If logic were a horserace, this guy would have lapped himself multiple times


A horse living as God intended it to

I suspect most of you don’t read the Answers Research Journal, the hack pseudoscientific journal published by Answers in Genesis to create the illusion that they do actual research. They don’t. And I don’t normally read it myself, but Daniel Phelps sent me a link to a recent article there titled Were Horses Designed to Be Ridden? If you know Betteridge’s law of headlines, then you know the answer is supposed to be “NO!”, but AiG can’t even get that right.

Horses have served as one of man’s closest companions for thousands of years. Humans have ridden them into battles, attached them to the plow, galloped them across great plains, and shown them in countless competitions. Found anywhere from ranches, to back yards, to racing tracks, to beaches, these magnificent animals have been used as instruments which brought great change into the world. One might even wonder how easily man would have managed to advance without them. With such close ties to man’s history, it seems natural that one should ask if horses were designed for riding. Such is the topic of this article and the research thereof. In considering different subjects such as History, Anatomy, and Scripture, it is this author’s belief that horses were designed to be ridden.

A bold claim. Does Caleb Harrier back it up? I shall follow Betteridge’s law, and the answer is…NO!

He’s supposed to provide evidence that horses were designed to be ridden, so he looks up the answer in a few sources, which is good. The sources are all consistent in their answer, which is also good.

Unfortunately, authors who have spoken to the topic of whether horses were designed to be ridden are usually dismissive to the idea. For example, the authors of Equine Science, simply state: “The horse is not designed to carry a rider’s weight on top of its back” (Pilliner and Davies 2004, 23). However, no explanation is provided in the text as to why the authors dismiss the idea.

Another example can be found in the popular book, How to Think Like a Horse by equine author Cherry Hill. In this work, she states that “A horse’s body isn’t really designed to carry extra weight, but it can by virtue of its suspension-bridge features” (Hill 2006, 50). Soon after, she adds: “Even though a horse is not designed to carry weight, because of the cooperative interaction between major topline ligaments and the circle of muscles, with careful consideration, we can ride” (Hill 2006, 52). The implication, then, from the author is that horses were not designed to be ridden. According to the text, horses at least have the capacity to be ridden but were not designed for such a role.

Numerous blog articles have been written on this topic of discussion as well. Sadly, these authors’ views also tend to be quite dismissive. In her article, “The Horse’s Body is not Designed to Carry a Person,” Didier (2019) states: “when we objectively assess what really holds a riding horse back we have to admit something quite awkward, and that is—from a design, strength, and balance point of view—the horse’s body is simply not designed to carry a person.” In this article, she at least provides reasoning for why she believes horses were not designed to be ridden, and it is due to their back structure in relation to where a rider sits.

In the article, “Were Horses Meant to be Ridden by Humans?”, Stone (2022) flatly opens with “Horses were never meant to be human slaves and carry them on their backs.” His explanation is the recurring theme about a horse’s anatomy, in addition to back pain caused by riding.

So all his sources say no, horses were not designed to be ridden, but he’s going to ignore that and decide that yes, they were designed to be ridden. So much for scholarship! His argument is that well, horses are ridden, and have been ridden throughout history, therefore they must be designed to be ridden. He also points out that they have strong back muscles, so therefore the only reason they don’t suffer catastrophic back failure is because they were designed to carry a human.

Then he unlimbers the big gun. The reason that we know horses were designed to be ridden is because the Bible, specifically the book of Revelation, says so.

It is this author’s position that, because Christ and His heavenly armies will one day be riding horses— as part of biblical prophecy—then horses were indeed designed to be ridden. It is not a horse’s historical record nor its anatomy that ultimately decides what it was designed for. As always, Scripture is our final authority. The King and His armies will return to the earth, riding on white horses. The horse kind—like other kinds—has always been a part of God’s plan. Horses have made a historical impact in our past; they will certainly have an impact in our future.

If that’s not enough evidence for you, there’s also the argument that Jesus would not use a horse for a purpose for which it was not designed.

Revelation 19 demonstrates that horses were designed by God to be ridden just as powerfully within a symbolic or metaphorical interpretation. For example, if horses were not designed to be ridden, then the Holy Spirit would not inspire John to write a passage that shows the Creator Jesus misusing His own creation. Also, if it were animal abuse to ride horses, Scripture—even metaphorically!—would not depict Jesus abusing His own creation.

I don’t know why he bothered to research horses, since he already knew his conclusion, and since the only source he needed was the Bible.

Comments

  1. cheerfulcharlie says

    Revelation 1:1
    The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:

    Which must shortly come? Well no, nothing like this happened some 1,900 years ago. So horses in Revelation are meaningless nonsense. All these Christians yammering about Revelation, seem to never read Revelation 1:1 and notice that this was supposed to have all happened long ago, but did not.

  2. John Morales says

    Gotta love the religious framing. Most people probably miss that.

    Whether or not horses were designed for riding, the premise is that horses were designed.
    It’s baked in.

    (So, either way. And, of course, we call them ‘creatures’, as if they were created)

  3. cheerfulcharlie says

    Archaeology demonstrates first horses were small and not really good for riders. It took centuries to breed larger, more capable horses. Large horses capable of bearing a rider in full armor are historically recent.

  4. Gaebolga says

    Also, if it were animal abuse to ride horses, Scripture—even metaphorically!—would not depict Jesus abusing His own creation.

    But if it were actually murder to kill a human, then wouldn’t “Scripture – even metaphorically!” not depict god slaughtering humans left, right, and center? Is the implication here that Christianity is just fine with killing people?

    Oh, wait…

  5. Ridana says

    Scripture—even metaphorically!—would not depict Jesus abusing His own creation.

    The fig tree he cursed and the pigs he drove over a cliff would beg to differ, if he hadn’t killed them.

  6. freeline says

    The late Ayn Rand wrote a very stupid article once (I know, she wrote a lot of stupid articles, but I’m thinking of one in particular) in which she argued that the human hand was designed to hold a cigarette because of the webbing between the fingers and it is therefore rational to smoke. She later died of lung cancer; I’d like to know if she changed her view before she died. And the idea that she might have it ass backward — cigarettes may have been designed as they were to accommodate the shape of the human hand — apparently never occurred to her.

    One can argue that anything is designed for anything; it’s called confirmation bias. I want X result to be true, so I’ll just go have me a look and find some evidence for it.

