The Developmental Disabilities of Developmental Scientists

I've generally been too burnt out by the simple fact that most people like the world the way it is to do much serious writing. My burn out has been increased by the fact that part of me is comfortable with the status quo and fears real change just like everyone else.I've tinkered with fiction and I've dabbled in some paying work (all in the area of boxing writing)but that's it. The little serious writing I've done has been about philosophy, theology, and morality in the hopes of shifting the focus of this blog from political symptoms to the underlying intellectual, spiritual, and moral condition.

My discovery of The Autism Crisis has compelled me to try to turn my hand to something semi-political, though my real concerns are the moral and intellectual motivations behind the politics. The blog's theme is the science of ethics of autism research in an environment where said science is solely driven by advocates of specific autism-related agendas not necessarily terribly concerned with autistic individuals. The degree to which the issue seamlessly fits into my view of modern sociopolitical philosophy got my fingertips itching.

My personal interest in autism science and advocacy started with an entirely selfish interest in ADD/ADHD science and advocacy. My childhood academic experience was about as pleasant as someone who has seen me characterize the US system of education as "sadomasochistic" might expect. Some of the problems came from my attitude toward school and teachers and some of them came from the attitude of schools and teachers toward me. The degree to which the US school system and I came to loathe each other eventually required my parents to try find a home schooling program that would be compatible with my desire to learn rather than to perform busywork for the justification of the system. Ultimately I was fortunate to live in a state (California) that gives a high school diploma to anyone able to pass a test that proves they learned what they were supposed to learn in high school.

The merits of the educational system and the value of a standardized test are issues for another time. Suffice it to say that I passed and it was the only way out of what I perceived to be a Hellish experience. My interest in ADD, ADHD, and Ritalin were driven by a desire to acquire a "normal" tolerance for the useless busywork that life too often demands we perform and to be willing to settle for doing a job as I was told to do it instead of doing it in such a manner that it was finished and finished correctly. I wanted to know if I was suffering from ADD or ADHD and I wanted to know if Ritalin would help me. To this day I do not know what my actual "diagnosis" would be, were I to seek one out, because my investigation led me to the conclusion that all of the science on the topic was fundamentally flawed.

The following is quoted from the ADHD entry on PubMed Health,a website for which ultimate responsibility lies with the National Institutes for Health. If the NIH espouses a different definition, it is not on their website, so I will take this quotation to define the condition as the NIH sees it:

ADHD is a problem with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination. For these problems to be diagnosed as ADHD, they must be out of the normal range for a child's age and development.

The words "the normal range for a child's age and development" are important. They imply an authoritative baseline to judge the presence of a developmental disability that requires treatment by means of a powerful mind-altering drug.

ADD/ADHD science is based on a pair of serious epistemological errors that Bertrand Russell or John Dewey would easily be able to point out to the scientists involved. The first of these errors, and perhaps the most severe, is the conclusion that the use of the word "normal" involves an objective intellectual judgment rather than a subjective intellectual judgment. The second of these errors, which would be a horrendous mistake even if the judgment process behind the word "normal" were properly understood, is to equate the process of judging what is "normal" by the mathematical study of averages. Thus "normal" is defined as "average."

The problem is that an "average" is not a discrete thing. It is an abstract mathematical construct. It does provide a baseline for comparison but it does not provide any sort of guidance in judging the validity of the comparison. The "average child" on whom ADD/ADHD science depends does not exist. They are merely an imaginary construct whose only purpose is comparison with the individual. The matter is complicated by the fact that any child psychologist not on mind-altering drugs themselves will tell you that "inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination" are in fact normal symptoms of a condition called "childhood." So we have a situation where evidence of normal childhood behavior is justification for a diagnosis of mental abnormality based on an arbitrary prejudice regarding "desirable" behavior combined with an imaginary baseline construct telling us how much "normal" is too "normal."

