My OK Go fanboy post

So, a few months back my brother wrote a fan post on his blog for one of his favorite artists, Sara Bareilles.  Now, Sara Bareilles is talented and all, and I do respect her as an artist.  But I choose to write about musical groups that don't put my man card in danger (and I'm only writing that because my brother hates it when I talk about man cards).  So, OK Go.

Some of you may be aware that OK Go recently came out with a new music video.

Yeah.  Awesome.  I know.  I've shared it with a few people over the last few weeks, and about half the time, they're like, "Who's OK Go?"

WHAT THE HECK, PEOPLE.  And most of the other half says something like, "Wait...weren't they those people who danced on the treadmills and stuff?"

Yes.  Yes they were.  But PEOPLE.  They have done SO MUCH MORE cool things since then (which was 2006, by the way.  8 years ago).

Like this.

And this.

And freaking THIS.

PEOPLE.  They built a mile-and-a-half long instrument, and they're playing it with a car.

WITH A CAR.

Oh, and they do almost every single one of their music videos in one continuous camera shot, with the exception of the car video, and End Love, which was probably stop-motion photography.

They're coming to Salt Lake in two days, and I think it goes without saying that I can't wait to see them.

One thing that impresses me about the band is that several of these projects have brought together dozens of people to try and do something that's never been done before.  But the main reason I love OK Go so much is because they take creativity so far beyond the limits of what anybody thought a band could do.  I'm pretty sure at some point during the making of one or more of these music videos, somebody came up to them and said, "Um, isn't this pretty much impossible?"  "This is never, NEVER going to work."  "You've tried this, like, 40 times already, why don't you just give up?"  "Why are you buying 280 guitars and 55 pianos to make this music video?"

And they just do it anyway.  They never say it, but everything they do sends the message that creativity doesn't have limits.  There shouldn't be anybody who says, "You can't do this."  There shouldn't be anybody who says that something you created has broken the rules of creativity.  Because there are none.

Skepticism and deception: Finding the right balance

As a Christian person, I'm still trying to find the right midpoint between extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility.  Two questions are relevant in my mind:  How skeptical does the Lord allow us to be, and how skeptical does the Lord need us to be?  One scriptures that comes to mind is Matthew 10:16:  "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves:  be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

I was first introduced to this scripture on my mission in a somewhat different context, but I think it has significant meaning when applied to the issue at hand.  The word "serpents" in Christian scripture is most often a symbol for the adversary and/or his followers.  To me, then, this scripture means that Christ is commanding His apostles to possess the same intellectual skills as their greatest enemies.  They are to examine evidence, search for truth in as many valid ways as they can, and be unafraid to reject an idea that might be wrong (but be equally inclined to embrace an idea that is correct).

But the "harmless as doves" ending seems to reject the intellectual cynicism that is characteristic of many skeptics.  Some would argue that the attitude of a skeptic is one of his greatest skills; that the ability to be a skeptic, occasionally summoned, is far less valuable than the consistent habit of being a skeptic.  This echoes the words of Eliezer Yudkowsky (who I've mentioned in this post and this post), who said of rationality, "It's dangerous to be half a rationalist."  By this, he means that it's hazardous to someone's intellect to selectively practice methods of rationality.  Particularly, it's dangerous to apply the flame of curiosity and skepticism to everyone else's beliefs without turning that flame on your own ideas to assess them for credulity.

When I first read those words, I was reminded of something I thought about on my mission after talking about anti-Mormon literature with my companion.  I remember thinking, "You know, I bet somewhere out there, there's a piece of anti-Mormon literature that if I read it, I would leave the church."  I kind of left it at that, not really wanting to think about it more deeply.  Later on, I realized that that idea itself wasn't the problem, it was the fact that I simultaneously held that idea in my mind with the contradictory desire to not ever read anti-Mormon literature.  If I knew that there was information that would make me scrap my beliefs, but decided against that realization to stay away from the information, wasn't I avoiding truth?  Wasn't that the bigger problem?

