= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
DSimon comments on Excluding the Supernatural - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (124)
Once, in a LARP, I played Isaac Asimov on a panel which was arguing whether vampires were real. It went something like this (modulo my memory): I asked the audience to define "vampire", and they said that vampires were creatures that lived by drinking blood.
I said that mosquitoes were vampires. So they said that vampires were humanoids who lived by drinking blood.
I said that Masai who drank the blood of their cattle were vampires. So they said that vampires were humanoids who lived by drinking blood, and were burned by sunlight.
I (may have) said that a Masai with xeroderma pigmentosum was a vampire. And so on.
My point was that vampires were by definition not real - or at least, not understandable - because any time we found something real and understandable that met the definition of a vampire, we would change the definition to exclude it.
(Strangely, some mythical creatures, such as vampires and unicorns, seem to be defined in a spiritual way; whereas others, such as mermaids and centaurs, do not. A horse genetically engineered to grow a horn would probably not be thought of as a "real" unicorn; a genenged mermaid probably would be admitted to be a "real" mermaid.)
How about: Vampires are humanoids that can sustain themselves only by drinking blood? That excludes blood-drinking when done occasionally or as a cultural practice.
What about a human with altered biochemistry, such that they could synthesize all needed biological materials from compounds found in blood? Is that a vampire?
"Only by", not "by only".
Fine. Humans that are incapable of metabolizing anything other than hemoglobin. Does that count?
I'd call them a vampire, but it'd be partly in jest. DSimon's below would give me even less pause, and with a fuller list it seems to become entirely uncontroversial.
If it turned out that there was a rare degenerative illness that prevented sufferers from absorbing nutrition from any source other than blood, would you agree that sufferers of that illness were vampires?
Ack. Okay, I guess I have no choice but to add yet another qualifier. :-)
How about: Vampires are very long-lived humanoids that derive their longevity from drinking blood. I can't think of a mundane example that fits that description. Which I suppose was Phil's original point: the only useful definition of "vampire" is one which excludes everything that could plausibly exist.