Remember our favorite pet troll’s prediction that I’d be shut down within a month? Remember how that happened on January 24th? Well, I just celebrated my 8-month anniversary of having not been shut down. Meanwhile, what’s his site look like now?
I have to admit, it’s a huge improvement. Shame he didn’t even last long enough for the Internet Wayback Machine to have archived a copy though, so I could prove what a difference the new site design is, both in terms of relevance and aesthetics.
In response to some database performance problems I was noticing with the high-traffic, never-dying astrology debunking post, threaded comments are now disabled so as to force the blog to honor the 50-comment-per-page limit. I figured I had best nip this in the bud before HostPapa decided to kick my ass.
WordPress’ default behaviour involves only rolling over to the next page of comments, after 50 top-level comments. This is by design, I guess. While I could have just dropped that limit to 25, or hacked out the part where it looked only for top-level posts (thus breaking nesting when it crossed a page threshold), I decided to do things the hard way, since I had decided to eliminate threading altogether anyway. Gear-headed stuff below the fold.
Continue reading “How to change comment threading and ‘in-reply-to’ in WordPress to match mine”
Phil Plait’s posted the infamous Don’t Be a Dick speech from TAM 8 over at his blog (though hopefully the cross-posting won’t bother everyone’s favorite Bad Astronomer). I’m amused that people watched this and thought he’s talking about PZ specifically. He talks a lot of sense. I do take issue with a few quibbling points, but as I’ve gotten a chance to preview an upcoming blog post by Our Lady, I wouldn’t want to step on her toes.
Phil Plait – Don’t Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo.
So what do you think? And more importantly, are my tactics in the never-ending astrology thread dickish at all?
Update: Stephanie’s posted the above-teased piece right here.
What’s the difference between someone who engages in an argument in bad faith in an attempt to spread their views and someone who has internalized the views of such a person but is willing to find out what might be wrong with them? What’s the difference between the willfully ignorant and the miseducated? What’s the difference between someone who is out to demolish our credibility and someone who doesn’t know yet whether they can trust us? What’s the difference between someone who’s setting out to obfuscate and someone who hasn’t been trained to argue through a proposition to find the truth?
There are a few clear answers to that, but none of them are going to be clear to me in the course of an online discussion with someone I haven’t encountered before. They all involve motives and history that I’m not privy to. If I’m playing to an audience, that audience isn’t privy either.
Sadly, I don’t owe Bora Zivkovic (whom I have fondly referred to as William Tockman in the past, if you’ll pardon the geek reference) nearly as much as some of his compatriots in the scientific blogosphere. But he helped with Jodi’s geeky proposal trail that started over at Stephanie’s, and for that I owe him a debt of gratitude. Not for helping me get started as a blogger, or for helping me find my place in the scientific community, or any number of other acts of kindness, both large and small. Nor have I participated in ScienceOnline, at least not yet. But the impact Bora has had on the science community is obviously far-reaching.
Now that Bora has left ScienceBlogs in the wake of the Pepsi blog ridiculousness, he needs to support his family, as their income is severely impacted. Considering how many good turns he’s done the community, the community is understandably speaking up, telling him what they owe him — and showing him, however possible.
I honestly wish I had more to say here, but the man’s largess should speak for itself. The fact that he has been unable to adequately monetize his actions is a failing of society — where merit alone does not win one a decent living. I also wish we had the finances at the moment to be able to show, rather than say, how high my opinion of him is. But if you have benefited from Bora’s kindness, large or small, you could donate and show that you recognize that kindness, and want to do him a kindness in return. Likewise, you could visit their store and see if there’s anything you’re interested in, or anything at his Zazzle store while you’re at it. I’m sure whatever you do will be appreciated.
I have posted the following comment at Jamie Funk’s Funk Astrology. It is in earnest. I have every intention of carrying out a real debate about the underpinnings of astrology, but I will not be goaded into talking about Jamie’s specific brand of it, and I have given them a perfectly legitimate “out” so they can save face, in case they really think such an argument would hurt their “brand”.
