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These might be useful in approaching the study of mind. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-scientists-10-commandments/ Sure, it’s important to have ideas, formulate hypotheses, and then devise methods to test those hypotheses, gather results, and draw conclusions that either support and validate or contradict and refute those hypotheses: the rough outline of how science is performed. But there’s so much more that goes into being a scientist that gets to the very core of what it means to investigate the origin, nature, and root cause of any phenomena that we dare to observe, design experiments around, and measure. Here, without further ado, are the 10 commandments that anyone who wishes to conduct good, quality science needs to follow... 1.) Thou shalt not assume thy preferred conclusion is correct. 2.) Thou shalt always consider the full suite of relevant data when drawing conclusions. 3.) Thou shalt remember the limits of thy theory’s range of validity, and only extend it cautiously. 4.) Thou shalt make public thy data, methods, and results, for all to consider and scrutinize. 5.) Thou shalt remain tenaciously skeptical of any hypothesis that thou encounters. 6.) Thou shalt quantify, respect, and not minimize thine sources of error and thy potential biases. 7.) Thou shalt not accept a new theory as representative of reality until it clears all three of the necessary, critical hurdles. 8.) Thou shalt obtain approval and consent from all relevant bodies before conducting research that may impact others. 9.) Thou shalt not exaggerate the significance of thine results in thine studies. 10.) Thou shalt hold even the best of scientific theories, models, and frameworks as provisional only, and constantly seek to test, revise, and refine them.

First a warning Be careful about the use of the terms open and closed systems. An open system can exchange energy, matter, momentum and charge with its surroundings. A closed system can exchange energy and momentum but not matter or charge with its surroundings. An isolated system cannot exchange either energy, matter, momentum, or charge with its surroundings. Some use closed when they really mean isolated, but I think you mean closed. However, as joigus +1 has pointed out, it is not that simple. The Sun generates particles of high energy and momentum. They do not constitute a great influx of mass but most are charged and if these were to 'land' on Earth our environment would be very different. Luckily for us Earth has an unusually strong magnetic field, as planets go, which deflects most of these and interactions only take place in the far upper atmousphere. Further in the past larger masses with enormous momentum have arrived. An example would be the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. You should also realise that Earth's atmousphere was very different in the more distant past. In fact it has undergone at least two major changes of composition, firstly after hundred of millions of years of near continual rain on the original rocks created the conditions for life and then even more dramatic changes by life itself from an anoxic state to an oxygen rich state. The technical term for the stabilisation we current enjoy, but climate change is degrading, is buffering. In particular the carbonate and bicarbonate buffers in the oceans. Note here that fresh water (lakes and rivers) have no such buffer. Here is a schematic of this effect.

Not even pseudo. The Sun is a big factor, and drives many reactions, keeping all those cycles going, as stated before in the thread. Otherwise all those cycles would grind to a halt in geological time, probably.

One thing to consider is what is to be considered fit for office. Clearly, Biden is not in the shape he once was and cognitively there are folks that are better. On the other hand, his opponent is clearly not fit for office. Not only from an ideological standpoint, but he also screwed up one of biggest global challenges of recent times (COVID-19) resulting in way more deaths than necessary. So if that passes the bar for fitness, clearly Biden does too. Provided that the president puts the right people into place, they might as well nap through the presidency. I don't think the bar is actually lower than that. But I think the actual question the Dems have is whether Biden is able to beat Trump. And as others already noted, this is quite a bit more difficult to figure out.

Well I admit I do write from the European perspective. Are your complaints about the USA specifically? If so I have to say I do not think you can simply blame financial interests. After all, there is good money to be made by investing in new infrastructure or creating markets for new types of consumer goods such as electric vehicles or heat pumps. In the US, though, you have an entire political party, commanding the allegiance of half the country, dedicated to belittling and ignoring climate change. It seems to me the problem is political populism that sees advantage in telling people a comforting story that they don't need to worry and it's all a conspiracy to control their lives by evil "socialists" etc. In Europe such views are fringe, not mainstream. I am speculating but I wonder if it is not all to do with the car-dependence of the American way of life. That car-orientation is something that struck me when I moved to Houston for a couple of years. Presidents can almost be hounded from office, it seems, because gasoline prices are too high.

