What grinds my gears

Oftentimes the human mind works in rather curious ways. For example, let's assume this hypothetical situation: A new flu pandemic has appeared that's especially nasty. About 1% of all people who contract it will die. (This is not unrealistic because such flu pandemics have happened, at even higher mortality rates.) You are pretty much guaranteed to get the flu unless you live a really isolated life. A vaccine is developed that prevents contracting the flu completely. Later it's discovered that approximately 0.1% of people get a serious chronic disease from the vaccine. What happens in this situation? A significant amount of people will refuse to take the vaccine, instead opting for the 1% probability of dying. It doesn't matter how much you explain the probabilities to them, they won't budge. But why? The highly contradictory reaction that many people have to this becomes even clearer if we assume two alternative hypothetical situations: Instead of the va...

I like Stephen King's novels like anybody else. He really is a master at writing in a really interesting and engaging manner. However, there's one aspect of many of his books that I don't like that much. Please don't misunderstand. I don't have any problem in supernatural elements being used in fiction, as long as it's interesting and support the fictitious reality of the story. In fact, quite many of King's books containing supernatural elements are just fine, when it's precisely the supernatural element that's the very core of the story. (Classic examples of this include Christine , Firestarter and Pet Sematary .) However, in quite many other of his books the supernatural elements seem completely out of place, and artificially tacked on. They feel like not belonging to the otherwise interesting story, and they actually detract from it. King is a master of writing suspense. Many of his novels start in a very suspenseful and mysterious manner,...

The world is full of people who believe in all kinds of irrational supernatural ideas, such as the paranormal, the "spiritual world", the supernatural powers of the human mind (that only wait for them to be unleashed via proper training), and so on. Well, people are (and of course should be) free to believe whatever they want. The problem is, lots of other people are cashing in on this psychological phenomenon. In the same way as many people believe in such things, there are others who are willing to sell them such beliefs for money. Just here in Finland, which should otherwise consist of relatively highly-educated civilized people, there exist several organizations that sell books and other material, and offer "training courses" related to the supernatural, the paranormal, and all kinds of such nonsense. And they are not doing it for free either. The thing is, these organizations and people are using their websites to advertise their material, and these adver...

Apparently there are people who really, honestly think that the Earth is a flat disc, and that all we know about astronomy is just a bunch of lies (perpetuated by a gigantic, world-wide conspiracy.) And I don't mean just a few lunatics rambling in their basements, but a relatively substantial amount of people who take it seriously and actually try to rationalize it. They have websites, forums, books and "documentary" films on the subject. The funny thing about it is that when you read their web pages and online forums, and watch their videos, it's really, really hard to tell if they are being serious or if it's just a parody. ( Poe's law is in full effect here.) However, apparently at least some of those people are really being serious about it. What's even funnier is seeing how they have to struggle to argue their position. As more and more undeniable evidence has come forth during history, they have to keep changing their arguments. In the distan...

In my previous post I talked a bit about the high standards of evidence that skeptics demand before believing in something. A bit more on that subject: As I said in the previous post, evidence is valid only if it passes the rigorous test of science and peer reviewing. However, there's still another aspect of this that also has to be considered: Just because the evidence has been verified as valid, that still doesn't actually tell us what it's evidence of. We should always be cautious to avoid jumping to conclusions even if evidence turns out to be completely valid. The next big question should be: "What exactly is this evidence of? What's actually the cause behind it?" Let's take an example: There's undeniable, verifiable and repeatable evidence that stars in galaxies rotate at orbital velocities that do not match the apparent mass of those galaxies. Normally the orbital velocity of a star should diminish the farther away it's from the center o...

There's a really widespread misconception, both in real life and in fiction, that skepticism means "the conviction that everything must have a natural explanation." The common picture of a skeptic is a stubborn old fart who denies anything seemingly supernatural out of principle, and refuses to even consider any possibilities. No, that's not what skepticism means. One narrow definition of the term in colloquial language might have that meaning, but that's not what it means in terms of the philosophy of science. What skepticism means is "not accepting extraordinary claims at face value without valid evidence" . Personally I would also add to that "and passing the rigorous test of science" . Skepticism is not about denying some explanations on principle while accepting others just because they are more "sciency" and "natural." Skepticism does not, in fact, have any preconceptions on what the true explanation for somethin...

While not the first zombie movies ever made, the original "zombie trilogy" by George A. Romero is by far the most influential set of movies of the genre in all of movie history. They popularized zombie movies, and they set all the major "rules" of zombies. And on top of that, they are really good movies. Perhaps the best characteristic of these movies is the extreme realism they depict. Of course I'm not talking about the very existence itself of zombies in the movies' universe, but everything else. The only "supernatural" thing depicted in the movies is that the bodies of dead people, for an unknown reason, get reanimated. The bodies are still dead, they just move and have some minimal brain functions. Everything else follows very physically plausible laws, such as: The bodies decompose over time due to natural processes, because there's little to no immune system fighting the micro-organisms that consume dead meat. This can be clearly se...

