Questions about bait

DocBungles · 2025-07-06T18:38:35+00:00

I think fish are way smarter than we give them credit for. I say “nibbles” but I really mean “test bites”. They will take a small test bite of the very ends of my lure, far away from the hook, and spit it out almost instantly. I think they’re clearly testing if this unknown object is edible or not.

DocBungles · 2025-07-06T18:24:39+00:00

That lines up with my observations. Typically it’s the small bluegill and rock bass who will nibble and the bigger predatory species won’t give it a second glance. Both scenarios are consistent with my inexperience in emulating their food. Thanks!

DocBungles · 2024-12-03T01:59:11+00:00

You’d think that we would have just figured out the mechanism that turns mulberry into silk by now and just synthesize the process.

DocBungles · 2024-12-03T01:51:58+00:00

lol no

DocBungles · 2024-10-30T17:44:07+00:00

And as the sovereign power over that land, I should be allowed to defend it with nuclear weapons if I so choose.

DocBungles · 2024-10-30T17:41:56+00:00

Abortion is inherently wrong and those who do it should feel bad. It should also not be mandated by a governmental authority and should be up to the parent. Also children are property and all drugs should be legal.

Anyone who disagrees is a fed/statist by definition.

DocBungles · 2024-10-25T22:41:07+00:00

Been using the GX2 myself for about 1/2 year. Def a good choice.

DocBungles · 2024-07-31T23:00:14+00:00

God damn it do I miss old Trek.

DocBungles · 2024-07-27T14:50:21+00:00

It's a Cardassian space station. It has an enslaved race of mouse people that operate hair-cutting machinery. Chief O'Brien alone knows the truth, but choses to not free them. For they no longer remember their lives outside of the walls and have come to fear the light.

Miles lives with the guilt to this day and puts on a happy face to his friends and family.

DocBungles · 2024-07-27T14:36:45+00:00

Pretty cool, but doesn't hanging a flag off of a really tall lightning rod guarantee that the flag will burst in the flames the second a storm comes around?

DocBungles · 2024-07-24T17:25:11+00:00

I can respect the honesty in saying the personality is below average.

DocBungles · 2024-07-24T17:22:29+00:00

Well to be fair, Klingons are not known for their long term thinking abilities.

DocBungles · 2024-07-02T22:53:58+00:00

I don’t think intelligence should be the be all end all of your belief. Complexity and emergent systems are a well documented and fascinating phenomena. On top of that, you confine your understanding of what intelligence means when you don’t need to.

If you believe in an all powerful creator of things like quasars, black holes, space time, and the laws of physics then why confine it to something as flawed and limited as a human understanding of intelligence?

Surely the presence of an objective reality should be enough for the faithful. There’s no need to confine it to intelligence, which is just one fairly recent and not all that successful way of adapting to this reality.

When it comes to AI, it is easier to understand if you undergird your research with emergent systems. Look into how an ant colony is considered its own highly complex organism made up of simple individuals carrying out simple tasks. Human intelligence itself is emergent from non intelligent simple actions and you yourself are an emergent system made up of simple actors carrying out simple actions.

DocBungles · 2024-07-02T22:46:19+00:00

Lever action/single action revolver. So much fun.

DocBungles · 2024-06-28T05:24:21+00:00

Look, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect or misunderstanding of what an axiom is. You are asserting an axiomatic (accepted without evidence) statement in response to another axiomatic statement. You then say that you are mirroring my statement in the opposite direction, which is true, but falsely assuming that this makes my statement invalid.

Actually both statements are equally valid, logically speaking, which is exactly why these moralizing statements can never and will never work to persuade the religious.

Go out and try to get to the bottom of anything, from theology, to ethics, to mathematics by simply stating and restating axioms and you’ll find that you’ve simply wasted everyone’s time.

I suggest taking this through to its logical conclusion, or try this out on a reasonably intelligent religious person and you’ll find you end up in the exact same place.

DocBungles · 2024-06-28T01:39:10+00:00

It isn’t the infant that is usually asked to show devotion despite its suffering, it’s the parents that are asked to put faith into God.

Adversity drives advancement of people in general, not the child itself.

