Why I won’t join the “skeptic movement” any time soon

I’ve been mulling it over for a while now. Late last year I began to consider if I’d join the Australian Skeptics, which would be something I’d do as a means to becoming a part of the broader “skeptic movement”, if at all.

Potential membership wouldn’t be entirely contingent on the quality of the local organisation (much as my membership in the Atheist Foundation of Australia isn’t), much in the same way that my prior membership in the ALP wasn’t entirely contingent on the quality of the local sub-branch or even state party. I still left the ALP mind you.

To my joy, previous concerns involving people big-noting their association with the Australia Skeptics in their bios, particularly Ian “marine volcanos” Plimer, turned out to be unfounded; the Australian Skeptics, and the “skeptic movement” in general going to great lengths to differentiate themselves from the climate change conspiracy theorists.

I can’t state how happy I am that my suspicions about the culture were so very wrong on this count. Although the state of affairs in Western Australia leave a bit too much to be desired.

Let me broadly state my goals in seeking affiliation with any “movement”; co-operation, facilitation or support that extends my moral agency, either directly or through other people. That’s what it boils down to.

Any given “movement” can have a super-abundance of talent, but not achieve this due to structural features. In-house frustrations, in-house politics, a lack of direction, a single bad leader, a lack of a purpose or worse, a purpose that isn’t going anywhere, can all in their own right, serve to completely undermine the agency of the most talented individuals.

So don’t take my criticisms as comment on the density of professional qualifications, or skeptical aptitude in the “movement”. I’ll cede now that there is a high density of professional talent in the “skeptic movement”, but that’s beside the point.

Any comment on competence then, will most likely be in respect to political and organisational aptitude.

Naturally, this post risks self-importance, considering my political perspective to be worthy of consideration. I justify the venture by saying simply that the “skeptic movement” has been involved in soul-searching about how to reach out to people, and that I doubt that I’m the only person thinking along these lines.

As the title tells you, after about a year of consideration, I’ve decided for the time being not to join any organisations that are a part of the “skeptic movement”. Let me tell you why.

Myopia ad nauseam

The 101st round of the “accommodationists”-versus-”dicks” squabble, where one side says “I’m not saying you can’t be skeptical of religion, but you shouldn’t be so skeptical otherwise we won’t get the message of skepticism across!”, while the other side is either merely dismissive, or just critical, isn’t going anywhere. It’s the same stuff with a slightly different spin each cycle.

It’s not that I think that the truth lay in the middle of these two poles, or that I don’t think that one side has on balance, more points to make than the other. If I were on a “side”, I’d be a “dick” and I think that the polarisation that exists is mostly the fault of “accommodationists” trying to differentiate themselves by labelling and exaggerating the competition.

But I’ll repeat; it’s not going anywhere. There’s no debate to be had. It’s a false controversy like Intelligent Design in schools. There is no clear demarcation around the “dicks”, allowing the goal posts to be moved at ease, and “accommodationism” (in terms of science-versus-religion, or atheism-versus-religion) is hardly a well-articulated position, much less a default assumption in the “debate”.

The tell-tale sign that this discussion has been all heat, is when after things simmer down, after the exaggerations are corrected, the accuser takes much the same position as the accused. Nowhere is this more evident than the more-productive-than-usual exchange between Daniel Dennett and Philip Kitcher – if the concerns held in one of the more productive, well thought out and calm examples of “accomodationists”-versus-”dicks” can evaporate into triviality, then what hope has the more hysterical, less articulate discussion have?

Unless skeptic organisations can rise to hosting this standard of discussion on the matter, the matter is as far as organised skepticism is concerned, a waste of time. Yet it gets frequent, indignant attention.

The moment an outsider to this discussion steps into the fray, they get pigeon-holed into either of the camps as if there isn’t a continuum between each of its poles. You’re either instantly a dick or an accommodationist.

Point out that someone on a forum hasn’t done due diligence on religion; you’re an accommodationist. So much as query a supposedly scientific argument behind a given “softly, softly” approach, and you’re one of those guys who wraps up and sets fire to dog turds on Michael Behe’s front doorstep.

It’s not that I’m religious, or that I think people should tread on eggshells around the religious (a truly patronising assumption really – something the religious should be really offended by); it’s just that not every mistake a critic of religion makes is trivial. Accuracy in critique, especially when it has real world implications, is important when you want to make the world a better place.

It’s not that I’m not aware of the challenges posed by dissonant minds; it’s just that whenever someone cites evidence for the campaigning efficacy of “softly, softly”, it’s extrapolated well outside the bounds of the study cited, and often well out of context. It reminds me of the days when on the grounds of rats and post-menopausal women supposedly being found to produce more testosterone with boron supplementation, bodybuilding magazines were littered with sleazy adverts for boron tablets claiming the new, safe anabolic steroid replacement had been found.

The problem with cognitive dissonance theory and theories of social change, is much like the problem with quantum mechanics and general relativity; they work as well as they do within their own domains, their own scales; person-to-person versus the level of entire cultures. But…

What they don’t do is line up with each other at the boundary, and they clearly don’t overlap. The cognitive dissonant society that never changes its collective mind about gay rights, racism, female emancipation or child slavery; the revolutionary human mind that takes new ideas on board in place of cherished ones, the moment someone holds up a sign in protest, these are fictitious. Change happens.