While writing this series of posts, I realized that, in order for this cognitive dissonance to actually be a problem, it had to be the case that if any given information made me reject my current belief schema, it was because it was true information.  In other words, if it's possible for false information to make me turn away from my beliefs, then the cognitive dissonance is just the fear of being deceived.  I think it's entirely possible for me to read something that contains sound factual evidence, but to be misled by the interpretation an author claims from that evidence.

So, I could turn the flame of curiosity and skepticism up to 100% and aim it at myself and everyone around me.  I could spend hours reading everything that's ever written about Mormon beliefs or Christian beliefs, from apologists and antagonists alike.  I could spend every minute questioning and doubting instead of believing, but I'm not going to.  Why?  Because I think it would be far too easy to commit a type II error.

Let's say our null hypothesis is "Mormon/Christian doctrine is not true" (remember, null hypothesis include the word "not").  A type II error is failing to reject a false null hypothesis; in this case, rejecting Mormon/Christian doctrine when it is actually true.  I think if I tried to be as skeptical as possible, with my infantile skills of evaluating truth, someone smarter than me could easily deceive me into a type II error.  And in this case, weighing the consequences makes a type II error far more dangerous.  If I make a type I error, the consequence is me being a lifelong member of the church and being about as happy as I am now.  If I make a type II error, the consequence is me being a spectacular rationalist/skeptic (or so I think), but being deceived, which holds far greater consequences.  To put it simply, I'm not taking that risk.

But I don't want to be blind to truth.  I think God wants us to know all truth, wherever it is.  People might want to keep us from truth, but God doesn't.  As a developing skeptic and a developing disciple, I think it's best to increase my skills of both in parallel.  The more I learn, the better I'll understand how to find truth, the better I'll be able to discern fact from fiction, the better I'll be able to determine what a collection of facts implies, and the better I'll be able to make the right call about something and avoid type I and type II errors.  As I move forward in life, I'll  gradually turn up the flame of curiosity and skepticism so that I can find out what is really true.  But because I do it slowly, I won't subject myself to a level of curiosity that will mislead me.  I won't be hard on my own beliefs until I'm ready to do it without fooling myself.  And that, I think, is the right balance.

Skepticism and deception: Why does it seem so easy to be deceived?

"For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."

-Matthew 24:24

Did you ever read that scripture and think, "Well, that's not fair!"  The elect of God are supposed to be those who are most devoted to Him, those who are His most faithful followers.  Why should it even be possible for them to be deceived?  If the best people on the earth are led away, what hope do the rest of us have?

The "if it were possible" qualifier makes it somewhat ambiguous.  There are arguments from several denominations for and against the possibility of the very elect being deceived.  To be honest, I'm not sure which side is right.  Frankly, I don't think it's within our ability to define who "the very elect" are.  But the issue of deception is, I think, an issue of what heavenly communication really is and what it is not.  It is what divides communication with God from communication with the adversary.

Having been raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I remember at various times having conversations with members in which they mentioned certain methods of communication that the devil could not imitate.  I'm not well studied enough to know where they got this information from, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a sort of cultural meme.  But while writing this series of posts, the idea somewhat intrigued me; that we supposedly can know of communication methods that are "off limits" to Satan.  I hope you'll forgive me if I go into some statistics terminology to explain my thoughts about it.

In statistics, there exists an idea called the null hypothesis.  It is a claim that usually includes the words "is not" or "does not", which can be assessed for validity by statistical methods.  Examples of null hypotheses include "vaccines do not cause autism" and "global warming is not occurring".  With respect to the null hypothesis, one can make either a Type I or a Type II error.  A type I error occurs when a true null hypothesis is rejected, whereas a type II error occurs when we fail to reject a false null hypothesis (we don't say "accept" in statistics; statistics is devoid of acceptance).

Coming back to the general topic, we might say a relevant null hypothesis is "The adversary cannot communicate by method X".  A type I error, therefore, would be an incorrect assumption that he could indeed communicate a certain way when in fact he could not.  A type II error would be incorrectly assuming that he could not communicate a certain way when in fact he could.  Suffice it to say that, if I was attempting to deceive a great number of people, I would try to get them to commit as many type II errors as possible.  In other words, I would try to falsely convince them of ways that I supposedly could not communicate, or methods of deception that I could not or would not use.

