If Chatoyance and RealityCheck were ever in the same room... would physicists get to study a matter/anti-matter collision? · 10:33am Jun 4th, 2014
In One corner, FimFictions queen of Misandry and misanthropy, Jennifer Diane Reitz, "Chatoyance".This kind woman hates technology, blames 98% of the world's problems on penis havers, and thinks castration is just what human males deserve.
In the other corner professional Ignatius J Reilly impersonator Ralph Edward Hayes Jr, "RealityCheck." where do begin with this one? his username is a good start, he is here to provide a reality check against all the pie in the sky liberals.... mighty rich coming from a young earth creationist who claims that Answers in genesis is a reputable source and that " applied common sense" makes it crystal clear how Noah's ark was a real actual thing and the world flood was a real actual historical event. A man who claims to love science but hates the scientific method which is like saying that you love literature but hate language. Of course he then proceeds to state that one can have science without the scientific method and even ended one of his stories by having a scientist characther renounce the scientific method in a Dear Princess Celestia letter which again is like a writer renouncing language.
Three examples to highlight RealityCheck's utter disconnection to reality:
On his personal blog he talks about nobody verifying Obama's birthplace ( that is right kids we have a birther) while recounting how he was asked to give a copy of his birth certificate when he applied for food stamps ( I assume his thought process ran thusly: "socialism is evil and indeed I must ruin one of my stories by writing a chapter in which I do nothing but intellectually masturbate over Austrian economics.... but I will suck on the government tit to eat. Those poors who vote democrat dont deserve it though, they are different they commit treason when they vote democrat")
anyways two possibilities here.
1. Ralph is being attacked for being a good white christian heterosexual male while the massive feminist conspiracy pulls strings to make sure no one verifies the credentials of a man elected to the presidency of the USA.
2. Ralph looks at the situation and realizes that is an absurdity to believe that in a nation that demands birth certificates from welfare applicants a man can become the nominee for the presidency from one of the two major parties without a thorough background investigation. He thus concludes that such an investigation certainly happened, even if they neglected to mail him the results.
Of course Ralph picks the first option.
Then on a comment on this site he berates environmentalists ( second only to feminists in RealityChecks list of " people who are bucking up america") stating that he doesn't understand why people worry about water pollution when water is continuously recycled.
the choices.
1. all environmentalists ( including those who work for regulatory agencies like the EPA to say nothing of Universities) fell asleep in every single science lecture they have sat in since the 4th grade,thus never learning about the water cycle.
2. Ralph rereads what he wrote and realizes he probably has a mistaken notion of what environmentalists do and do not know.
of course he chose number one.
Third example. I have it at hand So I will directly quote him.
3:Malicious Shipteasing.
Flash Sentry. Yes, Twilight falls in puppy love with the human Flash Sentry. Yes, he has a pony counterpart-- a royal guard. Yes, Twilight shows interest in him when she returns to Equestria.
No, he is not appearing in season four. He is not, in fact, ever appearing ever again. Bet on it.
For one bright shining moment of sanity, they broke down and admitted that one of the mane six was GASP!-- hetero-normative. Couldn't let THAT stand, could they...
Yes no heteronormative relationships on the show... except the cakes, rarity's parents, pinkie's parents twily's parents shining armor and cadence... in fact EVERY romantic relationship on the show is heteronormative!
but whatever I guess either
1. Ralphie is right and the feminazis who rule the world freaked out and squelched out Flash Sentry or
2. the writers of a show aimed at elementary school age kids did not want to deal with the complexity of writing a relationship involving the main character.
But obviously it is #1... Or are you not aware that Occam's razor is a tool of the feminazi oppresion of christian heterosexual males?
Misoginy? Of course. he is on record as stating that all human advances occur " despite" the overcautious nature of women. Surely then must celebrate adventurous women who break gender norms... o who are we kidding??? he moans and yells that the media will destroy society by eradicating classical gender norms , the very basis of civilization. He is completely blind to the paradoxical nature of his claims ( on the one hand human progress has occurred in spite of gender norms that make women overcautious, on the other these same gender norms are the basis of civilization) because it is not about making sense, it is about feeling superior to women. The very definition of misoginy.
It is redundant to talk of his homophobia, but I will just note that he is a Sparity fan , and has Cadence tell Rarity that they have ways to overcome differences in size and species. But interestingly she never mentions gender. nothing wrong with Sparity mind, but just so you know in Ralph Hayes head hot Dragon on Pony action is a-Ok as long as the parties are different genders. but mare on mare and stallion on stallion is evil. He keeps ranting about how he wants the mane six to get boyfriends so that" I can watch the lesbian shippers heads explode".
want more Realitycheck? here is 12 pages worth of his greatest hits complete with links to his blog so you can read it all in his own words.Make sure to take an antacid before hand. youll need it.
Now imagine a world where Chatoyance and RealityCheck meet.... would this cause an antimatter collision? a tear in the very fabric of the space time continuum?
p.S I am not trying to pick on RealityCheck, I just know him so well and his insanity is less well known on this site than Chatoyance's. To his credit I am unaware of RealityCheck calling for the sterilization of women whereas Chatoyance HAS called for the mass castration of men. So he has that going for him, which is nice.
One of the ironies regarding what you report of Chatovoyance's view is that Equestria, while technologically-less advanced than early 21st-century America, is not only a relatively technologically-advanced society (it has steam engines, railroads, airships and is starting to adopt electricity) and one obviously already on the escalator to higher levels of technology (it has a basically free-market economy and practices the scientific method), but its current level of technology is one of the more environmentally destructive ones (external-combustion steam engines produce a lot of pollution per unit of power generated). Granted, they probably use the Pegasi to channel many of the harmful waste products away from Ponies, but still ... it's not some sort of green utopia, it's just "non-technological" from an extremely condescending early 21st-century point of view.
Equestria is IMO definitely a mild matriarchy, but it's only a mild one -- there seems to be a general opinion that mares are better-trusted in positions of authority than stallions (I've speculated that the reason may be a legacy of a once-hard-to-mask estrus cycle that caused most stallions in settled areas to be constantly distracted by pheromones and hence effectively less intelligent than mares, which changed about 100 years ago when estrus-masking "suppressors" were developed), but it is more like a gender-flipped America c. 1925 than Saudi Arabia c. 2014. Stallions don't seem to be actually forbidden from doing anything on grounds of their masculinity, and they are treated with respect and kindness by the mares on the show.
The Equestrians also aren't terribly bigoted against non-Ponies -- certainly nowhere as bigoted as we are against the other animal sapients, such as gorillas and orcas, with which we share our planet. This may be because many of these other sapients can speak Equestrian and some seem to have high-technology societies, or formidable combat capabilities of their own, but it's still a point in their favor in the comparison between Humans and the Ponies of modern Equestria (the show explicitly states that Equestrians of earlier ages were far more prejudiced, even between Pony Kind and Pony Kind). They would probably be horrified by the notion of kidnapping and magically-altering members of another sapient species against their will.
As for Creatonists -- I've known Reality Check for years and I like him, he is a damned good writer. But I've never understood the belief in Creationism, possibly because I grew up understanding the fundamentals of evolutionary biology and natural history from the age of 10 or so. To me, ignoring the (literally) massive evidence of the Earth's age (some of this evidence takes the form of rock formations massing millions of tons), of faunal successions, and of the evolution of species (a theory so logical that one would have to postulate countervailing forces to prevent evolution from occuring) is absurd. It would be like ignoring the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun or that gravity attracts objects together (ironic to state in the context of a show about a geocentric mini-cosmos which contains a character who embodies Gravity, but hey ..).
I intellectually understand the emotional appeal of Young-Earth Creationism. It shrinks the Universe down to a non-threatening temporal extent (under YEC, existence itself is no older than human civilization) and puts us at its moral center (everything was created, recently, for our own benefit and will conveniently be folded up and put away when humanity attains its ultimate fate -- which will be very soon). Many YEC don't grasp that the Universe must also be logically very small (the original version of the Genesis theory assumed a flat Earth with the Heavens merely a bowl laid over them, not much higher than the clouds) to be logically-consistent -- the notion of a large Universe has become so fixed in our culture that the YEC don't dare argue against it, and may not realize why they logically must.
Really, calling the YEC cosmology a "punyverse" makes sense -- it's tremendously small and shrunken compared to the full, at least twenty-seven billion light-years (that's just our 3D visual horizon in 4D space) extent of the real Universe, and we're already starting to get clues from the larger structure of spacetime that our Universe may be only one of a very large number of other Universes, arranged in some sort of multi-dimensional fashion and sometimes impinging upon each other by means of gravity (thank you, Luna!). As I said, the smallness of the punyverse may be the source of its emotional appeal -- the sheer size of the Universe is rather intimidating, to a certain kind of mind.
