What I would have you know about skepticism

I'd have you know that skepticism is a constant search for truth. It's not perfect - even skeptics can be fooled and can be wrong. But the process of skepticism consists of constantly doing our best to be as truthful and honest as we can be. Skepticism is not a dogma. It is not a body of knowledge. It is a method - an approach to viewing the world through the lens of truth so we can navigate our way through times that can often be difficult and confusing. Skeptics take comfort in truth, but they are always aware of the ways in which they can be wrong.

Living through a pandemic is certainly difficult and confusing. But skeptics understand the need for expertise. We know that it is not possible to know everything about everything, but we have the humility to recognise that those who dedicate their lives and their careers to narrow scientific specialisations - such as virology and epidemiology - have more knowledge and understanding of these subjects than we do. We also understand that most scientists - unlike politicians or purveyors of health supplements - are generally honest and report facts accurately, because it is their job, their career, to do so. Do we have absolute assurance of this? No, we don't. But we have a pretty reliable trend. And we have seen examples of scientists who have lost their jobs, their careers, because they failed to uphold this principle of honesty.

Skeptics recognise that the track record of science is very impressive. Scientists, unlike astrologers, make predictions that actually come true. Scientists, unlike homeopaths, acknowledge when they have been wrong about something, and change their point of view accordingly. Scientists, unlike Bigfoot hunters, actually produce verifiable evidence to support their conclusions. And scientists, unlike conspiracy theorists, acknowledge that all conclusions are provisional and may be modified in the future because of new information.

Some scientists said some things at the beginning of this pandemic that turned out not to be true. Did they stick to their guns? No, they didn't. They corrected themselves and started saying things that were more true, because that's their job. Over the course of this pandemic, more and more true things became known, and now, two years later, we know a lot of true things about it. Do we know everything? No, we do not. But we're always searching for more true things to know.

Skeptics recognise the tremendous role that scientific expertise plays in the progress of civilisation and technology, and in understanding the wonderful and confusing universe that surrounds us. That is a recognition that is missing from mercola.com. It is missing from childrenshealthdefense.org. It is missing from @drtenpenny.

That is what I'd have you know about skepticism and its role during the pandemic. Do I, after spending over an hour composing this post, think that I'll change the minds of astrologers, homeopaths, Bigfoot hunters and conspiracy theorists? I do not. Because the evidence does not support that conclusion.

Playing Oxygen Not Included

So. Still playing Oxygen Not Included. I keep abandoning my base and restarting, either because something catastrophic happened, or I just started in an awful location with no access to resources, and water in the way of everything useful.

I recently got as far as almost 275 cycles, in a base that for reasons that are unlikely to become clear I named "Thistle Me Wiggins". I had my dirt-to-energy system fully automated - all my dupes had to do was deliver dirt to storage containers in my sage hatch ranches and it would be auto-dispensed to the feeders. The resultant coal was automatically shipped to my small power brick and again automatically fed into my coal generators, which were operating on a heavy-watt spine leading to transformers. My excess hatches were automatically wrangled into a small evolution chamber so that they could evolve into their final form - meat - while eggs that did not get shipped to my incubators were delivered to my kitchen to be turned into omelette. All automated. Dirt -> energy + food, with little that my dupes needed to do. Dirt was plentiful. More on that later.

I started my dupes off on lice loaf and gristle berry, but I phased those out in favour of mushrooms and the aforementioned barbeque and omelette fairly quickly. I was also able to get sustainable thimble reed and balm lily farms going.

I was lucky enough on this base to have a couple of cool steam vents, that I was able to tame simply by having them drain into ice biomes. So I set up a small hydrogen hood-style electrolyser. I was running only 12 dupes do I didn't need a full Rodriguez. That pretty much took care of my base oxygen needs. I ran the oxygen through my water tank to cool it and burned off the hydrogen for additional energy on the grid.

By then my dupes had some Mad Skillz so I built a second electrolyser and, after playing this game for months, for the first time I had my dupes in atmo suits! Sense of achievement! Then an actual achievement because I was able to break into my oil biome.

It was at about this time that I noticed two things. First, I was completely out of dirt. As in, zero available on the map. My hatches had converted it all into coal. The couple of composts I had running were in no way able to supply all that was required. I greatly expanded this, but to no avail. My hatches started starving to death. No worries, I thought, and started planning out my oil -> petroleum + natural gas -> energy system with a view to decommissioning my coal.

