If you choose rhetoric

You will get rhetoric. JF’s fans are crying that it’s unfair I have responded to JF on the rhetorical level. They also don’t know what “disingenuous” or “ad hominem” mean:

Look its disingenuous for Vox to whine about JF’s rhetorical dismissals and then ad hominem attack him.

There is nothing in the least bit disingenuous for someone whose dialectic overtures are met with rhetoric to subsequently switch to rhetoric. Nor am I asserting that JF’s irrelevant objections and inability to distinguish between concurrent and successional regimes, and between Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens sapiens, have anything to do with his panoply of physical, philosophical, moral, and mental shortcomings. What he said in the debate was simply wrong. The total number of seeds ever produced by every tree in the forest over time says almost nothing meaningful about the historical annual growth rate of the trees standing in the forest today.

I just find it to be tremendously amusing that an autistic French degenerate who sexually preys on women living really kickass lives is stupid enough to rhetorically attack a) a comedian and b) the author of what may the best modern book on rhetoric, both of whom are more intelligent and more socially hardened than he is, and his fans somehow interpret this as evidence of his superior intelligence.

If you know anything at all about Owen Benjamin, if you know anything at all about me, then you have a pretty good idea how merciless this is going to be and how long it is likely to last. So, don’t shed any tears, don’t bother shaking any fingers, just sit back, have a croissant, and enjoy the ride.

Introducing SocialGalactic

Twitter is SJW-controlled territory. Gab is a hellhole of defamation and Nazi trolls. So, after many of Infogalactic’s supporters asked us to provide something on the social media front, the InfoGalactic team joined forces with OneWay and created a new social media alternative: SocialGalactic.

We’re presently in Beta. Free accounts have 140-character posts and 1MB storage, which is just enough for an avatar and a header. We’ll soon be making Pro accounts available at three levels, which will provide posts of 200, 480, and 999 characters, and image storage up to 500MB. Sign up and check it out!

For the Burn Unit members who are already on the site, please note that it has been updated to version 1.1.0. Log in and log out to make sure that you’re running the latest version, which includes:

1)  Badges for member levels
2)  Character limits based on member levels
3)  Mobile improvements
4)  Moderator controls
5)  Notifications counters
6)  Position of post you are relying to in modal.
7)  X closes DM modal.
8)  Bio in dark mode
9)  Post counters on home page.
10)  Online user counter on home page.

Please keep in mind that SocialGalactic is NOT a free speech zone. Don’t be vulgar, don’t post nudes or obscene material, and behave in a civil manner. If you want spicy memes and bantz, you’ve already got Gab. Don’t bother asking for more image storage for free accounts, as we’ve identified that as a primary attack vector by trolls and monkey-wrenchers and we’re more likely to reduce the image storage than increase it.

They never saw it coming

Boys are now excluded from the Boy Scouts:

The Boy Scouts of America welcomed the establishment of Troop 86 in Vulcan and Troop 219 in Helena on February 1st. But these two troops are different — no boys, all girls. The first two of their kind in Central Alabama. With the formation of these two troops, a debate has taken hold. Some think this compromises the central mission of the Boy Scouts, whereas other believe it gives girls new opportunities that they never had before.

It won’t be long before men are excluded from the pulpits of Fake Christian “churches” too. This is why our ancestors didn’t allow women to join men’s groups in the first place.

The retreat begins

Torin was trying to cover JF’s intellectual surrender and his retreat from math, science, and logic in our debate earlier this week:

You seem quick to dismiss JF but what he said made perfect sense to me. If you want to create your own model OK. But if he is not comfortable with your assumptions also fine. I am confused a bit by the attacks but I guess this is just play. Yet the attribution of “fleeing” and “don’t call it science” are things I would not say unless I was damn sure. And since I have expertise in some fields I know how hard it is to be damn sure

Sir Hamster was having none of it:

“seem” – I watched the debate, and I saw JF making objections to the model that were already accounted for in the model. I knew it the moment he said it in the debate, and Vox confirmed it in tonight’s Darkstream. 

“comfortable” – JF’s feelings as a biologist are not very interesting or relevant when we can demonstrate his objections are irrelevant.  Having watched the debate, JF fled the moment he retreated to rhetorical plays, like when he claimed he was crushing Vox’s dreams. 

