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We already have one. It’s called “accepting that there’s more than 2 binary categories.” This thread is like: A: Do ALL substances contract when they freeze? B: Nope. A: Of course they do, and that’s what science has said FOREVER. B: Nope. There’s different behavior for water and other related substances when they freeze, for example. Not everything contracts. A: Right, but water is an anomaly. Everything contracts when it freezes. B: Well, I guess if you ignore water and related substances with different behaviors when they get cold then that’s true, but you can’t just ignore water if you wish to remain accurate. A: Yeah, but there’s only a tiny tiny fraction of substances that do this. MOST don’t. B: So what? Clearly not ALL substances contract when they freeze. A: I’m SO tired of the PC agenda that’s ruined science and can’t believe this nonsense is being taught to students. You should be ashamed of yourselves and just stick with the facts. It’s obvious that EVERYTHING contracts when it freezes and I can’t believe you idiots don’t see this! B: Sigh. There’s bismuth, too. A: I wish someone would give me an example of something that doesn’t contract when frozen. B: Silicon, gallium, germanium, antimony, plutonium… I could go on. A: I’m just going to keep waiting for an answer from the experts. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Thinking about the emergence thread running now and this topic: I wonder if everything we observe is a function of pareolalia, that allows us to turn the scene around us into discrete things that we can give names to and communicate them. I am considering the idea of emergence as an observer-dependent phenomenon, and that's why it's so hard for me to put my finger on. No thing is actually discrete per se, since everything is connected. Discreteness of things is perhaps just a mental construct that's not reflected in reality, like these murmurations.

"No Two Alike," by Nathan Myhrvold Nathan Myhrvold / Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC

This sentiment is absurd for the vast majority of trans-females. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what are they going to 'get off' with if they have been surgically reassigned? It's an incredibly serious commitment. The real reason for feminists kicking off about it is that "women have fought for a long time for equal rights, now men are hijacking it"... words to that effect. They want to keep that gender/sex space for themselves; for those that "menstruate"! Clearly, they wish to discriminate. Ironic.

Can you tell me who is using a PC filter? I ask because I've not seen either side of the discussion doing that. Any example would be great.

+1 for the article. Hard to pick sides. A classic example of "They said, she said". Well...I did skip to start posting on page 7, after scanning page 1.

The issue with that is that it will be >50% teaching and <50% science. I mean, you really need to have a skill at communicating, and be able to handle a room full of kids and so on. That's a skill that not everyone has, by any means, and it is quite exhausting. Also it is notoriously poorly paid. But handing on the torch of knowledge to the next generation can be very rewarding. No one forgets an inspirational teacher. Or a really crap one, come to think of it........

Very good points. Your point No. 2) and 3) Let me add another example from topology: An infinite instersection of open set doesn't necessarily give you an open set. Example (for those mathematically-minded): So by making so-called transcendent operations (performed in infinitely many elementary steps) you can lose even the most common-sense properties that you would think should be preserved. Intermediate case between your points 2)/3) and your points 4)/5) (kind of what @exchemist is talking about: The key, IMO: You don't need infinitely many elements to have emergent behaviour. A large enough number could be enough. E.g. In statistical mechanics we know that when your system has a finite number of entities, but big enough that the Stirling approximation holds: lnn!≃nlnn−n Then the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and describing the system in terms of thermodynamic equilibrium is on safe grounds. So you can describe the system with far fewer variables than it fundamentally has. Your points 4) and 5) are very similar in that: In some cases, you don't need the number of variables to be especially large in any sense. Your examples of potential energy, and the bricks necessary to make an arch, or a corbelled roof, don't really require big numbers. Another example similar to your potential-energy one is entanglement of two particles. As to your point 1) I don't think we're talking about the same concept of emergence there. Although the words are the same, that's more like what I would call*, morphing, mutation. A right choice of word would be needed to distinguish them, but it's not the same. The one you propose is more about causal emergence, IMO. *'Evolution' would be another possibility, but liable to be confused with 'evolution by natural selection' which is another kind of emergence. EDIT: I didn't see you were already talking about entanglement.

