There Are Four Lights

Check out my post over at Skeptic North for all my new holiday art in one place!

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Prints Available

Prints Available

In 2009, I sent this little tweet, which enjoyed many RTs (including one from @BadAstronomer).

The next year, I decided to transform the idea into manga form. Again, it was blogged by the lovely Bad Astronomer. The drawing has appeared in a few of my talks as well.

This year, I was thrilled to find out that my creation jumped from cyberspace to meatspace! The Chicago Skeptics celebrated Carl Sagan Day by eating apple pie and drinking Cosmos! Amazing! I’m glad they joined the fine Mayhew tradition!

Amazing Meeting? Spock is not impressed with Skeptics in the Tub.

Far too often, it seems, our thinking becomes caught in a loop of ideology and abstract thinking. When it comes to many issues, I see us forgetting about real-world, practical solutions because of the emotional impact that larger ideas and beliefs have on us. In an interview with Canada’s George Stroumboulopoulos (aka Strombo), author and professor of animal sciences, Temple Grandin touched on this issue which she calls “abstractification”.

I’m not into ideology and theory…Things have gotten to far away from reality–I call it abstractification. We need to be figuring out how to solve practical problems. In the ’50s, in my country, the Republicans built the interstate highway systems and the Democrates went to the moon.

As a woman with autism, Grandin explains she has difficulty thinking in abstract terms; her brain deals in pictures, a more literal style of thinking. What makes her happy is when something she does has a real impact on making the world a better place—-again, in a practical, literal sense. As a skeptic, I find it very important to base our solutions on evidence and apply critical thinking to them, instead of relying on what “feels right”.

Now, let me assure you…as a writer and artist, I’m fully aware of the importance and power of ideas, words, symbolism, and metaphors. In a few days, I’ll be attending The Amaz!ng Meeting where I’ll be presenting my talk on “Secular Storytelling”, which focuses on taking advantage of the powerful influence storytelling can have on us and it’s ability to inspire us into both action and a new manner of thinking, in order to promote skepticism and secular humanism. But I’m concerned that too often, more literal, practical thinking is being overshadowed by ideology and abstractification. And so, I’d just like to offer a few tiny examples of how we might do some more practical problem solving, when it comes to the issue of women in skepticism, in addition to the slightly more abstract action of speaking, writing, and debating issues in general.

One practical action has already been implemented at this year’s TAM; there seems to have been a conscious effort to invite more women speakers to conferences. One of the biggest and most easily remedied problems—-not just at skeptic conferences, but society in general—-is simply exposing everyone to more women. As writer, I often speak about the benefits of more depictions of female characters in comics, tv, and movies which demonstrate that women are just people. Think of the wide variety of male characters we’re exposed to and then the very narrow options for female characters. For this reason, I’d like to mention that I don’t want to see more women at skeptic conferences just talking about women’s issues—-we need to see more women talking about the same variety of topics that our male counterparts do, just like this year’s TAM lineup offers.

When it comes to the issue of women attendees, however, the issue has become focused on the problem of some women feeling uncomfortable or objectified by advances and flirting from male attendees. First of all, let me assure you that this is not a problem confined to skeptic, atheist, and freethought groups; I’ve been to a wide variety of conferences—-from the low to mid level anime and comic book conventions to the high-end, as classy as it gets, TED conferences. No matter what the topic, venue, or budget, when you gather a group of people in a social setting, you will end up with the problem of unwanted sexual advances or an unbalanced ratio of men/women attendees. This is an issue about conferences and meetup groups in general, rather than skepticism specifically.

One factor in this issue, however, is the practical problem that there seems to be a lack of social spaces for skeptics and humanists to hookup with other like minded people. Something which could be considered is having events set aside specifically for singles. This is a pretty common-place idea at other venues and in other communities, which have singles-only evening events as part of a conference’s program, or host meetups designated for single-and-looking members. If these spaces were available, there would a safe place for flirtation among attendees and might reduce the amount of this behaviour in settings where everyone simply wants to partake in causal socializing or intellectual debate without being hit on.

When the situation does arise where you’re feeling uncomfortable, I’d like to suggest that we consider doing a bit more speaking up, at the time. It may be that the people around you aren’t aware that they’re making you feel bad. We can be too quick to cynically believe our feelings will be misunderstood or ignored. I’m sure there are plenty of situations where we can politely express that we’d just like to be treated like everyone else and aren’t interested in flirtation—-not simply to say this in general but directly to those who are demonstrating that unwanted behaviour, when they’re doing it. Personally, I would do this before bringing up the topic in a more general forum because of the potential for a very practical result; that specific person might actually recognize their unwanted behaviour and make a real change in how they interact with others. Speaking or writing in a public forum to men in general has the drawback that many men may think that their own behaviour has never been a problem—-these gals are referring to other guys, not me! There are certainly going to be times where this won’t work, or is appropriate, but I think it’s cynical not to believe that most decent people will be understanding, as long as you’re nice about it.

