Posts Tagged ‘skepticism’
And That’s Before Getting Into the Whole ‘Roko’s Basilisk’ Mess
Here we see a real purpose behind lesswrong.com. Ultimately it doesn’t matter that people like Thiel or Kurzweil or Yudkowsky are pushing a crackpot idea like the singularity; what matters is that they are pushing the poisonous ideas that underlie Bayesianism. Thiel and others are funding an organisation that advances an ideological basis for their own predatory behaviour. Lesswrong and its sister sites preach a reductive concept of humanity that encourages an indifference to the world’s suffering, that sees people as isolated, calculating individuals acting in their self-interest: a concept of humanity that serves and perpetuates the scum at the top.
Stephen Bond on what’s wrong with LessWrong, with digressions into why all skepticism is neoliberalism and the rules of Fuck You, Buddy.
Amanda Marcotte vs. the Nice Guys®
I’ve avoided posting about Elevatorgate here in part because the skeptical community is not really my community, in part because it’s completely absurd, in part because I try to keep the blog relatively non-contentious, and in part because I already lost my mind once arguing about it over at MetaFilter—but Amanda Marcotte has one of the best step-by-step break-it-down explanations of the whole mess that I’ve seen. If you still don’t understand why it’s wrong to proposition trapped women, there’s really just no hope for you.
Friday Night
* Let a thousand Arizonas bloom: Puerto Rican Eduardo Caraballo was threatened with deportation from Illinois because he looks Mexican. Via MeFi.
* A bunch of neurotic, selfish, childish, insensitive and unimaginative, vicious bunch of jerks! Robert Heinlein v. fandom. Starship Troopers: no joke. Also via.
* Skepticism v. denialism. Also also.
* Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga is a new technological breed of journal that intends to take seriously the brazenly unserious shock pop phenomenon and fame monster known as Lady Gaga. You know what I’m gonna say.
Polygraphs
Like most junk science that just won’t die (graphology, astrology and homeopathy come to mind), because of the usefulness or profit their practitioners enjoy, the polygraph stays with us.
Thursday Night Links
* James Randi responds to the criticism he received yesterday for his stated climate change “skepticism.”
* The emissions cuts offered so far at the Copenhagen climate change summit would still lead to global temperatures rising by an average of 3°C, according to a confidential UN analysis obtained by the Guardian.
* The physics of space warfare.
* It turns out Joss Whedon significantly overbid for Terminator; James Cameron originally sold the franchise for a dollar.
* Avatar poised for a $200-million weekend.
* Point and counterpoint on Massachusetts as a model for health care reform.
Wednesday Roundup
* Skepticism fail: James Randi jumps the shark. Ugh.
* Health care reform continues its endless slide into oblivion. Steve Benen counts the five senators still not on board: Ben Nelson/Olympia Snowe from the “center,” and Feingold, Sanders, and Burris from the left. Meanwhile, Crooks & Liars and Firedoglake still argue the Liebermanized bill is worse than nothing, while Yglesias singles out Harry Reid for praise:
…the fact of the matter is that there’s almost no precedent for the legislative mission he’s been asked to accomplish of turning 59 Democrats, one loosely Democrat-aligned Independent, and two slightly moderate Republicans into 60 votes for a package that’s simultaneously a dramatic expansion of the welfare state and a measure that reduces both short- and long-term deficits.
Fair enough. But it’s Reid’s total rejection of reconciliation as even a theoretical alternative that has left us in this mess in the first place. Reid gets no special praise from me.
* io9’s 20 best SF films of the 2000s. Totally forgot Spider-Man 2 and Eternal Sunshine were from this decade; it’s been a long ten years.
* And meat-eaters finally win a round: “Meat may be the reason humans outlive apes.”
On Rehearsing One’s Own Prejudices
Here’s a nice video on open- and closed-mindedness from that paragon of skepticism, Candleblog.
Dying to Have an NDE
In the comments Ryan directs me to this piece in Viceland about both the experience of dying and near-death experience.
Next, you’ll experience what I think is the real moment of death. There are sensations of being surrounded by gentle beings and white light within which are figures that exude comfort, relief, warmth, release, and liberation.
Meeting dead people is a singular experience. I once met an acquaintance of many years who had died about a year prior. He looked casually at me and said, “Oh, no use talking to you yet. You aren’t staying.” I recall saying, “Shit, I hope the others know that,” meaning my hardworking rescue team, slaving away on my body somewhere else. I got the distinct impression that my friend was a guardian of some sort, not of me or of people, but of the realm his bulk (yes, there is an impression of substance) was maddeningly obscuring the view of. On another occasion, I saw a very dear friend who had died in a horrific car crash in which she had burned to death. This had happened some three years before. She did not notice me at first, so I called to her, “Hey, Donna, what are you waiting for?” She looked up without any surprise at seeing me and said, “My son.”
At that time this child, my godson, was a healthy little boy. Sadly, Max died in a house fire about a year after this encounter. I am always comforted that his mother told me she was waiting for him and that they are with each other now.
Isn’t it pretty to think so?
Alan Weisman, author of the key apocalyptic text of the moment, The World Without Us, was on The Daily Show last night. Here’s the video:
Ron Riggle’s Operation Fluffy Bunny report was also pretty excellent.
Meanwhile, just about all of The Colbert Report was mandatory viewing last night as well: here’s Stephen on the Freakonomics terrorism kerfluffle, skepticism, and (maybe my favorite news story of the year) corporate edits of Wikipedia.