Not personally, but I understand it involves a turkey baster... If I happen to be on that rare part of the spectrum of life, as to be a 'human' that is both capable of producing sperm and an egg and a usable womb and lucky enough too utilise our best technology. I have a third choice... 😉

Except the OP didn't ask, 'what is required for human reproduction'? Besides I still maintain the possibility of human self-insemination, not the worm method though. 😣

Far from it. Temperature is often quoted as an example of an emergent phenomenon, yet we know exactly how it arises. As I understand it, it is meaningless to speak of the temperature of an individual molecule, because temperature applies to an assembly of molecules, statistically large enough to form a Boltzmann distribution, in which the probabilities of each state the molecules can occupy is proportional to exp(-e/kT), T being the temperature. Other bulk properties of matter that arise from statistical distributions of atomic-scale entities - and there are lots of them - would be similar.

And yet our minds construct a temporal continuity, where we can still 'see' the near-past and 'look' into the near-future from the present. Clever bit of kit really, our brains.

Even the present moment is not discreet, yet that’s the only place / only time we ever are / ever exist ✌️

Obviously I don’t have definite answers on offer, since no one knows if macroscopic spacetime really is emergent, and if so, emergent from what. The only more ‘fundamental’ concept I can think of, which is in accord with known physics, and which might be able to give rise to spacetime somehow, are correlations. So we are talking information theory. And alas, a quick search on arXiv reveals that there is indeed work going on in that direction: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08278 Sounds good to me!

You know what cracks me up? The ones I put on the bottom turned out even better (like super crisp and make this top one look sloppy), and nobody will ever see them or even know they’re there (except you and me and readers of this post) 😂 Smart man They’re hand cut. No jigs or templates. Thank you, both ✌️

Really?

And how do you know "something stealthy" hasn't? Because you saw something that isn't (and has never been claimed to be) stealthy? To rebut the existence of stealth spacecraft, you have to be seeing the stealth craft. The ISS isn't one. It's like claiming that seeing a white horse proves that brown horses don't exist. I don't. That misses the point, which is it might end badly, and some people/beings might want to minimize risk. I also wear my seatbelt when I drive my car, even though I don't know that I will get into an automobile accident.

<span id="open" class="open" onclick="openNav()">&#9776</span> Why are you using a span for a button? &#9776 shouldn't be used as it doesn't work across mobile browsers (damn you apple/google not being consistent) Generally we use libraries like fontawesome for this https://fontawesome.com/v5.15/icons/bars?style=solid Alternatively you can make your own image or svg. <a href="javascript:void(0)" class="closeit" onclick="closeNav()">&times;</a> Same issue here using a link instead of a button. &times shouldn't be used. let open = document.getElementById("open"), navdrop = document.getElementById("navdrop"); function openNav() { open.style.display = "none"; navdrop.style.width = "100%"; } function closeNav() { navdrop.style.width = "0"; open.style.display = "block"; } document.getElementById should not be in your openNav and closeNav functions. There is no need for multiple functions here. let open = document.getElementById("open"), navdrop = document.getElementById("navdrop"); function toggleMenu(isOpen) { open.style.display = isOpen ? "none" : "block"; navdrop.style.width = isOpen ? "100%" : "0"; } You should think about disabled users too. &times is meaningless to a blind person. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/ARIA/ARIA_Techniques/Using_the_aria-label_attribute <button aria-label="Close" onclick="myDialog.close()">X</button> CSS wise you shouldn't be using position fixed on your nav because when you scroll the page it remains on screen. @media screen and (max-width: 636px) { nav { padding: 1em .5em 1em 1em; margin: 0 auto; overflow-x: hidden; z-index: 1; position: fixed; transition: 0.5s; } } From a usability perspective you are adding this dropdown to support mobile users but someone using a phone will generally have their fingers on the bottom of the screen rather than the top.

The whole telepathic thing bothers me, it seems so unlikely that telepathy is real in humans and to be able to communicate with aliens would be highly improbable, far more improbable than aliens looking just like us. Childhoods end was a great book!