Evolution and the problem of time

I always find it amusing when someone who has credentials in a subject, but is at a distinct disadvantage in IQ terms tries to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about. You may recall that over the years, I have repeatedly asked various evolutionary True Believers a very simple and straightforward time-based question, to which there absolutely must be an answer, and they not only have been unable to answer it, but frequently tried to deny it was either a) relevant or b) possible, thereby demonstrating that they don’t understand ANYTHING about their own faux-scientific faith. But the speed of evolution, and of the underlying mutations, is absolutely central to understanding the theory, as well as determining whether it is total nonsense or not:

Mathematicians keep refining π even though they know it to more than 12 trillion digits; physicists beat themselves up because they cannot pin down the gravitational constant beyond three significant figures. Geneticists, by contrast, are having trouble deciding between one measure of how fast human DNA mutates and another that is half that rate.

The rate is key to calibrating the ‘molecular clock’ that puts DNA-based dates on events in evolutionary history. So at an intimate meeting in Leipzig, Germany, on 25–27 February, a dozen speakers puzzled over why calculations of the rate at which sequence changes pop up in human DNA have been so much lower in recent years than previously. They also pondered why the rate seems to fluctuate over time. The meeting drew not only evolutionary geneticists, but also researchers with an interest in cancer and reproductive biology — fields in which mutations have a central role.

“Mutation is ultimately the source of all heritable diseases and all biological adaptations, so understanding the rate at which mutations evolve is a fundamental question,” says Molly Przeworski, a population geneticist at Columbia University in New York City who attended the Human Mutation Rate Meeting….

A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and
archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution,
such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world.
But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when
extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most
recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered
dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many
researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting
multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is
assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

You know you’re dealing with QUALITY science when scientists start substituting variables for concrete numbers depending upon what they want the results to be. Here is the money quote: “The fact that the clock is so uncertain is very problematic for us,” he
says. “It means that the dates we get out of genetics are really quite
embarrassingly bad and uncertain.”

As I have repeatedly predicted, genuine genetic science is eventually going to kill evolution by natural selection deader than phlogiston or the Flat Earth theory.

RIP Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is dead at 66:

British fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett has died aged 66 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, his publisher said today.He sold more than 85 million books worldwide in 37 languages, but also waged a very public struggle with Alzheimer’s disease in recent years – and was a vocal campaigner of the right to die.

The author is best known for his satirical fantasy novels set in Discworld, a flat planet resting on the back of four elephants, themselves perched on the back of a vast turtle moving through space.

After avoiding them for years, I eventually came to enjoy many of Mr. Pratchett’s books and consider him to have been rather underrated as a writer. I hope, for the sake of his literary legacy, that his death will be sufficient to prevent him from writing any more books.

The ghosts of the machine are pro-Puppy

This strikes me as not only amusing, but a propitious omen:

I just logged into Sasquan’s website to make Hugo nominations, and when I first opened my ballot, all the slots were already filled in. It seemed to be entirely with the Sad Puppies slate. It’s my first time nominating, is this kind of thing usual? And if so, why the hell?

I mean, I changed them all, but why were they there?

I’m not entirely sure it was the Sad Puppies party ticket, but Vox Day appeared a surprising number of times.

I don’t know why it should surprise anyone that an Internet Superintelligence should have machine intelligence friends. In any event, these deep mysteries of the cybernetic age aside, it’s been interesting to see some of the predictions concerning the Hugo nominations, both public and private. Chaos Horizon is among those expecting SP/RP to land two Best Novel nominees, Monster Hunter: Nemesis and Skin Game:

3. Monster Hunter Nemesis, Larry Correia: Correia finished 3rd in the 2014 Hugo nominations, with only Leckie and Gaiman placing above him (Gaiman declined the nom). That put him very safely in the field, and the mathematics are in Correia’s favor for this year. While Monster Hunter Nemesis is a slightly odd choice for the Hugos, being 5th in a series and urban fantasy to boot, it’s hard to imagine Correia’s supporters abandoning him en-masse in just one year. Despite the vigor of his campaign, Correia doesn’t haven’t the broad support necessary to win a Hugo.

5. Skin Game, Jim Butcher: Skin Game was part of the “Sad Puppy 3″ slate, but Butcher’s appeal extends well beyond that block of voters. While Butcher has never gotten much Hugo love in the past, he is one of the most popular writers working in the urban fantasy field, and his Henry Dresden novels have been consistently well-liked and well-loved by fans. Even WorldCon voters who don’t agree with the Sad Puppy 3 argument may look at the list, see Butcher, and think, Why not? If Correia can make the slate, so too can Butcher—and Butcher might be even more popular in Sad Puppy realm than Correia. On the negative, this is #14 in a series, and that’s a tough sell to new readers. I’ll be fascinated to see how the vote turns out on this one.

