Hi lewy: :-)
"Suicide bombers are rational, sane people whose choice to end their lives as they kill others is considered perfectly normal in societies they grow up in, the Globe and Mail reported yesterday from a southern Ontario religious conference." But this is perfectly rational, from a sociobilogical perspective. One individual removes the max number of breeders from a competeing population with the sacrifice of a single life. Remember, Sir Richard says, "...there is no altruism in nature."
Also, in the (relatively) new discipline of Evolutionary Games Theory, terrorism, homicide bombing, and guerilla warfare can be fitted to different gaming paradigms. We have come sooooo far from the "two person zero sum game"!

Hi,

It's great to see you take an interest in Nader's recent, unsavory dealings. For those of your readers who are daunted by the size of my 5000+ word expose' on the former consumer advocate's alliance with anti-Semitic cultists, Holocaust deniers, and, of all people, Pat Buchanan, you can check out this refined version, published in the Jewish Press. It goes down easier with your coffee, although some of the details may encourage it to come racing back up.

http://www.jewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=4034

"Entil'zha veni!"

You're in the anla-shok? I had no idea.

"Bjørn was pretty widely linked, though."

By three whole sites (Glenn, Volokh, Michael) that supported the war (not counting me), two of whom are exceptionally well-known for being fair-minded. Is that the full list of pro-war blogs? Is that half of them? A tenth? A twentieth?

I've done my best to try to keep that discussion from going into personalities or specific sites, but we both can name quite a list of prominent pro-war blogs. Where are they on this? Indifferent? Busy? Uncomfortable? (Again, how can one (correctly) call for moderate Muslims to denounce extremist Muslims, but be unwilling to take the undangerous step of denouncing bloggers that tolerate extremists in their comments?)

Is that a response one would accept when asking lefty sites to distance themselves from, say, ANSWER?

I'll be posting again on the subject of Joseph Darby shortly.

>> 'The Jews Slaughtering Non-Jews, Draining their Blood, and Using it for Talmudic Religious Rituals’

Old, but recurrent news. So the Bush administration is going to make this crazy stuff stop, or else cut off Egypt's funding, right?

RIGHT?

I didn't think so.

>>How’d they get those ideas growing up?

I'm sure the Enola Gay crew had a perfectly normal and happy childhood, as did most of the Fine Young Americans who carpetbombed Europe. "Cowboys and Indians" probably didn't hurt either.

Lewy, I tried to explain this to Gary on the Bjorn thread, and again on BooPear's thread, the basic problem about classifying Islam as a religion-- IT IS NOT A RELIGION. It is an addin, or "way of life". The religion of Islam cannot inspire hate-speech-- what's there to hate about it? "A hope for justice and a meaningful life". The five pillars are virtuous and honorable. The basic, instinctive hatred and rage most beings feel towards honour killings, violent jihaad, ritual beheadings, slavery, kidnapping, opression of women, etc. are understandable-- we're WIRED for it! It is a selective advantage.
The religion part of Islam is fine-- it is all the extras that present a problem.
And, I think that raises a question-- if Islam is not really a religion, how can it be entitled to protection under our judiciary and cultural values?

jinnderella,

In your view, is it possible to change that way of life enough to "defang" the worst aspects of it vis-a-vis relating to the West, or is it simply too codified? It does seem to me that some Islamic nations (like Turkey) are interpreting Islam differently -- they are choosing a new way, otherwise how do we explain the substantive difference between how the average Muslim lives in Istanbul vs. Mecca?

I really like the evolutionary angle you've touched on in a variety of threads: is it possible that the worst aspects of Islam are slowly but surely being weeded out as a disadvantage to long-term survival in the modern age? Perhaps the OBL's and his like are merely the dying gasp of powerful meme that's met it's match.

I like to think of animals who dominate one ecosystem, but get obliterated when they try expanding into others (and it is with great hope, I grant, that the reverse of that example is not what's actually occurring).

And a follow up question: can the interpretation of Islam change enough that, for the vast majority of Muslims, it DOES become "just" a religion?

