RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive275 on wheels

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, (new)(back)

My pet cosmic model

My preferred way of imagining how the universe works is this: 1. It came out of 'nothing' (no God et al.) 2. It is 'one' (no multiverse) 3. It is a one-shot universe, a once-in-an-eternity reality. That means that when it 'dies' booting a new universe will be impossible. Is there any cosmological theory or theorist that supports the way I love to imagine this? What is your own pet theory? --Gewgtweg (talk) 19:35, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

It's turtles all the way down.--Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:17, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

1. Universe born from (physical, not phylosophical) nothingness (quantum fluctuation), 2. Likely one of a whole lot (multiverse, even if what model of multiverse is open to discussion), 3. Given that eternity is a very long time maybe things could repeat again. --Panzerfaust (talk) 00:01, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

As we-the-inhabitants (including 'sky-watching-and-model-of-the-universe-constructing' entities on other planets) can only see some bits of the universe and have a necessarily incomplete understanding of the whole, we can only make guesses. And 'the lifespan of the universe is very long' so the possibilities may be changing with time.

To what extent are those bits of the universe which cannot be observed because they are beyond the transmission of light horizon effectively in a different part of the multiverse - and there can be a meta-universe which includes all the parts of the multiverse.

If you want 'the gods' to exist, they will; but even if you don't be ethical, accept that other people do believe, acknowledge creativity and enjoy 'wonder at the universe and the beauty that can be found in it.' And, above all, keep a sense of fun and a sense of proportion. 86.191.125.149 (talk) 09:46, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Atheist, agnostic and humanist charities

NPR interviewed Richard dawkins recently and the host brought up the issue of atheist organizations not being on the same tier as religious organizations when it comes to charity. I wonder what the exact numbers are? [1]
Also, do you think Rationalwiki supporting something like one lap top per child or water filters in developing actions would be a good means of getting us and other forms of atheist charitable communities increased media coverage? I know the servers must be expensive but Wikimedia uses some of it's donations for organizing official events doesn't it? I think it would help in meeting some of the optimistic long term goals? What do you all think? X-Factor (talk) 01:09, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

1) RationalWiki ≠ AtheistWiki. 2) There is an enormous amount of charity abuse: donating to elite private schools, golf-related crap, opera, Trump charities, and possibly even shadier ones. For some of the worst, take a look at this.[2] So, just because there's a buttload of religious charities out there, doesn't mean they actually do anything worthwhile. Bongolian (talk) 02:41, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

What would our ancestors think?

The following comments I heard got me thinking really:

Meh. The same facility of argument upthread that warns against painting a rosy picture of any time period could equally be applied to the present. I very much don't think that the combination of humans and environment was ever designed by mother nature, no matter the epoch, to make the average human subject miserable. Especially when the concept of misery itself changes. Not enough leeway is being made here for our brain's adaptive capabilities (and relative pleasures). Are all animals, since their lives are "nasty shortish brute" and so forth, miserable? (I keep using the word miserable, but feel free to substitute whatever negative word you'd like. As another bit for thought, going back in time and telling some human ancestor we now spend several hours a day parked in front of static two-dimensional chunks of plastic that emit little dots of light might result in some, perhaps zen-like, guffaws of sad amusement.)

And given the absolutely fantastic technological leverage humans now enjoy today, is it not true that that leverage comes with a greater potential for planet-ending outcomes?

You're absolutely right, they'd probably laugh at people reading books too (and after understanding, perhaps make comments to the effect, "Look at all the burdens your technologies place on you. Having to spend most days in a room learning for years and years, instead of living your life."). But here's where your equivalence between books and screen entertainment rings false, in modern contexts, we know better, that reading tends to be much more nutritive than tv or playing candy crush. They'd laugh even after grasping what the two-dimensional chunk of plastic does. (For a modern treatise on the vapidity of some of our modern entertainments, for anyone who likes reading (a lot), see David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest".)Machina (talk) 23:31, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Then the laughing would stop once they realize how shitty their medicine and law penalties were.—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 00:49, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Hopefully the smartest of them would also see that those chunks of plastic had more usefulness than just giving entertainment (being able to carry at worst an entire library with you and at best (almost) the entire knowledge of our species. And especially once they saw the insides of them and were given some knowledge of the "magic" that powers them (remember Clarke's Third Law) would understand why we spend so many years learning.

It's also debatable how could we be seen from the perspective of the future, for the good or the bad. --Panzerfaust (talk) 09:29, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Fuck 'em They're dead. --MtD^Bogan 13:29, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Rome Viharo attacking David Gerard

Rome Viharo's latest hit piece is attacking David Gerard and Rationalwiki [3]. Is there any chance you can add a section about this to his article? 166.88.123.6 (talk) 05:16, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

"But I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki!" Drink! RW wasn't founded by David Gerard and we don't claim to be an encyclopedia. This guy's an idiot. Christopher (talk) 12:57, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

In general, drama is not a goal of ours to document, unless that drama happens to represent something important in terms of: pseudoscience, woo, or authoritarianism. Drama focusing on one of our editors seems to double-down on bad-idea stuff. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 15:54, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

"Hi, mom!" Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:18, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

RationalWiki doesn’t claim to be an encyclopedia? Does it need to when it looks just like Wikipedia? Is there a disclaimer on the website anywhere that says all articles are not intended to be used for research? Even if I allowed RationalWiki that grace, it still changes nothing in the point of this article.

1. Just because something looks like Wikipedia doesn't mean it shares the same mission.
2. Maybe he should read RationalWiki to understand it's not an encyclopedia.
3. Just because something is not an encyclopedia doesn't mean it's not research-worthy.
4. This guy is retarded.—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 17:35, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

I also turn out never to have edited Rome Viharo. He followed me to Reddit /r/buttcoin too, where his line is not quite being accepted uncritically - David Gerard (talk) 09:24, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Any possibility that all the attention will bring more people to RationalWiki? CorruptUser (talk) 23:10, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Comparing both website's alexa ranks (his blog, us) I doubt it, he's a lot more obscure than us. Christopher (talk) 15:17, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

When he was updating the "notes and references" to include our responses he edited bits out, he could've provided a link to the discussion. Christopher (talk) 15:20, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

He rejects common reality and substitutes it with his own. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:28, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:25, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Anything to do with people from RW viewing his site? I know almost nothing about computers so I wouldn't know. Christopher (talk) 14:49, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

It got on Hacker News - David Gerard (talk) 15:56, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

About this article

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unabomber

I know I might sound like a broken record (my apologies), but I don't think the part where it says ignorance of history adequately addresses the issues about psychology that he gets at (also the citations seem to be missing for the counter data). Nothing about depression or self esteem which seemed to be the focus for his writing. Also I'm not 100% about stating that what he wrote was skimmed though (seems to weaken the criticism against him).

I'm not trying to endorse a noble savage view (of which I know is mistaken). But it seems like if there was an attempt to "debunk" him, it doesn't address the right points.

On another note, do those who use the references read them before citing them? I'm just curious. Machina (talk) 22:24, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

How to Create an Urban Legend

I'm curious about the Saloon Bar's perspective on today's Basic Instructions comic. The comic has been in "re-runs" for years now, so there's commentary under each page that can often be quite interesting. I too failed to evade hearing the octo-chicken myth; once by a friend who says everything as if he believes it (but probably didn't), once by someone who clearly did believe it, and once by my mom who thought it was a joke. So, be it in regards to comic, commentary, or both, what might you want to share? Any thoughts? Feelings? Sudden involuntary expulsions of beverage? ~ <3 00:32, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Your link doesn't work, this works for me although they look identical. Christopher (talk) 15:05, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Love's link ends with %7C, which translates to a vertical bar |; Christopher's link doesn't. Nowhere Man (talk) 18:17, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Gotchhh. I haven't made many edits yet, so I'm still not entirely familiar with RMF's formatting; besides of course the brackets, apparently off-wiki hyperlinks work entirely differently from in-wiki links. ~ <3 19:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Link to another RW page = pipe (|), link to external site = space (you know what a space is), because pipes can be used in URLs but spaces can't and vice versa for RW pages. See Help:links for more info. Christopher (talk) 19:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

To be an Urban Legend..... do something stupid and become famous for it XD --Rimuru Tempest (talk) 19:25, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

How soon after the first 'towns and cities' did the first urban legend emerge? (And how many of them were village legends updated?) 86.191.125.149 (talk) 21:44, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Good question. And is a sheep-herder or farmhand legend factual reporting, in contrast to an urban legend? nobs 19:57, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Probably some of the stories of 'them in the next village/the other end of this village/them who live by the (whatever) or in the shepherds' huts (and you know what #they# (variously) get up to) were transferred to the next street, suburb, guild, temple...

And, very soon after the use of 'lumps of chalk and charcoal' for drawing were discovered, somebody invented graffiti/drawing inappropriate images on the palace and temple walls. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:01, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Fornication in the Bible

Hey guyyyss can you find something for me? Something in my head says that the Bible never explicitly mentions fornication, but only mentions adultery. Is that right? I feel like I've read it here but tbh I don't want to go searching for it and I don't even know if I'm right. Thanks! Koifishdevelopment (swim) 13:27, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Possibly it depends upon which version/translation of the Bible you happen to read. 86.146.100.119 (talk) 13:30, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Blue Letter Bible is a good resource for such things. It's also got a Greek and Hebrew references (click on 'tools') if you wanna check translations and the like. -- Onychoprion (talk) 15:06, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, let me just take the opportunity and quote one of the classics. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 15:19, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

In the NT you got Jesus saying you can't put away your wife except "saving for the cause of fornication," which leads to the question then What is the difference between fornication and adultery?, which does not quite square with modern definitions. Then, in the OT, Gen. chapter 28, you got a widowed Judah screwing his widowed daughter-in-law Tamar (who became pregnant by whoredom, from which bloodline Jesus was born) and I guess it all worked out in the end. So, one probably should not begin from the premise that biblical fornication means out of wedlock sex, cause it doesn't. nobs 19:43, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Of course it's down to the translation. here is just one verse. You can do this multiple times. And this is the --Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:18, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

And here is Nobs' verse with multiple words for fornication.--Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:26, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

To be fair to nobs, Jesus is pretty down on sex in general. "Look on a woman with lust"=adultery. Add in the craziness that is Saul of Tarsus, and man, shit gets real, real, real anti-sex. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:38, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

And there's more: listening on an evangelical radio a preacher citing Saul's verses and asking women to be subservient to their husbands, even when gender violence is a very thorny issue here and said radio emitsmaong its adverts PSAs against that. Seriously. --Panzerfaust (talk) 21:51, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough nobs. Thanks guys. Yeah, I checked around and the Bible is pretty clear on it. Thanks. Koidevelopment (talk) 01:24, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I dunno. I think God isn't down on sex per se, he think he's more down on being obsessed with sex, like anything else, dope, alcohol, etc. If a person lives to get laid, and that's all that in their mind constantly, and they have sex with a lot of people with no intent to build a lasting relationship or have a family, that's fornication. nobs 05:02, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

And nothing on what the wife is #not# allowed to divorce the husband for - and what happens if she is a gold digger/spends all his money 'and all the other reasons and problems on both sides why couples get divorced'?

To what extent does fornication = 'they are getting more sex/enjoying it more than I am' rather than plain adultery (where there is no such implication)? 86.146.100.119 (talk) 13:24, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

You're looking at it through the cultural lense of you're own time. By nature, men and women are meant to be together. There are special provisions for Nazarenes, hippies of a sort who dropped out of society to live a sexless life. There is a command to take care of widows, and (in the OT) ostracize gays. So just about any able bodied male was expected to be married, serve in the armed service, support a wife and family, and pay the temple tax and fines for all the sins of his whole family. Women, being more in number, had to compete to keep a husband, cause the only alternatives are widowhood or whoredom. And if a female ended up selling her ass on the street cause she couldn't keep a husband, she'd be booted out of the community.

I'd define biblical fornication (Old & New Testament) as an obsessive sex addiction that causes a person to use other people in a selfish, unloving way, and abuse themselves. An addiction that ultimately interferes with their ability to perform their societal responsibilities such as having a family and rearing the next generation to know God, among other responsibilities (like contributing to the temple or church to support widows and orphans, etc.). Being "me" centered rather than family and society centered. nobs 16:24, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Adultry has more to do with betrayal of an oath than as mere sex crime or addiction. Faithlessness. nobs 16:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Small skeptical review of the link between sugar, sweeteners and stroke/dementia risk

This study apparently recieved some media hype back in April.

Thankfully, the guys at Examine.com took the time to write up a critical analysis of said study (and the way in which it was cited by the media).

It's a good read, especially if you happen to drink your fair share of diet soda (like I do). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:55, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Facts aren't enough for pro-vaccination activists -- apparently maps are

Facts Alone Won’t Convince People To Vaccinate Their Kids. Herr FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 11:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

What else is new? Wait, what? Maps will? Nice link regardless — thx. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I posted this in WIGO:Blogs a few days ago, and it demonstrates to me what I've always thought was the lesson that skeptics as a whole should have learned from the fight against creationism. Back in the '70s and '80s, many scientists engaged in evolutionary research did not want to actually debate creationists and engage the public, believing that debate was a waste of their time because the facts would speak for themselves. This allowed right-wing Christian outfits to spread anti-evolution propaganda with virtually no pushback, while painting their opponents as afraid to debate them. There were people like Carl Sagan who recognized that this was a bad idea, but their popular science work was often dismissed at the time for lacking scientific rigor. By the '90s, scientists began to realize that the facts wouldn't merely speak for themselves if they didn't have compelling arguments backing them up. After all, to quote the page on Very Serious People, "bullshit wrapped in a folksy anecdote and a G-rated zinger is more worthy of praise than the sober counter-point", at least as far as the public is concerned. Since then, we've had a very successful popular science campaign that's essentially driven creationism out of mainstream debate, such that they tried (and failed) to rebrand it about fifteen years ago as intelligent design in order to get around the stigma it had developed. Other debunkers of pseudoscience and bigotry are learning the same hard lessons that biologists did — if you just assume that "the facts will speak for themselves" and don't actually defend them, you open the door for cranks to pander to people's gut feelings and get them to believe that the facts aren't facts at all, but are fraudulent. Anti-vaxxers, global warming deniers, white supremacists, and MRAs are playing from the same book that the creationists wrote. KevinR1990 (talk) 16:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. EvoWiki provided the phrase Sanctioning the devil for people who refuse to debate. FuzzyCatPotato of the Female Arc welders (talk/stalk) 17:15, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Good points. Defining the terms of the debate is half the battle. If you let the other side define the debate, you're at a big disadvantage. E.g., Ken Ham is constantly trying to define the terms of the YEC debate with the non-scientific terms of observational vs. historical science. Bongolian (talk) 03:20, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Which logical fallacy is this

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/may/27/sarah-silverman/did-rand-paul-equate-right-health-care-slavery/

I have a friend who said that if healthcare was a right then it would be a logical conclusion that this is what would happen. That we could pull doctors out of there homes for treatment. Trying to decide which logical fallacy this would be. Assuming it is one.

P.S. New here, thanks for having me.^{— Unsigned, by: ‎Slowcooked / talk / contribs}

First, hi there and welcome.

Second, please sign your post with four tildes (~~~~)

Third, classically, that's a false equivalence, where two things, one being a legal mandate to do certain things in certain cases as might be expected by professional ethics anyways, the other being chattel slavery in perpetuity, are treated as morally and logically equivalent when they're not. It also incorporates a slippery slope where a completely different version of universal healthcare, where the government merely helps finance, is foretold to slide into a much more extreme version of the same, where the government controls all aspects of healthcare. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:28, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

I could see it being slippery slope (if we make healthcare a right, then physicians will be dragged from their homes against their will), with straw man characteristics (more implied, but basically "They want to make it legal to enslave doctors!"). In the end, the biggest fallacy I see is it's outright bullshit, since a) other countries where healthcare's a right don't have doctors being dragged from their houses, b) in the US other things that are rights that involve other people (representation by lawyer, e.g.) also don't result in people being dragged out of their homes against their will. -- Onychoprion (talk) 18:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

False equivalence redirects to balance fallacy which I don't think is relevant. I'd say it's a straw man and slippery slope. Christopher (talk) 19:26, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Slippery sloppe at the very least. Plus either a lack of knowledge of what happens in those countries with public healthcare or being a douchebag. Being who is and what I've readen here, I'm inclined to the latter. --Panzerfaust (talk) 20:42, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow, that's a shitty redirect on our part. Those things are, at best, tacitly related. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

No one has the right to demand payment for service from a third party (the US taxpayer) without a civil judgement for damages. nobs 00:17, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

So you want to abolish the paid military? Seems a bit extreme, nobs. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:54, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Attorneys can be required to work pro bono, though. They just aren't required to do a good job at it, at least not beyond not committing legal malpractice. And even if they do commit legal malpractice, the attorneys specializing in that are considered the scum amongst scum, thus tend to be the attorneys that were too incompetent for the other fields. CorruptUser (talk) 06:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Required to work pro bono isn't the same as being physically dragged from your house at the point of a gun to represent someone. That just doesn't happen. And I might be mistaken, but already doctors do work without the patient paying, because patients are charged after treatment, and bankruptcy is a thing. If I get hit by a car on my way home today and have to spend 17 days in ICU, there's no way in Hell I can pay for that, but I'll've already spent those days in hospital.

So either the nightmare scenario Paul poses won't happen (and thus it's a bullshit strawman on a slippery slope), or it already is happening not just to doctors, but layers, too. Though I wouldn't put it passed Paul to start pushing for the repeal of right to trail. _{Oh, wait, we already got rid of that. Nevermind} -- Onychoprion (talk) 18:52, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Building a real Noah's Ark

Correct me if I'm wrong, but would a realistic Noah Ark be a vessel -in the current times a space station or spaceship- that instead of living animals stored their "seeds" (spem and eggs), leaving aside of course the differences in construction techniques and materials?

I've noted that the history of Noah's ark fails also in what refers to logistics. In order to build something so huge you'd need specialized tools that I seriously doubt a family could create by itself, measurements, etc. It's not just as building a small fishing boat --Panzerfaust (talk) 20:49, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Well most people think its just Noah and his sons that built the Ark but most fail to remember a lot of his family was still alive during the building of the boat, they die before it is completely finished though. So it wasn't just 4 men working n the boat.--Rimuru Tempest 21:05, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Would't them be puzzled for the building of a ship so big and once they knew the truth would attempt to be passengers by force? --Panzerfaust (talk) 21:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

You don't believe in a literal Noah's ark do you? Christopher (talk) 21:10, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

If you're refering to an interstellar ship named Ark that appears on Frederik Pohl's novel The World At the End of Time, where animals are transported either in suspended animation -like several hundreds of people- or just their gametes, yes, I think we may built in the future something alike... if we do not extinguish before. If you're refering to the alternate Universe version where it appears as basically a manual to build a realistic ship of that kind, complete with descriptions of wood with properties that allowed to build something so big and the logistics, yes. The Biblical version is just an allegory at best. --Panzerfaust (talk) 21:36, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There was Noah and his family, the tribe in the Gilgamesh story and many others - 'the locals' got tired of the non-productive flooding, put everything into 'coracles, punts and other boats with low drafts' and drifted/steered themselves to places that higher ground/were flooded less frequently. These stories, several times retold from different sources were conflated into one grand unified flood myth, and the best storytellers named the characters.

Does this seem reasonably plausible?

Now we have seed banks, the Memory of the World Project and similar. 86.134.53.72 (talk) 21:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Another problem would be making the calculations for engineering such a ship. 2000 years ago, much of the mathematical knowledge we have now was not known. Even in the 1950's it could take a couple days to solve a calculus problem. I have to wonder how they would be able to do the mathematical calculations?--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:59, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

^^^. This would have been long before calculus and long before Noah would have been able to do such equations. The ship also would have undulated so badly in regular, coastal seas that it would have sank long ago before it ever reached flood-level seas. This is possibly the single greatest article I've ever read concerning the Flood. Enjoy all 38 pages of it. Koi "dammit Koi stop making such long sigs!" development 03:41, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks for the link. EDIT. Basically requires an insane number of GodDidIts to work. Oh well...--Panzerfaust (talk) 07:49, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Noah and family with all their animals and objects on a series of linked standard build barges (with protection against the sun) floating 'merrily, merrily down the stream' (and living off the surroundings) until they find the higher ground in this area makes so much more sense - and the 'story rememberers' do 'my ancestors did it all bigger and better than your ancestors' until it turns into the Gilgamesh story/Noah story. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 14:45, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Is Nibiru email real?

Hey Guys! VVell, i just vvas traveling throug the internet and i founded this

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/447

Could nibiru be real or is it just some random asshole posting that shit everyvvhere? i vvant to discuss if this email is something official, or if it vvas some random guy posting that to every people he could find. Also this page says some clue it could be just some random email sent to podesta

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/721260/Hillary-Clinton-Nibiru-email-released-by-wikileaks

Can you respond to me? Im scared ^{— Unsigned, by: DinoKiller65 / talk / contribs}

That mail has black hole level densities of BS. Do not worry, when someone who uses a Gmail account and not something more serious, and talks about that information having come from someone who has an alient implant on her brain you can be pretty much safe it's just woo (I'll add more later, tablets suck for writing long messages) --Panzerfaust (talk) 20:43, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Cut-and-paste woo that was widely spammed into the comments sections of crank websites over three years ago is just now getting "released" by WikiLeaks? Very bad quality control. Leuders (talk) 21:06, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

No, Nibiru isn't real. Though looking through the articles on Nibiru and Planet X we have doesn't go into very good debunking detail; I should fix that. I'll do a brief thing here, though.

