Rock Paper Scissors SPOCK Lizard

Sorry Sheldon, but it should be 

Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard,

NOT 

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock.

Here is Sheldon Cooper explaining the game:

In the original Rochambeau we have the simple rules:

Rock crushes Scissors
Scissors cut Paper
Paper covers Rock

Which we can represent as:

Rock < Paper < Scissors < Rock

where greater-than "<" represents the win/lose relationship

loser < winner

and Rock is repeated to complete the circular relationship. 

If we call this game "Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard" then we can write the rules like this:

Rock < Paper < Scissors < Spock < Lizard < Rock < Paper

now with Rock and Paper repeated (or just understand that it "wraps around"), and the additional rule that any sequence of three (with wrapping) is also a rule.

Rock Paper Scissors
Paper Scissors Spock
Scissors Spock Lizard
Spock Lizard Rock
Lizard Rock Paper

And now the rules are the same as the name of the game.

Image source: Hollywood Nuts!

Ken Ham on the age of the Earth

In my last post, An Evening with Ken Ham, I stated:

[Ham] would never address a real scientific question. Ham's approach to science is is entirely superficial, and his interest in science ends the moment he finds a trivial sound-bite that he can use in his sermons.

I thought I might follow up on that with my favorite quote from the evening; a self-contradictory statement which is wrong on two levels. This was a shorter version of this quote I am using here, taken from the Ham-Nye debate of February 4, 2014 [my emphasis added]:

Image source: Patheos.com

Ham: Now, a lot of people say, by the way, the Earth's age is 4.5 billion years old. And we have radioactive decay dating methods that bound that. We certainly observe radioactive decay, whether it's rubidium –strontium, uranium – lead, or potassium-argon, but when you are talking about the past, you have a problem. Let me give you an example. In Australia there were engineers that were trying to search out about a coal mine, so they drilled down and they found a basalt layer, or lava flow that had woody material in it, branches and twigs and so on, and when Dr. Andrew Snelling, our PhD geologist sent that to a lab in Massachusetts in 1994, they used the potassium-argon dating method and dated it at 45 million years old. Well, we also sent the wood to the radiocarbon section of the same lab, and they dated it at 45,000 years old. 45,000 year old wood in 45 million year old rock. The point is, there is a problem [1].

Yes there is a problem - Ham just said the Earth is at least 45,000 years old. If he really believes the Earth is just 6000 years old he should reject this estimate too. Is the dating right, or is it wrong? MAKE UP YOUR MIND PLEASE!

I could be more generous; perhaps he meant there is a problem between 45,000 years and 45,000,000 years. Here too the problem is self-evident. In fact it is such a boner that I didn't catch the 6000 years bug at first. Here it is again:

... we also sent the wood to the radiocarbon section of the same lab, and they dated it at 45,000 years old ...

If you know anything about radiocarbon dating, then you know it is limited to organic materials no more than about 50,000 years old (~75k years with more recent refinements). Anything older than that and too much of the carbon-14 will have decayed to determine anything more than "older than ~50,000 years". Snelling used a technique that cannot give a correct answer in this instance. There is also the matter of contamination from more recent carbon sources, and if the sample was actually petrified wood in the first place. There was never a peer reviewed publication of Snelling's analysis, never any independent verification of the results, and good reason to suspect the sample was not what Snelling claims it to be. This result has never been replicated by anyone else. Ever. 

Ken Ham really doesn't care if anything he says is correct, he only cares that if the lie sounds good enough to fool people who don't know any better. 

Image source: Hyperphysics

Reference:

[1] Browning, B. (2014, February 10). Transcript of Ken Ham vs Bill Nye Debate. Retrieved November 19, 2015, from http://www.youngearth.org/index.php/archives/rmcf-articles/item/21-transcript-of-ken-ham-vs-bill-nye-debate

An Evening With Ken Ham

I went to see Ken Ham, co-founder of of Answers in Genesis ministries, speak at a local church last night. I had a couple of questions prepared in case there was a Q&A session where I might get a chance to speak:

1) Mr. Ham: You blame atheists as the primary opposition to your views, but atheist are a minority in the US. Isn't it true that the majority of Christians are able to reconcile the beliefs with knowledge of science, and so they are your real opposition?

2) Most or all of Creation Science is contradicted by the Laws of physics. Would not the Answers in Genesis efforts be better spent in pursuit of basic physics research to discover the fundamental flaws?

There was no Q&A, but Ham made his beliefs evident during the talk:

1) Reasonable Christians are the problem. By admitting that Genesis isn't literally true, reasonable people are allowing all manor of awful things in the name of evolution. Reasonable people are wrong, and he doesn't give a damn what they think.

2) He would never address a real scientific question. Ham's approach to science is is entirely superficial, and his interest in science ends the moment he finds a trivial sound-bite that he can use in his sermons.

And Ken Ham gives a good sermon, I'll give him that. At times he would blaze through topics, speaking very rapidly and clearly. He is a master speaker, and I'm certain he can do a fearsome Gish gallop, dishing out falsehood faster than another can hope to correct him. Unsurprisingly, some of his talk was a sales pitch for the Creation Museum, the coming Ark Park, and his trunk load of Answers in Genesis propaganda, available to you now for this special low price ...

