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TOF once wrote an article entitled "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown and Down 'n Dirty Mud-Wrassle" which described the century-l...
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Hello family, friends and fans of Michael F. Flynn. It is with sorrow and regret that I inform you that my father passed away yesterday,... -
1. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown 2. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: Down for the Count 3. The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown: The Great Gali...
The humour/disconnect happens in panel 6...
ReplyDeleteThere are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
Especially if your philosophy limits itself to one subset of belief.
Not just a subset, but they want that subset pre-digested for 'em, and they start out ignoring the data that they don't want to deal with because it's not phrased in a way they want.
Delete"If you do X, bad stuff happens."
You know what they call scientists who go "I want to study this thing, but I'm going to ignore all warnings from the guys who know the most about it unless they can phrase it in a way that I accept"?
Dead.
The same people have been reading and writing both since the pulp era.
ReplyDeleteHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
ReplyDeleteAlso available as audio
Because space ghost, Mrs fantastic and wonder woman's jet are science ;-)
ReplyDeleteBecause space ghost, Mrs fantastic and wonder woman's jet are science ;-)
ReplyDeleteBecause it's sooooo much harder to imagine an aspect of reality that doesn't neatly fit into currently understood science, such as involvement from beings or forces not inside of that this reality, vs imagining an aspect of science we don't currently understand.
ReplyDeleteThese are the same guys that complain when the aliens don't fit whatever their current theory about how aliens are "supposed" to be, aren't they? Mundane scifi?
I like when they balk at, e.g., vaguely humanoid aliens, but not at stuff like six-sexed species. "Quadruped that stands up to use tools" makes perfect sense anywhere; six sexes means it's three times as hard to pass on your genes, right out of the gate. (There's a reason the "replacement" fertility-rate for humans is 2.1 children surviving per woman—we have two sexes. The replacement for a six-sexed species would presumably be 6.3, meaning that just breaking even as a population is three times as hard right out of the gate.)
DeleteGnats and camels, basically.
Heh. Reminds me of the Ethics of Elfland.
ReplyDeleteI am reminded of certain Catholics attacking Fantasy because Ted Chiang was vicious in the stories The Tower of Babel and Hell is the Absence of God ...
ReplyDelete