Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: the purpose

Smiley asks about the meaning of it all:

What is your goal when you discuss something with someone here? For them to admit that they are significantly less intelligent than yourself?

As some already answered, the fundamental reason this blog exists is to amuse myself. But my primary goals when discussing something with someone here are to a) force myself to articulate my thoughts in a manner that others can understand, b) unearth any flaws in my reasoning and expose any errors in my information and my assumptions, and c) reach the most logically sound conclusions on the basis of the most solid evidence available.

None of this has anything directly to do with making people admit that they are less intelligent. That is completely unnecessary, as it is already statistically inevitable in the overwhelming majority of cases. As always, it is wise to have a look at the numbers before leaping to groundless conclusions. Sitemeter reports 7,876 average daily visitors here this morning. Even if we allow for this blog’s particular appeal for those possessing above-average intelligence, let us say three times more, this means that there are most likely between 10 and 20 people here who are either at or above my level. And, so long as no spatial reasoning is involved, there are likely even fewer at or above my functional level.

I don’t walk people into traps and show them to be incorrect and/or relatively unintelligent in order to get my intellectual rocks off, I do it because they are annoying me by wasting my time and everyone else’s with their stupid and obviously fallacious arguments. I find such arguments to be petty and irritating, and the only reason I address them at all is because so many other people readily fall for such nonsense unless they are conclusively shown how intrinsically nonsensical it is. With a few masochistic exceptions, most people have the good sense to learn to shut up and think twice before mindlessly yapping away again once they have had their noses rubbed in their own intellectual excrement.

Serious questions are completely fine. Admissions that one doesn’t understand something and would like a detailed explanation are fine too. But if you are going to challenge me and claim that you are correct, you had damn well better be ready with a solid and defensible case. I’ve been writing columns for 10 years and blog posts for 8 years with the knowledge that hundreds, if not thousands, of people would be going over them with a fine-toothed comb in search of any error, however minor, that they can exploit in order to discredit me and my conclusions. So, in addition to the advantage of raw cognitive firepower, I also have considerable experience in structuring arguments as well as anticipating how people will attempt to disprove or otherwise discredit an argument.

Now, I love it when someone surprises me with something clever that I hadn’t previously considered. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest to be shown to be incorrect and I have openly changed my opinion on far too many things for anyone to credibly claim it does. I used to believe in the drug war, I used to believe that women should have the right to vote, I used to believe there was solid evidence for evolution by natural selection, I used to believe in monetarist economics, I used to believe in free trade, I used to believe Socrates was a great philosopher, I used to believe the USA was the freest nation on Earth, I used to believe the North was right, I used to believe that the Bible was a load of feel-good nonsense designed to serve as an intellectual crutch for those too psychologically weak to face up to the nihilistic reality of the universe.

Of course, I believed all those things for the same reason I believed the crust was the best part of the bread. Someone told me once and I never thought the matter through for myself. So, I recognize when someone is not expressing the fruit of their own intellectual labor, but is merely parroting what they have been told by someone else, because I have been there and I have done that.

Pity the poor cam whores

Either Andon failed Reading Comprehension 101 or we are facing an imminent Internet tragedy:

jumping from high places – always fatal. injecting kids with vaccines – almost never fatal. comparison warranted.

The central problem with this critique is that the comparison that was made was not between jumping from high places and being vaccinated, but rather between being filmed and being vaccinated. Still, I should be truly fascinated if Andon genuinely wishes to argue that being filmed by a web cam is intrinsically more deadly than being injected with poison. Perhaps, I can only imagine, he subscribes to the notion of the camera stealing one’s soul?

And yes, as always, these are real critics and genuine attempts to “correct” my reasoning.

Mailvox: an ironic failure of reason

Smiley reaches a logically erroneous conclusion:

So how is the average person who did not have the same experiences as you, and does not find the logic convincing, supposed to believe? Elsewhere, you, like most christians, indicate that non-christians intentionally choose hell over heaven as though they deep down know that christianity is true.

This also seems at odds with a claim you made once, that you believe that it is rational to not believe in Christianity. So if it is rational, how can one be held accountable for not believing?

The Divine Hiddenness argument against the existence of the biblical god, uses that precise fact, as its core. I find that infinitely more convincing than any argument ever proposed by any Christian.

