This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
(Why does “Paul Gibson” sound familiar?)
I’m actually inclined to agree with Tony’s assessment here and find my initial response a little insufficient in outrage. Partially due to weariness, partially because I’ve always been conflicted about how to feel about orders to “DIAF”.
Ditto, but he has been improving after being alerted a few times that he was falling into a rut.
Speaking of feeling conflicted: Not quite sure how I feel about this either. Can’t quite my finger on it, but I think either there is a hint of sexism/sex shaming or a tiny hint of eugenics and related notions behind this kind of joke. Just kind of feels off. Anyone else?
Fight fight fight!
What was that thing capped at, 4112 comments?
post 1 – You’re goddamn right that’s eugenics shit. Fuck that shit.
Racism against Italians – good old-fashioned americana.
Ah, that’s why I remember Paul Gibson : Same MO. Anti-Nerd starfart, escalating into incoherent froth and repetition.
BTW: Kudos to Tony for sensing the sockpuppetry!
Then I looked at Wikipedia. She was raised by Italians but adopted from Chile. Who knew?
anteprepro:
‘Paul Gibson’ started up in one of the last evopsych threads, then got obsessed with Nerd and started following him from thread to thread. This is at least the second sockpuppet they have created to continue stalking Nerd. So, if someone starts trash talking Nerd, bringing up porcupines and spewing “go die!” lines, there’s a high probability it’s ‘Paul Gibson’.
Yeah, you may be right. I retract my Snooki related…whatever that was.
It’s hard even for progressives to get stuff right all the time. A lot of us are basically in school here. I’m remembering Harvey Danger’s line “only stupid people are breeding,” and of course the movie “Idiocracy.” That stuff is bad news. I used to be down with it. :-(
Now doucheweasels are posting to my blog. Such fun. Once again, I have been imbued with the power of choosing to ban people! Must be a miracle or something.
Steve King unwittingly denigrates religion, and no one in the media bothers to call him on it.
Jill Smith’s Golden #666 Post.
Caine
ssshh
you’re getting mighty close to admitting that you are a PZsockpuppet™
or vice versa
or something…
Lofty
Thats a thing of beauty there. Before I clicked I had three images I thought it might be for the trophy: LotR troll, D&D troll, or the Gnomes troll. What a wonderful way to be reminded of something from my childhood. Now I gotta track down a copy online somewhere.
Chigau:
Ha! Right, I forget about all that stuff. As I’m now sitting here crying, after answering doucheweasel’s second post to my blog, I think I may need a day or two away. I seriously don’t need this shit.
Damn, I’m jealous….. whatta I gotta do to get a Golden Troll Award…..
no fair!!!!! Iwanna Trolllllllllll gimme a troll or I’ll hold my breath and do strange things with psephologists and porcupines!!!!
I realllyyy mean it tooo!
Caine
*hugs*
Huh, Titania from Fire Emblem as the thread starter? What brought this on? I mean besides being basically the best Oifey in the series.
Caine
*hugs*
More hugs for Caine, stat!
…but, she’s actually dressed. O.o
@Caine
That’s terrible. Hugs to you from me as well.
@omnicron
The description below the picture of Titania is a link to an article on women with actual armor instead of what they usually get stuck with. The fire emlbem series could probably have filled up another two pages worth of characters with all the female characters that wear practical armor, allthough unfortunately the most recent game uses fanservice to make people buy the DLC, literally objectifying the women to make money. I love fire emblem, but that’s just really sad.
Sure it can.
You know what would improve procreation?
Artificial wombs. Uterine replicators. End fetuses parasitizing women. Every parent would be able to have children — wanted children — without needing someone doing the 9 month gruntwork of lugging the developing embryo around and then painfully pushing the baby out through the vagina, or being sliced open for a cesarean.
Heck, marsupial reproduction is already an improvement on placental reproduction.
That’s as dumb as saying that if God wanted man to fly, he would have given us wings “to fly naturally”.
If you don’t think that airplanes are wrong, you shouldn’t think that opposite-sex gamete formation is wrong.
God’s word is crystal clear about worshipping Jesus: It’s an abomination.
God’s word is crystal clear on working on the Sabbath: You’re forbidden to.
God’s word is crystal clear on eating pork and non-fish seafood: It’s wrong.
Christians don’t give a shit about “God’s word”, because they pretend that what later texts say is more important than what earlier texts say. “Oh, look, we’re going to pretend that this interpretation means that Jesus is the same as God, so worshipping Jesus is not idolatry. Oh, we’re going to pretend that Jesus dying on the cross means that the Sabbath doesn’t matter anymore. Oh, we’re going to pretend that because some guy wrote down that another guy had a dream about hearing a voice saying ‘take and eat’ that kosher doesn’t matter anymore.”
Well, you know what? That works for homosexuality too. All you need to do is cherry-pick a few verses from the NT, like Jesus commanding people to “love one another” and “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, and wave your hands around; maybe pretty up the language a bit, and there you go: Homosexuality is fine.
Except for the part where Jesus says that some people should be eunuchs. Thus: not clinging to a wife is OK. It’s not much of a stretch to get to “homosexuality is OK” from there.
Except for all the parts where a man takes additional wives/concubines…
Christians have been molesting Scripture since they first started up.
Yeah, I noticed that you got off-track from what I wrote.
I didn’t ask a question.
Or in other words, “sin” is a stupid and meaningless concept. Eating pork, worshipping Jesus, and working on the Sabbath are “sins”.
The thing you’re getting off-track on is the question of whether a rapist should get his victim and their child. You now seem to be saying that that should happen, because the Bible commands it. So now you agree with and approve of what you said was asinine?
And I see another implication of you’re saying, that looks almost as nasty. Are you one of those people who thinks that consent between a husband and a wife doesn’t matter; that a husband can abuse, attack, and rape his wife, and it “doesn’t count” as rape because a married man doesn’t need his wife’s consent; that he can do whatever he wants to her, whenever he wants to — and it isn’t a sin?
That’s utterly moronic. We’re supposed to figure out what God doesn’t want by what the bible doesn’t say?
Hey, the bible doesn’t say “Post to the Internet”, so presumably, you’re violating God’s will in doing so.
Natural theology was invented by people who believed in God.
So now you agree that rapists should be given their victims, and their victim’s child, because that’s God’s intent; clear in His word.
You really don’t give a shit about not contradicting yourself.
That’s even more moronic.
You’re serious calling stamens fathers and pistils mothers?
Not at all, because you don’t understand it.
My argument is not that “everything that other animals do is OK for humans to do”; it’s: “Given that other animals have same-sex child-rearing, and it works for them, and for their children, it is not unnatural, and all other things being equal, it can work just as well for humans.”
Technically, we are animals. Humans are distinct from all non-human animals, but we are animals nonetheless.
Non-human animals can be moral.
I agree. Homosexuals should be allowed to marry and raise children, without bigots like you preventing them for no other reason besides bigotry.
Yes; when people regardless of gender have sex inside the bonds of marriage, and regardless of gender raise their own children in a loving home.
Or rather, you pretend that your bigotry is God’s intentions
Which is exactly what we should be doing.
We have feet to walk naturally; why do we ride horses; drive cars; ride buses and trains; take planes to fly through the air?
You can pretend it isn’t natural, but that’s just your foolishness and bigotry speaking.
Or rather, you pretend that “natural” only means what you want it to mean.
If it’s so easy, why didn’t you do it right here?
You mean, I have to be as bigoted as you are, and then I’ll agree with you?
So homosexual parents who happen to be adoptive and/or step-parents do deserve the title of parent too.
======
Silly ignorant bigot.
All life is cellular.
Multicellular life develops from cells that reproduce by dividing asexually (mitosis).
The common ancestor of multicellular life was single-celled life that reproduced by dividing asexually.
For someone who whines so much about the importance of biology with regards to reproduction, you sure do seem ignorant of the basics of biology — and indifferent to those basics.
Or rather, you have this intense need to totally redefine almost everything you lay your mind on, and hate being called on it.
You mean, there isn’t much difference between Christian extremists who are hellbent on instituting biblical law throughout the entire world and Muslim extremists who are hellbent on instituting sharia law throughout the entire world.
That’s as insane as saying that heterosexual couple cannot offer any more than a single parent with an extra income, and more time.
If a “child” is forced to “make believe” that the “unrelated individual” is the same-sex parent, then that goes for step-parents and adoptive parents as well.
And adoptive heterosexual parents are heterosexual nannies.
Since it is indeed physically and logically possible for the other parent to be the other parent, it is true regardless of your bigotry.
Which parent is unimportant enough to be expendable when God decides to kill one of a child’s parents?
He is indeed providing for his family, directly.
How? How do you know?
You haven’t explained how it’s a bad thing; you’re just arguing around in circles.
It has existed in humanity. But so have racism, sexism, and other bigotries.
Having existed in the past is no reason to continue with it.
You only think it’s “ruining” anything because you’re a bigot.
It has nothing to do with my wants. Clearly, it is from their own nature, and is therefore natural.
If anyone wanted it, God wanted it.
Your are such a ludicrous moron. Not every man who stays home to take care of house and home is a homosexual; neither is every woman who has a career a lesbian.
It’s amusing that you pretend that a desire for justice and fairness is somehow magically going to get me, personally, laid.
You remind me of an antisemite or racial bigot calling someone who calls for fairness and equality a “Jew-lover” or a “n*gger-lover”. And that sort of bigot is basically what you are, not only towards homosexuals, but even towards men and women who don’t conform to what you imagine gender roles should be.
You don’t actually care about God; you think you are God — so of course, God mysteriously wants exactly what you want, and hates what you hate.
Yes, you are disgusting.
Your repeated idiocy is noted.
Reality has a known liberal bias.
I agree that Regnerus’ opinions, and yours, stink. Especially when it’s obvious that you’re full of bullshit.
Right; a loving home. Which is really all that matters.
You’re a moron to even think that’s implied by anything I’ve written. Kids will presumably call their parents whatever their parents will teach them to call them.
It’s amusing that this sentence exactly applies to you, your imaginary religion, and your hate-filled bigotry.
I concede that you’re a moron.
======
You wrote: “we continue to progress in making society more equal for both genders“.
This implies that gender does not matter for most of the ways that society treats people; in matters of rights, for example. That fact that you call this “progress” implies that you agree that gender should not matter in most of the ways that society treats people. In other words, that gender is totally irrelevant —
— except for where you need gender to be relevant.
Which means what, anyway?
It cannot play any role at all.
You seem to think that rape is maybe moral, though. Because God’s word says that it’s OK, if the girl is not betrothed. Or because the wife is married, and husbands are allowed to rape their wives.
I agree that your shameful acts of idiocy, hatred, and bigotry deserve to be shamed, which is why I’ve been shaming them.
No, you don’t. You just need to be a quality parent.
Sterile people cannot adopt or be called parents, regardless of their quality? Great, now you’re limiting the pool of adopters even more.
If biology doesn’t trump everything, then there’s no reason that homosexuals cannot be quality parents.
Sure they do. You’re just being a bigot.
Homosexuals in stable relationships who want to adopt or have children, do.
So you don’t think that Isabella Miller should exist.
Because 1+1 is magically not 2, in the annejones universe.
======
And the “other professionals” have been criticized in their turn.
Yes, you’re not interested in truth, facts, math, or science.
Wait, what?
No we don’t.
Caine,
take care. *hugs*
@annejones
Pardon me for inviting myself into the middle of a conversation that’s clearly been ongoing since before I was around but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
Are you kidding me? Of course the bible doesn’t support the position of anyone here. That’s kind of the entire point of the conversation you’re trying to have, isn’t it? What the bible says vs. what thinking people who know how to use their brains come up with after evaluating evidence gleaned from reality? And then you drop “proof that you know the Bible doesn’t support your position.” as if that’s some kind of gotcha? As if anyone other than you was attempting to claim that the bible DOES support their position?
My mind is seriously blown by the sheer inanity of those 11 words.
Ah, Jill Smith was Paul Gibson. *waves bye-bye* Got to sleep in this morning for one whole hour. Divine.
Ok I can’t help myself here: @annejones
Haven’t you been saying all along that gay people can’t be parents because it’s always been a mother and a father? So you get backed into a corner on it and instead of conceding the point, you instead pretend to adopt the exact opposite position? And you think this is honest argumentation? Rawr.
Banned Paul Gibson may be, but I am still scratching my head over the “insult”(?) or mocking(?) at my removal of the “!” From my nym. I mean, wtf?
@annejones
If you’d like to use your Bible as a source, I’d appreciate it if you’d first prove that it’s a valid source.
Hint: It’s not.
What’s so magic about the number two, anyway? Yes, children are better off being raised by loving parents. If you’re so sure that two is better than one, why do you assume that two is also better than three or four?
That’s not a random hypothetical. I’m talking about actual people I know: one child has, and lives with, two mothers and a father. A pair of twins are living with their mother and both her male partners, and all three are raising the children together. These are long-term households, in which the adults chose to have children, and love them.
There is absolutely no reason in principle why a child could not be ideally well off in a loving stable household comprised of any particular number; loving and stable are the key. I suspect that in practice relatively few people could actually maintain a loving and stable set-up with more than three or four adult partners tops, though I’m open to being shown wrong of course.
.
I’ve often thought three would be ideal, because you sure as hell need the shifts in order to get any damn sleep or anything else done when they’re little! (speaking as an anti-bigotry cis-het parent in a several-decades-stable nuclear family myself, annejones you repulsive narrow-minded oppressive homophobic bigot)
Thanks for saying this, it was my first thought – women who don’t “behave” (e.g. Snooki, LiLo, Britney Spears) get lots of unfair shit. Not to mention the almost certain racist elements, which I’m not qualified to go into.
I do realize and appreciate it was retracted, just wanted to toss in my thoughts.
—
Caine: *hugs* Take care of yourself.
Tony: Well, you’ll always be “Tony!” in my mind, like “Tony! How does it feel to lose at Pictionary?”
—
I remember Paul Gibson vaguely. I’d like to say that while Nerd says what he says a lot, I don’t think it’s entirely without value. Reminding asshats that they need to put up or shut up is often good. And it’s not all he says.
/twocents
If they want to endorse candidates from the pulpit, I say fine, but pay some damn taxes.
—
I heard an argument once that Mormons don’t make charitable donations when they tithe, because it’s quid pro quo: you don’t pay, you don’t get into the temple. Ergo, it’s not a tax deductible donation, it’s a price for a service. Makes sense to me.
Damnit that was for the Lounge…sorry.
I’m growing very weary of spending time answering to posts which spew your obviously heterophobic, Christianaphobic, anti-social bigotry. Hey it’s kinda fun to make up new words, redefine old ones, and give them any meaning I want them to have. Anyway, I’m just going to summarize a few key issues instead of spending time on each of your comments.
Your evolutionary claims are without foundation and are make believe. We all descended from a single celled organism that created itself through a process that was disproven scientifically a couple hundred years ago, spontaneous generation. It only happened once in all these billions of years. We don’t know what it is or how it got here, we just know that we descended from it by animals changing into different kinds of animals. Worms became fish became amphibians became reptiles became birds became mammals and abracadabra, here we are. Ants became astronauts, fish became philosophers, and of course, the most well-known example of the adult fairy tale made into a children’s story, a frog became a prince.
Your insistence that homosexuals fit into the family structure is make believe, as well. They’re simply trying to gain respectability by trying to play house and lying about the need for a mother and father in a child’s life.
A child doesn’t need a father, except in the case of two gay men, then 2 fathers are ok and the mother role is expendable. Well, it’s only expendable until it’s time to defend 2 lesbians, then 2 mothers are ok and the father role is expendable. By logical extension such a position requires you to admit that both roles are of equal importance to a child. If they are of equal value then neither role can be expendable. Which parental role is a child not deserving of?? Which parental role do they not have a right to have?? You shoot yourself in the foot when you turn around and argue that they are equal yet each is expendable, whenever necessary to protect homosexual rights. It’s a transparently self-contradictory position for anyone who wishes to see the truth.
Your studies, while not all of them are totally and completely without any merit at all, many of them suffer from built in bias, and methodological problems. Even if taken at face value, they don’t refute the research that show that kids face a higher risk of negative behaviors and psychological problems, including suicide, when not raised in a married home by a mother and father figure. That is the gold standard that we’ve known about for quite some time now, and any policy that encourages people to veer from that gold standard, by logical extension, encourages people to bring children into the world knowing full well that they are at higher risk for those negative behaviors and psychological problems. Such public policies should be avoided, and those behaviors discouraged.
As for homosexuals exhibiting those qualities we talked about, impossible. No man with any strength of character, self-respect, self-control, or moral decency would lay down for, or with, another man sexually. That alone shows weakness of character, admission that he chooses to take a more feminine role, and a proclivity to sexual perversion. Same goes for women. They also wouldn’t raise a child to think that is a proper exhibition of manhood or womanhood, or a moral means of sexual expression.
Any hope of a homosexual male/female being a real man or woman lies in his/her ability to admit that they are different than heterosexuals, rather than trying to mimic the heterosexual lifestyle, while at the same time saying that it’s unfair for us to favor that hetero lifestyle with our public policies. That is a contradictory position, and any thinking person can see that. If the hetero lifestyle is not the natural one that humans are made for, the normal one, the gold standard, then why are homosexuals so hellbent on making themselves look as much like heterosexuals in every way they possibly can??
If homosexuals were to admit to themselves that they are different, and that their lifestyles aren’t conducive to creating offspring, family life, and rearing children without making those kids stick out like a sore thumb. If they could admit that forcing kids into a situation that everyone knows cannot exist naturally, 2 moms and 2 dads, is to remove them from the natural order of humanity. If they could remove themselves from that familial aspect and leave the children to the breeders to deal with, I could actually respect them for their honesty and willingness to accept themselves for what they have chosen to do with their lives. I could respect their moral stance that sexual issues are for adults to deal with, and that children should be left alone and not encouraged to make such important choices at such young ages. If homosexuals could do those things, I don’t think they’d face much resistance at all, in their quest to obtain reasonable rights, or even cultural acceptance.
That is one of the biggest complaints about homosexuals, they just can’t stay away from our children. They want the schools to enforce policies that encourage kids to experiment with alternate behaviors. Many, though not all, homosexuals even want to lower the age of consent for homosexual sex to 14. It’s those reasons that homosexuality is so often linked to pedophilia, so much of the homosexual movement is centered on affecting children. Those children belong to other people because homosexuals, between themselves, cannot produce their own. You are usurping the parental authority of other people. You are interfering with parental rights to teach their children whatever value system or worldview they wish to bring their children up in. That is not your right to make that choice for other parents, and it is harming your push for acceptance and legitimacy.
If homosexuals had the strength to admit that homosexuals and heterosexuals occupy a different place in the world, and that we are indeed a different kind of people, I and most others would be much more likely to support measures that would make those two different places much more equal in value. That can be accomplished sensibly, while still recognizing the reality that we are indeed, different. Forcing the issue through judicial activism is breeding contempt, and other countries are watching what is happening here in America. I think what is happening here is what is fueling countries like those in Africa, Uganda most notably, and Russia, to take preemptive action.
Your social constructionism seeks to remove any cultural recognition of differences between men and women, and any beliefs about sex being a moral issue. While it is true that there was, and still is some inequality between the genders, we are making progress in correcting those problems. They can be corrected without trying to totally remove a big part of our humanity. The only logical goal of your position is to make society into something that will be accepting of any type of sexual behavior that one can come up with, no matter how illogical, or what negative effects it has on society as a whole. Your position and goals are unnatural, harmful, and immoral.
Sensible homosexual rights and broad cultural acceptance, even within the religious community, would be much more easily attainable if social extremists such as yourself would get out of the way and allow the few realists that exist within the homosexual community to lead the movement.
Cool. Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.
“Heterophobic” meaning that we don’t insist that heterosexuality is the One True Way? There’s nothing wrong with heterosexuality; in fact, it can survive being around openly non-heterosexual people and relationships. (The divorce rate in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is lower than in any of the states that don’t allow same-sex marriage.) Why does your heterosexuality wither at the idea that not everyone is like you?
Shorter annejones:
BALD, UNEVIDENCED ASSERTIONS! QED!
Also a complete misunderstanding of sociology, biology, and history.
Says the spewing of homophobic bigotry trying to hide behind your imaginary deity and your mythical/fictional babble. You haven’t demonstrated either your deity or your babble is believable. The bigot is you. Not your babble, not your deity, YOU. You are flailing around trying to justify your homophobic bigotry. But you can’t. The evidence says you are wrong. Can you comprehend that? YOU ARE WRONG.
1) You don’t know crap about evolution
2) You never defined what the mother and father roles are or why they are both necessary
3) You never cited any of that “decades” of research
4) Your insistence on “natural” parenting and biology is incoherent and contradictory
5) Your slavish devotion to traditional gender roles (or at least how they were defined in America in the mid-20th century or so) is sad
6) The hardships suffered by homosexual people (particularly children) are entirely a result of the narrow conformity enforced by rigid religious social systems, yet rather than dismantle those, you’d rather perpetuate them so that you don’t ever have to deal with anyone different than you
7) Your particular focus on male homosexuality reveals a deep internalized misogyny
8) “Separate but equal” is never actually equal
9) Your implied support/sympathy for the anti-gay laws in Uganda and Russia clearly marks you as a terrible, terrible human being
10) Your arguments, such as they are, were thoroughly destroyed by Owlmirror
11) You’re boring and no longer even fun to bat around and should probably just leave
Is there anything in that word salad which is supported by evidence?
Taking it out of context, and for a limited value of “we”, the following may qualify: “While it is true that there was, and still is[,] some inequality between the genders, we are making progress in correcting those problems.”
Anything else?
And one last little thing: It really is limited thinking to suppose that evolution stands and falls on knowing exactly what the first life form was. We have such a huge wealth of knowledge on the nature and diversity of life forms, past and present, and how they interact and how they change over time through fossils and molecular evidence, yet some would just toss that all aside and insist on knowing what (or really WHO) was behind it all. It’s the authoritarianism of childhood.
(Which, of course, is not to say that we don’t have some pretty good ideas of how it all started, and aren’t finding out more and more about it all the time.)
Yeah, that’s pretty terrible of them queers to try to “gain respectability” after decades and decades of abuse and disparagement. It seems you can’t please some people.
And *this* assumes that the “role” of father and the “role” of mother are fixed and immutable things. What century are you waking up from? Even in so-called heteronormative family structures, the economic realities have rendered the parsing of who-does-what in a household enormously fluid. Mom and Dad both work. Dad does the dishes and the cooking. Mom fixes the car. Maybe there is no Mom and Dad does it all. Maybe there is no Dad and Mom does it all. Your view of “both roles,” as if there are only two “roles” to speak of, is ridiculously retrograde.
Again, “parental roles” even in so-called heteronormative households have been fluid for years. So there is little to no relevance what sex organs any given set of parents actually have, so long as they are both adequately caring for the child.
Examples or it didn’t happen.
Examples or it didn’t happen.
Does it even matter to you that your “gold standard” once entailed women and children to be nothing more than the objectified chattel of the family patriarch? Either you acknowledge that family roles are ever fluid and changing, or you acknowledge that family roles *never* change and remain rigid artificats of an antiquated, patriarchal past, which is what you believe the family model should aspire to.
Either way, you lose.
Again, if your “gold standard” means the patriarchal family unit of yesteryear, that ship has sailed. We’ve been veering away from that for decades, having nothing to do with gay-parented families.
Cite it or it doesn’t count.
Or, we could stop stigmatizing LGBT people (and, by the way, your continued reference to “homosexuals” is almost like referring to “negroes” in this day and age— not offensive per se, but demonstrative of how out of touch you actually are). If we stopped stigmatizing LGBT people, then the negative consequences of children being raised by *stigmatized people* would actually go away. See how that works? See how logically tidy that is?
As for homosexuals exhibiting those qualities we talked about, impossible. No man with any strength of character, self-respect, self-control, or moral decency would lay down for, or with, another man sexually.
Okay, now I know you’re not serious. I’m a dunce. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound….
Femaleness=weakness and inferiority. Got it.
Oh, I guess it’s okay for women to lie with women then? Because women aspiring to be man-like (men being superior) is more acceptable?
