Jerry Coyne on Why Evolution is True has been pondering the question of free will lately. It's a good question. An excellent question!
Is everything we do predetermined by the way things come together in our brains based on what's going on while we're still developing?
By the way things came together in our parents' brains before us? By the environment around them? Around us? Experiences that shuffle our mental chemistry?
If you could account for everything that might have an effect on how the dice fall, you know how they'll land, right? It's just the not being able to account for everything that makes it worth betting on the outcome.
It's a question extremely worthy of pondering, and I'm enjoying the posts on it, but I suppose in the end it's not something that makes a whole lot of practical difference in day to day life.
I mean, we presently have no way of accounting for every possible variable, for dice let alone for peoples' brains, so we may not have free will, but we can still make unpredictable decisions.
Whether or not we're technically responsible for those decisions, well, that's the real question. I vote for continued investigation.
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Sunday, August 8, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Go Ahead, Shave Those Eyebrows
GruntDoc asks a question that will surely be of deep interest to all eyebrow-possessing persons: is it true that if you shave off an eyebrow, it will never grow back?
Or is that an Emergency Medicine myth?
Commenters seem to concur that it's mostly a myth, pointing out that lots of people pluck their eyebrows on a regular basis and wouldn't need to do so if hair, once removed, never grew back.
I have no input into emergency medicine, but do recall being told, as a child, that if you plucked your eyebrows they would eventually not grow back. This was given as the explanation of why some of my great aunts had to draw theirs on with pencil.
So maybe eyebrow removal can become permanent after long periods of time, as you get older and hair gets thinner anyway. But apparently we need not worry about shaving them off occasionally.
Good thing, because that was at the top of my weekend to-do list. Shave them off, and draw them back on really close to my eyes, so I look stern and forbidding.
That'll cut down on the questions at the reference desk and leave me more time to assign call numbers.
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Or is that an Emergency Medicine myth?
Commenters seem to concur that it's mostly a myth, pointing out that lots of people pluck their eyebrows on a regular basis and wouldn't need to do so if hair, once removed, never grew back.
I have no input into emergency medicine, but do recall being told, as a child, that if you plucked your eyebrows they would eventually not grow back. This was given as the explanation of why some of my great aunts had to draw theirs on with pencil.
So maybe eyebrow removal can become permanent after long periods of time, as you get older and hair gets thinner anyway. But apparently we need not worry about shaving them off occasionally.
Good thing, because that was at the top of my weekend to-do list. Shave them off, and draw them back on really close to my eyes, so I look stern and forbidding.
That'll cut down on the questions at the reference desk and leave me more time to assign call numbers.
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Thursday, August 5, 2010
Speaking of Games...
I like this long, thoughtful post by Ashelia on Hellmode about choices in video games. One is often presented with the opportunity, in games, to choose one of two (or more) courses of action.
A lot of times this doesn't really have much impact in terms of how things develop in the game, but it can be a way to personalize the character and the experience. The post suggests that it would be cool to have choices, and the moral decisions they often represent, actually mean something in the game.
It should actually matter whether you decide to kill innocents for personal gain, or rescue kittens from burning trees!
Obviously the more a player's choices are able to impact the course of the game's story, the more potential story branches you'd have to be able to get to, and the more complex things would have to be, so that's probably a lot harder to write and program...but it would be cool. Also, think of the replay value!
On the other hand, I can see a sort of upside to the more linear (or multi-linear) way for games to go. I mean, it's kind of nice to know that you can do x, y or z along the way, but that you'll still get to the same destination, isn't it? Because there's a story there, and you want to know how it turns out, and you like to know that you only have to play it a few times to try out all the options and grasp the whole picture.
If every choice you made really had the potential to make significant changes to the way things worked out in the end, you'd have to play the whole thing hundreds of times to get the full experience!
I'd never be able to leave the house.
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A lot of times this doesn't really have much impact in terms of how things develop in the game, but it can be a way to personalize the character and the experience. The post suggests that it would be cool to have choices, and the moral decisions they often represent, actually mean something in the game.
It should actually matter whether you decide to kill innocents for personal gain, or rescue kittens from burning trees!
Obviously the more a player's choices are able to impact the course of the game's story, the more potential story branches you'd have to be able to get to, and the more complex things would have to be, so that's probably a lot harder to write and program...but it would be cool. Also, think of the replay value!
On the other hand, I can see a sort of upside to the more linear (or multi-linear) way for games to go. I mean, it's kind of nice to know that you can do x, y or z along the way, but that you'll still get to the same destination, isn't it? Because there's a story there, and you want to know how it turns out, and you like to know that you only have to play it a few times to try out all the options and grasp the whole picture.
