Our most recent troll is back, and done a much bigger derail of an ID thread. Wrangling him here. Comments in that derail below the fold.Saturday, September 05, 2009
Feedin' Pen for the Troll
Our most recent troll is back, and done a much bigger derail of an ID thread. Wrangling him here. Comments in that derail below the fold.
Open Twoofer Thread
Had breakfast with my parents today and saw how well their efforts at getting settled in are going. My dad's Man Cave is looking less cave-y and slowly looking like it might turn into an office. Anyway, over breakfast he told me about a National Geographic show he watched and recorded on the DVR. (My parents love it because they don't have to fetch me to program the VCR whenever they go out.) I believe the title was "9/11 Science and Conspiracy." So I watched about the first 45 minutes of the two hour program. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest when I'm in a better mood.Anyway, what I've seen so far moves pretty well in favor of the science. It goes through the general idea behind the official story (which happens to be backed by science, from what I can see). They got a couple of twoofers to look at an experiment they performed, showing that a (smaller than the support pillars) steel beam loses its strength under the heat of a jet fuel fire. It only took 3 minutes, 50 seconds, and the building fires lasted about half an hour. The segment started off talking about investigating how the twoofers interpret evidence, and one bit particularly caught my attention. One of them called "straw man" on the experiment because it doesn't debunk the controlled demolition (AKA the ninja drywall worker) theory. Uh, guy, that wasn't the point: It was about verifying one of the basic principles behind the official story: Intense heat can weaken steel without melting it. You were the one erecting a straw man there.
Anyway, that, along with everything getting cut and/or rattled by the impact of a 767 with a lot of inertia pretty well cemented the reasonableness of the official story. One point my dad covered more explicitly in our conversation was static and dynamic load. Once you had one floor falling on another, the expected happened. If if a floor had a high static load, that doesn't translate into dynamic load. I may have been able to carry some of my furniture to my apartment with my dad, but we'd have a much harder time catching that same weight.
Still more to come, from my dad's description. I'll update in the comments when I see it. I'm looking forward to the thermite experiments: It sounds like it's a lot of flash with little result: The stuff apparently burned off far too quickly to maintain any sort of high temperatures. I'll be seeing it myself, soon. Maybe stop over later on Labor Daybor.
As for the "feel" of the show: It's kind of like Mythbusters with a straight face. I don't expect any surprising results, though.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
The Egotism of the Fine Tuning Fallacy
Please click here for the comic before reading the rest. It's a big image, and I think it demonstrates the point quite well.
The Fine Tuning Argument strikes me as rather egotistical, as you probably guessed from the post title. It's not a problem for us skeptics and atheists. We can accept that the universe could have turned out differently. Even if you can show how improbable our familiar constants and laws of physics, that's not a problem. If they were different, we wouldn't be here complaining about it. It's possible that if they were different some other, entirely different form of life could have cropped up and possibly have members performing the same fallacy while others point out that our hypothetical selves might have had this conversation.
Of course, I see no reason why a universe-creating event could only happen once. Run a lottery long enough and someone's bound to win, eventually. Just because we may have won the universe lottery is no reason to get a big head.
A particular troll named vjazz ended up inspiring this post when I realized the nature of the argument. It goes something like this:
IDiot/Fundie/Troll: "Why does this universe exist with us in it, instead of some other, different universe?"
Atheist: "No particular reason. If it was different, we wouldn't be around to care, anyway."
I/F/D: "No, I'm too special and important to just be a product of as yet unpredictable forces, therefore I must invent an intelligent entity whose purpose for existing is to create me. I will call this entity a 'god.'"
Thanks go to the Calvin & Hobbes Extensive Strip Search for telling me where to find the comic, my brother for scanning in his image, and, of course, major, major props for Bill Watterson for making it. Buy his books. Do it. Now. I said now.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
The Word of Dog #1: "I Do Not Know"
"The beginning of wisdom is 'I do not know." (gestures towards the Negative Space Wedgie on the viewscreen) "I do not know what that is."-Lt. Cmdr. Data, Where Silence Has Lease
Welcome to yet another new series, The Word of Dog. Unlike the alleged words of stone idols written by bronze age shepherds, I don't expect you to take these entries on blind faith.
Where faith is a system of hubris, science can be thought of as a system of enforced humility. Faith claims to be all the answers when there is an absence of evidence. Scientifically-minded people, in contrast, are allowed to humbly admit ignorance, at least for the time being. Without evidence, conclusions cannot be supported. Without dogmatic conclusions being fed to them, scientists are free to form hypotheses and seek evidence to confirm or deny them.
