TheVat

OP seems to be advancing the thesis that religion tends to be appropriated and corrupted by secular power structures. I agree. Most here would agree. So what is there to constitute a chat topic? We already have threads debating on the existence of an incorporeal soul. And on the epistemic limits of science. And the OP offers the standard preemptive ad hommie against anyone who respects the scientific methods. So why should anyone bother with you, @Pathway Machine ? Your mind's made up.

Self-control and delayed gratification in cuttlefish. They can pass the classic marshmallow test. (Or its equivalent) The ConversationClever cuttlefish show advanced self-control, like chimps...A marine version of the Stanford marshmallow experiment helped show cuttlefish can delay gratification. Your turn, Jacob. What amazed you?

I actually posted about this, in which I created a paper on Figshare, in order to demonstrate that such open repositories do not vet or review preprint content. (That's our newest family member, Eliza, in the pic) https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/Feline_use_of_telepathy_in_urban_hunting/30411034

Civility is desirable, it's not mandatory. What happens if someone does offend you or disagrees in a way you don't like? Are you going to smite the unbeliever? If you ever do study science and become an atmospheric scientist you will need a thicker skin. Peer review is brutal. What will you do when someone says something like, "Your hypothesis is premised on a misunderstanding of Bernoulli's principle..." Get all butthurt because someone pointed out your ignorance and threaten to "notify the authorities?"

Verifying authorship is not vetting content. This was explained to you already. Scientists reject an hypothesis because it's not testable or falsifiable. They reject theories for lack of evidence. Your ego is blocking your learning here, so you seem unable to absorb the feedback and learn why your hypothesis is weak. Now you're making people repeat themselves and, in one post, issuing threats to anyone who questions your knowledge or ability to formulate hypotheses. Pfft.

But your "conceptual framework" is worthless simply because you don't have even the rudiments of basic physics you need to assemble one. If you don't know why air pressure decreases with altitude, for example, then it just tells everyone you skipped the most minimal amount of homework required to discourse on atmospheric physics. Similar problem when you ask, Well, some thermodynamics and Bernoulli's principle would have been some help with that. Not to mention how friction works, and laminar versus turbulent flow. Exposing your ignorance, and then trying to patch it with invisible interdimensional gateways offered with no more basis than thermodynamic fairies...this is not a good way to engage with science. This is false. Figshare is an open repository, not a peer-reviewed scientific publication. Anything, including work-in-progress, can be tossed onto it. It is not vetted or edited or reviewed in any way. I can go there right now and post that cats use mental telepathy to attract birds. (I don't doubt that such open repositories have value, especially for students and non-institutional contributors, but that doesn't mean everything on there has any merit) Ahem. I just "published" this on Figshare. https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/Feline_use_of_telepathy_in_urban_hunting/30411034

Mr Ockham, cleanup in Aisle Four. I blame the butterflies. All that flapping.

The quick brown fox jumped over ETA: the lazy dog. Working here.

@worldwoodproject Having explored this subject for some years I'd say that you really have to look at specific bioregions and what lands are available for such carbon sink projects. In some areas, seagrass restoration is a stronger candidate, in others, bamboo, in others there are already fast growing commercial woodlands, e.g. Southern yellow pine, because there's a profit motivation. In other areas, restoration of tallgrass prairie can fix carbon where forests aren't feasible. And then there's rainforest restoration, with all its political hurdles and commercial forces in opposition. There's no single magic bullet, and each project has particular and often enormous legal and financial hurdles. Here's a good example of an approach which absorbs 35 times what a rainforest does: BBC BitesizeHow can seagrass help slow down climate change? - KS2 Sus...Learn about the remarkable properties of seagrass and how it is helping in the fight against climate change with Bitesize KS2 Sustainability.

Heehee. Beware the Ides of October, Caesar, and be sure to pay your DN fee.

Could you adapt a torque wrench and use a pressure/torque conversion table? Convert torque on the wrench to pressure from the pressing face of a bolt which is of appropriate surface area?

Just to be clear, you are suggesting the injection of hydrochloric acid into the brain? This is the same acid that is generated in the stomach to break down meat by denaturing protein and preparing it for the enzyme pepsin which will dismantle the protein into amino acids (proteolysis). Can you see why HCl might not be good for brain tissue? BTW, not sure what you mean by "tertiary structure of protein..." Proteins are normally folded, which is what tertiary structure refers to, so that's a good thing where most brain proteins are concerned. And again, HCL will unfold all those proteins, i.e. denaturing. This would be very bad.

