Blasphemy Day

There most likely is no god.

Evolution is demonstrably true.

Priests, ministers, and people of faith are mere mortals like the rest of us.

The god of the Bible is a cruel, psychotic egomaniac. Thankfully, he doesn't exist, and even if he did, it's good to know he can be defeated by iron chariots.

The god of the Bible lacks the ability to feel love on par with the average human being.

Faith is an act of deceitful arrogance and hubris. Saying "I don't know" is an act of honest humility.

The universe has no inherent purpose or meaning. We create meaning and purpose.

Marriage is about love. It is not about procreation, religion, tradition, or greed.

An attack on same sex marriage is an attack on all marriage.

Religion has been used to justify countless evils, and the good attributed to it can and should be replaced with secular pursuits and institutions.

Zoomy Physics

I've been way too quiet on my blog, but I came across an interesting term, which might be meme-worthy: Zoomies. Sin particles that contaminate a location. I imagine most of you have encountered the idea before. I really wonder what sort of strange mindset causes people to think like that.

My first real encounter with zoomies, barring sci-fi and fantasy works, was shortly before I gave up going to church. I had just done something that helped eventually lead me to atheism: I read the Bible. In this particular case, the offending parts were in Numbers, when Moses was commanding all that genocide. Inevitably, I confronted someone who claimed to believe the whole Bible with those crimes, expecting him to do as I had done at the time: Label that part as something corrupt people added afterward.

That's when it got surreal: He said that the victims of those Biblical genocides deserved what they god because they had filled up the land with so much sin, it expelled them, almost like he was talking about an ecological disaster, rather than human beings engaging in religiously inspired plunder, mass murder, and rapine against another group for suspiciously unspecific sins. It didn't help that he talked as if every person in those victim nations were interchangeable, like sin was impersonal, rather than something you associate with a particular individual's crime. In the real world, we don't blindly punish everyone from the murder's neighborhood, we seek to punish the murderer.

I felt like I had stared madness in the face: Apparently, committing a crime wasn't what his version of god was angered by: It was these magical zoomy particles that offended him. In other words, god didn't care about helping or hurting other people. He didn't care about happiness or suffering. The illusion of god's love was just a Type 1 error caused by an arbitrary coincidence between zoomy particle production and harmful behavior. Being sinful and being evil were, under zoomy physics, independent of each other.

And the contamination factor just makes it worse: Under zoomy physics, a person could give to charity, save lives, and generally work hard to make the world a better place. But it was all for naught if his neighbors produced enough zoomies to cover that up. A kind person could therefore be treated as anathema for reasons outside his control. An innocent child could be treated the same as a murderer just for being born in the vicinity of one.

It strikes me as an abdication of individual responsibility and accountability. Can you imagine if it were applied in the real world? Sadly, I think I can: A murder has taken place in a slum. Rather than do a real investigation to figure out who performed the murder, the cops just take in the first person who looks "slum" or "ghetto" or "gang" enough to have done the crime, and assume that even if good evidence against the accusation comes up, he "obviously" deserves punishment for something because living in the slum means he's contaminated with zoomies.

Now there's the reverse: Preachers of allegedly high morals get caught performing devious con jobs and/or twisted acts sexual manipulation leading to some flavor of rape. What's one of the standard excuses? "The zoomies made me do it!" Okay, they typically say "devil" instead of "zoomies," but it's essentially the same thing: Blaming something else for their crimes. I'm reminded of instances of the Catholic Church blaming hippies and such for allegedly loosening moral taboos against child molestation as a cause for priestly abuse.

Normally, I'd be eager to write off zoomy physics as an invention of people who just want to have a ready excuse for doing evil, but if everyone thought of it as a transparent excuse, it wouldn't work. I can't imagine what must be going on in the heads of sincere believers in zoomies.

Meme Concept: Homophobia = Crypto-Islamic Fundamentalism

A random idea I came up with: Accuse homophobes of being Crypto-Islamic fundamentalists wanting to impose Sharia law on the free world.

