[SPOILER] Dark Savant graduates from blatant n00b to plain n00b

[Dark Savant]

RefSteel talked about this in good detail, so I won't add much... but this line of thinking always makes me think of this article:

Related, but not directly to what you wrote:

It is true that people who take vaccines are more likely to develop autism than people who do not.

It's for the same reason that wearing helmets or seat belts typically actually make it more likely you get injured.

You can't have autism if you are dead from an easily preventable disease.

You have to be very careful not to let this effect (it doesn't have a name I am aware of, which is a shame) get you when doing formal academic research, never mind the sort of informal discussion we're doing.



I can go on forever about flaws in biological education, but this is typically covered when you study genetics in any detail.  Sometimes, you will see ratios involving thirds instead of quarters in simple Mendelian inheritance.  That happens because a quarter of your population died, and you did not notice because the deaths were before birth.

The classical example of this is yellow fur color in mice.  That would be simple Mendelian dominant, but for the fact that if the mouse is homozygous for it (two copies), the mouse never even gets born.  So if you cross two yellow mice, you get 2/3 yellow and 1/3 non-yellow; and that version of the gene does not breed true.

That's with the classical version of the gene; biologists have engineered yellow mice that aren't like that now.  Fur color in mice has been completely worked out genetically, incidentally; it's not simple but can be explained reasonably in a 25-page or so paper.

If you're wondering how the heck yellow fur color is lethal ... it actually isn't; the gene just happens to be very closely physically linked to something that is.

I'm going to go off on even more of a tangent (because this is my thread ) ... there is a reason why you don't see Asians nearly as yellow as black people are dark.  That's because that yellow pigment is potentially lethally toxic.  There's an easy treatment for it, actually: intense blue light will destroy that pigment, allowing you to survive.  And the reason that's evolutionarily stable is because that yellow pigment, in absorbing blue light (~480 nm wavelength), prevents blue light from destroying riboflavin (vitamin B2).

In other news, I did play turn 29, but haven't reported on it yet.  

[Dark Savant]

Certainly, I'd like to hear your thoughts! I've studied the subject (abortion) a couple times, but don't remember ever I've hearing that. Ultimately the pro-life / pro-choice "question", "debate", "call-it-what-you-will" falls not in the realm of science (study of the physical world, what is) but in the realm of morality (right/wrong, what ought to be). Science can supply supporting evidence to back up one or more premises of the moral arguments, but a discussion on whether abortion is right or wrong must extend beyond science. I'm happy to contribute a couple posts on the subject if you want to have that conversation. Not sure how deep you want to dive in pursuit of the thread post/view count war

In an abstract philosophical sense, you're of course right -- it's fundamentally not a question decided by science or technology.

I'm talking about the way abortion rights specifically work in the United States, though.

According to Roe v. Wade, the right only exists either to save the life of the mother, or until the fetus/baby can survive independently.  The latter is a function of technology.

And it's not as if the Supreme Court was unaware that would change with technology.  Normally in law, there are common-sense exceptions made if something is too difficult.  The Supreme Court explicitly said in Roe v. Wade that once the technology exists, it doesn't matter how difficult it is.

That means rights are inversely tied to the advance of technology, which I don't think is a good way of going about things.  In the short term, things work as most people expect -- the decision supports abortion rights.

As technology advances, that's going to change.  I've met US scientists specifically working on making such technology possible who aren't aware how much it would politically change things if their dream came true.

People mostly don't worry about it, because most don't plan long-term, as they fail to do about everything from education to retirement to protecting the environment.  Also, just because you lose a right doesn't instantly make it illegal.

It does result in some effects that are rather counter-intuitive.  For one thing, since it's increasingly evident this is dependent on computer technology, working for or supporting any bleeding-edge computer technology company erodes those rights.  And if you want to get rid of much of the US legal right to abortion, one way to do so is to fund evolution research!

... okay, time to report turn 29 and play turn 30. 

[Dark Savant]

Turn 29 - 2840 BC (Part 1)

Wandering Aengus gets a look at GermanJoey's capital.



That's an early road; I imagine he's settling that way.  I'm not getting The Wheel for probably another 20 turns. 

Also, man does that look like a lot of jungle between us.  I'm presuming it's continuous, though for all I know the Valley Full of Riverside Corn is cleverly hidden there.

Stock names for cities?  Booooring. 

Where is Elkad?  He can't be packed in too close to GermanJoey, and unless some animal kindly gives him Woodsman II, he's going to take a long time getting through these trees.

The bear near Antigonus didn't actually attack.  Antigonus can run away from the bear in the direction I want to plant a city, so he runs, of course.

No one actually showed up near my warriors.  If I did, I'd probably scuttle my distant settling plan, and plant on one of the two possible closer sites in between.  It's still a gamble even without seeing anyone near there.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 29 - 2840 BC (Part 2 - C&D)

I have graphs on Elkad now.  They took a bit longer to get than usual, because he's putting all his EP on me.

They suggest his tech on turn 24 was The Wheel.  I'm going to need to find him to make sure he isn't actually uncomfortably close -- my current schedule for getting copper connected is quite possibly too slow and I'll have to cut out Agriculture to make it in a reasonable time.

4000 soldier points appeared this turn.

