Free Will Pt 2: Response to a Response

I made a comment 10 months ago on a Joe Rogan podcast with Sam Harris on Youtube. That podcast was about free will. I thought I could summarize what Sam was really saying in a very short format, and so I did. It's been quiet for a long time, but I got a new message from that comment thread yesterday. Nothing like that to drag me back into the fray. Let me restate my thoughts on free will here:

Anything and everything we can and will do is bound by the state of molecules in the universe before our birth. Physics does the rest. We are like a computer which reacts to inputs, doing different things depending on the state of the molecules inside the computer. What the computer will do can be predicted. If we break it down to quantum mechanics, we simply get more chaos and uncertainty, not more free will. 

We are the sum of our experiences and physiology which we get by chance. Free will is an illusion. When a brain tumor forces a man to kill his family, we understand the man is simply unlucky. Similarly, I see criminals as malfunctioning people who got the wrong environment, the wrong genetics, the wrong physical causalities that compels a person to commit the crime they did. They could not have done otherwise given those inputs. 

This doesn't mean that punishment is therefore useless. Nothing good is lost and something good is gained. We now have a basis for incredible amounts of empathy. Vengeance now makes no sense. Our goal now is to rehabilitate, not to punish for the sake of it.

The argument was that if there was no free will and humans are just products of their biology and environment then humans would be doomed to repeating the same actions over and over again. In other words, there will never be moral progress, for example.

To me the fact that humans are a product of the environment and biology (and biology ultimately being a product of physics) seems obvious. What other possible answer could there be? Even if you believe god breathes life into dust we come shooting out, we did not choose our soul. You're starting out from the premise that you are given a brain/soul/etc that you did not choose which will more or less determine everything you do or think to do.

To address the actual argument, I think humans are far too complex for us to end up repeating the same actions like a dumb computer. People are an amalgamation of a wide range of motivations, failings, and idiosyncrasies. The world is full of varied environments, and even identical twins living in the same household have different epigenetics. When we look even deeper, the twins do not have identical atomic structures, and neither is the environment exactly the same for both twins down onto the micro level. This is just a very pretentious way for me to say that there are always very small differences in everything (chaos theory).

So, everybody's atoms are different, their environments are different, and they affect other humans (such as passing on of history and past failings) to form this super complicated system that allows for so much diversity in human behavior and history. (But in some cases, it seems like history repeats itself.)

Thinking back about the computer analogy reminds me of chess engines. Strong chess engines are non-deterministic, in other words they do not always do the same move or analysis if you rewind the position again. The chess engine has no free will. It is just the interaction between lines of code and the cores of the processor. And over time differences emerge, and the position just deviates from there until we get something totally new. Imagine a chess game with idiosyncratic and error-prone humans whose actions and feelings change from day to day and hour by hour. Now imagine 7 billion people all playing this gigantic game of chess. Anything can happen.

A hypothetical posed by the commenter is as follows: If we know that murderers are simply malfunctioning people, since there is no free will it must be due to genetics or environment. Can we then start killing the person's offspring to stop future murderers?

Well, no. We can, but we shouldn't. We don't know if the cause of the murder was due to genetics or the environment or some vague mixture of the two which we cannot untangle. Obviously if the problem is environmental killing the baby is as dumb as killing yourself to prevent cancer. We also don't know that the murder gene will pass on and manifest in the same way to their offspring. Ideally we would rehabilitate criminals but the world is not ideal and we do not have the time, resources, or means to fix criminals. 'Rehabilitation' can very well involve punishment, it's just that punishment for the sake of vengeance makes little sense. It may very well be that a child will respond to a scolding or grounding after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar, for example. So when I mentioned 'rehabilitation' I don't always mean a life of free food and Xbox inside the same room all day. The question is what gives the best results, but who the hell knows?

