Yeesh — I don't think this game is going to take the world by storm. It's calledCrevoScope, and it's a "text-based massively multiplayer game", which somehow is supposed to simulate the evolution-creationism debate, without actually requiring players to learn or know anything. It's got some weird mechanics which I haven't puzzled out in any detail at all, but apparently you can acquire "knowledge" by clicking on a "library" link — you don't actually learn anything, a number for your character goes up — and then you get to go "debate" someone, and somehow the various scores help determine whether you "win" or not. It doesn't make much sense to me, and I don't think I'm motivated to put any time into it.
Especially since I took a look at the level of the discussion going on. Would you believe this is an argument someone made in all seriousness to disprove evolution?
Fact 1: History and Science has proven that some native African tribes eat monkeys as a prime source of food. There is bone evidence and filmed and video prof as well. Along with the bones of monkeys are human remains. So the body that science says is prof of evolution is just bones of monkeys that some tribe eat along side there bones.
Fact 2: Evolution teaches all life on earth came from one source. The primordial soup they call it if thats true would we not have DNA of all life on earth even if its a small percentage of it.
Fact 3: Darwin was a man that gave birth to this evolution theory. Were many people in the science community say is fact. Darwin himself have written a science manuscript stating that evolution is not possible just before his death.
I'm always astounded that every time I meet a creationist and hear their argument, they always manage to sink even lower than anything I'd previously heard. That sounds like a logical impossibility, unless perhaps creationist brains are in a universal state of implosion.
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The stupid combined with the bad grammar really burns.
That deathbed manuscript must be the one he dictated to Lady Hope.
These "fact"s are so poorly written that I am having trouble discerning what the writers are trying to say by them. Probably the clearest of the three is "fact" 3, which is based on an entirely false claim. More evidence that cognitive clarity is required for linguistic clarity, I guess....
Apparently it's based on what creationists actually do, simply Google some horseshit, call it knowledge, and then try to claim that it disproves evolution.
It's the opposite of honest scholarly or scientific debate, which is good for creationism, because it can't compete where any actual knowledge exists.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Dawkins recently said in an interview with Bill Maher that in his deathbed, he'll have witnesses and a tape recorder that such "facts" will not pop up about him after his death. Given what we have here- that may not really help.
"...evolution is not possible just before his death."
You see, because Darwin had to die in order to unleash the forces of evolution on the world. Turn with me to the Book of Darwin, chapter eight, verse three...
So if you go into the "church" in the game, this is what happens (I'm playing the "evolution" side, btw):
You would think they would at least give you a bible verse before you "gain more knowledge of the bible". But no. For these people, all you have to do is go into a church.
I gave up on trying to follow the reasoning behind the "facts", so I just despaired at the horrible grammar.
I imagine word of this game would have spread (at least a little bit) through some good ol' christian outrage. Unfortunately for the developers, GTA 4's going to be soaking up all of that shit for months to come.
My guess is that Fact 2 is a specially crafted brain-breaker for scientific types; they get trapped by its meandering meaninglessness and concede, leaving to buy headache medicine.
Either that, or then it's some arcane language trick a non-native speaker like me can't understand. Is that disproof written in Drone or in Yammer?
Hehe, hey, this game sounds an awful lot like role playing, doesn't it? Haven't you heard that's a demonic passtime that corrodes the soul and lets the devil into your life?
Looking on the bright side, these people are clearly losing the power to articulate coherent thought. Eventually, they may reach the point where they are unable to communicate or socialize at all except through a games oonsole. It reminds me of the Dilbert strip musing about Star Trek holodecks. The punchline has Dogbert saying something like "When holodecks become cheaper than dating, the human race is doomed."
Does reading these arguments make you lose "knowledge points?"
Every now and then I think it's useful to look at what average, ordinary people who don't generally engage in debates or discussions think are "good" arguments against evolution, or for God.
For one thing, it helps you recognize where some of the errors in thinking are first made, because you're not distracted by details or something that sounds like a different, but more legitimate, argument. And for another thing, it helps you appreciative the creationists and theists who come into science blogs looking to debate. They are actually a few steps up the rung. They've taken the time to think through the situation, decided to engage in rational discussion, arranged their thoughts, studied the matter, and have probably discarded their worst errors.
In order to realize this properly, you need to see what its complete absence looks like.
When I used to hang out in IRC, as poor as some of the apologetics were in #Christiandebate, they were usually still sophisticated light years ahead of what you'd find in the praise-and-worship rooms.
I lack the words... I mean, I just... it's...
It hurts. There really is no hope for these poor bastards, is there?
Reality must just be a dreadful, horrible, fearsome place for them.
This worries me a lot. Having just graded exams with an essay about Grastang's hypothesis (the grades were not good)
PZ sorry you didn't make Time's 100 most influential people, I would have voted for you if I was thinking about it.
Those "facts" are written in a dialect of English known as Moronic White Trash.
In theory, it is fixable with a generation or two of education. But in this case, maybe not. Sounds like we have found the missing link between reptiles and mammals!
@#12 Sastra --
No, it seems it's even worse than that. They've turned knowledge into a *bad* thing. I went into the library and got this message:
You're then given the option to "Read More Science", which, like pretty much all things involving knowledge in this game, makes you lose "will" points (-10 in this case...giving a presentation to a class is -8...).
