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I think one should not see philosophy too much as a separate subject, but looking in a special way to a subject. When a physicist is trying to find a particle at CERN he is doing physics. When a physicist is trying to find a new theory he is doing physics. Both activities are about physical reality. However, when it e.g. turns out that a conceptual framework does not work anymore (e.g. rise of quantum theory in the 1920s), when there are questions about the validity of certain methods, or about a demarcation criterion for science (e.g. string theory, multiverse) then one is doing philosophy. And one does not necessarily need a philosophical education for that: the interest in conceptual clarity and the intellectual capacity to do so, are enough. Latter should not be a real problem for physicists. First of course is really a question of what one is interested in. It's not everybody's thing. So not philosophers should push scientists to philosophical questions, so to speak from another discipline; the need for doing philosophy should arise in themselves because e.g. methodological or conceptual problems. Philosophers might be helpful in methodological and conceptual discussion, they are well trained in such discussions.

When I bought a new digital watt-meter *) approximately ~7 years ago, and started checking every device one by one in the apartment, I identified several such devices in my home.. e.g., the computer speakers and cable TV HDMI recorder were consuming ~90-100% of the regular power usage, when they were supposed to be turned off with the button and/or in stand-by mode.. *) Best purchase for everybody who wants to reduce energy usage and worried about global warming.. just 10 euros, its cost paid back within a month of use after checking the all home devices.. You plug it in between device, and socket, and leave it overnight. One device, one 24h day of checking. To see energy consumption in that period. When you use device, and when you don't. Then open spreadsheet in Open Office or Excel and enter data. Extrapolate to entire year and sum the all devices together, calculate percentage of usage -> you see how much you can gain by having it unplugged/disconnected by splitter which have buttons to shut down the all sockets. I have such electric splitter which has one the main button, and buttons for each socket independently. Search net for "Electrical sockets controlled by remote control". https://www.google.com/search?q=Electrical+sockets+controlled+by+remote+control Yet another "best buy" for somebody who wants to be ecological.. (but check it by watt-matter also it has to be in stand-by mode to support remote access)

It has an easy answer: consciousness has no influence for a given setting of the experiment. Consciousness might decide what kind of experiment you are doing (e.g. a 'which way' experiment, or a 'phase' experiment), but once chosen the experimental setup, consciousness has no influence whatsoever. The only 'real problem' I see is the problem of QM at large: the measurement problem. (± collapse of the wave function). Right. Physics present basically 2 options: classical determinism or quantum probability. Both do not work together with the idea of libertarian free will. Whatever free will 'really is', that your actions are random does not belong to any reasonable concept of free will. So QM is no help here. But one can define free will pretty clearly. One of the reasons however that these discussions are so difficult is that people often refuse to stick to a single definition. Above I mentioned one kind, libertarian free will, but there are other definitions. Just to clarify Incompatibilism: determinism and free will are incompatible a. Hard determinism: determinism is true. therefore we have no free will b. Libertarian free will: determinism cannot be completely true, because we have a direct experience of free will Compatibilism: there is no contradiction between determinism and free will a. Conceptual compatibilism: mind, motivations, beliefs, actions, etc are a complete different way to look at our human world than looking with a physical (chemical, biological, neurological) eye to humans. Both are valid in their domains, and you shouldn't mix them up. b. 'Hard compatibilism' (I never found a real name for this): Determinism is a necessary condition for free will. This means for 'real free will' that the world must be 'sufficient determinism'; with other words too much randomness will make our character and with that our actions to chaos. 1b is inconsistent (we would need non-physical causes: what would those be? The soul?) 2a might hide an inconsistency. But 1a and 2b seem consistent to me. But both must be explained in much more detail before one can start a fruitful discussion. But predictability has nothing to do with free will. Free will means just that I am able to act according my motivations and beliefs (to the latter belong justified true beliefs, i.e. knowledge). You mean "Where does that leave libertarian free will?" Yep, nowhere. But there is no contradiction with the compatibilist concept of free will. And btw, I think libertarian free will would be worse than wrong from a none-dualistic viewpoint.