You’ve got that backwards. As I’ve pointed out, gender roles in traditional family structures have become ever more blurred. It’s the heterosexual couples that are becoming more like the gay couples, in which the twosome is free to decide whatever roles they want to take in the relationship regardless of what ‘tradition’ has to say about it.
Actually, most gay couples would be adopting existing children, which is exactly what we need in an overpopulated world.
Ah, the old “everyone just knows” argument. I thought we were all about the studies and the sources. But now it’s “everyone just knows.” That’s odd.
I’m curious to know exactly what you mean by “remove them from the natural order of humanity.” With what, concentration camps?
It’s not a choice. When did you choose which of your hands would be dominant?
Ah, the old “gay predator” stereotype. Cite evidence or it doesn’t count.
Cite examples or it doesn’t count.
Evidence?
Most pedophiles are straight.
Right, because legitimacy is up to the heteros to grant. Not something inherent by virtue of human rights or something.
Yeah, one of those is overpopulating the world and one of those isn’t.
Yeah, it’s the fault of those uppity queers in America making it hard for queers around the world. If they would just know their place!
Ah, the old slippery slope argument. People are going to start marrying goats. Never heard that one before.
Yeah, people who want equality are such extremists. I’d love to know what would constitute “sensible homosexual rights.” Refraining from prosecuting gays for being gay like they do in Russia? Be still my beating heart. Our cups runneth over.
As for concern with what “the religious community” wants, you may have failed to notice the central raison d’etre of the place.
Rey Fox, last thread:
Well, isn’t it obvious? The boy needs a mother so he can see first hand how women are supposed to behave, because the plan is for him to own one too eventually. How will he know what to expect/demand from his property if he grew up without a mother, a.k.a. his father’s property? I mean, what if he ends up thinking it appropriate to treat his wife as an equal? Think of the consequences! The terrible, terrible consequences!
Rey Fox @40: Good summary list.
For your #2: “You never defined what the mother and father roles are or why they are both necessary” – I might add, “…and why these roles must be filled only by women and men, respectively.”
The behaviors we traditionally have referred to as “mothering” are not the exclusive domain of women. Similarly, the behaviors we traditionally have referred to as “fathering” are not the exclusive domain of men. A stable family needs adults who can and will provide “parenting” — that is, they love, comfort, support, provide, guide, teach, etc., etc. – and of course, women and men, gay and straight, have been doing all this and more for their families for millenia.
———
annejones, your presuppostion of the existence of a god, and your insistence on the infallibility of your so-called holy book, are sadly out of touch with reality. Your ignorance of biology, history, sociology, and reality is astonishing. While I acknowledge the important of your religious beliefs in how you order your own life, you have no right whatsoever to impose those beliefs on others, either personally, or systematically, such as through laws and regulations. You are wrong to do so.
I wonder if you know any gay people — really know them — and their families. Most bigotry is borne of ignorance and fear. In the case of your gay and lesbian and transgendered neighbors — there is nothing to fear, and much to gain. Open your heart to love. You’ll be glad you did.
Plus, getting a maid and a nanny is expensive.
All this time here, supposedly conversing with us, and annejones still thinks we’re “heterophobic”?
You are a seriously clueless person, annejones.
That’s a particularly idiotic thing to write now, considering the “my gay date” thread that’s happening.
I haven’t read annejones’ latest wall-o-text yet, but I just have to say something about this from the previous thread:
Listen, dipshit, it’s either girls and boys*, or it’s women and men. Adult women are not girls. You don’t get to refer to them as girls while not extending that same treatment to adult men. It’s infantilizing and offensive.
Okay, now to read the new wall-o-text…
__________________________________________________
*Oh, great, now I have that Blur song stuck in my head.
Always should be someone you really love.
Me at #45:
should have been:
So as not to leave out single-parent households from the “stable family” grouping.
I agree that that is exactly what you are doing. I’m sorry that you think that your dishonesty is fun.
Yeah, your stupidity was getting diluted there, so I guess you need to concentrate it down more.
Yeah; you’re so ignorant of science that you stupidly think you can just dismiss it all as make believe.
Meanwhile, your invisible intangible imaginary friend continues to actually be make believe.
Your ignorance of science is breathtaking. Your arrogant proclamations of your ignorance is profoundly intellectually perverse.
“Spontaneous generation” refers to several different ideas. One, the earliest, was that complex multicellular life, such as flies, could arise from decaying animals. That’s easily disproved: Isolate the decaying animal so that no flies can land on it (and lay eggs), and no maggots will develop and change into flies.
Another early idea was the mice could arise from old clothes. Again, isolate the old clothes, and no mice would arise from them.
The most sophisticated version of the idea was the thesis that unicellular life could arise easily from proteins; from beef broth.
Again, this was disproven by isolating the broth, and showing that no life arose in the time period that the experiment ran.
But none of these experiments proved that life cannot arise at all, because they didn’t test every single chemical environment and process that exists or has existed, on Earth.
Life is itself a chemical process. The inference that a chemical process led to the origin of life as we now know it is called abiogenesis, not spontaneous generation. This is an idea still being worked on, and it remains valid science.
Actually, that’s not entirely certain. Although. . . there’s another aspect of the beef broth experiment that is important, here.
The control for the beef broth that was isolated was beef broth that was not isolated. And of course, that beef broth developed all sorts of interesting colonies of mold, fungi, bacteria, and so on. This shows that the spores of living organisms are pretty much all over the place, and they will rapidly take over any convenient source of resources.
If there were some location where chemical processes were generating chemicals which could result in new life arising, the very ubiquity of already-existent life strongly implies that those chemicals would be taken over — eaten — by already-existent life.
Most life, for most of the history of the earth, was not eukaryotic. Most eukaryotes are not “animals” (they are fungi, plants, and protists).
Annelids did not become chordates. “Worms” is not a well-defined term in the animal kingdom.
No bird every became a mammal. You’re thinking of some stupid primitive “ladder of life” scenario. Life is not a ladder; it’s a tree. Birds and mammals are on separate branches.
The Simpsons is a fictional television show.
Embrace your inner fish.
No anuran ever became a hominid aristocrat.
It’s amusingly ironic that you believe the adult fairy tale of an imaginary invisible intangible person magically becoming a visible tangible person.
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
And about 26:20:
That made me grin, given this, prevthread. :-)
Thread won.
(But I still, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.)
I’m pretty sure this is projection. Your participation in this discussion is driven by hate, so you think ours must be too. Not so.
You can say that until you’re blue in the face, it won’t make the scientific evidence go away. Did you learn nothing from the last time you came here? Not even that you know nothing about biology and therefore shouldn’t be commenting on it? FFS, you didn’t even know what a nucleotide is!
You are the one who is lying, annejones. Lying about the “decades of research” that turned out to be… two papers published together, neither one particularly credible.
I repeat myself: it only looks self-contradictory to you because you’re a fool. It’s not that “both roles are of equal importance to a child”, it’s that both roles are equivalent. A mother is a parent. A father is a parent. Kids need parenting (Vicki @#29 makes a good point, by the way). Provided by people of whatever gender identity.
How is any of this contradictory?
Actually, they do, by showing that kids raised in a loving home by gay parents are not at a higher risk of any of that.
This is so fucked up I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe here: you are a disgusting human being.
And that’s enough, really. All that hate is making me feel sick already.
Why don’t you fuck off?
@ annejones
Mwahahahahaha…. sorry but I have to laugh:
Oh My Fucking YHWH! You are ignorant not only of science and basic human decency, but of history as well. It is not much of a generalisation to say that ancient Greek (male¹) society was bisexual. Hell, even the One True God, Almighty Zeus was bisexual. That is how they rolled (in the hay, back in the day). Most Greek men lay down with other men. It was a natural part of growing up. Love was between man and man. That love was often a verb. Woman were there to bear and help raise children. (They were highly conservative and patriarchal, though not vindictively so as annejones appears to be.)
The Spartans actively tolerated homosexual behaviour in their youth, as they deemed it would encourage bonding that would later provide advantages on the battlefield. The Athenians were OK under certain circumstances (for example they discouraged effeminate behaviour in older men). Over in Euboea it was a mixed bag, Chalcis tended to carry their homosexuality over into adulthood (to the chagrin of other islanders).
Civilisation will not collapse due to Teh Ghey ™ – the foundations of Civilisation were laid upon it!
…….
¹ Unfortunately I have less knowledge about women’s sexuality in Ancient Greece. My apologies if the focus here is mainly on the manly Greek men.
homosexualityhomosexual behaviourI’m reading up on the Skeptical Rapists (I have to no clue how you people manage to deal with it live – props to Caine and the rats).
I don’t think I’ve heard of The Heresy Club before, but I’m worried to see that Rhys Morgan‘s leaving it coïncides with their publishing the allegations against Krauss.
Does anyone know if he left because of the allegations or because the post was taken down?
@ annejones
You mean the very characteristics of these super-elite soldiers:
‘An Army of Lovers’ – The Sacred Band of Thebes
Ignorant of history, you will next be telling historians they are wrong?
*moar hugs* for Caine—to go with the ones I left for you elsewhere.
–
So… you’re not staying, then?
–
annejones:
Hahahohoheeheeharhar. gosh you’re funny.
AnneJones, only science can be used to refute science. Amount of science you linked to refute evolution: ZERO. All you presented was your ignorant and unscientific OPINION. Just like all your claims against homosexuals. Being nothing but bigoted and ignorant OPINION. You can change that by linking to third party evidence, found in libraries of higher learning world-wide. Just be aware, that literature refutes soundly all you bigotry, ignorance, and arrogance.
sez annejones: “I’m growing very weary of spending time answering to posts which spew your obviously heterophobic, Christianaphobic, anti-social bigotry.”
I don’t know about this “heterophobic” dealie, but your word “Christianaphobic” suggests that fear-of-Christians cannot ever be well-supported and rational. Given that many Christians are perfectly happy to murder doctors; torture and/or kill people whose sexual preference they (the Christians) disagree with; destroy education; and impose their particular sectarian beliefs on everybody, regardless of whether or not the imposed-upon persons share those particular sectarian beliefs… well, annejones, I’d have to say that fear-of-Christians can be rational and well-supported. More: Depending on one’s personal situation, fear-of-Christians can be a literally life-saving trait.
“Your evolutionary claims are without foundation and are make believe.”
In some cases, yes. There have been many “evolutionary claims” over the years, and not all of these claims are supported by evidence. Of course, there are a goodly number of “evolutionary claims” which are supported by evidence, so… what’s your point, if any?
“We all descended from a single celled organism that created itself through a process that was disproven scientifically a couple hundred years ago, spontaneous generation.”
One: You are mistaken about what was, or was not, scientifically disproven by Pasteur. “Abiogenesis” (i.e., the proposition that some kind of imperfectly-self-reproducing whatzit can arise from nonliving matter) is not an interchangeable synonym for “spontaneous generation” (i.e., the proposition that contemporary lifeforms can arise from nonliving matter). The latter is one specific subset of the former; Pasteur’s disproof of the specific concept of contemporary-lifeforms-arising-from-unliving-matter is, in point of fact, not a disproof of the general concept of self-reproducing-whatzits-arising-from-unliving matter.
Two: Since we don’t yet have all the details of abiogenesis nailed down, we can’t say whether or not the product of the initial abiogenesis event was a single-celled organism. Given the existence of things like viruses and Sidney Fox’s so-called ‘protocells’, all we can really say is that single-celled orgsanisms showed up somewhere along the way; we cannot say when they showed up.
“It only happened once in all these billions of years.”
On what grounds do you make this assertion, annejones? Since we don’t yet have all the details of abiogenesis nailed down, it’s entirely possible that abiogenesis events might be occurring right now! Of course, the Earth right now is inhabited by mass quantities of living things, which was obviously not true back when the first abiogenesis event occurred, so it’s not clear how long any newly-generated whatzit would stick around before it got eaten by a contemporary lifeform. And there’s also the question of whether or not we’d recognize the product of an abiogenesis event if we were looking at one…
“We don’t know what it is or how it got here, we just know that we descended from it by animals changing into different kinds of animals.”
Hmmm… basically, yes. Would you like to discuss any of the lines of evidence which support this conclusion?
“Worms became fish became amphibians became reptiles became birds became mammals and abracadabra, here we are.”
“birds became mammals”? No. Birds are descended from dinosaurs, not from mammals. As well, there is no “abracadabra” in the process, just some points where we don’t have all the answers yet. Um… you do know the difference between “we don’t know the answer here” and “we’re invoking magic here”, don’t you, annejones? Apart from those factual errors… yeah, if someone wanted to compress the whole story into 16 words, they could end up with a sentence more-or-less like what what you wrote here. Of course, any such 16-word sentence must necessarily leave out a heck of a lot of details, not so?
“Ants became astronauts, fish became philosophers, and of course, the most well-known example of the adult fairy tale made into a children’s story, a frog became a prince.”
Nope. It would be more accurate to say that “the descendents of ants became astronauts”, and the descendents of fish became philosophers”, and “one of the descendents of a frog became a prince”, but that’s not at all what you just asserted.
Have you forgotten your blog, annejones? The blog you went to the trouble of establishing because you wanted to debate evolution—or at least, that’s why you claimed you established that blog? Maybe it’s just me, but if I’d gone to the trouble of establishing a blog for a particular purpose, I sure wouldn’t abandon the thing after one post, which is exactly what you’ve done, annejones. I guess the Ninth Commandment is just words on paper to you, hm?
He says he left because the site got “too confrontational,” whatever that means.
Annejones, I used a computer game analogy that your fuckwitted fellow godbot couldn’t understand. Maybe you are smarter than he is, and you could understand it.
The computer game required using a small amount of money, and building it up by gambling. With gambling, the odds always favor the house, so the strategy had to be repeated win/save/re-gamble sequences. Consider a win a beneficial mutation. Losses to bankruptcy mean extinction.
Every time a loss occurred, one went back to the last save, and tried again. Consider that saved game a stable population. Every time a beneficial mutation (win) occurred, it spread through the population. If more beneficial mutations for various individuals and their progeny, that line is a loss and extinction. If a beneficial mutation shows up, it spreads through the population remaining. Finally, after many, many sequences, it looks like like, based on the saves, that the line at the end of the gambling period hit a low odds result, and this was the equivalent of winning a large sum of money. What isn’t seen is all the losses and extinctions that helped pave the way for that line to get there. By using the win/save/regamble paradigm, one could win enough money for the ending scene of the game. Same with life.
I never wondered this before, but is it possible ANNEJONES does not even know a gay person?
All the misconceptions she has just make me think she has never even spoken to someone she knew was gay.
Of course given her sad, pathetic views that are wrapped in her extreme homophobia I find it hard to believe anyone outside her Fundamentalist Xtian Cult would even talk to her.
HEY, ANNEJONES:
I thought about everthing you said and you are right.
Bolding does not work, so I wonder if “agreeing” will get a response.
The impression I get is it machineguns Teh Gay on sight, and follows-up with a napalm strike. A corollary is no conversations with any gays other than “Hello!”, and those speculated “Hellos!” were probably by accident (i.e., did not know the person was gay).
No
</snark>here, I’m serious: I have trouble imagining it as anything other than a potential homicidal manic (albeit probably not using napalm (not so confident about not-using the machinegun)). The sheer hatred is mind-boggling (the arrogance and lies, et al., are to be expected).blf:
I know, right.
I am not perfect, but I have some pretty darned good self respect, self control, integrity and decency, but according to annejones bc I have sex with other men, all of that is negated.
NEVERMIND THAT I NEVER WOKE UP AND DECIDED
“Self, wouldn’t be great to be gay? Think of all the great gifts you get! Osctracized by friends and family. Called a pedophile. Able to be fired just for my sexuality. Adoption is made difficult. Getting married is not possible in many places. Workplace discrimination is totes awesome. Housing discrimination is the bomb diggedy. I could even get bullied in school, harassed on the internet, deal with death threats, and even possibly killed.
All so I can suck dick.
Yeah, lets do it.”
What an unthinking stew of indoctrination, homophobia, misogyny and hatred.
Religion poisons everything.
Gosh, where is Paul Gibson to read Nerd’s #64…? /eyeroll
You forgot (I assume) honesty, wit, intelligence, and mental stability.
And if you have a same-sex partner, not only is all that negated for both you and your partner, it somehow passes on to any children, the neighbours, the dog, the neighbour’s goldfish, and the mailman. You and yer partner radiate a field so powerful it infects, as just one example, President Obama and turns him into a self-loathing moolsin terrorist, single-handedly responsible for importing millions and millions of commie cocaine-snorting facist socialists to man the death panels and FEMA trains.
s/mailman/mail-carrier/@annejones:
This I doubt. I think you and your ilk would then find it a little bit easier to justify building concentration camps.
wow.
I’m a language curmudgeon; e.g., I still refuse to use “game” as a verb.
However, I will make an exception for “Othering” (‘other’ as a verb). I can’t think of a better way to express the concept of what’s happening here.
Annejones, I have seen what your type considers “equal in value” – not even close.
Not even “equivalent”…
Annejones wants gay people to be “separate but equal”, apparently. Oh, bigotry! Will you ever stop being the same!
wait, annejones said this?
A classic of comparative physiology, still a delightful read (if superceded in a few technical details, of course [Science marches on]) is Homer Smith’s From Fish to Philosopher
It’s about the evolution of urinary/excretory systems.
(still long out of print but hey: here ’tis fer free!!
Gotta love teh tubez, no?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22856586
There’s a part of me thinks this is what annejones is angling for. (See, previously: gay couple adopting is totes awesome if adoptee is a gay teen.)
)…)
that’s sloppy.
gah
annejones and the Screed of Hateful Bigotry:
(By the way, annejones, I assure you that I am not super-mean to Christians or to heterosexuals or to pro-social people)
Parental roles are of equal importance to a child, and none of them involve genitals, because genitals are not used to raise a child.
You know, it occurred to me that you are full of shit when you write that children have a right to a mother and a father.
Because if you really believed that having mother roles and father roles was a right, you wouldn’t be screaming about homosexuals. You would be agitating for providing opposite-sex nannies to single parents, presumably provided by state funding.
(I can just see it now: “Division of Father Figures” and “Department of Mother Love”)
There are a lot more mothers and fathers who are single than there are homosexuals who are married and who want to have children. And of course, with opposite-sex nannies, the issue of homosexual marriage and adoption would be “solved” by the same institutions as for single parents.
“Hi there. I’m from the government, and I’m here to provide gender-appropriate childcare for your family which lacks a parent of my gender. No worries; it’s paid for by your tax dollars and the agitation of religious busybodies. Please sign here, here, and here.”
Of course, you don’t actually think that children have the right to a mother figure and a father figure. You just want to use the rhetoric of “rights” to deny homosexuals the right to marry or adopt. Because you’re a hateful bigot, not an actual advocate for children.
You are so completely full of shit. You want to know who has a higher risk of negative behaviors and psychological problems, including suicide? Kids whose parents evict them for not conforming to the parents’ ruthless standards.
You would gladly put your own child at risk for suicide.
Don’t you dare claim to not be a bigot when your own words damn you for the hate-filled bigot that you are.
And the only reason you’re saying that is from your hate-fueled bigotry.
No, it doesn’t.
Not necessarily. And you haven’t shown that there’s anything wrong with a “more feminine role” anyway.
Nonsense.
Obviously not.
You’ve completely contradicted yourself here. First a “real man” is someone who won’t perform “feminine” roles like taking care of the house and kids; now a “real man” is one who admits to being different?
You have no idea what a “real man” is; you just use the term however you want to support your bigotry.
They aren’t trying to “mimic” the heterosexual lifestyle. They want to marry and have children, as homosexuals.
If they were trying to “mimic” the heterosexual lifestyle, one partner would always dress and act like a woman, and the other would always dress and act like a man.
And what would be wrong with doing that, anyway? They would have your precious mother and father roles, right there.
Of course it’s unfair when your public policies are bigoted.
Nonsense.
The hetero lifestyle is the privileged one.
Of course, privileged people think exactly that; that they are natural, normal, and the gold standard. But it’s still nevertheless the root of bigotry.
Yeah, and if the children do come out as being different in any way — you would approve kicking them out of the house, and no doubt expelling them from school, too. The hell with children who are gay or transgender!
Is this your filthy, horrible bigot-speak distortion — hell, flat-out lie — for anti-bullying policies in schools? Because bigots like you are actually in favor of bullying?
Citation needed, you despicable piece of desperately lying shit.
Homosexuality is so often linked to pedophilia because of bigotry.
As in, to bring children up to be bigots, and kick them out if the indoctrination doesn’t take?
Everyone is a different kind of people. You just want to discriminate against the particular kind of people that homosexuals are because of bigotry.
I don’t know what this means, and I suspect you don’t either.
No; what’s happening in Uganda and Russia can pretty much be traced to a worse bigot than you encouraging and promoting bigoted and draconian laws and policies being enacted in those countries.
You are so completely full of shit.
Your bigotry is harmful and immoral. I can’t call it “unnatural”, because homophobic bigotry is as natural as racism and sexism.
The very real problem is probably that because you think that bigotry is “natural”, you think it isn’t harmful or immoral.
If those “realists” you allude to are so confused that they’re as bigoted as yourself, they couldn’t and shouldn’t lead anyone anywhere.
…Looks like I’ll spend most of tomorrow reading this thread.
annejones, learn to read your business card; you’ll be surprised to figure out what it says.
An act which, while undeniably being super mean, falls just a hair short of duper status.
Gadzooks!
I missed her ‘preemptive’ comment.
I swear the depths of her bigotry should NOT astound me at this point.
And yet…they do.
She is supporting policies that criminalize homosexuality or even talking about such. To add icing to that shitcake, she implicity supports the murder of queer individuals in Uganda and Russia, bc those hate crime are directly fueled by their abhorrent policies.
Owlmirror
Now, then, I think you’re being unfair to annejones; just because Lively has a bigger audience doesn’t make him a bigger bigot. I think that annejones can hold her head up high in any company of bigots in the certain knowledge that she’s as bad as they are.
Chas
So you’re over 500 years old, then?
<blockquote?She is supporting policies that criminalize homosexuality …[and] implicity supports the murder of queer individuals…
Yes. As I said previously, I get the distinct impression it wants to pull the trigger or open the valves for the gas-chambers. And I’m not joking. It really does seem to be a genocidal mass wannabe-murderer.
Gah!
<borkquote>fail…Let us give the very devil her due: She has never suggested that homosexuals should be executed by the state. Indeed, unlike the loathsome OSC, she has not even suggested that homosexuality should be (or should remain) illegal, or that the government should be overthrown if homosexuals are permitted to marry.
What a weird date.
The OED has citations dating back to Old English for game as a verb.
Chas might have meant the colloquial verb phrase, game the [X], which is very recent.
Although “game” in the sense of “trick or deceive”, from which the above is derived, has an earliest citation of 1699:
blf, please don’t refer to annejones as “it”. She is clearly presenting herself as a female human being. I realize she’s a reprehensible human being, but nonetheless, she is a human being.
Besides, my toaster oven is an “it”. And it is inoffensive and filled not with hate but with crunchy sourdough toast and the occasional bagel.
That Oxford comma is noted and appreciated. #takingsidesoveroxfordcommas
Owlmirror
The Merriam Webster I linked to noted a date of 1512, whence I got the figure of 500 years.
No. It did not “create itself”. It was not created, period. It formed through a natural process that followed the laws of chemistry.
The process is called abiogenesis. It is not spontaneous generation, and is quite different from spontaneous generation. That you think they are the same just demonstrates your ignorance as to what Pasteur actually did. That you still think yourself qualified to even mention the topic simply demonstrates your arrogance and hubris.
To whit, the process of spontaneous generation that Pasteur disproved occurs within a single human lifespan. Among many other differences, abiogenesis does not.
E pur si evolves, annejones.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7417/full/nature11514.html
Funny how PZ already just addressed this asininity in another post.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/17/theyre-still-bacteriaand-fishand-apesand/
No annejones, in your hubris ignorance you recite the litany of the CREATIONIST’s chain of being, but real evolutionary theory says no such thing. In fact if you observed any of the above and demonstrate it to be true, you would have falsified the theory of evolution. (You’d falsify your version of creationism too, of course, but that’s hardly difficult to do, since we already know it to be utterly false).