It's not true, but it's plausible enough for a joke:

Islamic fundamentalist theocracies commonly have anti-homosexual laws on a religious basis, and our "crypto" friends also want anti-homosexual laws on a religious basis.

Islamic theocracies also commonly require women by law to wear highly concealing clothing on the premise that all men are sexual predators with no willpower to resist a revealed ankle. In my experience, homophobes have heavy, heavy overlap with people who issue apologia for man-on-woman rape by claiming the woman was dressing provocatively, thus, in effect, claiming that men should not be expected to have the willpower to control themselves.

I think this meme has shock value since it draws attention to the worst similarities between the allegedly "good" Christian fundamentalists and the obviously evil Islamic fundamentalists.

Of course, I expect that a typical response will be a temporary alliance of convenience with radical Islam to fight the evil of our consistent morality. In such a case, it'd be interesting to see what happens if one of us were to quote the "crypto" in a separate thread where he denounces Islam.

Tabloid Facepalm

Just a small post, hopefully to help me get back into the swing of blogging. I used to strive to average at least a post a day. Anyway, onto an observation:

Yesterday, when I was buying some Dr Pepper bottles I saw a tabloid at the checkout line (I think it was National Enquirer or something like that) with the fake Kenyan Obama birth certificate on the front page. It's bad enough that printed media was writing an article on that hoax, presumably without any reference to the myriad deliberate anachronisms, but it's just sad that they were reacting as if they had just now read about it on their Twitter feed.

...Sounds like what I've seen of Glenn Beck, actually.

Faith is a Euphemism for Gambling

Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees said what I've taken to be the core of this idea pretty well in one of their videos.


Faith is equivalent to going to a casino, heading to a roulette table with an infinite number of numbers on the wheel, and betting on one based on a hunch. Probabilities are not considered, since one over an immeasurably large number is quite small. Books, relics, and so forth fill in the role of the "lucky" rabbit's foot.

The compulsive gamblers resent any effort to convince them to cut their losses. They even consider it a virtue to keep riding a losing streak, since they labor under the delusion that the laws of probability will bend to serve them and reward them for their stubbornness. This arrogance is encouraged to prevent change: Saying that you were wrong takes humility and courage. To a man of faith, these traits are signs of weakness. Humility cannot reside in a person who has delusions of perfection. To be humble is to acknowledge imperfection.

Science, on the other hand, is equivalent to getting a job at a stable company and doing hard, honest work in hopes of a paycheck. If the company goes bankrupt, you leave and apply for a job at a place that addresses the problems the previous one didn't.

Science plays for the best odds and knows there are no "sure things" in life: 99.9% odds means that there's a 0.1% chance you could be wrong. The fact that science-minded people know that they could be wrong means that they're willing to change if they find out they were mistaken. Humility is considered a strength because it acknowledges the need for change and improvement.

We all take on risks in this uncertain world. Science acknowledges our imperfections and works hard to minimize the dangers they pose. Science acknowledges that the universe is not limited to our self-serving imagination.

Faith is gambling on the "perfection" of your hunches. Faith is gambling on the arrogant belief that the universe is incapable of being beyond your imagination.

Meme Discussion: Bubble Boys?

Contrary to their typical rhetoric, many altie "detox" ideas and toxin scares seem to run on the idea that the human body isn't able to heal itself. This, of course, means that you need to buy all their books, supplements, etcetera, so that you can do the right ritual to purify your body, instead of leaving it up to useless vestigial organs like the liver and kidneys, which serve no discernible function.

I'm thinking about using the term "bubble boys and girls" to describe those sorts.

The first argument I can think of against the use is that it can be considered insensitive to those people who have genuine problems with their immune system and need to remain in sterilized environments. The reason I propose the term is that many of the alties I am referring to, if they took their policy about risk to its logical end, would need to isolate themselves from the environment: They worry about trace amounts of mercury compounds, but rarely see anything wrong with eating fish. They worry about 1 in 1,000,000 risks of vaccination, but not about the deadly diseases they're made to prevent. They worry about unspecified, unknown risks of anything remotely new (even after it's been safety tested for years or even decades), but accept old, well-known risks of everyday behavior without batting an eye.