As both Jenn and Margaret pointed out, I absolutely would have let the matter drop with nary a single mention of your names (and you’ll note, the original article sneering at the idea of using astrology to “predict”, after the fact, why Deepwater Horizon exploded, didn’t contain the name Jamie Funk anywhere on it until Jamie posted). I also didn’t think there was much to debate about — we have a difference of opinion, in that I believe astrology is bunkum, he believes it has value. It was his personal pride and conflating my sneering at astrology with sneering at his personal skills at it, that led to the escalation.
I’m not persecuting, I have no intention of carrying out an inquisition, and I’m certainly not hunting for heretics as I don’t personally hold to ANY dogma, much less a dogmatic belief in science without evidence. I mean, if you want to carry out the argument, I work well in either the mode where we discuss astrology, or we throw personal insults at each other (e.g. when Jamie called me a coward), so if you must cast me as an inquisitor rather than a warm and genuine human being with a difference of opinion, then do what you must to muster the courage to fight.
That said, after I post one last pointer to this thread and a cross-post of this comment, I have every intention of letting the matter drop, if you have no intentions of addressing my arguments in this post.
(That post, by the by, was written for this blog first, and cross-posted at my blog in case something untoward happened to it, like getting lost in a spam filter or getting reduced to merely a link. Cross-posting is not merely cut-and-pasting, but writing something intended to be posted in two places simultaneously.)
Just say “astrology must be taken on faith” and we part ways. You have my word.
Update: There are two other takes on this situation that you should probably read.
George W of Misplaced Grace – Daily Horoscope: Saturn Is In Aquarius And Yet You’re Still A Giant Dick
sinned34 of Evil is Underrated – People braver than I
You’re both on my blogroll now, and about damned time.
Something’s been kicking around in my head through pretty well through every panel on the skeptic track, forming sort of an overarching theme, about the uphill battle against which the skeptical “movement” (if there is such a beast) faces. And that centers around the old quote: “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get out of bed”.
It’s undeniable that there is an objective truth of the universe. This universe works a certain way, period, and though that way may be mysterious, it is internally self-consistent. Even if the “rules” by which the universe plays, happens to differ under certain circumstances, it works how it works. There is no evidence that these rules are being rewritten on the fly, there is no evidence that there is some kind of supernatural force affecting the natural world, and there is no evidence that one can intrinsically manipulate this unevidenced supernatural force to rewrite the rules of the universe the way we want. Those of us with an interest in discovering the way the world truly works — so-named “rationalists” or “skeptics” — place the truth value of descriptive statements about the universe above all else. As such, it is fundamentally important to us to evaluate and rewrite our core epistemology when better evidence, better data, comes to light.
This does not appear to be the default case for the rest of humankind. Whether by environment or by genetics, the default mode is to accept pat answers that free up brain share for going about your daily life without having to worry about why we don’t fall up, why the sun shines, and why we even exist at all. We accept authority as pushed on us by our parents or spiritual leaders, and we learn that questioning these authorities is just a way of sowing doubt in your own mind. Once you start to doubt the “authorities”, you have to devote mental energies to determining the truth value of each of their statements thereafter. So, it’s far easier to simply accept the first-to-market idea that happens to catch your attention and provides a plausible-enough case for its truth value, than it is to actively research every claim that you come across.
It is this phenomenon against which skeptics fight. When someone makes the claim that quantum physics implies that one can modify reality in order to make it bend to your will, simply by “thinking happy” as in The Secret or through chakra manipulation, that has parsimony with pre-existing biases toward so-called magical thinking. It is therefore more likely to be accepted at face value by someone that believes there is a supernatural component to reality.
Compounding the situation we already have, wherein people make wholly unsubstantiated claims about reality, there is also a tendency for the news media to make wild leaps far beyond the probabilistic findings of real science. What is nominally a new, fuzzy bit of information that is interesting but means very little on its own, becomes “life on Mars” or “may some day cure cancer”. The news media appears to be invested in making each article about scientific progress stand on its own, and therefore strip every shred of context that might give you insight into the long chain of events that makes up science’s history. With each advance forced to stand on its own, the scientific method seems like divine inspiration when it is decidedly not. For instance, the theory of evolution stands not on a wholly unfounded “guess” by Darwin, but rather on the shoulders of every advance that came before it in geology, archaeology and biology. Over the 150 years that followed, every new line of evidence corroborated the hypothesis of common descent, including radiometric dating, and what could essentially be considered the ultimate creationist-killer field: genetics.