1. God sincerely wishes with all his heart to believe in him (I know VD’s God is much more cruel and indifferent than most Christians’ ideas, but he still does desire every individual human to believe in him)

2. It is rational to not believe in God

3. So there is no biblical God

Most Christians deny 2. But they are wrong. And you, VD, appear to agree.

First, it is both absurd and petty to avoid capitalizing a proper noun. Regardless what one thinks of Marxism, Buddhism, or Christianity, they all merit capital letters. This is basic punctuation. Second, I think this is a very common and reasonable line of thought which nevertheless reveals several logical errors on the part of the questioner.

The answer to the first question is simple. Observation. Even if we do not have certain experiences ourselves, we can reach valid conclusions by observing the effect those experiences have had on others. Indeed, this is both how science operates as well as being one of the primary forms of transmitting Christian beliefs from its inception; the observed transformation that took place in the life of Saul, to say nothing of the cowardly disciples, no doubt played a large role in the subsequent beliefs of others, just as an observed transformation in one of my friend’s lives made a major impact on my own thinking about Christianity.

To say that non-Christians choose Hell over Heaven is not quite the same thing as saying that “they deep down know that christianity is true”. While some consciously do make such a choice, most do so by rejecting the choice, but of course, the refusal to make a decision is tantamount to making a negative decision when a choice must be made. Also, what most Christians actually mean in this regard is not that most non-Christians deep down subscribe to the Nicene Creed, but rather that they understand, deep down, that they are flawed and fallen beings in need of salvation from their sinful nature.

As the vulgar expression has it, they are aware there is a Jesus-sized hole in their hearts. While one can certainly quibble about the size and shape of the hole if one wishes, it would be very difficult for anyone with any experience of humanity to altogether deny its existence, even though the materialist has no choice but to do so. This, of course, is why so many people instinctively, and correctly, reject material reductionism regardless of whether they possess religious faith or not.

Now to get to the errors.

A. To say that it is rational to not believe in the tenets of Christianity is not tantamount to saying that it is justifiable to not believe in those tenets. Nor does it mean that belief in Christianity is irrational. (For the sake of the pedantic, I will point out that I used “belief in Christianity” in the sense of “being a Christian”; obviously it would not be rational to insist that Christianity does not exist.)

B. When has the rationality of an action ever excused one from accountability for it? It is perfectly rational to print your own U.S. dollars from a laser printer and one can even present a sound mainstream economic argument for doing so, complete with a utilitarian moral justification, but that will not prevent one from being held accountable should one actually attempt to buy something with them.

C. The Divine Hiddenness argument is both deeply stupid and theologically ignorant, so the fact that Smiley finds it “infinitely more convincing than any argument ever proposed by any Christian” tells us very little about anything but Smiley’s knowledge base and capacity for reason. The number of questions being begged in the argument are downright embarrassing. From Wikipedia: The argument from nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) is a philosophical argument against the existence of God, specifically, the God of theism. The premise of the argument is that if God existed (and wanted humanity to know it), he would have brought about a situation in which every reasonable person believed in him; however, there are reasonable unbelievers, and therefore, this weighs against God’s existence.

I will address this argument in detail in a future post, but for now, Job 38:1-2 is sufficient to demolish it.

Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?

D. As to the syllogism presented, it is hopeless from the start.

1. No. The Biblical God clearly does not “sincerely wishes with all his heart” for people to believe in His existence. In fact, such belief isn’t even enough to ensure one is not His enemy. “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” And God knows perfectly well that some people genuinely don’t believe He exists. “The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

2. Yes, but as was already pointed out above, so what?

3. The first step is false, the second step is irrelevant, and the conclusion is therefore false. But even if both steps had been true, the conclusion still wouldn’t follow.

A teachable moment

I was driving to the post office today, listening to the pure essence of awesome that is Rock Sugar, when it occurred to me that a previous attempt to “correct” me served as an ideal example of the frustration regularly experienced by more intelligent individuals forced to deal with the regular attempts of the mid-witted to demonstrate their intellectual “superiority” to all and sundry.

