LibArc Blogs

A quick review of a game by Hemisphere games named Osmos. This game is up for $2 on Steam for the weekend and I decided to just buy it. A trailer is here though I didn't bother to check it first, there is a demo as well.

The gameplay mechanics are pretty simple, you're a floating blob of matter, a "life form" or whatever, your goal in life is (usually) to be the biggest blob around. You do this by absorbing other pieces of matter, you die if you are absorbed by a bigger piece of matter.
You move around by ejecting matter from your body against the direction of your travel vector (the opening screen pointedly mentions Newtons Third Law, if it wasn't clear enough). This about sums up your end of the deal and if we left it there, would be a pretty crappy $2.

So there are gameplay modes, 3 of them. The first one, named Ambient is very simple, you get a field of matter and your job is to be the biggest of them all. No pressure or anything. Accompanied by the electronic music that resembles private airplane lounges more than 'sublime effects', it can be a very relaxing and interesting set of levels.

The second is named Force and seems to comprise of missions oriented around gravity. The first style starts you off as a blob of matter surrounding a 'star' and attempting to grow. This is surprisingly not as easy as it looks as orbital mechanics are not the simplest thing. The second style (there may be more I have yet to discover) is an attempt to "capture" (I.E eat) blobs named 'Repulsors' which are, oddly enough, repulsed by you according to your mass.

The third, Life is my term for it, is 1v1s (or maybe more later on) with other 'sentient' blobs of matter, where you compete to 'eat' them. This seems hit and miss, either a rather interesting bout filled with ejecting matter as you try to maneuver away from the enemy, or complete 'blargh' as it accidentally gets eaten in the first minute.

The sound I've mentioned in a sentence and that's about as much as it deserves to get. However the graphics are quite nice, fitting both for wide screen and for normal aspect ratios and being quite unique. A blue/red color scheme makes it easy to recognise who is eatable and who will eat you, and the effects work well enough.

Overall, I just bought it, but it seems to be worth a night or two of fun and it's something I feel comfortable playing with others around.

I'm abit annoyed at this article, so just let me rant.
This is mostly based off a single Haaretz article.

The article lays out the sorry state of CD in Israel. I'm not treating it as the holy gospel but two things scream out.
One is the Israeli attitude of "Israel cannot absorb a nuclear, biological or chemical strike. The conclusion was obvious. Israel will have to launch a preemptive strike."
This is a very nice assumption and I agree with it, but this does not absolve the goverment of working to protect civilians from possible attack. Civil Defense has side benefits everywhere, at the very least basic education. Even if we increase the protection factor of Civvies by just a few orders of magnitude, this can protect say...Netanya from a strike on nearby bases. Or the same for Jerusalem. This is ignoring the basic requirment of a country to defend it's citizens!
Second is the approach towards defense as a factor in calculation. Defense in Israel seems to be treated (going by published stuff only) as an afterthought, an "oh right, we can be attacked." And not as something serious to lay out plans for. Part of this comes back to the quote above, that Israel cannot sustain a real attack. But does that matter? Don't we have a basic obligation to not assume we're infalliable and we might take a hit? Conventional wise, we do that.
Why not do the same for chemical? That's a solveable problem right now. It would take abit of money and actually trusting people to use gas masks properly but it can work.
Biological is a differant issue but if we actually have Biowar we're all going to hell in a very fast car.

Nuclear is a whole differant kettle, we have working ABM and I'm willing to atleast partially trust it's numbers. But do we want to put everything in this assumption of "it'll either never happen, or ABM will do it's job"? Expanding PF for civvies is a childs play for an actual goverment.

That's it, comments are welcome.

Have you ever sat around with your friends drinking and wondered why we need governments? have you perchance pondered why rape happens, and why homophobia exists? What about child and spousal abuse? What about religion? Why on earth do we have that load of horseshit? And why the hell do people tease you for masturbating when they themselves do it more than you do!? The Theory of Evolution by Natural selection (or more specifically the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, modified and unified with the social sciences by sociobiology and evolutionary psychology) can explain these, and other fucked up (and not so fucked up) things about your life and humanity in general.

