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Phi for All

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Everything posted by Phi for All

  1. https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Cell_and_Molecular_Biology/Book%3A_Basic_Cell_and_Molecular_Biology_(Bergtrom)/20%3A_The_Origins_of_Life/20.03%3A_Formation_of_Organic_Molecules_in_an_Earthly_Reducing_Atmosphere https://ebrary.net/70968/education/conversion_inorganic_materials_organic_matter_through_series_complex_reactions https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1093669 The mechanisms for evolution are better understood than you think. Of course it's remarkable. But so is an animal that can fly because it's given up just about everything that doesn't aid flying. Birds don't even have the muscles to swallow water. Their evolution focused so much on wing muscles that now birds have to hold water in their mouths and then thrust their heads forward to force the water down their throats. Just about every species has something quite remarkable about it. Our remarkableness seems more relevant to us, for obvious reasons, but nature is full of remarkable species.
  2. One way to look at this is solar efficiency. Organic or living matter can much more efficiently absorb and dissipate sunlight as heat than inorganic matter or non-living matter can. A rock is very durable, but it has limited ways to disperse the heat it collects. Life is just better at that. As for comparing intelligences, that's not as meaningful. We're more than big brains. Human intelligence is different in a large part because we have lots of compatible features other animals don't, even animals with bigger brains. They don't walk upright to free up their hands, their thumbs can't oppose their fingers for gripping, and they can't communicate as well so they can't cooperate as well when they need help. Any gap is purely perspective and context, and not a mystery at all. Birds gave up a lot for flight, just like we gave up a lot for bigger brains. Sharks are incredibly evolutionarily stable, and our brains would be of little use if a human and a shark were tossed together in the middle of the ocean.
  3. I've always suspected that it's not a good idea to thicken and hold in suspension the food you're trying to digest partially via gravity and movement. It's very eye-opening to feel aches and pains go away after removing these stabilisers from your diet.
  4. Don't you think there's a difference between the brains of a newborn and you? What if you have no memory of being a newborn because newborns don't have enough experience to put together a meaningful memory? You have no memory of the time you crawled up the stairs in your house because, at the time, you didn't know what crawling was, or what stairs were, or even what a house was. Memories require that you know what each part of the memory is.
  5. I know the claims that emulsifiers are nutritionally inert, but there have been any studies on how they affect the processing of liquids consumed, and that they can cause cancer: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7961571/ It seems our bodies don't do well when trying to separate substances that normally don't form a stable mixture. Everything about emulsifiers seems to benefit the manufacturers and distributors and stores. The consumer only gets to shake things up less.
  6. You keep repeating what you've already said, and you don't address what I've been saying. You don't answer questions. Why do you think this is a conversation? I reject your basic premise, which seems to be: I definitely don't think the former will be like the latter. I think there is a distinct difference between not remembering experiences and never having lived them, and I tried to explain why to support my arguments.
  7. As I said earlier, there is a difference. Have you experienced both? With sleep, you have awareness of the passage of time. If you wake too early, you know it even before you look at a clock. There are dreams. There is awareness of being uncomfortable in your current position, so you change position. Under anaesthesia, you're usually counting backwards for a few seconds, and the next thing you know, a nurse is telling you the four hour operation went beautifully. It seems completely unreal that you were totally unaware for that long.
  8. This part seems wrong because you'll still be in the world you experienced. If you wake up in bed, it may not seem familiar but you'll still know you're in a bed and just woke up. You'll know what the items in the room are for even if you don't remember buying them or using them. It will NOT be as if you never lived these experiences. Unless you're taking away all knowledge, in which case this is a really pointless discussion. Have you ever been under a general anaesthesia, the kind that puts you to "sleep"? Once you've been put under, you realize it's not like sleep at all. In sleep, you're aware when you wake up that you've sleeping for some amount of time. Under anaesthesia, it seems like no time has passed at all, as if you weren't present during the experience. I think, in your scenario, it's much more likely that it would feel like sleep. You wake up and know that you have no memory of the experiences you've been through, but you know that you did because you're in a bedroom in a bed with a person's things around you, maybe even pictures of you. It wouldn't be as if you never lived before.
  9. This is a bad assumption that you don't bother to support in any way. And it's easily falsified as well. If you can't remember, you're still standing there breathing, aware that you're alive and sensing the world around you. That doesn't happen if you never lived at all.
