All,
I'm taking a break from blogging to take my preliminary oral exams. I need to write a paper, put together a talk, and study furiously in preparation for getting grilled by four professors for two hours about any physics they feel like asking me about.
Expect updates to resume soon after May 3rd.
Thanks for reading!
Charles
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Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
The American Political System
Our political architecture is a mess. Our entrenched two-party system rewards dickishness and limits voter preference to one political dimension. Our voting scheme damps the possibility of a third party. The electoral college is fundamentally undemocratic. It's no wonder our government is viewed as ineffective.
Let's start out with voting. Though perhaps the most intuitive, ours is not the only way to vote; there are many possible voting schemes. Though it's been proven that no voting scheme can be perfect, we can do better.
As we have it everyone gets to cast a single vote for a single candidate. If there are two candidates that they like they must choose between them. If we were directly electing representatives this would be great at ensuring proportional representation (for example, if distributing 100 seats, 48% of the vote for Democrats means that they get 48 seats). However, in electing a single president, our system is easily disrupted by third-party candidates "splitting the vote."
One of the simplest alternatives is having each voter rank their choices first through Nth in the case of N candidates. For example if 55% prefer Gore to Bush he would win, even if 10% prefer Nader to Gore.
Approval voting is similar, though rather than a rating each candidate simply gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. The candidate with the most thumbs up wins; this avoids the possibility (however implausible) of having a majority prefer Gore to Bush, but also having a majority prefer Nader to Gore, but also having a majority prefer Bush to Nader.
Beyond how the votes are cast we can draw issue with how they're counted. The electoral college has been opposed by the strong majority of Americans for decades, according to the Gallup Poll. Proponents of the electoral college (according to Wikipedia), argue that it is "an important, distinguishing feature of federalism in the United States," giving a halfway point between a direct election and a congressional appointment for the office of the president. Furthermore it ensures that the small states are not marginalized.
In principle the electoral college prevents a politician from campaigning only to the big states; the twelve most populous states contain over half of Americans. Suppose I run for president, and my platform is to dramatically increase the taxes in the thirty least populous states while abolishing federal taxes in the most populous states (this is probably unconstitutional, but you get the idea). If there were no other issues, I would presumably win all of the large states in a landslide, and thus the popular vote. The electoral college gives extra say to the small states to make them relevant. This is the same reason that we have a Senate rather than just a House of Representatives.
However, people are not rational voters and they make choices based on a variety of issues so I would argue that this advantage is overshadowed by the disadvantages of the electoral college system.
The overrepresentation of small states is dramatic. Effectively each person in Montana gets triple the vote of a person in Texas. It also marginalizes almost all of the voters. Voting Democrat in a blue state is redundant while voting Republican in a blue state is futile. Only swing states are important since other states are so predictable. On the rare occasion that a blue state votes for a Republican (as in Reagan vs. Mondale) the votes in that state still didn't matter because the candidate was strong enough to carry the election using red states and swing states.
The presidential primaries, which at this point are a half-year spectacle or more, already choose candidates as if the vote were popular. The preferences of Florida, which is crucially important, are not held above those of California and Texas, which are completely predictable. It wouldn't make for much of a show, but a more electable candidate could be found by only counting swing states; that's where the vast majority of general election campaigning will be anyway.
Switching to a popular vote would be trivial, since we already count all the votes. In addition to making our representation more uniform this removes the possibility of faithless electors. No faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of a presidential election (and many states even have laws against the practice) it seems foolish to invite the possibility.
Additionally, a popular vote makes it easier for minor parties to accumulate recognition, as they do not need to be the majority in any single state to be acknowledged.
A strict two-party systems makes strange bedfellows; in order to vote for the openly Christian candidate, a working class man must vote against his own economic interests (that is, be taxed more and see less for it). Similarly a pharmaceutical corporation, to experience lower taxes, must support the party that opposes teaching biology in public schools.
There's plenty more political dysfunction in this country to talk about but this is about as much as I can expose you to at once in good conscience. Perhaps at a later date we'll compare our year-and-a-half-long, multi-billion-dollar, TV-attack-ad-filled, presidential selection routine to that of some countries.
Let's start out with voting. Though perhaps the most intuitive, ours is not the only way to vote; there are many possible voting schemes. Though it's been proven that no voting scheme can be perfect, we can do better.
As we have it everyone gets to cast a single vote for a single candidate. If there are two candidates that they like they must choose between them. If we were directly electing representatives this would be great at ensuring proportional representation (for example, if distributing 100 seats, 48% of the vote for Democrats means that they get 48 seats). However, in electing a single president, our system is easily disrupted by third-party candidates "splitting the vote."
One of the simplest alternatives is having each voter rank their choices first through Nth in the case of N candidates. For example if 55% prefer Gore to Bush he would win, even if 10% prefer Nader to Gore.
Approval voting is similar, though rather than a rating each candidate simply gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. The candidate with the most thumbs up wins; this avoids the possibility (however implausible) of having a majority prefer Gore to Bush, but also having a majority prefer Nader to Gore, but also having a majority prefer Bush to Nader.
