Bender

You could promote those feelings for your friends and relatives and find value there.

A lot of metal tubes with cold water flowing through them.

The surface tension between mercury and air is about 7 times larger than between water and air. I'm not sure how it works in a vacuum, but I seriously doubt that the mercury would remain a long sausage. On the other hand, the inertia is also considerably larger. Could there be a critical diameter for the string: if it is larger, the mercury would separate before it can cool down too much; if it is smaller, it would freeze before it can move?

Of course the computer "feels" that it has made a difference: it increased its IAmGreat parameter. Seriously, our "feeling" might be more complex and involve a lot of neural processes and chemicals, but it has long been established in this thread that if complexity is the only difference, humans not fundamentally different from robots. Your second link demonstrates nicely that humans like to think we are special, because we think differently about humans than about anything else. That does not make us special. About the evolution of social beings: psychopaths cannot form a social group and individual humans would not have survived long. It would have been nigh impossible for a solitary mother to raise and protect children. Social structure was vital for such a squishy ape-like mammal with such a long nurturing period. Psychopaths would either need to display social behaviour or be excluded from the group. So it could be as much as disadvantage as an advantage.

why should it?

Hate, like anger, has become obsolete. It does more harm than good. Why hate Bieber if you can simply change the channel?

Nothing matters, so why not make the most of it and enjoy the ride?

I'm not even that great a programmer. Like others, you haven't given any definitions, so I'll have to throw in my own. Humans, computers and robots all use cost functions to decide which action to take, weighing benefits against cost/risk. I suppose to call an action a "True act of compassion" it needs to have a cost, while the only benefit can be "feeling good about yourself". So I'll give the robot an additional parameter, which I'll call "IAmGreat". Whenever the robot takes an action with no other benefit, the IAmGreat parameter is increased. Then I'll add increasing this parameter as an additional term to the cost function with some weight. There you go.

Longitudinaly, a belt on a pulley is a better analogy, since there is always slip. Laterally, it is sliding friction and the curve does not apply. The normalised force is used because it depends less on other variables such as load and temperature. Often you only need the slip at maximum force anyway (except in eg model predictive control). The curve is used for slip control to maximise the force during acceleration. The left part can be used to maximise breaking (or to explain eg ABS).

2. Look at the global numbers instead of specific examples. The situation is not ideal, but better than ever before. 3. This has been a problem since the industrial revolution, and we managed to tackle environmental issues of the past. I agree that we need to remain vigilant. 4. We can only die of obesity because we die less from other causes.

Since worldwide our health and lifespan is increasing, and poverty, war, hunger and violence is decreasing, I think we are generally on the right track. Ethics seems to be evolving towards more equality and away from specific religious views, which is great.

It isn't, it illustrates that everyone draws a line. Where do you draw it? Is it ok to kill musquitos or cockroaches? What about a pet cat killing mice? What is ridiculous is suggesting cows or chicken know who their relatives are. Also: taboo on massage? That's the first thing I hear about that.

Signal to noise ratio. Analogue signals need to be amplified. This means you will also amplify the noise. If the ratio is high, you don't notice the noise. If it is low, the noise will become more important. If there is no signal, the noise will be amplified to the level the signal would otherwise be.

Not. Why would they?

This can only work if new batteries don't need rare elements. The price of lithium has increased dramatically already, and there might simply not be enough of it to replaced all ICE cars.

Should white people be offended when black people bleach their skin?

The law of gravity is not a truth, it is a law, a model.

These kind of "scientists" make their conclusions first and sort through the data (if any) until they find something that they could use to convince "open minded" people. They do ten experiments and publish the one that confirms their conclusion with a significance of 10%, and throw away the other 9 data sets. I hope your openmindedness doesn't turn into the naivity to fall for such bad statistics.

But isn't the US the pinacle of capitalism, while also very religious?

Simultaneous events for you are not simultanious for other observers.

I attempt to teach my children contentment. There, I have proven your claim wrong. Edit: more correctly: I try to teach them to be content more often. If your claim is to be taken litteraly, you might be right, as I agree there is no reason.

You could also memorise 3.243F6A88 to add to your arsenal . Or what about only ones and zeros? 11.00100100001111110110101010001000 Easy peasy, and all you need is convert it to decimal. Satire aside, I agree that simply memorising pi is much easier, and usually 3.14 is accurate enough anyway.

Search for online courses. MOOCs are often free and high quality (or so I have heard : I have no personal experience with them).

The important distinction here is between resolution and accuracy. The resolution is the smallest difference you can measure with a measurement device. The accuracy is the absolute error made. The accuracy is usually worse than the resolution, for several possible reasons.

It could work with a fixed fee, rather than based on energy consumption.