Despite his skill, Ham never learns. The obvious errors from the Ham/Nye debate were repeated again last night. In fact, Ham pretty much hit every point that make atheists despise religion, from scientific to cultural to political. His opening sentence was to point out that religion is losing two-thirds of the coming generation, and I think atheists should thank him for that.

As I snapped the photo above, just prior to the presentation, I got the feeling Ham was picking me out of the crowd as a potential troublemaker. That was never my intent, and I'm not sure I would have left the room undisturbed if I had. I sat through the ~90 minute presentation quietly taking notes, waiting for the opportunity that never came, and left quietly when it was over.

On my way out there was all manner of of Answers in Genesis tracts for sale. I almost bought a couple of $2 booklets, and now I wish I had just to have a souvenir of the evening. It would had easy for me to grab some booklets and wander out through the crowd without paying - Yet somehow - despite my lack of a fundamental understanding of the Bible of the chapters of Genesis - I still think that stealing is wrong. Go figure. 

Testing Mathjax

`E = M*C^2`
sum_(i=1)^n i^3=((n(n+1))/2)^2
`sum_(i=1)^n i^3=((n(n+1))/2)^2`

Nifty!

Find out more about it here: http://asciimath.org/#gettingStarted

Who needs books when we already have a dictionary?

In a recent online discussion, which began with a post about Darwin Day, and soon turned into an argument about evolution, one opponent wrote the following:

"The theory of evolution, if it were removed from the consideration of science wholly, would not register a blip if it weren't for its role as a guiding materialist philosophy for atheists and agnostics in academia."

He wrote rather more, but this was the bit I thought worthy of response. Which I did...

By this line of reasoning, because we understand electricity and magnetism then we have no need of Maxwell's Equations showing us that electricity and magnetism are same thing. We could easily do away with a lot of that complicated stuff in physics textbooks, because there is no need for it. By this line of reasoning, because we have dictionaries to tell us the meaning of words, then we may as well discard all of our books, because the ordering of those words can't tell us anything we don't already know. Stupid books! [/sarc]
Evolution is a theory that ties together everything we know from biological and medical science. Like the electromagnetic force describes what we once thought of as different forces, evolution explains why we see so much similarity among life, and guides our studies of of how life works. In the same way that books are more than just collections of random words, evolution is a meaningful collection of knowledge and the connections within it. Nothing in biology, or in medicine, make sense except in light of evolution.
As for the bit about guiding philosophy, Methodological Naturalism is not atheism. 

There were no further replies on the thread, so the person I was responding to either never saw it, or was so awed by my witty reply that they gave up in despair. I'm gonna go with the latter, and make a blog post out of it.


Here is a link to the original discussion on G+. Not that anyone needs to see it, this is for my own future reference.

Discussing Firearms Insurance

There has been considerable commentary on G+ to my post The Case for Firearms Insurance, and it has been almost entirely constructive discussion. I was surprised the conversation has not been a lot more rancorous, because this topic seems primed to bring out the worst in the internet. Not everyone agreed with me, but nearly all everyone gave it serious consideration. This post is a collection of link to various discussions:

Dave Hill posted his thoughts on his blog, and there are a number of comments.

I found this article on Justin Tapp's stream: Is Gun Liability Insurance the Next Big Thing? which is news of similar legislation actually having been introduced in Illinois. There are two discussions ongoing:
my G+ stream and in the Respectful Politics community.

Finally, more discussion in the Respectful Politics Community.

I have some additional comments, which will hopefully be appearing as new posts soon.

Oh, and one more thing, I wrote my Senator.

A Word about "One Good Person with a Gun"

Following on my Firearms Insurance post from yesterday, I'd like to address a common argument in discussions about gun control: The hypothesis that "One Good Person" is all that is need to put an end to murders and crime, and therefore more people should carry guns, not fewer.

The argument goes, that one good person armed with a gun could put a stop to tragic mass shootings when they start, greatly reducing the harm done. The problem I have with this that it’s practically mathematically impossible. Without getting directly into the numbers, here is why I think this:

1) One is not enough: If the "One Person" knew in advance where the massacre would be, it would work. In practice we would need thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of armed individual carrying firearms on a regular basis. A significant portion of the population would have to be armed at all times in order that one of them might happen to be in the right place, at the right time, often enough, and soon enough, to make a difference.

2) "Good" is not enough: The "Good" person refers to intent, but they also must be very good at handling a firearm. And more than good, they must be nearly perfect. Accidents occur even to trained professional police officers, and the "Good Person" would need to be at least this good, if not considerably better.  Consider that thousands of people carrying firearms in public also means thousands of opportunities for accidents to happen. This risk will occur every day, not just on the day that some misguided soul decides to Go Postal take out their anger on innocents. Even a tiny risk of accident, multiplied by thousands and thousands of opportunities, will soon lead to more accidental shootings than the good people could ever prevent. **

** Add to this even a few gun owners that might want to "play Cowboy", and the harm could be far worse.

Put 1) and 2) together and it is pretty easy to see that the "One Good Person" hypothesis just doesn't work. It's a myth. The intention is fine, but the cure is worse than the disease. I could have looked up some statistics and put numbers on this, but then someone would just argue with my numbers. That is also my point - don't believe me - try it yourself: Find a source for firearms crime and injury statistics and put it to the test. I invite anyone to look up their own numbers and work this out for themselves. The math involved is fairly simple, but I can be available to help should that be needed.