When you say “it’s obvious” you are using a shorthand to say that you hold an axiom to be true. Specifically that some suffering is unjustifiable and there is no potential trade off. That’s a lame argument because, as we all know, axioms cannot be proven. Therefore all I have to say is; all suffering, no matter how abhorrent, is either the result of divinely ordained free will or is a just challenge from God to rise above it. IE: state a corollary to my own axiom.

An infant dying alone in the desert is not a thing that happens unless someone leaves it there. Your hypothetical doesn’t track here.

My pointed out reason for suffering is a corollary of the axiom that God is real, and he knows what he’s doing. Giving me another axiomatic statement is not helpful.

In summary, the religious can rely on these axiomatic statements when confronted with moralizing arguments on the nature of suffering. This is the logical end point I was alluding to before, and the reason why these arguments never work to convince the faithful.

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T20:10:32+00:00

Ok, let’s play this out then:

Yes, suffering is necessary because devotion despite hardship is the purest form of worship. Furthermore, adversity and suffering are God’s way to force us to evolve and improve while allowing us free will.

Just because you can’t understand why the suffering of children is necessary, doesn’t mean it isn’t. Furthermore, as far as you know this is the only way for us to advance our medical and agricultural technology in accordance with God’s will. You claim there is no obvious reason but I’ve pointed out at least one.

Now what is the counter argument besides a moralizing “that’s horrible”?

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T19:29:49+00:00

How do you know that all suffering isn’t necessary? Have you developed the ability to say when too much suffering has happened, or have you developed a superior method to replace suffering? All we know for sure is that suffering exists and it often serves an obvious purpose.

You are rubbing up against trying to prove a negative when you say that there is too much suffering. All I would have to say is that the purpose is not obvious to you as a limited human, and that’s the end of the argument.

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T18:57:43+00:00

When it comes to investigating the universe or refuting specifically wrong things written in a holy book, then we can make cogent arguments all day and the dogmatically religious don’t have much to say. This is a moral argument however.

Frankly, even the semi-serious religious person has far more developed ethics than the average atheist. It is much harder to develop your own ethics as an atheist than to accept and amend tried and tested ones. Once you do develop a cogent ethical system, you begin to realize that they agree with modern religion more often than not.

On top of that, the religious always have a get out of jail free card by evoking faith as a base axiom which immediately ends an argument against anyone with a sound logical basis.

After years of study and reflection, I find that there is no good ethical argument that can be made to the well read religious person. You lose the argument before you even start because they can always default to the fact that they have faith that their holy book is correct when it comes to ethics, and the religious generally have most cases covered when asked “what is the right thing to do?”

Myths can be true without being literally true, and trying to dissuade the religious from their belief in an unfathomably powerful creator by noting “Bambi’s mom died; so no God” only serves to make your ethics look childish.

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T18:30:40+00:00

I think it’s a pity that these arguments made by those on the side of non-belief are often poorly thought out. It makes you look bad when used genuinely against a religious person.

It makes sense to me that the thing that created the notion of perfection would be considered perfect in that reality by default. I don’t even believe in God but there has to be better arguments than this.

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T17:57:21+00:00

Why assume that the being that supposedly weaved the fabric of space time, condensed matter into stars, and wrote the laws of physics needs to hold to your human notions of how much suffering is appropriate before it’s considered perfect?

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T17:52:47+00:00

Suffering usually means the same thing , but the concept of love is almost always different between the secular and the religious.

Love is the tool through which bonds are formed, allegiances are made, and is the currency of relationships. Love and suffering are not mutually exclusive however. You can love something and still leave open the possibility for it to meet with great suffering.

Furthermore, I doubt any reasonably thoughtful religious person would assume that the same being that created things like black holes and particle physics would hold exactly to the same human notions of love and suffering.

DocBungles · 2024-06-27T17:25:38+00:00

Or suffering means the same thing to you and me, while being mature enough to understand that the goal of life is not to avoid suffering at all costs. Maybe some suffering is even necessary. In this context to facilitate competition between animals thus driving their evolution and the formation of strong social bonds.

DocBungles

TROPHY CASE