I tend to think he’s discounting Nebula-nominated The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, which I expect will replace either the Addison or the Leckie book on the list of finalists. My suspicion, and it is only that, is that Sad Puppies is going to generally outperform what appears to be the consensus expectations of two nominees per category. Now, I could be entirely wrong and perhaps there is a 650-strong stealth SJW slate that will lock out the Puppies entirely across the board, but I don’t see many signs of that having been successfully organized.

Chaos Horizons also looked the number of expected nominations and predicted the overall performance of Sad Puppies:

In an earlier post, I estimated the total nomination ballots for this year to be around 2350 (that’s pure guesswork, sadly). 330/2350 = 14.0%. Either way, the model gets us in the same ball park: Sad Puppies 3 is likely, at the top end, to account for between 10% and 15% of the 2015 Hugo nominating vote. For good or bad, that will be enough to put the top Sad Puppy 3 texts into the Hugo slate.

2. The data shows that the Sad Puppy 2 campaign fell off fairly fast from the most popular authors like Correia to less popular authors like Toregersen (60% of Correia’s total) and Hoyt (50% of Correia’s total) to Vox Day (33% of Correia’s total). Torgersen and Vox Day made the final slate based on the relatively weakness of the Novella and Novelette categories. While I don’t track categories like Novella, Novelette, or Short Story on Chaos Horizon (there’s not enough data, and I don’t know the field well enough), I expect a similar drop-off to occur this year. If you want to assess the impact of the whole Sad Puppy 3 slate, think about which authors are as popular as Correia and which aren’t.

If we put those two pieces of data together, we get my “Hugo Campaign Model”:

1. A Hugo campaign like “Sad Puppies 3″ will probably account for 10-15% of the 2015 nominating vote.
2. The “Sad Puppies 3″ slate will fall off quickly based on the popularity of the involved authors. 

I don’t think Chaos Horizon is correct about the percentage, however, for two reasons. First, he probably isn’t aware that the Dread Ilk did not get involved until AFTER the nominations were closed. So he’s probably missing about 120 votes right there. Furthermore, we know that an unknown number of Dread Ilk, and an equally unknown number of new Sad Puppies, got involved this year. So, my guess is that his 330 estimate should be at least 500 for the combined Puppies and could be even higher. If we assume his 2,350 estimate is correct, and I find his reasoning to be perfectly plausible there, then the Puppies will represent between 20 and 25 percent of the 2015 nominating vote.

(I note, with some amusement, that the combined Puppy vote will likely exceed the TOTAL Hugo nominating vote for any year prior to 2009. Keep that in mind when anyone tries to claim our votes are somehow unrepresentative, illegitimate, or unfair.)

Second, Chaos Horizon has no reason to understand that the Dread Ilk are far more intelligent, focused, and disciplined than the average readership. But you are, and therefore at least the Rabid Puppies element of the slate is unlikely to fall off quickly on the basis of popularity as it did last year.

Diversity = military occupation

France occupies itself:

As the threat of attacks by Islamist extremists remains high in France, President Francois Hollande has decided to continue the deployment of 10,000 troops on the streets across the country.

“The threat of terrorist attack against our country remains high. The head of state has decided to maintain the level of the army on the national territory at 10,000 troops in support of security forces from the Interior Ministry,” Hollande’s office said in a statement after a meeting of senior ministers, AFP reported.

A total of 7,000 troops will be monitoring and protecting religious buildings that are “particularly threatened,” the statement added. Among other sites that are being patrolled by the troops are stations, media buildings and various other possible targets for terrorists. The move comes almost two months after deadly attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine’s headquarters and a kosher shop in Paris left 17 people dead.

At some point, someone in France is going to realize that if you’re going to pay for 10,000 troops to militarily occupy your own nation, it would be considerably more effective to use all those troops to repatriate the group of people responsible for making the occupation necessary.

And that’s assuming they lean towards the more civilized option, which has historically not always been the case in France.

We are fighting back

Reggie at Reaxxion explains how SJWs are putting women out of work.

 PAX banned booth babes from their events and they are just one of many events including E3 to start banning booth babes. This is an excerpt of what PAX had to say on their booth babe policy:

PAX has a strict ‘no booth babe’ policy with the purpose of creating an environment where everyone can feel comfortable and welcome, and the focus is on games, not hired booth staff.

