The title pretty much says all. This is a rant. You have been warned. You know what I'm sick of? Know-it-all college student types. If you've been to college, or have taken a tour of one, I'm sure you're familiar with the shtick they all have: "Our students love having intellectual conversations, you can find someone who wants to talk about ANYTHING!" Blah. Blah. Blah. While this was touted as some sort of triumph, what I found actually existed were nauseatingly stupid, insufferable, and uninformed children taking turns giving monologues on stuff they had memorized for their own daily dose of self-aggrandizement. Stuff that they thought, in the 10 minutes they actually considered it, they had come to novel conclusions over. If it were just that, while still annoying, the problem would have been less severe. But no. The sickening part, in my opinion, was how ridiculously repetitive it was. If you've read r/politics, r/atheism, or any of its ilk, you already know what I'm referring to. Some might say I am biased, that I was looking for examples to confirm my theory. On the contrary, I am not suggesting that there were none, I just didn't ever meet any. (Incidentally, nor I am implicating myself as an example thereof, I'm just as dumb as the next average joe, I just don't pretend to be anything more.) You know why? For exactly that reason. A true physicist (or mathematician, or biologist, or sociologist, or whatever, it doesn't matter) does physics. A pseudo-physicist talks about it. Now of course, they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, of course you can talk and do, but by and large, someone who has to constantly talk about their own ideas, with the underlying pretension that whatever they have to say is worth hearing, probably is not. "Some people speak because they have something to say, others because they have to say something." The (actual) physicist, Richard Feynman, famously stated, "If you think you understand Quantum Theory, you don't understand Quantum Theory." While this sounds pessimistics, I think people often miss the point. Feynman has a great speech where he talks about his problems with lack in academic rigour in certain areas. In essence, what he was saying is that in physics, which is the most fundamental of all the physical sciences, is still plagued with uncertainty, thus it is arrogant to speak with such confidence in anything, if those who study the very fabric of nature cannot even do so themselves. Feynman clearly knew what he was talking about, he won the Nobel Prize, and yet he understood enough to know all that he didn't understand. So when I hear people on Reddit or on a college campus dropping internet-cobbled soundbytes and factoids, it makes me irritated. Not just because it's dumb. Not just because it's intellectually bankrupt. Because it is appropriating something meaningful into a barely recognized bastard of half-truths for his or her own capricious intents. But you see, it isn't merely that, in an effort to paint themselves as Renaissance men and women, everything must become intellectual. No longer is marijuana merely recreation, it is spirital enlightment or some other tripe. No longer is pathological promiscuity (I am not trying to slut-shame, rather I have found that there is and was a general sentiment that the mere concept of one reserving one's sexual activity is obviously absurd) entertainment, it is resistance against "backwards socio-religious puritan values which are trying to oppress people from expressing their sexuality," (incidentally, why does it always "expressing [one's] sexuality?" isn't that just called "sex?" seems like an attempt to make something out to be more than it is.) and those, by the way, are not my words. No longer is drinking a diversion, it is breaking through the societally mandated inhibitions that we have. I could go on, but you get the idea. These concepts are bad in college, but Reddit, in particular, is rife with them.
I'll get to thread that prompted this in a minute, but let me take a moment to address a particular circlejerk that annoys me to no end: "I'm smart because I read books, and no one else does these days." First of all, I am highly skeptical of the claim that your choice in entertainment is somehow indicative of your intelligence, and this is by no means limited just to books. Guess what? Because you watch Discovery or don't watch TLC, you're STILL not a scientist. You're still average. But the books one is particularly enraging, because it's just so full of self-importance. Moreover, the books in question are never intellectually challenging. I'm sorry, but Ender's Game is not great literature. It is a novel for young adults/teenagers (it's also filled to the hilt with flat, one-dimensional characters and mary sues, but that's another story). And there's nothing wrong with that! But, and this is a big but, it doesn't make you smart! Hell, reading actual great literature doesn't make you smart! Reading extended universe Star Wars or Star Trek novels definitely isn't great literature. The people I knew in school and beyond who were making big deals about this kind of stuff somehow also had horrible taste in fiction. Oh and, also, the same goes for pop science books, reading those don't make you smart either. I, obviously, think education is important. But mis-education is worse than no-education. I see no reason why science should be falsified to make it appeal to more people, because if you're changing it, then you're not really teaching science anymore are you? I'm not a fan of dubious metaphors, or laymen's descriptions of they change the meaning, and more than often they do. The thing is, most things are complex. This is just a fact.
