Hey, Peeps, a Change of Plans for Teh Bloggy Roll

I’ve hit upon a better idea than what I discussed in (This Post, Click Me), and decided to keep the inactive blog links active onsite, putting them together with the archived sites, since in a lot of cases, they overlap.

I’ve created a new blog list for these sites just below the main list, and will not be using the standard blogroll widget as originally planned, instead using the feeds widgets as per the main site list, since I find them more versatile for my evil purposes…

Heh Heh Heh…

I intend to modify the URLs in each link to allow opening a new window or tab when they are clicked on, to make navigation between sites more convenient.

I’m a little (no, a lot!) clueless on the proper coding of the URLs to do this, so I’m open to any helpful input on that.

I won’t be posting updates on the site tomorrow, but working on the links to other sites, including a lot of new ones, and some old favorites relinked to, now that I’ve cleaned out my browser bookmarks of any sites that no longer seem to exist.

When and if any inactive site ever becomes active again, I’ll move it up to the main list, of course.

Thanks for your patience in this, and I’m always open to suggestions from you all on how to improve this site, evolving in an almost Darwinian fashion as it is.

TED – Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

How To Argue: The Reductio Ad Absurdum – Invalid & Valid

Let’s suppose that there are two men engaged in an argument, we’ll call them Mr. A and Mr. B.

They’re engaged in a rather spirited discussion on psi-phenomena, and Mr. A argues that psi is unlikely to exist because truly compelling evidence, in the form of successful replications of psi, regardless of the beliefs or level of enthusiasm of those attempting the replication of the initial studies, does not currently exist.

Note that he is not saying he doesn’t think it’s real because he hasn’t personally experienced it nor seen concrete, direct evidence of its existence, but that despite the immense volume of evidence in the literature, it just isn’t very convincing by reasonable scientific standards, and so one should remain skeptical for the time being.

Nor is he arguing that it’s impossible, only unlikely to exist until convincing evidence under reasonable conditions by reasonably objective research workers indicates otherwise.

In his rebuttal, Mr. B argues that Mr. A, in thinking that psi probably isn’t real, must also believe that dark energy and dark matter must not exist, because Mr. A hasn’t seen them either, and that he must therefore believe that 90% of the universe must not exist.

But wait…

Mr. A said nothing about needing to see psi himself, only that convincing evidence obtained under adequate conditions by non-believers in psi is not there, not yet, saying nothing at all about the evidence needed to establish dark matter or dark energy, both of which have different evidential requirements than psi does, for which almost the entire body of data consists of statistical quirks, convincing or not.

Mr. A’s argument has, as can be seen, been misrepresented, and in such a way as to carry it to an absurd conclusion, the claim that by his own reasoning, most of the universe doesn’t exist.

That last was an example of a fallacious Reductio ad absurdum, and of course there was probably much more said than simply the above. But Mr. B’s argument was fallacious because it led to an absurd conclusion without using the actual chain of reasoning of Mr. A’s argument, by misrepresenting that argument as a straw person.

Later, Mr. A and Mr. B get into a discussion of the nature of reality, in which Mr. B, not liking the direction of the argument, responds to what he feels are the overly absolutist statements of his opponent, in exasperation saying in a rather postmodern fashion, “Reality is nothing!”

There are several ways that this can be interpreted, but in this case, a clarification is not offered, and Mr. A cannot read minds nor thinks at the time to ask for a clarification, so the most likely interpretation, that B is claiming reality doesn’t exist, will have to do.

What does this mean? Can we carry this claim to it’s ultimate conclusion without merely misrepresenting it?

Let’s see…

What is reality? And I don’t mean what is its ultimate nature in fact, but what is the meaning of the word? How is it used?

Reality, by definition, is that which can truly be said to exist, no matter it’s nature or other properties:

a=a: reality is real.

To be real, this quality of existing is essential, whether the thing existing is directly observable or not. If something doesn’t exist, then it’s not part of reality, and if it’s not even imagined, it’s not fantasy either.

What is everything that is real?

