User talk:Armondikov
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| Thread title | Replies | Last modified |
|---|---|---|
| Chemistry meets Universal Darwinism | 4 | 20:05, 26 March 2012 |
| Wazzock | 1 | 14:45, 25 March 2012 |
| Dan Savage answers a profound philosophical question | 1 | 00:42, 16 March 2012 |
| ADK007.svg | 2 | 08:26, 15 March 2012 |
| The Walking Dead | 3 | 19:29, 14 March 2012 |
| Let me guess | 2 | 15:41, 13 March 2012 |
| For you | 1 | 14:35, 8 March 2012 |
| The categories, they do nothing! | 10 | 18:15, 5 March 2012 |
| Thank you | 0 | 04:49, 4 March 2012 |
| 1-star reviews | 10 | 03:14, 25 February 2012 |
| "Devil cannot create" | 1 | 00:56, 24 February 2012 |
| Wittgenstein | 2 | 20:17, 23 February 2012 |
| Krypteria... | 15 | 17:46, 22 February 2012 |
| No problem. | 0 | 20:55, 19 February 2012 |
| Altering user comments | 5 | 20:27, 19 February 2012 |
| The further annals of the humanities vs science fight | 7 | 18:59, 19 February 2012 |
| Pony tails | 9 | 11:33, 19 February 2012 |
| Essay:Is there no God? | 0 | 07:39, 14 February 2012 |
| Note to self | 0 | 10:45, 7 February 2012 |
| Why did he have to qualify it at all? | 9 | 09:46, 7 February 2012 |
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Chemistry meets Universal Darwinism
They're coming for you! (Bonus: Read the bottom of the internet to see a memetics proponent jump into the mix.)
The issue with trying to bridge the gap between chemistry and biology that way is pretty much the same reason that memes can't follow a strict Darwinian evolution; the systems are far too volatile. As Darwinian evolution simply falls out of "descent with modification" there's no way you can apply that to a chemical system unless you're talking about autocatalysis, which while I think is a great idea for the "beginning of life", is a minute sub-set of chemical interactions. Certainly, reducing biological evolution to chemistry simply ignores a ton of emergent properties that are required for descent and modification to even make sense. This is like trying to ask whether a single atom, taken in isolation, is a solid, liquid or gas. You're talking about properties that simply don't make sense at that scale.
Either Pigliucci is explaining this remarkably badly, or Pross isn't actually saying particularly interesting. There's a trade-off between thermodynamic and kinetic stability, yes? And?
Oh no, parts of it are just plain wrong. He seems to be trying to make some kind of analogy from DKS to biological fitness, which doesn't make much sense. There are some other howlers in there as well, like evolution leading to increasing complexity and conflating evolution with natural selection. Why is it that people who are so enthusiastic about applying evolution to everything so often don't even understand it?
Dunno. Maybe the ID advocates have a point when they say evolution is there to destroy God, so applying it to everything would obviously kill Him off for good.
Above I should have said "evolution inevitably leading to increasing complexity." Re: ID, this comes up a number of times in Biology and Ideology, just substitute any proponent of Universal Darwinism for Dawkins here: "Darwinism is not being presented as a representative element of the scientific enterprise, with a legitimate place at the round table of ethical and social debate. It is clearly understood as the defining account of reality. Where most evolutionary biologists would argue that Darwinism offers a description of reality, Dawkins goes further, insisting that it is to be seen as an explanation of things. Darwinism is a worldview, a grand récit, a metanarrative—a totalizing framework, by which the great questions of life are to be evaluated and answered."
Wazzock
Susan used to say it, perhaps that's where you remember it? or perhaps this? Sophiebecause liberals 22:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
ADK007.svg
Seems like File:ADK007.svg which you are using on the "Now" page has some empty flowtext. The old version has 2 pieces of flowtext, one of them empty and the other containing "\m/". If you are using Inkscape, you can remove the empty flowtext in the XML editor (Edit -> XML Editor), and convert the second to regular text (Text -> Convert to Text). After this, the file should render correctly in MediaWiki. If you used a fancy font, you should additionally convert the text to paths (Object -> Convert to Path).
The Walking Dead
Is awesome! Watch it when you can. Actually, there's a Walking Dead marathon on Sunday for us. OuO
Blech! I say skip it. Bland, one-dimensional characters, almost no action and no urgency to the plot (which moves at a snail's pace). At best you can say there are some nice setpieces with zombies, but that's dragged down hard by long conversations between characters we know almost nothing about.
To be fair, though, the most recent episode was pretty great. I just wish more were like that.
I'll be the first to say "the books are better!" even though I haven't read them all yet. The whole clinging-onto-the-constructs-of-the-past thing that seems to pervade the show is kinda hard to accept and the show moves slower than Lost, which actually had some mystery in it. If you watch it while muted you realize that the action scenes really aren't a whole lot besides some camera tricks and prop work.
The categories, they do nothing!
A cognitive linguistics paper just for you.
Heh, nope, you would be a tenured prof in a linguistics or psych department if you had. "Cognitive linguistics" itself is a problematic term because it usually means "the branch of psycholinguistics that became George Lakoff's personality cult" rather than the more obvious meaning of "the application of cognitive psychology to linguistics."
