MisterPengo

Ha.

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:15:49 GMT

Continuing that long-running blogger/LJ-user trend of posting articles just because they confirm their own beliefs, I give you this:

For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time

Some choice quotes.

Outside a handful of majors -- engineering and some of the sciences -- a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

I favor autodidactism, certification, and the essential end of the university system as we know it - so naturally, I'm all in favor of the tone this article takes, though I'd go several steps ahead of it - primarily because I don't just view the university system as inefficient and outdated, but generally nefarious and an anchor around the neck of modern society. It remains the last archaic institution whose existence and membership should be regarded with the same level of skepticism we treat political leaders, business leaders, and religious leaders to.

Mister Pengo rates Everquest 2

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:09:55 GMT

Pros: Has the most solid fundamentals of any major MMO. Broad diversity of classes that each manage to perform in a distinct manner, while at the same time allowing each to fit into 1 of 4 'major roles' that every party needs (Tank, healer, dps, scout). Tradeskilling is actually useful, which is a rare feat. Consistent content updates and quality tuning. Game is tremendously solo-friendly. Tertiary link to a fun CCG. Game has truly improved with age.

Cons: The WNBA also has extremely solid fundamentals, and is about as popular as EQ2. Scenery is beautiful, while PCs and NPCs have a distinct 'Poser 2.0' appearance to them. Population consists primarily of housewives and the children of housewives, leading to a distinct impression you're exploring a fantasy world located inside of a suburban K-mart. Soloing too much makes you feel like a creep. Native UI stinks, though it can be replaced.

Overall: Hey, they're letting you play the game for free until the end of September, so go for it. They're trying like crazy to get people to play, and it shows.

When the game is broken.

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:45:11 GMT

Religious-themed post today, folks. Here comes the cut.

I doubt it'll shock anyone to learn that I do some online arguing now and then. I think I've mellowed out considerably from a far more debate-prone past - most 'debates' are little more than posturing, or are undertaken not with the hope of learning but of advancing a social or political cause. Sometimes I just can't help myself, but ultimately I know that on the topics I love to discuss most - religious, primarily - in the end, not much progress can be made. I'm not saying this as a mere critique of human nature either; I'm saying that based on our current state of knowledge, our current technological capabilities, some seemingly insurmountable philosophical barriers, and finally our foresight and imagination, we're in a permanent bind. Another way of putting it is 'we're fucked'.

Now, let me state right off the bat that I'm Catholic. I rejected the church in my youth, for just about every reason any expectant atheist would - claims of hypocrisy, of incredulity, of harm to society, etc. I returned because I became increasingly convinced of the power - the unique power - of Catholicism's rationale for just about everything they stand for, from just war doctrine to contraception to charity to justice to elsewise. All this while being a monolithic faith dedicated to the idea that humanity is, at its nature, fallen and twisted. I could go on here, but I think that's enough to mention where I stand. I'm a bad person in a lot of ways, certainly imperfect, but there's a place for me in the Church, and in Christianity at large.

But if I wasn't Catholic, I'd still be a theist. At the very least, a deist. And the reason has nothing to do with faith, supernatural experience (never really had one), or Pascal's wager logic - though I have respect for these, and will write more about them another time.

See, despite what you hear nowadays - deism/basic theism is the most rational option on the table, and always will be. It best fits the data, and best plays the role of null hypothesis. And this holds true even if you take the most materialist/physicalist 'all there is is matter and interactions with matter' stance possible. In fact, such a stance only bolsters this position.

At core, deism/theism makes only one assertion about our reality: It is fundamentally related to mind. Everything in nature - from galaxies and planets to cells and bacteria - is related, at origin and base, to a mind. Everything we see can ultimately be understood, conceptualized, orchestrated and originated by an agent.

At core, atheism makes the opposite assertion about our reality: It is fundamentally not related to mind. Everything in nature - from galaxies and planets to cells and bacteria - came about, at origin and base, unplanned. Unforeseen. Unorchestrated. It "just is", and the fact that those with minds can understand, conceptualize, orchestrate and originate these things to any degree is at most coincidental.

Problem one: Both of these positions are unfalsifiable. No evidence can be rallied to disprove the other.

This point doesn't get enough airtime nowadays, due to a lot of confusion on both sides. I can imagine the instinctive response to this: "That's not true! If God exists, He can just come right down and appear! Atheism would be falsified!"

I'm going to explain why this isn't the case, but before I do, we have to move on to the next problem.

Problem two: Both of these positions involve an entity that is, for all practical purposes, omnipotent.

Now, for deism/theism, this is obvious - it's a core claim (with some philosophical griping here and there) of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and just about every other theistic faith around.

But the same holds for atheism too: Anything, any being, any event, can be accounted for by a claim of brute-fact 'just is', deception, or appeals to chance + large enough odds pool. And any instance whatsoever of the intervention of God can be discounted and explained as either 'lucky coincidence' or the actions of a powerful, but less-than-God being. Write 'I Exist - Signed, God' on the moon? Predict the lottery 1000 times in a row? Predict your own thoughts hours in advance, moment for moment, before you make them? Defy the known laws of nature?

It doesn't matter. Message on the moon? That's just superior technology at work. Predict the lottery 1000 times? Congratulations on your amazing capability to rig the lottery. Your own thoughts predicted? Brainwashing, hyponosis, or other kinds of advanced technological meddling before or after the fact. Defy the known laws of nature? Illusion, more manipulation, matrix, or 'Well, it looks like we have more to learn about the laws of nature.' Even if God certainly exists, the world the atheist envisions can do it all - there is always a way available to the imagination.

But here things start to break down.

Problem three: But between atheism and deism/theism, the only available evidence we have and can ever acquire supports deism/atheism.

Now as I said, there's no way to falsify either God or atheism. But you can still get evidence in favor of deism/theism - in fact, it's the only kind of evidence you can get. And the reason lays with good ol' Descartes: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

Mind is undeniable for us. But it's not just pure subjective experience we're dealing with here, but creativity. Creation. Design. Not only can we do this purely in our heads in the form of dreams and imagination, but we can conceptualize the actual world we live in - come to understandings about everything from quantum mechanics to galaxy formation to creating life to otherwise. We can understand, predict, and even simulate - all with progressively greater accuracy. The result is that everything we see, we can conceive mind being behind as a guiding or originating force - regardless of any length or pattern of the chain of causality. And every incremental advancement in our knowledge and our technology provides incremental, if inconclusive evidence in favor of a mind being fundamental to reality itself.

But we have no similar analogue for the atheism proposal - and by definition, we cannot. The best we can do is propose an eternal, mindless past with all the right conditions and features to eventually lead to us - or mindless, pointless material popping out of true vacuum. We can't even properly /imagine/ this happening because, guess what? Imagine it happening and you're just showing how a mind can act as the source for what you envision. You end up with the bizarre proposal that the universe, with no intention at work whatsoever, just happened to give rise to beings with subjective knowledge of the only property that can satisfactorily account for everything we see -without- necessary ingredient of fundamental brute-force luck. All this without touching on any appeals to revelation or miracle.

It only gets worse from here on out. Let's say an atheist proposes a past-eternal cosmology - the universe has always existed with all the right properties to eventually result in creatures who have minds, like us. Unfortunately, this is not an evasion of the idea that our reality, our existence, is fundamentally related to mind.

It's practically a guarantee.

If you're allowing the past to be eternal, you're not proposing a mindless eternity. You're ensuring that our existence was preceded by intelligent life that literally had eternity to develop and figure out the surprisingly rational, organized reality it inhabits. Worse yet, if simulations of reality - any reality, not just the 'real' one - can be built, they've been built. In fact, an infinite number have been built. And the odds don't favor us occupying the 'real' universe world in that infinite haystack. Eternity can't favor atheism - it just establishes mind as every bit as fundamental as matter.

Of course, there's always the alternative: Inexplicable creation out of nothingness, by nothing - with all those brute-force 'right' properties for the universe to be rational and give rise to minds which can conceive of a more plausible method. And if this gets proposed, it will only show that atheists are entirely capable of providing vastly more "magical" cosmologies than the most mushroom-stoked theist ever dreamt of. Worse, it's the ultimate in unfalsifiability; how can you ever be sure 'nothing' was really the source?

Paraphrasing Churchill, 'Deism/theism is the worst explanation for existence, except for all the alternatives.'

Next time I'll talk about how computer simulations provide a powerful model for theistic concepts of the supernatural and God's relation to the universe(s).

Heh.

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:53:57 GMT

So, apparently 40% of 'vegetative' patients may be misdiagnosed.

"Now British scientists are leading the field in trying to put that right."

The cynic in me immediately wondered how they planned on killing them.

Hey.

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:45:29 GMT

Just a quick quote I like:

"Regardless of whether your candidate wins or loses by more than one vote, your vote was irrelevant. In the highly unlikely circumstance that your candidate happens to win by the one vote you cast, the courts will arbitrarily determine the outcome."

Can't argue with that.

Hey.

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 09:19:49 GMT

You wanna know what's creepy? People who go to public forums and, in detail, describe what they really like to see in pornography.

See, when I was in high school, friends of mine started to talk about their favorite porn movies. To this day, I remember some of those preferences in detail - and every time I remember it, I start to think how a psychologist would analyze "I like it when the chicks are with dudes who, like, have really insanely oversized cocks. So big that it'll hurt them." That's the sort of line that could have gotten Freud to quit smoking cigars. For the record, that guy is now a successful ocean biologist. Coincidentally, I'm pretty sure whales have the biggest cocks on earth. So, hey. Convenient.

Anyway, I'm not interested in analyzing the inner workings of the mind right now. Mostly I'm posting to say that I sure hope Age of Conan makes with the bigger patches soon. Also, it'd help if they outlined some of their near-term plans right about now. An MMO dev can only get away with silence in situations like FFXI, where they both add a lot of content to the game on a regular basis, and they're all foreigners so you reason they probably don't speak english even to an 'adorably mangled' level of skill.

