Silicon Valley creationists

There’s a wave of irrationality sweeping through the over-privileged, ridiculously wealthy world of coddled millionaires and billionaires of Silicon Valley. Some of them seem to think The Matrix was a documentary, and that we’re code living in a simulation, so they like to get together and wank over this idea.

That we might be in a simulation is, Terrile argues, a simpler explanation for our existence than the idea that we are the first generation to rise up from primordial ooze and evolve into molecules, biology and eventually intelligence and self-awareness. The simulation hypothesis also accounts for peculiarities in quantum mechanics, particularly the measurement problem, whereby things only become defined when they are observed.

No, that makes no sense. It exhibits a lack of awareness of modern biology and chemistry; “primordial ooze” is a 19th century hypothesis that did not pan out and is not accepted anymore. This guy is ignorant of what would have to be simulated, and thinks that if we were just created with the appearance of having evolved, he wouldn’t have to understand biochemistry, therefore it would be simpler for him.

And where have I seen that “created with the appearance of X” phrase before?

If we are simulated, it doesn’t make the problems go away. This would have to be such a complete simulation that it includes all of physics and chemistry and biology; that models quantum chemistry and the mechanics of all the chemical reactions that produced us; that includes viruses and bacteria, and includes all the evolutionary intermediates; that has such a rich back story that it would be easier to have it evolve procedurally than to have some magic meta-universe coder generate it as some kind of arbitrary catalog. It just doesn’t work. It definitely isn’t a simpler explanation — because it would require all of the complexity of the universe plus an invisible layer of conscious entities running the whole show.

I’ve also heard that phrase that “creation is a simpler explanation than evolution” somewhere before.

I hesitate to say this because I’m no physicist myself, but I don’t think this Terrile fellow understands physics any better than I do, either. The observer effect does not imply a conscious, intelligent, aware observer, as he claims. The observer effect does not mean that there had to be some super-programmer watching over every physical process in order for it to occur.

I don’t think these yahoos even understand what a simulation is.

According to this week’s New Yorker profile of Y Combinator venture capitalist Sam Altman, there are two tech billionaires secretly engaging scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.

I think there must be some scientists somewhere who are milking a couple of gullible billionaires out of their cash.

This makes no sense. If we are, for instance, code programmed to respond to simulated stimuli and emit simulated signals into an artificial environment, how can you even talk about “breaking us out”? We are the simulation. Somehow disrupting the model is disrupting us.

If you don’t think this sounds like febrile religious crapola, let’s let Rich Terrile speak some more:

For Terrile, the simulation hypothesis has “beautiful and profound” implications.

First, it provides a scientific basis for some kind of afterlife or larger domain of reality above our world. “You don’t need a miracle, faith or anything special to believe it. It comes naturally out of the laws of physics,” he said.

Second, it means we will soon have the same ability to create our own simulations.

“We will have the power of mind and matter to be able to create whatever we want and occupy those worlds.”

I’ve written some simulations myself — I have some code lying around somewhere that models the interactions between a network of growth cones. We already have the ability to create our own simulations! These guys are all gaga over increasingly complex video games; those are simulations, too.

The NPCs in World of Warcraft do not have rich inner lives and immortality. They do not have an ‘afterlife’ when I switch off the computer. My growth cone models are not finding meaning in their activities because they are expressions of a higher domain of reality.

I, however, am wondering why the Great Programmer in the Sky filled my virtual reality with so many delusional idiots and oblivious loons. The NPCs in this universe are incredibly stupid.

What strange alternate universe have I found myself in?

There exists an article in which a male politician’s fashion choices are judged. It even explains why he looks rather frumpy.

trumpfrump

This should not be. This cannot happen. This is just wrong. I’ve gone through life assuming that my poorly fitting clothes and lack of style would never be used against me because I am not a woman, and here are all my hopes and illusions shattered.

I do not know if I’ll be able to step outside in public ever again.

At least my clothes still have pockets, so I can retain a shred of my sense of superiority. Those feminists are probably going to go after those next, aren’t they?

The most revolting justification for the Indian genocide yet

I blame Jason Colavito. He told me to look up the Solutrean hypothesis, and I did, and now I can’t unsee it — this stuff is flamingly racist, stupid, and wrong.

Here is the shit. The ‘hypothesis’ is that 20,000 years ago, white Europeans, the Solutreans, peacefully settled in the empty wilderness of North America (there is no evidence for any of this). And then…

And it was the American Indians who came way later, ten thousand years later, around 10,000 BC, crossing over from Siberia into Alaska and then down through Canada to what is now the USA. It was those American Indians from Asia, a merciless, slant-eyed people related to the Mongols, a race given to horrific tortures and genocides, who killed them off, just as the Asiatic Indians did horrific tortures to American pioneers in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s, and Asians committed indescribable atrocities to white soldiers, sailors and marines during WWII in the Pacific, during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

You may close your mouth now. I know you’re sitting there slack-jawed with shock.

