Seeking Truth and Fighting Deception

I'm going to wax briefly philosophical and religious here, because we're having a discussion about truth, and how we can recognize it. Specifically, I'm going to make a case about spiritual truth vs. scientific truth, and spiritual means of discovering truth vs. scientific means. For anyone wondering, I am a scientist with a degree in Neuroscience and significant education in biology. I am also an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons). So, my opinions tend to lie at the intersection of spirituality and scientific exploration. Without further ado:

I recently saw this news report, in which computer software is capable of realistically replacing images of one speaker with another:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/experts-warn-of-digitally-altered-video-becoming-weaponized/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=49098070

I felt like I could tell that Tarkin (from Rogue One) was clearly computer graphics,

but I have a harder time recognizing these images as fakes.


Because our senses can be so easily fooled, truth is going to need to be actively mined by everyone.It's getting to the point where you can't just have an opinion that sounds nice, or feel comfortable. We're going to need to be proactive, assuming that our opinions are being manipulated, because people are using the best of technology and psychology to control what we agree with and fight against.

I'm not some doomsday-preaching, nihilist weirdo. I'm advocating for less gut reactions, less defensiveness of the thoughts that SEEM to come to us naturally, and more actively constructing what we believe and support. We need to SEEK truth, rather than comfortably sitting on what feels true. Feelings can help guide us, but feelings alone cannot be the basis of our conclusions. We need to accept that some things we hold to be true are actually false, and have been planted in our minds by manipulative, ill-willed forces. We must accept that we don't see the whole truth, and that our small piece of the pie will not feel comfortably complete, but it is better to hold onto that than to hold wild falsehoods that feel comfortable.

For those who feel that I am, as a religious individual, advocating "not seeking the Spirit," you are wrong. The "Spirit of Truth" known as the "Holy Ghost" does not teach us the truth of all things - this seems backwards, given the scripture that, out of context, plainly says "And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." But the "all things" referred to are all things relating to God and spirituality. It is not all things scientific or all things political, or all things related to breakfast cereals. It's almost demeaning to God to believe that he has some sort of obligation to tell you what you should eat in the morning, unless there's some grander significance to that choice. The same is true with many issues where we ourselves are responsible for understanding and deciding, and where the divinely appointed purpose is for us to take responsibility for the outcomes of our own personal decisions.

In a similar vein, scientific truth, political truth, economic truth, spiritual truth, and so forth, do not overlap entirely with regard to how they are gained and how they are applied. Truth, overall, may be one whole, but that's not how we have access to it.

Some might argue the spiritual point that "all things are first spiritual, then physical" or that "the temporal is spiritual," and while that may be true, it doesn't apply so directly in this case. When you come to a math problem, you can't ask the Spirit to solve it for you, you must do the math yourself. To have God solve a math problem for you (or other complicated problems that require expertise and effort) is utterly lazy, sign-seeking, entitled miracle-demanding-when-work-is-enough, and frankly evil; the days are coming where that spiritually entitled attitude is going to be the downfall of many otherwise good people. We must put in the effort to find answers, not sit around hoping that the feelings we have come from God, as opposed to the many, many sources that would imitate truth, when in fact they have their own, powerful, potentially evil (or at the very least selfish and manipulative) agendas.

It is more important than ever to have a correct view of our spirituality, as well as how we know non-spiritual vs. spiritual truths, so "that we henceforth be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and their cunning and craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive."

Embracing the Power of Our Medium: The Science of Video Game Psychology

With recent debates where politicians try to attack something other than gun laws, a lot of people have found themselves defending video games. Articles do everything from casually state, “video games don’t cause violence” to mock outright those who still hold the idiotic, backwards belief that video games affect people. I don't believe that the solution to our gun problem lies in video games, mind you, but truth is truth.

The mantra that "science proves that video games don't affect people" is not only false, I find it somewhat offensive. One reason I love video games (and other entertainment) IS THAT they are so powerful.

I'm here to just vomit science all over my own spaces, so I don’t have to do it on anybody else’s. Science supports the idea that video games change people. Video games are internalized. Violent video games, especially those where you play anti-heroes, cause people to internalize aggression, including misogynistic beliefs.

Before I start, let me clarify up front that I’m cherry-picking to make a point, which is a relevant thing to be doing. There are articles about the relationship between drug use and video games, about the health-related implementation of video games, about video game preferences changing with age, and, yes, even about how video games don’t increase violent behavior. However, cherry-picking is NOT hard in this case, and the sample I’m providing IS representative of the overall conclusion that science has come to at this point. You will find one article that fails to prove a connection for every dozen or more that do prove a connection, and the majority of articles that suggest no connection are opinion articles that do not provide any data of their own. A not-insignificant proportion of them demonstrate that autistic children are not at particular risk.