To whit, worms did not become fish. Fish in fact, are a type of worm. Always were, always will be. Amphibians are a type of fish. Always were, always will be. Reptiles are a type of amphibian. Always were, always will be. Birds are a type of reptile. Always were, always will be.
And if a bird can ever be shown to have changed into a mammal, the current theory of evolution would DEFINITELY be falsified. Angels would be a transitional form, I suppose.
Of course, the above is just an approximation, using your terms, because, see, annejones, in your hubristic and arrogant incompetence, you did not realize that you are not even using the proper terms. Your words “worms”, “amphibians”, and “reptiles” are, once again, not relevant evolutionary classifications, but terms that, once more, call back to your CREATIONIST (and debunked) idea of the Great Chain of Being. They are paraphyletic, and anyone who knows anything about evolution knows that paraphyletic classifications have no place in any evolutionary discussion whatsoever, and exist merely as a historical artifact of the time before evolutionary theory was developed, when the now falsified CREATIONIST idea of the Great Chain of Being held sway.
The PROPER terms are (again simplified)
Bilaterians>Vertebrates>Tetrapods>Amniotes
And it is not a chain, but a series of nested circles, each inside the other with the Bilaterians the biggest one, and within Amniotes there are two small circles that are wholly separate, one is the Birds, and the other is the Mammals.
Your clumsy attempt to insult the French nobility is noted.
E PUR SI EVOLVES, annejones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/science/watching-bacteria-evolve-with-predictable-results.html?_r=1&
David Marjanović –
Oh, please reconsider! It would be such a waste of your time. The nonsense is so dismally repetitive, and it’s being dealt with more than fairly by other people.
No, the irony does not escape me that I feel compelled to post this reply to you (which you won’t even see until too late) and yet, this very reply is a plea to you to not feel compelled in your turn.
Poor old “Do as I say, not as I do”. Such bad advice!
Pity.
I used to like Owlmirror.
UnknownEric the Apostate,
Thanks.
Not that I feel much wiser.
Sili:
Do I sense a Deep Rift forming?
All true skeptics, athiests, and freethinkers accept the use of the Oxford comma. It is never too late to join us. We have cookies.
Why does the odious aj persist in commenting?
Polistes:
No idea.
She has been asked repeatedly why she keeps coming here, yet never do we get a reply. Do some religious orgs require members to proselytize, no matter if they are heeded or not?
Or maybe she is doing research for the WBC on “different kinds of people”…4 or 5 decades from now, someone will “cite” her studies…
Just a thought: I wonder if Ray Comfort is aware of the phallic imagery in his preeeeecious bananas…
____
Non breaking spaces show up in preview? Neat.
Wow, that’s some kind of mechanized, inhumane desire you have there. A real mother would not call her child a parasite. Nor would she, no matter how bad it sucked at the time, choose to not have spent that time gestating and bonding with her child. I have absolutely no desire to live in the world that you would choose, and I suspect that many others would opt out as well.
Except that He didn’t tell us that we couldn’t invent technology that is helpful to mankind. He did however, tell us that homosexuality is an abomination, and that marriage is between a man and a woman.
No, and although I’m sure they exist, I don’t know of anyone who believes that it’s ok for a man to rape hs wife.
No, but when it does tell you the exact opposite of what you’re looking for, and then it doesn’t say that what you’re looking for is ok, you have your answer.
It DOES tell us that God created man and woman to be married, reproduce, and raise children. It DOES tell us that homosexuality is abomination, unnatural, and that ALL sex outside of that between a man and his wife, is sinful. That would include that which homosexuals call sex. It DOESN’T tell us that it’s ok for homosexuals to get married, like men and women do. It DOESN’T tell us that homosexuals should be allowed to care for children, as mothers and fathers do.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out by what it DOES say and what it DOESN’T say, that homosexuals are not allowed to marry, and are not fit for parenting. Not only does the Bible tell us those things, but they are reinforced by biology.
They are analogous to the male and female producing offspring.
Many species that provide care for their offspring do so with same-sex collectives or couples. Some of those same-sex couples mount each other, and could therefore be described as homosexual.
Ok, so does that mean that you have some sort of objective moral code which decides which animal behavior can be copied, and which can’t??
But all other things aren’t equal, animals behave differently than humans. They have different societal behaviors and actions. You have already asserted, earlier on, that you use what amounts to a morality to decide that some behaviors of animals, are not appropriate for humans. Therefore, you can not use the “all things being equal” part, to support your claim that it would be ok for humans to copy that behavior, and remain consistent. You’ve already conceded that human morality and animal morality, or codes of behavior, are different. That means that because something is natural for say, penguins, has abolutely no implications for deciding what is natural for other species, or for humans.
Not worth arguing but that all depends on your worldview.
I will concede that many species do exhibit certain codes of behavior that could be argued as a morality.
I cut out alot of your post about Biblical arguments and only commented on a few points. You might want to argue with someone who enjoys arguing theology more than I do. I don’t have the patience to spend alot of time arguing the Bible with atheists.
Doing a more extensive rebuttal in response to the stuff against my last post later…
Atheists are generally more well-versed in theology and the Bible than Christians are, it’s true.
Don’t bother. You’re a transparent gay-hater and your arguments are less than useless. And you’re boring. Hatred and bigotry and narrow-mindedness is boring.
If you are going to use your imaginary deity to back up any of your bigotry, you must demonstrate the existence of your imaginary deity. Failure to do so means all you have is YOUR OPINION, which will be dismissed without third party evidence.
Except your god doesn’t exist, and can’t be used to justify your bigoty. YOUR BIGOTRY COMES YOU.
And your world view is that of a delusional bigot, believing in imaginary things that tell her to behave like a bigot. BUT THAT BIGOTRY COMES FROM YOU.
Annejones
Explain clearly why your favorite book of fairy tales should be taken more seriously than the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Kangyur, or any of a dozen other ancient texts (all the ones I named are far older than yours, incidentally) that equally purport to be the sole and final guide to the desires of divinity and the right and proper way to live.
When and where, specifically, do you think a god told anyone that? And why should anyone (other than bigots) care what a fucking bigot god thinks anyway?
What the hell does procreation have to do with being a good parent or marriage partner? How does any fact about biology have any fucking thing to do with it? There’s making babies, and then there’s raising children well and loving and respecting everyone in your family and your larger social circle (which, by the way, should include gay people, you fucking bigot, no matter what any god might have commanded). You can’t fuck your way into a happy, healthy, ethical social life. That’s not what fucking, or baby-making in particular, is for. Aren’t you the least bit surprised about the premises of your own argument? Have you not even thought about them for one moment? Or have just thought about the one that goes “the Bible — err, I mean, God himself, the biggest most powerful bigot of them all — says so, and that’s all I need to know”?
The claim isn’t “it’s good because it’s natural” anyway. Your fallacious claim is that it’s unnatural therefore wrong; but there’s no reason whatsoever to think it’s unnatural, since it’s found in many other species in nature. If your claim is that humans have some special status different from other animals in nature, as having souls and being made in the image of a god and so forth, you’re claiming they’re supernatural, so this “naturalness” bullshit should be totally irrelevant even to you, notwithstanding the fact that it would also be patently fallacious even with some other set of naturalistic premises.
No more than braces are “mechanized” or “inhumane”.
Actually, I have noticed real mothers doing exactly that. They have been or may be pregnant, but being pregnant is a real and genuine drain on their resources.
Heh. Your parasitical language is noted.
I am sure that some women might prefer to do so. But I am also sure that, given the option, more than a few real mothers would be glad to offload gestation to a labor-saving device, and bond with the infant after decanting takes place.
Wait, what? If uterine replicators were invented, you would commit suicide? And “many others” would as well?
Really seriously?
Just as opposite-sex gamete transformation is helpful.
For pity’s sake; it used to be part of the legal code of many countries that husbands had a right to rape his wife.
Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape#Marital_rape
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape
Like hell. You’re utterly ignorant of biology.
Some do and some don’t. Some form monogamous pairs; others don’t. Some form same-sex pairings, and some don’t. Some of those same-sex pairings raise offspring, and some don’t
All other things being equal, the point remains that same-sex pairings can and do raise offspring. That behavior is natural, and there’s no reason why humans cannot do the same.
So do the variety of human cultures.
Some are and some are not.
The point is not to “copy” animal behavior, per se, but to refute the ignorant and stupid claim that homosexual bonding and child-rearing is unnatural or not supported by biology.
If it’s natural for other animals, there’s no basis for the claim that it’s unnatural for humans. All you’re doing is repeating bigotry.
You cannot refute my arguments because they’re true. The bible is the work of humans, some of whom did not like the laws laid out in the earlier works, and came up with nonsensical exegeses that allowed them to reject the laws they didn’t like. That’s pretty much the basis of Christianity.
Awesome. You just said any women who feel differently from you are not and will not be “real mothers”. You are one judgemental and offensive little shit, aren’t you, annejones?
Also, “no matter how bad it sucked”? Some women die, or come close to dying as a result of carrying a pregnancy to term. Some women have concomitant diseases that make pregnancy very, very risky for them. If this technology was available to them would you really condemn these women for using it? Wouldn’t a “real mother” try to protect her life and to spare her child from pregnancy complications? You know, try to make sure her baby is born healthy and with a living mother? Seriously, isn’t that exactly what a “real mother” would do?
Here’s the thing: you could opt out even if the technology existed. The only one here who wants to force other people to do things your way and your way only is… well, you.
Um, the verses she’s been referencing/paraphrasing in support of her bigotry do come from the Old Testament, which is to say, the Torah.
@ annejones
Oh, Yes! Pretty please.
And promise us you’ll add the whole historical perspective too. I look forward to your xtian revisionism with relish.
*Paging Monitors!*
I’ve just done the handy link dump on the SkepticDoc thread, which is already full of doucheweasels and hyperskeptical JAQers, insisting on going over the same ground which has been covered to infinity already.
I am so sorry, but I just can’t do this again, not today. So, could you please keep an eyeball or two on the thread? Thanks.
I just remembered the other point of why I brought up the bible:
You claimed that giving a rapist custody of his victim’s child was asinine.
The Bible says that a rapist whose victim is an unbetrothed virgin should be given his victim, and concomitantly, his victim’s children.
You never addressed that at all, preferring to go off on a completely different track.
But you know I’m right: The bible commands what you said was asinine.
Yes, but she also ignores loads of other verses from the Torah, talking about things like diet, clothing, hairstyle, etc. based on the newer bits of the bible.
Annejones each time you post you paint a worse and worse picture of yourself. Back when you did a driveby Gish Gallop of random creationist canards you were merely foolish. When you ran around dumping text and taking monthlong breaks and then making a blog (which has since been abandoned) I saw you as merely a harmless buffoon.
Apparently you disagreed because now you’ve spent several weeks arguing that you’re actually a wicked, nasty person. In your run of posts you’ve demonstrated monstrous intolerance, a willful seperation from fact and reality, a tremendously classist attitude, a passionate love for inhumane social systems, and a vicious hatred of all those who are not exactly like you. You have stated in no uncertain terms you would disown a child for the “crime” of being gay, stand strong behind patriarchal values, and fully support violence and discrimination against LGBT people. You also have an inflated sense of self-worth, why else would you threaten to commit suicide if you didn’t like the direction the world was moving? Fortunately you are not John Galt, you are merely a petulant and hateful bigot.
People have pointed out that there is nothing keeping you here at Pharyngula, Annejones. I will go one step further: Leave. We don’t want you here. Spread your vile hatred and bigotry in some other godsoaked corner of the web.
I see that annejones hasn’t yet touched her blog a second time. Still just the one post, still no response from annejones to any of the comments on her blog’s lone OP. Some mighty fine debatering you’re participating in, annejones! Mighty fine indeed!
@ CM’s
Aha! You are such a Sneech! (Linky here: Taking sides over Oxford commas.)
Hmmm… I seem to have borke the HTML for the link in my recent comment. Let’s see if I can make the link to annejones’ blog this time… okay, preview says it’s good to go. Cool.
Well, white people’s civilization anyway.
They would if they liked banging dudes. You are one stupid bigot.
If femininity is supposed to be indicative of a lack of self-respect, self control, moral decency, or strength of character, why do you consider gender roles for women so necessary? And how would me banging my wife be bad? That’s assuming a feminine role is bad at all for dudes, of course, which iit ain’t (And also, not even a little bit how relationships with gay dudes go, for serial). Shocker, Annejones knows as much about gay people as she does about history.
Meh, if religion never existed she’d just be using pseudoscientific nonsense entirely, instead of when she thinks it’ll work. Religion’s by no means the actual cause of any of this shit, just a vehicle.
@ Rutee
Annejones’ Civilization, with a capital “C” – as in “Christ”. Everyone else is going to hell anyway.
Zinnia’s latest post reminded me of this earlier piece of transphobic garbage. I didn’t respond to it then because I had no idea how to respond to such a stupid non-sequitur.
annejones, I just wanted to call out this example of gratuitous misgendering and being a shit to trans* people. I mean, you know perfectly well that you could have at least tried to provide some sort of rational response — it would have failed, because you aren’t rational — but no, you had to fucking well double down on your gender policing with this disgusting example of lashing out at someone you hate without cause, you bigoted sack of shit.
Whenshe returns, I hope to hear how many decades her rebuttals took.
Annejones: living proof that religion is toxic. She is consumed by hate.
Holy shit, Owlmirror. Thanks for posting that little touch of evil – I had managed to completely miss it.
annejones is one of the most hate-filled, toxic personalities I’ve even encountered online, and I’ve been online since the early 1980s.
Well, we gotta get unpaid labor from somewhere, right?
Well, the Old Testament got retconned. It’s a lot like the post-Crisis DC Comics Universe. The entire multiverse got truncated into one universe with a revised history. While we acknowledge the existence of the previous multiverse, it’s the new universe that stood in continuity. (That is, until Flashpoint, which I suppose is analogous to the Book of Mormon).
Oh, never mind.
ugh why do people still talk to Anne Jones
Anyone else notice that Professor Meyers made his post about Shermer, then about a week later his book was published?
Way to elide everything that led up to that post, falstaff.
Who is this professor Meyers you talk about. If you make such basic mistakes, how can you be expected to be taken seriously?
You are obviously thoroughly invested in specific details about everything regarding this website. Your opinion on the matter must be so incredibly well-researched, informative, and insightful.
(By the way, the above sarcasm is a real, live ad hominem argument! Yay!)
No, he’s inadvertently making an argument for the truth of the accusations, or at least for PZ believing them. The reaction to the post about Shermer is taking time and attention that PZ could otherwise use to promote his book.
I suppose if you believe that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, this makes twisted sense: but anyone who actually believed that shouldn’t be here, they should be busy telling Shermer to send PZ a thank-you note for the publicity.
Anyone else notice that falstaff is trying and failing to hide the fact that he’s a conspiracy chasing rape apologist behind the veneer of “Just Asking Questions”?
Hidden motive insinuation insinuates not-so-hidden motive.
Is it Non Sequitur Night again and nobody told me?
There are no sides. There is only the correct way to write lists, which is simple, clear, and self-explanatory.
Well, yes, I suppose it was counter to his own interests for PZ to publish a post that would piss roughly half of the skeptic and atheist community at a time when he could really use some positive reviews and recommendations. (No doubt Skeptic Magazine will give it a very fair review.) Of course, we already knew that he’s not the type to put his own pecuniary interests ahead of doing what he thinks is right, but we appreciate you pointing this out.
Owlmirror.
Thank you for your post at #81. I did not know that annejones answered my question. And the answer that she gave is proof that she is a failure as a human being.
carlie:
And redundant in most cases.
Correlation does not imply causation.
monitors can FUCK OFF
this is THUNDERDOME
…I’ll just leave this here.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/18/greenwalds_partner_detained_for_9_hours_at_u_k_airport/
Reading comprehension fail. Try harder, Chas.
Because she wants her ‘Witnessing Unto The Heathen’ merit badge, and her Internet Martyr-hood.
–
Yes. See, that way no one avoids Hell on the ludicrous claim that they never heard Teh Wurd. (Though why a Triple-O deity would fall for such a ruse (as with someone pretending to believe, just in case…) is, of course, One of the Great Mysteries.)
–
The Oxford [=Harvard] Comma is not always necessary, never a problem, and right there before the ‘and’.
“Lofty” can FUCK OFF TOO
Wow, Chas, you really are bad at paying attention. Maybe you should take Lofty’s advice and read the damn post, dumbass.
That doesn’t make it the slymepit.
She was asking for monitors for OTHER threads, and posted here because Thunderdome is one of the places where monitors often hang out.
First rule of holes.
believerskeptic:
Arrrgghh!
(Warning: rant ahead. Comic book related. Possibly lacking coherency. Maybe punctuation and capiltalization. Also run on sentence.)
Just hadda bring up Flashpoint. Razzum frazzum pointless retcon of everything except the stuff they want to keep oh and all of Green Lantern and Batmans history except for stuff they wont tell us so we have to fill in the blanks did Death of superman happen oh sure maybe some of it did but not all and no Crisis except AntiMonitor somehow exists and they restarted Action Comics which I wanted to see reach 1,000 and why does superman wear armor, and Wonder Woman is wearing too much black and that choker ugh Barbara Gordon is not Oracle and Cyborg is in the JLA as a founder and Donna is gone and so is Wally and Didio talks about moving forward but they reset the timeline and bring Barry Allen back to prominence and Superboy is completely different and Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans is gone and AAARRGGHH!
I have boycotted DC since the reboot. They use the reset button too much. Also, for all the talk of their history, they wiped much of it away.
Hahaha. Amuse me some more, Chas dear..Are you sufficiently pissed yet? Wit flows from the bottle.
Chas:
Caine’s post was about watching the Skeptidoc thread, not the Dome.
Sorry, Tony! I feel your pain. I too am frustrated with DC. Gerry Fucking Conway, my hero of hero comic writers, was recently interviewed on the subject of why there are so few well-written female leads in comics. He first professed his own personal liberalism, and then hemmed and hawed about how the current audience (which is to say, 40-something white fanboys) has the industry by the nads and they just won’t tolerate diversity, and you gotta cater to your audience, yadda yadda yadda.
Except the comic audience is anemic, and becoming more anemic with each passing year. Because there is no diversity. They have to let female characters and minority characters find an audience, and not cancel their books after two fucking issues if they fail to chart 100,000 sales (which they never will).
I do stand by my original point, though— the Bible has as much continuity and internal logic as a comic book universe, which ain’t saying much.
Whats up with the cool* scare quotes around Lofty’s nym?
Yeah…not so cool.
Believerskeptic:
Yeah the lack of diversity in comics is and has been a huge problem.
I havent kept up with regular reading in some time, but I wonder when the backlash against feminism will hit the comic book world (if it hasnt already).
I can’t stand Lesswrong.
I know that Richard Carrier blogs here and thinks the world of them.
I think they’re nuts; I think there’s a lot of overlap between the right-wing libertarian misogynist fanboy sect of geek culture and the lesswrongians; I think it’s sad that libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel gives them shitloads of money when he could spend his money on something actually worthwhile. I think they’re purveyors of pseudoscience, and I think they’re a personality cult surrounding that charismatic middle-school dropout with absolutely no formal credentials or peer-reviewed publications whatsoever, Eliezer Yudkowsky.
I hate to see “Bayes’s Theorem” bandied about here like it’s some innocuous logical cure-all to real-world problems. I have yet to see how Bayes’s Theorem can adequately address any of the topics we discuss here, like rape culture, misogyny, racism, homophobia, ableism, hyperskepticism, etc. Whenever it is found wanting, its adherents just say, “Oh, you didn’t get the right priors. Keep at it!” To me, that seems about as valueable as a Magic Eight-Ball. Keep shaking it, and maybe the right answer will come up.
Like many cults, they have an apocalyptic vision. They believe that beyond the technological singularity— which itself is *immensely* debatable and should engender all the skepticism in the world— Artificial Intelligence will become so powerful that it will rise up and either enslave or annihilate humankind.
Like many cults, they have a particular remedy. Send. Them. Mun. Eeeeeeeeee. Their two reasonable-looking, skepticism-claiming umbrella organizations, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the Center for Applied Rationality routinely make pitches to people in the “skeptical” and “rational” movement to monetarily support them so that we can stave off the impending problem of Unfriendly AI run amok.
Except, they never really tell you what the money goes to. Research? Okay, where? Where are the peer-reviewed publications? And freeriding on Prof. Carrier’s work doesn’t count. I’m talking about a peer-reviewed, bona fide published article by Mr. Yudkowsky himself proclaiming all his rather fanciful futurological claims subjected that monumental pain in the ass that is peer review. Being an actual scholar who has survived actual peer review, I can tell you that it is many things, but the last word you would use to describe it is “fun.”
They also never tell you, exactly, how their research will thwart the evil future robot overlords. What’s going to do it? Bayes’s Theorem? Is that why the Lesswrong “sequences”— hundreds and hundreds of thought-experiment exercises authored by Mr. Yudkowsky— expound so heavily on it?
And, of course, there is the sickening, sycophantic culture surrounding Yudkowsky, who is hailed as the foremost genius of our time. Not Richard Carrier, who at least has a legitimate academic background. Not Richard Loosemore, who is another prominent AI researcher who was drummed out of the proto-Lesswrong listserve for daring to cross swords with Big Yud on an equal intellectual playing field. Of course, the perception of sycophancy is subjective, but that’s my biased but candid assessment.
These people are cranks, and I hate to see their woo accepted by the skeptic community so readily and uncritically just because their ideas have the patina of scienciness.
Was Chas bitten by Paul Gibson before he was shown the door, transforming our mild-mannered Chas into a were-starfarter? Or is Chas just cwanky and needs a wittle nice nap?
I’d argue it did with Flashpoint. All the female-lead books (except Wonder Woman) got their books taken away in the reboot. Then gradually given back book-by-book as various male-lead books failed. Still at a deficit compared to prior to the reboot. Gail Simone was writing one of the most successful female-dominated books in comics history, Birds of Prey, so what was she assigned after Flashpoint? Firestorm. A character she has no connection to, and which failed miserably.
Tony
Haha, Chas probably thinks I’m claiming to be morally superior or some such bullshit. It’s just next door to where I live.
Cheers :-)
I like the idea of using Bayes’ Theorem and I think some uses of it by Carrier et. al. are credible, to a degree. But I think you’ve nailed the problem in the bolded section. The prior probabilities are usually the part that are just a fucking mess. And depending on what you wind up making it, it largely determines what the formula spits out. It makes one wonder why you even bother with the formula at all.
I don’t know how long you’ve been reading around here, but some interesting tidbits:
-A former blogger at FTB, Chris Hallquist at The Uncredible Hallq, eventually joined LessWrong and got a job of some capacity as a Singularitarian after drinking that Kool Aid. I think he moved to Patheos and I haven’t read his blog in the year or so since.
-PZ has frequently criticized the logic behind the singularity, and also a related idea of becoming immortal via somehow digitizing the human mind. PZ knows shit about neurobiology and as a result he’s a little, dare I say, skeptical of that idea.
That said, I think generally the Singularitarians want super artificial intelligence, as far as I can tell, and don’t really think it will destroy us. The Singularity is something they look forward to. Like fundies and the Rapture. So, maybe I just made your larger argument stronger!
Pancake
@Tony
The DC reboot is universally awful. But I’m having much more fun in Valiant and other indie works. Have you read Saga?
As in: he knows his shit.
Not as in: he doesn’t know shit, what he does know is shit.
This is what happens when I start saying things that are dangerously close to slang!
Let us not also forget the changes to Wonderwoman’s origin. Before she was a miracle child born from her mother’s love. Now her powers come from her Father Zeus.
Themyscira has been colonized by the patriarchy
believerskeptic
They probably would have done, if they could. However, there’s apparently a contract that says that if Wonder Woman hasn’t got her own title, DC loses the rights to her.
Tony
Based on his history, I’m forced to suppose that he means the same thing the trolls, JAQoffs, apologists, and deniers always mean when they complain about the ‘echo-chamber’: We don’t put up with their bullshit, we stand strongly for our principles, and we say so in no uncertain terms.