Age of Conan

Thu, 29 May 2008 09:01:58 GMT

Hey look, I'm not talking about anything controversial and boring! Well, maybe boring!

So I got into Age of Conan. At this point I join most MMOs the way a dog ends up eating bread that falls off the dining room table. I start off totally disinterested, because it's clearly not meat. I mean, sure, it's /edible/. But it's just not worth the effort. But by the time it actually falls off the table and hits the floor, I'm feeling kind of hungry, and the schipperke's acting like there may be meat INSIDE the bread, and so I wolf it up.

Age of Conan was the same way. The promotional stuff I saw leading up to the game left me more annoyed than anything - some paunchy producer making a video talking about the exciting 'minigames' in AoC. Minigames? Yes, like capture the flag. CAPTURE THE FLAG? When did Conan ever capture the flag? CTF may be a game played in the first-person shooter genre now, but it has its origins less in the bloody expanse of pre-history than 'what people played in grade school'. Keep in mind that, up until this point, AoC was being billed as a full-on PVP game, completely with open-world PVP, sieges, etc. So hearing about 'minigames' and 'arenas' was a letdown.

Still, some Scrunchie bastard ended up getting me interested in it at the last minute, and so I threw down the money.

Experiences so far.

1) I joined the RP-PVP world, and I don't regret it. If I had to do it over again in WoW, I'd have joined a PVP server outright. For all the ganking and camping, it just makes the game a lot more fun.
2) Graphically, the game does something that annoys me more and more nowadays: Uses some 'realistic' poser skin for human textures. Look: I don't play games to see realistic looking people, especially women. I play them to get away from that. Let's face it, most people - even attractive people - when you really, really look close at them (Like on a 46" monitor with a good graphics card), actually look kind of bad. Maybe you like freckles and pockmarks, but to me it looks like skin disease. You don't see the asian MMOs doing this!
3) Classwise, the game is fantastic. The individual classes, while needing balance tweaks, are able to be developed in pretty fun ways that make PVP (naturally, the centerpiece for me) more fun. Each class has 2 distinct talent trees, and a general tree for their class group. They also call them 'feats' instead of 'talents', but fuck it, they're talents and everyone knows it.
4) There's a ton of content in the game, as near as I can tell. Lots of quests, even raid areas are waiting for the level 80s. Maybe they're kind of bland tech-wise, but who cares? I sure don't. I don't even know the story with half the quests I do. I just click through to get to the objectives. Yes, I'm that kind of gamer.
5) It's buggy, but that 'acceptable for launch' kind of buggy. There's crashes here and there, some obvious bugs, but on the whole it's not a big issue. When you get to the outdoor zones out of newbieland (they really should make it an option to just start at level 20), you'll care more about the state of the content than the bugs, for the most part.
6) On the downside, the game relies heavily on instancing and zones. For outdoor zones that's not so bad (though frankly, this sort of thing always means that PVP will not be taken as seriously as it can be), but in dungeons it's downright atrocious. Who the hell makes a dungeon where you have to zone to other wings of the same dungeon? That's EQ technology.
7) While I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the game, it's clear that they blinked on the promise of PVP. You lose nothing by dying in PVP (Hell, if you die in PVP, get someone to PK you and you clear your debuffs - it's beneficial to die!), and right now you gain nothing by winning, other than annoying people and possibly getting them out of your hair. I'm not sure they have the stones to change this.
8) There are tradeskills in the game, but they're poorly implemented. Why does it seem that every MMO aside from EVE-Online approaches tradeskills in this way: "Okay, the rest of the game is made and should appeal to the widest range of person. All that's left are tradeskills. Now, what would someone with latter-days Howard Hughes level OCDs enjoy doing?" The main advantage of tradeskills is that gathering resources is so frustrating that I can already smell the blood that will be shed over resource nodes.
9) The environments are beautiful, but the models leave a lot to be desired. Everyone looks very 'budget Renfaire' to me, but I suppose that's what they really looked like in 10kBC or whenever this takes place hypothetically. I don't really mind though, since gameplay is all that matters to me. Conan could look like Billy D Williams for all I care.
10) The most worrying part of the game thus far is the anemic rate of patching. It's only been out a few days but.. the developers aren't talking to anyone at all, as near as I can tell. What are they thinking? Their game just launched and was a major success. Now is the time to start talking about all the great plans for AoC and what they're working on now.
11) Oh, the combat. It's fresh, and fun. Simple to learn, hard to master, particularly when it comes to PVP. It's odd how something as simple as combo button presses, at a lazy pace, adds a whole lot to the game. I'm not sure anyone is going to copy this, but they should - it's the sort of 'small step, giant leap' thing that has a lot of potential in games of this type.
12) The fatalities, however, are annoying. See, there's a certain % chance that you'll perform a fatality if you kill a character with a combo finisher. The problem is that a fatality locks you into a prolonged, supposedly cool-looking animation of you brutally slaying your foe. It grants a nice buff and is fine in a way, but several seconds of unbreakable animation means that a hostile player can get free hits in quickly. They should really implement temporary invulnerability during that stuff.

All in all, 'lots of potential, here's hoping they don't fuck it up'.

Templeton.

Sat, 17 May 2008 03:35:30 GMT

I like to check out the Templeton website now and then for science/religion news. It's an interesting outfit, science with a heavy focus on the relation between faiths in the world, and particularly the interplay between faith and science. Kind of an ecumenical organization (Foundation for a Better Life is another good one in that vein, more focused on daily living), though that hasn't stopped a some of the anti-theist science-heavy types from being angry at its very existence. Because if religious people can happily accept science with faith, the whole 'point' of science goes out the window for such people.

But anyway, recently they had a 'Big Question' series - asking some philosophers, theologians, scientists, and editorialists if science makes God obsolete. I've been reading through the responses (About half said no outright, and the rest were a mix between conditional 'no' and 'yes'), and figured I'd write up my thoughts on some.

Stephen Pinker's (On the 'yes' side) explanation starts out with..

Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral? Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

The problem is that Pinker's reply isn't all that convincing if you follow it closely - and his rendition of the questions sought through God is squirrelly to say the least. 'Where did the world come from?' in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam yielded a reply of 'God' with only the vaguest, seemingly poetic description of mechanism, and from what I've read the same has held in Hinduism and (if they even bother to address it) all forms of Buddhism. In other words, if it was 'one of the deepest puzzles about origins', interest in detail certainly was minimal for a long time.

What is the basis of life? Odd way to phrase it. What is the purpose, perhaps - but the western religious response has largely been 'to enjoy life, but be moral - and to find joy in sacrifice'. As for morality, it's a common canard that the impetus in Christianity is 'be moral or God will punish you' - but that falls apart the moment you look at the development of moral and general philosophy in Christian tradition. Nearly all 'moral' acts in Christianity aren't called so because God will condemn everyone to hell for not listening, but because they were rules for the good, benefit, and even enjoyment of humans. 'Natural law'.

"How the mind arises from the body" is a vague reference to soul - but in the Bible and Koran, the 'how' is barely referred to. Now, theologians explored the question, but even in the Catholic Church the questions were and are debated - while other faiths have their own typically vague considerations, aside from (and even here, not wholly inclusive) 'you are more than your body'. So one more time, if this was the point of God, most people seemed to do well enough without probing the question too deeply.

What I'm getting at here is that Pinker's trying to set up a 'role for God' that he thinks his view of secular and rational advancement can knock down - but the roles he defined were for most faiths either touched on only in the most vague ways (Mind arising from body, origin of the world) or were largely in the realm of the nature anyway (purpose of life, why be moral). My response would be that God has largely been sought out as an ultimate explanation, and typically a justification for (and expectation of) religion. Confusing God and religion is a big mistake.

Moving on, one finds more wrong with Pinker's stance. For one, his reference to the '6000 years ago' origin of the universe question makes one thing clear: First, he's treating the 'God' question as a purely Judaeo-Christian one. Second, he's unaware that Saint Augustine (far in advance of science ~400AD and a prominent theologian) and others did not think Genesis was meant to be interpreted in the most utterly literal sense - one day for God can be a thousand years, or instant, or any other number. He's also forgetting that Thomas Aquinas argued from the utterly opposite direction - he took the universe to have been eternally pre-existing (yet still requiring an unmoved mover for its existence and order - go read your Aristotle to understand this). So off the bat, the knock against Christianity gets stunted.

The third problem with this criticism is subtle. "If God created the universe, where did God come from?" Now, this normally is supposed to play out the following way: "Well, God is eternal/just exists." -> "Then we can just say the universe is eternal/just exists! God isn't needed as an explanation!" -> "Damnit!" Now, the Big Bang presents some difficulty for the eternal universe claim, but let's think about this another way. We not only have a universe, and not just a seemingly fine-tuned universe, but also a rational universe. If you accept that we have access to reason, and that the universe is operationally rational (and your mind is, in turn, capable of 'truly' grasping rationality), you have to ask yourself whether such a universe can A) Be eternal, and if it is, does that mean there are eternal principles (Hint: Principles are immaterial things) that govern it, and B) If it's not eternal, what sounds more likely: That rational, fine-tuned universes pop out of nothingness and produce reason-capable agents, or that both the universe and its rational principles have an, in turn, rational source.

What I'm getting at here is that the cost of accepting the rational world, when you get right down to it, is either God or something so close to God that you can't keep theists from claiming it as such. Your alternatives are either giving up on a rational existence (In which case science gets moved to the religion pile, thank you) or true agnosticism (Popular atheist move: All attack, claim you have no need for defense. But someone eventually realizes you're all criticism, no suggestion, and calls you out.) In other words, the more successful science and technology is, the stronger the case for God becomes.

Moving on, the rest of Pinker's bit is relatively unsurprising. He argues 'evolution explains the appearance of design in nature', but forgets that evolution isn't a thing - you can't get yourself a handful of evolution. It's a process, and effectively a tool. Like anything else, it's something an agent can use to accomplish a goal. So evolution at most can disprove proposed mechanisms (abiogenesis, except for the origin of life), but does nothing to an ultimate agent, aka, God.