(Although to be strictly honest, I wouldn’t ascribe the same level of success to cognitive dissonance theory as I would to general relativity or quantum mechanics, and theories of social change are in my view, less successful again).

To say that cognitive dissonance is an insurmountable barrier is every bit as wrong-headed as claiming that yelling at people is a moral panacea. Quackery really.

There is a need for a unification of theory, which demands a serious discussion of the problem. But rather than treat this as a problem in science and philosophy, the culture of the “skeptic movement” seems more interested in picking either “social change” or “cognitive dissonance”, then rallying around their choice like they’re eight year olds arguing over who would win between Spiderman and Batman.

Individual skeptics didn’t get here through bad skepticism. They got here through myopia; an all-consuming fixation on who is right and who is wrong, without asking to what end the inquiry was undertaken to begin with.

I used the term “make the world a better place” pointedly. When you assume this kind of objective, you can see the discussion as being side-tracked; egos, book sales, nerd squabbles. The thing is with the “skeptic movement”, it’s not at all clear that making the world a better place is the over-arching objective.

Surely it’s the case for quite a number of skeptics, especially those who are academics in medicine. Ben Goldacre’s skepticism is an example of both clear-thinking skepticism, and moral purpose.

It’s the difference between seeing the moral crisis of people dying painful deaths of AIDS after going off their antivirals, and just seeing alt-med as factually wrong.

It’s no surprise that so much of organised skepticism can be waylaid into obsessing about a non-controversy, when it doesn’t pay proper attention to why it does what it does. It’s down to bad leadership.

The acceptance of bad leadership

Did I mention I left the Australian Labor Party?

I could preface what I’m about to say with all the usual caveats, but I’m not going to. There’s little doubt that if people really want to take this the wrong way, they will irrespective of what I say. For the rest of you, I’ll try to be as specific as I can and trust that you aren’t lead to all sorts of fanciful conclusions.

I thought Phil Plait’s ‘Don’t Be A Dick‘ speech at TAM8 (yes that speech, those of you who know) was garbage.

Never mind the usual objections though; exaggerating a problem in absence of empirical evidence of its significance, passing off anecdote as something more substantial, straw men, fanciful extrapolation etc. I could spend forever being picky about these details, but that would be myopia ad nauseam as per my above condemnation.

Like Phil, I’ve done some reading of the forums, the blogs and whatnot – specifically in response to his speech, in particular the responses of prominent skeptics. It’s what’s missing in the critical response that disturbs me most of all; more than Phil’s speech itself.

I’m picking on Phil because I think he presents the best, or least-worst case of this problem, which makes it insidious; it can pass itself off as sound thinking.

Phil asks the question in the talk, “what is the goal of the skeptical, critical thinking movement”. This is a question that needs to be asked more often, but I don’t know if to be encouraged or put off that it’s been asked in this context.

The talk starts out with Phil, a leading skeptic, telling us how he’s new to thinking about the art of skepticism – how to do it. So why’s he lecturing then?

In telling us in relation to the prospects of skepticism, that “it keeps getting worse”, we are to believe Phil when he tells us “I’m not up here to bring doom and gloom”. I believe him. That’s not the purpose. It’s too bad then that he exceeds at it.

It’s not that a leader needs to be certain of the inevitable success of skepticism. That would just be stupid.

It’s not even that a leader needs to have a specific plan.

A leader needs to have confidence in their movement or organisation. This is an essential quality in any serious organisation, whether it’s serious about human rights, science advocacy or lawn bowls, because even if you are leading in a general direction, with a non-specific plan, you can’t direct your supporters at the same time as having no confidence in their ability to follow directions – whether or not their ability stems from their aptitude or the sheer difficulty of the task is beside the point.

This is why it’s not uncommon to find conventions and constitutions in organisations that specify that if a president can’t abide the decision of council, that the president is to resign. It’s the inverse of the “no confidence” motion.

The needed confidence in any organisation aiming for social change, is fueled by the realisation that yes, change does happen. This isn’t nearly adequately realised in Phil’s speech.

It’s not that he’s unable to realise the disconnect between theories at the level of the individual and the social level. As I said, this isn’t what disturbs me per se. It’s that in failing to realise this, Phil’s leadership capacity crumbles under an unintentional misanthropy.

It’s that in many of criticisms of Phil’s talk, the standard pabulum has been deployed. “Look I like Phil, but he’s wrong on this well talked about point, because of what myself and others have said time and time again! Oh, and I’m looking forward to Bad Universe! See, I’m really a nice guy! Not a dick at all!”

The leadership implications of Phil’s talk seem to have been widely overlooked, or at the very least poorly addressed. This seemingly in lieu of an affection the kind one would expect of fans at a comic book convention. This even from his critics.

Leadership isn’t something you cede to people on the grounds that you like them.

