Skeptics' Circle #67: Giant Robot Edition

Welcome to the 67^th meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Each of you should have a PADD in front of you on the table. Be sure to pay attention, because you'll need to know who you'll be teamed up with, as well as their capabilities. Chances are you'll be going into combat together so good teamwork is a must.

Why combat, you ask? Because, believe it or not, woos have managed to weaponize fallacies. Bad arguments are now very physical and woos can pump anyone full of them. It won't cause direct physical damage, but the resulting foolishness can be very harmful. Thankfully, I've been secretly working on a way to weaponize good logic, and I've had a breakthrough. It involves one of the few things cooler than ninjas, pirates, and pirate ninjas: Giant robots.

Team #1: Altie Resistance Squad

Alties ruled over medicine before the rigorous scientific method was brought to the field. They've tried reclaiming their former glory by appealing to tradition, religion, and so forth. In the past, they've resorted to attacking the FDA, the large pharmaceutical companies, the Illuminati, and any organization, real or imaginary, that apparently stood in their way. Now they're resorting to physical attacks with giant robots. They may not take the time and care to fire well-aimed shots, but they've often got a screaming passion and lots of repeating fallacy firearms.

This is the team I've formed to combat this menace.


First up is Orac of Respectful Insolence, whose machine I've designed to take into account his particular talents. This unit has had its cockpit modified to accept an artificial intelligence as its pilot, and thus be able to deal with issues impersonally. Anyway, given Orac's advanced AI and the fine motor precision of this unit, its laser blades can strike an opponent with surgical precision. He's not afraid to get his feet wet.


Serving as the rear artillery in this unit is Dean Moyer whose mech I've equipped with powerful aft cannons. He'll be serving as the backbone of this unit, willing and able to take down incoming specious arguments, aided by a system that carefully monitors his endorphin levels to measure their benefit in combat. This allows his comrades to pile red hot data onto their opponents.


Freshly assigned to the team is my brother, who's shown some potential in a mission in which he was paid by the fashion industry, food barons, Big Pharma, and pop-up blockers to shoot down Woolong^TM Tea. He's new to the field, but armed with this mech's baloney-detecting radar and his natural instincts, he can be of benefit to nearly any team.


Serving as the team's scout will be kiembe, whose long-range mech is powered by good old fashioned nuclear physics, not chi. He knows that gravity won't help him move easily, so his machine has been equipped with powerful boosters and a durable generator. Nothing too fanciful.


This machine is equipped with a pair of fast-firing rifles that allow Christian Bachmann to drill into his opponent's logical fallacies in regards to vaccines. He's a little embarrassed to rely on the thick armor of a heavyweight, but he's learning to deal with it.


New to the Skeptics' Circle is PalMD, who will be spending this mission as the team's rear guard. Emphasizing turning speed, this unit can instantly respond to incoming threats head-on.

Team #2: Counter-Intelligence (Design) Platoon

Once upon a time, there were "Scientific" Creationists who tried to use quantum mechanics to explain how so many animals could fit on a boat and such. But that was too overtly religious to get into schools, so they watered everything down until we got "Intelligent Design," which tried to prove everything was designed because designed things look designed. Or something. They're usually hazy on the details. Anyway, our intelligence tells us that they're working on a massive cannon designed to unconstitutionally fire "revised" textbooks into public schools. We need to take it out before it's operational. Naturally, this weapon is protected by giant robots.

Using the latest evolutionary algorithms, these machines have been optimized to strike at the heart of this organization.


Wherever Intelligent Design shows up, you just know Michael Behe and his allegedly intelligently designed robot are going to be there. Blake Stacey knows all his evasive maneuvers and so has been given a mech able to keep up with him and always appropriate weapon for each circumstance.


One of the real heavyweights of this counter-ID team is PZ Myers, whose multi-appendaged machine is more than able to shoot down multiple incoming Creationist claims at once. Or multiple Creationists making the same stupid claim.