Fundies, bizarrely, think this is a weakness of science. This, in truth, is a sign of the fundies' weakness of character. Sane people know that there will likely always be something we don't know, no matter how much data we collect. We can cope with these uncertainties. Our lack of knowledge represents an opportunity to discover new things. Because we take our ignorance as a given, our worldview is inherently expansive and inclusive. Many fundies instead regard ignorance as unimportant: truth is a much lower priority than the false peace of mind that comes with assuming the comforting answers they invented without evidence are true.
For that, we can pity them.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Doggerel #200: "You Just Want to Tear Everything Down!"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.To round off the Day of Doggerel, and for this big round number, I've chosen a leading contender for the most cynical bit of doggerel ever uttered by a woo: The idea that we're purely negative people out to spoil everyone's fun.
Quite frankly, I sometimes wonder the same about woos. In my experience, they're far from optimistic, and I see it in their vocabulary: "Impossible!" "Invisible!" "Unexplainable!" Someone who casually tosses these words around is not someone who is looking for a deeper understanding of the world around them. But I digress.
Science is a wondrous thing. Its methods have unveiled greater breadth and depth of the universe than anyone could have imagined. Every new discovery has shown there is always so much more to learn. That process has been far from easy, and it seems it will only get more demanding. The underlying philosophy of science has allowed for all this progress: If an idea can be torn down by the evidence, it deserves to be torn down. Anything that remains is probably accurate. Those ideas that fall do so because they're useless for telling us anything, or worse, lie to us with false predictions. We cannot afford to coddle ideas that may be wrong. That's why we apply the same rigorous standards to everything. That's why we can create so many wonders and can hope to discover more.
The Old Guard will have none of that. They judge ideas not on their real merits, but on their emotional attachments and biases. They take our abilities and our progress for granted, so they see nothing wrong with tearing away the foundation: The scientific method. They ask us to undermine the source of our hope and dreams so that they can keep a useless security blanket.
Doggerel #199: "Straw Man"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.There are many woos out there who like to imitate skeptics. To do so, they often shout the names of fallacies without understanding them. "Straw Man" is a real fallacy that often falls victim to this. The real nature of the fallacy is easy to illustrate: Imagine there are two boxers about to face off against one another. One hastily constructs a scarecrow out of straw and puts a caricature of his opponent's face on it. He then beats the stuffing out of this straw man and declares that he has defeated his flesh-and-blood opponent. That is the straw man fallacy: Claiming victory over an opponent after refuting a weak parody of his argument.
Sometimes there is merit to the accusation but no follow through: I am often forced to guess what my opponent is arguing if he presents only non-sequiturs to link his premises to his conclusion. If I guess wrong, then yes, I have inadvertently performed the fallacy. The appropriate response, of course, is to point it out AND explain precisely what you really are claiming. That latter half is so commonly missing, and what typically turns it from legitimate criticism to doggerel. I can't win an argument against someone who won't give me a target to analyze.
Other times, it seems to result from a skeptic taking an opponent's principle to a logical extreme, or finding an interaction that results in a contradiction or an absurdity. In such a case, the accuser needs to point out what part of his hypothesis prevents those things. Again, I seldom see them doing this.
Accusing your opponent of this fallacy invariably means that you should be prepared to communicate your real position in detail. Debate requires communication. There's no reason to hold back.
Doggerel #198: "Look it Up Yourself!"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.One of the common themes in woo is shifting the burden of proof onto the skeptic. With it comes all the work. This particular bit of doggerel tends toward just doing the latter: The woo doesn't feel like showing their work, so suddenly we have to construct their argument for them.
Of course, there's a LOT of information out there. If we're given a vague thing to look up, there's little chance we'll know what they want us to look at. Expect "low-hanging fruit" or similar doggerel to rear its ugly head if we bother to try looking it up.
And that's only hypothetical. More likely, however, we'll demand that they do their own homework. After all, if someone's stating their case, they should be the one to do it. We don't exist for their convenience.
Doggerel #197: "Unprofessional/Immature"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.Welcome to the internet. Lots of people out there say unkind things. That's reality. Yes, it'd be nice if people could remain in a calm tone, but we are emotional beings. Some of us have to rage in the face of apathy and cynicism. Some of us have to laugh at absurdities to avoid crying. Debates as open as those on these blogs are not for the thin-skinned. And neither is science.
That's why this doggerel falls so flat with me. A person's manner and tone are irrelevant to the arguments they present. If their premises are true, and their logic valid, it doesn't matter if they're making silly faces at you. That's the bottom line. If you can't toughen up and illustrate your argument or present evidence, don't blame the actions of others for your decision to post stalling comments about this irrelevance.
Annoyingly, though also irrelevant, I tend to see this doggerel coming from all sorts of vicious characters who demonstrate little or no awareness of their actions. I have seen, for example, all sorts of fundies who know nothing about us claiming in their opening comment that we're depraved, nihilistic beasts only worthy of being pointlessly tortured for all eternity, and then act shocked when someone addresses them with a mild expletive. So really, if you want to see a mature discussion, keep an eye on your own maturity.