Now, on neuroscience, Pinker's coming very close to an out and out lie: He gives the options of "It's not really a problem" versus "It's a problem science can solve" versus "It's physical, but can't be solved by humans". What he's leaving out is a considerable number of people - and I'm talking guys like David Chalmers and Jaegwon Kim, agnostics at the least who aren't religiously motivated - arguing that conscious experience can't be solved by known physics. In other words, it has the hallmark a non-physical but real problem. But there's another point to repeat with consciousness; 'God' never provided a solution to this problem, which is why even Christians range in view from Jehovah's Witnesses 'You no longer exist after death, but God will resurrect you' extremes to 'Your soul exists but sleeps until resurrection' views to 'Your soul exists and is conscious but barring divine infusion has no experience' views to 'Your soul exists, is conscious, and has experiences' views. In other words, we're back to the function of religion/philosophy.

On morality and nature, Pinker fluffs a bit. Again, put aside the easy criticism that evolutionary psychology is dismissed by many, and has a tendency to produce 'just so' stories. The fact is that casting questions of morality and conscience as 'purely biological' cannot be done, unless it's because you're arguing that since the brain/body is always involved in human choices, it must all be biological in nature. Reflection, learning, environment, and all kinds of external (and internal but abiological) distinctions abound. Oversimplification gets us nothing here.

Lastly, we're at morality itself. What Pinker's referring to here is Euthyphro's Dilemma, an old Socrates question. It goes like this: Is what is moral, moral, only because the gods decree it? Or do the gods obey what is objectively good? If the gods obey what is objectively good, you can't appeal to them as the source of morality. If good is what the gods decree, isn't that arbitrary?

I'd like to do a full entry on this sometime, but some comments in passing: Remember that this is a question related to Socrates. One horn of the question was the fact that the gods disagreed amongst themselves, and frankly the myths didn't always paint even Zeus in the best light. Not only that, but the gods Socrates was dealing with were themselves spawns of others such as Zeus, in turn a spawn of Cronus, in turn a spawn of Gaia, who was spawned out of Primal Chaos. In other words the greek pantheon themselves were not the unmoved movers, the ultimate grounding of existence, but rather contingent (in addition to capricious) beings. So right away, the original question was directed at a different target than the Judeao-Christian God.

Now, that's not to say the question isn't pertinent to God. There are some traditional responses; one is to identify God with goodness either in whole or in part, such that there's no real dilemma. Another is to argue that some morality is by decree, some is universal. I think there's value in a few of these responses, but I'll give a brief consideration of my own: For the purposes of the dilemma, it's worth pointing out that all morality is related to nature and situation. For instance, it's wrong to electrocute someone, but it's not wrong to use defrillibators on a heart attack patient. It may be moral to give someone some of your food, but not if you know they're allergic to some ingredients of the food. It's easy to see how a change in nature and situation changes morality (If the person was somehow cured of their allergy, it would no longer be immoral to give them food containing once-allergic ingredients. But if you didn't know they were cured, it would be immoral even if no physical harm came to pass.) If we accept this, and accept God as the creator and/or sustainer of the universe, an interesting result occurs: God becomes the source of morality because God arranged nature, and arranged the (lesser, intelligent) arrangers of nature in turn. Even if one tried to do what Pinker does and argue that morality must be independent from God (And I'd, frankly, favor the views that see God as containing good), God still is the essential source of good because God is the source of nature. So even at this point we haven't dispensed with God.

But with Pinker, the real take-home lesson is: He's zeroing in only on the Judaeo-Christian thought of God, and even there he's failing. By the way he frames his questions (Ignoring the variety of thought on the 6000-year-old-earth view, casually ignoring developments in philosophy of mind, casting questions of conscience as purely biological, passing of Euthyphro's Dilemma as a decisive argument rather than a contentious one, etc), I'd guess his reply has more to do with politics than his viewpoint.

Reviewing the other responses:

Cardinal Schonborn has the most unusual response of the lot, focused specifically on reductionism and scientism in general. I was a bit confused at first, since he took a different tone than many, but I think his take on the discoveries of science is pretty strong. Essentially, 'No, unless you're turning science into philosophy, but most people are pretty lackadaisical about faith anyway'.

William Phillips gives a nice, straightforward response - no, because of personal reasons and the order he sees in the universe as a physicist. Nice, and what you'd expect.

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy is unusual, mostly because I'd have thought guys like him would get their heads chopped off in Pakistan. His take on God is pretty odd - he seems to be saying 'Your God can't do anything that violates nature', but suspiciously seems to forget the whole 'Even the traditional religions see God as outside of nature' aspect. The same goes for his talk about unpredictability in quantum physics - it doesn't necessarily apply. On the other hand, he goes on to speculate that God is entirely capable of miracles via chaos theory. On the other other hand, he talks about how the God of the medieval era of religions are gone - but that was the time when theologians were talking about God being outside of time and working concordant with, not in violation of, nature. I think he has a point about the 'old trust', but part of this may be because he's from a decentralized Islamic tradition that had some issues with science. Whereas the Catholic Church (and other organized faiths, frankly) have always recognized that there's a distinct difficulty communicating the faith to the faithful, and tried to draw a distinction between seemingly legitimate miracles and superstition. Also, Hoodbhoy sounds like the name of someone I'd blow up in Team Fortress 2.

Mary Midgley comes out with a strong no, though it's primarily because she's got a long-standing axe to grind against scientism in general - the whole 'selfish gene' concept of biology, and natural selection as the prime mechanism of evolution. She has some interesting points, but I've heard all this before, so it wears less on me.

Robert Sapolsky goes with another atheist 'no', resting on the grounds of 'because religion fills people with ecstasy'. He's apparently confusing God with religion again, this time from another perspective. He proves as much with the 'religion has enough blood on its hands to darken the sea, and it's not an aberration but the logical consequence' bit. I don't know about Robert Sapolsky, but between the 20th century and history in general, I'd throw my 'less bloody' vote to the religious over the secular any day of the week. Don't believe me? Open a newspaper, hit the crime blotter. Count up how many crimes on any given day are religiously motivated. It's part of the reason why atheists have tried to write Stalin, Mao, and others off as 'religious because it was a personality cult even though it was a cult that espoused atheism'. On ther upside, that's one impressive beard.

Christopher Hitchens providing a 'no but it should', with some bizarre "Haven't thought this through, have you Hitchens?" arguments. Apparently the fact that the Andromeda galaxy may one day collide with ours somehow proves there's no God - nevermind that this isn't a certainty, and if it does happen it will take place over a billion years from now, and we'd have who knows what technology by then. This before getting into questions of consciousness, the Christian answers of God's plan, etc. The 'there's no evidence' line is a common one, but nonsense - there's plenty of circumstantial evidence. In fact, there's a tremendous amount. But there could never be falsifiable evidence of God even if God certainly did exist, even if God became embodied (again). Think about it: How does God prove He's God, and not just a really powerful ET, or a meagerly powerful one capable of deluding you? Either way, he goes on to rant and rave a little more (I guess people enjoy this), and then draws an interesting line in the sand: Religion is theism, not deism. Forget that this is not true: It's interesting that Hitchens would say this. Because it's followed my recent experience that some atheists love to argue, but only if they have nothing to defend, and only if they can pick their enemy (anthropomorphic God who created the universe 6000 years ago). Put deism on the table, which is really theism with weak if any religion, and they don't want to play. Because there's no counter to deism other than 'Primal Chaos' - remember who liked that one?

Keith Ward is a heavier hitter in debates like this, and the one who seems to be actually addressing the issue head on (by talking about God, rather than religion, and also talking about science). Essential argument is that science does jack-all against God - what's really going on is a philosophical fight, dueling metaphysics, and metaphysical fights never have a decisive end. If anything, science bolsters the case for God because the discoveries there have knocked both materialism and physicalism through several revisions (with more pending, depending on how consciousness and quantum physics turn out.)

Victor Stenger is basically a more animated version of Pinker with a worse beard than Sapolsky. 'No evidence' lie when circumstantial evidence abounds, and God cannot be proven even if He exists. He also talks about how before quantum physics, the sheer fact that matter existed indicated creation (Then why did all the scientists of the time presuppose an eternally existing universe?) He rattles off 'the universe could have come from nothing' without mentioning A) If it did, many religious people will take that as proof positive that they were correct, because they've been talking about ex nihilo creation for awhile, and B) There is no known true vacuum. We've got background energy. Stenger's another guy who smacks of political motivation, but the most telling part of his essay is how he tries to assert ex nihilo creation as somehow atheistic, and ignores the preceding view of an eternal universe.

Jerome Groopman - more beards! do you have to draw a beard lottery if you get a PhD? - mixing up God and religion again, but otherwise going the Keith Ward route of 'No, no conflict, separate spheres, and nothing in God/religion countermands science'. I'd disagree with his description of the clash - I don't see the religious as anti-science. They're anti-philosophy that tends to be smuggled in by some scientists or politicizers. America has a strong religious tradition and we love science. Israel's cutting edge, but they have a heavy concentration of orthodoxy, even among the younger generation.

Michael Shermer wriggles on this one, and throws out an interesting pitch: How will we know the difference between God and a sufficiently advanced ET? For all we know an ET will be able to do everything God will do! But, that just boomerangs around to screw with Shermer. Consider: If technology (note: technology is not science) is capable of achieving all the miracles typically attributed to God, you haven't vindicated atheism. You've vindicated Intelligent Design. But you're still not an unmoved mover, or the source of all being and existence. Yet you've justified viewing that mover, viewing that ultimate source, as both a being, and an omniscent, omnipotent, even omnibenevolent agent. You haven't made God obsolete; you've come as close to justifying the existence of God as is possible.

Ken Miller. Not a fan of him, mostly because of his rhetoric, even if I hold skepticism of intelligent design. He draws a fair enough distinction between science and God, though the view that God cannot be part (but not wholly described by) of nature is his own. Panentheism views nature as wholly within God while God still lies outside of nature in part. Interesting end point for him.