The orbit mentioned - highly eccentric with a period of ~3600 years with an aphelion less than 1AU from the sun is highly highly unstable, and for an object larger than Earth as claimed, would make the entire solar system unstable with it's gravitational influences. If it existed, we wouldn't, because the Earth wouldn't've been in the the habitable region for any consecutive 100,000 years, let alone 4.5 billion.

Putting all that aside, though, it couldn't be hiding behind the sun's glare and be "24-or-so months" away from perihelion (for an orbit like that, the time it'd spend closer to the Sun than Jupiter would be miniscule, on the order of months, and since it's allegedly much smaller than Jupiter, it'd have to do all it's world-ending-ness within that time-frame). The simple reason is that the Earth orbits the sun, so anything on that orbit that's 2 years away from being close to Earth would appear much more like a star which, as any astrologer will tell you, means it wouldn't be obscured by the sun for very long. Every day the Earth travels about 1 degree around the sun, meaning anything behind it one day would be not behind it the very next day. The sun, mind, is only a half-degree in diameter. Civilian solar telescopes have the ability to block out the actual disk of the sun to study the faint corona, which means anything not physically obscured within that half-degree wouldn't be secret for long.

Another point is that if Nibiru existed, and has an orbital period of ~3600 years, it would be common knowledge because something 10 times the size of Earth that passes closer than 1 AU to the sun would be very bright, easily visible to the naked eye, for a few years on either side of its perihelion. Written language is older than 3600 years, and there'd've been records of a "wandering star" appearing, growing brighter, then dimming, then vanishing if it happened. That's the type of thing that gets written down, and astronomers are really good at corroborating ancient observations with what they were.

In short, no, Nibiru doesn't exist, and no celestial body poses an imminent threat to Earth. Well, except NEOs, but that's a whole other can of worms, but a) no known NEOs pose a significant threat within the forseeable future and b) NEOs aren't being covered up, but rather there are lots of organizations, both public and private, putting a lot of money into looking for them lest they sneak up on us. But those don't cause periodic earthquakes or pole-shifts; they cause explosions and mass-extinctions. Worrying about NEOs is real, though, but you may as well worry about gamma ray bursts, coronal mass ejections, or a vacuum-energy bubble enveloping the Earth for all you could do to do anything about it. ;) -- Onychoprion (talk) 21:09, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I see someone has come here before me. Anyway, here're more reasons not to be worried:

1) The e-mail comes from gmail.com. Had it come from nasa.gov or any university it could be taken perhaps more seriously.

2) Note also the poor composition of that message -an astronomer and the like would have written something far better, including orbital parameters and not vage references about hitting in 2016 (FAIL) or 2017.

3) Nancy Lieder and Zecharia Sitchin. 'Nuff said.

4) They say that it will impact in October of this year. Was it true, said planet could now be seen at dawn (no, that bright star currently visible at dawn is the planet Venus and is totally harmless unless you go there unprotected) and amateur astronomers would have reported it. No NASA, Donald Trump, or whatever could hide that fact (and if goverments are so bad at holding leaks, why something far more serious than a trade treaty was not to be leaked?), especially when it was so close that it could be seen with the naked eye.

5) Just in case, Nibiru is NOT that bright yellow star that can be seen to the west after sunset. That's the planet Jupiter. Nor another bright yellow star not very high in the south from mid northern latitudes (that is Saturn).

--Panzerfaust (talk) 21:29, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

The main problem with Nibiru is the 'fear, alarm and despondency' caused by proponents of the 'theory. ' 21:50, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Noble Savage or Good point?

http://huntergatherers.org

Really just the first chapter. I don't know a lick about anthropology so I'm not sure if they're championing the myth or not. Machina (talk) 21:51, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Just based on what I know of the Australian Aboriginal peoples -

"relinquish any notion of control, either over other people or their environment" Controlled Burning.

"They do not interfere with the reproduction of crucial species nor the distribution of food resources" plenty of megafauna went extinct shortly after humans arrived on the continent.

"they famously do not interfere in the affairs of other hgs" various archaeological artefacts (such as shields and warclubs) and customs surrounding trespass on traditional grounds, vengeance raids, actual warfare (of the lots of yelling and a handful of deaths usually, I assume) and the like show this to be false. Also trade, especially across the Timor and Arafura Seas, if I remember my Yr11 Australian History correctly. Oh, and inter- as well as intra- tribal corroboree (a communal gathering centred around Dreamtime dances and tellings).

"respecting individual autonomy as much as any people that has ever existed" Initiation rites, men's/women's business, aforementioned concept of outsiders trespass. Skeletal injuries indicative of domestic violence against women and children.

" no intentional alteration of the gene pool of any species of animal or plant with which they are in contact"

I have no problem with that statement, although it is unclear if the citation (Panter-Brick et al. 2001) refers to that sentence or the whole paragraph. (Minor Edit: just that sentence).

So my money is on championing the myth. Daev (talk) 22:45, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

While there are some selective reasoning as noted by a poster above, the general thesis- that hunting and gathering wasn't some hellish, brutal existence when compared to most of "civilized" history- is generally accepted by historians. Obviously the author is exaggerating about how great it was in parts, but is it peddling a myth? It's just a new agey thing (Paleo fad) which tries to push real stuff into silly territory. I think the bigger myth is that paleolithic man were a bunch of bestial "cavemen" grunting and hitting each other with clubs. Though it seems they did hit quite a few cro-magnons with clubs... Hentropy (talk) 23:03, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

It's just that when I see many citations and a long bibliography I tend to think they are correct that the lifestyle was better then what we have today. This is another bit by the same author: http://fifteen.dividedquantum.info/

This also seems to be another bit about how civilization is a bad idea. TO give just a brief excerpt: "There are clear psychological needs that are not met by civilization; hunter-gatherers typify the role, sociologically and psychologically, into which humans evolved, and it is not surprising that, when people were taken out of that role, psychological aberration ensued." Machina (talk) 23:42, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

There probably are psychological needs that civilization meets imperfectly; Freud realized as much. The problem with hunting/gathering is that it doesn't allow much of a permanent physical culture; no written word, no hospitals, no Internet. We imagine that our lives would be diminished unacceptably without those things. The problem we face is the massive inequalities that got their start with agriculture, and the need for regimentation to make sure that the drudgery needed to maintain civilization gets done. The psychological impact of civilization comes from the need to create systems of compulsion to do those things. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 01:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Isn't there a compulsion according to biology to deal with hunting and gathering food? Also equality is only possible in death. Life is always going to be about inequality.Machina (talk) 01:22, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Limited physical culture sets limits to inequality. It will exist; it will also be confined to what you can carry. No one has to make us eat, or search food; we will "choose" to do those things because our instincts send us in the right direction. Also, Homo sapiens is the worst weed species, an ecological disaster everywhere they set foot. All of the Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions, from Europe to the Americas to Australia, coincide with the appearance of humans. The current round is simply a continuation of the process, slowly extending to kill off the African large animals that evolved concurrently with humans. The typical pattern, from Cro-Magnon to Clovis, is that you see a hunting culture perfecting their flint points, that collapses when the big game they hunted go extinct. This happened to the big game depicted in the cave paintings in Europe; happened also in North and South America, happened in Australia, happened more recently in New Zealand and Madagascar. Hunter-gatherers will rape their environment and suffer population collapses; the survivors will make do with what's left at much smaller population levels. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 01:29, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Rather abrasive to be honest, but I can see your point. SO you think the author is wrong? Also assuming you are right about humans (that we are a disaster in any era), what about now? How do you deal with such a thought?Machina (talk) 03:00, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Isn't necessary to deal with; it just is. Fortunately Homo sapiens, like all intelligent life, is a self-limiting phenomenon. What's left of the ecosystem will bounce back without us, the way it always has with other mass extinctions. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 10:08, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

What about this point about their psychology? http://9-1.huntergatherers.org/ Machina (talk) 02:16, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Non-solar melanin production

So, scientists are developing a pill that stimulates the body's of melanin, leading to suntan/skin darkening without having to risk UV exposure.

Who wants to place bets on how soon the lunatic fringe will paint this as the latest salvo in "white genocide" by removing their most obvious feature and subsuming them into the hued masses of humanity? Or come up with your own over-the-top reaction, your imagination is probably better than mine. 76.208.80.79 (talk) 21:25, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

LOL I'd not have thought of white genocide claims! XD My mind went immediately to people blaming Big Pharma for the downfall of tanning salons or something. "Now they're synthetic chemical is better than all-natural sunlights?!" Then probably something about chemtrails, clouds to block the sun and conspiracies to make everyone complacant by inducing Seasonal Affective Disorder. White genocide is good, though! -- Onychoprion (talk) 21:40, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm waiting for people on the left to compare it to blackface. It's racially-insensitive white genocide, folks. FuzzyCatPotato of the Fucked-up Oaks (talk/stalk) 21:43, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Tanning beds have been genociding white people for decades.[4] 😉 Bongolian (talk) 02:51, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Or Melanin Theory, ever popular with Afrocentrists. In this case, it would possibly be seen as a good thing-- hey, here's a magic pill that gives everyone the same superpowers as whoever it is that gets superpowers from a surfeit of dark skin tones. --73.108.184.31 (talk) 09:31, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Most of them would just move the goalposts and say it has to be natural melanin, not "chemically induced" melanin. A few of them may complain that "they're the only people who deserve the increased intelligence and ability to convert light into sound (?) that melanin gives them" and that evil white people are stealing it. Christopher (talk) 09:47, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Phase two is a virus that makes the treatment permanent, hidden in a flu vaccine. 90.222.158.224 (talk) 19:20, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

But viruses have no effect on the body! They must be radioactive viruses or something. Christopher (talk) 19:27, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Phase three for "white genocide" is a CRISPR/Cas system that makes the whole human race generate plenty of melanin. 😉 Bongolian (talk) 20:11, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

South Korean Mech in Discover

Discover has Method-2 a bipedal robot being piloted by Yang Jin-Ho, CEO of Hankook Mirae Technology with the help of Hollywood special effects veteran Vitaly Bulgarov of Terminator, Robocop and Transformers fame. I wasn't sure it was mission pertinent or worth an article, but thought it was interesting Discover had this featured in a blog. X-Factor (talk) 04:43, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Land bank

Are 'land banks the scam' on mission or not - the ones where you buy a bit of a field as an 'investment' and wait for building development companies to buy you out (when said companies are actually run by practical business people who will buy the fields with only one owner and much less hassle)? 86.191.125.203 (talk) 10:18, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Again Nibiru, but this time a senator

Again guys, i return to have a question

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx_yuCFHziQ

This guy is just talking some random thing that they sended to him? or thats a real affirmation? Can you explain that video? or debunk it?^{— Unsigned, by: DinoKiller65 / talk / contribs}

I don't speak Portuguese, do you know what he's saying? Christopher (talk) 12:18, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

He was s talking about that a "advisor" (im dont sure what sayed in that moment) sended a question about nibiru, that was getting closer to earth, it will kill 2/3 (well you already know the story) and that he was going to pass that to other senators to check if nibiru was really getting closer to earth or if it was just a false story^{— Unsigned, by: DinoKiller65 / talk / contribs}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. (You can indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line.) Thank you.

And why is this evidence for nibiru? Christopher (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Ehm, i just questioned what do you think and if that was meaning or not my friend. Dont be rude. Also i wanted to know the opinion of the others. ^{— Unsigned, by: DinoKiller65 / talk / contribs}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. (You can indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line.) Thank you. I'm not sure how I was being rude. Christopher (talk) 12:47, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Just a missunderstanding LOL, i thinked that you were rude, but not. Also thanks for answer me, im going to still wait for another response DinoKiller65 (talk) 12:59, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't make sense to leap from one bullshit Niburu thing to another asking, "Is this one real?". Try Niburu bullshit tester instead. Leuders (talk) 14:27, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! it was a kind of rude, but anyways thanks for the post my friend. I Just had some doubts abot that "Planet-X" thing, but anyway, it cleared me up. DinoKiller65 / talk

Evowiki is dead, long live RationalWiki

Tim Starling notes that Evowiki was a horrifying minefield of security holes, and nobody reads it anyway, so I've made it redirect to RW. Fuzzy has the whole thing scraped (i.e. all the stuff that nobody had ported yet), but it's mostly just leftover rubbish now anyway. All hail better server security! I'll get Fuzzy some Apache logs in case anyone other than bots ever looked at it - David Gerard (talk) 21:21, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

There was an Evowiki? 98.110.112.28 (talk) 21:44, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, there was. The best pages were ported to RW in 2015 by Fuzzy, myself and others. This is the list of ports. The Eye page is a good example of one that was ported and also substantially improved. Bongolian (talk) 22:00, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Updated RationalWiki:EvoWiki accordingly. Unusually bored editors should seek to turn those red links into suitable redirects. I think I removed all the obvious garbage, please delete any I missed. Maybe red links that are worth keeping but need a new article should be put in a separate list (though not to do as yet) - David Gerard (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Cherry picking to support transphobic sentiment

I have noticed and probably many here have noticed, those who support gender stereotypes and discrimination against Transgender people claim Biology is on their side. But it seems many support creationism and reject evolution. Is it me or is it that Transphobic idiots only use science when convenient? They fail to realize that humans invented clothes and not DNA, they claim Biological gender is the only gender. Plus many transphobes use the Bible as reference to support their claims. Thoughts?--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 02:27, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

You have a XX or XY chromosome. End of line. 2d4chanfag (talk) 02:52, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

So Klinefelter Syndrome, XYY Syndrome, and the incredible variety of karyotypic deviations and empirically observed intersexualities don't exist? That's a real cute idea, if not one that's founded in science or reality. Even if we were to accept your inappropriately reductionist and determinist idea about sexual presentation in the human species, the differentiation between gender and sex is well-established in the literature. Want to try again? Bearnurse (talk) 03:04, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean. Real life is not nice. 2d4chanfag (talk) 03:17, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

I always thought of transgender identity as a way to resist the gender norms (in terms of clothing and behavior). The best argument in favor of transgender identity is for people who are intersex, but apparently I don't hear this argument enough.—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 03:24, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Now I'm not being a troll when I say this. I see hermaphrodite as the only one's who can say thay are transgender. If you are going to or from male/female, then say what you are and get the job done. 2d4chanfag (talk) 03:48, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Just because someone has a penis or vagina does not mean they are a socially established gender.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 04:15, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Human sexualities are immensely complicated. Genes and hormones are involved, and environmental factors may be, not to mention the astrological factors. It isn't really surprising that in some cases the wiring and the plumbing don't match. And not all of them are things that gender reassignment therapies will fix, either. The take home is that none of us really gets to choose our sexuality, no matter how common or rare it might be. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 04:34, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Studies have shown that trans women (MtF) have female brains and trans men (FtM) have male brains. Gender and sex is complicated. In birds, the male birds have ZZ (XX) while the female birds have ZW (XY). Fungi have hundreds of genders. Also btw no one uses "hermaphrodite" anymore, it's intersex people. ClickerClock (talk) 05:11, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Hermaphrodite sounds cooler and intersex sounds like someone who is a intern in porn industry. 2d4chanfag (talk) 06:19, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Hermaphrodite != intersex. Calling a hermaphrodite an intersex and vice versâ is not correct.—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 10:10, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

You are correct. The science of gender is anything-but-simple when you start examining the nitty-gritty and, like many many many other things, when someone says "it's that simple" it's a clear indicator they're full of shit. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:00, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Isn't the argument of "two genders" or whatever just a case of most people mistaking the map for the territory? I mean, when I was in grade school, gender and sex were used almost interchangeably. Not that that's right, but if a word's meaning in a new context is different than the context it's been in for an individual their whole life, I don't see it as unexpected. And as far as I know, that's as far as the "science" against transexuality or gender goes. People mistake gender for meaning the same thing as sex, rather than just being a, uh, lifestyle/mentality I guess? I don't know the right word. I have no idea about any of the more technical aspects of psychological/social issues. megalodon (talk) 20:09, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't even know. It seems like classic Dunning-Kruger effect: know enough to develop a mental model with false confidence, but nowhere near enough to critically analyze that model and understand its failings. I hate saying that because Dunning-Kruger has become social shorthand for "I think my opponents are dumb" ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:39, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

@Bearnurse citing genetic disorders which often have very serious health consequences and are not intended at all doesn't help your case. In fact, it makes me think that that you're trying to defame the position you seem to hold :/ Lord Aeonian (talk) 21:09, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Not my intention at all. 2d4chan's initial post stated that only XX and XY were extant, which is patently false - I didn't mean to ascribe value judgments on the nature of Klinefelter Syndrome or XYY Syndrome, merely to point out their existence as contraindicative of 2d4's assertion. That's also why I included reference to the wide variety of non-pathologic exemplars and the importance of the difference between gender and sex. I'm a strong supporter of trans rights, but I can see how my initial construction could be interpreted as conflating trans issues with karyotypic pathologies. Bearnurse (talk) 02:43, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I am the Devil's advocate and he pays me good money. So... What rights dose a fag like me have but, trans people don't? Can you tell me because I can't think of any. 2d4chanfag (talk) 03:45, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Man, do the goalposts look red to you? Because they just shifted WAAAAAY down the line from where they started. In any case, transfolk lack many of the rights and protections guaranteed to other citizens, assuming you are referring to their experience in the United States. The right to governmental recognition and treatment in keeping with their gender, the right to protection against discrimination in housing, employment and government/public services (as the umbrella protections for sex and gender frequently do not include gender expression and identity, and such umbrella protections are currently more of an "opt-in" choice made by state legislatures, rather than a legal presumption), etc. Now, you can argue that they have the same protections as any citizen, but that is as empty and misleading a statement as those made by anti-gay marriage ideologues or the anti-miscegenation ideologues who preceded them - protection available only under the auspices of a prescribed identity or behavior pattern is not protective of those citizens who vary from that applied standard. Bearnurse (talk) 05:51, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Rule 11 of the internet. I don't see any goalposts here. I just like to argue about anything. 'Gender frequently' and 'gender expression' are not things that can be defined by legal ground or have the time to go through it. The law is bogged down as it is. Be alot easier to pick 1 of 3 options, male, female and other. I just don't see why we need anymore. Now you have a good point on gay marriage, anyone should be able to marry anyone (or thing when rodots come round.) I don't know why anyone would go through the hell, known as marriage. 2d4chanfag (talk) 08:16, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

You are aware that gender identity and expression are already legally defined, right? That federal legislation and jurisprudence have already utilized said definitions to rule on Title VII protections, like in Macy v Dept of Justice or in the passage of the Matthew Shepard Act rider of H.R. 2647? The issue is that - while the EEOC, select federal agencies, and something like 21 states provide Title VII protections to transfolk - other significant agencies and majority of states don't provide those protections, as they consider trans status legally discrete from sex and gender status. I mean, I get that you're JAQing around, but a little effort towards being informed goes a long way. Bearnurse (talk) 09:33, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok you got me there, I didn't know about that. Now all you have to do is to get the other states to get ther shit together. As to being informed, I am just a gamer. I don't really care what anyone dose as long as I can keep playing games. 2d4chanfag (talk) 10:00, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Band with me or Anita will steal GTA from real gamers™ like us. megalodon (talk) 18:30, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

We have already ran Anita from gameing. She's doing stuff adout Hollywood movies or something like that. All I know is, she is not problem for us gamers any more. 2d4chanfag (talk) 03:40, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

2d4chanfag - your poor English does your "cause" no good.

Science saves the day

Any curious observer with respect for what biological science actually teaches should take a look at this quick 9-minute introduction video.

Sorry, neither relativism nor denialism will save you here. Science simply has the facts. Good game, dawg.

(Please watch before commenting ). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 07:49, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

ya.... That vid somes up how I feel about it. 2d4chanfag (talk) 10:47, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I would not be so sure science will save the day

On Facebook there is an article talking about an option for gender on drivers licenses in Oregon. Not matter how much fact you toss at Transphobes they still won't listen.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 14:01, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Question

How would this debate develop if we belonged to one of those species where 'changing gender' was a regular/occasional phenomenon?