Beyond how the votes are cast we can draw issue with how they're counted. The electoral college has been opposed by the strong majority of Americans for decades, according to the Gallup Poll. Proponents of the electoral college (according to Wikipedia), argue that it is "an important, distinguishing feature of federalism in the United States," giving a halfway point between a direct election and a congressional appointment for the office of the president. Furthermore it ensures that the small states are not marginalized.
In principle the electoral college prevents a politician from campaigning only to the big states; the twelve most populous states contain over half of Americans. Suppose I run for president, and my platform is to dramatically increase the taxes in the thirty least populous states while abolishing federal taxes in the most populous states (this is probably unconstitutional, but you get the idea). If there were no other issues, I would presumably win all of the large states in a landslide, and thus the popular vote. The electoral college gives extra say to the small states to make them relevant. This is the same reason that we have a Senate rather than just a House of Representatives.
However, people are not rational voters and they make choices based on a variety of issues so I would argue that this advantage is overshadowed by the disadvantages of the electoral college system.
The overrepresentation of small states is dramatic. Effectively each person in Montana gets triple the vote of a person in Texas. It also marginalizes almost all of the voters. Voting Democrat in a blue state is redundant while voting Republican in a blue state is futile. Only swing states are important since other states are so predictable. On the rare occasion that a blue state votes for a Republican (as in Reagan vs. Mondale) the votes in that state still didn't matter because the candidate was strong enough to carry the election using red states and swing states.
The presidential primaries, which at this point are a half-year spectacle or more, already choose candidates as if the vote were popular. The preferences of Florida, which is crucially important, are not held above those of California and Texas, which are completely predictable. It wouldn't make for much of a show, but a more electable candidate could be found by only counting swing states; that's where the vast majority of general election campaigning will be anyway.
Switching to a popular vote would be trivial, since we already count all the votes. In addition to making our representation more uniform this removes the possibility of faithless electors. No faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of a presidential election (and many states even have laws against the practice) it seems foolish to invite the possibility.
Additionally, a popular vote makes it easier for minor parties to accumulate recognition, as they do not need to be the majority in any single state to be acknowledged.
A strict two-party systems makes strange bedfellows; in order to vote for the openly Christian candidate, a working class man must vote against his own economic interests (that is, be taxed more and see less for it). Similarly a pharmaceutical corporation, to experience lower taxes, must support the party that opposes teaching biology in public schools.
Having only two parties disincentivizes compromise. The Republican congress has shown us that through filibustering and strict party unity they can essentially shut down any legislation that is not in line with their agenda - and since the Democrats are the ones trying to implement changes this means that the Republicans are winning the political game.
The existence of additional parties (the most obvious would be a fiscally conservative but socially tolerant - Libertarian - party and a fiscally liberal and socially conservative - Orwellian? - party, though there are of course more than two degrees of freedom) would give voters more freedom in what they want the government to do, as well as giving legislators more angles from which to pursue compromise.
This is a dimension present in the legislatures of many other countries, though I'll have to explore that in detail in a later post.
The existence of additional parties (the most obvious would be a fiscally conservative but socially tolerant - Libertarian - party and a fiscally liberal and socially conservative - Orwellian? - party, though there are of course more than two degrees of freedom) would give voters more freedom in what they want the government to do, as well as giving legislators more angles from which to pursue compromise.
This is a dimension present in the legislatures of many other countries, though I'll have to explore that in detail in a later post.
There's plenty more political dysfunction in this country to talk about but this is about as much as I can expose you to at once in good conscience. Perhaps at a later date we'll compare our year-and-a-half-long, multi-billion-dollar, TV-attack-ad-filled, presidential selection routine to that of some countries.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Introduction to Abortion
Abortion is a complicated issue. Any claim otherwise would be convenient but does not hold up to scrutiny.
A single egg is not a person (or women would charged with murder every time they menstruate). Similarly a single sperm is not a person (with, very conservatively, 100 million men of reproductive age each producing 100 million sperm per day, and with 4 million babies born per year, that's about one sperm out of a trillion -- 1,000,000,000,000 -- that will ever become a baby). So before conception, obviously, there is no issue.
Even after conception nothing is certain. Though figures vary, somewhere around half of conceptions are aborted naturally, mostly before the woman is even aware of the pregnancy, and mostly due to defects in the fetus. This is even more pronounced among women over 40 and those who have previously miscarried.
Personhood is not well defined but certainly it has some correlation with biological complexity. The complexity of a zygote is not much more than a sperm plus an egg. It grows quickly, but a human embryo is not really distinguished from that of any other mammal (such as the cow you kill to eat or the mouse you kill for convenience) until quite a few weeks into development. At nine weeks, after which abortions decline sharply, the fetus is roughly the size of a grape. And it's not a grape-sized person by any means; it's just starting to develop a skeletal structure.
Plot of abortions in the US vs. gestational age in 2004
On the other side of that coin, late in pregnancy a fetus is basically a baby. Provided some intensive care immediately after birth, babies even a few months premature can lead normal lives. Appropriately enough, very few abortions take place at this stage. The United States lags other developed nations in this respect, but even so 98% of abortions in the US take place before 20 weeks (halfway through pregnancy).