In my experience, those of very average or sub-normal intelligence seldom attempt to correct people. They simply don’t dare. And with the exception of the socially retarded sub-set, those of high intelligence also seldom bother, either because it’s so much more trouble than its worth or because they view one isolated correction as being akin to attempting to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon. But mid-wits love little more than demonstrating that they know more than somebody else, especially in public, and they will readily leap at any opportunity to do so.

Anyhow, some time ago, I mentioned that Shook Me Like a Prayer was one of my favorite Rock Sugar mashups, and that I particularly liked the way it incorporated Hell’s Bells by AC/DC. Someone, I don’t recall who, immediately took the opportunity to jump on that statement, explaining that it wasn’t AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells, but rather, You Shook Me All Night Long that was the song that had been mixed together with Madonna’s Like a Prayer.

That was both true and false… and this is precisely why I hate midwits. First, they seldom have a sufficient grasp of the subjects they address, and second, they tend to inadvertently assume a position that requires the assumption that the person they are correcting is a complete and blithering idiot. I mean, let’s consider the facts that had to be known in this case to the midwit concerned:

(1) The Rock Sugar song is called Shook Me Like a Prayer and Rock Sugar songs are usually named after the two songs most utilized in the mix. Precisely how dumb does someone have to be in order to hear the song and somehow fail to recognize either chorus or the significance of “Shook Me” in the title? 65 IQ? 55? Actually brain-dead?

(2) To quote Wikipedia, “You Shook Me All Night Long is one of AC/DC’s signature songs from their most successful album, Back in Black.” It also has one of the most recognizable introductory guitar lines in rock history.

(3) Its occasional use during defensive stands in NFL games notwithstanding, Hell’s Bells is less well known than You Shook Me All Night Long and anyone who knows the former is almost surely familiar with the latter.

(4) Rock Sugar usually mixes in elements from at least three different songs even if only two of them serve as the primary sources and are referenced in the title. For example, Voices in the Jungle also contains the famous guitar melody from Sweet Child o’ Mine in the second and third choruses.

(5) There are freaking BELLS sounding in the middle of the Rock Sugar song.

Any one of those known facts should have been enough to give the correcting individual pause, but as we saw, they did not. Then add to those five known facts the two unknown ones that the midwit might have known, but couldn’t be reasonably assumed to know:

(6) AC/DC’s Back in Black was the first album I ever bought.

(7) I was a founding member of a band signed to Wax Trax! and TVT Records, and can therefore be expected to pay at least a little more attention to the more subtle elements that go into a song than the average individual.

Now, if you simply listen first to Hell’s Bells from the 22 second to the 40 second mark, then to Shook Me Like a Prayer from the 2 minute 28 second mark to the two minute 44 second mark, it should be completely obvious what I was describing. Despite not being one of the song’s two primary elements, Hell’s Bells is cleverly and seamlessly worked into the mix, which is precisely the aspect of the song I was praising.

The basic problem this example reveals isn’t that the midwit has no idea what he’s talking about, but that he has a partial understanding he erroneously assumes is a complete one. For those who find themselves tempted to be constantly correcting others, it might be worth keeping this example in mind to encourage a moment’s hesitation and contemplation before you leap in and embarrass yourself by attempting to “correct” an understanding that is materially superior to your own. At least on this blog, I have noticed that errors inspired by a combination of trigger words with insufficient reading comprehension appear to be the most common variety.

And on a barely tangential note, I was amused by DL’s email this morning:

I was putzing around in my SNES emulator the other day and loaded up “X-Calibur” or some such at random. Imagine my surprise (and triple-take to make sure I hadn’t misread) to find your past gig providing the music. Not a terrible little game, either. : )

Psykosonik: like the Spanish Inquisition, only louder, faster, and electronic.

Access issues

Difster has a solution for worldwide readers:

Some people are having trouble reading comments on your blog from other countries. Those outside of the US who are being routed to a country code and want to read comments can append /ncr to the end of your blogger address: http://voxday.blogspot.com/ncr

Also note that if you type in wwww before the blog address, you’ll go to a different location that is missing all of the comments. I don’t know how to eliminate this problem since I don’t know how it arose in the first place. Based on the link statistics, about 10 percent of the blog readers here are on the www location rather than the proper one.