This game is quickly going from amusing to just sad....
You are in complete intellectual darkness.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
@ #11:
Unfortunate, that there is no correlation to fertility.
So, I clicked on "Crevocafe" to "debate" someone... Then I clicked on some random person who was listed as being on the creationist side...
This is what showed up:
"You turn toward deadlyman3000 and say "How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?"
deadlyman3000 replies to your argument with "Think about it, God is all powerful, he could have used a variety of ways to fit the animals in- He could have shrunk them, make the boat larger, or many other possible choices. He is God afterall!"
Spinoza seems to be annoyed, un-satisified with the answer, but uncertain how to respond to that.
deadlyman3000 says his own argument: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"
You think for a moment and say "Scientists say that we evolved from chimps, not monkeys! I guess that God of yours didn't decide to give you a brain so you could realise this, huh?"
deadlyman3000 nods, enjoying seeing his opponent make a complete fool of himself.
Once again, you challenge your opponent: "How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?"
deadlyman3000 replies to your argument with "Well... um... all that matters is that he did!"
Spinoza smiles with victory.
Spinoza wins the debate!
You gain 10 exp points"
... I didn't do anything except click a button.
My responses would have been so much better than the above... I should get 10 trillion experience points...
... Okay, so then I just tried again... did basically the same thing and THIS is what came up:
"You turn toward Howy and say "How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?"
Howy replies to your argument with "Well... um... all that matters is that he did!"
Spinoza smiles with victory.
Howy says his own argument: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"
You think for a moment and say "Scientists say that we evolved from chimps, not monkeys! I guess that God of yours didn't decide to give you a brain so you could realise this, huh?"
Howy nods, enjoying seeing his opponent make a complete fool of himself.
Once again, you challenge your opponent: "How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?"
Howy replies to your argument with "Well... um... all that matters is that he did!"
Spinoza smiles with victory.
Howy wins the debate!"
Uh... wtf. What a retarded game.
@#19 Spinoza --
Yeah, all of the "debates" go like that. Except sometimes they say the "god could have done anything" argument both times, sometimes they say the "all that matters is he did both times," and sometimes they say one and then the other. It seems that the monkey/chimp thing is the only thing *you* ever say, though. If you try to debate with a fellow evolutionist, then you're "practicing" for your debate with the creationists, and the other evolutionist plays devil's advocate, and the argument goes *exactly* the same.
You'd think they could have been creative, at least...apparently that is a privilege only their god enjoys, though.
Wow, that "argument" is the pinnacle of illiteracy. Of course, as soon as I saw the words "Represent your ideology ....", I was outta there.
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a creationist here, yammering nonsense.
> bang head against wall
Teh stoopid, it 6urnnnz1!!!
Really, what's so frightening about this is that it's fairly typical (at least so far as I've seen). The creobots are nowhere near well educated, don't want to be well educated, distrust anyone or anything that appears to be well educated, and feel aggressively inclined toward stopping education in its tracks. It's bad enough that you really can't tell the sincerely fucked up people from the trolls, even after a moment or two of reflection.
There are a great many people out there for whom science and rational thought are deeply suspect by their very nature. Such people honestly feel that if it's not directly rooted to some Biblical "thought" or scripture then it's very likely essentially flawed and prone to causing evil. Pointing out all the good science does, and how it depends on rational thought, and how this does not negate "spirituality"* because it's unrelated to it, does not mollify them. There is, at the root of it, an inherent distrust of all things fallible, imperfect, mortal, animal. When you feel vulnerable, anything can look like a threat. Fundies are terribly threatened people with their backs to the wall, living in a world too big and uncontrollable for their fragile psyches to deal with.
The more I look at humans, the more I see very smart animals who sometime forget that they are, in fact, animals.... Very odd animals, to be sure, but it seems to me that that's just an outcome or symptom of our intelligence, and something that ought to be overcome before it critically debilitates us. Do other animals wish that they were something else, or is that a particularly human quirk?
* IMO (like nearly everything else), "Spirituality" is not a bad thing, per se. It's just a way of expressing our feelings and sense of experience using transcendent/poetic language (metaphor, simile, symbolism). However, I think that there are a great many more ways of expressing the same things that do not put one at risk of slipping in woo. However respectable I may find a "spiritual" person to be, I am always a little worried for him or her because there are usually some very ominous trappings lying in wait for them.
Okay, I'm playing as a creationist now...and the only difference is that this time, the evolutionist get to say his argument twice, and I win the debate.
Also, I found that there is one variation of the "evolutionist" argument beyond the one that occurred in #20 Spinoza's post:
Creationist brains would violate the second law of thermodynamics and therefore cannot exist.
Well, on the bright side, there's this hot new Catholic pilgrimage site where you can buy holy oil and EVERYTHING!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24454559
You find a jewel encrusted egg.
You have no curiosity, so you ignore it.
OMFSM. This game is really weird.
As a creationist, you can go to the church to confess. But to do so costs $300. WTF?! If you try to confess without having sufficient money, it tells you:
J (#17):
Thou hast done well in defeating the monster of humorlessness, J! Thou has gained 22 gold and 42 experience points.
