The Warcrafter
- Thread starter RHJunior
- Start date
wkz
Probably on the other side of the world from you
I donno about you, but I'm sorry; your protag!ROB just dropped a few ranks with this WoG, simply because instead of being a "more benevolent than his peers" risky chessmaster being as I first thought, he is merely a poor player who put his heart and feels into the game a bit too much more than playing smartly...
Meh. It's not like the rest of the fic suffers that much with this interpretation in mind.
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Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
Would you rather be sacrificed like a pawn? Chessmasters do that kind of thing.
And after the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
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wkz
Probably on the other side of the world from you
Sorta taking things out of context, ya?
A smart leader who cares about you while trying to make all the correct steps and a poor leader who cares about you who has a tendency to go "oops" while making moves on the chessboard, which one would you choose?
Because "cares about you" is already clearly evident as the protag!ROB is written.
Since we're using a chess analogy:
One sacrifices Pawns while going for the win, never maliciously or due to mistakes. The other loses Knights, Castles, Queens and what not as he stumbles along, until he eventually either lucks out or he loses his King and the entire game.
Both king and the pawn goes back in the same box either way. Which is the better game you want to be a pawn in?
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Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
...pardon me if I consider the entire freaking world to be evidence that what you just said is 100% unadulterated BULLSHIT.
wkz
Probably on the other side of the world from you
... we are STILL talking about the Warcrafter version of ROBs, are we?
Or would you rather our Protag!ROB crash into Earth Bet like a meteor, effect change in the space of "until he gets noticed", and then gets wiped from existence for trying? Because I assume there are rules for that sort of thing that prevent him from doing just that, rules which our protag!ROB constantly and repeatedly keeps mentioning...
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Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
This is a discussed trope in the fic;
wkz
Probably on the other side of the world from you
Yes. I agree.
And guess what?
By the rules that our protag!ROB is playing, the ROB collective does not believe in that statement.
Agents are willing to bet their Quatloo chip things to add power to Avatars going in to fix messed up 'verses (aka the Minority, unless the multiverse really sucks that badly). For Entertainment.
Most don't even bet much; it is constantly repeated in WoGs and in story text that our protag!ROB is the outlier, that he is the rare one who empowers his Avatars all the way. Or: most Avatars don't even have the level of power Bayleaf has.
This is only slightly better than letting a meteor crash and kill off an entire planet because someone wants to uphold a Prime Directive, because the Warcrafter ROB version of that Directive is to insert a (slightly more) powerful but still restricted ("within reason my fellow Agents, gotta save my Quatloo for future investment") and not necessary capable Avatar on that planet and then munch on popcorn as they watch him struggle to deflect said meteor.
With their unlimited power, parked on their chairs, watching the disaster unfold like a ***** soap!
This is why I believed what I first believe (before RH and his WoG), that our protag!ROB believes otherwise, doing otherwise and is denying 'the game' that his fellow Agents are playing by stretching the rules as far as they can go, in favor of improving the 'verses which are 'effed up at cost to himself. That Bayleaf is right in saying our protag!ROB is different from the collective in how he wants to save everyone.
Edit #2: In searching for the correct name of Quatloos, (which I accidentally got correct all this time, yay!), I found the proper names for 'Agent' (ROB) and 'Avatar' (Bayleaf) as used in this fic. Replacing those words in my post.
Edit #3: A disclaimer, just in case. Please remember I said this:
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LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
I don't really recall what method you wanted, but I found a typo (not that I remember where it was now). How should I report those in future?
I also don't have much idea how to get more actual replies, but asking for them in a header or the first chapter would probably work. Or adding an "informational"-tagged post would notify any subscribed viewers.
Has the latest chapter undergone editing? I seem to remember it being longer and it being more complicated to figure out the whole hostage thing when I read it on AO3, or that might be differences due to the moderating rules.
Just saying again how much I liked your work.
