Phi for All

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How does that work?

How did you come to the conclusion that "The evolution of human beings is fundamentally different from that of other creatures"? It's not true at all, so I'm curious why you think this. Humans are amazing, but we're not special wrt evolution. Evolution is blind to species, and is part of the biology of all living things.

Most of this shows a lack of understanding wrt evolution, and the rest is pretty vague. Innovation? I'd want to hear more about how bipedalism affects our cognition. And there were a LOT of other factors at work. Tool use and cooking food happened before we started walking upright, and they were essential to changing how we walked.

This is where your mistake lies. False, falsify, and falsifiable are three different concepts in science. All swans have two eyes is a false statement (I found a picture of a one-eyed swan). The picture falsified the statement "all swans have two eyes". The fact that finding swans with more or less than two eyes would make the statement "all swans have two eyes" false means the statement is falsifiable. All swans have two eyes is a statement that can be checked to see if it's false (making it falsifiable), but we can't do any checks to be certain it's true.

It's pretty simple, really. Can you think of a way to show something is false? Then it's falsifiable. But that's a great example. Finding a three-eyed swan is EXACTLY what would show "all swans have two eyes" to be a false statement. As a counter example, arguing that the Christian God exists is NOT falsifiable. Being unobservable, there's no way to perform adequate tests. There's no way to form a prediction based on observed behavior. Almost by definition, this god isn't going to show itself because that would destroy the reason behind the faith of its followers. Why is it nonsense? A single black swan is enough to disprove a statement like "all swans are white". But if I say "all swans are black or white", I can't prove that, not even if I check every living swan. I'd have to check every swan there ever was, or ever will be, and I'd have to be sure swans didn't live on any other planet in the universe as well. This is the basis for theory, the idea that we can only accumulate evidence in support rather than "proving" an idea. It's what keeps us searching for the most supported explanations, rather than answers we decide on and never go back to check.

So we all end up FAILING at the purpose of life? I think you need a qualifier.

Hrvoje1 has been suspended for 3 days for continued abusive behavior. Telling someone to "shut up" on a discussion forum rather defeats the purpose.

Ooh, my Groucho-purpose-of-life is to learn everything you can. "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

To find the joy. This isn't true, but that's off-topic. I found some joy in this old joke reference! Thanks!

3.7 times/month (over a 3 month period), I look at the clock to see it's exactly 12:34pm. Until I actually measured it, it seemed like this was happening constantly (my wife gave me this little bias). When compared to all the instances where I looked at a clock and saw a different time, the confirmation bias was revealed. There's a country road I travel every day with my daughter that has a sharp, narrow turn. When we meet another car coming the other way right at the turn, it's a bit harrowing and memorable. My daughter commented that it was happening an inordinate amount of the time for such a back road, but when we put tally marks on a sticky note, we found it was far less than it seemed (plus, since it's a 90 degree turn, both directions have to slow down, which makes it more likely you'll meet another driver right on the corner). I think empathy is extremely important for its focus on being more sensitive, not because it confers any special powers. In fact, being more sensitive can easily lead humans into seeing patterns that aren't there. And of course, there's evolution. It would be VERY hard to hide some special psychic ability that conferred great benefits. Such a trait would be passed along, and such people would show some pretty anomalous statistical behavior.

Not this, not ever. Far too costly, far too risky, and it doesn't address the reasons we create the rubbish. Even if we could figure a cheap way to send it to space, we'd just be using resources up at the same rate. We have ways of making sustainable products, but current manufacturers have a LOT invested in the current infrastructure, and don't want to spend the money to change. It would be far better to start making our plastic products from plants.

A friend of mine told me it's important to make a distinction between a "trip" and a "vacation". A trip is full of sightseeing and adventure and exploration. A vacation is where you park your butt on a beach and relax with a good book (or sunglasses) and DON'T think about all that other stuff.

Take some good reads, but I did the same thing in Cozumel when I had a 3-year-old. When we weren't playing in the surf and sand and pools with her, the resort had daycare to keep her ocupado while mom and dad explored for a while.

How about almond scrimshaw?