Now, onto the thread of the hour. I usually know better than to go to askreddit, and especially to click these type threads, but unfortunately, I capitulated and gave into my own masochism. "What is the biggest mindfuck you have ever experience?" Yike. Should have know better indeed.
So let's start why don't we!
I tried. Instructions too complicated, got dick stuck in football field.
This comment was a reply to a post about a phenomenon related to pi. This is pretty run of the mill for reddit, but it still irritates me. It's not that I find it offensive, it's only offensive insofar as is it insults be intelligence by presuming to be funny. And yet, it now has a score of +1824. It's all there folks, offensive username, all caps, complete derailing. People want to ask how we fix reddit? We don't. The score shows that a net of 1824 people who saw that comment thought it should be commended. You fix reddit by getting rid of reddit.
This in itself, was not so bad, although the wording annoyed me with the whole "woah space is like big, man" kind of attitude. However, it started a chain of an utter clusterfuck of circlejerk. This guy for example, was awarded Reddit gold for the courageous act of. . .posting a link? That and all the upvotes. I won't bother reposting all the child comments, you can read them if you are so inclined. I just find this whole "sense of wonder" bullshit annoying. Cynical? Perhaps. But in my opinion it's an excuse for not doing, you know, actual work. It's a way to sound smart without actually being smart. Why actually go to the work of being a scientist when you can just say "the universe is liek sssssooooooo big!" and call it a day?
Now this comment struck a nerve with me because it, and its replies are so full of shit. Undoubtedly, yes, technology has come a long way, but the whole "Singularity" is a bunch of techno-spiritual, pseudo-scientific crankery with some fancy sounding words and bold, big, and vague predictions that are both very broad and very meaningless. It is more or less tantamount to a rapture for neckbeards (gOD help us all). Take for example, this claim that, "The fact that tech grows exponentially means we're gonna see a lot of cool shit in our lifetime." Oh really? Says who. Funny, I don't remember ever learing that "fact" in Economics. Did Kurzweil say this? Because he also doesn't understand how evolution works and makes more teleological fallacies than any creationist has. That may be bad, but this little shitstain MAKES ME FUCKING ANGRY. Oh. my. God. I'm sorry, it just really gets me when I hear people say this. Mostly because it's SHIT. Having le computors is NOT a surrogate for learning actual math. To understand, you must do. You know how you learn calculus? You do it. It's boring, it sucks, but you suffer through. You give up a few hours of video games and cheetos, and you go to school without falling asleep, and you JUST DO THE WORK. If it works so well, why aren't more sci[ent]ists here getting Nobel Prizes? Oh, that's right, because it doesn't. Because people who actually, and this may come as a shock, have experience, probably know a bit more than John X. Neckbeard on Reddit. Ha! Just kidding, we clearly have a regular Einstein here (on a related note, I swear to God if I here "Einstein failed math" one more time I am going to punch the next person I see square in the jaw). There's also a bunch of anti-Texas Instruments circlejerking, and misunderstanding of how radiation-hardened electronics work. It amazes me that these so called geniuses don't understand why having the most powerful CPU on the Mars Rover is not priority number one. But hey? What do they know, I mean, they're only actual engineers, with actual jobs, at an actual institution. On that note, "Moore's Law" is something I never want to hear again. First of all because it's not a law, and second of all Gordon Moore regretted ever saying it, and third of all it hasn't even held true. I'm sorry, I just fucking hate the singularity, and all its mouth-breathing proponents who know shit about actual science. Take your pseudo-religion somewhere else (and I mean no disrespect to actual religions). But if we're talking about religion, one commenter bravely welcomes the day when religion will finally die, because that will mean we will have progressed. So there's that.
