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[Batgirl1]

Although actually, the idea of Dorfs socializing over tea and coffee, with heated debates being the nonalcoholic equivalent to a bar-room brawl, does make a nice kind of sense.  The question then becomes what happens if Urist is drinking tea, Thorin is drinking rum, and Dopey is drinking a hot toddy?

[Egan_BW]

I'd put my money on that being a threesome.

[GoblinCookie]

Yes, sorry, I should have clarified--I was thinking of cured & processed dry tea, meant for sale & transport, as opposed to already-brewed tea ready for immediate consumption. I'd assumed that my use of the word "tamped" would be enough to indicate the distinction (you can't tamp a liquid), but I see I should have spelled it out. Anyway, my point was that if various "tea" recipes have leaves blended together, then DF's current model of food preparation (wherein the added ingredients are treated as decorations on the main ingredient, and have their values multiplied accordingly) would mean that [1] unit of (+tea leaves+, +tea leaves+, +tea leaves+, and +tea leaves+) would cost far more than [4] units of (+tea leaves+). I was just saying that this was silly; 40 leaves' worth of dry tea should always cost the same as 40 leaves' worth of dry tea, no matter how it's grouped.

Unfortunately, it's at this point that my post ceases to have anything to do with tea.

I was arguing that the present system of quality = value does not work very well because according to it a stronger tea is more valuable than a weaker tea to a dwarf, since if quality is a X of the raw materials we end up with an ever huge gap between the value of the two types of tea since the initial resource value is greater. 

Well, well, well! Sounds like somebody finally did some actual research, and didn't like what they found. This must have presented a nice little dilemma for you: If you were unable to unearth any reputable sources that supported your claims, but you did discover several sources that supported mine, you could either

• Grudgingly admit that you were wrong about something, or
• Discredit the entire idea of independent sources and expert opinions as something untrustworthy.

By the way, which of these tactics comes closer to the default strategy of Don "Fake News" Trump? Now, granted, I'll be the first to say that you, GoblinCookie, are FAR more intelligent than he is. (I realize that that's incredibly faint praise, but hey, what do you expect from me, right?  ) But there's another similarity, as well: You both strongly believe a number of things which are objectively and provably false, and will stubbornly cling to those beliefs in spite of all evidence to the contrary. (Perhaps that's what motivates my personal grudge against you: Fighting you feels so much like fighting him.)

Well, guess what; I'm calling your bluff. You say that experts can be cherry-picked to back up practically any viewpoint? Well then, you'd better have some references that are more reputable than your own ass, which is literally the only source you've cited so far. I have my own, of course, but have refrained from mentioning them simply because, as I keep saying, the debate does NOT belong in this thread.

Speaking of which: I was going to bring up my old threat about taking our ongoing rivalry and moving it to its own thread, which would be located somewhere more appropriate, like General Discussion. But in GD's Forum Guidelines, I see that Rule #1 is "Do not pick a fight," which is directly against the nature of what would literally be a SixOfSpades vs. GoblinCookie thread. So I admit I'm a bit unsure of where to continue . . . which is the only reason I'm talking so much about it here. What do you think--should we move this to a PM, with the eventual loser agreeing to come back out in public, and metaphorically heap dung upon his head?

I think you and I have a very different philosophy and it time to switch to PM.

[SixOfSpades]

Syndrome Associate with Tea: Argumentativeness.  Dwarfs who consume too much tea will begin shouting at each other about politics, rumor verification, and cannibalistic rabbits.

Hmmm . . . a "Debate" interaction sounds like a very good wrinkle to fold into the School/Academy addition. Scholars could debate the niceties of whatever branch of science they're researching, Priests could debate points of theology, etc. The longer/more spirited the debate, and the higher the average Analytical Ability of the participants, the better the odds that they will eventually arrive at the correct answer.

I think you and I have a very different philosophy and it time to switch to PM.