Doggerel #196: "Anomaly"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless."Anomaly" is one of those 25 cent words that probably sees much more use than warranted. It's used to describe oddities, outliers, statistical clustering, individually unlikely events, and counter-intuitive results. Someone aware of statistics, some relevant science, and various tricks people can use to fool themselves might end up thinking "anomaly" means "everyday boring event."
Most so-called "anomalies" I hear about from parapsychologists, alties, and so on are exactly that boring. Anecdotes don't control for well-known alternative causes. Many statistical "anomalies" are well within the realm of chance, or the result of overzealous data mining: They essentially tilt their heads and squint as they look at many, many angles until they see something, rather than comment on their original hypothesis.
Many successful scientific theories are counter-intuitive to our middle world brains. We can easily fool ourselves. Someone who understands those things often knows an explanation for many things less knowledgeable people would consider odd. When dealing with parapsychologists, Creationists, alties, and so forth, I end up groaning when they point out a well understood or easily explained fact and treat it like a mystery. That's why I often find woo itself boring: There's nothing new or mysterious to look at. I have to entertain myself with figuring out how best to explain why I'm so unimpressed, and how to get that explanation to stick in my adversary's head.
Doggerel #195: "You're Just Denying the Facts!"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.I've seen it all too often: Someone claims I'm denying some fact a person is citing to support their position when I'm not. It may be an altie claiming I'm denying a person's improvement, a believer in parapsychology claiming I'm denying a "psychic" prediction came true, or a racist who claims I'm denying some economic statistics about certain countries. All too often, my trivial concessions fall on deaf ears who remain unaware of my true objections.
The reality of the debates I get in is typically this: My opponents' arguments are invalid because they rely on logical fallacies. Therefore, their conclusions do not follow from the facts they use in their premises.
Alties have claimed that I denied someone got better after a quackery treatment. I seldom have any reason to doubt the improvement: My argument is usually that there are other causes for improvement, therefore, they need to rule these other explanations out before they can claim an anecdote supports their case.
Parapsychology fans have claimed that I denied that a psychic prediction came true. Usually, I have instead argued that there are other, unremarkable explanations for their accuracy.
A recent commentator has claimed that my friends and I deny that some countries are in a poor economic state. We did not. We simply argued that there are many possible explanations for that poverty other than the DNA of the citizens.
Just because A is true, doesn't mean your conclusion follows from it. A sound conclusion requires both that the premises be true AND that the steps from premises to conclusion be logically valid.
Of course, there are cases where we do deny the premises of someone's argument. In such a case, we're willing to hear evidence to support the "fact" they're arguing. Usually, this results in a microcosm: The evidence they use to defend their larger argument's premise doesn't actually support it.
Doggerel #194: "I've Seen More Than You!"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.The universe is a big place. There's enough fascinating stuff just on our ball of dirt and water to satisfy most people. Exploring the world around us can be an exciting and rewarding experience that raises a person's awareness. But not always. The collection of experience does not necessarily make one person an expert.
Scientists collect evidence in the form of experience, but they use the scientific method to interpret those experiences. They have to sort useful, repeatable experiences from what would otherwise be a collection of anecdotes. Woos, in contrast, tend to rely on their biases to understand their experiences. Without even being aware of it, they can marginalize and forget details that defy their expectations and exaggerate memories that confirm their prejudices. Not only can a biased person fool himself on the contents of his experience, he can also attribute events to false causes.
The ivory tower of anti-science does not become more attractive if it happens to be mobile. This particular entry was inspired by a recent troll named Gabriel who described the "laziness" he saw as he traveled the world. He attributed this to inferior genetics among the people he saw without even considering cultural and economic factors. He continued using these uncontrolled experiences when asked for actual genetic data, as if traveling had endowed him an innate authority in such matters.
In science, it doesn't matter how much of the world you experience, it's how rigorous you are in interpreting experiences. Quantity is no substitute for quality.
Doggerel #193: "There are Lots of Frauds Out There!"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.This particular bit of doggerel applies to many forms of woo, but psychics are probably the first that spring to everyone's mind. The skeptical community has done a lot to find frauds. James Randi and Houdini are probably the best known for this. And they're the right sort of expert to detect fraud: As magicians, it was their job to fool us. I am grateful that they applied their skills of deception strictly towards entertainment and revealing the truth. By knowing how a magician could perform a task, they could sabotage a fraud with appropriate controls. That's how rampant fraud (knowing or unknowning) became obvious.
But that's not what this doggerel is about, precisely: Yes, skeptics can unmask huckster after huckster without disproving the existence of the genuine article. That's not the point. We must apply the rigor they do in case we do stumble across a real psychic. If we don't use the scientific method to rule out fraud, we will never be able to tell the difference. All things being equal, Occam's Razor favors known, mundane explanations over those that require belief in unproven entities like magic or miasmas.