In terms of effects we can measure on a societal level (that is, not counting the erosion of America's soul), legal access to abortions is good for us as a country. Abortions still take place in nations with laws restricting or outlawing them. In these cases they are much more likely to be unsafe and the woman is much more likely to suffer complications, including death. Something like 68,000 women die per year due to unsafe abortions, mostly in developing countries. Furthermore, though it's controversial, some argue that legalized abortion lowers crime by reducing the number of children born into families that won't take care of them. Historically there has been a drop in crime 18-24 years after abortion becomes legalized in a state (as well as nationwide from Roe vs. Wade).
Abortions can be divided between elective and theraputic (to save the life of the mother, or protect her from very probably harm). I have to believe that proponents of banning theraputic abortions are in the fringe minority; at any point in pregnancy the mother is obviously more of a person than the fetus. The loss of a perhaps viable child is tragic, but less so than the loss of a woman.
Perhaps even more extreme is recent legislation (Georgia HB 954) that outlaws the surgical removal of an already stillborn fetus, even in the interest of the mother's health. It is the norm in politics right now to treat abortion as a simple issue that you can either be for or against. That is simply not the case.
A single egg is not a person (or women would charged with murder every time they menstruate). Similarly a single sperm is not a person (with, very conservatively, 100 million men of reproductive age each producing 100 million sperm per day, and with 4 million babies born per year, that's about one sperm out of a trillion -- 1,000,000,000,000 -- that will ever become a baby). So before conception, obviously, there is no issue.
Even after conception nothing is certain. Though figures vary, somewhere around half of conceptions are aborted naturally, mostly before the woman is even aware of the pregnancy, and mostly due to defects in the fetus. This is even more pronounced among women over 40 and those who have previously miscarried.
Personhood is not well defined but certainly it has some correlation with biological complexity. The complexity of a zygote is not much more than a sperm plus an egg. It grows quickly, but a human embryo is not really distinguished from that of any other mammal (such as the cow you kill to eat or the mouse you kill for convenience) until quite a few weeks into development. At nine weeks, after which abortions decline sharply, the fetus is roughly the size of a grape. And it's not a grape-sized person by any means; it's just starting to develop a skeletal structure.
Plot of abortions in the US vs. gestational age in 2004
On the other side of that coin, late in pregnancy a fetus is basically a baby. Provided some intensive care immediately after birth, babies even a few months premature can lead normal lives. Appropriately enough, very few abortions take place at this stage. The United States lags other developed nations in this respect, but even so 98% of abortions in the US take place before 20 weeks (halfway through pregnancy).
In terms of effects we can measure on a societal level (that is, not counting the erosion of America's soul), legal access to abortions is good for us as a country. Abortions still take place in nations with laws restricting or outlawing them. In these cases they are much more likely to be unsafe and the woman is much more likely to suffer complications, including death. Something like 68,000 women die per year due to unsafe abortions, mostly in developing countries. Furthermore, though it's controversial, some argue that legalized abortion lowers crime by reducing the number of children born into families that won't take care of them. Historically there has been a drop in crime 18-24 years after abortion becomes legalized in a state (as well as nationwide from Roe vs. Wade).
Abortions can be divided between elective and theraputic (to save the life of the mother, or protect her from very probably harm). I have to believe that proponents of banning theraputic abortions are in the fringe minority; at any point in pregnancy the mother is obviously more of a person than the fetus. The loss of a perhaps viable child is tragic, but less so than the loss of a woman.
Perhaps even more extreme is recent legislation (Georgia HB 954) that outlaws the surgical removal of an already stillborn fetus, even in the interest of the mother's health. It is the norm in politics right now to treat abortion as a simple issue that you can either be for or against. That is simply not the case.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Nudity and Pornography
The puritanical idea that we must convince our children that sex does not exist, and that a naked body is sinful, is unsustainable. Asymmetry in indecent exposure precedent is perhaps not measurably bad for the country (as abstinence-only sex education is) but it is certainly awkward and pointless. For most adults in this country, sex - even recreational sex - is a regular part of life. Premarital sex is nearly universal and nearly all sexually active women have used contraception.
I'll accept that genitals ought to be covered. It's probably justifiable from a hygiene angle. But mandating that a woman's nipples must be covered is, as far as I can tell, nonsense. It's certainly incorrect to have gender asymmetry in the rule; the idea that a female nipple is more sexual than a male nipple is hard to justify. If you're unconvinced, try to tell which sex each of these nipples belongs to.
(Just a heads up - be careful about putting "nipple" into a Google image search; apparently nipple enlargement, nipple torture, and giant nipple piercings are pretty popular on the internet.)
Furthermore, if our goal is to protect children from explicit material, banning the female nipple is a really bad way to do it (of course it is generally easy to tell if a picture contains a female nipple; you'll notice that discussing complex issues as if they're black and white is a recurring pet peeve of mine). For example, you'll notice that of the four images below, three have exposed nipples. The first is art. The second is educational, helping teach how to do a self breast exam. The third, breastfeeding, I had to modify because a Google bot flagged it as pornographic. However, only the last image, "Sexy Bikini Girl," who has her nipples covered, is undeniably sexual.
