Phi for All

This is how I see it. My society conditioned me to react negatively when I see two men kissing, but since it's just two people showing affection it didn't take me long to change once I reasoned it out. Why would anyone continue to see it as disgusting or distasteful unless they also thought it was WRONG? I think that's the part of this that needs fixing.

Can you name some objective truths? What's the difference between reality and what we observe in nature? Also, what do you mean by creating life better than ourselves? Are you talking about having children that know more than we did at their age, or something else?

Actually no. If you skip the first day, you'll be skipping the first time around. You can't have a second time around without the first time. Also, if you skip the first day, it's like you're dividing the dish by zero, and you risk all kinds of undefined kitchen problems.

They all follow the same format. "You can't pet a hairless cat because 'petting' is defined as stroking fur! I'm going to insist on using this single, rigid definition no matter how you reply, even though I alone find it interesting and meaningful!" And the questions in the OP are always incredulity-based, which suggests they aren't being asked in good faith. I don't think it's a successful format for learning anything, and certainly hobbles any attempt at a decent discussion.

If the goal is "simplest" instead of "raising the most money", you are correct.

! Moderator Note Thread re-opened, sorry for the inconvenience.

! Moderator Note Opening posts should have at least some of the evidence you intend to use to support your assertions, if only to indicate that you know what you're talking about and that you're arguing in good faith, rather than simply making a declaration with nothing to back it up. Discussion needs others to participate, which requires that you give them a reason to besides your insistence.

Ignorance is a state we should be trying to correct constantly. Accumulated human knowledge is immense. Why are you making it about you personally? You're blaming yourself for not having something, thinking of yourself as an "idiot" for not understanding everything, and I think this is a problem. It makes you think of learning as "correcting your deficit", or "judging your capabilities" instead of "becoming even smarter" or "learning something new". You're a human, you have an amazing capacity to learn, and many tools that give knowledge deeper meaning and application. Nobody is exposing your ignorance when they teach you something, they're exposing your capacity to learn.

Tom Booth has been banned. The members here extended their help in good faith in an effort to update this poster's knowledge, but were ignored in favor of soapboxing.

What does "not enjoying" entail? Do you simply look away and not think about it anymore, or do you frown, make a disgusted sound or comment, and avoid those two people no matter what? I think the first behavior is about preference, and the second is about prejudice.

It sounds like we're working with different definitions of "prejudice". If you're judging a particular sex act with distaste, and assuming you've never actually engaged in said act, aren't you pre-judging it to be distasteful? Or is this a binary problem, where sex acts are only either enjoyable or distasteful? I have my own prejudices, and I try to fight them when I think they're keeping me from understanding. It's a struggle, based on my upbringing in the Midwest US, to overcome my kneejerk reactions to certain people and things. But it's worthwhile if it makes me more adaptable and accepting of diversity (which seems to be a strong trait in nature in general). I've acquired each of them for various reasonable (to me at the time) reasons. None of them were innate.

Really well said, and clearly supports that this is something we learned, we practiced, and can now change if we want to. It may be natural for any animal to fear something different, but humans seem to have enough intelligence to reason past it, if we want to.

! Moderator Note We have rules about wild-ass guesswork when it comes to science. People like you waste a LOT of time with your obtuseness. This has been explained before, but you have a really shitty, shitty style of discussion. You push your ideas while ignoring replies that run counter to what you're claiming. That's just preaching, and we are a DISCUSSION forum with rules against preaching. You act like you're posing legitimate questions, but you're repeating the same mistakes, which get pointed out, and then you ask people to point out your mistakes, which again shows you aren't listening. I'm going to recommend we ban you, since you can't discuss in good faith and just seem interested in wasting everyone else's time.

This reminded me of the term "massive", which is very different in science than in regular English.

That's not a great example, imo. People who smoke or chew gum/tobacco are often leaving the residue of their enjoyment for the rest of us to deal with. There's a reasonable stance against certain behavior if it actually impacts you negatively. But I understand where you're coming from wrt gum. I'm prejudiced against people who smoke, and I'm not well disposed towards someone who wants to talk to me while chewing gum. "Distasteful" is probably the wrong word to describe how we feel about someone else's sexual preferences. We need a definition for things we don't like people doing that has no impact on us (like their sexual preferences or the clothes they wear or their religious beliefs), and a different definition for behavior that does (like spitting gum on the ground or blowing smoke in someone's face or cutting in front of others in a line). And if a "distaste" for homosexuals extends to public affection when one doesn't object to heterosexuals doing the same, then I'd say that's homophobic. And that's what I see most; heterosexuals claiming that homosexuals are grooming small children or offending straight people just by being in the same mall or public area. It's the very existence of an alternate lifestyle they find "distasteful".