@111. omnicrom :
I’d rather annejones didn’t spread homophobic, transphobic Creationist bigotry and vile hatred anywhere personally and just kept it to herself – or better yet learned to abandon it altogether and become a better person not that that’s likely I ‘spose.
@StevoR
While we’re at it, you can follow her out. I’ll hold the door open for both of you.
Really you have no fucking room to talk about becoming a better person.
Oh good night.
Ingdigo:
May I help you hold the door to ensure both bigots depart?
There really is some gall at play from StevoR. HIM telling someone else to be a better person.
Ahahahaha. Haha. Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
Really, what makes you think that nobody would see the irony of you saying that? Even if you Just Disagree about your bigotry, you know very well what we think of you. And yet you barge in here, pretending nothing is going on, in order to offer your hypocritical two cents regarding annejones. What possesses you to do that? Are you just a glutton for punishment, are you hoping that we will just forget? Or do you just forget this shit yourself until everybody has to remind you, for the umpteenth time?
Believerskeptic:
Ummm, I think you are mistaken about Gail. She got Batgirl, which was a dream book for her. According to many fans, she was the only saving grace when it came to reverting her back to Batgirl (another example of moving backward, which contradicts the stated desire to move forward)
Oh and by feminist backlash, I did not clarify sufficiently. I meant the type of backlash the atheist movement is facing ATM.
Aww I see StevoR has run out of real world ways to be horrible and is now excusing fictional genocide and war crimes.
He’s a consistent little Goosestepper isn’t he?
@Tony
Of course she was fired by e-mail and rehired due to backlash. DC thinks they shit out their elbows
Ingdigo:
Nah, never was a Valiant fan-no matter the version-and like all comics, I have fallen way behind.
What are you reading?
Btw, have you heard of the Mighty Avengers minority heavy roster?
Believerskeptic, have you even established that ANYONE around these parts frequents Less Wrong? I checked it out precisely once, found the organization lacking, and never went back. I don’t know about other Pharyngulites, but none of them have mentioned it much. It would be SOOOO helpful if you could, you know, be rational and separate your beef against Less Wrong from your beef against the misuse of Bayes’ theorem, because one is an actual problem (hint: the latter) and the other is just your personal hobbyhorse which probably nobody gives a flying fuck about (hint: the former).
@Tony
Did but don’t have much interest in big two in general now. The ouroborus nature of western comics has really tried my patience. Not reading anything right now that’s not indy (hipster) Atomic Robo, and Saga
Why is StevoR here? Does anyone here like the little meat fucker?
He seems to only be here because it bugs people
Ingdigo:
Ah Atomic Robo…great concept. Great character.
Would like to see a well done movie.
StevoR’s here for the same reason as annejones: he refuses to go away, and manages to notactually commit bannable offences, despite skirting them constantly. And no, I have seen no evidence that anyone here likes him.
This is the Platonic Form of Irony.
I come here because I actually enjoy this blog and have positive contributions to make in some areas. You are entitled to disagree with me and I’m entitled to disagree with you. I have as much right to comment here as you do.
We clearly have very different perspectives and views on some things but that doesn’t make me a bigot or anything like the straw-monster you have wrongly painted me as being.
Annejones, OTOH, is clearly a homophobic transphobic bigot as well as a godbot.
@174. Dalillama, Schmott Guy : When you have a group of people constantly bullying and bad mouthing me is that any surprise? It just means that none is standing up to those bullying and slandering me here understandable if not admirable.
No you fucking dont
Yes it does
Hey everyone remember when someone dug up racist shit StevoR said off site. I like how every fucking time he assumes you are all morons who forget all he said last time
@StevoR
Shut up about Anne, you literally have no high ground to judge her.
@165. anteprepro :
I know what *some* of you have mistakenly claimed me to be -and also know its very much a hurtful, abusive lie and that those claiming this owe me an apology whether or not they are decent enough to offer it is up to them.
A hatred of homophobic bigots. Also not hypocritical at all despite that being your opinion.
No. I’m hoping you’ll come to realise you were wrong about me all along or at least move on from the mistaken impressions some of you have aquired through misconstruing my words and failing to notice that I’ve already clarified and apologised for a few comments in the past where I admit I went Over The Top and failed to sufficiently distinguish Jihadists from Muslims. Yes, I did make some mistakes and post a few things I shouldn’t have – but then who hasn’t done that some times?
Both StevoR and Annejones are deep in denial about their respective bigotries.
Poor StevoR thinks he is bullied and abused.
He isn’t.
He is held accountable for the things he says.
He has said hateful things.
He has supported genocide.
He is Islamaphobic.
He is a warmonger (who does not accept that neither the US nor Australia is in any danger from radical Islamists)
Every time he denies racism, he insults every person who has suffered from it…everone who still suffers from it…
@177. Ingdigo Jump (& all comments here) : You are entitled to your erroneous opinions – they are not mine nor are they facts.
Also past is past and I’m pretty sure everyone has said things they’ve later regretted. I’ve made it clear what my current views are and they aren’t what people wrongly claim about me. So lay off me.
@ 178. Yes I do – I’m not a homophobic bigot and she is.
@172.
Bzzzt. False. Although I’m certainly NOT going to be bullied off here by those who constantly attack me.
But *if* that were true then doesn’t that suggest that if you did want me gone you should stop being so “bugged” by my presence here?
I don’t care what you think IngdigoJump. I know you are wrong about me. Note that I haven’t responded by abusing and insulting you as you’ve done to me. If you don’t want engage with me fine, leave me alone, don’t attack attack me or argue with me and I’ll do likewise.
Fuck off SteveOr
Ingdigo Jump:
StevoR also thinks we are going to forget about the Daisy Cutter comments…
Or his dismissal of the innocent lives lost every time drones are dropped in Middle Eastern countries. He rationalizes the lives lost by drones by not caring about innocent people unless they live in Australia or the US.
You are not constantly attacked you whining fuckface. You come to the Dome, you get held accountable for what you have said. You have not renounced all the horrible shit you have said.
Some of the shitty things you uttered you tried to write off as “I was drunk” but that will not cut it.
Yudkowsky was invited to the recent online FTBcon, and PZ debated mind uploading with him, Eneasz Brodski, and David Brin. I watched it, and wasn’t wildly impressed by Yudkowsky’s eloquence or reasoning, but neither was I repelled.
I’ve been following Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It’s . . . interesting. I’m enjoying it so far, more or less. It has problems, which I would have to re-read in order to articulate properly, especially in the early parts.
I read one of the Sequences, and was really bothered by it, but articulating what was wrong would take me quite a number of words, and more time than I currently feel like investing. I’d like to read the entire Sequences at some point, and maybe work out what problems exist in it.
As I recall, sgbm debated with LessWrong a bit, and came to the conclusion that he really, really hates transhumanism. I don’t think I agree with him, but he made some really paranoid-sounding points, and if they were valid, it might indeed be plausible that transhumanism is a potential threat.
Once I read Charlie Stross’s discussion on Roku’s Basilisk, I realized that something is really goofy in the transhumanism community, if something like that is taken as seriously as it was described. I mean, really?
In general, though, I don’t think that the Singularity will be brought about any time soon, and in the near future, I think that the general goal of promoting rationality, Bayesian reasoning, and recognition of biases and logical fallacies is generally a Good Thing.
I would suggest, in regards to the current unpleasantness, that:
given that most women who are raped, are raped by an acquaintance, and:
most rape accusations are not false, and:
most rapists use self-justification to minimize their actions and blame their victims (“drinking alcohol with me implies future consent”; “not saying ‘no’, despite being incapacitated by high alcohol dosage, implies consent”),
therefore:
the probability that a woman who says that she was raped (by an acquaintance, after drinking alcohol with him, and becoming incapacitated) is telling the truth . . . is pretty damn high.
So one should update one’s Bayesian priors accordingly.
FWIW, HTH, IANAS/T, HAND
test
To clarify it was immortality and life extension specifically. And he has a point
On another thread I was accused of having a “grudge” against them. I don’t have a grudge against them; I’m just against them. I think they don’t belong in the skeptic movement because their beliefs are woo and their behavior is cultlike. I think they get a pass from skeptics because they seem so sciency. I think they’ve appropriated Bayes Theorem to be their version of engrams (from Scientology). I think they’re trying to be Scientology 2.0, and I know they have the backing of a right-wing libertarian billionaire.
I don’t care that it has Richard Carrier’s stamp of approval. I don’t care that it has Stephanie Zvan’s stamp of approval because Richard Carrier is a proponent of it and he’s been a good, reliable anti-misogynist ally. If someone comes onto a forum talking about engrams and posting “hard numbers” about the inefficacy of psychology, guess what! I’m thinking “Scientologist.” And if someone comes onto a forum which has zilch— zero— nada— nothing to do with inductive probability and then they suddenly, out of context, pull Bayes’s Theorem out of their ass, then yes, I think “Lesswrong.”
Is it possible Bayes’s Theorem has some uses? Sure. Is it possible that someone could be innocently suggesting Bayes’s Theorem wildly out of context and yet has never heard hide nor hair of the robot cultists of Lesswrong? Absolutely. But for me, if you pull Bayes’s Theorem out of left field in a conversation that has the least to do with mathematical probability, then, yes, I’m suspicious at the very least.
A close family relative of mine was in a cult a long time ago. It was a traumatic experience for the entire family. It entailed an entire personality shift of this person who was turned into a zombie. We didn’t recognize her. It took an intervention and deprogramming to get her back, which, by the way, she was an is enormously glad we did.
Yeah, maybe it is a grudge. I have a grudge against cults writ large. I think there are worse things of which to plead guilty.
If you’re actually interested— because, you know, read! Educate yourself before speaking out! You could, actually, you know, be wrong in your blithe dismissal of how potentially dangerous these people are— in how far down the rabbit hole goes, spend a little time with Dave Carrico’s blog, amormundi dot blogspot dot com.
I get that you don’t give a shit. See, I thought skeptics gave a shit about pseudoscience posing as science. Apparently, I’ve been misinformed.
It makes his reading of Ender’s Game series all the more horrific that he just gleefully goes along with a “government is good and their extermination was at best ‘lamentable'” Because you know they used child soldiers and war crimes but they really really really needed to.
As a side note I just finished Full Metal Alchemist so my opinion right now is that the pursuit of immortality is the most selfish and short sighted errant quests imaginable.
My god do you ever stop whining?
One other thing— I would not call “Rationally Speaking” with Julia Galef any kind of lightweight podcast. Galef is routinely invited to speak at skepticons. And she is deeply steeped in the lesswrong woo. But, I suppose that’s okay with everyone, that crank pseudoscientists get prestigious platforms at skepticon.
It’s a good thing a whined a little about how strangely my sister-in-law was acting and got her out of that gun-stockpiling Montana cult.
So no.
Go home believerskeptic u drunk
believerskeptic
The passive-aggressive voice is not a good one to use here.
“I guess I was wrong…”
“I suppose it’s OK with everyone…”
really is whiny
“My god do you ever stop whining”… isn’t that what they say about feminists in general? That your issues aren’t important? You’re just whining about men hitting on you at conventions? That you’re just blowing everything out of proportion? Do any of these refrains ring a bell?
I think this is important. I think keeping pseudoscience cults out of the skeptic movement is important. Who are you to say it isn’t? If you weren’t aware before, you’re aware now. Next time Prof. Carrier holds forth on the wonders of Bayes’s Theorem, you will now visualize a lovely read question mark hovering over his head. The next time you hear Julia Galef “rationally speaking” at a skepticon lecturn, you will now visualize an equally lovely question mark hovering above her head. And you’re welcome.
I realize I did not make the best first impression. I had a bad day. It happens to the best of us; I suspect even you, Ingdigo Jump. I deeply appreciate those of you who graciously accepted my apology and who are willing to give me another chance. Those of you who aren’t, your lack of charity speaks volumes.
believerskeptic
You didn’t make a good first impression, but it was apparently accurate -_^
I never drink alcohol. Never.
Robert Gross
And you are perfect, I suppose, Ingdigo? You certainly weren’t accurate with your accusation that I, a committed teetotaler, have been drinking.
Jesus, maybe you should
I was told that tone-trolling was verboten in these parts.
And now you owe an apology to me, because you have no FUCKING CLUE what alcoholism has done to my family. And no, I don’t mean mine. I’m a lifelong teetotaler.
*eye roll* Fuck off
Saying that I should just drink up when I have alcoholism in my family is like telling someone with depression to just “cheer up.” You don’t know the circumstances. It’s ableist and it’s wrong.
You first.
Is every two year old going to throw a tantrum at the same time now?
*shrug*
Bless your heart, bs.
Yes I’m sorry for offending your family history. Seriously though go cool your head.
Actually, I have a translation for this:
Actually means:
“Yes, Dr. Gross, you were right to point out that it’s hypocritical for the regulars here out of one side of their mouth to say tone-trolling is wrong, especially when you did it your first day here, but then when you actually point out that some of the regulars are prone to doing it too, that was quite a good point, and we’ll try to be less hypocritical about it in the future.”
No it does not. it means you’re a babbling nitwit
Why should I accept your not-pologies when my alleged not-pologies are never accepted?
Yeah, you really stepped in it with your careless comment. Good of you to admit it. I hope you get dogpiled for it just like I was.
oh for christ sake, Gross fuck off.
You clearly can’t handle this place
you where dogpiled for throwing a tantrum, which you’re doing…again
Believerskeptic:
Not everyone shares your opinion about LessWrong. Not ever freethinker or skeptic shares the same concerns as others.
I think you make your disdain known a bit more frequently than some others would like. I have glossed over the posts where you talk about it bc I am not interested.
You are. Great.
Not trying to tell you what to post, just trying to give a different perspective.
bs
you do not seem to understand what tone-trolling is
I’ve listened to skeptically speaking didn’t find anything odious with the episodes i’ve listened to, never heard of less wrong. I gotta tell you BS’s display doesn’t make me inclined to think he’s a balanced credible source and take his criticism seriously.
OK given that he’s sniping at me in another thread, I think BS has actual legitimate obsession issues. I’ll refrain from feeding his persecution delusions.
@181. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! :
Specifically I’ve made my views on a range of things very clear here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/thunderdome-15/comment-page-1/#comment-543071
Thunderdome 15 back in January this year.
Short version I oppose almost all the things I’m accused of being – I oppose racism, genocide, bigotry of all forms and I’m happy to live and let live with Muslims provided they’re willing to do the same to the rest of the world.
That was in January and I’ve been consistent and clear on that ever since.
@ 167. Ingdigo Jump
Aaand IngdigoJump loses by Godwin!
Also, no, I’m merely describing and discussing the novel’s plot and its situations – make up your own minds here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/15/orson-scott-card-is-even-worse-than-i-imagined/comment-page-1/#comment-673065
folks. There’s also plenty of evidence of how I’m being bullied in that thread too.
@181. Tony, The Queer Shoop: Undefeated Pictionary Champion :
Numbers added for ease of reference.
(1) Yes I have been bullied and abused. Evidence mentioned in the OSC thread linked above.
(2) That’s a matter of opinion I guess. Some people claim so, I dispute that. There have been comments when I’ve stated the harsh reality which I guess some find hateful. There are also times when I’ve argued the case for the West and especially Israel acting in self defence. Is that really “hateful” or just another perspective and one which is well supported by the facts and reality out there? Its in the eye of the beholder to some ‘spose.
(3) Wrong. I admit making and have since clarified & apologised for some comments that could wrongly give that impression but no. I support taking out Jihadists NOT innocent people.
(4) Wrong again. I disagree with the Muslim religious ideology. Everyone who isn’t Muslim does because subscribing to it means converting to Islam and pretty sure no one here is Muslim. I think the founder of Islam, Mohammad was a disgustingly horrid person who was among other things a child molesting warlord. However, those who believe in Islam and don’t seek to hurt anyone else? I treat them exactly like I treat everyone else – with respect and politeness and no wish to see them harmed. Jihadists, OTOH who are actively trying to commit terrorist atrocities? Those I think we have to stop.
(5) Nope. I don’t want war. However I’m not so stupid as to fail to notice when there’s *already* war happening because we’re being attacked by Jihadists who insist on trying to murder others. I don’t want war and thus I want the war we’re in to be concluded as soon as possible and as well as possible for as many as possible. The world needs to defeat the Jihadists so more people can live safe, free and happy lives including all of us and all of the moderate non-Jihadist Muslims.
Now what exactly about that does not make sense and what exactly about that makes me a bad person?
So finally, (6) Bullshit. Your opinion I ‘spose Tony. But that’s bullshit.
Emotional blackmail is totes rational, guise.
I don’t know much about LessWrong. I’m willing to hear about what’s so terrible about it; I don’t see anything here except claims that it’s a cult and woo and such.
I’m certainly not willing to consider a reference to Bayes theorem as some kind of shibboleth. So, believerskeptic, have you actually considered that quite a few people posting here are highly scientifically literate, and have most likely been using Bayesian inference professionally for decades?
Sometimes people use these phrases to unfairly dismiss people who are not BS, therefore use of these phrases is evidence that people are unfairly dismissing BS. Wow, I am really blown away by your skepticking and logickalness.
It is totes logical to assume that everyone has the exact same source of information about a scientific theory which has been around for a few decades and is enjoying a surge of relative popularity at the moment! Oh yes, quite the skeptic you are. My my my. Do continue to school us on our deficiencies in reasoning.
My initial impression is seeming more and more likely to have been the correct one.
Believerskeptic:
Chigau was not tone trolling.
Egg on my face: Bayes’ theorem is about a century older than I remembered off the top of my head.
I was going to say… Bayes was alive in the 1700s. But he went out of fashion, then came back again with increases in computer power that made some previously impossible problems tractable. I used to work with coding hidden markov models in computational biology, where Bayes is pretty much essential. Gene detection in genomic sequences and such.
@189. Ingdigo Jump :
“He (StevoR-ed) rationalizes the lives lost by drones by not caring about innocent people unless they live in Australia or the US.”
It makes his reading of Ender’s Game series all the more horrific that he just gleefully goes along with a “government is good and their extermination was at best ‘lamentable’” ..
(Edited for clarity.)
Tragic. I stated it was “tragic” for both sides. Which is a lot stronger than ‘lamentable’ and actually one of the strongest adjectives of all.
You are also misreading me to say I’m “gleefully” going along with the premise of the novel. I wasn’t “gleefully” going along with it merely stating that’s how it went and worked in the fictional novel which, did I mention, is fiction and NOT something I support in RL. I also noted the plot flaw in the Formics improbable failure to be able to communicate their change of heart to the humans in that novel. (They could have tried not attacking , fleeing from the human ships and never firing on them for example.)
Yes. Life and death situation. As I explained in the OSC thread :
There are some times and some situations where it is true that you have to kill your enemy to survive. In a gunfight or war or terrorism situation it is often the case that if you do not kill your opponent you will be killed and your opponent will go on to kill others.
If someone is pointing a gun at you, raises it and is about to pull the trigger – and you yourself are armed and know this person will murder you (and/or your family and many others) if you do not shoot them dead then this applies. You choose to shoot them and survive – and prevent them killing others who you care about or you choose to effectively commit suicide by letting them shoot you.
How can you not grasp that sometimes that is simply the unpleasant reality?
@183 &184. Tony, The Queer Shoop: Undefeated Pictionary Champion :
Oh for fucks sake. I’ve cleared that one up ages ago and repeatedly. It was a bad grim humour joke that didn’t work and yes I’ve apologised for it and said I won’t suggest it again even in jest. No I don’t want anywhere hit with daisycutters. Or nukes.
Actually its the exact reverse I accept that the military personnel in charge are doing ti to save innocent lives and they know what they’re doing a lot more than anyof us would because that’s their field of expertise. I think the drone strikes save more lives by preventing terrorist attacks than they claim.
To you maybe, you ain’t the only person in the world y’know.
Not only drunk ether but also tired and really emotional having just heard about Jihadist attacks on the news. Dunno ‘bout you but seeing that sort of shit affects me and gets me all rage-y.
Yeah, I can see that happening. But you might want to keep it at thinking that. Your posts that cite the use of Bayes’ Theorem and scream about the horribleness of Lesswrong look more than a little obsessive, and they’re certainly derailing.
Azuma Hazuki seemed more than a little put out by you getting all up in her face about how she happened to phrase her thoughts on the current unpleasantness.
God damn StevoR is a scumbag.
Every time he denies racism exists it belittles the lives of all the people who have suffered from it.
So all the blacks that were killed in lynchings…that wasnt for racial reasons?
And the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis…nope, no racism there.
Oh and the genocide of the Native people in the Americas by European invaders…nope no racism there.
Stop denying the effects of racism you snotbubble.
Can we just get rid of him, annejones, and txpiper? They are all disgusting.
Blockquote fix – that’s :
@189. Ingdigo Jump :
Edited for clarity.
Tragic. I stated it was ‘tragic’ for both sides. Which is a lot stronger than ‘lamentable’ and actually one of the strongest adjectives of all.
***
I will also add the plot twist that the “simulated” battle in EG was actually real was a shock and left me feeling stunned not gleeful. Learning that Andrew “Ender” Wiggin regretted what he done and redeemed himself by first writing about the Formics and their perspective on the war and then rescuing the Queen and saving them from extinction – that was a good twist that I enjoyed and thought made it a happier if still thought-provoking ending. At the time I first read it and also still now.
PPS. @ originally 180. Tony & #218 me :
Plus further evidence if any is still needed right here in this thread for instance #182. SallyStrange.
I might also add that when you are saying “what are the odds that X is telling the truth?” you are getting into probability right there. And if you want to analyse that, you’ve basically got a choice of Bayesian or frequentist reasoning. It’s not exactly out of left field.
Oh and now he continues to stupidly display his rabid authoritarian streak.
“I think drone strikes save more lives…”
Despite the evidence presented, he persists in this irrational belief. Moreover, he refuses to accept that the drone strikes are creating more terrorists than the pittance they have killed.
Yes, StevoR is an ignorant, racist, genocidal, warmongering, authoritarian douchemaggot.
@228. Tony, The Queer Shoop: Undefeated Pictionary Champion :
More evidence for point (1) there note din myresposne at #218 to your #180 Tony. I’ve more than enough evidence of bullying and abuse already though so you could, y’know stop now, ‘k?
Ha ha
Being told to fuck off is now bullying.
Yeah boo hoo, I feel so sorry for the guy who likes having bombs dropped on entire towns filled with innocent civilians.
Yep, I have a tear right here…in my right pocket.
Oh wait, thats my middle finger.
Fuck off StevoRacist.
@231.
What’s “irrational” about thinking that killing terrorist masterminds and their henchman who are planning and committing terrorist attacks is preventing them from doing so exactly?
Tell me, Tony, how many successful terrorist attacks has Osama bin laden or Al-Zarquawi or any other dead terrorist plotted and conducted after they were taken out?
That would bean extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence on your part.
Also I don’t think its a point that would’ve escaped the notice, contemplation and eventually been rejected by the various military counter-terrorist groups and Generals in charge of and responsible for the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program. If you think you know better than they do, then by all means contact them or better yet join up yourself and show by example.
The cliche that the military types are more than a bit dense – I really don’t think that’s true, do you?
No you shitstain, I will toss invectives at you every time you post here. I find you a loathesome human being and wish you would depart and take annejones with you.
The day you understand, reject and take steps to amend your bigotry and warmongering might be the day I stop despising you. I do not hold my breath on you changing.
So fuck off.
It is irrational to insist on supporting methods for killing said “masterminds” and “henchman” that produce unnecessary collateral damage AND have been proven, time and again, not to be particularly effective at said killing.
And yet you do.
@233. Tony, The Queer Shoop: Undefeated Pictionary Champion :
Yes. Screeching “Fuck off” at people is generally bullying and is certainly so in this instance. How the hell have gone through life so far being ignorant of that fact?
What a ridiculous liar you are, Tony.
No, I’ve never advocated or liked the idea of bombing of innocent civilians.
The ones I wrongly joked about in specifically Gaza were Hamas* terrorists who are guilty and also some human shields (mostly brain-washed into the same vile terrorist culture where homicide-suicide bombers are idolised and non-Muslims esp. Jewish and Western people demonised) of their own people that they hide behind and use as attempted blackmail to save their own skins after they’ve attacked truly unequivocally innocent Israeli civilians by indiscriminately firing rockets at them.