And what proportion of people are willing 'to live and let live so long as you don't force your preferences on me (and I can occasionally snark on the grounds of some trivial difference including your choice of sports team/music etc)? 31.51.114.103 (talk) 13:04, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi I am new

Hi Im new I made this article on Kraut and Tea and leaving it for the community to fill in the rest of it.--Knightofjustice123 (talk) 19:50, 17 June 2017 (UTC) Heres the Article:http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kraut_and_Tea

If you don't have anything to say, don't say it. 😉 I deleted your article because it was minute. Bongolian (talk) 02:53, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

If I could source I would make a decent article about Kraut; Guess someone else will.--Knightofjustice123 (talk) 19:57, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I've left a stub up. To add a source to the article, use <ref>URL</ref> and it will automatically appear in the references below. Good luck! Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 03:53, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I've added his Gab,minds,and Twitter --Knightofjustice123 (talk) 19:57, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Added 2 Tweets of anti-Muslim his.--Knightofjustice123 (talk) 02:35, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

No need to say everything you've done. Just do it! :)-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 02:37, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Hey I need a timestamp form the hangout chat mentioned at in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4be-OeVrQM at 41:40 from this hang out chat:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj-Y63BB0hA--Knightofjustice123 (talk) 17:20, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok I need some help moving the a thumbnailed image to the correct category of the article. --Knightofjustice123 (talk) 20:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Aliens

A Meme that defines this post

Yeah i use that image because i think it fits perfectly

Again, the conspiracy shitposting and debunking returned, this time i found this notice that looks so stupid for me. I Swear this will be the last post of this kind that i will put on this wiki

http://reflectionofmind.org/alien-ufo-invasion-fleet-will-reach-earth-september-2017-trump-allegedly-warns-putin-nasa-detected-miles-wide-armada-spaceships-entered-solar-system-video/

I Say because i saw the same notice with another title:

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/557708/WW3-Vladimir-Putin-Barack-Obama-aliens-attack-2017-missile-system

So what do you think guys? i dont think thats real, i just want to know your opinion. (Seriously, that notice sounds stupid LOL) ^{— Unsigned, by: DinoKiller65 / talk / contribs}

AAA-grade bullshit. If even amateur astronomers could pick that, as stated there, you can be sure Internet would be awash by reports and photos of the "alien fleet" and we'd see a global effort to prepare for its attack, not just two countries -effort that would take its time and would be anything but not visible-(and what's the use of a missile defense against someone with enough technology to travel between the stars?. Unless they were the Lizards of Turtledove's Worldwar, or similar invaders of other series we're pretty much screwed) --Panzerfaust (talk) 21:35, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Notice LOL, i want to say New, i am spanish so i dont speak english very good. Thanks for answering! DinoKiller65 (talk) 21:35, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

“”Those who believe that the UFO fleet might be coming to rescue our planet from the evil NWO-Illuminati globalist cabal were wondering why they took so long to finally come to our salvation. “Thought they should’ve been here already,” one of them said. “These Aliens keep on wasting our time. We’ve been waiting since 2000 and its 16 years now. They are telling us that they will arrive next year. When next year comes they will probably take a detour and visit Mars and we will have to wait for 2019. Then they might decide to go to Venus and check it out before they come here and then they delay again till 2021. And so this generation dies out…”

LOL! Lord Aeonian (talk) 23:03, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Is life "worth it"?

Firstly let me start by saying this IS NOT a suicide note or an intention to kill myself. It's just something I wanted to bring up for discussion. For what it's worth I have no plans to off myself.

Now then:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/3iu651/is_life_really_worth_living/?st=j432a49n&sh=60cae55d

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/artic...n-race-extinct

http://antinatalism.freeforums.net/t...orgotten-cause

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinatalis...ao&sh=e64a780c

https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-against-Human-Race-Contrivance/dp/0984480277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497811653&sr=8-1&keywords=conspiracy+against+the+human+race

The above made me question the nature of something that is supposedly a "given", that life is worth living in some mad sense. It's a lot but they seem to make a very logical case for life being more of a trap than a blessing.

It seems like survival instinct keeps us locked in, and it's a very sticky thing to overcome. Our "reasons" for living may be little more than rationalizations of this instinct. Pleasure seems to be reactive, more as a way to relieve the negatives going on in one's life.

It almost seems like to champion life is madness.Machina (talk) 19:00, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I Think it depends from your point of view, if thats a scientifically one, you just serve to continue the species, if thats a philosophic one, i dont know how to respond you DinoKiller65 (talk) 19:07, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

It just seems that from a logical point of view, life is a cruel thing to perpetuate and only a madman would do so. I think one of the links refers to mother nature as a psychopath that births her kids to kill each other.Machina (talk) 21:18, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

As we exist, and it seems to be in our nature to ask such questions then there is something in our nature that wants to make it worth while - lyrics of the 'Its a wonderful life' and all that. 86.191.125.235 (talk) 21:31, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll pray for you, brother. nobs 22:49, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

The universe allows life to evolve and then allows sentient entities to evolve, precisely so that the universe can be 'worth it.' (ie pulling itself up by its metaphorical bootstraps/demiurge concept) 31.51.114.103 (talk) 12:54, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

None of your links are working. For the record, you can't put elipses into a URL and expect it to work. If you'd like to shorten the URL, put brackets around it and type extra text. Saloon bar. [http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=RationalWiki:Saloon_bar Saloon bar].

Have you never heard of Sartre and existentialism? Life is what you make of it. And, while it has no inherent meaning, it does have meaning and it's up to you to decide what that meaning is. Koidevelopment (talk) 13:29, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Camus and absurdism seem to be relevant here. i refer you to the myth of sisyphus. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I read Camus but i think that he just ends up dodging the question. Not to mention that living beings cause suffering to other living beings just by existing. How can life be good by that metric?Machina (talk) 17:55, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

who said life was good? Why does it need to be? why is simply existing not enough? you want to really dodge the question, then get religion. Camus isnt dodging the question. the question 'is it worth it?' and its answer are trivial. its how you deal with it that is point. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I think it's generally accepted that existence is preferable to non-existence. I suppose that those with the opposite opinion didn't contribute many genes. Of course that doesn't prove that one is superior to the other - it simply illustrates what we are going to be programmed to prefer one over the other.--Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 21:10, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

'You look at what is, and ask why, I look at what is not and ask why not?' The universe is 'worth it' #because it is there# and we can ask the question. 31.51.114.103 (talk) 22:41, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Denominations of religions left for Rationalwiki to create pages for

I was going to make entries for all the denominations of Judaism Islam and Buddhism mentioned on those pages but thought it might be a better idea to discuss it first instead of starting 20 votes for the to do list. I don't think any of these denominations are going to have much to talk about and would probably end up being stubs but I could be wrong.
Also the page for Hinduism doesn't even begin a list, nor does one for Christianity count many; but would listing denominations for them be an improvement? X-Factor (talk) 16:32, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Given that they might be stubs, it might be better to create or expand subsections within those religions first. Bongolian (talk) 18:41, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

given the sheer number of christian denominations, from the huge to lone nutjobs ranting on the street corner, i dont think it necessary or even helpful to list them let alone create articles for them. id imagine this to the same for other religions. they are not pokomon. we dont need to catch em all. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:11, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

And if you were to create articles on them, don't blatantly steal whole paragraphs (or even sentences) from random websites as you've repeatedly done in the past. Christopher (talk) 20:48, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Make amends?

I know I annoyed you all, but can we go back to the good ol' times before the blocks and everything?

Love,

FA

(aka Chubby Armadillo)^{— Unsigned, by: Poggle teh lessAR / talk / contribs}

Black Founding Fathers

So today in class I heard a conspiracy theory I have not heard before. When the subject of Lincoln came up, another student seemed convinced that Lincoln, Washington, and the other early presidents were all black. This is why Washington D.C. is shaped like "Africa" apparently. Is anyone else familiar with this? Is there a name for it?^{— Unsigned, by: Alec / talk / contribs}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. (You can indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line.) Thank you. Christopher (talk) 17:29, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

@Alec, it sounds like something (liberally) culled from Louis Farrakhan's speech at the Million Man March. nobs 17:49, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

My understanding was that DC was roughly rectangular. In what way is it supposed to look like Africa? - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 18:35, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

If you squint in the right way anything could probably be made to look like Africa. Christopher (talk) 18:45, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

The original District of Columbia is a ten-mile square surveyed from Jones Point. Both Maryland and Virginia donated land to it. In 1848, Virginia asked for its land back, because it was not being well-used and supported a shanty town with gambling and prostitution. So the boundary became the Potomac River that bends to the left, much like the western coast of Africa. This is not by design. Hclodge (talk) 02:05, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

While not exactly the same thing, this book covers similar ground: The Five Negro Presidents: According to what White People Said They Were by J. A. Rogers (1965) Helga M. Rogers. ISBN 0960229485. The book has been fairly popular in the African American community since the time it was first published through today (Amazon rank is around 38,000 — pretty good for a book first published in 1965). It sort of carries the one-drop rule to the absolute extreme — any rumor of African ancestry is enough evidence for being black. I don't think anyone before Lincoln was included among the 5 but Lincoln and Warren Harding were among them. Bongolian (talk) 02:43, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

In the case of the Rogers book (Rogers was Afro-Caribbean, but his sources were the writings of white people), this could also be a case of psychological projection, since according to one analysis, "3.5 percent of self-described white Americans have 1 percent or more African ancestry."[5] The highest concentrations of these "one-drop" whites are in South Carolina and Louisiana, followed by other parts of the South. Bongolian (talk) 20:20, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I was of the understanding that the Washington DC map was planned around representations of Masonic symbols as an in-joke. 86.146.100.51 (talk) 09:51, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Opioid Epidemic

I know drug addiction is a terrible thing and it destroys lives but here is what Trump probably thinks-

Trump: The Opioid crisis is out of control, we need to do something. Ideas?

Psychiatrist: I suggest having government sponsored rehab clinics and end unnecessary imprisonment.

Trump: No, No. Reduce access to medical services and increase prison times. Plus have SWAT team patrols detain people on the streets.

Psychiatrist: That is a horrible idea. What good would it do increasing the use of ineffective methods? People need healthcare!

Trump: You are fired

(Months later)

Trump: What do we do about the drug crisis

Quack Doctor: I like the idea of increasing prison sentences and dehumanizing people for underlying mental health issues.

Trump: I will put that into action.

Does this seem accurate to what Trump would do?--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:28, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Trump in a nutshell DinoKiller65 (talk) 02:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

The opioid crisis is inextricably linked up with the Veterans Administration mess and Big Pharma lobbying. If the past is any guide, the 'crisis' will be met with more money for both, even with Republicans in control. nobs 08:32, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Why can't the US just have a drug programme like Portugal's.. I have been known to impulse buy books 14:15, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Probably that the government does not give a rats ass? Government officials have good money and healthcare, why would they care about the common person?--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 16:46, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

The globalists want everybody doped up (a compliant and unaware citizenry); then they'll keep voting for whoever gives them best dope deal with less legal hassles. And it's jobs for social workers, case managers, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, pharmaceutical researchers, public defenders, etc. These are professional high paying positions. Dope is an industry. We've made a huge investment to take the profits away from the Taliban, Mexican drug cartels, the KGB, Chinese intelligence service etc. nobs 22:46, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

While possible for research to be slowed down by greed, in the long run not developing cures for conditions or addictions does not help CEO's in the long run. If people die from a disease and there are only limited treatments (example- many cancers) then the costumer base shrinks. Even if someone has treatments for a deadly disease, many times treatments stop working. What good would it do CEO's if their base has largely dead. If you cure disease then people are alive longer for new disease to strike. Keep the population alive then new drugs get developed which makes money. Again, keep people on a failing treatment then people turn to Naturopaths/Homeopaths/Chiropractors. The ones who will be making money are alternative medicine practitioners. The Pharmaceutical companies lose out.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 02:09, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

the current opioid epidemic in the us is largely down to over prescribing, which i understand to be a result of 'big pharma' lobbying, as nobs points out, and incentives to drs to prescribe opioids. effective rehab or portugeuse style drug lawsa do nothing to combat this and just provide a sticking plaster while the realm issues are not addressed. AMassiveGay (talk) 17:19, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Woo/Pseudoscience for fantasy villain

I'd to make a low-tier villain loosely themed on some kinda woo/pseudoscience/conspiracy theorists in the real world for a low-level part of a D&D campaign. Just for a bit of making art from experience. I'd like to solicit suggestions.

Things I've considered for plots:

• A homeopath-like selling fake potions super-cheap that don't work that should save the PCs from a minor threat(like fire resistance potions for a fire elemental or something), and then the alchemists guild closes ranks to protect them when the PCs come for answers because they used "legitimate ancient elven secrets"
• A tavern bard who alleges that lizardfolk with shapechange spells have taken control of all the banks in the town as a quest hook, he even cites how he saw their lizard eyes once and then it turns out that, no, they're just regular bankers, and the PCs get arrested for murdering/breaking and entering/whatever.
• I desperately want some way that some farmers could see a giant glowing thing in the sky at night come and mutilate their cattle, only for it to turn out to be coyotes+drunkeness, but I can't figure out a way to make believing the crazy person to cause any interesting encounters for the PCs.

Any other ideas? ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:05, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I am into writing myself so here is an idea- a villain who used to a Chiropractor, attempts to create pandemics but ends up failing.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 21:40, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

How about physiognomy/phrenology, I'm thinking of Capt. Findthee Swing from Nightwatch (Pratchett).

"He measured people. He used calipers and a steel ruler. And he quietly wrote down the measurements, and did some sums, such as dividing the length of the nose by the circumference of the head and multiplying it by the width of the space between the eyes. And from such figures he could, infallibly, tell that you were devious, untrustworthy, and congenitally criminal. After you spent the next twenty minutes in the company of his staff and their less sophisticated tools, he would, amazingly, be proven right."

Preferably in a campaign without objective Detect/Know Alignment. Daev (talk) 22:03, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

(Phone posting), I like the mockery, but it definitely needs to do more than that and drive a real conflict. Merely being malevolent isn't enough, they need to do something to cause the PC's to fight or oppose someone.66.87.80.48 (talk) 22:12, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I love this, and totally might steal the idea for a campaign sometime. For the UFO light-in-the-sky thing, maybe have the light be a torch or fire or something reflected off clouds, from a wholly unrelated and innocent gathering that, especially to drunk angry people, could be construed as a ritualistic summoning of aliens demons or whatever. -- Onychoprion (talk) 22:19, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Nice ideas. You may consider someone claiming to have contacted with outsiders (devas or whatever) and having had different visions about events that will happen in the future (say a great red wyrm, or better the Torrasque, attacking and destroying the kingdom, an undead invasion... there're many options, especially on fluffy settings as "Forgotten Realms" and the like), and thanks to both high charisma and diplomacy/bluff (plus "leadership, assuming there's that ability in D&D; I've not played in quite a while) attracting a lot of people, just to be everything either the result of a very bad trip or a prank caused by illusory magic (again I don't remember if such as thing exists in D&D), of course everything geared to benefit him/her (cult leader, etc. Somewhat hard since this is D&D, where gods are real and give spells to their followers). As for the UFO thing, I rather think they could blame a dragon and if they searched long enough they could even find a real dragon, but a harmless metallic (ie: non evil) wyrmling totally unrelated to that mess and not the big, chromatic, one who was claimed to have been spotted. --Panzerfaust (talk) 23:06, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, you could totally do a self-fulfilling prophecy bit, like in Avatar: The Last Airbender. "She told me I'd meet my true love in these shoes." "And how often do you wear those shoes?" "Every day, now!" "Then of course it's going to come true!" -- Onychoprion (talk) 23:47, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, the dragon thing has potential. Maybe have a group of dedicated dragon-followers who are obsessed with finding the dragon that's been in the area. And they point them to a local garrison who is covering up the dragon's presence. In reality they're just secretive because they don't want neighboring nations to know they're developing some siege towers. Anyone here know any famous UFO kook names that can be acquired and fantasified for the story? ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:08, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

How could you go past Erich von Däniken for such a purpose? Daev (talk) 16:28, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Excellent, just erich to elrich and now it's fantasy. This has been a very fruitful conversation. Thanks, everyone! ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:12, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I just left this wiki for a bit and what???

I usually spread my time, patrolling edits. When i left this wiki for a bit... There was so so so much red !!!! everywhere.

I went to the Recent changes link and hid all the patrolled edits and it was a mess. I quickly patrolled a bunch of links; maybe sane edits? I rushed a bit with mass "mark as patrol". There are much less red !!! everywhere now.

Also there's this BoN editing the Eugene M. McCarthy page into saying the hypothesis that Humans evolved from a pig-monkey hybrid is reasonable now. I don't know whether to revert the edits or not as I do not have a degree in evolution.

Also when you rollback an red !!! edit, please mark it as patrolled as it doesn't clog up the the unpatrolled list.

"If you come across a change that is obviously wrong or plain vandalism, check if this is fixed later in the history. If that is the case, you can mark the bad change as patrolled to avoid cluttering up the patrol list with edits that are fixed."

ClickerClock (talk) 07:54, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I wondered about those edits myself. I've been bold and rolled their edits back, seeing as the purported mispresentations cited sources. Hertzy (talk) 08:19, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I have never heard anyone believing that humans evolved from pig-monkey hybrids ever. ClickerClock (talk) 08:22, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

You have now.. I'll add that particular link as a reference. Hertzy (talk) 08:30, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

When you rollback an edit it automatically patrolls it, if you use undo it doesn't for some reason. Christopher (talk) 16:01, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I've seen that pig-monkey thing before. Personally I'm a follower of the antelope-crocodile hybrid hypothesis. --Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 20:57, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Overflow (?)

I don't know how it's called when you have a number in, say, binary and when attempting to increase it the number loops back to -1 instead. Could that -or a sort of it- fit well for those who early on championed the defense of an idea, but later for reasons only known to the gods they change and defend the opposite idea, attacking with passion their early positions (say the equivalent of Ray Comfort becoming atheist and attacking religion)?

As an aside, if a stopped clock is someone who has a moment of lucidity what would be the equivalent of a working clock, but that as it marks the incorrect hour will always be wrong? --Panzerfaust (talk) 13:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Integer or Binary Overflow is what you are describing. Stack Overflow is something else. Perhaps Ideological Overflow for the analogous concept?

On your aside; horologically speaking a timepiece which is running neither fast or slow but is poorly or incorrectly calibrated (eg set to the wrong timezone or inverted daylight savings) is said to be maladjusted. Fitting as that may be, the more general usage would make that overly loaded.

Daev (talk) 17:50, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

The first is a category that I suggest for people who changed that way (ie: Durao Barroso, the former president of the European Comission, who was said to have been a maoist, just to support once at the EC austerity (just ask Greece and others), and now the bastard is working at Goldman Sachs). The latter another, for people who is seemingly unable to tell something right, just as a badly adjusted clock --Panzerfaust (talk) 21:16, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Could I get a doublecheck that I did this right?

I'd appreciate if a more experienced wikizen double checked that I included the proper details in my attribution of http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:Andrew_wakefield_CC3.jpg I haven't had to do one of those before and I've been awake for too many hours to be certain that I didn't miss anything. Ta Daev (talk) 13:59, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Hertzy (talk) 20:22, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Violence Against the Political Right?

I've read countless angry tirades about how violent and hateful the left is against the right, especially after the congressional baseball shootings, and they really irk me, as the right seems to base its entire bottom line off of "hate", but that's besides the point. My real question is if we have any data on the alignments of the perpetrators of these tragic events. On a side note, (I thought of this because of a previous post by ikanreed,) if the "left" really is becoming more spiteful and abrasive towards the "right", do you think it's a result of "intolerance of intolerance"? megalodon (talk) 15:11, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

no its the result of polarisation. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:17, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

It's a result of a lot of things. Polarization is a big one. But there's also the fact that the current conservative government of the US is actually a bit threatening to some people's lives. I mean, my tendentious nature would argue it always is, but now it feels more dangerous with the threat of losing healthcare, or being deported from the only country you've ever known your whole life. And so people are verbally and tribally responding to that. And that does indeed create the "culture of violence" that is talked about. You can tell me I'm crazy, but there's this sense of walking along the edge of a knife right now, where things could go real bad real fast. And no one knows how to respond. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 15:54, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Far more terror incidents in the US are caused by either of right-wing Christians or right-wing Muslims than left-wing anything. Hate crimes are themselves political actions -- and they are overwhelmingly done by right-wing Christians. And this doesn't even touch upon the far-right-wing response to, eg, Orlando or Quebec: that the gays and Muslims deserved it.

Violence is genuinely rising among the left. But the right-wing's complaints of being warred upon are just another example of projection. Fuzzy "Cat" Potato, Jr. (talk/stalk) 16:03, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

It'll get worse on the left. It almost has to the way things are progressing. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:12, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Trump has done nothing. Trump had no record to run on. And in six months has not filled one-third of the positions he needs to fill to govern. But the rhetoric and actions of his opponents has only strengthened what was tepid support among many Republicans and Democrats. This whole outraged reaction to Trump, who having done nothing is innocent of all the lies aimed at him, has backfired. nobs 19:01, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

One thing I think people should recognize more (not necessarily people here) is that just because the victim of a violent act was against "the right" doesn't mean the perpetrator was a member of "the left". I doubt anybody'd call the Trump Administration "left-wing" simply because they're attacking the right-wing extremism that is ISIS. -- Onychoprion (talk) 16:17, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

im not sure its accurate to depict isis as right wing or left wing. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:45, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Authoritarian fundamentalist conservative religious movement trying to establish a theocratic state? You I get that it could be confused with super-extreme-left in some ways, ISIS didn't approach that point through left-wing ideology. -- Onychoprion (talk) 16:54, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

ISIS is absolutely right-wing, but it's not neo-conservative, it doesn't like the "Freedom, woo!" identity associated with American conservatism. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:09, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

im not going to argue the point, but im not convinced such labels are particularly relevant or particularly useful in understanding such groups. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Understanding reaction and authoritarianism's universal appeal, when presented as a localized form that celebrates an idealized past, and ignores modern ethics to return to it is pretty useful to me. It's a current that runs through every culture on earth. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 21:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

So you got idiots out screaming "Impeach Trump," knowing of course only Republican Congress can impeach Trump. Than you got the same idiots (not mentally deranged or off their meds, but active volunteers in left-wing causes) out trying to kill Republican Congressmen you need to impeach Trump. Then you wonder why no one takes leftist bullshit seriously. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 19:41, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

^{[citation needed]} Christopher (talk) 19:44, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Imma level with you, nobs, this is a problem that could easily be solved with enough dead republicans. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

You've lost your faith in democracy? you really believe in one-party totalitarianism now? nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 06:17, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

ikanreed, your comment was threatening from a Trump supporter's perceptive.

