How Much Context Matters

Recently, I walked in in the middle of a conversation about microwave cooking, and as soon as I walked through the door, the first words I heard were "microwave food is not good, right?"  That sort of question has a few meanings, but the most common meaning I am used to hearing about is just about how food cooked in a microwave generally doesn't taste as good as other modes of cooking.  To this, I agreed, as I generally find this to be the case as well.  Then it went off on some tangent about "killing everything" and how that supposedly doesn't happen with regular stovetop cooking...  and so I replied that that only happens after you reach a certain temperature (presuming that he was talking about killing microbes).  After some shouting where I couldn't quite follow what people were saying because it was too many people talking at once, I figured we were still talking about taste, so I made the point about being unable to achieve certain effects like searing the outsides of foods, applying dry heat, etc...  and then I got a question about radiation going into the food.  Well, that's technically how a microwave is supposed to work, so that is ostensibly true, but not much of a meaningful question in the context.  It wasn't until much later that I was informed that the discussion was about the safety of microwave cooking, and so I found myself unwittingly agreeing with people who held an absurdly misguided and factually dead wrong position.

A lesson in just how much context makes a difference, and how far off the mark one can go if they make presumptions about what that context is.  It is within context that meaning is derived, and getting that context wrong can really destroy your sense of what people mean at times.

Beyond Logic Lies... NOTHING

I briefly mentioned in my diatribe on astrology that I could dedicate an entire blog post to one particular argument.  Specifically, the argument that certain delusional beliefs are "beyond logic."  While it came up in the context of astrology and tarot card readings, I'm pretty sure we've all heard this dodge with respect to things like "spirit science" and most certainly theistic belief.  It's a convenient little cop-out for people who feel that the burden of proof is a yoke too heavy to wear.  Rather than actually try to back up their beliefs or pretend there is any substance to them, it is easier to proclaim by fiat that the rules of rational discourse don't apply to them.  It's also particularly amusing that they don't just say that logic and reason aren't applicable, but that they're "beyond" logic...  as if to imply that being reasonable and applying some measure of sensibility is beneath one who believes in bullshit.  While the example that I'm referencing was brought up in regards to astrology, it's just as common in nearly every nonsensical belief.  New age, "spirit science", religion, alt-med woo-woo, and anything that carries the hallmark of Deepak Chopra.

You've probably heard it in several extraordinarily patronizing forms.  "You can't begin to understand XXXXX with logic."  "YYYY is above the limits of mere human reasoning."  "There's more to life than evidence and logic and all that."  "You're too dependent on your science and facts."  "There are things about the universe we cannot begin to understand with our limited reasoning."  And so on and on...  and on...  and on.  You might even occasionally see the roundabout form of "for those who believe, all things are possible" -- which is essentially saying that whatever they're selling works beautifully so long as you're gullible.  It's especially funny to see how they try to make it sound as if it's the rational thinker who has the problem, and not them.  Is there really such a thing as "beyond" logic?  Well, perhaps... if you want to spit on the very idea of true and false.

Dialogues with Hopeless Delusional Idiots ep. 3

This is a little switch from the prior entries in the series, but still fitting in the theme.  My previous two episodes involved religion and religious beliefs as the core topics of discussion.  This one is more on the alt-med end of the spectrum, mainly regarding anti-vaccine and autism-related nuttery.  Nonetheless, I'm still dealing with a hopeless delusional idiot here.  Let that be a reminder that idiocy of this scale is not limited to religion alone, and that this blog is about all kinds of stupidity.  It's things like this that make it bear mentioning that the moniker of "grumpy anti-theist" isn't enough by itself.  I'm "anti-" all kinds of insufferable stupidity.