This is not a blog post about how to avoid being deceived.  I don't know nearly enough about that to justifiably talk about it, though the scriptures provide a good starting point.  It is also not a blog post about why seemingly good people are deceived, for the same reason.  I don't know for sure if there are ways that are absolutely and definitely barred to the adversary in all cases, and I don't know how we would safely know if there were.  I'd like to think there are, and I believe that there are.

On my mission in Alabama, I met a few sincere, concerned, loving Christians who fully believed that we were being misled and compassionately attempted to help us learn of our mistake.  Some of them acknowledged that we were good people and were trying to do what was right, but that we were missing necessary elements on the path to salvation.  I never asked them this, but I sometimes thought, "If my only problem is that I believe something that isn't true, is that enough for me to miss out on salvation?"

I don't believe in a God who withholds salvation from the merely deceived.  To do that, especially to someone who was trying their best to do what they thought was right, would not be merciful nor just. I really would not be able to see any fairness in the situation of someone being told in the afterlife, "You did your best, but you just believed the wrong things.  Sorry."  Deception, coupled with vices, can inflict terrible damage, but I just can't see how deception by itself is enough to keep anyone out of heaven.

Skepticism and deception: The extreme of skepticism

Yes, I am aware that I wrote "skepticism" twice in the title.  Too bad.

In this post, we swing the pendulum to the opposing apex and examine the character of those who resist belief to almost everything.  As in the last post, I could target people will not even begin to give a shred of belief to something unless confronted with peer-reviewed, incontrovertible evidence, but I likewise do not believe anyone like that exists.  So this is my definition of the extreme skeptic:

1.  When presented with new information/ideas, the skeptic will compare it to what he already knows, and base his response upon the new information's similarities to the known information.
2.  The skeptic will view evidence for and against the validity of the new information.
3.  The skeptic will formulate an opinion based on evaluation of the evidence gathered.

I hope, thus far, that I have painted a fairly neutral picture of the attitude of the skeptic towards new ideas.  When most people hear the word "skeptic", they think of a caustic, opinionated antagonist who usually reacts to others' beliefs with disdain, like the Pharisees of Jesus' day (although "disdain" would be somewhat of an understatement).  There are definitely a lot of skeptics like this, but I think the "best" skeptics, the most practiced skeptics, have separated themselves from this attitude.

Good skeptics realize that it's not worth making an emotional show about something they believe is wrong unless 1) they think they have solid evidence behind their opinion and 2) they believe that the false information is damaging enough to warrant attacking it.  If they lack these things, they will try their best to be neutral until they have enough truth to back up an opinion.  In short, they follow the Litany of Tarski:

If the box contains a diamond,
I desire to believe the box contains a diamond;
If the box does not contain a diamond,
I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond.
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

At this point, I'll go ahead and admit I really like the idea of skepticism.  As a skill, I think skepticism is valuable.  But I also believe strongly in my faith, and the evidence I have for that belief is difficult, if not impossible, to transmit to others.  The main purpose of writing this post is for me to give my best answer to the question, "Why is complete skepticism a bad idea?"

In a way, this is the same question as "Why does God require faith?"  Faith is the act of moving forward with something when you don't have solid evidence that it's true.  The complete skeptic will not take part in this.  He will evaluate evidence and study viewpoints, but he will not give himself over to something, even temporarily, until he knows for sure that it will have a return.  He is unwilling to sacrifice something of real value.  But what is the true value of a cause if one is unwilling to sacrifice part of himself for it?  What is it worth if you're not willing to give up something that you might not get back?

If the cause you're putting faith in is untrue, it's probably not going to yield a valuable, unique return for long.  But with some causes, the only way you can ever find its truth is to sacrifice.

Skepticism and deception: The extreme of gullibility

In this post, I could talk about the complete extremity of the spectrum of belief, composed of people who unquestioningly and immediately believe 100% of what they are told.  But I don't think it's practical to go that far, partially because I really hope there's not a soul on this planet that's like that.  So this is how I will describe the extremely gullible:

1.  Their first instinct, upon hearing new ideas/material, is to believe it.
2.  They do nothing to suppress that instinct.
3.  They require little to no proof to maintain their beliefs.