Slightly off-topic: I was reading the Probability Bomb (I seem to have missed whatever page lists appropriate reading order, if there is one, or it wasn't obvious to me), and I have a slight complaint about the speed of light not being constant as a rebuttal to the age of the universe. Ignoring such complicated things to figure out (especially as, since one commenter pointed out, they've allegedly solved that problem, so there are no holes), you missed a rather likely solution -- which I'd say was hinted at us to boot:
The universe was created to be somewhat old.
Note that Adam and Eve were adults when they were brought into being. They didn't start as babies and mature. Similarly, the universe could have been formed in such a way (or adjusted after the Fall) so that the light of the stars had already crossed the distances to Earth, rather than try to find exceptions to physics (not that He could not have done so, just that we have no evidence, and such a change should have left it) so that the light could do so on its own.
A good comparison for computer-savvy people (most SVers, I suspect) would be disk imaging or virtualization (Note that I'm not saying I think the whole universe is a simulation) or that whole transfer stuff you do when you buy a new hard drive. You can take a frozen disk image and load it up on a computer, and it can't tell if the disk image was the original one that was in use for years (or just modified with all your installs ahead of time) or if it's actually freshly installed with all the data looking like it was already in use (as an aside, this plays merry hell on crypto, since it can't tell if its randomness on boot is actually unique or if it's a saved state already used in a past-that-never-was). Similarly, the universe might be young, but called into being with an old appearance about the same time that our planet was made with a nice fresh magnetic field.
I also don't have much idea how to get more actual replies, but asking for them in a header or the first chapter would probably work. Or adding an "informational"-tagged post would notify any subscribed viewers.
Has the latest chapter undergone editing? I seem to remember it being longer and it being more complicated to figure out the whole hostage thing when I read it on AO3, or that might be differences due to the moderating rules.
Just saying again how much I liked your work.
Slightly off-topic: I was reading the Probability Bomb (I seem to have missed whatever page lists appropriate reading order, if there is one, or it wasn't obvious to me), and I have a slight complaint about the speed of light not being constant as a rebuttal to the age of the universe. Ignoring such complicated things to figure out (especially as, since one commenter pointed out, they've allegedly solved that problem, so there are no holes), you missed a rather likely solution -- which I'd say was hinted at us to boot:
The universe was created to be somewhat old.
Note that Adam and Eve were adults when they were brought into being. They didn't start as babies and mature. Similarly, the universe could have been formed in such a way (or adjusted after the Fall) so that the light of the stars had already crossed the distances to Earth, rather than try to find exceptions to physics (not that He could not have done so, just that we have no evidence, and such a change should have left it) so that the light could do so on its own.
A good comparison for computer-savvy people (most SVers, I suspect) would be disk imaging or virtualization (Note that I'm not saying I think the whole universe is a simulation) or that whole transfer stuff you do when you buy a new hard drive. You can take a frozen disk image and load it up on a computer, and it can't tell if the disk image was the original one that was in use for years (or just modified with all your installs ahead of time) or if it's actually freshly installed with all the data looking like it was already in use (as an aside, this plays merry hell on crypto, since it can't tell if its randomness on boot is actually unique or if it's a saved state already used in a past-that-never-was). Similarly, the universe might be young, but called into being with an old appearance about the same time that our planet was made with a nice fresh magnetic field.
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- Somewhere, Maybe
Or the universe could really be that old, and evolve in the way that our god-given brains have logically deduced from observed evidence.
I love the Gallileo quote, which I can't recall exactly, but goes something like this:
"I refuse to believe in a deity that would give us brains and the capacity to use them, and insist we do not."
Honestly, I'm not sure what you're getting at there, if you're discussing about the real world, or the world in this fic, so I'm going to let it go at that. I -really- hate Creationism, since it flies in the face of what I consider to be all logical evidence, but I won't get drawn into a debate about that. You've got your theory, I've got mine, and if the two don't agree, oh well. v.v
Kinda sorry I brought it up now.
LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
I actually agree with the whole "don't discuss or it starts flame wars" part, and have something of the same feeling. Then again, I'd have to get an account to post it over at the original page.
...Laziness and infosec trumps guilt?
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
Love this to death.
So do I, but I adore it when competent Creationists point out the flaws in the existing theory, because investigating those flaws is how we get breakthroughs like geocentrism giving way to heliocentrism; people kept on adding "epicycles" to explain all the holes in the original theory, and then Galileo took the simple step of taking Earth out of the center of the universe, and then all the orbits made sense.
I particularly like the "time is not a constant" one; Gravitational time dilation is 100% real and acknowledged(the mere gravitational difference between the Earth's surface and orbit is high enough that it is proven that time moves faster in orbit; the atomic clocks on GPS satellites have to be readjusted by software on a continual basis, otherwise the satellites would be off by 38 microseconds — and their coordinate readings by 10 kilometers — in a single day) but only on a local as opposed to a universal scale.
The oil one is good too: Abiogenic petroleum origin is heavily disputed because modern environmentalism is heavily skewed towards the post-peak oil prediction; if more oil will become available if we just reduce our use for a while, a lot of proposed laws and policies will turn out to be completely pointless.
Stuff like this is why Creationists who can actually discuss their views in a scholarly manner are vital; One can't achieve progress without credible opposition, any more than an athlete can improve their skills without a challenging opponent.
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
You would think, but some of them - such as the author - are scientifically literate enough to point out that we've let theory become dogma.
Did you even click those wikipedia links? That's the kind of stuff a skilled opponent to existing theory is good at pointing out. The alternative is dumb crap like spending billions upon billions of dollars to improve existing instruments rather than acknowledging the existence of the Cosmic microwave background.
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
The Bible is not a credible source for scientific insight. Ergo, most of Creationism is discredited at a stroke.
Most of them still attempt to use the bible as a reference, without proving its credability as a scientific source. Eyewitness testimony, even if we assume that it was accurately reported and transcribed and copied for thousands of years, is -not- sufficient in and of itself for such extraordinary claims.
And that's where most of creationism falls apart: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and the burden of such proof is placed on the shoulders of the creationists making such claims. Merely casting doubt is not enough, you need to -prove- your argument to "win" that fight. And to do that you need to go head-to-head against the top scientists is basically every field of science.
To take one example: The spiral arms of galaxies don't blur into disks, because they aren't fixed structures, they're traffic jams as the orbiting stars, gas, and dust clouds enter them, slow down, crash into each other, trigger rapid star formation, and move on again. they aren't fixed structures, or they -would- have wound up around the galaxy like string on a spool.
Here's another example: the growing distance between the earth and moon is due to tidal forces. The Earth's spin keeps the tidal bulge formed by the moon "ahead" of it's orbit, so the moon is constantly being 'tugged' by that offset to the tidal bulge into going slightly faster. which pushes it into a higher orbit. This also slows the rate of the earth's rotation, and eventually (in roughly a billion or so years) the earth's rate of rotation will slow until the tidal bulge in the earth's oceans and crust will point directly at the moon, and the two will become tidally locked. That will happen right at around the point where the Earth's oceans begin to boil off due to the slow and steady heating of the Sun, tho.
Edit: Damnit, I didn't want to start a flame war. I'm done with this. *heads to bed.*
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
Does it matter why someone chooses to point out the flaws in your theories, as long as they do so in a way that encourages scientific discourse? Here's my single favorite story about this kind of thing; one day while in a small German town, Rene Descartes spent an entire night in a ceramic furnace/sauna/steam bath(some sources say he actually ate a handful of psilocybin mushrooms) and was visited by a series of wild dreams and hallucinations. His most vivid dream was for the future of the field of physics. In Descartes's dream, the field of physics became highly dependent on mathematical methods. Descartes's dream heralded a future where the predictive power of mathematics would replace observation and measurements as the most powerful tools for advancing the field of physics.