The Muslims I know who practise the religion part but pretty much ignore all the rest lead me to believe this can happen. That said, its got to be fantastically easier to be a "religious" Muslim than a "way of life" Muslim here than in places where Islam predominates.

BooPear: The answer to all your questions is-- sure! Everything evolves! Given enough time the osmotic pressure of Western memes will collapse the islamic cell membrane-- but Wretchard's Third Conjecture or one of Trent's Doomsday Scenarios may happen first.
IMHO, it is not useful to critique warbloggers for hate speech, when this is really a natural physiological reaction to very real atrocities which threaten the existance of the speaker. Also, it it not useful to mantle Islamic extremism with freedom of religion attributes.
Disturbingly, muslims are very aware of the laws of other countries, and immigrant populations are quick to avail themselves of the protection of the law to practice their "religion", while denying those same freedoms to their own sub-genome.
As for separating religion from addin, I do not think it can be done quickly. Islam underwent 14 centuries of memetic evolution to become the potent and brutally efficient "recipe for reproduction" we experience today. The best way to start, IMHO, would be to drive a wedge through the heart of the Qu'ran, infiltrating many books of fiction and non-fiction, history and poetry, science and technology. And music, other cultural forms of music to replace Qu'ranic recitation. Television, video, film-- where is art in Islam? Calligraphy which worships Allah represents the high art form, not paintings.

Ummm, that would of course, be, Qu'ranic calligraphy. :)

As for the "mythical moderate muslim", like in the C&F cartoon-- there may be moderate muslims, but the fundamentalists have the controls. Could one of your moderate friends get away with writing, say, a new 'Santanic Verses'? I doubt it.

So in that light, art, science and literature are really just dangerous infectious agents that the Islamic immune system must kick immediately into action to suppress, or risk being swamped. Neat! That I get.

There was an experiment done a few years ago at USAMRIID, where they took a bunch of very pure human pox (might even have been the nasty bioengineered stuff the Russians were cooking up -- can't recall offhand) and tried it out on monkeys. No dice, at first. The disease didn't cross species very well, and the monkey's immune systems were able to clear it out. So they tried more pox, and more, and more, until finally the monkeys succumbed. So I figure, "the West" doesn't cross species so well with Islam -- yet. But if we swamp 'em with enough of it...

Every time a McDonald's opens in downtown Riyadh, every time they play Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio in Tehran (you gotta check out AllahPundit for that one), we're one step closer the fabled "Islamic Reformation" (or it's equivalent)...

I'm down with that. I want to support more of it.

Could my Muslim friends write their own Satanic Verses? Not yet, no question. But they can read it without fear of reprisal -- while waiting in the drive-through line at McDonald's listening to Queen. It's a start. But faster please! :)

BooPear: That's very good! I think the Queen track should be 'Another One Bites the Dust!':)

Dr. Ledeen, ditto me! Much faster please!

Jinnderella and PooBear – thanks for adding your thoughtful comments to this thread.

Jinnderella, I do understand where your coming from with the Islam :== addin idea, but try this out as well: “Islam” doesn’t really exist per se, only an overlapping web of meme’s, of which there are many possible subsets. In this way of thinking, there are many possible and actual addins which are Islamic, as well as many religious, legal (fiqh), and philosophical schools of thought and scholarship (there are four such madhhabs I believe, and those are just the formal scholastic categories). Each of these memes has a claim on Islamic authenticity - sometimes contingent, sometimes absolute, sometimes traditional, sometimes textual. Taken individually, it can be difficult to deny the authenticity of any one meme, taken together, there is a great deal of internal contradiction. And so: how can one talk of “Islam” at all? (Ditto for Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, etc).

The total set of memes constituting Islamic meme-space is large. Some of these memes have, in the words of Bernard Lewis, “brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women”. Some memes are objectionable on cultural grounds, some are just uncomfortable due to a sense of foreignness, and some, I will claim, are lethally dangerous.