There is also a social cost of killing off offspring even if we knew they would grow up to be problematic. There is always a cost when you break the social order. A great example is brought up by Sam Harris himself in another podcast. We know that donating a kidney or some bone marrow won't kill you but can very well save the life of somebody. Yet, doctors do not suddenly grab patients and forcibly cut their kidney out. Why? Because there is a cost to society when you live in such uncertainty. If you can just kill children that are in high risk areas then not only you do inevitably murder innocent babies that would have grown up to be innocent, you end up with a world where we trust the culling of humans based on some people's judgement. That is the world where babies are torn from their mother's hands due to the baby failing some sort of test. A simple, straight utilitarian viewpoint fails because the world is not simple.

Some Thoughts I've Been Having Lately

Gay Marriage, Bestiality, & Pedophilia Pt II

I was watching Louis Rossman's stream (he runs a board repair shop somewhere on the east coast), where he was dissecting the newest Macbook "pro". The discussion touched on gay rights for a bit. We have that classical baker problem, right? Should somebody be able to deny service to a gay person if it goes against their religious beliefs? Some people believe they should purely on a freedom perspective... people should have the right to deny service to anybody for any reason, just like how the customer gets to rant about it online and try to bankrupt the business. Louis replied by saying that he thought that's just not a good idea. Would denying service to somebody because they are gay make the world a better or a worse place, he asked. When it comes to gays, my favorite thing to say is my own made up line: Sex preference is like coffee preference. Why people care about by coffee preference is beyond me.

Then the conversation touched on bestiality and pedophilia. Obviously, the chatbox wasn't the perfect place to discuss these matters deeply. To me the answer is obvious. Bestiality is sex of another animal, and there is no consent. So it's a no go. Pedophilia is not molestation and molestation is not rape. Let's not get our terms twisted here.

I've talked about this in the past. I don't believe in free will. A person was unlucky enough to be born with the environment, brain chemistry, alignment of synapses, that causes a person to like what they like. Most people are into the opposite sex. Some are into the same sex. Some are into old people. Some are into children. Raping or molesting old people is not okay, and okay, we can make the argument that doing the same type of crime on a child is worse.

But the assumption here is that anybody that is into children molests children? Because that's just a stupid thing to say. Of course there are people into children that recognize rape and molestation are not okay, and many of them struggle with the guilt their entire lives. It's a paraphilia with no upsides.

By banning pedophilia you are banning thoughts and preferences and that doesn't sit right with me for more than one reason.

By banning molestation and rape of children (as if it wasn't already) we are saying no to these things when there is no consent (and, a strong case can be made that no consent could even be given in this particular case, which is in some ways similar to bestiality).

Finally, molestation and bestiality are not the same as gay sex. The slippery slope argument here is just ridiculous. First think about the gay sex issue on its own. Then when we have the time we can think about how society should deal with bestiality and 'pedophilia'. I can do the reverse-slope argument: Anything not strictly by the book sex leads a slippery slope into gay sex, then pedophilia, then bestiality, then the entire world goes to hell because Satan wins.

What a great argument, no?

My Next Computer Build (Named Undelwalt)

I still haven't decided whether I want to do a custom loop for my next build yet. If I'm going to do a custom loop, I'm going all out. I see little reason to get the inconveniences of a custom loop without reaping its main benefit: the best performance. But that would mean maybe a $1,000 project depending on how it is done. Water cooling is its own seperate world and there are many choices and places to go wrong. Specifically for me, the choice is between a mora (external thingy with a lot of radiators mounted) or a more expensive, some ways elegant, some ways less elegant, traditional radiator setup in my case. My case wasn't designed for serious water cooling, it was designed for serious air cooling (it's even in the name of the case). I don't even know what case to get for triple 480mm radiators, and how I'm going to feed it only the coolest air. A mora would help bypass those issues, but something about it doesn't sit right with me... It's more about quantity over quality, which admittedly is not really a problem when all that really matters in the end of measurable performance.

At any rate, I don't want to name my next computer Undelwalt if it features no custom loop. There is no HBM for Pascal, and no custom loop? Comon, sure, upgrade, but it is not worthy of that name.