  7. freeline says

    And by the way, when one considers the massive amount of suffering horses have endured over the millennia at the hands of humans, from cavalry horses suffering painful and fatal injuries in battle to spending a lifetime essentially being a slave on starvation rations — the idea that a supposedly benevolent God was behind it strikes me as a bit rich.

  8. John Morales says

    freeline, an interesting claim. But I think it’s in your head, not a real thing. Got a citation?

  9. freeline says

    John Morales, I remember reading the article many years ago. A quick google search did not reveal it online but I did find this:

    “[S]moking, according to the cult, was a moral obligation. In my own experience, a top Randian once asked me rather sharply, “How is it that you don’t smoke?” When I replied that I had discovered early that I was allergic to smoke, the Randian was mollified: “Oh, that’s OK, then.” The official justification for making smoking a moral obligation was a sentence in Atlas where the heroine refers to a lit cigarette as symbolizing a fire in the mind, the fire of creative ideas. (One would think that simply holding up a lit match could do just as readily for this symbolic function.) One suspects that the actual reason, as in so many other parts of Randian theory, from Rachmaninoff to Victor Hugo to tap dancing, was that Rand simply liked smoking and had the need to cast about for a philosophical system that would make her personal whims not only moral but also a moral obligation incumbent upon everyone who desires to be rational.”

    https://statesofexception.substack.com/p/the-weird-one-act-play-murray-rothbard

  10. John Morales says

    Ayn Rand surely used cigarettes as a motif, but I very very much doubt she wrote anything like your initial claim, freeline.

    “I like cigarettes, Miss Taggart. I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke a cigarette thinking. I wonder what great things have come from those hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind – and it is only proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”
    ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

    (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/592838-i-like-cigarettes-miss-taggart-i-like-to-think-of)

  11. cheerfulcharlie says

    Smoking? Well, there was Lush Rimjob who once claimed he should be given a medal for smoking and championing smoking. Smart move Lush Rimjob. Another notorious smoker was Ron L. Hubbard. Who touted the benefits of smoking.

  12. Rob Grigjanis says

    freeline @6:

    she argued that the human hand was designed to hold a cigarette

    What a wanker. The human arm/hand was designed to masturbate. Smoking and drinking are just side benefits.

  13. Akira MacKenzie says

    As I recall, Rand wasn’t a fan of evolution despite her atheism. Her Objectivist “philosophy” taught that the world and all life on it has always existed as is, never changing.

  14. Akira MacKenzie says

    “The theory of evolution by natural selection has never been proved – and, in fact, has been disproved in some important respects – yet it triumphed over its opponents by being sanctified as a symbol of science.”

    –Ayn Rand,
    “The Anti-Industrial Revolution.”

  15. Dan Phelps says

    More than one person has pointed out how similar this “research” paper is to Ray Comfort’s banana argument for gawd.

  16. WhiteHatLurker says

    I had to look this up, but the source says that birds can eat horses (and humans, but nothing about riding humans, also used as transport for short distances) which doesn’t really indicate that the author had the best interests of the horses at heart. It took a pretty hard twist on the wording to get the result obtained.

  17. says

    Were christians designed to be ignorant? Children are born knowing basically nothing and christian children grow up to be adults capable of getting jobs and tithing dutifully. Meanwhile those who are more absorbent of knowledge often turn away from religion and stop tithing, so they become useless and miserable. I believe I have sussed out god’s mysterious ways.

  18. says

    “Were Horses Designed to Be Ridden?” Thinking one species were “designed” to serve humans, really isn’t that far from thinking OTHER HUMANS were ordained by God — oops, I mean “designed” — to serve…whichever humans are claiming their imaginary bestie is doing the designing.

    These bigots are carrying on the same bigotry that insisted that the “natural condition” of Black men was servitude to White men. Maybe we should call them rdesign proponentsacists.

  19. Hemidactylus says

    Akira MacKenzie @15
    Is there any surrounding context for this Rand quote? I searched in vain through her essay “The Anti-Industrial Revolution” from the book Return of the Primitive: the Anti-Industrial Revolution for the quote itself. Was it in the essay or within one of the several essays in the book given the subtitle?

    I found this when searching the quote online:
    https://www.quora.com/Was-Ayn-Rand-uncomfortable-with-the-idea-that-man-evolved-from-apes
    …which has a comment that asserts it was in the essay. Someone posted this quote from Rand:

    “I must state, incidentally, that I am not a student of biology and am, therefore, neither an advocate nor an opponent of the theory of evolution. But I have read a lot of valid evidence to support it, and it is the only scientific theory in the field.”
    Ayn Rand, The Age of Mediocrity, The Objectivist Forum, Vol. 2, No. 3, June, 1981

    I cannot corroborate this quote either but it does show diffidence on her part. Rare shocker!

    Now I have no idea if she was familiar with the real small “o” objectivist Karl Popper who was acquainted with the libertarian Hayek. Popper would have expanded on her quote in a quite nuanced and apt manner. He became aware that natural selection was refutable and refuted by genetic drift. I doubt Rand was thinking in that kind of detail if the quote above was by her.

    In the “The Anti-Industrial Revolution” essay she discounted the existence of instinct in humans, given she believed in tabula rasa. One doesn’t need to be an evolutionary psychologist to think that ridiculous.

    There is also the always quotable tidbit: “Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent “Thank you” to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.”

    She also took a moment to comment on hippies who decried the electric toothbrush. Maybe that happened? They can pry my electric toothbrush from my cold, dead hand. Point given to Ayn Rand on dental hygiene.

  20. says

    And the idea that [Ayn Rand] might have it ass backward — cigarettes may have been designed as they were to accommodate the shape of the human hand — apparently never occurred to her.

    Wow, even for Ayn Rand that’s stupid. You’d think she of all people would praise cigarettes as useful things designed by genius entrepreneurs to satisfy a human need/moral obligation as profitably as possible. Just another wunnerful innovation brought to us by brave heroic virtuous profiteering selfish industrialists.

  21. John Morales says

    [OT]

    …even for Ayn Rand that’s stupid…

    Strange attractors, eh? Apparently, mentioning Her is locks the topic in.

    So. No. She was not stupid. Read up on her.

    She dominated and fucked the men she wanted. She became famous, and she was atheistic.

    Here’s a twiggy bit for ya: “Alice O’Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum;[c] February 2 [O.S. January 20], 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand”.

