Thoughts From Vegas

This post is about the Vegas trip I took in January 2016. It contains pictures taken during the trip, all of the quips on Facebook I wrote during that time, and a little extra. On Facebook I experimented by turning Facebook into Twitter inspired by Neil deGrasse Tyson's Tweets.

I think a fitting song would be Two Step from Hell's 'Lost in Las Vegas'. It's a more quiet theme which is a departure from the movie trailer kind of stuff I'm used to them releasing.

Thoughts From Vegas

Twilight means the sun has set, in that it is below the horizon. That doesn't mean everything is pitch dark, however. There are different phases of twilight based on how many degrees below the horizon the sun is (from 6 to 18 degrees). Dusk is a part of twilight.

Back to our favorite topic though: Nacho cheese. It is a processed cheese, aka a "cheese product". Doesn't sound nearly as appetizing when I call it that, yeah? Cheese products are not legally allowed to be called cheese in the United States. This means your Craft Singles "American Cheese-product" is not cheese.

Maybe one last comment about cheese before I start to look kooky. Did you know that the characteristic holes in Swiss Cheese used to be considered undesirable? In general, the larger the holes in the cheese, the more pronounced the flavor due to a longer fermentation process. If the holes are too large, it can be difficult to slice. Swiss Cheese without any holes is called "blind".

According to the text on a chopsticks wrapper, chopsticks originated during the Shang Dynasty (1766-1122 BC), as a substitute for knives at the table. Confucius equated knives as acts of aggression and are therefore unfit to dine.

Hot foods. Pain has never hurt so good. Ate some Thai food today. Got a spoon and made sure I got a nice mouthful of chili flakes.

But a mouthful of chili peppers is no match for the Carolina Reaper, which registers ~1.85 million Scoville Units. Even the amazing and fearsome Carolina Reaper is dwarfed by a pepper spray however. It weighs in at an impressive 5.5 million Scoville Units.

But maybe you like it hot. Like, life-threatening hot. No worries, I don't judge. Pure capsaicin is 16 million Scoville Units. It is a dangerous substance. Capsaicin can't get any hotter than pure capsaicin, but there are 'molecular analogues' that are more dangerous than it. A cactus found in Morocco contains a waxy substance that is essentially capsaicin on steroids. That substance is called Resiniferatoxin. Attaching itself to the receptors for abrasion and heat pain, this toxin causes an uncontrollable release of calcium ions at such intensity, the nerve cells die. Ironically, the hottest substances in the world... aren't hot.

Most casino games are basically arcade games for adults.

You see those traffic lights from Vegas? They have flashing yellow arrow turn signs. Flashing arrow signs.

You see those warriors from Hammerfell? They have curved swords. Curved swords. (I was going to make more Skyrim puns, but then I took an arrow in the knee.)

Fallout: New Vegas told me there would only be 4 casinos in Vegas. Where the hell are the securitrons?

Fallout taught me that with a lockpicking skill of 100, I can picklock the cashier's door and jack all their stuff. Unfortunately, lockpicking was not one of my tag skills and I never picked up a Locksmith's Reader.

OTHOUGHTS FROM VEGAS: on a scale ot drunkenness from 0 to 10 I'm at about 9001.

Saw the Trump Tower today. I guess Mexicans aren't allowed in there. Maybe Trump has set up a force field that instantly perforates any Mexicans within 500 feet of its premises.

I'm glad that even when I was about to puke while typing an earlier Facebook post about my drunkenness, I was able to use proper punctuation.

Went to a casino named Paris today. I guess that means I basically know all there is to know about France. French people must love gambling. Oh, and bands with loud music. And chocolate gift shops.

In chess, the French Defense probably just involves retreating all of your pieces.

All of my Facebook-turned-Twitter posts today are 110% serious.

Somebody opened a command prompt and spam typed "yolo" into it in Fry's.

If the pole is horizontal, she's a gymnast. if the pole is vertical, she's a stripper.

Thoughts from Home: Oh my god, my email inbox! It's a horror show!

