User:Luigifan18
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Yo, I'm the Internet Wanderer Luigifan, and I stumbled upon this website through TV Tropes while piddling around one day (well, before they deleted their page on this site…). To put it bluntly, this place is hilarious, and it's really made me rethink several beliefs that I've held for a long time, particularly my faith in Catholicism (well, this place and Reddit[note 1]). I still identify as Catholic, but, well, let's just say that I don't take it as seriously as I used to.[note 2]
Essays
- Essay:The Word Of The Lord Should Not Be Static — An essay about why it makes no sense for God's perfection to be used as an excuse for having a strict, inflexible religious dogma
- Essay:Why Heresy Is Good And Blasphemy Is Bad — An exploration of the role that heresy can play in challenging dogma and improving religion, and blasphemy being nothing more than hate speech
- Essay:Why are logical fallacies effective? — Answering the question of why logical fallacies are effective at persuading
moronspeople - Essay:A critique of the Catholic Church's response to its pedophile priest problem (WIP) — An examination of the Child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, the moral and survivalistic dilemma the Roman Catholic Church was put in by the actions of its pedophilic priests, the limitations on the Church's ability to solve the problem, the inefficacies of the Church's response, and how it could have handled the situation better
- Essay:List of things that the Bible is NOT (and has never pretended or tried to be) (WIP) — A play-by-play smackdown of creationists, fundies, and other Biblical literalists trying to do things with the Bible that its authors in all likelihood never anticipated or intended
- Essay:Fundies are like Highlander — A quick comparison between fundamentalists and the immortals from the Highlander franchise[note 3]
- Essay:Does the concept of eugenics have any merits? (WIP) — In which I play devil's advocate by explaining how eugenics could theoretically be used to improve humanity, before delving into how the Nazis discredited it by showcasing just how easily it can be hijacked by bigots and twisted into something completely horrible, thus leading the bulk of humanity to come to the loose consensus[note 4] that we cannot trust our own instincts in regard to what human traits should be promoted or weeded out
Projects
Drafts
- User:Luigifan18/Restoration notice/Laird Shaw (Basically, I want to convert this into a template.)
- User:Luigifan18/Fun:Progress & Regress Pokémon — My
latest magnum opusattempt to pull Pokémon fans into RationalWiki. - Draft:World Aflame — A book by Billy Graham that made me a bit of a religious fruitcake in my teenage years.
- Draft:What God Wants — The titular chapter is a blank page. 'Nuff said.
- Draft:WTF, Evolution?! — A.K.A. a series of wisecracks about weird-looking animals, interspersed with educational descriptions of evolution.
Launched Pages
Mini-Essays
A "mini-essay" is, loosely speaking, a large edit to a page that is (usually) mostly confined to note-references which takes an essay-like form, but is too narrow in scope and/or dependent upon the rest of its host page for context to be placed in essayspace. Mini-essays generally aim to elaborate on a point raised in the host article, play devil's advocate to a point and provide potential rationales for things that look weird or dodgy, support or temper a harsh criticism, and/or bring up an opposing argument so that said argument can be addressed, clarify the meaning of a statement for people who are new to RationalWiki and don't fully understand the snarky/scientific point of view, or serve some other utility role for their host page. A lot of these mini-essays are possibly too opinionated for mainspace, need more citations, or may even be inaccurate (as I generally write them off the top of my head), so I would greatly appreciate feedback on them (and perhaps some writing support).
IMPORTANT UPDATE: As of May 15, 2024 and continuing until some undetermined point in time, I will no longer be inserting mini-essays directly into pages, due to many of them having proved to be rather… problematic. Instead, I will be declaring intended mini-essays within a special sandbox (User:Luigifan18/Mini-essay review board) where I include snippets from mainspace articles where I have written ref notes and other "mini-essay"-type potential edits and opening them up to discussion and feedback from the community, culminating in an ATIM-style vote on whether or not they should be included. Hopefully this hews more closely to my original intent to have my mini-essays be subjected to scrutiny, feedback, and approval or rejection from the RationalWiki community, without risking the inadvertent defilement of RationalWiki mainspace articles.
Pages where I've written mini-essays that have received minimal feedback
These are mini-essays that I've written that have not yet been reviewed and approved or disapproved of by other editors.[note 6] Please feel free to take a look at them and let me know what you think![note 7] (Bear in mind that all revision links lead to the edit where the mini-essay was originally created; these pages (and the mini-essays) may have been updated since then.)
