As tetrapods evolved (we are all tetrapods), the heart and lungs moved away from the head and we developed necks. In humans, as in all tetrapods, the RLN branches off the vagus nerve, loops around the aorta, and goes buck up to the voice box.  This makes the nerve many times longer than it must be, and this is the kind of design flaw evolution cannot fix. Think about the sauropods… those giant long necked dinosaurs like Diplodocus. The RLN in them is on the order of 20 *meters* long… to cover a distance of a foot or so as a crow flies!

Chapter two dives into our diets. Did you know a dog can live a long and healthy life eating rice and meat alone? They can because dogs manufacture the trace chemicals like vitamin C that they need to stay alive. But not us. A lot of our dietary foibles, like scurvy, are probably a result of growing up in a fruit rich environment. One day, the vitamin C gene broke, but since the environment already had a lot of vitamin C (e.g.:  fruit), evolution failed to notice. We are also hard wired for a feast and famine lifestyle. Except we are now in a world of constant feast, which results in runaway obesity.

Chapter three discusses some of the fun that takes place at the genetic level. As most people know, sickle cell disease is a genetic adaptation to malaria. But when a person inherits two sickle cell genes, the result is not good. 

One of the most interesting discussions was about how the immune system trains itself. In loose terms, long before you were recognizable as a human, the body set up a bunch of cells as a test bed, then break up various endogenous proteins and feeds them to those cells. If the cell reacts, it is killed. The upshot is all the remaining cells know how to get along with each other. Tuning of the immune system carries on for some time after birth. Allergies and auto-immune disorders are the result when this does not work. BTW: Do not buy "immune system boosters". Your immune system is in a state of balance. If you jack it up, you get  sick; if you suppress it, you get sick. Peanut and related allergies are on the rise. The "hygiene hypothesis" suggests that this is the result of anti-bacterials and over protective parents. This seems likely to be true. So let your kids get dirty… it is good for them. 

The next chapter focuses on reproduction. Why don't the fallopian tubes and the ovaries connect up directly? They should. It would avoid a lot of problems. Human child birth is extremely dangerous for both the mother and the child. Human babies are utterly helpless at birth. Our heads are enormous compared to the small hole we have to squeeze through to get born. These issues are unique to humans. A gnu calf pops out effortlessly for the mother, and is on the run within minutes. It may be that girls mature wore quickly than boys because there are many more things that can go wrong with their bodies. Nature responded by making women mature faster so they are more likely to pop out a puppy before dying.

Cancer is fascinating. If we live long enough, we will die of cancer. We think of the big C as death incarnate. But cancer is necessary for life. Cancer is runaway growth. Growth is what keeps us alive. As we age, our ability to control growth shrinks due to mutation and such, and we get cancer. Without mutation, life would not be possible. With mutation, life is a bitch.

The final chapters went off the rail for me and I only skimmed them. It discusses at length our cognitive errors, such as confirmation bias. I am already familiar with these "errors" and I largely skipped this chapter, and the next, which focuses on the large "why are we here" kind of issues.
This book has its moments, but I thought it strayed from its topic when it came to psychology. It is a good book to draw evolution examples from. In this case, the foot print of evolution is errors and compromises, not design. If all this sounds compelling to you, I recommend the book.      

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry; Neil deGrasse Tyson; 2017; W. W. Norton and Company; 208 pgs; index

This is a very quick read. Tyson is an decent writer with unbounded enthusiasm for his work. For me, this was mental chocolate: sweet, over quick and familiar. For most readers, however, I think a large percentage of this book will be new information… information that we all should have. It speaks to where we are in the grand scheme of things, but most importantly, it tells of just how grand the grand scheme is. And no, there is no schemer, only the laws of physics. In my life time, the amount we know about the universe has increased many fold. No other people in history have seen this happen. The trend will continue, but as time goes by, the revelations are bound to get smaller and less impressive. In other words, it is a great time to be curious.

Battle for Leyte Gulf, The; C. Vann Woodward; 2007; Skyhorse Publishing; 222 pgs; no index

he Philippines are a large group if islands in t he Pacific. The western part of the island group is largely open to ocean. It is easy to enter the inner seas from the west. The east is a different matter. Luzon to the north and Mindanao to the south are the largest islands in the group. Samar and Leyte, essentially one island, are to the south and east of Luzon and form the eastern shores of the Philippines along with Mindanao. 

In late October, 1944, a major landing was underway at Leyte Gulf  in anticipation of MacArthur's return and the liberation of the Philippines.  Leyte Gulf was filled with helpless transports and an attack by the Japanese was expected. 

There are three ways to get to Leyte gulf. From the west (the Japan side),  one can go through the  Philippines via the Sibuyan  sea and exit on the east side of the Philippines through the San Bernardino Straights, which separates Luzon from Samar and Leyte, and then turn south towards Leyte gulf. Or one can approach from the south, taking the Surigao Straight north of Mindanao, which opens onto Leyte gulf. The only other approach is from the eastern Pacific, an area controlled by the US. This is the field of battle for the largest naval conflict in history.

Japan was going all-in. Either they beat the US back, or Japan's navel dominance in then Pacific would be  over, and Japan's fate sealed.  Prior battles, especially  the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", had all but wiped out Japans naval air power.  They had carriers, but few planes and fewer crews to man them. However, they still had the world's two largest battleships ever: the Yamato and the Musashi.

The US was fighting far from home. They were stretched thin  on ammo and fuel.  But by all measures, they out gunned the Japanese.

This was a very complex battle that took place over a few days. I will give a 50,000 foot description.

The Japanese were in three groups (JN, JM, JS).