We only need one good, repeatable example of these extraordinary things to be convinced. True, many of us are jaded, and that's why science is needed to reduce experimenter bias in either direction. But one example that stands up under several tests could change everything and give us a strange and wonderful new thing to study. This would be most awesome. Don't use the frauds, knowing or otherwise, as an excuse to continually retreat to the next example. Use them as a reminder to be vigilant in your research and experimentation. Know that you're a normal person, and that normal people can be fooled. It's not just a good idea, it's a founding principle of science.
Doggerel #192: "Go Look at [Woo]'s Research Yourself!"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.Smart people can do dumb things, and dumb people can do smart things. It's natural that a person's intellectual output have both highlights and folly. Just because a scientist backed the wrong horse or accidentally misinterpreted his data once is no reason to diminish his successes. Thus, it's perfectly understandable for a fan of someone's work to ask us not to judge an individual or a field of study by one paper.
That is, however, the starting point for this doggerel. I haven't, for example, read all of the research done on parapsychology. I've read a fair sample of poorly done studies on the matter, and have yet to see one that wasn't worthy of a thorough fisking. But I will openly admit it's possible that there are some good parapsychology papers out there with positive results.
Of course, I find that highly improbable because I would expect these hypothetical good studies to be well advertised by my online adversaries. With deep science fields like biology, we could do the same, though we might get hung up on which of the thousands of studies to point to for a bit. Since, however, many "woo" fields of science are chronically described as being in their infancy, I would think experiments demonstrating fundamental observations would be easy to sift for. If we're talking about a particular "luminary" in such a field, it should be that much easier to locate just one such good study.
I seldom see any such response. As I think about it, in most cases, I suspect it's innocent doggerel: The advocate doesn't know the nitty gritty of science and thus doesn't know what will satisfy us, so they leave a broad response, asking us to sift through a large bulk. Of course, this means we'd have to spend more time going over someone's career or looking for needles in what our pattern recognition tells us is merely a haystack. If you're one of these people who has been directed here, I would encourage you to talk to skeptics about the philosophy of science, in hopes that you learn why we require certain rigorous standards. Once you have a good idea of what we mean by skepticism and science, you'll be better equipped to understand our point of view on the subject, and know what it will take to get us to change our minds.
More cynically, there are many trolls out there who adopt this as a stalling tactic: No matter how many studies we can form legitimate criticism for, they can always say we're just attacking the low-hanging fruit, while providing us with no good examples of high-hanging fruit to expedite the process. My skeptical friends and I would love to be proven wrong. If any of the various forces claimed by psychics, alternative medicine advocates, amateur physicists, etcetera, were true, that would make the universe that much more fascinating to learn about, as well as providing us with more means of helping others enjoy their lives. The frustration I felt from this stalling was one of the things that made me sympathize with the skeptics and eventually join them as I learned more about science and its underlying philosophy.
So, if you know of any good-looking research, bring it up right away. We've grown tired and impatient with so many unnecessary delays. We want to be proven wrong, but we don't simply allow our hopes to run wild. Like everything in science, you have to work hard to earn the ability to say, "I was right."
Doggerel #191: "Genius"
Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.We've gotten along pretty far in scientific discovery, and we owe a lot of that to some wonderfully clever people whose brainpower helped them put two and two together to find the answer to a lot of weird mysteries we've had to deal with. They deserve major kudos for their contributions to our understanding of the world around us. They don't deserve to be propped up as saints, though.
There is more to being a scientist than being a "genius." Science requires hard work and a methodical approach. Simply having a higher IQ, brain cell count, or whatever measure of intelligence you choose doesn't make you right. Sure, being able to pick out patterns or perceive connections other people miss is handy in scientific research, but bragging about that ability won't get you published if you can't use it to find good evidence. Evidence is, after all, the ultimate authority in science.
Albert Einstein was a genius. He used that powerful brain of his to revolutionize physics and cosmology. But, despite what users of this doggerel would have you believe, smart people can do stupid things. Einstein backed the Steady State model of the universe and rejected quantum physics. He did so in spite of available evidence because it didn't fit his sense of aesthetics. Those who subscribe to the (false) messianic priesthood model of science are the sort who would cling to Einstein's word because it's Einstein's word. Real scientifically-minded people would accept or reject ideas based on available evidence, no matter who proposed them.
It doesn't matter if you're a genius. It doesn't matter if you won a Nobel Prize. It doesn't matter if you have a brain the size of a planet. If the evidence doesn't agree with you, we can dismiss your ideas. I don't need to be smarter than Einstein to disagree with him on quantum physics or the cosmological constant. I just need better evidence and/or the ability to spot logical fallacies in his position.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
So, What's the Problem?