Mailvox: the case for the Singularity

Agnosticon presents his argument for his Singularitarian faith, or as I prefer to think of it, the techno-apocalypse:
In response to whether exponential technology will continue, whether immortality is feasible, and the compatibility of transhumanism with Christianity:

Technological Singularity doesn’t only rely on continuous exponential growth of separate technologies. If you look at the history of technology, there hasn’t just been a single exponential curve that keeps advancing each technology. For instance, vacuum tube technology gave way to transistor technology that gave way to integrated circuits with shrinking scale and increasing speed.

The Kurzweilian Singularity is composed of a series of S shaped curves, each having a gradual initiation and leveling out phase and a middle exponential growth phase as technologies come to fruition and then lapse into obsolescence. The combined effect of technological paradigms appearing and then shifting to new ones are observed as Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, Moore’s Law being just a special case. The LAR posits that complexity leverages itself to create more complexity.

The exponential nature of technological advance, particularly in anything that becomes an information science leads to what is now becoming a common pessimistic fallacy across a number of fields. The example Kurzweil gives is of the Human Genome Project which began in 1990 as a fifteen year project to sequence all of human DNA. Halfway into the project only a tiny portion of the genome had been completed, yet by the year 2000 nearly all of it had been finished. What researchers hadn’t realized, due to our inborn tendency to think linearly, is that gene sequencing had become an automated information science, amenable to exponential increase in efficiency.

If we consider the prospects for material immortality today, a similar distortion clouds our perception, namely you cannot extrapolate by linear means into the future and expect to come anywhere close to a realistic target. Not only is this because biology is now an information science, but also because the sophistication and intelligence of computational tools will also grow exponentially in the future.

The single greatest stumbling block for Singularity is the poor performance of software and artificial intelligence in the last half century. While Kurweil can confidently claim that the most powerful supercomputers today are roughly equivalent to the computational power of the human brain, and that by 2020 personal computers will share the same distinction, he cannot project a similar track for AI, which is crucially important. Most people interested in Singularity don’t believe it can happen without I.J. Good’s predicted Intelligence Explosion, whence intelligent machines are able to parse their own code and are smart enough to improve themselves recursively. It is possible that from that point onward, machine intelligence will explode in a positive feedback loop, giving rise to intellects many orders of magnitude beyond ours. The complex interdependencies of biological networks may be beyond our ape’s brains, but very likely they won’t be beyond the superintelligences that arise from the Intelligence Explosion.

The relatively poor performance of AI’s today, and the inability of narrow AI’s to generalize on their own to other domains is somewhat disheartening; however there is cause to be hopeful that things will change in the coming decade, mostly because research is now focusing more on general AI, and it is now known that narrow AI does not lead to insights in general AI. No matter how well DARPA gets a Hummer to cross the desert, that skill is not transferable to other domains.

Along with investigating general AI, the Singularity Institute is investigating means to ensure that superintelligent machines will not destroy us. Friendly AI is the new field that seeks to use decision theory and ideas about mind architecture to create minds that share our own values and retain those values perpetually throughout the intelligence explosion. The overall principle is summarized in the statement: “Gandhi does not want to commit murder, and does not want to modify himself to commit murder.” By grabbing any mind at random out of all of “mind space” the chance of picking one of benevolence is very low. However, by guiding the process onto favorable paths as the Singularity process initiates and unfolds, the theory is that we will be able to avoid those minds that are indifferent, or even hostile, to our existence.

Summarizing and putting all the pieces together, the hardware Singularity is already in progress, the software Singularity has been less spectacular, though there have been significant flashes of brilliance. Software systems in general have steadily increased in complexity. Showcase systems like IBM’s Deep Blue chess player and Watson Jeopardy player have impressively beaten human players, but like the DARPA challenge, are still hampered by being narrow intelligences. This may seem like cause for pessimism, but remember 1998 during the genome project. Remember that we humans suffer the myopia of linear thinking.

The prospect of material immortality? I, for one, am doubtful we will ever get there alone. If there is one thing that we know for sure, it’s that human intelligence is not part of the exponential explosion. Humans are pretty much as smart, and as dumb, as we were thousands of years ago (give or take a Flynn Effect). But imagine, if you will, an intelligence a thousand times greater than ours working on the problem, or a hundred thousand, or a million. Imagine something as far beyond us as we are beyond a gnat.