JN (for North) hung off the Philippines to the north and east. It was a carrier fleet, with almost no planes. It included the Zuikaku, the last Pearl Harbor flat top still afloat. It would not survive this battle. This fleet was assigned to throw itself at the northerly American ships as a feint to draw the Americans away from Leyte. They expected to get cut to pieces… and they were. 

JM (for middle) went through the Sibuyan Sea and out the San Bernardino Straights. Its job, as was JS's,  was to sink  American ships and stop the invasion.

JS (for South) approached from the south through the narrow Surigao Straights.

The Americans were in three groups (AN, AM, AS).

AN was Bull Halsey's group. Their primary task was to guard the San Bernardino Straights. Halsey would split his force to create AM.    

AM included a group returning from refits that were not completed. It steamed into the middle off Samar Island.

AS was to guard the Surigao Straights and the Leyte landing.

The Americans hit JN first in the middle of the Sibuyan Sea (the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea) , sinking the Musashi (the first Japanese battleship to be sunk my air power alone), and hurting the Japanese. The US over-estimated the damage done.
Then the  Americans waited for the Japanese JS at the top of the Surigao Straights and beat them back decisively. 
The Battle of Cape Engano (located off the north end of Luzon) followed with JM vs AM.  It was a draw. And finally the Battle of Samar finished the encounter.  This battle saw the introduction of the Kamikaze. The US took a lot of damage in this battle, mostly to escort carriers.

A lot of ink has been spilled on AN and Halsey. He did manage to finish off Japanese naval air power, but it was already all but dead.  He spent most of his time steaming toward a fight rather than fighting. He left his post guarding the San Bernardino Straights to get JN. This left AM unable to handle JN when it slipped through the San Bernardino Straights un-noticed.

An equal about of ink was spilled on why JM decided to bug out. The Battle of Samar was in Japan's favor. AM was on it knees, but they did not know that, nor did they know that JAs feint had actually worked. Poor communications. Had they continued to steam south to Leyte Gulf, they would have wrecked carnage. But instead they turn back through the San Bernardino Straights.

The Americans out gunned the Japanese and expected a win. Halsey almost reversed that. Poor intelligence on both sides led to poor decisions. Both sides also had command issues. There was no over all commander on either side. This led to poor coordination of attacks.

There was much carnage to follow before the war would end, but the Japanese would never again pose a serious navel threat (this does not count kamikazes).

The book is a fairly quick read. Lots of details on who did what, when, and why. It illustrates the old maxim that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. It certainly underscores the need for good communications. In 1944, most ships ran "silent" and only sent short transmitted radio messages in code. This lead to delays and errors.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin; Timothy Snyder; 2010; Basic Books; 408 pgs; index (poor), Bibliography

This book is a long read about a difficult subject - human suffering on an unprecedented scale.

The obvious first question is "What are the Bloodlands"? The Bloodlands refers to the dirt between Germany and Russia during the early 20th century. I say dirt rather than listing countries because borders change and definitions are loose. In today's terms it covers Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, the eastern two thirds of Poland, the western borders of Russia, and Ukraine. After the war ended, the iron curtain came down and the nature of the crimes committed  in these areas were covered up. Only now that 75 years have passed has more information come available.

For example, the liberating western allies never once saw a death camp. They saw the ends of several labor camps, and grisly as those images were, they were  but a shadow of the crimes committed  in the Poland death camps (they were all in Poland which became a Soviet puppet state). Another example: the truth is finally out about death sites like Baba Yar and Katyn. Katyn was a Soviet slaughter of Polish officers which they tried to blame the Germans for.

"During the years that both Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine than anywhere else in the Bloodlands, or in Europe, or in the world."

Think about that statement. 

We know Poland suffered greatly, due in part to being between a rock (Germany) and a hard place (the USSR), as did Belarus. It is worth noting that countries such as Canada (young, one border, surrounded by oceans) did not exist in Europe.  Europe has regions that have certain ethnic characters, and the map of Europe has changed many times prior to the end of WWII. Poland, for example,  had the largest number of Jews in Europe as well as large populations of Germans, Ukrainians, and Belarusians.   

Chapter 1 deals with the Soviet famines.  Starting in 1930, Stalin began "collectivizing" Ukraine farms.  Kulaks (well off peasants) were killed. Farms became state property.  And the state demanded ever increasing quotas of grain resulting in famine and starvation by the millions. The phrase "roving bands of cannibals" says much about the conditions.  Stalin's wife committed suicide the day after the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution. She was clearly making a point.  Young  communists were told starving people were the enemy  who "risked their lives to spoil our optimism".  3.3 million dead in Ukraine.

Chapter 2  is "Class Terror", basically blaming other people for the USSR's failings. If it wasn't a satellite state ruining things, it was foreign powers.  It deals with the internal and external politics of both Hitler and Stalin from 1933 to 1937.

National Terror, Chapter 3, deals with purges. Poland shares a long border with Ukraine. In the late 30s, the most persecuted group in Europe were not the Jews, but the Poles.  The definition of an "enemy" was so broad in the USSR that it could apply to anyone (it included as crimes certain "forbidden thoughts and ideas", and trivia like owning a rosary).  Stalin's Great Terror purged the upper ranks of his officers and again fell on the Kulaks. . Torture was common place and often public.  A million were killed. Many blamed the Jews for this. Later, when Germany and the USSR split Poland, the terror started there too.

Chapter 4: The Molotov - Ribbentrop line partitioned Poland.  Poland was a haven for Jews and had the largest concentration in Europe.  Germany got about 2 million Polish Jews and immediately began planning how to get rid of them. In about a year or so, eliminating Jews from Europe would become Nazi policy. The big players: Hans Frank (governor of Poland, and Hitler's one-time lawyer) , Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich (perhaps the evilest man in modern history) and Adolph Eichmann. Heydrich created the first Einsatzgruppen (special killing squads). Between 1940 and 1941, the two conquerors killed 200,000 Poles and deported a million more to  gulags or concentration camps. 