Points interturn:

• Aretas - +6 points for a technology.  He's cleaning up cheap techs and not focusing on Bronze Working, unlike almost everyone else.  I really doubt this means that the mapmakers didn't give him a lot of forest.
  
• GermanJoey - +6 points for a technology, which I'd say must be Bronze Working but for the fact that there aren't enough soldier points.  It could be warriors dying, but that's two dead.  I don't see anything else that makes more sense, so okay it's Bronze Working.
  
• mackoti - +6 points for a technology.  This is most likely Fishing, as he probably has a significant amount of water in his second city and researched this quickly (6 turns).
  
• plako - +1 point for his capital growing from size 2 to size 3.
  
• Shallow Old Human Tourist - +6 points for a technology, best guess is Fishing as that was also in 6 turns.
  

Points during turn:

Commodore, Dreylin, and plako all got +1 point for planting their second cities.

This is somewhat alarming, because I'm Exp/Imp and I'm probably going to be incredibly slow to actually plant my second city by those standards.  Okay, some of that is my play for religion.

I don't imagine we have seriously different land; they might simply be choosing more compact locations for their second cities.  Some of these players aren't either Expansive or Imperialistic.

However, I don't see cause for panic.  If everyone were doing this, I'd have seen tons of players already having planted second cities.  I imagine everyone has to make a choice between proximity and quality, and quite a few people are choosing the latter.

My originally proposed empire is still scattered enough that if someone attacks me early, or it turns out my scouting is failing to catch someone just out of sight, I have very serious problems.  I probably don't want to plant a third city in the other direction if I do this -- it's going to be too awkward to defend everything.

Of course, part of succeeding in this game is taking risks and not getting called on them ...

[ipecac]

but this line of thinking always makes me think of this article:

This is a classic kneejerk reaction when distasteful conclusions are suggested: proclaim that 'correlation doesn't mean causation', 'ex post facto fallacy' and the like to avoid considering the possibility.

[ipecac]

This is an excellent example of why "anecdotal evidence" is completely worthless.  Childhood vaccinations are administered at a variety of ages, one of which tends to be around the developmental stage at which autism, if present, is likely to be noticed for the first time.  Of course there are going to be before-and-after stories!  Meanwhile, there are far (far!) more numerous before-and-after stories about [religious leader from a religion you don't believe in; pick one] blessing a sick person and the sick person getting better.  In fairness, the blessings of those religious leaders may have had a placebo effect, but you can find before-and-after stories about just about anything you want.

As I have said, the prevalence of stories suggest the plausibility; I said nothing about proof. Anecdotes are often excellent leads to follow up.

The fact is that children don't become autistic after they are born; they're born somewhere on the spectrum, and the reason we tend to notice at a particular age is that the normal childhood developments that would occur around that time are the earliest on which autism is likely to have a noticeable impact.

Somehow (or so we are to understand) environmental factors during pregnancy is associated with autism, but once after birth nothing of the sort can be proposed to similarly adversely affect the child.

The point being:  There is not one thing.  There is no one cause.  Fortunately, we do know some things that are not causes: Letting a child watch too much television doesn't cause autism.  Giving a child the wrong baby formula to drink doesn't cause autism.  Exposing a child to people with head colds doesn't cause autism.  Getting vaccinated doesn't cause autism.  Nothing that happens after the baby is born causes autism.

Again, these are findings across the general population. You're not actually contradicting what I've said in the earlier post.

But it's still more complicated than that, and the additional complications still make it even more obvious that the vaccine myth is bunk: It isn't possible for something to "cause autism," because autism isn't one thing. It's an arbitrary label we assign to a set of developmental variations ("the autism spectrum") along which basically everybody varies to one extent, and in one way, or another.

People, including yourself, will still talk about 'causes of autism' because that's how we use language.

[ipecac]

It does result in some effects that are rather counter-intuitive.  For one thing, since it's increasingly evident this is dependent on computer technology, working for or supporting any bleeding-edge computer technology company erodes those rights. 

For one, this conflates all sort of technology together. It's difficult to see how, for example, the latest in Alexa voice recognition contributes to developments in artificial womb or incubator technologies.

[scooter]

but this line of thinking always makes me think of this article:

This is a classic kneejerk reaction when distasteful conclusions are suggested: proclaim that 'correlation doesn't mean causation', 'ex post facto fallacy' and the like to avoid considering the possibility.

You're assuming that just because people think your idea is ridiculous due to evidence means they haven't considered it seriously.

[ipecac]

You're assuming that just because people think your idea is ridiculous due to evidence means they haven't considered it seriously.

What evidence? There hasn't been any evidence here refuting my point.

What I have seen in the discussion in this threat is the assumption that seriously considering the controversial claim implies ignorance, the post hoc fallacy, or the attitude of "Science has been wrong about many things, therefore it is plausible that science is wrong about this thing I want it to be wrong about in spite of literally all the evidence being against me."

[ipecac]

And it's not as if the Supreme Court was unaware that would change with technology.  Normally in law, there are common-sense exceptions made if something is too difficult.  The Supreme Court explicitly said in Roe v. Wade that once the technology exists, it doesn't matter how difficult it is.

We can expect that when the advances in incubation technology are made, someone will file a lawsuit over 'it's not right to invade my body to extract and place my fetus in an incubator', and there'll be a new ruling.