Recently, it seems the trolls have been infesting all the skeptical blogs around here, but there's one big notable exception: Me (oh yeah, and JanieBelle too, though the adult content on her blog could explain it). So I'm asking you: What am I doing wrong (or right, depending on your perspective)? Do I not post frequently enough? Am I too nice? Do they not get my Terry Pratchett references?
Having my comments not approved to be posted in the first place. A moderation queue is generally intended to block off spammers and trolls from ever getting their comments onto your blog. When you use it to block off people who say stuff you just don't like, you've gone too far.
What makes it particularly frustrating is that this incident didn't occur on some woo's blog; it was on one of the blogs at ScienceBlogs. I won't mention which one in order to be more tactful that is probably deserved, but I'll note that it wasn't one of the big controversial blogs. All my comment really was was some helpful advice, but apparently some people can't take it.
Disclaimer: I have heard rumors that there have been some weird interactions of ScienceBlogs' e-mail notifications and Gmail's spam filter. I have seen other comments appear on this blog since I sent mine, but the interaction is apparently a bit capricious. This exists as an alternative explanation, though the cynic in me doesn't believe it.
Given a ratio of one for to none against my idea of talking about writing a fictional skeptical story (or as I like to call it, an infinite approval ratio), I've decided to go ahead and try it out. If it doesn't go so well, I can always delete every post talking about it and pretend it never happened, just like I did with... er... Oh, nothing.
So let me first summarize what I'm going to be doing here. The goal of my writing is to create an engaging fictional story which postively represents Scientific Skepticism. Some other goals to go along with this:
At this point, I'm going to give you guys a chance to chime in. Is there anything I missed here that you think I should add as a goal? Or, is there any goal here you think I shouldn't have? Or would you prefer I delete this post and never mention the subject again?
I recently installed Google Analytics into this blog, so I'm now able to see some of the strange searches that lead people here without resorting to checking the sitemeter every three days. Unfortunately, I don't tend to get as many completely sick ones, but I do get my own subsection of weird. Anyways, onto the show!
reverse mmorpg english - How do you reverse an MMORPG?
quiddle - I can't even make up words properly anymore. At least I'm on the front page for this one, so it's not too common.
religion "double slit" - No, saying God decides which way the particle goes doesn't actually explain anything (and it doesn't even work).
what good chiropractors do - Become massage therapists.
ridiculous commandments - All of them (Okay, maybe thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not steal have some merit. Maybe).
past tense of relief - Nouns have no past tense; they exist only in the present. If you buy into Zeno's crap, this means they can't exist at all.
answer 43 ultimate - Subtract 1.
reasons why not to believe in christianity - Have you read the Bible? It gives a ton of good ones.
191f4e7bcac950618399a24eb37bbcbda4af1b8609995234 - This number does not appear once in my blog, and search engines I've tried with it return zero results. The strange part is how it showed up as a keyword for me.
when 2 neutral charges are put together - The Third Doctor comes in and tries to reverse the polarity of their flow.
is ghost hunting antichristian - Probably. These days, your average pen is antichristian.
satirist are - I can't imagine how far down the search results they must have gone to get to me.
intelligent"sound" - I think Douglas Adams came up with an intelligent shade of blue at one point, but that's the closest I can get.
key combination "shift key stuck" - Next time you search for that, do a favor and type in all caps. It's just funnier, 'kay?
ask god - Again, how far down in the search results are they looking to find me?
how to use somehow in a sentence - Somehow, it doesn't surprise me there are people out there who can't figure this out.
a glass of water has one ice cube floating in it. the ice melts. disregarding evaporation, the water level: - Do your homework yourself.
zealot render - Now, this one sounds like a good name for a weapon skeptics can use against religiosos. Might just have to keep it in mind in case they try to start a holy war.
measures to prevent melting of icecaps - Sorry, quantum observation effects don't work on a scale large enough that measuring icecaps will stop them from melting.
Not on the strange side, but I also got a ton of searches for "Quantum Mechanics for Dummies" and variants on it, plus some miscellaneous other physical stuff for dummies, so I know my posts on these subjects are hitting some people. Of course, the problem is that you just can't dumb down Quantum Mechanics past a certain level, so there's no way I'll be able to get everyone to understand it. Nevertheless, maybe it's helping some people.