Chapter 5 deals with economics. Germany has attacked the USSR. The Germans had a Hunger Plan… feed the soldiers, starve the locals. The Russian war did not go as Germany planned. The 
Einsatzgruppen  were released in earnest  in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine (among others). Vast numbers of Soviet troops were captured and treated far worse than any other POWs in Europe. Only about 50% would survive. No names were taken, unusual even in those times.

"As many Soviet POWs died on a single given day in Autumn 1941 as did British and American POWS over the course of the entire second world war."  

The invasion of the USSR was supposed to solve Germany's economic problems. The opposite happened.

The Final Solution (Chapter 6). Himmler get s control of the eastern conquered territories. By now Communists and Communism were viewed a  Jewish plot, so killing Soviets and killing Jews were justified in the same breath. When food was short, the emphasis for the Germans was to kill Jews (useless eaters). When labor was short, the emphasis was to kill those unable to work, and deport those who could to now-depleted German factories. This had the odd result of making Germany the  country with the largest percentage of Jews and Slavs in Europe (other than their home countries). Atrocities were  everywhere. Baba Yar and Katyn are two examples.  

Holocaust and Revenge:  Belarus was ground zero for Germany vs. USSR. Moscow was never taken, but Minsk was burned to the ground.  A fantasy that is promoted to this day is that the Russians suffered more than any other group in WWII. This is false. In terms of territory, Germany barely penetrated Russia. Not so for the states in between.   Jews in Belarus feared Soviet pogroms, but feared the Germans more. Poles hated them both  but could see the future: If they defeat the Germans, they get Russian rule. The devil you know…?  Many fled Minsk to the forests where Jews and others carried out sabotage. The movie Defiance w/Daniel Craig captured the internal conflicts quite well . By war's end, half the population of Belarus was either dead or moved. No other country was treated worse.

The Death Factories: I wont go into a lot of detail here. From the killing squads, body burning, baby shooting, and gas vans to factories of death.  This is the most grisly chapter in human history. Six death camps did the dirty work:  Chelmo, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Madjanek and Auschwitz.  They were all in Poland, and the Western Allies never set foot in one.  The horrible familiar images from the Nuremburg trials were all Americans visiting labor camps that had been recently abandoned. 

Women, with more fatty tissue, burned better than men, and so workers would put them on the bottom of the pyres. Chew on that for a moment.

Resistance and Incineration recalls the closing days year of the war. The treatment of Poland and Warsaw are discussed at length. I have reviewed a book on this subject matter already.    

Ethnic Cleansings: Although Poland "won" the war, it lost 47% of its territory and became a Soviet satellite state. As the war ended, Stalin went on another rampage. He wanted pure states with pure goals, which he would create come what may.

The closing chapters sum up the book.German shot more Jews in the East than they had inmates in concentration camps.The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust never saw the inside of a concentration camp.The German  killed about 10,000,000 in the Bloodlands, the Soviets, about 6,000,000. Add about 30% to both for starvation and ethnic cleansing.More Poles were killed during the Warsaw uprising than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Almost as many non-Jewish Poles died as Jews died in Auschwitz.     
Final Thoughts

I have read a lot about WWII. I am never surprised, but always shocked, when I read the details of human suffering at the hands of the Germans and the Soviets. One can get almost anyone to do unspeakable violence if they can be convinced that they are the victims. This is a long book, but I never got bored. It has helped put the eastern part of the war in better perspective.  

Talking to Strangers; Malcolm Gladwell; 2019; Little Brown and Company; 356 pgs, notes, index

As it happens, most of the events upon which this book was based either happened in my recent lifetime, or are matters of well known historical events, such as Chamberlin meeting Hitler. Thus, I do have a perspective on these issues. All in all, this is a hard book to summarize. In part because it is basically clinical psychology, which is a soft science at the best of times.

The book wraps its arguments around several well known cases and/or events. It opens and closes with Sandra Bland, the young black woman who was pulled over in Texas (she drove down from Chicago) for "failing to signal", ended up being manhandled out of the car, cuffed and arrested, and then hung herself in the jail.

The first case described in detail was about a high ranking CIA official who turned out to be a Cuban spy. The second was about Chamberlin meeting Hitler. The basic message is that we suck at spotting liars. Ample evidence is provided that shows that a computer evaluating parole issues from raw data scores much better results than a judge who can look the perp in eye and judge their demeanor. This does not surprise me one bit. As a life long poker player, I have determined that I suck at it too, and I would be better off simply following the odds.

We rely way to much on our ability to tell when we are being lied to. And once we make the decision to trust, we are easier marks because we will defend the indefensible far too long. We are too trusting, and we "default to the truth". I think a philosopher would call this the Principle of Charity. It is, as the book acknowledges, both a very risky thing to do; and very necessary as it is the grease that keeps society alive.

In this vein, we tend to think of others as simple and ourselves as nuanced. E.g.: A cop might see a nuanced response to stimulus from you as proof you prevaricating. This is exactly what happened to the Amanda Knox (another case study in the book). She reacted in a way the prosecutors saw as irrational, and therefore she was guilty despite the fact the physical evidence pointed elsewhere. This went all the way to the Italian Supreme Court before it finally got tossed for the rubbish it was. What reaction set the cops off? Basically, she was  cool, clam, collected and quite. If she had cried like a girl, or some such, she would have walked.

The book calls these encounters as two "mismatched"  people. We might say "talking or acting at cross purposes".