    (Plenty of scholarly articles about her weirdness and her motivations and foundations, of course)

  22. John Morales says

    [also, this business of speculative yet ignorant denigration of dead people grates upon me]

  23. StevoR says

    So does this Caleb Harrier klown go on to explain why the long face?

    It might be hoove him to do so!

  24. Hemidactylus says

    Rob Grigjanis @13
    Dammit! Do I really need to do this? Smoking, drinking, and gerkin jerkin are all spandrels. Read your Gould. Maybe the opposable thumb was a more proximal adaption for tree stuff??? But distally we must flick off the lumbering lobe-fin fish who put us in the mess of manual labor. Those transitional tetrapods eventually resulted in the particular hoof bone pattern of the modern horse (Hemi hand wave keeping it more topical).

    Current utility versus historic origin! Jerking off was not on the agenda of the fish that sprang from the water and give rise to tetrapods. In retrospect I feel sorry for T. rex.

  25. Walter Solomon says

    Scripture—even metaphorically!—would not depict Jesus abusing His own creation.

    I recall Jesus putting a curse on a fig tree simply for the crime of not being in fruiting season. I wouldn’t use him as an authority of how nature should or shouldn’t work.

  26. Walter Solomon says

    Ah, Ridana beat me to it @ 5. Anyway, it’s obvious Jesus was a goofball. He also thought the digestive system “purified” food. Anyone who has ever suffered from food poisoning would know that’s bullshit.

  27. Walter Solomon says

    Akira MacKenzie @ 14

    As I recall, Rand wasn’t a fan of evolution despite her atheism.

    Ironically in this way she was in alignment with the Soviets she was so vehemently opposed to as they, too, were atheist and opposed to evolution preferring lysenkoism.

  28. John Morales says

    Walter, you’re over-egging the pudding.

    Lysenkoism did not oppose evolution as such, it opposed the model of it being purely natural selection and claimed that adaptations were heritable. It was wrong, but it was not anti-evolutionary.

    (Epigenetics was not then a valid concept)

  29. says

    Maybe the article mentioned in the OP is satire, intending to demonstrate the aphorism that one can take an Answers Research Journal reader to water, but one can’t make him think…

    Naaaah. That would be just a little bit too subtle for a cross-language textual determinist.

  30. Hemidactylus says

    I stumbled across an essay on Ayn Rand’s scattershot views of evolution on some blogger named Larry Arnhart’s site. Not linking his blog here. No. But the essay has quotes of Rand contemplating evolution:
    http://solohq.org/Articles/Parille/Ayn_Rand_and_Evolution.shtml

    One possibility was her stalwart dedication to free will. Also given: “Second, if biological evolution is true, then many areas of philosophy might need to be reexamined.” Dennett gave one of the better philosophical treatments sympathetic to free will, whatever his own shortcomings were. He, unlike Rand, was a serious philosopher. Ouch!

    I can think of far better liberal/libertarian philosophers than Rand. Nozick, Hayek, Gray, Berlin.

  31. microraptor says

    I find it ironic that this “article” on the purpose of horses was written by a talking ass. But that’s what you get from Answers in Genesis.

  32. Hemidactylus says

    @32
    Your attraction to vague innuendo and inside your own head jokes nobody else gets or cares about is strange. I didn’t bracket that.

  33. says

    So. No. She was not stupid. Read up on her.

    If you’re read up on her, then go ahead and quote some example of her being more intelligent than us collectivist heathens know her to be. I haven’t read up on her myself, but I’ve read plenty of criticism by people who have, and it’s pretty damning. At the very least, what I’ve read pretty clearly indicates she’s not worth reading up on. (So a big thank-you to all those who slogged through all that loony nonsense so we wouldn’t have to.)

  34. John Morales says

    …nobody else gets or cares about…

    Evidently and indisputably, you yourself cared enough to write that comment.

    See, when I myself don’t care about something, I really don’t actually care.
    I don’t go out of my way to claim it something nobody cares about, thus pretending to know what everyone else thinks.

    (And I get called arrogant!)

  35. John Morales says

    If you’re read up on her, then go ahead and quote some example of her being more intelligent than us collectivist heathens know her to be.

    I am not an ignoramus. I actually quoted Wikipedia.

    Start there.

    But hey, for you, I asked my AI idiot-savant friend:
    “Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was a Russian-American writer and philosopher known for her novels “The Fountainhead” (1943) and “Atlas Shrugged” (1957), which espouse her philosophy of Objectivism, emphasizing rational self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism. She moved to the United States in 1926, where she pursued a career in screenwriting before achieving literary success. Rand’s works have had a lasting impact on conservative and libertarian ideologies.”

    Basically, a self-made woman.
    Who dominated the men she liked to fuck, but that’s too salacious to detail.

    (Whhoooo!)

  36. Hemidactylus says

    @35
    I grant Rand was a bit of a sidetrack, but my own late contributions amounted to two to clarify things a bit. Three now. How many did you add?

    I did try to connect masturbation, spandrels, Gould, lobefin fish, and the very sad T. rex and added an allusion to horse hoof evolution to ummm… shoehorn us back to topicality.

  37. John Morales says

    [for the slow-witted]

    I mean, do you even get it?

    The men she fucked, not the men with whom she fucked.

    (Different things)

  38. StevoR says

    @27. Walter Solomon :

    Ah, Ridana beat me to it @ 5. Anyway, it’s obvious Jesus was a goofball. He also thought the digestive system “purified” food. Anyone who has ever suffered from food poisoning would know that’s bullshit.

    Wait, what?! I haven’t heard about that one. Where was that?

    @26. Walter Solomon :

    I recall Jesus putting a curse on a fig tree simply for the crime of not being in fruiting season. I wouldn’t use him as an authority of how nature should or shouldn’t work.

    Yup – see :

    https://thebrickbible.com/legacy/the_life_of_jesus/jesus_curses_a_tree/mk11_12-13.html

    Mark 11:12-13 to Matthew 21:19

  39. John Morales says

    [meta + OT]

    I did try to connect masturbation, spandrels, Gould, lobefin fish, and the very sad T. rex and added an allusion to horse hoof evolution to ummm… shoehorn us back to topicality.

    The topic is equine design, you know?

    So it’s rather rich you first claimed “Your attraction to vague innuendo and inside your own head jokes nobody else gets or cares about is strange.” and then went on about your own efforts at essaying the very same thing.

    (Is it you or someone else who goes on about irony meters? I kinda forget, all yapping toy dogs sound the same to me)

  40. thistledown says

    Dr. Pangloss didn’t stop with horses.