Is transhumanism incompatible with Christianity? This depends on how you interpret the Singularity. If you recast the quest for material immortality just as the attempt to extend lifespan, I don’t see why you can’t regard it as another medical procedure, albeit an unusual one. Many things about the Singularity can be regarded as only methodologically materialistic and not as pure materialism. However, it would be disingenuous not to recognize that most Singularitarians are probably strict materialists. Things like mind uploading, which contradict doctrines about the human soul, are probably Christian heresies; however, I don’t see much problem with cryonics, nanotechnological resuscitation, and a very, very long life.

There is some question about what and who will be allowed into the post-Singularity “heaven.” If our AI’s are made to be friendly, it might be presumed that evil human intention won’t be allowed into the Singularity either, at least not into merged or uploaded minds. On the other hand, since vintage, unaugmented minds will probably be quite innocuous considering the superpowers that inhabit the Singularity, they may be relegated to a quiet, pastoral existence on a preserve of some type, should they choose to remain human. But even that type of human existence will probably be different than our lives today — or perhaps they will cater to nostalgia. You may be able to return to childhood and relive your life as many times as you want. By this time, human qualia will be understood as neural/cognitive processes; the capacity to feel happiness and reward, or erotic pleasure will be beyond the crass boundary provided us by evolution. Conversely, the ability to inflict arbitrary horror, anxiety and pain on a cognitive agent could conceivably be without bound. The post-Singularity Hell could make Christianity’s look like Disneyland.

If our minds are to populate the post-Singularity on equal status to the potencies of those around us, whether merged with us, or as individual identities, are we ready and willing to relinquish those aspects of ourselves that are inimical to a collective existence? A similar question could be asked of the Christian afterlife. How much of “you” can you afford to lose before you become “not you”?

Said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

If you desire to live in full post-Singular status, you might face a similar quandary, and this may be the final answer to the question of immortality. Stealing a thought from Buddhism, it is change that defines the central aspect of our lives. It is unclear whether anyone ever lives beyond ten years in any actual sense, because after that interval we have changed beyond equivalent identity.

If we met our ten-year-ago selves, would we share any intimate empathy with them at all? We are engaged in a continual process of birth and becoming and death and dissolution. What we feel as nostalgia is the dim remembrance and mourning of a deceased relative who was ourselves. To achieve true immortality, we may need to reselect from “mind space,” this time choosing one capable perceiving an integrated experience throughout time. For human beings, immortality may be pure illusion.

Mailvox: the last man standing

CrisisEraDynamo requests a rebuttal:

How do you plan to answer Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, and Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), all of whom assert that aging will be conquered Real Soon Now?

Watching them die.

NB: I have nothing against any of them, you understand, but all three of them are older than me.

Mailvox: statistical illiteracy

dh appears to find it hard to distinguish between “X” and “virtually X”:

This will be difficult for VD to walk back in the future when he wants to try to hold his various intellectual foes to account for words they use. “Virtually Impossible” = “something that happens every day”. Got it.

First, as I have had to point out many times before, the purpose of an adjective or an adverb is to modify a word. Therefore, something that is “virtually impossible” is, by definition, not impossible. It is merely highly improbable. Does the state senator’s comment qualify?

As I pointed out in the comments, the Center for Disease Control reported that an average of 473 white men were annually infected with HIV through heterosexual contact over the course of a four-year statistical study. Now, dh had already admitted that the chances of being infected for anyone, male or female, having heterosexual relations with an infected individual, was 30 in 10,000, or one in 333. Is that sufficiently improbable to qualify as “virtually impossible”? No, I don’t think so. However, we’re not done yet.

However, this does not distinguish between men and women, which is necessary because it is easier to transmit the virus from male to female than from female to male. That is why an average of 841 white women annually contracted the virus through heterosexual contact in the same study. This means that men are estimated to contract the virus at a rate that is about 60 percent of the female rate, thereby lowering the one in 333 figure to around one in 500.

Still not “virtually impossible” in my book, but we’re getting closer. Now we have to take into account the fact that these one in 500 odds only apply to sex with an infected female. So, we have to return to the CDC, which tells us that there are 682,668 Americans presently living with HIV, 26,966 of whom are white females. This represents one in 3,649 of the 98,408,776 white females in America. Note that it is appropriate to include the entire female population here because children are also included in the AIDS statistics that we are citing due to mother-to-child transmission.

