Virus-avoidance advice

There has been a great deal of news and rumour recently about a new virus or worm targeting users of FarceBook, MurdochSpace, and the other one. Normally not the sort of thing that would find its way to these pages, as it seems to be a completely genuine danger and not in any way fraudulent. What prompted this blog post, however, was the public reaction to the news; I know of people who have decided to not use the networking sites at all while this thing persists. Not an unreasonable precaution, but why deny yourself the distractions of social networking if it's not necessary? And according to the details of this case, it's really not.

As with most digital viruses, the best advice for avoiding infection seems to be "don't be a moron"; though it does appear that this worm is more sneaky than most. It's also not new - it's been around since at least December, when there was a big news event on the subject - see articles from The Guardian, PC World, BBC News, The Huffington Post and Reuters.

This virus, known as "Koobface" can be avoided by simply knowing the way in which it operates. The best source for this information seems to be the video here, the summary of which is that the virus works through sending messages from infected accounts to friends of that account. The message comprises of a link to a video, ostensibly on YouTube, and a phrase or two suggesting that the target is featured in that video. Now listen carefully to the next part, because it's the one thing you should remember about the Koobface virus:

The only way it can infect your account or computer is if you click that link and then install what it requests that you install.

So the obvious advice is: don't do that.

Knowing how these individual virii operate is the key to avoiding them - besides good old common sense, anyway. If you get a link to a video with a message suggesting you're in it, don't follow the link, delete the message. If in doubt, ask your friend if the message is genuine. There is no evidence to suggest that the virus is so clever as to be able to respond to such an inquiry.

Darwinism

There have been times on this blog when I have alluded to my dislike for the word "Darwinism". Well, now I have an excuse to let rip with a rant on the subject, courtesy of a new article on BBC News by Andrew Marr:

The danger of worshipping Darwin

I have a lot of time for Andrew Marr; I think as a historian and particularly as a presenter of history, he has a great deal to offer. But in this case, he is either ignorant of the facts, or simply creating a controversy for the sake of having something to say on the matter. Because what does his article actually argue?

The majority of it is taken up with what he himself describes as "trivial" comparisons between evolution and religion, such as the observation that the natural history museums of Oxford and London bare a striking resemblance to cathedrals. Religion has heretics, evolution has heretics - Richard Owen. Religions have holy artifacts, evolution has holy artifacts - dinosaur bones. Religious people make pilgrimages, and Darwin's journey could be compared to such a trek. Marr's admission of the triviality of these weak parallels points to exactly how useless and arbitrary they are.

After this horrendous triviality, he goes on to what might be called the "meat" of his argument. Which is that the more striking similarity between what he calls "Darwinism" (shudder) and religion is that it "offers both a method and a message". The method is the scientific method of observation and experiment, contrasted with the religious method of prayer and mantras. The message is about the importance of the web of life, as opposed to religion's emphasis on, I suppose, nonsense.

He claims that "to deal with the consequences [of climate change and species extinction], we have to turn to scientific evidence, which will be brought to us by - yes - Darwinists." This reveals the definition of "Darwinism" with which he is working in this article: to my eye, it seems to be nothing more than a synonym for "scientist". The only criteria by which he judges someone to be a Darwinist is her adherence to the scientific method, something which predates Darwin himself by a good number of years (try hundreds if not thousands).

This is why I object to the term "Darwinism". Because that's not what it's describing. The word seems to describe a dogma whereby one man's word is taken as unquestionable truth; this is not the case with Darwin, as often it is scientists (those Marr would not hesitate to describe as Darwinists) who are the first to point out the flaws in his theory. Indeed, he himself devoted much of his great work On the Origin of Species to detailing the holes and flaws in what he had produced, challenging if not pleading others to improve upon it. When you use the word "Darwinism" to describe the pursuit of the scientific method, which unavoidably questions Darwin, you are setting up a confusing, oxymoronic term.

So what is the conclusion of Marr's argument, answering the question he asks at the start, "In this year of his double anniversary, are we in danger of turning Charles Darwin if not into God, at least into the founder of a secular religion?"?

"Darwinism, as I take it, is a creed of observation, fact, a deep modesty about conclusions and lifelong readiness to be proved wrong.

I don't say it offers everything that religion can. But I do say that, in this respect, it is better.

However we celebrate the old man, we mustn't let his work crust into creed or harden to dogma."

So, basically, there is no danger of Darwinism (taken as he takes it, in that oxymoronic way) turning into a religion - as long as we don't let it turn into a religion.

Thank you, Andrew. That was a truly tautological useful piece of journalism.