And though this should go without saying, acknowledging that a nude body is not inherently dirty is not the same as insisting that everyone be naked all the time. Men are free to bare their entire torsos in public but few do. When not constrained by laws we are still constrained by practicality.
This is of course not to say that a naked body cannot be sexual; it obviously can be. But nudity is not inherently pornographic and it should not be censored as if to see it is shameful. Like comprehensive sex education, the stigma associated with pornography comes from the religious notion that we must be sexually pure. This is completely irreconcilable with reality.
According to surveys, only a quarter think pornography is protected under the First Amendment, just over a third think it's "morally acceptable to look at pictures of nudity or sexually explicit behavior," while 82% of adults think that laws against online obscenity should be "vigorously enforced." Meanwhile, back in fact land, one in four web searches is for pornography, one in ten emails is pornographic, half of all online spending is pornographic, and thirty million Americans - about one sixth of online users at the time - access online porn per day. Two thirds of men between 20 and 40 admit to looking at online porn regularly, as do a third of churchgoing women. These figures are from 2005, but you get the idea.
Shame over the sexual act is obsolete. Kinsey showed us sixty years ago that just about everyone is sexual; there comes a point where you can no longer act surprised and indignant.
That said, pornography is overwhelmingly aimed at men. It portrays sex as a male-dominated, even misogynistic, act. This is a norm I don't think we should accept as a culture. However, that's hard to change, as I imagine that porn production is market driven. And with annual porn revenues conservatively at ten billion dollars (in 2005), producers have a pretty big sample as far as gauging what sells.
(The nipples were all male.)
I'll accept that genitals ought to be covered. It's probably justifiable from a hygiene angle. But mandating that a woman's nipples must be covered is, as far as I can tell, nonsense. It's certainly incorrect to have gender asymmetry in the rule; the idea that a female nipple is more sexual than a male nipple is hard to justify. If you're unconvinced, try to tell which sex each of these nipples belongs to.
(Just a heads up - be careful about putting "nipple" into a Google image search; apparently nipple enlargement, nipple torture, and giant nipple piercings are pretty popular on the internet.)
Furthermore, if our goal is to protect children from explicit material, banning the female nipple is a really bad way to do it (of course it is generally easy to tell if a picture contains a female nipple; you'll notice that discussing complex issues as if they're black and white is a recurring pet peeve of mine). For example, you'll notice that of the four images below, three have exposed nipples. The first is art. The second is educational, helping teach how to do a self breast exam. The third, breastfeeding, I had to modify because a Google bot flagged it as pornographic. However, only the last image, "Sexy Bikini Girl," who has her nipples covered, is undeniably sexual.
And though this should go without saying, acknowledging that a nude body is not inherently dirty is not the same as insisting that everyone be naked all the time. Men are free to bare their entire torsos in public but few do. When not constrained by laws we are still constrained by practicality.
This is of course not to say that a naked body cannot be sexual; it obviously can be. But nudity is not inherently pornographic and it should not be censored as if to see it is shameful. Like comprehensive sex education, the stigma associated with pornography comes from the religious notion that we must be sexually pure. This is completely irreconcilable with reality.
According to surveys, only a quarter think pornography is protected under the First Amendment, just over a third think it's "morally acceptable to look at pictures of nudity or sexually explicit behavior," while 82% of adults think that laws against online obscenity should be "vigorously enforced." Meanwhile, back in fact land, one in four web searches is for pornography, one in ten emails is pornographic, half of all online spending is pornographic, and thirty million Americans - about one sixth of online users at the time - access online porn per day. Two thirds of men between 20 and 40 admit to looking at online porn regularly, as do a third of churchgoing women. These figures are from 2005, but you get the idea.
Shame over the sexual act is obsolete. Kinsey showed us sixty years ago that just about everyone is sexual; there comes a point where you can no longer act surprised and indignant.
That said, pornography is overwhelmingly aimed at men. It portrays sex as a male-dominated, even misogynistic, act. This is a norm I don't think we should accept as a culture. However, that's hard to change, as I imagine that porn production is market driven. And with annual porn revenues conservatively at ten billion dollars (in 2005), producers have a pretty big sample as far as gauging what sells.
(The nipples were all male.)
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Pokemon Types
Pokemon is a pop culture phenomenon (primarily a video game but also made television series, movies, playing cards, toys, and so on) in which you capture monsters and battle them for sport and profit. Five generations of Pokemon games have been released for Gameboy and each has been a top selling game; the popularity of the franchise has ingrained Pokemon into our pop culture lexicon.
And that's great - the game has broad appeal, high replay value, and is more fun when played with friends. However it's doubtless that the core of the Pokemon game is battling Pokemon. And the type system by which that happens is, in hindsight, inelegant.
Each Pokemon has one or two elemental types inherent to its species. Additionally, each Pokemon can learn up to four attacks, each of which has an elemental type. Pokemon need not learn attacks of their own type, though they receive a bonus for doing so.
These types are crucial to making Pokemon battles interesting. For example Charizard is a fire- and-flying type Pokemon. Suppose my Charizard knows Fire Blast, Wing Attack, Scratch, and Bubblebeam. It will receive an attack bonus every time it uses Fire Blast or Wing Attack, but no bonus for the other two. Furthermore, Fire Blast will be super effective (double damage) against an ice-type Pokemon, but not very effective (half damage) against a rock-type Pokemon. On the other hand Bubblebeam, a water-type attack, will give Charizard no bonus by itself but will be super effective against a rock-type Pokemon.