This isn't something that grinds my gears, but hey, it's a blog... Major spoilers ahead, so if you haven't seen the movie and want to see it, don't read this. Just saw the movie The Cabin in the Woods , and immediately after, I thought to myself: "This would have actually been a lot better if they had removed all the scenes of the control room up to the point when the stonehead discovers the camera hidden in the lamp. After that it could have been almost exactly as it was (perhaps with a few added control room scenes.) It would have been a great twist that so far the movie seems like a regular horror/slasher, which suddenly turns into something else entirely, that there's more going on than first met the eye." That would indeed have been a great twist... but then I thought: Maybe it would have actually been too cliché of a twist? I mean, it would have been a subversion of the "traditional" horror/slasher, but in the end, perhaps it would...

Vegetarianism/veganism ranges quite a lot between people. The mildest vegetarians simply don't eat meat if there's a vegetarian choice, but don't worry too much if they have to eat a bit of meat because there's nothing else. They might also have no problems in eg. eating fish. They usually don't have any problems in eating animal products that aren't meat (such as milk products and eggs.) Vegans, unlike vegetarians, do not eat any animal products (not even milk products.) The most open-minded vegans, however, do likewise not worry too much if there's a situation where there's no choice than to eat some animal products (or even outright meat.) They do not adhere to veganism religiously, they simply follow it given the choice, but do not stress too much about it otherwise. The type of vegan that really amazes me, though, is the obsessive vegan. Not only do they avoid all kinds of animal products religiously, they are in fact pathologically obsessive a...

Almost 100% of fiction out there dealing with space travel ("almost" because there are a few exceptions, mostly some sci-fi novels where the author knows better) with respect to the "magical" limit of the speed of light. Basically, most sci-fi authors only know the "headline" version of the theory of relativity. Namely: You can't travel faster than the speed of light (in vacuum), period. (Not by any conventional means, at least.) Thus to get past this annoying limit, they invent all kinds of fictitious modes of travel, such as "hyperspace" and "warp speed" and whatnot. They seem to think that, for example, if you wanted to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri, it would take you at least 4.3 years to get there (using conventional means of travel), no matter what. It's (according to their limited understanding) physically impossible to get there faster. Likewise if you wanted to travel to the Andromeda galaxy, it would take at ...

The basic tenet of feminism is equality. Everybody should be treated equally completely regardless of their gender, have the same rights and duties, the same opportunities, and be respected in the same way as anybody else, completely disregarding such an inconsequential thing as gender (when talking about things where gender should in no way be an issue.) While there's still a lot of sexism and inequality in this respect, even in the civilized world, the feminist movement has in some ways succeeded in actually doing the opposite of this basic tenet: People are actually afraid to treat women in the same way as men for example in contexts like how they are depicted in fiction and art. If female characters in fiction do not get special treatment and are depicted in such a way that their gender is a complete non-issue, the author can actually be accused of sexism! This is the complete opposite of what equality should be! As an example, consider the following Magic: The Gathering ...

Although I'm not an American, I find the political situation of the Unites States quite interesting. In a morbid way. Not because of presidential elections or anything like that, but on a larger scale. The political landscape in the United States has changed radically during the past 10 years or so, specifically in relation to religion. You see, 20-30 years ago it would have been a political suicide for a politician to refer to his or her own religion in the United States. Making a reference to being, for example, a pentecostal or a baptist would have driven away all the voters of other denominations. (" Oh, he's a catholic. I'm certainly not voting for him! They are the church of Satan! " " Oh, she's a baptist. They are nutjobs! Vade retro! ") This has turned completely on its head: Nowadays it would be a political suicide to not make references to the (Christian) religion and to not profess one's religion. What was more or less a practic...

For years failblog.org was basically one of the best online blogs in existence. Its major shtick was to publish (at least daily, often even several times a day) images and videos, sometimes other forms of media, of people or things failing in some manner (usually hurting themselves in the process, although that was certainly not the only type of failures), such as for example skateboarders failing a jump and faceplanting, boats getting destroyed by a crane accidentally failing and dropping it, and so on and so forth. (The blog has a strict policy that they will only publish fails that remain at some level of good taste. No people getting killed or seriously injured for life, for example, and no gore. Emphasis on humor, not on morbid curiosity.) It remained like that for a rather long time, and I was a very avid follower. Then at some point it started to change. While failblog has always published other kinds of things (mostly related to internet memes) from time to time, it was qui...

This is a really short one, but... At least 80% of wrestling videos found on YouTube have a completely abysmal image quality. They are really low-resolution and compressed beyond belief. Many of them are so compressed that it's almost impossible to discern what's going on, and even the good ones have really visible compression artifacts. I would understand that if that was the norm with all YouTube videos, but no. The vast majority of anything else you find there is just ok. Except wrestling videos. What gives?

There exists a rather curious type of person. This is typically a young adult, or at most middle-aged, and they might in fact be computer adepts, if not even outright computer nerds, who like technology, innovation and progress... yet they still somehow manage to act like an old fart who detests everything that's new and trendy, who's constantly saying "bah, these kids today and their shiny gadgets... back in my day..." (They don't literally say that, but they act like it.) It seems that these people detest and denigrate anything that's new, flashy and popular, for the sole reason that it's popular. Especially if it's new technology. Out of principle, not because of any actual rationale. If it's trendy and hip, it must suck. There are people who still detest and denigrate, for example, the iPhone. Not for any rational reason, but just because it's popular. They also usually denigrate even the idea of something like browsing the web using a...