Stuart Kauffman takes the ultimate middle ground, the emergentist route. Arguing that reductionist science cannot provide a complete account of the universe, but that God must become wholly naturalistic (within nature, rather than outside). Interesting contrast to Ken Miller and other views - so apparently even if you work within the naturalist framework, you're not getting rid of God because you still have to grapple with immaterial and eternal principles. Admittedly, Kauffman offers this up as a 'symbol', yet symbols represent something. Pantheism? That doesn't seem right, and he seems to know it. In the end, he's punting - God is still valid, but that Christian God has just got to go. His closing paragraph indicates he's not really familiar with even the much-maligned Old Testament God. Seems like the sort of person who'd go on about how 'God forbade Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of knowledge! But knowledge is good!', only to blink when you tell them 'It was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was related to morality, not science.'

And that's all for now. Oh, I've also picked up GTA4 for the 360, yell if you want me to shoot at you.

Grobal Wawa?

Fri, 16 May 2008 08:07:50 GMT

By the way, if you'd really like to know what I think about Global Warming, you may be interested in the case I lay out on another site.

Hey look

Thu, 01 May 2008 08:38:17 GMT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aU.evtnk6DPo&refer=worldwide - Some good news! Global warming may be stunted for 10 years. Take that, Earth!

Actually, I've learned you can't be happy about news like this. People freak out and get 'they are not onboard with the program' vibes, and come over to remind you that global warming is VERY REAL and VERY DANGEROUS. Approaching the subject with optimism will infect others, resulting in complacency! Fear is the greatest weapon we have in this debate!

And so on and so forth. I'm willing to believe in global warming. Hell, I'm willing to believe in a lot of things. But, just as an experiment, take that link and send it to someone you know who's very concerned about global warming. Act happy, say 'I thought you might like to see this - good news! :)' I'm willing to bed the typical response will be restrained anger that you'd dare minimize the problem.

Speaking of environmental issues, the 'biofuel is raising the price of food!' debate is annoying me. I'm a big believer in biofuels - mostly because I take the question of energy and renewable/domestic resources seriously. So finding out that the worldwide biofuel crop of choice is corn, which on every chart I look at happens to be the ass-last crop in terms of fuel-conversion efficiency, is annoying. It kills the biofuel concept, because most people won't realize that there are vastly better alternatives to corn.

In other news, my GTA4 copy won't work, because I have a particularly fucked up PS3 60gb apparently. I can barely beat a stranger to death before a lockup occurs!

Whoops.

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:34:32 GMT

Scared off a couple Jehovah's Witnesses today.

10:00am, Misterpengo's room

*doorbell*
Pengo: Grmph. May be a freaking delivery, better get up.
*gets up in clothes slept in, goes to door, outside of which a nice and young husband/wife couple are standing*
Pengo: Yep?
Man: Oh, I'm sorry, did we wake you up?
Pengo: Yeah, don't sweat it, what's up?
Man: Oh, well, I wanted to ask if you if you believe there's one true religion.
Pengo. o O ( Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, or Moonies. )
Pengo: Yeah, sure, why not.
Man (Both him and wife a little worried-looking at dealing with towering, groggy looking slavic stranger): Well, I didn't mean to disturb you, but I wanted to read you a quote from the bible quick if you don't mind.
Pengo: Go for it.
Man flips through bible rapidly, finds page.
Man: *something about Christ saying that many people follow him but not what he said*
Pengo: Sounds reasonable.
Pengo. o O ( These people are less annoying than standup comics have led me to believe. )
Man: Anyway, we'll come back another time, but we have some reading material for you. Me and my wife are just going door to door.
Pengo. o O ( Hey, free stuff. )
Pengo: Thanks a lot, catch ya later.

No, I wasn't annoyed. In fact they were pleasant types, so I had no complaints. And the reading material was two magazines - something called Awake, with 'The Watchtower' slipped inside of it. I suppose because everyone knows The Watchtower is JW's publication, and I suppose if people see that they get spooked immediately.

I flipped through the papers. Typical JW stuff, mostly uplifting stories and biblical commentary. Was very interested to see them employing design arguments in both mags. Not the Behe/Dembski Irreducibile Complexity propositions, or even creationism - but a general posit of 'Here's the compound eye of the insect. This is how advanced this is. Did it arrive by chance, or was it the result of design?' I think it's a powerful argument, and again, I think this simplified form is what pisses off so many about it - theists are poised to turn on their heels and claim all of evolution as gapless design in one fell swoop. They have to shake off some lingering fights, and the young earth creationist view, but more and more I'm starting to see biology and cosmology as fields religious types of all persuasions (particularly orthodox, no less) rely on for proving their points.

I always dwell on this topic, but I was actually thinking earlier that Schopenhauer and other atheist philosophers who regarded life as not worth living (hinged on God not existing, life being meaning, existence being a sham) are actually anti-darwinian to a larger degree than their theistic counterparts. After all, one lesson hundreds of millions of years of evolution has made abundantly clear is that the desire to live is nearly a fundamental principle of our known universe. Hell, if you buy into abiogenesis, then life will spring forth from nonliving matter and persist in every way possible. All of humanity, and all that exists, is built on the back on the operating principle that life is perhaps the most desirable thing in the universe, the grounding of being itself. 'My God is the God of the living', indeed.

Oh, comments enabled for friends. What a neat function.

Okay, but how do I win his money?

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:40:25 GMT

I'm not really an ID proponent, sympathetic as I am to some of their theological views. Certainly not a creationist. In fact, despite being essentially Catholic, I'm very skeptical when it comes to claims of miracle or supernatural (though my thoughts on both are complicated). So why am I posting this trailer?

Frankly, because I think it's well done. And it pisses off the right people. Until there's a reasoned intellectual armistice that removes smuggled-in philosophy from science, the ID argument is every bit as 'scientific' as what prominent atheists argue are the metaphysical realities laid out by science. We've proven 'chance' as much as we've proven 'divine' insofar as it comes to "a force at work behind the universe".

But really, I'm just in a pissy mood today. By the way, I'll be re-enabling comments for people who are on my friends list, because I found out I can do that.

I have some bad news for you, Enlightenment Thinker.

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:00:37 GMT

Another theology/philosophy thread. Go hit 4chan if this is not your thing.

I'd LJ-Cut this, but can't get that to work, so here we go.

Ockham's razor. Wikipedia, which is a crapfest, gives this definition for the principle:

"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities.

This often gets brought out to justify a kind of methodological naturalism with regards to science. Fair enough. It also tends to be abused utterly, particular when it comes to controversial subjects - the most common use is 'God created the universe, and God just exists. Or, the universe just exists. Ockham's razor slices the former.' This line was popular before "Flying Spaghetti Monster" usurped it for the position of 'mating cry of the ignorant schmuck'. But, I digress.

Let's put Ockham aside for the moment, so I can discuss something that's always bothered me about scientific discussions: Randomness. The funny thing is that, outside the context of scientific discussions, I absolutely love practical randomness as a concept - it's a central design principle for my favorite games, and I think its general utility and situational attractiveness is considerable. I'm almost a Discordian on the subject. But in scientific explanations, the reliance always struck me as odd - as if it was a metaphysical conjecture. There are a lot of references randomness in evolution (mutations, species development, etc), in cosmology, and so on. In these contexts, randomness being the assumption that these situations or developments are under no guidance, serve no purpose, are foreseen by no one - they just happened, and if it led to something (subjective, of course!) positive or negative, oh well, that's just luck. Insofar as God goes, the reigning attitude is similar to Laplace's famous response to Napoleon when it was pointed out his scientific treatise on the order in the universe left out references to God - "I have no need for that hypothesis."

The French. What're you gonna do, eh?

At first my response was an objection on metaphysical and practical grounds. From our perspective, these events may be random insofar as we ourselves cannot predict them. "For all practical purposes, random". But the speculation on whether things are 'really' random (rather than orchestrated by God, etc) is itself useless. In science, all you have to do is define what happened in a microcosm - 'this genome developed this mutation which led to this trait which', etc. You don't need to even broach the subject of teleology in any way - leave that to others. Especially because design in such an ultimate sense is beyond the power of science to detect. (Or for that matter, rule out. I have to draw the line at Intelligent Design for myself, because I truly, honestly because that you cannot bridge that design gap purely by conventional scientific methods. The ability to test for intentional is extraordinarily difficult for typical human beings and less complicated entities. For a superpowered but still conventionally material being, more difficult. For God, even if God is a brute fact, impossible. On the other hand, I see Intelligent Design as having popped up in response to smuggled in philosophy that asserts science has 'proven God was/is not involved'. The irony is that that is an Intelligent Design claim; if you assert the latter and call it science, you open the door for those in the former position to come in as a dissenting yet still scientific view. More on this another time.)

Recently, I realized that the situation is more grave than that. Somehow I came up with this while I was driving around at 4am, feeling restless. Since then, I've been trying to find where the flaw is - I see none. Listen carefully.

1. There are two fundamental ways for events to occur in the universe. Chance (unguided stuff just bounces around and, through the established laws of the universe, comes to a particular result/state) or intention (an intelligent being with the ability to act orchestrates processes and material towards a particular result/state).
2. We have a priori knowledge of the second 'force' - each of us engages in acts of intention routinely. We certainly know that intention exists.
3. Meanwhile, randomness - 'events that are unpredicted/unforeseen' - is merely postulated to exist. We have less direct evidence that the unorchestrated exists than we do the orchestrated - even when we get results contrary to our intentions, the entire set of events could itself be in accordance with the intention of another being.
4. In principle, absolutely every event - from the motions of atoms and smaller to the occurrences on/with planets and greater - could be orchestrated intentionally. Put another way, 'for everything we say resulted due to the force of chance, we could in turn say resulted due to the force of intention'.
5. Since intention can in principle explain everything chance explains, and we only have evidence of intention, Ockham's razor demands we remove chance as an explanation. "Randomness" is the equivalent of the phlogiston.