The idea of having types interacting with each other adds significant depth to battles, but we see awkwardness in the types themselves.
The first issue is grammatical. I do not think it's unreasonable to expect that all elemental types be nouns (as most of them are). Some of the problem types even suggest an obvious choice; flying may as well be air or wind and electric could be lightning or electricity. There are a few more offenders, though I'll touch on those later as I look at other issues.
There are too many types. In total there are seventeen Pokemon types (initially there were only fifteen but dark and steel were added for balance reasons after the first generation of games). That means that in order to keep the game at a manageable level of complexity, on average a type will have no interaction with about two thirds of the other types. With fewer types we could have a less sparse interaction matrix. Some types have strong flavor overlap with one another; for example rock and ground or bug and grass. And some types are just bad from a creative standpoint.
For example, bug and dragon aren't elements; they're kinds of animal. The type itself constrains what the Pokemon can look like. Furthermore, Charizard and Gyarados show pretty clearly that a Pokemon can look like a dragon without being dragon-type. There are plenty of Pokemon shaped vaguely like a lizard, a fish, a bird, and so on without needing lizard, fish, or bird types. But in practice the existence of a bug type means that if any Pokemon wants to be bug-shaped it must be saddled with that type, depriving it of a spot that could have a real element. Particularly given the near-nonexistence of bug- or dragon-type attacks it seems to me that these types might as well not exist.
Similarly, the fighting type is awkward because it mandates that a Pokemon of that type be a close human analog. Fighting-type attacks are generally kicks and punches, so fighting-type Pokemon must have feet and fists.
The normal type is Pokemon that have no elemental proclivity. It's also the type that goes along with early attacks like Tackle and Scratch. It's basically the boring type that you encounter early on in the game then move past. I would advocate merging the fighting and normal types, perhaps call the new type strength or muscle. This seems fine thematically; it was never obvious how a punch could be super effective against something resistant to tackling.
The psychic, ghost, and dark types all feed on the same general theme of creepiness; they certainly don't need three distinct types. Psychic has a decent lexicon of moves but ghost has few. Dark moves tend to just correspond to fighting dirty (stealing their items, sucker punching, fake crying) which is thematically questionable. Perhaps one new type (shadow? darkness?) could replace the three together.
Of course merging types throws off game balance in a significant way, so the entire type interaction chart would need some reworking. But that's fine, because it's got issues too.
Some existing types are pretty noninteractive. Only ice- and dragon-type attacks are super effective against dragon-type Pokemon, and dragon-type attacks are super effective against nothing else. Electric, a common Pokemon type, is weak against only ground, a pretty rare attack type. Dark-types also rarely have to worry about weaknesses; rather than having to weigh the pros and cons of having a Pokemon of that type, it's more a matter of using one as soon as you can find it.
No types are mutually weak to one another. It's an option for an interesting game dynamic that simply doesn't exist. One might expect, for example, that water would be super effective against electricity and vice versa; when you drop a toaster in the aquarium it's bad for the fish of course (electricity super effective against water) but it's also bad for the toaster... and your home wiring (water super effective against electricity). The closest Pokemon comes to that is having dragon-type be super effective against dragons, but you already know how I feel about that type.
We would perhaps expect the type setup would be inelegant if it were carried through from the first generation of games, before the Pokemon franchise was swimming in money. But it wasn't. After the first generation the steel and dark types were added to address balance issues. Some other weaknesses and resistances were modified as well. It seems to me that makes criticism reasonable.
Chart from Bulbapedia
And that's great - the game has broad appeal, high replay value, and is more fun when played with friends. However it's doubtless that the core of the Pokemon game is battling Pokemon. And the type system by which that happens is, in hindsight, inelegant.
Each Pokemon has one or two elemental types inherent to its species. Additionally, each Pokemon can learn up to four attacks, each of which has an elemental type. Pokemon need not learn attacks of their own type, though they receive a bonus for doing so.
These types are crucial to making Pokemon battles interesting. For example Charizard is a fire- and-flying type Pokemon. Suppose my Charizard knows Fire Blast, Wing Attack, Scratch, and Bubblebeam. It will receive an attack bonus every time it uses Fire Blast or Wing Attack, but no bonus for the other two. Furthermore, Fire Blast will be super effective (double damage) against an ice-type Pokemon, but not very effective (half damage) against a rock-type Pokemon. On the other hand Bubblebeam, a water-type attack, will give Charizard no bonus by itself but will be super effective against a rock-type Pokemon.
The idea of having types interacting with each other adds significant depth to battles, but we see awkwardness in the types themselves.
The first issue is grammatical. I do not think it's unreasonable to expect that all elemental types be nouns (as most of them are). Some of the problem types even suggest an obvious choice; flying may as well be air or wind and electric could be lightning or electricity. There are a few more offenders, though I'll touch on those later as I look at other issues.