I don't like tiny Universes -- I glory in the sheer size of the Cosmos. The reason I write MLP fanfics set in my "Shadow Wars" variant of Alex Warlorn's PonyPOVerse is that this is one that puts Equestria in the context of a much-larger Universe, in which the Earth is affected by forces and beings originating in remote realms of Space and Time. When my Luna tells Twilight Sparkle, in "A Meeting By Moonlight," (she's speaking of the My Little Pony Tales world):
she's speaking for me as well, and not just about Ponies. I think that any sapient race, with imagination, determination and courage, can in time grow to the stature of the Cosmos, because sapience is a superior organizing principle to non-sapience. To me this is a far nobler concept than the limited dreams of Bronze Age priests, as expressed in Genesis.
But then, to do this, we must acknowledge the size of the Universe. We didn't go to the Moon by building a ziggurat and praying to Ishtar, and we won't master the management of whole planetary ecosystems (not only our own) by imagining that a magic grandfather in the sky is going to run it all for us.
If we are to mature as a species, we need to take charge of our own destinies.
Because it's impossible to enjoy someone's work when you disagree with his or her views.
Do both get preachy at times? Yes. Is either a perfect human being? Who is? Have I committed an intellectual fallacy with that last question? Probably. The point I'm trying to make here is that both are still good authors, and I enjoy the work of both (though I lost interest in Nyx's Family early on, and the less said about RC's blogs, the better.)
I suppose that makes me a boson of some kind, given your title question.
I approve of this blog.
In comparison to others, Chatoyance receives more flak than she deserves.
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good points, and i tackled this issue myself. I hope no one misunderstands me, I actually think quite highly of realitycheck's abilities as a writer, Nightmare Night and Nyx is displayed on my top ten favorites list. And it will probably stay there. I was one of his most vocal fans when he was first publishinghere is a pretty good sample of my cheerleading him on in fact , that scene between zecora and nyx is still probably my favorite moment in any fanfic on this site.
So what happened? he started interjecting his political viewpoints directly into the storyline with all the subtlety of a brick wall built overnight across an expressway.
I assumed, incorrectly that if someone brings his story to a screeching halt for an entire chapter to expound on his political viewpoints he would be interested in discussing said political viewpoints, WRONG. there is no civil discussion or debate wiht realitycheck. he is RIGHT. period full stop. Have a bone to pick with him? ENJOY YOUR BAN. My ban came about when i asked him to name one historian who would agree with his assertion that Nazi germany was an atheist/humanist regime.
This sent me out to find more about him to better understand him. Which achieved its goal, fore example it turned out he was brainwashed, I am sorry, homeschooled by his father, a fundamentalist fire and brimstone preacher who broke from the southern baptist convention because the SBC was too liberal ( among other things RC's dad thinks that the KJV is the only true version of the bible. don't ask me how he came to that conclusion)
I detailed the process of disenchantment with RC quite throguhly in this comment. Extra fun when RC himself using a rather transparent "sockpuppet" account shows up and tries to defend himself.
2174200 This is only the second time you and I have interacted, and I can already tell that you are a quality human being and i will enjoy interacting with you.
In much the same way as you describe, I fell asleep as a child to the soothing voice of David Attenborugh narrating his nature documentaries. i have been obsessed with science since always. Much like a certain purple pony, i have spent most of my life reading and studying. The moment that made me fall in love with Nyx and Past Sins was when she was picked on for asking too many questions and being too intellectually engaged since that is something that happened exactly to me. The first thing i can remember a classmate telling me is "you're a nerd" I was in kindergarten.
I do not consider myself an atheist, i would label myself an agnostic deist ( "d' not "th") bordering on ignostic. the problem with the creationist god is exactly what you said, he is too puny he is too small he is too petty. The creator of the universe we know does not go around condemning people for their sex lives, or testing peoples faith. the universe is simply too vast to give credence to such a petty and human centric god.
The thing that infuriates me the most about this is when people like realitycheck dismiss scientists as cynics with no sense of wonder. Judging from the strawman professor Dubious in Nyx' family he doenst understand the difference between skepticism and cynicism. All the scientists I know and know of are people who became scientists BECAUSE of their sense of wonder. They are not people out to sap the universe of magic, but almost exactly the inverse. As an example, take Carl Sagan. I have seen this a hundred times yet i still get teary eyed and all lump-in-throaty every time i see it
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2181614
I think that you understand what I'm getting at, then.
I find the Universe awesome. I am not a doctrinaire atheist despite the fact that I see no direct evidence of any God, because I know that it's beyond my and our current comprehension -- though as time passes and we use our minds to study its mysteries, we can learn more and more about it. But we must use our minds rationally -- binding them to the limited understanding of Bronze or early Iron Age priesthoods will prevent us from perceiving the truth.
The unfolding of the Universe -- the Big Bang, the formation of galaxies and the long generations of stars, the formation of planets and the evolution of life and sapience upon them is beautiful. It is something ot which the Mesopotamian priests who developed the earliest versions of Genesis could not have conceived -- not because they were stupid; they weren't, they were actually their world's versions of people like Darwin, Sagan and Hawking, and I think if you examine Genesis you will find that it contains a prototype of the concept of faunal successions -- but simply because they didn't have the benefit of the vast and painstakingly-amassed body of knowledge we possess today.
Those who turn off their minds to believe in Genesis today, though, and far worse those who misapply them, twisting logic and the normal rules of evaluation to deny the tremendous amount of evidence now existing for a billions-year-old Universe with a billions-year-old Earth in it, upon which many life forms have evolved and gone extinct. They are trying to live in the relative intellectual innocence of their remote ancestors, but their remote ancestors -- specifically the ones who joined the priesthoods and developed the ancient cosmogonies and philosophies -- were actually men of the mind who were trying to understand their world as best they could with the evidence at hand.
It is thanks to them that we have astronomy, mathematics, and writing itself. The Ancients were very much aware that one of the sources of their oldest and best lore was Mesopotamia, and some of that lore made it into Genesis. But the modern Creationists have cast aside the spirit of inquiry and fascination with the world that made this early flowering of science possible.
The worst thing I can say about Reality Check is that he has crippled his own understanding of logic and reasoning, because the proper application of logic and reasoning would tell him things that he doesn't want to know. Thus, he can imagine that if any aspect of any evolutionary theory is ever wrong, it means that evolution in general is wrong -- an attitude he would not apply in any other aspect of his life. (For instance, if your bank makes an error on your account of a few cents, do you necessarily assume this means that the whole banking system is fatally-flawed and that you must keep your money under your mattress? Or for that matter, if a plane crashes, does it mean that aerodynamics is a lie and that airplanes actually fly due to psionics having sex in airplane bathrooms? (*))
And yes: understanding the Universe through science generates true wonder, because it is wonder about things which really and truly exist. And these things are more wondrous than are our Bronze Age imaginings -- what is a God walking around poofing life into existence with a word over a period of a few days, compared to the slow and stately music of evolution, punctuated by the terrifying crescendoes of mass extinctions? What is an instant "firmament" (or even one crafted over centuries by my favorite Moon Princess) compared to the long dance of immense masses of hydrogen attracted by Gravity, then smashed together in Fusion to create stars and planets? (the "Dance of the Sisters," as I've called it in my fanfics).
Carl Sagan was both an awesome astronomer and an even better explainer of science.
===
(*) Reference to a very funny and dirty comic by Phil Foglio.
2181750 there is so much goodness to go through here I am going to have to go through it in pieces.
This This ABOVE ALL THIS. It is kind of a tragedy, because realityCheck is clearly a highly intelligent person ( In the IQ not knowledge sense) a person of merely average IQ can't write like he does.
So it is sad to see the completely corrupted chains of logic that he engages in merely in order to maintain his logically untenable positions.
The example that keeps leaping to mind is his attempt to divorce science from the scientific method.. as a nerd/ geek and a technology enthusiast, realitycheck cannot badmouth science, yet he knows, subconsciously, that the rules of science are hostile to his belief set. His beliefs would simply be obliterated by the scientific method, so he decides, absurdly, to separate the scientific method from science.
I cant find the comic at the moment, but he once drew a comic talking about the "fetishization" of the scientific method, and proposed that for the scientific method to be true scientists should be able to recreate the existence of Abraham Lincoln in a lab! Their inability to do do, RC argues, is prima faciae evidence that the the Scientific Method has nothing to do with Scientific facts.
I do not even understand the distortion of logic needed to make such an absurd compartmentalization. I cannot understand WHAT makes a scientific fact " scientific" if it is not verification through the process of the scientific method. One would assume perhaps it would be the consensus of the scientific community, except RC has claimed many times that evolution is NOT a scientific fact or theory but merely what is popular ( ie "consensus") among scientists. So Again, how does RC distinguish between scientific facts and trivia? not the slightest clue.
It is something of a tragedy , RC is a smart man, but he has erected (or more likely had erected for him when he was a kid) massive walls within his mind that must not be breached ( or he will be tortured for all of eternity, as is the wont of " all loving" gods) What could he have been? an educator? An actual scientist? A mainstream sci-fi fantasy author? Who knows. He never got the chance.
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RC is deliberately conflating "science" with "scientific experimentation."