RobSmith, listen did you come here willing to change your viewpoint? Or did you come here just to argue? If it's the later than ▮▮▮▮▮▮. The ads in your facebook are known purposely manipulate anger to feed misinformation. I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Facebook has something called dark posts; posts that appear only to the user demographic targeted. Facebook's dark posts showed you Pro Trump ads. You liked the ad; maybe even shared it. Than it showed you more dark posts relating to that ad you liked. Did you even read the whole article you liked? Or did you, like many people on Facebook just read the title of the article? Did you even fact check the article? Or "it makes sense to me because of my political views" happened and you didn't even bother. It showed you only the information that Facebook knows you enjoy. It hid away all the articles you don't like; who wants to hear a criticism about your star? Who likes a post about how someone you trust, someone you have faith in… let you down- let others down. That's how Facebook's algorithm works; it shows you the dark posts that you like. And people are let down. Trump promises that he will take care of everyone. He failed.

“”I didn’t want to be depressed. I don’t want to feel that he’s not doing what he said, so I just choose to not listen.

—Michele Velardi, a women who voted for Trump

He is more utterly incompetent than outright evil. It is a myth that Trump is innocent. His new healthcare bill will take way healthcare from millions. Even Breitbart thinks the replacement bill is trash.

It is a myth that Trump is good for all of America. He may be good for you. Not for all Americans.

Before you reply, RobSmith take a couple of deep breaths. Tip: delay posting your response. Look at your typed response and save it. Go do something fun for a hour. Read over you reply and tweak it.

I'm sorry for breaking your heart. ClickerClock (talk) 08:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ (A) I don't use FB as an information source, at all. I have my own well developed, highly qualified sources. (B) Thanks for the low-down on how FB works, much as I suspected. (C) I come here to get a pulse on popular sentiment in the country and the world from people who are, generally, well read and informed. (D) Your tirade against Trump has little to do with the Republican party. (E) Each member of Congress represents about 750,000 individuals. Shooting or killing one is an assault on the fundemental democratic rights of 750,000 people. Does anyone here seriously believe, that killing an elected member of one party, which would result in a vacancy and special election, would generate sympathy for the opposition party? (F) Finally, under the American system, the House of Representatives forms impeachment charges. The House is controlled by Republicans. It is no secret the GOP establishment has had differences with Trump in the past. If non-Republicans were even remotely serious about impeachment, or even remotely familiar with issues and how the American system works, it would make proper sense to court Republicans and show them respect, not violate their basic rights and try to kill them. The left can continue on the course it has set for itself, but no one views it as healthy, in any sense. All it has done has drawn Republicans closer together. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 09:20, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

This whole outraged reaction to Trump, who having done nothing is innocent of all the lies aimed at him, has backfired.

I was focusing on this. I was focusing on that. Innocent? Nope. The Republican party were not addressed as I was not focusing on them. Trump is not innocent.

Death threats are wrong. The mainsteam liberal media and organisations are consistently negative, negative, negative, against violent leftist action. Of course the far left don't read those sites, they stick to (insert-long-explanation-here).It is worrying that there is now a video game about punching Trump in the face.

And democrats; not counting the far-left; are courting Republicans.

They are making tools to help contact Republicans. One. Second tool. Another tool on helping call elected officials. Weekly reminders to call members of Congress. Another tool. I'm actually sick of listing all the tools.

Comedians like Sam Bee are encouraging viewers to call your Republican senator. There are numerous social media posts reminding friends of call your Republican senator. It's sad that interest in calling your senators has sadly dropped. Call your senator, Americans! Call them!

I have my own well developed, highly qualified sources.

Name a couple of media sites you browse and check them against this. I read: vox: factual + left, wired: factual + left, cracked: satire, theconversation : factual + least biased. What kind of factual and right-wing sources say that "Trump, who having done nothing is innocent of all the lies aimed at him"? Not Reason, Wall Street Journal, nor National Review. ClickerClock (talk) 10:31, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

By innocent, I'm referring to accusations of anti-black racism and homophobia, as well as no baggage as a career politician. While Trump does represent a threat to the coalition built on identity politics of the Democratic party, accusations of anti-Black racism or homophobia against Donald Trump are completely baseless. (The retort obviously will be, "But his followers bla bla bla..." That is s different subject for a different day. Trump is innocent, and accusations of homophobia and racism, and coordinated attacks against him, are lies.)

Here's some of the sources I use:

• Lawfare blog
• Steven Aftergood Secrecy News
• D Brief
• Palmer Report
• Politico Playbook briefing
• Daily Signal
• McClatchy
• Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Report
• Syria Comment
• Rich Gallen Mullings
• Dick Morris Lunch briefing (YouTube)

These are mostly daily or several times a week and are very good by qualified experts in their areas. I have other less frequent sources, too. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 15:19, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

The fact that so many people believe well-established points with executive orders, taped speeches, and a host of basically irrefutable evidence is still called lies is why people killing republicans is becoming inevitable. You idiots are making a world where it's your ideology versus reality, and the only way reality can force its way in is through actually directly affecting you. And that means violence. You don't recognize it, nobs, but you're doing far more to facilitate this violence than anyone on the left. And to the person that felt threatened by me suggesting enough dead republicans would fix problems: boo hoo. I don't care if you feel threatened by snarky comments. Your politics may very well kill my family. I don't give two fucks about your reading too much into comment hurts your baby feelings, you entitled piece of shit. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 15:29, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

• You idiots are making a world where it's your ideology versus reality, and the only way reality can force its way in is through actually directly affecting you.

This is the identical charge, almost word for word, the GOP and people on the right leveled at Obamunists from 2009 onwards. The fact your dreams and fantasies, that America was now perpetually a 'center-left' nation were baseless is out in the open. Sure, there were hotheads with irresponsible rhetoric using disguised language such as "Second Amendment solutions", but they were rebuked and forced to clarify. No sane activist, to the best I recollect, carried a gun to an event and tried killing an elected official, or anybody else for that matter, on behalf of an ideological cause the activist dedicated their life too. Facts are, there is no difference in the psychological make up of Hodgkinson (the baseball game shooter), a dedicated 99%er, Sanders supporter, and open avowed socialist, and an ISIS Shahid willing to sacrifice himself for a fucked up cause. We got a name now for dangerous leftwing terrorists, Hodgkies. No other issue matters. We can talk about how they got that way, but first we must bring them to heel. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 15:56, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Nobs, you don't have to accept your role in causing that person to decide violence was the only answer available to them. But, I'm being genuinely honest when I say that what you do promotes more violence among ideologically charged people than anything center-left politicians like Sanders says. You made this world. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:22, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm looking at North Korea now. This now is the millennial generation's problem. Kim Jong-un will give up his nuke when you pry it from his cold dead fingers. Forget a peaceful, negotiated solution after Hillary Rodham Clnton and Barack Obama stuck a bayonet up Gaddafi's ass cause he was stupid enough to believe the US Government's promises. I did not create this reality. I did everything in my power to avoid it. Now the reality is your problem. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 17:21, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Ikanreed: Domestic political violence is rising.

Nobs: Foreign policy is scary!

Is this why we had the rob-rail? Fuzzy. Cat. Potato! (talk/stalk) 17:24, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

FuzzyCatPotato: I'm tired of this. He keeps blaming for left for violence. Right-wing sites that are factual too blame the left wing for violence and defend Trump from being called a bigot. Of course there are no statistics proving that the left is responsible for Trump and violence. It's all philosophy.

Look at this philosophy professor go!!!There is evidence that Trump's supporters are mainly racist. Another study. Another another study!

Here's an article written by Professor of Political Science Funny? That? Oh and the only thing saying Trump supporters aren't racist is a a survey with "sample sizes of less than 30 respondents." At least he has the credentials hey?

The closest thing to support the hypothesis that the left is provoking violence is the Ferguson effect. That's all these right-wingers have.

Robsmiith:

• Lawfare blog - left-wing, factual
• Steven Aftergood Secrecy News - ???
• D Brief - Least biased, factual
• Palmer Report - left-wing, non-factual
• Politico Playbook briefing - left-wing, factual
• Daily Signal - right-wing, non-factual
• McClatchy - least biased, factual
• Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Report - right-wing, factual
• Syria Comment - ???
• Rich Gallen Mullings - ???
• Dick Morris Lunch briefing (YouTube) - ???

I meant regularly browsed, not a snippet of all sources you use. I don't put HuffingPost on my list of main sources as I barley look at the site! I should have clarified; sorry. I could easily put more least biased and right wing sites on my list but that would be cherry picking to make myself look good as I don't regularly browse those sites. Just because I used those sites as sources doesn't mean it is a site I regularly browse.

This is literally what you said:

This whole outraged reaction to Trump, who having done nothing is innocent of all the lies aimed at him, has backfired.

You admit to exaggerating now? ClickerClock (talk) 06:00, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

You did exactly as I predicted: you attacked Trump supporters using polls or focus groups or what ever. Show me one instance in word or action of something Trump said or did that was anti-Black, or anti-gay? Yet those are the two largest organized factions in the DNC mobilized to call Donald Trump anti-Black and anti-gay. This has absolutely nothing to do with racism or homophobia, and this itself is the issue right now destroying the Democratic party.

This just in: statistics and studies aren't evidence now. It's so easy to ignore such ugly examples of homophobia and racism from your own base. More examples. ClickerClock (talk) 07:24, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Most sensible people see it for what it is: No different than Hillary Clinton blaming James Comey and Vladimir Putin for her own failings. A failure to accept personal responsibility - the defining difference between Democrat voters and Republican voters liberal and conservatives in America. Identity politics is based on victimhood, and needs an oppressor. Americans are tired of these phoney divisions and playing this game. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 22:38, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Assange evidently agrees with me. I for one believe in a strong Democratic party and a two-party system. Where are the elements on the left that will speak up for democracy, against the single-party totalitarian strain that now controls the DNC? nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 00:49, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Argument from authority is a logical fallacy. "single-party totalitarian strain" You have repeatedly used the suffering of millions under communism as your political prawn. DNC? Totalitarian? You have never suffered under totalitarian in your life. I know what actual totalitarian is. Don't you never use my suffering as your political football against the left again. Actual totalitarian and communism forced my family to flee. Actual totalitarian. The DNC? Totalitarians? That's not totalitarians. On the behalf everyone who actually suffered under communism; heist right now. Stating a bunch of random left wing things as "totalitarian" erases the real actual suffering bought on by communism. It's laughable. It makes communism a joke. It erases victims of communism. You taking away focus on real totalitarian and real communism and moving it onto so-called real evils by communism: democrats and DNC. That's not communism. That's not totalitarian. Stop reducing my suffering to a bunch of angry ranting about democrats. ClickerClock (talk) 07:24, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

DNC aside, would you call a Sanders supporter - someone who got fucked over by the DNC - who murderers people he implores to impeach Trump, an advocate for democracy? Would you then call the rhetoric of Hillary Clinton pro-democratic, in any sense? Or the failure of Barack Obama to condemn violence among his supporters and followers? nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 21:26, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Copyright and Critique

So, I tried to look into copyright law, and am still unclear how far fair use goes. This is specifically in relation to my current draft work of In the Beginning. I'm doing a claim/response format, like we do with 101 Evidences. The whole book is already fee online, and we're certainly not making money off of it, and it is for critiquing purposes rather than blatant ripoff. Does that excuse copy-pasting what might amount to the entire book, or should I try to paraphrase (and we can then be accused of quote-mining)? Thanks! -- Onychoprion (talk) 21:00, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Fair use does not have a very strict legal definition because it is contextual. Fair use, when it has been clearly defined at all, has generally been done through court cases rather than by legislation. Generally, you can reasonably claim fair use if you quote (with attribution) a few paragraphs out of a modest-to-large sized book. You can't claim fair use by quoting a few paragraphs out of a 2-page letter. If you are using material for classroom instruction only, fair use is much broader, and generally includes copying complete journal articles for class use only. RW and others have claimed fair use for extensive quotations for the purpose of a side-by-side critique. Bongolian (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Fair use can most certainly include up to 100% of the original text, depending on context. I am not a lawyer, I just play the sort of person who attracts them on the internet, but a full RWing of 100% of a short text would generally constitute sufficient context I'd be personally happy to support it in many cases (YMMV of course) - David Gerard (talk) 14:44, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I am writing a book (at least attempting to, can't seem to finish anything) and need some help

It is apocalyptic and Pagan in nature (with zombies) Here is an excerpt.

“” Several hours went by and Henry was still trapped in the hotdog truck, the dead broke the windows and the truck was on its side. Henry had to go to the bathroom so bad but he was not able to escape, Henry ended up peeing his pants from bladder desperation. That only made the zombies more aggressive. Henry found a single bullet in his jacket and he loaded it into the gun. At first Henry considered suicide, but he then figured he would not go down without a fight. Grabbing a cooking fork Henry stabbed several zombies, it did not stop them but it caused pain. These zombies felt pain and Henry used it to gain the upper hand. Then there was a howl in the air, it was a Zduhac. The beast grabbed the truck and lifted it into the air. The Zduhac flew for seven miles before dropping the truck into a dirt mound. Henry suffered a broken left arm and five broken ribs but he climbed out. Henry felt a sharp pain in his leg and grasped, there was a piece of metal imbedded into his thigh and into the bone. The Zduhac actually laughed at Henry, despite the intense agony Henry pulled out the shard. Blood spewed out of the wound, Henry noticed that he was in a construction site filled with machines. The battle against the Zduhac was starting.

Another excerpt-

“” Official CDC Document Written by Doctor Sharon Bott M.B, PhD A sample of what is known as the Shadowcore Plague, I will note right now that it is a lethal virus of unknown origin. From police footage and personal recordings the SP is transmitted via bodily fluids. It is 99% fatal and its incubation period varies. Biochemical Study Initial analysis indicates that the virus releases a chemical blocking immune cells. This chemical has an unknown molecular structure and has an extremely dense energy structure. I don't know how to explain this. There is nothing more I can write about at this point. Physiological Study The SP has a lethal effect on skin tissues. The virus violently attacks the skin cells and many of them rot. The dead tissues get broken down into pure energy and get replaced with much more strange cells. As the disease progresses organs end up getting shutdown. Over all the virus rapidly changes human biological function. There is too many unknowns at this point to make any real hypothesis.

I have been trying to write stories for years and I have a goal to write a novel. Thoughts and suggestions to improve it?--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 03:34, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

As someone who wants to be an author but never writes it down. Try writing your stories is blurts, bits and pieces at a time. ClickerClock (talk) 10:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll make some changes to that paragraph and highlight those changes in bold.

“”Several hours went by and Henry was still trapped in the hotdog truck. The dead broke the windows and the truck fell onto its side. Henry had to go to the bathroom so bad but he was not able to escape; he ended up peeing his pants from bladder desperation. That only made the zombies more aggressive. He found a single bullet in his jacket and he loaded it into the gun. Just one round. At first he contemplated suicide, but he then figured he wouldn't go down without a fight. Grabbing a cooking fork, Henry stabbed several zombies, and did his best to stop them and it seemed to cause pain. The zombies felt pain and Henry used it to gain the upper hand, waiting for the right moment to use that single round he had left in the chamber. Then there was a howl in the air: it left fear in the hearts of those who heard it and could break any bond between friends. It was a Zduhac. The beast grabbed the truck and lifted it into the air, then flew for several miles before dropping the truck into a dirt mound. Henry could hear the bones of his arm breaking and cried at the pain in his ribs, then felt a sharp pain in his leg and gasped. All he could see was the blood, blood everywhere, blood on the floor, blood on the roof, blood on his pants and his clothes and his skin. There was a piece of metal embedded into his thigh and into the bone. The Zduhac actually laughed at Henry, but despite the intense agony Henry pulled out the shard. Blood continued to spew out of the wound, and he noticed that he was in a construction site filled with machines. The battle against the Zduhac was starting.

Obviously, you don't have to keep this revision, just use it for creative purposes. I would get someone to check over your grammar and spelling. Also, write more like a novel, and less like a medical report (i.e. 'Henry could hear the bones of his arm breaking and cried at the pain in his ribs, then felt a sharp pain in his leg' not 'Henry suffered a broken left arm and five broken ribs but he climbed out. Henry felt a sharp pain in his leg').

On the other excerpt: I'll do the same thing. Changes in bold.

“” Official CDC Document Doctor Sharon Bott M.B, PhD A sample of what is known as the Shadowcore Plague (hereafter referred to as the 'Plague') was taken from a member of the infected population. I will note right now that it is a lethal virus of unknown origin. Based on police footage and personal recordings and accounts, the Plague is transmitted via bodily fluids. We have seen 99% fatality among infected subjects and its incubation period seems to vary. Biochemical Study Initial analysis indicates that the virus releases a chemical blocking immune cells. This chemical has an unknown molecular structure and has an extremely dense energy structure. We currently have no way to explain this. There is nothing more we can write about at this point, as the research has turned nothing else up at this time. Physiological Study The Plague has a lethal effect on skin tissues. The virus violently attacks the skin cells and uses the infected cells to rapidly produce more virus cells. After a period of time, typically two hours, the cell members and the cell membrane are broken down into energy for the viruses, and the cell is replaced with another cell-like structure. As the disease progresses, it moves on to other tissues, notably the vital organs. The virus rapidly changes the biological function of the infected subject. There is too many unknowns at this point to make any real attempts at a cure.

A medical report needs to sound legit. Good words to use:

• Statistics

• Population
• Sample
• Statistical analysis
• Z-score
• Normal curve (note: when in a sentence, 'normal' must be capitalised for you to use it. "blah blah blah, filler filler filler, the Normal curve shows blah blah blah". Like that)
• Distribution
• Subject

• Biology

• Cell membrane
• ATP (used for energy in the cell; google how it works)
• Mitochondria
• Hypertonic
• Isotonic
• Hypotonic

Basically, you want to make it sound like your guy knows what he's talking about. KoiDevelopment™ (thanks, Love!) 14:04, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Another possible route: go to a fanfic website for (book, film, TV series etc) you enjoy (or a wider platform). Read stories by different authors - they are about the same persons in the same context, but the fiction can be quite different: understand what you enjoy and why, and then develop your story accordingly. (If you can write some fanfic and get feedback you may get some useful pointers.)

Join one or several writers' groups (and accept that 'different people have different tastes).

Do not overload the readers with technical detail. Are there perhaps several different viruses - or does the incubation period depend in part upon what diseases/antibodies etc the victim already has. Could there be material in various viewpoints/styles (police report, medical report, Henry... see the novel Dracula for an example). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The Biology would be no problem, statistics on the other hand will be a problem- I barely got through high school algebra and geometry.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 16:37, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

You don't have to use statistics at all. But, if you do decide to use some, those are some good words. I can explain them if you'd like. KoiDevelopment™ (thanks, Love!) 18:59, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't know much, but you can make the first part sound more "fresh" if you replace the amount of times you word the main character's actions as "Henry did x thing" (Alternatives would be like "He did x thing", "Doing x thing, Henry did y thing", or "With y attribute, he did x thing"). There's no real established human character other than Henry at this point, and the Zombies are referred to as a mass and not individuals, so unless that flying monster "Zduhac" has a gender, referring to Henry simply as "he/him/his" shouldn't be too confusing for the reader. megalodon (talk) 13:39, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

While it might be an exception because it breaks from the conventional tone of such things, I feel like transcluding a fictional document into a work of fiction runs afoul of "show don't tell". Only a reader who likes to engage with technical documents will feel engaged while reading that part of your book, even if it's only a half-page, and nicely formatted. All that means ignore literally everything I'm about to say if you have a good narrative reason to present it in this way

Something like

(protagonist) gave the document a second read-through, but she couldn't help rereading one small sentence in the section titled Biochemical Study, "This chemical has an unknown molecular structure and has an extremely dense energy structure." She leaned forward a bit and asked (supporting character) "It says they did all this labwork, spectroscopy and the like, but can't figure what it's made of, how do you think that's possible?"

