mistermack

Of course I wouldn't say that. That would be "argument by assertion". 🤣

Rubbish. I said that "natural" is a fuzzy word. Not "artificial" . You need to pay attention. Of course it can, because consciousness is a blur, not binary, it goes from zero up to human (so far). So of course, a level above zero can exist. You prove it can't. That's in the thread title, isn't it?

I think that Khan has made a blunder, and he will get kicked out next election. He obviously thought that there was votes in it, and maybe there are, but they might go both ways. What there definitely is, is money in it, but hopefully it will be another mayor that gets to spend it. The press seem to have given him an easy ride, considering he was actively trying to get the people who did the study to change the verdict, which is on record and undeniable. Very like Donald Trump, on the phone to Georgia trying to get the election result changed. Just as blatant, but Khan seems to have got away with that for now.

There's no real confusion about the "artificial" bit. You can easily demonstrate that intelligence of some sort was involved in producing "artificial consciousness" and therefor the artificial bit can be taken as established. Just as a termite mound or bee's nest, or crow's nest is artificial, because some level of artifice, no matter how small, was involved in making it. So the real point of interest is, can consciousness exist, without 4.7 billion years of non-intentional evolution? I would say that of course it can, it just won't be identical. Just as our consciousness is different to that of a fish.

"natural" is a fuzzy word. A lot of the time, people use it to indicate "non human", even though we are of nature too. Is a termite mound a "natural phenomenon" or artificial? It just depends how you view the word "natural". Others might say, if it's not supernatural, it's natural.

The original ULEZ area in London was tiny, so the improvement will be tiny. You can't put all improvement down to ULEZ anyway, because cars are getting less polluting constantly, as old ones are scrapped and new ones are bought. You would have to compare the improvement to a non-ULEZ equivalent, to get a truer picture of any effect. There will of course be SOME effect, but it's likely to be tiny, and only in certain weather, because the wind will play a huge part generally.

That sort of shock does happen to people when the water is close to zero degrees, I seem to remember. I don't know if that carries over to water that is cold, but not that cold. The Romans used to design temperature shock into their bath-house experience, going straight from hot to cold. I don't recall reading about them dropping dead from it, but maybe they did. With coldish outdoor pools, some people like to dive straight in, others like to do it gradually. I'm one of those, but I have to admit that diving straight in gets it over with quicker.

Artificial consciousness is possible, and is here already. My car definitely has a mind of it's own.

Back in reality, Jimmy Saville died an innocent man. But that's the advantage of an imaginary god, you can make him do whatever you like.

One child died of asthma, a few years ago, and the coroner claimed that the death was linked to vehicle emissions. For that reason, the case got huge publicity in the press, even though children die of asthma in the countryside too. So now, the whole of London has to turn cartwheels and pay through the nose, just because Kahn thought that there would be votes in it for him. It's actually the poorer section who will have to pay, the richer ones' vehicles are probably exempt, due to being newer, or electric. When I were a lad, you had smogs in London that really did kill people, asthmatic or otherwise. We had it tough. Who'd a' thought that global warming would cause such an deluge of snowflakes?

No link then. And, I'm well aware that coral can bleach for a short period without dying. But the page I linked was clearly not talking about a bleaching event of a few months : "Two years after the Chagos Archipelago bleaching event in 2015-2016, researchers found the reefs shrinking, with coral cover and carbonate production down by more than 70 per cent. But on returning in 2021, the researchers found the reefs on a path to recovery, though the speed varied from place to place, says a paper published 24 March in Limnology and Oceanography." Coral larvae free-float for hundreds of miles, and find a place to anchor. That IS how they reproduce. If "the surfaces become covered with algae which prevents settling of new coral larvae." then they wouldn't successfully reproduce at all.

Have you got a link for that? It's at odds from what I've read. For example : Coral reefs ‘can recover quickly after bleaching’ - Asia & Pacific (scidev.net) This is an interesting angle. Apparently sunscreen is killing coral too. I would never have imagined that : Tropics told to ban coral-killing sunscreen - Asia & Pacific (scidev.net)

It's not as total as people make out. Different corals like different conditions. And the way they reproduce means that their larvae drift for hundreds of miles. So if a location becomes unsuitable for one species, there's every chance that another will like it, and the species that died out in that spot will find another that has just become suitable. So the overall picture will be one of migration of species. What will suffer more than others is the fauna that inhabit the very coldest places. If they can't cope with warmer conditions, there's nowhere for them to go.