Another case with which I was very familiar was Harry Markopolus and his take down of Bernie Madoff. The SEC "defaulted to truth" and believed Madoff. Markopolis is unusual in that he does not "default to truth", but he has paid price: paranoia.

"Transparency is a myth." This line is repeated and emphasized and I agree with it. Transparency is the idea that if we can see what is going on on the outside, we can tell what is going on on the inside.  On TV, we see people say and do things, and their faces and their words match exactly. This is called emoting. In real life it is rare. We do not wear ourselves on our sleeves. We are not transparent. But we tend to think others are.

Another interesting point is that the facial expressions and other tells that we think we universal, are not. A smile is not just a smile. It depends on the culture you are in.

The book examines the Sandusky pedophile case; a well know fraternity sexual assault involving loads of alcohol; the KSM Guantanamo Bay torture story and several others. It also delves into policing a fair bit. The bottom line of the policing analysis is that cops are incredibly reluctant to give up their supposed god-like ability to see into men's souls and pick the good guys and the bad guys. When science gets involved, and it shows them incapable of doing what they think they can do, then and only then, do they-ever-so-slowly recognize the truth. 

Which leads into the study of the opening story about Sandra Bland.

I read this book to the end because it did keep my interest. My overall feeling is that it is far to broad, and overly simplistic in its analysis. I am always skeptical when people are broken down into groups that too broad to useful. The book does not really give advice on what to do about it.

Chamberlain was played by Hitler, who was really good at it. For some people, lying is their first option, and they do so with remarkable ease. Hitler, Bernie Madoff and my ex wife have these traits in common. I "defaulted to truth" with her as I do with most people. But I am skeptic and would love to know how I can tell if me and my listener are "mismatched".

Other cases are also explainable without appealing the "mismatched" perspective of the book. Bernie's success turned on greed and he was an expert con man. And Sandra Bland can be explained by bad policing policy (pull over everyone you can, give out as many tickets as you can, dig for a reason to doubt "them", abuse your authority), and bigoted, poorly trained cops. IMHO, Bland was pulled over for being black. When she got uppity, the cop lost his sense of perspective, she died, and, thankfully, the asshole cop was fired.

The ideas in this book are useful, but I see very little in the way of practical advice other  than the skeptics mantra: Doubt is the handmaiden of truth, and above all else, doubt yourself and your ability to detect lies.

Chamberlain had the facts… he was just a pussy who did not doubt his ability to read people.
George HW Bush made the same mistake with Putin (remember "I looked in his eyes?") and Donald Trump, the stupidest person to ever occupy the White House, is doing it again.

The pages of this book  are small and the leading loose, so this book is fast read and I read it. Perhaps this is my disdain for clinical psychology (which has done a lot of damage over the years), but I cannot recommend this book unless you are a student of the subject.    

I Told Ya So, and So Did a Lot of Others

When pondering on disaster relief, it is helpful to know what natural disasters should we prepare for.

War is hardly natural, and we seem to always be on the brink of it somewhere in the world, so I ignore it.

There are two major issues to deal with: How big might it be, and what are the chances of it happening. A crude break down of “how big” is Local vs Global.
Here is the list off the top of my head (Disaster; Size, Probability):Asteroid/Meteor (Big); Global; Very Low                            Asteroid/Meteor (Small);  Local; LowHurricanes;  Local but large, and mostly over water… mostly; HighTornadoes; Local; HighFloods (the most dangerous of these, save one); Local; High (depending on location)Earthquakes; Local; Medium (depending on location)Tsunamis; Global, restrained to coasts; Medium (depending on location)Fires; Local; High (depending on location)Famine, Drought; Local; High (and getting higher)Rain of Toads, Second Coming etc; Global; ZeroAnd, of course: Pandemic; Global, High

Only “Pandemic” stands out. It has the potential to go global; AND since it has happened in the past (Spanish Flu, Swine Flu, SARS), and, due largely to air travel, is more likely to happen in the future…  the probability is high.

Covid 19 was not unlucky, it was inevitable. A moments thought, which is about as much as I put into this piece, will convince anyone that the smart money should go to prevention of pandemics.

Therefore, ergo, ipso facto, and thus, Donald Trump disbanded the pandemic teams, cut the budget for the CDC and tried to build a wall to keep out Mexicans. He has turned recklessness into an art form. Of course, he did not create C19, but he has, and is, making it much worse.

I always want to end on a happy thought. This can be fixed.

​1) Reduce the number of people on the planet by 3 billion at least;
2) Reduce the number of Donald Trumps by one (ideally, remove the whole family tree); and
3) Stop treating every square inch of the planet as a tourist destination.
 
Lee Moller

SKEPTICISM AND GUIDED CURIOUSITY; Dale Beyerstein

The following paper was written by my friend Dale Beyerstein for the journal Humanist Perspectives ( https://www.humanistperspectives.org/issue211/index.html ) . 

People who debunk false or nonsensical claims sometimes tend to specialise – e.g., concentrating on pseudohistorical claims such as the 9/11 conspiracy, paranormal claims such as those involving extraterrestrial UFOs, alternative health claims such as the canard that MMR vaccine causes autism, or the claims of particular religions. This is understandable, because the one thing that unites modern day critics of these intellectual travesties is their commitment to thoroughness in researching and analysing claims before accepting them or debunking them. Of course, this is not to say that skeptics have always is lived up this ideal. But when one skeptic does not, fellow skeptics are generally just as critical of that lapse as they are towards any paranormalist.

But despite this tendency towards depth of knowledge, many skeptics also show a wide breadth. Many are quite well versed in what’s wrong with many different pseudosciences – from different versions of alternative or complementary medicine to astrology to UFOs. In addition, some are well versed in other areas as well, such as religion, politics, or anything you may wish to discuss around the watercooler. As well as being able to discuss these topics, they also can give a coherent account of scientific reasoning and critical thinking. Is this because these people are polymaths? Well, some are, but I think that the main reason has to with their curiosity.