All too often, if I have an extended encounter with a Creationist, I find they'll apparently agree with all the premises of evolution, but never point out where they disagree with it. C0nc0rdance made a video on that point:For the sake of saving time and clicks, here's the list he uses:
1. DNA is the basis of heredity.
2. DNA changes over generations.
3. DNA is responsible for the differences between organisms.
4. The environment acts on the frequency of changes.
5. There is no physical limit to the amount of changes that can occur in DNA.
The video does a great job, though I feel I should put in a little commentary of my own.
Point 1: Heredity: I haven't met a Creationist who disputes this, yet. I am aware of a passage about goats and striped poles that gives them room for it, though.
Point 2: Changes over generations: Another that you would think is indisputable. I have, however, seen a few Creationists who've painted themselves into a corner where they would have to argue that offspring are clones of the parent(s) to avoid self-contradiction. No, it didn't dawn on them.
Point 3: Differences between organisms: Minor nitpick referencing developmental errors that lead to so-called "science journalists" to label critters with extra bits as "mutants." If these malformed critters do manage to reproduce, however, their offspring will more than likely be normal. Of course, there are other environmental causes of difference, but it's perfectly okay to skip over them for the sake of brevity. DNA's the big, big one for discussions of evolution, and my nitpickery is only worthy of being shoved into a footnote.
Point 4: Environment acts on frequency of changes: I think this could be rephrased for greater clarity. He goes into greater detail in the video, but the slogan-sized snippet shouldn't require a followup elaboration to get the central points across. It should be a quick summary behind the idea behind natural selection, genetic drift, and the founder effect. I'd like to hear suggestions.
Point 5: No physical limit: The most common point of dispute I've been able to nail Creationists down to, and probably worth a whole video or blog post by itself. There are some limits in the form of development-related genes: They're highly conserved because changes to those part tend to kill the offspring before it leaves the womb/egg/seed. That's why you won't find big changes to body plans, like sprouting additional limbs (said developmental errors, of course, don't count) that could turn into wings. And of course, if too many changes happen in one offspring, it could render it infertile in regards to the rest of its parent species. Thankfully, evolution never posits such absurdities, no matter how much Creationists wish it did.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
118th Skeptics' Circle
Look closely. Look closelier. It's up at Evolving Mind.Open thread as usual, but peeping Toms are FORBIDDEN!
The Day of Doggerel
It's coming Monday, August 31. I've been pretty wonky lately with my medications causing insomnia and drowsiness, respectively. Thankfully, I've been on a bit of a summer break, mostly worrying about decorating my place and poking some trolls here and there. Anyway, I'm going to be doing a total of 10 Doggerel entries on Monday to try and simulate a full day's work, to get my biological clock back to normal. Here's the planned schedule.#191: "Genius"
#192: "Go Look at [Woo's] Research, Yourself!"
#193: "There are Lots of Frauds Out There!"
#194: "I've Seen More Than You!"
#195: "You're Just Denying the Facts!"
#196: "Anomaly"
#197: "Unprofessional/Immature"
#198: "Look it Up Yourself!"
#199: "Straw Man!"
#200: "You Just Want to Tear Everything Down!"
As you can probably guess from the links, the Day has come and gone. Enjoy.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Pointless Question #66
Hey, you over there, yes, you, the person from the fantasy/dungeonpunk/laser blade space opera over there! What precisely is it about your sword that makes it so cool?
Blank Thread for Gabriel
Might as well move some of the stuff here. Was unaware blogger had that 200 comments thing, and figure I might as well give him a blank slate to start explaining what he's trying to claim.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
WILD THREAD: What's Up With the Wingnuts?
I've always known the bulk of them are crazy, but... Wow. They've cranked it up to 11.9 over the last year. Birthers. Truly off-the-wall Godwining. What's up with that?This thread is hereby WILD! Comment policy does not apply within.
Simple Questions
I've had to ask a couple.Of course, as you've seen with Gabriel, I've had to ask repeatedly, "If the Wright brothers were raised in a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, would they invent the airplane? If not, why not?"
This is, quite frankly, a question I think any bonehead could produce a cogent answer for. It also gets right into the heart of the matter behind inequality in scientific progress across the planet: Geniuses who do not have access to knowledge and technology will have their potential greatly stunted, regardless of any genetic advantage they may have.
Another troll I've been dueling with was an annony identified as Graeme Bird by Tom Foss. Graeme lives in denial behind fundamental concepts behind the philosophy of science such as the null hypothesis (and, by extension, falsification thereof as a basis for a positive conclusion) and burden of proof.
I repeatedly asked Graeme what the alternative method for concluding "unicorns don't exist" there is. Dodged every time.