Too late. I've decided that, since my primary aim in correcting you was to prevent your teaching the other forum members things that aren't true, it would be an equal disservice to them if I concealed the actual science behind a PM wall. So I'm compromising by posting in the thread, but using a spoiler tag. Those readers who wish to learn why GoblinCookie is wrong can click the spoiler, while those who only want to concern themselves with tea are welcome to scroll right on past.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The rabbits could cannibalize each other. They are known to eat their stillborn young. There are also the practical issues of which animals have access to which food, and how rabbits are territorial, but I don't want to get further involved.

This is a very valid point, and supports my point over GoblinCookie's (as it emphasizes the fact that some rabbits would prosper at the expense of others), but I chose not to address it for two reasons: 1. Like you, I was trying to avoid a lengthy debate, and 2. I didn't want to look at the "rabbits" as rabbits specifically, I wanted to keep it as vague as GoblinCookie's original wording of "smaller creatures," the better to disprove his actual argument (as opposed to simply finding an exception to it). So I disregarded factors like the fact that rabbits & elephants eat different foods, live in different areas, etc., because they weren't generally relevant.


I shall refute three main points of GoblinCookie's, and (unlike him) I will back up my understanding with actual published and peer-reviewed research, because (again, unlike him) I freely acknowledge that there are people who know more about this subject than I do.

A small number of large creatures deals with a shortage of food better than the equivalent biomass of smaller creatures

From the book On Size and Life, which specifically deals with the effects and problems of scale on various structures (plants, animals, buildings, etc.):
     "But suppose there were a great drought sufficiently prolonged to cause extensive destruction of food plants. Under such circumstances, the population would be greatly reduced, and, because of the slow rate of reproduction, it would take many years for the population to recover. All of these problems are directly related to the elephant's size. To illustrate the point, let us see by comparison what would happen to a small rodent under the same environmental stress. An African field mouse would also be threatened by such a severe, catastrophic drought. But the needs of any individual mouse are minuscule compared to those of an elephant. If only a small amount of grass persists near springs or streams, a few mice will survive. When favorable weather returns, there will be a reservoir of individuals that can multiply with great rapidity, owing to the fact that they have a short generation time and large litters. As a result, they can repopulate quickly when their food plants reappear. In other words, there is a resilience to the small mammals in fluctuating environments that the large ones lack, especially if the fluctuation reaches a certain critical magnitude or duration."

The actual reason small animals survive mass extinctions better is that reproduction requires proximity between creatures.  Very large creatures require a large amount of land per creature and that drives them apart, which means is something kills off a large portion of the large creatures there is a good probability the survivors will be too far apart for them to reproduce well enough to replace their losses.

Many types of large animals alive today deliberately separate their populations as a matter of course, not just when times are hard. They usually congregate only during the mating season, at traditional sites instinctively known by all individuals. So, in response to a famine, a group of large animals would be more likely to respond by breaking into smaller groups than normal (perhaps even down to lone individuals) and scattering to gather food over a wider area, followed by gathering at the mating sites for a shorter period (because the available resources there would dry up faster). They would almost certainly not wander endlessly in search of food and die without ever finding a mate.
As for how a specific large animal dealt with an actual mass extinction (not just a blip of a famine), consider the therapsid Lystrosaurus, which plowed right through the "Great Dying" at the end of the Permian period, considered the worst mass extinction Earth has ever known. Witness this article on ScienceDaily.com:
Of particular relevance here is how the article points out that Lystrosaurus responded to environmental hardship by getting a lot smaller. I should also note that the only times that I can recall reproductive difficulties being the main factor in a species's extinction are with sea turtles (climate change raises their eggs' incubation temperature, which in turn wildly skews their gender ratio) and giant pandas (their libido is abnormally low, for some reason)--neither of which are suffering from any particular shortage of food.

It gets worse for your rabbits, since as a result of their being more rabbits than food, the rabbits end up eating 100% of the food that is available.  This results in them wiping out all the plants they eat, turning the whole place into a barren wasteland where no number of rabbits can survive at all.