The Bohr model of the atom originally used "orbits" to describe the path electrons take. That's changed to "orbitals" with "shells" and "subshells" as we learned more and needed to distinguish between observed behaviors.

Your truth is a bit weird, though, in context of the rest of our lives, don't you think? If you aren't participating in something, why do you find others enjoyment of it "distasteful", unless you believe they're doing something WRONG? Do you feel that way about anything else people do? If you hate eating fish, do you put down those who enjoy it? Are they doing something "distasteful"? What about people who dress up in cosplay? I've known people who think LARPers and Renaissance Festival fans are weird, and that there's something wrong with them mentally because they're so into fantasy and dressing differently.

Why would you want to be misled by encouragement when an idea is flawed? Most ideas are wrong, and discussion helps us find the parts we need to rethink. Even while speculating, you should keep a foot firmly in the science we consider our best current explanations. Why are you taking any of this personally, when it's your ideas, not you, that are being discussed? Some people spend years working on their personal explanations for various phenomena, then start discussing it with peers only to find out they misunderstood some part of the science, or didn't use the right calculations. If you know the science mind at all, you'll know we can't NOT point out mistakes, and part of that is that nobody wants to see you waste good learning time.

Same here. The ratio was the important part, not the total. For years, I'd read that insulin triggered many bad things, including reducing cell receptors that call for cholesterol from the blood. Then the cells produce their own cholesterol, leaving the cholesterol borne by the LDLs to fall to the artery walls, to be retrieved by the HDLs for recirculation. Fats in the body need to hitch a ride with lipoproteins before they can travel in the bloodstream. That all made sense to me. Now they tell us the total is what's important, and if what I'd learned earlier is true, using a total number makes no sense, except that cardiologists get to prescribe a lot of statins. The old system seemed to take into account that our diets are all so different. I really dislike the one-size-fits-all methodology.

! Moderator Note You can't soapbox ANYWHERE on SFN, even in the Lounge. You haven't been discussing these subjects, you've been misusing their information and then rejecting all attempts to show where you're wrong. You misunderstand many aspects of physics, you don't take criticism on board when this is shown, and you keep insisting your explanations are more valid than those with far more evidence. You're preaching, soapboxing, and it's a toxic way to approach a discussion. It doesn't work for us, that's why it's against the rules. Please go start a blog somewhere if you want to ignore replies and comments.

I agree with bufofrog. Only those who know what's inside the box can think outside of it meaningfully. Challenging any kind of physics without mathematics skills is just crazy, like trying to tell an Olympic gymnast what they're doing wrong when you've only watched a few people doing gymnastics and have never participated yourself. Speculation built on a shaky foundation is worthless. The box helps insure your explanation is based on what we observe in nature. If the OP would care to reread what's been written, they'd see that you did more than call it out. You asked pertinent questions, especially after it was shown that much of the OP was based on flawed understandings (e.g., that a sphere was a platonic solid, or that entropy is a conserved quantity). I must have missed where the OP corrected for this, because we're on page 2 now and I can't figure out why this explanation (NOT a theory) is still being discussed as if it wasn't shown false in the first few posts?

! Moderator Note Thread closed.

It's flammable, and the vapors are denser than air. It will definitely deter or kill certain bugs if you use a lot of it, but higher concentrations pose higher risks of combustion. Don't use it around wood or leather. Keep it away from bleach. It's probably keeping some bugs away the way you're using it now. If you still have bug problems, you should look for a solution other than increasing the amount of alcohol you use.

! Moderator Note No, since this alternative has gone through 17 pages of you avoiding responses that disagree with you and ignoring the science presented. This is a science discussion forum, and we rely on both sides of an argument LISTENING to each other, otherwise you're just soapboxing, and nobody wants to hear THAT. I wish there was something in your posts that made me think you might have a Eureka! moment, especially given the patient and instructional replies you've gotten, but you've shown that you're going to continue to double down and ignore attempts to teach you something. Thread closed due to insufficient support, so please don't bring the topic up here again.

It's not very efficient as a pest deterrent, and can be very dangerous.