Always with his head in the clouds and his eyes toward the stars, Phil Plait, AKA the Bad Astronomer, has this special aerial sniper model that will allow him to rain DOOM from low orbit onto McLeroy's textbook cannon.


Ron Britton, known for his service in the Battle of the Bay of the Fundie, has an insectine machine with compound eyes able to readily distinguish real science from Creation "science" and take the latter out quickly.


Evil Bender has had his AI uploaded into a significantly larger frame, including a variety of scanners to instantly detect the underground quote mines used by Creationists to fill their "revised" textbooks.

Team #3: Team Heresy

There was once a time when any crazy idea for explaining the universe seemed plausible. Without the scientific method, they were all on equal terms, and equally deserving of ridicule. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people whose brains are stuck in that era and gasp in horror when we engage in that ridicule. Thankfully they haven't brought back burning at the stake... yet. But in case they do, we'll have a team ready for them.


Assigned at point for once using his PA rectifier to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow of an incoming Pascal's Wager and returning it to the enemy combatants. He wrote his report on the clever action with a nice bit of literary flourish.


Attacking prayer with cutting sarcasm (in the form of an arm-mounted laser sword) is Barry Leiba of Staring at Empty Pages.


Equipped with dual machine guns and clips full of pointed-out Bible contradictions, Mike O'Risal is rumored to have reduced Jesus into a greasy spot on some garage floor. Supposedly, Jesus got back up, which, considered with contradictions in the story, leads the whole incident into question. But thankfully, the rest of his record speaks for itself.

The Reserves:

The most important thing with being a skeptic is eternal vigilance. You never know where a new problem can occur or what direction it'll take. That's why we maintain a number of operatives who can be on call at a moment's notice to deal with unexpected skeptical issues.


Mark Hoofnagle of Denialism has taken on woos who have been busy attacking our food supply. For those worried about that microwave rifle he's carrying, no, it didn't nuke the nutrients in our supplies.


Previously deployed in Africa, Dr. Vitelli knows a thing or two about mass hysteria and has an equally massive mech to calm things down. Before you ask, no, his mech isn't compensating for anything.


Recently, Shalini's mech has been slightly retooled with a magnetic repulsion gun to combat Secretards trying to pull people into their moneymaking scheme with the Law of Attraction.


Thursday came across a rather strange combination: Someone apparently hobbled together some bits of Astrology with a chain email and assaulted his inbox. The assailant was quickly and mercilessly dealt with.


Xenophile's gotten himself quite the record with his current mech, winning a number of duels. Due to clerical errors, however, we're not terribly sure how many of them were fought against AIs in a simulator.

Internal Operations & Home Base Defense:


Skeptico's generalized mech is equipped with a variety of situations in mind. He's known for his critical eye, and knows that just because you agree with a report's conclusions doesn't mean you can give it a good review.


With a light, mobile, and almost unarmored mech, An Anonymous Coward doesn't quite live up to his name. His machine has been equipped with a large variety of weapons to allow for a multitude of defensive tactics so he can decide upon the one with the most evidence for effectiveness under existing circumstances. He knows what it truly means to have an open mind.

Alright, that should cover everything for the initial briefing. You'll be receiving further mission orders via black helicopter. Once you've completed your assignments, rendevous at Aardvarkology for the 68^th meeting on August 30^th. Some of you should ready your base for hosting further meetings. Dismissed.

Disclaimers and notes:
1. You can get your Next AC schematic, emblem, decals, and so forth from me if you've got a PS3 and Armored Core 4. I make no guarantees about combat quality.
2. You think I'm advocating violence? With giant, impractical, energy inefficient, undeniably cool fighting machines armed with pure logic? You're silly.
3. My options for taking screen shots lowered considerably at the last minute. I can try to give you better quality images if you like.
4. Some of the emblems look weird because AC4 has only a certain number of shapes available. I think they're trying to prevent people from slapping excessively dirty pictures on their ACs.