An entirely separate field of study is how young people and gamers are primed to be defensive about video games, and have difficulty assimilating new evidence FOR the effects of violent video games. I’ll not be including those articles here. To my gamer friends: embrace the true power of your medium.

A non-exhaustive list of supporting primary scientific articles and their conclusions (from the NCBI):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4151190/
“In sum, the current research supports the perspective that MRRG gameplay can have consequences for deviant behavior broadly defined by affecting the personality, attitudes, and values of the player.”
(MRRG stands for “mature-rated, risk-glorifying”)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4830454/
“Our results supported the prediction that playing violent-sexist video games increases masculine beliefs, which occurred for male (but not female) participants who were highly identified with the game character. Masculine beliefs, in turn, negatively predicted empathic feelings for female violence victims.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5332106/
“These results provided only inconsistent support for the disengagement hypothesis, suggesting that participants found it difficult to separate a neutral face from a crowd of emotional faces.”
(Yes, this one’s weak, but it’s positive, not negative.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4229070/
“These findings suggest that both playing violent video games online and offline compared to playing neutral video games increases aggression.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5346125/
“...for children playing approximately 8 h or more per week, frequent competitive gaming may be a risk factor for decreasing prosocial behavior”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4227415/
“Our findings indicate that there is an association between daily exposure to violent video games and number of depressive symptoms among preadolescent youth.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140725/
“Physicians and parents should appreciate that T-rated video games may be a source of exposure to violence and some unexpected content for children and adolescents, and that the majority of T-rated video games provide incentives to the players to commit simulated acts of violence.”
(This one doesn’t make a judgment call about the violence or its effects, it merely dispassionately pointed out that, while some people don’t expect serious violence in T-rated games, it is there. So, perhaps a bit of a tangent, but still related.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5374198/
“Controlling for gender and socioeconomic level, results showed that video game exposure and religiosity were both related to sexism.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29093050
“The vast majority of laboratory-based experimental studies have revealed that violent media exposure causes increased aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiologic arousal, hostile appraisals, aggressive behavior, and desensitization to violenceand decreases prosocial behavior (eg, helping others) and empathy.”
(This is a review, not primary literature, but it’s a scientific review, not a popular media article. For those unaware of what this means, this is of a peer-reviewed quality, and capable of being quoted in primary literature. Basically, when enough primary research has been done, people evaluate the research overall and write scientific evaluations called reviews.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28221065
“Consistent with the literature that we reviewed, we found that violent video game exposure was associated with: an increased composite aggression score; increased aggressive behavior; increased aggressive cognitions; increased aggressive affect, increased desensitization, and decreased empathy; and increased physiological arousal. The size of the effects was similar to that in prior meta-analyses, suggesting a stable result. “
(This is the official APA taskforce in 2017, which is a huge deal. They don’t make statements like this lightly.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26880037
“Social dominance orientation and hostile sexism predicted higher levels of both sexual harassment and general harassment in online games. Game involvement and hours of weekly gameplay were additional predictors of general harassment.”
(This is referring to online harassment by males within the games that they’re playing.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26855192
“The FC patterns revealed a decrease in connectivity within 6 brain networks during the violence-related compared to the non-violence-related condition: three sensory-motor networks, the reward network, the default mode network (DMN), and the right-lateralized frontoparietal network. Playing violent racing games may change functional brain connectivity, in particular and even after controlling for event frequency, in the reward network and the DMN.”
(FC stands for functional connectivity.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26652675
“This suggests that individuals who play many hours of action VGs may be more capable of lethal self-harm if they experience suicide ideation, although this association does not exist for individuals who play other categories of VGs.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26587734
“The results of the present study imply that how a violent video game is played through different interfaces can magnify the intensity of postgame aggressive thoughts on top of already increased aggression due to trait-level hostility.”
(This one is really interesting, and demonstrates all sorts of interesting things. Two examples: People who play lots of video games are more readily able to identify with video game characters of new games, thus increasing enjoyment of new games. Also, input methods for video games (such as controllers) alter the intensity of postgame outcomes.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26386004
“Despite a variety of methodological weaknesses in his meta-analysis, Ferguson (2015, this issue) presents evidence to support the positive association between violent media consumption and a number of poor developmental outcomes.”
(This one is merely a commentary, but a commentary by a group of scientific experts toward scientists, not a popular media article toward potential customers. It is significant because it is one of many scientific responses to an article where one scientist (Ferguson) did a meta-analysis that was intended to demonstrate that there was only weak correlation between violence in games and poor developmental outcomes. Turns out that he done messed up.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26299393
“Violent video game players recognized fearful faces both more accurately and quickly and disgusted faces less accurately than non-gamers.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26181802
“Findings suggest that gameplaying with a sexualized woman may increase adolescents' acceptance of rape myths and tolerance for sexual harassment.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26121373