Temperature

So... we don't really feel temperature, right. We feel the rate in which heat is transferred from one object to the other. That's why a metal plate feels colder than a plastic plate at room temperature. The metal conducts heat away from us faster. In room temperature they would be at the same temperature, which is room temperature. If we put an ice cube on both plates, the ice cube would melt faster on the metal plate despite feeling colder to the touch because it transfers heat to the ice cube faster than the plastic one.

Then I'm thinking about my hands. They feel so cold. Surely if it's as cold as my senses are telling me it is, I would have a frostbite. Given what I know, my cold hands must be pretty warm. But they don't feel that way. My brain is screaming 'SO YOUR HANDS MUST BE A GOOD THERMAL CONDUCTOR BRUH'.

How is it, that when I game my armpits are hot but my hands are freezing cold? RIP intelligent design.

Intelligence vs Kindness

Several years ago I valued reason, logic, intelligence, education a whole lot. To me it was almost the primary judge of a person's worth as a human being. Over time some of my views have mellowed out a bit. If everybody thought and acted the way I did, then the world would be kind of a shitty place. The world needs some people willing to help others and do charity work.

Books

To finish off my collection of Skyrim books, I will purchase the third volume of The Skyrim Library (and skipping the Skyrim Special Edition Guide Collector's Edition since my older guide is the same, just with a different cover and bookmark). It's $1.40 off the $25 price required to get free shipping from Amazon for books though. I think I will buy Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence... This is the book I've heard Elon Musk read when it comes to fears about AI. Sam Harris said he got the impetus to look into it from Elon, and I've heard CGP Grey read the book too.

Just by purchasing the book and telling the world about it I get the satisfaction of reading the book without ever opening it. ;)

Intelligence and Judging of Others

Look, different people have very different opinions about my intelligence and worth as a human being. Really. A good example was with the whole religion thing. There were people who sent me some pretty angry hate mail. On the other hand, there was a guy who was beyond impressed that I wrote a book about religion... Surely he didn't believe in a god, but if he did, it felt like it would be me.

But okay, I already digressed. I don't need to be super duper genius to judge somebody to be less intelligent or reasonable than I am. Sure, it is easy to see one subject in which one is unreasonable and be tempted to judge their entire character based on that. But some people you know well enough to pass a judgement on. We judge people all the time. If it's not consciously (wow you are a saint), then unconsciously. It's just that, on occasion I have the balls and the honesty to tell somebody what I really think about them when I feel it is important. Now, I'm not going to turn my blog into a place where I rail against people I've had disagreements with, don't worry. I won't even offer details here.

I'm just saying. To illustrate my point I will just use IQ, and just pretend IQ is the perfect measure of intelligence for the sake of argument. If a guy is 80 IQ and I am 100 IQ, I can see that the other guy is dumb. Both below average and below my intelligence. But I don't need to be 140 IQ to see that 80 IQ guy is not all that bright.

Does this mean I will treat the 80 IQ guy like garbage? Of course not. I just probably won't value his opinions on some matters as much as the other people I know. Or, if I find his opinions to be so stupid as to be toxic, I will just not bring up or refuse to discuss some type of topics.

When somebody calls me arrogant for saying I think I am smarter than they are, they are really saying that they are smarter than I think they are. That's really all there is to it. I'm sure we could find people we both agree are morons, and get no pushback for saying so and so is dumb. The reason one the former makes me arrogant and the latter doesn't is because the guy being told he's not smart or as smart as he think he is is insulted and doesn't feel the same way about himself.

Do I ask for agreement? No. Feel free to disagree. And if so and so Mr. 80 IQ thinks I'm the 80 IQ guy then great, I didn't want to talk about hard topics with him in the first place (albeit for the reverse reason, but hell, it all works out).

I'm being exceptionally blunt here because I feel like it right now. And after reading this some will probably still think I'm an arrogant asshole.

Again: We all judge people. Some just have the honesty to say what they think when the time comes. And while I am blunt here I will try to be more... euphemistic... nice... etc, to try not to get the other guy to be pissed off at me. The fact that I even have to tell somebody what I think about them when it comes to this, often is a negative indicator of their awareness level.