As a preface before I dive into this, I am leaving this citation free. If you want sources for the statements I am going to make, ask. That goes for any question you may have. I am also putting a disclaimer on this so that no one messages, calls or IMs me telling me that I am a horrible horrible person. I am talking about things that people often find to be unethical. I am explaining them, not trying to say they are in fact acceptable. With the exception of the existence of governments. I am taking a morally neutral stance (though with religion my atheism will slip through). I going to assume that you know what evolution is and basically how it works. If you get confused, ask. Additionally, only biologists sit around and agonize over their fitness. I am talking mostly about ultimate mechanisms. Natural selection acts upon the genes controlling the brain and cognition, and cause you to think and behave in ways that maximize your fitness.

The Great Whore:
So, I have a few anarcho-capitalist friends *glares at Paul* and they might say that we dont really need governments, or that nothing in philosophy justifies the use of force on a population. Well, there might not be anything in philosophy that justifies this (but there is, it is called utilitarianism) but there is in biology.

So, we humans are social animals. We are specifically adapted to live in groups. We have an advanced social intelligence, and the ability to think in the abstract and innovate tools to solve problems. But that is not the question you need to ask yourself. You need to ask yourself how these groups are maintained. After all, a person who sacrifices for the good of the group will not reproduce as much as individuals who do no such thing, and will leave less of his genes (I am using he as a neutral pronoun) in teh next generation. Eventually natural selection will remove such individuals from the population.

To put this in a fun thought experiment, you know the old wives tale about lemmings jumping off cliffs to control the population? Who leaves the most offspring? The lemming that jumps, or the lemming that says "Screw you sucka!"? Obviously it is the later.

The first step is ecological constraints that force group living. I wont bother describing those in too much detail, but it can start any number of ways from increasing foraging efficiency to anti-predator defense. The next step is family groups.

In a family unit (like a small tribe) everyone is closely related. So by helping out the group you also increase your own fitness. Individuals who do not help will not have their genes as well represented in the next generation and they get selected out of the system.

Now, eventually because inbreeding is bad, resources are limiting, etc individuals have to disperse to new groups. Eventually the groups become genetically heterogenous (and a bit bigger). This means that, while you have your family, the social group as a whole is much bigger,and not everyone is related. This means that a cheater is no longer hurting himself, but is hurting everyone else both directly through not contributing, and indirectly for damaging the groups ability to compete with other groups.

You can think of a situation like this as being like an office where one guy never works and drags everyone else down with him. What has to happen? Well in most groups a power hierarchy develops. A dominant individual(the boss) will depress the fitness of the person socially cheating. This individual might do this in a number of ways. He might do it by withdrawing protection from that individual allowing the group to engage in ostracism, or denial of goods and services, or he might simply beat the crap out of him. This entails a cost however on the dominant individual which is offset by access to matings due to high social status and resource appropriation. But who watches the watcher?

As David Sloan Wilson puts it, the ability to pick up and throw rocks was probably the first tool used to force egalitarianism in human social groups. The alpha male cant be too much of an ass without open rebellion.

There is additional complexity here of course, like within-group alliances between individuals. But this is a rough sketch.

When social groups increase in size from here though, this system where individuals keep track of each other and keep each other in line becomes unwieldy. The same reason communism failed is the same reason anarchy, and anarchocapitalism do not work in practice.

The first thing you have to remember is that humans usually prioritize short term benefit over long term benefit. The second thing to remember is that unlike ants we do not have access to chemical signals that allow us to know if someone is cheating when we are not looking, there a lot of things in a large society that we cannot easily evaluate. For example, testing standards on medication.