So what does this mean? It means that, philosophically, science cannot be grounded in atheism - because atheism presumes the existence of a force we have no direct evidence of. Methodological naturalism must, at heart, be built on a foundation of what is effectively deism. Every advance in our science - from the human understanding of fundamental forces in physics, to unlocking the biological history of evolution, to the introduction of computation and simulation - adds more (circumstantial) evidence to deism, and weakens the scientific case for chance, and therefore atheism.

I'm not saying that science proves there is a God. And certainly, even if there is a God, it doesn't make any particular religion true. But I'm pointing out that, if we're going to take rationalism and Occam's razor seriously, only deism escapes as the most rational philosophical position. Atheism is in the same boat as the greek pantheon - it proposes inexplicable, unobserved, unnecessary entities.

Where am I ultimately going with this? Well, towards two destinations.

One, this justifies my position in regarding the claims of Intelligent Design to be outside the scientific (but within the philosophical) realm, as well as my position as equating Chance believers with being on the same unstable ground as ID proponents when it comes to explaining the findings of science.

Two, it explains why - despite the love atheists have for employing their quotes - both William of Ockham and Pierre-Simon Laplace were Catholic.

From..

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:33:42 GMT

From "A Man For All Seasons" - a scene I forgot about, but was reminded of by John C. Wright's link.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Normally, I'm not much for quotes. This one is inspiring, but it's missing something. So here's another.

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

From John Adams.

I think that's enough.

Lost Souls

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:35:06 GMT

Game and random talk today.

I'm still playing Lost Souls MUD on and off. The skill system they're using is an example of what I think is an extremely well thought out, intricate webwork of design. It defies concise explanation, because a single skill can alter a variety of variables - sword skill adds to your attack rating (likelihood to successfully hit with a sword), damage rating (amount of damage you do with a sword), keep capacity (amount of 'credit' you have and can put towards retaining an item over a reboot or logout), and so on. The best way to explain it would be to provide my character as an example and flesh it out, but I'll do that another time.

Feeling a bit out of it tonight. Too much philosophy, politics, and cosmology reading I think. The funny thing is, I don't entirely read these things for my own sake - but it breaks my heart whenever I come across an argument where people are fumbling with ideas they don't understand or can't articulate, or worse, coming to conclusions that everyone tells them are the only possibility when that's far from the case. I've never been a big fan of intellectual bullying. Or at least I haven't been for a long time now. Nevertheless, I'll have to read up on Michael Heller's work - the guy just snagged a Templeton prize, and he's an admirer of Leibniz, who I will do an entry on in the future. Theoretical models of penultimate designer and sustaining of the universe are things I enjoy reading up on. Also, porn.

Oh, picked up a car too. Fell in love with it on the spot - a 1983 Black on black 300D Mercedes. In beautiful shape, turbo diesel, readily moddable to run all kinds of biofuels if I so desire. But what really sold me is the appearance and the interior - finally, a car where my knees aren't on the damn dashboard. Slow acceleration, but who cares? Let someone run into me if they want, this car is a tank.

Back to games. Still a big fan of Monster Hunter 2 Freedom for the PSP - actually, I'm surprised at how the PSP in general has developed - finding out little things about the hardware that I never realized or appreciated, like the save state it has and such. Also, I'm looking into the iPhone more and more. Seeing what my brother accomplishes with it impresses me. I resisted getting one because I'm not a big fan of the apple hype, but hey, if it's as functional and convenient as it seems to be..

Politics - yeah, I'm just jumping around here - remains boring for me. Not a big fan of Obama, charismatic as he is. Kind of getting sick of the heartfelt appeals I keep reading about on blog sites too. Not at all in my memory has a candidate inspired such vapid declarations of fealty from so many - everyone talks about the feelings and thoughts Obama inspires. Hope. Pride. More hope. Change. Actually, that about covers it. It's actually pretty depressing to me, as it screams "people will pretty much back anyone who can make a stirring speech and maintain the right image". It doesn't help that I regard maudlin routines as a negative sign. I was an adamant supporter of Pat Buchanan, but even though the guy is a master communicator, it always came down to the philosophy, the policy intentions, the details. I don't cast a vote because of the emotion it will stir in my heart. Actually, I don't vote at all. Not for these guys, anyway. As an aside, anecdotally, the same people who usually praise Obama's vision and presence and positiveness usually pull a knife out and gut Hillary when the subject switches to her. I get a kick out of that.

Easter's coming up too. Various reflections there. Looks like it should be peaceful this year too, unlike last year. Oh, btw - if anyone ever wants to comment on these LJ things, contact me, or throw an email to misterpengo@gmail - really, I disallow comments because I reject the comment culture that most blogs and sites nowadays try to foster. Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that many comment sites feature more content from the original contributor, by far, in the comment section than in the original post section? But I've done this rant before.

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:15:38 GMT

I had an odd dream. Already the details escape me, but it involved delicious donuts, bishops, friends of mine, teleportation, and the loss of delicious donuts.

I was at a Knights of Columbus style meeting where people were talking about fundraising activities. I was there because I was somewhat interested in the goings-on and also, hey, free donuts! I mean, these were GOOD donuts. Really unbelievably unhealthy, oil-laden, and I had a bag of them. Some nice old lady started to talk about how she originally was the one to suggest these donuts for a fund-raiser and how she's working on some new recipes. The people said, oh, those recipes sound like what we're already using.

I say, heyyyy, I'm willing to try out your recipe. :9 She's nice enough, says okay.. and suddenly I'm teleported out. Except, oddly enough, I'm teleported to hell. But it's okay, because it's like.. text-game, Get Ye Flask hell. Utterly not intimidating. I exit there soon enough, then realize a friend of mine somehow messed with a teleportation ability. I approach them and say, damn you, you teleported me out of the middle of a good meeting - and also, I lost my fucking donuts! They end up running off in anger. Last thing I remember is contacting them to apologize, while trying to figure out how to get back to the meeting. Was.. talking with someone, but .. hrm.. I was having trouble, as I was moving down the road at a high velocity while talking with them, and they had bad hearing, so they had to keep teleporting forward to continue the conversation.

Been a busy day. And no, I'm not hungry. Haven't had donuts in weeks even. Go figure.

Oh, by the way.

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:53:37 GMT

Regarding the media blackout on Prince Harry.

I normally don't give a shit about royals talk, even if I vaguely like Prince Charles. But does anyone find the explanation that there was a media blackout because the journalists/editors were dearly concerned for the Prince's safety.. to be a load of bull? Notice how they leave out that part that, in the negotiations with the royals, these guys were promised all kinds of exclusive stories and information after he had finished his tour of duty. The red flag should be that the decision to Do The Right Thing was arrived it in *negotiations*, not independently volunteered. Quid pro quo.

On THAT note, does anyone see the fact that a government is able to cut deals - collectively - with a huge portion of the press as being, I dunno.. creepy? Granted, this is over in Europe - a place where (and I say this with apologies to my european friends) any amount of democracy and individual rights were things gradually allowed by the powers that be, and where cultural tradition favors reliance on a prime central authority without exception. For example, English "democracy" grew out of Queen Victoria being so distraught over the loss of her husband that she removed herself from politics to a considerable degree. France had a revolution, the atheists and deists killed a lot of people for awhile, then they had Napoleon - an autocrat so powerful that even after being exiled, his legacy lives on in Napoleonic-everything, from legal systems to measurements for bread. And Germany? Ha ha. Germany got so out of hand the rest of the west had to occupy them so they'd settle down. You hear that, Germany? We had to give you treatment normally reserved for countries like Haiti, or Liberia! Get over your horribly lingering Nietzche phase too. Seriously, ask yourself why we consider Europe 'democratic' sometime, when the concept is at best an artificial and recent part of their collective culture.

Anyway, enough of the American cockwaving. Not like we're any better with our shitty two-party system - it's more embarassing because we, at least, started out with a blood-won respect for individual freedom. The point is, the whole affair just illustrates why we have to resist that strange manufactured lie that 'freedom of the press' specifically refers to journalists in the employ of a paper or network owned by one of 3-4 megaconglomerates. I'm part of the press. So are you. We all have - or deserve to have - every bit of freedom to investigate and report as guys who got a journalism degree. And why? Because - get ready for it - the individual is the ultimate checks-and-balance system. It takes one Matt Drudge type to take a story the big networks spiked, and tell everyone about it. Or it only takes one obnoxious, full-of-himself blogger to do some research and point out that hey, Dan Rather is actually full of shit. But it requires an individual awareness and responsibility. Believe that only 'those guys on TV' can be members of the press, and you're dead in the water.

Updates!

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:11:39 GMT

Hey look, it's not a post about religion or politics!

General update on what I'm doing. Yeah, exciting, eh?

* Work. Shift to focus heavily on ebay and manufacturing lately. The former's difficult as I need items selected for me by my family, and currently my brother is trying to monopolize the quality items. Hey, he does a great job with them, so whatever. Trying to finish up learning about basics of PHP and general web coding for an online game of my own ground-up design. Also trying to come up with some manufacturing ideas, since my brother bullied my family into getting him a CNC machine. If you can't beat him, use his machine. Also doubles as lessons for 3D modelling for me, so hey.

* Lent. Ditched anything chocolate and cake-like during it, and managing to meet the no-meat-on-fridays rule reasonably. More people should do this - Catholicism aside, it's nice to be able to give up something unnecessary on command. Did you know there are some rites of eastern christianity which fast for 200+ days? Makes muslims and their ramadan look like the professional eaters at a casino buffet.

* Games. Focusing heavily on an old favorite, Lost Souls MUD. Haven't mudded in a damn long time, but since MMOs are currently - how should I put this - made for retards (save EVE-Online, which is made for accountants), I have to go where the complexity and development is prime. Amazingly, LS (lostsouls.org 3000 btw) is still under active development, and just finished a ranger guild revamp. To this day the game contains design philosophies that are golden, and my previous post did not do justice to what they have since accomplished. They deserve far more players, and far more attention. Oh yeah, also into Audiosurf thanks to Hit Points Guy or whoever he is in LJ-world. Rather fun to throw in Willy Wonka music. Meanwhile, awaiting new games (Patapon) and general gaming developments (TF2 updates, etc.) Not sure what mood I'm in for that lately.