There are too many types. In total there are seventeen Pokemon types (initially there were only fifteen but dark and steel were added for balance reasons after the first generation of games). That means that in order to keep the game at a manageable level of complexity, on average a type will have no interaction with about two thirds of the other types. With fewer types we could have a less sparse interaction matrix. Some types have strong flavor overlap with one another; for example rock and ground or bug and grass. And some types are just bad from a creative standpoint.
For example, bug and dragon aren't elements; they're kinds of animal. The type itself constrains what the Pokemon can look like. Furthermore, Charizard and Gyarados show pretty clearly that a Pokemon can look like a dragon without being dragon-type. There are plenty of Pokemon shaped vaguely like a lizard, a fish, a bird, and so on without needing lizard, fish, or bird types. But in practice the existence of a bug type means that if any Pokemon wants to be bug-shaped it must be saddled with that type, depriving it of a spot that could have a real element. Particularly given the near-nonexistence of bug- or dragon-type attacks it seems to me that these types might as well not exist.
Similarly, the fighting type is awkward because it mandates that a Pokemon of that type be a close human analog. Fighting-type attacks are generally kicks and punches, so fighting-type Pokemon must have feet and fists.
The normal type is Pokemon that have no elemental proclivity. It's also the type that goes along with early attacks like Tackle and Scratch. It's basically the boring type that you encounter early on in the game then move past. I would advocate merging the fighting and normal types, perhaps call the new type strength or muscle. This seems fine thematically; it was never obvious how a punch could be super effective against something resistant to tackling.
The psychic, ghost, and dark types all feed on the same general theme of creepiness; they certainly don't need three distinct types. Psychic has a decent lexicon of moves but ghost has few. Dark moves tend to just correspond to fighting dirty (stealing their items, sucker punching, fake crying) which is thematically questionable. Perhaps one new type (shadow? darkness?) could replace the three together.
Of course merging types throws off game balance in a significant way, so the entire type interaction chart would need some reworking. But that's fine, because it's got issues too.
Some existing types are pretty noninteractive. Only ice- and dragon-type attacks are super effective against dragon-type Pokemon, and dragon-type attacks are super effective against nothing else. Electric, a common Pokemon type, is weak against only ground, a pretty rare attack type. Dark-types also rarely have to worry about weaknesses; rather than having to weigh the pros and cons of having a Pokemon of that type, it's more a matter of using one as soon as you can find it.
No types are mutually weak to one another. It's an option for an interesting game dynamic that simply doesn't exist. One might expect, for example, that water would be super effective against electricity and vice versa; when you drop a toaster in the aquarium it's bad for the fish of course (electricity super effective against water) but it's also bad for the toaster... and your home wiring (water super effective against electricity). The closest Pokemon comes to that is having dragon-type be super effective against dragons, but you already know how I feel about that type.
We would perhaps expect the type setup would be inelegant if it were carried through from the first generation of games, before the Pokemon franchise was swimming in money. But it wasn't. After the first generation the steel and dark types were added to address balance issues. Some other weaknesses and resistances were modified as well. It seems to me that makes criticism reasonable.
Chart from Bulbapedia
Monday, March 26, 2012
Science and Christianity
In the claims that it does make, science is outstandingly reliable. Our systemic use of observation to deduce patterns of reality has been honed over centuries. Science uses mathematically rigorous analysis of data and review by experts to separate reputable theories from crackpots. A consensus by the scientific community is not earned lightly. To dispute such a consensus on an ideological basis is intellectually dishonest. It is the worst of religion; using deception to exert control over the uneducated.
There would be no conflict if the Bible made no testable claims, concerning itself only with parables and philosophies (though we would perhaps still be wrestling with the misogyny, bigotry, and sense of entitlement it can easily be used to promote). But that's not the case. The Bible lists the age of the universe on the order of thousands of years. The entire creation story is full of holes if taken literally. The Bible strongly implies that the earth is stationary - and by some readings flat - while the sun revolves around it. It tells of a sudden recent global flood. The list goes on and on with testable (and disproven!) natural claims in the Bible. And there is an entire political movement that revolves around getting these stories equal representation in our science classrooms.
The analogy that comes to mind would be if science textbooks included passages where they claimed that Jesus was a prostitute, then, through legislation and propaganda, threw a tantrum on a national scale when Christians declined to include those lessons in Sunday school. As Asimov said, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
It seems to me that if science and Christianity are to coexist in harmony, rather than acting as foils to one another, each must respect the expertise of the other. Christianity must defer to accepted science even if it conflicts with a claim made in the Bible. The idea that ancient texts can trump evidence when considering knowledge of the natural world is unacceptable. Relatedly, scientific cannon speaks nothing of the supernatural. It is certainly not a problem that some scientists are also outspoken on the topic but in those cases we must insist that our arguments be coherent and intelligible rather than ignorant and embarrassing.
Of course the reason that critique of science is different from critique of Christianity is that they're different kinds of knowledge. In a religious context, no matter what I believe, as long as I'm respectful and articulate my opinion gets a spot at the religious pluralism table. Others may even learn from me. In science there is a right answer and we drive towards it (see this story by Asimov to understand why science is valuable even if we're not right yet). We use peer review to drive towards consensus. Once we have a solid grasp of something - for example evolution, the basis for modern biology - significant evidence is needed to make an argument against it. This is just not the case when discussing faith, as it's personal rather than evidence-based.