Chemistry and physics, for instance, are experimental sciences -- theories regarding chemical compounds or physical laws can usually be confirmed or disproved by repeatable experiments. For instance if I think that I can make xenon flouride under such-and-such a temperature and pressure, I can mix xenon and flouride under the temperature and pressure specified, and then observe the results of the experiment. I can also have a control group, in this case xenon and flouride under other pressure and temperature regimes which are not supposed to result in combination, and observe the critical point at which the combination occurs.
By contrast, astronomy, geology or paleontology are mostly observational sciences. I can observe a rock formation and try to figure out what processes caused it to exist; to a limited extent I can conduct chemical and physical experiments to confirm or deny my theory, but mostly I have to compare my field observations to other field observations. There is no easy way I can re-run the entire history of the Earth to see if, under slightly different conditions, we get a different rate of sedimentary deposition or a different animal filling the niche of zebras, for instance.
Scientific experiment with control groups is a powerful scientific tool, but it is not the only scientific tool. RC wants to have his cake and eat it -- he wants the products of chemistry, metalurgy and physics but not those of astronomy or paleontology, because the latter sciences upset him.
2181750
What the hell, Jordan!
You rag on RC for YEC views bu don't call out the OP for an environmentalist apologist or economically illiterate.
Also,
"RC wants to have his cake and eat it -- he wants the products of chemistry, metalurgy and physics but not those of astronomy or paleontology, because the latter sciences upset him."
Really, you can't understand how maybe sciences and theorie formed WITHOUT experimentation (you know, the fundamental building block of science) or even the possibility of experimentation-to say nothing of a certain amount of disprovability-might be a tad irksome.
2218814
Not all environmentalists are wrong (for instance, we really are exterminating species on Earth at thousands of times their rate of appearance through natural evolution, causing the Sixth Great Phanerozoic Mass Extinction), and while I happen to be a loose adherent of Austrian free-market economics, the OP did not advocate something absurd like Marxism. There are other theorists beyond Von Mises and Marx.
YEC contradicts not merely (almost all of the) observational sciences (the ones it doesn't mostly have nothing to say on the topic) but also creates serious problems regarding experimental ones. To take the most famous and obvious example, if the Universe were only 6000 or so years old, we could not see anything beyond 6000 or so light years, unless the light from more distant objects were created already in place (which would be a rather pointless thing to do save to trick us into thinking the Universe were older).
There are other problems. Rock formations show continental drift; to take only the most recent obvious example (the breakup of Pangaea), for those continental plates to have moved rapidly enough to create the Atlantic in just 6000 years, the friction on their lower surfaces would have to be so great as to melt them back down into the mantle. Alternatively, if geological processes pushed them that fast (instead of Crustal Plate Angels tugging them around), the interior of the Earth would have to be much hotter than it is -- I suspect hot enough that the plates would melt anyway.
We theorize an expanding Univese over ten billion years old; we make observations of particles of various types and waves in various frequencies from Space after we make these theories, and they correspond to an ancient Big Bang, rather than a recent Big Abracadabra. I could multiply these examples to fill a book.
Basically, Young Earth Creationism is inconsistent with practically all observational and much experimental science. If the theory derived from, say, the Iliad or the Works and Days, you and RC would both recognize it as complete bunk, the product of a pre-scientific civilization struggling to grasp the origins of the Universe without the intellectual tools that make it comprehensible.
The only reason why you accord it any credibility is that you both desperately want the Bible to be literally true. And it can't be, because it contradicts what we see in Nature.
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So you say but even today we are observing phenomena like dark matter and dark energy that directly contradict some if not all of that scientific thought.I find it a tad absurd that you hold onto those things so tightly even though no actual experimentation was involved to deduce those answers and we discover stranger and stranger phenomena.
Also, why do you call it a trick? Just wondering
I don't actually disbelieve in evolution or even old Earth. I'm just flummoxed that people call it science when it's more like educated guesswork because believe it or not but science requires experimentation and scientists aren't infallible god-humans.
In any case, that's not what bugs me. The fact that you won't even defend Ralph over the things you actually believe and allow the OP to hurl insults.
What happened to your belief that a freer society was inevitably more prosperous than a controlled one?
What happened to your criticism that feminists were fools because they allowed female circumcision on the grounds of culture but constantly criticized America for not being super accomadating?
What happened to your belief that environmentalists who didn't support nuclear energy are fooling themselves (and believe me there are a lot of environmentalists who don't)?
2219189
ben, can I call you ben? let me tell you a story.
Couple years back, on this website there was a guy writing called Device Heretic. I personally am of the opinion that Device Heretic is the single most talented person to write ponyfic. His prose was astounding, his charactherization perfect, etc.
But Device Heretic had.... Problems.
By which I mean he was an alcoholic.
Sometimes late at night, he would get very very drunk, and he would get on here and go berate other writers. In particular he despised clopfic writers who would write clop featuring the CMC and other foals, berating them as essentially child pornographers. I happened to agree with most of his criticisms. I have very good reasons to believe you would too.
But nobody likes to be berated, and the writers got together and basically began a campaign of harrassment against device heretic. They managed to hack into his account. they doxed him, and connected his real life identitity with his Fimfiction account. In the end he actually lost a job opportuinity specifically because the people who were going to hire him found out about his writing of ponyfics and did not hire him explicitly citing his stories.
And so he left . Which was a sad day for fimfiction but certainly the correct decision for his mental health.
My point is that as much as it hurt me, and as much as I supported him and cheered him on on his profile, I don't recall ever going on the profiles of his critics to defend him. I am not that personally vested in a person who writes ponywords so as to go defend him against his critics.
So I again must ask you.... why are you so vested in defending RealityCheck if in fact you are not the same person? the only answer you have provided so far is that you have similar political views, but still the only thing that makes sense is that YOU ARE realitycheck ( given how often you quite literally speak for him) or you are related to him ( like his brother or his cousin).
but anyways.
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That strikes me as strange, that a man must be expunged and reviled by the very country he lives in by a mob of sorts if he espouses an unpopular opinion (and the hatred of foalcon strikes me as not terribly controversial). Not unlike how the creator of Mozilla was chased out of his position. If I may I'm not entirely certain just standing by was moral. Being a jerkass isn't a good thing, but neither is forming a mob.
Granted, I don't know Device Heretic or the raw histrionics he apparently descended to but it really flabbergasts me.
I'll be honest, I don't understand what you're getting at. Every minute of every day there are fans who go to substantially greater lengths and vitriol to defend what and who they like from dissenters. Perhaps you are an atypical fan.
I don't understand the Sparity thing, they're both sapients even if they aren't the same species.
I also must add that I think your mockery is a tad unfounded: your accusation of birther for instance is divorced from reality. Is it so bad that he doesn't treat Obama as ROYALTY THAT IS ABOVE THE PEASANTS and demands that a president be held to standards that everyone else is held to? The issue was more that one nominee directly presented his birth certificate but Obama did not.
Also, it strikes me as odd that dems can never seem to see what is obvious: that welfare creates a perverse incentive. Half the reason he's had to take food stamps is because the oh so generous (with other people's money) libs essentially take most of what he earns (he is still paying off a bloody tax fee from years ago). The guy pays his taxes and tries to make ends meet but is beaten down by the system people like you put in place in the name of your petty, sanctimonious view of generosity and you have the nerve to call him a hypocrite for not being able to crawl out of the hole you threw him in. I know these things because I listen to his livestream.
Considering that heads do explode when Flash is on screen for as much as 2 seconds...
I have no comment on the thing about women... it's generally a bad idea to attribute a single attribute to a group of people. I didn't see it as actively malevolent like the people in the link but again this is a bit of a misunderstanding on your part. His vitriol for feminists is due to the fact that they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to wear any outfit in public they wish and too smack anyone who looks at them lasciviously even if they are essentially wearing next to nothing. That and abortion angers him.
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You reason as if there were a binary choice: Currently Accepted Scientific Theory vs. Biblical Literalism. This dichotomy is irrational, and it's at the heart of why nobody who understands science takes Young Earth Creationists very seriously in intellectual terms.
The Currently Accepted Scientific Theory is "currently accepted" not because the secret arcane councils of the Technocracy decree it, but because it is the one supported by the plurality (in practice, usually majority and overwhelming majority at that) of the evidence. One always, rationally, picks the theory which has the most evidence supporting it. If new discoveries produce new evidence that more strongly supports another theory, support shifts to that theory, which becomes Currently Accepted Science.
To take one obvious example, a century ago geologists believed that the continents were fixed in place. There was a lot of evidence for this, most notably that (with the less advanced surveying equipment of the day) nobody saw continents sliding around (because they do so too slowly to be observed save by very precise measurements, such as those obtainable by orbital laser rangefinders). Also, since it was assumed that the crust was solid and sitting on solid rock until one reached depths sufficient to directly melt silicon, nickel and iron, it was hard for the physicists of the day to see how there could be the necessary flexibility in the system.