“Reward structures selectively affected in-game aggression, whereas narrative context selectively affected postgame aggression. Players who enacted in-game violence through a heroic character exhibited less postgame aggression than players who enacted comparable levels of in-game violence through an antiheroic character.”
(To put this plainly, if you’re playing a badass, you are more likely to have postgame aggression.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25803312
“Results indicate that taking what participants perceive to be the more moral mind-set in the video game predicts more antisocial behavior on the first task, but more pro-social behavior on the next task.”
(This one is complicated, but definitely demonstrates that video games affect us afterward.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25681166
“We found support for the hypothesized cultivation model, indicating a relationship between video game consumption and RMA via interpersonal aggression and hostile sexism”
(RMA stands for “rape myth acceptance”)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25455576
“It was concluded that exposure to violent video games increases the relative risk of desensitization to violence, which in turn may increase aggression and decrease prosocial behavior.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25043905
“Consistent with priming theory, results showed that both male and female participants who played a violent game as a male avatar behaved more aggressively afterwards than those who played as female avatar. The priming effects of the male avatar were somewhat stronger for male participants...”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24464267
“Consistent with the predictions of social-cognitive, observational learning theory, this study supports the hypothesis that carrying weapons to school is associated with violent game play.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24458215
“Whereas violent video games increase aggression and aggression-related variables and decrease prosocial outcomes, prosocial video games have the opposite effects. These effects were reliable across experimental, correlational, and longitudinal studies, indicating that video game exposure causally affects social outcomes and that there are both short- and long-term effects.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24085715
“In fact, a correlational study revealed that violent video game exposure was positively related to ethnocentrism. This relation remained significant when controlling for trait aggression. Providing causal evidence, an experimental study showed that playing a violent video game increased aggressive behavior, and that this effect was more pronounced when the target was an outgroup rather than an ingroup member.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24335350
“ Prosocial-media use was positively associated with helping. This effect was mediated by empathy and was similar across cultures. ....  Path analyses showed significant longitudinal effects of prosocial- and violent-video-game use on prosocial behavior through empathy. Latent-growth-curve modeling for the 2-year period revealed that change in video-game use significantly affected change in helping, and that this relationship was mediated by change in empathy.”
(This one is a little backwards, cause it’s pointing out that playing positive games increases positive behavior. Because video games ARE AWESOME!!)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23951954
“Taken together, it appears that being helpful while playing video games leads to the perception of being more human, whereas being harmful while playing video games leads players to perceive themselves negatively.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23745616
This one rambles about its conclusion a bit. Basically, when you believe that your character is a hero (Superman or a generic “warm and empathic” character) fighting for good, you are more likely to follow gaming with prosocial behavior. Believing that you’re a bad guy (Joker or his generic bad counterpart) resulted in participants judging others as more hostile. They close, ”This is in line with previous findings that empathy may not be positive per se. In fact, it may backfire depending on the interaction of game characters and the empathy players feel for them.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23650097
“Thus, violent video games that are framed in an explicitly prosocial context may evoke more prosocial sentiments and thereby mitigate some of the short-term effects on aggression observed in previous research. … aggressive behavior was not completely eliminated by the inclusion of a prosocial context for the violence.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253205
“Exposure to violent online games was associated with being a perpetrator as well as a perpetrator-and-victim of cyberbullying.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23097053
“As expected, violent video game players had lower cardiac coherence levels and higher aggression levels than did nonviolent game players. Cardiac coherence, in turn, was negatively related to aggression.”
(Cardiac coherence is the synchronization of breathing with heart rate.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22766175
“Results showed that exposure to GTA predicted higher levels of moral disengagement. Recency of exposure had a primary impact on the considered mechanisms of moral disengagement.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22550147
“By employing a Solomon Four-Group experimental research design, this exploratory study found that a video game depicting sexual objectification of women and violence against women resulted in statistically significant increased rape myths acceptance (rape-supportive attitudes) for male study participants but not for female participants.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22549724
“Prosocial games reduced state hostility and increased positive state affect. Violent video games had the opposite effects. These effects were moderated by trait physical aggression. Altruistic participants reported relatively more positive affect and less state hostility. Egoistic participants reported relatively more aggravated and mean feelings.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22489544
“The social context of game play influenced subsequent behavior more than the content of the game that was played.”
(This means that players who worked together in the game were more willing to work together outside the game than players who were competitive in the game. Game design matters as much as content.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22302216
“Discussion highlights how violent video gaming is associated with lower levels of prosocial behavior through the mechanism of decreased empathic concern, how this association can affect prosocial behavior differently across target, and finally what implications this might have for development during emerging adulthood.”