The site is not allowing me to quote for some reason. On the O.P, I think its less a dialogue between Conservative Vs Liberalism than objective Vs Subjective values, which we tend to apply arbitrarily (dependent on the subject) and not confined to either a liberal or conservative mindset but more closely to the bell curve model. For this reason I think its presumptuous to assume political affiliation based on how those values are applied to specific subjects. ie If he doesn't agree we are on the right path he must be other than we. Objective to we. On the subject of Hierarchies being natural, It seems they are essential to selection and evolution, if there is to be selection. Otherwise what are we selecting from or for? A universal state of being, or universal direction? I.M.O Competence is what J.P is arguing most strenuously for, to avoid conflict. Most here seem to have lead lives of 'privilege' where real bodily threat has not been a common issue. Where you realize you are about to be hurt, is it going to be fight, flight or surrender? Competence to make the choice and live with the result. In my experience when flight is not an option, even the illusion of competence can be what diffuses the situation to avoid violence if you can make clear you can stand, without surrender. I may not agree with all J.P has to say, that doesn't mean I think he he has nothing of value to contribute or that its value is lessened because I don't objectively share a box with him.

Peterson is making a statement, a claim, an observation, he’s not modelling a model. You on the other hand seem to be doing the very thing which you are accusing him of - taking an observation made by Peterson and implying that he’s making a model. Plus hes not claiming that male interactions are fundamentally a posturing where we asses the level of violence, we do it as only a part of our personality. Please elaborate on this, my English might be becoming a little rusty and I’m seeing you saying that if I was hitting on your wife/partner at a party you would call the cops?

Hi Phi and everyone else, its been a long time - around 3 years or so since I've posted anything longer than a few words. I've been busy with my family and business, not enough time to post a lot anymore, especially that the majority of topics have been mostly pollitical and less physics/science focused which was the original reason why I came here. I think what Jordan Peterson is claiming here is... let me give an example - if a man is hitting on your wife and he keeps on doing it despite civil discourse and does it again and again at a banquet or at a NYE party downtown, there comes a moment when you have to make a decision - you either take your wife and leave the place or stand up for yourself and tell the guy straight to his face to f off or you'll break his jaw. What Peterson is saying is that most men have a set of skills which enable them to detect which type of man they are dealing with during a normal, civilised, non hostile conversation - the leave the place guy or the break the jaw guy. I know that this might come as a serious shock to many here but women and men do differ in many physical and even psychological aspects and this is an example of such a difference. It might come as a further shock to many that this is not mysogyny, patriarchy heck - it's not even a bad thing.

If you don’t have an accepted definition and way to measure it, it can’t be an established fact. Asserting that it’s a fact so you don’t have to deal with this problem isn’t going to fly.

I asked you two clear questions, both of which you have ignored. When pressed for answers you resort to personal insults. How is this not trolling ? I find this a great pity since the development and meaning of complexity could be a very interesting and fruitful topic. Good night all.

I, on the other hand, thought he was the only one who actually addresses the topic. And he did t in a nice, polite way; unlike some of the other participants. If a crazy person comes at you, intending to do you harm, you have a spectrum of responses, from civil discourse, all the way to breaking his arm so that he can't. If that person is crazy enough, he will harm you no matter how civil you are, because he is long past respecting civility. I have no problem dealing with crazy,violent men, who have made that choice. How do you deal with crazy, violent women ?

You have been. Thank goodness for the ground forcing you to stay in place.

OK, I found my old notebook. So the assay for amphetamine testing is (I think) an ELISA test which turns positive for unknown reasons. Based on that I would assume that doing it again would create similar results, but the report did not show quantitative analyses how reproducible it was (i.e. out of 10 tests how often would it show positive vs negative?). If we do a chemical screen (using mass-spec) we can actually search for masses corresponding to amphetamines and that is what was done in the case study and that screen came up clean. Perhaps a more general answer which OP might be looking into: I do not know the precise mechanism for FP in benzoylecgonine or other compounds. The main issue is that most of the time a immunochemical assay is used, which relies on antibody-antigen binding (or more typically, competition of binding). Now false positives are typically down to something that competes with your reagent standard but which is something you do not want to test for.