You know what's also strange? Despite my liberal seasonings of Terry Pratchett references, I didn't get a single search for any of them. With that in mind, let's see what we can do for next month:
Tiffany Aching
Agatean Empire
Ankh-Morpork Assassins' Guild
Ankh-Morpork City Watch
Ankh-Morpork Post Office
Carrot Ironfoundersson
Dark Desert
Death's Domain
Detritus
Discworld
Djelibeybi
Cohen the Barbarian
Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler
Dungeon Dimensions
Ephebe
Gaspode
Genua
Granny Weatherwax
Greebo
Hex
History Monks
Igor
Bloody Stupid Johnson
Klatch
Lancre
Leonard of Quirm
The Librarian
L-Space
Lu-Tze
The Luggage
Magpyr family
Mort and Ysabell
Nanny Ogg
C.W. St J. "Nobby" Nobbs
Moist von Lipwig
Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip
Mustrum Ridcully
Nac Mac Feegle
The Great God Om
Parasite universe
Pseudopolis
Rincewind
Roundworld
Sto Lat
Susan Sto Helit
Ponder Stibbons
General Tacticus
Twoflower
Überwald
Unseen University
Verence II of Lancre
Havelock Vetinari
Samuel Vimes
Lady Sybil Vimes/Lady Sybil Ramkin
There we go, that should do it.
The subject was brought up over at Pharyngula of how skeptics are portrayed in fiction. I left the following comment over there, and I'm cross-posting it here so my readers can know a bit more of what I'm up to:
I'm actually working on a skeptical fantasy book myself (which is going at the expected snail's pace for random-intellectual-tries-to-write-a-book). The world contains many typical magical elements, but with physical causes behind them. Of course, since magic doesn't actually work in our world, my solution was to go in and tweak the laws of physics for this world.
Being the scientist that I am, looking at the results of somewhat different physical laws turned out to be one of the most interesting parts of constructing this world. For instance, one of the first ideas I tried was the existence of magnetic monopoles. I later added in negative-mass matter in order to explain the ability of magic to seemingly violate conservation of energy. Putting these together allowed me a somewhat-plausible physical explanation for magic, which means within the context of the story it can be studied.
The major theme of the story is rational skepticism, particularly about religions. In it, a major world religion's history is thoroughly plumbed and it's revealed that it's completely wrong in many ways, and the one seed of truth in it leaves out the real interesting story that happened in the past.
Unfortunately, I haven't really been working on it much lately. Seeing that there might be some interest for a skeptically-themed story, however, I'll see if I can convince myself to get back to it.
Although I haven't yet exhausted the recommendations from my last appeal, I am running a bit short on short things to do. With that in mind, I'm bringing this up again. Here's how it works this time: Ask me any question. If it's a silly question, you'll likely get a silly answer. If it's a serious question, you'll get a serious answer.
Whether you're puzzled over the definition of a quasar or you want my recommendation of which Terry Pratchett book to read first, now's your chance to ask. So get to it!
One thing I've been puzzling over for a while is what to do about imposter skeptics. You know the kind, the people who take a well-accepted scientific theory which they don't like, then take on the mantle of a "skeptic" to criticize it. Nowadays, the most common type is the Global Warming "skeptic." So, after doing some searching around of how the term "skeptic" is generally used, and looking at all variants on it, I think I've figured out a way we can distinguish ourselves from them.
First of all, there's the problem of what to call ourselves. Just "skeptic" won't do seeing as whatever we say about it, others undeserving of it will still use that as well. Also, it leads to getting us confused with the philosophical skepticism movement which believes (but not certainly) that there can be no absolute truth statements. It's an intriguing idea, and pretty close to one of my own beliefs, but it's a different matter than what we do.
So, here's the term I feel is best: "Scientific skeptic." After all, skepticism as we practice it is ultimately the scientific method, and science, when done well, is ultimately a skeptical way to learn about the world. There's also a lot of Critical Thinking mixed in, but that's also a key ingredient the scientific method. Since we use skepticism to figure out what is and isn't true about the world, the very goal of science, I think the label fits perfectly.