This flawed diagnostic system is broken entirely by the fact that behavior symptomatic of ADHD can also be a specific response to specific stimulus under specific conditions. The child who does not do his assigned homework because they believe the classroom exercises sufficient and who, instead, reads ahead in their textbook for the following day's lesson and then goes to basketball practice is making a rational decision. When such a child has prepared for the next day's lesson and expects to work on that lesson but instead finds the class bogged down in the review of the previous day's lesson in the form of homework analysis, it would be terribly abnormal if they were attentive. When said child also gets an "A" on all class tests it could further be considered normal for the child to receive a "D" in the subject they have clearly learned so well. All of this a natural consequence of a classroom environment created by valuing social promotion over the gradation of learned skills and the completion of assignments over actual learning.

None of us should be surprised that forced medication of students is preferable to school districts over the trouble and expense of giving individual children attention based on their individual educational needs and accomplishments. The parents' health insurance foots the bill rather than the school district. What should surprise us is that the majority of ADD/ADHD "science" is undertaken in support of educators with the purpose of controlling children they do not know how to teach. Many parents of kids diagnosed with ADD have been fighting this tooth and nail. They see the effects that mind-altering drugs have on their children outside the classroom. The "scientists" don't care.

My personal view, that ADD and ADHD do not exist at all but are merely convenient labels to allow school systems to drug students that resist sadomasochistic institutionalization, is not necessarily widely shared. However the parallels with icepick lobotomies in mental institutions in the 1950s and 1960s are worthy of consideration. Both "treatments" consist of the destruction of individuality to suit the needs of the institutionalizing system.

It is the issue of questioning the motivations behind the science that brings me back to Michelle Dawson's blog and this article. The subject of the article is a study advancing a specific thesis about autistic understanding of spatial relations. Their findings were not pleasant:

The press release starts by declaring that autistic children "lack visual skills required for independence" and does not exaggerate the claims in the paper, which merit a lot of scrutiny. So bear with me, this is not going to be short. First what they did (and didn't do), then what they found, then what it means.

The statement Ms. Dawson quotes from the press release encapsulates the high-minded science of the study quite succinctly. The study minimizes some of the real learning advantages studies have found autistic individuals to possess by dismissive their usefulness in "the real world." Rather than design a "real world" test of "visual skill", however, the actual study constructed an elaborate simulation that did not even directly test visual skills!

This attitude can best be described as a belief in the virtues of conformance, submission to authority, and the abdication of individual responsibility to expert opinion as recognized by the institutions that expert opinion serves. Teachers unduly burdened by students with ADD/ADHD are not able to properly teach the rest of the class, we are told. Parents burdened by autistic children are handicapped in every other area of life. In neither case is the individual diagnosed with a disability the victim of said disability: instead, through their disability, they are the means of someone else's victimization.

Something whose combination of symptoms we choose to label "autism" clearly exists. It is not so easy to argue that the symptoms of autism are as "normal" as the symptoms of ADD/ADHD. Even if ADD/ADHD does exist, however, teachers aren't its victims. The kids are the ones suffering from the school system's INability, as well as their own DISability. They deserve better. How much more insidious and dangerous is the scientific attitude that autistics are not the victims of autism but, rather, society and government are the victims of autistics?

I've talked more about the specific issue of ADD than I intended and less about autism, but the real point in all this is not either specific issue. It is a culture of institutionalization in which elaborate systems are developed for every stage and facet of life and people are deemed worthy or unworthy based on their ability to fit into those institutions. Science must serve fact and not institutional values.

Green, clean, or sustainable? Where should our priorities be?

'I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.' - Freeman Dyson


The environmental movement has busily attempted to make a great deal of hay off BP's colossal boner in the Gulf of Mexico. One sees it on HuffPo and one sees it on liberal blogs. It's hard to blame them.

The trick is whether they are pursuing the proper tack.

I tend to consider myself reasonably 'green' on most issues, but I tend to consider that Dyson's position on environmental activism bears a certain degree of merit too. It's important to understand that 'clean energy' is not as simple as it sounds. How do we define 'clean'?