AND THERE’S A TON MORE! I’m just getting tired of listing these. But hopefully this’ll help people to be a bit skeptical when they see those popular articles that make fun of people for believing video games affect us. Video games are the most powerful art medium of all time.

Why the pinnacle of modern technology has failed me.

I've long been a fan of diet soda. "Diet soda is the pinnacle of modern technology," I sometimes say. Well, recently my mother-in-law informed me that diet soda is bad for you. I've heard people ranting about problems with diet soda for a long time - a lot of nonsense about a lot of different problems that it might cause. I think a lot of that has come from the history of artificial sweeteners, which isn't so spotless.

Well, I've heard it before, so I wasn't surprised to hear her say that diet soda was bad for you. However, I don't tend to think of her as being a "bandwagon" sort of person, so I decided to see where science currently is on the subject of diet sodas.

Apparently, she wins.

Research suggests that people gain a couple pounds when they use diet sodas over not using sodas, and only extremely obese individuals lose weight by changing from regular to diet sodas in their diet. One article suggests that the reasons for diet soda being unhealthy are overcompensation for expected caloric restriction, as well as alteration of food preferences due to the extreme sweetness of the sweeteners. Another demonstrated that aspartame's inhibition of intestinal alkaline phosphatase enhances glucose intolerance (a chief factor of diabetese) - basically, diet sodas might be contributing to diabetes in a very different way than regular sodas.

Now, aspartame is falling out of favor due to reports of it causing cancer in rats (it hasn't been shown to cause cancer in humans), so sucralose is the up-and-coming sweetener for diet sodas. While experts seem to feel that sucralose is healthier than aspartame, research suggests that sucralose is "not biologically inert" with effects like alterations in blood levels of glucose, insulin, and other molecules important to glucose intolerance.

What I think this all means: I'm no longer able to call diet soda the pinnacle of modern technology, for which I am deeply saddened. I'll have to drink it in moderation, instead of guzzling it like I just don't care.

Some of the sources I reviewed:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3856475/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4661066/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5686455/
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-diet-pepsi-with-sucralose-healthier-than-aspartame-2015-04-24

Fluorens's Error - a bedtime story about neuroscientists.

Brains are organized and efficient.  They're massively complex, but scientists have been hard at work for a very, very long time trying to figure out how they work.  As much as 7000 years ago, people used to perform trepanation, the boring of a hole into someone's skull to cure them of who-knows-what.  The history of neuroscience continues on to the greeks, with Hippocrates; to the Romans, with Galen; to the Renaissance, with Andreas Vesalius; and so forth and so on.  Obviously, these few individuals I've mentioned do not constitute the whole of historic work on the brain.

One historic researcher, Marie-Jean-Pierre Fluorens, was an advocate of a particular idea about brain functioning.  Fluorens believed that the structure of the brain was related to its function.  He provided solid experimental evidence that the cerebellum was used in coordination, and that the cerebrum was involved in sensation and perception.  While others had made such hypotheses, Fluorens used ablative techniques (damaging specific areas) to prove empirically that it was true.

Franz Joseph Gall, like Fluorens, believed that structure was related to function.  He said that the bumpy brain structures (gyri) were related to behavior, and that bumps on the head were related to the bumps on the brain.  Thus, he invented a pop-pseudo-science known as phrenology.  Gall and his colleagues had data to back up the idea, but it wasn't very good.   More or less, they measured people's heads, and then correlated their personality traits to the various shapes on their head.

Fluorens found this psuedo-science to be preposterous, and his reaction was a bit over-the-top.  He actively argued against Gall and against phrenology.  He demonstrated that the skull's shape was not strongly correlated with the brain's shape.  Fluorens also provided additional ablative evidence that personality traits were not isolated to the neural structures under the skull regions suggested by Gall.  Fluorens concluded that the brain did not localize functions, and instead acted as one big processing machine.

Fluorens's conclusion makes me a little sad.  Modern neuroscience is well aware that different brain regions have different functions, despite a great deal of overlap and interdependency.  The frontal cortex is involved in planning and inhibition, the motor cortex is involved in movement, the somatosensory cortex is involved in sensation, the parietal cortex is involved in association and interpretation, the visual cortex is involved in seeing, and this is just scratching the surface. (I can't help but humorously point out that all of these structures are on the surface of the brain, the cortex, so we really are just scratching the surface.)