    “Observe how noses were made to carry spectacles, and spectacles we have accordingly. Our legs are clearly intended for shoes and stockings, so we have them. Stone has been formed to be hewn and dressed for building castles, so my lord has a very fine one, for it is meet that the greatest baron in the province should have the best accommodation. Pigs were made to be eaten, and we eat pork all the year round.”

  41. John Morales says

    [meta]

    Here’s a summary by my AI slave:
    “Ayn Rand was a prominent advocate for atheism and rationalism through her philosophy of Objectivism. She was known for her staunch opposition to faith and religion, viewing them as antithetical to reason and reality. Rand’s influence in promoting atheism was particularly notable during the mid-20th century, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when her ideas gained traction in intellectual and cultural circles.”

    So, yeah.

    Here is a post about a goddist claiming horseys are made for riding, and someone pipes about Ayn Rand, and suddenly, she’s the fucking topic. Dead and all, long since. But what the hey, right?

    Prominent atheist, goddist, all the same to some.

    (grr)

  42. Hemidactylus says

    @42
    And with horse hooves I semantically shifted to equine evolution, yet you’re hung up on kink shaming Rand. Ok.

    Was my attempt at getting us back to horse evolution “essaying the very same thing”?

  43. chrislawson says

    Hemidactylus@20–

    He [Karl Popper] became aware that natural selection was refutable and refuted by genetic drift.

    Can’t let that go uncorrected. Genetic drift in no way refutes or falsifies natural selection. The only thing drift refutes is exclusionary adaptationism, that is, the belief that natural selection is the only mechanism driving evolution. Using Popper as a source on the philosophy of evolutionary theory is a fraught problem. His early objections to evolutionary theory (accepting it but claiming it was unfalsifiable) were based on abysmal ignorance of the actual work in the field, simplistic and naive analogies from physics, and some extremely dubious rhetorical errors, for instance insisting that sexual selection is a direct refutation of natural selection when in fact it’s an example of it. Also, Popper changed his mind dramatically, eventually reversing many of his earlier objections and, to his credit, admitting considerable embarassment at having made such a cock-up of it…albeit while introducing new errors in his thinking.

    Here’s Frank J. Sonleitner summarising Popper’s views on evolution (written to correct Duane Gish’s misrepresentation). And here’s a longer, more detailed paper that describes the flaws in Popper’s treatment of evolutionary theory — I don’t agree with everything in the paper, fwiw, but it does an excellent job of reporting the limitations and internal inconsistencies in Popper’s various takes on evolution.

  44. springa73 says

    In a sense, many modern horses are designed for riding – by humans who have been selectively breeding them for several thousand years to be good at carrying human riders and other burdens, not by a deity.

  45. Hemidactylus says

    chrislawson @47
    I was going purely on my memory of Popper, which I shouldn’t have, based on reading David Miller’s Popper Selections which has “Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status”.

    In your second link Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober say:

    The way forward, he suggests, is to conceptualize alternative mechanisms and then design crucial experiments to decide between them and NS. We note that this is and has been common practice in evolutionary biology, where drift is often taken to be an important competitor to NS.

    Later they get more explicit on Popper’s views:

    We now return to Popper’s famous talk delivered in 1977 at Darwin College, Cambridge, which was published in Dialectica in 1978. Although Popper says that he has changed his mind about the absence of testable laws in ET, we will argue that Popper in fact did not change his mind at all (see also Hull 1999, 485). He begins by describing an evolutionary claim that is empirical: “In its most daring and sweeping form, the theory of natural selection would assert that all organisms, and especially all those highly complex organs whose existence might be interpreted as evidence of design and, in addition, all forms of animal behaviour, have evolved as the result of natural selection. … If formulated in this sweeping way, the theory is not only refutable but actually refuted” (Popper 1978, 345). Popper mentions two reasons for thinking that this PNSR formulation is falsifiable—sexual selection and drift. .

    My memory of Popper may not be that bad if they match it, but here’s Popper himself:
    https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/popper/natural_selection_and_the_emergence_of_mind.html

    In its most daring and sweeping form, the theory of natural selection would assert that all organisms, and especially all those highly complex organs whose existence might be interpreted as evidence of design and, in addition, all forms of animal behavior, have evolved as the result of natural selection; that is, as the result of chance-like inheritable variations, of which the useless ones are weeded out, so that only the useful ones remain. If formulated in this sweeping way, the theory is not only refutable, but actually refuted. For not all organs serve a useful purpose; as Darwin himself points out, there are organs like the tail of the peacock, and behavioral programs like the peacock’s display of his tail, which cannot be explained by their utility, and therefore not by natural selection. Darwin explained them by the preference of the other sex, that is, by sexual selection.

    He says other stuff about drift before and after this passage, but apart from it.

    But still I seem to recall others setting either drift or neutrality up as a null hypothesis. Anyway saying that selection is refutable or refuted in a specific case is not vanquishing it globally or in toto. It’s taking it down a notch.

    Yet Darwin himself said stuff about selection being primary (or main), but not exclusive.

    My curiosity was in how Akira’s provided quote showing Rand allegedly saying: “The theory of evolution by natural selection has never been proved – and, in fact, has been disproved in some important respects” was uncannily close to what Popper said more explicitly and without necessarily sounding like a creationist in doing so.

  46. John Morales says

    “My curiosity was in how Akira’s provided quote showing Rand allegedly saying: “The theory of evolution by natural selection has never been proved – and, in fact, has been disproved in some important respects””

    Alleged quotation, no citation.

    (Quote is the verb form, quotation the noun. FWTW. It’s maybe quibbling, but it’s also indicative)

  47. John Morales says

    “In its most daring and sweeping form, the theory of natural selection would assert that [blah]”

    It would, would it?

    (But does it?)

  48. John Morales says

    What about its less daring and less sweeping form(s)?

    (What would they assert, allegedly?)

    Vagueries, when the subject is a goddist ostensibly asking “Were Horses Designed to Be Ridden?” and PZ’s mockery thereof.

    (Tell me more about how you seek to “shoehorn us back to topicality”, because Popper this and Popper that, Hemidactylus. And hey, you started this exchange with me. You)

  49. says

    John: First, none of what you cited or quoted shows Rand was intelligent in any way. You only remind us that she was a proponent of a certain philosophy, but that philosophy has been shown to be nonsensical bullshit and a scam to boot. (Also, you admit that this philosophy was described in FICTIONAL NOVELS, not any sort of learned treatise or manifesto claiming connection to the real world.)