There are several sub-movements within the set of alternative "medicine" believers, with a relatively minor amount of crossover between them.  It's not necessarily the case that someone who is anti-vaccine is also a believer in Ayurveda, or that someone who buys into homeopathy is also a reiki healing fanatic.  That's not to say, though, that such people don't exist.  In this case, I'm dealing with one such person.  It is pretty clear as things carry on that this person wasn't drawn to alternative "medicine" (read : quackery) because he really found them believable on their own terms, but because he was so staunchly opposed to real medicine that anything that was different was inherently better.

This conversation was taking place on an online forum for a site that is ostensibly about video games (one for which I was formerly a contributing editor for their press outlet back when I was still working in the games industry), but like many forums, they have sections dedicated to "off-topic" or "general" discussion, and topics like politics, current events, "new cool stuff" was always going around.  While I'm no longer super-active with this forum or the site that owns it, I still appear now and then.  This one started with a guy who was posting a lot of anti-medicine nonsense shortly after Steve Jobs died...  I ignored it for a while, and the thread carried on, but after a few posts in, it also started including some anti-vaccine and all the vaccines-cause-autism bullcrap that rested on the outlandish idea that a former Playboy bunny knows more about human biochemistry than all medical doctors in the world combined.

A New Theory of Computing

Anybody reading this blog knows I'm a coder.  I've been doing it for almost 30 years starting out from little toy programs straight out of tutorials to publishing papers on computer graphics to 7 years in gaming and 4 years in motion pictures...  and now embedded graphics platforms.  I've been around the block and gotten extremely jaded over the years.  Every experience I've been through has its moments which ring loudly with the words "Don't let this happen to you."  I could tell you stories about the way I've worked for people who were so utterly dense they believed that an octagon has 5 sides (yes, I'm being serious), and worked on codebases that were so riddled with cyclical dependencies that you couldn't link anything unless you compiled everything twice.  There is just so much power in the tools we have, but when you use that power irresponsibly, you get the kind of crappy software so many of us feel every package is.  Then I stumbled upon something new that really revolutionized my view of computing.  I want to share it with you today.

In one sense, it is entirely new, but in another sense, it is a rebirth of old ideas first hinted at as a deeper truth which underlay the works of al-Khwarizmi, Aryabhatta et. al.  It's really a very simple series of principles that many of the great technical minds out there like Bill Gates, Alan Turing, Steve Wozniak, Donald Knuth, Linus Torvalds, Dennis Ritchie and others have known for years.  It is something that the mainstream software engineering industry doesn't want you to know!  It is a truly intuitive, natural, and holistic approach to coding and it will completely overturn everything you thought you knew about writing software!  It is not a fad like eXtreme Programming, or Scrum, or anything else that appears as the new big thing every so often only to disappear shortly after.  And unlike all the charlatans out there, this isn't totally fake, and I'm going to give you the real secret right here, right now.  I am not being paid to provide this, nor am I trying to sell you a book.  This is free of charge and available to anyone and everyone.  The secrets will really be revealed here and now, just below the jump.

I Can Fix You...

Do you suffer from horrifying arthritis pain?  I've got a fix for that.  Are you overweight and out of shape?  I've got just the thing.  The stress of work and paying the bills got you down?  I can fix that!  Not enough time to cook a healthy dinner?  Well, now, there's a cure!  All you have to do is send me money!

There's always a product or service out there to help you with every ill.  Sometimes, when I fly, I take a nice load of amusement reading some of the absurd products in the SkyMall catalogs.  The best one I saw was actually labeled as a "Wireless Umbrella."  I had to wonder...  I can't recall the last time I ever had to plug my umbrella in.  I like dogs and cats as much as the next person, but seriously...  dog nail-polish?  A walker cart for your goldfish?  There exist minor products to solve the most inane problems, like a neck lanyard to hold a wine glass level while leaving both hands free.  Who the devil buys these things?!?!

Well, as it so happens, there's a plentiful array of buyers.  This is America -- where nobody does things to deal with their problems, but rather, they just figure there has to be a product or service to fix anything.  In fact...  let me rephrase that -- we NEED to buy a product or service to fix whatever we have.

I will go vomit now.