Here's what happens if you're a creationist and go into the library (see my comment #16 for the evolution version) --
The only use of knowledge is in order to defeat knowledge. How depressing.
Incidentally, if anyone is considering playing this game, my first suggestion would be: don't. But if you, like me, can't help yourself, I suggest playing as a creationist. It's vaguely more amusing than the evolution option.
Okay, I'm beginning to think this may be a joke. (Poe's Law, I know, but...)
One of the books offered in the "Bookstore" is Applied Logical Theory. If you click for info, you get the following summary:
There's also a book called "Beneficial science found in Scientology". Its summary:
Agressively ignorant.
Enjoy.
Evolution was wrong because Darwin is now know to said so during his death. Monkeys exist now next to people in places where people now lives. So no species have seen changing into species different from first species. Monkeys and man thus therefore not related.
Sorry, I was just trying to write like a creationist. It hurt my brain.
@#35 MarcusA --
And you still did better than them, since I at least understood your "arguments" the first time around.
Hint: don't use words like "because," "thus," or "therefore." "So" is okay in very limited use, as long as it's unclear what part of your previous statement it is referring to. You might want to throw in a few more obvious typos as well. You did a good job sticking to the "no comma" rule, though.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue
An additional reason to avoid playing: To do anything interesting (other than the aforementioned fake debates), you need to become a "sponsor" and buy fossils. One could also get fossils by referring friends (PZ would have quite a few by now, if he'd put his referral link), but they seem a bit too integral to the game.
Etha Williams:
I think "thus" and "therefore" are allowed if they are together and unintelligible as MarcusA did. However, I believe "therefore" should have been in all caps.
These people can't think, can't write a coherent sentence, are hostile to science and can still write code? Programing must be a lot easier than I thought. Maybe I should take it up.
"Darwin himself have written a science manuscript stating that evolution is not possible just before his death."
I still hear this one every so often.
If historians found evidence that showed that James Clerk Maxwell recanted his field equations on his death bed, do you think that these people would stop using their cell phones, computers and all other electrical devices?
"Darwin himself have written a science manuscript stating that evolution is not possible just before his death."
Just about everything of record that remains that Darwin ever wrote is available online here:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
why don't you point out where his recantation is for us?
There has been serious inflation between now and when this is set, On the Origin of Species costs, $5,000,000!
BTW, as someone who was never educated as a Creationist, I was deeply mystified the first time (here, only in the last few months) that I saw the "...then why are there still monkeys?" argument. The only reaction I could muster was "Huh? Why wouldn't there be?". Clearly there's some kind of misunderstanding of what evolution means in the mind of someone who says it, but honestly, I can't fathom it. Can someone here explain it?
Can someone here explain it?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC150.html
There used to be some debate whether the term 'cretin' was from 'christian'.
The IDiots and their fellow two-legged sheep have removed any doubt.
@#44 Nemo --
I think it comes from the teleological misunderstanding of evolution (demonstrated in the Jack Chick tract posted recently) that everything is progressing towards man. So once that progress has been made, the old, imperfect organism should no longer exist. Of course, by this "logic" pretty much nothing should exist other than man...but I guess since the ultimate goal, man, needs plants and animals for food, they're allowed to exist. I don't know. The "logic" is so garbled that I'm having difficulty trying to explain it.
I'm beginning to think this game is just an elaborate joke. It's possible I'm giving too much credit, here; I've done it before.
Mike O'Risal:
Really? It seems to me that they're nearly ideal closed systems.
Your wagon has broken an axle. Lose 4 days.
One lineage is allowed destined to become Man, or should I say Mankind. All the other "kinds" are stuck where they are. Anything else would be... unnatural. Of course, in this model, the common ancestor is Adam. Or dust, if you want to go all the way back. *smirk*
Right. You have to assume that any given ancestor species turns into one and only one daughter species; there is no branching. As soon as you admit branching, the "why are there monkeys?" argument ceases making any sense at all.
Hence my version of this argument, which is "If we evolved, why are there kumquats?"
PZ, with that spelling and grammar it sounds like a kid. It's a cherry-picked worst case (not that their quality is all that good on average), an irrelevant item for sport. Really, that's straw-manning the personnel of the opposition.
BTW, here's a pertinent real question for someone to answer: Yes we see intermediary forms between reptiles and birds, having some feathers and reptilian features together etc. But what about the feathers themselves, what sort of intermediate condition developed and how did it persist meanwhile? The real question is intermediate features, not intermediate "forms" (creatures.) Don't take it as some "attempt" to make a point, if you can answer then do so.
To clarify, I'm not looking for a refutation, but rather for an explanation of why, from a creationist's perspective, it would even make sense to ask such a question. The Talk.Origins stuff doesn't really address that, for me.
I'd guess it was about teleology too, but like Etha says, that doesn't entirely explain it...
Neil, the argument you're makings is basically the Irreducible Complexity argument: what good is half a feather? Well, it turns out that half a feather is useful for, say, dissipating heat. Just because a transitional feature couldn't do what the final feature does, doesn't mean that it didn't provide its owner with an evolutionary advantage over those without it.