To clarify, the problem is that the rabbits in Six of Spades parable don't just starve, they also consume 100% of the food in the process.  Eating 100% of the food means extinction for the plants that rabbits eat and this extinction is irreversible.

The first of these quotes comes from GoblinCookie's 5-paragraph mini-rant near the end of Page 9. He was at least in the neighborhood of correct for most of it, except for what I plucked out (and, of course, everything that depended on its accuracy). As previously demonstrated in the infamous "DuckTales" debate, he has a grave misunderstanding of time where grazing is concerned, and insists on believing that relatively small causes (like a majority of female ducks each laying a reasonably large clutch of eggs) will inevitably devastate the entire ecosystem overnight.
From the book The Dinosaur Heresies, containing many great (and, at the time of its publishing, very unorthodox) theories about the lifestyle, metabolism, diet, evolution, and extinction of both the dinosaurs themselves and the therapsid "proto-mammals" of the Permian:
     "Extinctions on land possess another peculiarity. On average, plants do not suffer as much as the plant-eaters. The land plants of the Late Cretaceous did suffer some extinctions but nothing compared to the wholesale devastation experienced by the plant-eating dinosaurs. The relative immunity of plants holds true for the other previous and subsequent mass extinctions."
     What GoblinCookie overlooks is that grazing, even over-grazing, is a gradual process, not some Thanos snap that obliterates entire species in 1 generation. Environments that are over-saturated with herbivores mean that the herbivores get progressively weaker, and that the carnivores have easy pickings . . . it does not mean the immediate and irrevocable collapse of the entire ecosystem. Every day, for each plant that gets its leaves browsed & eaten, there are a hundred other plants that grow back a little. The plants survive. If the place couldn't support that many herbivores, the herbivores wouldn't be there. The plants survive. (One of the main reasons that today's global warming is so scary is that climate change, unlike grazing, actually can cause large-scale ecocide.)
     
That's the end of the science lesson, no more truths beyond this point. What follows is just my analysis of GoblinCookie's personality, intellectual honesty, and merits as an academic. (I tried to nest spoiler tags here, but apparently the editor won't let me do that.)

There are rather few actual facts, so any fact-checking service is simply a disguised propaganda outlet for somebody.  Since Edward Bernays day the propagandist has made great currency out of wheeling out cherry-picked experts to back up a claim in order to get the gullible to believe whatever they want.

Well, guess what; I'm calling your bluff. You say that experts can be cherry-picked to back up practically any viewpoint? Well then, you'd better have some references that are more reputable than your own ass, which is literally the only source you've cited so far.

I'm reposting this quote because, after I had specifically called GoblinCookie out and challenged him to produce some references that would lend him some credibility, I kinda expected him to, you know, provide some sources. I had done the same thing once before, back when he was arguing that a "clan" was primarily a system of government. So I provided links to a few online dictionary definitions, and invited him to do the same. He never responded. So, when the current debate arose, I figured I'd let him try again. Everyone deserves a second chance, right? I let him know that I had reference materials to support my claims, and gave him plenty of time to research his own. Books, articles, websites, Wikipedia pages, something. I mean, it's a big world out there, surely there's got to be somebody who thinks the same way he does, right?

. . . He did, indeed, send me a PM. In it, he does not cite any sources, or indeed defend his actions in any way. Instead, he does nothing but further belittle the very possibility of knowable, objective fact. He puts his pretension on full display with airs like ". . . there are rather few positive facts, most facts are negative.  We know certain things are *not* the case because there being so contradicts mathematics and logic." To be fair, he did say something that I agree with: "If the conclusions that logically follow from a premise are not sustainable, that premise is incorrect automatically regardless of how much apparent evidence you have and how many distinguished intellectuals agree with you." By his logic, if
a) A small number of large creatures deals with a shortage of food better than the equivalent biomass of smaller creatures, and
b) Intentional deforestation is destroying huge swaths of habitat in the Amazon basin, then
c) We should be hearing the environmentalists setting off warning sirens about the critically endangered rainforest ant species.
Oh, but wait, we don't. Instead, they're warning us about species like ocelots, tapirs, spider monkeys, and poison dart frogs. The ants seem to be doing fine. Well, since (c) is incorrect, that must mean that either (a) or (b) is also incorrect. Hmm . . . I wonder if it's (b).