The basis for, and strength of, each meme’s claim on Islamic authenticity is variable. It is Spencer’s observation that a great many of the problematic, negative, and lethal meme’s we deal with in the WoT have strong claims, especially strong textual claims, to authenticity within Islamic meme-space. And to the extent to which this is true, we must follow this trail, for on it may lie the seeds of a solution.

See? Once we desanguinenate the language, I think it becomes easier to discuss things like this.

Hate speech is kinda like obscenity, everyone knows it when they see it, and consensus is impossible. Personally I’ve used a fair share of whatever social capital I once possessed on The Command Post shouting some of it down on “our side” of the fence. I see no harm in calling someone on a self indulgent rant.

Bad speech should be countered by good speech – but the problem I’m having is that some of the “bad speech” relates to the applicability of extreme or severe methods and responses (e.g. the “banning Islam” meme), and the problem is not that all of the proponents are eagerly putting these ideas forth out of hate: the problem is that some of them are putting them forth reluctantly, in spite of the fact that they do not hate. And yet the “good speech” they are being confronted with (by folks who, it must be acknowledged, are also well meaning) consists not of refutation, but simple condemnation. This can lead to bad feelings on both sides.

Maybe I’ll have some more on this later.

OK, it's not "PooBear", it's BooPear. Jebus, I did it again. I'll probably do it some more... sorry...

Lewy: What you say is true, but it is the mighty glue of the 'uncreated, revealed' Qu'ran that holds it all together-- that is the bottom line, the indivisible net that bundles the memesets. If you are going to slice some out, you will have to cleave the qu'ran. :)

As a practicing sociobiologist, I understand the physiology of hate, the evolutionary neccessity of hate, and the selective advantage of hate. I see it as competitive-- if one side can hate, and the other cannot, which side will win?
Oh, I already told Wretchard the answer-- Darwin always wins! :)

It is much simpler if you just believe two things, there is a biological basis for all behavoir, and (most important) everything evolves.

jinnderella,

What is the the selective advantage in being able to hate? I try to let it pass over me and through me, as the Bene Gesserit would have me do with fear.

It seems to me that hate is an obstacle to the things which give western civilization it's competitive advantage (learning, technology, public discourse, etc).

Lewy: It is sadly simple-- you hate things that can harm you-- it is an atavistic response. Like hating a snake or a scorpion, instinctively, even though you may have not seen one before.

"It seems to me that hate is an obstacle" -- we speak of two different kinds of hate-- you are talking about institutionalized hate, a learned memeset. Umm, I'm talking about something else-- watching a video of a man cutting off someone's head, you may hate that man, because it could have been your head, or could be in the future, or because it is the head of someone in your tribe, or because it is awful and horrifying! Or maybe you don't hate the head-cutter, and make an excuse of poor socialization for him.

It is interesting that you mention the Bene Gesserit-- I am writing something about them even as we speak. :)

Umm, lewy, I am wastedtired-- and off to bed-- we'll slay this dragon une autre fois, 'K?
Bonne nuit et dormez vous bien, Le Roi Soleil!

OK, I getcha - but I would call what you're talking about by different names - visceral revulsion, cold wisdom, etc.

Like hating a snake or a scorpion, instinctively, even though you may have not seen one before.

I went snorkling once in St. John, and saw a sea urchin for the first time. Profound lesson on evolution - hmm, big black spikey thing - yup, had to happen. And nobody had to tell me those spikes were poisonous. I don't recall "hating" the thing, more like the big cluestick hitting me, telling me, "don't f**k with that thing"...

It is when visceral revulsion expressed in comments is mistaken for the institutionalized, learned memeset of hate that I believe the discussion starts to run off the rails.

As for actual institutionalized, learned memeset hatred - I would maintain that it is useless, in addition to being, well, bad...

lewy14,

I think you're on to something there. But how do we reliably tell the difference between learned hatred and revulsion, when on the surface at least they can look so similar? Particularly when we know that there are those who can tell the difference, those who can't, and those who choose not to because it suits their purpose better? It's that latter group that makes me the most nervous, because they're the ones using both hate and revulsion as a tool to accomplish something -- and that something is rarely positive (even if the end goal starts out that way).

