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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/05/24 in all areas

  1. Are you aware most communities in the US base education and sanitation expenditures on property values? In essence, this means wealthier areas receive more education funding, and better sanitation services BECAUSE they're wealthier. In poorer communities, far less is spent on education and sanitation so we get situations where "litter is rife", but you seem to be blaming the citizens for this. You make it sound like the rich are removing the stray trash cans themselves, so why shouldn't the poor? It gets removed quickly in the rich neighborhood because the trash services respond. It lingers in the poor area because the trash services don't respond, even after multiple complaints. I thought big corporations wanted to be normal people? My plan to implement your idea would be to raise the taxes on those big corporations to fair levels, tax top tier income so hard that the billionaires start investing instead of sitting on cash, and increase city services all across the board. Knowing that their government cares enough to invest in their communities, people will feel an attachment they don't now. I would welcome an effort to help citizens see the amazingness of nature and all it's bounty. I consider society to be a bargain between peoples. We agree to certain necessary rules (especially sanitation, health, and hygiene), and gain the benefits of working towards a meaningful level of prosperity and fulfillment. I want people to care about the environment we all live in, but I know it's difficult when big corporations pretend to care as they pollute and litter and also lobby away our social services and environmental regulations.
    2 points
  2. Even worse, generally speaking affluent folks consume more and produce more garbage. As you noted, they are just better able to pay folks to clean it up and frequently things get dumped into poor areas/countries.
    1 point
  3. Thus creating a paradox where they were never there to make the change in the first place. A chronology protection conjecture, as it were.
    1 point
  4. That is kind of an absurd thing to say. If the evidence is not trustworthy it is by definition not evidence. Seems like you just want to argue for fun which I am not interested in.
    1 point
  5. And this is because you haven't bothered to study science. You came here specifically to champion religion over science, without understanding either very much. Imagine this: someone from the country moves to the big city. They tell you they've been putting their garbage in a can next to the street, and praying to god to take care of it. And each time they do that, god takes away the trash. They believe trash collection is a matter of faith. They don't know any better, and it seems like a miracle when the trash disappears overnight. You have the power to educate them, and tell them about how the city collects the trash, or you could let them believe their fantasy. What do you do?
    1 point
  6. You are quite simply wrong. There is lots of evidence for both of these theories, so faith is not necessary. The evidence is literally at your finger tips if you could be bothered to look. On the other hand there is no evidence of God and there is no evidence of the biblical creation, so it takes faith to believe in those.
    1 point
  7. Can try with lower molar weight. But your acid is liquid. Can dissolve it.
    1 point
  8. You're having problems imaging the topology of 4D space-time by comparing it to 3D or 2D topologies ? Welcome to the club. Mathematics, however, has no such limitations.
    1 point
  9. Okay, +1 to iNow, he's being fair now. I like fair. I think more explanation may be in order on how's and why's of a formalism. First, we ask ourselves, what is a machine, and why is it any different than something that's not one? A machine is a designed object that has things that move things around. We have to design behaviors into this object, so that it does what we want it to do. What is this "things that move things around"? It doesn't matter. The bottom line is we must have to specify something about "things that move things around," the way to do this is generally an instruction. An instruction to things that move things around is an algorithm. What I have done, is abstract things so far up that algorithms themselves is a form. It doesn't matter how we implement "things that move things around" (formalism). Algorithms in general is now a form. Anything that is made, has to do this general thing. The technology doesn't matter. In my article, I gave the example how even catapults follow this. Architecture doesn't matter; You can use gears, you can use water pipes, basically "anything that move things around." As you can see, this is the furthest one can get from "rigidity." This has to do with the principles of computation itself. My argument is via principles- It is mostly an a priori argument that's independent of time and place. A trillion years from now, if you have something that moves things around, you're going to have something that move things around....... I hope this provides a reasonable (re)starting point. I'm not going to get into reasons that reverse engineering doesn't makes sense yet (well, they're in the article, but as far as re-explaining everything is concerned I should just keep it short for now.) p.s. Organisms are not designed, and therefore not subject to algorithms. See scientific finding referred to in my article regarding behavior of neural groups in a fly
    1 point
  10. You are mixing different things here. Survival does not equal passing on genes. They can increase chances, but very contextually. Conversely, there are multiple species where reproduction is coupled to death. Secondly, improving chance of survival does not necessarily involve intelligence. Effectively one would need go back to the basic definition of evolution, where we ultimately end up with terms like inheritable traits that are under positive selection, for example.