I see you’ve also failed to acknowledge or respond to your complete reading comprehension failure noted in my comment #232.
* Do you really have even the foggiest idea of who Hamas are and what they want and what they have a history of doing?
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#Hamas_Charter_.281988.29
Drones don’t just kill. Their psychological effects are creating enemies
“Costless” War: American and Pakistani Reactions to the U.S. Drone War
No, you’re just fine with it happening because hey, just trust the people in charge of doing the killing! Like you trust electricians! And besides, they are not really innocent are they, what with living in wrong place and everything.
Totally asking for it.Tragic, but what are we to do, am I right?***
Yeah, you are despicable. Fuck off.
Oh wait, you refuse to click on and read any of my links right Tony? Okay then, here’s just a few Hamas facts from that link :
Now that’s what calling for genocide really looks like Tony!
Then there’s :
Now *that’s* what real bigotry and racism sounds like, FYI Tony & co. – ed.
That’s what warmongering really reads like Tony.
Israelis build houses on their traditional land, Hamas decides this merits mass murder and renewed conflict most likely resulting in destroying everyone’s homes and lives. Yet some here think its that is Israel is behaving “disporoportionately” eh? Go figure.
(Also the security fence Israel built that gets so much criticism – well that explains *why* that’s there and why its a good thing that its worked so well in protecting innocent Israeli lives.
The typical Hamas tactics in their Jihad to exterminate all six million Israelis and wipe the world’s only Jewish nation off the map? :
There is of course plenty, plenty more. Starting with the whole homicide-suicide bomber tactics and Hamas refusal to ever even consider accepting a reasonable peace offer of which there’s been plenty made by Israel and rejected by the Palestinians over the decades.
Hamas – for which Gaza is the main base – certainly aren’t “innocent civilians” although they do admittedly hide behind their civilians as shields and blame others when the return fire accidentally kills them instead of the Hamas terrorists responsible for causing the war(s) – and thus ethically responsible for every last casualty of the war(s) in my view.
@239.Nightjar :
I trust electricians to know how to do electrical wiring and I trust counter-terrorist groups and organisations charged with protecting us from terrorism with stopping terrorists. In each case it is their job and therefore they have the required knowledge and competence to do their jobs best, yes.
Do you believe this is wrong – and if so why?
Who would you rather have determining counter-terrorism policies? Some group or person with expertise who knows what they are doing or, what, a random blog commenter with no such knowledge, training or experience?
Its not that they are living in the “wrong place” – although the nation of Jordan was specifically created to be the Arab state from the former Mandate – but rather the fact that Hamas which is who we’re talking about here (see link in #237 & comment #240) aretrying to kill and destroy a whole nation of innocent people.
Do that and yeah, you’re not really innocent any more.
Capiche?
For clarity – NO I am not arguing for nor do I NOT want Gaza hit with daisy cutters or nukes or anything.
I don’t know what the right solution to the issue is.
As long as you can redefine “innocent” and “civilian” to handwave the victims of your warmongering away.
Dammit that’s : NO I am not arguing for nor do I want Gaza hit with daisy cutters or nukes or anything.
StevoR, like I said:
Fuck. Off.
Your electricians analogy has been taken apart already, multiple times. I’m not in the mood to do it again and I don’t feel like searching for the relevant links.
No, sweetpea, we’re talking about innocents. Who are fair game because they were born in the wrong place, i.e., the same place as the scary, scary terrorists. Hence, human shields. Hence, too bad if they get bombed.
Sheesh. You can’t even keep up with your own warmongering talking points!
StevoR:
Are you a psychopath or something? Do you really think this kind of transparent lying is going to convince anyone? We can read what you write, StevoR. It does not matter how many times you say you aren’t a warmongering racist shitweasel, when your actual opinions on the relevant subjects keep confirming your essential shitweaselitude.
StevoR, you have a weird obsession with protecting Israel. Frankly they are, in ways, just as bad as Hamas or their enemies. The actions Israel has taken against Palestinians by stealing their land. The human rights abuses performed by the government towards Palestinians. Your unreserved support of a nation that has caused a lot of suffering in the area and was only created as a means of fulfilling a Christian prophecy strikes me as weird. However, this isn’t to say I think that Iran or any the other muslim lead countries should be allowed to kill Israels citizenry. But Israel isn’t innocent and is just as complicit in the suffering in the region.
For the record, I don’t remember ever having heard about Lesswrong until believerskeptic brought it up. If it has been mentioned previously, it clearly didn’t make a strong impression.
Dead Horse alert: if you’re tired of my issues with lesswrong, then just SKIP THIS POST, mkay?
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Uh, yeah, Richard Carrier. He endorsed them as a “good skeptic site.”
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Same dead horse alert.
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A lot of people never heard of Scientology until it was too late. Now they’re the most dangerous cult in the world.
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Now that I’ve launched my grenades here at the Thunderdome, let me now address an outrage that is really, actually sort of important in the grand scheme of things:
Why the hell isn’t Chicago in the rock and roll hall of fame?
Yah, I can see your style, believerskeptic.
(Space wastage ad absurdum)
@believerskeptic
My point, if it wasn’t clear, was that the jump from Bayes’ theorem to Lesswrong is something entirely in your head. Many who refer to Bayes’ theorem, like myself, have never heard of Lesswrong, so if you jump to that conclusion, you’re likely to get a lot of false positives, with a lot of annoyed people as a result.
I don’t know why you thought the comparison with Scientology was a good idea. It seems to me that it’s pretty much a non sequitur.
BS is such a good feminist ally, he’s willing to appropriate the very real struggles women face in a culture that hates them for his own little crusade. Good ally *pat pat*
Curious about LessWrong, but tired of believerskeptic‘s nonsense? Charlie Stross discusses the site in this blogpost–and subsequent comment thread–from February this year.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/02/rokos-basilisk-wants-you.html
StevoR thinks that the examples of genocide and warmongering he gave somehow prove he is not a warmongering genocidal assclam. They do not of course. He still maintains the ridiculous belief that it is necessary and just to invade another country and bomb their populace, thus keeping their people in a constant state of fear. Note also, that by advocating for these drone drone policies, he does support the murder of civilians, bc that is what happens when these drones strike. They get a couple terrorists, and 40-50 civilians. No big loss in his eyes.
:::spits:::
He refuses to acknowledge the psychological effect on survivors living in a constant state of fear. Fear that they or their loved ones may die any day. Fear that their home or livelihood may be destroyed in an instant by drone bombings. Drones that quite often are US in origin. Thats is a recipe for creating a terrorist. But not, StevoR lives in a black and white world where countries with power can invade those with little and bomb the hell out of their population. Then he gets to sit back and say “yeah just trust the government, they know what they are doing”. Yeah they know innocent lives are being lost: just like StevoRacist THEY DO NOT CARE.
Samuel Erkison @255: LessWrong looks like a very silly place.
O hai!
Someone please alert the Evil Cephalopod Overlord that Dennis Markuze has discovered the ScienceBlogs version of Pharyngula!
(It goes without saying that so have many, many spambots.)
kthxbai
David Marjanović
I sent an alert.
@ StevoR
I don’t know if you ever been in business, but have you ever considered the whole aspect of reciprocity. Essentially, for a deal to be fair, one should consider that the deal can be set up without naming the parties. Each party can set up a proposal for whatever it is they are undertaking, but without knowing beforehand, whether they are to be “Party A” or “Party B”. This kinda pulls everything into perspective, as one would then obviously propose something as fair as possible.
Now take this notion of reciprocity to the situation in Palestine. Imagine that you are only ever hearing your information in the form of “A” did “X” to “B”. Do you now see how it is the “X” that makes all the difference, as opposed to “A” or “B”?
If “A” does “X=indiscriminately fire upon citizens” to “B”, perhaps you will see where we have the problem with your picking sides here. Try this exercise next time before you post on these matters.
@DM re DM: alert sent
@annejones
I don’t comment at weekends, so I had to nip back to the last thread to find your reply to me (I see you still haven’t learned to name the commenter you are replying to).
You don’t seriously think that the definitions in a dictionary are arranged “best to worst” do you? You can’t possibly be that stupid. By what criteria would they measure “best to worst”? Besides, even given your logic, the definition you use most is 5… so by your own logic (and I’m not saying your logic is right) our definition is still better than yours. Gods, but you’re an idiot.
Why should biology be followed as closely as possible? What does that even mean? Do you feel that homosexuality is somehow “unbiological”? I think you’ve just tried to dress the Appeal to Nature fallacy up in a tuxedo, and succeeded only in making yourself look even more stupid.
Again, real mature. On a level with the “you fuck poo” insult from earlier. If you must attempt to insult me, can you at least try and make it a little more advanced than the sort of stuff we used to hear in the playground?
Here you didn’t even bother to quote the portion of my comment you were responding to.
I see you still don’t understand English. If one homosexual with a child is a “parent”, then two homosexuals with a child are “parents”. That’s simply how plurality works in the English language. Your argument holds no water, and is quite frankly ridiculous.
I don’t mind insults, Anne, but it is rather painful to watch a grown woman try to insult people when the best she can come up with is of the level that 12 year olds fling at each other during break time.
Name one culture where it didn’t. And no, those families involved father, mothers, and children. You’re against homosexuality, but in favour of polygamy? Are you Mormon?
I’ll deal with these two together; it’s good that you are capable of separating the person from their sexuality, but I take issue with your statement that you don’t hate homosexuals. You are trying to deny them happiness; denying someone happiness by necessity makes them unhappy. Why would you want to make someone’s life unhappy if you didn’t hate them?
Indeed.
You assume that because the studes didn’t use a heterosexual control then they are automatically irrelevant, but that’s a condition you simply made up. It all depends on what question the study was trying to answer. The question “Do the children of homosexual couples suffer from higher than average psychological problems?” does not require such a control group. The question “Do the children of homosexual couples suffer from higher incidence of psychological problems than the children of heterosexual couples?” absolutely does require such a control group. Single mothers being included as a third group is actually good science, as it allows you another comparison. Did any of the studies only use single mothers in the heterosexual control group?
The fact that none of them found a higher incidence of any of those things amongst the children of homosexual couples rather does refute that, don’t you think?
Indeed, please prove that “children [who] are not raised in a loving home by their biological parents who are married are at higher risk for negative behaviors and increased psychological problems”.
You ARE advocating for Gaza to be hit with bombs, and any other array of indiscriminate ordinance in furtherance of what you think is self-defence but is actually just an atavistic instinct for revenge.
What is the difference between a daisy cutter and 10 regular bombs that add up to an equal tonnage?
What is the difference between a nuke and a 1000 regular bombs that add up to the same kilotonnage?
What is the difference between daisy cutters and nukes dropped from bombers or launched from missiles and regular bombs and missiles launched from drones?
At the receiving end, THERE IS NONE.
It is the same indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians in the name of pre-empting attacks that are only suspected to be being planned, (when in fact it is almost always indiscriminate murder of civilians for the unspoken goal of REVENGE for previous attacks that were not stopped by previous “attempts” at pre-emption).
It has already been demonstrated to you, clearly and plainly, that such actions ARE NOT EFFECTIVE at preventing future attacks, or disrupting the terrorist’s ability to plan future attacks, and in fact, MOTIVATE more people to sympathize with the terrorists, become terrorists themselves, and PLAN MORE ATTACKS.
ah…I see. My bad. Well, that’s embarrassing.
Sorry, “Lofty”. you can fuck off or not, as you wish, as always.
Wait, I see, this is Brit-lish, right? You’re implying that I was drunk, not that I was angry.
Yes, I was drunk at the time. But the anger was faux. Yust yokin around.
And please don’t call me “dear”.
Naw, nothing like that. I was merely notating the nickname, you know, like in the newspaper: James “Whitey” Bulger, like that. (Just part of the overall crankiness level there.)
“Dalillama” and “anteprepro”: Have nice days!
@steveoR
Stop pretending that morality is a business for experts. If you have eyes in your face and a brain in your head then you ought to be able to see that blowing up civilians is immoral, and if you can’t then you are an emotionally stunted arsehole.
And if, like you, your argument is that it’s not OK for Hamas to kill Israeli civilians or Jihadists to kill US and UK civilians, but it’s totes OK for Israel and the US to kill Arab civilians, then you are a fucking racist.
Meanie! Slanderererer! Bully!
Oxford comma! Yes!
Owlmirror, I couldn’t agree more with #185. LessWrong is an … interesting place.
I’m curious about this, because I probably agree with sgbm on at least some points, assuming we’re looking at it from about the same angle. (In particular, the immortality stuff of transhumanism, as Ingdigo Jump mentioned…. I raised a bit of stink on it in that thread for the FTBCon video.) For one thing, their goals, if they’d ever be achieved, would typically benefit those who are already wealthy and powerful, exacerbating many of the problems we already have and perhaps creating new ones. I wouldn’t consider any objection along those lines as “paranoid,” unless it came with some additional extraordinary claims or a refusal to accept plausible ways of addressing those problems. However, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, so I’m just curious what you have in mind, if you feel like it’s worth some more of your thought and time right now.
What’s your issue with that? The site has a lot of good things to say which pertain to skepticism. It’s not an unvarnished “good,” nor did Carrier say so evidently: there are some pretty odd shenanigans now and then, the transhumanist and libertarian aspects (not just there, but in atheist/skeptic/scientific circles generally) by themselves introduce all sorts of problems, and the whole project of making some all-encompassing modernist system for “rationality” seems misguided to me. Still, there’s nevertheless a lot which is good, and it would take a lot to work out exactly what the bad parts are. About like Pharyngula or anywhere else, for what that’s worth. I’m not a fan of LW (and I’m not a frequenter, though I’ve read a chunk of the huge amount of material there), but I wouldn’t go around calling them a cult or seeing red whenever someone applies a little Bayesian reasoning either. And if I were really interested in criticizing them, making comparisons with Scientology and so forth, I’d try to say exactly what I think the issues are, not just smear them with a lot of name-calling.
You need to learn how metaanalysis works before thinking yourself qualified to comment on something like this.
Hahahahahaha.
BIOLOGY says evolution occurred, more or less as the theory of evolution describes. BIOLOGY shows no evidence of any creator or design in life on earth.
And yet you are happy to argue AGAINST biology on that topic.
And you claim to be consistent.
Like the odious texpip, you are a pathetic hypocrite.
(BIOLOGY also shows that homosexual relationships and activity are part of the NORMAL range of diversity for human sexuality, and is shared widely across the animal kingdom. The pattern we see now, with a minority of individuals being homosexual and seeking to raise children within homosexual relationships, while the majority are heterosexual, is the common pattern seen in nature among those species that actually bother to raise their offspring. What is exceedingly rare and UNNATURAL is what you are advocating for, annejones, which is the elimination of that homosexual minority entirely and making the entire species 100% heterosexual, and having offspring raised only by biological heterosexual parents.)
Sorry – I can’t read aj’s hatefulness any more. Bad for the blood pressure it tis. A big THANK YOU to those of you breaking down her screeds. I just can’t read her stuff.
@Polistes
That’s fair enough, some days I don’t have the spoons either. But normally her fucking idiocy just kicks off my SIWOTI syndrome, and before I know it I’m spewing steam from my ears, halfway through a 2000-word post :)
@consciousness razor
I’m currently playing Deus Ex and… yeah. This.
Meanie, slanderererer, and bully!
There. That’s better.
Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Oxford comma FTW.
Deeeeeeeep Riiiiiiiiiifts!©
cr @268:
Didn’t take long to find this piece by Yudkowski;
http://lesswrong.com/lw/r8/and_the_winner_is_manyworlds/
The smug certainty of that is enough for me to run away, regardless of my own opinion on MWI. Dogmatism is a short skip and a jump away.
@243. vaiyt : Well, how would you define Hamas?
Really. Read #240, think about it for a while.
Put yourself in the position of an Israeli leader and tell me how you’d see things then and what you’d do to protect your loved ones from Hamas and a whole slew of other equally bad terrorist groups?
Try, just a bit to be realistic and fair to the Israeli people and their POV.
NB. The electrician and military comparison argument that Nightjar raised in #239 was raised in a previous thunderdome – I meant to go back and read and respond to comments there but had an extremely busy week and couldn’t find the time to do so yet. I still intend to try and catch up on that later.
Heading off now. Catch y’all later. Night.
Works both ways, arsehole.
yEah not gonna talk to the clowns anymore
@Tony
Just finished Fullmetal Alchemist and I suspectg that regardless of end result the destruction from the mere pursuit of immortality would be devastating
StevoR sez:
Just fuck off, StevoR. Just fuck off. You contribute nothing but repetition. The same old denial, the same old arguments, the same old blindness and lack of self-reflection. You aren’t going to learn, you aren’t going to apologize, so just shut the fuck up already.
I wish txpiper, annejones, and StevoR would interact with each other more.
Amphiox
Fallout. /pedant
I think their brains would explode, as conversing with one another would require them to change their dialog options and stop repeating shit they’ve already said. Their scripts don’t allow for that kind of improvisation.
Heh. Yep. I’m not a physicist or a philosopher of physics, but if I had to pick one, it’d probably be a De Broglie-Bohm interpretation. But that’s me, and I don’t feel like getting into all of that now. I also don’t really care enough to dig around in Yudkowsky’s blathering to figure out how he thinks he comes to that conclusion. I’ll say it again, for emphasis: lots of shenanigans.
(It’s worth noting the standard “read everything we’ve ever said!” technique of argumentation. Why the sudden revelation that the MWI is correct? Well, who really cares; I’ll just link to dozens of articles which also don’t give a complete answer. A classic bit of rhetoric in there: “But enough telling – let me show you.” So he can’t say, in so many words, what his explanation supposedly is…. yet you’ll notice that what he’s “showing” you is just a lot more “telling” which also doesn’t actually tell you anything. But after you’ve suffered enough information-overload, and in the fullness of time, all will be revealed.)
And to be fair, as I’ve said many times and will say again, PZ’s guilty of shenanigans* too, on all sorts of subjects, not to mention the commenters here (or there). Occasionally, he’s said things which are just plain flatly, stupidly bad, false, fallacious and/or ignorant. So, it doesn’t seem especially useful just to pick out a few problematic things and draw many conclusions from that. Perhaps we have a somewhat more self-critical group of people here, or perhaps because of its popularity we’re not so isolated from “outside” criticism. But they’re really not the same sort of site either and seem to have different sorts of agendas, so maybe it’s not entirely appropriate to compare them without taking that into account too. LW is much more structured and more focused, whereas Pharyngula covers all sorts of random stuff which is all over the map. Either of those might be said to introduce their own problems….
But really, I’m not interested in defending them. I just want an honest discussion, if anyone feels like ripping them to shreds. I’m not really in the mood for it, personally.
*I don’t know why I’m suddenly using that word, but I’m sticking with it for the sake of consistency.
Entertaining that StevoR linked to the Orson Scott Card thread. Didn’t know that he had shat out war and genocide apologetics there, and didn’t know how thoroughly he was shown to be talking out of his ass about a fucking work of fiction. A work of fiction, written by a far right Mormon bigot, was too morally nuanced for StevoR to handle. I’m not surprised that it is true, I’m just surprised to see it so clearly illustrated!
Oh, so it’s OK if other people don’t want to hear about your fucking hobbyhorse, but you feel sufficiently motivated that I should hear about your stupid crusade that you’re posting comments on my blog on posts that have nothing to do with it at all? You’re a stupid fuckface, believerskeptic. I think we’d be better off without you, and you’d be better off without Pharyngula.
I have a quick question, if no one minds. When a therapist plans to leave their practice, is it unreasonable to expect them to let a patient they’ve been seeing for 3+ years know about it? Is it reasonable to be upset if they don’t, and to struggle with this?
Maybe some more details are in order, but I just feel like such an idiot for being so upset about this.
I have a therapist that I’ve been seeing for more than 3 years, at least once every 3 or so months, often more often. So the other day I sent her an e-mail to request an appointment and she says “sure, I’ll see you the day after tomorrow”, which is odd because normally it takes about a week to get an appointment. So then when I go to see her, she’s like “today is my last day, I’m leaving. BAI.”
Now I feel really horrible, like if I hadn’t coincidentally e-mailed her, she would have just left. I don’t know. Is this my crazy talking, or am I right to be upset about this? I mean I know that the therapist client relationship is at the end of things, a professional one, so theoretically she doesn’t owe me anything, but I’m really, really upset and have no idea what the hell to do now.
Driving by.
Thank you all who offered hugs and support, it’s appreciated. So is all the heavy lifting going on in the SkepticDoc thread! Absolutely fabulous. One word for monitors: ‘Johan’ has pulled the same re-hash shit in at least two prior threads. I’m sorry, but I’m still out, I just can’t handle another one of those threads yet. I’m doing better today, and am going to stick to more mental basket-weaving.
Chas: you should be fucking embarrassed. For Fuck’s Sake, you usually have some semblance of reading comprehension. Try not to get all confused over this post, please.
Gen:
Yes, it’s reasonable. That’s an established relationship of high trust. I think you should, at the very least, explain how upset you are about this to your therapist.
Gen:
I think it’s 100% reasonable and you shouldn’t feel like an idiot. It’s a professional relationship, yes, but it’s really unprofessional of your therapist to cut it off like that, without warning or even referrals. Caine is right, it’s a trust relationship, and it’s really poor form to not give you a warning.
Tony, I feel your comics-related pain. ‘Way back, the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot lost DC my business, for all of the same kind of reasons—if not the specifics—you cite (Power Girl as the daughter of Arion of Atlantis and Lady Chian? Huhwhat?!? And what the hell have they done to Wonder Woman?!?!? What did you bastards do with the Huntress?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! *rageflail* ).
I mean, yes continuity problems tend to crop up; but the Crisis was only a ham-fisted, temporary-at-best fix.
Later, Marvel lost my business when it pulled a similar stunt.
These days, the only comic I read consistently is Knights of the Dinner Table.
–
Hear, hear!
–
I just started going to a new doctor late June. I saw him a second time mid July shortly after getting a letter in the mail informing me that he was moving a new practice by early August. I was informed several weeks in advance about a doctor changing practices. A doctor I had only been going to for a month or so, and who was just a physician, not a therapist who I was building a sort-of relationship with as a necessary part of treatment.
I do think you have a right to be taken aback by this. It does seem a little unprofessional/unusual.
I’m sorry, Gen. I’m sure it’s going to be hard starting over, finding someone trustworthy and relatable and so on. I hope things work out for you.
I think she at least owes her clients a heads-up that they need to find another therapist. They should get some kind of advance notice, and it would be helpful if she also had a list of other therapists they can go to. You know, professionally, that your job is to help your clients, whether or not you’re motivated to do so because of the personal relationship you’ve built up with them. You can quit any job whenever you want, but in this case, you can’t just say “I’m done” without knowing those people have expectations and needs that you’re not going to meet anymore.
Gen
I agree with others; you have every right to be upset there.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all.
I would be.
It may be a professional relationship, but the subject matter is intensely personal.
–
Let’s say, for instance, that someone was seeing the therapist in connection with abandonment issues….
Yeah, that’s not going to fuck them up at all.
–
cicely
That is exactly the case with L’s last therapist too, and yeah, didn’t help.
Dalillama, L has my heart-felt sympathy. To my mind, that kind of behavior is both unkind and irresponsible—personally and professionally.
–
@ Caine (only Caine, others, please skip this comment)
What with the deep rifts forming around the use of the Oxford Comma¹, also the rise of Big-Endianism and the insufferable Sneeches with stars-upon-thars, we have decided that control of the Thunderdome will be resolved by a slugging match between all belligerents. To this end, all Pharyngulites will be issued with Standard Issue² Nerf Guns ™ . As you are the commander of the largest rodent army in these parts, I immediately capitulate and offer my services to our Rodent oBerlawds.
@ Gen
Sounds like both a professional and interpersonal failure on their part. Really not acceptable. You are quite justified in feeling let down, and in complaining about your treatment. That is really not on.