It's not a perfect fit, but I think it should be emphasized that many alties would indeed need to completely isolate themselves from the world to meet their arbitrarily high standards, hence it'd be appropriate to exaggerate just how fragile they think humans are, and the ridiculous extremes they'd require if they applied their risk aversion uniformly. Of course, I don't mean to use the label as literal truth, but as a semi-comedic exaggeration to hurl at them in hopes that it will wake them from their intellectual torpor, even if only for a moment.

Any thoughts?

Science and Humility

I often like to say that science is a process of enforced humility when I compare it to the arrogance so often inherent in woo.

Science requires everyone to consider the possibility that they could be wrong. When a scientist proposes a hypothesis, he has to include an escape hatch, just in case it turns out to be a bad idea: They have to know something that could potentially prove the hypothesis wrong, whether it's in the form of a prediction that turns out wrong, or evidence against its premises.

These things must be acknowledged. That's why scientific papers tend to have an experiment's limitations openly described. That's why we have the peer review process to weed out possible errors, why experiments must be independently replicated when possible, and so on and so on and so on. By being honest about our ability to screw up, we avoid much of the trouble that comes from designating individuals as infallible gurus or prophets. It's not who you are that makes you a scientist or and "authority," but what the evidence says. There is no room in science for a cult of personality.

Of course, it's quite well known among us scientifically-minded individuals that publishing in a science journal is not for the faint of heart. Putting your work on the line, open to criticism is not easy, especially if you made a mistake. This is normal, and how science should be. All too often, I hear whines from milquetoast woos who complain about how they aren't given any special exemption from criticism, and how their ideas are so fragile that they need to be shielded from open discussion. It sickens me. Science may be harsh, but it's supposed to be fair: No one gets a free pass. No idea is above criticism. That's how science has gotten to where it is today: By knocking down all the weak ideas, the accurate theories stand out and prosper.

Quote of the Time Being #24

From James Sweet:

By the way, I recently coined the term The Quantum Gambit for the following argument:

1) My insane theory doesn't make any goddamn sense.
2) Quantum theory is supported by mountains of evidence, but even it's strongest proponents (e.g. Feynman, Schroedinger, etc.) have gone on record saying that it doesn't make any goddamn sense.
3) Therefore, my insane theory is probably supported by mountains of evidence.

The Stone Soup Gambit

Recently, I watched Jim Henson's The Storyteller. In one of the episodes, the titular character manages to con his way into getting a free meal out of a cook by making "stone soup". He puts the stone in a pot of water and boils it. As he takes a sip to "test" the flavor, he asks for a little salt, and the cook obliges. He repeats, getting more and more extra ingredients. After putting together a tasty stew this way, the cook is delighted and dumbfounded that someone could make delicious soup from "just" a stone. I think I can use this little tale to start a meme: "The Stone Soup Gambit."

When we argue for experimental controls and present alternative causes, it often feels like we're trying to convince someone that the stone contributed nothing to the flavor. There's rarely a shortage of alternative explanations: other ingredients in the soup. Essentially, what we want is a (double-)blind taste test between a pot of boiled water and stone soup, hold ALL the extra ingredients, to see if it's possible to consistently tell the difference (at greater than chance levels).

Instead, we usually get complaints that amount to saying it's impossible for the alternatives/ingredients to affect the outcome, therefore we can afford to be sloppy in our methodology. These efforts fall rather flat with skeptics, and the repetition is a leading cause of our frustration. Often, we get a few token concessions, controlling for whatever the field considers the token objection (see-through Zener cards, weather balloons, etcetera) and they expect us to be satisfied with the removal of so few alternatives.

It's a very simple concept. I don't see why applying such a basic principle invokes so much rage on our opponents' side. I certainly can't blame my skeptical friends for getting frustrated dealing with robotic, repetitious replies.

Science and Lore

I recently came across a use of the word "lore" to describe a number of woo beliefs. I think it describes it well. In the fantasy genre, wizards, adventurers, and so forth are often looking for lost, forgotten lore in ancient tombs, buried in the back of some powerful being's library, or in the ruins of an ancient civilization. In poorly thought out settings, all research is about digging up the old, and none about discovering the new. Worse, sometimes experimentation and innovation are treated as sacrilegious. Science is alive. Lore is dead.