What I find most irritating about GoblinCookie's latest failure is that it's boring, he merely moves the goalposts and retreats into the no-man's-land of "facts don't exist, so you can't prove me wrong." But more to the point, he pulls this stunt only after giving that faux-scholarly mini-rant I mentioned above. He spouts off sentences like "The tendency of random distributions in populations is towards the mean, not towards the extremes, a rabbit that is 20% better at finding food is many times more improbable than a 10% better and a rabbit that is 40% better than the mean is many times more improbable again," and then immediately turns on a dime into "As I said there are very few facts."

GoblinCookie, in the past I have called you both Ignorant, and Arrogant. I see I must now formally add both Cowardice and Hypocrisy to your list of known character flaws. You say that "there is often little purpose wasting the finite number of seconds that make up your life trawling through the internet finding people who agree with you," and you DO have a point there. (It doesn't really apply to me, as literally all I had to do was grab 2 books in my bedroom and Google "How to Survive a Mass Extinction", but it's still a point.) You, and perhaps others, will deride the length of time I spent typing all this up, and say it was worthless. I disagree. I consider it time well spent, not only because it helps people to unlearn the non-knowledge you've been foisting upon them from under the didactic cloak you so love to wear, but also because I personally enjoy exposing your faults. I will ram your oversize ego right back down your throat even if I have to break your teeth to do it.

[Egan_BW]

Too late. I've decided that, since my primary aim in correcting you was to prevent your teaching the other forum members things that aren't true, it would be an equal disservice to them if I concealed the actual science behind a PM wall. So I'm compromising by posting in the thread, but using a spoiler tag. Those readers who wish to learn why GoblinCookie is wrong can click the spoiler, while those who only want to concern themselves with tea are welcome to scroll right on past.

Ah, so you admit that the purpose of you not taking it to PMs is a need to prove in front of everyone here that you are smarter than GC~

[SixOfSpades]

Ah, so you admit that the purpose of you not taking it to PMs is a need to prove in front of everyone here that you are smarter than GC~

Mmm, nah, if I felt a "need" to thrash him in public, I wouldn't have offered to move it to a PM in the first place. The only thing(s) that needed to be seen were either the actual facts of the scientific points under debate, and/or GoblinCookie's full retraction & admission of error. I would most likely have been content arguing the matter in private--IF he had actually wanted to argue. Instead, I opened my PM inbox & got only a face full of his fatuous navel-gazing upon the nature of truth. So, since he clearly was never going to give a public retraction, I felt obliged to give him a good public schooling.

[Calidovi]

should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.

[Rowanas]

should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.

I would include them all under brewing or farmer-related tasks. At the moment we've got an arbitrary distinction between alcohol and all other substances, which makes this sort of thinga bit of a peculiarity.

SixofSpades, I disagree with both you and GoblinCookie on "if the conclusion reached by logical extension of a premise is incorrect, so to is the premise" because it is logically true but very unhelpful in normal discourse, where the enumeration of all the tiny footnotes is purely a matter of nitpicking, rather than any kind of aid to the discourse itself in most situations.  So my disagreement is that it is generally and practically unhelpful, rather than false.

[GoblinCookie]

Too late. I've decided that, since my primary aim in correcting you was to prevent your teaching the other forum members things that aren't true, it would be an equal disservice to them if I concealed the actual science behind a PM wall. So I'm compromising by posting in the thread, but using a spoiler tag. Those readers who wish to learn why GoblinCookie is wrong can click the spoiler, while those who only want to concern themselves with tea are welcome to scroll right on past.