Nemo #44 wrote:
Etha's close, but creationists don't really think everything is progressing towards becoming human. It's just that the model they're using is a bizarre combination of evolution, teleology, and the creationist idea of "kinds." The kind of animal -- say, fish -- turns into another kind of animal -- say, a bird. Fishes are swimming around, then some of them leap in the air, grow feathers, and turn into birds. Eventually, they all would -- if evolution was true.
But they don't. There are still fish. So evolution can't be true.
With monkeys, once some of them start to turn into humans, they eventually all would, because it's a "higher" -- ie more advanced -- form. Creationists who use this argument then are not only thinking teleologically -- evolution working towards a goal -- they're also picturing evolution in a way which visualizes the "growth" of a species as just like individual growth. You start out a baby, then you turn into a child, teenager, and adult. Monkeys then are like humans who didn't grow up.
What kept them from growing up? Huh? This question stumps evolutionists. They just kind of gape and blink. Gotcha.
@42: "...why don't you point out where his recantation is for us?"
[lol]
It's been expelled, you insensitive clod!
[/lol]
Creationists continue to sink so much further into deeper and deeper levels of hopeless, mind-numbing stupidity, that I'm convinced what happens at baptism ceremonies these days is that the baby's head isn't merely sprinkled with water, but that the entire head is deliberately immersed for long enough that oxygen deprivation causes irreversible, lifelong brain injury.
Tell me about it. It's like some perverse version of Zeno's paradox, only instead of arrows failing to catch up to tortoises there's your opinion of creationists forever lagging behind the grim reality.
I'm convinced what happens at baptism ceremonies these days is that the baby's head isn't merely sprinkled with water, but that the entire head is deliberately immersed for long enough that oxygen deprivation causes irreversible, lifelong brain injury.
of course.
didn't you know that's where the idea for waterboarding came from?
:P
OK Randall, that's a start, but I wish you (and others) wouldn't call even Socratic questions "arguments." I should be able to see if you can come up with something without it being turned into a "case." I'll make an overt case if I want to, but even that done later doesn't make the first question an "argument." Arguments are defined by current format, not (heh) teleological assumptions of the listeners.
As for feathers, I'm also wondering how all the hooks etc. got there. Note that part of the question of how things happen (I like you assume rationalistic birth of any complex life from parents, not miraculous formation) is about how to imagine what happens to genes: how much randomness, how much is "contrived" in anthropic type ways (regardless of how you imagine the reason why) to end up favorably to higher development, etc. I mean, if the fine structure constant etc. at the very foundational end is already favorable, then why not particular ways for complex molecules to hook up, to make advanced traits more likely etc. at the higher end. It's convenient that prospects for such developments are so handy.
"Darwin himself have written a science manuscript stating that evolution is not possible just before his death."
My high school students used to ask if it was true that Darwin went crazy in his last years. Even the creationist in our science department brought the subject up. I think that a local pastor was spreading this disinformation in his sermons. These people just make stuff up. What is the saying? ... a lie can travel twice round the world before the truth can even get its shoes on. If you call them on their lies, they'll just shamelessly keep repeating them to new audiences or come up with new ones. There is no end to this.
With apologies to JBS Haldane:
Creationist arguments are not only stupider than we suppose; they are stupider than we [b]can[/b] suppose.
It appears to be a parody. If you type google crevoscope and parody, you get a few links, that refuse to load.
I got the cache of one to work (very, very slowly). On it, someone named "Yasic" claims to have made it and says it's meant to be a parody. He says "Remember, my game is a parody, you should have fun regardless of which side you take, all sides are made fun of." The same person mentions the game on other sites as one his favorite games and says it's "for obvious reasons."
Google Cache
Original Site
Pathetic.
This is one of those rare examples of someone who is even less knowledgeable of programming than they are of evolutionary theory, trying to program an anti-evo "game".
Even money says this person wears flipflops or slipons because
they haven't mastered the algorithm for tying a shoestring.
For inquiring minds, the Admin contact is:
Naumenko, Yaroslav sayasic@gmail.com
Screechy Monkey #63 WOOT!
Cheers,
you know, I was looking at this, and I kept thinking...
Crevoscope?
seems like a place to have a fake virtual debate for those that don't want to have real virtual debate on a blog.
*shakes head*
@ #11
Hehe, hey, this game sounds an awful lot like role playing, doesn't it?
Yes, yes. I was thinking the same thing. I remember back in the days when Pokemon was all the rage..and I just never got it.
Wait, what? You fight, and the opponent with the highest level wins, and then the winner gets a higher level and more fighting powers..I ..see..
Oh, and then it evolves. Of course, you mean that it produces viable offspring with it's own characteristics which have been selected for by a predation or resource deficiency? And others of the same species in the same geographical area have the same pressures, and over time and subsequent generations the population as a whole develops characteristics similar to those originally selected for?
Oh..no, you mean that your weird pet just oscillates slightly and then grows taller?
Why didn't Darwin think of this? It's so much easier and much less time consuming. Sounds wonderful. *clicks on library link*
We are returning to moderating all comments, as we did before. More soon. Posted by: Chris C. Mooney | April 24, 2008 2:46 PM
I must have missed that...