- Page: Responding to Sam Burke's Argument That Christianity Entails Anti-Natalism
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=prev&oldid=2470932
- Revision 1 Description: How cultural background affects the baseline assumption of which religion is treated as the default "truth"
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=next&oldid=2470933
- Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=2527002&oldid=2506438
- Revision 3 Description: Expanding the first mini-essay to specify what is required to produce someone who is actually a blank slate towards the subject of religion (namely, skepticism and/or indifference towards religion, as opposed to hatred)
- Revision 4: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=2603071&oldid=2539235
- Revision 4 Description: Further clarifying that strict adherence to dogma can be a powerful disincentive towards belief in religion (especially when information contradicting that dogma is pretty easy to come by) and that Christianity's interests of not having people leave the faith can be best served by not demanding a very specific set of beliefs from its followers
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Responding_to_Sam_Burke%27s_Argument_That_Christianity_Entails_Anti-Natalism&diff=prev&oldid=2470932
- Revisions:
- Page: Risk
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Risk&diff=prev&oldid=2471882
- Description: Expanding on the plane crash vs. car accident example of poor risk calculation[note 8]
- Page: Silver bullet
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Silver_bullet&diff=prev&oldid=2472305
- Description: Why the term "silver bullet" is specifically used for a simple "solution" to a complex problem.[note 9]
- Page: Science and religion
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Science_and_religion&diff=prev&oldid=2479324
- Description: Exploring religion's purpose (religion exists and has existed for most of human history, so the theory of evolution would suggest that it's useful for humanity in some fashion)
- Page: Freedom of religion
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_religion&diff=prev&oldid=2481286
- Revision 1 Description: Regional religious dominance ≠ state endorsement
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_religion&type=revision&diff=2502769&oldid=2481287
- Revision 2 Description: Religion being seen as a threat and the impact of this perception on freedom of religion
- Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_religion&type=revision&diff=2583352&oldid=2528259
- Revision 3 Description: A note on the subject of monolatrism, Judaism's monolatric past, the editing of holy books, and what implications this editing should have for anyone who thinks said holy books are divinely inspired and should be followed to the letter
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_religion&diff=prev&oldid=2481286
- Revisions:
- Page: Dogma
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Dogma&type=revision&diff=2487316&oldid=2260086
- Description: A truncated version of my critique of the concept of dogma
- Page: Overton window
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Overton_window&type=revision&diff=2495069&oldid=2495047
- Description: The relationship between the Overton window and heresy
- Page: Secular religions
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Secular_religions&diff=prev&oldid=2496465
- Revision 1 Description: A rant about how debates between theists and atheists tend to go nowhere, since neither side has definitive evidence, theists struggle to come up with arguments that don't commit at least one egregious logical fallacy, atheists are stuck with the nigh-impossible task of proving a negative, and neither side can admit that the other is right without getting smacked by a blimp-sized lump of cognitive dissonance
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Secular_religions&diff=prev&oldid=2640076
- Revision 2 Description: Revising the prior mini-essay to admit that people can and do change their minds about religion (though usually not because of the results of a single debate) and mentioning that Ann Coulter's definition of "liberalism" probably looks incredibly bizarre to people who don't frame "liberalism" in U.S. terms
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Secular_religions&diff=prev&oldid=2496465
- Revisions:
- Page: Anecdotal evidence
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Anecdotal_evidence&diff=prev&oldid=2502491
- Description: Piling on additional reasons why anecdotal evidence is not reliable
- Page: Lie detection
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Lie_detection&type=revision&diff=2510148&oldid=2502675
- Description: Exploring additional circumstances behind stress-free deceit and hesitant truth-telling, as well as the nature of honesty
- Page: Red Queen's race
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Red_Queen%27s_race&diff=2506060&oldid=2427199
- Description: I added a closing statement about the trouble an unrestrained Red Queen's race can cause and how difficult it can be to prevent one from escalating.
- Page: Atomwaffen Division
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Atomwaffen_Division&diff=2511047&oldid=2510991
- Description: Okay, this one barely even counts as a mini-essay. All I did was type up a quick counterargument to the closing line of AWF's mission statement (and I'm not sure if it's actually a counterargument or just a statement to the effect of "Nazi scum should fuck off"). I'm only putting it here because as I was about to hit "Save changes", I realized that I should advise readers to have some sort of backup plan before they actually run their mouths off to someone who is likely to have few (if any) qualms against murder, so I added a disclaimer. I don't want to get anyone killed…
- Page: Speed of light
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Speed_of_light&diff=2526941&oldid=2526934
- Revision 1 Description: In the midst of adding some notes and making some quality-of-life edits, I ended up going on a tangent on the difference between cranks and denialists — yes, most people who are either of those are also the other, but there is a distinction to be drawn between them. I went into more detail in the article, but the distinction boils down to this: cranks make positive unsubstantiated affirmations ("this idea is true!"), while denialists make negative unsubstantiated affirmations ("that idea is false!").
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Speed_of_light&diff=prev&oldid=2526950
- Revision 2 Description: While cleaning up a few things that I missed in the previous edit, I decided that at the point where the article states that all observers would observe the speed of light being the same, I would have to include a disclaimer that this only applies to properly functioning observers, given the kerfuffle that ensued in 2011 when some instruments erroneously reported that some neutrinos had apparently broken the speed of light.
- Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Speed_of_light&diff=2637999&oldid=2541566
- Revision 3 Description: While adding a few more links and tweaking some formatting, I also found myself talking about the nature of motion to address the unintuitive concept of something that literally cannot move at a rate below a certain speed, let alone stop moving altogether (like light or tachyons). Long story short, much like the thrown baseball on a train that appears to move at different speeds depending on where it's observed from, everything on the Earth is moving through space along with the Earth itself, and the same is true for objects on other celestial bodies, so there really isn't anything that is completely stationary in the universe. Likewise, all particles on the atomic scale are also in constant motion (except at absolute zero). Thus, light is not that unusual in the sense of being restricted to a certain speed.
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Speed_of_light&diff=2526941&oldid=2526934
- Revisions:
- Page: Word magic
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Word_magic&type=revision&diff=2526996&oldid=2462287
- Description: I expanded the "Explanation" section to explain that the existence of a word, by itself, only denotes something that humanity is capable of imagining, which is only loosely related to whether or not that thing actually exists. (And, no, I didn't even stuff this one into a footnote. I'm putting it here simply because of the volume and relevance of information that I added.)
- Page: Sin
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Sin&diff=2533899&oldid=2533896
- Revision 1 Description: I went on a rant on how believing in predestination predestines the believer to be a rotten no-good son of a bitch.
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Sin&diff=2583532&oldid=2533899
- Revision 2 Description: Defending the usage of religion as a defense mechanism against selfishness and anarchy, while still decrying religion spiraling out of control into a self-righteous mess
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Sin&diff=2533899&oldid=2533896
- Revisions:
- Page: Axis of Evil
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Axis_of_Evil&type=revision&diff=2538776&oldid=2427720
- Description: I wrote a note about how the leadership of Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil" really was unhealthy for their citizens (at least from a Western perspective) at the time he was starting to consider invading them, and what Bush should really be criticized for is the hypocrisy in only invading Iraq when it served American interests and cocking everything up.
- Page: International relations
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=International_relations&diff=prev&oldid=2538775
- Description: A set of footnotes on the pitfalls of deterrence (such as the assumption that no politician is a bloodthirsty lunatic)[note 10]
- Page: Atheism
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Atheism&diff=prev&oldid=2539194
- Description: An honest assessment of the relationship between religion and atheism and the strengths and weaknesses of a religious worldview, scattered all over the page[note 11]
- Page: Islamophobia
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Islamophobia&diff=prev&oldid=2539160
- Description: Exploring the blatant hypocrisy of the Islamophobic attitudes of Christian fundamentalists, who are guilty of many of the same sins as the Wahhabists who stoke their ire
- Page: Evolution and morality
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Evolution_and_morality&type=revision&diff=2539594&oldid=2500722
- Description: In which I point out that creationists do have a "precautionary principle" — namely, Christianity itself — and the problem is more that their implementation of said code (if not the code itself) is heavily flawed due to stagnation, hypocrisy, and corruption
- Page: Falsifiability of evolution
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Falsifiability_of_evolution&diff=prev&oldid=2540002
- Description: A small rant about Goddidit having no predictive power and how the closest thing it has to evidence or predictive power is the word of people who claimed to get memos from God Himself (and even Creationist fundies tend to be somewhat skeptical of new prophets cropping up — just look at what happened to Joseph Smith when he claimed to have a New New Testament!)
- Page: Authenticity of divine revelation
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Authenticity_of_divine_revelation&diff=2539994&oldid=2475922
- Revision 1 Description: A memo expansion on how polytheistic religions often have trickster/prankster gods (like Hermes, Loki, Coyote, or Veles) who would readily fit into the role of "Cartesian daemon" who makes it more difficult for all of the gods to reliably communicate with their followers (and even in Abrahamic religions, which tend to be monotheistic, Satan fills a similar trickster role who would not be above impersonating God to tempt people into sin)
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Authenticity_of_divine_revelation&type=revision&diff=2540000&oldid=2539996
- Revision 2 Description: Okay, this barely counts as a mini-essay, but it's still important, since it closes a loophole that a wannabe prophet could use to try to refute the proof.
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Authenticity_of_divine_revelation&diff=2539994&oldid=2475922
- Revisions:
- Page: No platform
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=No_platform&type=revision&diff=2539894&oldid=2502548
- Description: A side note about someone issuing a "change my mind" challenge being a potential red flag for that person being completely unwilling to change their mind
- Page: Snake handling
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Snake_handling&diff=prev&oldid=2540124
- Description: A critique of Christianity being accused of being a "death cult"
- Page: Animal rights
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Animal_rights&diff=prev&oldid=2540185
- Description: A side paragraph on cruelty as the differential between infliction of suffering and the necessity of such actions
- Page: White supremacy
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=2508668&oldid=2508634
- Revision 1 Description: This isn't really a mini-essay on its own, per se; it's more of a quick bit of snark towards the inherent selfishness of bigotry (specifically, white supremacy being little more than an extreme progression of exclusively serving the interests of oneself and one's immediate family at the expense of everyone else). However, I later used it as the foundation of a more thorough mini-essay.