The other thing I noticed was that some of my dupes were getting stressed. Very stressed. Okay, time for a massage clinic. Didn't help. A "relax and take it easy" schedule. No luck. More decor? I was already bright green in all but my most industrial areas, and all my dupes were in snazzy suits. Why were my dupes so stressed? Ah, there it was - low morale. I had forgotten to keep an eye on morale when I was allocating skill points, and a few of my dupes were well over their available morale capacity. Cue stress responses. Okay, that was it. That was the point at which my base became unrecoverable. I had done very well this time around, but it was time to quit and restart again.

And it was only just now as I am writing this up that I remembered that there exists such a thing as a skill scrubber.

I love this game.

Some thoughts on character voices

Here are some ideas.

First, yeah, it'll feel a bit silly at first. Actually, a lot silly. But character voices are also incrediby fun. The give a lot of... character... to your... uh... character. So I think they're worth giving it a go.

I'm going to give credit here. This is the video that made it all click for me. This video gives non-mutually-exclusive characteristics to your voices that you can combine in lots of different ways. Here's the video. Like and subscribe, if you want.

There are a few aspects of voice character that are basically essential. I'm going to be honest here, and say that these didn't make a lot of sense to me at first. But once I started playing with them (and it is important to remember that it does count as playing), I started to get the idea.

Here are the three basic characteristics of your voice. You can interpret these words however you want. Play with them a little and like me, you will get the idea after a while. These are opposite ends of several spectrums.

Light vs. Strong
Direct vs. Indirect
Sudden vs. Sustained

Already you should be able to see a few examples. Christopher Walken is Light + Direct + Sudden. Jeremy Irons is Stong + Direct + Sustained. Sybil Trelawney is Light + Indirect + Sustained. The demon Sweet from Once More With Feeling (Buffy the Vampire Slayer S6 E7) is Light + Direct + Sustained. I hope you get the idea.

You can combine these characteristics to make a distinctive voice for your character, or if you're a DM, your NPCs. And here's where it starts to get crazy.

There are more characteristics you can play with. Here are a few:

• Nasal vs. Throat
• Breathy vs. Dry
• Old vs. Young
• Slow vs. Fast

There are more. See the video.

Using these characteristics, you can mix and match to get a character voice that is unique and distinctive. I have two characters in my current game - a High Elf Diviner named Ereshan, and a Gnome Knowledge Domain Cleric named Jugbait (pronounced "YOOG-bat"). They tend to speak in synergy, ending each other's sentences. I thought it would be fun to roleplay this out, so I practiced switching between two distinct voices mid-sentence. Ereshan is Light, Direct, Sustained, Breathy. Jugbait is Strong, Direct, Sudden, Fast. I have chosen Direct for both, because I think that provides a link between the two, but otherwise they are quite distinct.

Once I had decided on this, I went to a page of random quotations and started practicing. I started by reading quotes in just one voice, but eventually started switching between the two mid-sentence.

Um, anyway, I don't have a great conclusion to this post, so yeah. Bye. I'll probably work on this more later to finish it properly because I hate bad endings.

Brütal Legend

Okay, I've said this previously in other ways, but I want to share with you about why I think Brütal Legend is a Good Game, and why I think it is Worth Playing. Warning: Opinion follows. YMMV. HAND.

The game was released in 2009, which at the time of writing I guess makes it kind of retro, which I think is appropriate given the heavy metal soundtrack that lifts heavily from what I refer to as Golden Age Metal. Hey, gold is heavy, right? I've never been a metal fan, particularly. But this game introduced me to the best of metal, carefully curated by experts in the field. The soundtrack to this game is nothing short of awesome. More on that in a moment.

The gameplay is... okay. It has aspects of a lot of genres - it's mostly an action adventure third person RPG, but it's also got squad command, driving and racing sim, and real-time strategy elements. It's not as good as the best third person RPGs, and it's not as good as the best squad command game. It's not the best racing sim and it's not the best RTS. But it's okay at being everything that it tries to be. And I think that's enough. It doesn't need to excel at being those things because of its other strengths. And those strengths are these:

It has an amazing backstory, revealed gradually through the course of the game. As long as you hit all the right monuments, you learn the background and how the world came to be the world it is. It draws straight from the "Everything I Know About Storytelling I Learned From Babylon 5" school. It becomes clear that you're really starting the story in the middle, not the beginning. You learn about the beginning as you progress towards the end.

It has excellently written characters. Yes, it's a platform for Jack Black to be Jack Black. But all of the main characters are interesting, flawed, quirky, likeable people that the player has reasons to care about. They make decisions that may confuse the player. They have conflicts, they have resolutions, they have highs and lows, WTF moments, OMG moments, and it is immensely satisfying to experience the story with them. Speaking of which...

It has a well-written and compelling story. It's a story about love and betrayal, about subjugation and resistance, and the struggle and triumph over ultimate evil. Joseph Campbell would like this story.