We can discuss this as much as you want, as long as you aren't asking for a diagnosis. Nobody on the web is qualified to do that without physical testing, so we'll also tell you to see your doctor. The extra frequency and discomfort MAY be psychosomatic due to your focus on the phenomenon, but it's strange that it happened without the normal food stimuli (or outside the normal time for the stimuli). There's a LOT of molecular activity going on above a hot cup of coffee, and probably some irritants that get released when you open the packaging on a breakfast bar. But the problem most likely isn't with the stimulus, but rather with the way your body is wired to react to it. The signal transmitted to the brain from the nerves can be different between people. I've had explosive sneezes before, obviously triggered by some stimulus, but I've never experience the nausea you mention. It almost sounds like your body is so determined to be rid of X that it prepares to sneeze and/or vomit simultaneously in order to purge the irritant. Do your eyes ever water as well? I've also experienced some weird cross-wiring wrt the head/face/throat/sinuses (where all the intake orifices are). Sometimes when I get a scratchy throat, if I can't clear it with saliva or a cough, my eyes will water (another reaction to irritants). I've sneezed right after plucking a hair from my moustache. This may be our bodies dealing with our particular neural pathways. Again, if you're concerned, you should ask your doctor. It would be REALLY cool if you could journal your experiences, treat this like an experiment. EVERY DAY, you mark down whether it happened or not, and if so, what the detailed circumstances were. Besides being great evidence to show your doctor you aren't crazy, this kind of experiment could give you some predictive power over this phenomenon.

Trying to rocket our waste off-planet is too dangerous, even if we could justify the costs (roughly US$20K/kg, or about US$5-6T). One Challenger-level incident and we've got a bunch of nasty in the upper atmosphere. So if you had a facility in space that produced hazardous waste, and it was near enough to a BH that you could safely and cheaply put a capsule full of it on a radial trajectory, you could use the BH as a dump, right?. A minute out, the capsule might still have enough energy to change course, but once past the EH, spacetime is so heavily curved by the gravity that there is only one path to follow, for anything, no matter how much energy it has available to escape. The path in both space and time leads to the dimensionless point at the center. We can't know what happens, but it sounds more like a trash compactor than a dump.

Your questions are unclear. If you want to throw waste into a BH, why do you need to land? And because of the nature of a BH, there's no way you could leave if you did. Past the event horizon, no amount of energy will ever let you escape.

Which series is this? I enjoyed the clever realms he created in his Richard & Kahlan novels. Loved the wizard's rules.

This is pretty basic stuff. Substitute almost anything, good or bad, for "dying by suicide" in your above question, and I think you'll have your answer. How does one person blowing up a building encourage others to do the same? How does one person eating an ice cream cone encourage others to do the same? Emulating observed behavior is one of the foundations of how we learn, from a very young age. It's a spectrum ranging from avoidance to admiration to hero worship, and it's very powerful. Also, I'm not sure I agree that sending a message that suicide is NOT OK is necessarily stigmatizing it. You can decry an action without implying anything about the person performing it. I want to be able to say suicide is a horrible thing, without implying a person is horrible for contemplating it. Does that make sense?

Please, no. We can talk about this the way the OP intended, the way your first post did. As soon as you make this about you personally, it becomes a medical issue and the thread gets shut down We are unequipped to offer professional advice, you know this. Please don't make this about diagnosing your situation. I was hoping we could discuss the subject without violating the rules. This should be talked about, but without doing unintended harm.

Then why don't more suicides burn themselves? I'm just saying it's a poor argument, that the pain is the same. I disagree with your third paragraph.

Probably why I specifically made sure to say: You claimed calling suicide cowardly wasn't right because both the suicide and the accidental death have the same kind of pain. I don't think that's true in most cases. Suicides get to choose how and where, they know it's coming, there are many factors that make it less painful. I just didn't agree with that part of your argument.

If there are many types of mental illness, and mental illness does not discriminate, then why wouldn't some people find ridicule a meaningful method of prevention? I assume, of course, that you would include ridicule in a list of stigmatizing deterrents. And I'm not advocating it for everyone, but I do think some people want to be told their thoughts of suicide are silly and transitory. So I'm loathe to remove that tool from a professional's bag. Can you give examples of ways suicide prevention is being turned into "taunting"? Again, it seems like everyone is different, including what they interpret as callousness and sadism. Are some mental health professionals advocating sadism if they point out how suicide affects survivors? I don't like calling suicide "cowardly", but I also don't agree that these deaths are equally painful as their accidental counterparts. Cutting blood vessels isn't the same as losing an arm, just as dying by GSW isn't the same as a bullet to the head.

Diverse skills, personalities, needs, preferences, and abilities amongst a population help keep it vibrant, so you're right, it's fantastic that everyone is different. In fact, I'd argue that trying to set ideals on any aspect of human societies is going to limit us. Why should everyone like the same things? Why should being a banker be better than being a baker or biologist? I'd say the differences you're pointing out stem from the intentions involved. It's not good to make someone feel like crap, but there's a difference between trying to humble someone who has too much pride, and trying to humiliate that same person (the dictionary may disagree). Is the intention to help or harm? Or perhaps humility is a personal perception, the same as pride, and something you need to be straight with yourself on, rather than worrying about what others think. Pride is a motivator and a deadly sin at the same time, like wrath, envy, sloth, greed, lust, and gluttony. Abuse them at your peril.