Doug @ #4
I'm wondering what the point of your link was? With no citations or data it's hard to take you seriously in either your comment or your take on conscious thought, although the idea is intriguing.
Something to consider:
The genome of a human and a chimp are different by 3.9% = 117 million DNA base pairs. Even if a chimp would've had to only mutate 3 of those pairs, there's a probability of 55 million billion years.
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
This game sounds like the directions on a shampoo bottle.
Lather, Rinse Repeat.
It's no Zork... :(
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
Probabilities are not measured in years. Copying, pasting and quite possibly mangling a block of text does not constitute an argument. I hope this was not intended as such.
Neil B, #61:
The short answer is D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's: Things are the way they are because they got that way.
In other words, there's some developmental pathway by which the fractal structure of feathers is recursively generated, with moderating factors at various levels of recursion to produce specific features such as hooks. The precise details of that pathway may be known to somebody, but not to me.
Taking two steps back, one can concoct plausible just-so stories about the adaptive value of feather-like structures first for thermoregulation, then for gliding, and finally for powered flight. There was a recent Nova episode about some wind-tunnel experiments aimed at validating (or falsifying) explanations of this sort.
In between, there's presumably an evo-devo-flavored analysis that could be done to show why the evolution of feathers was constrained by the available developmental pathways to produce the kinds of recursive structures and fine details we see in actual feathers. Whether anybody has done that analysis I have no idea.
I'm not sure which of these three levels your question is aimed at, and I'm not sure that the complete answer at all levels is even known. But I think most of us are pretty confident that the answers are knowable, if somebody does the necessary research.
Holy crap. I've long had fantasies of creating an educational MMORPG that would teach kids hands-on science, by giving them a virtual lab to run virtual experiments in order to make real discoveries. This game...is not what I had in mind.
Ooh. Those Big Numbers make kinda mathy, but it could be way mathier. O_o
> wield 'spear of destiny'
You begin wielding a spear of destiny in your right hand.
> mount dragon
You climb on the back of a dragon and begin riding it.
> bash creationist
You swing your shield at a creationist and miss.
> bash creationist
You swing your shield at a creationist but your attack has no effect.
> flee south
You run for your life and gasp for air.
> north
The main chamber of the Temple of Madness is littered with the remains of those foolish enough to challenge its inhabitants.
A creationist is here with fingers in its ears.
A creationist is here with fingers in its ears.
A High Priest is here leading his sheep.
> bash creationist
You swing your shield at a creationist but your attack has no effect.
> flee south
You run for your life and gasp for air.
> quit
Thanks for playing!
I think that game needs a huge revamping, 15 minutes to restore 10 points of will, or a donation of RL $. At that rate it will will take longer then the existence of the entire universe (<6000 years) to reach the highest level. I had dreams of becoming the MMO virtual PZ of evolution, now they are crushed by horrible game design and an ignorance of evolution.
Ian :
No... of course not. It's a great idea, though.
What an interesting change of pace that would be. Heck - it would be a paradigm shift.
The problem with MMPORGs is that the player rarely learns what the character "learns," regardless of whether or not the skill is less mundane than combat arts or spellcasting - like, say, fletching, shearing sheep, making pastries, or mining for fish.
It's seductive, though, and given the almost total lack of RP in MMPORGs these days, all that's left is level-grind, a bit of chit-chat now and then, and a virtually (!) endless series of artificial goals and accomplishments that ultimately lead nowhere and yield nothing for the player, even as the character achieves great skill, fame, and wealth. It's odd.
I don't want to sound overly harsh, for I've spent quite a few too many hours in the MPORG world myself, and it's an enjoyable pastime... in moderation... up to a point.
This game sounds like the worst of all possible virtual worlds, though. All this pretending to gain knowlege of very real things... for the purpose of pretending to match wits with someone who likely doesn't know any more (or less) about the real subject than you do. Don't you even get to select an argument to make? It's double-odd.
My point is... uh... hell if I know. My brain is mush now anyway.
"You find a creationist's brain the size of a plover's egg!"
Ooh, mwb (#78) that was Gemstoney!
Silly me... I thought maybe the Bandogge should wade into the site, then I read some of it. It's not worth his time to lift his leg on.
@#58 Martin --
This would actually go a long way to explain Kenny's assertion that near-death Experiences proof the existence of God.
Etha: LOL, indeed! :-D
Clever, Hematite. Quite clever. I'd almost forgotten that film.
My mistake, I meant it would take 55 million billion years (get rid of the probability part).
Do humans have a conscience?
Several human genomes have been sequenced. Individual humans walking around today who are even famous, Venter and Watson for example, can differ by 15 million base pairs.
We know this by actual count. The difference between two humans and humans and chimpanzees isn't all that much different. Considering chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor ca 6 million years ago.
I actually used to play other browser-based games along with yasic for several years (Hobowars, DragonCourt, etc.).
He made this game a couple of years ago, and if my memory serves, it was originally called EvoCrevo. It's apparently changed names since then.
I never really played it since I have no more interests in browser-based games, but it def. seems like a parody.
Some do, some don't. Did you lose yours and just decided to lie a lot or are you merely extremely stupid?
Good question. And can you find LOVE under your microscope, Mister Stupidhead Smartypants Scientist Guys?!