We call it the Universe, or the Cosmos, take your pick, though myself, I’m partial to the latter, though for this discussion I’ll use “universe” for the totality of existence.

To say that reality is nothing, in this context implies that the universe doesn’t exist, 100% of it, not just 90% in the straw person argument above, since the universe is everything, with or without any supplementation to it by anything allegedly supernatural.

But if the universe is everything that exists, and everything currently within and originating within the universe, by definition existing as part of its totality, and therefore part of all reality…

Hmmm… I smell something funny about this, don’t you?..

If the ‘reality does not exist’ interpretation holds and the claim were true, then the claim could never be made, since neither of the two persons would even exist themselves in order to have their argument.

But if Mr. B exists to make his argument to Mr. A, and Mr. A exists to hear the argument, then the claim, assuming this interpretation, is simply, obviously, and demonstrably false.

Clearly this is an unacceptable conclusion, at least until such time as Mr. B offers a clarification of his statement that requires a different interpretation of what he said, we must assume what we did know and thus consider this a valid Reductio ad absurdum.

But personal debates among argumentative friends are often messy, impromptu, with little if any ‘rehearsal’ or ‘practice’ beforehand, and unless both are skilled arguers, it is unlikely that normative standards or ideals will reasonably be met without time and practice.

This is just one of the hazards of personal arguments, but it’s something that can be improved if done systematically and with time, skillfully and instinctively, but the rewards of rich and confident testing of our knowledge by argumentation far outstrip any annoyance that may result in the beginning.

TED – Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy

My Fondest Regret…

This post is going to be wildly off-topic, ridiculously sentimental, and may ramble a bit, so if you wish to read further, please bear with me. It is an open letter to someone I haven’t seen in years and haven’t tried to out of respect for her marital status and any wishes she may have pertaining to this.

Nonetheless, it’s something I simply must get off my chest for reasons that may or may not be expressed here. Here goes…

It’s been since the summer of 1995 when I last met you with your then fiance, whose name I hadn’t the courage to ask, but as I told the two of you then, he’s a lucky guy.

I don’t know if the two of you are still married, and I don’t have to. Like then, as now, I wish you both good health and good fortune wherever you are and regardless of anything happening since our last meeting then.

But though I try to fool myself, and convince myself that I’m past you, your face, your name, your voice…in some way or fashion, every day since that last meeting, you intrude upon my thoughts, and sometimes my dreams.

But always in a good way, nothing that brings me pain, only satisfaction of a good friendship when a messed-up-in-the-head, insecure, clueless nerd like me first met you in high-school, and the way you’ve shaped my views of love and humanity ever since, even though I’ve never dated you, and didn’t ask you out when you offered me the chance.

When you told me to my face that you loved me.

The past is dead, gone forever, but my memories of you last as long as my brain remains operational, as long as a shred of reason and memory lasts. We were friends, and when by chance our paths cross again, if they do, I hope that we remain friends as we parted.

You are one reason I’m a skeptic, but a good one, one that brings joy and meaning to it, not sadness or anger. You’ve NEVER done me wrong.

There are certain ways I will no longer think of you, certain ways that I cannot think of you, for I’m not as hormone-addled as I was in my teens, and there are ways in which I’ve moved beyond that, but the profound way you’ve positively affected my life, despite the fact that what might have been never truly was (my greatest error), and missteps like my last disastrously toxic relationship in 2009 with that woman, with whom my vaunted skepticism was sorely lacking when it was needed, you were and still are the biggest influence on my life, and that I won’t forget, as long as I draw breath.

Thank you.

You even once called me a genius to my face, a term I don’t think that I really merit, that I’ve really earned, but you said it in complete sincerity, in that tone of voice you have when speaking in total honesty. From some, it sounds empty, but from you it was a compliment of the highest order.

Thank you also for that, but it is you who were and no doubt are the genius, not me.

I’m out of your life, as it should be. With a husband and family to care for, and to be cared for by, you don’t need peeps like me interposing themselves intentionally or not. Live your own life, grow, learn, feel joy in every sunrise, and don’t worry about me. That too is how it should be. I won’t seek you out, but if we meet again, I won’t avoid you, and be well, Lilia, be happy, you’ve deeply influenced my taste in and views of women…

You are and always will be my fondest regret.

