Another poor soul not destined to become a famous artist....

Not long ago, my mother sent me a link to a wikipedia page. Wikipedia being my bible, I opened the link immediately and came upon something that pretty much summed up my entire life: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This theory postulates that the more stupid, incompetent, and generally annoying you are, the less able you are to realize it. It means that an idiot is able to disregard any and all objective measures of himself, thereby maintaining high self-esteem in the face of near-universal scorn. Getting a 700 on the SAT – which I believe may be the number of points you get for correctly bubbling in your name – doesn’t make the idiot question his intellectual abilities. He doesn’t consider his degree from an online diploma mill to be in any way inferior to a degree from an accredited university. When he gets fired, he blames not his poor performance, but his boss’s inability to truly understand his unique genius. Doesn’t the idiot ever wonder why he continually fails in every aspect of his life? The answer, evidently, is no. He simply doesn’t recognize his setbacks as the personal failures they are.

An unfortunate corollary of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that just as the incompetent tend to overestimate their abilities, the competent tend to underestimate. The person with a 700 on the SAT is pleased as punch with his score, and would be more than happy to share it with the world, unaware that the world is not impressed. On the flip-side, I went to a prep school where the average SAT score was 1300, and if you didn’t score well above 1400, you kept that shameful secret to yourself. The idiot expects to conquer the world with his diploma-mill degree; my classmates and I had full-blown nervous breakdowns at the thought of winding up at one of the lesser Ivies. The smarter you are, the higher the expectations, and the more susceptible you are to self-doubt and self-loathing.

Perhaps even more importantly, this corollary implies that intelligent people are unable to accurately gauge the intelligence of others. If you’re smart, you likely assume that everyone around you is equally smart. When you get an award or accolade, you might be under the impression that the people not getting it have other great talents that you don’t possess. This is probably not the case. They could just be dumb and untalented. And probably ugly.

I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that we are not all endowed at birth with the same potential. It’s insane to presume that all people born without obvious physical or mental disabilities have an equal capacity for success. We don’t. Growing up in an absolutely ideal environment isn’t going to turn someone with an IQ of 93 into a world-class physicist. Conversely, growing up in a terrible environment isn’t going to turn someone with an IQ of 137 into a bumbling fool. I could not, with all the practice in the world, become a singer or an athlete or an artist; not only do I not excel in music and sports and art, I’m actively BAD at them. Like, significantly below average. Truly, truly godawful. But now, aged 28, I’ve acknowledged and mostly come to terms with that. It’s high time people who are bad at thinking did the same.

It Appears I'm Pissed-off Today

Grievance # 1
Why, when I buy a cup of coffee in the morning, do people always try to give me a napkin with it? How unskilled could I possibly be at consuming beverages? It’s an act I’ve practiced on a daily basis for my entire life. I could drink a cup of coffee with my eyes closed; in fact, most mornings I do. That’s why I’m buying the coffee in the first place. Save your company some cash and the environment some trees, and keep your napkins to yourself. Anyone with an Airplane!-style “drinking problem” can suck it up and make a special request.

Grievance # 2
I don’t have a choice of cable provider; it’s Time Warner or nothing where I live. Back when I lived in Ann Arbor, MI, it was Comcast or nothing. This is not good. These companies, aware that their customers have no choice but to be loyal, have no incentive to provide good service. I pay an astronomical cable bill every month, and here’s a quick rundown of a few of the problems I regularly encounter:
*At least once during any given hour, the sound will deviate and no longer match the image. I have to change the channel, and sometimes shut off the box entirely, in order for things to return to normal.

*The image freezes constantly. I suspect this is somehow related to the sound issues, but is annoying in its own right.

*The cable box resets itself daily, and this is not a quick process. It shuts off unexpectedly (it seems that it always happens in the middle of one of my favorite shows, but that’s not possible, right?) and then takes roughly 10 minutes to reset itself. It’s important to not that the resetting does nothing to improve other aspects of the service.

If everyone is so into capitalism, why aren’t they calling for the dissolution of these companies? We should have a competitive market of cable providers. He whose service is best wins.

Grievance # 3
It’s a fact that the slower a person moves, the more central his location. For example, if I’m rushing down the subway steps to catch a train, I can count on there being someone, generally an individual of substantial size, sauntering down the middle of the stairs, clogging up the works. When I miss my train because of these retarded behemoths, it’s VERY hard to refrain from punching them in their fat little faces. Have a little consideration. If you’re old, enormous, or otherwise enfeebled, stay to the right of the sidewalk or stairs and let the rest of us pass you. We shouldn’t have to be late to work just because you’re not dead yet.