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=2540563&oldid=2540551
- Revision 2 Description: I went on a tangent about how some crank "phenomena", denialist agendas, and conspiracy theories are not inherently bigoted, while other crank "phenomena", denialist agendas, and conspiracy theories are inherently bigoted (and crank magnetism can result in non-bigoted irrational ideas getting mixed in with bigoted irrational ideas). I also snarked a bit about how white supremacists don't properly understand what "virtue" means.
- Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=next&oldid=2540563
- Revision 3 Description: This is an expansion of Revision 1 in which I postulate that one root cause of bigotry may be selfish-gene-driven behaviors and attitudes, as postulated and described by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene.[note 12] Yes, I know it's ad hoc, and bigotry tends to be acquired more through nurture than nature, but I feel that this hypothesis could be a valid explanation for how bigotry became an element of the human psyche to begin with.
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=White_supremacy&diff=2508668&oldid=2508634
- Revisions:
- Page: Heaven
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heaven&type=revision&diff=2543742&oldid=2543645
- Description: An attempt to nip the edit wars about heaven being real or not in the bud
- Page: Nutpicking
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Nutpicking&diff=prev&oldid=2545084
- Revision 1 Description: A series of diatribes about deranged and dishonest alliances
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Nutpicking&diff=2601780&oldid=2592820
- Revision 2 Description: Pointing out that believing in predestination tends to lead to bigotry
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Nutpicking&diff=prev&oldid=2545084
- Revisions:
- Page: Tea Party movement
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Tea_Party_movement&type=revision&diff=2545199&oldid=2523023
- Description: Roasting the cavalcade of depravity that is the American Right
- Page: Caffeine
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Caffeine&diff=prev&oldid=2545890
- Description: Proposing a hypothesis that part of the reason why caffeine isn't seen as a "fun" drug (and therefore at risk of offending or stirring up a moral panic among fundies and other moral-guardian types) is precisely because it isn't illegal at all (not even for use by teenagers) and therefore lacks the "stick it to the man" factor of illegal or illegal-for-teenagers drugs like alcohol, heroin, or ecstasy that would make rebellious teenagers extra-eager to use it
- Page: Liberal bias
- Revision:
https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Liberal_bias&diff=prev&oldid=2545923https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Liberal_bias&type=revision&diff=2546482&oldid=2519370 - Description: Over 3,000 bytes of calling conservatives out for being completely idiotic and unhealthy for humanity and exploring the pitfalls of capitalism
- Revision:
- Page: Rationality
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Rationality&type=revision&diff=2545926&oldid=2467078
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Rationality&diff=2584408&oldid=2545926
- Revision 2 Description: Sharing a relevant tidbit of Islamic thought (yes, Islam does actually hold rationality in high regard, contrary to what some Muslims might think)
- Revisions:
- Page: Antitheism
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Antitheism&diff=prev&oldid=2545951
- Revision 1 Description: Is religion capable of being wrong and misguided? Yes. Should religion be criticized and corrected? Yes. Should religion be despised and demolished? Hell no.
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Antitheism&diff=prev&oldid=2638073
- Revision 2 Description: Addressing a couple of elephants in the room in the form of people who honestly draw satisfaction, contentment, and purpose from their religious beliefs (and how the existence of such people is not a valid reason to claim that religion is the only way to lead a happy and fulfilled life for everyone) and the obnoxiousness (and relative scarcity) of proselytizing atheists
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Antitheism&diff=prev&oldid=2545951
- Revisions:
- Page: Atheist fundamentalism
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Atheist_fundamentalism&diff=prev&oldid=2545961
- Description: A couple of brief rants about how any cause can potentially be hijacked by assholes and expressing sympathy towards the homosexual victims of Soviet oppression
- Page: Saudi Arabia
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Saudi_Arabia&diff=prev&oldid=2547300
- Description: Assorted remarks on how theocracy is overall a terrible idea
- Page: Moral panic
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Moral_panic&diff=prev&oldid=2549064
- Description: A brief synopsis of how moral panics can egg on counter-cultural rebels by turning the subject of the panic into a forbidden fruit and/or an icon of opposition to the status quo (basically, the psychology that drives the Streisand effect can also apply here)
- Page: Policies of Donald Trump
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Policies_of_Donald_Trump&type=revision&diff=2583337&oldid=2583294
- Description: Snarking on the Southern Strategy, McCarthyism, and the personality of Donald Trump
- Page: Externalities
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Externalities&diff=2584364&oldid=2584358
- Description: Questioning how the most common corporate externality avoidance tactics make sense as long-term plans, considering that they involve spending money to avoid spending money
- Page: Fact
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Fact&type=revision&diff=2601515&oldid=2569547
- Description: Dunking on Ben Shapiro and analyzing the value of gold
- Page: Zeal of the convert
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Zeal_of_the_convert&diff=2603068&oldid=2603059
- Description: Let's be real — communism has legitimately good intentions, it just hasn't thought things through and tends to fall flat on its face as a result. Fascism is simply bigotry and tribalism writ large — the expression of ultimate desire for self-prosperity at the expense of everybody else.