Science does take the past into account, but when new data, gathered with greater care, precision, and attention to alternatives contradicts earlier knowledge, it changes to accept this new knowledge. The value of that knowledge isn't based off of its newness, but on the increased care and context it is collected with. This process continues, leading to more growth into subtler and subtler frontiers of knowledge.

You don't get that with lore. Lore is fixed. Lore does not change when new knowledge comes, because it values the old as absolute. The value of an idea depends not on the care in collecting it, but on the age and metaphysical authority of whoever said or wrote it down. This rule of seniority locks it down.

That is why I prefer the expansive nature of science. It has no such borders.

Avast, Ye! Thar Be Downloads to Plunder!

Telltale Games be givin' away the first chapter o' Tales o' Monkey Island. Be quick or be dead, mateys! They be closing their ports at the first stroke o' midnight!

(Haven't played the series myself, but I've been thinking of getting all the games. Imagine this sample will help me decide... Was there ever a updated release of all the games on the way, or did I just imagine that?)

A Brief History of grOw

I present to you, an abbreviated, relatively low detail, version of the most interesting bits of history of the game of grOw, made by thatgamecompanyoverthere.

Note that some events may be swapped around. You may get pedantic about that in the comments. It's less about precise details and more about underlying truths. And please pardon me for being a bit cute. I'm in a weirdly good mood today. Or a goodly weird one.

Introduction:

In the beginning, there was the grOw server. Some say it was programmed by some crazy software engineer who logs in at night when nobody's watching to troubleshoot the data. Others say it's the most splendid piece of AbandonWare known to man. Still others say the grOw program was an unintended byproduct of other partitions on the drive no one has yet been able to access. Those stories are for another time, though. It was an enormous machine that quietly ran a program based on four simple rules. The events happening with each tick of the computer's clock, however, were far from simple. Like many elegant games, simple rules added up to amazingly complex interactions.

The first 10 billion cycles didn't really hold everyone's interest. Most of the object elements were simple copies of H_001 and H_002. Large clumps of these were attracted to one another and eventually started squeezing the H_002's into He004's, and so on until there were many "heavier" object elements. Most of that time passed without anyone logged on to care.

Chapter 1: How to Copy

Eventually, however, some interesting happenings started on a little rOck made mostly of Fe, Si, and O_, and Al, orbiting and otherwise uninteresting ball of H_ and He. This rOck was called The wOrld. It was soon covered with liquid flOw. Inside the flOw, bits of H_, O_, N_, and C_ began to clump together into files called aminOs. At the bottom of the flOw, where it was dark and hot, these aminOs began to assemble into strings called genOmes.

Many similar interactions between object elements had happened before, but these genOmes did something quite rare: They made copies of themselves out of the surrounding aminOs. The process was imperfect, leaving in many errors, but this process led to longer and longer genOmes. Long genOmes could take protective resources from shorter ones, creating a sort of competition to see which could form the longest string. Eventually, another fascinating thing happened: Some genOmes developed copying "errors" that started manufacturing other chemicals from their surroundings. Those that made chemicals that protected them from other genOmes, or allowed them to copy themselves more efficiently and accurately prospered. Competition grew only fiercer as new innovations were cobbled out by trial and error. The complexity of these genOmes rose as time went on. Some specialized in taking materials from others, rather than manufacturing them all. With this, different strategies and specialties arose. These early genOmes were called "g3rms" and the resources they competed for was called "foOd."

Chapter 2: How to get foOd

Eventually, some g3rms started clustering together for protection. Eventually these clusters of identical genOmes themselves found a way to specialize in different tasks, determined by physical pressures, chemical interactions, and even parts of the individual genOmes that could be turned "on" and "off". Some clusters were large, some were small, but individual g3rms still existed: Large clusters had advantages where there was a lot of foOd. Investing that resource into bulk made it harder to steal from. The individual g3rms made up for their vulnerability by copying themselves more frequently: As long as a few survived to produce copies, their category would survive.