It's quite possible that I'm off the mark. The reason I put my post up was because I thought, maybe wrongly, the focus on purely chemical processes was far too fundamental/low level to be talking about Gaia-type processes in the same breathe.

What about about all the living systems, directly or indirectly modulating the environment according to their needs? Amongst all the various competitions for resources there can be an overarching homeostasis that allows a certain range of organisms to exist simultaneously. within the parameters of that prevailing environment and maintain it. There are also endosymbiotic and ectosymbiotic relationships that between them can modulate their immediate environment. Then you have microscopic organisms and plant life recycling carbon dioxide and other materials whose effects are environmentally global in their effects, so you have hierarchies of organisms all doing their job of maintaining an Earth-sized environment that sustains them together. That's homeostasis in my book. If people want to call that overarching process 'Gaia' that's fine with me. I know what they mean.

They are, overall (though not at all in the steps by which they are carried out), one reaction scheme: a redox reaction, which can be driven "uphill" (reduction) by the energy in sunlight and "downhill" (oxidation) by thermodynamic "gravity", as it were. Just about any chemical reaction can, in principle and rather trivially, be driven in either direction, so the mere fact of this is not in itself evidence of balance. My understanding is that homeostasis refers to a stable biological state that resists being changed, as a result of some regulatory feedback. There is no such regulatory feedback implied by the reversibility of this reaction. However if you were to expand the scope of the question to look at the Earth's carbon cycle, there is a kind of balance, with carbon sources and sinks more or less in equilibrium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle I'm not sure it is correct to call that homeostasis though, as many of the components involved are not biological.

please i need assistance urgently on the following: a) y = kx it is direct proprortionality b) y = -kx please state indirect or direct proportionality it is common knowledge that when there is an increase of y1 to y2 there is a corresponding increase from x1 to x2.....this is direct proportionality. the above definition of direct proportionality does is not applicable on the straight lines as follows a) y = -2x + 10 b) y = -3x c) y = -x + 8 for the function y =x2 (x squared) a) for the domain x equal to zero or greater than zero (and also less than positive infinity) the curve is an increasing function b) for the domain x equal to zero or greater than zero (also greater than negative infinity) the curve is a decreasing function based on the quadratic curve y = x2. please could you confirm everything as stated above.

1- matter of principle, not money 2- I have been arguing both scientific, philosophical with no mysticism since the get go. 3- I mentioned often times in the thread that it may very well be a field like the higg’s field 4- the casual- general definition of the word is what was intended why not just bring the whole former mind thread into the new one and that will be a good decision for all parties.

I live in a tax-credits subsidized apartment for seniors built in 2022. There is an exhaust fan in the bathroom already which runs constantly. No switch to shut the damned thing off. I can't modify all this crap on this rented property. Iowa does not strike me as one of the more sophisticated parts of America in nutshell. I was raised and educated in California's San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from high school there in 1982. My apologies. Somebody got me started here on that. I was provoked. Anyway, there are 8+ some billion people on this entire globe. I'm but one individual. There is not much I can do or say at age 60 that is going to make much difference. Perhaps, I should stop worrying about the energy future of the world and other pressing issues. The hand of fate has it in for all of us. What will be, will be and what can we do about it? If I could start all over again young, I think I would have liked to have pursued a career in civil engineering, ecology and/or some occupation concerned with "safe, practical and green energy" as fossil fuels alternatives. I say possibly civil engineering because the roads in states like Iowa, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Texas and Colorado are horribly bumpy as a motorist and I like roads that are smooth as a baby's bottom. America needs glass-smooth city streets and highways. Our infrastructure is embarrassingly primitive.