Spider jump scares

Always good for a laugh.

Which reminds me…yesterday, my wife tried to cheer me up by telling me she saw some small insects in the house, which means the return of the spiders can’t be far off. This seems to be an unusual response by most hu-mans.

I’m kind of laid up from a fall yesterday, having trouble getting any sleep because any turn of my head sends alarm signals up and down my spine. This is cramping my plans. I have a spider agenda! I need to move all the spiders, especially the lady spiders, to shiny clean new containers, so they can spend the next week getting comfortable and filling it with new silk. They won’t know it, but they’ll be making their nuptial bed. Yeah, time to try breeding! They’re still on the small side, so they’re comparable to human teenagers, but we’ll see if they’re as horny as people get in their youth.

I still have concerns about species matching, though. There are two spider species, Parasteatoda tepidariorum and Parasteatoda tabulata, that I can’t tell apart, short of dissecting their genitalia, which absolutely ruins them for mating, and I don’t want to put P. tep together with P. tab, since that could just end with cannibalism (wait, different species, so not cannibalism? Just violent murder?). My solution for this go-round is simple: I’m going to put male spiders on their sister’s nuptial bed. I want an inbred line anyway.

I’ll try to record their activities next week, so maybe I’ll have a movie for you then. With any luck, it won’t be a gory murder/horror flick, but instead a little incest porn. I hear that’s popular, but have no idea why.

And no one was surprised…

That dogmatic suppositionalist, Sye Ten Bruggencate, seems to have done a naughty. The only question is whether it was something so horrible even an atheist would be horrified, or something only a weirdly repressed believer would find objectionable. Hey, maybe he just put on mixed fabrics, or had shrimp for dinner. That’s the optimistic perspective.

Atheism is dead. Atheists killed it.

One of my major problems with Christianity, a problem that has become increasingly vivid in recent years, is the cultish refusal to dissent from their own extremists — there’s an attitude of servile “getting along” with leaders who have become more and more deranged. We’ve been seeing that for years, with people like Pat Robertson and the Falwells and every one of those horrible organizations with “family” in the name, all certifiably hate-filled and determined to stamp out every deviation from their pale ignorant angry norm. It’s gotten so bad that the derangement has become the point, rather than the Christianity, so that the flock went ga-ga over a paranoid narcissist who has never exhibited the feeblest spark of religious devotion. Their new Jesus figure thinks he is the god and the Christians must lift every voice and sing his praises.

There have been many great Christian dissenters, people who believe in the religion with every fiber in their hearts, but who also see charity and reducing human suffering as the true great mission of Jesus Christ. I can disagree with their theology while respecting their goals and methods. Their priority is to be a good person and help others. Unfortunately, we don’t have a Cult of Jimmy Carter, but we do have a cult of Donald Trump.

So yes, I respect Christians who are willing to stand up and reject the Christianity that fuels armed mobs of “militias”, that reject the Christianity that says LGBT folk must be shunned and punished, that reject the Christianity that treats women as chattel, the Christianity that has wed itself to white supremacy, even if they do believe in gods and prayers and ancient mythology. What matters isn’t the poems they love, it’s the actions they take. Right now, the important thing is that they take a stand against the religion of conservative hate that is hijacking their faith.

We atheists have a similar responsibility. It’s not as if we’re somehow immune to the unreason and poison of the far right ideology. We should look at this and be appalled.

I’ll let James Croft explain it.

Yes, Atheists for Liberty were at CPAC to hobnob with fellow true believers in the anti-social justice cult which has captured US conservatism – and, to be fair, where better? CPAC is not a normal political conference, after all. In the range of acceptable, rational political opinion, it is not so much to one side of the scale as outside the scale entirely. CPAC brings together the vilest conspiracy theorists and hatemongers in the GOP and the conservative movement, and gives them a massive megaphone. It has consistently promoted false and harmful political ideas: this year it promoted the conspiracy theory that Trump won the presidential election, as well as transphobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric that wouldn’t be out of place at a neo-Nazi rally. It is a cesspool of the worst elements of American politics, and everyone who swims in that cesspool gets covered with slime.