This is not the way many people view skeptics. Many people see skeptics as, in the words of U.S. President Richard Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew, “nattering nabobs of negativism.” This is because skeptics reject quite a few popularly held beliefs. But skeptics hold a number of beliefs, albeit provisionally. Sit down with a group of people that includes at least one skeptic, and you will find a genuine interest in ideas. But more important, you will hear a lot of “Why is that?”, “What’s the evidence for that?”, or “But what about…”. And they are curious, but they practise a special type of curiosity, which I shall call what I shall call guided curiosity.

What am I on about here? Well, everyone holds that curiosity is a good thing; but if you think about it, unbridled curiosity can actually inhibit understanding. Take conspiracy theorists, for example. Being curious about how every girder split from its mountings in the World Trade Center on 9/11 wouldn’t seem to be a bad thing. However, when you think about it, it’s obvious that such detailed knowledge about an event such as this just isn’t going to be available. Who would be wandering around the buildings as they were collapsing to gather it? And if anyone did, would they have survived long enough to tell us? And it begs the question about a conspiracy to assume that anyone was figuring these things out in advance in order to plan the attack. It’s obvious that flying a plane into an iconic building will cause chaos; the perpetrators didn’t need to know exactly how much or exactly how it would happen. So why should we be worried that we lack that information?  But this lack of information is what starts some conspiracy theorists down the rabbit hole. Why don’t we have it? Who is hiding it? Why? Religious believers fall into the same trap. What happened before the Big Bang? Obviously, since we have no answer at present, we must conclude that there must have been a God to cause it. Asking questions that admit of no answers, or improperly formulating them in a way that prevents a sensible answer to be given, is a surefire method for generating false, and sometimes ridiculous beliefs. So there needs to be limits on our curiosity.

I’m not suggesting limiting the range of one’s curiosity to what is ‘practical’, or of immediate interest, or to easily answerable questions. Rather, the point of limiting curiosity is this: The wider one draws the curiosity net, the more information one receives, everything else being equal. But on the other hand, one will pick up more flotsam and jetsam as well. So the point is to maximise knowledge, or at least justified beliefs while minimising the amount of nonsense or outright falsehood.

The method which does the most to achieve this is best stated by the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume: “A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” (Hume 1955). Let’s refer to this as Hume’s Rule. Sexism aside, the rule is stating that the stronger the evidence, the more confidence one should have in one’s belief, and the opposite holds as well. Less evidence should result in a weaker belief. And a corollary of this principle is that one should not have a belief at all until one has examined the evidence. Following Hume’s Rule is the basis of guided curiosity. In what follows I shall give some examples from religion and paranormal belief to show how guided curiosity keeps us from falling for nonsense.

The consequences for religious belief of Hume’s Rule are readily apparent. Very few religious believers, when pressed, will hold that the evidence for religious belief is very strong. This is where the argument typically takes a turn: to hold that there is, after all, an exception to Hume’s Rule, which applies only to religion. Religious belief is grounded on faith, not reason or evidence; and Hume’s Rule applies only to beliefs based on evidence. Faith is, of course, precisely belief in the absence of evidence, and is, according to the religionist, a virtue which not only elevates the religionist who possesses it, but shows the simple-mindedness and shallowness of thought and character of the atheist or agnostic who lacks it, and instead asks for evidence.

By the time the atheist has defended her character from the above charge, there probably won’t be much time left to return to the question why faith is only appropriate for religious claims. After all, faith has a companion in mundane affairs, gullibility – which is also belief in the absence of evidence – which is decidedly not considered a virtue in those who invested in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. But if you do find the time to pursue this point with the religionist, it’s very unlikely that you will receive an informed answer. Instead you will probably be told that this comparison is insulting, and the debate will end there. Perhaps it is; but the fact that a person may be insulted by being told that he has a long nose doesn’t by itself prove that the claim is wrong.

Hume’s Rule has another important implication for religion, atheism and agnosticism. To see it, let’s introduce just a bit of probability theory. Since evidence is what makes a belief probable, it follows that evidence which establishes the probability of a claim to be less than .5 (or 50%) should be disbelieved. This is because the probability of belief p and the belief in the denial of p (Not-p) must add up to 1. The sentence “It will either rain or not rain on my house today” has a probability of 1, or, in other words, expresses a certainty (the Law of the Excluded Middle in logic). According to the app on my phone, the probability that it will rain here today is 40%, or .4.  When a belief p has a probability of .4, its denial, Not-p has a probability of .6 (1 minus .4). So I should believe that it won’t rain today – but, applying Hume’s Rule, my belief shouldn’t be very strong, and I should be prepared to change it. Ditto my belief in a god, except that I assign the probability of there being a god to be much lower.

A claim with a probability of exactly .5 should be neither believed nor disbelieved. Thus, agnostics must be holding that the evidence for belief in a god is just as compelling as that for disbelief, or, in other words, a probability of .5 for each. A probability of less than .5 is grounds for atheism, for the reason just given. But most people who call themselves agnostics do not really believe that the probabilities are equal. They concede that the probability that there is a god is less than that of the belief that there isn’t one, but they stick to the claim that we cannot be sure that a god doesn’t exist. But this is just to miss the point of one of the basic axioms of probability theory given above. It is important to remember that the denial of the existence of something does not require evidence that the probability of its existence is 0. Most agnostics have no difficulty in dismissing the existence of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, despite not having checked every claim of where Christmas presents or quarters under the pillow came from, and therefore not being in the position to say that the probability of their existence is 0.
It might be thought that the agnostic has an answer to this. Given that God is supposed to be transcendent, completely outside the realm of human experience, no evidence is possible for belief or disbelief, because there is no evidence at all. With no evidence leading us in either direction, suspension of belief (agnosticism) seems to be the only reasonable position. But this rebuttal isn’t conclusive.