Vox was stepping through the construction of a model using generous assumptions favorable to TENS. That’s not a dream, nor was it crushed. TENS advocates should have built their own model. They haven’t, nor do they want to. At this point, the reasonable conclusion is that they don’t want to deal with the questions such a model would bring. 

If you want to call what I said, “attacks”, you should recognize that JF resorted to rhetorical attacks in the debate. It was intellectual surrender. 

Torin tried to maintain a fighting withdrawal:

I saw two different models because of a disagreement on assumptions. Sure there was some rhetoric. But a lot of rhetoric is going on here. This is why I stopped playing team sports. Have a good one.

But Owen Benjamin had the last word in his analogical description of the debate:

Vox: We can measure how tall the trees are. And we know how old they are. So, what is the annual rate of growth?

JFG: No, no, it is time for me to crush your dreams. Can you not see all zee seeds zat are scattered around zee forest? Zere are so many of zem! Meellions and beellions! Now look at zis picture, do you not see how zee acorns, zey have zee different sizes? Zoot alors! Croissant!

The amusing thing is some of JF’s fans are demanding that I debate him again, not 12 hours after insisting that he crushed me.

The reason you don’t want a second debate is clearly because you are a terrible loser and dishonest intellectual. You really think that biologists haven’t gone over these theories of yours before? If you are so certain that all of this is satanic gamma talk perpetuated by 110 IQ mid wits then why not destroy JF and the rest of us in a second debate. Because you are afraid of losing even more face, nobody is fooled by your stammering retort in this video. Man up and put your ideas to the test or admit defeat!

Of course I’m not going to debate him again. As I observed in the Darkstream last night, there is no point, since he’s either too dumb to understand the issue or too dishonest to address it directly. I gave him the chance to refute my case, he whiffed more completely than his followers are even able to understand, and I was able to learn what I needed to learn. Let’s not forget, this was the second time I’ve spoken to him about something that wasn’t his book, and the second time he has completely failed to understand a perfectly straightforward argument.

I’m beginning to wonder if Downe’s Syndrome might be sexually transmitted.

Intra-media war

When the Washington Post goes to war with the National Enquirer, I think we all know who wins. America.

Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? (On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI, and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.)

In the AMI letters I’m making public, you will see the precise details of their extortionate proposal: They will publish the personal photos unless Gavin de Becker and I make the specific false public statement to the press that we “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”

If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they say they’ll publish the photos, and quickly. And there’s an associated threat: They’ll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from that lie.

Be assured, no real journalists ever propose anything like what is happening here: I will not report embarrassing information about you if you do X for me. And if you don’t do X quickly, I will report the embarrassing information.

Nothing I might write here could tell the National Enquirer story as eloquently as their own words below.

These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.

I’m both amused by Jeff Bezos’s appeal to the nonexistent integrity of “real journalists” and amazed that the National Enquirer people were willing to put their demands in writing.

But I don’t see why Bezos should resist the idea of giving a false public statement. There are literally dozens of them published in his newspaper every single day.

Darkstream: thoughts on the evolution debate

Possibly the most interesting thing about this debate was how it demonstrated the power of rhetoric to persuade those incapable of understanding dialectic. More than a few of JF’s fans sincerely believe that he blew both me and my case away despite the obvious fact that he didn’t even begin to address the latter. For example:
  1. He claimed that mutation rates rather than fixation rates were more relevant to my case, even though “the fixation probability is one of the cornerstones of population genetics.”
  2. He failed to grasp that the 2009 Nature study specifically involved parallel gene fixation, thereby accounting for the entirety of his objection to my case. He thought my case assumed a successive-mutations regime even though the study obviously concerned a concurrent-mutations regime.
  3. He retreated to rhetoric and misdirection by bringing up that list of genome sizes and population mutation rates, neither of which said anything about actual fixation probabilities or time frames.
  4. The fact that there are “millions and billions of mutations” says absolutely nothing about how fast a single mutation propagates through an entire population, let alone provides part or all of the basis for a speciation event. The fact that each human child is born with an average of 70 mutations doesn’t say anything about how long it took to fix the genetic structure of the human eye throughout the entire human population.
Now, if you don’t understand the significance of a scientist resorting to rhetoric rather than directly addressing the subject at hand, I don’t think you’re tall enough for this ride. These things should become considerably more clear once I have the transcript of the debate and can analyze it at my leisure.