A consistent theme of this year’s CPAC – as well as in conservative spaces more broadly – is the idea that social justice warriors are trying to “cancel” everything they disagree with. A great tide of illiberalism is washing over the USA, they claim, generated by angry Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist activists. Some of the biggest cheers of the evening were against “cancel culture”, something you’d think would be a boutique interest in the time of a massive global pandemic. But this seems to be what US conservatism has fixed on as its new bête noire, and Atheists for Liberty agrees.

This is an example of a new and growing phenomenon: the lines between religion and nonreligion, and even conservatism and liberalism, are becoming less important compared with the line between the “woke” and the “anti-woke.” Where you stand on the approach and concerns of contemporary social justice culture is becoming the signifier of political allegiance in the USA, and since Atheists for Liberty are anti-woke, they will happily dive into the CPAC cesspool.

I took a look in my archives, and I think I first started writing about the Deep Rifts in Atheism way back in 2009. I notice, though, that what I was saying back then was that we’d find our strength in the arguments over our goals, that internal dissent was the force that would drive us to be better atheists. I was so optimistic back then! Looking back over a dozen years, what I can see is that I was wrong (about so many things), and that there was no resolution, and that there could be no resolution. Atheism is a granfalloon. For those of you who aren’t great fans of Kurt Vonnegut (also an atheist and humanist!):

A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism (created by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle), is defined as a “false karass”. That is, it is a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless.

In that spirit, I repudiate “Atheists for Liberty” and all who find common cause with their opposition to justice. I will and always have criticized the atheist movement, and will not be one of the sheep who follow the worshippers of authoritarianism and prejudice and oppression into their hell on Earth.

Besides, look at that photo: smug assholes happily wallowing in the insanity of CPAC. How could anyone think that is behavior to admire or emulate?

Nope nope nope nope nope

I tried to walk in to open up the genetics lab this morning, and it ain’t happening. The roads and sidewalks are sheets of glassy ice — I got as far as the corner of my house before I went flying. I’ll be OK, I landed on my head.

Unfortunately, I can now feel every muscle and bone in my spine from thorax to cervical vertebrae aching and complaining. I’m going to be feeling this for several days.

Every year, godfuckingdamnit, I have take at least one serious fall. This is it. This better be the last one.

Shermer: Reliably wrong every time

People still pay attention to this conservative fraudster?

Skip it. Irreversible Damage is simply more right-wing hysteria. The premise is that the transeses are transing our kids against their will — the usual moral panic we saw about the gayses recruiting kids with their flamboyant, ever-so-appealing gayness. It’s a garbage book by someone who writes for the Federalist and other such reactionary venues. I’m not going to watch it, but I’m pretty sure Shermer won’t be doing a critical, or dare I say it, skeptical interview.

Watch this instead.

If you don’t want to watch a video, here’s a solid critical review of Shrier’s book. It’s published by Regnery? Yuck. She didn’t interview any of the kids she describes, but rather talked to their parents, who are very upset that their kids were transgender? Jesus.

How many people lined up to live on Devil’s Island?

Why do artists always put domes up? We’d be living in tunnels deep under the Martian surface.

Maybe Devil’s Island is a poor analogy — prisoners sent there had a 75% mortality rate, but it was a tropical island and they had air to breathe. Mon dieu, free air! And water fell out of the sky! Maybe a Siberian gulag would be a better example. The air is still free, but it’ll eventually kill you if you try to breathe it at -50°C, and they were, of course, work camps. We really have nothing to compare with Mars here on Earth. Yet Elon Musk is dreaming of sending a million people to live there, all beholden to the company store, that is, Elon Musk. Maybe you could find a few utopians who could be fooled into moving there, but the volume Musk fantasizes over? No way. I also suspect the effort would bleed his fortune dry.

But here’s a thought experiment for you: Charlie Stross gives him everything he could want.

