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Thank you. Thank you also for providing an accurate statement of the setup in Scotland we can all agree. So can I ask you to consider the value of accuracy in discussion ? Rather than going over old ground any more can we also discuss your title question ? Only the first line provides a discussion topic, I would rather not comment on the rest except to ask you to you consider if this is a good way to address people and open a conversation you hope to have an adult discussion with. So did you wish to discuss barriers to equal opportunity in 'education'. - as you state in the title or barriers to equal opportunity in 'academia' - as you state in your opening post ? I hope you are not conflating the two. They are not the same. In any event we need an agreed working definition of 'education' and 'academia' before progress can be made.

! Moderator Note Vague generalizations disguised as slurs towards a group of people are against our rules. This sort of thinking has been debunked MANY times over, much like creationism and phlogiston, so we don't waste our time wallowing in such ignorance. If you persist in this, you'll be required to leave. Nobody here is interested in going backwards; discussion should be meaningful, and promote learning. IOW, stop making moronic monkey noises.

4) Some combination of those

! Moderator Note So you're not both holding your collective breaths, POVphysics turned out to be a sock of someone trying to get around the mod queue (put there originally because they couldn't support their assertions).

POVphysics has been found to be a sockpuppet of Wulphstein. Both are banned.

That's a trap we all fall into. These issues can be emotional for many people. Nobody makes a good argument from anger.

Your response here indicates that I did not manage to communicate my point. Sorry. I am not saying it is an either - or situation. I am saying that there is a scale between opportunity and result and the question of where a particular activity or situation falls on that scale is a question of ethics that can be discussed scientifically, particularly in the context of education, as required in this thread. Here are some examples from real life. Consider a runing race. 1) If everyone has the opportunity to run then they will not all reach the finish line at the same time, because they do not all possess the same ability or luck. 'Affirmative action' has lead some educationalists to ban races in some schools and try to ban exams. Where do you draw the line here and why ? 2) I have zero or even less than zero talent fo music, no matter how much musical education I am offered or receive. There are a limited number of stradivarius (and similar) violins in this world. Should I therfore be offered the opportunity to play such an instrument, therby depriving another player the opportunity or maybe breaking one ? Should I waste the time of the few people in this world capable of teaching the high standard necessary to obtain the best from such an instrument ? 3) Would you get into a taxi driven by a blind taxi driver, or should taxi drivers be drawn only from the ranks of well sighted persons? If so how well sighted ?

There are already several such models - most notably Loop Quantum Gravity and Causal Dynamical Triangulations, among some others. The idea to quantise spacetime itself is not new, it is one of the main approaches in the search for a model of quantum gravity. On the other hand though, the approach of trying to apply the usual machinery of QFT to gravity (which is where the idea of a ‘graviton’ comes from) can effectively be ruled out at this point, since we know that it is mathematically inconsistent and doesn’t work. And if it did, for some reason, work, then gravitons would need to obey all the usual rules of particle physics.

In case you still haven't got it, your question was a damn silly question, it was meaningless, it was an affront to logic and common sense. If you still cannot see that I recommend you study for a bachelors degree in philosophy and the history of science. You can report back here when you graduate and apologise.

I only had a very cursory look on the lit in a very different context. As a whole, it seems that the dynamics is very complex, especially as the perpetrator-victim interaction heavily influences the victims. Rape victims who were also subject to child abuse are more likely to attribute blame to themselves, for example. It is a well-known observation that in abusive relationships the perpetrator creates a situation where the victim believes that the situation is their fault, which is likely to colour their view. The smoking example is related to a different phenomenon, I think. Folks that have e.g. overcome adversity or have become successful tend to ascribe it to their own abilities (but again, it also correlates with their belief in a just world, so it may a bit of a chicken or egg situation) and then are less empathic to failures of others. There are studies that show that a belief in meritocracy (specifically, belief that the world is based on meritocracy, which is related to the just world hypothesis), is inversely correlated with traits such as empathy and is associated with higher levels of stereotyping. (see e.g. Madeira et al. Frontiers in Psychology, 2019; https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02007)