Getting Drunk

Due to some... complications, I didn't get drunk on the casino floor. Mark brought the goods when he came into my hotel room though. It was several days into the trip, and by then Mark's uncle and grandma came to join the fun. I was aware that I was the only person in the room that had not really drank alcohol before. I've taken a sip or two, but they were really just little sips and not enough to affect my cognitive functions at all. I digress.

I was aware that if anybody is going to get wasted, it's probably going to be me. I am male, but I am a very lightweight male with no tolerance to alcohol at all. My parents didn't strike me as super-duper drinkers either. Still, it wasn't enough to prevent me from what was to come.

Poison never looked so pretty.

We took a shot basically back to back, with only a few minutes of time in between. By the time I downed the second, I felt my face getting a bit warm. Apparently when an Asian person blushes due to alcohol, it is called 'Asian Glow'. More or less I acted the way I normally would despite the fact that I was getting more and more drunk. (I did consider saying things I normally wouldn't seriously consider, but I thought about how I would normally act and decided against it.) I tested my ability to walk in a straight line. By the 5th shot it was pretty compromised. After the 7th, Mark asked me to try shaking my head back and forth. It was disorienting enough to cause me to drop to one knee. Soon after I started seeing stars, and a minute after that I found myself puking into the toilet. Mark's uncle tried to comfort me by saying that this is all perfectly 'normal'. Not really any consolation though.

By drinking a ridiculous amount of fluids and puking over and over (some, on purpose), I managed to expel most of the alcohol that I ingested earlier. The puking took its toll on my throat though, as it began to hurt for a week afterwards. Alcohol causes blood vessels to dilate. This is why people blush and feel warmer when they drink. This improves circulation. (Chronic increased blood pressure from serious drinkers is not related to this effect.) This also moves blood closer to the skin, which is why the warmth is in some ways deceptive. The person is getting colder while feeling warmer. This effect was illustrated (kind of) in a Skyrim mod called 'Frostfall', where drinking alcohol decreases exposure for a limited period of time before the player gains back the exposure he lost and then some... Resulting in a net positive gain in exposure, bringing the player closer to hypothermia. But I digress again! So anyways, that's why I was shivering even though I didn't feel cold. Hours after the ordeal I managed to sleep. I woke later that day without a hangover because the alcohol ingested was purged and massive amounts of fluids came into my body.

Probably a person or two in the past have questioned why I don't like to drink alcohol. The answer about how I like to have my senses sharp is part of it. I can imagine a scenario where somebody goes out to eat and drinks an alcoholic beverage, with no legal way get home by car anymore. Many, many people die each year due to alcoholic consumption. Part of it is from traffic accidents. Another good reason why I don't drink alcohol is because it tastes like shit. I know some people drink for the effect and after a few times it doesn't seem so bad anymore. I'm not sure I want to like it though. And I certainly can't imagine paying money to get drunk. Given the choice to do it for free, I would typically pass.

Wrapping It Up

If you know me well you know I rarely leave the house, and I'm not really the type of person that likes to take trips. Trips cost money. I dislike travel. By sleeping through the drive and having most of my expenses paid for me, most of my qualms are gone. Plus, it was the last time I could meet with a friend for a very long time. Perhaps the last meaningful thing we'll do together. We were there for an entire week. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. Between photography and food and my laptop and just hanging out before it all ended, I managed to find something to do most of the time.

Hash browns, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and gravy. Sublime.

Photography... oh man. I bought a mirrorless Sony a5100 camera because the camera I had took the adjective 'potato' to a whole new level. I traded some flexibility for compactness and portability. Got it used for $350. However, the lack of the traditional viewfinder makes it hard to judge how the shot will come out. This caused some pictures to be too dark and outside scenes to be poorly color balanced. (No, the weather in Las Vegas doesn't turn everything blue.)

Thanks for sticking with me this far. Sometimes I really don't even know why people bother to read my blog. There are so many blogs out there to choose from. So that's that then. This was the 2016 trip to Las Vegas. Peace out.

I was sad that I didn't get a clear picture here. The middle ring looks very pretty! Too bad it was like $900.

I did get something before the trip ended though.

I had to change iso and aperture on the fly really quickly, but this would've came out very nicely had the white balance not gone to shiiiiite. Can't bother to Aftereffects.