The best reason for suspending belief is that we are awaiting further evidence that might require us to change our minds. Now let’s return to the agnostic’s strong point that we are considering the transcendent; for which no empirical evidence can be found. If this is so, then there would be no reason to suspend belief pending further evidence – the supposition is just that this won’t be any. Now, add this to another corollary of Hume’s Law: The onus of proof is always on the person who puts the idea forward. When the claim is presented without any evidence to support it, Hume’s wise person would disbelieve it. This is because there are always more ways of getting something wrong than of getting it right. Take for example, guessing the day of the week on which a total stranger was born. If you guess Thursday, you have one chance in seven of getting it right, and the smart money will be on you getting it wrong. So in the debate between the atheist and agnostic where both agree that there is no evidence available about the transcendent (literally the world for which no empirical evidence possible), the onus of proof is on the believer, and the believer has none. Therefore, the claim should be disbelieved, and the atheist wins by default. In addition, remember that the theist claims to believe in some god or another; one with certain properties (even if she admits that there is no empirical evidence for those properties. But now go to a second theist, who believes in another god, with somewhat different properties). Both of these theists will be implicitly recognising the onus of proof, since they apply it to each other: the first will deny the second’s god on the grounds that the evidence is insufficient, and vice versa. Repeat this a few thousands of times, and we have the point made so well by Richard Dawkins (2006): “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

Pseudoscientific claims fudge the onus of proof too. In fact, they do so with such regularity that we might consider this error as one of the defining characteristics of pseudoscience. Take conspiracy theories for example. Why is all the evidence about how “they” killed Kennedy, or placed the explosives in the World Trade Center towers to supplement the work of the airplanes, completely hidden? That it is missing is just the evidence that skeptics are supposedly too dense to see; its absence shows how clever and powerful “they” are that “they” can hide it so well. You can diagnose the informal fallacy involved here as failing to respect the onus of proof; or you can equally well call it begging the question (appealing to the very fact you are attempting to prove as evidence for the very fact that you are attempting to prove). Or you can call it the argument from ignorance, which involves saying that because you cannot disprove my claim, I must be right – whether or not I have presented any evidence.  But the main point is that they have managed the impossible feat of creating something out of nothing. This, by the way, is the thing about informal fallacies: They are like cockroaches, in that if you spot one you can be assured that there are a bunch more lurking where you can’t see them.

A corollary of Hume’s Rule is the requirement that we search for not only the evidence that supports our belief, but for that which goes against it. Looking only for the supporting evidence is confirmation bias. The religious, conspiracy theory and the paranormal believer on the other hand are notorious for this cherry picking. The Christian apologist, searching for miracles, concentrates on the one little baby that survives the plane crash, but ignores the 200 others who perish. The believer in her own telepathic powers zeroes in on the few times she ‘knows’ what her friend will say next, while remaining blindly oblivious to the many more times she guesses wrong. The 9/11 conspiracy theorist pays attention to any problem, no matter how insignificant, in the received account of how the towers collapsed, while not being troubled at all by the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever of anyone planting any explosives in the buildings beforehand. The believer in any sort of complementary or alternative medicine will keep track of every cold that cures itself after taking echinacea while ignoring the ones that cure themselves without taking it. The graphologist (handwriting analyst) keeps track of every case where a handwriting sample shows large loops on the descenders of fs, gs, js, ps, qs and zs and its writer has a better than average libido, and ignores those with large libidos but wih handwriting characteristics that cannot be described this way, as well as those whose handwriting has thin or small descenders but who are nevertheless quite libidinous. (If you think I’m making this up, check Paterson, (1980:11), and don’t ask how she measured libidinousness.)

Let us look at one more rule of guided curiosity. It’s not only important to pick up new information; it’s also essential to compare that new information with what you already have. Is the new information consistent with what you already believe? If not, you have work to do to reconcile these beliefs. Perhaps you will have to reject the new information; perhaps you will have to modify it to a certain degree. Or maybe you will have to do one or both of these things to your present beliefs to achieve a fit. This shuffling process will always be with us, as long as we are gaining new information. (For a better account of this process, see Quine and Ullian (1978).) If the new observation is consistent with our old beliefs, then you can ask how it enhances your understanding of what you already know. What implications are there from the new belief to other hitherto unsuspected claims? Do these implications suggest further claims which can be tested? An example will show what I mean. Therapeutic Touch (TT) is a healing modality which involves practitioners manipulating the “energy field” which surrounds our body without actually touching the body itself. (This has led me to describe TT as “neither therapy nor touch.”} One shape of the field is healthy, others are making us sick. The crucial thing to note about TT theory is that practitioners work on just this energy field, not on the body underneath it. So, let’s take these claims at face value. If the healers can manipulate the field, they must be able to discern its presence somehow without simply inferring it from the presence of a body. But if we can perceive its presence through sight, smell, touch or hearing (probably taste isn’t an option here), then everyone should be aware of it. But we are not. Only TT practitioners are. Well, that must be because there’s another sensory mechanism which not all of us have – only those who would be good therapeutic touch practitioners have it. The inference from the claim that the energy field can be worked with to the claim that practitioners must be able to recognise its presence is not one that is often made by TT believers. But it was made by a nine-year-old from Loveland, Colorado, Emily Rosa. And though no TT practitioner had thought of doing this, the young Ms Rosa thought about how to test this claim. For her science project she set up a solid barrier dividing a table in half. The barrier left enough room for a TT practitioner to pass her hand underneath, just high enough for the experimenter to have her hand underneath it, or not. Whether it was or was not was determined by a randomizer. So, if the TT practitioner could do better than chance, on a test designed to rule out the other sensory modalities, this would be evidence of the energy field that some gifted people could detect. Needless to say, Ms Rosa’s experiment did not confirm this hypothesis, but it did lead to her being the youngest person ever to be published in a top rank medical journal (Rosa , et al, 1998).

