randomc

Given female sexual selection preferences tend toward machiavellian intelligence, and given the strong link between machiavellian intelligence and no-conscience disorders such as pychopathy/sociopathy, polygyny could perhaps be expected to result in a higher representation of such disorders compared with monogamy. Since it might also be expected that a stongly polygynous culture would accelerate the natural feedbackloop associated with female selection preferences and machiavellian intelligence, it's possible to hypothesise that socially enforced monogamy is the principle variable responsible for the more successful civilisations in history. I should say that the above is not at all a resolved issue, it's just stitched together from stuff i found online. You might find this paper more pertinent to the question; monogamy history of It's also interesting to speculate about the increase in narcissism, autism and adhd, and associated disorders since the sexual revolution. A couple of generations doesn't seem enough to me, but i dunno, maybe epigenetic changes can become fixed in a population in such a short time? Evidence certainly exists linking autism with line-1 retrostransposon insertions. Possibly other disorders could be too Anyway, i better give sources since i'm making some fairly outrageous claims and associations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3153759/ machiavellian intelligence and sexual selection http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=jumping-genes-brain-tied-autisim

Just as a thought experiment, if consciousness turns out to be verifiably a part of the fabric of our universe, how might philosphy absorb this data? Things would get pretty tricky i think!

The inside jokes are so often other people though. There was a guy who posted here a couple of years ago (i can't remember what he called himself, i just think of him as 'primal scream guy'), who was just obviously a dysfunctional personality, i mean, he was ill, and he was mercilessly torn to pieces. After he was ejected from here he popped up on another forum, where he got exactly the same kind of treatment, but worse. I just have a hard time seeing him as the bad guy. It doesn't seem to be like that here now, i should add.

But what's the appeal for the inner cliques that always seems to form on these forums? I mean, they don't seem to spend much time talking amongst themselves, their attention is much more directed at newcomers and outliers, people who don't 'get it'. Trolls can be unpleasant but the outcome is rarely worse than mischief. It's cliquey types that always seem to be really nasty, to cause distress to people - same in real life actually. So if a troll is simply someone who acts on unpleasant motives in an online discussion, i think everybody trolls. The cliquey types are just a little more sophisticated.

I didn't see it as autodidiacticism so much as harmless pootling. If the 'options' aren't neccesarily mutually exclusive, then the dillema may or may not be false, right? It would appear to depend on how you define things, which is something i brought up some thirty posts ago, but nobody took it up - what do you want me to do?

OK, that's a bit insulting - i don't really see where i've made a decision that isn't rational. your view is that if i so much as entertain an idea that turns out to be irritational then i'm a monkey? i mean, how do you figure stuff out - do you just accept stuff on the basis of authority or do you prefer to think it through?

ok, so scotch free will. But the plasticity of the brain allows control over behaviour over the long term, right? That's the essence of cognitive behavioural therapy and stuff like that; and it seems to work, so then surely it's neccesary to view the way thought relates to the chemical state of the brain differently, depending on the segment of time in which you look at it. And over a long time segment we have a greater degree of control over our behaviour. Maybe this is an additional emergent property? Anyway, i just can't stand the idea i'm not in control, that's what peeling my onion, i'm not particularly fussy about metaphysical free will.

The conclusion i came to after a bit of reading on wiki is we have a kind of 'veto', but that's about it. it's still free will though, it just works the other way round.

I think a calculator would do it pretty much the same way as it would be done by hand, by approximating the function with another function, which by design can be truncated for any desired accuracy. the desired accuracy is part of the programming.

Well, we can't have free will then! Why?

OK, i'm still not happy. Look at it like this: a 'high level' property/pattern/behaviour emerges from the interactions of 'low level' elements, and does so without external direction; it self-organises for higher complexity. So if the emergent property directs the organisation of the system we have a paradox, because if thought directs the chemistry of the brain producing more thought, then thought can't be an emergent phenomenon. So i will only accept that it is if you will stipulate that free will doesn't exist; because that seems to be the only reolution . ...looks interesting but it's a bit beyond me. I suppose the complexity and self-similarity of the fractal increases measurably with an infinite number of iterations, and so maybe it defines a kind of metric for emergence or something like that?