As we both agreed, the DF suggestions forum is not the place to talk in-depth about the nature of biology.  Maybe someone should report you for deliberately derailing a thread?  I will respond to your 'why I am wrong points' only by PM, I'm saying this in case people think that I cannot respond or have no interest in doing so.  I've already amply demonstrated why Six of Spades is talking nonsense, so I don't really need

Ah, so you admit that the purpose of you not taking it to PMs is a need to prove in front of everyone here that you are smarter than GC~

Mmm, nah, if I felt a "need" to thrash him in public, I wouldn't have offered to move it to a PM in the first place. The only thing(s) that needed to be seen were either the actual facts of the scientific points under debate, and/or GoblinCookie's full retraction & admission of error. I would most likely have been content arguing the matter in private--IF he had actually wanted to argue. Instead, I opened my PM inbox & got only a face full of his fatuous navel-gazing upon the nature of truth. So, since he clearly was never going to give a public retraction, I felt obliged to give him a good public schooling.

So you now openly admit to deliberately derailing a thread? 

Those aren't facts, those are the opinions of various biologists that wrote books.  What you call the fatuous naval-gazing is the whole problem, you refuse to understand that mere opinions are not facts.  In other words you really love this particular fallacy.  If you were interested in facts, you would be interested in the 'fatuous naval-gazing' because they concern how we distinguish facts from opinions.  A fact is not the opinion of some clever person, or a lot of clever people; a fact is something that is or is not the case by necessity, that is to say it is not possible for it to be wrong. 

should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.

Tea would fall under cooking, because boiling water and adding things is pretty much a staple of many recipes.  It is certainly does not fall under medicine, because there really is no similarity between making tea and most medicine skills, unless medicine is supposed to mean making medicine instead of administering it.  Making medicine may fall under cooking or chemistry depending upon the nature of medicine. 

[therahedwig]

So, hey, I actually do want to talk about goddamn tea. As in the darned soaking of dried plants into hot water and drinking the resulting concoction and related industries. As someone who has been waiting for the thread to rerail, neither of you two have been keeping on topic, so don't go claiming moral high ground on thread derailment.

[GoblinCookie]

So, hey, I actually do want to talk about goddamn tea. As in the darned soaking of dried plants into hot water and drinking the resulting concoction and related industries. As someone who has been waiting for the thread to rerail, neither of you two have been keeping on topic, so don't go claiming moral high ground on thread derailment.

The difference is he is in some kind of crusade against me, but I'm not in a crusade against him. 

[Starver]

G'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan, g'wan...

[KittyTac]

Chill.

Chill.

...now, can we go back to discussing tea?

[therahedwig]

Are you guys hinting we should discuss icetea? :p

Okay, so we've got...

Alcoholic plant based drinks.

Non-alcoholic plant based drinks from fruit: Juice.

Non-alcoholic plant based drinks from herbs and spices: Coffee, Tea, Tisanes(Herbal Tea) and Hot Chocolate.

Animal extract based drinks: Milk, Yoghurt, Lassi.

Water.

So maybe we could talk about combining these somehow?

[SixOfSpades]

should tea fall under cooking, or would it be better suited under a medical skill? i think the inclusion of tea precipitates the inclusion of other syndrome-causing drugs.

Tea would fall under cooking, because boiling water and adding things is pretty much a staple of many recipes.  It is certainly does not fall under medicine, because there really is no similarity between making tea and most medicine skills, unless medicine is supposed to mean making medicine instead of administering it.  Making medicine may fall under cooking or chemistry depending upon the nature of medicine.

The grey area between the disciplines is rather large, both in techniques and in terms of historical time. Tea falls under the "seasoning" aspect of Cooking (which of course doesn't really exist yet), because like other herbs, it's collected and consumed in quantities far too small to satisfy hunger, all it can really do is provide flavor. But I disagree with tea being unlike medicines: Many healthful herbs are delivered via infusion, and compounding the precise ratios of such plants would definitely fall under the Medical purview. If anything like the Innovations plan is ever developed, I would place Tea as a discovery that could be unlocked by a Cook or an Herbalist/Herbologist.