You get several benefits that way

• You get to leave out the parts that you don't feel qualified to write
• You can introduce as much informality as you think the reader needs to remain engaged
• You can make characters in your story decide what's important to learn about, without needing a lot of technobabble filler. The reader then either learns what's important(if your characters are right), or gets a red herring you can flip on them later.
• It's not static. The scene is alive and moving through the exposition. Infodumps can work(think star wars title crawl), but always be wary of them. Some asshole who has never written long-form fiction in his life. Theory without practice is masturbation 15:17, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Eugene M. McCarthy

A guy who believes that pigs are capable of having sex with chimpanzees (or something like that) has noticed our article on him and, amongst demands we treat his hypothesis more fairly, appears to have some possible good points. Given that he's made comments on my talk page implying he wants to sue the RMF this should probably be mentioned somewhere where people will notice it. Christopher (talk) 20:20, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Eh, as long as the article is cited well I have no problem keeping it the way it is. It's badly sourced and I've only been following along a little bit though so you guys'd have to deal with the pleb. L'homme Idéal (je rigole). 20:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

If the article's subject is a living person, and said subject threatens a lawsuit, the first step is to cut all unsourced and weaksourced content and push it to the talk page. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 22:09, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

It appears to be true that McCarthy claimed this. There's a writeup in the Guardian on McCarthy's claim by Henry Gee, a Senior Editor of Nature.[6] Bongolian (talk) 18:23, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Is this person reliable?

I saw this guy being cited as a source in regards to anthropology. Anyone know of him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Berman

Not really sure if he is someone to listen to or ignore. Here is one quote by him: According to Berman, "...the training for transcendent (i.e., vertical, power-based) solutions, as opposed to paradoxical tension (which is a dynamic "nonsolution"), begins in early infancy. Child rearing can teach you that Self and Other can remain in balance; or it can teach you that there is room for only one ego in any relationship. In the latter case, one dissolves the Self, ecstatically, into the power of the Other; on the macrolevel, vertical politics is a foregone conclusion."

And this is the link to the place that cited him. http://9-1.huntergatherers.org/

I'm not an avid reader so I don't know how to respond to him. Machina (talk) 01:34, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Can anyone translate this to English? --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 01:37, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Same guy who was asked about in the 'noble savage or good idea' thread of a week or so ago (now barchived). I only read a paragraph of his stuff, which made a number of universal claims about "hgs" (he couldn't be bothered typing out 'hunter-gatherers' each time I guess) that I know to be inaccurate to the Australian situation. Edit: Noticed that the guy citing Berman was the topic of that thread, not Berman himself.

As for Berman himself, his degrees are in Mathematics and History of Science and is a self-styled 'Cultural Historian and Social Critic' who has taught at 'a number of universities in Europe and North America' and held a visiting chair at 'Incarnate Word College (San Antonio)' - which has been 'The University of the Incarnate Word' since 1996 and is a "Sponsored Ministry of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word." One of the recommended links on his blog is to The Guardian. Saltcellar prepped.

Wandering God, the book the above was quoted from, is on Google Scholar. I have not fully read it yet.

Example quote "The second mode is very much about meaning and the process of being absorbed in it. I call this constellation the"sacred authority complex (SAC)..."

I strongly doubt that he is notable.

Sourcepath: OP's wiki link > his blog > googled the college and gbooked his book.

Daev (talk) 07:09, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Hell has frozen over.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm here to announce that we've gotten a positive mention from 8chan. https://8ch.net/leftypol/res/1798318.html'Legion^{what do you want from me} 02:07, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

It just seems they linked the page describing anarcho-capitalism's problems, which the OP requested information on. I'd guess they'd take just about any source for that particular topic. Lord Aeonian (talk) 03:07, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Its /leftypol/... nothing good can come from them. 2d4chanfag (talk) 07:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

To clarify: /leftypol/ is the tankies, not the alt-right. A good chunk of the alt-right is made up of former libertarians who went off the deep end and decided that they liked freedom for themselves more than freedom for others, such that it's not hard to find some support for anarcho-capitalism as an economic system in those circles. On the other hand, the general attitude of the sort of hard-leftists who populate /leftypol/ is that ancaps can go to hell. Not surprising that they'd agree with anybody criticizing anarcho-capitalism. KevinR1990 (talk) 08:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I went on leftypol many times and most references to USSR are ironic, there are some unironic tankies but they're not a majority. I don't why everyone thinks leftypol is tankies (perhaps it was at the beginning), many are anarchists or communalists, and not all the communists are Stalin/Mao/Hoxha apologists. Diacelium (talk) 12:41, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Ironic tankies are like ironic nazis in that they seamlessly invite in and morph into that which they mock. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 19:53, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@Diacelium I saw that they recently did a survey of political ideologies, and the results were that Anarcho-Communism was the largest ideology with LeftCom being the second largest. And @ikanreed leftypol follows a practice of anti-sectarianism, meaning that as long as you're not a rightist or a liberal you're cool, so unironic tankies are already on leftypol they're just a small minority.'Legion^{what do you want from me} 07:01, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

"anti-sectarianism?" You mean cooperating with bourgeoisie revisionists? /leftypol/ might as well be /ancapscum/ Lord Aeonian (talk) 07:06, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

RationalWiki apocalypse party

Rather sudden spike of wandalism

We are seeing an inexplicable and extremely sharp rise in wiki vandalism today, especially by Anonymous user.

Are we being hacked? ~ <3 17:41, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

The FBI are investigating, it appears to mostly be some idiot called "Christopher" and CheeseBurgerFace on wheels (who I'm not a sock of). Christopher (talk) 17:49, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Viharo just published another attack article on RationalWiki, second day in a row...coincidence? 162.252.57.33 (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I hope you're both joking. Christopher (talk) 18:04, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Nothing matters and everything here will soon disappear unto the void

Here's the full status report from Tim Starling:

[A]t http://rationalwiki.org/ you will see a wiki which, at first glance, appears to be RationalWiki running on MW 1.27. It is a bit of a facade, a lot of things will give blank page PHP errors, and search is not done yet. But if you log in, you will see that I have set everyone's password expiry to be in the past, so you can see how that will work.

It's a snapshot which I imported and then upgraded as a dry run. This database will be dropped and recreated, so any edits you make will be lost.

[....]

The upgrade of the ru.rationalwiki.org database failed halfway through, I still need to fix it.

So how's everyone doing this monday? oʇɐʇoԀʇɐϽʎzznℲ (talk/stalk) 14:55, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Cake. Bicycle^wheel 14:57, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Pretty good my dude. You FCP? Certainly not Anonymous user, whoever that is.^{[{{#rand:1|4}}][{{#rand:4|10}}]} 14:58, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Neither I nor my aunt have a parrot. There is, however, tea, not to mention perseverance. Bicycle^wheel 15:04, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Dicks.—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 16:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Doing alright. Caught the Last Week Tonight episode on vaccines, it's pretty good. What's the best thing you've read/watched recently? Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 19:29, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Just caught it myself and I am so frustrated. It is good, it is very good, but I have spent years telling my friends to vaccinate their kids and now that they're having kids I worry that I was just telling them they were dumb. I found a story here about people trusting in MMS to fix problems maybe caused by MMR. But they aren't caused by MMR and I'm still working on it like two years at least. MMS enema makes the worms fall out (Read: Bleach enema makes your intestinal lining dissolve) The packaging is so stupid but so necessary. I'm glad they addressed it, but man they really only hit the target audience. Gaul Dernitt (talk) 01:54, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

This was a misreading of my email. I imported a snapshot into the new server for testing, but the new server was not actually serving traffic, nobody ever edited the snapshot except for me. I wiped that test snapshot and reimported from the live RationalWiki database during the read-only period, so no edits were lost. So, like any good apocalypse party, when the morning comes and the world is still there, you have to figure out how to live with the shame of the night's events. Have fun! -- Tim Starling (talk) 00:24, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

A fistpump and a Yessss! for having made edits I'm not really ashamed of whatsoever for my contribution to Happy Vandalism Day

...but it is kinda sad that the update broke Template:USERNAME, so now RationalWiki:Saloon_bar#Rather_sudden_spike_of_wandalism looks like an expression of genuine concern. ~ <3 05:41, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism

OMG THIS SITE SUXXZ ASS!1!!!

YOUR ALL A BUNCH OF MORONS!!!

LOSERS

YUR ALL GAY AND ALSO

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YOUR GOAT STINKS!!!!!!!—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 16:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Of course goats stink ya dip, mom says so http://animals.mom.me/billy-goats-smell-bad-3344.html Gaul Dernitt (talk) 06:14, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

And referring to the 'cock' - which? 31.49.51.68 (talk) 10:11, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Most silly things that conspiracy theorists accused you of?

I got accused of being part of a secret subdivision of the nonexistent New World Order.

Me: STOP posting the personal information of children.

The conspiracy theorist: I am 100% right. Are you part of the New World Order? You are a hypocrite as you don't protect children at all because (insert WTF here).

ClickerClock (talk) 07:46, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

What is this "New world order"? 2d4chanfag (talk) 11:34, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

We have an article on that: New World Order. ClickerClock (talk) 11:44, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I have been accused of being 'deep' in the Illuminati because I joined a fraternity in college, that George Soros pays me to defend my country's institutions from those who would see them destroyed, that Big Pharma pays me to talk about how little money is actually made on vaccines delivered one time compared to lifelong maintenance medications, and that I was a cuck gender traitor for joining my wife at the Women's March. Also, since I'm a Democrat, and there was no Southern Realignment after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I'm also apparently a member of the KKK and a pro-slavery advocate! Semipenultimate (talk) 17:03, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

For me, I was accused of being a Big Pharma shill. Why? Because I stood up for vaccines.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 01:49, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Clearly, this is the new World Order. (I have made this joke before, I know.) Narky Sawtooth (Nyar?~) 06:40, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I was accused of being a LaRouchie who is opposed to "economic royalism". nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 22:50, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

LOL. A conspiracy theory is: "A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy without warrant, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors" - wikipedia. Yes the New York Sites; totally conspiracy theorists. It's actually reputable newspaper. Yes, a comparison between Rob and 18^th century Royalists is 100% like being accused of being a LaRouchie. Not that LaRouchie is even mentioned in the article. Seriously fellow Rationalwikians, read the article linked. Rob thinks comparing is the same as accusing. He thinks that a journalist is a conspiracy theorist. ClickerClock (talk) 06:07, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

I can say I got lucky. The worst I had were some people I had good relations with (have almost ceased to comment there, a digital newspaper, for unrelated reasons) attempting to convince me 9-11 was caused by bombs planted in the WTC, even if I brought them several times with numbers and comparisons with certain B-25 that smashed against the EEB than a fuel-filled 767 at Mach 0.8 (?) is something very serious. I prefer not to waste time arguing with people who defend conspiracies -it's more than often pointless- --Panzerfaust (talk) 11:05, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

One day i view a stupid video that say that the aliens extincted dinosaurs, so yeah, i was pointing my facts because that was fake, and some conspiracy girl idiot accused me saying "i was blind, i was brainwashed" and some shit like that. Really, THAT WAS ANNOYING - @DinoKiller65

Betelgeuse

Just to note about the article I've been unable to find on YT one video with even more BS about Betelgeuse's supernova in 2012 -for the record, one of those SOHO observatory UFOwooers love so much- --Panzerfaust (talk) 08:40, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Betelgeuse did go supernova in 2012. Problem is, Betelgeuse is 640 light years away, give or take a few. We won't know about it until 2652. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 18:41, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

I seriously doubt they'll even know that to see things that happen in space a lot of time is needed until light or whatever reaches us. Anyway, the video was SOHO footage of a bright star eclipsed by the Sun followed by a solar eruption. Never mind that: 1) Betelgeuse is never eclipsed by the Sun, 2) in early August (the date of NASA's footage) Betelgeuse can be seen just before dawn, 3) SOHO's camera has a FOV not wide enough (much less than the minimum needed) to include both Betelgeuse and the Cancer constellation, where the Sun is in that epoch, and 4) Orion is far larger than the small inset they put. It's easy to guess why comments were blocked in that video.

EDIT. Found it, it's actually a Spanish page about what looks like woo. Image and page --Panzerfaust (talk) 22:14, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Trump?

The Indivisible Project: it's a guide to stopping Trump.

Rationalwiki's US ranking according to Alexa is 5,930 and The Indivisible Project is only 15,802. Soo… mind if some of you American Rationalwikians browse the guide for a bit. If you got a popular blog/site/social media account, please boost the link to your readers. ClickerClock (talk) 11:16, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Norwegian translation

Hello, I would like to see articles in Norwegian. I can do the translations if you guys want. Many Norwegians need to get some other logic than what they get from facebook.^{— Unsigned, by: Niikoo / talk / contribs}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. (You can indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line.) Thank you.

Well we've got a few articles in other languages already and a whole Russian RationalWiki so I don't see why not. Christopher (talk) 09:42, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, User:Reverend Black Percy, is there a reason we don't have any Swedish articles? Is it because there's no critical mass of Swedish users? Bongolian (talk) 20:52, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Pseudoscience in a science class, any personal experiences?

For me, it was in Honors Biology. We ended up watching "What the Bleep do we know?". Then one time my teacher suggested that if there is only DNA based life in the universe then that might be proof of intelligent design. I disagree with that statement though. I strongly suspect my former teacher supported intelligent design when he mentioned he owned several different ID books. Now an interesting thing was that I owned a zombie novel called, "Day by Day Armageddon" by J.L Borne and he said "it was not Christian". He was a good teacher though.--Rationalzombie94 (talk) 13:49, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

I attended community college a few years ago to brush up on credits I needed to go for a master's. My oceanography professor was a crank who believed that evolution and global warming were secular religions, and devoted the sections of the lesson plan covering those subjects to promoting intelligent design and global warming denialism instead. I wound up filing a complaint about it with the dean. Perhaps not surprisingly, I also distinctly remember having to correct him on basic high school physics on my first day of class. (I think it was about the relationship between density, mass, and volume, though I can't say for sure.) The show Community turned out to be way more true-to-life than I thought, at least when it came to the quality of the education at Eastern Florida State College's Melbourne campus. KevinR1990 (talk) 20:10, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Something similar happened to me, in a history class, we were talking about the toltecs, and my history teacher sayed "some theorists say that the atlantean figures were builded in honor to aliens, that could be their gos, i dont think thats real". But a friend make a stupid response saying he believe that, and im pretty sure he only thinsk that because of ancient aliens and giorgio tzokaulos. - @DinoKiller65

What is this?

Well guys, i´m need some debunking help. I was traveling on the web and i found this

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Finformeinsolito.com%2Fsecretum-omega-las-misiones-secretas-del-vaticano-espacio&edit-text=

Yeah, i used google translate so you can understand, but you can help me? i want to know if this article has some proofs or not

@DinoKiller65

I got a log in request and crashed my Kindle.

Please advise. @DinoKiller65 I'm not good with computers.Gaul Dernitt (talk) 05:29, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. @DinoKiller65 sign your comments properly.ClickerClock (talk) 07:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

There is no evidence that support that. It's all conspiracy ramblings. I took a look and that website is shady. Under the hood, it's very badly designed.ClickerClock (talk) 07:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Just Realized How Racist I Am

Without hesitation I made a joke about being dipped in shit and calling the Klan. I feel horrible about it. This is not like Bob Dylan's I will Be Free. This is a casual none I've made before. It's racist and that's kind sayna why it worked. It's done. I'm sorry. I probably still don't get it exactly Gaul Dernitt (talk) 07:17, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

here is the thing: At least you know it now. It is very hard to deprogramm bias and racism from oneself, but it is doable and worth the effort. Best wishes--Benaresh (talk) 08:48, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I don't know if it's doable or not to never be racist, but as a meddling atheist I appreciate it. Really. Gaul Dernitt (talk) 04:10, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

At least there's a chance nobody knew what the fuck you were on about anyway. 2.126.236.234 (talk) 14:53, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Rome Viharo article is blocked from commenting, can someone lift it?

I came in from the outside following the drama here and wanting to clean up. I wanted to participate in the article, created an account but I am not able to edit or comment. Heyguy (talk) 14:22, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The fact that I see the word Drama instantly makes me want to see no. Internet drama is better than real life drama in that if you ignore the attention seekers, the problem goes away. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 15:30, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

ok but to be fair, the article on Viharo on RW is at least one half of the drama, creating the attention in the first place. Wouldn't it make sense to at least clean up the article and remove the drama? At least allow the talk page to have comments so a consensus can be reached? 206.72.194.41 (talk) 16:22, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Above comment was me, I forgot to sign in. I don't want to be accused of being a sock puppet :/ Heyguy (talk) 16:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Unless another editor feels like indulging you, allowing edits to a drama magnet because of drama continues to seem like a bad idea. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:33, 27 June 2017(UTC)

Okay, suit yourselves I just wanted to help. It is kind of a ridiculous looking article. Heyguy (talk) 23:19, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

I am for. I mean the Mormonism page wasn't built in a day and that page makes me laugh and say 'whaaa' every time I reread it. Anything can be undone, I say if the guy has an insight undo it when it's not up too standard. Good on him for asking, he probably won't pull an 'I thought this was'.

IKANREED YOU MONSTER I thought this was RationalAutism!

Also not an editor because that biz is so covered. My vote doesn't count and I'm pretty cool with that.Gaul Dernitt (talk) 03:57, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't going to edit the article at all, I was just going to comment and make suggestions. If the community agrees, they can change the article. Why not just give me a permission for talk page, and if no one likes it you can boot my ass out? Heyguy (talk) 14:30, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

You don't have permissions to talk page? I am the ultimate rube when it comes to wiki definitions, I can get permitted to shreds so I'm a little lost. Point is I think you should talk page it. Gaul Dernitt (talk) 04:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Can you debunk this?

Hey guys, i was travelling around the internet and i founded this

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Finformeinsolito.com%2Fsecretum-omega-las-misiones-secretas-del-vaticano-espacio&edit-text=

also i heared some claims that the Vatican is constructing a robot with the sape of jesus for a second coming, i dont found proof, but i think you can clarify me those two things. Also dont be rude with me, im just scared and guillible in some cases - @DinoKiller65

With the second question - perhaps you came across reference to [7]? Or Project Blue Beam. No need to worry in either case. 31.49.51.68 (talk) 22:00, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Still need advice. I mean if you were some kinda sphinx, yeah, this would be a riddle. Please advise. Gaul Dernitt (talk) 04:19, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

The link does not work (what is the URL of the original text?) and clarification of 'sape of jesus' would be needed.

Why would anyone believe in RoboJesus (especially considering the diversity of Christianity)? 31.51.114.16 (talk) 11:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

This was the original link http://informeinsolito.com/secretum-omega-las-misiones-secretas-del-vaticano-espacio its in spanish, use the google translate. Also the second reference was a comment in a conspiracy theories video, i just wanted to know if something knew from were it comes. And yes, i need advice - @DinoKiller65 14:34 28 June 2017 (UTC)

A webshite that says the Vatican and NASA conspired to hide evidence of aliens and Niburu. Kind of amusing, but not very original, so not sure why you think that would need immediate debunking. Leuders (talk) 19:54, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, i´m going to wait, but for what you said to me looks like it could be a hoax or fake - @DinoKiller65

Who has the time to make a Goatskull/Illuminati logo? If you're serious, believe me, they are not.

Another language is hard to debunk. II never meant to imply you needed advice, my unshAkeable (close enough, spell check) fault for not clarifying the subject of my statement. 'Webshite'in hoity toity English refers to internet feces. Hoity Toity refers to fashion, but it's an onomonapaedic metaphor. Gaul Dernitt (talk) 04:46, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I missed the goat/skull/illuminati logo. Nice. Leuders (talk) 14:03, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I Thinked that webshite was a words game between website and shit LOL, but thanks for your response bro. - @DinoKiller65

Arkansas' Ten Commandments Monument

It's back: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/27/534558892/ten-commandments-installed-at-arkansas-state-capitol-aclu-plans-lawsuit

aaaand...

It's gone again: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/28/534697858/arkansas-ten-commandments-monument-lasted-less-than-24-hours

Must be a sign lol. Seriously though, if god is real and trying to convince us all of a greater good, he/she/it is doing a great job, and I'd love to see more of their work. megalodon (talk) 16:18, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

They're going to crucify this guy. Because they're theocrtatic windbags who can't recognize when they're on the wrong side of history. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Anyone else see pareidolia-wise the 'Kilroy was here' cartoon? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:45, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Goddidit… oh wait, they caught the guy. Bongolian (talk) 06:21, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I have absolutely no evidence of this, but a friend on discord told me that people on "gofundme" paid for both his bail and damages to his car. I really hope that's true. megalodon (talk) 13:46, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Permaculture

Is permaculture pseudoscience ? I hear a lot of ecologists praise it so I'd like to know if it's woo or not.

(Also why is there a weird text at the top of the Saloon bar just between "RationalWiki:Forum" and "1. Geocentrism" ? ) 82.231.157.133 (talk) 18:24, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Permaculture, to the extent that I understand it after briefly looking at Wikipedia, sounds rather like the medieval farms described in James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State (highly recommended, BTW), with their woodlots and mill ponds, all aimed at local self-sufficiency and survivability to the extent possible. Like anything else environmental, it probably attracts authoritarian purists, but the basic idea of working with rather than against the land is quite old. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 20:11, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Can we just appreciate how pretty this fresh wiki is?

It looks great!

