So I've received some new insight into horror stories, especially those which purport to be true. Perhaps part of the terror behind urban legends and ghost stories is that maybe, maybe, they're real, it's not just people making up things and double-exposing photographs.
But what if you know the story is entirely made up?
This page gives a nice introduction to the Slender Man, a mythical being invented entirely on the Something Awful forums in June 2009. We know he was entirely made up for a thread on fake paranormal images . All the stories about him are made up, all the photographic evidence edited in Photoshop with various degrees of skill. He does not exist at all.
And he terrifies the heck out of me.
Why, really? Like I said, this mythical creature does not exist. Everyone involved with making up the "evidence" freely admits it. We actually can pinpoint the exact person who created the myth. We can read the inaugural post ourselves. There is no ambiguity with respect to the source at all.
So why the fear? Why do I expect something to creep up upon me at any moment? Why do I keep glancing behind me?
The only explanation I have is that there is a part of the brain reacting to this sort of horror, while simultaneously ignoring the consciously-controlled, shall we say, logical portion of the mind. We do know, after all, that we aren't in full control of our bodies. We can't order white blood cells to move to a certain spot, or kill the nerve input from a particular location, or will our stomach to stop grumbling. While the brain (well, the central nervous system, more accurately) is the seat of thinking, most of it is not involved in conscious thought.
I would posit that there is a portion of the brain, developed for survival, which automatically gathers information and initiates the instinct to flee or become more alert, sometimes strongly enough to manifest as horror. I would also propose that this portion of the brain is incapable of descerning between actual images detected by the eye directly, and images on a television or in a picture. In other words, when you watch a horror movie, this portion of the brain thinks it is all true and happening in front of you, no matter how much your logical mind protests that you're sitting in a movie theater with popcorn in your lap, dammit.
This does a good job of explaining why my conscious mind is calmly analysing this while the rest of me wants me to run away, you're in danger!
Seriously, I'm hyperaware right now. I can feel the pressure when my blood passes through my veins through the part of my arm where my sleeve constricts it slightly. I can see everything in high detail, my typing, these words, sounds, everything. All for a fake, fake tentacled person who allegedly kidnaps children and kills people and stuff.
Read the thread. Read the posts if you dare. And permit your imagination to take over your mind. Prepare to be looking over shoulder for the rest of the week. Tell yourself he's fake. It won't help.
I think this Something Awful member put it best:
So many people struggle to understand the Slender Man. They wish to categorize it, compartmentalize it. If it exists, it can be understood. If it can be understood, it can be controlled. If it can be controlled, then it is not scary. You are but fools to do this. The Slender Man is not what you want him to be, not how you want him to be. Do you truly think that it is man? You think because you give it a name that all of a sudden you are somehow anywhere near what it really is?
This can not be named, can not be controlled. Just because you want it to be something does not mean it is. He is uncontrollable. He is unstoppable. He is what scares you. He is hate. He is pain beyond death. He is in your nightmares. He is in the corners of your vision.
He is right behind you.
Sunday 25 July 2010
Friday 16 July 2010
Heartbreaking
Failure is pretty common in scientific research, I'd say. Considering how deeply we work with the unknown, it stands to reason that our initial assumptions, and therefore the expected outcomes, will run contrary to the actual reality. It's completely logical.
It doesn't stop the hurt when things go wrong. Certainly it mitigates nothing when you're working on four things at once and all of them fail simultaneously.
All this hard work for poor returns is taking its toll. The deadliest part is that I can feel myself spiralling into insanity and self-destruction. A large part of me doesn't particularly care.
The other part isn't going down without a fight.
Letting go is a coward's option, it says.
But it's hard when it's also the easy option.
It doesn't stop the hurt when things go wrong. Certainly it mitigates nothing when you're working on four things at once and all of them fail simultaneously.
All this hard work for poor returns is taking its toll. The deadliest part is that I can feel myself spiralling into insanity and self-destruction. A large part of me doesn't particularly care.
The other part isn't going down without a fight.
Letting go is a coward's option, it says.
But it's hard when it's also the easy option.
Tuesday 6 July 2010
General Despair
I don't know, it's...
It's just one of those days.
I suppose I could elaborate, but...
Sometimes you just work so hard. And somewhere in your mind, you think that effort equates to results. More effort, more results. Of course, it works nothing like that. But you are always surprised, and hurt, when slapped in the face with the raw truth.
That no matter how hard you try, the inevitable is the inevitable.
Details don't matter. The story is the same always.
It's just one of those days.
I suppose I could elaborate, but...
Sometimes you just work so hard. And somewhere in your mind, you think that effort equates to results. More effort, more results. Of course, it works nothing like that. But you are always surprised, and hurt, when slapped in the face with the raw truth.
That no matter how hard you try, the inevitable is the inevitable.
Details don't matter. The story is the same always.
Friday 2 July 2010
In Which I Invoke Godwin's Law
Being a successful researcher is about finding connections no one else spotted. It's not something you get by following the obvious path. Take the comparison made between the Escherichia coli genome and the Linux kernel, published in PNAS and highlighted in the July issue of Science. Perhaps a rather strange thing to look at, but the value of the work is clear. Evolution has shaped the bacterial genome to be able to withstand certain types of changes, and it is fascinating to see how that differs from the evolution of an open-source operating system. More importantly, mapping a biological system to a well-understood synthetic one means that we are closer to defining the confusing mess of gene interactions in terms we can readily understand.