…
@ All
Today I went to visit the NORSA community care project in Wellington (South Africa). It is really quite refreshing to meet such caring, loving people who are devoting their lives to the raising of orphans in the poor communities of South Africa. I hope to write more about them in the near future. For now though, I just want to say that for all the bullshit we have heard here recently, for example primitive attitudes towards issues such as adoption and family formation, there are many people who just get on with the job of giving young children the love that they need.
What I saw today was a novel form of family. Where orphaned children (many of whom are AIDS-infected) are being raised in “Care Homes” within their own communities. Each care home has of the order of seven or eight children being raised by a foster parent (of the nine homes, only one has both mother and father foster parents, the rest are all single foster mothers). The children adore their their foster parents and refer to them as their mothers.
IMHO: There really is no one way to define what a family is, other than to say that it is a group of people of varying ages who love and support each other.
…
¹Also called the Harvard Comma by a certain band of miscreant heretics.
² That is… they fire marshmallows.
AnneJones, look at the front page and nice picture of a married lesbian couple. Then look at the comments, and realize you have nothing to say that we will listen you on. Your deity doesn’t exist, and your babble is book of mythology/fiction. You can preach all day, but you will be either ignored or given the middle finger salute.
*ahem*
So. Benign Dictator For Life ™ for whom are you speaking re:”control” of the Thunderdome?
hhmmm?
Theophontes:
The Rodent Army shall fight on the side of the Oxford Comma.
JADESPRITE: what is that?
DAVESPRITE: what this thing
JADESPRITE: yes
DAVESPRITE: legendary sword
JADESPRITE: how did you get it?
DAVESPRITE: long story
DAVESPRITE: shenanigans mostly
Victory!
Dang , I asked the Pullet Patrol if they had a side in the comma fight, but they responded “What’s a comma?”
Nerd #305
Good. Perhaps they can be
trickedled into the correct action.The Rodent Army will poop little Oxford Commas wherever they think they’re needed. Commas away!
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/19/a-short-statement-on-anti-trans-bigots-swiping-pandagon-net/
leaving this here for believerskeptic:
The phrase “update your Bayesian priors” has come up a few times in discussion of privilege on various axes, such as men not having the priors to understand why harassment is such a big deal, white people not understanding why certain expressions are insulting to PoC, that sort of thing. Here’s an example:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/04/08/i-cant-imagine-living-in-an-abusive-relationship/comment-page-1/#comment-599028
That’s the only context I’ve heard it in here (though I don’t always read every thread).
Come to think of it, why *isn’t* there more activism against cults in the skeptic movement, writ large?
Surely the pseudoscientific beliefs of cults are far more damaging and harmful in real life than fucking Bigfoot believers. As I said on another thread, Scientology ruins people’s lives with mafia-style intimidation, and a nearly infinite bankroll to legally silence their media critics.
I suppose picking on dummies who believe in crystals is a lot easier and requires a lot less courage. I’d love to see the so-called Big Name Skeptics take on Scientology for starters and the proto-Scientologies in the making.
By the way, those who keep describing lesswrong as my so-called “hobbyhorse”? No. Cults are my hobbyhorse. It just happens that LW is a cult that claims to be a stalwart of the skeptic movement itself, hence its immediacy.
But I’d love to chat about Scientology; est and all its progeny; the Church Universal and Triumphant and all the guns they’ve stockpiled; Lyndon LaRouce; so-called transcendental meditation and the Natural Life Party; the inner sanctum of Objectivism and Libertarianism; Scamway and all other life-sucking, money-grubbing pyramid schemes; Lifespring and its plagiarism of est; the Unification Church (i.e., the Moonies) and their media arm The Washington Times; etc.
You know, what? Start here. Because, you know, “Read! Educate Yourself!”
http://www.factnet.org/cults-sects-index
Yeah you’ve given me no reason to take you seriously sorry.
I think it depends partly on how you define “cult.” One cynical-but-sometimes-useful definition is “a religion small enough to pick on.” By that definition, nothing skeptics or anyone else says about the Magdalen laundries, pedophile priests, or the Mormons bankrolling Proposition 8 would qualify.
Anti-Scientology activism seems to be a separate thing. I suspect some nontrivial number of those activists are neither skeptics nor atheists, which suggests they would accept skeptical support if offered but not join atheist or skeptic organizations or go to meetings or conventions.
b-skep, can you give a couple of specifics re: LW?
I’ve wanted to be interested in what they do, but something always felt not-right about them.
believerskeptic, if it’s a cult, why is it not listed in the link you offered?
believerskeptic
I feel I should point out that Scientology was explicitly founded as a cult by L. Ron Hubbard, and it is therefore unsurprising that they have become, in fact, a nasty cult (although it’s my understanding that Miscavige has made it even nastier than Hubbard ever did). They get away with their bullshit primarily because of the massive, massive religious privilege in the U.S., something which the explicitly anti-religious Lesswrong is unlikely to benefit from no matter how cultlike they may act. Additionally, AFAICT from what you’ve, Lesswrong is mostly infested by libertarians, and they’re doing all the damage they can already, no need to point to Lesswrong particularly. Around Pharyngula, libertarians get generally short shrift, although Ed Brayton seems to be oddly sympathetic to them, one reason I don’t frequent his blog very much.
Yeah, maybe that’s it. The whole thing feels like being inside a “gosh wow” early Heinlein novel.
@315: Fair question. Two reasons as far as I can tell. First, the site is hopelessly out of date. (And the *reason* they’re out of date, by the way, is because they’re underfunded and understaffed due to relentless legal battles with, guess who, Scientology.) As I said, it’s just a starting point. Second, a lot of the veteran cultbusters are not even *aware* of the transhumanism movement or the debates surrounding artificial intelligence, or have even conceived that cults could possibly spring up around the subject of artificial intelligence. But I’m working on making them aware. LW is itself very young, and it takes time for groups to come onto the radar. It takes, well, people like me, handwaving and jumping up and down saying “they’re a cult, look at how they’re organized, look at how they behave, look at what they stand for” before the anemic cultwatching community entertains the inclusion of a group among the canon.
Here are some great books on cults. Again, same site, out of date, but interesting and worthwhile reads nonetheless.
http://www.factnet.org/node/904
i,i half of what’s wrong with LessWrong can be uncovered by reading any Harry rant from Harry Potter and the Highly Preachy Fanfiction.
believerskeptic, I’m not unfamiliar with cults, nor with extropianism for that matter.
I have no reason to disbelieve that your hobbyhorse is cults and that you consider a particular website to be one such.
(Alas, it’s in the nature of a hobbyhorse to demand riding)
That’s nice that you think Less Wrong is a cult, BS, and you may be right. However, that has nothing to do with Bayes’ theorem nor with its general application, whether correct or incorrect. Your insistence on linking them is not inspiring much confidence in your reliability as a reporter of Less Wrong’s flaws. More specifics, please, and less ranting.
They’re organized pretty loosely and mostly online; they seem to argue a lot about abstruse topics and try to promote some basic ideas about thinking clearly along with some rather unlikely goals, and they stand for a (probably hopelessly idealistic) particular vision of human progress.
How are they different from a hobbyist or fan organization?
Or maybe rather than being anemic, the “cultwatching community” is rightly skeptical of your loud obsession with a group that, weird as it might be, is not actually a cult?
Which is just the sort of thing which makes Less Wrong so much like them….
Yep. The typical starting point for nearly every cult I can think of that ruins people’s lives with mafia-style intimidation and a nearly infinite bankroll to legally silence their media critics is often battling against a cult that ruins people’s lives with mafia-style intimidation and a nearly infinite bankroll to legally silence their media critics; but not being inclined to mafia-style intimidation and also having neither the nearly infinite bankroll nor a corrupt legal apparatus embedded within their institution nor any substantial contact with the media, which they would need to really do it right. It’s just a matter of time.
Look, you’re doing a really terrible job of making this case so far. They’ve got problems, that’s for sure, but I can’t tell if you even understand what those are. It definitely isn’t being Bayesians or even being excited about AI.
Who? Isn’t the singularity already widely considered “rapture for nerds” (and related claims treated with just as much suspicion and derision)? Don’t you think a lot of people see what’s wrong with it fairly easily, even if they’re not steeped in all of the issues?
How?
What “canon” could you be talking about? The canon of legitimate skeptic groups??
Can someone recommend a good intro to Bayes Theorem? The material I got from my Accounting Theory course just doesn’t cut it.
Apropos of nothing much. . .
http://xkcd.com/1013/
Isaac Bonewits’s Cult danger evaluation frame might be relevant here. Note that it doesn’t distinguish on the basis of what the organization/group in question believes or whether it identifies itself as a religion.
I realize now BS meant the “canon” of cults, not cultwatchers. But it’s still an odd way to phrase it. A canon is a collection of rules within a tradition or an institution, not a collection of institutions or ideologies or people or just any old collection.
believerskeptic, over on the other thread, you re-mounted your hobby horse with this
PLEASE try to observe that a question like “what are the odds that X is telling the truth” in fact has has a GREAT deal to do with probability theory. No ass-pulling required. Thank you.
In fact this is very much what Bayes’ theorem is all about. Given a piece of evidence (eg a particular DNA sequence, or a testimony of rape), how much does it support a particular theory (eg that sequence X evolved by mutation from sequence Y over Z generations; or that dude X is a rapist).
VERY brief statement of the theorem here – http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/bayesweb/
*brightly*
Oh? What about the canon of an TV, book, or comic series? (← serial comma!)
Is it canonical that Kzinti are part of the Star Trek universe? And if so, is it canonical that Known Space and the Star Trek universe are in fact the same?
/nerdsnipe
Echoes of null-A.
Owlmirror, you hesitated before writing ‘series’ rather than ‘serials’, right?
No, and therefore no.
That episode of ST:TAS was really clumsy.
Haven’t seen that in a while. (From a neopagan, I’ll note!) This should be fun.
Internal Control – I’ll give this a 2, just to be generous. It’s a website.
External Control – I’m calling it a 10. Their goals are utterly whacky and would have profound implications on societies worldwide if acted upon as they would want. Their personal lack of control over the situation if there’s a singularity or whatever, assuming it would happen, really isn’t my concern here. They want the situation, and it will be influential with or without them directing it.
Wisdom/Knowledge Claimed by leader(s) –
Wisdom/Knowledge Credited to leader(s) – I’ll give both of those a 7. They’re a skeptic group, a Bayesian-obsessed one to boot, so they’re ostensibly all about changing their minds when appropriate, verifying what they’re saying, responding to criticism with rational argument, etc. They’re not especially great when it comes to certain issues, but it still helps to mellow them out.
Dogma – This one’s pretty hard, the way it’s phrased. 5?
Recruiting – 2
Front Groups – Unless they’ve got hidden organizations, for which there is no evidence I know about, it’s a 1. They seem as transparent as can be. You can hardly even count them as an “organization” themselves.
Wealth: 1
Sexual Manipulation of members by leader(s) of non-tantric groups – Unless I hear differently, it’s a 1.
Sexual Favoritism – Again, a 1.
Censorship – All of the silliness about the basilisk should by itself bump it up to a 3 or so, but even that seems unfair.
Isolation – No indication of this. 1
Dropout Control – 1
Violence – 1
Paranoia – Let’s say 10, because they really need to score some points somewhere.
Grimness – I don’t know. 6? Who really approves of being made fun of? Yet are they really so grim about it?
Surrender of Will – I’ll give it a 4, just because they need more points.
Hypocrisy – Let’s kick this up to 7, since they’re not particularly skeptical when it comes to their pet topics (“hobbyhorses,” you might call them).
So from a possible range of 18 to 180, I gave them 70, but I was overshooting it here and there.
—-
These are rules of the fictional universe. It is rule-violating when some entity would conflict with the existence of others which are established. People calling them “non-canon” in other cases are not True Pedants™, thus their claims on canonicity are not canon.
/nerdcounterstrike
This is also a canon. It followz Rulz™.
@ chigau
Commas form part of our dastardly plan, no?
theophontes
Possibly, commas are not, to be trusted.
[{|If you are including sekret messages, I can’t even see that they exist, let alone read them:(:( |}]
the curse of the iPad
(I am awake only because it was raining so hard that it came in around my window. now it’s stopped and I’m done mopping. good night)
I just read about Choice: Texas, a crowd-funded compuer game project about the abortion situation in Texas (lack of access, etc).
Seems like it could do with some support.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I appreciate it a lot.
Russel Glasser from the Atheist Experience has written on that subject, although I don’t remember where those posts are hosted now. It was a while back. You might try contacting him for that.
It’s a pity you weren’t at the meeting described here (see also the linked arxiv paper); you could have given that interpretation some love.
I admit nothing!!!!
I do not disagree with this assessment at all. It’s just that I saw it recently on Youtube, and so had it in mind.
*waves hands excitedly*
You are wrong on the Internet!!!!! A canon is the collection of narrative entities (people, things, events); the episodes are containers for those entities!
In the original Star Wars film, Han shot first.
In later edited releases of that same film, Greedo shot first.
The event of Han shooting first remains in the canon of fans of the film.
The event of Greedo shooting first is in the “official” canon of George Lucas and Lucasfilms, Ltd.
(Also, my English teacher at my famous high school was a famous memoirist, so shut up!)
/nerdslapfight
Speaking of QM, here is Sean M. Carroll’s attempt to provide a lay explanation of QM as currently understood (or perhaps not understood, per Feynman)
… a broken link!
Correct link. Remember, when linking, the “http” matters.
Holy suffering fuck on a shit-stirring stick!
And there was much palming of face.
You know, Firefox used to include the initial http:// in the fucking address bar. What happened? Why did they remove it? Why does it sometimes copy and paste, and sometimes not?
Anyway, I was motivated by this hideously humiliating fiasco to google the stupid fucking config change (because, predictably, the stupid shitbricking config option does not have “http” in it, so you can’t find it by fucking well typing in “http” in the rockfucking “about:config” search bar, never mind that there are a fucking metric shitload of things that come up with “http” associated with them.)
Anyway, the shitty horrible doucheweasels at mozilla broke the urlbar in fucking version 7:
http://techdows.com/2011/09/show-http-in-firefox-7-address-bar.html
And, for those desperate to know the stupid fucking config option without following a shitty plain-ass link, it’s:
browser.urlbar.trimURLsWho the livid green fuck comes up with these stupid shitfucking ideas?
/starfart
Indeed, I remember seeing that on Carroll’s blog. He says it’s embarrassing, but the funny thing is that you’d get a very different result if you took that poll at a different physics conference (probably still with substantial disagreement, just a different assortment). So I think it would’ve been fairer to say all such graphs are the most embarrassing!
I think it’s just mind-boggling to see “Copenhagen” isn’t somewhere close to zero, rather than the front-runner. And “information-based” … are we still talking about a theory of physics, with some stuff in it somewhere, or when did the topic change?
Bah. I probably have some music theoretic fights I ought to be getting back to.
This is not so, you silly, silly person. Episodes are themselves “narrative entities.” Do they contain themselves? Do you contain multitudes, you self-contradicting silly person? It’s conceivable that an entire episode is or is not canon. Don’t you realize how utterly wrong you are about this, on the internet no less?
How could it be canonicity if it isn’t composed of or governed by rules? How could it be so, if a critic doesn’t raise it as a genuine issue because of what would be an actual inconsistency, not simply your arbitrary and useless declarations about what contains what? So I must be right, and you must be wrong. The laws of logic — the canons of logic — demand it. J.S. Bach, who I take as an authority on all subjects, demands it. My definition demands it; and it is my definition, which I have, which belongs to me rather than you, which I think is good because it is better than yours.
Huh. It always copies & pastes when I do it. Even when I try to start from the left margin.
heliobates:
Ian Hackings Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic is a delightful romp, should the internetz be dissapointing you.
This is on the internetz and is very simple.
If you really needed, I could really quickly whip up a pretty intuitive derivation of that formula.
David:
Yeah, same here.
***
Chicago (band)? Blecch. This part of the hatrack loathes Chicago. In fairness, my ex could never get enough of them, or Yes. Can’t stand either one of them now.
As to my hatrack reference: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/12/last-word-for-now/comment-page-1/#comment-668558
And BS remains a self rightous asshole. So glad we have this new addition.
I’d love to know believerskeptic‘s views on other brain-altering chemicals.
And by love to know, I mean quite the opposite.
@nightshadequeen
I’m sure we’ll all hear it. They’re clearly staying now out of spite just like our friend StevoR
Caine @347:
Well, this umbrella stand loves Yes (especially Relayer), and still plays Saturday in the Park and 25 or 6 to 4 regularly. Takes all kinds.
Wait, what?
Did Prohibition die in vain, then?
Drinking may, for some individuals, at some times, in some places, under some circumstances, be unwise—even massively unwise—but inherently immoral?
*shaking head*
–
Rob:
Yep, sure does. That’s a good thing, too.
Of course a narrative entity can contain narrative entities! If you don’t understand recursion, see: “recursion”, with your current context, including the context of not understanding recursion, until you understand recursion!
Yes! Because of quantum!
Inconceivable! Oh, wait, no, it is conceivable. Because I’m right, not you! An episode that is not canon is a narrative entity that is not part of the collection!
Foolish wrong person! Your “rules” are meta-descriptions of the canon, not necessarily part of the canon itself, unless you are arguing that in addition to narrative entities, the meta-descriptions of the canon are part of the canon — which means that I am right anyway. Hah! Take that!
Q: I say, what’s that harpsichord doing in the pool?
A: The Bachstroke, I do believe.
You and your definition are definitively wrong!!!!! . . . !!
Also, cannon.
======
*bitterly*
Yeah, yeah, it works almost all the time, right up until it doesn’t. Usually after it has lulled you into thinking that it always works. And then . . . right when you least expect it . . . The dread linkbork pounces!
======
And . . . Cue shitfit (not from me, but).
WARNING: Possible abuse triggers.
* * * * * * *
I Was Trapped in a Therapy Cult
Mademoiselle By Brittany Morgan as told to Laura Billings
I saw Mary and Margaret for the last time at a fast-food place on the outskirts of town. They told me that meeting at their office as we usually did would put them and everyone I loved in jeopardy, and in the state I was in, I believed them. They told me that if I didn’t leave town immediately, my parents would soon find me and take me back to their satanic cult. They urged me to get as far away as I could, to change my name and face as soon as I got there. I felt like I was losing my world, but the two women I’d come to think of as surrogate parents were firm, insistent. If I did as they told me and went underground, they promised, there might be a chance I could come back to them someday. I wrote out a last will and testament that entrusted them with my journals and my few possessions. Then they asked me to sign a disclaimer saying that if I ever accused them of wrongdoing, it would be because I’d fallen back into my family’s cult. I signed it willingly. Mary and Margaret were my therapists, and I trusted them with my life.
It’s several years later now, and I’m in my late twenties and living in a different city; and although I came here to disappear, I’ve found myself instead. In the years I’ve spent trying to piece together the broken parts of my life, I’ve come to understand that I really was once a member of a cult — a psychotherapy cult built around the two women I’m calling Mary and Margaret (their names, like all those in this article, including mine, have been changed). The story I’m about to tell is not about how psychotherapy ruined my life. It’s true that bad therapy set me back, took years from my life and left me with more questions than answers. But it’s also true that good therapy, with an ethical, honest, professional counselor, has helped me to get my life back. Maybe if you read my story, you’ll know better than I once did how to tell the difference.
When I look back on my childhood, I think of myself as a weird little kid — a lonely child, who never quite fit in at school and a confessor for my parents, each of whom confided too much to me about their troubled marriage. I spent most of my childhood in fear of my father’s rage, trying to stay out of range of his outbursts. I hid my own emotions — but when I moved away from my parents to go to college, all those bottled feelings of anger and terror began to emerge. I couldn’t face them. I started drinking a lot. I stopped eating, and when I couldn’t keep that up, I started bingeing and purging.
Then a friend told me about a therapy group she was in that I’ll call The Group. It was run by two women counselors with apparently good credentials and a comfortable office in a sleepy suburb. A lot of their philosophy was based on the 12-step model of groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, but what really appealed to me was their belief that therapy didn’t have to be a five- or six-year commitment. When I met them, Mary and Margaret explained that they believed in accelerating the process by pushing patients to confront difficult issues almost continually, so that they could be “cured” in just two or three years. It seemed empowering to be able to take such control in solving my problems, so I called my parents and asked if they would pay for my therapy sessions. At first, my father said absolutely not. But my mom, who knew how much I was struggling, convinced him. Within a week, I started individual therapy with Mary (the clients were assigned individual sessions with either Mary or Margaret), as well as occasional evening group therapy classes on such topics as sexuality, love, family dynamics and relationships. The drive from my campus took more than an hour each way, but I was happy to do it. I felt like I was finally doing something good for myself.
Unleashing a lifetime of suppressed rage
Within a month, Mary said I was ready for my first “anger session.” You’ve probably heard about how, for some people, hitting a pillow or screaming at a stand-in for your parents can be a way of releasing suppressed anger. Still, no textbook could have prepared me for what I saw that day. There were about 30 of us gathered in the office basement. The lights were down and the therapists started playing some slow music with sad lyrics that made many people start to cry. Then we broke into smaller “anger areas,” where we sat in a circle. I sat with my back to the corner, thinking I’d be safer there. But then the man next to me grabbed an oversize wiffle bat at the center of the circle and started pounding a big pillow with a loud, persistent thwack! Thwack! Thwack! just a couple of feet from where I sat. He was a big man, maybe 6’3″, and as he continued pounding, others in the circle shouted out to provoke him. Amid their deafening shouts, his rageful screams turned to mournful howls. Everyone in the room was screaming, shouting, crying — so much raw energy that I could feel every heartbeat in my throat. I was horrified — and yet, when it was my turn, I picked up the bat. I felt awkward at first, and so self-conscious I don’t know if I even made a sound. Gradually, I overcame my discomfort — so much so that, at the anger sessions I attended several times a year, I actually looked forward to the cathartic feeling of going out of control.
Since most of us were in group therapy together, everyone knew what everyone else’s issues were. For instance, if you were overweight, someone in the group might shout out, “You’re so fat no one could love you!” Or, if you were an incest survivor, one of the therapists might say, “You want to be Daddy’s little whore?” The person in the center of the circle would get more enraged, more rattled, until often he or she would experience flashbacks — memories of painful experiences that somehow felt real and present again.
We were fine — society was sick
I never questioned whether this provoking of hopped-up emotion could actually be “good” for people, or whether it might be considered unethical, or even abusive. For one thing, I was really impressed by the other people in The Group. They were older than I was, smart, well educated and affluent. Most lived in expensive, old-money neighborhoods, and many had Ph. D.’s. I found it thrilling to be in discussions with people who were so articulate, so intelligent. If they thought this was okay, why shouldn’t I?
Another reason I never questioned The Group’s methods was that such questioning really wasn’t tolerated. Mary and Margaret believed that our society and everyone in it were damaged and unhealthy.
They believed that addiction was rampant, and that you could be addicted to everything from magazines to your own children. If you expressed any sort of discomfort with their methods or rules, Mary and Margaret said it was simply because you too, were a victim of our sick culture. So if you questioned the point of an “anger session” or challenged their rule against taking aspirin, Mary’s and Margaret’s response would be that you, too, were “in the disease.” Having lived through an experience as intense as an anger session, and having bonded with these people in a way I never had with my own family, I simply couldn’t risk alienating them. I had finally found a place where I felt accepted for who I was, rage and all. Going to therapy felt like I was finally coming home.
“Detaching” from Mom and Dad
Within three moths, the pace of the therapy sessions had accelerated. I was in a weekly class, a weekly individual session and a weekly support group, all while keeping a full schedule at school. As The Group’s rules required, I stopped drinking caffeine, taking aspirin, eating sugar or using any other substance that might tamp down my true emotions. When friends worried that The Group was taking too much control of my life, I told them they were “in the disease.” When Mary suggested that I was ready for the next stage — “detaching” from my parents — I was willing.
Mary and Margaret met with my parents and told them I could work through my issues more quickly if I cut off all contact with them for two years. My parents and I screamed and argued, but in a final, tearful conversation with my mother, I was able to convince her how much this mattered to me. I sent letters to my relatives that year in my Christmas cards, explaining why I wouldn’t be seeing them anymore. When I look back, cutting them off so harshly is one of the mistakes I regret most.