Booth babes are defined as staff of ANY gender used by exhibitors to promote their products at PAX by using overtly sexual or suggestive methods. Partial nudity, the aggressive display of cleavage and the navel, and shorts/skirts higher than 4” above the knee are not allowed. If for any reason an exhibit and/or its contents are deemed objectionable to PAX management, the exhibitor will be asked to alter the attire of its staff.

Cosplayed characters that are playable in-game are an exception to this rule (within reason), and exhibitors must obtain permission from show management prior to the show.

As Reggie points out, cosplayers shouldn’t be breathing a sigh of relief, because it’s obvious they are next. Hot women make not-hot women uncomfortable, therefore they must be banned.  As Game Dev newsletter subscribers already know, Alpenwolf has bravely responded to this attack on women by adding a female character to First Sword and making her the face of the game.

About more in the near future. “Morwyn Shadowsong” is already scheduled to be featured in a photoshoot for a popular men’s site and will also be appearing in miniature, cartoon, and 3D formats. She will also be the protagonist of a novella, The Gladiator’s Song, which will be published later this year by Castalia House.

Relativists regret consequences of relativism

It is becoming increasingly obvious that abandoning traditional Christian moral values comes at a very heavy societal cost. Unfortunately, even those who belatedly recognize this can’t quite bring themselves to do the obvious and call for a return to the traditional white Christian civilization of Western Christendom:

The health of society is primarily determined by the habits and virtues of its citizens. In many parts of America there are no minimally agreed upon standards for what it means to be a father. There are no basic codes and rules woven into daily life, which people can absorb unconsciously and follow automatically.

Reintroducing norms will require, first, a moral vocabulary. These norms weren’t destroyed because of people with bad values. They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism, which refused to assert that one way of behaving was better than another. People got out of the habit of setting standards or understanding how they were set.

Next it will require holding people responsible. People born into the most chaotic situations can still be asked the same questions: Are you living for short-term pleasure or long-term good? Are you living for yourself or for your children? Do you have the freedom of self-control or are you in bondage to your desires?

Next it will require holding everybody responsible. America is obviously not a country in which the less educated are behaving irresponsibly and the more educated are beacons of virtue. America is a country in which privileged people suffer from their own characteristic forms of self-indulgence: the tendency to self-segregate, the comprehensive failures of leadership in government and industry. Social norms need repair up and down the scale, universally, together and all at once.

There is no easy way out. Humanity is not going to magically, or rationally, invent a better moral system than those that a) were handed down from on high, or if you prefer, b) evolved through trial-and-error. In light of the failure of secularism and multiculturalism, the nations of the West are going to embrace some past moral structure, absolutist judgments and all.

The only question is if it will be pagan or Christian. And the former is considerably less pretty than its historically ignorant proponents understand.

Interview with a legend

Johnny Wilson, the former editor-in-chief of Computer Gaming World, is one of my all-time favorite people in the game industry and one of the individuals I most respect on the planet. He’s written one very good book with Rusel DeMaria on the history of the industry, and I’m hoping to get another one out of him for Castalia House.

Like a lot of the old school game industry people, Johnny is more than a one-trick pony; in addition to being a professor at DePaul University, he’s also a theologian and a pastor. The whole Gamasutra interview from 2012 is fascinating, but in light of #GamerGate, I found these two answers to be particularly prescient.

Was there any moment that made you realize game journalism had finally reached the main stream?

Considering the shoddy state of mainstream journalism today (even some once-great newspapers are pure sell-outs), I guess we reached that bottom rung level a long time ago. I know that when I was editor, I had definite ideals of serving the reader, avoiding conflict-of-interest, and getting behind the corporate facades and into the real stories. The truth is that I don’t know of any modern publications—analog or digital—that have those ideals.

Do you think game reviews with percentages and stars somehow cheapened game journalism?

No, I think the desire to get the “first” coverage cheapened game journalism. In the pen and paper world, we used to talk about “shrink-wrap” reviews. I know that some of the early pioneers in the hobby game magazines would talk about popping the shrink-wrap, looking at the components, reading the rules, and writing the review without even pushing pieces around. My feeling was that European publications, because they had a more competitive environment (and efficient distribution system), rushed reviews to press. That doesn’t really serve the reader at all.