Swarthy Young Men Reciting the Constitution

I suppose I feel it’s somehow incumbent upon me to weigh in on the whole Ground Zero mosque “controversy.” First off, I’d like for everyone to stop referring to it as the Ground Zero mosque. It’s not at Ground Zero, which, by the way, is nothing but a hole in the ground. If we really had such reverence for that particular location, we probably would have gotten our shit together enough to erect at least a fucking statue or a hut or something. As it is, we should really stop patting ourselves on the back for having survived a relatively small-scale terrorist attack almost a decade ago, at least until we’ve managed to make something positive come of it. All we’ve done thus far is start a couple wars and park some extra cranes in downtown Manhattan. As you may have gathered by now, and probably could have guessed, I’m siding with the liberals on this one.

It’s a scientific fact I just made up that conservatives have a lot of wet dreams. On TV they only talk about the one where the swarthy young man recites the Constitution, clad in nothing but a stars ‘n stripes loin cloth, kindly donated by Ted Nugent. What they don’t tell you is that the tanned hunk only memorized the 2nd Amendment. Not that conservatives would admit such a thing, even to themselves. Their perpetual avoidance of honesty means they can’t just call a spade a spade and say, “We don’t like Muslims so we’d like to suspend their 1st Amendment rights.” Instead, they’ve come up with all sorts of other inane reasons to shit all over America.

I fear I’m starting to sound a little earnest, and I would hate for that to happen. Patriotism has always struck me as pretty goofy, so I really have no problem with people shitting all over America. What I do have a problem with is people shitting all over America while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, emphasis on “under God.” You’re either blindly devoted to the Constitution or you’re not. I’ve never really understood how blind devotion to anything came to be considered a positive attribute, but there you have it. I don’t understand a lot of things.
I also don’t especially have a problem with people not liking Muslims. I personally don’t like anyone, Muslims included, but if you’re not ready to spew bile at Christians and Jews, you’re not ready to spew it at Muslims. I’m not saying there’s no difference between the three religions. It’s undoubtedly true that Muslims are, by and large, more interested in killing Americans than are Christians and Jews, but then again Christians and Jews get treated pretty well around these parts; the construction of a church or synagogue a few minutes away from Ground Zero wouldn’t even make the papers.

To conclude, unless we’re going to halt the construction of all religious buildings, an idea whose time has come, Muslims can put mosques and community centers in any location that’s properly-zoned for non-residential facilities. Ta-da. Problem solved. Now if we could only have Glenn Beck put down…

Watch out, this one's pretty serious!

In early 1993, two 10-year old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, kidnapped 2-year old James Bulger at a Liverpool, England shopping center. James’ mother had gone into a butcher’s shop, and as she was placing her order, the toddler, as toddlers are wont to do, toddled off. In a time span of what was likely less than a minute, Thompson and Venables approached the child, took him by the hand, and led him away. His mother, panicked but assuming he had merely found his way to another part of the mall, frantically roamed the grounds looking for her son. Eventually the police were called, and a search of the shopping center and its immediate environs was undertaken. By this time, however, the two older boys and their victim were long gone, having embarked on a miles-long journey across Liverpool, which concluded at some railroad tracks. There, Thompson and Venables beat Bulger to death with bricks and an iron bar, leaving his corpse on the tracks. When the little boy was discovered, his body had been severed by an oncoming train.

This case was and continues to be a media-fueled sensation in England, and the sensation inspired public outrage, outrage that I believe was unwarranted. Don’t get me wrong. One can hardly blame the little boy’s parents for wishing the two older boys dead; this is the stuff that parental nightmares are made of and if James’ mother or father hunted down the murderers and did to them what they did to James, it would be perfectly understandable. The rest of the world, however, should be a little more charitable.

We should be charitable because we all know that kids are dicks. Whenever I would come home from school telling tales of the psychological torture inflicted upon me by my classmates, my parents would say, “Kids can be so cruel.” I heard this phrase pretty regularly since my childhood interests – silent films, Agatha Christie novels, and synchronized swimming – were considered highly mockable. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was bullied, but I was daily indicted on charges of unforgivable weirdness, with accusations of corpulence leveled periodically, just to spice things up a bit. I’m providing this background by way of explanation. You see, I’ve never much bought into the notion of children as unspoiled angels. Kids are little assholes. A perfectly normal kid will say and do things a normal adult would NEVER do. Things a normal adult, the sort of adult these normal kids will one day become, would consider immoral and unethical. So when I hear about two kids beating to death another kid, I’m not shocked.