...and the angel said to Descartes: "The conquest of nature is to be achieved through measure and number."
Does it matter how he came to his conclusion as long as those conclusions let to the discovery of scientific facts?
- Location
- UK
No. No no no, theories do not get opponents. Theories are the highest level a scientific idea can have. While science is not in the business of proving things beyond a shadow of a doubt, a scientific theory is the closest thing you can get to it. Disproving a theory is the sort of thing that earns people Nobel prizes and is highly unlikely to be achieved by someone who believes accounts written 2000 years ago by illiterate goat herders is worth any more consideration than the legends of Heraclese. And as for 'waisting' money on instruments, that's what science does. It accepts nothing at face value (or at least, it's not supposed to) and all hypothesis are rigorously tested. Those that pass may become theories, those that fail are discarded.
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
And again, I ask; Does it freaking matter why someone picks apart your math as long as they can prove the math is wrong?
Because blind hatred of creationism is not pro-science. It is outright bigotry.
"Scientific consensus" is one of the big, creepifying things that make me believe the existence of world-dominating conspiracies. (All of this is cribbed from Michael Crichton's various speeches condemning politicized science)
In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no.
In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no.
In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post.
And in the early 1900's, there was this GLOBAL consensus that most people don't like to talk about; A new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.
This theory quickly drew support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research was funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis was reported frequently in the media. The science was taught in college and high school classrooms.
Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.
These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.
All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.
This theory, championed by scientific consensus... was EUGENICS.
People willing to challenge the status quo, for whatever reason including religion, are ESSENTIAL. Dismissing them for whatever reason without rational scientific discourse is STUPID.
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LostArchivist
Sane, unfortunately.
- Location
- The State of Confusion
I always like to think that a theory should be supported on its own merits or feasibility, and not who wrote the thing (at which point I get laughed at because I'm a Christian and thus wrong
).But it's awkward to bring it up anywhere or you get funny looks for randomly blurting "Jesus freak" stuff, or cause thread derails. Which I feel bad about.
I'm honestly not sure how to place that. I'd actually agree. We need to be careful to do our research if we make some sort of claim precisely because everyone places the burden of proof on us. My place in this is mostly wincing as someone makes a good argument and then accidentally poisons the whole thing with one wrong pseudoscience "point" that can be disproven, and then a big pile of bricks drops on the whole thing, ignoring any other cogent points that were made. Part of the issue is that both sides commonly do this, or outright write off the other side as being crackpots, instead of actually checking their research.
Going against top scientists is a really nasty two-pronged fight. They have popularity, and we all know how, despite our best efforts, we tend to believe authority figures even if they are wrong (which I am honestly not implying either way; I'll only know after I'm dead. But, at risk of making a morbid joke, it costs me nothing if I am wrong!
). And then you have armchair scholars debating against really smart people in the top of their fields. Of course we lose! All it takes is one wrong point, and everyone laughs because of the association with the error, even if the rest of it made sense. So, we end up on the wrong side of four fallacies: People believe authority figures, think we are crazies, associate facts of validity they don't yet know with the wrong fact they do know, and for our side, some of us try to say that God must exist because we can't prove he doesn't!For my side, I mean, even the most silly-looking coincidences can't happen in practice, even ignoring stuff we have proof for!
RHJunior glosses over it, but there's a mention in there about the Earth's magnetic field not being able to last for the timescales mentioned (among at least two other items I don't want to bother looking up again, and that itself was an accursedly brief summary).
And Lee Strobol wrote books about what happened when he did his own research into this: He realized that they literally couldn't be making it up, and became a Christian. I mean, there's enough stuff just about the Resurrection that simply would not have been added if anyone were trying to make a convincing fake. It's funny, because we can look at the stuff that looks ridiculous to see that it's real -- the guards would have been killed for letting this happen, so they couldn't have been involved in faking it; the women of the group did a lot of the reporting, but due to the time period, were not considered trustworthy sources -- yet did so anyway; Jesus' death was so certain that even today we know he could not have walked out or been seen again; and many more. Heck, his disciples themselves were practically handpicked to be unable to actually pull off any sort of faked version, yet were also low-class citizens who would be ignored unless this sort of thing were legitimate!