I mean, geeze, is it that hard to humor me for a simple question that gets to the fundamentals of the matter?
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: homOsapien. 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 homOsapien 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 homOsapiens.
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, homOsapien, though the transmission ability known as "language" could have individual members of a nomadic group specialize in the behaviors they learned. One homOsapien could learn everything he could about hunting to bring in and share foOd from a hOrse he killed. Another homOsapien 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 homOsapien 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 homOsapiens 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 homOsapien 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 homOsapien 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 homOsapien's memory.
With this thought, a group of homOsapiens 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 homOsapiens specializing in various trades, more time was open to understand the world. No one homOsapien needed to know everything. If a wise homOsapien 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, homOsapien 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 homOsapien 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 homOsapiens 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.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
D&Dify: Hizzy Rules
Well, I've been thinking of some extra ways of customizing characters, and I think I've come up with a few good ideas. Looking for some input.Background bonuses: Since 4th Edition's pretty streamlined, it's sometimes hard for me to think of ways to put in little pieces of individuality for my characters. So, house rules to the rescue.
First, take the "standard" background bonuses available to characters: Two associated skills with the region/personal history/whatever background. You either get a +2 bonus to one or add it to your class skills.
The next bit is my idea: You get one background "quirk" for each tier of play. Paragon- and Epic-tier quirks are unique characteristics you've acquired over the course of adventuring. These quirks generally don't provide statistical bonuses, but the idea's broad enough to require DM approval. Some examples:
Elemental Prestidigitation: A good quirk for non-Wizard arcanists. Only usable in non-stressful situations. Example with my desert sorcerer: He gets "sand" as his element. He can do Prestidigitation-like abilities, so long as they involve sand, like conjuring a bed of sand to lie back on, forming sand sculptures that crumble once he stops concentrating, turning sand into rough glass objects, etcetera.
Daily Ritual: You can perform a chosen level 1 ritual once a day for free, possibly with restrictions. Example: I have a concept for a NPC wind-oriented Shaman who can perform the Animal Messenger ritual with birds.
Warforged Prosthetic: My desert sorcerer's paragon-tier quirk: He's a southpaw who lost his right arm to a werecroc and replaced it with a effigy look-alike. It doesn't give him any bonus to his ability scores like the old Arm of Nyr, but it does allow him to embed or attach Warforged components. He usually keeps an off-hand weapon embedded.
Bonus Language: It seems a bit off that there don't seem to be many ways to learn new languages.
Any thoughts?
Woo Enthymemes #4: The Myth of Passive Observation
Welcome to another edition of Woo Enthymemes. This entry was inspired by remembering some guy on a news article comment thread who was rambling on in a superior tone of voice about how the Double Slit Experiment put us skeptics in our place in regards to the existence of the supernatural. Cue my rolling eyes. I have yet to meet a woo who can tell me something I didn't already find boring in an "old news" sort of way about quantum mechanics.Put simply, the typical quantum woo's amazement at the Double Slit Experiment comes from being stuck in the "Middle World," full of medium-sized objects moving around at medium speeds over medium periods of time, many of which involve agents we can perceive with our standard array of senses. All the objects they observe aren't heavily affected by being observed. Our minds were "built" by evolution to live in that world because resources spent understanding the "Big World" (of galaxies, dark matter, and illions of years), the "Small World" (of electrons, quarks, and femtoseconds), and the "Dense World" (of singularities and the instant of the Big Bang) was not conducive to having and raising children.
There is still a piece of my mind left in the savanna that gapes in wonder when I hold two repelling magnets against one another: They're inanimate objects, and yet they "struggle" to avoid meeting one another, as if they have their own locomotion, pushing against my fingers in a desperate effort. I know intellectually, of course, that like magnetic charges repel like charges. There's no intention there, anymore than water "wants" to flow downhill.
The myth of passive observation is born of our heritage as inhabitants of the Middle World. Let's say I'm in a dark cave and I want to examine a particular rock. I can shine a flashlight on it to look at it. I can pick it up and feel its shape. I can chip off a tiny sliver of it and perform various tests to determine its composition. All of these methods of observation change the rock. Shining light on it warms it up ever so slightly. Picking it up leaves traces of my skin's oils on it while picking off dust. Removing a sliver subtracts from the rock's overall mass. Because a human can be very delicate in the Middle World, these changes can be quite minimal. The danger of this, however, is that it can lead us to the hubris of thinking we can observe the universe as if we are not a part of it.