As previously mentioned, the soundtrack draws from the best of metal with actual licensed tracks from groups like Black Sabbath, Mötorhead, Mastodon, Anthrax, Brocas Helm, Def Leppard, Judas Priest and more well-known and perhaps less well-known bands. The tracks are masterfully matched to story elements, as well as being available while simply driving around - which you will do a lot of. And it includes the absolute best use of Ozzy Osborne's Mr Crowley that you will ever encounter.

The voice acting is outstanding. Jack Black, of course, is as he always is, Jack Black. But the game also features voice acting by Tim Curry, Lemmy Kilmister, Ozzy Osborne, Lita Ford, Robin Atkin Downes, Brian Posehn and a host of other talent. Even those who aren't normally known for their voice over work, such as Lemmy and Ozzy, are excellent and at no point in the game seem strained or artificial.

The world design is outstanding. From the moment you enter the metal world, everywhere you look there's another album cover. It's atmospheric. It's integrated heavily with the backstory. There are a number of different environments, each with their own colour palette and ambience. It's a pleasure just to drive around in this game, discovering all its secrets and hidden locations and bonuses.

So there's six reasons to play this game. It's available on Steam for Windows at least, playable with mouse and keyboard or controller. It's not available for PS4. But if you're interested in story, characters, design, and aren't too hung up about gameplay that is pretty good but not outstanding, I heartily recommend giving Brütal Legend a try.

Charisma

It's one of the most confusing saving throws in D&D. The Charisma Save. What's it for?

I usually describe Charisma as the force of someone's personality. It's a little like being strong-willed, though this overlaps with Wisdom somewhat - Wisdom saves in 3rd Edition were called Will Saves - but it's more than that. It's being sure of yourself. It's being confident. It's knowing what you want, what you need to do to get it, and being able to actually do that.

So it follows that people who have low Charisma scores lack self-confidence, and possibly experience anxiety and depression. They suffer from Impostor Syndrome.

With this in mind, I have come to the conclusion that attacks and spells that require a Charisma save are actually attacks on your self-confidence. They strike at your self-esteem, they induce anxiety. They won't affect someone who has a strong sense of self and of purpose, but to be an anxiety sufferer hit by something like that? Potentially devastating.

9 Commonly misunderstood rules in 5th Edition D&D

I've been playing 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons since its initial release. I've been consuming media about it. I've been buying supplements. And, sorry to say, I am a rules lawyer.

Hence, I have compiled this list of nine commonly misunderstood rules in 5th Edition D&D.

1. Every time you pick up a d20 you are making an ability check.

This is the basic mechanic for the 5e ruleset. Roll a d20, add an ability bonus, and add your proficiency bonus, if that is relevant to the check.

For a melee attack roll, you roll a Strength check. For a ranged attack roll, you roll a Dexterity check. For a spell attack roll, you roll an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma check, depending on the particular spellcasting class you are. Attack rolls add your Proficiency bonus, as long as you are proficient with the weapon you are using.

A saving throw is the relevant ability check, with your proficiency bonus if your class has proficiency in that saving throw. Each class grants proficiency in two abilities. One of these will be one of the three most common saving throws - Dexterity, Constitution, or Wisdom. The other will be Strength, Intelligence, or Charisma.

Skill checks are the interesting one. A skill check is just an ability check, and you can add your proficiency bonus if it seems appropriate. Skills are listed with abilities, but that doesn't mean they always have to be that. If you want to roll a Performance check with Intelligence instead of Charisma, and you can make a reasonable case to the DM why it should be so, you can do that.

2. There is no flanking rule.

You do not get advantage on your attack roll for flanking your opponent. The reason for this is that flanking is a special ability that kobolds and wolves have called Pack Tactics, and a special ability of the Rogue class. Kobolds, goblins and rogues can get advantage if an ally is within 5 feet of their target (rogues can also get Sneak Attack damage if this is the case) but you don't have to be physically flanking your opponent like in earlier editions.

Giving the ability to everyone negates this special advantage.

3. You can't hold your initiative.

At the beginning of a combat encounter, all creatures roll intiative. This randomises the combat order, giving priority to people with high initiative scores. If the rules allowed you to "hold" your turn so that you go at a different place in the order, then what was the point of rolling in the first place? Why doesn't everyone just hold their turn and act when they want to?

Instead, on your turn you can take the Ready action. You specify to your DM what you want to do - an action - and when you want to do it - the triggering event. When the triggering event occurs, you can use your Reaction to act out of turn.

