I am not sure what to make of this, because I do think that many times the "When you get to be my age..." argument is often used to shut down an opponent. But... I also think that at times it has merit.

For instance, I don't know of a single one of the fellow art students who could understand the argument for needing to do 500 tracings a week when the instructor told us "At the end of the semester, you will understand why you needed to do them. At least, those of you who do them will understand why"

And, he was right, yet most of us were angry that he could have communicated this more effectively had he tried. However, if he had done a better job of telling us why we needed to do 500 tracings a week, it is likely that fewer of us would have done the 500 tracings a week (also supported by past evidence of when he used to give a fuller explanation to his classes. We could see in both the grades and the classes' work that they had not put in their time)... So, in that case, there was a motivational factor to have us gain the experience on our own, instead of trying to gain it through proxy.

BTW, the reason that we did 500 tracings a week was much like the whole Karate Kid "Wax On", "Wax Off" thing... So that our bodies would learn the motions of drawing, leaving our brains free to think about composition or morphology of the image on which we were working. Except that it was long before the movie ever came out.

Mind you, I do suspect the point you raise, while valid enough to consider, is nowhere near most (intolerant) people's true rejection of homosexuality.

Agree with you that "you'll get around to my view" could often be a reflex defense disguising "I know that I'm right but I can't be bothered to examine my real reasons".

What if you have neither Ritalin nor Provigil?

What about Spiking that coffee with Provigil or Ritalin?

Thanks Kaj,

As I stated in my last post, reading LW often gives me the feeling that I have read something very important, yet I often don't immediately know why what I just read should be important until I have some later context in which to place the prior content.

Your post just gave me the context in which to make better sense of all of the prior content on Bayes here on LW.

It doesn't hurt that I have finally dipped my toes in the Bayesian Waters of Academia in an official capacity with a Probability and Stats class (which seems to be a prerequisite for so many other classes). The combined information from school and the content here have helped me to get a leg up on the other students in the usage of Bayesian Probability at school.

I am just lacking one bit in order to fully integrate Bayes into my life: How to use it to test my beliefs against reality. I am sure that this will come with experience.

I always love reading Less Wrong. I am just sometimes confused, for many days, about what exactly I have read. Until, something pertinent comes along and reveals the salience of what I had read, and then I say "OH! Now I get it!"

At present, I am between those two states... Waiting for the Now I get it moment.

I have a very adverse reaction to human babies... I want to pop them. Or something similar. They look like you could just stick a big pin in them and they'd go POP.

Bunnies are way cuter than human babies (at least to humans I think).

Your challenge will qualify until you find the one person whose parents have taped every time they had sex and can provide the dates on said tapes. You may want to watch out, because now you never know when you might start having to provide evolution tapes :P

Of course... that would imply the person had watched their parents sex tapes, so you're probably still very safe.

Oh... I also thought that I would throw this into the mix.

When a creationist or evolution-denier says that "No one has ever seen an ape evolving into a man, or a dinosaur evolving into a bird." Often, what they mean is that an Ape literally turned into a man while it was alive. The more subtle creationist will just imply that a thing that was fully ape gave birth to a thing that was fully man, yet I have discovered that both types are to be considered about equally likely to be encountered.

Neither type of Creationist or evolution-denier seems to understand that were these things to occur, both would disprove the Theory of Evolution...

Also, for anyone who wishes to know how far some of these people go... William Dembski, who runs a "University" that teaches "Creation Science" has, as part of one of his classes, an assignment whereby they get credit for making posts critical of evolution and in support of creation on what they term "Hostile Internet Forums". PZ Myers has taken to deleting any posts and banning any members who are discovered to be part of these classes. Richard Dawkins' forums have yet to devise a strategy against this sort of thing...

On the issue of "Have you ever seen an Ape evolving into a Human?" and the requested video tape (We get that too at RDF), I have found the following to be very helpful in showing just how stupid the claim is. Simply ask the person:

"How do you know that your father is really your father? Do you see him have sex with your mother to conceive you? How do you know that she did not have sex with someone else? Do you have a video tape to prove this?"

They of course, will have to admit that they take it as given based upon the testimony of their parents.

But, no creationist is going to let a thing like reality or evidence stand in their way. In the words of more than a few Creationists, such as the founder of the Creation Museum: If reality and scripture contradict, reality is wrong and scripture is right (paraphrased, as this has been stated in more ways than I could possibly recount here)