As I was when we were both taking Latin together in high-school,

Troianus sum.

Dick Feynman on Religion

I’ve always wondered where some of the lyrics in some of the Symphony of Science music, with Dick Feynman’s autotuned voice came from.

Here is a scene from one of his interviews, in which he describes human gods as far too provincial, and I’m inclined to agree with him.

It seems to me that the findings of science have far outstripped the puny gods of a puny species on a mote of dust spinning around a perfectly ordinary star, in a universe that is far bigger than we can understand, and which neither cares nor even knows we are here.

I have my doubts that religion will ever catch up to, much less surpass, the wonders of reality, and the science we use to probe it’s mysteries…

A Heads Up on What’s Up with the Blogroll Feeds…

Hey Peeples. I’ve noticed lately that the RSS feeds to blogs this site links to have been acting funny lately, and several of the blogs linked to haven’t been updated for several months now.

I also decided that the blogroll widget just below the link feeds has a lot of links to sites that are either no longer active, or already linked to in the feeds widgets, and therefore redundant.

I couldn’t help but notice that at least one of the blogs linked to no longer seems to exist, so I thought it would be a good idea to update this blog’s linky-love to other sites and clean things up a bit.

I’ve temporarily deactivated link widgets to blogs no longer updated, and I will definitely be checking in on these sites periodically, and when and if they are once again active, will restore the widgets linking to them, no questions asked.

I’ve also deleted the widgets to the now defunct blogs, fixed the links to the active ones, and taken down the blog list widget below the feeds, for deletion of the redundant links and the transfer of the remaining active links to new feed widgets, which will make up the entirety of my blog roll from this point on.

Also, I’ll be looking around for new blogs heretofore unlinked to, and post feeds to them. I’ll also be using the separate links widget for those blogs that may be useful even if no longer active, as useful archived sites and blogs accessible from this one.

I suppose I’m far too much of a neurotic for my own good, but this is something that has been bugging the crap out of me for a while now.

APW | Astronomy Pix of the Week for May 22-28, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

• Io: The Prometheus Plume

• An Unexpected Flare from the Crab Nebula

• Three Arches Above Utah

• Space Shuttle Rising

• Supernova Sonata

• Messier Marathon

• The Mileage of Light

APW is a weekly installment, published each Saturday between 7:31 and 8:30 am EDT, of links to each daily entry on NASA’s website Astronomy Picture of the Day. I hope you enjoy looking at these often breathtaking images as much as I do.

Fractals of the Week: Mechanika & Waves de la Lune

WPS | Web Picks Sceptique for May 27, 2011

• on Bug Girl’s blog… Insects Totally Caused Ultimate Frisbee…

• on Big Think… What Alien Solar Systems Are Like…

• by Steven Salzberg… Pseudoscience stories you might have missed…

• on Faux Nu’z… Found beneath the Brooklyn Bridge: A sea monster? I’m afraid not…

• on Cosmic Variance… Are Many Worlds & the Multiverse the Same?..

• Louisiana Senate panel refuses to repeal stealth-creationism law…

• on YouTube… A time lapse video of the Very Large Telescope…

• on twitpic… Fractal wallpaper artwork by yours truly: I’m releasing it into the public domain, free for use…

• on krissthesexyatheist… Bro Crush: Richard (Papa Bear) Dawkins…

• on Lousy Canuck… The Politics of the Null Hypothesis…

WPS is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious and discriminating readers. WPS is published once or twice a week from Wednesday to Saturday on the Call.

To the Call’s Readers in Scotland or Thereabouts…

Image via Wikipedia

Let me first say that I’m not being paid anything or receiving any special services or goods for posting this, but I thought it would be a good idea to get off my backside and put more of an “active” in my skeptical activism, so what follows is a heads-up to let any interested readers on your side of the Atlantic check out a couple of events being hosted next month by the Glasgow Skeptics, events which I think are worth bringing attention to on this venue.

