Politics Micropost

I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep soundly if this happens. Hat tip to PZ.

Open Your Slang Dictionaries

You'll want to add "Shruggie" to it.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

I finished reading Watchmen today. It doth be cool. Discuss.

This Rant is Just a Bunch of Ones and Zeroes

Managed to get myself irritated remembering some typical woo arguments. IDiots say those of us who believe what the evidence tells us about evolution don't care about humans because they're "just animals." Vitalists, fans of psychic woo, yadda yadda say we don't care about people because we're just electrochemical reactions. This makes no sense to me.

A rose is a plant. It still smells sweet. Van Gogh's Starry Night is a bunch of pigments. It's still beautiful. Love is a bunch of unpronounceable chemicals. It still makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Okami is a bunch of ones and zeroes on a plastic disk. It's an awesome game. I'm a bunch of copper and tin (4.6%) in a canine shape. I like to think I'm a decent guy who deserves the same rights as other sentient beings.

Just because you can look at something from the bottom up doesn't mean it ceases to have the values we assign to it from the top down. About all it can do is point out that we don't have a complete description. Or that we'll have to be long-winded in describing it accurately. I don't see a problem with that.

About the only time I find knowing more about something to detract from it is in fiction. Boba Fett isn't as cool as he used to be. With reality, I usually find the explanations for the world to be more elegant, amazing, or beautiful than my imagination. I'd be dissatisfied if reality was as impenetrable as woos claim.

Doggerel #164: "Insensitive"

Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.

Some poets may go on about how truth is beauty and vice-versa, but unfortunately, the truth can be quite nasty. There's no getting around that. Knowing there's a problem, however, is the first step to solving it. Looking for real solutions instead of relying on false ones is the way to go. And we get called "insensitive" and such for believing that.

There's no evidence for psychic powers. There's no magic panacea for everything that ails you. The evidence for your favorite stone idol is no better than the evidence for any other. Woo doesn't work. That's just how things are. Don't shoot the messenger when he's trying to get you to calm down and do something productive.

Yes, it's sad grandma died. I know the feeling. It'd be nice to know she's hanging out somewhere, enjoying herself, but we don't know. Nothing wrong with hoping, but don't substitute hope for certainty. Don't rush to waste time and money on a church that can't prove anything about the matter, and often seems genuinely opposed to inquiry. Do what you can to keep her memory alive even if she isn't. The church certainly didn't help me on that front.

Yes, it's bad that you or someone you love has some nasty medical condition. Calling natural periodic improvements "evidence" for the efficacy of the latest woo supplement/untested herb/needle poke isn't going to provide a real cure, treatment, or whatever.

It's nice you had an emotionally moving dream, but that doesn't make it magical or something other than what's in your head.

Paving the way for real hope usually requires dispelling false hope. Appreciating something for what it really is often requires stripping it of false associations. Skeptics like me can do that and still find beauty and hope in truth. Just because we're telling you you're wrong, don't think for an instant that we're telling you to despair.

Doggerel #163: "Science Has Limits!"

Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.

Woos love to talk about alleged blindspots of the scientific method. Many of them are fabrications on their part: Artificially labeling something with the meaningless word "supernatural," the five senses, abstract concepts, or just because they say so.

Of course, you end up with lots of woos making appeals to other ways of knowing based on the inevitable barriers to omniscience laid out by people like Godel: Any system will be either inconsistent or incomplete. Of course, this doesn't help them in the least. Just because science won't reveal every fact in the universe and unify them with explanations and predictions doesn't mean faith is any less arrogant or more useful.

One metaphor I find appropriate is a description of the typical Creationist tactic: The homeless man throwing stones at evolution's incomplete mansion. Woos of any stripe who make these sorts of appeals are doing just that: They're trying to tear down something incomplete but full of successes that keep coming while providing nothing constructive. I have yet to see anything useful or meaningful come from woo.

Pointless Fun: Dawn of Souls

Well, it's been a while since I've had a Pointless Fun post. And it's gone retro and remake-y.

Mega Man 9: Done in the classic 8-bit style. Saw it in the Playstation Store and bought it before I realized it also game out for Wii and Xbox, so I'm stuck running my hot PS3 to play a game that looks right at home on the NES, down to dangling ends of sentences in story scenes. Quite excellent, and it feels like they've really taken off the kid gloves. Well, at least until you've got it memorized.

As mentioned in another post, Cave Story is coming to Wii. This is awesome sauce.

The Mother 3 Fan Translation is in the final stages: Testing. I can't wait for it to be finished. They've put a lot of work into it.