The environmental lobby has a lot of ideas. Solar, hydroelectricity, wind, geothermal power... and they all pose their own economic and environmental risks. Hydrogen fuel cells are a substitute for gasoline, but not for oil. Hybrid engines and chemical batteries create waste more toxic than carbon dioxide and that waste must be disposed of safely. How do we do that?

Self-proclaimed 'conservatives' bandy about phrases and code words like 'clean coal' and advocate greater use of nuclear energy. Right wing propaganda aside, making 'clean coal' a fact and not a propaganda phrase would cost more money and pose a greater economic risk than public investment in solar and wind power. It is important to note that the 'free marketeers' who oppose investing in potential new solar and wind based industries are happy to pour a fortune into the coal industry on a pipe dream. Nuclear energy, like chemical batteries, requires the safe disposal of waste much more toxic than CO2.

This isn't an issue where there are easy solutions. T. Boone Pickens' plan to convert gasoline-power industry and transport to natural gas power while investing in wind and solar power was interesting... but also very expensive. Economic issues have caused it to be thrown aside. It still might be worth examination, but the cost is a real factor.

More importantly, natural gas is still a non-renewable resource. Ditto uranium, cadmium, lithium, and coal. We may not have developed Hubbert Peak level models to discern when these resources will be exhausted... but we still know it will happen if we're intellectually honest with ourselves and others.

This is not to say that investment in battery power and nuclear power is not practical. It is only by seeking to improve existing chemical and nuclear technology that cleaner and safer alternatives can be discovered. If cold fusion can be made practical, further research into fission and fusion technology must almost certainly precede it.

There are no easy answers.

What if we're not even asking the right questions?

It is not just a matter of finding safe and clean energy technologies. We also have to develop sustainable energy technologies if we don't wish to eventually go Luddite. This energy has to be affordable to the average citizen if we do not wish to narrow our economic base even further than we have already done.

Civilization is going to have an effect on the environment. We can make choices about just what form that effect will take. We can't eliminate it entirely. We may not be able to eliminate every option (with the exception of the non-existent and scientifically shaky 'clean coal' notion) entirely either.

The honest answer, from the environmentalist standpoint, is that we really don't know yet. The honest response to that answer is not 'conservative' declarations that we might as well keep doing what we're going as long as it keeps working.

The honest response is another question.

Why aren't we doing more to find out?

Long Silence, Random Thoughts

Obviously, I haven't been around for awhile. Not just here. I haven't really been active on any of the political blogs on which I used to comment regularly. Originally this was for reasons of health. When I overcame the health issue that kept me from writing, I realized I was incredibly burnt out.

I'm still incredibly burnt out.

I've been working a new job since late May and it appears to be going well so far. This has kept me pretty tired in the evenings. It is good to be back in telecommunications again, but it is also tiring to learn a whole new system for a whole new company. I am just glad I was fortunate enough to be in that position.

I am a 'grandfather' now, which is rather amazing to me since I've never technically been a father. The baby is gorgeous and I got to skip the part of having to raise and pay for a kid for 18+ years and skip straight to the fun part. So no complaints there.

I think most of the bloggers whose domains I used to stalk are probably glad to be rid of me. That is probably a good thing, since I don't know when I'll be that active again. I just felt, today, that I had to write something. So I am writing about nothing.

My thoughts on the issues of the day are, as usual, a mixed bag. I just don't feel as motivated to shout at the wind. I want to be that motivated. The trouble is that we live in a world where people don't want to think, read, or listen if they can possibly help it.

I'll try to have something to say the next time, but this time I just felt I needed to say anything at all.

Housekeeping

Once again I've been inactive for longer than normal. This has been due to a recurrence of my dental health issues that were responsible for my last unintended hiatus. I am pursuing their resolution, but until they are entirely resolved I cannot promise regular updates at the same pace as before this problem began. I apologize for any inconvenience to anyone actually paying attention my need to bloviate and I appreciate the patience of those who haven't dropped the site from their links yet.

Skepticism: The Cornerstone of Democracy

That's right. The fundamental foundation of a successful democracy is an open-minded skepticism. Things like individual liberty and civil rights are not the building blocks of democracy. They exist in a successful democratic society because conditions in a successful democracy allow them to exist, but they are dependent on society continuing to create the necessary conditions.

