Ken Fabian

A kind of rat evolved that was "smart" enough to adapt it's behavior by eating another animal's faeces because it made creasote bush edible (probably because it was hungry, other food was not available and those are what it could findbut instead of being poisoned, it gained nutrition)? It's young learned to do so from parental example. Sounds like "conventional" evolution to me. Humans evolved the ability to pass on complex knowledge about tools and working collectively that enhanced their abilities to obtain food and defend against predators. Again, sounds like conventional evolution.

I've been revisiting some of the music I liked when (much) younger. Not much of it still has appeal. Even going back over Beatles albums there were a lot that just don't do it for me, but still leaving some that really, really do. The hard rock likes of Led Zep, Deep Purple, I liked then, not much now. One band - at least some of their catalogue - has managed to impress me more than I expected going back around; I was a fan of Yes in 70's and 80's and much taken back then with Steve Howe's guitar and Rick Wakemen's keyboards especially. Still am but this time around I am floored by Chris Squire's bass playing. Not necessarily has wide appeal but since people seem to be including linked examples. (People who make videos of live performances suck at showing what anyone apart from lead singer and lead guitar are doing but this one segue's into Squire's signature solo piece - him showing off, and a bit indulgently; the basslines across so many songs are awesome, better than that imo, as often the lead instrument as not but so few videos show what he is doing (and how any video people who were AT a Yes concert failed to pay notice to him has me scratching my head)) - "Long Distance Runaround/The Fish" -

Yet I suspect a majority of atheists have a lack of belief in magic or miracles in common and - in my own case - the disbelief in gods and supernatural beings flows from my disbelief in magic rather than the other way around. It is a lack of belief that includes (excludes?) the supernatural and non-physical realms and, by that, disbelieves in gods. Am I therefore actually a-magicist, with my disbelief in gods a subset or is it distinctly different?

As a not-American I expect my opinions aren't worth much and are going to be information poor - yet poor information amplified by partisan media looks like the very essence of recent American election experience. Who was it that predicted media companies would become defacto political parties? As businesses who's principle paying customers are other businesses most media ownership will naturally lean Right and those that do go after the Center and Left clicks and views are either inclined to the sensationalist and superficial, without much real conviction or do have ideals of democracy and fair play, bringing good manners to a gutter fight and wondering why they are ineffective. The shift away from (further away from) unbiased and factual reporting to news and current affairs as political partisan marketing is looking like a winning combination, so they will probably just do it more. Whilst it looks like Trump and supporters have demonstrated a ready willingness to cheat it would take compelling, court appropriate evidence to make such charges and despite media massaged perceptions I expect official election oversight is competent enough to find it. I did wonder if US Democrats would have a "claim the election was rigged" playbook ready. Seems like some serious problems with polling predictions too - they probably expected to win.

One of the possible uses of AI is likely to be (already is?) the identification, tracking and targeting of political opponents and dissent. Successful revolutions may be becoming impossible. Civil wars, maybe with enough organized opposition. Palace coups, yes. The trough of despair between turning against tyranny and achieving a resurgent and strong democracy and rule of law is likely to be deep and costly and hard to climb out of. Expecting palace coups to bring a return to the rule of law seems a forlorn hope - they advance the most ruthless and lawless. I don't have any optimism that media, trad or social, will side with democracy and the rule of law over extreme partisanship; they will support the politics that advantages them as businesses and align with that of their paying customers - the businesses that advertise. The public is getting bombarded with so much that is false and misleading that what is true becomes indistinguishable.