Note that you get only one Reaction per turn. If you do this, you can't take an Attack of Opportunity or cast a Reaction spell like Feather Fall or Shield. Or if you do, you lose your prepared action. If you're patiently waiting for the goblin to pop his head out of cover but then the ogre shoves you off the cliff, it's probably worth losing the prepared shot.

4. There is no critical fail

You don't automatically succeed on a natural 20, and you don't automatically fail on a natural 1. Attack rolls do a critical hit on a natural 20, but there is no additional penalty for rolling a 1. Some groups house rule critical failures, but there is a problem with this. It is generally quite easy to avoid rolling a natural 1. Halflings almost never suffer critical failures, for example, due to their Lucky trait. Several feats allow you to re-roll 1s. You have to be especially unlucky to roll a 1 that you cannot just avoid in some manner.

5. There is no move action in your turn

In your turn, you can do three things: move up to your speed, take an action, and take a bonus action if you have one. Your move can be split up as much as you want before or after your action and bonus action. Moving does not take an action. You can take an action to Dash, which allows you to move your speed, effectively doubling the distance you can move.

6. Twinned Spell

Boy, the Sage Advice column is full of this. If a spell is capable of affecting more than one target, it can't be Twinned. That's it.

7. You still need to carry a lantern

A lot of the races in D&D get Darkvision. Some parties arrange to have all Darkvision-enabled characters in their party so they don't need to carry torches and lanterns.

Darkvision does not mean that you can see perfectly in the dark. It means that you can see in complete darkness as though it were dim light, and you can see in dim light as though it were bright light.

Dim light is not good. Your range and visual acuity suffer, and you cannot make out colours. I would not blame a DM for setting a puzzle for the characters that depends on colour vision for its solutions, just to push home the message that Dwarves and Elves still need a light source.

8. You cannot go below 0 hit points.

Zero is the floor. There are no negative hit points. When you hit zero you are unconscious and you start making Death Saves. There is no need to track how far below zero you go.

9. Grappling

This is actually very simple. If you want to grab someone, you make an Athletics check, opposed by their Athletics or Acrobatics check. If you beat theirs, then they have the Grappled condition.

The effect of the Grappled condition is that they can't move. That's it. It doesn't stop them from taking actions. So yes, you can cast Shocking Grasp while you're grappled. Alternatively, you can make a Strength or Agility check to try and escape the grapple. Electrocuting someone who's got you in a bear hug may be satisfying, but unless you take them to 0 hit points, it won't get you out of the bear hug.

So there it is. Nine commonly misunderstood rules in Dungeons and Dragons. If you have any questions, read the rulebooks. You'd be surprised how many rules questions can be answered with the simple formula RTFM.

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On Being Open Minded

Here's the thing about open minds. A lot of people think it means something that it doesn't mean.

People who practice a skeptical mindset are always open to the possibility that they might be wrong. Always. It's a fundamental part of skeptical philosophy - to self-reflect and examine our own biases, and to change our opinions when given sufficient reason to do so. It's absolutely baseline 101. If you are interested in skepticism, this is the first thing you need to know.

People who say to skeptics "you should have an open mind" almost never do this. They never consider the possibility that they might be wrong. Maybe they have what they believe to be a good reason to think they might be right. Maybe they're just stubborn. But whatever the reason, the idea that they might be wrong is never seriously considered.

And here's where it gets tricky. Most of the things that people say "you should have an open mind" to skeptics about are things that have already been seriously considered and rejected, usually a long time ago. This looks like dismissal. This looks like the skeptic is not open to the possibility that they are wrong. But that's not what's happening. Almost everything that people challenge skeptics with are things that we (collectively as skeptics) have been open minded about, seriously considered, and rejected on the basis of logic and plausibility. And the ones that aren't are the ones that are just patently ridiculous or are clearly the product of mental illness.

We don't need to seriously consider the possibility of ESP, because ESP has been seriously studied for decades and no-one has come up with anything substantial. So skeptics don't need to "keep an open mind" about ESP. We've already done that and the hypothesis was rejected.

We see the same thing with creationism. "But what if you're wrong?" Yeah, we've considered the idea that we may be wrong about creationism, decades ago, and the overwhelming evidence in favour of evolution and the complete lack of evidence in favour of creationism is sufficient to draw a conclusion that we can be pretty sure is reliable.

For homeopathy in particular it's even worse. Not only is there no good evidence that it works, there's plenty of good evidence that it doesn't work, and furthermore there is a lack of any plausible mechanism for how it might work. Any proposed mechanism would require the laws of chemistry and physics as we know them to be fundamentally incorrect, and we are pretty sure that they aren't. We've considered it. We've looked into it, we've studied it, and we've determined that it is not real. We could continue to do so (and there are indeed some who do) but for the rest of us, there's really no need to rehash old ground. It's been done before.