Even this is irrational to expect of someone, but I bet there's a few people floating around that fit this description.  So why is it dangerous to have a knee-jerk belief response to new information?  Besides making you an easy target for scammers, this habit disables you from determining what information is important and what is not.  Truth is a stubborn thing, and absolute truth is going to stand up to any and all attempts to debunk it, even if it takes time.  But grabbing on to whatever ideas are currently popular is a shaky strategy at best.

Truth is the best foundation upon which to live your life, because by definition, it doesn't change: "Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come" (Doctrine & Covenants 93:24).  That's a good definition of truth whether you're religious or not.  Fad fades.  Trend dies.  But truth is the thing that will not move; and if you know where you want to be and build on truth, you won't move either.

But I'm drifting off topic.  The other form of gullibility I want to discuss is excessive trust in people.  This I find much more tolerable, for this reason:  in a perfect world, everybody should be trustworthy and dependable.  Even if we fail, we should give our best to keep our promises to others.  I believe this is part of what will make heaven heavenly:  we will be part of a society in which we can put complete trust in everyone we interact with.  But excessive trust in new information is risky regardless of morality, because often people are just wrong, despite their best intentions.  Usually it's harmlessly wrong, but sometimes it's dangerously wrong.

In many ways, I look up to people who tend to trust those around them.  They're looking for the good in people, and they live by the philosophy that everyone is motivated by the just and true.  If they put themselves around the right people, their innocent trust probably won't get them into trouble.  If they get unlucky, they might get hurt, and they might learn to doubt others' intentions.  But I'd rather be somebody who trusts too much than trusts too little.  People who trust no one miss out on too much.  For lack of a better ending, here's one by Ernest Hemingway:

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

Skepticism and deception: Introduction

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but it took some time to gather the thoughts I wanted to include.  I've wondered a lot the past couple months about what place skepticism should take in my life.  I started reading this webcomic called Carbon Dating that is, of course, for total incurable nerds.  Unlike some webcomics, Carbon Dating has a developing story and recurring characters.  The main character, Rob, is a science journalist, whose job is to find and report on new and developing scientific findings.

In doing so, Rob often comes across a lot of pseudoscience or "quack science", products or ideas meant to appeal to people who really don't need a lot of evidence to be convinced of something.  A couple characters in the webcomic are meant to represent the gullible target audience of pseudoscience, who at their best are attracted to medical products whose only benefit is the placebo effect, and at their worst get scammed and ripped off by false advertising.  The underlying plug from the author is to not believe everything you're told, even if it looks like it's backed by solid evidence.  Sometimes the author gets up on his soapbox about skepticism and promotes material from the skeptic community, of which he is an active part.  Readers of Carbon Dating often get referred to stuff like this:

This is Michael Shermer, a well-known contributor to the skeptic community.  The video is his theory why many people have a knee-jerk response to believe something they hear.

Why am I attracted so much to skepticism?  There's a few reasons.  Of course, I don't want to get duped by something that's obviously wrong.  But while there's plenty of stuff out there that has a laughable lack of evidence and rationality behind it, to me it seems like there's more and more that's very well covered up.  I feel that the technological age is making it easier and easier for evidence to be fabricated.  In addition, skepticism is important to a career as a reputable scientist, and while I don't intend to be the best there is, I want to be proficient at a good way of finding truth, scientific or otherwise.

Does that mean I'm instantly mistrusting of anything that comes to me?  No.  I'm trying to find a good balance between skepticism and gullibility, and this series of posts is part of my finding.  In the next couple of posts, I'll outline both extremes of the spectrum and talk about why I think they're not a good idea.  After that I'll try and aim closer to what I'm looking for.

On emotional excitability, or lack thereof

Yesterday I took some time to evaluate myself and see how I was doing, a practice I enjoy taking part in every so often.  In doing so, I decided to read a couple journal entries from during and before my LDS mission.  What surprised me is how different it sounded, how not-like-me it sounded.  I'm well aware that I changed a lot during my mission, and I feel that I've changed at least as much since the completion of my mission.  But one defining characteristic of the changes I've been through has been a gradual decline of my emotional excitability throughout my life.  With the possible exception of the last few months, this has largely been unintentional and has gone mostly undetected.  I don't necessarily consider this a loss, but yesterday I was wondering why much of my emotional excitability has faded.  This post is somewhat of an attempt for me to gather my thoughts about it.  The easiest way is for me to approach it autobiographically.