I think that what you describe is not a psychological effect per se, but rather a symptom of certain types of political views, but there are underlying psychological reasons for elements of it (such as blaming victims). What I means is the reason why certain folks are not seen as victims, whereas others might be, tends to be heavily influenced by societal views and politics. To take a recent example, certain folks view refugees as victims, whereas others might consider them as threat. Other examples have shown that e.g. in cases of rape, victim blaming is related to racial stereotypes and correlate with racism scores. When it comes to healthcare, studies from the 70s have shown that certain political ideologies blame individuals and their decisions on poor health, rather than e.g. failures and cost in the medical system. Another related belief is the so-called just-world hypothesis, in which individuals believe that the world is inherently morally fair (e.g. noble actions are rewarded and evil actions are punished). Those knowingly or unknowingly ascribing to this belief obvious also tend to blame the victim as the assumption is that they did at least something wrong, otherwise they would not have encountered the bad event and so on. I suspect at least one element of it, is that folks want to belief that they are in entire control of their lives. And if they are, they cannot be victims. Conversely, folks only become victims because of their choices, rather than circumstances (as the latter would be contrary to their assumption of control). There are, as mentioned, political overlays as well as self-experience that influence the likelihood of such attitudes. For example unsurprisingly, folks who are struggling are less likely to believe in a just world.

So the good news for now is that it is still quite non-trivial and that it is still not quite as specific as folks would like. I.e. even under the best conditions it is likely to create unwanted mutations. As such, things are still difficult and unlikely to happen on a broad or superficial basis. Another thought is what level of editing we are talking about. Editing, certain cells and re-implanting them, would be something else compared to manipulations in embryos, for example. And lastly, we are still limited in the understanding of our genome. With some exceptions, editing parts of our genome will have unintended consequences and as such I do not (yet) see it fundamentally different than playing around with mutagenic substances, which is also not generally allowed. That is not to say that these and other methods are not a bioethical issue, they clearly are. While we face technical limitations, they may be overcome at some point. And we will have to think more about how we view our genomes. That, is not quite as trivial, as obviously through life we do change it (mostly, but not exclusively in epigenetic ways), but in an untargeted way. If we had the means to control the outcome, in a perfect way, should we do it? The case is most obvious for fatal genetic diseases. But obviously there is a huge grey area. I doubt that we have a clear answer, considering that we often lack such in areas unrelated to genetics. Why should this case be different?

I have not yet looked at those questions. I wait for your answers to my questions (the behavior of the code, and hence my answer, may depend on context).

Re: Moontanman in What are You Listening to? To be fair, a pragmatic understanding of knowledge that explains ideas as useful and functional---but ultimately subjective--tools in the interaction between the subject and his surroundings is not something that is easy to reconcile with the notion of consciousness without evolution via natural selection. Natural selection among random variants, whether biological or cosmological, seems to be the only process by which functionality would emerge from randomness. If you assume that randomness comes first and that cognition must involve functionally useful concepts, it is difficult to imagine cognition that is not the result of natural selection. I will grant that my lack of imagination is inevitably a limiting factor, but I have to admit that "autistic" gods like Spinoza's or Temple Grandin's are probably a lot more imaginative and substantive than the pop-theology that helps people get more donations. Call me Egnostic. Andrew Jackson Jihad shout out! I had a Defiance Ohio song removed form page 9.

I went back and corrected the typo, that 1339 years should have be 4399 years . The Gregorian calendar wasn't introduced until 1582, so it wouldn't have been in effect over this time period. But even if you take the difference between 1399 Julian years and 1399 Gregorian years, it only works out to be ~34 days.

Hawking worked in mysterious ways...