I actually know nothing about this. What makes the stars "move on again"? Wouldn't it make more sense, especially for long-term cohesion of the arms, if they stayed slowed down? Is there even enough actual material in there to be more than a statistical anomaly in practice? Nebulas, even, are actually incredibly sparse.
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Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
This is something that hits me hard all the freaking time; I'm a pretty dedicated atheist, but it pisses me off how so many other atheists are basically hardcore anti-religious bigots. I don't want religionists to be able to dictate how I live, but I do want them to freely express their beliefs - especially when those beliefs have led them to discover valuable facts that can improve my standard of living.
Howard Taylor(writer of Schlock Mercenary) wrote a great article on this; Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Me
Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Me
11:00am, December 20th, 2005
I'm glad to see that a Federal Judge has ruled against teaching "Intelligent Design" in Pennsylvania biology classes. Intelligent Design is not science - not even BAD science - but it is bad religion. After all, any religion that has to lie about what it is in order to sneak into the building needs to take a long hard look at some of its own tenets regarding morality and integrity.
Now, before my religious friends lynch me... I believe that God created Heaven and Earth, and that His explanation of HOW he did it, as revealed to prophets throughout the ages, is about as complete as He needs it to be. More divine revelation as to His Methods and Means would not make any of us mortals more faithful. After all, most of us pay little enough attention to the revelations that have already been given.
So here I am, devoutly religious, and I detest "Intelligent Design." The ONLY bit about it with which I agree is some of the disclaimer text which the creationists (let's call them what they are, shall we?) want to apply to Evolution: It's a theory, not a fact.
Facts are directly observable and measurable. Fact: we have found fossils. Fact: we have observed the chemical processes by which fossils can be created. Fact: we have observed changes in the genetic makeup of certain populations of animals. Fact: we have observed and demonstrated the mechanics by which genes are expressed, and how they can be damaged through natural events.
We have a very long list of similar facts, and right now the only theory that unifies these into a consistent description of the world in which we live is evolution through random mutation and natural selection. That is not the same as saying that the theory is itself a fact. Sure, we've "proven" that Evolution explains things better than competing theories, but that is still not the same thing as saying "Evolution is a fact." Are there holes in the current theories? Absolutely. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I'm not casting aspersions on science. Evolution is some darn good science. It's tricky, you know, examining the fossil record and the living world and coming up with a description for what happened during the last half a billion years. It's a little bit like feeding a dictionary into a wood-chipper, and then attempting to re-create the book by observing just one piece out of every 1000 and extrapolating from there. A LOT of things happened on this planet during its history, and the vast majority of them left no discernable trace that we can read today. Scientists work HARD to fill in the gaps, and to make our lives better by theorizing, testing their theories through experimentation, and then refining their theories.
But for all their strengths, the scientific methods we use don't work well when applied to the description or improvement of the moral codes by which we live. Religion (and by religion I do NOT mean "orthodox heirarchical power structures" -- I mean "community and individual spirituality") DOES work well in this way. Sure, lots of people disagree with the concept of moral absolutes, but it's hard to argue with somebody who has found happiness through adherence to a spiritual and moral code. It can be argued, after all, that the purpose of life is to learn to live happily.
Is there some paradox here? Mightn't Evolution suggest that God was lying, or that Moses was lying, or that religion is a sham? Well, certainly it COULD suggest that, but I don't treat it that way. I believe that eventually our science will be good enough that we can explain to God how we think He did it, and He'll say "Great job! You get an A! It would have been an A+, but you left 'Dark Energy' in place as a fudge factor. Now here's a nebula full of hydrogen. Show Me what you can build." Until then, however, I'm not going to use the book of Genesis as a template for a scientific theory. The answers may be in The Book, but we're expected to show our work. That's the only way that we can enjoy the fruits of DOING the work.
