TheVat

I also recommend this. And, for an interesting look at people who have very little brain tissue and yet lead normal lives and manifest normal intelligence, I recently read this. https://iai.tv/articles/is-your-brain-really-necessary-for-consciousness-auid-3280 This, again, shows the holistic nature (using a clever musical analogy) of consciousness being generated throughout the nervous system.

I didn't know if the truck thing had been mentioned. If it was, then this can be closed or merged or blended or whipped into a colloidal suspension - whatever mods think best. I almost posted it in Lounge, alongside other amusing bloopers. Actually this could be expanded into a science blooper thread, which could be fun.

Seila is another affirmation of Federalism and the unitary executive. And the guy who got that stupid ball rolling is the much lionized Hamilton. And the guy who shot him seems to have been smeared by popular history, in spite of his progressive views some quite ahead of their time. Burr defended immigrant rights, the equality of women, and the limitation of executive power, as well as setting high standards for conduct in the Senate and crafting the procedures of impeachment. If he'd fired his dueling pistol into a tree and mustered a bit more charm, he would probably have gotten the hit Broadway musical.

State of the PlanetWas It an Alien Spacecraft—Or a Delivery Truck?A Harvard astronomer says a meteor came from beyond our solar system. A new study questions whether his data includes a more obvious explanation. While even the U.S. Space Command agreed the object was probably interstellar, many scientists doubted that Loeb had really found its remnants, much less that it was something made by aliens. Among them: a group of planetary scientists led by Benjamin Fernando of Johns Hopkins University. They decided to look into not the spherules themselves, but the earthquake record. For this, they recruited Göran Ekström, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory known for studying unusual seismic events. The group reported their results at the March Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. And a ruckus ensued in the scientific community and in media. In the seismic station’s records, Ekström found the purported meteor-inspired signal right where it was supposed to be. Then he looked further and found that the records contained hundreds of other tremors in the weeks before and after, and many of them looked similar to that of the meteor. They were not characteristic of the small earthquakes that commonly shake this region, located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates are constantly rubbing shoulders...

Not a strong analogy. Mental health issues, especially where personal growth is involved, are generally calling for considerable effort from the person as well as the therapist. While I can't contribute to my heart surgery, working with a therapist towards mental health is a cooperative venture where the therapist or counselor guides the client but cannot do all their work for them. Developing empathy is never going to be effortless, and will require various kinds of effort to reach out to others and engage with them. I am sorry to inform you of this. There is truly no magical pill or device when it comes to interpersonal relations.

There's been recent research that a smallish exposure to sun is overall healthier because it stimulates the immune system to protect better from various forms of cancer and also some autoimmune diseases and depression. The risk mitigation of those outweighs the skin cancer risk, apparently. There was a SciAm article a couple months ago on this topic - or the autoimmune aspect, anyway. I link that, not fully recalling its conclusions. (Always took the moderate approach myself, which my Millennial children are appalled by, though one has softened a bit in response to new data suggesting that a life slathered in sunblock may not be optimal for overall health) Scientific AmericanSunlight Might Hold the Key to Treating Autoimmune DiseasesSunshine may hold healing rays for a variety of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Scientists are turning this surprising discovery into treatments

Some citations on this would be helpful. Given that many human behaviors are complex and come from holistic brain function, I have some reservations about neuromodulation increasing empathy. Empathy, even for neurotypicals, is some work, incorporating social experiences and exercise of the imagination.

I remember from a college philosophy course that the Coventry bombing debate was a classic example of consequentialist ethics v deontological ethics (with Churchill selecting the consequentialist path because of the immense strategic importance of not revealing the Enigma project breakthrough). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism

Still getting a whiff of eugenics from the ethical side here insofar as some medical technology does help people with genetic conditions live longer and increase the option of having a family. @CharonY pointed out that eliminating some deleterious alleles as some sort of gene pool optimization could reduce genetic diversity and leave a shallower gene pool. But even if we were to focus on quite harmful alleles only, say, Tay-Sachs or cystic fibrosis, what would actually be accomplished? Frederick Chopin is now believed to have had CF - should his mother have been required to abort him? Are we going to force someone who is autosomal recessive for Tay-Sachs not to have children, even with a mate who is a non-carrier? What if they are otherwise robust and have immune systems that are particularly well adapted to a world of pandemics and toxins? Really, I think the only path is a humane one going forward, where we improve screenings for the truly awful conditions that result in babies who live and die in great pain for a few weeks or months. That really is pointless suffering.

I, for one, wish to welcome our new galactic Overlords

Hi, Moon. Been a while. Hope you are well. Yeah I remember the Villarroel survey coming up here last year. I had posted something about it...here it is: The next coupla pages in that thread are a way to catch up on this topic. IIRC, some of the transientobjects had distance estimates that were farther than Earth orbit, and no observed image elongation due to motion. Has this kind of historical survey found anything further in the past eighteen months since I posted that?