- Page: Anti-Defamation League
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-Defamation_League&diff=2605131&oldid=2600913
- Revision 1 Description: I felt the need to make a comment on how there's a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and one can and should criticize and demand the cessation of Israel's ghastly treatment of the Palestinian people without demanding the complete revocation of Israel's sovereignty and statehood.[note 14]
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-Defamation_League&diff=next&oldid=2605263
- Revision 2 Description: After some back and forth, I decided I had to make myself clearer on not conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Anti-Defamation_League&diff=2605131&oldid=2600913
- Revisions:
- Page: Bystander effect
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Bystander_effect&type=revision&diff=2605859&oldid=2414014
- Description: The section on pluralistic ignorance made me feel obliged to bring up people who do know things that are unknown to most — particularly scientists — which then led to me slamming anti-intellectualism (while also warning of the folly of credentialism).
- Page: Sexual intercourse
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Sexual_intercourse&diff=2608197&oldid=2608191
- Description: …I studied biology in college. I'm fascinated by the subject. I couldn't resist going on a tangent about breeding seasons.
- Page: Iran-Contra
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Iran-Contra&type=revision&diff=2609774&oldid=2584195
- Description: More jabs made at the Republican Party's expense (as well as a jab at communism)
- Page: Takedownman
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Takedownman&diff=prev&oldid=2610063
- Description: Inquiring on the meaning of "plasma" and snarking on some weird things Takedownman did
- Page: Red-baiting
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Red-baiting&diff=prev&oldid=2610153
- Description: More dunking on fundies
- Page: Intelligence (government)
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Intelligence_(government)&diff=prev&oldid=2610181
- Description: A bit of light-hearted snark about the general assumption that HUMINT means the kind of stuff that one would see in a James Bond or Mission: Impossible film.
- Page: WOMBAT
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=WOMBAT&type=revision&diff=2612493&oldid=2602123
- Description: In which I compare the labeling of a pseudoscientific hypothesis as a WOMBAT to the dismissal of a frivolous lawsuit with prejudice; that is, the idea is so stupid and proposed in such egregious bad faith that those who have formally established their expertise in the matter know better than to take it seriously and don't want it anywhere in their presence.
- Page: Apologetics
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Apologetics&diff=2621880&oldid=2414196
- Description: A grab bag of comments about the nature, techniques, and arguments of apologists
- Page: Methodological naturalism
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Methodological_naturalism&type=revision&diff=2623837&oldid=2623833
- Description: Smacking down the idea that evidence-based medicine can be embraced while simultaneously denying the validity of evolution and using Dungeons & Dragons to illustrate Clarke's point about magic bleeding into science
- Page: Yin and yang
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Yin_and_yang&diff=prev&oldid=2624168
- Description: Commentary on "separate but equal" and humans not liking darkness
- Page: Evolved ministry
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Evolved_ministry&type=revision&diff=2637666&oldid=2637293
- Description: Explaining the meanings of "aerokinesis" and "hydrokinesis" for people who aren't familiar with terms used in superhero fandom circles
- Page: Blasphemy
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Blasphemy&diff=2638698&oldid=2619136
- Description: In which I compare the case of the Tennessee man who "vandalized a church" by sticking a paper to the door to Martin Luther doing pretty much the same thing several centuries earlier
- Page: Levitation
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Levitation&type=revision&diff=2639790&oldid=2585560
- Description: Providing a more detailed explanation of how levitation is defined and how it is contrasted with flight
- Page: Parapsychology
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Parapsychology&diff=prev&oldid=2639769
- Description: A grab-bag of statements about the connection between parapsychology and psychic powers and drawing parallels between parapsychology, the ideomotor effect, Clever Hans, thin-slice judgments, and intuition
- Page: Christian Science
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Christian_Science&diff=prev&oldid=2640235
- Description: Comparing and contrasting Christian Science and Gnosticism's denial of material reality
- Page: 12 Arguments Evolutionists Should Avoid
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=12_Arguments_Evolutionists_Should_Avoid&diff=prev&oldid=2640643
- Description: Mentioning how Project Steve intentionally handicaps itself to prove its point and "creation science" is wildly different from actual science
- Page: Jerusalem syndrome
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Jerusalem_syndrome&diff=prev&oldid=2640790
- Description: …I do hope Christopher Hitchens wasn't trying to imply that religion is a mental illness, rather than being something that might cover it…
- Page: Informal fallacy
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Informal_fallacy&diff=prev&oldid=2640857
- Description: Contrasting the circumstantial fallacy with Bulverism
- Page: Richard Dawkins[note 15]
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Dawkins&diff=prev&oldid=2640888
- Description: Mentioning that Dawkins raised controversy not by doubting Creationism, but by doubting Christianity itself, and mentioning that firm disbelief in the Christian God is not incompatible with atheism that acknowledges the [remote] possibility that a god (or gods) may exist without the Christian God necessarily being (one of) the god(s) that genuinely exists
- Page: Richard Dawkins - God Hater
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Dawkins_-_God_Hater&diff=prev&oldid=2640904
- Description: Elaborating on how it's not an association fallacy to claim that religious moderates can contribute to fundamentalism even if they don't endorse or actively oppose it, Stalin's character flaws, how it's okay to not know God's origins (rather than claiming him to be eternal), Chinese people not being particularly familiar with Christianity or Islam until they interacted with people holding those faiths, non-belief being a blank-slate default state that everyone is born into, and the question of ants having consciousness… whoo, there's a lot here.