Still I was making progress, and I was making friends in The Group. In anger sessions, I was experiencing many flashbacks. At first, these memories were the familiar ones from childhood, but emotionally charged — as if I were experiencing all the rage and shame I should have felt as a kid watching my parents fight, or being yelled at for some small mistake. Mary and Margaret pushed us into confronting these buried issues with an almost relentless zeal.
The more memories we dredged up, the more praise we got, the more we were “progressing.” What I didn’t know then was that most therapists would never encourage this exhausting pace. Constantly coping with these issues — on top of being a full-time student — was wearing me down. Bizarre “flashbacks” from the past Two months after cutting off contact with my parents, I went to an intensive five-day workshop where I had the most awful flashback yet. The workshop was held at an old church camp. On the second or third day, I walked into the sanctuary, saw the altar and suddenly dropped to my knees. It was like a scene from a science-fiction movie where you’re jolted into the past. I saw myself as a young girl, being sold to two men who abused me sexually in some sort of ritual. I sobbed violently for hours afterward. This horrifying memory felt real to me. And yet, no matter how bizarre my flashbacks were (or anyone else’s — many group members “remembered” being abused in satanic rituals), The Group never challenged or questioned them. If you didn’t believe them, you were simply “in the disease.” By examining my flashbacks with The Group, I came to believe that they were real, and that my parents were members of a satanic cult. I moved off-campus into an apartment with a fellow Group member to make it harder for my parents to find me. They were the enemy and I never wanted to see them again.
You might think this discovery would have uprooted me, but, in fact, I felt I’d found a better family. I thrived on the feeling of belonging I had in The Group. When I got a positive stroke from Mary and Margaret, I’d be flying. But if I made a complaint — if I worried that I couldn’t keep up with my classes and all the therapy groups they wanted me in, much less pay for them — they would shun me and tell me I was “in the disease.”
We all craved their approval so much that no demand they made seemed to burdensome or too silly. If Mary and Margaret told you that you were “addicted” to reading the newspaper and eating applies, then you would quit reading the newspaper and eating apples. If you had sexual thoughts about someone in The Group, you were supposed to tell that person in order to get the sexual feelings “out of the way” of your therapy. You had to get Mary’s and Margaret’s permission to begin a romantic relationship. Some married couples weren’t even supposed to have sex unless Mary and Margaret approved it. Few of us objected. Most of us had cut off every relationship we had with the outside world. Mary and Margaret and The Group were all we had and we’d do anything for them.
Going off the deep end
About a year after I’d experienced my first horrifying flashback, the rapid-fire pace of these sex-abuse memories started to slow down. My therapists told me it was because I was holding onto something deep and buried — and they began suggesting possibilities. I would kneel in the center of the group circle and begin hitting the pillow. “How do you feel?” the therapists would ask. “Angry,” I’d respond. “Who’s there with you?” they’d ask. “I don’t know,” I’d say. Soon they would offer examples — “Is it your uncle? What is he doing to you?” — and a hazy picture would form in my mind. These flashbacks had such a dark tone, and I began to “remember” scenes of abuse and terror at the hands of my parents and family friends. The process felt very different from the way I had dredged up memories before. Now, rather than having a memory that helped me understand my real feelings, I was having a feeling and then trying to match it to a “memory” — trying to figure out something that might not even be there. It was sort of like watching a scary movie and not knowing what’s going to pop out of the corner until someone says “a guy with a knife” — then your imagination takes you there. Unlike my earlier memories, which were clear and chronological, these were murky. Even so, I really believed what my therapists told me: that this was a technique for getting at deeper issues and that it would help me get better.
When the two-year detachment period my parents had promised was up, they contacted Mary and Margaret and demanded to see me, to know where I was living. At this point, my progress in therapy was slowing down because refused to confront a very troubling flashback that Mary and Margaret were convinced was the key to my getting better. At a group session one night, Mary and Margaret demanded that I “go into” this flashback, so I lay on the floor and started flailing my arms and legs, a tantrum technique we sometimes used to take us into a trance-like state. I kicked and screamed so much that I seemed to lose touch with my body. I fell into a catatonic state in which I couldn’t speak or respond. The ambulance came for me five hours later, at 2:00 A.M. and that morning I woke up in a hospital psychiatric ward. The resident psychiatrist tied to understand what had brought me there, but I called Mary and Margaret, who warned me to be careful about what I said, because other mental-health professionals might be “in the disease,” too.
I was hospitalized for five weeks. Forced to live a brand-new life in the underground I thought Mary and Margaret wanted me to get better, but now I believe they wanted me out of the way I was volatile and fragile, my parents were calling constantly and, I later learned, my parents’ lawyer had hired a private detective to find me. My crisis had attracted too much attention. The police wanted to know what sort of therapeutic practice had sent me to the ER in the middle of the night. I guess I had become a liability. So Mary and Margaret told me to leave town, and a member of The Group came to my house (I’d just been released from the hospital) with $3,000 in cash so I could escape the satanic cult they said was pursuing me. I believed I was in danger. More important, I knew that if I didn’t follow their instructions, I’d never be allowed to come back. I did what they asked.
The first weeks of my exile were a blur. I stayed with a Christian family who were part of an underground network to help satanic-cult survivors. At Mary’s insistence, I legally changed my name, had a nose job, changed my hair color, got colored contact lenses and bought new clothes in a completely different style. I even changed the way I walked. I was alone in a place where everything was different — the air, the time zone, the people — and where I had no roots, no friends, no one to talk to. When I looked in the mirror, I had no idea who I was.
Before I left, Mary and Margaret had encouraged me to continue with my therapy through an organization that helped survivors of satanic cults. (At the time, it never occurred to me that it was, in fact, therapy that had brought me to this point.) When I went to see my very patient new therapist, she must have known immediately that the treatment I’d received with The Group was unethical. Yet she knew that challenging my fierce loyalty to them would send me out the door. I came to her office one night with a letter I’d just gotten from Mary and Margaret. I was too scared to read it alone. It was shattering. They wrote that they knew I’d gone back to the satanic cult, that I was a sick person who would never be allowed back into The Group, that the belongings I’d asked to have sent to me had been destroyed in a basement flood. I sobbed when I read it. I felt completely alone. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, but instead walked out to the top floor of the parking structure and climbed over the railing. I had done everything they asked, and yet they would never take me back. I had felt suicidal before, but I had never some as close as this. My therapist found me as I was contemplating my leap and said, “Don’t do this now in front of me.” She told me that she cared about me and didn’t want to lose me. It was the right thing to say, because even though I had only known her a short time, I didn’t want to hurt her by hurting myself. Together, we went back inside. That night was a turning point for me. Although part of me still hoped that I could one day win Mary’s and Margaret’s approval again, I had finally started to understand that I had to live life for myself.
Coming face to face with the cult leaders in court
A few years later, I sat in the conference room of a lawyer’s office. Across from me were Mary and Margaret, surrounded by their own lawyers. This had become a fairly common setting for them — I was one of more than a dozen ex-Group members suing the two therapists for malpractice. It had taken me a long time to come to this decision.
I had slowly reestablished contact with some of my friends who had left The Group. They told me they had come to believe that The Group was actually a cult. They gave me a book that contained a checklist of cult characteristics. A cult, it said, is a group that holds to a black-and-white doctrine of good and evil; that treats questions about its doctrine as a reflection of the skeptic’s imperfection; that encourages members to feel part of an elite group whose leaders are seen as perfect. The book also described how cults pressure their members into cutting off contact with family and friends, and how cult leaders encourage members to shun those who questions the leaders’ authority. My heart stopped when I read that description — I didn’t want it to fit The Group, but it did.
When I finally decided to sue, I couldn’t wait to face Mary and Margaret and tell them how they’d hurt me. But there was also a part of me that wanted to apologize for having brought them there. I still longed for the sense of community and belonging I’d felt in The Group. The emotions we had experienced together were so intense that I had felt bonded with these people for life, as though we were survivors of a plane crash.
When I started my testimony, however, I gained strength as I told the truth about what had happened to me — and watched Mary and Margaret lie. They said they had never encouraged me to detach myself from my parents. They said they’d never encouraged or believed any of my flashbacks. They said they’d never told me to flee and change my identity. They said they had never controlled people’s diets, or their sex lives, or called us abusive names like “slut” and “cult whore.” While they denied the charges and gave their own version of the events, I had to endure the indignity of having all thirteen of my personal diaries — now exhibits for the defense — photocopied and passed around to lawyers on the other side. I had to listen as a room full of strangers dissected the details of my therapy, my home life, my pre-Group sex life, with the aim of proving my innate instability. At some points, Mary and Margaret rolled their eyes and laughed at my testimony. But finally, on the morning my case was set to go to trial, their side offered a settlement. I was relieved that I didn’t have to testify in court. Though some of their clients reported Mary and Margaret to the state licensing board, resulting in the suspension of their licenses, the last I heard, they were still carrying on with their practice and The Group.
Moving toward a life more ordinary
Two years after the lawsuit, my life is returning to normal. I’ve completed the two college classes I’d left unfinished and earned my degree. I’m going to massage-therapy school this year, and am enrolled as a graduate student in psychology. I’m sure that seems an odd career choice, but I feel that helping people in an ethical way can be my path toward feeling whole again. When I look back, I know that I was especially vulnerable to The Group: I had zero self-esteem and felt connected to nothing. Finding a place where I felt I belonged was the biggest fulfillment I could imagine. I think that, under the right circumstances, almost anyone could fall prey to a group that promised help, understanding and belonging during a difficult time. What makes me saddest about my experience is that if I had found a good, ethical therapist when I first needed help, I could have saved myself years of pain and confusion. I’m still working through the pain of my experience with Mary and Margaret. But I know that the life I lead from now on is the one that really counts.
I love the hatrack references.
(Is it bad that I feel like it’s a rite of passage to have participated in causing my first flounce?)
Believerskeptic
And your point with that?
@believerskeptic
I’ll leave this here so as to not clutter up the other thread.
I don’t think you’re suited for this place. You’re not mature enough to accept a simple correction without devolving into a temper tantrum that’s unbecoming of a five year old.
As you’ve noticed, we correct each other all the time here. Nobody is expected to be perfect. However, they are expected to be able to accept correction without losing their shit. You clearly can’t do that.
This is exactly the same thing that happened in the first thread you blew up in and you obviously haven’t learned a damn thing from that. That makes me seriously question whether you ought to be here.
Except, what you’re being criticized for isn’t depressive behavior. It’s assholish behavior. Your depression has absolutely nothing to do with it. People are annoyed with you because you’re acting like a jackass.
If you don’t like the term “whining”, fine. I’ll use another one. I’ll call you childish. I’ll call you a self-obsessed asshole who is incapable of taking the least amount of criticism.
I said this before, but you clearly didn’t hear it, so here it is again:
If you had simply accepted the correction, this would have been long forgotten. If you would let this go, so would everybody else. You’re the one keeping this alive with your continual childish behavior. Snap out of it.
Believerskeptic,
An invitation to explain how LessWrong is a “cult”, according to you, is not an invitation for a long essay about a completely different group acting like a cult.
HTH!
http://www.scientologyslavery.com/
An Open Letter to the Church of Scientology
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Derek Bloch. I was raised as a member of your organization from a very young age. I joined the Sea Org at age 15, and left shortly after my 18th birthday. I was sentenced to spend my 18th birthday cut off from contact with my parents while working in the basement tunnels underneath L. Ron Hubbard Way in Hollywood, CA.
The world has become aware of your antics in recent years. Your credibility has been ruined and your church is slowly falling to pieces. The final blow will come when someone finally challenges the tax exempt status of your empire of extortion and you lose it. The current leader of your organization has not only condoned, but perpetuated and himself committed the abuse of members at all levels of your organization.
I think the world as a whole understands that life can be difficult and that we all look for an escape. This is the purpose of entertainment –a very prolific market these days. However, the danger of escaping from life comes when it is not a momentary escape, but essentially a permanent detachment from real life as a whole. This is Scientology, for every single person involved.
Auditing is only a way for you to submerge yourself into your imagination and pretend that the world you see around you is an illusion while your imagination is real. Everyone has various reasons for finding such an escape liberating, and even addicting. The founder of your religion knew exactly what he was doing. He used your own mind against you to collect embarrassing truths and incriminating evidence to extort you and anyone else that has been touched by Scientology.
In the meantime, there are people like me, who didn’t fit into the fold. I refused to accept that Scientology was the truth, and that the “past lives” that I was audited through as a child were real. I decided that I wanted to move on with my life and for that I was shunned by my family. It has been just over a year since I have spoken to them.
I am angry, and possibly even a little hateful for the turn of events which has severed me from my family. The programming they received while under the control of your organization has destroyed the bond I had with my mother, father, brother and sister. In turn, my parents severed their ties with their brothers and sisters and parents.
The bond between mother and child is supposed to be one of the strongest bonds in nature. Scientology is capable of not only weakening that bond, but destroying it entirely. I cannot imagine for a moment what else besides a cult like Scientology would be capable of such an evil act.
Like other cults, your cult encourages bigotry and gives members a feeling of superiority over the rest of society. My parents believe that by refusing to speak to me in the name of your organization that they are actually doing me a favor. They are blinded by the enhanced ego your cult programming has instilled in them. The same ego that Tom Cruise demonstrates when he feels he can advise people on seeking proper mental health care.
There are no words to express the abuse I suffered at the hands of every member of the Sea Organization during my three years there. I was a child and I did not deserve to be treated that way. I was coerced, against my own protests, to leave my family and fly 3,000 miles away, to the state of Florida, at the age of 16. I did not want to be so far from them, but if I had not agreed I would have had to endure confessionals at the hands of one of your “Ethics Officers”.
Ethics officers are the epitome of psychological torture. As a child who was hiding his homosexuality from his parents, I suffered greatly at the hands of your evil organization. I spent all those years seeking to hide it as long as I could, until finally, while at your organization in Clearwater, FL I could no longer.
After being discovered I was harassed endlessly. I was threatened with the loss of my family, which, at such a young age, would have been devastating. I was made to feel evil for daring to have homosexual urges. It wasn’t until long after I overcame my suicidal urges as a young man and started to build a life outside of Scientology that I would find that my homosexuality is not a character flaw.
However the confessionals I endured at age 17, which delved deep into my psyche to uncover all of my homosexual acts and fantasies as a young boy and which I confessed to someone easily two and a half times my age, drove me to the brink of self-destruction. The damage which has been done to me has caused me unimaginable pain and discomfort throughout my life.
I am lucky to have been able to hold a steady job or two and maintain my personal relationships with my friends throughout this time.
Luck is on your side that I do not possess the resources and have probably passed the statue of limitations to file a lawsuit against you, however I still have the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which allows me to speak about my experiences inside of your insidious organization. It sickens me that you are capable of shielding your criminal empire with something which was intended for the greater good.
I have been watching the media and the end of your days is coming. Your group is growing ever smaller and your power is ever-weakening. You continue to claim that you are expanding in size and at some point that illusion is going to come crashing down on you. Your abuse must come to an end, most importantly the abuse of children. It disgusts me the way you treat children: you deny them their childhood and threaten them with the loss of their families. They live in a culture of fear, and are forced into a state of constant anxiety.
Until the first time I took prescribed medications, I had no idea what normality was. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I didn’t have to be in constant angst and worried about things out of my control.
My question to you is: Is living in your fantasy world of spaceships and Xenu really worth what you are doing to the people around you? Hubbard is no longer running the empire. It is running on its own. You are doing this to yourselves because of your false belief in the words of a sociopath who has been dead as long as I have been alive.
Is your mission of world domination really worth what you are doing to all these children? Ruining their lives one-by-one. Denying them proper education and ruining their family bonds.
Think about your ethics practices which involve intense invasion of privacy and Draconian control mechanisms. Do you really want to propagate these on a worldwide scale? Do you really want to live your life in constant fear of being found guilty of being human?
You believe you are better than the rest of us, when the truth really is that our species is evolving and people like you, with your hate and bigotry are holding us back.
I will find great pleasure in watching the criminal acts of your organization being exposed in the worldwide media. I will find great pleasure in collapse of your organization.
None of it will reduce the pain I have suffered at the hands of your organization.
Scientology is evil.
Sincerely,
Derek Bloch
Ergo, LessWrong is a cult.
QEMFD.
believerskeptic
Please make your point in one screen or less; if you really must post these long letters, please do it elsewhere and link here.
LykeX:
To this, I will add: There are many, many, lots* people here who have a wide variety of disorders. Myself, I get to deal with PTSD, hypervigilance, hypnophobia and oneirophobia. Life’s just a bowl of cherries, eh? Now, one thing you won’t find horde members doing is yelling “you can’t tell me I’m whining because I have depression!” or the like. That’s because they behave like adults, even our hordelings who are not yet chronologically adults.
Having a disorder does not exempt you from receiving warranted criticism. Full stop. You also don’t get to do something like claim “Depression!” as a justification for assholery.** Full stop.
*Discworld.
**Spellchecker wishes to change assholery to gasholder. Appropriate.
Post-Cult Problems: An Exit Counselor’s Perspective
Carol Giambalvo
Classification of Ex-Members
There are several classifications of ex-members, based on how they left the cult. Former members usually fit into one of the following:
Those who had interventions.
Those who left on their own, or walkaways
Those who were expelled, or castaways
Walkaways and castaways need the most help in understanding their recovery process. Former members who were cast out of a cult are especially vulnerable; often they feel inadequate, guilty, and angry.
Most cults respond to any criticism of the cult itself by turning the criticism around on the individual member. Whenever something is wrong, it’s not the leadership or the organization, it’s the individual.
Thus, when someone is told to leave a cult, that person carries a double load of guilt and shame. Sometimes walkaways also carry a sense of inadequacy. Often they can think through these feelings intellectually, but emotionally they are very difficult to handle.
Tools for Recovery
In my experience, the most helpful tool for recovering ex-cult members is learning what mind control is and how it was used by their specific cult. Understanding that there are residual effects from a mind control environment and that these effects are often transitory in nature helps diffuse the anxiety. Clients, especially walkaways and castaways, feel relieved when they learn that, given the situation, what they are experiencing is normal and that the effects will not last forever.
Also integral to the recovery process is developing an attitude that there are some positives to be gained from the cultic experience. When former members learn about mind control, they can use that understanding to sort through their cultic experience, to see how they came to change their behavior and beliefs as a result of mind control. They can then assess what out of that experience is good and valid for them to hold on to.
When former members live in an area where there is an active support group meeting, it is often helpful for them to participate. Support group meetings provide a safe place for ex-members to discuss concerns with others who are dealing with similar issues. In this environment, no one will look at them like they have two heads.
Common Issues in Post-Cult Recovery
Some of the recovery issues that keep recurring in my work with ex-cult members are:
Sense of purposelessness, of being disconnected. They left a group that had a powerful purpose and intense drive; they miss the peak experiences produced from the intensity and the group dynamics.
Depression.
Grieving for other group members, for a sense of loss in their life.
Guilt. Former members will feel guilt for having gotten involved in the first place, for the people they recruited into the group, and for the things they did while in the group.
Anger. This will be felt toward the group and/or the leaders. At times this anger is misdirected toward themselves.
Alienation. They will feel alienation from the group, often from old friends (that is, those who were friends prior to their cult involvement), and sometimes from family.
Isolation. To ex-cult members, no one “out there” seems to understand what they’re going through, especially their families.
Distrust. This extends to group situations, and often to organized religion (if they were in a religious cult) or organizations in general (depending on the type of cult they were in). There is also a general distrust of their own ability to discern when or if they are being manipulated again. This dissipates after they learn more about mind control and begin to listen to their own inner voice again.
Fear of going crazy. This is especially common after “floating” experiences (see point 18 below for explanation of floating).
Fear that what the cult said would happen to them if they left actually might happen.
Tendency to think in terms of black and white, as conditioned by the cult. They need to practice looking for the gray areas.
Spiritualizing everything. This residual sometimes lasts for quite a while. Former members need to be encouraged to look for logical reasons why things happen and to deal with reality, to let go of their magical thinking.
Inability to make decisions. This characteristic reflects the dependency that was fostered by the cult.
Low self-esteem. This generally comes from those experiences common to most cults, where time and again members are told that they are worthless.
Embarrassment. This is an expression of the inability to talk about their experience, to explain how or why they got involved or what they had done during that time. It is often manifested by an intense feeling of being ill at ease in both social and work situations. Also, often there is a feeling of being out of sync with everyone else, of going through culture shock, from having lived in a closed environment and having been deprived of participating in everyday culture.
Employment and/or career problems. Former members face the dilemma of what to put on a resume to cover the blank years of cult membership.
Dissociation. This also has been fostered by the cult. Either active or passive, it is a period of not being in touch with reality or those around them, an inability to communicate.
Floating. These are flashbacks into the cult mindset. It can also take on the effect of an intense emotional reaction that is inappropriate to the particular stimuli.
Nightmares. Some people also experience hallucinations or hearing voices. A small percentage of former members need hospitalization due to this type of residual.
Family issues.
Dependency issues.
Sexuality issues.
Spiritual (or philosophical) issues. Former members often face difficult questions: Where can I go to have my spiritual (or belief) needs met? What do I believe in now? What is there to believe in, trust in?
Inability to concentrate, short-term memory loss.
Re-emergence of pre-cult emotional or psychological issues.
Impatience with the recovery process.
In my experience, there is no difference in the aftereffects experienced by those people who had family interventions or those who walked away or were expelled from a cult. Most ex-cult members — no matter the method of leaving the cult — had some or all of these residuals. The difference is that the individuals who had interventions are more prepared to deal with them, and especially those who went to a rehab facility.
It is important to note and to bring to the attention of the ex-cult member that each individual’s recovery process is different and there is no “How To Recover from a Cultic Experience.” In fact, the desire for a quick and easy recovery may be in itself a residual effect of the cult.
Ok, I’ve had to say this a lot today but I’ll out one more:
Objection. Relevance?
more or less annoying than annejones? Hmm.
Wouldn’t be so bad if believerskeptic linked to those pieces, instead of copying and pasting entire articles and nothing else.
Anyone can make other people scroll, but it’s a pointless and irritating technique.
Coincidentally, I scrolled through John Morales’ comment at the same rate as BS. Look at that.
Greetings, fellow Pharynguloids!
I wish to inform you of an important message: Stephen Colbert is actually an angry hippopotamus. Now, you may want to see the evidence that supports this claim, and I will be glad to provide it!
[Long story about hippopotamus attack]
[Another long story about hippopotamus attack]
[Third long story about hippopotamus attack]
There! You should now be totally convinced that I am entirely correct and that Stephen Colbert is an angry hippopotamus.
Even more shocking, I heard he’s not a conservaturd.
Owlmirror, that hippopotamus story about Colbert broke in 2012.
Pteryxx:
I vote more. Yes, annejones is a hateful, ignorant, god-soaked pickle, however, all that could possibly be cured.
BS is just another ass, floating on a surfeit of ego who is utterly certain that their viewpoint on any given subject is gloriously right. This particular, hateful, ignorant douchecake thinks he is a god.
nightshadequeen:
After this ( http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/19/charlescwcooke-conservative-intellectual/comment-page-1/#comment-674239) comment by believerskeptic, I would like him to go the fuck away. I was prepared to chalk up his initial comments as a one off mistake. But now he claims a morally superior position bc he does not drink? People who do not use taboo words are morally superior to those who do?
Fuck that.
I like to have a drink once in a while and there is nothing morally inferior about that.
I also use taboo words like FUCK or SHIT, but his Royally Smug Pain in the Ass finds that makes me morally inferior to those that do not.
Seriously, fuck you BS.
believerskeptic’s not bothering to respond to anyone, either.
Hey believerskeptic, learn to shut up and/or take turns and/or listen. Don’t expect sympathy from me; it wouldn’t be the first time I was decent to someone that I shouldn’t have encouraged.
What a load of BS.
Huh, really? Well, now I know what I’m having for dinner. Anyone else want a fuckin’ martini?
I’ll try to be especially fat while drinking, too, to maximize my moral inferiority.
But I’ve been jumping up and down, screaming myself hoarse, warning everyone, trying to get people to believe this one simple terrible truth, and Stephen Colbert still has a television show!
People still use the fake word “truthiness”, when everyone should know that that’s the bellow of an angry hippopotamus!