Paleontologists, however, noticed something interesting. There were frequent examples of faunal or floral groups which existed at the margin of one continent and continued on the margin of the next one over, often with rather large oceans between them. What's more, this tended to be noticed between continents whose coastlines geographers saw kind of fit together, such as South America and Africa.
Geologists attempted to explain this by postulating that in the past the sea bottoms had risen and fallen (actually true for some sea bottoms, but not the deep oceanic ones) creating "land bridges" between these continents (a good example of a real "land bridge" is the drowned land of Beringia connecting Northeast Siberia and Alaska). This concept of extreme sea floor rises and falls lasted from the late 19th to mid 20th century as the Currently Accepted Scientific Theory.
Then science discovered things which contradicted this CAST. Did the scientists then go "Oh, we were wrong -- Genesis must be accurate! All the animals and plants of the world were put where ever we found them by God, no land bridges needed?"
Of course not.
What happened was that a US Navy expedition mapped the Atlantic seafloor (my biological father was on that expedition, as an ordinary seaman) and they discovered something interesting. Namely, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge -- one of the longest mountain ranges on Earth (humans had long noticed the large really high part of it called "Iceland") -- and there was something odd about this ridge. The rocks along the ridge are very young, but as you move out along the seafloor away from the ridge, the rocks get older and older until you hit the continents.
In a blinding flash the mechanism driving continental drift became plain. New oceanic crust is spawned by the volcanoes of the mid-oceanic ridges, and this oceanic crust pushes the continents about, just like convection currents pushing the congealed stuff on the top of really hot soup. What's more, geophysics had advanced over the ensuing decades (thanks in part to seismological data) and it was now understood that very hot solid rock behaves like a very viscous liquid rather than a true solid -- the crust floats on a structurally weak aesthenosphere which comprises the upper mantle, providing the flexibility which enables the continents to (slowly) move.
Young Earth Creationism is so poorly supported by evidence, and there is so much direct evidence against it, that it isn't even in the running, where pretty much any science is concerned. And that's not because the Scientific Establishment are Meanies who won't give it a chance. It's because the Universe is speaking to us in the language of logic, and rather firmly saying "No" to the Biblical Literalist claims.
Because, assuming that a God created the Universe around 6000 years ago, creating it with what looked like billions-year-old light and other particles in passage and bilions-year-old geological strata in place, complete with the appropriate amounts of decay, would be difficult to fathom save as an attempt to trick its inhabitants into thinking the place was older than was actually the truth. It's also difficult to fathom why a God who was even moderately nice, let alone omnibenevolent, would do anything that nasty.
All science is "educated guesswork." This is true to some extent even of experimental science, because we may be overlooking some external condition affecting the experiment (for instance, before we gained the ability to do experiments in orbit, every single experiment we did in crystal formation was under the effects of a fairly strong gravitational field). This is even true to some extent of wholly abstract sciences such as mathematics, since our minds are fallible and limited -- we may be making unwarranted assumptions and not perceiving them (for instance, until we discovered the idea of curved space, we assumed that the angles of a triangle must add up to 180 degrees -- this is no true save in flat space, and OUR spacetime isn't really flat!!!)
I have never repudiated this claim -- though one must add "eventually, and all other things being equal." It is possible for a specific controlled society to be more prosperous than a freer one if it enjoys the right sort of advantages over the freer one, and it is very possible for the more controlled one to be temporarily more prosperous, until the Laws of Economics have had time to bite.
They are, and I've argued this many times elsewhere. Even once on FIMFiction itself. How is this relevant to the topic under discussion?
They are. Again, what's the relevance?
You could also quiz me on bimetallism (for the record, I favor the monetization of precious metals but with a free floating standard of exchange) or taxation (flat tax). Or ice cream (Neapolitan, Cookies and Cream).
What's the relevance?
2219516
They are different people, and threatening even implicitly to stalk Ben isn't cool.
2218814
do you know what a " false dichotomy" is? because just about every argument you make seems to be one.
A false dichotomy is when you argue that your conclusion is one of only two options available. Usually both options are rather extreme.
For example you argue that because I oppose the Austrian School of Economics I Must be a marxist. This is a pretty straightforward example of a false dichotomy. Because your argument depends on the presupposition that a person is either an adherent to the Austrian School or a Marxist. There fore once you know I am not an Austrian you now "know" I am a Marxist.
Of course this is an absurdity. Yes I am not an Austrian, but I am also most definitely not a Marxist. But this possiblity does not even seem to occur to you. hence you have commited the logical error known as a false dichotomy.
You Criticize Jordan for not blasting me for my " economic illiteracy". Again False dichotomy. You assume that all people who are economically literate agree with you. since I don't, i must be an economic illiterate. look I know I cant prove this to you, but as an undergrad I double majored in Political Science and Economics. I have probably read more actual books on Economic theory than you have. For example I have actually read and studied F.A Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, yet I bet you have never read Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Here is the really damning thing... I bet you don't think you need to read Keynes, because you already know a priori without any need to look at the evidence that he is wrong . This is why I accuse you of being an anti-intellectual, you start by deciding before you look at the evidence that some ideas are wrong and some are right and you wont even look at any evidence that may in anyway contradict your apriori conclusions.
But all this is a massive digression on my part. the point is that most economic literate people ( as in say.. professional economists) are not Austrian school adherents. Are they all Marxists instead ? Of course not! Most economists are not marxists either! That is your false dichotomy blinding you. the world is not either or.
Yet another example, you criticize Jordan for not criticizing me for being an apologist for eviromentalists. The logic that underpins that statement is that, clearly, all moral people have to criticize those who apologize for enviromentalists, since clearly, moral people by and large view enviromentalists are beyond the pale. This only makes sense if you believe that say the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)/PETA/ sea sheperd etc are representative of the typical envriomentalist,or at the very least the aknowledged " leaders" of the movement. Again this is an absurdity bred from your constant and insistent use of false dichotomy.
Look you cant have your cake and eat it too. I bet you anything that If I ( or anyone else) wrote a blogpost stating that I am worried about all the pollution in the sea and overfishing, you would " accuse" me of being an enviromentalist. Yet people who worry about sea pollution are very far removed from ELF/PETA types. So if anyone who worries genuinely about seapollution/overfishing/carbon footprints is by definition an enviromentalist then it is IMPOSSIBLE by pure math, for ELF/PETA et al to be the leaders of the enviromental movement. My point here is that you cant claim anyone who adheres to one idea is an enviromentalist ( thus throwing millions and millions and millions of people into the pot) and in the same breath point at the most extreme people you can find and state that those people are the ones who truly speak for enviromentalism!!! ( you/RealityCheck do exactly the same thing when it comes to feminism by the way)
Speaking of feminism, you also have a nasty tendency to just make shit up for example apparently Feminists are a okay with clitrectomies because they are concerned about cultural imperialism or what have you. I unlike you, happen to know some feminists in real life... gasp! Shock! and they are all opposed to genital mutliation of women. all of them. every single one. Not One is an apologist for Islam. not One claims that we can't criticize those cultures. of course im sure that they do exist, and I have no doubt you have a quote from a feminist defending the practice on the basis of anti imperailism ready to go so that you can claim that that is the way that all feminists behave. ( how does that work by the way? how do all feminists get together to receive their monolithic marching orders?)
But rest assured that if you went to a conference on genital mutilation, the overwhelming majority of the anit- genital mutilation activists you would meet there would self identify as feminists.
Speaking of false dichotomies and ridiculous world views let me quote something you posted on the comment's section of the infamous Chapter 11 of Nyx's Family you come to the defense or realitycheck in the most sockpuppetty of ways, bringing in a quote from the tvtropes of the story in order to massage your/ his ego:
This tells me that either you have never set foot in a Secular University in the USA or you live in a parallel dimension. I don't know what other people's experiences have been but In American universities Marx and Chomsky are extremely controversial figures.Extremely controversial. I know this blows you away but most faculty members in most Universities in the United States are not marxists. Liberals, perhaps, but marxists? not at all. ( by the way Chomsky is a linguist not an economist, and many many academics -even Barack Obama supporters!- think he should stop blathering about foreign policy and keep to linguistics)
And that is the whole problem isn't it? you have already divided the world into two monolithic entitities. Good people of course are Christian and vote republican while adhering to Austrian economics while bad people are all atheist marxist feminists who support PETA and Central Planning.
Once you run into an atheist you "know" you have already run into an evil feminist marxist etc.
All you have to know is that someone opposes your viewpoints and you already claim to know what viewpoints they do support , because in your head there are only two choices.
2219661
I just reread what I wrote and i can see how it can be misinterpreted the tone is kind of... off
so let me be perfectly clear:
I in no way shape or form meant what I wrote as a threat against Bensarchar or RealityCheck. I did not mean nor mean to imply that what happened to Device Heretic could or should happen to RealityCheck or bensarcharcar. I believe that what happened to Device Heretic was awful, and i for one, hope that all of those who harrased him got permanently banned from this website.
The point of my comparison was to compare myself and bensarchar and how we reacted to criticism of a favored author. That is all.
2219876
Sorry then -- my misunderstanding.