But my sorrow is not because Fluorens was wrong.  I'm saddened by the fact that Fluorens was right.  He was right about the cerebellum and cerebrum, and function following form.  However, at some point, Fluorens made a shift from proving things to be true to disproving the pseudo science.  This shift resulted in his final false conclusion.  I'm saddened that his passion for fighting what was wrong overpowered his passion for proving what was right.

For many years now, I've known this story of Fluorens, and I occasionally share it.  I call it the story of Fluorens's error.  His error was not his final conclusion.  We make Fluorens's error by expending our energy to fight against something, instead of fighting for something.

Three things that are not debates, but battles between ignorance and knowledge

Vaccines

Is this still a debate?

I recently saw a friend post about vaccines and autism... again; I thought we shut this down in 2012 or so. Someone sited a statistic that 1 in 50 vaccinations results in autism, and that by 2030, 1 in 2 children will have autism due to vaccines. Besides being absurd (why would the number increase with time? Are we developing vaccines that are better at causing autism?) it's also unsupported by any respectable science. Because of the popularity of the issue, scientists have repeatedly done studies to identify a causative connection between vaccines and autism. It has been proven repeatedly that there is no connection.

People like to say, "But you can't prove that there's no connection, you only prove that you didn't find one." Fair enough. There's also no way to absolutely prove gravity exists - maybe things falling to earth is a coincidence that appears to be gravity. But we're so sure of the importance of vaccination that it's baffling that this terrifying correlation is still being propagated. Terrifying, in that it's scaring people into making dangerous decisions about their children.

Then there's the question of whether parents should be able to choose to vaccinate their kids. I'm not going to get into the religious debate, where people belong to an established religion that doesn't allow vaccination... I just think that's a more tough debate. But in most cases, it should be considered child neglect to neglect vaccination. You don't just decide, "I don't want to feed my kids this week." You can't just do that. "I don't want them to wear clothes. What's wrong with nakedness at school?" You can't do that. As a parent, yes, you make decisions about your child. But when those decisions result in demonstrably dangerous outcomes, we call it neglect or abuse.

If your response is, "But vaccines haven't been PROVEN to help." or "But if some people don't vaccinate it's okay." or "I know what's best for my child." Then, apologies, but you're ignorant - I know you want to list all these anecdotes, all these "studies" and articles that support your side. But you're ignorant for choosing and believing those sources. Search for a single article that supports your case on www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (National Center for Biotechnology Information, associated with Pubmed) or the New England Journal of Medicine. You won't find one. In contrast there are thousands (if not tens of thousands) of studies that support the science behind vaccination. The rare studies that seem to support anti-vaccination have all been either debunked or explained by other means, such as concerns over thiomerosal, which, if I'm not mistaken, isn't in vaccines anymore anyhow. And if you think this is some sort of government conspiracy that is manipulating scientists, then I just can't help you. Cars drive forward, electricity powers lights, medicine cures more diseases every decade. Thanks, science.

But, assuming you accept modern scientific discoveries...Vaccines have been proven to help significantly, eliminating extremely dangerous diseases, reducing the burden of many other diseases, and improving the lives of millions. In contrast, the dangers of SOME people choosing not to vaccinate is evident in the fact that dangerous diseases that were almost eliminated returned when vaccination rates fell off. While "herd immunity" is a real and supported scientific concept, the conclusion from herd immunity is that we should all get vaccinated to protect those who can't. The conclusion is not "it doesn't matter if we get vaccinated."

We give children vaccines for dangerous diseases that can be easily prevented with little to no consequences - diseases that, without vaccines, would be somewhat common and quite horrifying.

If you think that I am just ignorantly following the masses, you are absolutely wrong. I do not passively choose to have my children vaccinated. I don't consider the decision difficult, but I made the decision based on the unarguably solid stance that modern science has taken on this issue. I am not looking to one doctor who, for whatever reason, decides that they want to fight against vaccines. I do not look to anecdotal evidence. I look to the gold standards of medical care in 2017. Gold standards that have been proven over and over during the course of more than a hundred years of concentrated scientific efforts... based on over a thousand years of scientific discoveries. In contrast, those so-called anti-vaxxers are making terrifying choices based on a fad, a few stories, and even a few would-be scientists who believe they can get rich off of fear and ignorance.

If you're a friend who is considering your stance, recognize that children have suffered from diseases since time immemorial, which we have cured by vaccines. To fight against vaccination is to fight against healthy children. I sincerely plead that you get off the popular anti-vaccine bandwagon (which should have broken down years ago).