Things continued in this fashion to the point that the g3rm colonies began competing with one another. A variety of strategies appeared among them. Interested users came up with names for these general strategies. First, cOrns were colonies that remained in one location for most of their life. They prospered by using light from the nearby H_ ball to turn low grade foOd into higher energy grades. They would then use this energy to produce many smaller colonies called s33ds that would be carried by various means to another location. Those s33ds that landed in safe locations could then grow to produce others.

This source of high energy foOd, however, did not go unnoticed by another category called the hOrses. They would remove large chunks of the cOrns or entire s33ds and break their structure down into foOd they could use. These groups would compete with one another: Some cOrns would grow a defense against the assaults of hOrses, by growing spines, thick g3rm walls that would make the foOd harder to break down or extract, and so on, while the hOrses would develop stronger t33th, hardier foOd extraction mechanisms, etcetera.

Meanwhile still another strategy developed known as wOlfs. These genOmes essentially raised the hOrse strategy further by extracting foOd from hOrses. Competition formed as wOlfs and hOrses got faster, stronger, sharper, and so forth to eat or avoid being eaten.

In turn, there were crOws, who had many similar mechanisms to wOlfs, but favored taking leftover foOd the wOlfs couldn't store, or was too low grade for them. There were, of course, many genOmes that employed a measure of multiple strategies.

Chapter 3: The nOOdle

In the background of all this competition, still more innovations happened, notably including the evolution of the nOOdle: A mass of specialized cells that would direct a genOme's behavior according to outside stimuli. The earliest ones contained simple instructions: If you smell a cOrn, eat it. If you see a wOlf, move away from it. As the variety of genOmes steadily grew, so did the complexity of the instructions that a genOme would encode into its nOOdle. A particular kind of hOrse would need to know which kinds of cOrns it could extract nourishment from.

Eventually, nOOdles reached a level of plasticity: Many behaviors were too complex to simply encode through the genOme. Instead, the creature in question would acquire new instructions in its nOOdle by observing the world around it. This adaptation eventually led to the practice of many creatures demonstrating useful foOd-gathering behaviors to later generation copies. This was especially prevalent in wOlfs, who required larger nOOdles to outwit their prey, and crOws, who needed to recognize opportunities when they came and take advantage of them. Now, there was a new depth to copying strategy: Groups of creatures could pass on useful learned behaviors to later generations.

Chapter 4: The Ascent of homO

Many observers of the grOw server had been fascinated by the new behaviors exhibited by these creatures with large nOOdles. Many more would become entranced by a new group of generalist creatures that arose known as HomO. HomO was a subcategory of generalist creatures that combined the strategies of hOrses, wOlfs, and crOws. It required a massive nOOdle to contain the sheer variety of useful behaviors it could use to survive and copy, as well as discover new behaviors. Its pattern recognition abilities were, in many ways, too good: They would engage in pointless rituals born of coincidence. One homO of note injured itself by accident twice and formed a false connection between those accidents and observing a black c4t intersect its intended direction of movement. Though these rituals and prohibitions did cost time and energy, the cost was often small enough to be offset by significantly useful behaviors such as following hoOf-shape depressions to the hOrse that produced them. Many variations on homO existed, and tended to compete with one another. Though simple strength and endurance were useful in these struggles, the benefits of a larger nOOdle and progenitors diligent in passing on behaviors was invaluable. The eventual result is the current standard: homO_sapien. It had one of the largest nOOdles ever seen in a homO, as well as an efficient file compression routine, to store more data with less nOOdle space.

Chapter 5: Sp34k!

Because homO_sapien had a dizzying array of behaviors to pass on to later generation copies, they banded together into wandering groups. One day, a homO grunted in a peculiar fashion and extended a fing3r towards a nearby hOrse. The repetition of this behavior started a collection of learned behaviors called "language". Initially, it was quite simple, but over generations, different sounds became associated with different objects and behaviors. Syntax arose, allowing complex descriptions and precise commands to be transmitted between the nOOdles of completely separate homO_sapiens.