That depends on whether the small population would have become ever more voracious consumers. (read Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock) What would the world look like if everyone lived like the upper third of the current income level? Only, that's not really indicative, because the present top 30% is different for each nation, and all based on the economic and industrial precedents set by a much larger population. There is a good deal of scope for speculation in that question - By what means does the population level off? How does population pressure affect international relations? What alternative routes might the advancement of technology taken? How would an earlier introduction of robotics and genetic manipulation have affected social stratification and economics? Far too many embedded questions. Fun to contemplate but impractical.

I have to agree with Phi here. I’ve learned way more from your physics related posts than I did from Michio Kaku.

Not quite. Yes binary is a base 2 number representation system. But no, it does not use 2 states on their own to represent a number. That could only ever represent 2 numbers. A number system are designed to represent all the numbers in its particular range. In order to do this you can either use a different symbol for every number, which is obviously inefficient and difficult to learn. Or you can repeat symbols in some way, with each repetition having a different meaning. The smallest count of symbols you need to do this is called is 2 and is called binary. 2 is then called the base. One consequence of using 2 is that it leads to very long representations of numbers, both numerically bigger numbers and fractions. In general, The larger the count of symbols the shorter the repreentation becomes. So if use use 3 symbols we get ternary numbers, also called trinary numbers So if use use 4 symbols we get quaternary numbers So if use use 5 symbols we get quinary numbers So if use use 6 symbols we get seximal numbers So if use use 7 symbols we get septernary numbers So if use use 8 symbols we get octal numbers - note this one does not follow the pattern and is abused by computer science to also mean groupings of binary numbers. So if use use 9 symbols we get nonnary numbers So if use use 10 symbols we get denary numbers commonly, but wrongly, called 'decimal numbers'. So if use use 16 symbols we get hexadecimal numbers or hex numbers. Mixed representations can also be used, such as BCD or binary coded decimal and octal. Up to and including base 10 we use the 10 digits 1 through 9 and zero as the symbols To additional obtain symbols for number systems with a base greater than 10, we use letters from the Latin alphabet, eg hex numbers use the 6 letters A,B,C,D,E and F. Does this help ?

I never said he was being or should/shouldn't be ignored, I like, Peterson is saying that we should not ignore instinctual traits that date back thousands/millions of years of evolution when considering behavioural situations. In that, to be able to better control these inherent instincts, the ones especially bad for modern society, it pays well to consider them, what they are and where they come from, then work towards ways to control them in a positive manner. Suppression of these can be as harmful in the long run, as allowing them to act out in a negative way. Finding ways to control them without prejudice and suppression in an acceptable manner is a positive approach, in my humble opinion. Regardless of intelligence, we all bare our ancestral instincts some more or stronger than others, we all deal with them in our own way, some positive some negative. Anyone who ignores this fact is either lying or naïve. This is one thing which I agree with Peterson on. So who doesn't, if they have the opportunity? Every celebrity in the public eye does the same. Doesn't make them wrong or right, or any more or less an expert or professional in their field. Its down to the individual in the audience to decide on whether they agree, disagree or get convinced or even brainwashed into believing something or not. I watch and read many of the "pop" science books, YouTube videos and pod casts. I'm not naïve enough to fall into the trap of assuming everything is correct and also appreciate that many things are sensationalised or written in an analogous way to gain more interest or appeal to the layman.

This is hard to disagree with. This plus his uncanny command of the English language which seems to be there for the sole reason of bulding likes/views/clicks is something that draws me away from him. His English is impressive though when put out of context. I live in the outside world of the 21st century in a middle class family and circle of friends and business interactions in Europe. You know, the place that is not the internet forums, the other place (it’s there I assure you)

Looks like we can expect an announcement tomorrow. OECD countries agree on 15% floor https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/politics/global-minimum-tax.html

Exactly. Thank you for agreeing with me. It's not the threatening of violence, it's projecting confidence and fearlessness with grains of humour, knowledge and intelligence which dissolves those situations. I've had numerous situations like this in my life and I've never had to resolve them through violence - the weak attack the weak. I thought you sarcastically replied "Quantum Field Theories" as a reply to CharonY's toxic elements and I found it hilarious. What QFT's are we talking about here Phi and I'm sory for the faux pas. Edit: Found it - Quoted For Truth. Facepalm at self.