If you're a random stranger who considers yourself an anti-vaxxer... just move along. You're as likely to convince me you're right as you are to convince me that I have no skin. It would be much easier to convince me that the moon landing of 1969 was faked.
As long as we keep going with these silly arguments about the basic importance of vaccination, it becomes harder to hear serious arguments about how to improve vaccination procedures and production, and ensure relevant safety measures as technology advances. There are real issues at hand. Let's move forward.

A reliable, scientific source for information on vaccines is the CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm

What about the evidence of children who have very serious adverse events?

Another friend posted a very sad video of a child having a seizure, recently. I believe I've seen it before (2 years ago?) by a friend who might be considered an anti-vaxxer. I'll be responding to this sad video under the assumption that people watching this video are moved by empathy to avoid causing children and their parents pain.

There's a difference between a mistake and an error. An error is when we do something wrong, and we should have known it was wrong - it is a miscalculation on our part, and the correct course of action was calculable. A mistake is incorrect primarily in the context of the outcome. It can also be an error, or it can be merely a mistake. That is, we can do something wrong because we calculated it wrong (error), and then we feel badly about the outcome (mistake). However, sometimes we calculate everything correctly and do exactly what is right (no error), but the outcome is still bad due to our choices (mistake).

Vaccinations can have extremely rare serious negative side effects, but they are treating diseases that would not be extremely rare if it weren't for vaccines. When we vaccinate, we have what can be seen as a rare mistake, when we ought not have vaccinated a particular child. But unless we knew in advance that the child would have such a reaction, it would not be an error to vaccinate them. Of course, everything changes once we know how they'll react. And the importance of vaccinating everyone becomes doubly important once we find those who MUST be protected by herd immunity rather than personal vaccination.

The video is sad. However, the equivalent video would be a bloodbath of unmeasurable proportions if we were to see the world with nobody vaccinating. Even a world with 50% vaccinating... it would be a terror unlike our generation generally witnesses. The world before vaccines was rampant with death from diseases that are now rare.

If we saw a video with five unvaccinated children infected with smallpox, and watched it through to the end, we would eventually see the cold, limp, lifeless body of four of those children, and it might haunt our dreams to know that we could have prevented those deaths. Indeed, it is a true miracle that smallpox has been conquered by vaccines. What other diseases can we eliminate?

Unless you KNOW otherwise, to vaccinate is never an error, and so giving parents the option to make an error out of fear of the rare mistake is not wise. This is inhumane for two reasons: 1) the child should be given the wisest choice, regardless of the parents ability to reason medically and 2) if the parent makes the wrong choice, whether it’s an error or a mistake, they will bear the psychological burden of causing the outcome.

Although it occasionally turns out to be a serious mistake to vaccinate (remember, that just means the outcomes were undesirable), to make the alternative choice (the error) would result in millions upon millions of mistakes of equal or greater severity.

Climate change

Because of "An Inconvenient Truth" this became a political issue instead of a scientific one. However, the only thing that matters in deciding if this is true is what science has to say about it. The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the fact that mankind has caused an unprecedented change in greenhouse gasses. The ensuing change in climate may seem small at this point, but even if mankind's contributions were suddenly eliminated from the earth, it will take far, far longer than our lives or the lives of our children to reverse these changes.

A reliable, scientific source on climate change is the EPA.
https://www.epa.gov/climatechange/climate-change-basic-information

And here's NASA.gov on the issue.
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Feminism (but not all feminism)

Now, to be fair, there are extreme forms of feminism, and knowing if you're talking to someone who has an academic understanding or an angry ignorance is not always easy. Both are able to spout out facts, and both have strong interest in improving the lives of women (and, frankly, both can be enfuriated by the state of things). Given that my understanding of feminism is primarily self-taught (textbooks, internet searches for quality sources, lots of introspection and contemplation), I do not have sufficient background knowledge to perfectly recognize who are the experts and who are the excessives. However, I have come up with a metric that I believe works most of the time: people whose feminism is primarily about how terrible men are don't get feminism, whereas feminists who have compassion for men get it. The reason why this works is not because the former make me feel bad and the latter do not (though this is true). The reason this works is because feminism (academic, educated feminism) is not about men vs. women, it's about humanity. The fact is that women have been (and in an uncomfortably large number of cases continue to be) treated poorly and there are structures that continue to be in place that do not have their best interest in mind. But the principles of feminism would also protect men if the tables were reversed on a grand level. Men and women everywhere should become educated in egalitarian feminism and seek to promote healthy feminist causes, which in most cases (given where our modern systems derived from) is a very pro woman agenda.

