Area54

Further on the non-explosion, as far as I understand it the graphic choice of the word explosion was associated with the equally graphic phrase Big Bang as a means of communicating the idea in laymans terms. Hence, "explosion" never had any place within the theory itself and there need be no more reason for rejecting calling it an explosion than for not calling it a parrot.

Since I provided an affirmative answer to this question on your previous thread, but you have chosen to ignore that response I see little point in making the effort to answer it again, or to address any of your other questions. Good luck with your search.

There certainly are. It is scarecly half a century since homosexual behaviour was made legal in the UK. Perceiving it as a dysfunction increases the probability that it will come to be perceived, again, as a crime and prevent acceptance in those countries where its practice is still illegal.

You overlook the means by which (successful) reproduction is achieved by humans. Since humans are a social species individuals who are not capable of, or interested in reproduction can assist directly or indirectly in raising children, help provide the nutrition required or even, (if we adopt for a moment a stereotypical view of male homosexuals) provide a pleasing ambience for the environment in which they excrete. Even if I were to concede, for sake of argument, that it is a dysfunction why would you wish to correct it if the individual "suffering" from it is quite happy with their condition?

It is certainly resistant to a definition, but not - I think - to definitions. As iNow said: There are multiple definitions of consciousness and probably none of them are wrong. Each has a field of application, some of which overlap. (Think Venn diagram.) The problem arises when, as in this thread, different members are sitting in different fields. Gees appears to be using multiple definitions and, in particular, extending it to include mere sentience. For me that undermines the value of word consciousness. What would help you all discuss the topic with Gees would be if she clearly stated what definition(s) she is using and in which field(s) of application it/they apply.

One might well imagine if sexual desire were reduced to the level necessary to eliminate the tendency to masturbate that it would be insufficient to encourage procreation. I have no idea as to the answer to your second question, but it has got me pondering on just exactly how a clam would masturbate.

I shall take each paragraph in turn. Paragraph 1: I don't know who Hugh Ross is. I'm not especially interested in opinions when discussing science. I prefer facts. I apologise if that comes across as curt. I merely wish to signal this particular topic is not one I am interested in pursuing. Paragraph 2: Papers are published online. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them. And the ones published in the low tier, obscure journals still get ignored. I said I didn't like opinions, but here is an understanding I have, that I can't demonstrate and therefore it has the same status as an opinion. Exchanges between individuals in a specific field occur in parallel with, but often ahead of journal publication. In Lemaitre's time it was by letter. Later by fax. Then email. Then skype. Who know what tomorrow brings. And note further, that the delay was minor. (And it was only my opinion that the delay was extended by the obscurity of the journal). Paragraph 3: It is not uncommon for such to occur. It certainly had nothing to do with Lematire being a priest. You have probably heard of Bode's Law, but are you aware it should be called Titius-Bode's Law. Or take the Kuiper belt. It really ought to be the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. Come to think of it, this practice of ignoring the first "discoverer" seems rampant in astronomy.

It has value in that anyone reading the thread who is "tempted" by some of AP's arguments can see them clinically demolished by just such a post.

I should definitely like to hear Airbrush's explanation for making such an irrelevant point. As I said earlier:

Nice one.

I have read the wikipedia article and it broadly coincides with my understanding of Lemaitre's history. Here are some of the assertions you made and how wikipedia dealt with them. From the wikipedia article: " In 1923, he became a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Cambridge, spending a year at St Edmund's House (now St Edmund's College, Cambridge). He worked with Arthur Eddington, who introduced him to modern cosmology, stellar astronomy, and numerical analysis. He spent the next year at Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Harlow Shapley, " If you are unaware of who Eddington and Shapley were check them out. Regardless, here are two prominent astronomers at prestigious institutions who trusted him sufficiently to allow him to work with them. Are you suggesting they were unaware he was a Roman Catholic priest. In short, your assertion that no one studying both fields would be taken seriously is wholly contradicted by the wikipedia article you claim for the source of your knowledge. His proposal, of an expanding universe, was radical. Recall that it was made in the same decade we had just discovered that there were galaxies other than our own. Astronomers were still getting there heads around this idea of "island universes". The delay in recognition was extended because "The paper had little impact because the journal in which it was published was not widely read by astronomers outside Belgium". There is a neat parallel with another priest who produced a radical paper that was published in an obscure journal and, in his case, ignored for almost half a century. Do you wish to claim that scientists in Gregor Mendel's time also distrusted priests dabbling in science? At any rate " In 1930, Eddington published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society a long commentary on Lemaître's 1927 article, in which he described the latter as a "brilliant solution" to the outstanding problems of cosmology.[15] The original paper was published in an abbreviated English translation in 1931, along with a sequel by Lemaître responding to Eddington's comments." I am at a loss, therefore to see, how you can take from the wikipedia article the ideas of yours I have quoted above. Certainly there were objections and alternative theories - this was a new and challenging field, with limited data on which to test hypotheses. But there is no hint, anywhere in that article, that acceptance was delayed because the source was a priest. Again, note another radical idea, this time from geology, that took a couple of decades longer to be accepted. Plate tectonics. Wegener was not a priest. It is not true that a new theory needs to wait till the death of its opponents to be accepted, but it can sometimes look that way. However, it has nothing to do with the religious affiliation of the researcher.