I would also argue that, from an evolutionary perspective, fear is one of the most useful emotions we have. If you're interested, Gavin de Becker wrote a fascinating layperson's book a few years back called the "The Gift of Fear" that is both a fun read and a practical guide to getting the most out of fear.

Finally, don't worry about spelling or mis-spelling the handle. It's goofy and we all know it. There will certainly never be any offence taken on my part. :)

No wonder my ears were burning! No fair! I thought Joe put this thread to bed! :)

lewy: "As for actual institutionalized, learned memeset hatred - I would maintain that it is useless, in addition to being, well, bad..." In sociobiology and evolutionary psycho-biology, "bad" means you don't get to reproduce. Can you think of competitve reasons why institutionalized hatred may have evolved?

BooPear: "I would also argue that, from an evolutionary perspective, fear is one of the most useful emotions we have." But hatred is more useful. Which has the greater selective advantage, running away or hating and killing danger? Remember, even if the individual dies of snakebite, the close relatives get to stay and exploit the resources. Besides, we are predators, not prey animals. Our wiring is better for fight than flight.

Caveat: This is sociobiology speak. Not ethics. :)

Jinnderella,

I'm afraid I'm a bit of a closet Romantic (in the sense of Wordsworth, Goethe, Coleridge etc). But your sociobiological perspective seems to me to smack heavily of "nothing buttery" the idea that we are "nothing but" machines programed by evolutionary biology. Does Darwin give us a perspective that is sometimes useful for some things? Absolutely. Did Darwin give us the One Big Key to Everything? I don't buy it. Hate may well have developed as an adaptive behavior. That may well mean we'll never completely eliminate it. But that does not mean that hate is always a good thing, that individuals are not morally responsible for their hatred, or that hatred cannot be overcome by individual or social effort. I'm afraid I can't give up on the ghost in the Darwinian machine.

Oh Fred. You are confusing genetic evolution and memetic evolution.

"But that does not mean that hate is always a good thing, that individuals are not morally responsible for their hatred, or that hatred cannot be overcome by individual or social effort."

Sure, this is all memetics-- religions, governments, those things evolve also.

The visceral reaction to seeing someone's head cut off is physiology, biochemical hate if you will. What lewy is talking about is institutionalized hatred, memetic or "learned " hatred. But the genes predate the memes, if you will. Ummm, mebbe you can say the memes evolve to protect the genes. ;)

jinnderella,

Good Morning. 8) (I slept in today - no early meetings).

Can you think of competitve reasons why institutionalized hatred may have evolved?

Actually, no, and I would see it as analagous to the gene for cancer, in that once it fully metastasizes, it usually kills or weakens the society. Hatred didn’t work so well for the Nazis or for Imperial Japan. China was set back decades by it’s institutionalized hatred of the “bourgeois” (Cultural Revolution). Systematic dehumanization has not worked well for any society in the modern age.

In previous ages, hate and intolerance and dehumanization were always present, but seldom became the focus of entire societies. When they did catch hold locally (the Inquisition, the witch burnings in the New World and in the Old), the institutional hatred seemed to reach a frenzy and then burn itself out without taking down entire states or cultures.

In the modern age, it seems the mechanisms of mass media and industrialized warfare have mixed with the meme of institutional hatred to create a volatile and destructive mix. I see no current competitive advantages to the meme of institutionalized hatred, whatever the story of its evolution.

BooPear,

But how do we reliably tell the difference between learned hatred and revulsion, when on the surface at least they can look so similar?

Sadly the world is not lacking for examples of hatred which is a) obviously institutionalized, b) propagated and amplified by those who buy ink by the barrel. My approach is to concentrate attention on those voices - the "no brainers", so to speak...

lewy14 and jinnderella,

I find the cancer concept intriguing, where we see powerful memes arising and spreading which not only have no particular evolutationary advantage, but which are in fact ultimately destructive to their host population(s). Seems plausible to me, at least.

