Phi for All

I think you're beginning to see the problem with the term "lazy". Perhaps you're being lazy by only offering advice to help him physically. Your son is lazy for not exploring more solutions he's never explored before. Bunch of lazy people all over the world not bothering to deal with pandemics, mass shootings, anti-democracy extremists, poverty wages, cultural upheavals, authoritarian governments, religious extremism, and wealth disparity using the tools their parents gave them to cope. They should all get a little more exercise.

It depends on how much of this simplistic outlook you're willing to inflict upon a loved one. You insist your son is lazy when there might be any number of other reasons why your recommendations aren't working. To me, the complaints sound like there's a lot more going on. If it was simply about feeling a bit overweight, the extra exercise and focus on diet is a simple solution. I'm not going to advise you look beyond the "lazy" judgement, but I will say that kids today face a world unlike anything we had to grow up with. Their prospects aren't nearly as rosy, they face the judgement of millions of people on social media in addition to their parents and peers, and they see a lot of the lies about society that we failed to pick up on. The pressures they face can't always be dealt with by doing a few more situps, because they're more complicated and reach more deeply.

There are so many variation of this, and historically they all mean the same thing, that there is no evidence. If there was, the best way to reveal it is right up front in the opening post, but conspiracy never works that way.

What I see is young, strong, energetic people dropping the bullshit they've been force-fed like flies. They can see behind the curtain to where the uber-extreme wealth manipulators use "Democrat" and "Republican" as boogiemen for uninformed, fearful voters. They can see that worldwide there is an effort to prop up authoritarian governments and leaders in an effort to reduce the power of democracies. I see these people dropping the prejudices engineered into the system. I see them rejecting the hate and ignorance in favor of reason and clarity.

I agree, the evidence is clear in each of your posts.

Has any other supernatural event EVER occurred before? Supernatural means "outside of nature". I can't think of any actual events that have happened that had no natural explanation. I don't count stories in the Bible, since there are rarely any non-biblical writings to help verify them. That's not the way animal tissue works after death. We see decomposition effects, we witness what happens after a long time underground. We've long imagined that the dead can rise again, but the patterns of necrosis are well documented. Reanimating all the dead cells in a body is ridiculously expensive in terms of energy. And I suppose you believe that this magical reanimation is also going to make these resurrected people strong enough to push open a coffin with several cubic feet of dirt on top of it? At a certain point, faith in stuff like this seems quite silly to me, no offense. If it makes you feel comfortable, I hope it's worth it.

! Moderator Note We're not overly fond of conspiracy here to begin with, since there is rarely any evidence offered, but the real offense here is making these statements as if they're already known facts. I'm throwing this thread in the Trash, but you can start another one on this topic if you bother to back up ANY of your conjectures with actual evidence. For instance, Bill Gates predicted a coming killer virus because so were many leading immunologists, and of course we've known about vaccines and quarantines for centuries. If you wish to claim conspiracy, please support your claims with facts.

So what is ethical about judging whole groups of people based on the actions of some of them? By claiming all "athletes" and "players" are greedy and uncaring, aren't you discriminating against a LOT of people? Why should I expect help from anybody who is unlikely to be anywhere near my sphere of influence? And if Aaron Judge and I DID somehow find ourselves in a real tight situation in life (our lifeboat is leaking, for instance), what makes you so absolutely certain Aaron wouldn't help me out? Just because you have a jaded outlook on sports professionals, does that justify such generalized prejudice?

That's not a phrase most people of faith use. It seems to imply some kind of proof, which doesn't fit well with the concept of faith. And Jesus hated banks, remember? Render unto Caesar, right? The best "entrance into heaven" argument I ever heard was that God doesn't do the judging, nor does it require belief in Jesus. YOU judge yourself to be worthy or unworthy of heaven, for whatever reasons. It's such a fabulous place that many will think themselves unworthy and linger outside the gates, which is the real Hell. It's only your judgement that decides.

Indeed, though it seems lately that we have to sift through 5 spammers, 4 religious extremists, 3 crackpots, and 2 science deniers before we get a sincere science enthusiast.