    Second, “her ideas gained traction” also doesn’t mean her ideas were intelligent or honest. Hitler’s ideas “gained traction” for awhile, but only bigoted haters take that as proof of Hitler’s “intelligence.”

    And third, Rand was not a “self-made woman,” she was a handy (if unknowing) propagandist for an aggressive anti-progressive movement of rich reactionaries, some of whom had fascist or even Nazi sympathies, who both paid her and paid colleges to pretend she was a “serious thinker.”

    Oh, and PS: dominating the men she liked to fuck didn’t prove she was intelligent either; or that her ideas were more valid than those of a lifelong virgin or a sub slut.

  50. microraptor says

    Well, since we can’t seem to let the subject of Ayn Rand go:
    “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” John Rogers.

  51. John Morales says

    “First, none of what you cited or quoted shows Rand was intelligent in any way.”

    In your estimation.

    Self-made women immigrants from Russia, dime a dozen, really, right?

    (Bah)

    Oh, and PS: dominating the men she liked to fuck didn’t prove she was intelligent either

    Of course not. It’s what every single young immigrant woman did, back in the day.

    (Fucking clueless, you are)

  52. John Morales says

    [so quiet, again]

    (Also, you admit that this philosophy was described in FICTIONAL NOVELS, not any sort of learned treatise or manifesto claiming connection to the real world.)

    Like the Babble. And, you know… the topic is “a recent article there titled Were Horses Designed to Be Ridden?”, not about Alice.

    (Even after her death, she is clearly strangely attractive. To some, anyway)

  53. John Morales says

    John Rogers and horseys, of courseys.

    (No worries, microraptor, you’ve been strangely attracted)

  54. StevoR says

    @56. John Morales : “Even after her death, she is clearly strangely attractive. To some, anyway.”

    Necrophiliacs presumably! Although I’d imagine by now even for them not much to, er, bone by now..

    /hyperliteral mode

    (Maybe shoulda saved this one for the horror thread but anyhow.)

  55. John Morales says

    Not sexually attractive, StevoR. Topically.

    See, this goddist Caleb Harrier (unearned name) made some claims, and PZ mocked them, and now we’re talking about her.

    (You know Godwin’s Law? Sorta same thing)

    /hyperliteral mode

    Clueless mode.

    Anyway, Simone was a contemporary of Alice. No less topical, more impressive.

    (Feminist, actually)

  56. John Morales says

    A horse is a horse, of course, of course; hydrating one, however, may be problematic.

    (Equine equanimity)

  57. freeline says

    Wow, just wow.

    I respond to the OP with an on-topic quotation from Ayn Rand, only to have John Morales question my veracity. Since I’m still kind of newish here and didn’t know that John Morales is a troll, I made the mistake of feeding him by making a good faith effort to find the quotation on line. Well, not every quotation, even by famous people, gets immortalized on the internet. However, I really did read it in an article she wrote fifty years ago. I explain this, get busy with other things, and go to bed, only to wake up to find that John’s thread hijack has resulted in 40 comments about Ayn Rand rather than the actual OP. With no basis in fact, without explaining why he’s skeptical of the quotation, the troll simply reiterates his claim that I’m lying. I guess there’s a reason not to feed the trolls and I apologize to everyone for having done so.

    That quotation is certainly no more stupid than any number of other things she said, and is perfectly consistent with her usual modus operandi of inventing often fanciful reasons to show that whatever she liked is rational and whatever she didn’t like isn’t. Of interest to those here, she once made the claim that racism is socialism since it judges people based on their collective status rather than their individual character. Does anyone doubt that someone capable of making claims that silly might also believe that the hand was designed to hold a cigarette?

    OK, I’m done. Moving on to other things now.

  58. Hemidactylus says

    Horses weren’t designed per Revelation to be ridden. They weren’t even evolved for that. From our POV they could have exaptable features to be coopted by us as we domesticated them. They surely impacted history via stirrup invention. I wonder if they impacted human evolution.

    Dogs as wolves didn’t evolve to be human companions but sociability and hunting were cooptable. Did dogs impact human evolution?

    Still, horse hoof evolution seems a better route than the apocalypse to understand them better. And it gave us the metaphor of horseshoe theory.

  59. says

    springa73@48 Caleb Harrier’s horse article seems like a followup to Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort’s ridiculous banana assertion, that the banana was designed by God to suit humans. They didn’t realise that the banana they buy in the story was selectively bred by human farmers etc. to give it the characteristics they thought God had given for human convenience, like lacking seeds. By such reasoning God should have designed the animals humans eat to shed their meat, instead of making us have to kill them, spend time removing their skins and innards, and so on.

  60. rietpluim says

    Donkeys are designed to ride Jesus into Jerusalem. The evidence is in Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44, and John 12:12-19. Since then they’ve lost their use so they may just as well go extinct.

  61. Akira MacKenzie says

    I’m more than willing to admit the possibility that I was repeating a misquote. If that’s so, I apologize. I don’t have searchable collection of Rand’s “works” to check against.

  62. chrislawson says

    Hemidactylus@49–

    Well, you’ve picked up on one of the things I disagree with in the Elgin and Sober paper. Pretty much everyone else who who comments on the matter thinks Popper changed his mind. Popper certainly thought he changed his mind. Elgin and Sober argue, correctly imho, that Popper still held much the same categorical reasoning and the main change in his outlook came from recategorising evolutionary theory rather than re-evaluating his underlying philosophy. And I agree with them there. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t change his mind at all. He clearly did. Poor word choice on Elgin and Sober’s part.

    As for the natural selection/sexual selection matter, that is one of the key reasons I think Popper was still badly in error even in his later statements. The peacock’s tail, after all, is very much an example of adaptation to a utility. The utility in question is attraction to mates, which over recent evolutionary time has clearly had greater adaptive weight in peacocks than flight efficiency (although I should point out that peacocks do actually fly, just not gracefully or far).

    Insisting that the peacock tail is non-adaptive is an error caused by imposing an external expectation of utility onto an organism. Looking at other avian body variations makes the problem obvious. Moas had no wings at all. Emu wings are almost completely vestigial, having only stubs of fused bone and resorbed cartilage. Ostriches, despite being flightless, have large wings which they use for thermoregulation, balance, and courtship displays. Penguins can’t fly, but their wings are extremely well adapted to swimming.