Maybe I'm just bitter because when I heard the TV programme announced upon which this article is based, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, I was hoping beyond hope for some kind of adaptation of the Dan Dennett book of the same name, which I guarantee you is a worthier read.

Scepticism and Denial

During an interview on Point of Inquiry with Kendrick Frazier, the editor of The Skeptical Inquirer, I was interested to hear him address a point on what is often called "denialism". This is the phenomenon whereby someone who has grave doubts about a certain doctrine or set of facts is labelled a "denier", such as with holocaust denial, climate change denial, or vaccine denial. It is a point of annoyance for many freethinkers like myself that these deniers are given, by themselves and others, the epithet "sceptic" (so a climate change denier becomes a climate change sceptic and so forth).

Surely, though, that's what they are - to some degree at least. They are "sceptical" of the claims made by those who believe climate change is real, or that the holocaust did happen, in so much as they doubt the claims. It is, as is so often the case, a matter of definition. In common parlance, there is nothing wrong with calling these people sceptics - it is much more usually seen as a position of doubt than as an attitude toward inquiry and evidence. But when the context of the conversation changes, and scepticism takes on its newer meaning with which readers of this blog will be familiar, it is no longer appropriate to refer to them in those terms.

The new meaning of sceptic, which has its origin in the U.S. with figures such as Carl Sagan and James Randi, is associated not with denial or promotion of particular doctrines, but rather an outlook. This outlook is one of free-thought, rational discourse and unbiased inquiry, and it is therefore a mistake to associate it primarily with doubt alone. Under this definition, those who oppose the ideas of climate change and the holocaust, for instance, should by no means be named as sceptics. Their minds are not open to the evidence, and their position is not flexible, as that of any good sceptic (under this definition) should be.

What they do is far more accurately described as "denial" than "scepticism", so I agree with Kendrick Frazier that they should be referred to in this way. It is all part and parcel of the process to stake a claim on the word "sceptic", and turn it into something far more positive than the curmudgeonly, narrow-minded, blind denial with which it is still too often associated in everyday contexts. Will this endeavour ever bear fruit, and is it worth it? Those are questions for another day. For now, it is enough to remember, whenever you hear someone referred to as a "sceptic" with respect to a particular issue, to ask whether the word "denier" would be a more accurate description.

What else could it be?

Via Neil Gaiman on Twitter, comes the news that not only has Plato been revived from the dead, not only is he now writing for The Sun, but his fabled lost city of Atlantis has been found. Quite the news day.

In typical Sun fashion, the article could hardly be more credulous; nothing is considered as alternative explanation for the find. But when the Telegraph article on the same subject follows suit, perhaps credulity is indeed the answer. Especially if Plato says it's true.

Here are but a few reasons to be sceptical (other than the very good reason of simply having this as a default position): the reported "city" is the size of Wales. Does anyone else think that maybe that's just a little on the large side, even for a fabled city of legend? There isn't the kind of detail you'd expect to see in the outline if this was indeed a city the size of a relatively small country. There are only ten or so "streets" in either plane, and no less distinct, narrower lines in between to indicate smaller streets or buildings of any normal size.

Secondly, Atlantis is generally accepted in scholoarly circles as being nothing more than a narrative, heuristic device by Plato to illustrate his points and tell a story. In this way it can be seen as any product of imagination as opposed to history: nothing of the Atlantis myth (aside from the sheer scale, a classic exaggeration of such tales) cannot be traced to something historical with which Plato would have been familiar; wars were certainly no stranger to the Athens of his lifetime, and even a city lost to the sea overnight would have been a familiar concept.

Finally, we have the problem of all the other discoveries of Atlantis over the years; as recently as 2004, sites have been found and claimed to be the fabled lost city because of some feature or other that matches with Plato's rhetorical account. What makes this one more likely than the others?

Now, I don't know enough about oceanography or indeed Google Ocean to postulate convincingly on what this picture might show - the possibilities as far as I can think are some kind of geological formation, or perhaps an artifact of the mapping process. I'd welcome any suggestions, but will take some considerable convincing that what this picture shows is a city our only source of knowledge for which is the probably-rhetorical account of a philosopher well known for talking out of his arse.

----

UPDATE: The Daily Mail, of all things, has "dashed hopes" that Atlantis had been found. Guess what it was. Yup, an artifact of the mapping process.

"Details for the ocean maps on Google Earth come from sonar measurements of the sea floor recorded by boats - and the area around the Canaries was mapped by boats travelling in a series of straight lines."

Well that explains that, then. Is the magic gone, now that the truth is known? Only in a literal sense; the explanation of how this illusion happened is still very interesting. Or maybe that's just me.

Small Wonders #1: Evolution

My head is somewhat fuzzy with The Ill at the moment, so just a quick entry today in case coherence is in short supply.