Another distinction is that Christianity makes explicit recommendations for how society ought to be run. There is a significant population that views the Bible as an infallible document mandating bigotry and misogyny. As a result there are those who speak out against religion as an institution. There isn't really an analogous situation with science; while being educated in science can help us make lifestyle choices, science itself is knowledge, not prescriptions. If you're educated in the underlying science you can critique the prescriptions; it's hard to do the same for Christianity without unraveling the faith structure.
Dawkins is probably the scientist most well known for speaking out against religion. He insists that we understand the universe well enough to posit the nonexistence of God. It basically comes from Occam's Razor. We have an understanding of the universe that does not require the existence of a creator God; in fact the existence of such a being with the power and will to suspend the laws of reality demands that we add significant complexity to our model with no supporting evidence. We are compelled to accept the least complicated hypothesis that can explain all observed phenomena. To me this seems like a very elegant argument, and about as sciencey as you can get when discussing something which by definition cannot be observed.
(The other side of that coin is the plausibility argument - there are an awful lot of parameters that have been tuned just right to allow life to exist in the universe. Had the speed of light, the matter/antimatter ratio, and the amount of dark matter in the universe been off by even a small amount from Big Bang parameters it's likely that we wouldn't have planets, much less life. This argument doesn't do much for me, though, as it's just the anthropic principle; if the universe weren't suitable for life, nobody would be around to notice.)
(Of course Dawkins is known not only for being an outspoken against belief in God in the abstract but also for opposing the effect of religion on society. That'll have to wait for another post, as it's certainly a deep topic. My favorite resource on the topic is a debate between Hitchens and Tony Blair.)
We can have conversations about God. And we can have conversations about science. But, no matter how important an ancient text is to you, it should only ever be a part of one of those conversations.
Centuries ago Galileo was ostracized for teaching a revolutionary new astrometric model despite that fact that it matched observations better than the church-approved model; centuries later that's still used as an example of the church's fallibility. Now the evangelical church is fighting to keep evolution and climate change - topics which have been well accepted by experts worldwide for decades - out of American schools while the rest of the world facepalms.
There would be no conflict if the Bible made no testable claims, concerning itself only with parables and philosophies (though we would perhaps still be wrestling with the misogyny, bigotry, and sense of entitlement it can easily be used to promote). But that's not the case. The Bible lists the age of the universe on the order of thousands of years. The entire creation story is full of holes if taken literally. The Bible strongly implies that the earth is stationary - and by some readings flat - while the sun revolves around it. It tells of a sudden recent global flood. The list goes on and on with testable (and disproven!) natural claims in the Bible. And there is an entire political movement that revolves around getting these stories equal representation in our science classrooms.
The analogy that comes to mind would be if science textbooks included passages where they claimed that Jesus was a prostitute, then, through legislation and propaganda, threw a tantrum on a national scale when Christians declined to include those lessons in Sunday school. As Asimov said, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
It seems to me that if science and Christianity are to coexist in harmony, rather than acting as foils to one another, each must respect the expertise of the other. Christianity must defer to accepted science even if it conflicts with a claim made in the Bible. The idea that ancient texts can trump evidence when considering knowledge of the natural world is unacceptable. Relatedly, scientific cannon speaks nothing of the supernatural. It is certainly not a problem that some scientists are also outspoken on the topic but in those cases we must insist that our arguments be coherent and intelligible rather than ignorant and embarrassing.
Of course the reason that critique of science is different from critique of Christianity is that they're different kinds of knowledge. In a religious context, no matter what I believe, as long as I'm respectful and articulate my opinion gets a spot at the religious pluralism table. Others may even learn from me. In science there is a right answer and we drive towards it (see this story by Asimov to understand why science is valuable even if we're not right yet). We use peer review to drive towards consensus. Once we have a solid grasp of something - for example evolution, the basis for modern biology - significant evidence is needed to make an argument against it. This is just not the case when discussing faith, as it's personal rather than evidence-based.
Another distinction is that Christianity makes explicit recommendations for how society ought to be run. There is a significant population that views the Bible as an infallible document mandating bigotry and misogyny. As a result there are those who speak out against religion as an institution. There isn't really an analogous situation with science; while being educated in science can help us make lifestyle choices, science itself is knowledge, not prescriptions. If you're educated in the underlying science you can critique the prescriptions; it's hard to do the same for Christianity without unraveling the faith structure.
Dawkins is probably the scientist most well known for speaking out against religion. He insists that we understand the universe well enough to posit the nonexistence of God. It basically comes from Occam's Razor. We have an understanding of the universe that does not require the existence of a creator God; in fact the existence of such a being with the power and will to suspend the laws of reality demands that we add significant complexity to our model with no supporting evidence. We are compelled to accept the least complicated hypothesis that can explain all observed phenomena. To me this seems like a very elegant argument, and about as sciencey as you can get when discussing something which by definition cannot be observed.