We skeptics need to look out for each other more than we sometimes do.

The first happens on Monday, June 6, at 7:00 pm featuring a guest appearance by P.Z. Myers at the Crystal Palace, and then on Sunday, June 12, at 10:00 am, there’s the first #Skeptron conference, going on at the Grand Ballroom of Sloans (Click Me Here).

The latter can be reached by way of the Argyll Arcade, well-within a five-minutes walking distance from Glasgow Central Station and Glasgow Queen Street. This event is scheduled to go on during the Glasgow Science Festival, and it should be easily reached from across Scotland.

(for the #Skeptron FAQ Page Click Here)

Featured speakers of #Skeptron will include, circumstances permitting, Simon Singh, Chris French, David Allen Green, and others (Click Me Here).

Check both events out. I’d do it myself, but I’m kind of stuck on the wrong continent for now. Well, I can’t have everything…

The Buzzwords of Nonsense

Image via Wikipedia

Peeps who promote nonsense as fact, and there are a lot of them, often employ the marketing technique of saying that that their claims are “hidden,” “secret,” or “suppressed” knowledge, that “they” don’t want you to have.

It’s really nothing more than an obvious selling point, like the overused terms “natural,” “organic,” or my favorite, “holistic” used in food products and alt-med modalities.

Let’s face it, it makes whatever idea or claim you’re trying to sell look a lot sexier than the same silliness not dressed-up with a conspiracy theory or vague, obscurantist buzzwords, and this makes it more appealing to prospective victims, er, I mean, clientele…

*Ahem*

Why do people often fall for vague jargon that has no real meaning?

I think there’s a number of reasons at play, and I doubt that it easily boils down to a simple answer, since peeps tend to be interestingly complex individuals with equally interestingly complex minds.

Now then…

People often consider vague, intrinsically meaningless words and phrases to have deep profundity, and since we are a species that loves narratives, being as Michael Shermer says, story-telling animals, we tend to see patterns and attribute agency where they sometimes do not really exist, as per his ideas of patternicity and agenticity.

We have the tendency to subjectively impose meaning to the meaningless, usually without even being aware that we do it, and so unaware, fool ourselves into thinking that the meaning we give it comes from without rather than from within.

The brain has been described as a belief engine — we see patterns and give them meaning whether those are really there or not as a way to explain what seems to happen around us, unthinkingly, and one does not have to be mentally ill, uneducated, or stupid to do this — it happens to all of us, simply because of the way our brains operate, using psychological mechanisms that sometimes serve us well, and sometimes not.

I think that in seeing the brain as an incredibly complex machine rather than an otherwise useless shell for a mystical soul, it becomes obvious that a dualistic world that splits mind and matter, in which everything we don’t understand is a supernatural mystery unfathomable by science, is a lot less satisfying and interesting, more conducive to a failure of the imagination, and leads to a world in which our sense of the really wonderful is dulled by bombardment with the same increasingly mundane claims and worn-out talking points by those who ride the coattails of science without being willing to play by its rules, and in so doing, do its work.

Some things never end, and so it goes for Troythulu. Suck it up, skeptic.

Related articles

• Reason Writers in on the Plot: Matt Welch’s Hour-Long Conspiracy Chat With Michael Shermer and Minnesota Public Radio (reason.com)
• Michael Shermer attempts to school Jesse Ventura on critical thinking (skepacabra.wordpress.com)
• Kinds of Selves (theconnectome.wordpress.com)
• Michael Shermer: Baloney Detection Kit (thegreatone22.wordpress.com)
• 20 Compelling TED Talks for Psychology Students (mastersdegree.net)
• Dr. Andrew Weil versus evidence-based medicine (scienceblogs.com)
• My chiropractor’s a real jerk-off (cubiksrube.wordpress.com)

What are the Thoughts of the Mind of the Cosmos?

Image via Wikipedia

To give the only honest answer I can to the above, while there is a lot we as a species are collectively learning about the universe, I don’t think for an instant that I really know.