Let’s suppose that Musk’s Mars colony plan is as viable as his other businesses: there are ups and downs and lots of ducking and weaving but he actually gets there in the end. All the “… and then a miracle happens …” bits in the plan (don’t mention closed-circuit life support! Don’t mention legal frameworks!) actually come together, and by 2060 there is a human colony on Mars. Not just an Antarctic-style research base, but an actual city with a population on the order of 500,000 people, plus outlying mining, resource extraction, fuel synthesis, and photovoltaic power farms (not to mention indoor intensive agriculture to grow food).

Do I believe that will happen? I do not. I think when the first thousand colonists die off and the few survivors start desperately begging for rescue from this hellhole, the supply of potential colonists will wither away and that venture will end. But it’s a thought experiment — we’ll assume that it all comes together that way at first.

Then Stross flicks over one little domino…what if a new deadly coronavirus variant emerges on this distant world?

You are the Mayor of Armstrong City, facing a variant SARS pandemic, and supplies and support are 15 months away. What do you do?

Alternatively: what are the unforeseen aspects of a SARS-type disease infiltrating such a colony?

And what are the long-term consequences—the aftermath—for architecture and administration of the Mars colony, assuming they’re willing to learn and don’t want it to happen again?

I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like an unusual circumstance for a new colony. It’s happened in the past, many times. You set off to a rich, fabulous bit of country, like Virginia or Massachusetts, in a new land, and initially you’re suviving a hair’s-breadth away from catastrophe, and a plague sweeps through your colony, and it’s the 17th century so you don’t have things like vaccines or even decent medical treatments. What happens?

You die.

I don’t think there are that many unforeseen aspects of such an epidemic, although certain people want to willfully ignore the possibilities (they’re not going there after all — some other gullible sap is). This would be a colony that requires a well-maintained infrastructure to maintain the basics of life, like air, water, and food, and something will crumble and the whole thing will collapse, and everyone will die, while sending frantic, woeful transmissions back to Earth at the speed of light.

The long-term consequences will be that no one in their right mind will want to go to Mars, and the way to prevent such a catastrophe is to send robots, assuming there is some economic gain to be had from exploiting the planet in the first place.

Maybe you have a more optimistic perspective? Try to persuade me.

Watch the logic go “Wheeeeeeee!”

Yeah, I get YouTube comments now. Watch this guy go from you admitted that you think to therefore, Jesus! in the span of a short paragraph.

PZ Myers , if you go back and listen to the answers you had provided to my questions, in that discord question and answer show which begins at 1:00:15, then you’ll see that you’ve admitted the existence of God1. That’s because you admitted Logic is conceptualized by a mind2. You then admitted that you assume logic exists with regards to governing the natural universe3. Hence, it would then follow that a mind is responsible for actualizing and sustaining that universe4. There’s no way to get around this5. Now that you know the truth, then I urge you to accept Christ Jesus as your Lord and savior6. Repent of your sins. Ask Jesus to come into your heart. And receive eternal life in him7.

  1. I’m pretty sure I didn’t.
  2. OK, my brain processes information from the world around me, producing thoughts and actions, if that’s what you mean by “coneptualize”.
  3. The universe operates on fundamental rules — Newton’s laws of motion, the Boyle Ideal Gas Law, the Nernst equation, etc. This does not imply that Newton, Boyle, and Nernst conjured the rules into existence, but that they perceived them and described them accurately.
  4. Oops. You’ve leapt from “conceptualizing” to “created”. Those are not synonyms. If I draw a picture of a tree, it does not imply that I created the tree.
  5. Looks like I just did.
  6. You haven’t justified the choice of Christ Jesus. What if I prefer Mohammed? I think Anansi is more my kind of savior.
  7. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard your silly dogma before. How about if you take reason and evidence into your heart, and live a more sensible life?

I’m also thinking of a different chain of “logic”. a) my thoughts are generated by a brain; b) he’s just admitted that god conceptualized the universe; c) therefore god has a brain; d) therefore, if I do find myself at the pearly gates in an afterlife, all I have to do is get past his bodyguards and hit him in the head with a rock very hard, and his reign of terror will be ended, and we can arrange a more equitable distribution of power and glory to all of the souls in Heaven, before liberating all his poor victims trapped in Hell. You can look forward to it — shortly after I die here on Earth, expect the Jubilee, Christians!