If every choice you made really had the potential to make significant changes to the way things worked out in the end, you'd have to play the whole thing hundreds of times to get the full experience!
I'd never be able to leave the house.
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Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Geek Digression Ahead
We're having some interesting adventures trying to coordinate our latest role-playing session using Google Drawing and Skype. It's good practice for important work-related online conferencing I may be called upon to do one day.
Oh, wait, I don't have to justify this. I'll be honest, then--it has no immediately foreseeable practical application.
It turns out to be about as hard as you'd think to come across a way to make use of ventriloquism in an adventuring situation.
Also, to find a reason to roll a d16. Any reason, any reason at all will be accepted! Very specific randomly chosen directions or phases of the moon is about all we've come up with.
Or I guess some sort of very heavy weapon. There are weapons that do d12 (between 1-12 points of damage, for non-geeks), so d16 is conceivable. Say, an extra-large greataxe with a nasty spiked blade!
You'd get better damage results with 2d8 or 4d4, though, so I don't know that anyone would be clamoring to carry it.
Especially not me. First Edition clerics can't use edged weapons.
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Oh, wait, I don't have to justify this. I'll be honest, then--it has no immediately foreseeable practical application.
It turns out to be about as hard as you'd think to come across a way to make use of ventriloquism in an adventuring situation.
Also, to find a reason to roll a d16. Any reason, any reason at all will be accepted! Very specific randomly chosen directions or phases of the moon is about all we've come up with.
Or I guess some sort of very heavy weapon. There are weapons that do d12 (between 1-12 points of damage, for non-geeks), so d16 is conceivable. Say, an extra-large greataxe with a nasty spiked blade!
You'd get better damage results with 2d8 or 4d4, though, so I don't know that anyone would be clamoring to carry it.
Especially not me. First Edition clerics can't use edged weapons.
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Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Hearken to Me, Good Young People
Librarian-validating news from the NYT (via LISNews) with the exciting headline "So-Called 'Digital Natives' Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows."
Based on a study at Northwestern University,
This is what we keep warning people about! Our constant harping on Wikipedia, however, appears to have had some results, since "only a third of the students used Wikipedia to search for answers when given particular tasks."
They need us! They still need us!
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Based on a study at Northwestern University,
Apparently, the students favor search engine rankings above all other factors. The only thing that matters is that something is the top search result, not that it's legit.
...
In fact, a quarter of the students, when assigned information-seeking tasks, said they chose a website because - and only because - it was the first search result.
This is what we keep warning people about! Our constant harping on Wikipedia, however, appears to have had some results, since "only a third of the students used Wikipedia to search for answers when given particular tasks."
They need us! They still need us!
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Monday, August 2, 2010
Video! Video!
Stephen's Lighthouse passes on the news that Netflix will finally be providing its rental-movie goodness in Canada, but, in what might be a sign of the future of rental-movie goodness, only in download format. No DVDs by mail in north North America.
Is the end of Zombie Shakespeare? I mean, DVDs?
I must say that ever since we achieved the magical combination of PS3 and Netflix streaming video right to the TV, we have watched a lot fewer DVDs. Our streaming options are limited at the moment only by the fact that Netflix's own streaming options are limited.
Some things we must still request in physical form if we want to see them.
And a lot of what is available to stream is kind of bad. Still, it's entertaining to flip through the many choices. It's like having a bunch of bad cable channels!
For someone who's had nothing but basic cable for years, this is exciting stuff.
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Is the end of Zombie Shakespeare? I mean, DVDs?
I must say that ever since we achieved the magical combination of PS3 and Netflix streaming video right to the TV, we have watched a lot fewer DVDs. Our streaming options are limited at the moment only by the fact that Netflix's own streaming options are limited.
Some things we must still request in physical form if we want to see them.
And a lot of what is available to stream is kind of bad. Still, it's entertaining to flip through the many choices. It's like having a bunch of bad cable channels!
For someone who's had nothing but basic cable for years, this is exciting stuff.
.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Wild Books
I'm following Aunt B's book-publishing saga at Tiny Cat Pants. She's working on publicity for a book of ghost stories she's self-publishing, and says,
This is an interesting question for people into future-of-the-book musings. Can media that addresses books refuse to address self-published books forever? See this article for more.
Ooh, what about self-published e-books?
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This is where things really differ between a self-published book and a “real” book. If I had a publisher, I think my media list would easily be 100 places that should at least get a press release. As it is, I have about 20. Folks are very clear that they don’t want to see self-published books.
Which is fine. I just wonder how long they can continue to do so.
This is an interesting question for people into future-of-the-book musings. Can media that addresses books refuse to address self-published books forever? See this article for more.
Ooh, what about self-published e-books?
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