And what about these imposters? We can't cede the generic label of "skeptic" to them. Also, most of them aren't really being skeptic at all, they're simply denying things. We could call them "deniers," I guess, but there's one other good idea I found: "pseudoskeptic." What this does is take the "pseudo-" prefix, which means "fake," and add it onto "skeptic." So, not only do we differentiate ourselves from them with it, we call them fakes in the process.
So, what does everything about this? Anyone have any better suggestions?
Time is fast running out. The deadline for contributing to the next Skeptic's Circle is tomorrow at 9 PM Eastern time, so get your posts written and e-mail a link to TheInfophile {at} gmail {dot} com before time runs out.
The blog is mysteriously empty, and Infophile is nowhere to be seen. The only sign of life is a single shred of black paper on the floor. Picking it up, you find the following message written on it in white ink:
I apologize for the inconvenience, but it would seem that Infophile is off preparing to host the next Skeptic's Circle. Can't say exactly what he has planned, but looking back through his blog, it actually appears that he left hints in a few places. Apparently whatever he's doing has been in the works for quite a while.
If you've got posts to submit, send them along to TheInfophile (at) gmail (dot) com (you never know how advanced spammer technology may get; they could even be reading handwritten notes now). I don't know if he'll be checking his e-mail there, but I'll be sure check it for him just in case. His password shouldn't be that hard to crack. Hmm, I'll probably be able to check it around 9 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, May 9th, so if you get it in before then I should be able to get it up in some decent form. After that, well, maybe I'll tack on a link at the end for you.
Until then, I've got some work I need to get at. The museum's really gone into disrepair due to lack of funding, and if Infophile isn't going to be doing much around here, I might be able to find some surplus funds to spend on renovating it.
-Nate Black
(Hey, it worked for Skepticism!)
Well I got tagged for this by TheBrummell (yes, it did get around to me), so here goes, a list of reasons why I blog:
As you've probably heard (unless you're more out of the loop than I am), 32 people were murdered at Virginia Tech in the USA's largest-ever mass shooting by a single individual. I have something I'd like to talk about in relation to it, hoping to explain how an individual could sink to those depths, but I'm going to wait a bit.
The events are still way too recent for me to talk about a subject which might make the gunner look a little less bad. For now, I'll just let it be and let people mourn for the dead and curse the killer. Once it's a bit less of an open wound, then I'll talk about it.
It's just sad that so many others don't have this small amount of tact. Already, we've got Debbie Schlussel blaming it on Muslims, Ken Ham blaming it on atheism, and Jack Thompson blaming it on video games. Even though I'm just blaming it on the depraved psychology of one individual, I'm still going to wait before going into it. People like these just sicken me.
Well, I've got a ton of possibilities for my next "Big post" rolling around in my head, so I figured I'd leave it up to my readers which you wanted to see first. Here are a few suggestions, but feel free to come up with something else:
And it seems that just a single post later, I'm again continuing a series I'd thought finished. Well, events just made it appropriate. I was actually planning for this to be a stand-alone post at first, but when I realized it worked perfectly as the third part to this series, I figured, "Why not?" (Yes, again.)
If you haven't, I highly recommend you read the first two posts in this series (particularly the second, in which I mathematically disprove faith. Seriously):
Part 1 - "The Dark Room"
Part 2 - "The Uncertainty Proof"
And now...
Part 3 - "The Method Behind the Lack of Madness"
Recently, Skeptico got into a debate with some anti-New-Agers who happened to believe in acupuncture. The basic chain of events you should check out is:
1. The original post by Cosmic Connie
2. Skeptico's complaint of censorship and reply
3. RevRon's critique of skeptics
4. Rockstar Ryan's big "Screw you, too!" to Ron
To sum it up: Cosmic Connie made a post criticizing Gregg Braden and his publicity for his new book, The Divine Matrix. Skeptico stepped in to compliment her for it. After a few rounds of polite discussion of subjects such as "Is it more appropriate to call them 'Newage' (rhymes with 'sewage') or 'New Wage'?" a commenter who had browsed Skeptico's blog took issue with his critique of acupuncture.
From there, it turned into a full-scale debate on the merits of and scientific basis for acupuncture, with Skeptico facing off against Connie, this commenter, and Connie's beau, Ron. Reading through the debate, it didn't seem to really be all that heated or rude, just Skeptico doing his thing. There was mounting frustration on both sides, though (and it seems to me that Ron was the first to get rude). And then after one post by Ron, the thread stopped.