- Page: I'm not prejudiced, but...
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=I%27m_not_prejudiced,_but...&diff=prev&oldid=2648666
- Description: Discussing how the fact that "men tend to be stronger than women" is merely a statistical tendency that applies to populations rather than small samples or any two individuals, and that there are many factors beyond biological sex/sex horomones that contribute to physical strength (such as physical fitness routines); thus, applying the statement that "men are stronger than women" to a narrower scope than humanity as a whole, with little to no regard to other variables, is a fallacious instance of biological determinism (more specifically hasty generalization and therefore is sexist.
Pages where I wrote mini-essays that were later deemed unworthy of mainspace
These are mini-essays I added to pages that were later removed by myself or other editors due to being detrimental to the quality of their host pages. Some of these have been moved to essayspace because I felt that they could stand on their own and were worth salvaging; others will simply languish in the fossil record unless I can think of a way to rewrite them into something that's actually useful.
- Page: Heresy
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heresy&diff=2488504&oldid=2480764
- Revision 1 Description: Distinguishing heresy from blasphemy (albeit with definitions of my own devising)
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heresy&diff=2502963&oldid=2502934
- Revision 2 Description: Elaboration on why religion should be criticized and amended, but not outright demolished and abolished
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Heresy&diff=2488504&oldid=2480764
- Removal reason: Removed from mainspace because it was more an expression of opinion than of fact (not to mention being a borderline argumentum ad dictionarium); now located at Essay:Why Heresy Is Good And Blasphemy Is Bad
- Revisions:
- Page: Freedom of speech
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Freedom_of_speech&diff=prev&oldid=2495907
- Description: I couldn't help expanding on the bullhorn thing.
- Removal reason: Removed from mainspace because it was pretty much just snark for the sake of snark.
- Page: Logical fallacy
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Logical_fallacy&diff=2488676&oldid=2488671
- Description: Using TV Tropes to explain how logical fallacies manage to be persuasive — first with TV Tropes' own neutral, non-judgmental language, then rephrasing it in a more RationalWiki-esque tone
- Removal reason: Removed from mainspace for being a bit too insulting to cranks and people who fall for their bullshit; now located at Essay:Why are logical fallacies effective?
- Page: Cleanse
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cleanse&diff=prev&oldid=2480619
- Description: Assessing the cleanliness of the Ganges River & taking the piss out of homeopathy.[note 16]
- Removal reason: The Ganges mini-essay was cut for uncited speculation (I'm planning on patching it up with actual sources and more coherent points and restoring it, but that may take more research than I'm prepared to handle). The anti-homeopathy snark is still present.
- Page: Internet crime
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_crime&type=revision&diff=2511094&oldid=2511060
- Description: Again, this is less a mini-essay and more me throwing some snark around. But seriously, I did take my role as a sysop pretty seriously while it lasted,[note 17] and if ban evasion is a federal crime, then Ken, Mikemikemev, Grawp, Kamen Rider, and the rest of the usual disruption suspects are guilty as charged several dozen times over. I'm just not sure if it'd be worth the trouble of formally prosecuting them (probably not, considering how easy it is to clean up their messes and how the spectacle of a court case could possibly qualify as a troll banquet). (Heck, I'm not even sure whether or not I'm JAQing off here. The page had conflicting evidence on how seriously ban evasion could be treated as a federal crime, particularly for wiki sites, so I may or may not be full of shit.)
- Removal reason: As it turns out, yes, I was full of shit.
- Page: Evolutionary ethics
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Evolutionary_ethics&diff=2586807&oldid=2408824
- Description: Bringing up Richard Dawkins' selfish gene theory
- Removal reason: Long story short, the whole page went bye-bye due to glaring issues with its quality and, erm, suspicious point of view. See RationalWiki:Articles for deletion/Evolutionary ethics for details.[note 18]
- Page: Honor killings
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Honor_killings&type=revision&diff=2496447&oldid=2470030
- Description: An examination of the relationship between religion and the wider culture it arises from (as well as throwing some shade at the Middle East)
- Removal reason: I may have thrown a bit too much shade at the Middle East… see the talk page for more.