    According to Popper’s approach, none of these flightless bird wings have utility and therefore none of them are adaptive. And sure, for moas and emus, wings appear to have lost their utility. But for ostriches and penguins, the wings are clearly adaptive if one can just see past the single specific function Popper assumes is a fixed utility for all birds.

  63. John Watts says

    No mention of what happened to the equids of North America that went extinct about 11,000 years ago. Overhunting by the Clovis peoples probably had much to do with it. In which case, one could just as easily say horses were meant as food, not as transportation. At least in North America before the European invasions.

  64. says

    No worries, freeline, Morales appears to be in, or at least near, the libertarian camp, and tends to get a bit defensive (not to mention bloody incoherent, as his last few comments show) when that religion-disguised-as-political-theory comes under attack.

    As for stupid (and flat-out racist) quotes by Ayn Rand, I do remember two. She’s explicitly said that since Native Americans never established any rules of personal-property ownership, they therefore had no right or valid claim to any part of the two continents they were living on, so our White Capitalist ancestors were totally within their rights to push them off somewhere else. She has also demanded that all civilized people (by which she pretty clearly meant White Christians) were morally required to defend and support Israel, on the grounds that Israel was a nation of brave White people under barbaric attack by swarthy heathen savages, just like those brave manly cowboys in all the Western movies that (dis)informed her “understanding” of America. (Hell of a dose of Crusader mentality, for someone pretending to be a rational atheist!)

    Also, Ayn Rand was on record singing the praises of a man who had kidnapped and murdered (and maybe also raped) a defenseless young girl, ‘cuz he just wanted to. He was a brave individualist bravely taking what he wanted (no word on what the girl might have wanted, maybe she was just a weak mooching socialist?), therefore, in Rand’s opinion, we should be elevating him to virtual sainthood, not punishing him for murdering an innocent kid.

    Seriously, we should all be asking the question John Oliver asked: “Why is Ayn Rand still a thing?”

  65. Akira MacKenzie says

    I’ve often humorously mused that Ms. Rand was actually a Soviet agent, sent to the U.S. to spread the most insane and cruel version of capitalism imaginable that would either destroy us if implemented or would offend us so much that we’d come running to Marxism.

  66. says

    Akira: I don’t think Rand was competent enough to be a conscious sleeper-agent. She was, however, easily manipulated; so it’s possible the KGB may have had a hand in some of that manipulation, just as the FSB, GRU, and probably ROC have a hand in manipulation of similarly-addled and clueless stooges today.

  67. freeline says

    Raging Bee, she’s still a thing because an awful lot of her views now inform what is currently the majority political party. I am interested in religion as a sociological phenomenon — how does it impact society — and it’s the same dynamic. We can snicker all day at idiots who think that Noah’s ark was an actual historical event, but in large sections of the country they are now running the schools. I have my own theories for why that is, but there’s no getting around the fact that those people are now in power, and likely to be for a generation. So we can’t just ignore them, much as I’d love to.

    And I’m not convinced that she actually had a coherent philosophy beyond turning her own personal preferences into dogma. (I actually knew her but not well.) A now deceased friend of mine, an eminent historian with ties to the libertarian movement, once got kicked out of her apartment. She made the comment that her favorite classical composer was Rachmaninoff because his music was the most rational. Thinking that such a stupid comment must be a joke, he burst out laughing, and was promptly shown the door. And she was like that about everything. She thought it was irrational for men to have facial hair, and it was simply a case of she didn’t like beards so she turned it into a dogma. What foods you liked., what music you listened to, what you enjoyed doing in your spare time, all of those were, to her, moral questions as to which there was only one correct answer. It was a cult of personality, not unlike Trumpism.

  68. says

    freeline: I’m not suggesting we ignore or forget Rand; I’m saying we should seriously examine, call out, discredit and debunk her BS and the entire movement she was a part of, for all the reasons you stated and more.

    Akira: I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe a few KGB bosses had also done some humorous musing about using Ayn Rand for their purposes. I sure would have if I was one of them.

  69. John Morales says

    “Morales appears to be in, or at least near, the libertarian camp”

    You could hardly be more wrong. Ideology is for other people.

  70. KG says

    December’s Scientific American includes an article by archaeozoologist William T. Taylor on the domestication of horses, which recent research indicates occurred around 2200 BCE – some 2,000 years later than previously believed. They were then apparently bred for strength (and presumably docility) and soon used for transport – cattle had already been used to pull wagons – and warfare. So as springa73 says @48, domestic horses were in a sense designed – those people controlling their breeding presumably knew what qualities they wanted, and succeeded in producing horses which had them.

  71. Walter Solomon says

    John Morales

    [also, this business of speculative yet ignorant denigration of dead people grates upon me]

    Does this also apply to Jesus as well?

    I wasn’t going to touch it but you had to comment on something I wrote so you left me no choice.

  72. Walter Solomon says

    StevoR @ 41
    Mark 7:18-29

    And He *said to them, “Are you so lacking in understanding as well? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the person from outside cannot defile him, 19 because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and [a]is eliminated?”

    TBF, I believe the point was to criticize the Pharisees for being sticklers to the Jewish laws rather than literally declaring all foods being safe to eat.

    That said, I hadn’t read the verse in awhile and sorta remembered it as he was claiming the stomach “purifies” all food thereby making them safe to eat.

  73. John Morales says

    “Does this also apply to Jesus as well?”

    Is Jesus a member of the set of dead people?

    (There’s your answer)

  74. John Morales says

    Not according to Christians, Walter. Remember? Only dead for a little while, he got better.

    Here’s what you quoted: [also, this business of X yet Y denigration of Z grates upon me]

    (X,Y,Z are the criteria at hand)

  75. Walter Solomon says

    Not according to Christians

    And what about historians, John? They generally accept that Jesus existed and said, at least, some of the stuff attributed to him but usually reject the whole resurrection thing.

  76. John Morales says

    Well, sure. So, there’s your Z.

    Now, if X and Y also apply, then there’s your answer.

    How someone such as you keeps asking a question the answer to which was always implicit in what you quoted when asking it, even after having had it explicitly explained, is left for psychologists to determine.

    (Are you angry at my #29? Is that it?)

  77. John Morales says

    So.

    Since you’ve brought all this up, what proportion of Christian historians believe Jesus is dead, in your estimation?

    I mean, to actually be Christian entails believing Jesus is not dead, so… a bit of pressure there, no?