Is it me, or the headings look better?

ClickerClock (talk) 11:40, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Yup. IMHO the revision difference view is amazing. Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 16:43, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Visually, it looks great! It just needs a few bugs shaken out. Bongolian (talk) 20:38, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

It's all a dream come true!

Oh, and guys... Remember who to thank. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 11:09, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

The old way to link to Wikipedia does not work

The old way to link there using brackets does not work anymore, so time to edit pages to fix that. As an aside, where's now the button to sign comments?

It appears that the button is gone, but under the edit window, next to the Insert items, is Sign your user name: followed by 4 tildes. What else is missing is the formatting buttons (bold, underline, color, etc.) Nowhere Man (talk) 15:48, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Ahh... caught it. Now if I had not to edit all the old templates to link to Wikipedia Panzerfaust (talk) 21:58, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Extensive critique of RationalWiki by an ardent fan of YouTube's "Rationals" crowd

It might have a point about double standards for YouTube talkers. I genuinely loathe the articles on people we broadly agree with -- they tend to be [1] aggregations of content we like and [2] aggregations of internet drama (see Laci Green), rather than an attempt to pick out the good and bad of a source. In contrast, articles on people we broadly disagree with tend to fit the RationalWiki mold of shitting on almost everything they do (see Sargon of Akkad). Mʀ. Wʜɪsᴋᴇʀs, Esϙᴜɪʀᴇ (talk/stalk) 23:09, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Something, something, nuance. (Note that I was really hungry when I randomly wrote that, to the retrospective detriment of my tone of writing. Even so, however, I think some nugget of something may be extractable from said rant. Just don't get too stuck on any of the names I drop, and see it all as more of a general 'editing culture' sort of statement.). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 23:24, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Upon re-reading it, I think my point was something along the lines of "If RW was given the choice to lean closer in editing practices to either ED or TOW, then RW ought to lean closer to TOW (for reasons apparent)", but conveyed in a terribly butthurt way. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 23:53, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Did anything ever come of that rant? I've thought off and on about giving the regressive page a go again since the edit warriors for that page are no longer active . Lord Aeonian (talk) 00:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I do think we could do much better if we engaged political opponents with a bit more respect. Of course, this is all about arguing on the Internet, so nuance and grace are going to be in short supply. We should at least attempt to understand and state, in plain English, our foes' claims; for regular woo, plain English is pretty much a universal solvent. Practice the art of explaining beliefs without using the jargon of believers. I spent some time reading the earlier neoreactionary blogs when I started the article on neoreaction. I found them intriguing enough to merit a semi-serious response from my own position of Baudelairean conservatism. Leaving aside the racist twaddle, a case could be made for their monarchies and monocultures, I concluded; but historic advocates for those systems found very different virtues in them, and their revival would require that both capitalism and technological change be sharply contained; a key contradiction, I thought. I'm so far happy to have them ignore me. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 02:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Could we add a disclaimer to our main page that says something like, "We make no claim to be impartial, fair or even-handed". That might stop some of the same criticism from coming up again and again and again. Spud (talk) 03:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Well... We're not exactly hiding our policy. As such, it's even (arguably) a feature of sorts to be able to dismiss out-of-hand anyone who'd attack our 'lack of neutrality' (since the critic in question clearly has not read up on RW in the least before huffing and puffing about it). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 03:18, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

That's an "extensive critique" of RW by a raving Islamophobe who can't spell. I think if that sort of reader is pissed off, we're doing something right. Really Fuzzy, this is shit-tier critique from an idiot - David Gerard (talk) 13:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I must admit I haven't clicked on Fuzzy's link yet (that ADHD again). I'll keep your critique of the critique in mind as I peruse the original thing, whenever I actually get around to it. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:23, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@David Gerard A raging Islamaphobe with no writing skill? Sounds just like YouTube's "Rationals"! 32℉uzzy; 0℃atPotato (talk/stalk) 17:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Check your spam folder for RationalWiki emails

GMail kindly put a pile of RW notification emails into my spam folder. Please check yours and take a moment to mark them "not spam" - David Gerard (talk) 13:15, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

And make sure you don't follow every single page you edit (including this one) so that you won't get emails notifying you every time somebody else edits the page. Spud (talk) 13:23, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

The actual problem appears to be that the wiki is adding pages to your watchlist if you have ever edited them. Can email notifications be turned off globally? - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 14:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Check RW:TECH -- hopefully it'll be committed soon. Fuzzy "Cat" Potato, Jr. (talk/stalk) 16:53, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Hiya

I've just made a No Bullshit It's a bit of a blip right know and could use improvement. Knightofjustice123 (talk) 01:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Why was my page deleted I was still working on it?Knightofjustice123 (talk) 03:22, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Need more addition to my new stud:http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Andrew_Wilkhow

Software upgrade (sticky)

Server shuffle at 1400 UTC

Today at 1400 UTC, we will be shuffling servers. In more detail:

With the kind volunteer assistance of Tim Starling (from Wikimedia), we're working on shuffling the RationalWiki servers around and upgrading at last.

First thing in the programme: around 1400 UTC today (3pm BST, 10am EDT, 7am PDT), David is about to repoint DNS at apache1, and switch off and delete the Squids and the load balancer. Users should notice no effect, but we'll be keeping watch.

Next up: set up new servers with up-to-date software, SSL termination at last ...

You should see no immediate effect. Sir ℱ℧ℤℤϒℂᗩℑᑭƠℑᗩℑƠ (talk/stalk) 13:58, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

It gradually took effect from 1400 to about 1450, 'cos it turns out a TTL of 300 might as well be 3600 when you figure in mobile provider proxies. Anyway, nobody saw anything got it? - David Gerard (talk) 17:23, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Good work, David & Tim on the smooth transition! Bongolian (talk) 22:02, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I notice that autocomplete is no longer working in the search box. Is this due to the update? Can it be fixed? Bongolian (talk) 01:09, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, I notice that this link Special:SpecialPages now gives a blank page. Is this related to the transition? Bongolian (talk) 06:42, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

And HotCat doesn't work, it just says "500 internal server error". Christopher (talk) 06:57, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I think those things were my fault, and unrelated to the server switch, see RationalWiki:Technical support. -- Tim Starling (talk) 01:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Update

The new server & MediaWiki instance are ready.

To complete the migration, we (Tim) will:

• Switch to read-only mode today at about 06:00 UTC 28 June
• Load the database from about 10:00 UTC 26 June
• Restore normal activity today at about 10:00 UTC 28 June

All edits made between about 10:00 UTC 26 June and about 06:00 UTC 28 June will be lost. If it's important, save it offwiki.

Fuzzy. Cat. Potato! (talk/stalk) 00:24, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

RW upgrade

The message dates to yesterday and refers to 'since this morning' and FCP's talk page is uncommentable on, what is the situation as of 27 June? 31.49.51.68 (talk) 11:54, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to reply here (I don't know much in general about media wiki and I hope I'm doing this right), but the upgrade affected me and my family. The hoodlums are after us now. Thetruehuman (talk) 12:59, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

22 million will lose coverage with the new server & MediaWiki.

As a general observation something like 'Normal service will be resumed as of "time (time zone) on date" (and save any essential comments and repost after that time)' would probably resolve most such queries. 31.49.51.68 (talk) 13:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

We haven't set a time yet, but the moment we do, I'll update the message. FU22YC47P07470 (talk/stalk) 17:14, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

So what exactly does the upgrade entail? Visual updates? UI updates? I don't keep up to date with the current MediaQiki version so I don't know what's different between these two versions. Koidevelopment (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Better security, better UI, better API, fewer bugs. Example: an "[edit]" option for section=0 (the intro). Example: a somewhat-decent CAPTCHA that doesn't rely on external advertisements. The bigger improvements aren't related to the MediaWiki upgrade, however. 32℉uzzy; 0℃atPotato (talk/stalk) 17:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

What a night to get spooked. Gaul Dernitt (talk) 03:42, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Good work everyone involved on the update. I've noted the old way to link to Wikipedia articles do not work, as they direct to this site. Where's also the button to sign comments?

Views of Pages

Are view counts going to be added to the new version of this wiki? I have asked a few months ago but haven't heard anything.Roo (talk) 19:29, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

I meant to ask about that as well, from old discussions it's clear we used to have it. Christopher (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

No, they will not. Sir ℱ℧ℤℤϒℂᗩℑᑭƠℑᗩℑƠ (talk/stalk) 21:28, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

People decided not to have them anymore as "we're not about page views." I miss them, but hey ho. Bicycle^wheel 13:55, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

If it's an option, I'd opt for view counts. The FCP Foundation (talk/stalk) 20:09, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

In case it's not obvious from my previous comment I'd opt for view counts as well, Tim and David have enough to do as it is though. Christopher (talk) 20:13, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

It seems like Wikipedia's viewcounts are provided externally through WMFLabs. Perhaps we could ask to be added as a project? oʇɐʇoԀʇɐϽʎzznℲ (talk/stalk) 23:37, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Comment from an IP

I am not encountering the captcha questions, which are part of the charm of RW... might as well go to the other place. 31.51.114.16 (talk) 11:55, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I re-enabled the captcha for every edit (it was disabled since the upgrade), although it is now the new reCAPTCHA instead of the optimally annoying SolveMedia. I think you all need to think about how you want to deal with vandalism going forward -- vandals are humans, and trying to annoy them into going away by giving them lots of captchas to solve is probably not an ideal approach. -- Tim Starling (talk) 00:16, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

They are annoying the 'mostly useful' contributors - which will include eg 'named contributors' who just wish to make a minor correction without necessarily seeing the need to sign in.

Getting everybody to create a username will only annoy people/result in many useful, amusing or harmless' contributions not being made, and probably result in many secondary user names being created (so you can do different things with different pen names - so long as you don't lose the argument with yourself).

As most pages on the recent changes are regularly checked (by people looking for arguments to pursue) perhaps there could be a more nuanced system of captchas - so Saloon Bar, Donald Trump and Conservapedia will have maximum protection and other pages will have minimal captca-fight-back. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:11, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Brainstars moved

I just noticed that brainstars are now appearing in the top right corner of navpages, rather than outside the navpages as they used to. This isn't so bad except when the color of the brainstar is close to the color of the top bar of the navpage. See Hell for such a case. Bongolian (talk) 03:13, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

In celebration of this wiki finally getting an update

I redid the smiley. What do you think? [dead link]

In a couple of days hopefully, this place is going to be [dead link] [dead link] [dead link]

ClickerClock (talk) 06:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks good to me, but would it be possible to slow down the speed of the gif? It moves really fast between heart-eyes and regular eyes. Koidevelopment (talk) 13:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Can do.ClickerClock (talk) 00:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Not trying to be harsh, but I think that artistically, though not technically, it's a substantially worse presentation of the same animation. By transforming the entire face, instead of just the feature that communicates the most important aspect(the heart eyes), it draws attention where it should not be. I get that the original seemed a little flat, but this doesn't fix that. Also, emotively, going from flat-neutral expression, to overjoyed, then smoothly back to flat-neutral fails to communicate which state is the "end" state that the viewer is empathizing with. The net effect is muddled.

I know how much of a jerk I'm being by saying "Hey your labor of love is wrong and needs to be done differently than your vision", so, sorry about that. But I wanted to give an honest assessment. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 21:33, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion.ClickerClock (talk) 00:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Version 2

I had to delete Version 1 as I keep on screwing up updating the file. I replaced it with [dead link]. ClickerClock (talk) 00:57, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Beaaauuutifully done. Koi "dammit Koi stop making such long sigs!" development 01:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Much improved. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 14:45, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Should this be the new Love Eyes . gif? ClickerClock (talk) 03:33, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd say yes. Christopher (talk) 14:14, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

That's two votes for yes!ClickerClock (talk) 06:08, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Colony on Mars and anthrax zombies

This discussion was moved to Talk:Google Maps.

FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 17:57, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

GG

Should we make a GamerGage mothball template similar to the Conservapedia one?GG is CP is in pretty good shape compared to GG.'Legion^{what do you want from me} 05:15, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Mothballs probably aren't good for individual articles. Moving most the GG material (especially the bits about individual people and minute drama) to an archive article might work, though.

Besides, everybody knows GG was the biggest political event this side of the millennium. Sir ℱ℧ℤℤϒℂᗩℑᑭƠℑᗩℑƠ (talk/stalk) 22:34, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

More google maps things

This discussion was moved to Talk:Google Maps.

Fuzzy. Cat. Potato! (talk/stalk) 17:57, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Can Andrew Wilkhow have his own article

Or be added to this: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservative_talk_radio Knightofjustice123 (talk) 04:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Requests for new pages should go on the To do list, unless of course you actually think it's important enough for you to create the page yourself. Bongolian (talk) 19:50, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Also, can someone make a article on EazyonMe

Yes that's the way he spells his channel name. Knightofjustice123 (talk) 17:00, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Blog Dissection

I'm taking a class that involves determining the reliability of sources. I just finished reviewing a source by Dr. John Bohannon for Science Magazine when...well...this happened.

Allow me to present to you "Food Babe." The article isn't exactly cutting-edge science, and I was wondering if any of you would like to dissect it here. RoninMacbeth (talk) 18:04, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

The claim that our bodies are being "compressed" more than they are at sea level is bullshit, "cabin air pressure at cruising altitude is lower than air pressure at sea level". (We have an article on FoodBabe by the way.) Christopher (talk) 18:25, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Why does that not surprise me in the slightest? Did you notice this little gem ("The air you are breathing on an airplane is recycled from directly outside of your window. That means you are breathing everything that the airplanes gives off and is flying through. The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this! The nitrogen may affect the times and dosages of medications, make you feel bloated and cause your ankles and joints swell.")? RoninMacbeth (talk) 18:29, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

If the air was pure oxygen it actually would be bad for you.

Another inaccuracy: "Additionally, the pressurized cabin reduces the humidity by 40% of what humans typically thrive at. The Sahara Desert has more humidity at ~25% than your airplane does at ~10%. Remember your body is made up of 50% water, if the humidity is reduced by 40%, your body becomes very dehydrated, very quickly and usually without you feeling the effects until after you get off the plane. Dehydration causes all sorts of issues from fatigue, headaches, constipation, light headedness and even death in extreme cases."

Reality: "The available evidence has not shown low humidity to cause internal dehydration and there is no need to drink more than usual." Christopher (talk) 18:48, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Tell that to the long-haul air crews who keep open cups of water or tea (safely secured against choppy weather) on the flight deck in an attempt to raise the humidity in their breathing space. It isn't so much about "internal dehydration" as it is about desiccating the nasal mucosa, bronchi, and alveoli. CamelCasePragmatist (talk) 20:08, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Whether or not that's the case, the blog post said "[d]ehydration causes all sorts of issues from fatigue, headaches, constipation, light headedness and even death in extreme cases." These problems are caused by internal dehydration. Christopher (talk) 20:20, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Error number 3: "Did you know certain countries require that airplanes and even passengers be sprayed with pesticide before they take off? This means if you are visiting one of these countries you are breathing in these fumes potentially all flight, especially if they were sprayed on board. Horrific!"

Reality: (WHO again) "Passengers are sometimes concerned about their exposure to insecticide sprays during air travel, and some have reported feeling unwell after spraying of aircraft for disinsection. However, WHO has found no evidence that the specified insecticide sprays are harmful to human health when used as recommended." Christopher (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

All of the above should be added

...to here. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:25, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Disagree -- airplane woo would be a good article. Gwyneth Paltrow also has said some nonsense about planes. Collect it! FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 17:02, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Does the self exist?

It's a common theme among eastern philosophy and now modern neuroscience. Is there such a thing as a self? Or is it just a collection of thoughts that when they are consistent enough we take them to be a separate cohesive individual? Machina (talk) 01:56, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Mine does, dunno about anyone else. Daev (talk) 01:58, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Hey, so does mine! How about that! Bicycle^wheel 05:56, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah, but I only have your word for that - and you may be a delusion. Daev (talk) 08:18, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Two highly relevant videos are available here, for starters. I've got way more to recommend, but I'm on my phone atm, so let's start slow. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:31, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for those Rev. I note in passing that at the 4:29 mark of pt1 there is a quote from Descartes which anticipates the Turing test.

My more serious response to Machina's opener would be that a being's mind is an emergent property of the processes/patterns of neuron activity. The more sophisticated the brain, the more sophisticated the mind it 'houses.' More sophisticated minds are capable of possessing (or just do possess; edge cases and shades of grey blur the definitions a bit here) increasingly numerous and more complex mental faculties. One of those faculties being a sense of self - that is to say being able to conceive the statement 'I am' or 'This is me.' I view that sense of self to be a pre-requisite faculty for an entity to have a mind (or to claim being-hood) as opposed to just a nervous system. I point out that for ease of phrasing I've used meatbag terms in the above, but my understandings are not limited to such.

I now return to my previously scheduled program already in progress. Daev (talk) 13:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

No. The self only exists insofar as it it is in rebellion against the collective entity that is human consciousness which by reason and goodwill mandates universal healthcare coverage and govetnment social spending. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 23:33, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

WTF? Christopher (talk) 17:43, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Rationalwiki Hunger Games?

I'm very bored. ClickerClock (talk) 11:52, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Try and reduce the 'Wanted pages' list by 50/500/your favourite number pages in one day. 31.49.51.59 (talk) 11:59, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

commit yourself to fully citing a certain amount of pages in a day or regularly adding full citations to a page every day.Vorarchivist (talk) 04:25, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Conspiracies and cargo cults

It has recently dawned on me how much many conspiracies like freeman on the land has aspects of a cargo cult in them, especially when it comes to ways to prevent whatever nonsense that the conspiracy warns you about such as how the previously mentioned freeman on the land says that it can stop you from paying taxes if you make up enough real looking documents like it was a spell and not a document of law.

This made me think of how crank magnetism might not only be because of distrust of authority but also things like a tendency towards magical thinking and cargo cult thinking. Vorarchivist (talk) 04:23, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

North Korea and Trump.

Trump's now considering military options about N.Korea, please tell me I am overreacting about the prospect of war. S.H. DeLong (talk) 18:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

You are overreacting about the prospect of war. Also, open your inbox, I've e-mailed you. All the best, Reverend Black Percy (talk) 19:19, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Isn't "considering" quite a strong word for whatever Trump's doing? 2.126.236.234 (talk) 20:27, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Don't worry. Not only is Trump gonna make America great again, he's gonna make THE WHOLE WORLD great again!! --Right-wing RationalWiki (talk) 22:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Indeed he will, fellow sane human being! I always thought my high school would look better as a radioactive slag heap, anyway. Edit:In case it wasn't painfully obvious, I was kidding.RoninMacbeth (talk) 05:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the military option is the only one remaining after Hillary and Obama stuck a bayonet up Gaddafi's ass. A peaceful, negotiated solution (as in the cases of South Africa, Ukraine, and Libya to give up their nuke programs) is now out of the question. The only way to get Kim Jong-un to give up his nukes is to pry it from his cold dead fingers. The clock is running; they soon will have an ICBM capable of hitting Seattle (home of Boeing & Microsoft, two big defense and intelligence contractors) or L.A. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 06:34, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

An important issue is what will happen next, if there's a "next". Long history short, North Koreans fledging to South Korea, having to rebuild the former... I could go on but I suspect Germany's reunification will be nothing compared to what's in store for that peninsula. Panzerfaust (talk) 13:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Phantom redirects to Wikipedia

This discussion was moved to RationalWiki:Technical support.

Archiving timestamp. (I personally disagree with the move but eh). Christopher (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

"I AM THE SENATE!!!" Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

According to Stephen Hawking, Donald Trump could cause Earth to go Venus

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-donald-trump-paris-climate-change-agreement-earth-brink-global-warming-us-fossil-a7820336.html

Not to defend Trump, but I thought the worst case scenario (runaway greenhouse) was ruled out. Panzerfaust (talk) 23:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I can't answer that, but Hawking's entreaties that humans begin colonizing Mars now seem loony to me. It seems like he's stepped out of the area of his expertise. Yes, it sounds like astronomy, but there's a lot more to it than rocket science and physics. Mars is an extremely unfriendly environment for life right now: near-vacuum atmosphere, high levels of radiation (with concomitant increased mutations and cancer), no known biome, possibly scant water, no known power source other than solar, greater risk from meteorites due to minimal atmosphere. Getting a colony to live on Mars would be challenging enough, but a self-sustaining one may not be feasible even in the very long term. Wouldn't resources be better spent getting Earth into something closer to long-term sustainability first? The cost of putting a long-term non-self-sustaining colon on Mars would likely be extremely expensive (frequent resupply missions of food, water and supplies). If it never becomes self-sustaining what then is the value? Bongolian (talk) 03:52, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Leaving aside Earth going Venus, which I find unlikely even if everyone and not just Cheeto Man Trump trashed Paris agreements, there's no way we can go to Mars now even if all countries with experience in space exploration pooled their resources together just for that goal. There're a lot of issues to resolve, especially the self-dependence of the colony and if it depends of this planet what's the use of said colony as when things went pear-shaped on Earth they'd die a slow, horrible death?. A Moon-based colony is more realistic, but the many resources spent in going to Mars are better used to improve things here. Panzerfaust (talk) 13:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I think he'll send us to Jupiter. You know. To get stupider. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 14:28, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, in order for a feedback loop to cause a runaway greenhouse effect, we'd need to burn up about 10 times as much fossil fuels that are even in existence in the Earth's crust. Worst case scenario is feedback from water vapor in which the Earth's temperature rises 4 degrees Celsius, which effectively ends our ice age, makes most of the world uninhabitable or, at least, less habitable for humans, which basically causes half of the world to go into a state of war and collapse. But hey, with fewer humans, in a couple of centuries the Earth begins to recover and civilization can restart, just with fewer resources to restart with. CorruptUser (talk) 01:47, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I'd love to see a source on that 10x thing, since I'm pretty sure historically we had ridiculous levels of CO₂ in our air, and the sun's only gotten hotter since then. Admittedly, I'm not climate scientist, so maybe even with all that and a warmer sun we wouldn't start a runaway greenhouse effect just yet. I do know that 4C figure is only for 2100, though; it's not like temperatures will stop rising after that, if we don't do anything.