The discussion then continued on Skeptico's blog. Skeptico explained that he had sent in another comment to the discussion which tore apart Ron's last comment, but Connie had refused to post it. She claimed that it was an attack on Ron and that the debate had turned into a "pissing contest" which she didn't want to have on her blog.
Now, I'll interject with my own opinion on the matter here: If you don't want to have heated debates on your blog, that's alright. But don't let it go on for a while and then cut it off after your side gets the last word; that's just poor form. If you do feel the need to cut it off at a certain point, then maybe you should point to some other place it would be appropriate to hold it (the JREF Forums are always a good choice for stuff like this), and leave a comment at the end that the debate continues there.
The debate then did continue over at Skeptico's blog, and there was now a debate about the debate (which reminds me of the US Congress's recent idiocy when they held a vote on whether or not to hold a vote, but I digress). Ron made not one, but two posts which said they would be his lasts words on the matter. And then after that, he made a big post on his blog criticizing skeptics. This particular post is the subject of this entry here, so I highly recommend you read it before continuing.
What is a skeptic?
Skeptics nowadays suffer from a poor public image, though it's not for lack of trying (and it is improving, we just haven't gotten the label to stick in the public's mind yet). When the average person thinks of a skeptic, it's generally what we call the "Hollywood Skeptic" they think about. This is the person you see in the average monster movie who denies the monster exists right up until he's eaten by it. From this, the public develops an image of the skeptic of being an irrational denier.
This is quite similar to Ron's view of skeptics. He sees us as being like intellectual cliques from high school. These were people he saw who "emerged from the Science or Philosophy Clubs" and would "gather to reaffirm their uniqueness in a culture which demanded a conformity and social finesse they somehow lacked." As he says:
These self-proclaimed intelligentsia were admittedly interesting to talk to, until they began their cerebral wagon-circling, bemoaning the inferiority of those outside their circle. At that point, they became pretty toxic and frankly, boring, and those of us who merely visited on their periphery would inevitably wander off in search of more positive interactions, leaving the kids (typically labeled losers or weirdos) to their cerebral circle jerk.
I’d frankly forgotten about these kids, having long ago discovered that actually living a life was more rewarding than sitting on the outside taking shots at it, and that a sense of wonder was more enriching than pessimistic disenchantment. The other day, however, I discovered that the kids are still around, and just as alienated as ever. Only now, they call themselves skeptics or critical or rational thinkers.
I figured I'd take a page from a few other bloggers and post some of the strange search strings that have led people to my blog. Sitemeter is only showing the last couple of days, but there are some interesting ones nonetheless.
atheist pedophiles - This is what we call "Example mining." Try a search for "Priest pedophiles" next time and see how much easier it is.
quantum theory for dummies - I seem to get about two of these every day. I really should get around to continuing the series.
electrons - This was a blogs-only search, but I still must have been pretty far down the list. Someone really wanted to know about electrons...
how long till the ice has melted in antarctica - Already started. How long for all of it? Maybe a hundred years at the outside, if nothing's done to stop global warming.
meat puppets - Probably the band; I couldn't have popularized the term that quickly.
First, assume the cow is spherical - Second, assume it has constant density. Third, assume it's in a vacuum. Fourth, do not attempt Cow-Tipping.
I promised you new features to be unveiled today, and the wait is over! If you're wondering what I'm talking about, check here.
So, today I present to you the grand opening of The Night Museum, and the emergence of my alter ego, Nate Black. The Night Museum will be used primarily to mirror modern society, putting them on exhibit within it. Through this method, I Nate will expose its flaws and teach you how to find and correct them in yourselves.
Plus, if I'm ever feeling particularly pissed off, Nate has carte blanche to take over and tear anyone he wishes a new one.
You heard me. It's de-lurking week, which means that if you've been lurking around here, now's your chance obligation to drop me a comment. I know there's at least one of you out there, and if you don't comment here, you will be nagged. You know who you are.
Well, on the 11th it will be 6 months since I started this blog, so I thought I'd give you guys a general update on my plans and what I've learned about blogging at this time.
