David Touretzky

Behind the Smoke-Screen David Touretzky Calls “Science”

“[Pavlovian] Classical conditioning has a well-developed computational theory… At present there are no theories of instrumental conditioning comparable in scope and explicitness… The goal of our work is to provide such a theory….

“Due to the pioneering work of B.F. Skinner on operant conditioning, we have coined the term “skinnerbot” to describe autonomous learning robots…”

Operant Conditioning in Skinnerbots
David S. Touretzky
Carnegie Mellon University Researcher

David S. Touretzky is a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University whose questionable “research projects” have thus far cost the American taxpayer million of dollars.

The above quotes are excerpted from one of several research projects conducted by an entity co-founded by Touretzky called “The Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition.” The flawed theories upon which he bases his work have been known for decades to be of such damage to mankind, that a full public investigation of the value of Touretzky’s research projects, particularly in light of their cost, is overdue.

The experiments of Pavlov and Skinner that Touretzky reverently references in the above paper as the basis of his work are viewed by today’s society as the barbaric acts of madmen.

B.F. Skinner imprisoned his infant daughter for nearly a year in a “box” similar to those he built for rats. Skinner stated in an interview that he would rather burn his own children than destroy his research.

As author and educator Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld stated, “The child was “stimulated” and had to respond in a certain way, like a chicken or a rat in a cage, because they firmly believed that children are animals. If you believe, though, that children are human beings, you can’t train them like a rat.”

Skinner would be imprisoned for the rest of his life were he to carry out the same experiment today.

Although best known for his conditioning of dogs by deprivation, the first subjects Ivan Petrovich Pavlov experimented on were children. He punched holes in their cheeks to collect and measure their saliva.

Pavlov’s and Skinner’s experiments fed Behaviorist beliefs that, as Dr. Blumenfled states, “all children are animals and can be trained as animals.” John Watson, the most famous of Behaviorists, believed that researchers had to look at human beings “the same way you would look at the ox you slaughter.”

Touretzky’s “research” seeks to find new applications for these old barbarisms. His grant requests and questionable “findings” imply that Pavlov’s and Skinner’s dehumanizing “conditioning” theories have a use beyond their only established value to date: providing “scientific” justification for those whose business it is to torture, pacify and euthanize.

Touretzky puts a vague potential value on research projects which drain the taxpayers of millions. In actuality he is repackaging and selling other men’s theories under the sexy new label of “computer science.” By recycling Skinner’s box and his experiments on rodents, Touretzky has managed to make a very comfortable living dangling under the noses of the administrators of government funds the carrot that perhaps someday robots can be conditioned to react and “learn” like rats, as he considers humans do. In truth, these experiments appear to be a mere re-ringing of Pavlov’s bell inside Skinner’s torture chamber with a dash of Noam Chomsky to appear timely. For Touretzky has yet to provide a shred of evidence that the value of his contributions to science amount to more than the cost of his dead rats.

Little attention would be paid to Touretzky were he just another researcher dreaming up dubious projects in order to feed from the public trough. But Touretzky’s thirst is for power and fame as well as money.

TOURETZKY CREATING RACISM

Touretzky subscribes in full to the Behaviorist doctrine that man is an animal and his virulently racist remarks are in complete alignment with psychiatry’s practice of Eugenics which holds that dark-skinned races, among others “defectives,” are intellectually inferior. Racial and religious minorities are his favorite targets.

“She [US Congresswoman] is the former ambassador to Micronesia! and she’s black. I should have known. What [sic] are all the really st00000pid congresswomen black?”

“The black underclass is a very, very sick culture, with terrible internal problems such as high rates of black-on-black murder, teenage pregnancy, educational failure, drug abuse, and so on. AA programs can’t help the black underclass, because those people are so screwed up they’re virtually unemployable….”

“There’s also a long rant about the sickness of black underclass culture, which again, I completely stand behind.”

“Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran Bomb Ira-a-a-n, because we ca-a-a-n…. the arabs and persians are still crazy f–ks, so what are we gonna do?”

“F-k the Muslims. … check out the bloody Muslims .. jeez what loons.”

“Man, Hispanics are f–ed up, which is why they’re still working class. Dipshits.”

While his vicious verbal attacks on Hispanics, African-Americans and Muslims are usually confined to his nightly discussions on a private internet chat group, he apparently considers the Church of Scientology to be a target he can safely attack in public. Promoting himself as an educator, he presents himself to the media as an expert on religion – a subject in which he has no education himself and no credentials. Scientology’s dedicated defense of the public against the kind of barbaric experiments devised by Touretzky’s mentors apparently makes the Church, in his mind, a force that must be slandered at every opportunity – particularly since Scientology’s ability to prove the spirituality of mankind renders Touretzky’s belief in the neural basis of cognition to be invalid.

Touretzky is less anxious to discuss his true motivations with his employer, associates, and students at his university. Therefore they are published here so that his true intentions are known and so that those entrusted by the taxpayer with the disbursement of their hard-earned dollars for the public good will be encouraged to look beyond the smokescreen of “science” to the actual value of Touretzky’s work.

POSSIBLE VIOLATIONS OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT FUNDED BY U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

“My money comes mostly from the US govt, not corporations. So if we raise taxes and hike the NSF and NIH and DARPA budgets, that would be to my benefit. … I’m already overpaid.”

David S. Touretzky
Carnegie Mellon University Researcher

For several years Touretzky has been on a crusade to denigrate and harm the Scientology religion, as well as affiliated entities and numerous individual Scientologists. Touretzky has been the beneficiary of a number of monetary grants by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health – which funds have been utilized by Touretzky both directly and indirectly to support his anti-Scientology endeavors and to create hate against a religion.

Touretzky is employed on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University, which is the direct recipient of the grants he has sought and received from the NSF and the NIMH. These grants have paid for his research relating to Scientology and studies of Scientology. Touretzky admits that his research includes Scientology, thus he uses U.S. Government appropriation to attack a religion under the guise of “cognitive science” or “computational neuroscience” research. Here is what he said in an email he sent to a public official:

“My research areas include cognitive science and computational neuroscience. Hence, Scientology’s … theories of how the mind works are of particular interest to me.”

Touretzky has posted hundreds of pages of his purported “research”- much of which is simply anti-Scientology diatribe – on the CMU computer facilities. He has made no secret of his desire to actually harm Scientology, to cause persons to leave the religion, to prevent new persons from joining the religion, to cause governmental entities to discriminate against Scientology, and essentially to do whatever he is able to derogate and disestablish this faith in an effort to destroy religion. This has been done during and in the context of his supposed scientific research funded by the NSF and the NIMH.

Government entities are forbidden to establish any religion, and are equally forbidden from attacking and disestablishing specific religions. Scientologists have a right to their beliefs and their churches have a right to provide services to their congregations and to establish and exercise their faith without governmental harassment and interference.

Yet, the NSF and the NIMH have knowingly or unknowingly, been the vehicle for modern-day governmental suppression which the enactment of the First Amendment and which an unbroken line of Supreme Court decisions dating back over 125 years forbids as unconstitutional under the free exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment.

Touretzky will no doubt assert his own right to speak as he pleases concerning his views of Scientology, Muslims, African-American and Hispanics and to enter into whatever pogrom his personal hatred dictates. But because his acts are directly and indirectly funded by a governmental agency, that governmentally sponsored conduct violates the First Amendment rights of religions he attacks.

Regardless of the means utilized by Touretzky to camouflage his conduct through grant requests which do not reference Scientology, and whether or not the NSF and the NIMH were previously aware of his acts, his conduct consequently violates constitutional law.

www.ReligionFreedomWatch.org contains extensive documentation showing Touretzky’s bigotry and racism while working at Carnegie Mellon University under Federal Grants projects.