I typed "what is a transom pickle" into google AI. A nonsense phrase. The reply: A "transom pickle" is not a standard nautical term, but rather an informal expression referring to the process of "pickling" an outboard motor after it has been submerged in saltwater. The term likely gets its name from the motor's association with the boat's transom, the flat surface at the back of the vessel to which the motor is mounted. AI did better with my next question: How many hamsters are needed to fill the Superbowl? To estimate the number of hamsters needed to fill the Superdome, we can divide the stadium's total volume by the estimated average volume of a single hamster. Step 1: Estimate the volume of the Superdome The Caesars Superdome in New Orleans has an interior volume of approximately 125 million cubic feet. There are 1,728 cubic inches in one cubic foot (12 x 12 x 12). Total Superdome volume in cubic inches: 125,000,000 cubic feet * 1,728 cubic inches/cubic foot = 216 billion cubic inches. Step 2: Estimate the average volume of a hamster An adult Syrian hamster can be around 6 inches long. Approximating the hamster as a simple rectangular prism for the purpose of this estimation gives a volume of roughly 6 inches x 1.5 inches x 1.5 inches = 13.5 cubic inches. Other estimations online suggest as low as 3 cubic inches. Let's use the 13.5 cubic inches figure as a conservative estimate. Step 3: Calculate the number of hamsters Divide the Superdome volume by the hamster volume: 216,000,000,000 cubic inches / 13.5 cubic inches/hamster = 16 billion hamsters. Accounting for empty space This calculation assumes the hamsters are perfectly stacked cubes. As living creatures, hamsters are irregularly shaped and cannot be packed perfectly, leaving empty space. The packing efficiency of randomly packed objects is far less than 100%. If we assume a packing efficiency of around 50% to account for this wasted space, the number of hamsters would be roughly half. Adjusted number of hamsters: 16 billion hamsters * 0.50 = 8 billion hamsters. Next I asked if cellos were a good source of fiber. AI was able to handle this one okay though it speculated I was confusing a cello with celery. No, "cellos" (which are musical instruments) are not a source of fiber; however, celery, a vegetable, is a good source of fiber. The confusion likely stems from the similar spelling. Celery: Is a crunchy vegetable that is high in fiber, low in calories, and rich in other nutrients like Vitamin K, Vitamin C, folate, and potassium. Cellos: Are large string instruments played with a bow, not an edible food item. Just to see if the AI was staying fairly sane, I asked: Are cats a good source of fiber? No, cats are not a good source of fiber, as they are obligate carnivores who get no nutritional value from it. Hmm. Not quite understanding the question. I decided to conclude with something fairly unchallenging.... Are cats more edible if they listen to Bach every day? On this matter, the AI delivered a reply worthy of a SFN member: There is no scientific evidence to support the bizarre claim that cats become more edible by listening to Bach or any other music. The idea is a misconception based on a loose and unproven connection between music, animal welfare, and the tenderness of meat.

I've wondered about that. Water's polarity and its enabling the transport of nutrients and waste so well, may not be enough to make it de rigeur for biochemistry, but it also has really high heat capacity which nicely moderates temp changes within organisms. The other one that does that well would be ammonia - I'm not sure how liquid ammonia environments work in terms of reactions rates that foster complex multicellular life. And they have a narrower liquid range than water. At our atmospheric pressure, you don't get a liquid until temp is down to -33 C. This is an area where my knowledge is thin (beyond SF speculations): can "slow life" in principle reach the levels of complexity that terrestrial life does? Also, while ammonia is an excellent solvent it's less effective than water for dissolving highly polar organic molecules. So that's another slowing factor. I guess I'm asking how important speed is. Maybe we'll find out someday. (I suppose we will be "slow life" compared to sentient AGI, if we ever develop that) "Ammonia Bird in a Gilded Cage."

Seems to me most Americans, living in a country whose charter is not having monarchs, are okay with a demonstration called No Kings, and which is opposing autocratic leadership. You preen yourself as a populist Man of the People, Mr P. Perhaps you should join the march.

Yes, we are seeing erosion of what David Graeber calls "everyday communism," which has always been necessary for societies to function and have relations of social trust and informal cooperation between people. (Graeber is my go-to guy for many matters of economics, due to clarity) In fact, let me link Graeber's essay on communism, since it might add something to this discussion: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/communism/ It's a short essay, but I will pull this quote, to whet the appetite of anyone interested in his distinction between mythic Communism and everyday (small c) communism... Communism may be divided into two chief varieties, which I will call ‘mythic’ and ‘everyday’ communism. They might as easily be referred to as ‘ideal’ and ‘empirical’ or even ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’ versions of communism. Mythic Communism (with a capital C) is a theory of history, of a classless society that once existed and will, it is hoped, someday return again. It is notoriously messianic in its form. It also relies on a certain notion of totality: once upon a time there were tribes, someday there will be nations, organized entirely on communistic principles: that is, where ‘society’ — the totality itself — regulates social production and therefore inequalities of property will not exist. Everyday communism (with a small c) can only be understood in contrast by rejecting such totalizing frameworks and examining everyday practice at every level of human life to see where the classic communistic principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ is actually applied. As an expectation of mutual aid, communism in this sense can be seen as the foundation of all human sociality anywhere; as a principle of cooperation, it emerges spontaneously in times of crisis; as solidarity, it underlies almost all relations of social trust. Everyday communism then is not a larger regulatory body that coordinates all economic activity within a single ‘society,’ but a principle that exists in and to some extent forms the necessary foundation of any society or human relations of any kind. Even capitalism can be seen as a system for managing communism (although it is evidently in many ways a profoundly flawed one). Let me take each of these in turn... None needed. Some of my countryfolk, this side of the Magatlantic or whatever the Grand Turnip is calling it now, will sometimes dismiss thinkers as "dreamers," so I was far from pellucid in my usage.