I didn't expect good understanding of tariffs (a lot of don't know) but I didn't know there was such widespread misunderstanding (what people "know" being wrong) - not knowing what tariffs are for or who pays them. It was always about raising the prices of imported goods so people have no choice but to pay more for higher priced local goods - and in theory give protection and opportunity for local businesses. Ideally gaining time to invest in improvements that will make their goods competitive. Short term - some businesses and jobs are saved but prices go up. But if the necessary productivity improvements don't happen they stay high. In some ways it is the very inverse of free market capitalism - probably why, historically, free market ideologues opposed tariffs (but usually only in theory). I suspect in reality the businesses that most support tariff-free markets like that are in positions more like the Chinese are now - already low cost and very competitive and wanting other nations to take tariffs away. ie that is to their short term advantage, without much commitment to ideology. Like with carbon pricing... if it is well designed and works like it should then it can't be an ongoing source of government revenues that can replace other taxation; if it works the revenues should decline to zero as people turn to local goods instead of buying the (undesirable) imported goods and paying tariffs. Anyone claiming raising tariffs is an alternative to other taxes or even more wrong, that the other nation pays the tariff (seriously?) is trying to scam you. It hurts them economically - reduced exports, reduced profitability - as a consequence, but they aren't paying the tariffs. Of course what politicians say before and what they do after can be very different and US Congress may not agree to do all Trump says - some of that being contradictory. And of course affected nations put retaliatory tariffs on goods they import from the anti-competitive, anti-free market nation. Without the sustained commitment to raising productivity for domestic businesses - as protection for uncompetitive businesses - tariffs are inflationary - raising prices to no good effect.

If we have the technologies to take people to another star humanity will not need planets; artificial habitats should be easy in comparison. Humans that have been living in space for a long time may not feel the same (primitive) attraction for living on planets - may even find it disturbing and unnecessarily dangerous. I think the desire for new lands is less innate than historical with a strong survivorship bias - history written by descendants of people living in successfully "colonised/conquered" lands. I expect that for most humans making the most of their lives in the lands they were born into, without any strong urge to migrate has always been the majority. Earliest human migrations were into mostly familiar or similar environments that the tools and skills they carried with them were more than adequate to survive. Desperation when things were tough probably had more influence than any overarching urge to explore and migrate. There was a great abundance of resource rich environments reachable on foot and with simple boats. How Earth-like? For most of Earth's history Earth would not have been suitable for humans - not enough Oxygen for one thing. Is the biochemistry similar enough for compatibility? Even chirality can be different - mirror imaged compared to terrestrial biochemistry. Even aside from predators and diseases biology can make a great variety of poisons and allergens. I expect the uncontaminated biology and biochemistry for study to be the most valuable things about an Earth-like world to an interstellar capable humanity. Terraforming - deliberately introducing invasive Earth species to displace native life for the purpose of making it more Earthlike for colonists looks unnecessary, shortsighted and selfish to me.

Nothing wrong with the topics Night FM has posted per se, even if most of them are nothing new; lots of posts here are on topics that keep recurring. Just not convinced the member is engaging in discussion in good faith but that isn't unusual. The subjects can be provocative and some posts did press some of my buttons but there wasn't much in the way of reasoned or interesting arguments to follow or you'd see more participation from me. Pass over and move on. How to have more and more interesting topics that engage existing members and attract new ones? Going by more popular formats - keep on hammering those same controversial or partisan or divisive topics that press people's buttons over and over and then all over again even harder. Science forums like this suit me just fine but I'm headed into the old codger demographic.

Night FM is actually doubling down and defending enslavement and mass murdering as social engineering on the basis that the victims are loathsome (they deserve it?) and or will end their unhappiness (out of kindness?) Anyone who would do that to incels would do that to anyone they think is more loathsome than incels... given the anti-atheist themes presented on this site, Atheists perhaps? Incels want vouchers for prostitutes. Night FM wants to kill them - the incels that is. I know which I think is more loathsome. Is there a block user feature here?

?!! You are advocating commit mass murder and you want to call it "being merciful"? As someone who was a bit shy and socially inept in my youth it sounds like you want to kill people like me or send me to "work will set me free" style resorts... so kind and thoughtful and compassionate of you. But it sounds like hate to me. Not sure how the forum rules against hate speech apply but you have crossed a line with me. I know a lot of people do say things like "better dead" and it is just saying stuff - but even if not literally meaning it I find that kind of rhetoric abhorrent. Vile. You want to be part of a society that does things like that, where "good" people can and will work as gas chamber guards and firing squad participants? You imagine the consequences - to everyone else or to anyone else - will be good? I am trying to understand why you would suggest such things and can only hope this is some weird and insincere trolling, perhaps to provoke and incite awful atheists to propose doing that to religionists, ie to get to some version of "See? They deserve it!" as the conclusion. The alternative is that you actually mean it. I don't want you dead - not my thing. I would much prefer you wake up and change your mind. I'll try not to think badly of "True Christianity" because of the bad example you set and will assume these are your personal views. How you reconcile your stated desire to commit mass enslavement and murder with your religious beliefs will be up to you.