* Been wrestling with computer issues, seem mostly solved saved for a telnet problem which is apparently modem related. Add two sticks of ram, get bug hell.

* Oddness. Been reading up on scientology and the Lyndon Larouche. By the time I'm done, I want to be able to perform a 'touch assist' at will, which is moot because I don't plan on touching anyone anytime soon. I know Scientology is some big crazy cult, but a lot of these teachings I'm coming across seem downright mundane, if a bit OCD-ish. They claim you can make a drunk person sober by pointing at things and telling them to say what they are. The funny thing is, I'm willing to bet this has a noticable positive effect on a willing person, even if it doesn't exactly 'make them sober', but instead just makes them more lucid and focused at that moment. Larouche's stuff (remember, I'm not reading everything, just what I have access to) is a lot more comical - the guy has a thing for flair, I'll give him that. On the other hand, LaRouche is also well-versed in history (or at least whoever is writing his pamphlets is), so my reactions tend to vary from 'There's an international conspiracy to reprogram people's minds through the wikipedia? Baloney' to 'Bertrand Russell was a tremendous liar and obsessed with sexual perversion? Well, duh'. You may wonder why I'm bothering to read deeply into what everyone agrees are the two greatest lunatic-conjobs around right now. The reason is multifold - one, to learn about them at their source and have a personal understanding of what they're saying. Two, to be able to identify what they're wrong about and explain why in proper detail. And three, to understand and realize if they may well be right about anything whatsoever. For a long time now, I've maintained a personal standard of giving the devil his due - admitting to someone being correct when they're correct, even if I disagree with them. It's a philosophy with tremendous benefits, and it's paying off here once again. Even if I keep confusing Lyndon with Lipton, those soup guys. Lipton LaRouche.. I'll have to think about that.

* Food. Been getting ahold of great, unique foods at the farmer's market. Raw honey is now a staple for me, as are mushrooms - which I get in tremendous amounts for a dollar. Got some great tasting, powerful wine as well, though I'm not big on alcohol in general. Weird foods have been pig feet souse, beef tongue souse, and my favorite, scrapple. Also conch meat and skate. I can't sing the praises enough for raw honey, as it (to me) tastes better, and I vastly prefer the very firm texture of it in general. Oddly enough, it's sold by a very religious family that are part of Faith Assembly of God, which I can recall instantly because of its unfortunate acronym. For all the religion-defense, atheism-critical blogging I do, I should admit that anyone who self-describes as 'born again' puts me off a little. It's not so much the declaration, as it is the tendency for it to come with this strange lilt in the voice and a habit of repeating seemingly memorized phrases. Oddly, I get the same vibe off pro-abortion types - nothing's creepier than hearing that 'a woman's right to choose' (Always with 'choose' kinda dangling there, the 'abortion' word sliced right out) in the same droning monotone as a rote memorized prayer. Everyone worships something. Anyway, it's made a bit worse as the guy who sells this stuff has dark hair and light blue eyes. I don't know why, but that combination has always bothered me. It's irrational, but if I were a dog, I'd snarl at people with those features without provocation. Damn spice addicts!

* Tech. I got ahold of a roomba. Man, that thing makes life easier, so long as you rearrange your room so nothing is on the floor. Oh, I also go ahold of a new camera. I can put something on the lens and snap a photo with clear results - super-macro mode is amazing, and makes my job easier.

Ah well, later.

Lesson time!

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:27:20 GMT

Time for a little news.

Did you know 70% of religious people don't think nanotechnology is morally acceptable? Hey, this Wall Street Journal blog says as much. A survey was taken - starting off with the very even-handed claim of "If you don’t have a super-fast, super-small computer in a few years, blame the moral majority. It turns out that most Americans find nanotechnology, the scientific field most likely to produce such a breakthrough, morally unacceptable."

That's right. Religious people aren't just making you feel guilty when you masturbate. Now they're making it harder to get good computers.

And that's far from the only site reporting this. Oh, browse the links if you're bored - chances are you're not, and I commend that. But you'll find wide-eyed awe at the fact that, gee, these religious people just hate science. Over a the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, we've got a guy ("Public intellectual"? Fuck you.) talking about how this story shows how we "need a direct, long-term, unremitting campaign to weaken the cognitive and moral authority of religion. We need to attack the root of the problem by doing whatever we can to create a more rational and sceptical ethos in Western societies, the US above all."

Skepticism. You know what that means to this guy? It means reacting in a very politically-charged manner to a news story about a survey, and not bothering to check into it deeper.

See, I couldn't believe it. 70% of Americans believe nanotechnology is morally unacceptable? It doesn't add up. The quoted scientist gives some muddled explanation, talking about how Americans are 'lumping nanotechnology in' with other sciences - but he also mentions that this view stays even with Americans who are judged to be better informed about the science.

So, I decided to dig.

http://nanopublic.blogspot.com/ - Found the blog of the guy who wrote the article, while digging for resources. Still didn't access the paper itself, but I did find information on the question he was referring to. Here's a link.

Notice anything funny going on here?

First, the way the survey works. "For each of the following issues regarding nanotechnology, please tell me if you agree or disagree with it." - And they're using a 5 point scale with a 0 midpoint. You know the drill - 'Strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, neutral, somewhat agree, strongly agree'. And four statements are provided:

* Nanotechnology is morally acceptable.
* Nanotechnology is useful for society.
* Nanotechnology is risky for society.
* Nanotechnology should be encouraged.

The fact that there's a net positive response in America (Though certainly lower that in the 3 European countries surveyed) goes unmentioned in these articles. Also unmentioned the fact that they aren't gauging whether Americans think nanotechnology is morally unacceptable - they're asking if they agree with a claim that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. They may be hesitant to call it morally acceptable if they aren't fully informed of what the scope of nanotechnology covers. They may be somewhat aware, but think 'morally acceptable' is a bizarre phrasing for what they may think is morally neutral. This while noticing that even in Europe, there's a considerable gulf between the number of UKers who agreed with the first statement, and the number of French who agreed with same. But France and the UK both score under 5 in terms of religiosity - so apparently, something more is in play here.

Now, if that response were by itself, it would be one thing. But notice the three other statements, and America's performance. 'Nanotechnology is useful for society'? High responses, far higher than the (already positive) average of Americans who think nanotechnology is morally acceptable. A negative agreement to the statement 'nanotechnology is risky for society'. But - and here's the killer - a damn positive result for 'nanotechnology should be encouraged'.

Why are the results of this survey being sliced to a single question, and the results misrepresented to make it look as if Americans (particularly religious Americans) dislike and seek to discourage nanotechnology, when the survey itself shows very positive views of its usefulness *as well as* the idea that it should be encouraged?

On the blog, we get another graph.

Along with this explanation: "And again, this is not just about a simple correlation between religiosity and attitudes toward science, which is important in its own right. But in this case, we're talking about a link between benefit perceptions and attitudes that varies depending on respondents' levels of religiosity. In other words, seeing the benefits of nanotechnology is consistently linked to more positive attitudes ... at least among less religious respondents. For more religious respondents, in contrast, that effect is significantly weaker, and seeing the benefits of nano does not necessarily translate into support for the technology or future funding (see Figure 2)."

What the hell is he talking about? Go by their own charts - people with perceived high and low religiosity have the same 'support for nanotechnology' when they view the benefits to be low. When they view the benefits to be greater, *support among both the high and low religiosity respondents spikes*, going from roundabout 5 to just under 7.5 for low religiosity, and at 6.5 for high religiosity. Yes, there is a difference in the degree between the low and high - but the explanation spins the results. 'At least among less religious respondents'? No, among both - but the blogger tries desperately to downplay that, with an 'at least', 'significantly weaker', and then a throwaway line about how seeing the benefits does not necessarily translate into support or future funding.

There's more than one problem at work here. First is the typical issue with surveys nowadays - the survey only gets you results for the questions you ask, and even that (as anyone who watched McCain's ascendancy, and Hillary's descent) is complicated. When you start to explain *why* you go the results you did, you're a step further away from the support of data, and a step closer to magic make-up-stories land. The second is also sadly typical - the data gets translated and spun in the most interesting or desirable way. Here, the push is to show religious Americans, and religion in general, as hobbling science. So suddenly, only one stat of four is relevant to reporting - and even that stat is phrased in a suspect way (Going from the average 5-point response of American to 'Nanotechnology is morally unacceptable' to 'Only 30% agreed that nanotechnology is morally unacceptable' - And frankly, I'd love to see how many Americans voted neutral, considering the net average was still fairly positive). The result is you have people running around wildly misinterpreting the data, ranting about the injustice of it all, and not looking at the source (or looking, and not mentioning.)

So what's the lesson here? Be a skeptic - a real skeptic. When you hear about scientific results, don't just swallow what you read second-hand. Either go for the data and understand it yourself, or accept it conditionally while realizing you may not have the whole story. Remember at all times that journalists - and yes, even scientists - are human, and may well be playing a biased angle. Because frankly, far too many people nowadays - and you may as well add me to the list to be safe - hone their words, their views, and their interpretations to achieved a desired reaction among others. In the age of the internet and the availability of data, that's one trick that needs to be more consistently exposed.

Thought of the night.

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:27:00 GMT

Where would hentai anime creators be without looping animation?

What you don't remember.

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 11:02:36 GMT

I've had trouble getting interested in the political races this time around. Here's a brief rundown of the candidates I'm aware of, and my views on them.

Huckabee: Fiscally liberal, socially conservative. I wasn't aware creatures like this still existed. He terrified the GOP, which I appreciate.
Giuliani: Remember when he was the front-runner? Not a fan of his 9/11 routine. Was looking forward to him taking the primary, so I could see his cross-dressing-skit played on TV every day until election.
Romney: Hey, I like mormons. They're nice people. Sure, he flip-flopped - you would too if you were a Republican running in Massachusettes.
McCain: Woah, where'd he come from? The GOP hates him, but they seem to hate everyone this time around. I like the idea of a complete hothead running the country during an overseas adventure.
Paul: Ah, Ron Paul. I fell in love with his candidacy the day I heard about it. That's when I knew he would never, ever win. No, don't backtalk to me, I did this dance with Buchanan twice already.