Quantum Mortis #4 is out

QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted #4: We Regret to Inform is now available at Arkhaven Comics in high-resolution CBZ format and Kindle format for $2.99. As are the three previous issues.

Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower is a ruggedly handsome military policeman who hates aliens. Fortunately, as a member of His Grace’s Military Crimes Investigation Division – Xenocriminology and Alien Relations, he gets to arrest a lot of them. Sometimes he even gets to shoot them.

Chief Tower and Detector Derin Hildreth of the Trans Paradis Police Department are investigating the murder of the Crown Prince of Morchard, and when there is a second attempt on the life of his brother and successor, they rush to the scene. But their investigation is complicated by the discovery that the assassin is in the employ of a foreign embassy. Does Tower dare risking the wrath of an ambassador with diplomatic immunity? Do you even have to ask?

The Kindle version is also available on Amazon now. It will NOT be available in Kindle Unlimited.

Why the US is interested in Venezuala

The Saker interviews Michael Hudson to learn why the USA is suddenly so interested in Venezuela, of all places:

The Saker: Could you outline the various reforms and changes introduced by Hugo Chavez? What did he do right, and what did he do wrong?

Michael Hudson: Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its government revenue – mainly from oil, of course – to develop infrastructure and domestic spending on health care, education, employment to raise living standards and productivity for his electoral constituency.

What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector. And he was unable to stem the capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its wealth and moving it abroad – while running away themselves.

This was not “wrong”. It merely takes a long time to change an economy’s disruption – while the U.S. is using sanctions and “dirty tricks” to stop that process.

The Saker: What are, in your opinion, the causes of the current economic crisis in Venezuela – is it primarily due to mistakes by Chavez and Maduro or is the main cause US sabotage, subversion and sanctions?

Michael Hudson: There is no way that Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic independence without inciting fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney’s regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy, running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its savings to U.S. banks.

By imposing sanctions that prevent Venezuela from gaining access to its U.S. bank deposits and the assets of its state-owned Citco, the United States is making it impossible for Venezuela to pay its foreign debt. This is forcing it into default, which U.S. diplomats hope to use as an excuse to foreclose on Venezuela’s oil resources and seize its foreign assets much as Paul Singer hedge fund sought to do with Argentina’s foreign assets.

Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile’s “economy scream,” so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela. It is using that country as a “demonstration effect” to warn other countries not to act in their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being siphoned off by U.S. investors.

The Saker: What in your opinion should Maduro do next (assuming he stays in power and the USA does not overthrow him) to rescue the Venezuelan economy?

Michael Hudson: I cannot think of anything that President Maduro can do that he is not doing. At best, he can seek foreign support – and demonstrate to the world the need for an alternative international financial and economic system.

He already has begun to do this by trying to withdraw Venezuela’s gold from the Bank of England and Federal Reserve. This is turning into “asymmetrical warfare,” threatening to de-sanctify the dollar standard in international finance. The refusal of England and the United States to grant an elected government control of its foreign assets demonstrates to the entire world that U.S. diplomats and courts alone can and will control foreign countries as an extension of U.S. nationalism.

The price of the U.S. economic attack on Venezuela is thus to fracture the global monetary system. Maduro’s defensive move is showing other countries the need to protect themselves from becoming “another Venezuela” by finding a new safe haven and paying agent for their gold, foreign exchange reserves and foreign debt financing, away from the dollar, sterling and euro areas.

The only way that Maduro can fight successfully is on the institutional level, upping the ante to move “outside the box.” His plan – and of course it is a longer-term plan – is to help catalyze a new international economic order independent of the U.S. dollar standard. It will work in the short run only if the United States believes that it can emerge from this fight as an honest financial broker, honest banking system and supporter of democratically elected regimes. The Trump administration is destroying illusion more thoroughly than any anti-imperialist critic or economic rival could do!