We also know that some human cancers can be defeated through a combination of surgery (often substantive -- they don't call them "cancer survivors" for nothing) plus chemotherapy, others through relatively less drastic chemotherapy or alternative treatments alone.

Bearing in mind that we are talking about real human beings here, is it hate speech to advocate drastic memetic "surgery" -- or even possible to discuss such a concept freely and rationally, without someone eventually coming along and screaming "hate!"?

Lewy and BooPear:
Gee, this is a great thread-- how come this always happens on your watch, lewy? We're talking behind everybody's backs!

"Hatred didn’t work so well for the Nazis or for Imperial Japan." Umm, actually it did until the other sub-genomes got together and ganged up on them. For a while it is a competitve advantage. But the other scenarios you describe can also happen-- meme diffusion and transmission, interaction with the environment which becomes hostile to the original memeset. Perhaps through a law being passed. You have to think "tribal" for the origins. Memesets that worked, persisted (at least for a while) and those that didn't, died out.:)

The cancer analogy is good though-- what is a cancer? a group of cells says, leave me alone! and grows into an undifferentiated mass that has lost all concept of its true function.

And I think memetic surgery prob'ly won't work-- too radical a change for the receptors-- supression or banning of practices? Education, and offering the RNA transcriptase equivalent to transform malignant memes into benign ones. :)

We're talking behind everybody's backs!
Shhh! 8)

You have to think "tribal" for the origins
Hmmm... not quite "tribal", but maybe the difference between the Romans and the Etruskans? Is there an example you can give?

Even so, there are some genetic adaptations which are no longer valuable in modern, industrial society. The biological responses of fever, inflamation, and scabbing are often counterproductive now that we have antibiotics and bandages.

BooPear: Surgery is never to be preferred. Unless of course other options fail, and then it cannot be rejected a priori on principle, although discussions about surgery will be confronted with a great deal of condemnation and gnashing of teeth. The same goes for discussions around how to protect the physical and legal infrastructure of our own society. A clear framework for describing the parameters of productive discussion would be a valuable contribution. Robin touched on some aspects of this in her "The Discussion We Ought to be Having" post a while back.

An editorial word about topic relevance: The discussion around what is hate, and what is hatespeech, and what measures are permissable to discuss, and if some measures deserve censure without addressing their merits – these are all topics relevant to the general thrust of this update series, and in particular to some of the items at the top of this post. I’m of the opinion that this discussion is still “on topic”.

lewy-- are we getting too many wetware analogies?

Well, what Fred said! Learned or institutionalized hatred is passed as memesets, and what you call 'visceral' hatred is instinctive, and triggered by visuals or aurals. That kind of hatred is biochemical, and the capability of manufacturing the chemicals and receptors involved is genetic.

But physiological hatred is the origin.

Hatred as a selective advantage prob'ly originated with a "my tribe, your tribe" scenario, Romans and Etruscans, sure. Different subgroups competing for the same resources. Demonizing the adversary population to drive them off. It has certainly been done to the Jews often enough. :(

are we getting too many wetware analogies?

Quite possibly.

Let me try to wrap this up, and then attempt to advance the discussion:

What mememtic evolution has created is a set of methods by which psychological hatred becomes institutionalized, propagated, codified - or in other jargon, evolution gave rise to mechanisms by which volatile hate is made persistent.

Early in history, cultures which were able to discover, learn, and perpetuate these methods gained advantage and propagated - this must be so, or else we wouldn't have inherited those mechanism today.

Today societies and cultures perfect and practice these methods, which make persistent and focused the hatred that would otherwise be transitory, at their peril.

And this then suggests a method of combat, which is to reverse-engineer (deconstruct?) the mechanism, and monkeywrench it.

Lewy, I concur-- but you have to keep in mind that this is not a discrete proccess, it is continuous. Atrocity-->visceral hate response-->hate memes.
Do some build up a mental callous?

Mental callous, or perhaps mental ruts - I'm not looking to pass judgement here, just uncover the mechanism.

The thing about the hate institutionalization mechanisms is that they become self sustaining even in the absence of any "outrage", or perform some pretty drastic twisting of reality to create "outrage" out of thin air or close to it.