2219660
The relevance is, in case you didn't bloody notice, RC is essentially being insulted for the crime of believing essentially those exact things, he's being marginalized for calling feminists fools for supporting female circumcision, for not being environmentalist enough by bad mouthing nuclear energy, etc.
Why are you playing friends with fools that for the most part would consider you a scientifically literate version of RC?
2219757
Actually I did study econ. More importantly I studied history. Keynes has been wrong so many times it's actually infuriating that people consider him an expert.
To be honest I just don't have the time or patience to list off every possible flaw with feminists so I went for the extremely low hanging fruit. I could repeat the last things I referred to in your previous blogpost so you can look there for a more complete list.
I think your making a lot of false dichotomies. You say "all x are perfectly rational people" when I point out that there are people who are not, who are known to do and say stupid things you scream "FALSE DICHOTOMIES!" Ultimately the point I'm trying to get across is that the people RH criticize sometimes deserve a little criticism. Environmentalists used to be pro-fracking now they oppose it and they still oppose nuclear power. Feminists used to have a point now they rely on flawed memes like the 75 cents per dollar meme. What does feminist really mean anymore? Is RHJ gonna call for women to go back to miniskirts and stop working? No. The thing is he has some valid points but because he thinks it isn't right for a man to be put in prison because of the merest accusation of rape and have his life ruined over the aforementioned accusation he's a raging misogynist or something.
I was criticizing jordan for violating principles (mostly by leaving certain things unopposed) I know he has because I read his blog.
2220011
Again you keep making these huge inferences! where do you even get this?
when did i EVER say " all x are perfectly rational people"?
did I ever say ever that all feminists are rational people?
answer? No. You can easily prove me wrong by pointing out where I did say that. So you will right? of course not. because I never say that. there are plenty of irrational feminists.
Did I ever say all enviromentalists are rational? NO! Why on earth do you even think I said that?
I never even said all Keynesian Economists are rational.
The world is full of irrational people. Irrational enviromentalists Irrational feminists, and irrational economists most definitely included.
Again you seem to think in monolithic terms, in fact this is so ingrained in you that you seem unable to notice that other people dont necessarily think this way. When i defend some aspect of some beliefs held by some people you would label as feminists i am in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM defending all beliefs held by all feminists ( or enviromentalists or whatever)
You are the one who wants all feminists to speak for those who attacked Sarah Palin, and who want all enviromentalists to speak for the sins of PETA. You want to take the most extreme examples and smear everyone. when I defend the masses agaisnt this impossible standard you somehow assume that I must be absolving PETA or whatever of all sins as well. Why would you even think that? I seriously do not understand your line of reasoning.
Look I mocked RealityCheck for insisting that Enviromentalists don't know what the water cycle is because that is such a dumb statement that it fully deserves to be mocked. However my engaging in such mockery in no way shape or form is an " apology for enviromentalists". Again the very sentence " apology for enviromentalists" is posited on the idea that enviromentalism is some kind of extremist fringe movement like islamism, that all right thinking people abhor, in other words that enviromentalism = ELF/PETA/Sea Shepherd. So again you seem to be arguing that when I make fun of RC for insinuating that people worried about water pollution are all people who flunked all science classes after third grade what I am actually doing is apologizng for the acts of ELF/PETA/ Sea Shepherd. Again I have not the slightest idea how you reached that conclusion. I am all ears and will read any explanation.
So again:
When did i say all Feminists were rational?
When Did i say all Enviromentalists were rational?
When did i say everyone who did not adhere to Austrian Economics is rational?
next time, try countering what I actually said and not what you imagined I meant. it is easy. Just stick to my written words. They are right there for you to read.
2220011
That is NOT why he is a mysogynist. Check My OP again, i gave a pretty good reason why he is a mysoginist( roughly paraphrased he argued "human progress takes place in spite of the natural overly cautious predispositions of women") I can link to pages and pages of similar material.
Here is a question, and you dont have to answer me publicly, it is more of a question for you to ask yourself...
where do you get your conceptions of what present day feminists stand for? do you interact with a lot of feminists face to face on a regular basis engaging them in debate on their positions? or on the contrary to you listen to people like say Glenn beck Michael savage, bill o reilly, sean hannity , rush limbaugh etc and take their descriptions as an accurate representation of modern feminism?
( oh and by the way, most but not all, feminists favored the miniskirt, and most,but not all, anti-feminists opposed it
)
I have no knowledge if what you say about fracking is true, but I actually agree with you that blind opposition to Nuclear power is idiotic, and that any foreseeable sustainable energy future will need much greater use of Nuclear Power than the amount used in the present day. Not all enviromentalists oppose Nuke power, but some do and that is indeed dumb.
Here is another thing that some but not all enviromentalists oppose and I think they are wrong: GMO's. There is no evidence whatsoever that GMO's are harmful and they have quite a lot of potential, in fact due to over ten thousand years of human selection and breeding, just about all ourfood is genetically distinct from the wild strains. But there is an element of the anti-science left ( not all the left is anti science, but some is) that has become rather hysterical about it, and thus many but not all enviromentalists now oppose GMO's without any good evidence to back it up.It is basically a religious hysteria of the left.
Anyways turning back to fracking, like I said I dont know if what you said is true, but if it Is there is a very interesting historical precedent.
Obamacare.
Yes . really.
The Affordable Care Act as it was codified into law is almost exactly the same as a proposal by the conservative Heritage Foundation from the year 1993. As you may recall, then First Lady Hillary Clinton was heading a panel to propose an overhaul of the USA health care system.When she released her proposal, the Heritage Foundation released a counter proposal. Just about everything that we now associate with Obamacare, the health insurance exchanges the mandate, the penalty if you do not buy insurance etc, first appeared in this heritage foundation proposal .
I repeat these where conservative republican ideas proposed by a conservative think-tank But of course when the antichrist/secondcoming of Hitler known as Barry HUSSEIN Obama Soetoro the Second proposed legislation that was 96-98% identical to the proposal by the conservative Heritage Foundation.... why it was the end of America don't you know?
2220011
you may need to get the smelling salts for this one.
My best friend is a republican. I swear. true story.
Wait it gets better.
he is a Republican Investment banker. Like wall Street. Like the guys the Occupy wall street guys protested against.
I hope you are sitting down because it is about to get even worse.
Are you sitting?
You sure?
My best friend, while in college was an actual bona fide White House intern in the White house during the Administration of President George W Bush i shit you not.
if you walk into the living room of my best friend's apartment there taking pride of place is a picture of my best friend and President George W.Bush standing next to each other in front of the HMS Resolute desk in the bleeding Oval Office.
But wait! you say.. you must never talk about Politics with this friend, politics must be a minefield where you never venture for the sake of your friendship...
Actually... we go at it all e the time. in fact that is kind of how we met and became friends he was the president of the high School debate club and captain of the debate team, I was vice president and vice captain. During those long bus rides to and fro between Forensic tournaments we bonded and became besties.
Later on we co founded our HS's Model UN Club. during our first simulations we banded together to sabotage proceedings satirizing the ineffectiveness of the UN general Assemly. Think of it there was I a self proclaimed Liberal, banding forces with my Conservative best friend to make fun of the UN sounds impossible doesn't it.
Look I value compassion, warmth intelligence and reason over ideological purity anyday. I would much rather spend a day with my best friend talking about politics than spend a day talking about politics with an anti GMO hippie with bad reasoning, even though the Hippie and I likely voted for the same guy in the last presidential election, whereas I know for a fact my best friend and I did not.
So if Jordan 1179 is a conservative republican or whatever it does not matter to me. if his blogs and comments are In any way indicative of his ability to reason, i welcome his electronic friendship.
2219660 dude you have a genuine gift for explaining science. You are like a regular Bill Bryson.
2220011
That is a lot of words to say , in essence " I am taking my ball and going home".
Also by previous blogpost I am going to assume the one where you presented such well reasoned arguments as "Some self described feminists said some nasty things about Sarah Palin, a politician and public figure, and thus feminists have actually betrayed women " That is the one you are talking about yes? I find it hilarious that a self professed fan of Rush Limbaugh feels so bad for a politician's feelings. I suppose ad hominems are only fun when it is your side that hurls them.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/pWdd6_ZxX8c]
"Yeah, well, that is just like, your opinion, man"
flippant jokes aside, I want to be clear about what I am saying here. i am NOT arguing that Keynes is infallible and supply side economics is the devil. What I AM arguing is that the idea that Keynes was wrong, full stop, the end, is not something that is viewed as the truth by economists and historians as a profession. You are free to have that as an opinion of course, but as the video points out that remains, merely, your opinion man.
My point is not to argue that keynesianism is the fool proof end all be alll of economic theory, instead yet again, I oppose false dichotomies, it isn't keynesianism or the highway. However most economic historians do not view Supply Side economics ( of which the Austrian School is the most extreme example) as infallible either.
actually the consensus that is a majority but certainly not all economic historians view the current "Great Recession" as essentially a screw up caused by the deregulated economies crafted by the Supply-Side economic policies that have dominated in the USA and Western Europe in the 25+ years since the supply side revolution of Reagan and Thatcher.