My argument with, for example, PC Gamer’s percentage system wasn’t that they used percentages, it was that an astute reader would notice that the magazine (at least, during the Gary Witta era) always had some sacrificial lamb of a product that they rated in low percentage ratings. But, if you looked at those games, a lot of them were never released in the U.S. and certainly weren’t advertisers in that publication. At CGW, we didn’t have enough editorial space to deal with games that weren’t going to be released in the U.S. So, we wouldn’t even have touched those games. On the other hand, there were times that lousy games we might have been tempted to ignore were actually advertised in our publication. If they were advertised, I felt an obligation to review them. And I had more than one advertiser yell at me that I shouldn’t treat them that way after what they had spent. I shrugged my shoulders on one occasion and said, “Ironically, I probably wouldn’t even have assigned the review if you weren’t trying to get my readers’ attention.”

But, did our star ratings cheapen our review work? No. If anything, the stars sharpened our efforts. The reviewers suggested a number of stars and the editor covering that genre was expected to defend that star rating in the general editorial [OK, “Star Chamber”] meeting where we debated the ratings. The meeting often required a half-day or more of heated discussions before we approved those reviews to go to press. We didn’t discuss the reviews among ourselves as much before the star ratings were implemented. To be honest, I resisted the star ratings for as long as possible. I wanted the readers to READ the reviews. But, the bottom line is that I just kept getting hammered by readers that we NEVER gave bad reviews when I thought it was clear that we gave bad reviews. I eventually realized that our readership was becoming younger and more casual and, as a result, we had to spell out what we really thought.

The world wide web was the death of game journalism. There simply isn’t any reliable metric to determine which site is really reliable and which journalists are legitimately trying to do their work and which are merely “fan boys” getting their dopamine fix by slamming people and using “tabloid” style headlines. It always makes me nervous when I read reviews on the web because I don’t feel like I can trust anyone to have played the game all the way through.

Go read the reviews from the older CGW issues sometime. The difference between the level of expertise and the depth of knowledge possessed by the writers then versus the writers of today is astonishing. The dirty little secret of the SJWs in game journalism today is that they don’t actually know very much about games, which is why they always lean towards using their nominal game reviews and articles as a platform for non-gaming issues.

I wrote for both Electronic Entertainment and Computer Gaming World, and writing for the latter was always rigorous. Chris Lombardi not only sent my first review back to me for re-writing, but rejected an article on games as the realization of the Wagnerian concept of Total Art that later appeared in a BenBella SmartPop book. The most notable thing CGW had that most modern game sites lack was integrity.

He’s on a manic swing again

I always enjoy McRapey’s manic phases. That’s when he produces his most amusing quotes and you get a clear glimpse at how messed up and insecure he is. He’s apparently been feeling his oats lately, so he decided another shot at #GamerGate was in order, which promptly led to him feeling insecure after a number of #GamerGaters wondered who the hell he was:

4 NYT Best sellers. 3 Hugos. 3 TV series currently in development. Books in 20 languages. CLEARLY, public opinions have hampered my career.

(I should note that two of those Hugos were awarded to me, essentially, FOR having opinions in public. So.)

GamerGater: YOU ARE TERRIBLE FOR TELLING ME NOT TO READ YOUR BOOKS AND I WILL NEVER READ THEM NOW Me: Ate a lot of lead paint as a kid, huh?

Lots of GGers smugly asking who I am because they’ve never heard of me. Of course not, you’d have to be literate for that, lads.

It’s amusing how Johnny can’t open his mouth without trying to spin the narrative. I mean, full credit for admitting that two of the Hugos were political in nature, but we all know that all THREE of them actually were. There is not a single person on the planet who genuinely believes Redshirts was the best science fiction novel of 2013 in any sense of the term. Including McRapey himself.

And the idea that anyone who is literate has heard of John Scalzi is hilarious. I live in Europe. I know many highly literate people. Absolutely NONE of them have ever heard of him. We have over 100 players at the adult level. Ender has a game this weekend, so between that and practice next week, I should see everyone. I’ll report back on how many of these literate and multilingual Europeans have ever heard of “the science fiction writer John Scalzi”.

It’s also funny that Scalzi thinks he’s big time because he can sell up to 150k books per shot with Tor pushing him as hard as it can. He’s trying to break into the game industry, where games that have 17 million active players are still practically unknown to the game journalists as well as everyone who doesn’t play in that particular genre.

One more amusing note. Back in 2012, someone named CDaniell claimed I was jealous of Scalzi. His words are even funnier today, now that we know what we know about SF’s biggest con artist.

I did have a chance to read up a bit on Mr. Scalzi. So: The SFWA presidency, the Hugo nominations, the ascendancy to the the New York Times best seller list, the 50,000 visitors-a-day blog and a novel being adapted to film with Wolfgang Petersen attached to direct? Goodness. Talk about an Alpha who can seriously put the bread on the table. 