Let me explain it more simply: My faith enables me to live happily. Science and technology enable me to live LONGER. I don't want to see science used to discredit religion, because that will make people live LESS happily, and I don't want to see religion used to discredit science, because that will further delay the delivery of my flying car. If this simple dichotomy can be honestly and openly explained to our children, they can embrace the apparent paradox, and get on with the important things in life: being happy, and figuring out how to build me a jetpack. It's 2005, for heaven's sake. I was supposed to have a silica farm on the moon twenty years ago, and I can't even get my replicator-bots onto the roof of the house.
This is what drives me nuts about the entire Creationist-Scientist argument.
Adam and Eve were created fully grown.
Is it really that hard to comprehend that the universe could have been created several billion years old, given that the creator is supposed to be a-temporal?
Not 'looks like' it was several billion years old, it _was_ several billion years old.
And thus the 'conflict' nicely vanishes, and we can all play nicely together.
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
In good nature, let me make an "Omphalos" joke;
The oldest trick in the book is kidnapping a couple of teenagers, brainwiping them, waking them up in a prepared habitat, and saying, "I made you out of dust and I made her out of one of your ribs."
-"Ursula", Leftovers by Matthew Joseph Harrington
- Pronouns
- Yes
This, very much this.
"scientific consensus" is what you get when people who disagree with official dogma are prevented from publishing or speaking in science forums, where politicians and other grant sources provide grants only to people who include the proper conclusions in their grant applications, etc...
IMO even if the worst case scenerios of Global warming are true, the worse danger to modern society is the scientific consensus about it.
I'll add dangerous to stupid. Like free speech, scientific discourse, which is essential for scientific progress is an "everyone or no one" type of deal. Mocking people for their poor understanding of science or their ridiculous beliefs is one thing, stopping people from providing scientific criticism because you don't like their politics or religion leads to politicians dictating the conclusions, rather than scientists working to discover them.
Sure that works, although my preferred explanation hinges on the definition of "day". In my highschool science class we had six posters describing the way the universe was created according to the latest scientific theory, labeled Day one (The big bang to ~300 Million years after it, when the universe finally cooled enough to have separate light and darkness), Day four (star formation), Day two(planetary formation), etc...
Kalaong
Extinction is approaching. FIGHT IT.
One thing that makes me giggle incessantly is how a few generations ago, "scientific consensus" insisted that dinosaurs were so weak and unweildy they were all amphibians who had to much around deep swampland or collapse under their own weight. Only when we actually subjected dinosaur skeletons to actual engineering processes did we realize that they were actually ridonkulously fast and strong survivors.
Another is how John Yudkin warned that it was the rise of sugar consumption that was leading to the prevalence of heart disease and obesity in the modern era, only for Ancel Keys to denounce his studies in favor of fat consumption. We're only realizing in recent years that refined sugar has the exact same effect on the brain as cocaine. And remembering that one can starve to death eating rabbit because fat is a vital nutrient!
Scientific consensus keeps getting proven 100% wrong and we only notice otherwise when actual scientists using actual science show that the "consensus" is a bunch of sheep.
Every so often I google for some kind of poster on what each generation's "consensus" is and how the next generation has collectively decided on something else entirely. And how historically, they've always been proven wrong.
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
-Arthur C. Clarke's First Law.
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- Pronouns
- Yes
Which IMO has more to do with how idiotic the "war on drugs" is, then with demonstrating anything about refined sugar. Someone pointing out that we have a substance that has a some of the same effects of cocaine but without most of the risks should be a feature, not a negative. But because everyone knows Cocain is an evil drug (unlike tobaco or alcohol which are okay) pointing similarity between sugar and cocaine short term neurological reactions is treated as pointing a negative phenomena.