This is what normal, functional, intelligent people use to understand life. Called a fact.
This is what religious fanatics with no education and a brain the size of a walnut use to figure out life. It is known as Making Stuff Up, aka lie. Guy's so dumb he can't even make up a reasonably coherent lie.
Yeah, but have they ever interbred?
Ouch. Didn't think there would be such a vehement response. Just one wrong argument and I'm labeled retarded and an idiot.
THIS is the best game ever made by a creationist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfV2OzEHwg
I DEFY YOU TO FIND A BETTER CHRISTIAN GAME. YOU CANNOT!
Meaningless gibberish. IIRC, the number of mutations between 1 generation of humans to the next is around 100 base pairs. The vast majority are neutral mutations.
Oh, good grief! Is there no end to the stupidity? The argument seems to be that evolution is the domain of intellectual, educated, scientist, elitist types. In reality to reject creationism you simply need some semblance of intelligence.
The bad grammar...it hurts...SO MUCH...
#90
More importantly, can love bloom on the battlefield?
Well, Raven's not the kid-gloves type. You'll live.
Whether the harsh reaction is warranted or not, the underlying reason for it is simple enough: After hundreds (perhaps thousands) of "one wrong arguments", it gets old. Very old. You're a victim of the authors of the pseudo-educational sources you're citing - they don't want to foster understanding, they want to "inform" footsoldiers such as yourself who then go out into the field and spread disinformation. The remedy is simple, but many refuse it - and that pattern is a part of the back-story here, too.
Neil B @#
Its a development thing, feathers are a (relatively) small jump from scales.
I saw a show on Discovery awhile back where a bunch of developmental biologists were musing about growing dinosaurs using chickens. By inserting a few (ie I don't know how many, I'm an engineer not a biologist) genes into a chicken embryo, they got it to grow wispy hairlike feathers like the ones velociraptors had (yeah velociraptors had feathers, I was disappointed too) on thier legs instead of scales.
basically, feathers are rebelious/mistaken scales that were adapted to be better suited for flight. It probably took a long time to do though.
It didn't occur to me until after I commented, but perhaps PZ meant the title of this post to be "Shall we play a game?" - that's probably what tickled my memory for the WarGames ref above.
The game is run by a game designer that has no time on his hands to actually update the game. The only remaining mod LF is a powermad idiot and needs to be removed. The spellings errors in the game have existed since the start. the game isnt even finished yet. (multiple parts are not even accesable.) the automated debates are limited. (maybe only 10)
on the actual workings of the the game.
2 stats used for debates.
bib and science.
in debate you compare your stats vs the opposing stat of your opponent.
@ Jon #86
Do humans have a conscience?
It's what separates humans from other animals. It's whether we choose to listen to them or not.
Blind Squirrel, FCD @ #40
I can assure you that programming is much easier than you thought, I'm continually amazed at how much you can get wrong and still have a working result. I noticed the same phenomenon when I used to do PA for gigs: there are almost an infinite number of ways to do it wrong and still have it work!
In both cases the quality of the end result directly correlates to the clear-mindedness and forethought of the person doing the work; a poorly designed system makes it near impossible to change things when the circumstances require. Given what I've seen of this game (and the author's writing) it's probably implemented horribly but works just well enough to get by.
Octobermaid @ #98
Love _is_ a battlefield! </Benatar>
Ichtyic (post45)
That was of course an excellent link, and the first sentence in the 'Response' ("common ancestor whose population split to become two etc") says it all, but I'm not sure the second sentence (concerning Americans/Australians and their European ancestors) is helpful in debates like this, because your average home-schooled, literal-minded creationist might miss the analogy and immediately jump to the obvious fact that the common chimp-human ancestor is no longer around, while Europeans obviously are. A semi-clever creationist, fixated on distinct species as opposed to gradual evolution, will immediately spot that these three nationalities are all members of the same species carrying different passports, and off you go... another hour wasted on debating and educating those who won't be educated.
Keeping in mind the limited (time) horizon of the young earth people, I was thinking of a more recent analogy: we have pc's as well as Apple computers, both derived from Babbage's Analytical Engine. That particular engine has become extinct, but its two (or more) descendants are taking over the planet, etc ... (you get my drift). I admit that I haven't thought this through, but as analogies go, surely, this one can at least serve a rhetorical purpose somewhere in the debate?
I just read through my last post and though "Ick! I'm insufferable!". Here it is again, shorter and without pretense:
Programming could be done by a chimp. I can't recommend taking it up professionally though, because most of your time will be spent cleaning up chimp shit.
nanoAl #100:
if thats true would we not have DNA of all life on earth even if its a small percentage of it.
so, like the way our DNA is 95% like that of a chimpanzee and 25% like that of a banana?*
*I got this latter off a t-shirt, don't know if it's right
Peter @107,
Feathers are indeed adapted scales
Feathers, scales, hair, even breasts: Neil Shubin's Inner Fish book suggests these structures all derive from ancestral teeth.
Stupid Shubin! If our hair evolved from teeth, why do we still have teeth???!!!
Stupid Shubin! If our hair evolved from teeth, why do we still have teeth???!!!
obvious:
in case we ever need to exapt them as feathers.