Even if Earth doesn't go Venus, though, that'd be a huge extinction-level event, one in which I doubt humans would survive unless we do the space thing. Not Mars or Venus, because it's far easier to just build habitats in space than it is to colonize other planets (no need for terraforming, no pesky gravity-wells to get into or out of, etc.). And it'll take far longer than "a couple of centuries" to recover and restart civilization. Again, not a climate scientist, but the last mass extinction event took in the tens of millions of years for the biosphere to recover. It won't be humans that'll rebuild civilization after that. -- Onychoprion (talk) 02:01, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Source. You'd need to have about 30,000 PPM CO2 for the greenhouse effect to trigger a runaway feedback loop, or about 10x as much oil, gas and coal that was in the Earth's crust. So no, it's not going to happen. But using up all the fossil fuels in the crust, even the ones in impractical locations to mine, would raise the temperature by 7 degrees celcius. This would not kill off the human race; we adapt to too many climates, but it would fuck over civilization bigtime.

Interestingly, we would still technically be an ice age, as there'd be a sliver of ice in Antarctica year-round. CorruptUser (talk) 12:25, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm pretty sure this is the actual paper to which they're referring (as the abstract is more or less copypasta'd in similar blogposts). What worries me about it is they don't factor in methane from permafrost melting (keep in mind there's a huge belt of it wrapping around the arctic), but instead focuses on water vapor and carbon-dioxide concentrations. They readily admit throughout the paper that their model is quite simplified (doesn't factor in clouds, e.g.), and there's a lot that's unknown about how the atmosphere would react to warming. Again, I'm not climate scientist, but when it comes to something so serious, I'd rather not put too much faith in simplified models.

There is a substantial amount of carbon in arctic permafrost (source About twice what's in the atmosphere already, though I'm unsure if that's literal carbon (in which case the warming effect would be 20x, since CH₄ is 20x more potent than CO₂ while having the same amount of carbon per molecule or carbon-equivalent, which wouldn't be as bad), and most (60%) would be released after 2100, with direct relations in how much of it released and the rise in temperature since not only is literal methane currently trapped in permafrost, but dead plant matter also trapped will be consumed by methane-producing microbes (same source as before, though have another one too: source). At the very least there's cause to do a lot more research. And not to get all Pascal's Wager on this, but, well, Pascal's Wager. Any delay, even 4 years of inaction, pushes us closer to a possible Venus. -- Onychoprion (talk) 15:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, According to some Fundies God will help us if we screw up things, as the Bible said He gave us this planet to exploit it. Jokes apart shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Plus as one of the above linked paper notes, things will be much worse than a Venus, at least at first. All those water in the atmosphere before Sun's UV radiation dissociated it would raise surface temperatures enough to melt surface rock, and with atmospheric pressures higher than those at Venus. Panzerfaust (talk) 21:10, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Methane only lasts in the the atmosphere for a decade or so, and while it is extremely potent, on the timescales considered the methane would break down long, long before it could cause a runaway greenhouse effect. After all, all the methane in the Earth was released at once one time before, and it only resulted in 96% of all species being wiped out, so obviously the Earth didn't turn into Venus then. Like I said, humans would likely be one of the lucky few species that survive, but civilization as a whole? Well, it'd basically be the Fallout universe, without the mutants. CorruptUser (talk) 01:29, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Methane may not last long, but there's no such thing as "all the methane in the Earth" because it's constantly being created by organisms. And the sun was a fair bit weaker during the P-Tr Great Dying; if we had similar atmospheric conditions today the Earth would be a lot warmer. It's possible a few decades of extremely-high temperatures could trigger runaway greenhouse. Once the entire planet is covered with high-altitude clouds, there's not really a way back. Sure, clouds may be reflective, but they're also incredibly insulating; Venus has about the same albedo as Antarctica (Venus is 0.77, while Antarctica averages at 0.8, compare Earth's 0.30 and the Moon's 0.12), but that's not stopped it from being Venus. -- Onychoprion (talk) 14:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The Sun's increase in luminosity since said extinction should not be enough to mess up things that way (just around 2%-3%). Things do not get messed up down here until one talks of 5% and up. Panzerfaust (talk) 20:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

CNN

You done and goofed CNN[8]. Thay are now in a all out war with 8chan, 4chan and reddit. We are going to make gamergate look like cute kittens. 2d4chanfag (talk) 18:19, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Cool story bro. 2.126.236.234 (talk) 19:22, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

That's nice dear. Bicycle^wheel 20:27, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Complete list of people who are afraid of 4chan: the kinda people who post on 4chan. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 20:27, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

What happened to voting?

This discussion was moved to RW:TECH.

Fuzzy "Cat" Potato, Jr. (talk/stalk) 11:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Ping works!

{{ping}} each other at will! Make sure to do so as annoyingly as possible! Fuzzy. Cat. Potato! (talk/stalk) 01:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@FuzzyCatPotato Thanks! Don't mind if I do. Spud (talk) 07:03, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@ClickerClock What if you {{ping}} yourself? ClickerClock (talk) 09:32, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

And nothing happens. ClickerClock (talk) 09:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Accessibility Concerns

Fire away! List some of your issues with Rationalwiki. ClickerClock (talk) 06:53, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Not enough cake. Bicycle^wheel 10:06, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I've been compiling a "tech wishlist" of options and features I'd like to see implemented, but I think really the most pressing I can think of right now is that the Recent Changes list, as of the update to Mediawiki 1.27, moves things around whenever they're updated; while I'm perfectly okay with combining multiple edits to a single page into a single blotter entry (though sometimes I'd like a button to expand them all with one click), when something is no longer where it once was, one's mental "map" of the blotter then lacks an important waystone, making it harder to tell where to pick up from when coming back to the site.

I know some people would find it annoying to see what was clearly a contiguous string of edits to page A by user A split into two blotter entries by user B happening to edit page C in the meantime, but that doesn't happen that often given how inactive the wiki is, and I'd be fine with the occasional occasion in which it does occur. For now, I've simply disabled the "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" setting entirely, even as drastically as that may change those lists. ~ <3 11:49, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Would it be possible to make the default setting for external links that they open in new tabs/windows? - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 18:07, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I second what Smerdis just said. Spud (talk) 07:08, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@Smerdis of Tlön @Spud It's possible. I just need to get that certain gadget working. ClickerClock (talk) 07:21, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Smerdis of Tlön @Spud The gadget works! Go to Preferences to Gadgets to User interface gadgets. Tick "Open external links in a new tab/window". ClickerClock (talk) 08:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

No need to ping everyone each time, I've made it the default for now. Christopher (talk) 10:28, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Don't make it default. That messes with the flow for screenreaders aka bad for blind people. ClickerClock (talk) 10:30, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I've reverted myself. I'm still not quite sure how it's bad but you're the expert. You can still have it enabled if you go to your preferences. Christopher (talk) 10:34, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Screenreaders do not announce whether a link in opened in a new tab or not. So if links open in a new tab by default, a poor disabled user can be clicking the link for ages, hoping it will open. Which results in a bunch of tabs to close when they figured that the link opens in a new tab. ClickerClock (talk) 10:42, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! (OTOH, a tab called 'gadgets' is probably the last place I'd look for the setting.) - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 18:49, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Google News

Google seems to have tacitly admitted that they helped to create a monster. They recently created a "Fact Check" section on their default news page. It features PolitiFact, Snopes, Gossip Cop, FactCheck.org, BBC, The Washington Post, and perhaps others. Perhaps Gossip Cop and FactCheck.org are worth having RW pages. Bongolian (talk) 18:38, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Definitely; Gossip Cop, FactCheck.org.

Relevant articles: Google Blog, trial run. Here's a list of fact-checking organizations.

Of interest to RationalWiki:

For publishers to be included in this feature, they must be using the Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where they fact check public statements (documentation here), or they can use the Share the Facts widget developed by the Duke University Reporters Lab and Jigsaw. Only publishers that are algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information will qualify for inclusion.

Now to get that sweet Google power. Herr FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 19:49, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Documentation Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 20:10, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Eh, use Duck Duck Go. It doesn't log your searches and uses a proxy.—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 21:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I have created Gossip Cop and FactCheck.org. They could be expanded if anyone is interested. Bongolian (talk) 07:20, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Spam filter

Could somebody add "escort" to the spam filter? We're starting to get spambot accounts with a "<Greek placename> escorts" type name. Thanks. Bicycle^wheel 10:50, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Done. Christopher (talk) 10:59, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Much rejoicing! Bicycle^wheel 11:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Yaaaaay. RoninMacbeth (talk) 15:20, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Rationalwiki

It's clear that this wiki is under the occupation of ignorant, CNN loving liberals. But fear not because I am here to change this! --Right-wing RationalWiki (talk) 17:37, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

1: Nobody loves CNN. Nobody sane, anyway.

2: Please use "leftists" instead of "liberals" -- it's got a dirtier ring to it. 32℉uzzy; 0℃atPotato (talk/stalk) 17:41, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

HuffingtonPost then? Either way I've been looking through the pages here and it's clear that the RationalWikians have been corrupted by the FAKE NEWS of the left. Like I said- don't worry because I will work to change this. --Right-wing RationalWiki (talk) 18:01, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

You're doing better already! Using "fake news" and "left" as buzzwords -- it's quite impressive, really. FᴜᴢᴢʏCᴀᴛPᴏᴛᴀᴛᴏ, Esϙᴜɪʀᴇ (talk/stalk) 18:03, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

@Fuzzy: Actually it's not "fake news", it's "FAKE NEWS". And no one sane likes the Huffington Post either. Christopher (talk) 18:08, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

For me, it really doesn't matter what your guys' comebacks are. Put up a goat and . --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 18:59, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm insulted if you use anything less than Jacobin magazine or underground communist zines when accusing us over our reading material Vorarchivist (talk) 23:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

But Jacobin is actually good.'Legion^{what do you want from me} 04:28, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

If anyone doesn't mind, I vandal binned Right-wing RationalWiki. Seems like its only intention is to troll. --It's-a me, LeftyGreenMario! 06:20, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Typical of the left to try and silence their opponents. --Right-wing RationalWiki (talk) 09:39, 1 July 2017 (UTC)c

I concur, the left is evil because they treat those brown people like humans sometimes. I will now go to my favorite website, 4chan, bastion of all human intelligence and truth, and type "'Islam is a religion of peace'" on /pol/ continuously. megalodon (talk) 14:07, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

You scream of the type of person who would blatantly come here to start an argument. I don't think you even believe what you're sayingRenegade (talk) 23:02, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Your thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST0GfutYmLk Knightofjustice123 (talk) 23:14, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

What is the Coudenhove plan?

This is all I can find about it:https://www.google.com/search?q=Coundenhole+plan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#safe=active&q=Coudenhove+plan+ Knightofjustice123 (talk) 02:45, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Talk hour - totalitarian

Ok, people who have been affected by totalitarian regimes speak some random related thing on your mind. I personally believe we at Rationalwiki don't listen to survivors of totalitarian regimes enough.

ClickerClock (talk) 10:29, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

"Totalitarian" is a rather meaningless moniker. What societies are totalitarian? I thought North Korea was, but then I read a book on North Korea, and realised that North Korean citizens actually have a great deal of freedom from the government behind closed doors. On the one hard, penalties for being caught doing prohibited things–such as watching foreign movies or TV shows–are extremely harsh, tantamount to execution; but, on the other hand, North Korean government officials are easy to bribe, so you can actually get away with breaking very many of those harsh rules through bribery (and most North Koreans do exactly that.) Is a society totalitarian if you can basically do whatever you feel like so long as you don't cause a scene and buy off the right people? (And poor Otto Warmbier, his problem was he caused a scene, plus he was an American; his case is not representative of the North Korean average.) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:25, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

1) What about the people who can't avoid bribes? 2) I've heard the same thing and it's not hard to believe but ^{[citation needed]}. 3) People shouldn't have to bribe government officials to watch TV and should be allowed to "cause a scene" if that just means disagreeing with the government. Christopher (talk) 11:38, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@ZackMartin I think it's fair to say that North Korea's corruption doesn't make it less totalitarian. Constant bribery is a high cost for small freedoms. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 17:32, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

View Counts

I thought adding a feature that gives the unique view counts of each RationalWiki article could be beneficial, as it would indicates which ones we should prioritize or protect. What do you guys think? Nerd271 (talk) 14:56, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

It's easier to check new inbound traffic by other means (google alerts and suchlike), and increased attention doesn't normally justify pre-emptive protection. However view counts are kinda nice to have and I'm sorry they went. Bicycle^wheel 15:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks! Nerd271 (talk) 15:09, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

What the hell changed after the eighties anyway?

• The Eighties: Democrats oppose overthrowing brown-skinned socialist governments using proxy "freedom fighter" terrorists. Republicans support getting "tough" on Russia.

• 2017: Democrats support overthrowing brown-skinned socialist governments using proxy "freedom fighter" terrorists. Republicans are supposedly working for Russia, according to Democrats.

What the fuck happened? TabithanQuine (talk) 11:53, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

The Democrats were Clintonized, threw their working class constituents under the bus in pursuit of corporate money, and went right. The Republicans declined to meet them in the center, and went crazy. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 22:15, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

or maybe those simplified analyses mean absolute shit FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 03:52, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Looks pretty accurate to me. The democrats got fed up of losing presidential elections and went for triangulatin' Bill (cue nobs conspiracy rant...) Bicycle^wheel 13:01, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Anti-imperialism became unacceptable as the overton window was driven so far right, at least on foreign policy and economics, that sanity is basically a non-option at the national level in those areas. There is no American left. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 14:31, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

You all are focusing too much on politics within the western world. This has nothing to do with "anti-imperialism," this is just the continuation of the Western policy since 1954 of toppling secular middle eastern powers and replacing them with Sunni theocrats, or at best power vacuums. Pre-1991 this was because religion was seen (correctly) as a powerful antidote to Marxism, since then I suspect it's more geopolitical inertia and the US just doing what KSA tells them to. Lord Aeonian (talk) 01:36, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

It's technology, Too much too fast. You got 1 billion 12 year old's with iPhones whose only schooling is a madrassa who think Trump was elected pope of Christianity. Capitalist investors can't get the iPhones in their hands or build cell phone towers fast enough. Good luck, world. nobs^{Aloha Snackbar} 21:28, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

More language projects

This is just an idea, but could I start an Esperanto language project? Not because I think that this is the most important language to translate into, but because it's the only language I have sufficient proficiency in (Sad I know). Regardless I would encourage other bi/multi-lingual editors to translate more articles. The linguistic state of this wiki is pretty pathetic.'Legion^{what do you want from me} 02:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Jes! Kompreneble vi povas. Kaj mi helpos vin! Spud (talk)

@SpudMultajn dankegojn amiko!'Legion^{what do you want from me} 21:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Min amuzas la ideo de Esperanto-lingvo projekto. Faru ĝin! - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 04:36, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Captchas

Sometimes one ticks the box to say one is not a robot and sometimes there is a group of images to make a selection from (which sometimes has to be done several times to work). Can we go back to the words and phrases (which were sometimes actually relevant to the topic/comment). 31.49.115.131 (talk) 10:12, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Nope. The new Captcha is statistically better at keep out spam and we currently have a spam invasion going on. ClickerClock (talk) 10:14, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Really? We never used to get spam with the old CAPTCHA. Another disadvantage of the old CAPTCHA is that it's sometimes blocked as advertising. Christopher (talk) 10:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

My guess is that the spambots are designed around reCAPTCHA (since it's used on big sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) whereas our old advertisement-comprehension spam filter wasn't used almost anywhere. Or: reCAPTCHA is absofuckinglutely better, but also better known. Cømяade FυzzчCαтPøтαтø (talk/stalk) 16:40, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I have the captcha come up with 'tick all relevant boxes': I do so and click 'next' and get another 'tick all relevant boxes' sometimes #several times# - if this happens to other people how many 'reasonable'/minor corrections/jokey/goat with mustard pot up a tree comments are being lost as people decide they have better things to do? 31.49.115.131 (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, those reCAPTCHAs can be pretty annoying. But it seems you need only: 1. register 2. wait a day 3. make a few (ten?) edits, and you no longer have to deal with CAPTCHAs. I was very thankful for that... —Kazitor, ^pending 08:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

"Eternal life"

I wish to apologize beforehand if anyone find this as well as others as nonsensical ramblings, but I often wonder if those who offer "eternal life" (talking from a religious perspective) have thought on what it really means, as per its opposite: the article on the Pascal's wager sums those issues quite nicely Panzerfaust (talk) 20:10, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Interesting question. I think that they refers as "had peace forever". Also his opposite, well, ITS THE SAME FUCKING THING, JUST WITH SUFFERING, COME ON, THATS NOT ETERNAL DEATH, THATS ETERNAL SUFFERING LIFE RELIGIOUS MONKS! sorry, i just need to aclare that. DinoKiller65 (talk) 20:14, 2 July 2017 (UTC)DinoKiller65

What is the quote - many of those who wish for eternal life don't know how to spend a wet Sunday afternoon?

And the saying - be careful for what you wish for.' 86.191.125.168 (talk) 21:30, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

From 'Anger in the Sky' by Susan Ertz "Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

The same book (same page even) provides "Boredom comes simply from ignorance and lack of imagination."

Daev (talk) 22:15, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Hell is eternal life where the people so concerned have not found anything to do (possibly 'plus a number of people who were evil by whatever definition').

Heaven is eternal life where the people so concerned have found anything to do.

The reality, of course, is more complicated than that. 31.49.51.59 (talk) 10:07, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Pretty much is quite complicated. I like the analysis given on this on the Pascal wager's article -sooner or later, you're going either to be used to torture or be sick of eternal bliss. The only ways I see it could work is that both played with the way one perceives time -that unless someone was changed beyond recognition, so those would not be issues-, and while I can see this and other nasty tricks (read Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream) being applied in Hell, it's not so nice having them in the opposite side.

Another issue is that Eternity is a very long time, especially at its end. Even the likes of Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot do not deserve an eternity of torment as much as they deserve pùnishment for the deaths and suffering brought by them, and of course anything may happen in the meantime (what it's mentioned in the Pascal wager's article, plus as nobody's perfect and sooner or later will screw up things being sooner or later likely sent to Hell, being (probably) unable to leave Heaven if someone wanted so, as the physical Universe has rotten to subatomic particles or worse... Panzerfaust (talk) 13:38, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Possibly why people came up with the idea of reincarnation - or something like the set up with Diaspar and Lys. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

In other words, do not mess happily with infinity and related concepts. Panzerfaust (talk) 13:41, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

When they say "eternal", do they really mean eternal (timelessness, life outside of time altogether), or do they actually mean sempiternal (an infintie temporal duration)? I doubt the coherence of sempiternity. If we apply the Bekenstein bound to the average human brain, we find it can exist (at any one moment) in only one of (approx) 10^7.8×1041 distinct states. Hence, any human life could contain at most that many distinguishable moments before it starts repeating (as in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence.) And, there are only a finite number of possible humans who could ever live–not just humans, also extraterrestrials with brains of a similar volume to those of humans–and that figure is an upper bound on that number. It is an utterly unimaginably large number–but nonetheless finite. Rather than considering the volume of the brain, one could consider the volume of the Earth, the volume of the galaxy, the volume of the observable universe–it doesn't ultimately matter; the point is, as long as human lives are limited to a finite volume and finite temperature, they can only exist in a finite number of distinct states–there are a finite number of possible human lives, and all human lives must be either finite in duration or recurrent. Now, this line of argument relies on some quite materialist assumptions (which I don't actually share), but I think it is possible to construct a similar argument, to the same conclusion, using non-materialist assumptions instead. So this actually proves quite fatal to religious ideas of everlasting future existence–whether that be heaven, hell, or an infinite number of future reincarnations. Out of the three possibilities for the future–it goes on and on forever, it ends somewhere, it loops back like one great big circle–this argument rules out "it goes on forever", leaving only "it ends somewhere" and "time is a circle" as options. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:07, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I seriously doubt they'll have the knowledge of physics required to know what is a Bekenstein bound, so they probably are talking in spiritual terms, that in order to be logic should be something very distinct of our mortal existence -I guess-. Panzerfaust (talk) 20:32, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

If it takes (say) two minutes to go into a state of mind, register what it is and analyse it - how long a period of time would the number of states quoted last? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Something so mind-boggingly big that reminds me of the estimations of, say, the time needed for a Boltzmann brain to pop up from nowhere. It would look like an eternity but still it's not eternity as endless time. And I hope you packed something that will entertain you so many years, as the real Universe if has not gone quantum vacuum collapse or Big Rip will very likely be a very boring place. Panzerfaust (talk) 20:29, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Fat Aardvark

Awww come on guys please unblock me. Blocking me for 20 years was wayyy to harsh. --Poggle teh lessAR (talk) 13:41, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

This court of public opinion will now hear pleas for mercy. To clarify your plea, what does the verb "to harsh" mean? ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 16:29, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I think he's asking for a harsher ban. 40 years, anyone? FuzzyCatPotato of the Moist Nouns (talk/stalk) 16:44, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Seconded!RoninMacbeth (talk) 16:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Also, we should delete FA and Poggle's user pages.RoninMacbeth (talk) 17:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Nooooooo! Please don't increase my ban. I'll be good I swear! --Poggle teh lessAR (talk) 17:20, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

You swear? Well then, I see no reason why the court of public opinion shouldn't spare you. Of course, if you break your vow, then that will make you an oath breaker. And I don't take kindly to oath breakers.