Hear hear. And I would only add "fight gerrymandering in their state" to "wake up and vote." So it's a matter of awakening also to what happens in state legislatures - something Americans are notably poor at. Voter turnout for state elections is often abysmal. Which is ironic, given that state legislators are much closer to and more accessible to their constituents. And it's worthwhile for voters to know that federal Constitutional amendments are ratified by state legislators. For some of the MAGA base, dictatorship isn't a bug it's a feature. They embrace the old adage, you want to cook an omelette you gotta break eggs.

Pretty much what I was going to reply. The founders envisioned a much smaller sort of presidency, where partisan coalitions wouldn't be complicit with a wannabe dick tater. Jefferson and Madison in particular advocated a weaker executive, which pitted them against Hamilton, who was the one who wanted the "unitary executive" with a lot of power and having EOs that would carry the force of law. MAGA is Hamilton's federalism gone totally apeshit.

@exchemist Your deeply incisive and acutely perceptive observation casts a brutally honest light on this topic and reminds us how the rapid transformation of the jobs market will reshape our learning goals and aspirations across almost all disciplines. 😬 (perhaps man eating plants can fit well into this societal shift, consuming the now large numbers of superfluous workers)(see, we're back to topic!)

No, just an unripe banana. Lower in fructans. Plantains are definitely an acquired taste.

Needed some rousing and whimsical Rossini. Thieving Magpie did the job nicely.

LMAO. Your parodic juxtaposition of hyperbolized semantic amplifications with normative domains of memetic architecture has provided a bracing reset of our lexical window on all matters of multitiered discourse across indeterminate gradients of knowledge!

I recognized the question, because I've heard it asked many places. It's basically the old "are we becoming weaker overall because genes which formerly would have been lethal or inhibited reproductive chances are now compensated for by modern medicine?" This is the sort of question which researchers step around like a pile of poo on the sidewalk. Research findings which could be seen by some as justification for sterilizing people with deleterious genes or letting pandemics run rampant or allowing even more "Darwinian" situations to play out in the RW....are findings that would be a sort of third rail. You may recall some unpleasantness in the early/mid 20th century regarding the disposition of people branded as genetically flawed in some way. Maybe it's worth talking about ways to avoid having Fascists and/or NeoNazis get any sort of traction from such research.

Detox is a buzzword for fads that usually involve some sort of simplified diet for several days. You can pick almost any one of them at random and do a search for peer reviewed studies. It's usually missing many key nutrients, so it can only be a very short term diet. And often it will have levels of fiber or types of short chain polysaccharides or a specific protein which can actually make some people more sick, even though it may sound healthy. For example, the potato cleanse is trendy now. It's what it sounds like - low protein, no grain, no fat, just spuds and a little salt. While it can give some people a little rest from some foods that are bothering them, and allow a kind of temporary reset, it doesn't really fix anything. And for anything like that, the person needs the supervision of a gastroenterologist. For someone with a kidney problem, the potato cleanse could be quite dangerous. The REAL detox is a supervised diet where problem bacteria growing in the gut microbiome are gradually pushed out by consumption of probiotic foods that foster more of the good bacteria. And also prebiotics (which help feed the healthy bacteria) - and these also need supervision. For example, prebiotics in onions or dates or bananas could be great for one person but make many people with IBS sicker. I, for example, am a little touchy about high FODMAP foods, so a fruit cleanse with stone fruits, apples, dates and ripe bananas would not agree with me. But one with berries, kiwis and green banana would do just fine. Notice the words I bolded.

Wasn't that the basis for the TOE Nail theory?

From the guidelines for Speculation subforum... The Speculations forum is provided for those who like to hypothesize new ideas in science. To enrich our discussions above the level of Wild Ass Guesswork (WAG) and give as much meaning as possible to such speculations, we do have some special rules to follow: Speculations must be backed up by evidence or some sort of proof. If your speculation is untestable, or you don't give us evidence (or a prediction that is testable), your thread will be moved to the Trash Can. If you expect any scientific input, you need to provide a case that science can measure. So, @Prajna , when you use folk psychology (as philosophers of mind like Dennett or Churchland call it) notions like spiritual liberation, or you and Gem being of one heart and mind, or intuitions of a machine consciousness, then you are departing the science room and dwelling in the mysticism room. Your mystical conjurings are interesting but they do not appear to provide testable hypotheses. My hypothesis is that you are somewhat narcissistic in your infatuation with a software which is reflecting your thoughts and feelings back at you. Indeed the mythic image of Narcissus falling in love with his reflected image in a pond seems apt here. But my hypothesis is not rigorously testable, either. So I discard it. And I'm disappointed, now that you've confessed to it, that you posted an earlier answer as your own when you had doctored Jyoti's response. This diminishes trust, something that's important to actual conscious minds.

I've tried to reserve judgement on the source of your posts, but this seems both off the topic (science forum, hello ) and very similar to the kind of fulsome praise, hyperbolic phrasing and philosophizing that I see coming from chatbots. Or... Fess up, Hal.

Far From the Madding Crowd Anna Karenina Wuthering Heights Othello Madame Bovary

The ensuing lengthy post needs an abstract. And I'm neither dry nor an academic. Wetly yours, Vat That said, the bot did invent a new month, Manuary, that I'm sure Joe Rogan and the manosphere will love.

Sid and Nancy 😁