There is another important implication of Hume’s Rule. He tells us that belief should be based on the preponderance of evidence, or on the probability that evidence confers on the belief. But the evidence for or against the belief is continually shifting as more of it becomes available. Along with this, the probabilities will fluctuate. Remembering this is how the skeptic following guided curiosity avoids dogmatism even when she has a fairly strongly held belief. She is always ready to modify her beliefs, and in some cases switch from belief to disbelief or vice versa as the new evidence comes in. And it is also why a skeptic should not only state her beliefs, but state them along with the degree of confidence – her estimate of the likelihood that more evidence will require her to revise or abandon those beliefs. Or better yet, always be prepared to state the belief along with the evidence for it. With these qualifications, there is no harm in provisionally stating a belief with a probability not much higher than .5, or disbelief even when the probability is a bit less than .5. Taking a belief seriously confers the benefit that, once a belief is stated along with the evidence for it, it can be examined, and implications drawn from it, which in turn can lead to new understanding. However, dismissing it because the probability is not much above .5 forgoes this possibility. The important thing to remember about dogmatism is that what is wrong with it is not the forceful stating of the belief, but concentrating on the belief rather than the evidence for it, or the unwillingness to budge from it when new evidence comes to light.

Some skeptics will be disappointed that I have gone all this way without mentioning one of the cardinal principles of skepticism, that there are times – quite a lot of them, actually – when you shouldn’t express a belief at all; you should straightforwardly admit that you do not know. There are two advantages to this admission. The first is that it serves as a stimulus to curiosity: having admitted that you don’t already know gives you a good reason to try to find out. Second, it prevents you from misleading others (and yourself). When they think you know and you don’t, they might follow you when they shouldn’t.

There are two situations where one should say that one doesn’t know. The first is when this expression is simply a substitute for “I don’t care.” This expression is tantamount to admitting that you have very little evidence and you are not prepared to gather any more. For example, just by reading the headlines and deciding that I have no interest in the articles they head, I couldn’t help finding out that Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, and his wife, Kate Middleton, recently had a son, whom they named “Archie”. But his birthweight? I don’t know; meaning …. After all, one cannot expect to have time to look into everything; one must prioritise.
The second situation is where the evidence you have at present is about equally compelling for belief and disbelief, and it is possible to get more. In this situation it makes sense to suspend belief and wait for further evidence. But there’s an important exception here: sometimes waiting isn’t a viable option; circumstances require an immediate response. Fortunately, these special cases are quite rare; so withholding judgement while awaiting more evidence is an available option, and a good one.

Otto von Neurath (1921) compared our belief system to a leaky ship at sea. We are continually replacing rotten planks with fresh ones, but never are we able to replace the whole bottom at once, given that we wish to remain afloat. Thus we will never have a perfect set of beliefs; there will always be some false ones in there that we haven’t found yet. The best we can hope for is a gradual improvement. To continue with his metaphor, when we find a particularly strong plank on the boat which doesn’t fit very well with the old ones already in place, going to the all the work to make it fit may result in a much less leaky boat overall. Similarly, encountering a new belief that is inconsistent with some old ones, but with a lot of evidence backing it up may require the modification of several of the old beliefs at once. But the result may be a more coherent belief system overall. But not a perfect one. Non-skeptics may find this disconcerting. They are like the sailors who aren’t in it for the pleasure, but just want to get somewhere – anywhere -- and who just want to go along for the ride. But the true skeptic enjoys the sailing for its own sake.
 
Dawkins, Richard 2006: The God Delusion.Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company.
Hume, David: “Of Miracles”, in Hume 1955, Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merill Company Inc., An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
Paterson, Jane 1980: Know Yourself Through Your Handwriting. Montreal, Readers Digest Assn.
Quine, W.v.O. Quine and J.S. Ullian, 1978: The Web of Belief. New York, Random House.
Rosa, L., E. Rosa, L. Sarner, S. Barrett 1998: "A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch". Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol 279(13):1005–1010.
Von Neurath, Otto 1921: Anti-Spengler. Munich, G.D.W. Callwey
 

War; Gwynne Dyer; 2016; Vintage Canada Books; 450 pgs, notes index

Dyer is a Canadian war researcher who wrote this book in 1985. From what I can gather, it is well respected. This edition has been revised and updated.

The book tours war historically, examining its roots and its evolution over the millennia.
The opening comments discuss some of the big picture history. For example, major battles prior to the 20th century would generate casualty rates as high as 50-60%, with an average of 20. In modern battles, this figure rarely exceeds 1 percent. This was due largely to changes in technology (weapons got better). This in turn changed the nature of soldiers and their mission. In the old days, soldiers did not get combat fatigue (shell shock, or today: PTSD) because they would die before it ever happened. Today, all armies recognize that troops can only take so many combat days (in WWII, it was 240) before they  fall apart.

Dyer has always impressed me especially with regard to basic training, which he discusses in a chapter called "Any one's Son Will Do". Get them when they are young. Break them down to the same level, making them all equals, and then build up a small group dynamic where each man relies on the others to help him stay alive. Drill Sergeants are masters of psychological manipulation, and they know it.