Nice little fountain.

It appears that some casinos take the Chinese zodiac seriously. Some garden shots for the year of the monkey. That clear concave bar you're seeing is actually just water shot through a relatively slow shutter speed.

Last shot before I go.

Limits of Discourse

Dialogue is great. Debates, yay, debates. War of ideas. You get to see other people's viewpoints. Learn something new, make new connections. It's great. Except when it's not.

There is a naive part of me that feels there is a way to get to the bottom of every controversy. That, if I meticulously dissect every argument from somebody who doesn't think clearly, I can get them to concede or at least seriously doubt their beliefs.

Sure, I have been wrong before. It's easy to proclaim how many times one is wrong in an attempt to secretly convey their real message: It's not that I am closed-minded, it's that your arguments are wrong. Saying and doing are two different things of course. I have felt the reluctance to admit I was wrong when I realized I was wrong. Sometimes I explicitly admit that I was wrong. Sometimes I implicitly admit I am wrong by changing my argument around the point made, or I alter my conclusions based on the new, correct information. Yet, on some occasions I stoop the to same lows I accuse others of. I simply stop talking instead of admitting I am wrong. More and more I am making an effort to stop that. Sometimes though, the reason behind the abrupt end on my part is because I simply don't know what to say anymore. Maybe I am thrown into uncertainty and I need time to process. By the time I get the epiphany (if I do), the conversation has long since ended. Or maybe I realized the argument was a waste of time and I lost my interest.

But when I'm on the other end, I get annoyed. It reminds me of a post I made on Facebook about computers. Multiple people, each making an argument, getting it refuted, and bailing. I try to get them back into the conversations by tagging them and asking, 'Do you agree with my conclusion?'. Nothing. There is no accountability. People don't want to appear to be wrong.

I am a person that tries to believe in things that are real. Yeah, everybody says that about themselves. Consider this though: I used to be anti-gay-marriage. I used to staunchly argue against people who proclaim to be atheists. I used to emotionally attack those who believe morality could be subjective or relative. I used to think that justice must be better than mercy. I really do feel that (for the most part), I put in a decent effort to have my thoughts be modified by incoming evidence. Yet, I argue with some people and it's as if their heads live in another reality which abides by their own version of logic.

It should have been more obvious. There are people who believe Obama is an atheist, Muslim, communist, socialist, Satan worshiper that wants to instill marshal law. Few years ago when I typed in 'Obama is...' into Google search, the fourth results was 'Obama is the anti-Christ.' Even if I was the most skilled debater in history, I could ever get through to those people. Some things I see as truths. I think my arguments are valid and I don't really understand why or how people could disagree with me. And it can drive me nuts. Then again, maybe this is the same feeling the person on the other end is having. Sometimes I just want to shout, 'I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG, OK?'. Sometimes I want to invoke my authority: I've written a book about religion, buzz off. I have the largest Haswell overclocking thread on the entire internet. I've seen your objection many times, and probably phrased better in most of those instances.

But that's really, kindda a douchy, terrible thing to do. So I don't. I mean, saying 'do you know who I am?' feels like the height of arrogance. I don't feel comfortable saying it.

I'm going to try something new. I will try not to let my opinions about somebody's intellect dominate how I interact with them. If I met somebody online to talk about video games and I find out they have crazy beliefs about politics or religion which cannot be shaken, then I will tell them those topics are off limits. Either we can continuing arguing about these things, or we can talk about what we came to talk about... games or music or whatever. One of these options maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering, and the other does the exact opposite. Some fights are not worth having. Some arguments are constructive, some are not. If there's nothing left to glean from the debate, then why not just leave it? There is probably no way for me to get through to them anyways. Sometimes the opportunity cost is too great.

You probably already know that I'm referencing a recent event. I met somebody and we talked about video games all the time, until I brought up free will. I stopped the game I was playing to argue back and forth about free will. At the end I realized I have just wasted a part of my life achieving nothing but bringing more negative energy to the world. Again, that's not to say that I will dodge every conflict. Knowing my personality all too well, I will end up going into more arguments than I need to and staying in it for longer than I really should. It's like going to sleep too late: You know you'll hate yourself for staying up so late come tomorrow morning, but you do it anyways. And next morning, you tell yourself, 'holy shit, this is terrible, NEVER. AGAIN.', but you also know in the back of your mind that you're going to do it again. It's like compulsively checking social media, or reading your hate mail even if you know they are the minority of the messages heading your way.