We already have the first synthetic organism, demonstrating exactly how completely a cell's character is defined by its genome. This is not, of course, entirely new - scientists have been inserting DNA into cells to modify them for years. (I do this on a regular basis.) The difference is that previously, the introduction was partial - the host cell retains some of its original DNA, which helps to stabilise the organism in the face of the introduced genomic materia and the changes that it brings. This is the first time DNA has been introduced into an empty shell, restoring its function to be near-identical to the original.
Perhaps also, this is one of the rare times when such things come to the attention of the public. Scientists working in these fields know that such things are possible - it's simply a matter of expertise, of sitting down and working out the details. But we in science are well-insulated from the real world. There are a shocking number of people out there who do not understand things believed to be self-evident by the scientific community. For example, a lot of people don't realise that while the means by which life was first created, is perhaps debatable (although such a debate requires a healthy disregard for the fossil record), natural selection itself is not. It happens constantly. Right now. Everywhere around the world. In the soil, on the ceiling, on your face, in your gut, anywhere and everywhere a bacterium or virus might be. You grow up bacteria on a plate or in a host, slowly add increasing levels of antibiotics, and pick out the resistant survivors. That's natural selection, right there. It's a process which so undeniably exists, there is absolutely no point in debating its existence. And yet some people do.
I also think that a lot of people don't understand what science is. If you can point a stick at someone, yell "Avada Kedavra!" and reliably kill them in a flash of green light most of the time, it's not magic, it's science. If something is observable and can be tested, then it comes under the banner of science. Science is not a fixed set of facts. It is a way of thinking about the information which you have, and thinking about how you will acquire more or different information. The current set of facts is meant to change with each new acquired observation. Unfortunately, what many have to go on are the popular depictions of science, which are often not of science at all, but some kind of technological magic.
(As an aside, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was a horrible, horrible movie for any student of science. Science is not about building crazy gadgets or doing utterly impossible and senseless things. And no, movies meant for children do not get a one free ticket out of being sensible. Monsters Inc. had good imaginary science, why should the rest of you do less?)
In spite of the advantages of thinking scientifically, I don't see it becoming much more widespread than it is now. Thinking scientifically is hard. It requires absolute trust in one's observations, in one's calculations, and in the ideal that there is a truth, even if you can never find it. If there is something which you desperately want to be true, but there is no evidence to support it in spite of repeated testing, then you have to have the strength to let go. You need to always check your sources and be sure of the information you pass on. You need the courage to admit that your initial hypothesis was wrong. It's far easier to simply accept beliefs without questioning them.
I think it's sad, though, to be blind to the excitement as we understand more and more about the way things work, as we find how closely life walks the line between chaos and order, as we come closer to realising how incredibly complex and yet simple biological systems can be, simply for the sake of trotting out the old, ignorant argument of how terrible it would be if someone cloned Hitler.
We already have the first synthetic organism, demonstrating exactly how completely a cell's character is defined by its genome. This is not, of course, entirely new - scientists have been inserting DNA into cells to modify them for years. (I do this on a regular basis.) The difference is that previously, the introduction was partial - the host cell retains some of its original DNA, which helps to stabilise the organism in the face of the introduced genomic materia and the changes that it brings. This is the first time DNA has been introduced into an empty shell, restoring its function to be near-identical to the original.
Perhaps also, this is one of the rare times when such things come to the attention of the public. Scientists working in these fields know that such things are possible - it's simply a matter of expertise, of sitting down and working out the details. But we in science are well-insulated from the real world. There are a shocking number of people out there who do not understand things believed to be self-evident by the scientific community. For example, a lot of people don't realise that while the means by which life was first created, is perhaps debatable (although such a debate requires a healthy disregard for the fossil record), natural selection itself is not. It happens constantly. Right now. Everywhere around the world. In the soil, on the ceiling, on your face, in your gut, anywhere and everywhere a bacterium or virus might be. You grow up bacteria on a plate or in a host, slowly add increasing levels of antibiotics, and pick out the resistant survivors. That's natural selection, right there. It's a process which so undeniably exists, there is absolutely no point in debating its existence. And yet some people do.
I also think that a lot of people don't understand what science is. If you can point a stick at someone, yell "Avada Kedavra!" and reliably kill them in a flash of green light most of the time, it's not magic, it's science. If something is observable and can be tested, then it comes under the banner of science. Science is not a fixed set of facts. It is a way of thinking about the information which you have, and thinking about how you will acquire more or different information. The current set of facts is meant to change with each new acquired observation. Unfortunately, what many have to go on are the popular depictions of science, which are often not of science at all, but some kind of technological magic.
(As an aside, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was a horrible, horrible movie for any student of science. Science is not about building crazy gadgets or doing utterly impossible and senseless things. And no, movies meant for children do not get a one free ticket out of being sensible. Monsters Inc. had good imaginary science, why should the rest of you do less?)
In spite of the advantages of thinking scientifically, I don't see it becoming much more widespread than it is now. Thinking scientifically is hard. It requires absolute trust in one's observations, in one's calculations, and in the ideal that there is a truth, even if you can never find it. If there is something which you desperately want to be true, but there is no evidence to support it in spite of repeated testing, then you have to have the strength to let go. You need to always check your sources and be sure of the information you pass on. You need the courage to admit that your initial hypothesis was wrong. It's far easier to simply accept beliefs without questioning them.
I think it's sad, though, to be blind to the excitement as we understand more and more about the way things work, as we find how closely life walks the line between chaos and order, as we come closer to realising how incredibly complex and yet simple biological systems can be, simply for the sake of trotting out the old, ignorant argument of how terrible it would be if someone cloned Hitler.
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