In short, Venezuela is another crisis point for US financial imperialism. The inability of Venezuela to take possession of its own gold in London is yet another indication that the neo-liberal world order is increasingly unstable. It’s not about the oil, it’s about the debt.

It certainly doesn’t help that US officials are doing incredibly stupid things, like the Secretary of State calling Juan Guaido “duly-elected” when the man has never even run for President of Venezuela! The two candidates who lost the 2018 election to Nicolás Maduro were Henri Falcón and Javier Bertucci, while Henrique Capriles was the losing candidate in the 2013 election that was also won by Maduro.

1MB is NOT a bug

If you are experimenting with (the thing that shall not be named but will be announced Friday), the 1MB limit on image storage is most certainly NOT a bug. Free accounts get 1MB, which is just enough for an avatar and a header, and not very much more.

More importantly, this approach allows us to defang a major attack vector utilized by anonymous trolls, serial harassers, and monkey-wrenchers on social media sites.

One more thing. If you are an Infogalactic supporter – and thank you very much, all of you – you need to email me BOTH your @name and your support level. I may write 900-page epic fantasy novels without an outline, but nevertheless, I am entirely incapable of remembering every single supporter’s precise support level on the basis if their email account. Telling me “my name is X” is great, but it does not tell me whether you are a Bronze, Silver, or Gold supporter.

The support badges and additional text limits are expected to arrive before we announce publicly on Friday.

UPDATE: our payment processor is suddenly taking belated issue with our subscription model because it is technically on a different site, so we have taken down the products from the store while we resolve the matter. If you are already a Burn Unit member, please continue to provide me with your username and support level in order to have your status upgraded.

Maximal mutations

As I promised last night, here are the numbers I utilized in last night’s debate on the theory of evolution by natural selection with biologist JF Gariepy:

BACTERIA
Years: 3,800,000,000
Years per generation: 0.000071347 (37.5 mins per generation)
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600
Years per fixed mutation: 0.114
Maximum fixed mutations: 33,288,000,916

Source: Sequencing of 19 whole genomes detected 25 mutations that were fixed in the 40,000 generations of the experiment.
NATURE, 2009

NOTE: These 25 mutations were fixed in parallel. The 1600 generations per fixed mutation represent an average. So, JF’s appeal to massive parallel propagation is already accounted for, at least with regards to observed fixation in bacteria.

MAMMALS
Years: 200,000,000
Years per generation: 4.3
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600
Years per fixed mutation: 6880
Maximum fixed mutations: 29,070

NOTE: the bottom number represents the maximum number of fixed mutations from Morganucodontid to Homo sapiens sapiens.

CHLCA
Years: 9,000,000
Years per generation: 20
Generations per fixed mutation: 1600 (Note: 8170 generations fastest Y-chromosomal lineage observed and extrapolated.)
Years per fixed mutation: 32000
Maximum fixed mutations: 125

NOTE: the 9 million represents the latest average estimate for the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor, which estimate has ranged from as little as 4 million years on the basis of the molecular clock to 25 million years.

Now, the primary problem with JF’s appeal to parallel gene propagation is that it requires a minimum of 15,000,000 mutations to become fixed in the human population, and another 15,000,000 mutations to become fixed in the chimpanzee population, and to do so in an amount of time that permits 125 fixed mutations in series.

In other words, there must be 120,000 genes simultaneously fixing throughout the entire population in parallel at all times, and the same process has to happen TWICE. This does not strike me as credible, even if we don’t bother questioning JF’s claim that the observed genetic differences between human and chimpanzee lie on a spectrum and that not all humans will possess the 15 million mutations that separate Homo sapiens sapiens from Pan troglodytes and that not all chimpanzees possess the additional 15 million mutations that separate Pan troglodytes from Homo sapiens sapiens.

Or, to put it more simply, there have been 450,000 chimp and human generations since the CHLCA. Based on the number of mutations observed fixing in parallel in the Nature study, that would permit 562 total fixed mutations in that time frame. Which is only 29,999,438 short of the approximate number observed.

I understand that some people are disappointed that I did not drive these points home during the debate, or that I did not answer JF’s rhetoric with any rhetorical killshots of my own. But JF is not, and has never been, my target. I’m hunting much bigger game. That being said, I will analyze his program and make use of it at some point in the not-too-distant future.