It's not really so subtle at all if you're familiar with the history of the fields, though. It's sort of like how "evolutionary psychology" often doesn't mean "psychology done from an evolutionary perspective," but "selfish gene + Cosmides and Tooby."
Sometimes I just want to roll the clock back a couple of years to before I stumbled head first into fuzziness. Things were just so much better.
Too late, you have already unasked the question.
Sometimes, academics ask questions that defeat the purpose of the intent of the underscored themes. This whole discussion on Categories by Danziger, creates a non "day to day life and use of language" and imposes, instead, this artificial construct of what catigories SHOULD do, and therefore why they are imperfect and imprecise. But what she wants them to do, and what they actually do do are two totally different things.
Her work on "language space and culture (1998)" just makes me wonder why she wants to prove her thesis, rather than wants to work with the proof she has to MAKE a thesis.
Thank you
Thank you for what you have done for me. I do not expect that we agree on science. But I genuinely appreciate you taking out the more spurious elements of the article. People do not listen to me because they assume I want the article to be completely uncritical, which is of course untrue. Cheers, Notedscholar (talk), March 03, 11:46pm
1-star reviews
I remember you said something about using the 1-star reviews on Amazon -- I found a great one on Gould's Mismeasure of Man, emphasis "mein": "I recommend instead books that are sound on these issues: Why Race matters (by Michael Levin); Race, Evolution and Behavior : A Life History Perspective (by J. P. Rushton); Mein Kampf; The Real American Dilemma: Race, Immigration, and the Future of America (by Jared Taylor.)"
I love how science is always right... till it contradicts what *I* believe.
Hey, me too! It's so convenient.
Because the 1-star trick totally works. Though I fear such reviews might be soon replaced by a simply dichotomy of like/dislike as in practice no one really works outside of a 4 point system anyway. You know, like Strictly Come Dancing judges only really scoring between 7 and 10 even though in theory they have 1-10 to play with? Pretty soon the entire world will be just one big thumbs up button that we kick any time we're feeling anything slightly stronger than pure ambivalence about something.
what is teh one star trick, by the way?
"DON'T TRUST THIS BOOK! Scientists are now discovering that Gould misrepresented the science to fit his radical Marxist ideologies!"
In my experience, being accused of being a Marxist (unless you actually are Marx) is synonymous with being right.
Actually, the part of the book on Morton's skulls has been debunked. I don't know why he even went after that, though, since cranial capacity is not a proxy measure for intelligence anyway. Now it's a whipping boy of the self-proclaimed "racial realists," because if one of Gould's arguments was wrong, he was obviously just a PC-Marxist hack and racism is not racist.
the funny thing is that the guy who's review you found is a real nut job. self styled "self educated biologist", math person who has discovred some new math or something. click his link to find out about him
Wittgenstein
Re: latest essays: Read und learn your Wittgenstein.
This one seems like a more to-the-point explanation to me.
Witty and religion interesting enough. I'm wondering if some of it is clumsily walking into ignosticism when they're saying "is P" is used in different senses. I'm pretty sure I could coax the "is P" out of a religious believer, and if they couldn't do that then their model of their own belief would be somewhat... well, crap at doing its job.
Krypteria...
I haven't been on a "let's go find some new music" trip for a long time, but I'm quite surprised it's taken me this long to find Krypteria. And some of it is serious earworm.
Is she lezzing-it-up with herself here?
Zo... you are vantink ze new muzak, ya?
My exposure to non-mainstream music is sorely lacking. This is all I have to counter with:
"Mainstream" is so relative as a term, though. There are people I know who consider Nightwish to be mainstream, despite them never having had anything in the UK chart to my knowledge and so don't fit any meaningful definition of "mainstream".
I think once we understand how "mainstream" and "alternative" music works, we'll understand everything about the human condition. I could re-write all of skepticism and human rationality with this as the analogy.
Here's the most obscure group I know, though I'm not sure if local unsigned group featuring a guy I vaguely knew at school counts as "obscure" as it's practically unknown by definition. But the EP is free to download, apparently: http://esolovesyou.bandcamp.com/
Altering user comments
You altered my comment with [1]. I reverted, requesting it be left as-is, there is reason for red links in that comment, it shows that a page name is being suggested, and it will, in the future, show whether or not the page was created or moved. I was again reverted by Weaseloid. So, for my understanding of RationalWiki practice, will you please explain this thing to me? I understand that some users don't like red links on article pages, though I've certainly seen exceptions. But on a Talk page? What's the problem? To what extent will the mob allow users to edit the comments of other users? It can be a very slippery slope, some people tend to get pissed off about it.
There has been long standing policy/tradition that you can edit user comments for functionality. If they mistyped a template, if they added redlinks, if they forgot to put the : at the beginning to show it's a new comment, etc.
Okay, so here I should have created the page? That would, then, not create a "page to be created." Adding a red link showed that the text was a proposed page name, and the proposals were actually being made, as they would balance, sauce for the goose, etc. Symmetry. On the other hand, if RW doesn't want real debate, I'd like to know that, too.