Are you guys hinting we should discuss icetea?

Why not? If cold biomes can/should produce cultures that value hot drinks, certainly ice would be a valuable luxury commodity in warmer climes.

Okay, so we've got...

Don't forget alcoholic milk drinks, like kumis and kefir. And upcoming cavern strangeness might also produce strange new beverages, as well.

Non-tea-related stuff:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

SixofSpades, I disagree with both you and GoblinCookie on "if the conclusion reached by logical extension of a premise is incorrect, so to is the premise" because it is logically true but very unhelpful in normal discourse, where the enumeration of all the tiny footnotes is purely a matter of nitpicking, rather than any kind of aid to the discourse itself in most situations.  So my disagreement is that it is generally and practically unhelpful, rather than false.

Understood, but it's a question of goals--whether or not something is "helpful" is only a consideration when the object is attainable in the first place. Since the more desirable goal (getting GoblinCookie to admit he was wrong) is not attainable, it is (slightly) more productive to argue that his logic was false, than to waste time trying to be helpful.

Maybe someone should report you for deliberately derailing a thread? . . . So you now openly admit to deliberately derailing a thread?

As most of my "biology" posts also made positive contributions to the tea discussion, took the biology tack only reluctantly, emphasized the importance of staying on topic, used a spoiler tag the one time I got long-winded (two, now), and even invited uninterested readers to skip over it, I hardly think that reporting me will produce the result you desire, especially when you yourself were conspicuously less conscientious.

I will respond to your 'why I am wrong points' only by PM

I've just got to announce that GoblinCookie got some science right! He said this: "What I was actually talking about however was not a disaster but a stable state of affairs where there is a small amount of food per area.  That kind of situation actually favours larger creatures over smaller one, because economies of scale and slower metabolism means a larger creature eats considerably less than a number of smaller creatures of equivalent mass."
     And, assuming he's talking about warm-blooded animals (which indeed, I did specify in my example) all of that is correct! It's a very different scenario from what we were actually arguing about, but still, well done GoblinCookie!

I've already amply demonstrated why Six of Spades is talking nonsense, so I don't really need

Those aren't facts, those are the opinions of various biologists that wrote books.  In other words you really love this particular fallacy.

I love how you seem to think that the simple act of citing a source--or hell, perhaps even just reading a book--in and of itself constitutes a logical fallacy . . . and then you go on to assume that I must be too stupid to know the difference between a fact & an opinion. Well, here's a tip: Appealing to an authority is only a logical error if you assume infallibility where none exists. For example, saying that "Ten million Justin Bieber fans can't be wrong." (Uh, yeah, they can.) But what *I* did was call up a group of biologists & paleontologists who explicitly contradicted several of your main points. Since any person with even a passing knowledge of any form of science would immediately acknowledge that my sources (a group of well-respected, published professionals whose books have stood up to literal decades of peer review) easily supersede your sources (yourself), me citing my references is anything BUT a fallacy, logical or otherwise.

A fact is not the opinion of some clever person, or a lot of clever people; a fact is something that is or is not the case by necessity, that is to say it is not possible for it to be wrong.

And who deduces whether or not something is "possibly wrong" or not? Is it, by any chance, you? You didn't do too well at logical deduction last time, as I recall. And I have VERY grave misgivings about this theme of "distrust of clever people" that you keep harping on. It's very odd, to say nothing of self-destructive, for a self-proclaimed intellectual to insist on blowing all the old anti-intellectual dog-whistles that the Republicans are so fond of using. You imply that all scholarly works are nothing more than smart people's opinions,  and to quote books is a fallacy, and there are very few positive known facts--I guess you've forgotten all of the posts you've made in earlier pages of this thread, where you make concrete claims about hard biology facts. Or perhaps you simply think that the only authority anyone needs, the only scientist worth listening to, is also the only person you go to for your scholarly research: Yourself.