I once saw you defend RC's shoehorning of his economic opinions into a story by saying " yes politics is eww.. but there is a reason why the recovery from the recession has been so difficult"... and I kind of smiled. See the recovery in Europe has been much harder than in the USA... the reason? due to pressure from the conservative goverment in Germany, Europe has taken the path of austerity (as dictated by Supply Side economic theory) while the USA has behaved in a more Keynesian manner. This is widely ( though again not universally) seen as what has made the difference.
This is the reason why you see the rise in Neo-keynesian economics in the last five years.. the recession is viewed as a mistake, an error of supply side economics, of markets that were in fact not able to for example, properly to value obscure quantitative " black box" products like the mortgage backed securities and derivatives that fueled the inflow of investor capital into mortgages in turn fueling the housing bubble.
Of course none of this is to even imply that Supply Side is Dead long live Keynes or any such absurdity. There are no panaceas, cure alls or holy truths. There was a reason for the Reagan/Thatcher revolution and it wasn't ( just or even mainly) the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The high interest rate, low growth, high inflation " Stagflation" economic enviroment of the mid to late 70"s in the United States and Europe is widely viewed as fueled by mistakes derived from Keynesian monetary policy ( with complicating factors: in europe there were labor market inefficiencies caused by much too powerful labor unions, while in the USA we had companies that had become complacent and forgotten how to innovate in the face of the utter lack of competition that US industries faced in the 20 or so years immeadiately post World War 2)
So again the consensus ( held by a majority but most certainly not all economic historians) opinion is that the current great Recession reflects the failings of Supply side economics ( of which the austrian school represents the most extreme elements) whereas teh stagflation of the seventies embodied the failings of Keynesian theories.
Neither school of economics is dead mind, In fact they are both so alive that pointing out some flaws is often sufficient for a Noble Prize in Econ. Milton Friedman, the most influential Economist of the last 50 years won a Noble prize ( and rocketed to intellectual stardom) for proving some crucial flaws in the monetary and consumption aspects of Keynesian theory.
on the other side Daniel Kahneman who was not even an economist but a psychologist, won his Noble in Econ by pointing out some flaws in Supply side ( including of course Austrian) economics. Namely, the fact that people do not behave as rationally when making economic decisions as neo-Classical/neo-liberal/Austrian models demand.
If you truly think you have what it takes to finally kill of Keynes, I urge you to stop wasting time reading/writing stories about magical talking cartoon horses and focus on writing your great Economics paper. Great Things await you...How does a Nobel Prize and say... a lifetime appointment to the Hoover Institution sound?
2219189
I dont want to repeat what Jordan179 has said, since he is a lucid and clear explainer of the issues at play here.
I will say two things.
Firstly the whole " but look Science doesnt know everything " thus implying god stratagem, comes very close to the problematic God of the gaps argument, in which you basically stick god in the spaces where we lack knowledge. There are two problems here.
Firstly you are now stuck with a god that gets ever smaller and smaller shrinking and shrinking as we know more and more about the universe.
The second, more important problem ( one that is shared with the cosmological/ first cause argument, among many others) is that this argument never answers the question as to why precisely, this points in any way to your god as opposed to any one of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of deities humanity has worshipped throughout history. Why is the god of the gaps the Christian fundamentalist god as opposed to Allah, or Ganesh, or Isis or Ahura Mazda or the Great Spirit?
I consider myself an Agnostic Deist. A deist ( in case you fell asleep in american history class... the concept was rather popular among this nation's founding fathers) believes that there exists a founding energy ( a " demiurge") that creates universes by in essence establishing the laws of physics, but does not intervene in the day to day lives of its creation ( thus is not a " personal" god) a divine watchmaker, but certainly not a divine father or judge.
Of course i have no definitive evidence this god exists and i am more than comfortable with the possibility that he does not ( hence agnostic) but i like the idea and know of nothing that disproves it.
And those last words of mine are indicative of where I am heading. Assume the god of the gaps is right. Assume the first cause argument is correct. Assume that science will not know everything ( and it never will know everything... more on this later.) and that those spaces where human light does not shine are filled with the holy divine essence of god....
How is that an argument for the creationist fundamentalist christian god as opposed to say an argument for my deistic divinity?
In fact In this instance my god is much more likely to exist than the god of the bible. For starters the deist does not have to deal with the 2 contradictory and scientifically inaccurate accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis.
It also doesn't have to deal with the fundamentalist biblical god's personality issues. the most glaring of these being that the activist god of the bible is nowhere to be seen in the present world. Fundamentalist literal christianity ( and Orthodox Judaism for that matter) asks us to believe among other things that the hands on god who threw plagues at Egypt to free his chosen nation and once wrote fiery letters on a wall to intimidate a mesopotamian monarch ( who is promptly slain that very evening) that same god.... then decides to sit by the sidelines as millions of his promised people go up the chimnneys of the Nazi death camps.
The deistic god doesn't have that problem.
So again assume you can shoehorn a deity into he gaps ... why would that deity be your deity?
See there is the belief amongst fundamentalists of all religions and creeds that the only possible god is their god, so anything that can in any way be viewed as permitting the existence of a deity instantly becomes proof of the existence of their god.
Why should that be the case when there are an infinity of other possibilities ?
I think you already know the name of this logical error.
Two words. first word starts with "F" second word ends in "y".
Statements like this are evidence of a profound misunderstanding of what science is.
You accuse Jordan 179 of " holding on" to these ideas, but of course Jordan is doing nothing of the sort. If you had watched the short video with Carl Sagan that I posted you would have run into this quote:
''
(science's ) only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths. All assumptions must be critically examined. Arguments from authority are useless. Whatever is inconsistent with the facts, however fond of it we are, must be discarded. ...(science is) self correcting , ever changing, applicable to everything. with this tool we vanquish the impossible" - carl sagan.
If a new better theory comes along that better fits the observable facts, we use that new one instead, embracing it , thankful for our added and improved understanding of the Universe.
It is implicit in your critique that you see this state of flux as a weakness, but all the contrary it is a strength of science, in fact it is almost certainly its greatest strength.
See here is the thing. Humans cannot perceive reality in its sum totality. this is referred to as " The Heuristic Problem. " which is really just a fancy way of saying "Humans are not omniscient" We have very limited cognitive ability, and we can only gather information from an infinitesimally small slice of the known universe. Thusly we cannot know reality since to know reality in its totality requires omniscience.
The best we can do is to create models, that is, simplified approximations of reality. This is were the real glory of science kicks in . Through technology and exploration, we increase our ability to both gather and process more information, and as those gaps become smaller we can modify our scientific models to better reflect our increased understanding of reality. Thus Science has built within it a system that ensures that its models are ever closer approximations of reality. Ever less simplistic, ever more accurate.
Science today is a more accurate model of reality than it was two centuries ago. Two centuries from now, it will be an even closer approximation. This may , indeed quite possibly will, necessitate the modification or rewriting of modern Scientific Theories as we keep reworking and fine tuning those Models.
Given our lack of omniscience, it is impossible for any human to tell you how accurate our current scientific models are to actual reality, but what I can promise you is that, as long as we use the laws of sciences and adhere to the scientific method our models now are better than those of the past, and those of the future will be better and closer. never quite there, since we are only human, but ever closer.
All of this of course, is anathema to the worldview of any fundamentalist religion. Fundamentalism believes that its chosen iworldview, that its model of reality, is a divine revelation. In most religions, ( certainly the abrahamic ones) this source is omniscient... he has no heuristic problem!!. Thus this revelation is perfect,( or at least it has no excuses not to be) and a measure of its perfectness is that it does not change.It has no reason to. Any and all new information that conflicts with the model must be dismissed out of hand. there is only rigidity. this is the very essence of fundamentalism, which in Christianity, arose as a reaction against attempts by more liberal theologians to coalesce Darwin's findings on evolution and geologists findings on Earth's age with Christianity. This rigidity of course, is why Science leaves fundamentalism further behind in the dust with each passing year. with each passing discovery. With each new piece of information.
Of course the test of any model is its ability to predict the future. And here is where science is triumphant. All the prayers to all the gods did nothing to stop disease. Science has tripled the Human Life Expectancy within the last four centuries. No rain dance ever ended a famine. Science more than doubled the carrying capacity of the earth, that is it more than doubled the number of humans the Earth could feed. And eventually science will take us beyond earth, as science allows us to predict the position and motion of exploratory vessels many millions of miles away.
With science, we vanquish the impossible.
2222334
And ... which is functionally even worse ... emotionally-driven to deny and oppose every advance in human knowledge, because it becomes a threat to religion as a reduction of the sphere granted to the Divine. This -- when in effect -- causes religion to actually retard scientific progress.
Or, indeed, any god known to any human religion? Why a monotheistic system in general rather than a polytheistic system, or a henotheistic system with demiurges, such as that proposed by noted monotheistic Catholic J. R. R. Tolkien in his fantasy work? This is another example of "false dichotomy," with the assumption being "currently accepted scientific theory vs. my SPECIFIC religion, when in fact the number of possible theories is very, very large (not literally infinite, of course, but infinite enough that no human could ever list them all in a single lifetime).