I'll say, however, that I find the practice of eliminating redlinks from Talk pages to be a possible bit of "hiding the history." I also noticed this particular redlink, Armondikov, which you created on Talk:Grappling_Ignorance a few days ago. Of course, that page was deleted, is that the difference? That could be arranged. I'm just trying to understand the practice, being a n00b here.
The further annals of the humanities vs science fight
Thought I'd share this with you:
The comments section of this blog post devolves into yet another "science is harder than history/sociology/writing" "no it's not!" fight.
I'm impressed, it took me until I scrolled 55% the way down the page to see the word "Hitler".
Didn't read the whole thing, but it seemed fairly sensible to me. Social sciences and humanities are not in principle easier, but are generally graded more leniently. Maybe if they were held to the same standards, there would be less bullshit being cranked out by social science departments.
There might be something of a "there is no wrong answer" culture in social sciences, perhaps. I did once see someone say Philosophy was superior because it craved disagreement, and the entire aim of Philosophy was to come up with clever ways to disagree with people, while science demanded everyone to agree and allowed no dissent. They kind of missed the point, I think.
Philosophy != social science. One of the biggest problems is not a culture, but a cult -- The Cult of the P-Value.
Pony tails
Why did he have to qualify it at all?
See, if he had said "anyone who is raped has a limited window to get a hormone shot", no one would have cared. But he has to qualify it. "real rape" "honestly raped". Why? something is in his mind to make him need that qualification. He would not have said "If someone has actually been robbed, they should go to the people". He'd just say "if you are robbed, it's your duty to go to the police". his qualification implies that he does not think most people are "actually" raped.
Any exceptions you make to something as strong as a pro-life stance become, effectively, sacred. The idea of someone faking a rape become a very salient situation when you have this as an exception to a strong belief, however rare it might be in reality.
The alternative explanation is that it's an off the cuff remark and didn't really mean anything.
Remember, we're dealing with a class of people paranoid enough to be this stupid over the subject. So these exceptions that they put in (rape, incest, "if the mother is in danger") are pretty sacred cows. They're saying "I'm going to give you access to this because of circumstance X, you better not abuse my trust" when they add such exceptions. Hence the need to add "honest" or "legitimate" or "genuine" (which I don't think would illicit such a reaction if prefixed in front of any other crime) when they're talking
BUT this is exactly the reason these sort of exceptions just won't work in practice and are fundamentally stupid. Do they demand that they go to the hospital within hours or days? Do they demand a conviction first? Or what?
While i understand that is what is in his mind, i don't understand defending it. at all. He also stated, THREE TIMES in that one interview that "killing 9 lb babies is reprehensible, yet we allow abortion". He is either in his fucked up mind by accident, or carefully, blatantly conflating the issues. One time its: "rape is rare, only a few women are really raped, so it's not necessary to talk about", The other time it's: "near term babies are just like people, killing them is reprehensible - therefore, abortion is wrong". but in both cases, the issue is to make you associate one thing (most rapes are faked) with another (there for rape exceptions would be infrequent at best).
This bothers me so much, because it's part of a grown trend in how our politicians are talking about women, and issues that apply mostly or only to them.
In the real world, it is 100000 times better today for rape victims than it was in the 80s. I have seen the centers, talked with police women who specialize in rapes, etc. And that is amazing for victims. But in the political world, we jump backwards. We say women are asking for it. we say "it's rare", we dismiss it. I am angered every time one of these men talk without any knowledge of what they are saying. He has 2 daughters, and i think 3 grand daughters. It's not "unlikely" one of them has been raped, it's highly probably. But he doesn't get it.
2 weeks ago, New Hampshire tries to pass a law that prevents a cop from taking away an abusive spouse, if the cop was not a direct witness to the assault. Even if witnesses report yelling and screaming, and the cop arrives to find her face bashed in. Why do you even present such a bill?
Why are we so willing to dismiss women? seriously.
I'm emphatically not defending everything else he said. In fact there's a serious leap of logic in there that makes no sense.
I'm merely saying that focusing on "honest" and assuming he's magically developed a new category of rape (a la the "forcible" wording from a while back) is putting words into his mouth. In fact it distracts heavily from the other problems in his argument. So the headline is "Ron Paul thinks there's 'dishonest' and 'honest' rape" when it should be "Ron Paul thinks there's no difference between 1 minute after and 1 minute before birth, so there's no difference between 9 months before and 9 months after, either". Because the latter is definitely what he's said and clarified and unpacked thoroughly, the former is a single throwaway word that probably doesn't mean much.
I don't agree. This issue, how these particular men define and see rape, is as important to the lives of women as their right to abort. Fine, for you the abortion issue, the conclusion that "One month and nine month" are the same is a big deal. (it is to me as well). But when I hear these men talk about rape like this (And yes, he does see a distinction) is to watch women who have to sit in court and try to defend themselves: "if you were raped, you deserved it", "you went to his room, why did you do that", "you said no too late, didn't you". I've seen it; it goes on. and language like this fuels it.
That's why it's a big deal. cause it's not about abortion or exemptions. it's about a view of women, and of being raped.
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