Seeing Fight Club make an appearance just made me laugh because it was only a matter of time. Fight Club is, and forever will be, the conversation fodder du jour for pseudo-intellectuals. I'm not saying it's a bad movie, but the whole "screw the man, man!" thing is so overplayed, and just so adolescent. It's about insanity, not whatever bullshit anti-consumerist message you managed to get out of it. There is, in fiction, a thing called an unreliable narrator, and I can't think of anyone who fits that label better than Ed Norton's character.
The drugs circlejerk is also really annoying. As I mentioned earlier, there is a whole lot of bullshit circulating around reddit. The obvious ones we know, marijuana is harmless, perfect, etc. But there are some which are more obscure. One in particular that gets me is the idiocy that LSD trips have any epistomological meaning. Maybe they change you, maybe you see weird stuff, but that doesn't mean it's true. You can read all kinds of mind-numbing nonsense about witnessing the birth of the Universe, or making you understand science (I wish I was kidding). Oh but it's true! Kary Mullis says LSD helped him discover PCR. Oh wait, he's an AIDS denialist and thinks Astrology has something to it. Nevermind. I can't even fathom how that would work. Maybe I'm wrong, but I somehow find it hard to believe these types of people, or anyone for that matter, would be in the position to solve partial differential equations while intoxicated. For starters, this guy makes some idiotic comment, but OH WAIT WEED!!! HAHA! ZOMG LOL!!! I DO THAT TOO! AM I COOL YET GUYS!?!?! (Why do I find it hard to believe that the same people who whine about their social ineptitude also have huge amounts of pot? They're like that guy everyone knew who was full of shit but constantly bragged about how high they were getting.) But moving on to acid, this comment and the thread are so stupid I don't know where to begin. For example, as someone who actually has OCD, I find it incredibly hard to believe it cured this person's OCD. Or even further down is the claim that acid made someone able to drink water. God, this is all such bullshit. But the circlejerk is by no means just limited to acid! No siree! Shrooms can cure all your woes as well. They're just illegal because the corporations (I love how all it's all some nebulous entity of "corporations," never anything specific) just want to keep you down!
As a side note, I think this could be a joke thread, but I see those same tidbits reposted every day.
It would seem the MRAs are out in full force today. On the first, it is always amazing to me how quickly redditors will believe what someone says and not be curious to hear what the other side of the story is. It is possible that the guy is completely truthful, I dunno. Nevertheless, it speaks volumes that redditors are willing to upvote something they can't prove and more importantly probably have no experience with. It's yet another example of the "wimmenz be bitchez" thing on this site. The second is just "friendzoned" in so many other words. Peripherally related is this pandering story. The story itself is not so much the problem as the manner in which it is told. I know the sort of thing the guy was going for, and reddit eats that shit up, that overly aggressive, ironically angry type of humour that most people stop finding funny past 12. Also the "HAHA I CAN RELATED BECAUSE I'VE HAD SEX GAIZ" too thing.
This and this are bad because they are two of the more egregious examples of pseudo-science I have seen on this site. The first, about holographic quantum mind is incoherent babble. But it panders so perfectly to your standard model neckbeard he can't but help and upvoted. The second is insultingly poor pseudo-mathematics, or as RationalWiki would say, "golden ration woo." It saddens me that the word fractal has been so debased.
Lastly, let us take a look at perhaps the worst example I have seen thus far: Every action and decision we make is influenced by the sum of our experiences, memories, influences and the environments we've been exposed to. All of which at a simplified basic level are actually events or elements caused by the decisions of other people. These decisions were in turn caused by another sum of experiences, memories, influences etc of those people. Doesn't that at some level make everything kind of predictable if we were able to map every single influence?On a related note, if every decision we make is influenced by things in our past, most of which were beyond our control, what does that say about free will?