This had yet another unexpected specialization effect: Before, grOw had genOmes that specialized in the colonial strategy, with individual colony members specializing into "c3lls" that would perform particular functions. The specialized c3lls of the nOOdle allowed populations of largely the same genOme to in turn specialize in behaviors according to local variation in climate. Now, homO_sapien, though the transmission ability known as "language" could have individual members of a nomadic group specialize in the behaviors they learned. One homO_sapien could learn everything he could about hunting to bring in and share foOd from a hOrse he killed. Another homO_sapien could learn everything about cOrns, and know which ones are high grade foOd, when and where they grow, so that they could be gathered efficiently. Another could learn the fundamentals of multiple behaviors and teach the young copies while the specialists are working.

This meant that a group of homO_sapien was not bound by the size of its largest nOOdle. Rather than keep redundant copies of instructions in each member's nOOdle, each could store different categories of instructions and leave working memory space for temporarily learning and forgetting other behaviors as needed, or to leave room for learning new behaviors by observation.

Chapter 6: F4rming

Gathering homO_sapiens eventually studied the relationship between c0rn, s33ds, and sOil. They found that if they had enough leftover s33ds, they could cause their own plants to grow. Over generations, they found that they could plant s33ds from the most bountiful cOrns they grew to make bountiful copies. Over time, these cOrns, with enough care, could produce large amounts of foOd in a relatively predictable, stationary environment. They could, over generations of copying, produce more nourishing and pleasing foOd from these monitored copies. These cOrns eventually became known as crOps. Reliable foOds meant there could be more time spent understanding the world, and less time scrounging for scraps.

Chapter 7: ToOls

One day, a hunter homO_sapien observed a piece of woOd and played with it. He was able to perform this idle behavior because the gathering specialists found a large collection of b3rries and fru1ts that would sustain the group for many, many years if carefully managed. He noticed that when bent at both ends, this piece of woOd would suddenly spring back into its original shape when he dropped his resistance. He tied the two ends together with a piece of s1new and pulled at the center. The creation sprang back into shape. He noticed the speed of the s1new as it went from bent by the pull of his fingers to a straight line. He fashioned a small sp34r in a manner similar to the method that his progenitor's progenitor's progenitor passed on to generations of copies. He put the small sp34r against the s1new and pulled it back. It moved forward suddenly as he let go. He repeated the gesture, eventually getting the small sp34r to go wherever he wished. It moved with great speed like a thrown sp34r, but farther. This meant he could kill a creature without giving as much chase. This saved time and energy, so he taught it to his young copy, who taught it to his young copy. Over further generations the free time these toOls, known as the bOw and arrOw, gave their users idle time to find ways of improving upon it. These improvements were also passed down the generations.

Chapter 8: scrOlls and bOOks

One day, a homO_sapien thought about marks that were left behind by another tribe as hand prints left on a cave wall. He thought of the idea behind speaking as he did so, and ended up thinking of a new idea: If sounds from a person's mouth or gestures with your hands can be attached to ideas, could pictures and shapes also be attached to them? Marks on stone would last longer than a sound or a gesture. The speaker would not need to be around at the same time as the listener. In this manner, even two people who never met, or even lived at the same time could send messages or pass along ideas. You could also send a message to yourself, since marks on a stone last can longer than a single homO_sapien's memory.

With this thought, a group of homO_sapiens were no longer bound to the total memory capacity of everyone's nOOdles. Information could be recorded on a scrOll or in a bOOk, which would act as a substitute for nOOdle space. This, in fact, was superior to the nOOdle in terms of fidelity.

Chapter 9: The tOwn

With all the homO_sapiens specializing in various trades, more time was open to understand the world. No one homO_sapien needed to know everything. If a wise homO_sapien knew something at an earlier time, it was probably written down and preserved, rather than allowed to die off. Because the farmers raised crOps, famine became less of a concern over time. Relatively few people could now do the foOd-gathering work that once required an entire tribe. Generations worth of bOOks were put into the schOol library, where children could learn a wide variety of topics, even those that did not directly produce food. Some became toOl makers. Some learned about plants out of curiosity, and when they grew up, learned that some had medicinal uses. Some studied rocks and metals to find which ones made the best tools, and made new, even more useful combinations.