What better way to inaugurate my "Small Wonders" series than with Darwin's Theory of Evolution, something so often taken for granted? It seems common sense to say that life as we know it has evolved from less complex forms, and yet look at it more closely and it is truly an absolute wonder that one man (ignoring, as most of the world sadly does, young Wallace) formulated, researched, developed and presented a theory with such staggering implications for virtually every field of study.

It seems so elegantly simple, and yet at the same time mind-numbingly complex. "Species change over time" is the pithy, easily-understood summary of literally a lifetime's work, and it has branches reaching off into innumerable other lifetimes' works. Genetics; medicine; zoology; biology; even ethics and philosophy were profoundly affected by the dawn of the Theory.

I greatly recommend finding out more about this subject; there should be no lack of freely-available information at this of all times. It is quite simply one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of all time, and one which can be appreciated at any level - from its simplest summary to the greatest levels of detail.

At Long Last...

It was announced in the later hours of yesterday that the 3rd and 4th of October 2009 would see a TAM in London. I am, to put it mildly, rather excited by this news.

Those who know what TAM is have probably already heard this news; for those who don't, TAM stands for The Amaz!ng Meeting - an annual conference in Las Vegas sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. It is a gathering of atheists, sceptics, scientists, secularists and freethinkers of all colours. There is also a healthy dose of wit and jocularity to be had, of course. We all know of the connection between intelligence and comedy...

Not only is it guaranteed to be stuffed to the brim with absolutely fascinating keynote lectures, but it's also an opportunity to meet like-minded people in an environment where there is no need to disguise one's scepticism. It's a shame that the wider world is so often hostile to free debate, but TAM is an oasis of reason in the harsh desert of ignorance. Yes, I'm somewhat looking forward to it.

If you want to learn more, here's the (somewhat terse) news in the official press release; they're also on Twitter and FarceBook.

I hope to see you there!

Ignorance and Obfuscation

Half of Britons do not believe in evolution, survey finds.

"More than one-fifth prefer creationism or intelligent design, while many others are confused about Darwin's theory."

Right from the start, we have a misleading headline which suggests (not explicitly, but leaves open for misinterpretation) that half of Britons are creationists. In fact it's less than one quarter.

The real story here is that, to my mind at least, the creationist campaign - particularly that of intelligent design - has succeeded in blurring the issue. While I don't know that more people believe in creationism, I think more people are under the impression that there is doubt where no serious rational doubt exists. I can't seem to bring the previous figures to hand, though - so if you know what they were, please let me know - particularly if I've got it wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if this poll returned the exact same results as last time, actually. It wasn't that long ago. Also, let's not go over the many ways this data could be skewed - I'd at least want to know what questions were asked before trying to draw any sensible conclusions.

I'm all in favour of having these issues out in the open where they can be discussed, but that's not what we're dealing with here. Creationists are campaigning to get their rubbish accepted to the same degree as evidence-based theories, and disguising it under the banner of freedom of speech and open debate. Scientists are not blameless, either - more needs to be done to promote the public understanding of science, which would hopefully prevent a quarter of people from simply being "confused" by evolution. Those who bear the overwhelming burden of responsibility here, though, are the media; while there is a great deal of good science on the BBC and elsewhere (Attenborough being the absolute pinnacle), there is too much dumbing-down, and ignoring of science stories in favour of sensationalism and big headlines.

There is no easy solution, nor one single person or group to blame. What I do know is that 50% is too high a proportion of the population to be in any serious doubt about the theory of evolution.

Cursed Cowell

I'm almost one hundred per cent certain that Simon Cowell has been cursed more than once. So the question is, why did this instance become news?

"She [...] said, 'You're all doomed'.

"Then we had a really bad session, the worst ever, in fact."

Is there even a point playing the "spot the logical fallacy" game with this? I'm not sure I've ever seen a clearer case.

Does this mean a witch put a curse on the MSN news website? Because it's reall bad reporting, possibly the worst ever, in fact.

Small wonders

By way of a new semi-regular feature on this blog, I intend to write a number of short pieces on the small things that one can so easily forget about, but which are nevertheless quite amazing when one stops to think. It is basically meant not only to inform and remind my readers of these small wonders, but also to reinforce the numinous aspect of atheism and scepticism. I've decided there's not enough "holy crap this is amazing!" on this blog, and the new discoveries provoking that reaction are more or less covered by the main science blogs out there such as Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, and Not Exactly Rocket Science. So I'm left with the stuff hiding in plain sight.

Look out for this new feature, coming soon to A Sceptical I near you. Early posts in the series are planned to cover aeroplanes, electricity, and cats.