    1 point
  11. This thread is already way too personal, and I'd prefer we focus less on the individual. I'll try to be better at this myself, but we all need to remain focused on the positions and merit of the information being shared. Let's be clear: Many of Alkon's points are entirely valid. Much of what he shares contains very good and useful information. Likewise, some of what I've shared has been somewhat weak. This is all true, and so is the fact that he clearly has a strong interest in this topic and obviously allocates much of his time learning about it. That's exactly what we ALL should be doing... learning, growing, understanding and I applaud him for it. I just cannot personally join him in that final leap where he keeps making absolute comments about what will and will not be possible in the future, or where he dismisses things based solely on a rigid framing of terms or the quite limited technologies which are most familiar and most hyped today (or those being discussed on LinkedIn, for example). Nobody has a crystal ball, and nobody should IMO argue in the manner he has by starting with formalized rigid unbending structures and preconceived conclusions. We can make any logic work if we put all data into rigid potentially inaccurate semantic boxes and I see a lot of that here. If that works for him, then great! But it doesn't work for me, nor I propose does it work for most people who are scientifically minded (I believe he may be more philosopher than empiricist, but that's not intended as either a judgement or sleight, just a general observation). The technology in this space is changing at an incredible pace. It is equally being amplified by parallel technologies in processing power and capabilities. There are literally tens of thousands of seriously brilliant engineers working on this every single minute of every single day, and my core position here is that we must be EXTREMELY cautious and avoid making broad sweeping proclamations and predictions with any illusions of certainty. We must temper our confidence. What's potentially worse here is that we barely have workable definitions of consciousness and unconsciousness, the actual topic of the central claims made in the OP... so any assertions about what does and does not fit into those ill-defined ever-evolving categories strike me as specious, at best. Anyway... enough personal bullshit, yeah? This is an interesting topic that's fun to explore if we can please be civil with one another (and yes... the same reminder applies equally to me).
    1 point
  12. They can have a rough finish, but it's more that they have curved convex surfaces, so even with a glossy finish, the light diverges upon reflection.
    1 point
  13. The thought experiment is underconstrained because it’s fictional. How can you be sure that people don’t turn bright plaid when they time travel? Because they chose that to be the story line. It’s fiction. How do you know the memory wouldn’t exist? Why does this have to be true? It’s just an assertion. There’s no science that backs this up. You could just as easily assert that we would know. We could get temporal headaches and crave chocolate milk.
    -1 points
  14. No, judgement is those white spots. And it seems like one have to accept what science says without questions. Really?? I think this theory of evolution and a theory of bb are exactly matter of faith.
    -1 points
  15. It does seem to follow a sense of involvement in community. In wealthier and more educated areas, there is less litter. In fact, a stray can will be removed from the street quickly in a more affluent area. In poorer and less educated communities, litter is rife. A stray can will rust and decay before anyone lifts it from the ground. Maybe if normal people could adopt patches of areas instead of big corporations? If somehow average people could feel an attachment and investment in their own little space? I bet there would be a host of creative and beautiful settings if we could somehow get everyone to see Nature as part of a whole. After all, birds and trees and grass don't care how much someone makes......
    -1 points
  16. If you watched the video or truly understand GR, you would know that there is really only one option.
    -1 points
  17. Wait. I mentioned that this example is incorrect, but you insist on it. It is incorrect in the core. It's not religious belief, it's immaturity. Faith is not about waiting for God to do my work for me. I have another scenario for you. Are you waiting your neighbors to "evolve" from the country neighbors to respectful city neighbors? Why have you mentioned that they are from the country?
    -1 points
  18. 2 + 2 = 4, no theory involved as this is easily proven. So math is never theory, it either works or it fails which makes it wrong not a theory which is why dark matter was invented as without the missing mass the math fails, and the universe can't be proven. As for black holes they once claimed that nothing could escape, now they say different, Hawking clearly admitted what he believed was his mistake, Einstein made a similar mistake that Hubble forced him to admit as well. Sorry for mixing ideas but it's all related and part of the same Universal enigma.
    -4 points
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