John Locke, the recognized pioneer of classical liberal thought, was also the first of the British empiricists. Prior to the empiricists, philosophy and science were based on strict logical thought. It was assumed by many that logic was entirely reliable and that logical theory did not have to be challenged. While some of the flaws in the Socratic Method and Aristotleian Dialectic were already obvious and the Rennaissance had led to a flower of scientific experimentation and humanism.

All of this led to intense reaction from conservatives in many quarters. Martin Luther rejected the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church of his day, but he also rejected the humanism of the Renaissance and preached a stricter morality and a philosophy based on faith rather than reason. John Calvin went even further, coming very close to rejecting reason as altogether worthless and leaving a legacy of anti-intellectualism that lingers to this day. The Reformation undid much of the progress of the Renaissance in many of the countries where it took root and the Counter-Reformation that followed entirely repudiated the Catholic humanism of the age of Da Vinci and Galileo. Thus those inclined toward piety tended away from intellectualism regardless of their religion. Those who did embrace intellectualism clung to the dialectics of Aristotle.

Locke, and the empirical thinkers who followed him, rejected the idea that a logical theory was a correct theory. They correctly understood the lesson of Galileo: logic does not equal truth and no theory can be considered sound unless it has been thoroughly tested and the actual results observed in the real world. That's the scientific method, philosophically stated.

There's a reason we call this era 'the Enlightenment.'

Thus, in order to prove that our ideas are true, we must doubt them. Absolute faith in our beliefs is dangerous. By allowing logic or religion to dictate a belief system and failing to test our own beliefs we set ourselves up for grievous intellectual error and the disillusion that accompanies it. It is even worse when we ignore the results of real world testing of our beliefs and insist that the logic behind them makes them true regardless of empiric experience. Skepticism and flexibility of thought, coupled with an ability to observe and accept the actual function of our ideas in the world, thus become the only surety of reliable knowledge.

A recurring theme among conservatives and libertarians is distrust of government. I don't believe that this, of itself, is a bad thing. I believe skepticism of government is very important. Absolute faith in the righteousness of one's government leads to experiences like the Japanese internment, the Red Scare of the '50s, the Vietnam War, and the scandals of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. Forgetting these lessons led to the experiences of 8 years under George W. Bush and a Republican Party whose fundamental line of attack is to present their own blunders, corruption, and incompetence as absolute proof of their theses about government.

Of course we should not place blind, unearned trust in government.

Nor, however, should we be blindly and unthinkingly afraid of government and allow that fear to override the empirical facts. Reflexing, unthinking, and close-minded fear is not skepticism. It is paranoia. One of the fundamental truths of paranoia is that paranoids frequently manufacture their own nightmares so skillfully as to make them real through their attempts to resist or escape them. Like the man said, they find themselves living in lonely worlds they populate with enemies.

Skepticism requires that we able to see the facts as they are rather than as we want or fear them to be. We must accept empirical reality and work with it rather than attempt to reshape the world in the image of our own beliefs no matter how logical we are sure those beliefs may be.

I've noted in the past that I began my political life as a fiscally conservative Republican, slightly more socially conservative than my moderate-to-liberal parents. Time, experience, and observation have drastically changed my views and ideas. I have been noticing that recent events and debates have continued to have an effect on my views and ideas. Changes have occurred at an easily observable pace. No doubt this will moderate as conditions change, but I fully expect my views to continue to change as I continue to experience the world and see them tested.

This may be arrogance or elitism on my part, but I believe this self-awareness and skepticism is key to the democratic process. Empirical testing can be the only test of political theory and ideas that do not survive the test of the real world must change. Laissez faire has repeatedly failed empirical testing. It failed during the Gilded Age, when a handful of men amassed massive amounts of wealth while reducing their fellow man to poverty and economic peonage. It failed in the 1929 and in 2008, when economic disasters were directly caused by the corruption and speculation of investors entirely unfettered (from without or within) by common sense or enlightened self-interest. In 1929 this happened because a monied, capitalist aristocracy could not wrap their brains around the idea that nothing lasts forever. In 2008 it happened because the financial industry believed that credit was equal to infinite, free capital.

