exchemist

Just read the annual report for 2024 and was depressed to read, first of all, the Dean's report, which was full of the trendy, dull, corporate-sounding platitudes that I tend to think indicate a 2nd rate mind. I was resigning myself to the idea that this is what academic institutions have become nowadays when I started reading the report on the college in 2024, written by the college theology tutor, Prof Mark Edwards. What a relief. The donnish sense of waspish humour is still alive after all, I'm pleased to say. I quote one passage that amused me: ...we have welcomed two new Canon Professors, Andrew Davison as Regius Professor of Divinity and Luke Bretherton as Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology. Professor Davison, a former undergraduate in Chemistry at Oxford, has written with distinction on the sacraments, but has also become known as an expert on Science and Religion; his recent study, "Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine", explores the possibility that intelligent life has more than one chance of survival in the universe. Some fear that it is now breathing its last in American universities, but Professor Bretherton's welcome return to his native England took place before the impending exodus. He has written six distinguished books, of which five are about political theology; the fact that he waited until the fifth before asking "What Is Political Theology?" suggests he has already mastered the Oxford approach to teaching. I must admit I was tickled by the suggestion that this guy wrote four learned books before sitting up and asking himself, "WTF am I talking about?" 😄

This is also true of all manner of skills a child learns, from multiplication tables to French vocabulary, or sport. There is a certain amount of hard work needed to achieve mastery and the child has to realise that. Fortunately, children are quite good at that sort of thing and generally do understand and accept it without a great deal of “forcing”.

Not sure about that. I think small children are very open-minded, as they have not yet learnt when to be sceptical. I don't really think a young child has to be taught to be open-minded. I suspect it how to teach critical evaluation and scepticism without it leading to closed mindedness, incuriosity or cynicism that is the challenge.

Yrs, but I think one should raise them to be critical as well as open-minded. There are far too many credulous people in today's world. And with the internet it is more crucial than ever to be able to sort reliable information from rubbish. One important thing to do as a parent, I think, is to lead by example by displaying curiosity about the world: taking an interest in as wide a range of things as possible, be it things in nature, stories, other people and so on. I think the ability to take an interest in things, to be curious and keen to apply one's mind to whatever one encounters, is vital, whether it be serious analysis of a situation or an idea, or just amusement. Seeing the funny side of things is very helpful in life. And then make sure they go to a good school, where their minds will be expanded, encouraging them to think, not just get good grades in exams and (also important) one where they will pick up the habit of enjoying physical activities. This will develop habits that will help keep them healthy in mind and body in later life. (I sometimes think that teaching me to enjoy singing and the feeling of fitness I got from rowing have been more important in my life than everything academic that I learnt. My son also got used to being fit at school - now he climbs mountains for leisure.)

Children can be the image of their parents.

Yes, and it is interesting how that picture of God evolves in the Old Testament. At the start, he is just the God of Israel, just one among many, though supposedly superior to the gods of other tribes and nations. At some point this changes to a belief that the other gods are mere idols, i.e. fakes, and there is only one god.

I’m British and I ‘m not clear what you mean by the green light rule either. Can you elucidate?

Wot dat?

I agree. Anyone citing a document should have read at least the abstract. If not, they can’t know whether it supports their argument or not, so it’s just a bad faith bluff. That it has been put forward as relevant by an LLM is not good enough. Maybe indeed checking citations is a good way to smoke out botshit. I’m chary of the idea of insisting on maths, though. That works for a mathematical science like physics but would not be appropriate for biology or geology, say.

Yes I don’t suggest the ant would burst, just that its insides could become blocked and it would starve from lack of nutrition or something. But I’m only speculating.

I don't think anyone has suggested that. The point about LLMs is they are "stochastic parrots", that cannot reason, but instead simply report results based on the statistically most widespread opinions they have encountered in their training data set. So you cannot rely on LLMs to do maths or make deductions.

Dust fibres, probably.

Einstein had nothing to do with any nuclear programme. That is what all the historical evidence shows. Your “belief” is unfounded. If you persist with this story of yours it needs a prominent disclaimer at the start to make clear it describes an alternative, entirely fictional, history. There are already far too many falsehoods attached to the name of Einstein. Your attitude,, preferring unfounded “belief” to fact, is symptomatic of one of the great curses of our new internet age. You are not entitled to make up your own version of events, just because that’s the way you prefer them to be.

Yes, I think it's the reborn idea: "..no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit..." And in the Prologue to St John's gospel it says "to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God (implicitly through spiritual rebirth at baptism). Also, in the Beatitudes, the peacemakers "shall be called children of God". And more generally, God the Father is so called in part because he is the creator of everything, including mankind. Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. So it seems to be fairly pervasive imagery in Christianity.

Amen to that. It's clear these walls of text are not written by the poster, are very tedious to read and generally disguise rather poor ideas. Lipstick on a pig, in many cases.

So interaction with the vacuum rather than interference. OK.

Agree with the general sentiment but, on one point of detail, do we not now treat spontaneous emission as due to interaction of the atom with vacuum fluctuations?

I read this thread and burst out laughing. There's a sort of Spinal Tap quality to it.

Interesting. Perhaps his son was the last straw then that triggered Musk to “come out” as the nazi he secretly was all along. But it does not seem coincidence that within 6 months of his son’s announcement Musk had bought Twitter, sacked the moderation staff and embarked on a series of high profile far right activities, not just in the US but concerning Europe too. All very odd, counterproductive behaviour for a maker of EVs. But, back to your observation about Silicon Valley, I realise Peter Thiel is on record as expressing contempt for democracy. And it seems Zuckerberg has also run up the Jolly Roger, promoting a new, snarling macho persona, quite at odds with how he used to present himself. So yeah, there does seem to be a lot of it about among the tech bros.

That’s why I wondered about surface tension. Burping may be impossible if you are so small that you can’t break the surface tension on a bubble in your gut. But I agree “exploding” ants seems a bit of an, er, stretch.

What is fascinating? Most of us, including me, cannot read Chinese characters so please quote the posts you are responding to in English.

Are you able to discuss any of this, in your own words?

So what? The Easterlin paradox seems to have nothing to do with referenda.

As @swansont points out, this does not seem to have anything to do with the thread topic, let alone the points I have made. Can you explain its relevance?

One obvious problem is the presence of a low kinetic energy central core. There is no such structure observed in the cosmos.