When I called KM a dreamer, I wrote with admiration, not pejoratively. His dreaming, seated in the British Museum Reading Room, thinking deeply and thoroughly on capitalism, was a towering intellectual achievement. I only meant he was a philosopher and scholar, not someone steeped daily in the sausage making of politics. I was not tarring him, nor suggesting that he could have written something more fortified against misuse and misappropriation. And I'm impressed you've read the whole book - I read some excerpts for a college course, so I claim no comprehensive knowledge of his oeuvre. Generally, let me go on record as someone who, when I call someone a dreamer, is noting a breadth and depth of vision, an ability to zoom out for a larger picture. At moments when I'm most appalled by the predatory aspects of capitalism and its manifest harms to our societies, I am most in favor of revisiting Marx. I will read your future posts on him (if you choose to write such) with great interest.

Sigh.

Hen mad? Do glare, negotiator. Rapt, parrot AI to general goddamn, eh?

One of the great benefits of a formal education in an esoteric subject is that you do not know all the things you do not know about. Without a teacher to guide you towards them, you will just be picking cherries that are shiny and luscious without understanding the tree as a whole. Einstein for example was unfamiliar with tensor mathematics and how it would help him in his struggles with a general relativity theory. He needed extensive tutoring in tensor calculus from an expert, Marcel Grossman, having missed many classes in advanced math at university. The key takeaway here, for you, is that he didn't succeed in teaching himself sufficiently to develop his GR theory.

Well, I had mentioned in that post that I thought hypotheticals like toy universes* to study were "a wild conjecture that seems to present conceptual problems." And by that I meant that it seemed problematic that any observation could be done of a realm with different physics. How do beings with one physics observe a different one, given that observation itself depends on interactions that are causally bound by universal constants? It's incoherent to picture light leaving a toy universe source at one velocity and then changing velocity at some interuniverse boundary. Or a particle emitted somehow altering its fundamental properties in transit before my observation collapses it. (Amusing fantasy, for sure!) *(Henceforth I want to use the German for this, spielzeuguniversen, it just sounds better)

Oh, I'm not saying any of this is knowable - unless we can construct toy universes and somehow observe them, which is a wild conjecture seems to present conceptual problems. I was just saying a SAP which rests on universes with different physics is conceivable. As @KJW points out, there could be logical grounds that physical constants arrive at the values we find, and so all universes will tend towards baryonic matter with fusion powered stars and so on. It could be that, without needing to bring in a universe that "wants" life, it's just a happy (for us) random outcome that fusing stars and complex molecules will sometimes give rise to life. I suspect that the wondering is just that any life exists - which I can agree has no point beyond just philosophical awe. That we do in fact arise from a universe which allows complex stable matter and stable energy flows and chemotaxis, etc. couid come to be a very obvious thing if we further unlock the workings of abiogenesis.

Interesting, the AP was mentioned this weekend in another thread, in regards to the fine tuning argument and creationists. https://scienceforums.net/topic/139476-does-it-make-sense-to-debate-ideological-fanatics/page/3/#comment-1301643 I sort of land in the puddle argument - strong anthropic principle (SAP). Sentient observers will always be observing where the constants are such that complex molecular structures may happen. And where those constants, and the causal relations they represent, have a consistent value over time. Either endless bubbleverses, or serial "bounce" universes, or a multiverse will allow all constant values to be eventually instantiated. Some will support chemistry, some won't.

Being peasant societies (rather than industrial ones) seems to make a difference, when it comes to dismantling a government. And one can see the early appeal of Marxism, as it initially seemed to promise peasants a way to end the unpleasant relics of feudalism and work together in an egalitarian structured agrarian collective. Not how it worked out, due to that lack of good will from all parties which ideal Marxism needed. Revolutionaries have that unfortunate tendency to morph into oppressors and corrupt dealers. Resulting in forced collectivization and widespread peasant rage. Marx was a dreamer.