First of all, this idea is by no means new. It's more correctly known as Laplace's Demon. And it's wrong. This isn't an opinion, it's just matter of factly incorrect. Determinism is not real. This has been unequivocally proven to be true. And even if it weren't, a computer smaller than the Universe cannot compute a complete simulation of the entire Universe, making the argument null. Also there's this little bitty problem called complexity theory which means that some problems could never be solved within a finite amount of time anyway, just saying. Somehow though, our brave scholar, receives Reddit Gold for this. Why? Because it perfectly panders to just the sort of bullshit quasi-empiricist sort of mentality that Reddit has. It's phenomenon called "scientism." And it's just, as I said, wrong. What I love is the pathetically flaccid video someone lower down gives as an argument, along with a few others who cite Sam Harris. Sam Harris is a hack philosopher of the first degree, who has some pretty horrendous, disgusting things to say, such as that we should put people to death with bad ideas and that torture is liek totalee okay gaiz. With that being said, Daniel Dennet makes a very, very good argument on why Free Will does exist, but then I doubt he knows anything. It's not even the belief that free will doesn't exist that bothers me. It is, in no particular order, the spinning of an old idea as one's own as if it were original or insightful in anway, the use of empirically wrong arguments with no acknowledgement thereof, and the idiots who are so oblivious as to why the reasoning of the commenter was shit and go on to repeat the same shitty arguments to all of their shitty friends.
The end.
Man, that felt good.
I'll get to thread that prompted this in a minute, but let me take a moment to address a particular circlejerk that annoys me to no end: "I'm smart because I read books, and no one else does these days." First of all, I am highly skeptical of the claim that your choice in entertainment is somehow indicative of your intelligence, and this is by no means limited just to books. Guess what? Because you watch Discovery or don't watch TLC, you're STILL not a scientist. You're still average. But the books one is particularly enraging, because it's just so full of self-importance. Moreover, the books in question are never intellectually challenging. I'm sorry, but Ender's Game is not great literature. It is a novel for young adults/teenagers (it's also filled to the hilt with flat, one-dimensional characters and mary sues, but that's another story). And there's nothing wrong with that! But, and this is a big but, it doesn't make you smart! Hell, reading actual great literature doesn't make you smart! Reading extended universe Star Wars or Star Trek novels definitely isn't great literature. The people I knew in school and beyond who were making big deals about this kind of stuff somehow also had horrible taste in fiction. Oh and, also, the same goes for pop science books, reading those don't make you smart either. I, obviously, think education is important. But mis-education is worse than no-education. I see no reason why science should be falsified to make it appeal to more people, because if you're changing it, then you're not really teaching science anymore are you? I'm not a fan of dubious metaphors, or laymen's descriptions of they change the meaning, and more than often they do. The thing is, most things are complex. This is just a fact.
Now, onto the thread of the hour. I usually know better than to go to askreddit, and especially to click these type threads, but unfortunately, I capitulated and gave into my own masochism. "What is the biggest mindfuck you have ever experience?" Yike. Should have know better indeed.
So let's start why don't we!
I tried. Instructions too complicated, got dick stuck in football field.
This comment was a reply to a post about a phenomenon related to pi. This is pretty run of the mill for reddit, but it still irritates me. It's not that I find it offensive, it's only offensive insofar as is it insults be intelligence by presuming to be funny. And yet, it now has a score of +1824. It's all there folks, offensive username, all caps, complete derailing. People want to ask how we fix reddit? We don't. The score shows that a net of 1824 people who saw that comment thought it should be commended. You fix reddit by getting rid of reddit.
