Phi for All

You can't trust a justice system run like a private industry. We have so many conflicts of interest that it's just open corruption. Money has so much influence where it shouldn't have any. China has four times our population but the US still has more prisoners in prisons than China. The real evidence shows we aren't more criminally minded than other countries, we're just so numb to extremist capitalism that we let our wealthy prey on us.

Just to add for future readers, this is pretty common. Starting out learning science, much of the knowledge is interconnected. The more you understand about one aspect, the easier it is to grasp the next. When you jump ahead of your own knowledge, getting excited about a popular science article on something advanced like black holes, the conclusions you draw seem fairly basic and super coincidental because you're trying to complete a puzzle when pieces are missing. Our ignorance manufactures puzzle pieces to fit, and we have to be careful about that.

This is a peeve of mine too, especially when some of those walls of text derive down to, "In the future, we must look for ways to be more efficient, and be willing to embrace them if they help." I was told to stop that crap in no uncertain terms by my eighth grade composition teacher, and I've done my best since then to write meaningfully. The LLMs are SO much noise surrounding a signal.

Stay with me here, remember what we were talking about? It was this comment: You seemed to object when I mentioned this criticism, but now it's OK? I'm trying to show you why the early church rejected the apocryphal books. Not because they were magic and could tell which writings were divine, but rather that they had an edict from Constantine to develop a doctrine that pulled the church together to quell strife in the empire. Above all, they wanted to stop the idea that Jesus was made like the rest of us. They really needed him to be created directly from their god, not just a man that god chose. And lots of those writings of the time talked about how Jesus was just a carpenter's son who thought his own churches had lost their way.

No. Thomas thought they were misguided in their focus on the narrative of Jesus' life, rather than his divinity. He criticized their focus on sin as opposed to ignorance (definitely a Gnostic trait). Again, this gospel from a disciple wasn't included because the church found it unhelpful. They didn't want the masses studying to banish their ignorance, they wanted them to feel guilty about their imperfections. Duh, as written by the author of the Book of Matthew. You don't think Matt was criticizing Pete by highlighting the whole "Get behind me, Satan!" blowup in his gospel? I think Mark mentions it too, but you know who doesn't mention it in his own book? Peter. Oh, right, the whole "men can decide what is divine" argument. Makes no sense to me. Leaving Thomas out because his ideas didn't suit the church sounds SO much more plausible.

Are you kidding me?! Read the scriptures again. Jesus was a radical who criticized the hierarchies and hypocrisies of the times, flipping over the tables of moneylenders and admonishing those who were self-serving. Your disciples criticized each other in the canonical Gospels as well, such as in Matthew 16:13–23 where we see Matthew criticizing Peter. Have you read your own Bible? It took me three readings when much younger to reach my conclusions. Thomas' account was not useful to the early church. It told no stories, just quotes from Jesus and some some admonishments to the other disciples. It's not a particularly moving piece of scripture, but it seems bizarre to use the excuse that the direct quotes of Jesus weren't inspired by his god or father.

Moderator Note This thread is closed.

Moderator NoteYou keep posting hyperlinks that go nowhere, and you need to stop. It looks like spam and we're an all volunteer staff, so if you keep it up I'm just going to ban you to make my life easier. Can you please be more careful?

The only purpose is taking advantage of the changes in allele frequency within a population over a great deal of time. Why do you need something more? What about Earth's species do you feel is lacking due to this process?

🔹 Summary:Some new members, as well as some established ones, are using AI for a slick look that makes it seem like the poster really did some major work on this idea. 🔹 Why this matters:This behavior opens the door to: lazy interpretations bad signal to noise ratios ignoring reading even your own citations 🔹 What I think of it:I think it's spitting in the eye of rigor, study, and reason. Not a fan.

You obviously think highly enough of these mortal human early church leaders to capitalize their names and give them magical recognition powers, which are, again, very convenient for your stance. And if you'd read more than just the four gospels, you'd know that most scholars think the book of John to be partly a response to the book of Thomas. Thomas didn't talk about himself (or rather the author didn't talk about Thomas), he quoted Jesus directly using logia, sayings that are directly attributable. How could the so-called fathers of the church decide Jesus' own words had no christ in them? Could it be because Thomas criticized Matthew and Peter? But again, it's just humans deciding how they want things to be, not interpreting an all-powerful but unobservable deity's wishes. And you're claiming you understand what your god wants, even though its also inscrutable and can't be comprehended. I think the image you created for this god helps you manipulate your claims so they seem to cover every objection.

If youthful impulse control is to blame, what difference do the charges make? You would pardon the young thief but condemn a young person who got into a fight to a lifetime of mistrust and poverty?

No, nothing you've done till now convinced us. There is a way you can convince us, but you've already revealed that you either used AI to write the OP, or you wrote it yourself without bothering to read the reference material you cited as the basis for your post. So which is it, Luc? We're more than willing to hear good arguments made in good faith, but this seems fake and forced and not really your work in lots of ways.

"Flexible and adaptive responses" gave the AI the green light to stretch Luc's request to fit the agency idea. How can anyone make such claims and then leave it to the AI to force-fit the science? Let's face it, I'm tired (also Lili).