Other Stuff
Meh. Thanksgiving was a disaster, but I managed to get home without being stranded in the middle of nowhere, so that's good. I bought some jeans for like $15 from JCP because my pants were all disintegrating. I read a bit about spin wash cycles, permanent press, and other stuff...

Skyrim SE is still coming along. It seems clear that it is the future. I'm seeing others working on a project with a somewhat similar to mine (take pictures of every texture in the game to compare texture packs). Makes my project feel... not special, lol.

FF15 comes out this week. I hope my crush on Luna won't be destroyed by oddly inhuman dialogue that is in Kingsglaive. Cliched, cheesy, bad dialogue makes me cringe, so I hope to see some compelling stories.

I hope to finish the Skyrim texture project by Feburary 2017. First I want to finish my The Last Remnant hard mode playthrough. After Skyrim SE I will play some Fallout 4 DLC, Skyrim SE (SURPRISE YOU CAN ACTUALLY PLAY THE GAME INSTEAD OF JUST MODDING IT!!!)... And my next task, returning to Mugen testing, this time running many shorter matches more akin to a chess rating list. That way I can tally how much A wins over B and have that affect elo rating.

What am I going to do with school? Hell if I know. Let's not think about that right now.

If I keep typing, everything is going to go downhill from here so let's stop.

Buh bye.

Early Thoughts on the Male Contraception Shot

Some early thoughts about the 'male birth control shot':

-It seems to me that all articles fail to describe notable details in the trial.

-There were 320 participants. Only 20 of them (6.25%) left the trial due to actual adverse effects of the drug. 8 of them withdrew for more than one reason.

-It is easier for me to see just how feminists and anti-feminists end up in this hellhole together. Reading again and again stuff like how men don't get it, men are babies, men are too fragile for office, medicine is inherently sexist, it makes it easy to make it feel like I'm the one being accused. In some cases these people clarify which men they are talking about, but for some I can't help wonder if they're talking about all men. On the other hand, I went to the Blue Pill subreddit and saw some ridiculous BS too, like 'men don't get pregnant, why should they have to worry about contraception, any side effect is too much'.

-In March an independent committee established by WHO/RHR and CONRAD determined that the risks reported outweighed the harms in the study. I wonder what that actually means. Can they just do another study later on? How easy would that process be?

-To my understanding, it is the job of the participants to report all side effects, even side effects that might not even have to do with the drug. Reporting acne is not the same as complaining about acne and crying about it to mommie. And it's unclear how severe their problems were.

-It's unclear to me what 'severe' acne or libido increase even means. Acne can vary from normal to disfiguring. Although, I have to wonder just how high libido one's libido has to be for it to be 'severe'.

-One person in the study committed suicide. Study finds this was probably not due to the drug.

-A 'nonfatal serious adverse effect' was depression for one person, rated as probably related. In the past I've had the displeasure of encountering a person who got super triggered at me for talking about suicide and depression in a slightly slack way, Telling this guy to 'suck it up' might be dangerous for his mental health. But to be fair, this is an isolated incidence even though it was rated as serious.

-In another one of these types of cases, a man got tachycardia with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, rated as possibly related.

-Finally, the last 'nonfatal serious adverse effect' was a guy who attempted suicide, rated as 'probably related'. Did you read this in the media? No, I don't think so.

-According to the study, a person has not recovered fertility after 4 years. 8 of the participants took over a year. This is a serious side effect that needs to be noted.

-75% of men responded positively to the survey and said they would give this method of contraception a shot. The person writing the results of the study thinks this supports further development of this contraception approach. I agree. Clearly most men like it.

-In the end I think the person who can avoid pregnancy the easiest ought to do the contraception, be it the male or the female. Of course, I'm not going to tell people how to have sex. A couple should discuss together what they want. Maybe they want to mix the shot with the pill.