It’s been my experience that the more one truly understands, the more knows what they don’t know and understand, whether it’s popular but century-old science like quantum physics that nobody really understands, (and the ones who claim most often that they do are the ones who understand it the least, i.e. proponents of quantum flapdoodle…) or the more recent and trendy superstring theory.

Through deeper understanding of one’s limits, unknown unknowns can stand revealed as at least suspected unknowns, if not known ones.

It’s people who claim the most to be in possession of arcane wisdom gleaned from ancient mystics who really don’t know the depths of their own ignorance and therefore know the least in making their pretensions to knowledge.

Funny thing that they would project that very need onto the sciences and research workers they criticize as being engaged in a futile enterprise.

It’s those who know the most, about themselves and their field of study, who boast of their claims to knowledge the least.

These two videos are a pair of talks I found on the TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) website, the first being a discussion by Brian Greene and the second by cosmologist Sean Carroll, both discussing powerful ideas that when tested will little doubt enrich our understanding of the Cosmos, to know the thoughts of the mind of (non-theistic)god. Enjoy.

Related articles

• “Time really exists”: Highlights from our live-chat with Sean Carroll (ted.com)
• Electrons are fantastically round, say British scientists (guardian.co.uk)
• From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll (telegraph.co.uk)
• Living In A Quantum World (preview) (scientificamerican.com)

TED – Mick Ebeling: The invention that unlocked a locked-in artist

How does a graffiti artist with ALS do his work, when only able to communicate by blinking? Here’s the technology that saved his career, and helps others like him as well…

Apocalypse Again – Let’s keep this puppy rollin’…

Image via Wikipedia

Peeps who are horny for the apocalypse disturb me.

I mean, after last week’s failed rapture prediction, its originator, preacher Harold Camping, is backtracking by saying after the fact that his biblical numerology, (which he was so certain about being perfect before both his 1994 prediction and the one just this month), was wrong and that he now says it’s October 21st instead.

People have done this sort of thing for centuries, and the story never changes: Clergyman uses something resembling math to calculate something from a book of the Bible, predicts the End of Everything™ and like clockwork, the End passes by without even a single hallelujah by the ascending Elect, awaiting the next guy to make the next prediction, etc…

Mister Camping…Why is it that you, like everyone else who uses contrived pseudo-mathematics to make these sorts of predictions, have such authoritative confidence in your claims until after the fact?

Why don’t you, you know, check the math before you make your claims?

All it does is fill people susceptible to these claims with false hope and needless fear, and often results in serious harm being done to themselves and others in senseless acts of violence.

Why bother? Is the money you get in donations worth it? This merchandising of fear and confusion?

I ask this because it’s massively irresponsible… immoral even… to spread claims like this…

I find this appalling, for what sort of truly moral person wants people who don’t share his beliefs to suffer in eternal torment or destruction?

Why convince people to want this?

Why only be good in anticipation of reward in paradise as opposed to those of us without religion, who see value in being good for its own sake, not just fear of punishment nor hope of reward for what we neither desire nor believe even exists?

I predict that the next End Times prediction will fail, and when it does, it puts yet another nail in the coffin of religion’s credibility and relevance in a world that can do well enough without it.

Just sayin’…

Related articles

• Rapture Predictor Harold Camping: Apocalypse Rescheduled for October 21 [Oops] (gawker.com)
• That Nutjob: Rapture Happened ‘Spiritually’, Apocalypse Still Slated For October 21st (geekologie.com)
• Harold Camping: Apocalypse Rescheduled For October 21 (gizmodo.com.au)
• Apocalypse now (ladyashlie.wordpress.com)
• Preacher Harold Camping apologizes for lack of apocalypse, reschedules Rapture for Kim Kardashian’s birthday (popwatch.ew.com)
• Harold Camping Moves Goalpost: October 21 is the New Rapture (towleroad.com)
• Watch: Harold Camping Emerges From His Home The Day After His Failed Rapture Prediction (towleroad.com)
• Apocalypse still imminent: Rapture now coming in October (guardian.co.uk)
• Harold Camping: May 21 Judgment Day Did Happen (newsfeed.time.com)