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[D] Monday General Rationality Thread
Post:
Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:
- Seen something interesting on /r/science?
- Found a new way to get your shit even-more together?
- Figured out how to become immortal?
- Constructed artificial general intelligence?
- Read a neat nonfiction book?
- Munchkined your way into total control of your D&D campaign?
Comments:
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u/Gcrein:
I just recently started reading Terry Pratchett for the first time. I finished *Good Omens* (which was co-authored with Neil Gaiman), and I'm currently delving into his Discworld Saga starting with *Equal Rites*. I wouldn't particularly consider his work to be rational fiction (there are more than a few things that happen "just because"), but the more I read from him the more I become convinced that he was a rationalist. It's just the way his characters act, and the way his stories are structured. In his worlds there is just no such thing as a mystery that is better left unsolved. In any case case, I'm really enjoying his work. Do you know any other authors like that? Authors that don't particularly write rational fiction, but still have stories that contain a lot of rational problem solving? Also does anyone have any suggestions about where I should go with Discworld after I finish the Witchworld portion?-
u/alexanderwales:
Charles Stross is *generally* like that. He does a bunch of research and part of the charm of reading his books is that you get to see that research along the way, whether it's research into nuclear weapons protocols, mathematics, or economics. This is especially evident in *Accelerando*. -
u/redrach:
I suggest reading all the City Watch Discworld novels, starting with _Guards, Guards!_ They're the strongest part of the series, IMO.
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u/Frommerman:
Has anyone come up with a superpower which is both simple to explain and *doesn't* result in breaking really important aspects of the universe? If you go with flight, you have to explain that the energy comes from your own body, and what control mechanism you use, and whether you can survive low atmospheric pressure. If you can do invisibility, we question whether you can see, whether the fact that you can see means you are detectible, and if you aren't whether this breaks quantum interpretations of photons.-
u/alexanderwales:
A bunch of the crappy superpowers don't have problems with physics. Angel (from X-men) flies with his wings, for example, which is plausible if you assume a certain wingspan, hollow bones, lean musculature, etc. Breathing underwater is similarly something that is plausible for someone to be able to do with a divergent biology. "Invisibility" might just be active camo that works similarly to how an octopus uses their chromatophores to blend in with their surroundings. The implausible part there is usually how the person gets that power, which often contradicts vast swaths of what we know about biology, but it's not physics breaking.-
u/electrace:
>Angel (from X-men) flies with his wings, for example, which is plausible if you assume a certain wingspan, hollow bones, lean musculature, etc. I'm not so sure about that. Condors are the largest flying bird (according to google),they weigh up to 33 pounds. and their wingspan is around 10 feet long. Even if you got a human down to 66 pounds (and good luck with that), that's still twice as heavy as the heaviest flying bird. I'm no physicist, but I'd imagine flapping those things appropriately fast enough to fly would be well in excess of human capacity (*especially* if they aren't muscular, and have fragile bones).-
u/alexanderwales:
[Quetzalcoatlus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus) might have been around 150 lbs. with a wingspan of 32 feet. Alternately, [check this post](http://www.wired.com/2012/01/humans-with-bird-wings/) for some math on wing span vs mass. The biggest difference between the comic books and a plausible reality is that the wings would be *huge*, large enough to make life really problematic.- u/electrace:
I stand corrected. Although, having wings that large on a human wouldn't be much of a super-power. It would be about as useful as carrying a hang-glider around 24-7. It'd probably be easier just to get a jetpack and call it a day.
- u/electrace:
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u/blazinghand:
*Cuttlefisheyeman* [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuttlefish#Eyes) With his powers of light polarization vision and lack-of-a-blindspot, Cuttlefisheyeman is the ultimate visual hero! Many people claim they can't *see* how his power is useful, but maybe if they had eyes like his, they could! -
u/None:
It's not very super if it doesn't break the known laws of nature. -
u/ArgentStonecutter:
Shapeshifting, with conservation of mass. Like Pratchett's vampires who turn into a flock of bats because individual bats don't weight much.-
u/Vebeltast:
Engineered wet nanotechnology in general is a solid superpower. Start at shoggoth and grey goo and start working your way up.-
u/ArgentStonecutter:
Oh, sure, suck all the romance out of it. \^\^- u/Vebeltast:
Shoggoths are *totally* romantic. o_ô .... ....pfffhahahahahI can't keep a straight face even online.
- u/Vebeltast:
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u/Chronophilia:
Superpowers that are simple enhancements of things we can already do are fine. Lifting 1 ton, running at 30 m/s, seeing and hearing frequencies that normal humans cannot, accelerated healing factor, that sort of thing. Obviously all of these can be taken too far to be plausible (Superman lifting a building raises certain structural questions), so stay within the bounds of biology. Some versions of telepathy. Having a two-way radio in your brain doesn't break anything important, and even if you can force people to reveal thoughts or memories that they don't want to it still doesn't crack the universe down the middle.-
u/fljared:
Hardly interesting, though. Even a semi-superhuman who can lift one ton, run at 30 m/s, and has superhuman sense can be beat by a regular soldier with a motorcycle and a gun.- u/Uncaffeinated:
That's real life for you. Superheroes as a genre are almost impossible to make realistic. The convention seems to be that all heroes and villains are MadeOfIron with unnatural healing and toughness even when they don't have any explicit such power. Because the alternative is heroes who die on their first night out or get a crippling leg injury and retire and noone wants to read about that.