:P
and I can quite understand why Shubin focuses on teeth and fish; our finny friends have teeth in the oddest places.
http://museum.utep.edu/archive/fish/pharynteeth.htm
on their tongues, too:
http://www.artscape.us/aquaculture/fish_dissection/head_gills.html
some good dissection pictures on that last one, btw.
"so i could beat the livin snot out of you"
That's the best creationist rebuttal I've heard so far. :D
Alcari has been killed by Creationist wielding a Wand of Stupidity.
Do You Want Your Possessions Identified?
like the way our DNA is 95% like that of a chimpanzee and 25% like that of a banana?*
50% banana! (part 6)
ROBERT KRULWICH: And what it's telling us is so surprising and so strange and so unexpected. Fifty percent of the genes in a banana are in us?
ERIC LANDER: How different are you from a banana?
ROBERT KRULWICH: I feel...and I feel I can say this with some authority...very different from a banana.
ERIC LANDER: You may feel different...
ROBERT KRULWICH: I eat a banana.
ERIC LANDER: All the machinery for replicating your DNA, all the machinery for controlling the cell cycle, the cell surface, for making nutrients, all that's the same."
Fess up, Hematite. You were actually trying to inject Ben Stein into the thread. WarGames--Matthew Broderick--Ferris Bueller's Day Off--Ben Stein. Ooh ooh! New Six Degrees Game. Let's start with Brad Pitt. Who can get from Brad Pitt to Ben Stein in six steps?
Hello there, I am yasic, the creator of this game.
First of all, I would like to say that this game is a parody of the creation/evolution debate and makes no definitive stances on which side is right. If you must know, I personally accept the fact that evolution is the method by which we managed to obtain the great genetic diversity on this earth. I do however try to do my best to make sure the game is evenly divided among the two sides, as difficult as it may be at times.
If you play this game, and you will certainly find many arguments that sound silly or are just plain stupid (for both creation and evolution.) These are intentional and are my attempt at mimicking real world events that are used by genuine creationists and evolutionists around the world. I just have to ask- what kind of creation/evolution parody do you expect if you do not have the fun arguments we all know creationists to make. There are also many hidden references to people or organizations within the game, ranging to an easily accessible idea that Fox News would sponsor you (if you are a creationist) to try to teach creation in public schools, to a very hidden reference to the banana of Kirk Cameron!
Now about the clicking to gain stats:
This game is, as listed above, a text based game. It is a specific type of game that has a slightly different audience than most other games. This game is based more on long term strategy and user planning than on skill of the wrist or quickness of the eye. You are given limited resources every day (in the form of energy, here called 'Will') and you must choose what to do with it to try to reach your goals, whatever they may be. You may choose to try to use your will to attack ('debate') people or try to raise your stats, or perhaps raise cash to buy yourself some equipment ('books') or a number of other options. You are racing against the clock and other rivals. Not all games require graphics to be entertaining.
This type of game is enjoyed by millions of people around the world, and you may not be such a person, and I have no expectations that everyone should be. But I do ask that you do not simply brush it off without even finding out what the appeal is or how it works.
Finally I would like to point out that the quote listed above is not actually from the game itself, but (my best guess is) posted by another user on the forum. I am happy to have this person on the game as it may produce some interesting discussion to people who enjoy talking with creationists. This is of course optional and there is no rule that says you must talk with the person here... that is how forums work, you decide which topics to partake in. It is my experience that quite a lot of people do enjoy this type of discussion and I fail to see how having an real creationist hurts a parody of the creation/evolution debate in any way.
I could say quite a bit more here, however I happen to have a final exam in an hour so I am going to end it here. If any of you have any questions or comments, I will be sure to read them as soon as I finish with that.
-Yasic
Poor, whiny creationist Jon:
It's a time-saver. Creationists, as a rule, don't have the slightest fucking idea what they're talking about, and what's worse they make it clear they have no interest whatsoever in learning. They tend to regurgitate arguments that have already been refuted countless times, arguments that often never even made sense in the first place. So, when you start in with some bullshit argument that only an idiot would take seriously, it's natural to assume you're an idiot. This saves the time of trying to figure out why an intelligent person would make such stupid statements, by simply throwing out the "intelligent person" assumption, since it is not supported by any evidence.
Of course, there's always the alternative that you know your argument's a piece of shit, and you're just lying. This is another common creationist tactic, lying. Apparently that whole "thou shalt not bear false witness" thing isn't something your ilk think is all that important.
So, Jon, are you stupid, or are you a Liar For Jesus™? We all know you don't have any evidence on your side.
Brad Pitt has a Ben Stein number of 2.
http://oracleofbacon.org/cgi-bin/oracle/movielinks?firstname=Brad%20Pit…
You know, I've been trying to mull over rules for a classroom exercise/game to demonstrate survival of the fittest. Everyone rolls three dice ('cause I'm an old school RPG geek) for a number of attributes.(but keep track of the individual dice) So you get a 3-18 score for, say survivability, charisma, fecundity, etc. Roll against one's survival attribute to determine how long you live, charisma to find a mate, and fecundity to determine how many offspring you have. Once you've paired up the mates, you'd randomly determine which dice within each attribute were inherited from either parent or were randomly re-rolled(random mutation). With each new generation, you pass the offspring out to the students. Average fitness will improve over time as the unfit die off and the more fit have more offspring. Improvement should slow down as average scores improve after several generations. Even when scores are high, meaning that most mutations are of negative impact, they should still be slowly improving.