We didn’t know about the horrors that Asians committed against pure, white European peoples because, as this bozo claims, the jew-owned press won’t publish it. However, he has no evidence for any of the above — there is no archaeological evidence of an advanced Aryan culture inhabiting the Americas 20,000 years ago, nor evidence that non-white people are more savage than Europeans; I think the Nazis are a persuasive counter-example. There is also no evidence for this story:

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Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

ada

Today we celebrate women in science and technology by remembering Ada Lovelace. We also take note of how tech companies still fail to meet gender equality standards (so they better hire my daughter when she graduates), and the miserable failure of academia to end sexual harassment. So it’s kind of a mixed celebration.

Do read that last link, if nothing else.

Last week I watched a documentary by Louie Theroux, about Jimmy Savile and the child rape scandal. In it, Theroux said something that struck me; “monsters don’t get close to children, nice men do”. I think the same can be said of these sexual harassment and abuse stories that we hear of so often now in STEM disciplines. The perpetrators of harassment and abuse are not monsters, they are often highly respected and inspiring figures at first. They can be our friends, colleagues, and mentors. That’s what makes it so hard if we find out that this trusted friend, colleague, or mentor has been abusing and hurting other people. The resulting cognitive dissonance keeps us from accepting that it is even possible that our trusted friend, colleague, or mentor is capable of these behaviours and therefore, we automatically ignore what we hear from survivors. We believe the excuses and explanations that the perpetrator comes up with. And I have come to realise that this is just one of the many ways that our society allows sexual harassment to go on as long as it does, and why survivors are so scared to come forward. Even when they do, we expect these survivors to shoulder the emotional labour of reaching out to other victims, talking to the media, and reliving the harassment, all while trying to hold the perpetrator accountable for what they did. And if that wasn’t enough, survivors also have to deal with those within the community who question the veracity of their experiences.

On a cheerier note, at least now you can buy badass women of science t-shirts.

The descent of a lie

It’s not often that ideas in evolutionary theory become directly applicable to politics, but now we have a case of plagiarized errors in the Trump campaign. “Plagiarized errors” is the idea that the propagation of mistakes is often more revealing of the history of a lineage than the functional parts of an organism. The example often give is of how we can catch students cheating on a test: if two students turn in an exam with identical correct answers, it could just mean they both studied very hard and mastered the material well; if they have identical wrong answers, right down to the spelling mistakes, that tells you that someone has been slavishly copying someone else. For more examples of how the concept is actually used, check out Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics by Edward Max.

The nice thing about the plagiarized error concept is that it allows one to trace the history of the error. In the recent debate, Trump made an unusual error of attribution — he quoted Kurt Eichenwald (incorrectly, as it turns out, ignoring his conclusion) and claimed that it was a quote from Sydney Blumenthal. It was an odd combination of specific errors, and that makes one wonder where Trump could have gotten the same set of mistakes. It turns out that there is only one other media source that makes the same combination of errors, misattributing Eichenwald’s words to Blumenthal, and distorting the meaning of the piece in the same strange way, and that tells us exactly what source Trump plagiarized.

It came from “Sputnik, the Russian online news and radio service established by the government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya“. Russian propaganda sources are feeding misinformation to the Trump campaign.

As Eichenwald explains the distortions and errors in the Russian piece:

The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000 word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article. The Russians had carefully selected the “of course” paragraph, which mentions there were legitimate points of criticism regarding Clinton and Benghazi, all of which had been acknowledged in nine reports about the terror attack and by the former Secretary of State herself. But that was hardly the point of the story, “Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages.” The piece is about the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans, and the article slammed the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation—the tenth inquiry into the tragedy.

And then, to his surprise, Trump makes exactly the same set of mistakes.

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”

“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.

“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”

Further, Trump did this on the same day that the Sputnik article emerged — it wasn’t as if this lie had time to percolate out into right wing media. The Trump campaign is being fed stories by the Russian media, or at the most benign, is reading Russian propaganda looking for dirt to dish on Clinton.

This is not funny. It is terrifying. The Russians engage in a sloppy disinformation effort and, before the day is out, the Republican nominee for president is standing on a stage reciting the manufactured story as truth. How did this happen? Who in the Trump campaign was feeding him falsehoods straight from the Kremlin? (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment).

This is just weird. The Republicans, of Red Scare fame, with anti-Communist hatred imbedded deep in the brains, are now fielding a presidential candidate who admires Vladimir Putin and who glibly recites Russian propaganda as fact. And we don’t just have a Manchurian candidate, we have a Manchurian electorate that sees no problem with this.

The sad thing is that we have great difficulty getting the concept of plagiarized errors in evolution through to creationists, so I suspect the fanatical followers of Donald Trump won’t be able to comprehend the application of the concept to political propaganda, either.