The procreation part is less significant - or at least a lot less hard work - than the caring and raising of young. That biological imperative to deal with the results of procreaton imbues a lot of animals - not just humans -with empathy or some equivalent, where a lot of behavior is devoted to the welfare of others; it takes no knowledge of gods or morality or even thinking it through and deciding and I would not call it "purpose", but for want of more nuance, humans trying to make sense of the world by thinking about it found it beneficial to frame it that way. For apes including humans the troupe and group is how their young are kept safe and cared for; even if an individual's own survival may (but doesn't always) take precedence they will care for their children. Their own children may have priority over others but there is overall benefit including to those children to looking out for everyone's children - as well as for other adults, who aid the providing of care for all the group's young. In dire circumstances it is more common amongst humans to require a willingness to sacrifice their lives than to revert to every individual for themselves; the group matters more than the individual. Self sacrifice for the good of others may be easier for some by believing something of themselves, if only in the memories of others, goes on after their death. I expect more applied science has been used to assure the food, health care and education of our young than for aiding successful procreation, although we do that too.

I expect most of the lucky Christians believe they can trace their line all the way back although there are those reliant on more recent 'revelations' or theological thinking. Most people accept what they are taught (if it doesn't overtly contradict their experience), true, but for science based knowledge the path is open to follow the evidence, logic and reasoning that underpins it. But scientific skepticism is a lot of work; to do it well requires becoming an expert. What is taught at school level is not built with or on faith, but relies on trust that was well earned before it became - in order to become - part of school curricula. Debates about various aspects of scientific knowledge when framed as between Religious that implicitly claim a primary role for Gods and magical miracles vs Scientific which rejects magical miracles as hypotheses for lack evidence (atheistic) aren't really adequate for testing the validity of the science based knowledge; I expect scientist rarely consider theological implications at all and are simply doing their jobs - determining what is true wrt the objects of their inquiries. Any explicit intent to disprove religious beliefs would be rare and unusual motivations. And, yes, some - even most - such debates are between people who aren't deeply knowledgeable, leaving endless nits to pick and having no likelihood of resolution of differences. As good a reason as any to limit my participation in them - but the misrepresentations of "atheists" as incapable of moral behavior and misrepresentations of widely accepted science as overtly anti-religious (scientist-atheists as enemies) can come across as passing judgement upon me, slanderously in too many cases, and that can press my buttons sufficiently to chime in. Not necessarily NightFM's thing but the "you'll suffer eternity in Hell" thing is especially abhorrent to me, especially when it comes with "you will deserve it" and worse again with "we will be pleased by that". I've known some very fine religious people, a credit to humanity; they seem unobsessed with proving anything and seem uninterested in making war with atheism and science.

Jesus is lucky to have you...

I am not convinced this kind of extrapolation can tell us a lot, let alone give reliable predictions about something as complicated as the rainfall responses to global warming. There are a whole lot of factors including and especially those affecting sea surface temperatures and their geographic distributions - which are affected by ocean currents and oscillations. These influence wind directions and their humidity. Regional geography matters. Throw in the possibility of the slowing and cessation of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and other ocean effects any simple extrapolations will break down even more. Overall rainfall is predicted to increase globally because warmer air takes up more water vapor; where conditions for rain occur there is likely to be heavier rainfall. The corollary to that is that in arid climate zones warmer air needs more water vapor to reach saturation, in order for rain to occur, so is likely to be less frequent and lighter. That said, the warmer it is the quicker that water deficits (droughts) can occur.

The catastrophes are the exceptions; most of the time nature is providing the essentials for life. I expect that without prior instruction most people would not, but, on the other hand, I think most people in the face of a mysterious and dangerous world - and experiencing dreaming and imagination that are unbounded by observable, waking reality - would be susceptible to suggestion of conscious agency and intent in natural phenomena. And susceptible to persuasion by those suggesting it.