    I suppose it’s much the same for Christian scientists (no, not Christian Scientists!) who should damn well know creatures weren’t poofed into existence and designed for human use.

    (thus I circle back to the topic at hand)

  78. John Morales says

    [JESUS is ranked as the 256th most popular given name in the United States with an estimated population of 261,547.]

  79. Walter Solomon says

    You posted two very long replies berating me for asking you a question but you ask if I’m angry. That’s rather rich. No wonder you’re widely regarded to be a troll.

    How someone such as you keeps asking a question the answer to which was always implicit in what you quoted when asking it, even after having had it explicitly explained, is left for psychologists to determine.

    Yeah, no. I asked the question once and only once. You, perhaps thinking yourself clever, brought up the resurrection in an attempt to make my question seem illogical.

    That is unless you truly believe in the resurrection story. If you do, I will admit my error in assuming you didn’t. Otherwise, why even mention it? Anyone who was alive 2000 years ago is quite obviously dead nowadays.

    Since you’ve brought all this up, what proportion of Christian historians believe Jesus is dead, in your estimation?

    Brought what up? You raised the subject of the resurrection. Furthermore, you made the original comment about people making denigrating comments about the dead which, honestly, invited a question like mine.

    Anyway, why are we limiting ourselves to Christian historians? Can historians of other faiths, and no faith, study the historical Jesus? I’m just curious.

    Finally, I could answer your question if I cared to do so but to what end? What purpose would it fulfill.

    I’d just be doing what freeline made a persuasive argument against doing which is feeding a troll.

    I’m done replying to you. Have a good weekend.

  80. John Morales says

    “Brought what up? You raised the subject of the resurrection.”

    @80, you directly quoted me and wrote: “Does this also apply to Jesus as well?”

    That initiated this recent exchange.

    Since then, you’ve asserted that most historians think that Jesus is dead.
    Since not all historians are Christians, I asked you what proportion of Christian historians “usually reject the whole resurrection thing”. I also explained why.

    “I’d just be doing what freeline made a persuasive argument against doing which is feeding a troll.”

    Right, right. Not flouncing at all.

  81. says

    Ideology is for other people.

    John, you’re not fooling anyone — this is a longstanding blither-point of libertarians: “All ideologies are bad, we abjure and despise all ideologies, we ourselves are above all those other smelly mobs because we don’t have an ideology, we have Pure Reason and Objectivist Truth.” Just like the religious ideologues who insist that their beliefs are Truth and everyone else’s beliefs are “religion.”

    Also, any ideology, good or bad, is basically a set of ideas about making the world a better, more “ideal” place than it currently is; and libertarians despise ANY notion of having any set of rules or policies other than blind, mindless profit-seeking. Greed, selfishness and pure monetary calculation are “rational,” and any ideas of doing anything other than making money are “irrational” and therefore wrong and evil.

  82. John Morales says

    John, you’re not fooling anyone

    Brilliant! Utter and total success!

    (I was never trying to fool anyone about anything, and I have evidently succeeded at that!)

  83. John Morales says

    Also, any ideology, good or bad, is basically a set of ideas about making the world a better, more “ideal” place than it currently is

    I have no ideology, under that definition.

    I don’t give a shit who my father (date-raped my mom) might be.

    Etc.

    Look: human diversity exists.

    Deal.

  84. John Morales says

    I mean, do you even get it, RB?

    “making the world a better, more “ideal” place than it currently is” depends on personal predilection.

    See, when you write stuff as if there were some sort of immutable, independent, objective standard for what is good and bad, you’re buying into the framing that religious types employ.
    You just don’t grok that.

    A rapist would surely want a world where rape is no biggie, right?

    [Essay a generalisation, if you can, if you dare]

  85. Silentbob says

    @ Morales

    You’re hopelessly internally contradictory. It makes me laugh.

    Explain the basis for rape being “bad” (wrong/undesirable) absent ” sort of immutable, independent, objective standard for what is good and bad”. “If you dare.”

  86. Silentbob says

    Lest I be misrepresented (I have to remind myself I’m dealing with a troll), of course rape is “bad”, because their is an “objective” standard – human suffering. The entire rational basis of morality is that suffering is “bad”, well-being and flourishing “good”. I’m not going to give a lecture on philosophy in a blog comment, but suffice it to say all morality is “ideological” and anyone claiming to be anything other than a psychopath but also claiming to have no “ideology” is either lying, or doesn’t know what “ideology” means.

  87. Hemidactylus says

    Ideology is like water to a fish. It may not be aware in what it is swimming, but it is still there.

  88. John Morales says

    “Lest I be misrepresented (I have to remind myself I’m dealing with a troll)”

    You are surely not misrepresenting yourself.

    No.

    You are perfectly representing yourself.

    (O, my obsessive hate-fan, you truly and most surely perfectly represent yourself!)

  89. John Morales says

    Hemidactylus, to imagine fish are unaware of water is perfectly in keeping with your abilities.

  90. Hemidactylus says

    For you to imagine you’re aware of your own ideological embedding is in keeping with yours. You lack the Archimedean point.

    Hell your lack of self awareness is a running joke here that transcends threads and soon becomes obvious to newbies. It should have dawned upon freeline by now.

    For you to acknowledge your own ideological impedance would be a bit of an ask given such blatant solipsism with others. Unexamined lives and all that…

  91. John Morales says

    Hell your lack of self awareness is a running joke here [blah blah]

    Um, your perception of my lack of self-awareness is not an actual lack of self-awareness by me, it’s a perception of yours. But, if it assuages your evident ego-bruising, go for it.

  92. says

    Ayn Rand’s philosophy is just all about perpetually maintaining the narcissist attitude and immaturity of a particularly spoilt teenager and how the rich could have only become rich because they are better than us non-rich peons and definitely not because of luck or inheritance.
    Of course it’s the religion of choice for indolent manchildren everywhere.

    I think showing any proclivity for Rand or her writings should disqualify any person from holding any position of authority.

  93. John Morales says

    Meh, Augustus.

    Of course it’s not a philosophy, as such. No rigor.

    But there’s no difference between “showing any proclivity for Rand or her writings” and showing the opposite (“even for Ayn Rand that’s stupid”). Well, the one is more extreme than the other, since historically she was known for her writings, and did not have any sort of reputation for stupidity.

    (You know, Speaker for the Dead and all that. Mormon he may be, but a nice sentiment, no?)