It is incumbent upon our society to learn from such mistakes and correct them rather than (as we have for many years now) repeat the same old mistakes in new forms. This requires government intervention in certain areas of the economy, as most of us have already learned and understand. Conservatives are correct to say that eventually we will have to pay the bill. That's the whole point. One always has to pay the bill in the end and forgetting that very fact is the fundamental economic mistake we have seen repeated ad nauseam throughout history. Yes, at some point in the future our taxes will go up. That's how life works. Tax cuts can't last forever either. Conditions change, and policies must change with them.

When we believe in something so absolutely that we do not even consider the alternative, we are writing our own doom on the walls ourselves. Experimentation, experience, and trial and error are the only way to be as sure as possible of our knowledge. Even then conditions may change.

This is only common sense. Unfortunately, in today's political climate, common sense is very radical indeed.

Society, the State, and the Government

'Nature abhors a vacuum.'

-- Francois Rabelais, 1494-1553


One of the most misused words in the English language is 'statism.'

Merriam-Webster defines the word as meaning 'concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often extending to government ownership of industry.' They date the word to 1919 and I am willing to accept their date and definition.

In recent years, much like the words 'Communism' and 'socialism' (which also have very specific dictionary meanings), self-proclaimed libertarians have used the word to mean 'anything the government does that I personally dislike.' It is certainly perfectly acceptable to dislike action taken by the government (something many conservatives forget when it comes to liberals, or when they themselves are in power.) It is simply not correct to use the word 'statism' to describe actions that fall outside its proper definition. Nor is it correct to use 'statism' to describe the belief that government should exist at all or should take effort to solve social problems. There are a lot more words for this, all dependent on context.

If one wishes to follow the correct dictionary definition of 'statism', then I don't believe there are many 'statists' in the United States of America at all. Nor, for that matter, do I believe there are many in most of the Western world. Even the most aggrieved socialists, most critical of capitalism, believe to some degree in capitalism and markets and do not believe the government should control or centrally plan the entire economy. Many of the most aggrieved socialists are philosophical anarchists who see the state and its sponsorship of corporate power as the problem.

I would like to be a philosophical anarchist. The problem is that government isn't going anywhere. It is inevitable and inescapable. If we successfully dismantled the United States government from top to bottom today then the governments of each of the fifty states would successfully Balkanize into fifty little countries. Some of them might combine to form larger associations on the pattern of the very government recently dis-established. If we dismantled the state governments from the ground up as well, we'd still have all that local government. Cities, counties, and townships would govern themselves as separate entities or federate into larger states on their own. The latter is highly likley, as that's the whole point: cities and fuedal counties discovered that they could better manage their affairs and protect their security by combining their interests under a central authority that could respond in emergencies.

I'll even go one further. Let's say we succeeded in completely dismantling local government on top of everything else. Everyone looks after themselves as best they can, gets together in community organizations to look after themselves collectively as best they can, or pays someone to provide them with protection. The former and latter system, which today is called anarcho-capitalism, has been tried before. During the Dark Ages they called it 'feudalism.' Everyone either protected themselves or paid someone else to protect them. Ultimately, the people providing protection became the government. They had the power to do so and there was no one with equal power to stop them. The middle option, community collectives in which freemen combined to defend themselves and each other against the feudal protection racket, is frequently lauded by anarcho-socialists. Ultimately, as the protection racket got bigger and stronger and more united, cities had to all with a bigger mobster, the king, to survive.

So modern government, in its first infantile throes, was born.

Break down everything libertarians and anarchists despise in modern government, dispose of the state entirely, and you simply create an environment for feudalism to make conditions so difficult that government becomes necessary all over again.