I think we're all too familiar with it, e.g., the Arab media distorting what's going on inside Iraq. No outrage? Invent one, construct one. This is part of the mechanism that needs monkeywrenching (and blogs can and do play a part in this).

Lewy:
I used to think, when I first came here, that the blogverse should be immune to anachronistic thought patterns, bigoty, bias, hate-speech, etc. I thought that because the flow of information is so free here, and memes can evolve, devolve, get transmitted, transmuted, have replication error, or get diffused so fast. But different memesets are instantiated in different message boards, like say LGF vs dKos. A poster from either of those websites isn't going to change their base memeset any time soon. And you do see tribal community values emerging in the larger boards.
So, I no longer think that free flow of information is an absolute cure.

A poster from either of those websites isn't going to change their base memeset any time soon. And you do see tribal community values emerging in the larger boards.

Agreed. But the role I see for blogs is more along the lines of what's going on with the Iraq blogs, the Iran blogs, and the blogs that straddle ideological fences (e.g. cough WoC cough) which bring together people who normally wouldn't talk to each other.

These are the kinds of people propagandists would normally like to interpose between. Let them come together and the hate pimps suffer.

Also, blogs raising money for SoA, etc.

But lewy, if it can't happen here, in the sea of information, where the truth is just a click away, where can it happen?

But lewy, if it can't happen here, in the sea of information, where the truth is just a click away, where can it happen?

Sorry, I don't quite follow.

Lewy, my point is, even here you see those rutted mindsets. If the cure for bigotry and hate-speech is information and exposure. Let's say you comment at LGF and meet a commenter from dKos-- what is your flash instant reaction? you have a whole set of prefab memes in place that define the other commenter.
Let's address the anti-muslim speech-- same thing. Prefab memes even though the Iraqi bloggers are case-in-point examples that all muslims are not the same.
My direction is, I don't think education and information describe a cure.

I think it CAN happen here in the blogverse -- just not necessarily in a way that is always immediately obvious.

When you look at the evolution of ideas "left" vs. "right", in some places we've seen virtual 180 degree reversals in thinking over the past twenty / thirty years. Israel was once the darling of the left. Not anymore -- it's the right now. Once, the left would have been front and centre in demanding greater rights for women in the middle east, etc. Now it's the right.

What I think the Blogverse does is speed the process up. It can never eliminate the problem, however, because people will gravitate towards those blogs which already fit their preconceived notions. But every now and then a thread gets going, arguments are made... and opinions slowly change. I've seen that happen on LGF lots of times, for example.

IMHO, the best way to support those new, better memes forming and taking root is to keep the discussion going, and to keep challenging ideas, good and bad, on all ends of the spectrum -- but do so in responsible, respectful manner. I can't have a discussion on immigration with someone who screams "racist!" every time the very subject comes up, but I CAN influence thinking with little tweaks here and there...

To me, that's where a blog like WoC comes in. The potential is enormous. Has it been fully realized yet? No -- but it's sure going in the right direction.

The hardest part is not only to keep the stream of ideas and back-and-forth discussions coming, but also to do it effectively and consistantly.

My direction is, I don't think education and information describe a cure.

OK, yes, that I understand - I think your point from previous posts is that any mememtic engineering messages have to be impendance matched to the receptors of the target audience.

(Wow. That's a dogs meal of a metaphore mix. But it does say what I mean. In electrical engineering, if a conductor is not impedance matched to the load to which it is delivering a signal, the energy of that signal will simply reflect back towards the source).

lewy, BooPear:
That was great! My favorite lines--

"To me, that's where a blog like WoC comes in. The potential is enormous. Has it been fully realized yet? No -- but it's sure going in the right direction." I think so too-- it's thoughtful. Thoughtful is a high compliment. :)

"...any mememtic engineering messages have to be impendance matched to the receptors of the target audience." I love EE metaphors! And that one is so perfect! Are you fluent in DSP also? :)

'gnite all-- thanks much for the learning! :)