We need a dedicated third party to handle this stuff for us, which we as a society grant the ability to do social policing full time. We subsidize the costs they incur, and via "social contract" (not to equivocate with a llegal contract) grant them the authority to do things like set standards, and regulate business etc for our own benefit, and grant the resources to evaluate the things we in our day to day lives cannot (like the efficacy of pharmaceuticals)

I mention governments because they are fairly well representative of the conflict social behavior creates between the rest of the group, and the individual. Each one depends upon the other, but each individual in the group wants to minimize their investment to said group while maintaining the benefits and keeping others from also skirting their duties. Similar conflicts pop up all over the place. It is worth noting also that when dealing with governments and such, the nature of these systems is going to be determined by cultural evolution. But the psychological scaffold upon culture is built is genetically controlled and subject to natural selection.

Now, before I get to the fun bits I just want to say one thing. I love laughing at you people. And by you people, I mean straight people. I can laugh in a way that only a person who knows he has already lost the race (for reproductive success) can laugh. All the shit you and I do (in my case fruitlessly) to increase our fitness become hilarious. Hilarious!

Because You Touch Yourself at Night:
So, why is it that people don't like it when other people masturbate? And why do women fake orgasms?

This has everything to do with sperm competition. And don't worry ladies, I am not leaving you out. You fake orgasms for purposes of sperm competition too. For both of these issues I have to explain male and female reproductive biology a bit.

Males are competitive. We have seen this in society for ever, but it is also true inside the woman's vagina, cervical mucous, uterus, and fallopian tubes. Men have four different types of sperm. Blocker sperm which are older, larger, and often deformed and only semi-motile sperm. They also have hunter-killer sperm which are fast, young ,and kill other mens sperm. Egg getter sperm which are fast, young and do the obvious. And a fourth called Family Planning sperm which are produced when the male is stressed out and kill everyone's sperm.

What masturbation does is optimize the ratios of these different types of sperm for different types of sex. When you are in a long-term relationship and are not expecting to cheat, you masturbate less frequently. Not because you are having regular sex (though you may tell yourself that) but because you need older blocker sperm in case your partner cheats on you (and she just might... more on that later) This prevents another guy from impregnating your partner and tricking you into raising the offspring of a more physically attractive and genetically desirable, but less socioeconomically desirable male. This is something that, funnily enough is called cuckholdry, named after one of my favorite near passerine birds, the Cuckoo . When you produce sperm they head to the epididimis to mature hang out there for a while, aging until they are ejaculated. When you masturbate, you purge the ranks of older sperm. So when you are in a long term relationship and not expecting infidelity(on your part anyway), you masturbate less frequently so you have all the older blocker sperm you need to keep your potentially two-timing mate from cuckholding you. This does not apply in the early stages of a relationship where you two are mating like rabbits, but only once you have settled in and are engaging in "routine sex" where you are basically just topping up supplies of blocker sperm, with some egg-seekers running scouting missions from the cervical mucous into the fallopian tubes checking for Oocytes. These periods are interspersed with occasional "hot periods" full of lots of sex, which I will not get into here. In the end, your sperm ratios are optimized for this sort of "mission" when you do have sex by your masturbation frequency.

But Ben? You might ask. What if I am single or expecting to cheat on my partner? That, my son sets up the male-male conflict. If you are single or expecting to cheat (IE. to potentially trick another guy into raising your offspring) you masturbate more frequently to bring the younger sperm up in the queue, so you can engage in a more offensive sperm war.

Other guys do not want you to have an optimized sperm ratio. They want you to have a sub-optimal ratio, because that way if, one way or the other, you sleep with their mate (or someone they mate with just after or after you... filthy sluts both of them!) they have a better chance at beating you in the sperm competition. So they put social pressure on you in an attempt to get you to have a sub-optimal masturbation frequency all the while trying to masturbate optimally themselves.

And that is why men get teased and the like for masturbating. Bear in mind, that is not the logic chain that gets used when they make fun of you for spanking your monkey, but selection probably did act in order to bring up a frame of mind conducive to the train of thought they do use.