The evolution of the body of humankind’s scientific knowledge is as cumulative as the biological improvements over time in humankind, and the whole story deserves being told. Once people recognize that our current state of knowledge is predicated on every other advance that came before it, I suspect many of the abovementioned problems we face in adoption of the scientific worldview will pretty much evaporate.
I’m not sure how likely it is I’m going to have time for blogging over the next few days. See, tomorrow, at 11:55am, Jodi and I are planning on getting on a two-part flight to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I say “planning” because flights have this annoying tendency of getting delayed by an hour pretty well every time I’m supposed to get on one.
Plans for the week’s vacation include visiting the science museum, one of the two zoos, visiting with all sorts of super-awesome people we’ve met on the blogosphere (e.g. Ben and Stephanie Zvan, Tim and Carrie Iwan, and I’m kinda hoping to collect PZ Myers and the rest of Quiche Moraine to fill my autograph book), and of course, we’ll be spending four of our vacation days devoted exclusively to CONvergence, a sci-fi/fantasy/skeptics/nerddom convention. The Skepchicks have a track there called SkepchiCON, which we’re both looking forward to participating in as much as possible. I’m of course interested in the panels being hosted by some of those same blog heroes mentioned earlier, but will make sure to stop and check out some of the less heady events, such as Gnome Punting and Advanced Zombie Survival.
If you’re one of the few people that my dear, hermitous wife has allowed to follow her on Twitter, she’ll be live-tweeting our goings-on. I’ll have my laptop, but I can’t guarantee I’ll get to live-blog much of anything. Will probably put together catch-up posts once I get some time.
Anyway, almost time for bed. Onward to adventure!
Why do atheists feel the need to put down people who believe in a God? I spend a lot of time on the internet and a lot of my encounters with Atheists have been negative in the sense they feel superior to me because they don’t believe in God. Why is that?
I’m going to assume you’re earnest in your question, and that you’re not merely smearing me specifically with perceived slights by other people. There’s a number of possible answers for this question. From most to least likely:
1. You’re on the internet. People are generally douchier than in real life, when behind a screen of anonymity. It’s possible if you were to debate them in person, they’d be more civil.
2. It’s also very easily possible to misread tone on the internet as it’s pure text. You may be mistaken about their perceived superiority. Some people aren’t as good as others at being diplomatic in pure text, where people don’t have the benefit of facial expressions or tone of voice to detract from the seeming condescension of their words.
3. If you’ve spent a lot of time on the internet debating with atheists (and I notice you’re using a capital A so I think this possibility is a good one), they may feel that you’re claiming that an atheist is an Atheist, e.g. that they subscribe to a religious view of atheism, the same way that a person can be a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Jew. The thing is, it’s also possible (and much more likely) that they are atheists because atheism is the default position for someone unconvinced by any specific dogma — it is merely a lack of theism. Getting on someone’s nerves is not a good debating tactic — it’s just a good way to ensure you’ll end up incurring harsh feelings. And once you’ve gotten someone’s enmity that way, forget civility.
4. They could recognize specific arguments from battles past, and they may have already heard and feel they have already sufficiently countered them. This is especially true if you’re going to an atheist’s blog, and you haven’t taken the time to search it to see if they’ve specifically addressed your exact argument before.
5. They could feel you’ve mischaracterized something they’ve said, and are offended. It’s not a matter of feeling slighted by your not “believing’ their argument, but rather that you’ve either intentionally or unintentionally misunderstood what they’re saying in order to make a point of your own. When having a debate with someone, read their argument more than once before you start your rebuttal. They’ve likely done the same, so its’s only fair.
6. Understand that just because they don’t agree with your position, doesn’t mean they haven’t thought it out. And it certainly doesn’t mean they are intentionally disrespectful of yours.
There’s more possibilities than just these, but these are the ones off the top of my head.
