radiant.matrix

Washington State’s HistoryLink site has a great article on collective delusion (a.k.a. “mass hysteria”).

In this case, the year is 1954. A few vandals cause pitting in some windshields, and this makes the news. People soon start noticing similar pitting in their own windshields. The number of these “incidents” grows until they clearly can’t be explained by vandalism, and everything from nuclear radiation to supernatural activity gets blamed (and investigated, at high taxpayer expense). So what was it?

Apparently, there were a few cases of vandalism. As for the rest of the “incidents”, they were pitting that was always there, and occurs as a normal part of driving. No one noticed it until they started looking, is all.

It’s funny to look back on this now, but the same thing regularly happens today. Remember the US just after the WTC attacks in 2001? Everyday occurrences were being reported as “terrorist threats”, and the tiniest of security problems was suddenly a “gaping hole” that terrorists would strike at if we relaxed our vigilance the tiniest bit. My favorite example is the people in the State of Minnesota preparing for a terrorist attack on the Mall of America.

While the State repeatedly told people that there were no likely targets in Minnesota, people refused to go to the Mall of America for fear of being there during an attack. Several normally intelligent people I know who live near said mall made emergency plans in case of an attack. None of these people took the time to think about the fact that it’s a mall, with little or no international (or even national) significance.

But, when people want to believe something is true, they will find supporting evidence everywhere. A lot of the hysteria has died down, but we still see people reacting this way. Collective delusion occurs when people latch on to a threat and start to find evidence of it everywhere they look. A prime example is Medical Student Syndrome, where students studying a disease suddenly discover that they have symptoms, when in fact their observations are of perfectly normal conditions. Of course, the public is no better when it comes to that sort of thing.

Ah, yes. Another stupid law.

Apparently, Michigan now wants to make it a crime to sell video games that are “sexual” or “ultra-violent” (that’s actually the term proposed in the law) to anyone under 17. The same law also requires that sellers of such games create a “restricted area”, defined in much the same way as it is for selling adult magazines and videos. On the face, those provisions seem a little extreme, but understandable: people want the same standards applied to video games as to other visual media.

Unfortunately, the same law also allows for civil action against game makers and sellers when some foolish kid snaps (again) and a video game gets blamed. Remember Columbine? Those kids supposedly “honed their skills” by playing Doom. Now, I’m not too bad at FPS games like Doom and Quake — but I couldn’t shoot a real rifle with any kind of accuracy. Statements about how playing fantastical video games translates to real-world violence are just stupid, if anyone bothered to scratch below their surface appeal.

I continually fail to understand why nobody seems to blame the people who perpetrate violent crimes. Are people somehow supposed to be free of blame because they are under 18?

Besides, do we honestly think that these kids are spending $50 or more on a videogame? It’s parents and other adults that purchase these videogames. Unfortunately, parents often buy games for their children not to use them as pastimes, but to serve as babysitters. If a parent can’t be bothered to observe the games they buy their kids (or, heaven forbid, read about them before buying them), then why do we blame the kids instead of irresponsible parents?

Granted, a violent kid isn’t always a parent’s fault. But why don’t we ask what’s at fault instead of assuming that a 16-year-old is so impressionable that they are incapable of separating the fantasy of killing pixels from the reality of killing a living thing?

If such things really affected kids so much, then how come generations of kids who learn to hunt real, living things aren’t hunting humans en masse? It’s because most normal people, with proper guidance, can separate killing one type of thing (fictional or edible) from killing humans.

Anyone who’s ever been a victim of “identity theft” or another financial fraud can stop feeling stupid: apparently, banks can fall for these scams too! The [Times], a British newspaper, reports on Banks giving a man €5m (around $6 million US) simply because he asked for it.

This man, known as “Gilbert”, had a friend call a bank and tell them to expect a visit from a GDSE agent. Gilbert then visited the bank, talked to a manager, asked for the names of the richest customers (which he was given), and claimed that one of them was laundering money. From the article:

Gilbert then demanded all the cash at the bank so he could mark the notes with microchips and keep track of the terrorist. A total of €358,000 was to be put in an briefcase and slipped under the door of a brasserie lavatory. The manager did as she was told. The money disappeared.

No specific mention is made as to whether the bank manager took steps to check Gilbert’s credentials, but I’m willing to bet she didn’t.

California has passed an anti-phishing law. Bruce Schneier of Counterpane writes for Wired on the flaws in this approach.

Synopsis: Phishing is just a tactic, and the law will likely do absolutely nothing to stem financial fraud. Sounds like a re-election bid for the congresspeople that passed it.

Would the computing world be safer if we all switched to one of the Windows alternatives? Somehow I doubt it, but that doesn’t mean we should all just keep using Windows: market domination of any single OS is a bad idea.

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