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What is Intellectual Dishonesty?

It looks like I need to clear up what I mean by 'intellectual dishonesty' due to some misunderstandings. Hopefully I can end them here. The following are just my opinions, and what I mean when I say what I say.

Dishonesty means lying. Lying means to saying things that are not true with the intent to deceive. Jokes don't count. Omitting something important instead of saying something that is not true in order to deceive is an implicit lie. It is a distinction without much of a difference. The other person is trying to deceive me. They are a liar and cannot be trusted. You cannot 'accidentally lie'.

Intellectual honesty is very different. Intellectual dishonest is a failure to apply standards of rational evaluation that one is aware of in a self-serving fashion. (That's an awesome definition I copied from a wiki, by the way. :p )

Somebody could make a terrible argument full of fallacies which the bystanders should all easily notice. But moreover, the argument is so terrible it's pretty much disingenuous; even the person making the argument probably knows better on some level.

There are many examples of this. Shifting of the burden of proof is a classic one. Another is the argument from ignorance. The ad hominem is well-known. The 'if you don't care, why did you post?' comments are intellectually dishonest arguments because those arguments are almost always a semantic word trick. (For example, the person complaining is equivocating the word, 'care'. When somebody says they don't care, they mean they are not interested in the subject matter, and they commented to say they are annoyed by your beating of a dead horse and spamming the world with more useless commentary.)

These are all arguments which a good percentage of people intuitively feel is wrong on some level. But there are many other intellectually dishonest ways of debating. A person could change the subject when their current argument is failing. By keeping the other person mired in tangents, one can keep real criticism at bay. It's easy to bury the other person in nonsense that takes a long time to debunked. It can be hard to call somebody out when they do this.

Parroting statistics that are obviously dubious is also intellectually dishonest. The person is putting far more time scrutinizing others than their own statistics. A good example is the '1 in 4 women are raped' statistic.

So really, what I am saying is that being 'intellectually dishonest' means committing fallacies or using cheap debating tactics to prove a point or to deflect criticism so that one never has to deal with them. And this process has to be conscious on some level. Some people use these terrible tactics knowing full well they are doing so; in that case, it would border on dishonesty. But in many other cases, the person is too emotional and frazzled to fully recognize what they are doing. They just know that they are grasping for straws and making unsound arguments.

A recent example of shocking intellectual dishonesty is on Sam Harris' podcast with Omar Aziz. Aziz strongly disagreed with Sam Harris on the link between Islam and terrorism. To bolster his argument, he tried to defame Harris by claiming him to get into the Islam/Terrorism book business as a get quick rich scheme. When challenged by Harris with actual book publishing realities and specifics Aziz did not know, Aziz refused to back down... Repeatedly pointing out that Harris made SOME money on his book, and some is more than none if he had simply released his book for free on his blog.

I believe most people say things they think are true. Almost everybody is intellectually dishonest on some level, and some much more than others. If a person is explicitly aware what they are saying is untrue, he is likely not to say it in the first place. The mind has many ways of tricking itself and others though. Sometimes it's clear somebody is rejecting an idea because of the ramifications if it were true. There's a gut-feeling, a very defensive attitude that makes one want to do anything to make what the other person is saying not true. Of course, a perfectly rational person would let you carry them helplessly along your lines of thinking and logical arguments to arrive at your conclusion.

Do I feel that religious people are lying about their experiences? No. I don't think their experiences have correlations with reality though.

I have never seen Sam Harris as frustrated as he was during that podcast. Maybe Sam needs to do more of that mindfulness meditation he likes. And as for myself, I am not a very patient person. I'll go another way: I'll drop topics I don't want to discuss with some people. I do not see eye to eye with some people when it comes to intelligence, but we can still try to have fun talking about random, inconsequential things.

Discourse can be good and it can be bad.