So what about The Ladies? Nope, not leaving you out. Nor will I engage in any double standards. Women are sluts, just like men. You are just more sneaky and strategic about it, which in its own way is admirable. While for men (who can and do fuck anything that moves) there is little inherent risk to pregnancy (paternity lawsuits aside) females have to invest a lot more and have to be careful when selecting mates. Women have to balance the sometimes competing interests of having a good genetic father, and a good socio-economic father. Early in life there is often no real contest. Barring the possibility of older men, women do go after jerks who in that environment are good looking and high in social status. In the event they reproduce this male is almost sure to abandon them because they are not yet established and unwilling or even able to invest in the offspring, but at least the individual is a good genetic mate and their high status will set the female up to obtain a better social (able to raise the offspring) mate later in life. Cheating is often rampant in these situations because there is nothing to lose really and more to gain from increasing their status. Even the label of a two timing slut when younger is not a serious blow so long as the female is cheating with high status males. They never cheat WITH nerds. They cheat ON nerds.

Later in life, women settle down with a good (relative to environment anyway, more on that in a second) social mate and actually raise offspring (they might already be raising kids, but these are the ones that dont get the short end of the stick. More on the short end of the stick that step-kids get later)But there is still a compromise potentially. Females want a good genetic partner. They solve this through cheating and subsequent cuckholdry. The frequency changes based on how much there is to gain vs how much there is to lose. For example, population averaged false paternity is 10% or so. In the lower socioeconomic classes where there isnt really a whole lot to lose if their mate leaves them the false paternity rate is near 40%, and near zero with higher socioeconomic classes. How do women get away with this?

They do it by confusing men. Unlike most other mammals, human females do signal their ovulation. Not only that, but ovulation does not happen at a consistent time (this is why the rhythm method of birth control does not work). During the period where she is near ovulation she will often be more interested in sex, but this is not a reliable indicator because she is also more interested in sex than average at other random times. She is also prone to want sex just after cheating in order to foster a sperm war she has biased in such a way that her long term partner loses, and trick him into raising another guy's offspring.

Wait? She biases sperm competition? Yep! She does this through strategic use of orgasms. She is more likely to orgasm (and ovulate) when cheating. Orgasms soften up cervical mucous and allow for easy passage for wave after wave of sperm. But shortly afterward it hardens up, preventing new sperm from getting through.

So after the guy she is cheating with gets her off, his sperm passes easily through the cervix, but when she gets back to hubby his sperm cant get through and get slaughtered by killer sperm as the egg-seekers go for the gold. Masturbation allows her to do this artificially. She can now micromanage for herself whether her cervical mucous is hard or soft without having to rely on even having an extra-pair partner.

And this brings us naturally to the next part

He Hits Her Because He Loves Her:

We all know them. Girls who fall in with a guy who is possessive and controlling. He wont let her out of his sight and controls her every move. He might even use physical and emotional abuse to force compliance. And we also know the poor schmucks who's girlfriends wont let them spend a night out with the guys, or who try to get them to not go the christmas party at their moms place, or who call 24 times in a single evening.

Why the fuck do people do this? The short answer is that they are pathetic and emotionally insecure. The long answer is that they are engaging in the time honored tradition of mate guarding. They do it for slightly different reasons. Males are trying to prevent their mate from engaging in cuckholdry. So they get jealous, controlling, and possessive in order to either spend as much time with their mate as possible or to increase the risk associated with doing anything other than be faithful/obedient when he is not around through beating or threats of abandonment, and particularly harm to offspring she may possess (Male chimps will actually hold infants hostage to force female compliance). In this respect, humans are not much different from songbirds. Males jealously mate-guard, but the second the female leaves his sight, off both of them are mating with someone else.