So now that we understand each other, please go out and make good contributions. No more vandalism, no more trolling. No more fucking banter. Got it? Excellent. RoninMacbeth (talk) 17:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

No more banter? There wasn't any in the first pace, just "look at me, I'm great at banter" all the time. Bicycle^wheel 18:38, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Fat Aardvark: the one and only master-banter. αδελφός ΓυζζγςατΡοτατο (talk/stalk) 21:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I was referring to his banter sarcastically. Perhaps I should have used scare quotes around the word "banter," like so. RoninMacbeth (talk) 23:11, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

It's a shame. I think progress was being made here but now I see some foo, without even attempting to justify it, l blocked my account for 1000 years. --Poggle teh lessAR (talk) 16:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Do we have a page on school segregation?

I've read a few articles on school segregation lately, particularly pertaining to people forming white, wealthy smaller districts out of larger ones.-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 03:38, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

We have one on regular segregation, but it stops after Brown v. Board of Education and most of it is spent refuting the notion that segregation was right-wing. Nothing on the thing you're describing, from what I see. RoninMacbeth (talk) 03:42, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps I could write another section on the page about modern school segregation. Sadly, it isn't over.-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 04:15, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

How widespread is school segregation in this day and age?--Spoony (talk) 04:18, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Fairly prevalent. Here's a Last Week Tonight video on it. The problem is that, unlike post-Reconstruction Southern segregation, there's no codified law enforcing segregation. It's just enforced by redrawing district lines and the movement of kids from one school to another. RoninMacbeth (talk) 04:22, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

There are 9 current district secession attempts. Shockingly, that map indicates there's one attempt in the liberal SF Bay Area.-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 04:28, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@DiamondDisc1 Where do you live in California? I am not at all surprised that there's a secession attempt in the Bay Area. Seriously, we have a lot of moonbats here.Edit: Moonbats in that they point out problems hundreds of miles away while acting almost exactly the same at home.RoninMacbeth (talk) 04:30, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

The Northern region.-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 04:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah yes. Good ol'NorCal. Whenever someone from another area finds out we're from California, they just make bad surfer impressions while we shift awkwardly.

Anyhoo, I would be extremely willing to believe that there is segregation in the Bay Area, particularly in any urban center. The problem is that it's too difficult for anyone to try and remove an amorphous cultural element than an actual law. Malcolm X actually mentioned that areas that are supposedly progressive on race use tactics like gerrymandering to keep blacks and other minorities separate. RoninMacbeth (talk) 04:45, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Totally agree on the bad surfer impressions. >:( Been in the area with the ongoing secession effort, nice area, though there are some snobs who are probably supporting said effort.-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 05:13, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Such a shame. RoninMacbeth (talk) 05:20, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

A quick Google search reveals that the new district in this instance will take all the white and upper-middle class schools, just like other cases.-DiamondDisc1|1csiDdnomaiD (talk) 05:29, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Regarding Ted Stevens

It's my understanding that Ted Stevens' conviction of corruption was largely due to gross prosecutorial misconduct- to quote http://www.npr.org/2012/03/15/148687717/report-prosecutors-hid-evidence-in-ted-stevens-case

"A blistering report released Thursday found that the government team concealed documents that would have helped the late Stevens, a longtime Republican senator from Alaska, defend himself against false-statements charges in 2008...

...The 500-page report by investigator Henry F. Schuelke III shook the legal community, as law professors described it as 'a milestone in the history of prosecutorial misconduct.'"

As someone who's lived in Alaska his whole life, I can attest that public opinion of Stevens was largely positive- he was known as "Uncle Ted" among quite a few people. What I don't get is why every RationalWiki article I've read, when not (fairly) sniping at him for his "tubes" quote, labels him as corrupt. Examples of this can be seen at the articles for Alaska, Mark Begich, and Ted Stevens himself.

Am I missing something, or are those articles in need of some editing? Menoshe (talk) 18:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Most likely because we were not aware of any reports that indicated that prosecutorial misconduct could have been at play in his sentence. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. RoninMacbeth (talk) 19:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Reviewing the article leads me to believe that it already mentions his mistrial and the prosecutroial misconduct at play in his conviction. RoninMacbeth (talk) 19:06, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

The Mark Begich article takes a very different tone, and having read Stevens' article I'd argue that it implies he actually was corrupt and just got lucky. That may just me be, though. Menoshe (talk) 19:10, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Found this Gem from Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/forwardsfromgrandma/comments/6mgboi/sorry_if_this_is_against_the_rules_but_i_saw_this/ @FuzzyCatPotato Wanna write up an article on the book? Knightofjustice123 (talk) 00:21, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Knightofjustice123 Why don't you focus your efforts on one article? A bunch of stubs won't help anybody looking for answers. Pick one nutty website or one nutty YouTuber, sit down, get a dozen sources of them saying crazy shit, and draft it in your sandbox: User:Knightofjustice123/sandbox. Sir ℱ℧ℤℤϒℂᗩℑᑭƠℑᗩℑƠ (talk/stalk) 01:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@FuzzyCatPotato Hey Fuzzy why is your reddit account suspended? Knightofjustice123 (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Flat Earth Nonsense

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zngdg3/the-earth-is-flat-sam-kriss

"It's notable that this development only took place in the context of the emergence of a truly global capitalism and what the philosopher Max Horkheimer would later call "instrumental reason" – scientific reason that doesn't just explain reality, but which is put to use; the mode of reason that alienates people from a world reconfigured as one vast factory. For millions, technological advances meant not freedom, but utter misery – and just as it declares that everything can be known, instrumental reason abstracts that knowledge beyond immediate experience. "Enlightenment", Horkheimer writes, "has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity." Faced with a reality that could no longer be intuitively understood, whose secrets had become the property of a small class of scientists and administrators, the early Flat Earthers tried to claw back some of their autonomy. They insisted that their own experience, not the diktat of a ruling class, was true. And when you look at the Earth with your own two eyes, it doesn't look round. It looks flat.

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments , Søren Kierkegaard tells a parable: a man escapes from a mental institution and into town, but worries that he'll be returned to his cell if he's discovered to be mad. So he decides to answer every question with a statement that's undeniably true: "The Earth is round." This is, of course, madness, and he's quickly locked away again. The banality of angrily insisting that the world is round makes it in a way far less true than the idea that it's actually flat. Because it's not true, in the boring, conventional sense of the word, Flat Earth theory has an enormous creative potential: all those thousands of people, constantly creating their crystalline new realities and uploading them to YouTube. Flat Earth is fascinating because in an era where so much of the world is disenchanting and so much of social existence is already a given – you will have your job, you will have your life, you will be exploited and then you will die – there are people who can dream the Earth itself into a different shape. It's flat."

It sucks when people start to use philosophy to justify incorrect information. Now they're calling it "creating their own realities". Do these people really have to make shit up to feel at the center of anything? Machina (talk) 02:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Those people are sadly misguided. It's turtles all the way down. RoninMacbeth (talk) 04:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The rational ones get involved with some alternative history/become Trekkies etc. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 14:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Although a charitable interpretation of his text sounds more like "Aaw, bless their little crank hearts for daring to hallucinate" — which isn't all that bad, I suppose — I must say it annoyed me to see him wade too deep into his preferred hermeneutics and ending up overstating himself (as is typical of the practice). In no sense but that of a fantasy prone cultural critic is the world flat — and even then, it really isn't. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 12:41, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

SpaceBattles forum on RationalWiki

Moved to Talk:Ghost Bicycle^wheel 20:53, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Moved back by me. Christopher (talk) 20:59, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

So these hatnotes don't really amount to anything and you can ignore them. Bicycle^wheel 21:29, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

It's amazing how many different ways "RationalWiki is liberal Conservapedia" can be said. Shoutout to divabot.

@Reverend Black Percy's prior observation that the sanest individuals had the fewest objections to RationalWiki seems to hold.

There was a semi-serious critique on our ghost page's content, which currently reads:

Infrasound may be responsible for many reports of hauntings. The symphonic resonance of the human eye is 18Hz, and vibrations (including sound) in that frequency can distort a person's vision, sending inconsistent information to the brain which does its best to make sense of it, but often makes us "see" things that aren't there. Infrasound also affects people in chilling ways, causing them to feel like someone else is in the room, that they're being watched, etc.; the low sounds put out by extraction fans, and wind blowing across an opening in an old abandoned house (where the whole house acts as a resonance chamber), are good examples.

User "Pooka" writes:

One of their 'rational' explanations for ghosts was "infrasound causing the eye to vibrate causing hallucinations".

Nope! Sorry, 'Lavender Town Syndrome' does not make you sound less crazy than the guy who believes in ghost pirates.

[....]

Yes, I'm aware that infrasound can cause weird effects on the human nervous systems, as can electromagnetic fields. It's still a ridiculous explanation for why people see ghosts. Let me tear this apart;

1. There's literally no evidence for it. The anecdote described in what you quoted was exactly as scientific as if it said, "Tandy discovered a drop of blood on the ground and thus theorized that a 3 hit dice tanar'ri had accidentally been summoned into the laboratory, as no proper Protection from Evil spell was in effect". Correlation is not causation.

2. You would need to explain what at supposedly 'haunted' sites is producing sound at the magical frequency, why it only happens there (i.e., either that frequency is rare enough that we aren't constantly seeing ghosts, in which case you need to explain why it's occurring at the haunted site, or it's common, but doesn't cause us to see ghosts most of the time for some reason), why it only happens to some people some of the time, etc. That explanation is simply too 'flaky', and raises more questions than it answers. It's literally a 'God of the gaps' explanation.

3. Most of the accounts of supposed ghost sightings I'm familiar with tend to be more specific than 'grey blob on the edge of vision'. That isn't a ghost. That's an eyelash. I think Tandy had an eyelash and didn't notice it. You'll note that's actually a way more likely explanation for his story.

[....]

That's different. What's being claimed is that very specific sound frequencies cause hallucinations by causing vibrations in the eye jelly, which short-circuit data being sent to the brain. That explanation, as I explicated, runs into all sorts of technical issues with both the specific frequencies needed, the apparent selectivity of when hallucinations happen and to who, and to what hallucinations seem to happen. Infrasound causing your eyes to mistakenly register a gray blob is one thing. If only most accounts of ghosts involved 'gray blobs'.

The FCP Foundation (talk/stalk) 19:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

I've removed the infrasound stuff from our ghost page, without better citations it did sound like bullshit. Christopher (talk) 19:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

There's something in the infrasound theory, though. this is a start - it's only an old BBC news stub but there might be more on it elsewhere. Bicycle^wheel 20:52, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

As a believer in ghosts I've long held off editing the page, but there's some real crap in there. Ghosts can be explained by Dementia with Lewy bodies (a rare medical condition with many other symptoms, and pretty much only affecting older people)? Hallucinations caused by eating giraffe livers? Are you serious? Bicycle^wheel 20:42, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Bicycle Wheel Feel free to remove those -- maybe paste 'em to talkpage?

Sidenote: Why do you believe in ghosts (if you don't mind the question)? 32℉uzzy; 0℃atPotato (talk/stalk) 05:36, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I knew I'd get asked that. I've always enjoyed reading about the paranormal - ghosts, UFOs, anything - and I just feel , despite there's a small hardcore of evidence that won't go away. Personally I think a) ghosts aren't "spirits of the deceased" so much as recordings of a past event (recorded how? well if I knew that...) b) science will one day either show that this hardcore of cases will have a mundane explanation, or that it's some new scientific phenomenon. Either way, that'll be the end of ghosts as mysteries. Either no more ghosts, or explained ghosts, but certainly the end of ghosts. Science will find the answer... eventually. Bicycle^wheel 08:45, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

That's certainly an interesting idea. Why do you prefer the "recording" explanation to the usual explanations -- hallucinations, vibrations, and hucksters? Fuzzy. Cat. Potato! (talk/stalk) 17:29, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it Could explain the cases where different people see the same ghost at different times, when they didn't know each other and often didn't know about any ghost. Ghosts are often said to not interact with witnesses, or to be not someone known to the witness. They often are said to repeat the same mundane actions over and over. So to me it just has that feel of an event being recorded and replayed somehow. Bicycle^wheel 09:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

There are rational explanations for many ghosts etc (Pareidolia, expectations, natural phenomena - infrasound and 'whatever fumes caused the Delphic oracle' etc) and UFOs (natural phenomena, 'balloons, kites, dirigibles, advanced airplanes on test flights etc) and quite a few other things (and some of 'testing things with my fancy new bit of equipment - what do these inexplicable readings mean?) - but there is a remainder of 'weird stuff.'

Bicycle Wheel - have you come across The Stone Tape? 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Wouldn't these guys have found something by now? Leuders (talk) 01:07, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

La unua Esperanto ĉefa artikolo

Mi ĵus publikigis kion mi havas por la unua traduko de artikolo en Esperanton, helpu ĝin kreski ĉi tie!'Legion^{what do you want from me} 18:47, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched. Bicycle^wheel 18:51, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

mdrkio'Legion^{what do you want from me} 18:56, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Bonaj Memeoj! Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 22:24, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Dankon por la mojosegaj memeoj amik''Legion^{what do you want from me} 22:49, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Hieraǔ mi kreis la uzanto-kategorion Espearanto-parolantoj. Bonvulu redakti vian uzanto-paĝon kun la nova kategorio se vi kompremas min. Spud (talk) 04:04, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Mi iam bone parolis Esperanton. Mi tradukis la novelon fare de Ambrose Bierce, Oleo Hunda ("Oil of Dog"), in Esperanton. Bedaŭrinde mia Esperanto malfreŝiĝis. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 04:29, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Sam Harris and Free Will

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lks1MfZ8gQU&t=2316s

Is he right about us not having free will? He seems to say that because we don't know all the factors in play and don't have control over them, then our free will does not exist?Machina (talk) 01:18, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

If we don't know all the factors at play, then scientific reasoning would suggest it is impossible to make an ironclad claim either way. Personally, I'm a hard determinist, but I honestly am not sure about this belief because I do not know all the factors at play. RoninMacbeth (talk) 01:20, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

But doesn't hard determinism make life not worth living? Machina (talk) 02:28, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

You think life would be more worth living if you were entirely responsible for your past? - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 02:45, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes it would, because that would mean I can change things if I don't like them, but if everything is "fated" and you know what is going to happen and what you will do then what is the point in going on?Machina (talk) 21:30, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Machina, I think you've missed something crucial about free will. There is no scenario in which YOU are NOT making your own choices. The question, massively simplified, is whether or not said capability to make decisions — decisions you make, no question about it — are ultimately the product of a 'top-down process' (i.e. woo-laden substance dualism in which your immortal soul is somehow piloting your otherwise-inert body "from the outside" as if it were some kind of bizarre RC meat mecha) or a 'bottom-up process' (i.e. energy + laws of motion/cause/effect/etc + the passing of considerable amounts of time). It may sound like determinism means "the future has practically already happened!", but actually, determinism just means that the future will be a function of the past. Besides, determinism really says nothing absolute about the future (never mind implying anything like "the future is already here!"). All determinism prescribes is the now, and that the now flows from the prior. That's it. Put like that, it doesn't sound all that bad, now does it? Any alternative to "the future being a function of the past" necessitates a universe in which reality itself is either absurd or outright psychotic. Compare that meaning of determinism to the divine omnitemporalism inherent to libertarian free will — in which (quote) "the future already exists and God necessarily has foreknowledge of it". Now that's a terrifying scenario. Thankfully, it's nonsense. Understood correctly, all determinism implies in the practical sense is something akin to "what is going to happen is what is going to happen", and that is a state of affairs to which no logical alternative exists anyways, no matter how you slice it. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 22:33, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

But doesn't that wreck our justice system? I mean, what do we do in the case of psychopaths and murderers? What if we loan somebody an object and they break it or they do something stupid and hurt themselves? What we can't fault them because they would have done the same thing anyway if we were in their shoes? We couldn't have decided differently because we are a victim of circumstances? It sounds like hell on earth if that was true. It would be enough to drive one to suicide.Machina (talk) 00:08, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm in the USA. Here, the justice system needs wrecking. No punishment it ever hands out is ever proportional, and when that happens there's often an outcry that the judge went easy on the accused. Ideally, what we'd get is a system that is equally attentive to the excuses offered by the poor as it is to those offered by the wealthy. Until that happens, as a matter of principle, nobody is guilty. And in the meantime, if you want to know if you have free will or not, I made a simple and easy test. - Smerdis of Tlön, ^{LOAD "*", 8, 1.} 00:42, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

In my experience, every single argument which relates philosophical free will to the justice system reeks of sophistry. Here's the equation y'all are looking for.

• In case of free will: criminals may ethically be punished (since criminals now have free will).
• In case of determinism: judges may ethically punish criminals (since judges now lack free will).

Or, phrased differently:

• Free will entails that "ethics apply" and judicial punishment is just [ P ].
• Determinism entails that "ethics do not apply" and judicial punishment is not unjust [ ¬(¬P) ].

Please note that there is literally no difference whatsoever between these two outcomes — by which I mean to say, these "two" outcomes are specifically one and the same outcome. As such, people trying to force a consequential connection between philosophical free will and the criminal justice system makes Percy a dull boy. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 01:39, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

But the video seems to suggest that it wouldn't be their fault since there was no "choice" in the matter and that they are the victims of circumstance. The events of their lives led to them doing that. They mention the brain tumor argument, someone who is violent because of a tumor in their brain. You wouldn't place blame on someone like that, so in a case where determinism is true it would be the same thing.Machina (talk) 02:36, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm familiar with Harris' argument; as noted below, I even have his book Free Will sitting in my bookcase. And what's very important to reason about is things like medical conditions causing different behaviors and so on. However, as I had hoped was clear above, my argument is about universal free will. I mean, what does a tumor matter, if that tumor is only there because the creature with the tumor is there, in turn because of — by extension — precisely where, relative to each other, hydrogen atoms happened to materialize out of a boiling quantum stew a rough dozen billion years ago? Rhetorical question, for the record. My point is the following — when we mean to say 'free will', we can't just say 'free will'. Doing so confuses things enormously. This is the reason why I bolded the word "philosophical" in "philosophical free will". Contrast this with the much more tangible example of a physical tumor affecting decision making. It's a convoluted topic, I know. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 03:50, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Machina: Does it? Why can I not decide whether or not my life has meaning, or what that purpose is, by myself? RoninMacbeth (talk) 02:47, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

If it's bullshit, it don't matter if you like it. And free will is probably bullshit. FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 04:32, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Free will (in the 'truly free' WLC-libertarian sense) is a hopelessly stillborn pipe dream, I'm afraid. Ultimate universe-wide determinism — perfect in its utter arbitraryness — is not just possible, but positively likely. Now — this is not to say it's "somehow not us" making our own choices. We still do, unequivocally. We just don't get to choose what we ourselves choose to choose. Crucially; with or without libertarian free will — it would still be deductively certain that the choices you would choose to make are the choices you would choose to make. As such, our present lack of libertarian free will makes no practical difference either way (because the very notion of such 'freely' free will is an incoherent absurdity to begin with). Note also that for any (even MINIMALLY moral) theist God to be able to function, omnitemporalism seems an apparent requirement. And omnitemporalism, for the record, is not even wrong. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 09:58, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I've not seen the video and don't know where I saw that -was long ago, maybe it's related to this- but I remember to have readen elsewhere that free will as understood in the religious/(I guess) libertarian circles did not exist. Panzerfaust (talk) 13:41, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Neither have I — though, I have read Harris' book of similar title (among many other works on free will).

Please also note that the term 'libertarian', when used in the context of the philosophy of free will, has nothing to do with political libertarianism (compare related terms — e.g. 'determinism' or 'compatibilism'.) Reverend Black Percy (talk) 14:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

True, I noticed that went I went to the article about determinism, or wherever there was the compass with both that and free will. Panzerfaust (talk) 20:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)