Ben Stein : no intelligence allowed

[spoonless]

So, I finally got around to watching Ben Stein's movie "Expelled : No Intelligence Allowed". I guess since my last post ended with a Ferris Bueller quote, it makes a nice seguey into this one to mention his acting career got made from his role in Ferris Bueller's Day off, as the monotonous economics teacher, teaching a class full of bored drooling high school students about the Laffer Curve, Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics", and repeating "anyone? anyone?" after every question regardless of the fact that nobody ever answered his questions.

Before I watched the film, I couldn't help but brush up on my knowledge of Ben Stein's life on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Stein

He was the son of an economics professor, but went to school for law. Became a lawyer and at one point was a professor of law at Pepperdine University. I knew that he had been a speech writer and lawyer for President Richard Nixon, but I had no idea that he had taught as an adjunct professor for a while at UC Santa Cruz (where I went to grad school) before he became a real professor at Pepperdine. That surprised me more than anything on his resume, given UCSC has sometimes been referred to by conservatives as "the worst school in America for leftwing indoctrination", and given how insanely conservative Ben Stein is. He must have found plenty of enemies there!

The most entertaining thing I found on his Wikipedia page, though, is that apparently--even though he's not an economist, many news outlets such as Fox News regularly ask his opinion on economics as though he's some kind of expert (presumably either because his father was an economist, or because he played an economics teacher in Ferris Bueller). For example, in August 2007, he appeared on Fox News with a panel of other "experts" where he proclaimed loudly and arrogantly that subprime mortgages were a wonderful "buy opportunity", dismissing fears that they might be unsafe. Peter Schiff was also there and disagreed strongly with him, saying that subprime mortgages and perhaps even the whole mortgage market was in danger of crashing. Stein and everyone else on the panel laughed at him saying "you must be a laugh riot at parties". Talk about putting your foot in your mouth!

Regarding Richard Nixon's involvement in Watergate, he defends him by saying:

"Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POWs, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton—a lying, conniving peacemaker." - Ben Stein


The film Expelled is his defense of the Intelligent Design movement, where he lays out the case for a full-blown conspiracy among scientists who believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. His central claim is that ID advocates within the science community are systematically identified and expelled from the rest of the community, never allowed to explore ideas that might contradict Darwin's great theory.

I have to admit--I sort of thought that I might watch this movie and get very angry. And I suppose I should be, because there are probably plenty of evangelical Christians who will watch it and think his investigative reporting is brilliant and his arguments against Darwinism are air tight. But for the most part, I just thought it was hilarious. I mean some of the antics in it were very entertaining, but so far from reality that it's hard to watch it and not think "OMG, that is so cute that he thinks that!"

The only part that made me kind of angry was the part where he visits the Nazi death camp, and has some tour guide explain to him how all of the Nazi's beliefs were based on Darwin's ideas. In scenes before that, he has drilled in to the viewer that the natural consequence of belief in evolution is to become a Nazi and engaging in forced eugenics and genocide. The theme of Nazis is woven from beginning to end of the film, but only the part where he actually visits the camp is creepy. The rest of it is more aimed at a metaphor for erecting a wall where science is on one side and religion is on the other, and if scientists ever stray over onto the religion side of the wall, they get shot. He mixes up his analogies though, because while they keep showing shots of Nazi guards on one side or another of a wall, they also keep cutting to shots of the Berlin Wall, which was erected by the Communists, not the Nazis. At the end there are a lot of shots of Reagan talking about freedom, while simulataneously Ben Stein is talking about academic freedom, and shots of the Berlin Wall falling down are interspersed. (I think the speech Reagan is giving is when the wall was coming down.) Very poetic, and interesting how he ties all 3 of those ideas of "freedom" together. But downright idiotic if you think about it in a larger context!