Something that came up in the cryptocurrency thread reminded me of this bit of trivia: In the days of the old west, people used the US dollar and the Spanish 8 Reale coin (they were "pieces of 8") interchangeably because they were basically the same size and made of silver, and that worked because the value was based on the amount of precious metal. They used to chop up the coins when lower denominations weren't readily available. In deference to the Spanish (presumably), it was into 8 bits (1 Reale each) so 25 cents was two bits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar (This makes clear that the Spanish dollar was used by a lot of folks, much like the US dollar is used outside the US today)

My opinion is that your biases are showing. He says that when dealing with 'crazy' men or women, once civil discourse has come to an end, the next step is physical. And that can be done with 'crazy' men, but obviously not with 'crazy' women. Don't hear or see what isn't in the video. Well that explains things. I've never read his self-help book. ( being the Clint Eastwood type, I've never needed help ) And I hope I wasn't too rude when I asked about your area of expertse. It was rhetorical; I know full well what your expertise is. But I have to ask, if you wrote a book on genetic sequencing, meant for the general public, would you include some sensationalist elements to make it more 'interesting' for the lay-person ? Might you include a chapter on how similar human genetic structure is to a lobster ? And does that one specific similarity make us and lobsters the same ? Do you think a pop-sci book is equivalent to J P's actual research and expertise ? Do you also dismiss all of Michio Kaku, Brian Green, Stephen Hawking, and other's work, because they have written pop-sci books ? Again, don't get your information from pop sci books, or, snippets of interviews on YouTube, taken out of context.

Citation needed Don't anthropomorphize nature. She hates that.

Is this a schoold project ? Very nice if so. I'd love to see how probability distributions are used to distinguish between a snadbag and a maracas ? OK if we are talking about sounds that can be made using granular materials, I would start but observing the difference between sounds generated by 'soft' materials such as flour, soft breadcrumbs, foam rubber chunks etc and 'Hard' materials such as macaroni, dry sand gains, hard plastic beads, steel shot, etc. A simple sound test can be made by pouring a stream of these onto a) a hard surface such as a formica table top, a sheet of steel, glass or marble etc. b) a soft surface such as a rubber sheet, a cloth over the hard surfaces, etc. For each test you may be able to distinguish two types of sound. a) The sound of the stream of granules impacting upon the test surface. b) The sound the stream makes as the particles bump together as you pour. For a maracas you need (a) in both cases. The sound is made by stopping and starting the 'stream', as it bumps agains first one side then the other of the container, followed by a trailing sound of the hard particles bunmping together because the maracas is not full. For a sandbag you need a soft cloth surface (bag) more nearly fully filled and you strike the bag, which you do not do with the maracas (which you shake). The principle sound will be the softer sound of a few of the grains rubbing rather than bumping together as the bag and contents distort in shape. There will be no impact sounds against the soft cloth walls. Sand grains are hard in both cases. In the case of flour it is the flour grains themselves whicha re soft and so capable of significant distortion when bumped against each other. It is this distortion that absorbs the energy which would be given out as sound if the grains were hard. I wish you well with your investigation, It is a fine project.

It shouldn't be that hard to find out. However, while you are speculating, factor in the number of electrical and electronic devices per household, as well as their efficiency of power use. Factor in the relative size and capacity of the washing machines, refrigerators, water heaters, etc. Factor in the extra features in household appliances that require them to keep drawing on stand-by, when the owners think their microwave, television or stove is turned off. Factor in climate change: the extensive use of heating units in regions that are ill-equipped for cold weather, and air conditioners during unprecedented heat waves.

The quote was called into question, as well as the content called "misguided". In response, I clarified that it indeed was a single quote, and from someone who is certainly a credible source on this subject. And we are having the scientific discussion right now haha. Which is going well I think. Complexification is an established fact. what is not is how to measure it. The article offers the concept of energy rate density, the amount of energy that flows per unit time and per unit mass. I find this measurement system acceptable. As far as defining complexity itself, that's very simple. In the beginning there were no atoms, just elementary particles. Then came atoms, then molecules, then life, human beings, then culture/technology. This is the complexification we speak of.