I agree with the OP. One outstanding feature of Islam, both historically and today, is the undercurrent of compulsion. There is compulsion exercised in Christianity too, but less overt. Historically, Christianity was forced down the throats of people. Today, it's more subtle, but it's still there. And most religions, nearly all, employ compulsion. But I don't know of any religion that employs as much compulsion as Islam. The the loudspeakers are the most obvious bit of compulsion. You are EXPECTED to pray, not invited. And why do it together? So that everybody can see who's praying, and who's NOT praying. Most of the compulsion happens to children, it gets a little bit more subtle as people get older, but it's still there.

The difference between the Nazis and the current Israeli coalition is that there are external restraints on Israel, as I pointed out previously. The Nazis had a free rein, and they used it. What do you think the Israeli right would do, with a totally free hand? I'm pointing out facts about human nature, and how they treat fellow humans. At present, Israel is among the worst, even with the "civilising" effect of being dependent on external allies for funding and security. Right now, with all of those constraints, they are actively ethnically cleansing the place of non-jews, but just doing it far more slowly than they would like. The other thing to remember is that we don't get the full story of what is happening in Israel. Just as the world didn't know what the Nazis were up to. We only know what went on because the Nazis lost the war. Well, the extreme Jewish faction is in control in Israel, and they decide what you hear, and what you don't.

Ironically, Israel is now run by a very far right coalition. The Israelis are only just being held in check by having to appease the US pubic opinion, without that they would make Hitler look like a gentle soul. And up to now, the courts were a moderating influence, but that's about to change.

It would be a lot easier to move the Earth further away from the Sun. A metre a year should be enough.

Yes, it only takes one. I read somewhere that the jury that chose to indict him had one juror who consistently voted against at every opportunity, and it only got passed because they could take a majority at that stage, whereas in a full trial, it needs to be unanimous. Luckily, the election can be won on a majority. Not of voters though, that would be too simple for the "home of democracy". Here in the UK, they try for a unanimous verdict, but if it gets bogged down like that, the judge can instruct them that he will take a majority verdict. Usually 11 to 1 or 10 to 2. Whether that's better or not, who can say? Life is a constant series of compromises in the real world.

I'm sure that the Sun won't be ending all life in 600 million years time. We've gone from flying stringbag planes to robots on Mars in just over a hundred years. There's no way we won't be inhabiting all sorts of environments in space, in another 600 million years. And we'll have taken samples of other life forms with us, of course. If we don't wipe ourselves out, and barring a catastrophic impact on Earth in the next 200 years or so.

Pee on it, and then light it again when needed. Well, it works with a camp fire.

If you brush away the dirt, you should be able to read it visually, going by youtube : How to read your water meter - YouTube

Surely, if it's a smart meter, you can go online and check your current reading and previous readings? I thought that was the whole point of a smart meter ?? I haven't got one, but that would be the least I would expect from one. I can see previous readings on my electric and gas pages. I put them on a graph, and can tell if I'm using more or less than my historical average, but that's on monthly readings and estimates. A smart meter would have up-top-date info, I would think.

Fresh water, farm land, grain, fish, oil, gas, roads, rail, dairy, rubber, clean air, condoms, . . . .

It's been claimed regularly for years that the human line went through a bottleneck when numbers dropped close to extinction, but this seems to be work that tried to establish a more accurate estimate of when it happened. It was known that our dna shows very little variation, for which a population bottleneck is the obvious conclusion. This date that they've given of about 900,000 years ago, puts in in the era of homo erectus, leading on to homo ergaster. It could be that the population dropped to a tiny number, or it could alternatively be that an isolated population of a few thousand grew and grew, displacing or wiping out the other humans who existed at the time, rather than interbreeding with them. That would give the same signal in the dna. That's possible, but less likely, I would have thought, given that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals when they came in contact with them, as proven by the 3% odd Neanderthal genes that modern humans have, except for people from sub-Saharan Africa.

Yes, the multiple different units don't help with comparison, but the comparison given to the tap water limits is really telling. On top of that is the fact that the biological half-life is so short for Tritium, so it's not going to build up in fish, in the way that mercury can. If I was living in the area, I'd be far more interested in mercury levels, when buying fish.