He has interviews with PZ Meyers, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, and other great skeptics. If there is one thing that really impressed me about the movie, it was that he actually let them talk for a pretty long time. I was surprised at this, because at times, they appear to completely annihilate his arguments, or at least make him look foolish... and yet he doesn't cut it from the film. Those parts made me think he did a decent job at being an honest filmmaker and including what his opponents have to say--unfortunately, there are other parts where he is clearly being dishonest. The worst one, I think, is when he talks about winning the lottery of life. There's a catchy cartoon about a guy playing a slot machine. Stein claims that winning the lottery of life (creating the first few organic building blocks of life, out of inorganic materials) is like playing a slot machine and winning, and then playing 250 more slot machines and winning on every single one of them, all in a row. While I'm sure that's a powerful image for many people, it's completely dishonest because after all the scientists he interviewed about how life got started, I am sure that at least *one* of them explained to him how big the universe is, and how many galaxies there are out there. So his metaphor is completely dishonest in that it only shows one casino, not trillions of casinos all running simultaneously, where only in at least one of them this has to happen. In fact, he asks questions just like this, where I'm sure that was the answer given, but then he deliberately cuts that out of the movie and instead leaves the more emotional rants about how stupid creationists are.

In terms of Darwin's theory itself, namely that species form from previous species through natural selection, none of the ID advocates interviewed even attempt to give an alternative suggestion to that. Instead, it seems like what these people claim is just that somehow, there are some ingredients somewhere mixed in with life that supposedly can't be explained without recourse to "intelligence" designing them. None of them seem to realize that if this really were true, then there would be no more science to be done--that would be the end.

Overall, I thought it was definitely worth watching, if nothing else as a window into how really whacky conservatives like Ben Stein think about science, and how the intelligent design people in general think. And there is one big theme in the movie that I whole-heartedly agree with and enjoyed. And that theme is that people don't seem to realize just how incompatible religion is with Darwinism. He interviews scientists who explain how political correctness and the desire to win court cases has led scientists to mute what they say against mainstream religion and pretend that it is more compatible than it really is. This is absolutely true, and I think he does a great job at pointing it out. Unfortunately, his conclusion is that since they are incompatible, Darwinism must therefore be wrong. And also unfortunately, one of his main arguments, and arguably the strongest argument he has, for why it's Darwinism that must be wrong rather than religion, is that Darwinism naturally leads to genocide, while religion leads to happy happy joy joy. I say it's the "strongest" argument he has in a sort of tongue and cheek way, because while he does lay out an entirely plausible route through which Darwinism could lead a normal well-meaning intelligent person down the path to Nazism (through the intermediate step of Social Darwinism), it's not actually an argument for Darwinism being "wrong" in the sense of "not true". And he seems to ignore the obvious fact that the vast majority of people who believe in evolution are not Nazis (although he does warn several times that "I'm not saying belief in Darwinism *requires* you to believe in Nazism or that all Darwinists are Nazis"). But even the way he says that seems to suggest that he *mostly* believes that, or *almost* believes that which of course is total nonsense.

So overall, I think it has some important and true messages, but it also has some deeply dishonest and misleading messages. Oh, one more entertaining bit. Upon interviewing one scientist, who explains one plausible hypothesis for how the first organic cells may have formed--by "piggy-backing on crystals"--he stares at him with a stupid look and says "um, excuse me?? Did you say... *crystals*?" and then there's a flash to a shot of a wizard holding a crystal ball and smiling devilishly. Pure genius in the cinematography, although I really feel sorry for the person who watches it and thinks that's what the theory actually says.

Sigh. I seem to be really fascinated by conspiracy theorists lately. I may have to make another post about the Books-on-Tape I've been listening to this month, called "The Rise of the Fourth Reich : How Secret Societies Threaten to Take Over America". Totally batshit crazy guy wrote it, and ties together every conspiracy theory known to man, from 9/11-truth, to UFO's, to perpetual motion machines, to JFK, to the Illuminati, to Hilter using a body double to fake his own death, to the CIA being filled with Nazis and putting Floride (aka "Prozac" according to him) in the water to pacify everyone into obedience to Nazi control, to NASA being founded by Nazi occultists who time all of their launches meticulously according to astrological signs. Anyway, more totally nuts stuff, but for some reason it's a hard book to put down. Perhaps in some ways only slightly crazier than Ben Stein is.

Comments

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't know that much about Michael Shermer. I remember enjoying his column in Scientific American while growing up, but as an adult I've mostly lost track of what he's been up to. Incidentally, I used the adjective "great" to describe him rather than "excellent"... not that there's a huge difference, although when writing narrative evaluations for students I remember we would typically use the word excellent for A+ or A students and great for B+ students.