For a man who once thought feminism was quite odd, I've had a surprising number of online arguments with men who I've decided have some fear of being impotent. They swear at me and call me a social justice warrior and a white knight, neither of which should be insults, but neither of which really categorize me correctly. My opinions do not fit into the box of social justice, and they are not formed in order to feel good about myself in relationship to women. My opinions are formed through critical thinking and observation of facts. I can be swayed by facts, though I don't merely trust everything every stranger throws out as factual. Indeed, my opinion on feminism is the opposite of what it once was, and the event that changed my mind: I read a textbook chapter that described feminism dispassionately.

In my opinion, feminism is NOT the radical notion that women are people. It is the radical notion that people are people, and it benefits women (and is called feminism) because women have been treated like they aren't people for so surprisingly long. Feminism is only about women because history has forced it to be so. The principles of feminism are universal truths, which seem drastically slanted because our history has been drastically slanted, but if history had been different, the core values of egalitarian feminism would still be true. Note that there are many sub-types of feminism, and for many of them, this is not the case. Some forms of feminism are not worth pursuing, and frankly give feminism a bad name.

Furthermore, a true knowledge of feminism does not necessarily lead one to action any more than a knowledge of gravity does. However, if one is to build a rocket, a knowledge of gravity is essential. And if one is to build a truly moral society, a knowledge of egalitarian feminism is critical.

Some men and women have latched on to anti-feminist movements. While, in some cases (not all), their intent seems reasonable, the fact is that the movements are missing the point of feminism. As just a brief example, this image suggests that this woman doesn't need feminism because men care about her and respect her and aren't pigs. However, that doesn't have any bearing on whether the principles of egalitarian feminism are true or not. The fact is that this woman, and the wonderful men in her life, probably believe those truths, which is why she so comfortably "doesn't need feminism." It seems to me that such movements are not responding to the academic principles of egalitarian feminism, but to the man-haters who pose as feminists to strengthen their position.

Sure, the minutia of what exactly is wrong and how to fix it can be debated. Also, many things that try to benefit from the label of feminism are not true (and in my opinion not even truly feminist). But the "debate" about whether feminism is right - that's a battle being waged between ignorance and education. And in this battle, the ignorance of the correct side harms it almost as much as the ignorance of the opposing view. Feminism is not a club or a political party - it is an ideology, a collection of truths that have no owner, but which could benefit society if we stop claiming or fighting them and start finding ways to live them.

If these things aren't debates, then why are people still debating them?

To be blunt, people are ignorant. This is not merely an insult. Some people are not in possession of the facts necessary for discussing these topics. They're stuck on popular views that are fully debunked by an accurate knowledge of the world. Could there possibly be something true within those views worth holding on to? Sure, but the views overall are so destructive that it is akin to allowing your house to burn down because you can roast hot-dogs and marshmallows in the fire. Vaccines save lives. Climate change is putting our entire world in danger. Feminism is poised to create a humanity that is deeply moral in their interactions toward each other - it is the best scientific solution to all forms of hate. We need to stop wasting time debating these non-opinions, and start spending time furthering our understanding of how these truths matter.

Why gamers need to stop arguing that video games don't affect them

"Article on internet interprets science so that experts don't need to."

I'm neither for nor against anything in this argument, but I feel like arguments where people are significantly biased are hardly worth investigating or discussing with the general public. See, people will believe whatever they want - I'm sure I'm not the only person who has witnessed this phenomenon online.

Although it doesn't completely discredit any individual study entirely, the article that prompted this blog entry was published in a questionable journal, and was cherry-picked by the author of an internet article because its conclusion inspires a particular feeling within the intended reader. It massages the ego of the readership, and makes them want to return for more confirmation of their world view.

I play video games - odds are I play more than you do, dear reader. In some ways, I'd like to think that my empathy was "unaffected" by video games, but that seems pretty unrealistic - in some ways nonsensical. How do you even measure empathy at a given moment? You can't assign it a value! Consider what it means to be "unaffected" - not only that you lose no "empathy-units" while playing, but that your alternative activity would have provided no increase in empathy.

What if you would have spent some time caring for the elderly, or deepening relationships with family members, or doing community service, or developing a social hobby? Not that these are entirely mutually exclusive from playing video games, mind you. Or, consider how one video game might actively teach people to take actions that are non-empathetic, while another specifically focuses on teaching empathy. I have seen interesting games designed with this in mind as part of health-related video game design competitions.

One tries to instill the idea that everyone is important, and our differences make us strong.

One teaches that sometimes our internal dialogue about other people is not accurate.

One encourages you to consider the plight of schizophrenics. The main character is not merely schizophrenic, but the game attempts to develop empathy within the player for the character.

Personally, I feel like video games are merely a medium for communicating, like any other medium. But video games are very powerful in ways that other mediums aren't. As a medium, it incorporates every potential of writing, of movies, of music, and more.

