Mr Deity returns

As one or two of the two or three regular readers know, I’m impressed by the Mr. Deity shorts. Well, after a delay following the second season, the third season is available. I recommend it.

Coverage of Perriello’s C’ville session

Hundreds of people met with Representative Tom Perriello in Martin Luther King, Jr., Performing Arts Center at Charlottesville High School Tuesday 11 August. Among those attending were representatives of the local press, including Brian McNeil (Charlottesville Daily Progress), a crew with Jennifer Black from Charlottesville CBS television affiliate, one accompanying Angela Pellerano from the Richmond CBS affiliate, Henry Graff of the local NBC affiliate, and undoubtedly others.

Mr. McNeil’s coverage refers to the people in the assemblage as mostly civil. But Ms. Black reported that the meeting was “loud.” Meanwhile, the snippet of text on the Web site for WINA characterized the audience as “different from what many of his colleagues have encountered.” There was not extended shouting, as news reports indicated occurred at meetings of representatives in other districts, but Ms. Black’s note about volume captured a few occasions when people shouted. Ms. Pellerano’s on-air comment that it was “lively” but “tame” by comparison, seems pretty accurate.

Robots running amok?

In “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man,” John Markoff reports on concerns about whether machines might overrun their human creators. It’s the stuff of science fiction, no? Reminds me of the endgame in Sim Earth.

A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Although I pretty much dismiss this concern out of hand (who would build a machine that’s out of control?), I did have a what-if moment.

• If machines ran the world, would they wage wars?
• If machines ran the world, would they immediately take steps to resolve global heating?
• If machines ran the world, would there be capital punishment?
• If machines ran the world, would they behave differently toward each other based on the color of their paint?
• If machines ran the world, would they prevent each other from saying or writing things?
• If machines ran the world, would they worship humans?

Link to Mr. Markoff’s article from the New York Times.

PoI: R. Hyman

Over on Point of Inquiry, D. J. Grothe has an interview with Ray Hyman, author of The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research.

Ray Hyman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Oregon and one of the leading figures of modern skepticism. He was a founding member of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly CSICOP). He has been a consultant with the U.S. Department of Defense, helping investigate parapsychology for the government and is the author of many books, such as The Elusive Quarry, and many articles in the scholarly literature, such as his popular manuscript that teaches people how to appear to have psychic powers by using “cold reading.” A former magician and mentalist, he has been featured on the cover of The Linking Ring, the magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Hyman was a co-recipient of the 2005 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, and also CSI’s In Praise of Reason Award. For almost 20 years, he has run the popular Skeptics Toolbox, which trains rationalists in the best methods of advancing skepticism in our society.

Link to the blog entry where one can download the MP3.

Anthropomorphism explained

That guilty look that the pet gives you? It’s a reaction to you, not an expression felt by the dog. Just another example of human’s theory of mind run amuck.

Condition	Owner told dog obeyed	Owner told dog disobeyed
Dog was given treat	Should be guilty; human behavior conveys “not guilty”	Should be guilty; human behavior conveys “guilty”
Dog does not eat treat	Dog’s not guilty; human behavior conveys “not guilty”	Dog’s not guilty; human behavior conveys “guilty”

Alexandra Horowitz of Barnard College in New York (US) studied the cause of the “guilty look” in dogs and reported about it in “Disambiguating the ‘guilty look’: Salient prompts to a familiar dog behaviour” in the academic journal Behavioral Processes. She set up situations in which a dog’s master or mistress was told that it had obeyed or not obeyed the owner’s command to not eat a treat, either accurately or inaccurately (see table for conditions). The owner (1) placed a treat near the dog and told the dog not to eat it; (2) left the room briefly; (3) could not see whether the experimenter did or did not fed the dog the treat; (4) returned to the room and was told to greet the dog (it hadn’t eaten the treat) or to scold the dog (it had eaten the treat).

The 14 dogs in the study did not show more guilty look behaviors (e.g., avoiding eye contact, lying down, moving away from the owner, etc.) when they ate the forbidden treat than when they didn’t eat it. They did show more such behaviors depending on whether their owners scolded them or greeted the. That is, their guilty behaviors were responses to the humans’ behavior, not to their own behavior.