Now I’m in no way likening the verbal nastiness I endured to the grotesque and violent death of James Bulger, but I am suggesting there’s a common source. Kids are not the same as adults. As obvious as that sounds, it’s hard for most of us to grasp. We forget what it’s like to be a child. We forget what a bewildering world this is to the uninitiated. More than anything, we forget how fucking stupid kids are. They’re bad at thinking. That’s why we’re legally obligated to look after them, at least until their brains are mostly developed. So just how sure are we that kids are truly able to grasp the impact of their actions? Probably more sure than we should be.

This case, which was tried in an adult court, was not a whodunit. There was no doubt that Thompson and Venables directly caused the death of James Bulger. Kids, stupid as they are, make terrible criminals. They don’t consider witnesses – 38 people reportedly saw two older boys dragging a tearful younger boy across Liverpool on the day of the murder. In addition to accumulating virtual armies of witnesses, kids also make no attempt to cover up or remove from the scene forensic evidence, tending to leave behind hair, blood, fingerprints, footprints, and basically everything else that could possibly link them to the crime. Finally, youths are easy to break. Police are wildly successful at eliciting both true and false confessions from children, because children can’t lie for shit. Given how often they do it, you’d think they would hone the skill pretty early on, but apparently not. Then again, considering that a good lie requires forethought, a trait not commonly found in the pre-teen set, it’s not surprising that their fairy-tales collapse almost instantaneously. Caught in their lies, trapped in a corner, kids confess.

So went the story of Thompson and Venables. Having been captured with Bulger on security cameras at the shopping center (I told you kids are shitty criminals), they boys were brought in for questioning only days after the murder. Both told a whole slew of fantastically unconvincing lies, both were called out by the cops, and both ultimately confessed; it was reported at the time that Venables was remorseful while Thompson evinced no guilt or concern for the suffering of the victims. Armed with two confessions and all the evidence in the world, all the British criminal justice system had to do was determine the appropriate punishment, the determination hinging on whether or not the kids fully understood that their actions were wrong.

This is where things get tricky. Of course the kids knew that beating to death a baby is wrong. Despite being habitual truants, both Thompson and Venables were regarded by their teachers as bright, and both were academically successful during their detainment. Psychiatrists, when asked whether or not the kids were aware of the wrongness of their actions, unanimously answered that they did. The mere fact that they lied in their police interviews speaks to their awareness, and I have no doubt that, had you asked them if killing a kid is wrong, they would have said yes. The question is whether that’s especially meaningful, and I would argue that it’s not. That a kid by the age of ten has come to the realization that society frowns on murder is not impressive. Even stupid children are cognizant of the major societal mores, but that doesn’t mean they’ve developed an internal sense of right and wrong. That, coupled with a youthful lack of impulse control, can lead an already-troubled kid down a pretty scary path.

Many normal kids are basically mini-sociopaths. They have a scaled-down sense of fear, and believe they’ll get away with all sorts of things no one ever gets away with. Their ability to control themselves is virtually nonexistent. When they’re frustrated they throw tantrums, when they’re sad they cry, and when they’re angry they lash out. Most importantly, they’re only in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development as defined by Piaget, and that’s the best case scenario. If they’re extra stupid, they could still be piecing through the preoperational stage.

What this means is that the level of egocentrism displayed by a normal child is decreasing at age ten, but it could still be playing an active role in his brain. The more egocentric the individual, the less able he is to empathize, and the less able an individual is to empathize, the less able he is to fully comprehend the effect his actions have on other people. A violent youth might not even entertain the notion that his victim is a human being capable of feeling pain, or the fact that death, generally speaking, is permanent. Additionally, even when their childish egocentrism has largely faded, kids are unlikely to be able to apply their newfound powers of empathy to abstract or hypothetical situations. In murdering James Bulger, Thompson and Venables manifestly failed to put themselves in the shoes of the little boy or his family. How could they when such a situation would have been purely hypothetical? They’d never been murdered, nor had they ever had kids who were murdered. Asked after the fact if the little boy’s mother was sad when her son died, I’m sure both would have responded in the affirmative, but I doubt either would have ever considered the possibility without prompting.