And speaking of being nice…the last practical idea I’d like mention is one that has been mentioned before and applies to most any issue; remembering to not be a dick. This applies to everyone—-even you—-in pretty much every sitution. The “Don’t be a Dick” rule isn’t just about style; it’s a manner of communicating which has a real use—-not being a dick will never make things worse. But keeping to this motto is a lot harder than it sounds. It’s easy to be nice on matters which we aren’t emotionally invested in and towards topics which aren’t particularity important to us. Not being a dick doesn’t mean being a push-over or an apologetic. It means making a conscious effort to ensure that your words are going to be received in a manner which makes it most likely that your opponents may find them convincing.

As skeptics, we all know that the act of telling someone they’re wrong often makes them more deeply convinced they are right (my favourite book on the subject is, of course, “Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me” by TAM9 speaker, Carol Tavris). This is exacerbated by aggressive language, personal attacks, and general dick-ish behaviour. What I’ve seen in the discussions about women in skepticism is many debates quickly escalating into arguments blown out of proportion. One side will be called whinny, privileged, man-hating crybabies who need to shut the fuck up, while the other is called rich, white, fucking privileged, rape-apologetics who are an embarrassment to scientists everywhere. There is nothing helpful about this kind of debate. The practical result is only to make those who already agree with you more passionate, those who disagree more confident of their convictions, and everyone in the middle turn away and push the entire topic away from their interest completely.

What else can we do, in addition to debate and consciousness raising, that will have a practical benefit to the issue?

Here’s an nice example of creating a provocative, flashy title for your science article in order to draw readers; “Quantum magic trick shows reality is what you make it” – New Scientist. Yea, sure, fine…call it a ‘magic trick’, whatev~ But the misleading part is the claim that “reality is what you make it”.

This relates a bit to my last post where I discussed the problems in believing that science is just another narrative among many that you can “choose” to believe. People who subscribe to that view will jump all over this article and add it to their repertoire of examples where quantum mechanics legitimizes the position that whatever you choose to believe becomes real through the act of believe it alone; “reality is what you make it”.

But this is misleading. Quantum physics doesn’t support the position of “anything goes”. In fact, quantum physics makes extremely accurate predictions about the quantum world. This means that there are “rules” about how reality is working—-not that reality works in whatever way you choose it to. The spookiness of quantum physics makes it easy to exploit people’s misunderstanding of it. Typically, this is done to prop up unsupported beliefs using the legitimacy of science, like quantum physics, in order to lend a sense of  credibility to them.

A commonly used misunderstanding is that the term “observer” means a human or intelligence. It’s not the person’s consciousness or thoughts which effect the outcomes of the measurement, it’s the act of measurement itself—-it’s the fact that something is interacting with it. I find it a bit easier to think about it like this: When we look at big things (measure it) we’re observing it because light (photons) are hitting them and bouncing back into our eyeball holes. Because the objects are big, the photons hitting them don’t have much of an effect…a little photon bouncing of a chair isn’t going to going to knock it over; like bouncing a billiard ball at building isn’t going to effect the building. But if you want to measure particles, you have to bounce other particles off of them. Sorta like bouncing a billiard ball off another billiard ball. Then, add in the spooky, counter-intuitive fact that particles don’t actually have a fixed position ‘n stuff and you get that brain-melting feeling of confusion and throw your Brian Greene book across the room~aaaaaaagh!

My point is, there’s a lot I don’t know about quantum mechanics and plenty that I’m wrong about (most likely, most of the previous paragraph!). What I’m confident I’m not wrong about is that we can’t draw the conclusion from quantum experiments that reality is what you make it. At some point, there are ‘rules’ the universe follows. You can’t have a rule that says ‘there are no rules’.

Everything I say is a lie –Captain Kirk

There are no magic tricks in quantum mechanics that give you a loop hole for whatever belief you have which doesn’t conform to reality. The universe operates independent of our desires.

I read an interesting article, Why Feminism Is Also Dude-ism. I found this woefully true:

Every woman he knows has been talked down to by a man who wasn’t as smart or capable as she was. Almost all of them have been treated poorly or made uncomfortable by some dude at some point who saw getting into her pants as a prize to be won.