Anthropomorphisms are regularly used by owners in describing their dogs. Of interest is whether attributions of understanding and emotions to dogs are sound, or are unwarranted applications of human psychological terms to non-humans. One attribution commonly made to dogs is that the “guilty look” shows that dogs feel guilt at doing a disallowed action. In the current study, this anthropomorphism is empirically tested. The behaviours of 14 domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) were videotaped over a series of trials and analyzed for elements that correspond to an owner-identified “guilty look.” Trials varied the opportunity for dogs to disobey an owner’s command not to eat a desirable treat while the owner was out of the room, and varied the owners’ knowledge of what their dogs did in their absence. The results revealed no difference in behaviours associated with the guilty look. By contrast, more such behaviours were seen in trials when owners scolded their dogs. The effect of scolding was more pronounced when the dogs were obedient, not disobedient. These results indicate that a better description of the so-called guilty look is that it is a response to owner cues, rather than that it shows an appreciation of a misdeed.

Read others’ takes: Elsevier’s Science Blog. Sean Couglin of the BBC in “Can dogs really look ‘guilty?’.” Henry Fountain of the New York Times in “It’s an Owner’s Scolding That Makes a ‘Guilty’ Dog.” Rob Stein of the Washington Post in “Is the Hangdog Look for Real?.”

Point of Inquiry

Point of Inquiry provides a free public outreach service of the Center for Inquiry. It’s associated with Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (publisher of Skeptical Inquirer), Council for Secular Humanism, Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health, and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion.

Here’s a blurb about Point of Inquiry:

Point of Inquiry is the premiere podcast of the Center for Inquiry, drawing on CFI’s relationship with the leading minds of the day including Nobel Prize-winning scientists, public intellectuals, social critics and thinkers, and renowned entertainers. Each episode combines incisive interviews, features and commentary focusing on CFI’s issues: religion, human values and the borderlands of science. Point of Inquiry explores CFI’s three research areas:

1. Pseudoscience and the paranormal (Bigfoot, UFOs, psychics, communication with the dead, cryptozoology, etc.)
2. Alternative medicine (faith healing, homeopathy, “healing touch,” the efficacy of prayer, etc.)
3. Religion and secularism (church-state separation, the effects and proper role of religion in society, the future of secularism and nonbelief, etc.)

Learn more about these resources Center for Inquiry.

Oh sure!

Hey, folx. Check this! I just inherited $2.8 million!

Idiocy unleashed

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Numerology (2nd ed.) by Kay Lagerquist, Ph.D., and Lisa Lenard

This book is dedicated to all of you who long for meaning and want to understand how to live your life with consciousness and move with the flow. As our greatest spiritual journey is to “Know Thyself,” as mandated by the Oracle of Delphi in Pythagoras’s time, I offer the wisdom of numerology as a light on the path. May you be guided to the highest and best expression your soul’s purpose, through the numbers.
Kay
April, 2004

According to the back jacket of the book, Ms. Lagerquist’s doctorate is in metaphysics. Penguin publishers describes her as “a professional numerologist, counselor, and workshop leader.” She may also have a book on reading Tarot cards. There’s even a Web site: http://www.numerology-insights.com/ and a phone (waaaaaaiiit for it, please) number: 360.221.2696. For the numerologically exitable, the sum of those digits is equal to 1. (For those who remember it, you can do this by “casting out nines.”)

I am not making up this story. The ISBN is ISBN 1-59257-215-4 and that sum is equal to 5. According to one of the entries on Ms. Lagerquist’s Web site, 5 sounds like a number that should be avoided. The words she lists as associated with a year that sums to 5 are: (a) Chaos, (b) Rebellion, (c) Communication, (d) Uncertainty, (e) Instability, (f) Sudden change, and (g) Media / promotion. (I guess I should have enumerated that catalog instead of using letters, hunh?) I wonder if she would have had better sales with a different ISBN.

Thanks to Tim Slocum for the diversion!