I think i get it; it's an additional property of a system arising from the interactions of the original components of the system. Huzzah.

So the difficulty is in the way we tend to define objects? Then to say the whole is greater than the sum the parts is a kind of hedge for the discrepancy between how we intuitively define objects and how we should define them? Or it actually is greater than the sum of the parts? this is giving me brain squeak.

I'm not sure to be honest. I don't know if it's reasonable to say that they were ever part of the system, they're a product if the system if anything.

eh?

Doesn't thought arise from physiology rather being a part of it?

So you're asking: should we assume that all people have equal rights? History suggests the danger innot doing so is that it leads to sub-populations dehumanising other sub-populations, often with rather nasty consequences. So whether it actually makes us equal or not, the assumption at least limits some of the worst stuff.

x^2=16 x = plus or minus 4 Anyway, I think i'm just distracting you from what you should have been doing, which is looking at the graph.

Investment in science is a much more snesible form of philanthropy than the Gates/Buffet 'buy-everyone-on-the-planet-lunch' strategy. It's something permanent, hence way more valuable

You're trying to find the coordinates of the point at which y=2x+p is tangent to the curve. To find points of intersection of a line and curve, just substitute the equation of the line into the curve (or circle, whatever). y=mx+p x^2 + y^2 = r^2 gives something of the form x^2 + (mx+p)^2 = r^2 but since in this problem you get x^2 + (2x + p)^2 = 20 its difficult to sort out all the variables. You can still solve it by the same approach of substitution, but instead by using the line that passes through the origin that is perpendicular to y=2x+p. Since the slopes of two perpendicular lines are the negative reciprocal of each other, the equation of this perpendicular line is y = -1/2x ( +0, because it passes through the origin) This line joins the centre of the circle to a point on the circle, and because it is perpendicular to y=2x+p, the point at which it intersects the circle is the same point at which y=2x+p is tangent. So substituting y= -1/2x into the equation of the circle gives the coordinates of a point on y = 2x+p. x^2 + (-1/2x)^2 = 20 (solve for x here then y in x^2 + y^2=20) Then you can rewrite y=2x+p in point-slope from which you can find the range you are asked for.

The line perpendicular to y=2x+p with end-points on the circle and at the origin fixes the y-intercept where you need it.

Because most people are won over by superficial persuasion, and given that the basis of that superficial persuasion in this instance is that 'they' are calling scientists charlatans, for scientists to call 'them' charlatans in return just looks really feeble. Seriously, scientists should just withdraw from the debate. The alternative is to stoop to the same level of bullshit.

Perhaps scientists working on climate change should refuse to participate in the public debate altogether, and instead delegate this task to economists and other professional risk assessors. The strength of scientific consensus is apparently the pivotal issue, but this seems to me a completely slanted way to make a decision about whether action should be taken. Consensus could be balanced against AGW and it would still make more sense to act than not, simply because of the level of risk involved. Probably i'm taking too simplistic a view, but this seems to me a way in which the public debate would be more sensibly dealt with by climate change scientists.

I don't really get it. What is this kind of propaganda supposed to achieve? The message is 'have faith in science, my children' which seems to directly condradict what has been rendered the secondary point, that faith can't reliably explain the natural world. Maybe it would have been more acurately titled 'the pseudo-rationalist cult anthem'. It just comes across as being more about having the right kind of faith, which is pretty much guaranteed to piss a lot of people off and further entrench them in their positions. So in pushing this agenda so agressively there is a potential decrease in quackery to be weighed against a potential increase in social division. It just seems unnecesary when education will probably do the job in the long term, and with fewer anti-science nutcases produced as a result.

Why should we strive to appreciate life? Because we'll be miserable if we don't. Trite and obvious, but why complicate it further than that? Someone asking this sort of question is more likely expressing a pyschological twinge than engaging in detached reasoning, so to go looking for some sort of universal is to ignore what motivated the question in the first place. I'd suggest reason is sometimes the worst possible tool to pull out of your bag of self-management tricks. Much better off with good old-fahioned bone-headed common sense. That's how i get by anyway .