Are you doing it under your real name? Because that’s important, for some reason.
…this seems strangely apropos…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/2013/08/20/the-path-of-the-privileged-paternalistic-ass/
MM:
Sure, I’ll join you. I can’t think of better company to be all immoral with. We’ll have a party.
Oh, I see this was already under discussion. I missed it due to the three ridiculous walls of text shat forth by Captain Smugnoramus.
Caine,
Yep. I mean, at least with annejones it makes some sort of sense. She says something really stupid/hateful, we disagree/call her on it and she disagrees back. Annoying, sure. But come on, what is this nonsense? This obsession with LessWrong in a blog that doesn’t seem to be all that sympathetic to LessWrong is just… pointlessly annoying.
Other hippopotamus zoologists just ignore me when I point to Stephen Colbert.
Oh, the huge manatee!
Tony:
Perfect.
Nightjar:
Yes, and stupid. I’d never heard of LessWrong prior to Mr. Smugnoramus showing up and having an attack about it. I looked it up, meh. Didn’t care about it before, don’t care about it now. As for Bayesian Priors, it’s a great way to get the concepts of privilege and implicit bias across to someone new to those concepts, and I really appreciated DocFreeride bringing it up in some thread or other a while back.
Can’t today. Hungover as all fuck.
Anthony K:
Well, you know what’s said to cure a hangover…
Hair of the goddamned dog.
@Antiochus
That Hacking book looks great. It’s Kindled and queued.
Cheers!
A key bump and a fat blunt?
Ummm, exactly how hungover *is* that?
Scale o’ 1-10.
Or is “…all fuck” off the scale?
No, you see, Richard Carrier once (exactly once) made a single-sentence comment complimenting the website, so obviously the entire FtB network is in dire danger of assimilation into the borg-like cult that is LessWrong… Even if most of us have never heard of the site.
Noooo, Bloody Marys are the cure!
A key bump?
Sheesh. Thats a tease.
(Am I morally inferior for knowing what you are talking about?)
Tony, I hereby claim the Santimonious High Ground* for not knowing what they’re talking about.
*aka Sheltered Homeschooler Ground.
Ah, good point. Am at work, so 6.5?
Tony @373, let’s see…
Smug and self-serving as it may be, it’s hardly a monstrous conceit — but it doesn’t apply to BS.
The quantification is helpful; it’s not an universal claim, therefore sometimes not choosing to drink is not a morally superior choice.
I submit that the only times that choosing not to drink is morally superior are when one has reason to expect that such drinking will result in immorality; this has an implication in regards to those who have never cared for drink.
Isn’t spamming a ban worthy offense? Careful BS
Actually, I will come out in support of believerskeptic, in a qualified way:
If drinking alcohol lowers your inhibitions to the point where you drink to excess, and then harm someone due to being incapacitated but unaware of it, or
if being even partially drunk tends to make you angry and violent or abusive or cruel, especially towards vulnerable dependents, then
it is indeed more moral not to drink at all, ever, than to drink a little and risk harm to others.
(I can take a small amount of alcohol or leave it, and being very drunk just makes me feel sick, so not drinking a lot is just self-preservation. But I’m aware of far too many stories that start with someone drinking, and end with . . . bad stuff happening)
Sometimes I remember that the rest of the world doesn’t have Caesars and it makes me sad.
Oddly enough, this is part of the reason I chose to drink, and heavily.*
I needed to see for myself how much of the above is hereditary. Fortunately for me and the people I care about or interact with, I am not my father.
*Going from moderate to heavy drinker is easy. Going in the other direction is…harder.
Anthony:
Good things for a party. Just sayin’.
Owlmirror:
The flat truth of the matter is that most any human activity can end with bad stuff happening, we have a talent for it. While abstaining from alcohol can indeed be an act of moral behaviour on the part of an individual, it in no way fucking whatsoever justifies an asshole in pronouncing that anyone who drinks is immoral. Y’see, assholes who are prone to making such pronouncements often end with…bad stuff happening.
Drinking coffee changes my behavior. There’s a certain cult that thinks coffee is immoral. BS is a Mormon, you guise.
Portia:
Hee. Years and years ago, when we first started driving to Utah to visit my mom-in-law and the vast horde of relatives, we bought a jar of instant coffee (I know, I know, horrible) to keep at mom-in-law’s house. After that visit, we couldn’t get back for a couple of years, but when we did, there was the jar of instant coffee, which hadn’t been touched. I think I threatened to buy her a coffee maker once…
Caine:
Ha, well at least they didn’t object to the horrible stuff being around.
I lived with a Mormon friend for a year and a half…I had a little corner of the cupboard for my coffee, and he had recently converted, so I was the happy sinner who got several free bottles of booze. (Lucky for me he hadn’t trashed the coffeemaker yet). He drinks oolong tea, because green tea has too much caffeine…
Anthony:
Yes, but learning that the heavy drinking might kill you very soon focuses the mind wonderfully. Then you give it up, and wait patiently for the day you can start drinking moderately again. Life truly is grand.
Portia:
Well, I’ll just say mom wasn’t too happy about it, but she has a hard time saying no to eldest son, even if he is a heretic. It was hidden away in a non-used cupboard in the kitchen.
Rob:
These days, my pancreas regulates any drinking I might do, along with making sure I eat on a regular basis. The not eating regularly is the primary problem, but I’m now terrified of anything that may upset Pancreas the Parade Pisser, so at most, I venture to have a beer once a month.
Owlmirror:
I criticized BS for his attempts to shame Charles Cooke for going to get a drink.
He assumed a drinking problem on Cooke’s part (at no point did Cooke mention NEEDING a drink, but BS tried to reframe it that way). I politely tried to tell him that was not cool. Which was when he made his generalized comment. He never qualified his statement further, so while you may be right, thats not what he said.
Re: alcohol
I’ve found that a little bit of alcohol helps me dealing with my demophobia. It’s about the only thing that truly does, too. Doesn’t have to be too much (or rather can’t be too much, because the fear of losing control in a crowd effectively stops me from crossing the line from “just a little bit drunk” into “moderately drunk”). My friends already know that the very first thing I have to do when I enter a crowded nightclub (which I do try to avoid), for example, is to drink something. Same thing if I’m going to a gig. I’m always the first to start drinking and the first to stop.
I don’t know why, but it helps. And I consider that a good thing.
Anthony K:
Ah, so a Caesar is similar to a Bloody Mary. I have never tried Clamato juice, so No idea if i would like it.
What was the dish in the picture at your link. Looked like fries with some cheeselike substance.
Tony:
Uh oh…
So, Tony, never been to Canada, eh?
Caine:
Actually, I have been once.
Toronto was a beautiful city.
I stayed in my first B&B.
Saw my first bidet.
Freaked the fuck out in the CN Tower. Not literally, but it was creepy as hell being that high up and looking down through the glass panes at the street. There were kids playing on them. I walked around the damn things.
Most memorable time was taking the boat trip into Niagara Falls.
Fuck the religious “wonder of god”.
I was awestruck at the falls. So beautiful…magnificent…breathtaking.
Ah, the wonder and the glory that is . . . poutine
I thought it was pathetically transparent when StevoR attempted to get back into the Horde’s good graces by posting trite observations in normal threads which no one could disagree with, mainly by reiterating the point of the post. We all know how well that went/is going. believerskeptic, however, is giving him a run for his money. It’s a pretty low bar to have posts lower in my reading priority than StevoR’s, but somehow bs’s managed it. I don’t know whether it was witnessing his introductory posts and subsequent meltdown, or the present fawning, pedestrian, ingratiating-by-usually-agreeing attitude, perhaps both… whatever the reason, I haven’t had a reason not to just skim his posts yet.
It’s an old trick too based on the idea that the more mental “yeses” you can get a person to have the less likely they are to say “no”. Iirc it’s often taught for sales, to find ways to get potential customers to agree to as many things as possible hoping it’ll trick the mind into being more likely to agree more and to less certain things so you can lead them to the conclusion you want them to have.
To quote Bob:
Throwaway:
You should stay away from the Canada thread then. Believerskeptic left more whiny comments there. He thinks he is dogpiled when a bunch of random people criticize him. He defended multiple comments (including Christine Rose’s dehumanizing comments)…each time referring to dogpiling.
He really cannot handle this place.
@Tony
I suspect he can’t handle Shakesville
“Why the hell isn’t Chicago in the rock and roll hall of fame?”
I remember when they were the Chicago Transit Authority, as an opening act for Hendrix.
It occurs to me, that in the ‘who’s worse’ sweepstakes, poor ol’ txpiper didn’t even make the cut. Tsk.
Gosh, txpiper, I’m guess you don’t have much going on if all you have on tap is rock’n’roll trivia.
Maybe you missed the questions I asked you. I’ll copy and paste them, so as to save you the effort of clicking on a link:
======
Can we try and figure out the prior beliefs or disbeliefs that lead to these current disbeliefs? For example, if you disbelieved in the Titanic disaster, it might be because you disbelieved in icebergs, or passenger ships, or because you imagined that everything known about the Titanic is nothing more than a conspiracy of historians and oceanographers, presumably using props put together by a team of special effects artists.
The age of the Earth follows from radiometric dating of uranium isotopes and their decay products (and of other isotopes/decay products, but let’s keep things simple). Do you deny the existence of uranium, or of isotopes, or of radioactive decay? Do you imagine that spectroscopy and radiation detectors are figments of physicists’ minds? Do you imagine that the atomic bombs tested in and deployed by the US were just conventional explosives that were magically scaled up? Do you imagine that fission plants all secretly have coal furnaces that make them go?
Maybe it’s even deeper than that.
Do you deny the existence of atoms? Do you imagine that chemicals are magical irreducible essences?
The age of the universe follows from an analysis of the cosmic background radiation.
Do you deny the existence of this radiation? Do you imagine that the radiation signature has not been properly analyzed? Do you imagine that the speed of light is not what it has been measured to be?
I just read a wonderful line in Richard Kadrey’s Kill the Dead: “he left the distinct impression of a man marooned in the Sahara of his own psyche.”
A good descriptor of StevoR and BS.
Poor Txpiper. Might remember bands, but can’t remember the basics. His deity doesn’t exist, and his babble is book of mythology fiction….
Behold the texpip, trying, and once again failing in his inimically incompetent way, at making a joke about a publicly funded service.
“Behold the texpip, trying, and once again failing in his inimically incompetent way, at making a joke about a publicly funded service.”
This is just precious….actually priceless.
===
Owlmirror, I’ll get back to you in a couple of days when I have time.
Sure! Fill up my goddamn glass, if you would be so kind.
Sorry; I mean, “fuck you very much!”
(I’m not at all sure I’ve got the hang of this “immoral inferiority” thing, yet.)
–
Caine:
Well first and second place go to StevoR and Annejones though I am not sure which one is worse.
Dont forget there is a third place AND a runner up. Txpiper and joey could battle for runner up.
Do we have an Anti-Mollie award?
Should call the the Order of the Trollie, or OT for short. No-one will be confused by that.
wow believerskeptic, your lemon and sand paper on taint-esq personality has you less popular than the homophobe bigot and the genocidal goosestepping authoritarian shit bag.
I want to go down with an underhanded support and say I find Anne and SteveoR far worse in substance. With we’re playing High, Stupid, or Evil both of those are at least a double maybe a hat trick where I suspect BS is only one
Lofty:
Such a prestigious award should encompass the actions of those stalwart defenders of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, authoritarianism, et al, not just trolls.
We need something with more punch.
Suppose we could just name it the Annejones or AJ Award (was thinking if Ed’s Bryan Fisher Award).
Ingdigo:
OOOOUCH!
lemon and sandpaper on the taint?
Tony:
No, no, no. That would be unnecessarily nasty to AJ Milne, who is a fine person and an OM. Why not just The Jones, as in StevoR has a genocide jones / annejones has a hatred jones.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
Oh, boy, did that make me giggle. Worst parade float ever.
Tony, The Queer Shoop: Undefeated Pictionary Champion:
There is a little science-museumy-thingy called the Ecotarium near us that, in a recentish redesign, put a glass-bottomed balcony on the third floor. It isn’t so bad now that it’s a bit scratched up and dirtied, but when it was new I could not walk out upon it without the feeling that my armpits were trying to crawl up on top of my head.
wait, did StevoR finally get the plonkhammer?
txpiper
And a slightly-older friend of mine saw Hendrix as the opener for the Monkees.
Music evolves.
Not yet, doG bless him.
Caine:
The Jones works.
****
RevBDC:
We should be so lucky.
I am still wondering what his contributions are that will be sorely missed if such a thing happened.
@Anthony K #298
Having read your link, it would seem that a Bloody Caesar is simply a Bloody Mary with clam broth added (Clamato juice? Seriously?).
On a serious note: is that actually nice? Or is it something you neck while holding your nose because you know it’ll make your head stop hurting? Inquiring minds want to know.
@Cicely
I’m really enjoying the concept of being “immorally inferior” :) Do you think we can use that one to confuse annejones?
Horde: “Hey anne! We now believe that homosexuals are immorally inferior!”
Anne: “Yes! I knew my excellent argumentation skills would change your hive-mind eventually!”
Horde: *titter*
Reminiscent of the dihydrogen monoxide joke, maybe, but I think acceptable in this case…
Thumper:
Anthony’s link indicates that this drink is
Oh and there is no Bloody Mary mix.
Oooh, on a semi regular basis, we can have a Thunderdome segment called Keeping up with the Jones by members of the Immorally Inferior Horde
@Tony
Fair point. I’m having trouble imagining it would be nice as a cold drink. Served hot as a stew, with whole clams? Gods yes. I’d eat that in a heart beat. But cold clam broth?
And I was under the impression it had set ingredients, but no set proportions. Vodka, tomato juice, tobasco, and lemon juice; egg white optional, and in my experience rarely added. But I may very well be mistaken.
Clamato juice is delicious.
@ chigau
Dang li’l technical hitch! There goes our chance at World Domination.
[original abbr: “what better place for sekrit masarges? Have no fear, we have a mole in the Rodent Army…”]
@ Tony
Not yet, but we do have a Ms Molly Badge, to be issued to fabulous fiskers. I think Owlmirror and Amphiox are likely candidates.
Ms Molly gets on with everyone, so I’m not sure what an “Anti-Molly” would look like.
@chigau
I’m going to have to see if I can get it in the UK… quite apart from my pathological need to satisfy any and all curiosity, even if I find it horrible to drink cold it sounds like it would make a great base for soups, stews, and sauces.
Apparently Waitrose stock it (they would, wouldn’t they?). So there’s my next flavour adventure, I think.
One of my Facebook friends just posted an evo-psych bingo card. I believe this confirms my feeling that at least 85% of my FB friends are above average.
Give it a try, thumper. I recommend spicy Clamato, if you like spicy things, but even without it’s pretty good. Think a slightly less tomatoey tomato juice with a bit of savoury flavouring. The clam taste is pretty subdued.
It is delicious. I can’t imagine drinking a bloody Mary in comparison. They sound…boring.
And after you’ve had your fill of Calgary’s contribution to Canada’s mixological landscape, go and have yourself a big plate of ginger beef, Calgary’s contribution to westernized Chinese food.
Sadly, I do not know of any dishes or drinks originating in Edmonton. Happy Pop and Burger King (no, not that Burger King) were cultural landmarks, not necessarily culinary ones. Green onion cakes (蔥油餅) as a street/festival food? I have high hopes for Bannock Burger, though I have yet to try them.
Chigau? Any others?
Hmmm. The Bloody Caesar sounds disgusting. Then again, many things that sound disgusting are actually quite delicious.
The wikipedia recipe is disgusting. It should be at least 3 oz vodka to 6 oz Clamato.
I like a Bloody Mary with black pepper, lime, an Oxford comma, and horseradish; hold the mommafuggin celery, thanks.
The clam juice would seem to provide some umami, which certain Mary variants achieve with beef bouillon instead. In short, a Caesar sounds delish to me. (btw, I note that an alternate name listed for the Caesar cocktail is a ‘Red Wings’. Either this is what it’s called in Detroit (just ‘cross the bridge) or it’s a clever if indubitably sexist reference to Hells Angels symbology.)
Anthony:
I love Bloody Mary’s
If available my recipe is
1.5 oz vodka
4 oz Bloody Mary mix (not a fan of homemade). Whisky Willies or Zing Zang.
.5 oz olive juice
The juice of a lemon, lime, and orange wedge
3 dashes of hot sauce
3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
Dash of Guinness
Dash of agave nectar or pinch of sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash of mustard
Coat the rim of the glass with blackening seasoning
Garnish with spicy green beans, pickled okra, and celery &/or carrot stalk. Bleu cheese stuffed olives optional. Olives stuffed with avocado/bleu cheese mix even more optional.
Anthony K
I can’t think of anything culinary that originated in Edmonton.
That makes me sad.
We do have some good breweries.
Tony,
not knowing what’s inside that black box called Bloody Mary Mix that’s impossible to replicate >:(
So far I’ve been mostly content with this recipe: Sriracha Bloody Mary
How about just have a salad with your booze?
Tony, the Redhead requires 10 dollops of Hot Salsa Brava in her Bloody Mary….
Antiochus Epiphanes, that would be a rational decision, of course. :) But how about we take it as a game? MOAR Bovril, vodka, spinach, and grated horseradish in my breakfast drink, will you have it, Jeeves, please?
10 dollops is a gurgle.
*bitterly*
Yeah, yeah, it works almost all the time, right up until it doesn’t. Usually after it has lulled you into thinking that it always works. And then . . . right when you least expect it . . . The dread linkbork pounces!
Of course a narrative entity can contain narrative entities. If you don’t understand recursion, see: “recursion”, with your current context, including the context of not understanding recursion, until you understand recursion.
Yes! Because of quantum!
Inconceivable! Oh, wait, no, it is conceivable. Because I’m right, not you! An episode that is not canon is a narrative entity that is not part of the collection!
Foolish wrong person! Your “rules” are meta-descriptions of the canon, not necessarily part of the canon itself, unless you are arguing that in addition to narrative entities, the meta-descriptions of the canon are part of the canon — which means that I am right anyway. Hah! Take that!
You and your definition are definitively wrong . . . !!
Also, can
non.Q: I say, what’s that harpsichord doing in the river?
A: The Bachstroke, I do believe.
Q: Doctor! I don’t mind helping you move this harpsichord into the TARDIS, but where are we going with it?
A: Bach to the future!
Q: Kowalski! What are you doing here? And why are you driving a harpsichord?
A: Heard you needed Bachup, sir!
Q: Well, Kowalski, can you provide covering fire from that harpsichord?
A: Yessir! I’ve got your Bach!
This is what I get for trying to read the Thunderdome while drinking, isn’t it?
Owlmirror
be ashamed (giggle) very ashamed
I know, Owlmirror! It has happened to me and others, and I remember being able to reproduce it – but not now! I think it happens when the link is an internal/relative link, in the way the browser converts it to an absolute. It inserts the referring URI first.
Perhaps
True. That call would yield a memory overflow.
That’s why I can’t seem to remember things when I try to!
{theophontes tries, but fails, to read the CR/Owlmirror exchange in anything other than an Outrageous French Accent…}
So please forgive my ignorance on this issue, but as I was reading some of the Slyme brigade’s posts in JT’s latest debacle of a thread in response to PZ’s post they kept suggesting HE was a sexist or misogynist… where did this trope come from?
Kevin, FWIW, I saw these earlier:
Shorter JT
Dearest JT Eberhard
JT Eberhard lectures Black Woman on How to Respond to Naively Racist Questions
@ Kevin Schelley
HE is a biologist, and as such teaches about sex (Eeek!). With women in the audience (Eeeek!). And has asked women onstage as part of the act (Eeeek!)
Obviously, to Slymepitters, if he were not sexist, he would only allow male volunteers onstage. That would kinda undermine the whole point of the presentation, but would at least not incur their wrath.
That is about as much sense as I can make of their accusations of misogyny.
@John Morales
Yeah, I’ve read those, they’re very well written, thorough takedowns.
@theophontes
So it makes just as much sense as I thought it would… none.
@ Kevin Schelley
My Google-fu is not as bad as I feared:
Link here.
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/brand-school-clerk-stops-violence-with-human-connection/
If anyone wants to read a story about a heroic woman who defused a potentially deadly situation by caring about a gunman, here you go.
Antoinette Tuff is a hero.
People like her, can we haz more?
Surely the Motoraunt created dishes that were unique? Such a novel and inspiring venue must have been a hotbed for culinary innovation.
I have a friend who’s entree was served on a broken piece of floor tile at Pagolac. Thought that turned out to be a one-off.
There was the Seven Seas Restaurant IIRC which served pinkies (baby mice) as battered shrimp*. Such innovation that it’s never been repeated to the best of the authorities knowledge.
*Could just be an urban legend, though I did have a friend in the restaurant business at the time they were shut down and he claimed it was true, for what that’s worth.
@Anthony K
I intend to :) apparently the spicy version is difficult to obtain in Britain, but since I intend to douse it in Tobasco and Worcestershire this shouldn’t be an issue :)
@Tony!
Your recipe sounds like lunch in a glass :-/ not that that doesn’t have it’s advantages.
I tend to go more for whiskey cocktails myself; a firm favourite being the Manhattan. That said, I’m also a big fan of rum and enjoy making up my own rum cocktails.
Also, Tony! you appear to have ninja’d the “immorally inferior” addition to my ‘nym. Damn. I only did mine this morning, so presumably you beat me to it? Would you like me to change it?
Or, as Schwarzenegger said in Terminator, “I’ll be Bach. You’ll be Mozart.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/these-apes-take-swimming-diving-fish-water-6C10971396
@Kevin Schnelly:
The one I keep hearing about is his 7 year old post in reference to the XKCD #54 (here) where he quoted the sub-text. Sometimes they talk about the Michelle Bachmann corndog photo.
It’s as if they’re stuck in a time capsule and can’t realize that people change and realize their errors.
This makes totally no sense when you know how to pronounce Bach…
I swear I went looking for the jock until it hit me square in the face.
@Giliell:
It makes sense if you overpronounce “back” – like “bock” – as in the way Ahnold would say it.
Working my way through the JT debacle…can’t say I’m one bit surprised.
Remember when he said women should be clearer in their rejections, to help out the Good Dudes Who Mean No Harm? I would link…but I’m lazy.
Literally jaw-droppingly fuckheaded.
Oh, gods dammit. I like JT. Why’d he have to go and fuck up?
He’s been fucking up for a while now, causing me to like him less and less, in spite of his several likable qualities.
@Portia:
There are fewer and fewer blogs I’m going to read on Patheos. Fincke, JT, and Hallquist all failed with this, RBB played the “PZ is a sexist” trope, even Hemant Mehta gets under my skin sometimes.
I might just open a “Patheos” folder and put the blogs I like to read in it.
That one also happened for me a while ago. He’s less overt about it than JT, but I think he has similar attitudes towards social justice. It Less Important™ than Atheism as a Movement. I don’t think Hemant is such a great mouthpiece for any movement I want to be a part of. And his comment sections are shit.
@Portia
I don’t read him that often any more, so was unaware. I’ve always got the impression that the Patheos Atheists were more about dictionary Atheism but nominally supportive of social justice issues. I still think that’s the case, it’s just dissapointing that JT had a privileged moment and then doubled down.
Thumper:
Yeah, that seems like a pretty good summary of Patheists (it’s a new thing, get on board :) ) Unfortunately, doubling down is JT’s pattern, it looks like. No one understands him donchano.
@Thumper:
Daylight Atheism – Adam Lee – is pretty good, I like Bob Seidensticker, too. Of course Libby Anne is great (wish she’d stuck around FTB, but I understand her reason to leave.) I also like Daniel Florien and Hank Fox.
FTFM.
Portia, yeah I noticed that before. He just seems so convinced he is
rightgood, that he doesn’t stop to re-examine.Why world sea levels stopped rising for a while.
Apparently it’s all Australia’s fault.
Thumper:
Heck no. Dont change it.
Theres plenty of room for two immorally inferior people here :)
I like ‘Patheists’!
Adam Lee is the only blogger at Patheos I continue to read. He stands out over there amid the others.
s/before/as well/