This in itself, was not so bad, although the wording annoyed me with the whole "woah space is like big, man" kind of attitude. However, it started a chain of an utter clusterfuck of circlejerk. This guy for example, was awarded Reddit gold for the courageous act of. . .posting a link? That and all the upvotes. I won't bother reposting all the child comments, you can read them if you are so inclined. I just find this whole "sense of wonder" bullshit annoying. Cynical? Perhaps. But in my opinion it's an excuse for not doing, you know, actual work. It's a way to sound smart without actually being smart. Why actually go to the work of being a scientist when you can just say "the universe is liek sssssooooooo big!" and call it a day?
Now this comment struck a nerve with me because it, and its replies are so full of shit. Undoubtedly, yes, technology has come a long way, but the whole "Singularity" is a bunch of techno-spiritual, pseudo-scientific crankery with some fancy sounding words and bold, big, and vague predictions that are both very broad and very meaningless. It is more or less tantamount to a rapture for neckbeards (gOD help us all). Take for example, this claim that, "The fact that tech grows exponentially means we're gonna see a lot of cool shit in our lifetime." Oh really? Says who. Funny, I don't remember ever learing that "fact" in Economics. Did Kurzweil say this? Because he also doesn't understand how evolution works and makes more teleological fallacies than any creationist has. That may be bad, but this little shitstain MAKES ME FUCKING ANGRY. Oh. my. God. I'm sorry, it just really gets me when I hear people say this. Mostly because it's SHIT. Having le computors is NOT a surrogate for learning actual math. To understand, you must do. You know how you learn calculus? You do it. It's boring, it sucks, but you suffer through. You give up a few hours of video games and cheetos, and you go to school without falling asleep, and you JUST DO THE WORK. If it works so well, why aren't more sci[ent]ists here getting Nobel Prizes? Oh, that's right, because it doesn't. Because people who actually, and this may come as a shock, have experience, probably know a bit more than John X. Neckbeard on Reddit. Ha! Just kidding, we clearly have a regular Einstein here (on a related note, I swear to God if I here "Einstein failed math" one more time I am going to punch the next person I see square in the jaw). There's also a bunch of anti-Texas Instruments circlejerking, and misunderstanding of how radiation-hardened electronics work. It amazes me that these so called geniuses don't understand why having the most powerful CPU on the Mars Rover is not priority number one. But hey? What do they know, I mean, they're only actual engineers, with actual jobs, at an actual institution. On that note, "Moore's Law" is something I never want to hear again. First of all because it's not a law, and second of all Gordon Moore regretted ever saying it, and third of all it hasn't even held true. I'm sorry, I just fucking hate the singularity, and all its mouth-breathing proponents who know shit about actual science. Take your pseudo-religion somewhere else (and I mean no disrespect to actual religions). But if we're talking about religion, one commenter bravely welcomes the day when religion will finally die, because that will mean we will have progressed. So there's that.
Seeing Fight Club make an appearance just made me laugh because it was only a matter of time. Fight Club is, and forever will be, the conversation fodder du jour for pseudo-intellectuals. I'm not saying it's a bad movie, but the whole "screw the man, man!" thing is so overplayed, and just so adolescent. It's about insanity, not whatever bullshit anti-consumerist message you managed to get out of it. There is, in fiction, a thing called an unreliable narrator, and I can't think of anyone who fits that label better than Ed Norton's character.