Navel gazing is fine and right for any movement or organization that wants to stay on course. I don’t begrudge Phil this at all. But nervous, self-defeating, exaggerated speculation isn’t the kind of navel gazing you want; it doesn’t lead anywhere, not to quality skepticism and more importantly not to social change.

A “skeptic movement” that tolerates this in its leaders – and by “leaders” I mean people who get to sit on the executive of skeptic organisations and give prominent lectures on how to “do skepticism”, not just popular skeptics – is steering itself toward irrelevance and political impotence.

It’s the movement, much, much more than Phil, that repulses me in this respect. Leadership candidates come and go and many, if not most, don’t quite have the ability, even if they have the right to hold such ambitions. It’s how a movement selects its leaders that enables the leadership with the best chance of going somewhere.

Until this changes, I think skepticism as a movement has little claim to be taken seriously in this respect.

Nerd circle-jerk

If it helps, I’ll make a few confessions. I own a number of graphic novels written by Alan Moore. I still have X-Men, Swamp Thing and 2000AD comics from the 1980s in storage.

I still like them. I honestly think some of the writing is better than some of what passes for more serious modern literature.

That said, I hate conventions. I’ve never been to one. And no, that’s not an absence of experience; I experienced long-range repulsive force.

You won’t catch me at a comic book convention. If skeptic organisations want to get at people like me, they’d be best off doing something that gets the attention of political wonks, like crashing a political convention.

It’s a source of endless amusement, that it’s often the same people who say that organised skepticism needs to attract different people, that are the ones you read blogging about their visit to Nerdvention 5000. Because the “skeptic movement” hasn’t even begun to tap the rich vein of geekdom, right? The nerd demographic is under-represented in the “skeptic movement”.

People like me may very well own comics, but people like me also got laid as teenagers. Skepticism is going the wrong way about recruiting us, investing so much energy strip-mining the latest gathering of cult-misfit.

And for pity’s sake, I’ve never seen anyone seek funding for an event with so little objective justification, and with so much irony. In the union movement, at least the parts I’m from, even if off-record, junkets were called junkets. But at least they required a strategic rationale (and data collection) to justify the expense!

“I can’t afford to get to this geeky convention. Send me money please so I can go.”

Apparently this is all it takes for a skeptic blogger to fund a holiday (well, maybe this and a sizeable readership thinking with their cocks). No failure criteria. No past recruitment data.

Sure, it’s their right and it’s all legal, but that’s not the point. It’s the fact that this can be passed off as something approximating campaigning that’s astounding!

If years ago, as an intern in the union movement, I’d made a public request for funding so that I could go seek entertainment interstate, while trying to pass it off as being in the interests of my union, I’d have been be laughed at. Yet it seems skeptics are okay with this to the extent that it’s perfectly uncontroversial.

It’s not that these things can’t have political utility. SA Unions has used a stall at the Big Day Out to great effect. But in these kind of environments there’s more of a rationale, and checks and balances before any such committment.

That question of Phil Plait’s is looking pretty good, “what is the goal of the skeptical, critical thinking movement?”

If the goal is to perv at cosplay, to carpet-bomb nerds with out-reach, to have a geeky good time and perhaps alleviate a little loneliness, then sorry, you’ve lost me.

Skepticism may very well politically by recruiting misfits, outsiders and counter-cultural critics. But geekdom, as diverse as it may very well be, is still only a narrow subset of the potentially engaged, critically thinking public. I don’t think that organised skepticism has given an adequate strategic account of its nerd fixation.

It’s not a “movement”

You know where you see thought and discussion not advancing beyond first talking points? You know where someone can assume leadership on the basis of simply being liked, or likeable? You know where people can allocate resources based on what’s popularly seen as fun?

The world of the hobbyist, that’s where.

It’s always funny to see JREF big note itself as a peak skeptical organisation, when there are organisations called universities doing it bigger and better. Peak hobbyist maybe.

I started this post with a simple criteria. That to join any movement for social change, my moral agency had to be improved.

What is there that I can do as a member of a skeptical organisation, that facilitates my moral agency in a way that couldn’t be achieved without my joining.

I can sign all the petitions. I don’t need to be a member. Campaigning skeptics aren’t going to stand there refusing my signature because I haven’t signed to any given organisation.

I can blog away. I don’t need to be a member.

I can attempt to write a book, and the skeptic community being what it is, especially online, I could seek support just as well not being a member. People aren’t going to cut me off because I’m not joining the Australian Skeptics, because they know at least implicitly the Australian Skeptics as an organisation, aren’t the be all or the end all of skepticism, much less the mouthpiece of skeptical thinking in Australia.

Most skeptical thought in this country has had nothing to do with the Australian Skeptics.

If anything, I’d have to explain my proximity to an organisation that promotes the criticism of things not understood; awkward and unwanted, rather than helpful.

Perhaps I can get behind a prominent member of the Australian Skeptics? Well, I can do that without being a member as well, and am only happy to do so.

If I’m to get behind something as a movement, first I have to be convinced that there’s a movement to get behind, not just a hodge-podge assemblage of individuals who I can support on an individual basis.

Organised skepticism, you have to aspire to more than this before you can call yourself a movement, and before you’re at any risk of my signing up!

~ Bruce