- Page: Cognitive dissonance
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=prev&oldid=2475158
- Revision 1 Description: Awareness of needles & expanding the genocidal army analogy
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=prev&oldid=2475179
- Revision 2 Description: Exploring just what the heck the word "soul" describes if not the spiritual part of a person that supposedly lives on after the physical body's death
- Revision 3: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=2510559&oldid=2496024
- Revision 3 Description: I expanded the genocidal army analogy again to account for the "flight" and "freeze" parts of the stress response.
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cognitive_dissonance&diff=prev&oldid=2475158
- Removal reason: Apparently User:Bongolian thinks mini-essays are stupid. 🫤 Or, to be honest, I'm not sure why these were removed.
- Revisions:
- Page: Militant atheism
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Militant_atheism&diff=2506481&oldid=2469387
- Description: I got carried away ranting about the Four Horsemen of New Atheism.
- Removal reason: Apparently I was too generous to the Four Horsemen in terms of their willingness to coexist with sane religious people. (A piece of my mini-essay did get incorporated into the article proper, though.)
- Page: Slippery slope
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Slippery_slope&diff=2491429&oldid=2491426
- Description: In which I draw a parallel between unfounded slippery slope arguments about same-sex marriage and Pascal's Wager to demonstrate that both are examples of how easily an argument that rests on no actual evidence can be reinterpreted to argue in either direction on an issue.[note 19]
- Removal reason: Apparently this was a bit confusing and wall-of-texty.
- Page: Ark Encounter
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Ark_Encounter&type=revision&diff=2627012&oldid=2626673
- Description: In which I throw shade at Ken Ham and his AiG cronies for attempting to do something with the Bible that its authors probably never anticipated and certainly didn't write it in a fashion that would enable the endeavor — specifically, creating an exact replica of Noah's Ark as described in the Book of Genesis, never mind that the only parameters we were given were the length, width, height, and type of wood (and the parameters were in cubits — a non-metric unit, with all the potential inconsistency that implies).
- Removal reason: Apparently, even a quick zinger at a creationist who's known to be an imbecile, resting on nothing but obviously-true assertions, still requires extensive citations. Also, at least three people thought the joke wasn't funny enough to be included in mainspace, though it was suggested that I make a separate essay out of it.
- Page: Racial profiling
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Racial_profiling&diff=prev&oldid=2631572
- Description: A quick cautionary remark about how easily unconscious bias can occur and not be noticed
- Removal reason: I'm not entirely sure, but it was stating the obvious.
- Page: Hell
- Revisions:
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Hell&diff=prev&oldid=2475065
- Revision 1 Description: A slightly less unfair viewpoint on the subject of why people might deserve infinite torture (and why it's still somewhat questionable)
- Revision 2: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Hell&diff=prev&oldid=2490133
- Revision 2 Description: This is simply an expansion of the original mini-essay.
- Revision 1: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Hell&diff=prev&oldid=2475065
- Removal reason: According to Bongolian's edit summary, "Deleting a dubious mini-edit on which variety of Christianity is more reasonable.", though I'd say he missed the point of the mini-essay — bringing up the moderate Christian objection so the rationale behind it could be assessed and perhaps debunked.
- Revisions:
- Page: Haig's Law
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Haig%27s_Law&diff=prev&oldid=2490115
- Description: A somewhat expanded synopsis of the law of exclamation and explaining some nuance of the concept
- Removal reason: I'm not entirely sure, but I think it has something to do with the mini-essay stating the obvious and the Haig's Law page not being the best place to go in-depth on the law of exclamation.
- Page: Placebo effect
- Revision: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Placebo_effect&type=revision&diff=2639086&oldid=2608886
- Description: Explaining how the placebo effect in and of itself is not an example of mind-body woo, though it does often contribute to woo
- Removal reason: I dunno exactly (Bongolian just seems to have it in for me), but I think it's something to do with redundancy (the subject of mind-body woo is already addressed further down the page).
Pages where I wrote mini-essays that are quality additions to the article
I won't be moving anything here based on my own opinions alone, since that would defeat the point of RationalWiki's mobocracy. If you think one of my mini-essays is a great addition to its page, please tell me that you like it and why you approve! (Either my own talk page or the talk page of the host article will be suitable, but please specify the location of the mini-essay if you use the former, or ping me if you use the latter.) If I get enough approval (say, at least three such remarks), I'll move a mini-essay here.
So far, this section is empty.