If this looks to you like we're not being open-minded, then all I can say is that it isn't that. It isn't that at all. It's us having already been open-minded, having already studied and examined, and having drawn a conclusion based on logic, reason, and evidence.

No, the mRNA vaccine cannot change your DNA

1. Introduction

To understand why this particular piece of pseudoscience is such a load of crap, it's necessary to have a bit of background information.

Please remember that the human immune system is very complicated. No, more complicated than that. No, even more complicated than that. It's pretty ridiculously complicated, in fact, which has led some people to (incorrectly) assume that it could not have evolved naturally and that some intelligence was behind it. So my explanation here will necessarily be greatly simplified.

2. How your body deals with a viral infection

There are little bits called antibodies in your blood that latch onto foreign invaders. White blood cells recognise these antibodies, and eat the things that they're attached to.

Viruses have certain structures on their surfaces that these antibodies recognise. In the case of a coronavirus, these structures are known as the "spike protein" and are what gives the coronavirus its crown-like appearance in microscopes. "Corona" is Latin for "crown".

When your immune system recognises a pathogen, it sends signals to other parts of your immune system to flood your bloodstream with antibodies. When the system has discovered which antibodies work, it not only prodces those antibodies in bulk, but it stores the blueprints up for later. This is why if you get chicken pox or mumps in childhood, you are usually subsequently immune.

3. How a regular vaccine works

Modern vaccines use either dead viruses, or bits of dead viruses, that are introduced into your body so that your immune system can deal with them without the risk of contacting the actual disease. These bits attract the antibodies, the blueprints of which are then stored up for later use if a live virus infects you. Using a vaccine is far safer than actually catching the disease, while being as effective as if you actually did.

4. A bit about molecular biology

Don't worry, this bit is actually pretty simple. There's a principle of molecular biology that is so fundamental that it has been referred to as "the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology". And that is this:

DNA --> RNA --> Protein.

This is the basis of how cells work. In the nucleus of the cell, DNA is transcribed onto RNA - basically, the RNA makes a copy of certain bits of DNA. These bits of RNA (strictly speaking they are messenger RNA (mRNA) - there are other types of RNA) float off into the cell where they encounter little cellular machines called ribosomes. These ribosomes take the stretches of mRNA and use them as a template to connect amino acids into long chains. These long chains are called proteins, and they are what your cells use to do stuff.

Notice that this is a one way process. DNA to RNA to protein. There is no way back. No biological process converts protein to RNA or RNA to DNA.

5. How a mRNA vaccine works

Now we get to the good stuff. An mRNA vaccine, such as that produced by Pfizer or Moderna, introduces mRNA into the process above. Specifically, it introduces mRNA for building the coronavirus spike protein. This mRNA floats off into the cell in the same way that mRNA produced by copying your own DNA does. It encounters the ribosome and is used to produce the spike protein.

Think about this. The mRNA vaccine hijacks your natural process for producing proteins, and gets it to produce the part of the coronavirus that is recognised by your immune system. That is extremely cool.

From here it works just like a regular vaccine. Your antibodies latch on to the spike protein and the blueprints are stored for later. The only difference is that instead of introducing dead viruses or bits of dead viruses, it introduces mRNA.

And because of the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, this mRNA is not capable of affecting your DNA in any way.

6. What About AstraZeneca?

AstraZeneca is a bit of a special case. It is not a regular vaccine, but nor is it a mRNA vaccine like Pfizer and Moderna. Instead, it is a DNA vaccine. When you get AstraZeneca, DNA is introduced into your cells where it can perform the same function as your native DNA - it gets transcribed into RNA and translated into proteins. Again, in this case, the coronavirus spike protein. So it is in fact very similar to the mRNA vaccines, it just takes an extra step.

7. Side effects

A side note about side effects. A common complaint about the flu vaccination is that you feel like you've caught the flu after you get it. This is not true. One of the functions of the immune system (like I said, it's very complicated) is that when an infection is discovered, it floods the location with blood. This is called inflammation. This is actually a good thing, because with the blood comes white blood cells - to kill the infection - and antibodies - so that the white blood cells know what to kill and so that the blueprints can be stored for later. Unfortunately it also has other effects, such as fever, chills, swelling and soreness. These aren't because of the infection, but because of your body's response to it. Over-the-counter medicine such as ibuprofen can help reduce the symptoms.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are likely to produce a similar immune response. I'm told it can be quite unpleasant but trust me - it's not as unpleasant as dying from coronavirus.

7. Conclusion

No, the mRNA vaccine will not change your DNA. It can't. It's impossible.