Females engage in nagging behavior and threaten to cut off the relationship (and thus mating opportunities) because they fear abandonment. Remember, the primary thing she gets out of a relationship is offspring provisioning and defense. If the male forms a pair bond with another female this detracts from the primary mate. This is one of the many issues with polygyny but that is an other note entirely.

Of course, all of this talk about abuse and cutting off "Mating opportunities" (among other things, Mrs. Bobbit) leads rather naturally into the next topic

Like a Red-Headed Step Child

Have you ever noticed that step-kids get the shaft? And no, not always from Father O'Grady. Children are more likely to be abused by step parents (particularly step fathers) and foster parents than their birth parents. Same thing with adoptive parents. They are also more likely to get kicked out of the house after they turn 18 and less likely to get college assistance last I checked. Now this is not because step parents are evil, or even that all step parents do this. Just that the numbers are there and need explaining. The easiest explanation and the one most consistent with what we see in nature is that it is a way to defend against cuckholdry (are you seeing a theme?). Even though they walk into the cuckoo's nest (hah, like they have their own nests!) knowingly, their subconscious mind does not always get the message. And for the same basic reason why male lions and monkeys kill the old dominant males offspring when they take over, step-fathers have this odd tendency to abuse step-kids or disproportionately invest in their own kids at the step-kids expense. It literally is because they love their own kids more, and as for the abuse, really the pump is just primed for them psychologically to be set off by smaller things.

Of course, while we are talking about terrible things...

Rape:

The word of the day is sacrifice.

It's a notion, an idea that is central to the vast majority of religions, actually... pretty much all of them now that I think about it.

There are different types of sacrifices and different reasons for them, let's go over some very general types shall we?

A: herbs and crops, plant material basically. Usually burned or sometimes just prayed over and eaten. Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Balinese have or in the case of Balinese still do. (See that Balinese reference, that's my college education working for you!).

B: Animal, everyone in the west has some vague knowledge of this thanks to the Old Testament (look even if you haven't read it you've seen or heard or watched movies with stories based on it, it's part of your general cultural background if you're a westerner, deal with it). Usually the animal is killed (throat slitting the most popular way) and parts of it are burned. The rest gets eaten usually by the priests.

C: Finished goods. This can happen in a funeral ritual fairly often. For example burying a Norse chief in his ship filled with goods or burning it. The Romans would create items just to be given to the gods the Chinese have made a special type of money (and credit cards!) to be torched.

D: Humans. As far as I know no major religion in the world practices human sacrifice. The biggest ones that I am aware of arethe MesoAmerican faiths of the Mayans and Aztecs, which were wiped out by the Catholics (sometimes even Inquisitors are good for something). To be fair this is not done casually. The MesoAmericans honestly believed that if they didn't do these sacrifices the world would end. That is one hell of a motivator I think.

Why do we make sacrifices to our deity/s of choice? In the older religions (I.E Pagans) it was a method of worship and barginning. You see this happen in the Judeo-Christian tradition to. One of these stories has a deeply unhappy ending (warlord declares to God that he'll sacrifice the first thing out the door to greet him coming home if God gives him victory. It's his daughter. I was taught growing up that the moral is DON'T DICKER WITH GOD! He doesn't care for it).

In some cases it's an outright bribe. Dear Goddess of the waters, here is a sacrifice of goat, please don't sink my fishing boat. Thank you.

In others it's a method of giving thanks. Lord of healing, my daugther got well! Please accept this goat.

In others the deity in question is viewed has sorta of business partner, keep in mind that's not how they would put it but it's the best translation I have for our worldview. Spirits of crops the harvest was wonderful, you ensured our survival. Have a goat for a job well done.

In Shintoism and other Shamenist religions, you sacrifice to placate a spirit when you've done or are about to do something that will rightly piss it off. Dear Spirit of the trees we are sorry we chopped down said trees to build our homes. We will plant new ones for you. In the meantime please take this goat as a down payment.

Sidenote: I don't what it is but the goats are taking one hell of a beating for the team this post aren't they?