Update:
7. They may not necessarily disrespect YOU. It’s possible they’re disrespecting only your IDEAS. People deserve respect intrinsically. Ideas have to be proven before they should be respected. And in some cases, the manner in which you “prove” ideas may not be the same as other people — for some, merely having enough people believing the same thing makes the idea worthy of respect (e.g. if there are a billion Muslims in the world, their ideas can’t possibly be ALL wrong, could they?). This is fallacious on its face. The fact that a lot of people believe a thing that’s unproven, doesn’t make the thing they believe any more worthy of respect. It is only when ideas are well-evidenced that they should be respected, and even then, they should never be elevated to the level of sacrosanctness.
Just a few quick, interesting things (a short RCimT, if you will) before I hit the hay.
If you haven’t already seen it, check out Jim Gardner’s multi-part review of Joe Cienkowski’s tract really-short-book Atheism is a Religion – Evolution Is Their ‘Creation’. As an added bonus, I clash with some random anonymous dude here in part 2 over some specious claims about the ability to be “true-agnostic” like True Neutral in D&D. Amusingly, later in the same thread, a steady-stater named Russ shows up to talk about how light can get tuckered out, and how he knows better than the scientific consensus through his self-education in particle physics and cosmology over the past 41 years. And guess why there’s a scientific consensus about the big bang cosmology? That’s right, a global conspiracy for money! Of course!
Our Lady of Perpetual Win, AKA my evil overlord, has a fantastic meta-analysis post about how alliances are formed and maintained on the blogosphere, and what can be expected from allies — and conversely, what CAN’T be expected in any fairness. And here I just thought you went around collecting minions from willing subjects. Suffice it to say, expecting a nascent community of otherwise outcasts to act monolithically is pretty counter-intuitive. Though I guess if you were really supposed to collect minions, you could expect at least some measure of uniformity in action. Stephanie also reposts a salient piece from last year about allies, containing this most-choice quote:
The people we need to reach, in the mainstream or in other marginalized groups, are not monolithic. We need as many ways to reach them as there are people to be reached.
So, again, quit elbowing the people on your side of this argument. Just because they do things differently, doesn’t mean that method is inherently wrong or will damage “the movement”, if there even is such a thing.
And finally, George W, a frequent commenter, takes it upon himself to enter dialog with someone that confronted PZ Myers, PZ ignoring him, and the Pharynguloids going rabid over him thereafter for his troubles. While I don’t personally care for the whole tone debate, this is exactly what Stephanie means by that pullquote above. There is some utility to the slavering hordes at Pharyngula. There is also utility to my making fun of, say, the more fundamentalist Sunni Muslims for believing some fan-fiction about their prophet and threatening people for drawing him as the logical extension to that belief. Likewise, there is utility to those cases where someone honestly, and without malice, offers their hand to the person on the other side of the debate, hoping to educate them about how the universe actually works and how splendorous it is unfiltered through religious dogma.
Mind you, there are some cases where the person you’re trying to lift out of dogmatic belief has no intention of ever leaving it. Sometimes you have to live and let live. It’s why I do not argue against the sillier beliefs on other people’s forums unless the owners are known quantities and, well, already proven allies (so to speak). I advertise, instead, hoping people with sincere beliefs will come to me seeking enlightenment. Or sometimes, just seeking a fight. You get some depraved and tenacious loonies this way (search for Zdenny on this blog!), but every once in a while, you get a genuine discussion with someone that genuinely wants to know more about the universe, and those make it all worthwhile.
I’ve been asked to put up a short primer on how to properly format your comments so that you can take advantage of what HTML I’ve allowed. And I’m of course happy to oblige!
There’s a quick reference by clicking on the “allowed HTML” link right above the comment box. It gives you the following possible code:
<a href=”” title=””> <abbr title=””> <acronym title=””> <b> <blockquote cite=””> <cite> <code> <del datetime=””> <em> <i> <q cite=””> <strike> <strong>
To use a tag, enter it as shown. That starts the tag. Type whatever text you want, then close it with the slashed close tag as shown below. The parameters are optional, but some are necessary for the tag to be functional. They go only in the opening tag, not in the closing one. The quick reference shows what parameters are available for each tag, but doesn’t say whether they’re important or not. See below for what each tag does.
Continue reading “Quick HTML reference for commenting”