I remember little about what it was like to be a child, and I feel most people my age will relate.  But from my parents' description of my personality, I was very expressive about almost everything that happened to me.  It was very easy for someone to tell how I was feeling at any given time.  I was also quite extroverted and had very little inhibition about sharing my opinions or thoughts about something.  I think this is pretty common among children today.

This trend continued throughout most of junior high school.  I was more withdrawn in the occasional environment where I felt less comfortable (physical education, for example), but for the most part, especially around those I knew well, I continued to be expressive and outspoken, with little care for what other people thought about me.

Sophomore year of high school was different for me.  I had gone to a junior high school that most people in my area didn't, so when I returned to the high school that most of my childhood friends were going to, I knew a lot less people.  My default became introversion, a habit I broke out of only when I was around people I knew well.  Around this time I began to notice that most other people's ups and downs seemed more intense than my own.  I concluded that it was because I had never really been through anything difficult; and because I had never known the sorrow of hardship, I didn't really know how to appreciate the joy of wellness.

This conclusion lead to some interesting behavior on my part.  I often wondered why my life was so easy (I still do sometimes).  Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I had often been taught that if we had not had extremely trying experiences up to that point in our lives, we would someday.  I began wondering when all my trials were going to come, and if God was just "saving them up" to unload a barrel of crises on me when he saw fit.  I would occasionally pray for trials, just because I knew they would come sometime so it might as well be now.

After a couple years of nothing hard really happening, I decided that one of two things must be the case:  either I was so spiritually strong that nothing that happened to me seemed like a trial, or I was so spiritually weak that God was just babysitting me through life until I was able to handle something remotely hard (I didn't realize at the time that reality was probably somewhere between those two extremes).  I also wondered where my motivation to do good was going to come from, since I never had to apply self-discipline or a work ethic to overcome any obstacles.

My first year of college brought a lot of changes.  Like most people, I knew hardly anyone in the singles ward I attended at BYU.  Most of my first semester free time was spent either associating with a few close friends or doing things by myself.  After a few months of this, I realized I was missing something.  Second semester I tried to get a lot more involved, and it worked.  Our ward did a mini-version of the Lion King for a stake activity we had, and I played Pumbaa.  It was the corniest thing in the world, but for some reason I still don't understand it was one of the best experiences I had in my life.  I made some really close friends that semester, and I was happier than I had been before.  As a bonus, anytime I listened to music from the Lion King, it brought back all the memories and feelings from that time in my life.

One of the first things that I learned about my mission was that I would experience greater happiness and joy than I had ever experienced before (Preach my Gospel, page v).  Knowing how amazing college was for me, I looked forward to when that was going to happen.  Sometimes I had great experiences that seemed like they "qualified" for my happiest experience ever, but after thinking about it for a while I decided that college was still better.  I started to doubt somewhat if anything that great would ever happen.  An experience I had about halfway through my mission crushed all doubt whatsoever (the last one described in the linked post).  I may only be able to say that I had one experience that "topped" all the happiness that I had ever felt before, but I unquestionably did, and I can't deny that.

I mentioned that I've changed a lot since the end of my mission.  Part of that was when I spent a summer in Oklahoma selling pest control, but that doesn't have much influence on what I'm discussing here.  The main thing that's changed in the last few months has been how much I've pursued intelligence to the exclusion of several other things in my life.  I've recently been exposed to several works of fiction that quite realistically depict the protagonist being able to do things that other people can't, largely because they can keep their emotions in check and use their intellect to solve problems.  It's fiction.  I know that.  But I can't help it affecting the way I think.  I know a lot of difficult decisions are coming up for me, both planned and unplanned, and my current opinion is that I'll deal with them a lot better by using my head and not letting emotions cloud my judgment.  I don't know if that's the best way to go about doing things.  But I don't plan on changing unless I feel that regaining my emotional excitability (or extraversion for that matter) is something I should do.  Right now, being "left-brained" feels like part of who I am.  I guess it's only a matter of time before I figure out whether it's worth the cost.