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I came across some new info that solidifies the idea that I have at least some Sámi in my ancestry. It was a YouTube video which broke down the DNA of a Sámi male. It used results from the same test I took. It identified one of the genetic groups as matching one of mine. It returned a result of 7% Inuit, which adds weight to my suspicion of where my 2% result came from. The icing on the cake was in another video on the Sámi, which had a photo of a Sámi girl. I saw a strong resemblance to my sister. I called my wife over and asked her if the photo reminded her of anyone( without giving her any other context), and she said my sister. So while still not 100% conclusive, I'd say that the odds are pretty high.

In classical mechanics, this would be the case. Physics is more than classical mechanics. EM radiation possesses momentum. This was predicted by Maxwell (i.e. before relativity and QM) and experimentally confirmed in 1903 by Nichols and Hull.

So, the conventional wisdom is that if you shorten the treatment you can promote the selection of resistant bacteria. Generally speaking there is a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) at which they inhibit bacterial growth which is dependent on the strain, but can also be influenced by their growth condition (in the lab standardized media are used to measure MIC, which might not be exactly the same in the body). Now if the effective concentration of the compound drops below MIC, the effects are actually a little bit weird. If you look at defined cultures, e.g. mixing non-resistant with resistant bacteria, you still see a selective effect. But if you take a more complex sample, say fecal cultures or wastewater, the studies have been quite mixed whether there is a selective pressure (and/or there are other factors that would override it). It is fairly fascinating, actually.

I was saying that your stance of "physical cause the mental and that's that" is indeed epiphenominalism. I don't get what you said regarding the "baggage" of epiphenominalism, since the position is simply that of "physical causing the mental and that's it." I accept my theoretical nothingburger, and I don't see why you can't also just accept what your position directly entails. Okay, FINALLY something I can definitively talk about. Technological parallels of the mind have always failed and will continue to fail: First hydraulics, then telephones, then electrical fields, and now computers and "neural networks" that aren't remotely "neural." Information processing itself is a evidently a bad analogy of what the brain does: https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer From the point of view of computer science and engineering, machines don't deal with referents at all, and thus the mind isn't a machine and a machine could never be a mind. The following is an illustration of what an algorithm is and how one operates: Machines don't and can't deal with referents while the mind does, which explains perfectly "bad" but expected machine behaviors such as vulnerability of deep "learning" networks to adversarial attacks which place pixels invisible to the naked eye into images to completely scramble identification (e.g. Have a machine label a panda as a gibbon): ...as well as so-called "hallucinations" of LLMs when all they do is similarly find the nearest zone in the mathematical landscape (read carefully to see what went "wrong" in this example): Contrary to what some companies and experts may try to tell people, these categories of "errors" are fundamentally unfixable because according to the programming of the algorithms these are NOT ERRORS; They are the results of how the deep "learning" works. (How "machine learning" isn't actual learning is yet another topic)

But I answered it! Here the complete citation, not just the first part: But they are! But again you are using a vague word, 'responsible'. (you used 'driven' before, also vague). What is this 'responsible'-relationship? You say it is causation, I say it is supervenience. So my answer to your question is simple: there are no other variables. But there are different ways we can look: from the low levels like atoms, molecules, and neurons; or at the higher level of persons, (true) beliefs, actions, motivations, (free) will etc. The latter we are using in day-to-day life, the former by neurologists, biologists etc. And to epiphenomalism: In the fist place, I highlighted the important word: 'cause'. In the second place you left out what more is written there, immediately after your citation: So what is this: mental phenomena are caused by physical processes, but they miss the other half of what causality is: that events, mental events in this case, are caused, but cannot cause other events themselves? And isn't this just evading: I actually haven't. I've said "it depends on how you define it." If not causation, what is it? Or what is then the applicable concept of causation, according to you? I agree with your second sentence. But you have found another word to describe the relation between physical processes, which is again more vague, 'rooted'. I was more specific: it is a relation of supervenience. And everything you wrote about your views on the matter, show for me that you mean causality. And if you want it or not, this stance is called 'epiphenomanilism', with all its problems. From the same Wikipedia article:

Landscape of Earth under the sea as if it were drained.

Think about it. If you can't have thoughts about anything at all, where does that leave freewill? Specifically, freewill regarding what? Also, you're conflating the concept of a mind with the reality of one.