Weekend plans

It’s Tuesday. I’m ready for the weekend already, so I can make my plans, can’t I? Besides, I have great plans. Tremendous plans. I have the best plans. Also, next weekend is the greatest weekend, since we get Monday and Tuesday off for our Fall Break, so it’s a four day weekend for me. So here’s what I’m going to do.

  • NerdCon: Stories is this weekend in Minneapolis. It’s a great little event with well-known writers (Scalzi will be there, also Mary Robinette Kowal, Saladin Ahmed, Nalo Hopkinson, Paolo Bacigalupi, etc.) doing weird creative things. It’s also far enough out of my comfort zone that I never feel guilty about not doing anything but enjoying myself as an audience member — you know that feeling, scientists. You shouldn’t be at the conference unless you can justify it by submitting an abstract. Also, it’s inspiring because it’s all about stoking the fires of creativity. You should go. We can enjoy it together.

  • I’ll be working on a talk I am obligated to give for a different event — I’m speaking in Beijing at the end of the month. The title of that talk is “Five difficult concepts in evolutionary thinking…and how to address them”. What I’m going to say is all clear in my head, but I have to do the work to sort ’em out and organize them and figure out how to communicate them. You should go. We can enjoy authentic Chinese food together and take a day to see the sights.

  • I am not formally speaking at Skepticon, but I am doing one of the Friday workshops, so I should start getting ready for that. My topic is “Bad Evolution”, and I’ll be preparing short, written examples of awful creationist logic and coaching people in how to handle them. It’ll be fun. You should go. I’ll be giving out prizes for good counterarguments — stickers you can put on your Skepticon badge.

  • There will be grading. There is always grading. But I’m going to try to get all caught up before the weekend so there isn’t too much hanging over my head. You should come to my house and do it for me.

  • My wife has been ambitiously cleaning up and throwing out two decades worth of accumulated junk. I hardly recognize our living room anymore, and I hear sounds from upstairs that tell me she’s tearing apart the boys’ bedrooms. I know I’ll be drafted to work on those projects. You should come help. We can lift things together and make trips to the dump.

  • I intend to take some quiet time and do nothing all by myself. You are not welcome to join me in that. That would defeat the whole point!

See? It’s going to be a great weekend.

Now I just have to see about making it through the week.

P.S. Skepticon still needs donations.

I envy you your locker room

I’m suddenly seeing all these people talking about their locker rooms, and how it wasn’t anything like the locker rooms Donald Trump is talking about. They didn’t talk about women, or how they want to grab them, or other such crudities — they just wanted to take their shower and get out. I believe them. Personally, that’s how I dealt with being afflicted with the shower ritual in high school.

But I was not so lucky in my environment. The locker room I experienced was a hell hole of machismo, strutting athletes, point-by-point explicit ranking of the anatomical bits of women at school, and lots of bragging about sexual conquests. I didn’t have a nice locker room experience.

There was a reason for that. It was Coach. This locker room was run by a swaggering, bullet-headed lunk with no boundaries — he’d stroll through as we were taking showers and comment on boys’ penises. He’d ask for details of Friday night make-out sessions, and would laugh if you “scored”, and tell you which girls were “sluts”. He set the tone. He approved of the worst of behaviors, and mocked you if were a “nice boy”…which made you a “fag”.

Does this remind you of someone?

We have a presidential candidate who reminds me a lot of Coach. I see a nation acting like a tribe of monkeys, with many people following the lead of the coarse vulgarian and becoming worse themselves. That’s what people do.

I could do without the daily reminder of those years of misery from the media.

I’m sure there’s a connection between Trump and fossilized soft tissue

I went down the rabbit hole for a little while this morning. It started here: I was sent a link by Trey Smith about the TRUMP: the COMING LANDSLIDE. ~Ancient Prophecy Documentary of Donald Trump. With a click-bait title like that, I had to start watching the video. And then Trey Smith is mesmerizingly weird: his technique is to stick half his face right into the camera, and make lots of hand gestures with a computer screen in the background. It was effective at first just because his tics and odd movements and emphatic phrasing were engrossing, but I didn’t last long, because there’s no substance there. He seems to think Trump is destined to be president, but his main argument is numerology and ‘because the Bible’ with lots of finger stabbing at the video screen behind him.

So I switched to some of his other videos, and of course he’s a Young Earth Creationist, and he’s very impressed by something that has become a veritable obsession with YECs in the last decade or so: preserved soft tissue in fossil dinosaur bones. And that led him to Mark Armitage.

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Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Today is a meaningful day up north, on which they will all give thanks that they are not part of the United States, and pray that they never will be.

Meanwhile, down here, most places call this Columbus Day, on which we celebrate genocide, the murder, rape, and enslavement of the indigenous people’s of this continent. We only do this to add a special fervor to the Canadian celebration because we like them all so much.

Nah, I lied. We do this because it is our nature to take over and exploit whatever we want. Manifest destiny and all that. Canada is just lucky that they don’t have anything we want…hey, oil in Alberta, huh? And global warming is going to expand agricultural opportunities northward?

Pray harder.