-It is not beyond the drug companies' morals to try to leverage social justice/accusations of sexism to try to get a drug passed. Not to say that it is being done here. But it seems people oversimplify the science behind drugs. For example, calling Flianserin 'female viagra' and denying it from store shelves sounds like a possible case of sexism but close inspection of the data shows why it was not allowed.

-Were there possible serious side effects due to the drug? Yes. Were there probably babies? Yes, some of the men in the trial were probably wusses. But they were the minority. I wish I had more details to judge more accurately, but I do not. Then again, neither do the people ranting on FB.

-The figure quoted is a 4% chance of failure. It's unclear exactly what the 4% figure means. If each use there is a 4% chance of failure then the contraceptive method is terrible. More likely it's 4% failure rate when used over a typical year. Jury's out on what a 'typical year' means.

-My final question is this: What percentage of females left studies regarding the pill due to side effects? We know what this study showed that 5% of men left the study due to side effects without specific information on how bad the side effects where. What of females in a similar situation? Surely we need data from both sides to see if there's even a problem here. Without adequate data it seems people are reading headlines (or even articles, albeit terrible ones) and believing what they want to believe without no further investigation.

-My conclusion is that I don't know, and more data is needed. While it is true that some men do need to be reminded of the problems (and even the benefits) of the pill, I got that after the first post and scrolling more and more I only see that with some angry voices and very little specifics on the study. Remember, the angrier both sides get, the less both sides listen to each other. I have a cool head right now and it really is the best way to go when discussing these issues. Plus, it sucks to comment on studies without reading it first (although everyone is guilty of that, including me). If Healthcare Triage makes a video on this topic I will post an update later as necessary.

-The link to the summary of the study is here: http://press.endocrine.org/doi/pdf/10.1210/jc.2016-2141

Scientific Studies and Journalism

You've probably seen those headlines: Latest study shows eggs are good for you. Latest study shows eggs are bad for you. Cell phones might cause cancer. Scientists discover a way to make plastic out of pollution. These headlines are confusing because it seems like the scientific community can't make up its mind about anything, with contradictory information every other day. Many of the touted miracles and breakthroughs don't ever show up in the real world.

What this is is a symptom of terrible journalism... Journalism so bad, many of the writers of those types of articles should be fired. While the readers are stumbling around, confused and distrusting of science with all its seemingly abundant contradictions, the writers of those articles are busy trying to get clicks and eyeballs on their content. While it frustrates me that people who read these articles can't see past them or ask any basic and relevant questions, I don't really blame them. Science is complicated. If it weren't, we could all be scientists. People don't have the time to look at the specifics of every study, and even if they wanted to they often have to pay to have access to the studies. Not only do people need a background in the particular field that is being studied, they also need to understand how studies work in general. That's not even considering the dogmas people hold about many subjects and just plain irrationality. And boy, those things are in no short supply.

Let's explore the many ways words and sentences can trick you into believing things that are not true when it comes to medicine.

'The World Health Organization has categorized processed meats as a group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco.'

One has to ask, what exactly does 'group 1 carcinogen' even mean? It's normal to assume the worst. The WHO uses the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) system. There is a difference between 'hazard' and 'risk'. The former explains the likelihood that something can give cancer while the latter tells us the intensity of the effects from a given thing. The categories from IARC for cancer hazard are as follows: definite, probable, possible, don't know, probably not. The fact that processed meats and tobacco are both considered to be definitely carcinogenic does not tell us how much of an impact those things actually have. It just tells us the link between those things and cancer are believed to be strong. Also in the 'definite' category are things like alcohol, sunlight, birth-control pills, and Chinese-styled salted fish. Nobody recommends never stepping outside. There isn't a worldwide ban on birth-control pills. It takes a lots of sun over time or a ridiculous amount of birth-control pills to get cancer. It doesn't take that much tobacco to have a seriously negative impact on your health.