Notes
- ↑ I happen to be active on both /r/religiousfruitcake and r/antitheistcheesecake, and I often find myself feeling the need to tell both of them to stop blindly hating on each other… I've actually created a community named /r/fruitandcheese to serve as neutral ground between them, but only time will tell how that turns out.
EDIT: As of April 7, 2024, probably not very well, as I got myself banned by putting my foot in my mouth by hastily saying "The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi". I didn't mean that as an endorsement/advocation of violence (I was thinking more of death by natural causes or the consequences of their own actions), but there really is no excuse for how that couldn't be taken the wrong way. I'm trying to appeal the ban (well, "appeal" might be the wrong word; I think I deserve to be banned, I just don't think I deserve a permanent ban), but the formal appeal form's limitations (mainly a 500-character limit and one-attempt limit) prevented me from making an effective apology (in both senses of that word), so the main appeal got rejected. I have tried to appeal using the account help form, but I don't have any idea whether or not that will work (I haven't gotten any feedback on my ticket even being read). And since I didn't appoint any other moderators on r/fruitandcheese due to not being able to find any other users I could trust to remain reasonable, accommodating to both sides, and relatively neutral in debates between theists and atheists, the prospects for its survival don't look good. The whole situation is my fault, really, but… damn, I can't help being upset. - ↑ Those who knew me on GameFAQs from about 2007 to 2010 will know what I mean. If you don't recognize the name "Furry Fiasco", well, explaining would end up requiring me to type multiple pages' worth of tropes and stuff.
- ↑ This was originally placed in the one world religion page, but Cosmikdebris felt that it was editorializing, and after pondering the matter for a while, I came to agree.
- ↑ I say "loose consensus" because many people in the modern day are morally repulsed by the very concept of eugenics (again, in large part because what the Nazis did with the idea was freaking horrible), and are therefore completely unwilling to even consider any arguments in its favor. In short, modern opposition to eugenics is derived just as much, if not more, from emotional reactions than from logical arguments against it (such as "we can't predict the long-term repercussions of eliminating certain traits from the gene pool, especially since those traits very well might end up being helpful in adapting to some sudden environmental change") or well-reasoned moral arguments against it (such as "everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness").
- ↑ Technically, I didn't make this page; Bongolian was the one who set it up. However, I did make the Saloon bar topic that inspired it in the first place, so I figured that it's only fair that I take at least some of the credit.
- ↑ The original name of this section was "Pages where I've written miniature essays that really need to be reviewed and fact-checked by people who have more time to devote to research than me", but that was so dang wordy that it ate up about a third of the allotted character limit of an edit summary all by itself (and it was really dang unwieldy to link to this specific section of my user page in other talk pages, the Saloon bar, or ATIM), so I eventually decided to change the section name.
- ↑ I would suggest using a rating system akin to the system used by the Dungeons & Dragons homebrew wiki (I was quite active there throughout the 2010s), which would admittedly be useful as a firm basis for deciding if one of my mini-essays is "community approved" or "community opposed". However, I don't want to burden the admins with copy-pasting a whole multi-template system from another wiki just to evaluate one user's [particularly extensive] contributions, especially since we already have a perfectly good system for rating the overall quality of our articles.
- ↑ My original plan for this edit was to have notes nested within notes, but I had to scrap that because I just couldn't get it to work properly.
- ↑ Okay, this one's not totally uncited — I did a bit of fact-checking at TV Tropes. I could have sworn they used to have something about ancient people thinking that silver was literally light in a solid form…
- ↑ Ioe bidome did incorporate this into the article proper, but I'd still like some other users to weigh in on this before moving it to the "approved" section.
- ↑ Part of my musings were later trimmed down and incorporated into the article proper by CircularReasoning, but given that the rest has been left as is, I'm not moving this mini-essay into the "accepted" or "rejected" sections just yet.
- ↑ Seriously, I wrote my college honors thesis on that book. It wasn't on the subject of bigotry, though.
- ↑ Yes, I linked to Wiktionary, not RationalWiki or Wikipedia. This is because I'm referring to "sacrifice" in the general sense of giving something up (usually in exchange for something else), not the specific religious usage of offerings to gods. Both RationalWiki and Wikipedia's pages on the concept of sacrifice primarily describe the religious usage of the term.
- ↑ I wasn't going to count this as a mini-essay, but it somehow caused a borderline HCM 5 situation.
- ↑ It's about dang time I tackled this page seriously, considering I named one of the Progress Pokémon after this guy…
- ↑ While these are technically two separate mini-essays, they were both created in the same revision. As such, I'm lumping them together in the "rejected" section, even though only one of the mini-essays was rejected.
- ↑ Admittedly, perhaps I took it too seriously…
- ↑ I was one of the voices who objected to its removal on the grounds of the page being a naturalistic explanation for the origins of morality. Maybe if I get my mop back, I'll look into restoring it and rewriting it in a way that doesn't have nasty implications.
- ↑ I think RationalWiki already has an article on this subject, but I can't remember what it's called.