The film was canceled, the 50,000 visitors a day was proven to be a lie, the fan writer nominations are now an award and a Best Novel award that is a historic embarrassment, and the NYT bestsellers show every sign of being nothing more than his publisher gaming the list.

The NYT pumps anti-GamerGate

It’s amazing how the mainstream media thinks they can just blatantly lie about easily verified facts and control the narrative thereby:

Originally intended as a short about the indie game scene in Mr. Francois’s native Australia, “GameLoading” soon transformed into a feature about indie developers worldwide. Among the interviewees are Ms. Quinn, who created the free, text-driven interactive fiction game Depression Quest in 2013. Instead of battling dragons and demons, players fight clinical depression. Ms. Quinn’s creation enraged some gamers, who objected to its subject matter and to the fact that, like more conventional video games, it was being released on Steam, a popular digital store. Anonymous trolls sent her rape and death threats and posted her home address and phone numbers online, prompting her to relocate.

Mr. Francois has struggled to understand why fans of mainstream games would feel threatened by an indie like Depression Quest, since they’re hardly in competition with one another for fans. “The reality is, we’re going to see more games, and more variety of games. Obviously, Activision isn’t going to kill off their first-person shooters.”

It’s not that hard, Mr. Francois. No one is threatened by Depression Quest. But everyone was furious that a bunch of game journos tried to claim it was a great game, then conspired to hide the fact that some of them had personal connections to Quinn.

As for Activision, there is this out of Redmond:

In an interview dating back to late last year, Bonnie Ross, the woman in charge of stewarding and developing the blockbuster HALO franchise, stated that her goal in managing the franchise was to increase the diversity of characters appearing in the games produced by Microsoft subsidiary 343 Industries. She further reinforced her position on women in the gaming industry by stressing the importance of hiring more female game developers and giving them role models to aspire to within the industry.

Ms. Ross’s influence has already been heavily felt within the HALO canon: she is the executive responsible for tearing up the original script for HALO 4, which featured women as villainous characters, and forcing a complete rewrite to include stronger female protagonists.

So, do they seriously struggle to understand or are they just disingenuous? We know perfectly well that Ross will turn HALO into the tale of a female Master Chief torn between her love between two soldiers if given the opportunity. While there’s nothing wrong with that per se, male gamers don’t want that in their games. If they did, they’d be reading Twilight.

This is Christian leadership

The nations of Europe are throwing off the poisoned dream of multiculturalism. And I don’t think it is an accident that it is those who successfully survived decades of socialism that are the first to clearly recognize the evils of diversity. From the Prime Minister of Hungary’s State of the Nation address:

The Honourable Chair has mentioned wiseacre analysts who take the view that the concept of a civic Hungary (i.e. one based on Christian-democratic, conservative principles) is merely a political product, and that this has somewhat shaken the faith of the members of our political community. I understand the concerns, but I hope for more self-confidence from Reformed Church pastors, let alone ministers. For our flag is flying high; everyone can see that. Everyone can see that we are a people’s party community, based on Christian-democratic foundations – the ideal, guiding star of which is a civic Hungary. I do not think that this would change in the next hundred years….

Hungary gave its own answers to the most important European questions in
2010. Already since 2010, we have been living in the future which many
other countries are only just setting out towards or will attempt to
reach sooner or later. Europe today continues to huddle behind the moats
of political correctness, and has built a wall of taboos and dogmas
around itself. In contrast, we took the view that the old pre-crisis
world will not return. There are things from past periods which are
worth keeping, such as democracy – as far as possible in a form which
needs no modifying adjectives; but we must let go of everything that has
failed and has broken down. We must let go of these things before they
bury us beneath them. We have chosen the future. Those who do not make
choices find that instead circumstances will make the choices for them.
Those who do not actively decide will find that their lives will be
decided for them. We therefore let go of neo-liberal economic policy,
and perhaps we did so as late as we possibly could have; we let go of
the policy of austerity, just before we were about to share the fate of
Greece; we let go of the delusion of the multicultural society before it
turned Hungary into a refugee camp, and we let go of liberal social
policy which does not acknowledge the common good and denies Christian
culture as the natural foundation – and perhaps the only natural
foundation – for the organization of European societies. We decided to
face the barrage of unfair attacks and accusations, and also let go of
the dogma of political correctness.

And as far as I see it,
Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect – in other words,
they have not yet lost their common sense.

What a tragedy that the USA does not have such a leader. What a tragedy that we don’t even have a nation for such a leader to address.