41^st Reality: Fun-looking shmup. I haven't gotten far in it, yet.

Tumble Drop: Short but fun puzzle game.

Onto YouTube stuff:

Shigeru Miyamoto makes things awkward:


Remakes into movies counts, right?


Zelda meets Spore:

Pointless Question #35

So, you've got evil mind control powers. Why can't you get your victims to, you know, act quasi-normal while under your control instead of speaking like zombies? And what's up with their eyes?

97th Skeptics' Circle

It's up at Evolved and Rational.

Open thread as usual, but poetry about your love of Mudkips is FORBIDDEN!

The Virus Worked?

It seems something from XKCD came true, almost: Noticed there's now an audio preview option for YouTube comments. I hope that lowers the stupid, but I doubt it.

What Star Trek Means to Me

During my days of watching YouTube debunkings and such, found one that included a clip of Hovind (I think) spouting the straw man about evolution being inherently progressive and how it'd all elevate us to deities who could fly around the universe meeting other intelligent life, "Just like in Star Trek." Something tells me Hovind listens to trekkies about as often as he does biologists: Roughly never.

Star Trek is very light on the science. Most fellow Star Trek fans I know don't bank on FTL travel being possible. Those who do doubt it would be convenient, usually because hypothetical methods would involve the power output of at least a few suns. Star Trek is a fantasy franchise set in the future instead of a medieval Europe-y place.

I signed on during The Next Generation, so that's primarily what I think of when someone mentions Star Trek. I don't see it as an accurate prediction of how things will go. I see it as something to hope for: Humanism will take off, the shackles of superstition will be broken, science will save the day, and all sentient beings will be treated with dignity, whether they're animal, vegetable, or mineral. It's idealistic escapism for people like me.

As for the "becoming gods" thing: Many, many episodes dealt with the Enterprise crew being powerful and resisting the temptation to just bully the local undeveloped planet into cooperating or forcing cultural change. Many episodes (most noticeably to me in the original series) had the crew helpless in the face of the week's sufficiently advanced alien and having to rely on guile. Of course, though, one minor point of annoyance is the lack of transhumanism. But the sheer amount of power is usually irrelevant to the story. I imagine it'd be easy to rewrite a lot of episodes with the Enterprise being a seagoing ship and replacing "planets" with "islands" and so forth. Having spaceships flinging glowing balls and beams at each other does tend to set a different visual tone, though. Anyway, I don't take the different levels of power to be a prediction: It's analogical for different moral dilemmas. I highly doubt we'll ever cram suns worth of energy in convenient packages. Besides, you could argue we're what primitive people would call "gods." That's more an argument for the lack of imagination that comes with ignorance.

In our current world, where woo reigns in politics, people like me need morale boosters like Star Trek. If we can imagine something like that show, maybe, just maybe we'll be able to achieve something like that. But then I bump into Creationists who claim ice is magnetic, and my cynicism returns.

Southern Medicine

Many of you crazy skeptics insist on having only one set of "scientific" standards for medicine. I say that medicine that originates from bronze age traditions below the equator aren't subject to those standards! You have to perform experiments that leave in bias! You see, Southern medicine is built on an entirely different philosophy that your allopathy! You can't test it with arbitrary Northern standards like "Do more patients get better from it than placebo?" Instead, you have to focus on how it makes the patient feel. And not on a pain, symptom, or not-living level. How it makes them feel spiritually. So, you can stay in your box of logic and experimental results, I'm going to believe what I want, no matter what you say.

Just in case it's not astoundingly obvious, since woos get very crazy out there, I'm making fun of the whole "Eastern versus Western" altie argument.

YouTubin': Collecting

Just making a post where you can dump suggested links to particular bits of crazies I could lampoon when I get around to YouTube. I could also use some good advice on how to compose, software suggestions, etcetera. Want to make sure I break into the Vlog thing properly.

This is Awesome Sauce

Cave Story is coming to Wii.

Discuss: Scientology Vs. Anonymous

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on Scientology. I'm not all that up to date on the whole Anonymous thing, either. So, here's Thunderf00t's YouTube entry on the topic. Sounds a bit fun. Rubs some of my propaganda sensors the wrong way, but the core stuff being talked about is probably quite accurate:

YouTubin'

I'm thinking of following in some other people's footsteps, making some YouTube videos. Any suggestions to make? Software? Microphones?

I'm thinking of doing a series based on TV Tropes's "You Fail Biology Forever," dealing with the misconceptions involved.