- u/Uncaffeinated:
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u/Kishoto:
Have you ever been in a discussion/argument/informal debate and people ask you for your source? A valid question, as how else do you know if I'm not just making this stuff up? But, realistically, it's very rare that you have a source for each and every single thing you've learnt. For example, I know that some villages in Europe burnt kittens for entertainment centuries ago. I don't know where I learnt it, and I also don't know if there were deeper meanings behind it, simply because I learnt this random fact in passing years ago. I know it's a fact. But I can't source it. Does that invalidate my argument? (Let's pretend you're in a situation where you can't just whip our your phone and Google) And if the answer is no, WHEN should it invalidate my argument? I can't be unsourced about everything. In addition, let's go a little deeper. As a human, how often do you update your beliefs? For example, just the other night, I learnt that the tonsils are little sacs on either side of your uvula. But, when I was a child (~12 years ago), I picked up the mistaken impression that the uvula WAS the tonsils, or contained tonsils. So my friend and I were discussing tonsils a week ago and that's when it hit me. I've seen tonsils (in pictures), I've known there were two, I've known the uvula is a seperate thing. All for years. But when my friend asked me if I knew where tonsils were, I opened my mouth and realized I didn't. Somehow, the belief that the uvula was the tonsils or contained them had persisted, despite how I'd learnt several things over the years that logically disproved such a thing. I found it to be a mildly disconcerting, but amusing realization. That then led me to wonder how many of the facts I know (I've built up what I assume is millions, by now) are dusty and out of date, or founded on beliefs I no longer hold true, or are just plain wrong. So.....thoughts on either point would be much appreciated.- u/alexanderwales:
I ask for sources (and expect people to ask for sources) when the argument rests almost entirely on the fact that's being presented. For example: > Eighty-three members of the supposed Apollo team have come forward and said that the moon landing did not happen. If I am arguing with someone over whether the moon landing was real or not, and they come forward with this claim, it becomes the center of the argument that we're having. I immediately have to ask for a source, because if it's true it would probably cause me to update my beliefs. In this case, me asking for a source is a more polite way of saying "bullshit", because I don't believe that this claim is true (partially *because* it would cause me to update my beliefs so largely). Same for your claim about kittens. If our argument goes: > You: "Medieval Europe was terrible to animals" > Me: "I doubt that they were more terrible to animals than we are now" > You: "Yes they were, it was common for village to tortured animals for entertainment" Well ... here we have a problem, because I have no idea whether what you said is true, and there's no way for us to take it further without me knowing whether it's true. If it is true, then I have to update my beliefs. If it's not true, then you need a new argument. And maybe some weaker version of your claim is correct, or perhaps your original source isn't trustworthy. But either way, if I say: > "Do you have a source for that?" Then you say: > "No, I just know it" Then our argument is dead in the water. We can't possibly move forward until we've established this matter of fact. I frankly don't trust your memory to have gotten the details correct. Maybe you misheard, or misremembered, or someone was just making things up, and I have no way of knowing but it's the crux of your argument. (I don't trust *my own* memory either, which is why I tend to google things while I'm in the midst of an online argument and then cite my sources as I go.) So ... it depends. If you're just throwing out a fact, I don't really care. But if you're trying to support or defend some position with a fact I find dubious, I will probably ask you for a source if ten seconds of looking on my own doesn't find one. I expect the same of you when I make a claim. Edit: Just as a small anecdote to add to this. I was talking to a very religious co-worker about abortion. Our debate was essentially about how seriously people take the issue, with me being on the side of "generally people who are pro-choice take it fairly seriously". Then he says: > Pepsi puts ground up fetuses in their sodas and no one cares. And just like that ... this was what our conversation was about. I was polite enough not to directly say "bullshit" even with the immediate questions this raised in regards to supply lines. So I asked for a source, and he told me to Google it, which I think is a shitty thing to do if your entire argument rests on a single point, but ... I Googled it. Because *if it were true* I would have to change my mind on the issue. This was a point of data that was so central to our conversation that it couldn't possibly be ignored or talked around. ([Here's the Snopes article on the subject.](http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/pepsi.asp) But that's sort of not the point of the story; the point is that there was no way we could continue without a citation of some kind.)
- u/alexanderwales:
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u/notmy2ndopinion:
Do any of you know of an online, iterative, Bayesian calculator that is easy to use? I'd like to be able to direct medical trainees to it when they use resources like JAMA's Rational Clinical Exam series. http://jamaevidence.mhmedical.com/Book.aspx?bookId=845