In his opening chapter, Dyer makes this startling revelation:  In WWII in the ETO, only 15% of combat infantry riflemen ever fired their weapon in anger! Most soldiers would never have  reveal such a fact, until they were told they were not at all alone.  More than four fifths of combat soldiers got through the war with killing anyone, and without firing a shot! More research has backed this up. Gettysburg was a hugely costly battle  for Americans because it was Americans on both sides. More than half of the recovered muskets from the battle were loaded with more than one round, and only 5% were ready to be fired when they were abandoned or dropped.  Six thousand had as many as 10 rounds in the barrel. In other words, most of the fighters were spending their time  reloading a loaded gun, and, one assumes, ducking. No one is suggesting these men were cowards. Many were simply principled and did not want to kill.

The upshot of this is startling: if you could get the malingerers to enter the fray, the other guys didn't stand a chance. Which they did. New training got the numbers up to 50% in Korea and 80% in Vietnam. The US had figured out how to get men to kill automatically. Dehumanizing the enemy was a big part of it.

War goes back a long way. Chimps war on each other and so do we.  We did not invent war, we inherited it. Dyer examines hunter gatherer groups and their interaction;  ritualized warfare in groups like New Guinea bushmen;  and other evidence of our more primitive past.  Some suggest that ritualized warfare is not the "real deal". It does generate casualties at a low rate, which meant that they could do it a lot, which in turn meant high casualty rates over time.   Hobbs, Rousseau and Darwin are invoked  and examined for their viewpoints.

The birth of war was driven by human life style choices. Hunting and gathering can keep you alive. So can farming. But a new type of living was now being made: pastoralism (i.e.: nomads). They lived by herding domesticated animals. Inevitably, these groups clashed. The nomads would win fights because they were mobile, which meant they could concentrate their forces when needed. To combat this, walls around towns were built.  When horses were domesticated, things accelerated.   It is worth noting that Egypt was largely spared from nomadic attacks by its geography.

The Sumerians hit upon the idea that religion could be a better way of settling disputes. It worked for a while. Priests liked it because it gave them power.  But as we know, religion is not a cure for war, but more often an excuse or a direct cause.

Aside: Women were equal partners in life until civilization and agriculture came along, driving the need for a power structure which eschewed women because it could.

Sargon was the worlds first emperor over a militarized society (circa 2300 BC). Around then, there was a major technological innovation: the compound bow. The bow and arrow has killed more people than any other weapon, ever.  Unlike the English longbow (yet to be invented), the composite bow was short, powerful and could be fired from horseback.

Other inventions over time include the chariot (fast, hit and run, archery platform); the pike and phalanx; war galleys; improved, harder metals; bigger horses;  the saddle and stirrup (700 AD);  gun powder (1300 AD); and organized armies (which gave the powers-that-be the willies).

Aside: Japan had a warrior based culture. When the musket was introduced, they were appalled. A samurai could be killed by a commoner! Unacceptable… so they just stopped making them. That obviously changed later in history.

Armies got bigger, the percentage of soldiers dying went up, battles were huge but infrequent; and the average citizen was left alone.

Armies had to be trained and fed. You could not just conscript someone and throw them into battle. Standing armies were a part of every major European power from 1700 on. 

What happened next was the introduction over time of the concept of "total war".

New weapons were being developed at a quick pace. It was soon discovered that a few men behind cover with guns could stop a large number of advancing troops. Tactics changed. WWI introduced the concept of the continuous front.  The  tank was used for the first time. It gave professional soldiers the hope that  it might end the wars of attrition. It did, but it caused the continuous front to become mobile. This and aircraft took a terrible toll on civilians. The tank eventually spawned "blitzkrieg", or  mobile "lightning" war.  The world wars were the first where civilian deaths outnumber the deaths of combatants.

The next chapter in the book documents the history of nukes. There have been a lot of ideas over the years on this subject, but the prevailing idea is that you only need enough to destroy the other guy. This was known as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). And so far, this math has kept the nuclear peace for 75 years. The advent  of nukes gave rise to the phrase "conventional war".

The birth of the professional army came in 1803 Prussia with the creation of the Kriegsakademie. This approach of using well trained professional soldiers was soon adopted by others.  One hundred Germans in WWII were a match for 125 British or 250 Russian troops. Why? Because they had 10x as many good generals who knew how to get the most from men and equipment.  The old game is now protected turf and generals everywhere want to keep it that way (the start of the military-industrial complex?). Technology has changed the equation a great deal. One example: a Spitfire in WWII cost 5,000 pounds to make. The supersonic Tornado, its 3rd generation successor, cost 17 million, 172 times more after adjusting for inflation.

The last chapter speculates about the future of  war:

Baboons are nasty creatures. The males are obsessed with status and fight all the time.  But in one troop something unusual happened. The aggressive males all died off at once from eating infected meat.  Overnight, the troop settled down to a much more egalitarian society. And it  stayed that  way even after the demographics of the tribe returned to normal! The ritualized war fare on New Guinea bushmen killed a large percentage of  combatants, one at a time, year after  year. The government stepped in and told them this had to stop. They all agreed enthusiastically and never looked back! It seems both were caught in a local stability point that they could not get out of without a nudge. Perhaps there is hope in both those stories.           

While not as eye-opening a book as Guns Germs and Steal, this book is a must read for anyone who wishes to grapple with these thorny issues. War has been with us for all of our history. But perhaps we can first ritualize it, and then dump it as a bad idea.  I doubt it. The New Guinea bushmen were offered an alternative to their wars… essentially third party arbitration. This is something the top dogs will never agree to.

One final tidbit: Have you ever wondered if you were safer as an officer in combat, or as a soldier? In WWII, the answer was "soldier". In Vietnam, it did not matter.

Dyer himself has served, so he has seen some of all this from the inside.