So you maintain that homosexuality is a dysfunction? That there is "something wrong" with homosexuals? I just wish to be clear as to your position.

Thus far the postulated difference in lip character (upper versus lower) apparently related to a specific ethnic group appears to be purely anecdotal. Ashwatthama, do you have any formal observations of the two populations that would statistically support your suspicion?

How can I possibly address your points if you make no serious effort to help me understand what those points are? That's a rhetorical question. But I get it. You will persist in being obtuse, so we'll just take that as read and I shall only respond to any future posts you make that are intelligible to me and that consider relevant. I never asked you to defend them, for I have not attacked your character. I have not attacked your intelligence. I have tried to help you understand that you are not communicating clearly. You don't wish to hear that. I don't know why you would wish to hide from that issue, but if that's your choice go ahead and write as badly as you like. It is absolutely no skin off my nose. Anything associated with most of Freud's ideas is nonsense and this is certainly true of the SuperEgo. Associating any other concept with the SuperEgo devalues that other concept. It is a pity that, while easy to comprehend, it is nonsense*. As Fermi said of another matter "it isn't even wrong". I'll leave you and tar ro your fantasies. Enjoy. *Produce any citation from a reputable, peer reviewed journal that states "When a specie changes and that change makes it feel better, we call the change evolving." and I shall offer my unreserved apology.

Of course they can, but it's a hell of a lot more time consuming to wait for a volume to come back from the stacks after half an hour or half a day only to find it is irrelevant. Google Scholar is an excellent resource for amateur "research" projects such as this. Until this point you have either ignored my repeated recommendations for such a research project, or responded by simply repeating the same ungrounded assertions. Now that is truly offensive, for it offends both the soul and the intellect. So get off your fat ass and see what other researchers have thought of your idea. You are just making excuses. You may like thinking about things, but you clearly have no interest in validating or refuting them. Simply ridiculous behaviour! Do you have someone directly at risk? If not that's just another excuse for sitting on your fat ass. Well, if you got off your fat ass and conducted the proposed literature search you might very well find your status suddenly recieved lots of positive rep. I would be awarding some for sure. Please feel free to report me for repeatedly asking you to get off your fat ass. However, I shall continue to do so until you actually do get off your fat ass. Otherwise you are just wasting bandwidth.

Most well regulated forums seem to have rules of this type in place. It's a little annnoying, but one soon passes the thresholds. (Besides, my avatar looks so like me, it's scary!)

You quite underestimate your abilities to confuse. More seriously, these characteristics apply to different posts. Some are wrong, some are nonsense, some are not understanable, some are not novel, some are trivially true. This was the precis that you told me had completely missed the mark. Here is what you said. "It missed the mark. My ramblings are purposeful. If you leave out any aspects then you don't get the whole picture. Attempting to provide a Cliff's notes version of a post of mine is already missing the mark. I meant to say, everything I said. Leaving any of it out, or rewording it to say something different than I meant is useless." Now let's proceed from there. I understood your post have contained three essential points. You informed me that I was incorrect - I had missed the mark. That means my understanding of those three points was incorrect, that perhaps there were more, or less than three points, but if there were three I didn't know what they were. Under those circumstances why on Earth would I spend time discussing them further since they had nothing to do with you? They were a mistaken interpretation on my part. Now you hint that my three points may actually have at least partly hit the mark since you would welcome an explanation of why I thought one of them to be wrong. So what's going on? Either I got it wrong - that's consistent with your initial response. Or, I got it right - which is what you are now implying. If its the latter why did you tell me I had missed the mark?

