Function

That's not easy. If not, one of the hardest questions of all time. If they don't see, they see nothing. But that doesn't mean they see black or darkness as if we were to close our eyes. And they cannot explain to us what "nothing" looks like, because else it wouldn't be called "nothing". It's a secret reserved for the blind.

Law of conservation of energy smites this theorem apart in a billion pieces. Off-topic: we cannot understand the very definition of "nothing". I've always wondered what blind people saw, but not any professor in ophthalmology could answer me. Only blind (born; or by serious total damage to the visual cortices) people know what "nothing" looks like.

Here's how to do it ... Spoiler alert ...

I'm ashamed.

When I'm, for example, standing in a long hallway, and someone I was going to meet is entering the hallway from the other side, I feel uncomfortable looking at them all the way until they reach me lol Like "should I say 'hi' now? or now? or perhaps now?"

Not sure on the "picture group", but here's something on people thinking in words by voice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870271/ An excerpt: "Prominent models of AVHs have suggested that the experiences arise when an internal mental event is misattributed to an external or non-self source. For example, Frith (1992) suggests that, if inner speech is not recognized as self-initiated, it may be experienced as an AVH. Many models have assumed that the raw material of AVHs is a kind of inner speech (Bentall, 2003; Fernyhough, 2004), although definitions of inner speech have varied, from simply ‘thinking in words’ (McGuire et al., 1995, p. 596) to ‘the overlapping region of thought and speech’ (Jones and Fernyhough, 2007a, p. 148), the latter of which highlights that not all thought processes necessarily take place as inner speech."

I never liked history in high school.

Considering the promiscuity: we were told it was the other way around, that homosexuals were more prone to promiscuity and this promiscuity is a necessary condition for the conservement of a healthy relationship in lots of cases. The next paragraph is a very dangerous one. For lots of reasons. Please provide peer-reviewed articles supporting your statements there. Again, homosexuality is not a disease. Stop suggesting so. Concerning the child mortalities alone: please do compare with developed countries. Per conclusion, your view on the need for medicine is very old-fashioned, lacks progressiveness (which is obligatory nowadays) and just plain wrong. Again: stop suggesting homosexuality is a disease, or just get out.

Medicine assists in "natural" reproduction too. Imagine the child and mother mortality rates otherwise. If medical intervention is your criterium for excluding reproductions as "non-assisted", then you should exclude most pregnancies and births and reproductions in most developed countries. What about medical help with subfertility or infertility? This still applies to heterosexuals, too, and is an assisted form of reproduction. I suggest you exclude all reproductions in which medical help is involved to any degree, end up with only a few reproductions, and check what the mortality rates are there. It is impossible to exclude medicine from modern reproduction. Reproduction is no longer equal to the old-fashioned image you may have of it, we are way ahead ot that. We do no longer live in the ancient times you recall without medical help, without assisted reproductions, and without homosexual reproductions. Additionally, do you have arguments against surrogacy? That's quite "natural" (in your definition) and can still be the product of love between 2 homosexuals and the natural help of a third. Would that be unnatural? Your attempts to blackguard homosexuality in the evolutionary sense keeps failing in my opinion. I'm sure there will be others here totally agreeing with you, but your thoughts prove a certain lack of progressiveness, which is essential in a science forum. There's this critical question, stating that if homosexuality has nothing but disadvantages in an evolutionary sense, then why wasn't it eradicated over the last millions of years? If it wasn't present from the beginning, why would it randomly occur and persist to occur from a certain point on, if it were so unnatural and disadvantageous to evolution? I'm asking you to give me a convincing answer to that question, staying loyal to the ideals you have made clear before.