So, why the heck are gamers so interested in proving that we remain unaffected by them? "My games are boring and don't touch me on anything but a superficial level." What kind of terrible game... What kind of terrible art... Why even play? Go rake some leaves or shovel some snow if it's really all the same to you.

Which leads me to believe that most gamers trying to prove that they're not affected by video games haven't really thought it through. Perhaps they feel a hint of guilt, because there's some kind of stigma associated with gaming.

"Reading - that's for smart people. Gaming - that's for jerks and know-nothing time wasters."

"Playing video games? Go outside! Reading? Oh, now you're good, stay inside and do nothing in this case."

Maybe gamers have defensiveness ingrained because of how they feel their hobby is perceived by others.

Inasmuch as video games are not the deepest, most educating, most moving experiences available, it is due to the fact that the game creators have not made them so. Hey, that's quotable.

Do you think that players of team games (Counter-Strike: GO, or DoTA 2, or LoL) have not actually learned something about teamwork (or at least that they should have) after hundreds of hours of working in small teams to accomplish challenging goals? Do you think that players of management games (Civilization, Total War, Mount & Blade, Cities: Skylines) haven't developed some organizational habits that might matter in the real world?

If you're interested, check out the links to those games to see some examples representing teamwork and organization in those games. Just briefly scan through the linked guide to Cities: Skylines, and it'll baffle you how much organization it takes to follow. Consider how the author of that guide, who describes himself as a student of planning, states, "For me, this is not just a game. This is city building." Anyhow, back to the topic at hand.

If we accept all the positive learning that occurs, then how does it make any sense to say that games that glorify violence and crime, like Doom, Grand Theft Auto, and Payday don't educate people as well. They don't make you suddenly a violent criminal any more than Sim City makes you suddenly a glorious guru of city planning. But there is something that is learned, possibly something transferable. There was a time when gamers were really excited to tout the glorious improvement in hand-eye coordination provided by action games. When people began to respond, "Yeah, but... why do you need that specifically?" the extolling stopped and the gamers went back underground until research started proving other things that were beneficial... but OBVIOUSLY nothing detrimental.

The whole argument appears to simply be a defense of gamers' feelings. Although their feelings do matter, and non-gamers might be utterly careless and unconcerned with the future of gaming, the truth isn't found by being merely defensive and self-affirming.

Just the feeling that "I'm the same person" before and after playing a game doesn't really address the issue... or frankly mean anything, because we're all limited to our own perspective in the reality we live in (n = 1).

Shaming male birth control study participants is wrong in more ways than one.

Am I seriously posting about this thing again? I guess so. I've mentioned this topic a few times on social media.

Lots of articles are reporting on this drug trial where the wimpy man-things gave up on birth control because it gave them oh-so-well-known side-effects.  Most of the articles and web commentary are getting it wrong because, hey, it's fun to talk trash about men. The most recent article I read gets at least 2 things absolutely wrong:
1) "96% effective" only appears to be similar to other birth control methods if your math skills are limited to addition and subtraction. It's more than twice as bad as condoms alone, where user error ruins the effectiveness significantly. Modern IUDs are almost 100% effective; when they don't work is when they fall out unnoticed. Even female hormonal birth control is more than 99% effective. This new drug was, like... 10 to 100 (maybe 1000) times more likely to mess up than those traditional methods. It is a lot harder to reduce sperm count to 0 with reasonable hormone doses than to stop ovulation. 4 couples on birth control got pregnant during the "efficacy phase" of this study! I hope they were looking to have children.
2) "The effects of injections were completely reversible..." except for the guys who say they became impotent and haven't yet recovered. Oh, and the 5% of participants whose spermatogenesis didn't return to normal for 52 weeks until the scientists stopped watching.

In the end, the female partners responded that they "wouldn't use this form of birth control again" 20% MORE frequently than the males who were actually using it. You might think that percentage would be understandably elevated by the women who got pregnant, but the study doesn't delineate which participants said what.

I wish people would stop acting like this is super-duper obvious, and start appreciating that there were 320 men who tried a new method of birth control that had seriously troubling side-effects, and 75% of them are rearing for more pain when the drug trials resume. The only thing they had to gain was taking the burden of birth control off of women, which is pretty selfless. An ounce of compassion in return, please?

The only thing that actually bothers me are the sexist, inaccurate, anti-male reports that are flooding the internet. The sarcasm, and dare I say it, the misandry... it's just plain unwarranted. Perhaps it's what increases your viewership or makes you the most money, but it's also wrong on many levels. No self-respecting feminist would give in to this kind of demeaning, hate-derived social commentary. Especially against volunteers who should be seen as pioneers.