First of all, what I've found out: It took a couple months or so to find a niche I could best fill, but I think I've got it now. My most popular posts so far are the Distilled Wisdom series and other more philosophically-oriented posts. I fully intend to keep this up, and will have the next entry in Distilled Wisdom out in a few weeks, once work on my research paper has settled down. I also intend to do a follow-up to The First Lever (three guesses what it'll be called), on how self-interest leads people into wooish beliefs.
Now, I mentioned a few times in the past that I was planning to apply for a column in the school newspaper. I recently found out, however, from talking with people who have been involved with it, that it's not quite that simple. They won't let you have just a column, it seems, and you'll be roped in for tons of other duties as well. With this in mind, along with my overfull schedule and continuing research project, I've decided to forgo applying. Instead, I'll be using my time to concentrate on this blog, keeping up what I've done before, and adding new features. Also, there's one other side-project I have going on which I'll talk about in the future.
Did I say new features? Well, you'll have to wait until the actual half-anniversary to see what I mean. I'm not giving you any hints, either. You'll have to sit there in torture wondering about it. Or you could get a life.
As far as templating goes, I'm also planning to expand the blogroll a bit. I'm going to split it up into a few categories, including an "Anti-Blogroll," which will list blogs which express views disagreeing with me, but which I feel are still well-written enough to be worth reading.
Well, the spammers are hitting full-force. In order to save myself the headaches of deleting every spam that comes by, I'm going to temporarily (I hope) enable word-verification for comments. Don't blame me; they're the ones forcing this.
Telling me that your spam is not spam will not work. Take the following spam I recently received:
Wazzzup. You site is realy cool!
viagra
viagra
Its'not a spam [Links removed. I'm not going to help their business.]
Very pleased 82 years young research scientist very plwased with your arcticle and its insights on the wave character of matter ---you wrote " Then things got stranger. We tried firing things that we were pretty sure were particles through a double-slit experiment, such as electrons. They, too, showed a diffraction pattern. We went bigger and shot atoms through it. Same deal. Our record so far has been shooting Bucky Balls (spherical molecules of 60 carbon atoms) through it, and even they act like waves.
Now that you have cleverly mastered problematic math, try catching up with where Einstein left off with mechanical visualization of matter and its energy transport using event local determinism at the individual freqency pulse level.. As Maxwell knew by gut feel only --all measure is by molecular size electron quantum. You are bright and young enough, figure out how to prove in a deterministic way that an electron is a helical string of 1/h-squared Higgs particles and a tandem linked 1/h quantum waves---literally a maximum density extrusion that can tandem link as a continuous pulse series of electrons, across open space--- to span the distance from the surface of a bright moon to your romantic eyeballs --to touch your very soul in real time--per E = Mc-squared! I offer you my latest short theory paper as just posted --- pasted below
1. The quantum wave is one helical world line turn around R of 1/h G-size Higgs particles that pulse- move from one R to another R next door in one of just 6 directions. When 1/h such quantum one turns around R build a wavy line around a single line of R's as a ray of radiation propagating through DM space, you have one electron segment of the wave string of radiation. When a ray of radiation of whatever frequency, including the light range thereof, extends from the moon, say, to one's retina, the radiating surface of the moon has touched our eye! In well recorded fact, the ray of moon radiation has literally touched our very soul in terms of a measurable sequence of extruded electrons that travel to us per E = Mc 2! Deny this in any way and you destroy the commonly held foundation of physics as we best know it today!
2. It takes 1/h electrons in helical strong Higgs particle tandem to equal a unit of mass and DM granulates so that E = Mc2 is always numerically equal to nhf, where n is the count of electrons in parallel and/or series, and f is the number of such electrons pulsing per second through the measurement aperture. We do not now nor did we ever have the ability to measurement parse series versus parallel electron passage and do not even bother to understand fully what is meant here by "aperture". How could we be so Wheeler-announced stupid for so long --and still have prediction? By the h-symmetry that lets h be both quantum energy in ergs and quantum mass in grams. Any systematic approach could get there like a dumb "Piece of cake"!
Maxwell knew that molecular sized electrons were ubiquitous in our measure of physical reality...
I'm taking a quick break from working on my research project to note an idea I had for an upcoming installment of Distilled Wisdom: The Principle of Charity. It keyed in my mind after reading the following comment over at Dangerous Intersection:
To really “fight fair,” Step One is to put one’s opponent’s best foot forward. Otherwise, every argument is a straw man argument.