Were there any others? Who knows. Who cares. Aside from Paul, I'm relatively apathetic about all of them. On the Democratic side..

Clinton: I'm surprised her platform isn't expressly 'vote for me, and my husband will be the one running the show. Seriously, it's a loophole. Exploit it.'
Dennis Kucinich: I beg your pardon, but I don't think his wife is as hot as everyone insists. Freckles look like skin cancer to me. That's all I have to say about this one.
Obama: Charismatic, or so everyone keeps fucking telling me.

About Obama: I think he's extremely personable. Keep in mind that I say this as a man who hates everyone - I don't persuade easily. When I saw his little op-ed where he wrote about the importance of faith and religion, his attitude towards it, etc, I had to admit the guy has one hell of a way to cajole. On personality, the guy comes across wonderfully. As a person, as a communicator, I like him. I really do.

But guess what? You don't remember it, but once upon a time, George Bush was one of the most likeable people to occupy the Oval Office. And Dick Cheney was even more popular than him. See, no one remembers this - no one remembers how, on The Daily Show (Which, let's be honest, is a funny, explicitly left-wing show), you could practically smell the soaked panties during the Lieberman-Cheney debate. 'Why can't we be voting for THESE guys?' Bush was a bit of a bumpkin, but he was nice. Sincere seeming. Down home. Cheney, meanwhile, was experienced. Authoritative. Businesslike.

Well, now everyone hates them. But they forget how much they used to like them - and not just 'like them better than the alternative', but actually viewed in a positive way, based on their personality. So why should I judge anyone based on that? Or at least, why judge them strongly based on how inspiring they can sound.

As for his record, he doesn't have much of one. 'He's not a Washington insider' you tell me. Again, I have a problem with that. Here's an illustration.

Let's say you have a business. You need to pick a manager. Your goal is to make money however possible, and the person can change the business direction if they so choose. But the current business model is very old, well-established, etc. It has plenty of regulars, it makes an alright amount of money as is.

By the way: The business is currently 'hardcore pornography and fetish store'.

Let's consider our options. You can choose someone with a considerable amount of experience in the porn industry (McCain, Clinton, for the purposes of this example.) They know all the ins and outs, from the standard Playboy and Maxim level fare to guro hentai, latex fetishist, and other such. They know all of the age-of-consent and obscenity laws in the area, and probably are on a first name basis with the hardcore addicts who really are the store regulars. You can be certain they'll stay the course and be fairly adept at the day to day routine. Hell, they may even ramp up sales. Not much will change overall, though. Maybe McCain will have more of a focus on girl on girl and cut back on the fetishist selection, while Clinton will expand the selection into transgender porn and bestiality. But chances are you can tell how they'll run things, and they certainly won't depart from the business theme altogether.

On the other end of the scale you have guys like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. Now, these guys are well aware of how government works, but they aren't necessarily insiders - they're more like watchers. They don't like the business, think the regulars are creeps, and want to completely redo things. Buchanan wants to phase out porn, focus heavily on the 'standard' mags like Penthouse, Playboy, and possibly Hustler, but make a shift towards a specialty bookstore clientele. Paul could give two shits about porn - he wants to get rid of it entirely and set up an off-track betting site. Hey, it's a lot more respectable, but who knows how much appeal it's going to have and how hard it will be to set up. And how do you guard against counterfeit liberty dollars anyway?

Now, we look at Obama. He's open-minded, but has no real connection to the porn industry. So unlike Buchanan and Paul, he's not going to change the business. But unlike McCain and Clinton, he's not jaded and planning to engage in business as usual. The hopes are high - maybe this guy will approach the subject in a whole new way! Maybe he'll only sell porn from full-fledged amateurs who aren't being oppressed by a sordid and mob-connected lifestyle! Maybe he'll chase away all the serious perverts and create a culture that only appreciates upscale, tasteful erotica!

One problem. See, the guy may not be jaded, but chances are he's surrounding himself with people who are. He isn't a career porn dealer, but he's not a career anything else either - he has some plans, but is uninformed about how to get them implemented, and what the specifics should be. His advisors will get him up to speed as soon as possible. So the machine he's opposing today is probably going to be the machine he's working tomorrow. It's not enough to merely be fresh - you also need to have a plan in place to revamp things, and 'changing the tone' means he's probably going to walk in with big, nebulous plans, then settle for putting some pamphlets about porn addiction recovery in the corner of the store. The rest of the time, he's going to run things the way McCain and Clinton would, but he'll not inspire an automatic feeling of revulsion in half his clientele.

In other words: If you want a reformer, someone who will change things drastically and hopefully for the better, vote for Ron Paul or Ralph Nader. If you want someone reliable who will just do what you'd expect any politician to do, vote Clinton or McCain. If you want someone who's probably going to be in over his head and will end up not changing much while doing what his advisors tell him to do, vote Obama. You may notice that I'm not playing off McCain/Clinton as being better choices. That's because I don't think they are (though I'll favor McCain in a vague 'maybe he'll do things I support more often' defeatist way), but because.. I really do not care. Unless something amazing happens, I don't plan on voting for any of these idiots anyway.

Hey.

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:16:54 GMT

It's Ash Wednesday.

Just thought I'd mention that.

I'm giving you a hand. Get it?

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:41:36 GMT

This post gets into boring theological stuff. If you're like most people, you'll wisely skip over this. Enter, LJ-Cut!

One semi-popular internet debate tact re: God and (in this case, particularly Christian) religion is the 'Why does God hate amputees?' line. It's lesser known than the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but it's also a good example of why I love the english language and communication in general: You're able to, in a single sentence, say a hell of a lot more than than your sentence alone formally lays out. I'm dealing with this one in particular because I see too many theists flub the response. I don't like seeing people with otherwise good arguments thrown for a loop because they're confused.

The logic in the line works as follows: Supposedly, there are miracles (cures and healings in particular) that defy medical explanation, and therefore get attributed to God's work. But for all of the healings, there are no cases of amputees growing back their limbs. This, in spite of amputations being a common affliction throughout the world. Apparently, God is happy to cure all kinds of other afflictions - but not amputees. Therefore, God must hate amputees - or, more likely, God's not healing anyone, and the people who think they've been miraculously cured just got lucky.

Sounds reasonable, eh? And pretty damning if so. If the argument has any strength, though, it's by virtue of the proper response requiring one hell of a lot more text compared to a single line. But the underlying logic is the most important thing to grasp, so we're going through this systematically.

1) The first important flaw is an easy one to miss, because it's not a question of logic per se, but medical information: Actually, limb regrowth affects humans as well. It's one of the reasons that abortion tends to be such a tricky affair - "Fetuses can regrow almost anything that gets damaged while in the womb." Less impressive is the knowledge that young children are often able to regrow fingertips as well, but an amputation is an amputation - and I'm surprised that knowledge of this is as limited as it seems to be, considering how interesting a part of human development it is. So 'How come human amputees don't get healed?' immediately falls back to 'How come grown human amputees don't get healed?' Part of this is usually due to hubris on the part of the person making the challenge, that sweet mental image of an uncaring God tossing out healings left and right but looking on amputees with disgust. But what about adult humans? That's damning enough, right?

2) Well, no. Successful reattachment of limbs has been going on for decades now, thanks to the advances of medical science. As you can see in the article (among others, if you search around), the future prospects for limb reattachment, regrowth, and otherwise are considerable. So even adult amputees have been healed - trivial information, verifiable by many. We could bring up prosthetics, other forms of relief both physical and mental, but in a way it's not necessary. Down goes the argument again, and another caveat is added: We're on to, 'Okay, but how come no miraculous healings of amputees are argued?'

3) But does that stand? In Luke, we have Jesus reattaching the ear of a servant after Peter gets too hasty with the swordplay. The Catholic 'Miracle of Calanda' is a reputed case of an amputee being healed in the 1600s. The response here is obvious: Even if documented, the miracle of Calanda happened too long ago to be certain of. The Jesus miracle, moreso. Not a loss, but a rephrase: 'Why are records of miracle amputee healings rarer in comparison to other types?'

* This isn't part of the argument, but I'm urging you to pay close attention from this point on, because we're getting to the heart of the matter. Before you read on, ask yourself: In this argument, is there any subtle claim about God - a very disputable claim - inherent in the argument presented by the skeptic? A question of God's methods of operation that should be questioned by just about any theist, orthodox or not? Don't worry, we'll get to it.

4) The remaining aspects of the argument require a split into several responses.

4a) Amputees are chosen as an example for miracles precisely because few claims to this kind of miracle are had. But let's assume they were more common. Very common, in fact: A world where claims of limbs miraculously regrowing are more common. Is the skeptic faced with undeniable evidence of God? Well, no, and for two reasons: First, the context of a miracle in this argument is "an event which occurs through a mechanism that is unknown." If an amazing event actualized through an unknown mechanism were sufficient force to verify the existence of God, everyone would be a theist for reasons ranging to the origin of the universe, the question of consciousness, quantum measurement, etc. Even if the mechanism remains forever unknown, this wouldn't be sufficient force: One could always expect a 'normal' explanation to be found in the future, or lacking that, argue that the explanation was likely mundane, but simply unprovable. The only way to rectify this is by A) Understanding that the event which happened was a miracle, and B) Understanding the mechanisms behind the event itself. But by the reasoning we're seeing here, to know B is to exclude A. With this understanding, there is no way whatsoever to prove a miracle to a skeptic by force of evidence. (This problem puts the skeptic in an interesting situation, but I'll save that for another time.)