Another problem with the bacon hysteria is on the purported 18% risk of cancer for consuming processed meats like bacon. 18% risk of cancer for consuming how much bacon? It turns out consuming 2 sticks of bacon a day, every day, has an 18% relative risk for colorectal cancer. The 18% figure headlines like to stick in your face is relative risk. The chance of getting colorectal cancer over your lifetime is about 5%. An 18% relative risk brings that up to 0.05*1.18 or 5.9% chance of getting colorectal cancer over your lifetime. That is an absolute risk increase of about 0.9%. In other words, the risk is very small. That's not to say that people should go heavy on the bacon of course. Cancer is not the only ailment a person can have. Obesity or high blood pressure are problems too. It's probably not a good idea to eat a lot of processed meats all the time.

'Study finds video games increase aggression'.

What is 'aggression'? When I lose in a video game, I get angry. Being angry makes me aggressive. I also get angry at people that can't drive or people who can't read a study before jumping to conclusions. Also somewhat relevant is that fact that the latest study does not nullify all of the older studies. A positive study also doesn't 'cancel out' a negative study. The specifics of the studies matter. Even if all of the studies hold up to scrutiny, the objective viewpoint is to consider it as what it is: contradictory data in a debatable field of study. I understand that people don't like nuance or uncertainty, but that is reality much of the time.

'Latest study finds that mice and rats exposed to cell phone radiation have an increased risk of brain and heart cancers.'

If you have been keeping up with the latest news, you probably know which study I am referencing here.  This is the study published in March done by the US government where 2,000 rats and mice were subjected to signals modulated to GSMA and GSM standards at 900 and 1200mhz frequencies. After two years, the researchers report a 'low incidence' of brain and heart cancers. (The data has not been released.) Not surprisingly, people who believed cell phones caused cancer jumped onto this study without actually reading it.

To first state the obvious: Mice and rats are not humans. Studies that are done on mice cannot be directly ported over to humans, otherwise nobody would ever do human trials. Let's assume the results of rat studies are directly comparable to human studies for the sake of argument though. Following the results of this study, female humans are immune to cell phone radiation, whereas males need to be careful. You will get more brain and heart cancers, but you will also live longer. (But only if you use the cell phone to talk to your friends for nine hours a day to get the full benefit!)

The rats in the study also did not behave normally. The type of cancers the radiation-doused mice received were typical of older mice of that species. Since the control mice (the ones that got no radiation) died early, they might have gotten the same cancers had they lived long enough. This study also wasn't peer reviewed. Well, technically picking out the peers you want to review your study is peer review in that the people are your peers and they reviewed it, but that is not the peer review people typically mean when it comes to science. When published to a pre-publication site, it got hammered.

Also worth noting is that the cell phone has a real value. What absolute risk of cancer one is willing to tolerate for a given activity varies for each person. But if you are really worried about non-ionizing radiation, you should probably be more scared about the giant nuclear reactor people often get exposed to, causing a cancer that will kill about 10,000 people in the US alone. It fires both ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. You meet it every time you go outside. It's called the sun.

'Study finds an 87% increased risk for autism for babies who's mothers took anti-depressants during pregnancy.'

As you might guess, that 87% figure is a relative risk increase. The risk of getting an autistic baby is about 1%. That makes the absolute risk increase a little bit less than 1%. There are other things to consider. Maybe the anti-depressants aren't the cause, it's the depression or the things depressed mothers have to go through. Maybe abstaining from anti-depressants will cause harms elsewhere (like self-harm). Everybody has heard of the phrase, 'correlation is not causation'. However, most people don't seem to believe it. They sure don't act like they do. Sometimes looking at a link between two things is not enough to get the full story. The world is more complicated than that.

There are two types of studies: observational studies and experimental studies. Cohort and case control studies are studies that look at some group of people and in an attempt to look for correlations. On the other hand, a randomized controlled trial is an experimental study. They both have strengths and weaknesses. RCTs are expensive and have a smaller sample size than observational studies. If people are studying a rare phenomenon, it would be hard to gather a large enough group of people for RCTs to show anything. If the thing studied takes a long time to show results, then it would be extremely time consuming to follow people over the years. It's also unethical to do some RCTs on humans. However, RCTs are still the golden standard of research today. People are gathered randomly, with one group given a control (for example, a placebo) and another given the real pill. RCTs are not prone to many of the confounding factors of cohort studies. If we look at people's life expectancy on or off heart medication who have hypertension, we might not be controlling for factors like race, age, ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, or other factors. People who take medication might simply be the type of people who are more sick to begin with or are more willing to exercise or eat right.