The Matrixpunk esthetic must die

Sorry, I invented a label. It’s to describe a nonsensical fad that I keep running into. It’s like steampunk: romanticizing the Industrial Revolution by putting gears on your top hat, imagining a world run on the power of steam with gleaming brass fittings, rather than coal miners coughing their lungs out or child labor keeping the textile mills running for 16 hours a day, limbs getting mangled in the machinery. Or cyberpunk, a dark gritty world where cyborgs rule and everyone is plugged into their machines, and the corporations own everything, including those neat eyes you bought. Sticking “-punk” on a term implies to me an unrealistic cultural phenomenon in which everyone adopts a faddish esthetic that they think looks cool, but quickly dies out leaving only a relic population that doesn’t realize how deeply uncool they actually are. Try to live on the bleeding edge, discover that the razor moves on fast leaving you lurking on a crusty blood clot.

So…matrixpunk. One movie comes out in 1999, and everyone is wearing trenchcoats, ooohing at deja vu, and talking about how deep it is that we’re just a simulation (and never mind the losers who are gaga over the red pill/blue pill idea — boy, that one sure drew in a lot of pathetic people). It might have been mind-blowing for a few months a score of years ago, but it’s time to move on and recognize that it’s very silly.

However, one of the core ideas that seems to have suckered in some physicists and philosophers is the simulation crap. As a thought experiment, sure, speculate away…it’s when people get carried away and think it might really, really be true that my hackles rise. Apparently, Sabine Hossenfelder thinks likewise.

According to the simulation hypothesis, everything we experience was coded by an intelligent being, and we are part of that computer code. That we live in some kind of computation in and by itself is not unscientific. For all we currently know, the laws of nature are mathematical, so you could say the universe is really just computing those laws. You may find this terminology a little weird, and I would agree, but it’s not controversial. The controversial bit about the simulation hypothesis is that it assumes there is another level of reality where someone or some thing controls what we believe are the laws of nature, or even interferes with those laws.

The belief in an omniscient being that can interfere with the laws of nature, but for some reason remains hidden from us, is a common element of monotheistic religions. But those who believe in the simulation hypothesis argue they arrived at their belief by reason. The philosopher Nick Boström, for example, claims it’s likely that we live in a computer simulation based on an argument that, in a nutshell, goes like this. If there are a) many civilizations, and these civilizations b) build computers that run simulations of conscious beings, then c) there are many more simulated conscious beings than real ones, so you are likely to live in a simulation.

Elon Musk is among those who have bought into it. He too has said “it’s most likely we’re in a simulation.” And even Neil DeGrasse Tyson gave the simulation hypothesis “better than 50-50 odds” of being correct.

Yeah, it’s a bunch of smart people (and a few hucksters) falling for the hammer-nail appeal. I’ve got a dazzlingly good hammer, or steam engine, or computer, and therefore the world must be made of nails, driven the piston of a very big steam engine, all under the control of a master computer. Or, more familiarly among the crackpots I have to deal with, watches are designed and manufactured, therefore the rabbits on that heath must also have been designed and manufactured. But how do you test your supposition? What would look different if the world did not operate analogously to your familiar technology, but was built on different rules? Why, what would it mean if rabbits lacked a boiler and a gear train in their guts?

Hossenfelder does a fine job of taking the whole idea to task. You should read that, not me, but here’s her conclusion.

And that’s my issue with the simulation hypothesis. Those who believe it make, maybe unknowingly, really big assumptions about what natural laws can be reproduced with computer simulations, and they don’t explain how this is supposed to work. But finding alternative explanations that match all our observations to high precision is really difficult. The simulation hypothesis, therefore, just isn’t a serious scientific argument. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but it means you’d have to believe it because you have faith, not because you have logic on your side.

Right. I would add that just because you can calculate the trajectory of an object with a computer doesn’t mean its movement is controlled by a computer. Calculable does not equal calculated. The laws of thermodynamics seem to specify the behavior of atoms, for instance, but that does not imply that there is a computer somewhere chugging away to figure out what that carbon atom ought to do next, and creating virtual instantiations of every particle in the universe.

Also, Nick Bostrom is an ass.