I recall you have said some nasty things about James Randi in the past (which as far as I can tell from what I've looked into, he does not deserve). Would you put him a step up or a step down from Shermer?

I had not heard either of the things you mention about Shermer--will look into it if I get a chance.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

Randi and Shermer both strike me as scoundrels, but for completely different reasons. Randi was a showman through-and-through. His history as a "researcher" is laughable, and many of the studies he critiqued illustrated his incompetence. On the other hand, he also debunked a great many charlatans, frauds, shucksters, etc. Complex character, but definitely shady and certainly of questionable credibility.

Shermer has credentials. He got into the business of debunking by 'accident' - i.e. media and etc began calling him to act as "debunker" for random "paranormal" event/claim and he in a way he got typecast. That aside, his research methodologies are often of questionable rigour, his data often unreliable, his claimed results often inconsistent with observed data, etc. One of the sexiest examples of this involves his involvement with Sheldrake's "dogs that know" experiments.

But the fraudulent posturing as a prof is a recent thing. Scandalous.

[darius.livejournal.com]

I've read some of Shermer's columns (not recently) and he seemed pro-establishment rather than skeptical. (I don't remember what writings specifically -- maybe on cryonics and nanotech.) Dawkins OTOH impresses me. Randi I don't know enough to have much of an opinion on.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, healthy skepticism and critical thinking naturally leads one to a pro-establishment point of view.

While I'm open to the possibility that the establishment (and by that I mean, mainstream science) is not always right, I do think that they always have a better chance of being right than those outside of the establishment. I've met a number of people who call themselves skeptics but believe that mainstream science is biased in all kinds of ways, and I generally think these people just do not understand the issues very well.

[darius.livejournal.com]

The distinction I have in mind is, does your presumption for the establishment view lead you to presenting sloppy arguments that wouldn't impress you if contrarian? That's how Shermer looked to me, while Dawkins, for example, didn't, even when he makes mistakes. I'm biased towards some views that Shermer sneered at caricatures of, it's true. (I don't really want to look for specifics now -- stuff going on in my life.)

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your perspective. I don't have any contrarian views that I'm aware of, but I can understand how if someone just keeps appealing to authority to defend the establishment that can get annoying.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

Really, no contrarian views that you're aware of? I note that your profile includes the following as interests:
bisexuality, burning man, counter culture, cyborgs, drugs, ethical relativism, futurism, genderqueer, goth culture, libertarianism, lsd, lucid dreaming, many worlds interpretation, multiverse, neophilia, nick bostrom, open source, pleasure/pain inversion, polyamory, pushing the envelope, rave culture, synaesthesia, cosmic landscapes, the doomsday argument, threesomes, transgressing boundaries, and transhumanism
All of those can be interpreted as "contrarian" in some ways, and a few of them (neophilia, pleasure/pain inversion, pushing the envelope, transgressing boundaries) are almost explicitly contrarian!

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I meant this in the same context as the rest of the thread, which was about the question of whether being a skeptic naturally leads to being pro-establishment or not (and more specifically, about whether Michael Shermer should be considered a "great skeptic").

In the comment just before this I qualified my use of the word "establishment", saying that by that I mean the views associated with mainstream science. I added that qualification because I'm aware it can be used in a broader sense to mean many other things. Although I think that is what darius meant by it in accusing Shermer of being pro-establishment anyway. (If he did not, he didn't correct me on it.)

Looking at the list of interests of mine you dug up, I have to wonder how having an interest in something makes me a contrarian, even if the establishment here is taken to be mainstream American culture rather than mainstream science. Yes, I'm interested in counter culture, but does being interested in something make you a contrarian? What if my interest in it is that I want to figure out how to suppress it? Or what if my interest in it is just that I think it's interesting and worthy of study? Granted, I admit that not only do I find counter culture interesting, but I also enjoy "participating" in many things that would be labeled counter culture. But even participating in something deviant, I'm not sure that represents a view or a belief that is contrarian... although it comes closer since presumably if I'm participating I must think it is worthwhile while most people don't.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I agree, that being interested in something doesn't mean you support it, but I believe that most of the things I listed (though probably not all) are things that you do support.