There are many possible confounding factors for a study. Even if a study is done correctly, the conclusions one draws from a study may be incorrect. We have to consider sample size, correlation vs causation, and whether the study is directly applicable to humans. Mouse studies are not the same thing as human studies. My point about sample size might seem like useless ranting, but in fact it is a huge problem when it comes to studies on diet. The sample size of many diet studies is downright shameful. For example, one of the commonly quoted studies for the anti-artificial-sweeteners crowd is a study looking at people and their gut bacteria. Turns out, the study randomly took 7 people and dosed them with FDA's maximum allowed levels of saccharide for six days straight. This is the type of studies we are dealing with: Groups of less than 10 people, often with little control. A study is only as good as how well it's done. A meta-analysis (analysis of many studies) is only as good as the studies included for the analysis.

Science is very complicated and it takes a decent background in a particular field to be able to make heads or tails of a study by oneself. I totally understand why people would fall for a bacon scare headline. But many people I have met over the years seem to believe they are the experts on diet and exercise. When I challenge their beliefs and invite them to sit down with me and look at the studies regarding to our debate, they always turn it down. Many people are underqualified and overconfident, which is classic Dunning-Kruger. They want to have their worldview reinforced, not challenged.

Most of the blame goes to the science communicators: the people writing the headlines and articles online and in print. These people are paid to write factually correct information and to whip up informed opinions about various issues. The burden of crafting a headline that doesn't cause misconceptions to the person who only reads headlines is on the journalists. Unfortunately it seems like many of them are either intentionally incompetent or helplessly incompetent.

I was on a subreddit called 'Futurology' a couple of months ago. This is a subreddit that contains many posts about new and exciting headlines about the latest scientific 'breakthroughs'. One of the threads was about solar panels which generate electricity from falling raindrops. The headline sounded promising until we start to crunch the numbers on the efficiency penalty for developing such a solar panel. The amount of raindrops required for the solar panel to produce enough electricity to match a typical solar panel would be about 2 trillion drops per square meter, continuously. One commenter posted that future solar panels are almost guaranteed to be the type that can generate electricity from raindrops. To which I responded:

Will and might are two very different things. Many things start out inefficient and end up inefficient. Science is a graveyard of dead ideas. People remember the hits and forget the misses. All that has to happen for this predicted future to never happen is for people to find a better way of getting power that doesn't involve raindrops. I'm not in the business of predicting the future for a good reason. Plenty of sensationalist headlines with little real world benefits to show for it just makes people doubt science.

Many, many things are interesting and promising lines of research. But we should always be candid about the current obstacles that scientists face and how far they are from achieving what they want. Just saying 'future solar panels will be like this this and this' means either the person writing the headline is pointing to something so obvious as to render the headline useless, or the person is being sure of things they cannot be sure about.

Finally, I leave you with a segment from John Oliver about scientific studies. (Note: This is not a random video I threw in here to make my post look more snazzy, it's actually educational and entertaining.) Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go argue with more people about artificial sweeteners, GMOs, coffee, and soda.

Credits:

raygirl.deviantart.com

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.

Hearts of Stone

Today I want to talk about the first expansion for Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I consider it to be the best game of 2015.

First some background: Witcher 3 is by CD ProjecktRed, which is a Polish company full of Polish people. I'm not even sure their CEO can even speak English. The game is set in Scandinavia with Polish music played by traditional instruments. Witcher 3 is an open-world RPG. The land is vast, and the graphics top notch. Running around in Skellige where it's snowing, along with Ard Skellig playing is just sublime.

