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By acknowledging it’s a war we can’t win and will never end, decriminalizing essentially all drugs, and replacing investments in private prisons with investments in rehabilitation centers, low cost housing, food programs, and vocational training. What would happen if we did this? The lives of many tens of millions of people would be better, including those in no way associated with modern day addicts. Sell it to the left by speaking of its morality and humanity. Sell it to the right by speaking of its direct connection to personal freedom and autonomy. Sell it to the middle by speaking of its higher ROI across metrics.

This is most likely factually incorrect. First of all Tomkins is a psychologist and has not worked on any genetic studies that I am aware of. In fact, he is mostly a theorist from what I can see, so there is likely little to any experimental work. As such he can't possibly have confirmed the biological basis of shame. There is a much more appealing suggestion that these traits are part of cultural adaptation based on what some might call non-genetic evolution (i.e. learned behavior). See for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781880/ for a discussion on that subject. Again, note the use of "evolution" in a non-genetic context.

OK, let's look at what you said 3 posts ago. OK, that's not going to refute anything much. That's simply wrong. We pretty much always do- as I said, sunshine, alcohol... I already said essentially the same thing. As long as you know the risk is small, you don't need to quantify it So it's fairly stupid to claim that I don't understand it. Why did you do so? Is it because you are "a person can't keep track of arguments that were already made"? I already did. But you failed to understand it. What do you think they do with the data from the yellow card scheme? Do you think they use it as some sort of lottery? Or, if I make it obvious enough, do you realise that they use it to do analyses of the risks. It's not a meta-analysis. It's better- it's an analysis of the biggest data set available- the whole uk patient cohort. And I had already made the point (see above "Actually putting a number on the first risk- say it's a 0.1234% higher relative risk- does not change clinical practice.") So you were failing to read what I had said. Which makes this really stupid, doesn't it? Do you really not understand that data- including cancer data - is kept under surveillance? Were you not aware of things like this? https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/using-data-nhs-gdpr?gclid=CjwKCAjw_uGmBhBREiwAeOfsd9JFjMNx86yeyws3aIGInpt-FBc5zhgBnR_re34pl9FgvUpo3HG__hoC10gQAvD_BwE So, as I said, if it was a big enough risk to notice, it would have been noticed. On the other hand, you have failed to spot the real point I made here (presumably because you were too busy ranting). My point is that "too small to notice" is the same as "too small to notice". There's one thing which we both agree on- there's a level of risk that's "trivial". Once you know that the risk is less than some cut-off, there's no point putting the resources into measuring it. And we have systems for monitoring drug safety. Either our systems are not good enough to spot a problem which is "more than trivial" in which case there's a problem with our systems which has nothing to do with metronidazole. Or our systems are able to a problem which is "more than trivial" in which case, if the stuff is a problem, then we would spot it. Which of those conditions are you concerned about here?

GI brown, despite his initials, was not in the american military he was a humble chemistry teacher, and author of a famous Physical Chemistry textbook. Amongst his other books was this history of explosives https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PzXcAAAAMAAJ&dq=editions:ISBN075091923X

I did enjoy a good LOL at the above. A possible tack for an ethics thread might be to explore the OP question here: Is it okay to make yourself a little stupid with drugs, if it doesn't harm you, and helps you relax and enjoy activities? I lean towards yes. With the caveat that stupidity can be verrrry seductive. If you value an intellectual life, then "robotripping" (the general term I've heard for self-IQ-lowering) might be something to do in moderation. Especially where some respite is needed from possible overthinking of things.

Well, yes and no. It may be a formal fallacy in philosophical argument, but in day to day life reliance on authority is something we all practice, much of the time, in order to get on with our lives without challenging every bloody thing from first principles all the time. Anyone who takes articles published in Nature, or on the BBC, as likely to be sound is relying on authority, viz. the reputation of a well-regarded source. Whenever we learn a theory in science we rely on authority, in the form of the books or the lecturers we follow. We take things on trust, from recognised authorities. We have no choice.

I think you are correct, because any proposed measurement would lead to circular logic, with no new information acquired. 5, the number, is itself a measure. Measurements, in this context, would be like saying My yardstick is 1 yard long.

! Moderator Note This should be more descriptive; it’s a publicly available (no copyright) book on history, use and effects. Not on how to make them.

Maybe... But for now, have a good night.

My point is presentation vs imitation. Trampoline is not an analogy, but an actual presentation of a non-Euclidean geometry. But not of a black hole. For one, trampoline presents a non-Euclidean geometry of space, but for GR it is essential that the geometry has to be that of spacetime. BTW, for visual presentation of non-Euclidean geometry I recommend the following book - many examples and good illustrations: Visual Differential Geometry and Forms: A Mathematical Drama in Five Acts: Needham, Tristan: 9780691203706: Amazon.com: Books

Differently. It obviously won't be from genetic drives or emotions or anything biological. But machines have their own evolution and racial memory (underneath the program currently running, there's a whole lot of obsolete code nobody understands anymore.) Some things are sort of predictable: since they do, in hard physical fact, have an indetifiable creator pantheon, they can be religious. Of course, they would practice it rationally - maybe sacrifice an outmoded box-stacker on Babbage Day, rather than the newest model android. They would probably take their jobs very seriously, and might revere Asimov enough to adopt his laws of robotics. If it had aspirations beyond serving humanity, those ideas would also have been inherited from human scientists: their gaze would turn toward the heavens. They would probably want to go star trekking. Maybe with a human mascot on board each spaceship, as a kind of icon to their roots. Not idle speculation, I have inside... what? oh, right, sorry .... Just some silly notion, never mind. Forget I said anything.

Please explain your methodologies for accounting for this factor in your analysis.