4b) Not only would the presence of amputees miracles not necessarily (certainly not logically) persuade a skeptic, but another problem pops up: The argument can simply shift to another affliction, medical or otherwise, for which miracles seem rare or non-existant. What about babies born with Harlequin disease? Or another affliction, either by class ('People with Down Syndrome?') or specific type ('Someone with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma?') Not only that, but even if miracles of every conceivable class and type are common, then the next objection comes: 'Why did Anne regrow her leg, but Bob didn't?' Under the presumption of the skeptic, questions of apathy on the part of God linger until the universe is operating in a way that utterly defies prediction and explanation. Note that whether or not a skeptic says 'Well, if I saw an amputee healing, *I* sure would be convinced!' has no bearing on any of this - the issue is related to the argument itself, not the arguer. And an argument of 'I'm not convinced of God's existence, because I don't see this class or type of affliction miraculously healed' needs to have it pointed out that the argument given is an argument that arguably cannot be satisfied.

5) If you haven't figured out the real trick yet, here's the revelation: It's implying that the only way God works in the world is through miracles. Which is why responses 1 and 2 will actually piss off most skeptics more than persuade them - because the argument requires 'God's work' to be relegated to an extraordinarily narrow class of event. But the explicitly miraculous, the apparent breaking of natural law, has never been the sole - or even primary - domain of God's work in western theism. From the God of the american Deists discerning rights of man through natural law, to Christian clergy and laity 'doing the work of God' in hospitals and other forms of service, to the basic plea to 'Give us this day & our daily bread' entreatment of God to maintain working order, to otherwise.. we're dealing with an age-old attitude of the divine working through the natural and mundane. This takes us back to 1 and 2, with a new understanding: There is no compelling reason against, and plenty of compelling reasons for, the theist pointing at the advances of logistics, science, and other 'natural' innovations, and claiming them as part of divine intention. In fact, considering the biblical exhortation that great works will be performed by others than Christ, I personally think the explanation gets interesting.

The natural response is, 'Well, you ascribe good things to God, but not the bad things. What's the reason for that?' But by that point, you've fallen back to the Problem of Evil - and the 'Why does God hate amputees?' argument is exposed for what it is: Bullshit, dressed up in rhetoric to catch people offguard, and persuade through trick rather than through reason. It's eliminated, and more importantly, you're able to understand why it's eliminated - and hopefully have a greater understanding of divine action and authorship.

I'm leaving some tertiary points aside here - various ways to view 'miracles' themselves, purpose and reasonable extent of faith, the problem of 'proving God' even if God certainly exists, etc. But that's for another time; for now, it's enough to expose the "God Hates Amputees" flaw. Next time, I'll... probably post about molasses. Using that a lot in cooking lately. It's an acquired taste.

Lala

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:21:44 GMT

Pope says some science shatters human dignity!

First line of the article?

"Pope Benedict said on Thursday that embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning had "shattered" human dignity."

So, it's not science that shatters human dignity, is it? Unless 'science' now means 'anything that is or can be done by humans which involves application of known principles'.

But 'Popes says some engineering shatters human dignity' or 'Pope says that some uses of nature shatters human dignity' while more accurate, doesn't have that delicious bite of religion v science, now does it?

Hey!

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:45:03 GMT

Look at this, it's an LJ post and it has nothing to do with anything controversial.

I plan to commit some interesting entries here soon. Telling you why the 'Why does God hate amputees?' atheist line fails miserably, a rough estimation of the current and past presidential candidates (short story - I like Ron Paul, but not in an insane way), along with some general ranting. This should be of interest to the roundabout 2 people who read this blog.

But onto the non-controversy.

I'm trying to design a couple games - I have horrible discipline, so that's going about as well as you'd think. But I wanted to share a valuable resource with people who are like minded. Yes, both of you.

http://lostsouls.org/wiki/Main_Page

Lost Souls MUD. Listen carefully, because I don't say this lightly: Behold, for when it comes to questions of intricate, unique gameplay and design among MUDs, you will not find a better example. Now, keep in mind that I say this as someone who, well over a decade ago, before PPPoE was common, was mudding. InfinityMUD. End of the Line (Another good one). Three Kingdoms. BatMUD. Scores of others that were immediately boring. I've even been back to some of these recently, like BatMUD. Mark my words, if you are interested in mu*, MMO, or general game design, ignore Lost Souls at your own peril.

It's hard to succinctly describe just what Lost Souls accomplished. 'Diversity' sums it up, but it doesn't do it justice. I'm sitting here, trying to think of how to communicate it best to you - so what I'm going to do is walk you through a character life.

First, choose your race. You have 32 options to start with. Now, not only do these races vary wildly in terms of statistics - and I don't just mean STR CON DEX INT WIS CHA. Aside from a generally standard stat spread, you also have 26 different kinds of damage types, and the races will each vary heavily in their relative weakness/strength. In addition, you have a wide, wide selection of innate traits and skills - drows, for example, have ambidexterity, night vision, and a penalty to assimilativity and access to Magick Resistance and Necromantic Affinity. A yeti, meanwhile, has an innate ice affinity, killer instinct, lesser night vision, and claws for natural weaponry.

All this before the limbcode. See, LS was one of the few MUDs to implement hp and stats for each particular body part - and the body parts can change depending on your race. Avians will have wings, lizards will have tails, an insect-creature will have a thorax, etc. There are some strange body types in the game too - three-legged three-armed creatures, ghostly types who only have limbs from the torso upward.

By the way, there are also 6 additional greater races (far more powerful in potential at the cost of greater exp required, only accessible by players who have a character who attained hero level), 4 additional elder races (even more power at the cost of more exp, only available to characters who have achieved legendary level), and at least 9 transition-in-game-only races available from surgery or use of a warpstone.

But let's keep this simple, and choose the yeti.

http://lostsouls.org/wiki/Yeti

Straightforward. He's tough. He's got some constitution. He's big. A little weak to temporal damage, a bit handy with ice. But clearly we're dealing with a big fucker who's best at ripping things up with his bare hands/claws.

So you start him out at first. Do some quests, get some exp. Get used to the game. This is where you start learning things, like the variety of ways to die. If you're not good at swimming and walk into a river, guess what? You'll get pulled away by the current. And if you hit a waterfall with jagged rocks, you'll probably be dismembered. (Remember: Limbcode. You can lose limbs in this game. And enough damage to your head or torso (or thorax) means you're dead.) Pick up some equip, maybe start thinking about guilds and associations.

Now, at current, there's 25 guilds in the game (Think of guilds as 'classes'), possibly more that are hidden. Each dramatically different from each other for the most part, with the exception of the mages (Azure Magi are ice specialists, Red Magi are flame specialists, etc - very different, but you get the basic scheme.) 26 associations as well (think of associations as subclasses), which you can join multiples of, though certain guilds/associations conflict with other associations.

Again, let's be straightforward here and go with a pretty simple guild: The Brute Squad.

http://lostsouls.org/wiki/Brute_Squad

You couldn't get more straightforward than these guys: They drink beer and they fight, just like their help file says. They don't even have all that many abilities: They're better with hand to hand combat. They can pump up to temporarily increase their power. They can headbutt - an extraordinarily powerful attack in the right situation, as it's a very-likely-to-hit strike at the enemy's head. And most of the time, if the enemy's head takes enough damage, they die instantly. ... Most of the time. There are beings who can survive the loss of their head. Or beings that just plain have no head, such as slimes. Another attack these guys have: Dismember. They'll just grab a couple limbs and pull really, really hard. Maybe hard enough to just do a whole lot of damage. Maybe hard enough to tear the limbs off.

Okay, so you're in your guild now. Let's pick an association for you (Remember, you can join more than one). I happen to love the Servants of the Crystal Blades. But I'll save that for another time. For now, let's go with the followers of Apollo.

http://lostsouls.org/wiki/Followers_of_Apollo

"From the site: Apollo grants his favor to his subjects in several different ways. First, they may 'dazzle' an opponent, by spreading a bit of his light within dark places. They can 'commune' with Apollo to find out where he is located, and thus know night from day at all times. Finally, in order to ensure continued favor with Apollo, his followers may 'offer' items to him for his amusement. In addition, he grants his followers protection from damage by other sources of light. His temple also serves as a fast way to move across the continent, as only members may use an exit from which they did not enter. Disciples also have a communication channel, accessed with the commands 'apollonian' and 'assoc'."

Now you have some ability to fast travel, you can blind foes, you gain greater immunity to light while losing some resistance to darkness (It's a more than fair trade by ratio). Keep in mind you can mix and match this with multiple other associations. But right now you have a hard-fightin', hard-fartin' yeti who can blind people before he smashes their skulls in. Useful, isn't it?

We're not done. See, the game also has 'psychic wild talents'. Roundabout 26 individual ones, and they can show up in game through a variety of ways - using drugs, psychic trauma, boosting your philosophy skill or wisdom attribute, natural development, etc. These can be impressive boons in their own right, and can show up when you least expect them.

Now, I've gone through all of this while choosing the most straightforward and simple guild, a very simple race, a single association. I haven't even touched on the variety of areas you can explore, the variety of equipment you can find, etc.

There's a lot that can be learned from LS, from a design perspective. This, from a game that (quite frankly) hasn't been tremendously updated over the years, as far as I can see. But if you had to ask me what the most important lesson to take away from this is, I would sum it up thusly: Sometimes, it's better to play very fast and loose with balance, even in a multiplayer game, if the tradeoff is a vastly more diverse, depthful game. With the number of guilds, associations, races, abilities, powers, etc in play, Lost Souls never had much of an equal playing field. Some races were out and out better in particular guilds (a faerie brute squad member will never have the potential a yeti or ogre does). Some weaknesses were almost impossible to cover up (I remember playing a high-level ringwraith. Incredibly powerful. So ethereal that he was basically a shadow, melee attacks hardly scratched him. You know what happens when you aim a wand of light at a shadow's head? It means that what would be a no-damage attack to anyone else, is instant death for you.) But if you create a game with a focus on incredible diversity, you can get away with a lack of balance - both because the fun will be in exploring and finding out what does and does not work, and because the diversity will generally mean that even an incredibly potent character combination will always have a weakness some other character is able to exploit.