It also doesn't have to deal with the fundamentalist biblical god's personality issues. the most glaring of these being that the activist god of the bible is nowhere to be seen in the present world.
Christianity sidesteps this by arguing that after Jesus, salvation shifted from that of the Jews as "chosen people" to that of any who takes Christ as a personal savior. This of course begs several questions, especially if one is at all familiar with the history of the Jews between the fall of the Solomonic Empire and the Birth of Christ, a period of roughly a thousand years.
Where was the God of the Old Testament during the period that the Judeans were getting their butts handed to them by pretty much every bordering empire of the Ancient World? The excuse of the Prophets was that the Judeans had departed from this or that strict observance of the Covenant, but in many cases these were observances which nobody but those Prophets in particular had demanded of them.
Also, a Covenant which demands perfect compliance by a whole nation is essentially impossible to fulfill on the human side -- why didn't an omniscient God realize this? Or, if He did, how is this fundamentally-different from a maliciously-worded contract, so designed as to be unfulfillable by one party so that the other (who drew it up) can skip his own obligations? (Most Western courts will not support such contracts -- why is God less just?).
The promise of the Messiah was never fulfilled in the sense that it was taken by the Prophets, either -- you know, those same Prophets such as Ezekiel with whom Judea's lack of 100% perfect agreement was taken to be a valid excuse for God's failure to fulfill his part of the bargain purchased with so many foreskins (and what the heck does an obsession with foreskin sacrifice have to do with Cosmic justice and mercy anyway)? The Hebrews were promised a mighty leader who would restore the Empire of David and Solomon, not a philosopher who would morally-impress the rest of the Classical world into conversion. Sorry, but if you read the later parts of the Old Testament, it's pretty obvious that my ancestors were expecting Assyrian-scale devastation visited on their neighbors, not "turn the other cheek."
Aside: IMO the Muslims of around AD 3000 or so are going to be looking back on the period AD 1500-2500 and asking themselves similar questions. The Twelfther Shi'ites, who have an explicitly Messiah-like prophecy, are going to be particularly exercised by this -- assuming, that is, that the vengeful West leaves any of them alive after said Shi'ites finally do get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and use them to provide a military-historical object lesson on the difference between Mutually Assured Destruction and mere Foolish Provocation.
While, admittedly, Hitler fell in the end, this came a little bit late for some 10-12 million of his victims, 5-6 million of whom were those very same "Chosen People." And the argument that the Crucifixion superseded the Covenant is specious -- making a new contract, with other people, does not logically nullify those already made. ("Oh, you want your widgets? Sorry, the Yahweh Widget Company has new customers now, so we don't need to send you the widgets you already paid for. Thanks for all the foreskins, though -- our Boss keeps them in a big Foreskin Bin and swims through them daily ...")
The general term for this is The Problem of Evil, and the solution is usually something which contradicts omniscience and omnipotence.
There's also the question of why the Creator of the Entire Freaking Universe is obsessed with foreskins. Or the telling of rosary beads. Or peregrinations to Mecca. Or whatever a particular religion chooses to demand of its observants, which can't help but seem fairly trivial compared to, say, even a single Galaxy with a supermassive black hole formed by the consumption of thousands of star systems.
Such a God would be relatively far mightier than I am, compared to (say) myself versus a single bacterium. What particular observances do I demand from the bacteria swarming in my bloodstream? "Don't eat too much of me or put out too many harmful waste products or I shall smite thee with my immune system, reinforced by antibiotics," is pretty much the long and the sort of it -- I don't give a damn about the opnions of bacteria in any other respect. Neither would a Universal God necessarily give a damn about us.
At this point, the Fundamentalist falls back on the circular reasoning that the Bible is literally and perfectly true, based on the fact that the Bible says it is literally and perfectly true, and since the Bible is literally and perfectly true, we must believe everything it says.
This generally leads to either ignorance of what the Bible actually says (for in point of fact it frequently contradicts both observable external reality and other parts of itself; or the most incredibly sophistic and fallacious reasoning aimed at papering over the internal contradictions.
My kin have been doing this for two thousand or so years -- the result being the grand and insanely complex and useless theological discipline of Torah studies, which makes shari'a look simple and straightforward by comparison. If we'd only accepted Christ as our personal savior, we'd have done this to the New Testament as well, probably creating something that would have driven Jesuit scholars stark raving mad and could be weaponized against the Unbelievers due to the SAN losses it provoked by merely viewing it. Come to think of it, those of them who did convert started to do this in the Late Classical Era, which is why the East Roman Empire was so torn by incredibly-covoluted heresies, from which the phrase "an iota of difference" derives.
(*nods*) Actually, what I do is modify my theories regarding the nature of the Universe in accordance with new evidence. I actually first learned about cosmology and physics in the 1970's - 1980's, when I was in my teens to young adulthood, at a time when both dark matter and dark energy were as yet undiscovered (or were at most very fringe speculations).
Neither, incidentally, imply a Biblical God.
One of the best Carl Sagan quotes ever, and one which sums up both the moral beauty and the intellectual superiority of the scientific method as opposed to any conceivable religious authority. We may accept a scientific authority because the opportunity cost of checking it on every detail is great and we've known it to be accurate on other matters (which is an economically-rational thing to do) but ultimately, if we disagree, we can examine the reasoning, examine the observations or experiments, and try to come up with a better theory.
The "better" part of the theory is important. If the currently accepted scientific theory is inaccurate on some matter, that doesn't mean that any old random or emotionally-appealing theory must instead be true. If Newtonian gravity doesn't adequately explain the orbit of Mercury, that doesn't mean that I can just substitute "magic invisible space dragons" or "Mercuria, the Alicorn of Mercury" to describe its motions. I must substitute a theory that better agrees with the observations while making no unsupported or unfalsfiable claims.
Exactly. It's not that scientists are individually-smarter than are mystics. It's that scientists are using an inherently-better method than are mystics. The scientific method allows for error detection and correction by numbers of thinkers, even if they are not formally coordinating their efforts, in an emergent process. Each scientist stands on the shoulders of his predecessors. That's what yields progress over time.
Oh yes. Based on my knowledge of the history of science, I can make a pretty good educated guess to the effect that much of modern physics, cosmology, geology and evolutionary biology will be modified or superseded by new discoveries, over the next two centuries. I even follow developments in the field that I can make a decent guess as to which theories will turn out to be inadequate over the next half-century. I of course don't know exactly what superior theories will replace them -- my lone and limited mind can't sufficiently model the intellectual endeavors of millions of scientists working over many decades upon evidence some of which has not yet been gathered, as to out-guess them!
And that is the great advantage of science over religion. Science works. The factual predictions of religion have been repeatedly falsified, save for those worded in such a manner as to be "unfalsifiable" (and that which is unfalsifiable in its own terms cannot be valid statement of a theory, for it cannot be tested).
Many moral systems endorsed by religion work, compared to complete amorality. But even here, science has an advantage over religion -- it can explain why they work, through reference to Game Theory. And it can point the way to improved systems of morality.
The methods of testing moral systems endorsed by science -- mathematical calculation and experimental simulation -- also have significant merits over those endorsed (explicitly or implicitly) by religion -- holy wars and generations of repression with a Darwinian competition conducted in the real world between adherents of different schools).
The Scientific Method is objectively superior to the Mystical Method as a means of understanding reality, as shown by its results. Or to put it another way:
"By their fruits shall ye know them."
2220399
"Libertarian Republican," essentially. My beliefs map well to Classical Liberalism -- I favor a government whose functions are centered on defense, police and judicial functions; I'm in favor of a strong defense and a pro-American, pro-Western, pro-democratic foreign policy; I believe that government's role in the economy should be the enforcement of contract law rather than attempts to fine-tune economic events; and I am in favor of the decriminalization of the vast majority of currently-illegal activities between consenting adults. I hold that individual equality under the law is the highest possible enforcement of civil rights, and that attempts to enforce equality of outcomes between groups inevitably do more harm than good (including to the groups being ostensibly favored by those laws). Attempts to base governance on religion, and specifically for government to favor or disfavor religions, are extremely dangerous and should only ever be done regarding cults which are direct theats to national security (Communism during the Cold War, Fundamentalist Islam today) -- and even then, only very carefully. The Constitution is our strongest institutional protection against tyranny, and should not be violated even to achieve favored ends, lest we lose its protections.
That kind of stuff.
2220399
Friendship and Love trump Politics for me any day of the week. I married a Democrat. And I have far more loyalty to her and her family than I do to any politician or party of politicians. For that matter, I have far more loyalty to her than I do to my country -- and I'm fairly patriotic.