The vast majority of kids, like the vast majority of adults, will never commit a serious act of violence, but in the kids’ case this most definitely is not indicative of a strong moral compass or the ability to empathize. They don’t murder because they don’t especially want to, and not because they really GET why they shouldn’t. The only thing that set them apart from millions of other kids their age is that Thompson and Venables wanted to move past schoolyard bullying and engage in extremely violent activities. Both were known to be disturbed long before the murder; Venables, widely considered to be the less evil of the two, once attempted to choke a classmate with a ruler.

That being said, there’s no reason to believe that with the maturation of the brain and all that comes with it (e.g. the increased ability to empathize and control impulses) Thompson and Venables wouldn’t be able to become perfectly non-violent adults. In fact, neither was considered to be behaviorally problematic while in juvenile detention, and neither has been accused or convicted of a violent crime since they were freed in 2001. Venables, who, like Thompson, was given a new identity upon his release, was recently returned to prison on charges of possessing and distributing child pornography. However vile this may be, it’s indicative of a whole other set of problems and could very well be only peripherally related to his violent past.

Ultimately, although I disagree with the court’s opinion that the boys were fully aware of the evil nature of their actions, I think the imposed sentence was fitting. For their own protection, no details of the boys’ period of incarceration have been released; such information could compromise their new identities. However it is known that the boys served time in detention centers vastly different from adult prisons. Such centers provide residents with therapy, schooling, job-skill development, and recreational activities. Through good behavior, kids can earn privileges (e.g. in-room TV, supervised outings, etc.) which are rescinded if the good behavior deteriorates. In essence, troubled juvenile delinquents, many of whom have never known structure and stability, are transferred to an environment conducive to their mental and physical development. The recidivism rate is remarkably low.

The British public by and large disagrees with me. The general consensus over there appears to be that the sentence should have been penal, rather than rehabilitative, in nature. Why they think the world should have given up on a pair of children, I don’t know. Rehabilitation doesn’t do much for adults, but kids are a different story. Their stupidity, potentially harmful in some respects, can work to society’s advantage. Kids are easily manipulated, hugely influenced by their surroundings, and generally able to transform into wholly changed people.

The Brits also seem to be of the opinion that the boys’ 8-year sentences were too short. Although they were released only when their respective parole boards had deemed them unlikely to re-offend, I suppose that failed to satiate a vengeful public. The fact that Venables’ life since his release has been plagued with substance abuse, and that he’s once again incarcerated has been used as proof that the boys were released prematurely. This is patently untrue. Thompson, his location and new identity still unknown, has not been in trouble since his return to society nearly a decade ago. Venables’ case is obviously not so simple. During the trial, it was noted that Venables was deeply troubled by his crime, and anyone who’s ever experienced feelings of intense guilt can understand why a person, particularly one whose guilt is actually and completely justified, would turn to drugs and alcohol. Where the predilection for children came from, I don’t know, but it certainly doesn’t mean he was unfit to be released nearly 10 years ago. It was determined that he was no longer a violent threat to society, and the presence of child pornography on his computer doesn’t render that determination somehow untrue. Does he belong back in prison? Absolutely. Does that mean he should never have been released? No, unless Britain is interested in un-civilizing their society.

And by the way, a lot of this applies to the cognitively disabled (formerly known as mentally retarded). Their reasoning powers are equivalent to those of a child, so they are not as responsible for their actions as the rest of us. If the punishment should fit the crime, executing the intellectually disabled, whether or not it violates the US Constitution, is not OK. I can’t believe that’s a bold stance to take in this day and age, but then again we live in a world that believes criminal children should be locked away for life, so I guess I’m nothing but a bleeding heart.

I told you I had a lot to say about the culpability of children…

Shaken, not stirred

I have so much to say, mostly on the degree of culpability of criminals who are, or have the mental capacity of, children. Sadly, my time recently has been spent preparing for an audit at work, to say nothing of preparing for applying to law school in the coming months, so I’m going to keep this brief. What inane thought process resulted in a hurricane named Earl? Hurricanes should not sound avuncular; they should sound terrifying. From here on out, and in what I hope will become a trend, I’m going to name hurricanes and other tropical storms after Bond villains. Hurricane Earl has therefore been retitled, “Hurricane Ernst Stavro Blofeld.” Not only that, but in determining an explanation for the spate of hurricanes we’ve faced in recent years, we should no longer blame global warming, which sounds kind of nice and, as such, has failed to inspire the appropriate level of fear. Because shadowy groups of super-villains never fail to capture the public imagination, “global warming” will now be called “SPECTRE.” I hope you’ll join me and my ever-loyal Moneypenny (previously known as my dog) in our bid to make the world a better place.