I've only been on the forum a short time, but I have been impressed by the breadth of knowledge and insights of Strange. My exposure to Silvestru's posts is more limited, but those I have seen have been well reasoned and to the point. As you are 37 and have, it seems, some knowledge of science you are surely aware that assertions are necessarily questioned, often quite aggressively. That can feel uncomfortable, but I ams sure you know it is an essential part of science. At any rate, if you wish helpful input there are better ways of going about it than calling well established members trolls and using obscenities to demand a response you consider satisfactory. (It's also considered bad etiqutte - and is probably against forum rules - to argue with a moderator's remarks in the thread.) As to your questions, Moontanman's suggestion looks the best bet so far; my amateurish view is that this could be accomplished in several thousand, but not tens of thousand, years.

I think you previously qualified this to reflect that "a significant number of white people won't watch films full of people of colour". I thik that is an important qualification to keep in mind. This white male is generally indifferent to the colour, sex, creed or appearance of the actors, unless these are key parts of the story. That indifference relates to my attitude to the film, not to the practices of the film industry. Changing the specifc topic, the conversations on this thread encouraged me to note the ratios of actors by sex and ethnicity on TV programs that I have been watchinng. I've not done this in any systematic fashion yet, but thus far I've been pleasantly surprised. If I do document this more thoroughly, following say a week of observations, I'll report the results here. It will offer somthing more than anecdote and first impressions.

@tar, Apart form the contentious issues on dopamine and your rather elitist attitude to Neandertals, I see no significance difference between what you have just said and my earlier precis. And those points are trivial. No one is arguing with them yet you seemed to present them as something novel. I found that bewildering. As to Freud, he was discounted by all but con artists and charlatans many decades ago. If you are unaware of this I recommend you purchase some books published after the 1940s. I suspected the non-comprehension of your posts was down to me and so I deferred comment for several weeks. It seems I am not alone in bemusement. I do believe that is something you might wish to reflect on.

If you paid for your lessons on the History of Science, demand a refund. I'll support you all the way.

You don't seem to recognise that humour is a valid rhetorical device for highlighting incongruities in people's arguments. I was not "poking fun at you", I was criticising your writing style which is obtuse, flowery and thematically weak. You do not welcome such criticsm. I have weighed in on the OP's ideas. However, if I see an observation that appears faulty, or evidence that is weak, or assertions that are unsupported, I shall often comment on them. As far as I can see you do the same thing, but you object when such "questioning" is directed at you. I did not suggest your input was garbage. I stated, I thought quite clearly, that it was very difficult to understand what you were saying. Out of respect for you I spent half an hour trying to understand one of your posts, taking the time to write a summary and asking for your help to understand how accurate that summary was. In response I got a snotty and unhelpful reply. I presume you post here in order to share your thoughts. I would think that only works if your thoughts are intellgible to others. There appear to be two individuals, at least, in this thread who find your posts difficult. After sixty three years you should have learned that a lot of criticism is designed to help, not harm. If you don't want your post to be properly understood ignore the advice, the commentary and the "fun poking". That's your option. This is a science forum. Please don't abuse the word theory. (Yes, I'm criticising your writing style again, because lucidity and accuracy in scientific discussions are important.) That is a speculation/hypothesis that I have already addressed. I think I noted, or certainly should have, that when you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. If the implications of that remark passed you by I was stating that your infatuation with dopamine has driven you into a simplistic, narrow minded perspective on reality. Neither am I. That is one of the reasons I have not attempted to write a great essay on consciousness and evolution. I recognise my limitations. I am not seeking to emulate any protagonist. The reason I have not said much that is interesting or thought provoking about consciousness and evolution is that I don't really have anything interesting and thought provoking to say about them. But I have been reading other people's ideas about them and I believe it is entirely inline with the ethos of the forum to comment on these and point out weaknesses in them., or to ask for clarification. Your lack of concision is annoying, but I could live with it. My main objection is that I don't understand what you are saying and you aren't doing anything to help me overcome that.

It is probable that if this condensation was occuring that at least one the many thousands of current genetic research projects would have picked it up. Such a bizarre occurrence would have attracted global attenion and potentially led to a Nobel prize. The absence of such excietment suggests, strongly, no such condensation has been detected and therefore none exists. For organisms that reproduce sexually the condensation would render the organisms sterile unless breeding with another organism that had experienced an identical condensation. You would need to offer a convincing mechanism to account for how that might be overcome. Just to be clear, the source to check it are all the published papers on genetics that make not mention of condensation.

If this is something you are personally experiencing the best approach is to consult a doctor, not ask questions on an internet forum.

I've given your post a +1 reputation upvote. Thank you for providing, in your writing, a classic example of pseudoscience. You've managed to capture so many of its diagnostic features in only two paragraphs. Well done. Dunning-Kruger would be proud of you. /reflective despair