Also with regard to the Flash/Twilight situation -- a lot of fans I think miss that Pony-Twilight-in-Humanoid-Form was attracted to Humanoid-Flash, not particularly to Pony-Flash. It was only Humanoid Flash with whom Twilight actually had extensive interaction on-stage. While they are analogs of each other, they are demonstrably-not the same entities, nor are their personalities necessarily identical (for instance, Humanoid-Flash is primarily interested in music, while Pony-Flash is pursuing a military career, which implies some possible differences).
The most obvious interpretation of the events of Season Four with regard to the lack of important appearances of Flash Sentry is that Twilight was either embarrassed by her (as she saw them) inappropriate feelings for Pony-Flash and hence avoided contact with him; or alternately that she tried to get to know him and found out that he wasn't as interesting to her as was Humanoid-Flash. And Humanoid-Flash is in a different universe to which she has only the most intermittent access, which would make a love affair or marriage both rather impractical.
Twilight's standards for her own behavior and even emotions are rather high -- possibly unrealistically so even by Equestrian standards. I interpret her as fundamentally heterosexual (even though I deliberately gave her an unlikely lesbian mutual attraction in my stories because I wanted to play with the idea of reincarnation romance and the question of to what extent the object of love is determined by the object's personality versus one's own main sexual orientation), but it's hard to see any character recognizably Twilight Sparkle who is anything but highly idealistic and moralistic in romantic and sexual matters -- she's like that in every other aspect of her life, so the exclusion of that field from this tendency would demand specific explanation.
Put simply, unless she felt as if a love affair was likely to lead to long-term love and hopefully marriage, I don't think she'd start one. I don't see any of the Mane Six as actually promiscuous, but Twilight is one of the two who would be least likely to be willing to get involved with somepony just because "he's cute" (the other one being Applejack, who is similarly honorable).
And in Equestria Girls itself, she didn't actually make that deep a connection even with Humanoid-Flash. She knew him three days, and her attitude toward him boiled down to "you're cute, you're good with music, and you helped me -- you're a nice, fairly smart guy and I find you attractive." That's where love can start -- but she had to leave that universe immediately, so it really couldn't go anywhere.
It's certainly nowhere as deep as the connection shown rearding, say, Rainbow Dash for Soarin' (near-identical interests, repeated friendly contacts coupled with "you're cute and a nice guy") or Pinkie Pie for Cheese Sandwich (he's her disciple and close to soul-mate -- probably the Pony most like herself she's ever encounterd, of either sex), or Fluttershy for Bulk Biceps (one of the few members outside the Mane Six with whom she's demonstrated emotional relaxation, and she was outrageously flirting with him in "Equestria Games"). Or if you want, the most explicit romantic attraction on the whole show -- Spike's love for Rarity. Which is, though probably not sexually yet (due to his youth), very obviously requited, as Rarity not only treats Spike as one of her best friends, but has become increasingly physically affectionate toward him as the series has progressed.
I'm guessing that RC is seeing as lesbian some friendly behavior on the part of the Mane Six toward each other. Equestrian culture remind me very strongly of that of the Victorian Era in that it's common for close friends to unashamedly display physical affection, including hugging, bumping and non-sexual kissing. The only lesbian love I think the show may be implying is between Rainbow Dash AND Fluttershy (lifelong friends, frequent companions, extensive examples of mutual displays of both emotional and physical affection on-camera). (Which, if true would make Fluttershy the only polyamorous member of the Mane Six, since she's been shown as being more physically intimate with both Rainbow and Bulk at the same approximate time. Oh, and Discord, too, if you want to get into that).
Well said my firend
It's quite simple, really. If you put Chatoyance and RealityCheck in the same room, the only possible outcome is the most brutal and least watchable hate-sex in the history of the human species.
Totally a necropost, but I asked RealityCheck about TCB on his Youtube stream. I was in a bit of a troll mood that day.
2677370 And of course he mentions the her transexuality.
3115334 He would, yes, but Chatoyance isn't so much transgender as trans-freaky. In any case, a RealityCheck/Chatoyance reaction would not cause annihilation, but merely a quasinuclear reaction. For annihilation, I'd want to pit The Conversion Bureau against Fall of Equestria, producing usable amounts of Humans Are Magnificent and venison instead of just drama.
3115395 "Fall of equestria" being one of the few moments where i think we are all in agreement with RC, who wrote a pretty good takedown of it in like one paragraph.
3115334 I actually came in here to ask what on earth caused a revival of this comment thread after a year of inactivity. Now I see.
2677370 oh lawd. Does he still read out loud to all of you viewers from Answers in genesis?
Am I the only one who finds it odd that Hayes has recently writting chapters on how much Racism sucks, yet has said that
3116158 I am still astounded that he is writing Cheerilees Class AT ALL. The entire point of that story seems to be all about mutliculturalism and acceptance and tolerating those that are different from yourself.
Which of course runs counter against his entire ideology.
Of course he would say the Democrats are the real racists, wanting to keep the blacks " on the plantation" so they can keep voting democrat. because if african americans became supply side austrian economic acolytes they would umm I suppose ignite their inner entrepeneurs, become rich and vote republican.
In fact he has said precisely these things.
3116158 and also of course he LIVES OFF OF WELFARE CHECKS, BY HIS OWN ACCOUNT HE LIVES OFF OF FOODSTAMPS.
Seriously how has this man EVER contributed to society??? Like he himself never speaks of holding any job higher than a clerk at a store. BY his own ideology Hayes is a leech and a detriment to society. He thinks that people have to be productive and self reliant but he flunks those tests spectacularly.
You seem to know quite a bit about our dear ralph so maybe you already saw it, but here is the latest tussle RC and I had in the comments section of another story. Enjoy.
3116158
Not really. I've seen his misogynistic rants and his tendency to rant about sexists, and his "tradition is eeeevilllll" rant in Shorn despite supporting a very traditional interpretation of the Bible. The doublethink required to write anti-racist sentiments and then say something deeply racist doesn't seem like it would even pose him a challenge. I don't know if you saw his rant about gay people, but when called out he insists that he doesn't hate them.
I also have to marvel at the hypocrisy that goes into his political views. He rants and raves about welfare, but when called out on the fact that he's on food stamps and has only ever had menial jobs that a high schooler could do he makes excuses. It seems to have never occurred to him that if he could be poor due to circumstances beyond his control, so could other people.
3116711 Even if he's changed from that there still the fact that he's completely Hetero-normative. Kind of shooting the message of non bigotry in the foot when you practice a different form of it.
3116737 Really? He doesn't hate gays? I was confused when he said that
What does he think hating gays mean, flat out gay bashing? Cause that is it, but it's not as simple as that.
3116745 He was writing Cherilees Class since before his website breaking homophobic AppleDash rant. So it isn't that he changed but...? I don't know. I guess he views himself as a persecuted minority ( part and parcel of evangelical christianity is to view yourself as a persecuted minority no matter what percentage of the population you are or how much political muscle you wield) So he wants us not to persecute minorities... but then goes on to joke about machinegunning hispanic immigrants at the border ( as an actual IRL (legal) hispanic immigrant to the USA you can imagine how that one made me feel )
The story he posted immeadiately after the great appleadash apocalypse of may 2014 got downvoted to hell and trolled to pieces by people.
SOmeone waltzed in there and posted the following critique of RC's hipocrisy in re the fact that he is a homophobe yet supports rarity spike :
Ralph's answer is a thing to behold so I quote it in its entirety:
You all see the problem here i am sure. First of all he completey misses the point and thinks that people are outraged by the age differenvce.
Let us zoom in on that second sentence though.
There you go. Realitycheck LITERALLY DOES NOT SEE GAY/ BISEXUAL PEOPLE AS ....PEOPLE. A horse and a dinosaur/ reptile sure they are people.... but gays NOT people.
It is the only explanation.
3116774 No no no you misunderstand Ralph loves gay people SOOOOO MUUUUUCH that he has to let them know that the all loving creator of the universe will torture them FOREVER for their sin!
It is you who doesn't love gay people enough! You are not brave enough to warn them about Sin and hell!
Look if you knew a heroin addict and you told him he was sick and needed help is that evidence that you hate the heroin addict ??
( note: in case it isn't bleeding obvious the above does not represent my actual viewpoints on these issues)
3116774
He drops the act pretty fast, but his standard procedure after launching into one of his tirades is to insist that he doesn't hate them, he just hates what they do. In RC's worldview, all gay people are obsessed with having sex with people of their own gender and certain that if they're pushy enough they can convince straight people to try it.
I think he just kind of veers between deluding himself and admitting that he hates gay people. He's already shown himself to be a grandmaster at doublethink, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to imagine that he can change that part of his beliefs whenever he feels like it.
3116812 and what business, precisely, is it of his what gay people do ? How precisely does it affect him? Is he constantly sexually harrassed by the hordes of openly gay men he deals with on a daily basis, all of whom are sexually infatuated with him?
3116840
Exactly my thoughts. Especially since his own libertarian views should make the same argument.
Then again he wants people who write gorefics (Cupcakes, Cheerilee's Garden, etc) to be forcibly committed to asylums so I suppose he's pretty willing to contradict his political views whenever something makes him uncomfortable.