Since it isn’t possible to contract the virus from someone who doesn’t have it, this means that a white man who has sex with a white woman has approximately a 1 in 1,824,682 chance of contracting the virus. This compares rather favorably with the 1 in 58,618 chance of being legally executed, the 1 in 147,717 chance of dying in a dog attack, and the 1 in 615,488 chance of dying in a fireworks discharge.

In other words, for a normal white man like Stacey Campfield, it is, in statistical fact, highly improbable, or if you prefer, “virtually impossible”, to acquire the HIV virus, which of course is necessary in order to spread it.

And before anyone starts complaining that white-on-white heterosexual relations doesn’t encompass everyone, I will note that the entire context in which the statement was made concerned the significant difference in practical risk factors among different population demographics. Campfield’s point, and it was entirely correct, is that it is totally absurd to discuss HIV infection as if it presents a similar risk to everyone, regardless of their race, sex, or sexual behavior, which of course is the main reason the mainstream media’s dire predictions of a heterosexual AIDS epidemic, still less “a national disaster as great as a thermonuclear war”, were so wildly incorrect.

And in conclusion, I will point out that in a nation of 310 million people, a “virtually impossible”, one in 1.9 million event is indeed very likely to happen every single day. Or, as is the case here, about 1.3 times per day.

Mailvox: dating site science

AA asks about a new study purporting to demonstrate that religion only benefits people where it is a free rider:

What do you think about the newly released study that claims that religious beliefs only make people happier due to cultural factors? According to the new study of almost 200,000 people in 11 European countries, people who are religious have higher self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than the non-religious only in countries where belief in religion is common . In more secular societies, the religious and the non-religious are equally well-off.

“The results suggest that religiosity, albeit a potent force, confers benefits by riding on cultural values,” study researcher Jochen Gebauer of Humboldt University in Berlin and colleagues wrote online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

Do you think this study indicates the truth or is there any other valid reasons why religion creates better lifestyles for people in need of purpose?

My initial assumption is that this study is the usual propagandistic garbage put out by pseudoscientists who are dishonestly attempting to bolster their preconceived opinion with a false sheen of science. No doubt it is the sort of quasi-scientific study that purports to “prove” that all conservatives are racist, low IQ child molesters and therefore all decent human beings have no choice but to vote for Nancy Pelosi.

[Stops to read the referenced article about the study.]

Bingo. Here is the money quote:

“Gebauer and colleagues wanted to know if larger cultural forces contribute to the well-being of spiritual sorts. They turned to eDarling, the European version of dating websites like eHarmony or Match.com. Users of eDarling answer a question in their profiles about how important religion is to them; while setting up their profiles, they also complete psychological surveys asking them how “calm,” “cheerful” and “content” they feel, among other measures of happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem.”

No doubt in their next study, Gebauer and his colleagues will report the astonishing news that contra all the media reports, there is no epidemic of obesity in America as only two percent of the women on eHarmony report themselves to be “overweight”. Not only is the ridicuous study entirely based on a notoriously unreliable form of self-reporting – it’s a DATING SITE, for crying out loud – but it contradicts many studies based upon more concrete metrics for measuring psychological health, such as alcoholism, suicide rates, and prescriptions for drugs used to treat depression.

Here, for example, is a study that uses the objective measure of hypertension as a metric and directly contradicts the conclusions of the eDarling-based study.

“With the help of a large Norwegian longitudinal health study called HUNT, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were able to find a clear relationship between time spent in church and lower blood pressure in both women and men.

“We found that the more often HUNT participants went to church, the lower their blood pressure, even when we controlled for a number of other possible explanatory factors,” says Torgeir Sørensen, a PhD candidate from the School of Theology and Religious Psychology Centre at Sykehuset Innlandet (Inland Hospital). “This is the first study of its kind in Scandinavia. Previous research from the United States has shown that there is a possible link between people who attend church and blood pressure.”

In fact, if we are to take dating site science seriously, we can conclude that there are other, more important factors in making people happy. For example, OKCupid relies on the same sort of self-reporting “science” and concludes that women’s self-confidence increases with weight and age.