I imagine that most people, perhaps especially guys, would read that and think that a guy would really have to be a major jerkasaurus to act like that. But, sadly, I find those two things to be among my most common experiences. Sometimes it’s even from guys who would describe themselves as supportive of gender equality; I know one male friend who even does a lecture about female characters in storytelling who always made me feel like there was nothing I could say that could be convincing or credible when it came to ‘the big stuff’. Sure, if I’m going to ramble about She-ra (which, btw, I’m awesome at) that’s fine…that’s something I “should” know—-but I couldn’t possibly be taken seriously if I’m talking about cosmology, the laws of physics, the brain, the scientific method… Nope.

It also has never become easier to realize that someone you were hoping would be a friend and would be interested in you and your work was actually pretty much just interested in making out with you. If that’s not an option for him then you’ll probably stop hearing from him.

And to my fellow skeptics; You think it’s hard trying to communicate to someone evidence that they are wrong in a manner which they might be likely to consider it? Try attempting that when you’re a tiny brunette with giant brown eyes of whom nobody ever has a problem likening to a pixie. People stare down at you like they’re looking at a box full of kittens.

Cute. But nobody takes a box full of kittens seriously.

Homg, what?! You’re trying to tell me dowsing is due to something called the ideomotor effect? Whatev, I’m a super smart scholarly man who couldn’t possibly be wrong about anything (especially when it’s pointed out by a pixie!).

To be fair, women have dismissed me as well. But they’re usually wiccans and reiki masters who hate me because my words threaten their magic mother Earth goddess powers.

Nobody likes hearing they’re wrong, but apparently it’s especially annoying to hear it from me—-and much easier to dismiss me as well. Just admit it, people, if I was an old man with elbow patches on my sweater, you’d take my arguments more seriously. You wouldn’t be so compelled to lecture me as if I need to be taught a lesson because you wouldn’t automatically assume you know far more than me.

So, I guess I’m saying that I don’t necessarily mind if you look at me like I’m a box full of kittens as long as you listen to me like I’m old elbow-patch sweater man. Wait, no! Stop! Now you’re picturing a box full of kittens wearing elbow-patch sweaters! THAT’S EVEN MORE ADORABLE!

I received an odd email this morning, which triggered my skeptical alarms:

Dear Sara E. Mayhew,

My Name is Prof. Peter Kopelman from the London Youth Community Here
in London UK. We want you to be our guest speaker at this Year ST’
GEORGE UNIVERSITY , which will take place here in UK. We are writing
to invite and confirm your booking to be our Guest Speaker at these
year ST’ GEORGE UNIVERSITY Event.

The Venue as follows:VENUE: St George’s University of London,
Cranmer Terrace,
London,
SW17 0RE.
Email:stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com
Expected audience: 500 people
Duration of speech per speaker: 7PM-8PM
Name of Organization: ST’GEORGE UNIVERSITY
Topic:MEDICAL
Date: Wednesday 30 March 2011.

We came across your profile on
http://www.amazingmeeting.com/speakers and we say it’s up to
standard and we will be very glad to have such an outstanding
personality in our mist for these overwhelming gathering. With your
multi talented speech more lives will come close , Sorry about our
late invitation it is due to the fact that our Speaker had back out
because of her sudden illness.

Arrangements to welcome you here will be discussed as soon as you
honor our invitation. If you have any more publicity material, please
do not hesitate to contact me. A formal Letter of invitation would be
sent to you as soon as you honor our invitation. We are taking care of
your traveling and Hotel Accommodation expenses including your
Speaking fees.

Remain Blessed

Prof. Peter Kopelman
stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com
ST’GEORGE UNIVERSITY.
Ofice(+44) 702-401-8034

The first thing I found odd was why a London university would want me, on short notice, to speak at an event on the topic “MEDICAL”. Another red flag was the “gmail” address (why would a university use gmail?). And, finally, the slightly odd grammar triggered some skepticism as well.

I suppose the creative element to this scam is how personalized it is; they mention my recent additional to The Amaz!ng Meeting speaker lineup. Also, Prof. Kopelman and the St. George University are real, so a quick google makes it seem legit. But some deeper searching (for this “London Youth Community” organization) yields evidence for the scam: http://whyismarko.com/2010/creative-email-scam/

Apparently, the scam tries to get you to fork over money for a “work permit”.

So, there you have it! Maybe, next time, they shouldn’t try to scam someone they’ve picked of a list of speakers from the biggest skeptics conference. Also, as a Canadian, I have a limitless supply of humbleness so any attempt to take advantage of my recent TAM9 booking is futile!