Heterosexual sex is no prerequisite for reproduction. Above all, lots of heterosexuals do not reproduce, whereas a fair amount of homosexuals do reproduce, albeit mostly not in a manner involving sexual intercourse. Sex is no requirement for reproduction and we have luckily enough evolved to a situation where this thought pattern can be eradicated. I hope you will follow and leave behind your - forgive me - narrow-minded thoughts. Above all, and more important, we, as self-conscious human beings, have evolved into organisms able to fill in the meaning of life and its goals ourselves, not letting them be dictated by others or so-called evolutionary postulations. If we decided for ourselves that indeed, our only main goal would be reproduction and conservation of our species, then we should ask ourselves what the general purpose of that would be. If we have no other meaning than reproduction and conservation, we could all hang ourselves because our intrinsic life would have no purpose.

To my question asking you whether a choice exists in sexual orientation, you answered "yes very much so."

Stating this, how could you ever say in post #41 that there is a choice involved in the development of sexual orientation?

It is. Loving a person of the same sex is natural, too. Everything that happens must be natural. Which could bring us back to an old discussion asking whether our clothes are natural or not. Psychotherapy is more in its place then. Poignant how people can be made into thinking that they, or what they believe in or stand for, is not natural and should be fixed. Poignant how even the most modern societies can be cruel to minorities. Roger Dynamic Motion, might I, a bit off-topic, enquire your views on transsexualism and transgenderism?

You say that choice is involved in the development of sexual orientation. My dear friend, it is not. If it were, I'd choose to be attracted to women. For a multitude of reasons. "Reparative therapy", pardon me? Nothing is broken, nothing has to be repaired. Trust me, the examples you give are whatsoever destructive for the mental well-being of the homosexual. They do not inherently 'want' to become heterosexual, they think they do because they are forced into believing they must. These lines of thought are no natural thought patterns and are mere results of public opinion and its religious influences on sexual orientation and are - plain wrong.

Explain to me our misunderstanding, please.

This must be the most productive post in these whole forums.

Then we are done here. I wish no longer to discuss this fragile and delicate matter with such narrow-mindedness. And forgive me to say that, but you're on a forum which agrees that we are already a bit further in understanding sexual orientation than it being a "choice" whatsoever. Don't you think that if I had a choice, I'd be sexually attracted to women? Lots more choice (forgive me the sexist tone here, didn't mean it like that) and less taboo. An overall easier life, if you'd ask me. But warning: biased.

Are you insinuating the existance of choice in sexual orientation?

It would be unethical of providing these "markets" with research data allowing the mto influence the outcome of sexual orientation of their progeny. Egodystonic homosexuals are not to be taught how to "solve" the origin of their 'egodystonia' (which would then be their homosexuality); this would only force them into things they believe would be healthy, slowly destroying their mental well-being without them even knowing it on long term. The environment, society, in which egodystonic homosexuals grow up are, as far as I'm concerned, the true cause of the dystonia. That problem should be addressed. Not the 'cause' of their sexual orientation.

Can you clarify this please?

It's a vicious circle. But you don't answer my question. You state that it's a multifactorial being. Dependent of environment, that is. There is no reason to believe that other cultures have less homosexuals than more developed, progressive cultures, unless you have data to show so (which would be, however, strongly biased: statistics in arab countries will be lower due to possible prosecutions and kafkian feelings). If this is true (which cannot be proven), then there is no reason believing that homosexuality is multifactorial. It is therefore impossible to state that homosexuality is, or isn't, environmentally influenced. To me, it's not.

I dare you to state that the homosexuality genes in strict muslim countries is stronger than those in more progressive countries, given the strict anti-gay mentality in let's say the whole community there and probable punishes, also given the contradictory prevalence of homosexuality, there. Gay people do exist in those countries, probably as much as here, and let's be honest: the environment there is not in favour of homosexuality. Which, according to your statement, must mean that the genetic predisposition for homosexuality there and here should be different. Which is, imo, most obviously not the case. Gay people may be oppressed there and may force themselves in fake straight partnerships to evade prosecution. Can you please provide an article (peer-reviewed), backing-up your statement?