Pointless Question #34

Earlier today, I was on the highway, driving at 60 mph when someone pulled out of a parking lot for a left turn. Almost seeming to wait for me to get in range. Brake slam and horn later, I finally formed a verbal expression: "GEEZE!!!"

What's wrong with me?

Pointless Question #33

You know when one of the main characters leaves their station on the Enterprise's bridge to deal with the Negative Space Wedgie of the week, there's always some no-name ensign to immediately take their place... Where do they come from?

The Following Entities are Made of Awesome

Andromeda's Wake
AronRa
cdk007
DonExodus2
potholer54
Thunderf00t

The Fundie Mentality

I've been watching a fair bit of YouTube videos by fellow atheists and skeptics, lately. They've had to deal with a lot of nutbars over there, some of whom try to censor them. One nutbar in particular named VenomFangX knowingly perjured himself making a false DMCA notice and tried to pass the blame onto his friends when he got caught. When Thunderf00t suggested a compromise (since he felt the legal angles were too harsh, and he wanted more VFX videos to lampoon), VFX accused him of performing blackmail. While dressed up as The Dark Knight's rendition of The Joker. How appropriate. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Anyway, that gets me to the topic of the moment: How I intuit fundie thought. Now, there's a difference between being a fundie and simply very religious. I've met religious people who are good and decent, who do the right thing because it's the right thing, and believe in a similar deity: One who believes in fairness and justice. Now, I might think they're silly, like someone who believes in Santa Claus into adulthood, but they're still decent people.

Being a fundie requires a certain malice. Take for instance, my favorite recently unbanned troll, during his golden days when we went by the alias of "Weapon of Mass Instruction":

[Infophile:] "So, if someone convinced you the Bible weren't true, you'd abandon your morals and go on a murderous rampage? ...Excuse me if I've lost the urge to argue with you; I suddenly don't want to win.

WoMI: Actually, I would answer yes. The Bible would not be the best selling book for all these years because (as you would like to think) people are stupid.

I have yet to see "The Origen of Species" on the best seller.

[Bolding mine]

This sort of declaration confirms that some fundies have an inherently criminal, malicious mindset. Are these fundies any more moral than someone who goes looting if the police go on strike or end up distracted by bigger crises? No. They're just more paranoid. They've just bought a story about a super cop who never blinks, sees through walls, and so on. They don't think, "Is this the right thing to do?" They think, "Am I going to get caught doing/not doing this?"

People who think that way are dangerous. The people I care to know ask if something's right. Who will it help? Who will it hurt? Does it set any dangerous precedents? Those are the sorts of questions that crop up with any moral dilemma. That's why moral people spend their time arguing about those sorts of things when it comes to sticky issues.

Many fundies would rather simplify that process by just going by what an imaginary bully says: "Do this, or I'll torture you for eternity!" This is what's commonly known as "might makes right." Oh, such a noble sentiment, isn't it? Of course, I prefer to think of one of the key features of real morality is that it protects the weak, not simply appease the strong. Contrary to Creationist characatures of evolution, "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean survival of the strongest: We're social animals. Our "strength" is cooperation. We protect each other. We work towards common goals. What these sorts of fundies propose is selfish cowardice: Do what benefits you personally: Avoid getting beat up by the bully, no matter how many people you hurt in the process.

Still other fundies say morality isn't based on love, empathy, justice, or fairness: It's based on the arbitrary whims of a deity who was randomly given the "authority" to determine morality. This is known as the Divine Command Theory of ethics. If their god makes morality by declaration, there's no moral basis for those declarations. Behold the god of craps tables and the roulette wheel. If he declared murder to be good, it would be good. Of course, those who don't really subscribe to DCT will say their deity would never make such a declaration. If that's the case, they believe in a basis for morality independent of their deity and stand a better chance of earning respect.

I've also encountered other fundies who believe morality is an irrelevant mortal pasttime: All that matters is if you believe in their stone idol. You won't be held accountable for your good and bad works because all you have to do is clap your hands together and have a conversation with their imaginary friend. No need to atone. No need to take any responsibility. Any barbarian can be excused for any wrongdoing by saying he's imperfect. Any time we call them on their obviously evil actions, we get called things like "PC police" as if people getting hurt is a matter of us being "offended." Whatever standards they have, they never have to live up to them themselves. They think they're free to run amok and the only barrier to their doing so is the rule of law, which they constantly rail against.

The decent non-fundie religious people I know generally believe in a god who happens to be a Humanist.