That is where things go wrong when a thoughtless person looks at the results of experimenting in the Small World of Quantum Mechanics. The word "quantum" refers to the smallest possible changes. Warming up a rock by a fraction of a degree in the middle world may be negligible, but the same sort of energy addition in a Quantum experiment could very well excite an electron into the next orbital shell or pin down the uncertain particle to a particular location, collapsing its wave function. The latter is precisely what happens in the Double Slit Experiment: Electrons are extraordinarily tiny particles with tiny mass. When we experiment with single electrons, we don't have the messy interactions of the Middle World to average out all the strange individual behaviors. Working with fundamental particles could be akin to moving an egg with a piece of construction equipment: We're hamfisted Middle World creatures manipulating objects that can be altered with the most delicate of touches.
The reason I am repeatedly impressing that fact in this blog post is because this is an issue that we were not made to think about. We take it for granted that we can look at something without changing it, mostly because the changes we inflict when being delicate are so small we can't casually observe them. While scientists are aware of this fact, many laymen who read their work have not raised their awareness. That is why many quantum woos out there can act surprised that observation can have effects: If they naively believe that we are separate from the experiment, they can believe it's magic when "passive" observation can have active effects. There is no such thing as passive observation. There is only active observation that strives to have negligible effects. In the Small World of QM, there is no "negligible."
Thursday, August 20, 2009
I Need Science!
It's been fun "debating" Gabriel, but I need some uplifting fluffy stuff to get over the frustration of trying to teach a guy that science doesn't come from DNA. It comes from knowledge and hard work. Before the Wright Brothers could build an airplane, they needed to live in a society that had knowledge of woodworking and specialized members devoted to the task. The same for textiles, the creation of combustion engines, Otto Lilenthal to work out some of the early stuff for them, and so on and so on and so on. On top of that, the division of labor required knowledge of agriculture and a stock of plants able to efficiently produce nourishment that could be processed by the human digestive tract in a manner more efficient than nomadic hunting and gathering, and also be amendable to breeding to survive in a large collection of environments.So, now that I've listed off all that stuff, the topic for the thread is this: List underrated or seemingly irrelevant discoveries/ideas/practices that were prerequisites for today's technologies that we take for granted. The human pyramid of scientific progress wouldn't have gotten far without some of those giants and even little people at the base. They deserve their kudos.
One of the great beginning technologies I'll start off with is a primal idea that helped kickstart the whole "civilization" thing: Division of labor. "Hey, I'll hunt, you gather, and you over there, see if you can figure out if any of these plants can be useful in unexpected ways."
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Well, I certainly wouldn't agree that we have a purpose per say, but it does fit my views rather well, in a none related way.
The Evolution of the Human race until the White Race is rather interesting, something some of you deny as well as accept (unwillingly) using the advances we have done. America, the most technologically advanced nation on the planet, we created things people could only dream of (africans, asians etc), and they now use our technology and even modify it acting like they are the creators of it.
Will we be abolished? Maybe, with the hatred for the White Race and the Anti-white propaganda spread in school with "black month' and other silly ideas (you care to mention something as negroid made?), it seems we should be ashamed of being the best, No thankyou, I want to be proud over my White History and everything we have done and will do.
I wouldn't be suprised, on the other hand, if civilized human beings would end with us if negriods or asians would take over, lacking the ability to handle the awesome technologies we have created for them, as well as the lack of ability to comprehend Democracy and value of others such as the white race.
Lets hope we can stand against the tides of evil.
9/04/2009 12:55 PM
you care to mention something as negroid made?
Ummm, how about Western civilisation?
9/04/2009 1:13 PM
Let's see... I'm not quite sure what you think about the pyramids (did some white people cross the Mediterranean to conscript the Egyptians into building giant tombs?), but, more recently, the Tuskegee Institute, at least to start with, provides a bunch of fairly obvious examples.
Part of your argument relies (semi-implicitly) on the fact that science has, in previous centuries and until recently, been dominated by white people. Would you extend a similar argument regarding women?
On the other hand, as of late, there's been a shortage of American science students in higher education, and I see mainly Indian immigrants picking up the slack. Is the recent climate of anti-intellectualism the result of genetic drift?
9/04/2009 1:37 PM
Anoymous:
First off, there have been inventions by African peoples in the past, as an example the Ethiopians were one of the first peoples to refine steel. And do I need to point out that civilisation began in Mesopotamia, not Western Europe? China and India also has sophisticated societies going long before our ancestors did.
Secondly, Western civilisation isn't a White thing, its a British thing. Both the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution (which added together are Western Civilisation) started in the United Kingdom. The thing is, there's not really any genetic difference between the British peoples and the peoples they are descended from such as the Scandinavians and the Germans. How does that work with your theory of genetic causality?
9/04/2009 3:56 PM
Is that racist still around? It does appear at the very least he's finally admitting very clearly that he IS in fact racist, instead of denying up and down that he EVER said anything about one race being superior to another. Will he deny that he made this very post?