  10. We made up how to measure time, rather than making up time itself. We observed that change is a process that requires things don't happen all at once. We observed many things that we understood better when we measured them using some sort of standard. We observed how important it was to know how long and how wide and how tall something was, as well as how long it took to build it. We observed all these dimensions, and the more we started measuring them, the better our tool-making skills and construction skills became.
  11. ! Moderator Note Thanks for this. Please give us an overview of your concept, something we can begin a discussion on. If it's persuasive, you can post more, but we need a place to start talking.
  12. I really dislike it when you jump inside someone's head to tell us what they're thinking, then use it as part of an argument. Even assumptions should have some supportive evidence.
  13. And they manage to have universal healthcare, along with a minimum wage that's twice the US rate, while their GDP is only half of California's with twice the population. Most US states have a higher GDP than Canada, none have healthcare coverage for all.
  14. You're basing this argument on guesswork and personal preference? There should be good reasons why we change naming conventions. I'm also NOT a fan of forcing scientific definitions to be simpler for the layperson. Pop-sci articles already do too much of that. We have specific terms when we want to be absolutely clear about our subject. Medical professionals know you can't refer to a woman's vulva unless you specifically mean that part of the anatomy, not the entire system.
  15. Most members of this forum are seriously interested in the best supported explanations for various phenomena, so I don't know why you would think we're biased against religion rather than its lack of rigor. And our philosophy section is not a WAG forum, it's not a place where we want to discuss every idea or thought that can't make it past the most elementary hurdles. I'm sorry you find us lacking, but there are TONS of sites out there for wild guesswork devoid of real science, and I invite you to visit them. If we're a bit stricter about what we devote our time to, that's on us, not you, and I encourage you to spend your time in places you enjoy.
  16. Involves, not evolves. For school? Which liquid? Which metals? What are you using for heat control? Are you supposed to figure out what processes and equipment you need? Was part of the assignment to figure out what you need to do this? If not, why didn't the instructor tell you what kind of tube you needed for the experiment? Hope you don't mind me asking for clarification. Sometimes posts like these are followed by a sockpuppet who wants to sell us some tubes.
  17. Nothing can help the uninformed except luck or information. Best of luck! Probably because we'll be in the dark.
  18. If you can't figure that out, just be lunch.
  19. The Parasitic Class has a different definition of symbiosis. Why aren't you happy to be sucked dry? The benefits are obvious to them. You're the one who doesn't understand.
  20. I never was able to give up paper books. And I agree that there is vulnerability in putting all your eggs in a single basket, but I'm also a firm believer that, if more people have better access, baskets will be made to higher standards to protect your eggs. Or something better than baskets can replace our old woven stick technology. Are you supposed to play along with the technology, or are you supposed to avoid it? Can you still get into heaven if you're wearing The Beast's fanny pack and using his cell phone? Reminiscing about rotary phones is a new one on me. Even diehard landline proponents prefer buttons, don't they? Waiting for the dial to spin around is like torture for the modern brain. It would be worse than going back to dial-up internet.
  21. Is it addiction, or is it a natural desire to simplify complex processes? I never used to carry around a camera or television before my smartphone, but I did stop wearing a watch, gave up a daytimer planner, ditched a pager, threw out the road maps and donated a few hand-held games. I haven't given up the wallet yet but its days are numbered. The smartphone took the place of all of that and more. I don't blame it for social media, it just a tool to keep it in our faces. It wouldn't be too much of a step to have the smartphone as a cuff on your forearm, and use it in tandem with a universal healthcare system, so everyone gets issued a cuff. A smartphone that also monitors BP, O2, heart rate, etc. If you make the tools better or more serious or meaningful, does it ever become OK that it's a universal tool for everything? Is it the focus on one tool that's bad or the focus on one aspect of the tool?
  22. Is it more of that ChatGPT BS? I have to tell you, that program is fooling you into thinking you're on to something. It gives you bad equations, seems to support any conjecture you feed into it, and doesn't seem to be capable of dealing with the questions the membership has put to you. You think this program is helping you fill the gaps in your knowledge, but it doesn't care what it fills those gaps with. It's teaching you nothing.
  23. And you don't feel it might be a mistake to assume the wealthy don't like your looks as opposed to anything else? Why are you part of the problem if you're nice to everyone? We're not talking about the wealthy, the elite, the upper tier. We're talking about the Parasitic Class, who are sucking the life out of the rest of us. Their type of wealth IS evil, and they want you to believe you don't look good enough to be around them.
  24. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-security-fairness-act-signed-by-president-biden/ Are you eligible for more money after Biden signed the Social Security Fairness Act? Those bonuses are retroactive back to December 2023.

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