Of course, there is one notable difference between the Dark Ages and today. We have corporations with entrenched money and power. We complain about the government being in corporate pockets, with some degree of justification in many cases, but with no government at all we'd have the pleasure of watching corporations build the kind of government and society they wanted all around us with no recourse at all. Their government would be a lot less democratic and participatory than the one we have now, and a lot less responsive to the needs of society. It would be a 'one dollar, one vote' democracy. As bad as things are now, that would be much worse.

What society needs to do is take control of government. Government needs to cease to be a means of state control over society and become a means of societal control over the state. The state came into being in order to serve specific societal needs. These include (but are not limited to) public safety, general welfare, and (whether conservatives like it or not) the redistribution of wealth through the various strata of society in order to attempt to secure a basic standard for the quality of life. The only way this will happen is if people act. Responsible and informed voters must make responsible and informed decisions for the genuine public good, rather than base their decisions on personal prejudices against their neighbors or their desire to pay lower taxes. Democratic society must be an educated society. This does not mean everyone needs reams of paper proving their formal education. It means that everyone needs to be willing to take responsibility for educating themselves for their entire life regardless of their level of formal education.

It also means that society needs to reject ignorance as a badge of honor and embrace the fact that there are things we do not know... and seek to learn what we do not know. We should be proud of what we learn, not huddle in the dark and fear the sounds from outside. The only way this will happen is if we take control of our political environment. Government must become society's servant.

This is all very radical and extremely difficult.

Unfortunately, we've already gone through far too many years of the alternative.

Who's happy with what we've got now?

There Really IS An Explanation For Everything

Dr. Ron Chusid has speculated a lot, on his own blog, about the real beliefs of outspoken and controversial right wing 'pundits' like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

It appears that there may be more to Beck's particular apocalyptic visions than just the attention it gets him or the ratings.

He may so stridently predict the total economic and social implosion of the United States because he being paid to do so.

Brett Michael Dykes, writing for Yahoo! News, notes:

Yet another controversy appears to be brewing around Fox News host Glenn Beck. Some are accusing him of a blatant conflict of interest concerning his frequent on-air promotion of an investment sold by one of his main advertisers: Gold.

What are the accusations?

(If you'd like to see for yourself: http://mediamatters.org/research/200912020029 and http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1209/Becks_cross_of_gold.html are the links in the above quoted text)

For a start, Beck is a compensated endorser for precious metals broker Goldline International. They sponsor his radio and tv shows, he frequently endorses them during live segments, he has had their CEO on his radio show as a guest in what amounts to free advertising, and their ads are all over his website. Now that's fine. Celebrity endorsement is nothing new and hardly a scandal.

Here comes the really big but...

When Glenn Beck tells his television audience to pull all their money out of the stock market and buy gold, he does not disclose that he is paid to endorse people who make money when the price of gold rises. This would be a violation of journalistic ethics if Beck were a journalist. It is a violation of Fox News's own policy about their hosts providing on air endorsements during their tv shows.

Even if Beck were not specifically telling his viewers to go out and buy gold, there is still a serious issue of conflicting interest. Beck has been talking the economy down hard since President Obama was elected. He has been predicting economic collapse and apocalyptic chaos. When people are afraid for their livelihood and personal safety, the price of gold goes up. They invest in portable assets they can take with them in an emergency. This means Beck is serving Goldline International's interests every time he forecasts that we'll be eating our neighbors in a few years. He creates a climate of insecurity that profits his sponsor. It raises fundamental questions about the integrity of Beck's show and its content.

Beck's response to criticism?

"So I shouldn't make money?"

The complete lack of compunction in this question is less disturbing than the fact that Glenn Beck doesn't even see the point the critics are making.

It's not about the money, Glenn. Every American has a right to earn their livelihood, as best they can, by means of their pursuit of happiness. We actually put that in writing somewhere.

It's about integrity. Like it or not, there are people in the country who trust Glenn Beck. When he panders to a narrow corporate interest because it profits him, he betrays the people who watch his show and take stock in his word. Personal integrity has value.

Glenn Beck's personal integrity is easy to put a price on.

Just check the price of gold.