I probably shouldn't list them as "contrarian" though. What I think of as "contrarian" is probably not just what is contrary to the "mainstream" (of whatever sort), but rather a position that is held and defended specifically because it is contrary. Slate specializes in this sort of essay, playing the Devil's advocate, partially out of sympathy for the view, but also partly just out of the intrinsic interest in defending an unpopular position. Contrarianism of this sort is very interesting, but also gets annoying fast (see Christopher Hitchens and John Tierney for examples of that sort, though they still produce interesting things far more often than, say, David Brooks).

Also, I think just about all scientists have to be contrarian in some sense about something - that's how you make your contribution. You just have to do it well, and actually support your case in ways that are interesting and make sense, even if they're not strong enough to overturn the consensus.

And even outside your own field there are probably some cases where there's good ground to be contrarian, because of some lack of evidence for the mainstream position. For instance, Matt takes the contrarian view that there is probably life on both Venus and Mars. I think his case for Venus is pretty interesting (basically, the huge amount of H2SO4 in the atmosphere there should be just as much a giveaway as the huge amount of O2 in the atmosphere on earth - both compounds are so unstable that you need some out-of-balance chemical reaction to be producing it, and life is a natural candidate), though I don't know about Mars. Of course, also, in both cases, there are a significant number of people in the relevant community (NASA scientists) who do hold the contrarian position.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I think just about all scientists have to be contrarian in some sense about something - that's how you make your contribution. You just have to do it well, and actually support your case in ways that are interesting and make sense, even if they're not strong enough to overturn the consensus.

This assumes a very Kuhnian way of looking at science, and in my opinion, a false way of looking at science.

The consensus forms around questions slowly as they are answered. For open questions, there is no consensus on them yet... these are the ones that make for valid, promising research projects. Researching something there is already a strong consensus on is not science, that's crackpottery.

Of course, there is gray area. You might research something that there is already a weak consensus on, and then you are not a crackpot just a contrarian. And occasionally (albeit very rarely) that type of thing works out. But it is certainly not the norm in how science progresses. That would be an abberation.

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be that extreme. (Also, I don't think the Kuhnian picture is that extreme - he thinks most of the important science is "normal science", and it's just that revolutions capture our historical imagination. At least, from my memories of reading it ten years ago.)

My point is just that you have to have your own research program, with your own interesting ideas, which have to be sufficiently different from other people's that they're interesting. In some cases that can be because it goes against what many other people think (if you manage to turn up evidence for it, or for related ideas, or whatever), and in others it can just be because you propose ideas that no one else has thought of.

There's certainly no reason to go around thinking the consensus is a hoax and you're some powerless genius that will be proven right in a century's time. Even the historical cases crackpots point to aren't properly described that way.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

My point is just that you have to have your own research program, with your own interesting ideas, which have to be sufficiently different from other people's that they're interesting. In some cases that can be because it goes against what many other people think (if you manage to turn up evidence for it, or for related ideas, or whatever), and in others it can just be because you propose ideas that no one else has thought of.

I think this is not necessarily the case--but even it if were, I think the use of contrarian to mean "having your own new ideas that nobody has thought of before" (rather than "opposing the consensus") is a bit of a stretch.

You often have to be creative to be a good scientist, but that doesn't mean you have to be a contrarian.

But sadly, a lot of times you don't even have to be that creative. For example, in experimental science, often you just have to be the one to go out and get a grant to purchase equipment and set it up, and perform the tests that nobody has performed yet, but that everyone pretty much agrees is the right "next step" for a given research program. For example, if the fine structure constant is known to 12 decimal places, someone might apply for a grant to do some tests to try to measure the 13th decimal place. Now granted, if it's something like that it's not likely to have a terribly interesting or surprising result, so you're probably not going to go down in any history books. But occasionally there are also times were someone did the obvious next step, and then it happened to be surprising, and they do end up getting fame and recognition for it.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, healthy skepticism and critical thinking naturally leads one to a pro-establishment point of view.

That's completely ridiculous. Not only is it conceptually flawed, but it's completely hegemonic. Have you read Foucault? With your interests in gender, I suspect Foucault's discursive genealogies would be on your radar... And Judith Butler, too, for that matter. Neither of which would suffer such foolishness as you've suggested above.