Did your god write that? No. More human words. Unlike you, I don't read a whole lot between the lines. I look for what is observable, and try not to make things up based on how I want them to be. Convenient. Your point of view, am I right? This makes me sad. You take something incredible, that has allowed us to reach the point where at least one species could leave this planet if we needed to, and reduce it to "just because it is there". And instead you prefer wishful thinking where you get to make everything up without a shred of evidence, and pretend your faith in it is stronger than my trust in science. As you can tell, I'm having a moment with Christians today, since I live in the US where their hypocrisy is reaching new bounds. Read that over again and you'll hopefully see where it's wrong. Think hard about how beliefs are created. It's amazing to me how many folks don't mind brandishing their privileged ignorance these days, confident they know what everyone else must think. Try using only what I've written as your guide, it's what I do with your posts.

https://academic.oup.com/book/53529/chapter-abstract/422108335?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false Just the abstract, and I added the bold since it doesn't seem to support your ideas, unless your mysterious agency is evolution itself. I think the AI grabbed on to the keywords "evolution" "shapes" "behavior", then switched them around because you were asking it about agency. It's trying to give you the answers you really want, but maybe not the answers you think you're getting. You're off-topic. Do you have anything meaningful to add in a thread about evolution?

Oh, believe me, I questioned evolutionary theory for quite a while. I did NOT find it very intuitive. I highly recommend Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker as a good source for understanding natural selection, because studying BEFORE you start questioning works better. You know more, you understand more, so when something isn't right it will nag at you, and when something IS right it makes perfect sense. You should try it.

This part intrigues me also. History shows us that virtually all fascist regimes end up taking guns away from the general public. It's fascinating to think about your average MAGAt proudly handing over his guns to comply with TFG's wishes. Then again, the southern ones have been listening to one of the biggest Yankee carpetbaggers in history, a rich dude from New York City. They might forgive him for shooting someone down on 5th Avenue, but I don't think they'll forgive him for taking away their right to shoot someone down on 5th Avenue. That's where the line might be.

It's clear you're using some kind of LLM, and I think swansont was referring to the fact that the LLMs often make shit up just to look good. We don't trust the list of references you're basing your ideas on. If swansont can't find the papers with his access as a former USNO physicist, do they exist at all? Great. Can you link me to their research or not? If not, then you don't get to make this claim.

It's difficult to find information about distilled water that isn't focused on past shortages, but it's always made me wonder why my local Kroger affiliate has quite a bit of shelf space devoted to distilled water. It's heavy, cheap, takes up a lot of shelf space, and can't be nearly as profitable as almost anything else in the store. Lots of folks need it for medical devices and such, but I don't think it's enough of a draw on its own. I suspect my store and others are being paid subsidies to stock such items, in which case the taxpayers are all paying to decrease the risk to these retailers. No evidence, but if anyone can find some, I'd love to hear it.

Humans wrote everything you think you know about your god. That rather points to them creating its image and likeness. Not sure what you mean by "by default". Our memories are stored all over in interconnected regions of the brain. And memories are classified, too. Explicit memories are about experiences and general facts, where implicit memories include emotions and what your muscles know through training. Working memories are relatively new to mammals, located in the prefrontal cortex, and hold our short term thoughts as well as our verbal and spatial working memories through the functional separation between the left and right sides. You may take these abilities for granted, but many folks take them seriously enough to actually study them. People did create gods, unless you think they ALL exist. And it seems to me that it's people like YOU who play god, thinking they know the mind of this supposed creator, and pretending that this worship is any different than thinking metal is smart.

Except evolution has no shaped outcome. It has no design, no motivation, no desires, and no intentions. It's just a mechanism that throws every kind of shit imaginable against the wall to see if it sticks (sticks meaning giving an advantage that leads to passing that advantage along to the next generation). That's all. That's it. But that plus all the time in the world leads to the biological diversity we see on this planet alone. It's pretty awesome to me too, but I sure don't need to give evolution some kind of mystic agency to view it this way. Perhaps I just use my imagination in differently. The mechanism inspires me where the agency sounds like wishful thinking.

I have friends participating in the NO KINGS protests where my mobility issues stop me from going, but I have a good speaking voice and an app called 5 Calls, where I make five calls a day to my Reps and Senators urging them to vote down this nonsense. For instance, did you know that TFG's Mean Ugly Bill eliminates the tax one has to pay for a silencer for your handgun?! I didn't even know they were legal! It also defunds the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which enforces federal financial laws and oversees financial institutions to make sure they aren't ripping people off. So much for law and order, right?

Urine is mostly sterile when it comes out of us, unless there is blood present. Storing it in plastic over time is just going to allow the small amounts of ammonium ions in our pee to create ammonia gas. Unless your long illness involved a urinary tract infection, and as long as there's no blood present in the urine, you should be able to simply flush your supply. Ammonia isn't a pleasant smell (at least to me), but it's not going to concentrate enough to affect you if you're just pouring the bottles into the toilet. Open the windows and wear a mask if you're still worried. Even better, certain plants enjoy some extra ammonium and nitrogen as part of their growth cycles, so you could water them using your bottles. I'm not a gardener, so maybe it would be better to mix the urine with dirt instead of pouring it directly on them. Don't do this with grasses though. I'm pretty sure it's the ammonium in a dog's urine that causes bald spots on a lawn.

It seems like any other fascist push to redefine bias and truth in media in a way that flatters them more, but TFG's narcissism keeps pulling the spotlight away from any actual agenda they may be working under. Still, if this administration puts any more Project 2025 plans into effect, our government infrastructure may not survive. The Heritage Foundation will have brought the USA to its knees better than any foreign adversary.