“Curvy women pass skinny ones in self-confidence at age 29 and never look back. They also consistently have the highest sex drive among the groups.”

So there is the scientific utopia of which so many secularists dream. Obese and godless old women rutting confidently, and often, with each other. Oh sweet Sappho! Do you understand the significance of this? Do you realize what this means? There is now a scientific basis for Lesbian Dorito Night!

Mailvox: hit me with your best shot

Agnosticon hasn’t delved deeply enough into the archives to understand why things work the way they do:

If a blog is purposed for argument and not just banal discussion, then opposing views are essential for its content. Of course, this would also depend on quality of opposition, and most regulars here will immediately begin insulting self-proclaimed atheists, so it can be concluded that this blog doesn’t really value argument. I think many here are here to socialize with like-minded others. It’s possible that true argument might not be possible due to asymmetry of opinion, although that isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. Conventionally, a “troll” is not just someone who shows up only for argument, rather a person who shows up to derail argument. It would appear that Vox means to argue, since his posts are so often provocative, yet when engaged he often seems too ready just to score a couple points, declare victory, and get out. There are other people here who seem genuinely interested in argument.

Agnosticon first fails to distinguish between legitimate and substantive arguments versus those that are obviously stupid and fallacious in considering whether the Dread Ilk are interested in arguments in general. He seems to be unaware that I have written a book in which dozens of popular atheist arguments are conclusively demolished and have addressed many more on this blog over the past four years, so when yet another clueless college kid shows up and starts spouting off half-understood atheist pablum that everyone has seen before, it is hardly a mystery that he meets with nothing but ridicule, especially when he presents his outdated arguments in an obnoxious and confrontational manner. And why would they be ever be interested in taking such interlocutors seriously, especially when over the last eight years, we have seen this sort of individual lie, move the goalposts, refuse to admit when they are conclusively proved wrong, and otherwise behave in an intellectually unserious manner?

In the very thread in which Agnosticon commented, we have the example of Dan, who cannot understand that utilitarian philosophy is not “a rational basis in fact”. Does he honestly recommend that such an individual be taken seriously? And if so, how?

The second thing that Agnosticon fails to recognize is that there is substantial proof right here on this blog that I am genuinely interested in argument of a sufficiently high quality. I have zero interest in arguing for the sake of arguing, much less wasting my time on people who are insufficiently intelligent to say anything new or interesting. It’s not a case of scoring a couple of points, declaring victory, and getting out, it is simply about qualifying potential opponents. If a person is incapable of avoiding very basic logical and factual errors, or if it is apparent that they rely upon the usual chicanery such as redefining basic terms and so forth, then there is absolutely no chance they are going to present an argument that I can’t shred with ease. But rather than refusing to give everyone a shot, I prefer to permit anyone one or two opportunities to say something interesting or effective. If they want to waste that opportunity on a trivial drive-by comment or two, that’s their choice.

If they can’t deliver a substantive argument, or if I can identify their glaring mistakes – or worse, intellectual dishonesty – at first glance, then they’re done as far as I’m concerned. I already know how the prosecution will proceed and it’s all over but for the formalities even before it has begun. And really, considering the number of comments and emails I receive, that’s the only way it is possible to allow pretty much everyone who wants one a shot.

So don’t waste it on nonsensical blather if you wish me, or anyone else, to take you seriously. I’m quite willing to give Agnosticon the opportunity to present a case for his Singulatarianism, or what I described in The Irrational Atheist as apocalyptic techno-heresy, even though he has one strike against him for having demonstrated an inability to distinguish between logical and philosophical integrity and logical and philosophical necessity. But if he can’t present one, that’s hardly reflective of my unwillingness to engage in substantive argument.

It’s pretty simple. Right now I owe Dominic my next entry in our ongoing debate on the existence of God. Once that concludes, whenever that may be, I’m sure I’ll engage someone else in a substantive and detailed debate. Debt deflation might be a good one. But I’m simply not going to focus any time or attention on commenters who publicly demonstrate that they have neither the intelligence nor the intellectual integrity to present a challenge that is both substantive and interesting. Of course, the primary purpose of this blog is for me to amuse myself. Everything else is secondary; I’m pleased that some of you find it worth reading on a regular basis, but that’s not its raison d’etre.