Now sacrifice isn't completely one sided. Christianity is built around the idea of Christ's sacrifice. Buddhism is rife with heroic figures who sacrifice to aide in humanity's uplifting and eventual enlightenment. Demeter in Greek mythology sacrifices every fall. Odin gives up an eye for knowledge in an attempt to preserve the world. Various spirits give up power, time and pieces to empower priests and shaman. Animal spirits will allow members of their species to die to feed the humans/whoever you got.

In these cases the sacrifice is treated with respect and gratitude usually. As for that matter most sacrifices are not treated in a causal matter but as an event worthy of note, the bigger the sacrifice the more notice. This means that there is usually a ritual to go with the sacrifice...

The word of the day is sacrifice.

It's a notion, an idea that is central to the vast majority of religions, actually... pretty much all of them now that I think about it.

There are different types of sacrifices and different reasons for them, let's go over some very general types shall we?

A: herbs and crops, plant material basically. Usually burned or sometimes just prayed over and eaten. Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Balinese have or in the case of Balinese still do. (See that Balinese reference, that's my college education working for you!).

B: Animal, everyone in the west has some vague knowledge of this thanks to the Old Testament (look even if you haven't read it you've seen or heard or watched movies with stories based on it, it's part of your general cultural background if you're a westerner, deal with it). Usually the animal is killed (throat slitting the most popular way) and parts of it are burned. The rest gets eaten usually by the priests.

C: Finished goods. This can happen in a funeral ritual fairly often. For example burying a Norse chief in his ship filled with goods or burning it. The Romans would create items just to be given to the gods the Chinese have made a special type of money (and credit cards!) to be torched.

D: Humans. As far as I know no major religion in the world practices human sacrifice. The biggest ones that I am aware of arethe MesoAmerican faiths of the Mayans and Aztecs, which were wiped out by the Catholics (sometimes even Inquisitors are good for something). To be fair this is not done casually. The MesoAmericans honestly believed that if they didn't do these sacrifices the world would end. That is one hell of a motivator I think.

Why do we make sacrifices to our deity/s of choice? In the older religions (I.E Pagans) it was a method of worship and barginning. You see this happen in the Judeo-Christian tradition to. One of these stories has a deeply unhappy ending (warlord declares to God that he'll sacrifice the first thing out the door to greet him coming home if God gives him victory. It's his daughter. I was taught growing up that the moral is DON'T DICKER WITH GOD! He doesn't care for it).

In some cases it's an outright bribe. Dear Goddess of the waters, here is a sacrifice of goat, please don't sink my fishing boat. Thank you.

In others it's a method of giving thanks. Lord of healing, my daugther got well! Please accept this goat.

In others the deity in question is viewed has sorta of business partner, keep in mind that's not how they would put it but it's the best translation I have for our worldview. Spirits of crops the harvest was wonderful, you ensured our survival. Have a goat for a job well done.

In Shintoism and other Shamenist religions, you sacrifice to placate a spirit when you've done or are about to do something that will rightly piss it off. Dear Spirit of the trees we are sorry we chopped down said trees to build our homes. We will plant new ones for you. In the meantime please take this goat as a down payment.

Sidenote: I don't what it is but the goats are taking one hell of a beating for the team this post aren't they?

Now sacrifice isn't completely one sided. Christianity is built around the idea of Christ's sacrifice. Buddhism is rife with heroic figures who sacrifice to aide in humanity's uplifting and eventual enlightenment. Demeter in Greek mythology sacrifices every fall. Odin gives up an eye for knowledge in an attempt to preserve the world. Various spirits give up power, time and pieces to empower priests and shaman. Animal spirits will allow members of their species to die to feed the humans/whoever you got.

In these cases the sacrifice is treated with respect and gratitude usually. As for that matter most sacrifices are not treated in a causal matter but as an event worthy of note, the bigger the sacrifice the more notice. This means that there is usually a ritual to go with the sacrifice...