    BTW, this thread was never supposed to be about her.

    (It indicates her fame or her infamy, whatever, well after her death. So there’s that)

  94. says

    …since historically [Rand] was known for her writings, and did not have any sort of reputation for stupidity.

    Actually, yes, she was getting quite a reputation for stupidity, not to mention outright racism and lunacy, at leas among people who actually READ and UNDERSTOOD her books, as opposed to just gushing over them and pretending they’d found a “genius” to follow and adore.

    BTW, this thread was never supposed to be about her. (It indicates her fame or her infamy, whatever, well after her death. So there’s that)

    No, if anything it indicates that we understand she was a memorable part of a movement/scam that’s still causing harm to millions of people, therefore it’s necessary to call it out and debunk it, just like we have to call out and debunk racism, religious lunacy, and all manner of fraud.

  95. John Morales says

    “Actually, yes, she was getting quite a reputation for stupidity”

    By whom, and when?

    “at leas among people who actually READ and UNDERSTOOD her books”

    Are you intimating you yourself have actually READ and UNDERSTOOD her books?

    Oh, right.

    Me: BTW, this thread [“If logic were a horserace, this guy would have lapped himself multiple times”]was never supposed to be about her
    You: No. [blah]

    Are you disputing my claim, or are you not?

    (Care to be a little less ambiguous?)

    BTW, I refer you to my #35.

    (Yeah, equine hydration problem, I know. Still, form)

  96. Silentbob says

    Perhaps an appropriate time to remember, according to scripture, Jesus entered Jerusalem on both an ass (donkey) and the foal of an ass (baby donkey) at the same time. How this was accomplished is unclear, but one imagines a foot upon each like a circus performer:

    1 And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples,
    2 Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me.
    3 And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.
    4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying,
    5 Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.
    6 And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them,
    7 And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.
    8 And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.
    9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

    Matthew 21:1-9

  97. KG says

    Perhaps an appropriate time to remember, according to scripture, Jesus entered Jerusalem on both an ass (donkey) and the foal of an ass (baby donkey) at the same time. How this was accomplished is unclear, but one imagines a foot upon each like a circus performer – Silentbob@108

    This kind of repetition (any ass is of course the foal of an ass) is simply a rhetorical device common at the time, and found in many places in the Bible. There’s plenty in that book that is absurd, without relying on such ignorance-based “gotchas”.

  98. says

    Are you intimating you yourself have actually READ and UNDERSTOOD her books?

    If you think I haven’t, go ahead and specify what I got wrong.

  99. John Morales says

    Is it very important for you to believe I believe you, RB?

    (A simple ‘yes’ would have sufficed, you know)

  100. Bekenstein Bound says

    this thread was never supposed to be about her.

    Not your decision. You’re talking like you think you should be in charge and should be able to bar certain topics in certain threads. I wonder why?

    It certainly didn’t escape my notice that you seem to treat insults to Rand as if they were personal insults to yourself; the same when the Randian proposition that wealthy people have proved their merit and wisdom simply by being wealthy gets questioned, as in several threads about the AI bubble in recent months. What have you got emotionally invested in Rand and in that proposition specifically?

  101. John Morales says

    Not your decision.

    PZ’s decision. There it is, in black and white. The actual topic. The OP.

    It certainly didn’t escape my notice that you seem to treat insults to Rand as if they were personal insults to yourself

    You are projecting.

    I am disputing claims that are disputable.

    Here’s an example at your level:
    If you were to say that Donald Trump is known to pull his pudding in public, and I disputed that, it would not entail that somehow I am admiring him or whatever.

    Exactly the same thing.

    Be aware that, whenever you attempt to paraphrase me or adumbrate what you perceive to be my claims, there is little congruence with what I have actually written.

    What have you got emotionally invested in Rand and in that proposition specifically?

    You are as good as stating that one should only ever dispute mistaken or false claims if one is emotionally invested in the subject of those claims.

    That’s not how I operate, and I have told you before. I have zero emotional investment in either.

    (I do like to not be wrong, of course. Not the same thing)

  102. StevoR says

    @17. WhiteHatLurker :

    I had to look this up, but the source says that birds can eat horses (and humans, but nothing about riding humans, also used as transport for short distances) which doesn’t really indicate that the author had the best interests of the horses at heart.

    Cap’n Obvs & pedant mode on but virtually any scavanger from hyenas thru vultures to down to ants and worms can eat horses once they dead! Praying Predating upon them is a whole ‘nother story and I think very few if any avian dinosaurs can prey on fully grown adult horses and even extremely large birds of prey would probly very rarely tackle even young foals. Even wedge tail eagles! (Aquila audax)*

    O’course “birds” is an extremely broad category & specifics of specific species differ, well more than just a tad! ;-)

    .* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge-tailed_eagle

  103. Bekenstein Bound says

    PZ’s decision

    Nope. He is quite clearly tacitly allowing topic drift in the comments on this blog. It is only you who seems to be trying, without authority, to forbid it.

    [smokescreen and insults deleted]

    The claims about Rand do not appear to have been mistaken. The claims about the billionaires backing the AI bubble have now been proved accurate, in the wake of the Deepseek debacle.

    Try again.

  104. John Morales says

    Nope. He is quite clearly tacitly allowing topic drift in the comments on this blog. It is only you who seems to be trying, without authority, to forbid it.

    You’re still projecting. (You know the Fundamental Attribution Error?)

    You imagine I am trying to forbid it. Which tells me about you.

    But sure. Go on, quote me saying as much, if you dare. Prove your claim.

    The claims about Rand do not appear to have been mistaken.

    Suddenly, the passive voice, the hedging.
    You ever heard of E-prime? I used to practice it, now I use it when I like.

    The claims about the billionaires backing the AI bubble have now been proved accurate, in the wake of the Deepseek debacle.

    What, a new disruptive AI version that uses far less resources and is far cheaper to run is around as good as the current freebies?

    I have multiple times tried to tell you the distinction between a financial bubble and a tech bubble, but I’ve learnt your limits.

    (AI is not a bubble)

    Try again.

    Try what again?

    Ah, right.

    Sure:

    Gotta love the religious framing. Most people probably miss that.

    Whether or not horses were designed for riding, the premise is that horses were designed.
    It’s baked in.

    (So, either way. And, of course, we call them ‘creatures’, as if they were created)

  105. John Morales says

    [I also mentioned it was early in the S-curve, but of course the equine hydration problem reasserted itself]

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