An observation, in quantum theory, is just an interaction. Photons interact ("observe") and are massless. Yes. A photon could interact with something. Yes and yes. That doesn't really make sense that way round. All massless things travel at the same speed for all (massive) observers, whatever the speed of the observer. Therefore there is no speed that is "relative to the speed of light". No. Needing space is a characteristic of fermions (which all have mass). Bosons can all occupy the same space (they can overlap or pass through one another). And there are bosons with mass. But all massless things are (I think) bosons, and so no't need space. (Assuming that is what you mean by "need space"; or maybe they just need to get away from it all for a while!) I think entropy only applies to systems, which probably always have mass. But I'm not going to attempt to answer this! It is often said that photons, for example, don't experience time because as you get closer and closer to the speed of light, time dilation increases and it would seem logical to say that it becomes infinite for photons (ie. that no time passes for them). But, mathematically, that is wrong because there is no valid frame of reference for something travelling at the speed of light. If you try and do the related math you end up dividing by zero. And what does it mean for a photon to "experience time" anyway? They are unchanging so it makes no difference. I would say that a universe requires spacetime because without that it would be zero-size and exist for zero time; in other words it wouldn't exist. But, using the math of GR, you can define a universe with no mass or energy in it; just spacetime. These "vacuum solutions" to the Einstein Field Equations are useful for exploring aspects of the theory. Wavelength and frequency are not independent, so they would only be one dimension (if you can count them as that, which you may be able to). Interesting question... And that's another good reason why a photon does not have a valid frame of reference: two photons moving in the same direction should be in the same frame of reference, because they are both moving at c. But every observer must see a photon moving at c so both photons would see the other one moving at c and so they cannot be in the same frame of reference. The contradiction arises from trying to consider the speed of light as a valid frame of reference.

No offense but you should work on your reading comprehension. My post suggests that neurons found in people with type I (N370S homozygote) Gaucher's disease would possibly have an increased number of axonal branches and a corresponding increase in the length of the axon plexus. I used the Ashkenazim as an example since they have a reputation for high academic achievement.

It sounds to me like you are ignoring the possibility altogether, in other words you are potentially rejecting reality because you don't like it. How can you deny the relationship between the morphology of an organism's neurological system and success? From the Wikipedia page on Gaucher's disease: From A regulatory role for sphingolipids in neuronal growth. Inhibition of sphingolipid synthesis and degradation have opposite effects on axonal branching: Again from the Wikipedia page on Gaucher's disease: I'm sorry if this makes you uncomfortable, but welcome to the brutal reality. Life isn't fair. A diagram from the linked article below:

Thank you. I'll stay.

A mysterious world that would make no sense to us. A quantum world, with bursts of energy which structures the particles thanks to the directing fields, intelligent or not. The very structure of the universe what. A world that would be capable of generating billions of stars with phenomenal quantities of energy. Can you imagine for a moment the size of our universe? If so, then how much balls of jello would it take to generate such a universe?

I am claiming that the greatest barrier to equal opportunity in education in 21st century Western countries are morphological differences in the neurological system. There are plenty of people in our fine universities, unfortunately most of them are morons and will contribute little to human knowledge. It's not because they didn't eat enough broccoli growing up, and it's not because an evil force is preventing them from reading their books. It's because they don't have the neuroanatomy to succeed. By the way, I think something like 50% of kids today attend some sort of institute of higher education after they graduate from high school. That's way too many. Perhaps 0.5% of people are capable of making meaningful contributions to intellectual fields if they devote themselves to study. Why are we admitting so many genetic morons into our schools? They take up space and make moronic monkey noises.

I suspected it a little. That's why I found it a little strange this jelly story. No. Not too much. On the other hand as swansont puts it, we don't need a balls of jelly to make the Standard Model of our universe work. So I gave you the number n°* for this balls of jello story. It's because I'm used to talking about quantum or nuclear physics. That why. * guess . I will surely say nonsense, but would that not be there a form of 'intelligence' in the behavior of the Higgs boson?