If the rules were well written, it should be possible to do this in one class period and illustrate how survival of the fittest allows random mutations to lead to improvements in fitness.
Hematite:
The same reference popped into my mind too, strangely enough. Something is making me want to drink TAB and play Galaga. Eek!
@#115 yasic --
I had a feeling it was a parody, what with the "logic" book ("my brain hurts") and the Actual Science in Scientology book cover. Still, the trouble with doing these things and trying to parody both sides is Poe's Law -- creationism is pretty much impossible to parody/straw-man in an obvious manner. Thus, it seems like the creationist arguments are being made in earnest, while the evolutionary arguments are being made strawmen of.
Jim A:
Sounds like fun, although it has a mild teleological flavor, a touch of the erroneous idea that natural selection has an intrinsic target. The real world isn't the WEASEL program (which was only intended to demonstrate the power of selection, after all).
@#118 Jim A. --
That is a fantastic idea. Though creationists would probably argue "but it doesn't explain how you got from a D6 to a D20" or some such nonsense....
The details -- development genetics -- were in Nature and/or Science a few years ago. Go search for them: http://www.nature.org/nature, http://www.sciencemag.org. You probably won't have access to the full papers, but just write to the authors and beg them for a pdf.
Teeth on the gill arches are normal. I think larval salamanders have them, too. Anyway, larval temnospondyls had them.
Aren't those the coronoids or the prearticulars, the bones that usually support the inner toothrows of the lower jaw? (In the osteoglossomorphs, however, the toothed basibranchial reaches all the way forward to the tip of the tongue.)
Also, the dentition pattern on that page is rather pathetic. No teeth on the pterygoids, ectopterygoids, parasphenoid, and coronoids or prearticular? Looks like a salamander.
What is this crazy talk about "two sides"? I'm not even talking about the FSM (pasta be upon Him)! Introduce a few Islamic creationists, Vedic creationists*, Raëlians... that should be fun!!!
* Hindus. Say that mankind, the Earth, and the universe are each several orders of magnitude older than what is scientifically defensible.
Chorus: We wanna see blood! We wanna see blood! We wanna see blood! We...
Gregory Kusnick, nanoAl (some reference to the infamous "Uncle Al" of the Internets?), Peter Ashby, anyone else: you did as best I suppose possible for decently concise answers about feather development. Thanks.
Now here's a good deeper challenge for anyone: Have we hashed out the origins of the first cells yet? I know about the protein-fat microspheres or etc., read about that long ago in Time-Life The Cell or etc, but haven't seen really good scoop lately.
It just so happens that I am an amateur pseudo-linguist and can tell you that proper linguists have thrown up their hands in despair over this controversy.
My personal theory is that the passage to which MoE refers is written in a relatively new sub-dialect of Moronic White Trash that is distantly related syntax-wise to Drone and has some grammatical features of Yammer. I have dubbed it Pidgin Yammer.
I must agree with raven that the comprehensibility problems of Moronic White Trash speakers can be overcome with much dedication on the part of the individual, but once speakers have adopted Pidgin Yammer, it is generally too late to enable them to be comprehensible to speakers of English ever again.
Finally, for creationists, a game in which you ARE entitled to your own facts!
Teeth on the gill arches are normal
for fish.
yes, I know that David. not everybody does, though.
Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?
Yasic; I think ideally for the argument-combat you'd use the insult swordfighting system from Monkey Island (IMO one of the funniest game sequences ever created). That would require some basic input from the players which should spice things up a bit. It would be a lot of work to build the challenge-response tables but I think it would pay off by making the game a much richer experience.
There is the small problem that the creationists wouldn't win any arguments once an evolutionist had collected all their facts, but perhaps you could balance it by giving them responses which 'win' the argument by making the evolutionist flee in despair ;)
Neil B cells are fairly easy once you have replicators. You are an autocatalytic, self repliating RNA string/collection of strings, you may even be a proto ribosome able to make proteins. BUT your bit of primal soup has lots of replicators just like you and nucleotides and phosphates are becoming scarce. It is a classic poverty of the commons scenario. So such 'eintities' are in a bind and the most successful will be those that find a way to sequester their resources. So you take a piece of primal soup in a lipid bubble and move in. Very soon free living replicators cannot exist as all the nutrients are locked up inside cells, which of course gives you predation. First on the menu are the naked replicators, those cells will gobble them up which is why we do not see them today.
Viruses don't count since they cannot replicate outside of cells.
If you mean cells like we have with a defined nucleus well there is a hypothesis that the nucleus is a symbiotic bacteria like mitochondria and chloroplasts. New Scientist had an article on it a while back, they have some possible candidates, it had something to do with a sort of bacteria that are huge in bacterial terms.
Maybe it's my age but I thought primarily of the WarGames reference as well. I also thought about this game which i played with some friends most of the weekend and is probably more wholesome than the above mentioned one.