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swansont

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Everything posted by swansont

  1. Did I reference the title? I was referencing the question “Are we better off having invented the printing press?” that you asked in the OP. Which suggests that the topic is not about writing things down, but the ease of making multiple, identical copied of the written word. How easy was it to write things down 2400+ years ago, as opposed to recent times? Only written words can change meaning? Can you trace etymology with only an oral tradition?
  2. As an aside, I have to wonder if the infertility issues getting worse is partly an artifact; infertility clinics cost money, so one wouldn’t expect people to go to a doctor unless they had the means to do something about it, which would increase as household income increased. IOW, we got better at diagnosing the problem, and reduced an economic bias.
  3. Just saying so isn’t enough. Why are you sure? And let’s be clear about the numbers you use. What do 10% and 100% refer to? You have the fraction of antibiotics that cause issues, and the probability of the side effect. Considering how widespread antibiotic use is, most men will have taken more than one course, so the chance of being affected is somewhat higher than the simple product of the two. If the odds of being affected is random, then the chance of the effect is higher. If you take more than one course, there a chance you’re given a different antibiotic. The high number of prescriptions (there are areas of the US where it’s more than 1000 prescriptions per 1000 people) suggests that people are given multiple courses; presumably this is because one didn’t work and the doctor tried another one. Infertility issues predate antibiotics, so the baseline rate is not zero. But if the rate is now around 8%, then the combination of factors can’t possibly exceed that.
  4. I think it would also depend on the vapor pressure of each; if the vapor reaches the equivalent of 100% humidity then you won’t get more evaporation.
  5. Can you provide links to this advice?
  6. No. Generally speaking thread closure is an action against the thread starter; if someone else misbehaves we try not to punish others. (an exception being if the original discussion has run its course and it’s all tangential discussion)
  7. You seemed pretty sure in the OP, but now we’ve seen that it’s likely not even at the 10% level + 50% chance. Remember, the number I cited was annual use. That means people are likely to get several courses of antibiotics over the years. If you have actual information to support an argument, go ahead and post it
  8. You’ve not identified a ratio in the IQ graph, or a number on which to form one. If your reference is 100, the golden ratio would put a line at 161.8
  9. Hard-wired responses to some stimulus are not evidence of thinking. It’s like that joke about a thermos - keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold. How does it know? (Must be thinking, right?) Neither math nor logic inherently ties to “reality” - what separates scientific theory is the requirement that it must agree with observation/experiment. IOW exponential growth or decay functions are part of math, but plenty of “reality” is not described by exponential functions.
  10. Socrates famously having lived after the invention of the printing press. How does a record of what someone said become out of date? Has a new version of e.g. the Gettysburg Address been released? Spoken word relies on memory, which is flawed. Writing before the printing press relied on hand-made copies, which were often not faithful to the original. Would you want a legal issue decided based on what people thought they remembered, or would you rather have multiple identical copies of a written document.
  11. When you have to move the goalposts, I wouldn’t say so.
  12. 10% of antibiotics is about 8% of prescriptions in a given year. I’m assuming a similar fraction of the population gets a prescription at some point. 50% of that is 4%. That would account for half of the infertility rate. Even with a shift from “antibiotics have a negative effect on male fertility” to “a small fraction of antibiotics have a negative effect on male fertility”
  13. ! Moderator Note You provide no evidence, and no testable model, just supposition. This does not meet the criteria for discussion in speculations.
  14. That would still account for a large fraction - about half - of the cases of infertility. It would mean other factors are not in play.
  15. I don’t see any analysis on your part that explains the discrepancy. Only some vague assertions. Nothing in your link says anything about discarding the big bang, or the notion of expansion.
  16. Given how many people are prescribed antibiotics, I’d say yes. 270 million prescriptions a year in the US. 805 per 1,000 people. https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/nearly-quarter-antibiotic-prescriptions-may-be-unnecessary# Fertility clinics would be flooded. Not the ~8% rate we see from men. https://www.yalemedicine.org/conditions/male-infertility/
  17. Implosion bomb, yes. They were quite confident the gun-type uranium bomb would work, since they had already done tests, though they didn’t do a full-blown (as it were) test like Trinity. https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2020-summer/why-wasnt-little-boy-tested/ “The scientists were not simply confident Little Boy would work, they knew Little Boy would work—it was a mathematical certainty. Thus, the weapon went into combat without a full-scale nuclear explosive test.”
  18. You characterized this as a possible serious issue, which suggests a strong effect. If it’s hard to notice, it can’t be. You can’t have it both ways.
  19. A circle spinning at light speed is a poor description. Spinning is a rotational effect, and light speed is a linear measure. Any spinning circle will have a range of linear speeds, depending on the distance from the point of rotation. If others indicate you are not being clear, you should believe them. But you just said that nothing was going faster than light. What is “pure flow”? You’re just substituting one ill-defined term for another
  20. If it were permanent we’d probably notice the correlation.
  21. The ether was discarded, as it did not match with evidence. Are you sure you want to describe your conjecture in that way? That wasn’t the objection. ! Moderator Note the objections are not personal and they are related to what you wrote; the interpretation of animus assumes too much. What you write is insufficiently supported with valid science. You may have been expecting a credulous audience but you don’t have one. Leave the animus out of the discussion and focus on clarifying and supporting your claims.
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