And insofar as the "rightness" of establishmentarianism or "science", I can't bear to struggle through this dialogue with you again. Now that I'm even more deeply immersed in the literature of cultural studies, critical ethnography/sociology, and discourse analysis, your position seems about as tenable as young Earth creationism. You've really no idea, and you've been prevented from having any idea by the discursive regimes of truth that have shaped your subjection. All I can do is encourage you to problematize your prejudice and suggest domains of thoughts which could add coherence to your worldview. To that end, Foucault's study in sexuality might help immensely, but then again his studies in psychiatry might be more directly applicable insofar as critique of the "rightness" of establishmentarianism science. Either way, it's also intriguing to note that from a Lacanian angle your position here conveys a great deal of self-lothing and abjection. More rabbit holes to chase...

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

From what I know of them, I have the impression that I would enjoy both Foucault and Judith Butler, especially Butler. Surely they have interesting things to say about gender.

I'm not sure how either of them would have anything relevant to say about science though. In fact, I've found that critical theorists in general tend to say some of the stupidest things about science.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

In fact, I've found that critical theorists in general tend to say some of the stupidest things about science.

Ah, more sweet prejudice.

And if you think Foucault or Butler would validate your esteem of "science" (or gender!), I'm happy to burst your bubble. It's so completely elementary an awareness it'd be like going up to Einstein thinking you could judge him under the lens of an artist. Arguing across purposes. Poor conceptual analysis. Logic fail.

Very revealing set of dialogue. But an unproductive use of either of our time. Your prejudice is a clear-enough indication of that.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

Here's a vid related to Shermer you might find... provocative: http://j.mp/bSzjTv

The beginning starts a little ... oddly, but stick with it...

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

The thing that strikes me as odd here, is why anyone would think the title "Adjunct Professor" was somehow indicative of authority. Adjunct Professor is the college equivalent of "substitute teacher", a non-permanent position that is based on a semester-by-semester short-term contract and would normally never be listed on a school's website. Basically, the school figures out what classes are missing that term and hires whatever adjuncts it needs to fill in the gaps. It's going to change every term so I can't see what the point would be of listing such temps on a website. I've known plenty of graduate students who have filled in as adjuncts now and then, it does not even require a PhD, a masters degree is usually sufficient.

Looking on Claremont Graduate Universities website, Michael Shermer, PhD is listed under the school of Politics and Economics as a Senior Research Fellow:

http://bulletin.cgu.edu/content.php?catoid=3&navoid=120

As a Senior Research Fellow, it would make perfect sense that they would use him as an adjunct from time to time, that's pretty standard I think. It would not make sense to list his role as adjunct since adjunct does not really mean anything. Notice there are no adjuncts listed on the page.

The idiot in the video claims that he went to their webpage and did not see Michael Shermer listed there, and that the Dean of the school had never heard of him. I find that humorous since his name is indeed listed on their page. I'm not sure whether a particular dean would be expected to have heard of every adjunct the school has used.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

"Senior research fellow" ≠ "adjunct professor". If he taught a class, I'd think the dean or president would be able to verify his placement. You seem mighty trusting...

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

But Senior Research Fellow is a more prestigous title than Adjunct Professor, and more indicative of a person having some authority.

Perhaps the general public does not realize this, and therefore he chose to opt for his less prestigious title. It does seem a bit weird that he picked that to use, but I don't really blame him.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

In one instance it is implied he was not only engaged in research but also teaching, whereas in the other instance it is implied that he was engaged in research. Hermeneutics and discourse analysis aren't encompassed in the subjection process you went through, but they're certainly relevant in any and all textual iterations.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the title of this video "Michael Shermer says 9/11 may be an Inside Job!" concerned me a lot more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dz4GQJvHYI

I mean, anyone who thinks there is a serious possibility of it being an inside job, clearly should not be in academia and has big problems with critical thinking.

However, he doesn't actually seem to take it any more seriously than I do... he just says that like many things, he could be wrong. But there is no evidence to suggest that 9/11 was an inside job. It's just pure speculation on the part of some whacked out conspiracy theorists. And based on the other video, I find it terribly sad that dumb professors are leading their students into this nonsense too.

[ankh-f-n-khonsu.livejournal.com]

Ah, sweet prejudice. Your certainty is far less quaint than tragic.