At any rate, Bill Watterson. Never really read those comics back in the day, but I present you with this!
http://eviljoshandbilly.keentoons.com/toons/ejb08.html
This guy made a total of 10 of these cartoons and has vanished from the face of the internet. Artwork is rough but the guy is hilarious enough to deserve a full series of 15 minute shorts on Cartoon Network.
9/04/2009 4:10 PM
I see racist troll is back.
That last bit about the tides of evil made me laugh so hard I nearly wet myself. And I'm at work right now.
9/04/2009 4:24 PM
That cartoon was pure win.
9/04/2009 4:39 PM
The racist doesn't appear to have ever answered my question of how he explains the existance of black or asian inventors or scientists or artists or anything that one would normally call intelligent. I think he tried to say that they are just stealing, but that really does very little to explain it all. It's a blanket explanation that totally ignores the totality of examples, one with no research at all.
We aren't so chained so very completely to our genes that they dictate every single thing about us. They can't, otherwise we'd be robots that, when presented with an elk, would immediatly start hunting it. The genes simply work from a simple basis, really simple rules that tends toward their own reproduction. One is building an intelligent brain that can figure out problems on it's own. There is no need to invoke a subconcious "true" motive. Installing that frame work has no pressure, the basic rule is all that was needed. Further, as environment changes misfirings can occur, such as
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D85yrIgA4Nk
It's these misfirings brought about, especially in humans, by our own tendancy towards invention and discovery, that are the biggest way to break free of the dominance of genes. However, that's a side note. The main point is not to talk about "breaking free" so much as to point out that just because someone DOES behave some way does not mean a genetic explanation needs to be invoked to explain WHY they act that way. Two brains otherwise identical will have two different ways of behaving if they have two different environments.
(I must be absolutely clear here. This is NOT meant to give the impression that I think one "race" or another really does have superior intelligence and it's a matter of "overcoming" that weakness. There is no evidence that intelligence is in any way linked to the classic "racial" traits.)
I'll expand on my previous challenge. There ARE some genetic traits that are linked to intelligence, in terms of such conditions as down syndrome. However, notable is that these conditions are not tracable to any one "race". They are wide spread among ALL ethnicities, having the same basic effect, as though as a general rule the genetic code for how to build a human brain was similar enough that they could be changed in identical ways across that "barrier". What is your response to this? Do you believe that one race is more or less likely to have autistic kids than others, and further, what do you think of the fact that such genetic disorders seem to have the same effect, as though they have the SAME basic genes initially? Does this not completely defeat your entire premise?
9/04/2009 5:28 PM
Racist troll need to talk about genetics, not cherrypick history. Why are racists so terrified of discussing the Human Genome Project and such?
9/04/2009 8:02 PM
Racist racist, yes, use the word in a negative light, all it says is that I accept the true nature of our human heritage. Just like I am superior to a dog, I am superior to a negroid, facts are hard to fight.
Is it not funny that the 'viking blood', the Scandinavians, live the longest, have the safest and most advanced societies? Utopians in fact and yet, the 'white are evil' mantra still continues, 'poor negriods' and we should feel sorry for them.
Of course, you where not aware of this, and now when you are, you will deny it claiming its a conspiracy, by the 'white man' no doubt? Or maybe they written a deal with Satan himself to get does good statistics, its all fake and false, its not true. Egypt and Peru are the beams of civilizations and advancements.
Now, the asians have taken our technology, not even you seem so daft to deny this, and you have not explained that, weird isn't it? They did not actually make any of the technology, they took ours and modified it, fine, We gae them that ability, we helped them along, we tried the same with the negriod but they started wars and chaos in Africa, I remember a internew on television with a tp-notch negroid from one of these useless nations, HE HIMSELF stated that the west should STOP GIVING to them, because they cant deal with it, they need to learn to make food themselves, if we help them they cant handle it.
And when we dont give, we get blamed for being Evil.... Funny that. Oh, and did you know does Viking Scandinavians are also amongst the top aid givers in the world? Does blond blue eyed evil whites, juck.
Its sad you are ashamed of your race, its sad how the schools have made you think you got something to be ashamed of.
9/05/2009 6:14 PM
The problem with aid to Africa is that lots of the MO gets laid out using preconceptions that don't apply. It's a mix of perverse incentives and memetic disconnect. In other words, lots of foreign aid was distributed by people and agencies who did not know the best way to do their job.
On a less argument note, that comparison you made... Are you suggesting that human-dog hybrids are viable?
9/05/2009 6:27 PM
Human/Dog hybrids?
Dude you need a quick lesson in biology.
9/05/2009 6:46 PM
Somebody who attempts to argue genetics based on anecdotal evidence and unfounded assertions claims that my attempt to refute an analogy represents a lack of knowledge of biology.
Thank you, good sir. A thousand Alanis Morissettes could not make anyone on this earth uncertain of the definition of irony, so long as your comment remains.
9/05/2009 7:42 PM