The drugs circlejerk is also really annoying. As I mentioned earlier, there is a whole lot of bullshit circulating around reddit. The obvious ones we know, marijuana is harmless, perfect, etc. But there are some which are more obscure. One in particular that gets me is the idiocy that LSD trips have any epistomological meaning. Maybe they change you, maybe you see weird stuff, but that doesn't mean it's true. You can read all kinds of mind-numbing nonsense about witnessing the birth of the Universe, or making you understand science (I wish I was kidding). Oh but it's true! Kary Mullis says LSD helped him discover PCR. Oh wait, he's an AIDS denialist and thinks Astrology has something to it. Nevermind. I can't even fathom how that would work. Maybe I'm wrong, but I somehow find it hard to believe these types of people, or anyone for that matter, would be in the position to solve partial differential equations while intoxicated. For starters, this guy makes some idiotic comment, but OH WAIT WEED!!! HAHA! ZOMG LOL!!! I DO THAT TOO! AM I COOL YET GUYS!?!?! (Why do I find it hard to believe that the same people who whine about their social ineptitude also have huge amounts of pot? They're like that guy everyone knew who was full of shit but constantly bragged about how high they were getting.) But moving on to acid, this comment and the thread are so stupid I don't know where to begin. For example, as someone who actually has OCD, I find it incredibly hard to believe it cured this person's OCD. Or even further down is the claim that acid made someone able to drink water. God, this is all such bullshit. But the circlejerk is by no means just limited to acid! No siree! Shrooms can cure all your woes as well. They're just illegal because the corporations (I love how all it's all some nebulous entity of "corporations," never anything specific) just want to keep you down!
As a side note, I think this could be a joke thread, but I see those same tidbits reposted every day.
It would seem the MRAs are out in full force today. On the first, it is always amazing to me how quickly redditors will believe what someone says and not be curious to hear what the other side of the story is. It is possible that the guy is completely truthful, I dunno. Nevertheless, it speaks volumes that redditors are willing to upvote something they can't prove and more importantly probably have no experience with. It's yet another example of the "wimmenz be bitchez" thing on this site. The second is just "friendzoned" in so many other words. Peripherally related is this pandering story. The story itself is not so much the problem as the manner in which it is told. I know the sort of thing the guy was going for, and reddit eats that shit up, that overly aggressive, ironically angry type of humour that most people stop finding funny past 12. Also the "HAHA I CAN RELATED BECAUSE I'VE HAD SEX GAIZ" too thing.
This and this are bad because they are two of the more egregious examples of pseudo-science I have seen on this site. The first, about holographic quantum mind is incoherent babble. But it panders so perfectly to your standard model neckbeard he can't but help and upvoted. The second is insultingly poor pseudo-mathematics, or as RationalWiki would say, "golden ration woo." It saddens me that the word fractal has been so debased.
Lastly, let us take a look at perhaps the worst example I have seen thus far: Every action and decision we make is influenced by the sum of our experiences, memories, influences and the environments we've been exposed to. All of which at a simplified basic level are actually events or elements caused by the decisions of other people. These decisions were in turn caused by another sum of experiences, memories, influences etc of those people. Doesn't that at some level make everything kind of predictable if we were able to map every single influence?On a related note, if every decision we make is influenced by things in our past, most of which were beyond our control, what does that say about free will?
First of all, this idea is by no means new. It's more correctly known as Laplace's Demon. And it's wrong. This isn't an opinion, it's just matter of factly incorrect. Determinism is not real. This has been unequivocally proven to be true. And even if it weren't, a computer smaller than the Universe cannot compute a complete simulation of the entire Universe, making the argument null. Also there's this little bitty problem called complexity theory which means that some problems could never be solved within a finite amount of time anyway, just saying. Somehow though, our brave scholar, receives Reddit Gold for this. Why? Because it perfectly panders to just the sort of bullshit quasi-empiricist sort of mentality that Reddit has. It's phenomenon called "scientism." And it's just, as I said, wrong. What I love is the pathetically flaccid video someone lower down gives as an argument, along with a few others who cite Sam Harris. Sam Harris is a hack philosopher of the first degree, who has some pretty horrendous, disgusting things to say, such as that we should put people to death with bad ideas and that torture is liek totalee okay gaiz. With that being said, Daniel Dennet makes a very, very good argument on why Free Will does exist, but then I doubt he knows anything. It's not even the belief that free will doesn't exist that bothers me. It is, in no particular order, the spinning of an old idea as one's own as if it were original or insightful in anway, the use of empirically wrong arguments with no acknowledgement thereof, and the idiots who are so oblivious as to why the reasoning of the commenter was shit and go on to repeat the same shitty arguments to all of their shitty friends.
The end.
Man, that felt good.