You're in luck, since I've heard some very convincing arguments lately that laziness, at least the way we typically think of it, never existed in the first place. It's simply a way to judge people who aren't doing something you think they should. The idea that people would rather do nothing than anything else is patently untrue. What we've always thought of as laziness is often just smart people refusing to do something in which they see no value, or smart people doing their jobs with the least amount of effort. Some jobs have been so dumbed down that they're almost insulting. Personally, I've always bragged about working smart rather than working hard. Does that make me lazy? This is one reason why I think the term is being misused. Right now, lots of business owners are screaming about lazy workers bringing conflict and problems, but I know a lot of those folks are just fed up with being underpaid. Productivity has been through the roof for the last 50 years, but wages have stagnated for workers and they're sick of working for a pittance while the rich sit on fat stacks of cash, waiting for the worker to falter so they can buy up their assets at twenty cents on the dollar. Again I think you're off by a bit. It's not the comforts that makes us less smart or want to work less, because historically, saving up for the comforts made us work harder to earn them. I think it's the convenience. Convenience seems to promote an attitude where people should do dumb things in order to save time. Spend an extra 25% on items from a small store so you don't have to spend the time dealing with a bigger store. Or shop online thinking to save some time but end up researching 20 products and their comments sections for three hours. Convenience lets you drive on fresh asphalt AND ensures you'll have potholes next year. I think "lazy" is a pejorative whip used by those who want us to work harder on their terms. Humans in general aren't lazy at all. We're ultra smart and curious, and we all prefer to do the things we want to do as opposed to the things we may HAVE to do. Nobody teaches us when we turn 18 that we have to parent ourselves from now on, and the real job of parents is to get us to do things we don't want to do. Practically everybody wants to do things as opposed to not doing anything, but they often don't want to do what everyone else thinks they should be doing. I remember being called lazy once because I arranged my work area to where everything was a bit closer to me. The boss hired me to make fittings and put them into boxes, not walk around unnecessarily, but when I tried to do a better job he called me lazy for not wanting to walk those extra steps. I pointed out that it saved me a LOT of time, but he still thought it was lazy. Said a young man shouldn't mind a few extra steps. I thought he was crazy.

! Moderator Note The latest spam tactic is to later add the link to their essay writing services in the quote they use, rather than in their own writing. The delay must fool the system, so it needs to be dealt with manually.

I have humor blindness because I can't see myself laughing at that.

When viewed through the right lens, we represent a diverse spectrum of light-hearted people.

! Moderator Note We're a science discussion forum. This reads like your blog, and it's not. We discuss science here. If you'd like to do that too, start a topic in the appropriate section, and give us a good place to start a conversation.

You don't get to base anything off that thread, since you did a really poor job of supporting your ideas there. Anything you stacked on top of that pile of nonsense is just going to fall over quickly. You make a LOT of assumptions, you suppose a great deal, and you don't bother to back any of it up with more than your waving hands. Honestly, you claim it's impossible to define life or death but then claim it's necessary to define it in order to understand what you're talking about. None of it seems rooted in any kind of science, but is rather just how you think things should be, or what makes the most sense to you. The problem with that is you don't know enough science to make guesswork like that meaningful. There's no way to test your ideas, so they aren't science. Sorry, but discussing a wild guess isn't as fun as you seem to think. People of science want more.

If you have a question for Homework Help, post it just like your first post. Give it an appropriate title, ask your question, the members will try to help.

Pretty sure we've got enough resources to invest some effort towards the viral threat of coronavirus AND possible bacterial threats from new sources. Don't fall into the trap of thinking humans as a species have to focus on one thing at a time. Back on topic, it seems clear this is a classic crisis representing both big dangers and big opportunities. I hope we have the time to sort through which is which.

1-2 It's been pointed out that you misunderstand what GDP represents. It's the value of all the goods and services a country produces, and represents the size of its economy, not what kind of buying power it has. 3 The IMF ranks the UK as #5 in nominal GDP in the world. How is that "second class"? 4 This is just the poor opinion of one Chinese state media editor, according to your link. They don't speak for "the rest of the world". In fact, nobody I know thinks Australia is nothing. 5 You should read the link you posted. It's the opinion of one political analyst from Curtin University, not every Australian. 6 This is a very shallow and hasty analysis of a very complex situation. Do you think it's wise to leap to such conclusions, especially given your misunderstanding of the socio-economic issues mentioned above?

! Moderator Note We're a science discussion forum. Can you give us an idea of what you wish to discuss? Sending us to a website we don't know, requiring members to click links they may not trust is against our rules. Please give a bit of an overview of what you want to talk about wrt the documents, or copy/paste enough to give us an idea of the direction you want the discussion to go.

! Moderator Note This is definitely a medical question you should ask your doctor about. Nobody here knows enough of your medical history to prescribe or comment on your medications, and your eyesight is too valuable to trust random people with, even on a science discussion forum. Ask your doctor, or check out the manufacturer, please.

! Moderator Note No offense, but opinion isn't what we discuss in Speculations. You've been given the tools to find some evidential support for your idea, which is what we're really interested in. Please do some analysis and see if that helps to support what you're proposing, and elevate that opinion to actual evidence.

Do any of the arguments the comments are about sound like they're made in good faith? I think the comments are proper for the argument that "the scientific world approaches the end of its capabilities". The OP clearly isn't swayed by the already listed accomplishments.

It doesn't matter if they aren't spotted. The interesting question is which side of a zebra has the most stripes? And of course, it's the outside. Last time I bought zebra, the clerk scanned the wrong barcode and I got charged for rhino.

This same kind of "Is it worth it?" BS used to revolve around the space programs, until it became blindingly obvious that the investments were returned manyfold in terms of practical knowledge and innovation. The same is true of the LHC, because most laypeople don't know enough about beam optics or particle physics to judge the value of an investment in experiments using such technologies. The average Joe is too ignorant of science to make a qualitative judgement, so they fall back on "It's expensive and I don't get it so it's WRONG!".