(The other side of that coin is the plausibility argument - there are an awful lot of parameters that have been tuned just right to allow life to exist in the universe. Had the speed of light, the matter/antimatter ratio, and the amount of dark matter in the universe been off by even a small amount from Big Bang parameters it's likely that we wouldn't have planets, much less life. This argument doesn't do much for me, though, as it's just the anthropic principle; if the universe weren't suitable for life, nobody would be around to notice.)
(Of course Dawkins is known not only for being an outspoken against belief in God in the abstract but also for opposing the effect of religion on society. That'll have to wait for another post, as it's certainly a deep topic. My favorite resource on the topic is a debate between Hitchens and Tony Blair.)
We can have conversations about God. And we can have conversations about science. But, no matter how important an ancient text is to you, it should only ever be a part of one of those conversations.
Centuries ago Galileo was ostracized for teaching a revolutionary new astrometric model despite that fact that it matched observations better than the church-approved model; centuries later that's still used as an example of the church's fallibility. Now the evangelical church is fighting to keep evolution and climate change - topics which have been well accepted by experts worldwide for decades - out of American schools while the rest of the world facepalms.
Free Will and Consciousness
Free will is an interesting topic which carries significant religious baggage and has been a focal point of philosophical thought for centuries. Intuitively it seems to us that we have the free will to make choices but upon closer inspection it becomes less obvious.
The brain is a machine that operates according to the laws of physics. The complexity of the brain is very high - it's certainly not understood fully - but we know how big neurons are and how they communicate. And at those length and time scales we would not expect quantum mechanics to be relevant; that is, we would expect the behavior of the brain (and, by extension, the entire physical self) to be a deterministic result from sensory input.
(Of course quantum mechanics introduces perfect randomness, so that doesn't give you free will anyway, but it would at least be somewhere to start.)
Now the way we test whether this is the case is as follows. I give you the choice between chocolate and strawberry ice cream. You choose one. Then I rewind the universe and ask you the exact same question in the exact same environment while your brain is in the exact same state, over and over again. If you choose chocolate every single time, your brain is deterministic; otherwise you have free will.
Unfortunately this test is not possible, for obvious reasons. And the brain is far too complex for us to assemble a perfectly controlled test without time travel. Barring significant advances in brain-related technology, testing free will in any conclusive way is a bust. There plenty of science trying to inch towards understanding free will, of course, but studies are extremely limited in scope. In general they aim to influence or predict the subconscious actions of an individual.
Since there's no known physical or biological mechanism by which we could reasonably expect free will to arise, its existence is starting to seem unlikely.
This seems strange, at least at an intuitive level, because we are conscious beings (I am at least!). I can process information and make decisions. I can choose to take particular actions. If you ask me a question I can think about it, consciously come to a conclusion, and use my mouth and lungs to tell you the answer.
The problem is, as far as I can tell, nobody has a clue why that is. In an academic context consciousness doesn't seem to be well defined (which is unsurprising as it's inherently subjective). Studies regarding consciousness, like those regarding free will, seem more or less in line with tests of the limits of subconscious behavior. That leaves me feeling not much closer to an answer, but at least I'm feeling like I've come up with a good question:
I am conscious, whether or not I can rigorously explain to you what that means. Is there some mechanism by which my consciousness exerts control over my body? Or is my consciousness a by product of a complex but deterministic machine?
The brain is a machine that operates according to the laws of physics. The complexity of the brain is very high - it's certainly not understood fully - but we know how big neurons are and how they communicate. And at those length and time scales we would not expect quantum mechanics to be relevant; that is, we would expect the behavior of the brain (and, by extension, the entire physical self) to be a deterministic result from sensory input.
(Of course quantum mechanics introduces perfect randomness, so that doesn't give you free will anyway, but it would at least be somewhere to start.)
Now the way we test whether this is the case is as follows. I give you the choice between chocolate and strawberry ice cream. You choose one. Then I rewind the universe and ask you the exact same question in the exact same environment while your brain is in the exact same state, over and over again. If you choose chocolate every single time, your brain is deterministic; otherwise you have free will.
Unfortunately this test is not possible, for obvious reasons. And the brain is far too complex for us to assemble a perfectly controlled test without time travel. Barring significant advances in brain-related technology, testing free will in any conclusive way is a bust. There plenty of science trying to inch towards understanding free will, of course, but studies are extremely limited in scope. In general they aim to influence or predict the subconscious actions of an individual.
Since there's no known physical or biological mechanism by which we could reasonably expect free will to arise, its existence is starting to seem unlikely.
This seems strange, at least at an intuitive level, because we are conscious beings (I am at least!). I can process information and make decisions. I can choose to take particular actions. If you ask me a question I can think about it, consciously come to a conclusion, and use my mouth and lungs to tell you the answer.
The problem is, as far as I can tell, nobody has a clue why that is. In an academic context consciousness doesn't seem to be well defined (which is unsurprising as it's inherently subjective). Studies regarding consciousness, like those regarding free will, seem more or less in line with tests of the limits of subconscious behavior. That leaves me feeling not much closer to an answer, but at least I'm feeling like I've come up with a good question:
I am conscious, whether or not I can rigorously explain to you what that means. Is there some mechanism by which my consciousness exerts control over my body? Or is my consciousness a by product of a complex but deterministic machine?
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