Some grew bored with simply sustaining society and sought ways of eliminating problems that ate up time and resources. One of these problems was the formation of pointless rituals that came from the pattern recognition abilities that had done well enough in the wild. These people invented a method called "science." With science, they double-checked everything they did and found ways of reliably detecting patterns with less chance of false positives. The facts they uncovered involved such intricacies, they need specialized parts of the schools to pass on real understanding of the process, rather than just simple conclusions.

These scientists sought out other people to verify their results by conducting the same experiments, as well as gathering data from all other scientists in the world. The resulting mass of data was so vast, they needed many, many machines to contain it all, and a method by which these machines could pass this information to someone who wishes to access it. Using these innovations, homO_sapien was eventually able to discover the genOme at the heart of all life and even study their own: They found little difference among their kind. The reason was unambiguous: The ideas the homO_sapien civilization was built on blunted the red tooth and claw of nature. A person with a tiny increase in his nOOdle size that allowed him to memorize a few more facts did not make him more significantly likely to survive and copy his genOme than someone who used a bOOk to the same effect. Genetic evolution was almost, but not quite obsolete. As a society develops better methods of protecting its members from famine, disease, accidents, and violence, the fewer genetic hurdles there are to jump. This is as it should be.

Chapter 10: Inequality

Despite the advances that many homO_sapiens had made, there were many who could not enjoy this prosperity. Some lived in places that were inhospitable for growing crOps. Some lived in places dominated by superstitions that demanded the mistreatment or even death of those who questioned their value. Some lived in areas where particular resources were scarce, the needy had to spend their time fighting one another for it instead of going to a good school or conducting research. Those who had gifts for certain fields were often forced to squander their genius on contemplating how to get their next meal or ambush the Haves, instead of unlocking secrets or designing new toOls. Many never had a chance to learn what knowledge the outside world had discovered for simple lack of time and access to that knowledge.

There is a saying: "If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." The advances we experience today are only possible because our ancestors were able to pass on that knowledge in a way that we can retrieve it. Scientific progress is built on the work of those who came before us. There is no gene that can tell us what dark energy is. There is no gene that will tell us how to analyze a cluster of data. There is only what we learn from our fellow beings. Shutting someone off from the mountain of diligent work from those who came before us will stunt even a genetic genius's growth. The destruction of that knowledge can easily cause a return to the Dark Ages. If you cannot give your offspring the knowledge shared by civilization, your DNA cannot preserve that progress.

On the Topic of Race and Memetic Evolution

Had a thread derailed earlier with a guy following me from Pharyngula. Things got more interesting when he suddenly dropped the typical racist troll tone and actually asked questions. Here is where that derail gets onto its own rails.

Pointless Question #64

If Rule 34 is, well, you know, what are Rules #1-33?

Tree Metaphor

Yesterday, we had a tree cut down in our yard. (Conveniently, it was technically public property, since it was near enough to the road. Handy to have a registered surveyor in the house.) It was in danger of falling over after the Sunday storm loosened its roots a little more. Last hurricane to pass through the region got it started. Anyway, I ended up with a metaphor for evolution in the process:

I've heard that having an automatic sprinkler system in your lawn tends to cause problems for the trees: The regular watering and some leakage gives the trees easy access to surface water. As a result, the roots stay shallow in the soil. If they had to contend with drier conditions, the roots would grow deeper and provide a better foundation. With shallow roots, hard rains can loosen the soil they're in, causing the whole tree to fall.

That's like evolution, in a way: The tree doesn't have any foreknowledge or intelligence. It doesn't know it needs deep roots to avoid toppling from a storm. It's programmed by its DNA and developmental environment. The roots grow towards water sources. In times of drought, they'll grow downward, and coincidentally provide a stronger base. Those conditions exist in nature, but we change that with those around our houses. The roots grow for short-term interest, but in the wild, the strategy leads towards long-term success by a strong root base.