Hearts of Stone revolves around Gaunter O'dimm, a 'mangy vagrant' the player meets very early on in the main storyline. Gaunter O'dimm is 'evil incarnate', and some might call him 'the devil'. He will grant the wish of anybody, but he will grant them exactly what they wished for. He crafts contracts with verbal tricks that lead people to their downfall.

For example, a man named Olgierd seeked out Gaunter O'dimm, looking for immortality. In exchange, Gaunter asked for the soul of somebody he is close to. He cared for only two people in the world: His wife and his brother. He choose to let his brother die. A day later, a bunch of ruffians popped up and outnumbered his brother 5 to 1. Frightened, his brother hid in the cellar, only to be executed unceremoniously.

As Olgierd went on living for years and years, eventually he got a heart of stone. He stopped caring about anything in life. He's already seen everything in the world, and he become apathetic to the it. This includes his wife who killed herself out of loneliness. In getting his wish for immortality, he had lost the two people he cared for in the world and his humanity.

There was one final term in the contract: Olgierd makes up three wishes which have to be fulfilled by somebody other than Gaunter (eg, the player), after which Olgierd and Gaunter must both be walking on the moon in order for O'dimm to get the rights to his soul.

Gaunter eventually tricks Olgierd by meeting with him on a temple with a mosaic of a moon. The contract states that they both have to be on the moon, but the contract didn't specify WHICH moon. This is based on an old Polish folk story, Twardowski. In that story, the devil makes a pact with a man for his immortality. The devil may only take the man's soul should he visit Rome. Eventually the devil has the last laugh, as one day the man visits an inn named 'Rome' and his soul is forfeit.

The 'deal with the devil' is called the Faustian Bargain. The name is from the legend of Faust from German folklore. It's also featured in some Christian folktales. The moral in general is to be careful what you wish for.

Ever heard of the phrase, 'the devil is among us'? It is literally true in Witcher 3, as during the questline, Gaunter O'dimm pops up as random passerbys, wearing a different outfit each time. I played the DLC and I never even noticed this; that is how well he blends in. Gaunter's face looks generic and normal, yet once we learn about his true nature, his face becomes quite sinister. Ironically, the initials of Gaunter O Dimm is GOD, but according to legends he would be the exact opposite of God.

Should the player allow Gaunter to take Olgierd's soul, the player is granted a free wish, which the player can choose to turn down. Either way, the scene ends with Olgierd playing with Olgierd's skull, whistling his theme. It's short but very effective. Very haunting.

Should the player do one of the optional objectives leading up to the final meeting on the moon, the player can choose to risk both his and Olgierd's lives in a battle of wit. The player has answer the devil's riddle by finding it in his little playground. The answer is 'reflection', and there are many mirrors in the world, but O'dimm destroyed each one as the player approached them. Eventually you break a wall and let water leak out. Quickly look into the puddle to see your own reflection. The player defeats O'dimm in a duel of wit. If Gaunter O'dimm is truly evil incarnate, then perhaps evil can never be killed. He will be back; and he says as much as he slowly applauds before he is banished.

The devil is treacherous, but never cheats. He grants people what they ask for, but not what they want. Whereas the main antagonist of the main game are stereotypical bad guys, here the enemy is among us and looks just like everybody else. It's a lot more sinister. Gaunter O'dimm along with the Crones in the main game are what I consider to be among the best antagonists in video gaming history. CD ProjecktRed has turned old Polish myths into haunting and interesting realities. What I write is not as compelling as playing the game yourself. Also, I find most games to have mediocre writing and story. Witcher 3, with both Hearts of Stone and the Baron questlines actually got me to think a bit about the lore and the ramifications of my actions. It's not life-changing stuff, but it's a breath of fresh air.

His smile fair as spring, as towards him he draws you 

His tongue sharp and silvery, as he implores you 

Your wishes he grants, as he swears to adore you 

Gold, silver, jewels- he lays riches before you 

Dues need be repaid, and he will come for you 

All to reclaim, no smile to console you 

He'll snare you in bonds, eyes glowin', afire 

To gore and torment you, till the stars expire