Evolution only responds towards short-term success. Long-term success happens, but an environmental change can easily destroy that. That's because it doesn't have any foresight either. One example is "Killer X mutation," a gene selfish enough that it tends to cause extinction of its species out of 'short-sightedness'. In the short run, the gene benefits by making copies of itself more plentiful. In the long run, it ends up eliminating the male population and wiping out the species.

There's no Platonic eidolon leading creatures towards some perfect form, or any foresight that'll provide us with superhumans adapted for catastrophes that haven't happened yet. There's just population statistics that favor genes that have momentary advantages.

Brainstorming a Meme

One of the things that always irritates me is woo projection. And I see a lot of it coming from the far right side of the political spectrum. Everyone remember when Sarah Palin was channeling the ghost of Trofim Lysenko by making fun of fruit fly research? And you've all heard anti-intellectual sentiments.

So, I'm thinking of using "Bourgeoisie" (once I can memorize the spelling) in place of "intellectual" when paraphrasing neocon rambles against science: In Wikipedia, it describes Bourgeoisie as the class "...whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth..." with my emphasis being added onto the "education" part.

They like to ramble on about how popular their witchcraft hypothesis is, as if truth was determined by how much it lines up with the popular ideology, and not by actual evidence and logic. Lysenko and Stalin hated genetics and the latest synthesis of evolution because they didn't fit with Communist ideology. So, they banned the research of genetics, gulaged and executed evolutionists, and went with some quasi-Lamarckian crank hypothesis with unreproducible results.

That's what I keep thinking about when I hear them go on their relativist rambles.

Random Geek Thought

Recently, I saw a TV Tropes entry: "Absurdly Sharp Blade" and the Kill Bill example with the Hattori Hanzo sword made for the Bride: "I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut."

And then I thought of something else I recently saw: A video of the ending of Final Fantasy Legend, where the final boss is the Creator of the universe. Due to a programming error, the chainsaw in the game has reverse effectiveness: Early enemies are nearly immune to its insta-kill power, and it has a 100% chance of working on the Creator. When you succeed on the attack, the game text is "[Target] was cut."

I think there's meme potential in combining those, if someone hasn't done it already.

On Expertise and Badassery

[Motivational Poster goes here when I find the one I'm looking for]

Truth Surge posted a rant recently, and made a comparison between expertise and badassery: If you have to do something to claim it, you probably don't have it. For example, when Dr. "I'm a neurosurgeon!" Egnor makes a series of fallacious arguments based on century-old canards faces off against a skeptic who points out those fallacies and points to evidence, fulfilled scientific predictions, and so forth, well, who are you going to trust more?

Well, I imagine a sensible person would trust the guy backing up what he's saying, rather than someone trying argument by letters after his name. Unfortunately, there aren't as many sensible people out there as I'd like there to be. An expert is someone who knows the field, can find evidence, and so forth. In short, an expert can get results in academic matters, just like a badass gets results in action movie matters. Vocabulary and lab coats don't define a scientist anymore than gimmicks define a badass.

Science is a field where your standing is determined by the sorts of results you can get: You make predictions based on a hypothesis or theory, and you get results. If the results support the hypothesis, yay, now get someone else to replicate/confirm the results. If the results falsify the hypothesis, well, time to refine or throw out the hypothesis.

Suggested Meme For 2009

"Why does Bill O'Reilly hate Christmas?"

I'm getting rather sick of the Grinch trying to steal Christmas from the people. For a couple years, his efforts to attach theocratic bigotry to what's supposed to be a sincere holiday greeting discouraged me from saying "Merry Christmas" for fear of being misunderstood.

So, ideas for spreading the meme: When the 2009 season comes around, put up a post or something with the title, "Why does Bill O'Reilly hate Christmas?" and have something about how Bill tries to put a ceiling on your holiday feeling. One thing I recommend is a cartoon of an atheist and a Christian enjoying the holiday with Bill trying to ruin it.

Just what the hell is wrong with that guy?

I'm on Cracked

Don't know much about their website, but I've read a reasonable share of their various lists. Here's one I find interesting. Not as cool as reverse bladed swords that manage to never bludgeon anyone to death, but they have their charm.