TheVat

Seems to have some parallels to the Baltimore Affair, back in the late 80s. Cell biologist David Baltimore also resigned from the presidency of a university, was also connected to a researcher who had been accused of falsifying data (though she was later exonerated IIRC), was also criticized for not retracting a paper when irregularities came to light. It's been problem for decades, and medical fields are especially prone to such problems, with all the corporate pressures to find treatments in lucrative areas of research.

I thought several of your observations - the broadness of their category, the profit-focused trend in healthcare, the differentials between regions and socioeconomic groups, and the aging population - all helpful in understanding this lamentable stat. Also the aggressive marketing of cheap junk food. (go to France, hang with the locals, and try snacking on a bag of cheezits - they will emit horrified noises and toss you in the nearest river)(and if you eat lots of junk food you you will float easily) I've seen stark contrasts myself between states. When I'm in the Colorado front range, for example, it's really noticeable how thin and fit people look, compared to rural western Kansas and Nebraska, a couple hundred miles away. In Colorado, lots of bikes and bike trails, lots of hikers, lots of healthy food stores, great variety of outdoor activities, etc. IOW, a fitness oriented culture, and people who move there to be part of it. I saw this statistical study by state, of rates of multiple chronic conditions and found huge differences, with Arkansas at 60.5% and Colorado at 42%. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7199953/ Interesting that DC was the lowest, at 38%. (which may relate to factors like more walkable neighborhoods, quality healthcare, young healthy people who move there to work government jobs and then move away when older, etc)

If it's infinity how does it have an edge? - respectfully yours, Buzz Lightyear Seems like "geek Rapture" ideas always get some hard scrutiny at science forums. The question remains of whether a snapshot of a connectome is merely a recording of memories or an actual transfer of consciousness. I would posit that this uncertainty would make the initial pool of experiment volunteers really small. YMMV.

This CDC stat I saw recently in a news article was a bit of a shock. https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/index.htm "Six in ten Americans live with at least one chronic disease, like heart disease and stroke, cancer, or diabetes." This number really doesn't line up with my own experiences, with a variety of social and work circles in five different states, so clearly I have had sampling errors and perceptual filters that led me to think that number would be lower. Either that, or the statistic presented has been tinkered with in some misleading way. (if that figure was describing, say, all adults over fifty, I would find it easier to swallow)

Glad to hear that! I visited The Naked Scientists forum (UK based) for a little while a couple years ago. It was well-run, but I preferred SFN for its wide range of discussions and transparent structure. As for the evil twin website (scienceforums.com), best to avoid. I'm sure some here have visited there by accident when they were on a different computer and had to type in the URL. It is a shithole.

Phoenix, your paint has arrived.

I encounter this argument against a variety of reforms. The underlying logic seems to be that only some kinds of problems are worth solving. E.g. let's withdraw money for treating depression, because they're fine physically and other people are starving or sick. They should just grow a pair and quit whining. You see the flaw there? Just because you don't experience a certain category of suffering doesn't mean it's not a real problem for someone else. Human life can't be reduced to one short menu of problems. If I send money to the Nature Conservancy, it's because preserving wild lands is important to me and I believe it's critical to keeping the planet sustainable, it doesn't mean I don't care about discrimination or food insecurity or malaria.

That last line, from his Princeton roommate, was pretty funny. Thanks for sharing that. @John Cuthber

IIRC, a character created by a writer is part of their intellectual property and cannot be used by other writers without permission. The exception is when the copyright is expired. Anyone can use a Jane Austen character, or Captain Ahab.

What are your specific criteria for being (still) male? Not sure I've seen these in a post here in this thread. As for posting opinion polls, that is what Americans in some online forums call shouting "scoreboard!" The science of gender is not determined by popular opinion.

You have misread me. The nirvana point was quite opposite to a virtual space of infinite experience. It was a conjecture (hardly an "argument") that a consciousness in such a virtual space might reach a point where no further experience was necessary and so would not suffer from the finite menu of experience available to it. I was pointing to our present limited knowledge of what such a being might consider a bliss, not stating that the conjecture was inevitable. It is a possibility I felt worth considering that a being, in the fullness of time would achieve a kind of contentment and cease to see new states as its source of meaning. This is, it should be noted, a philosophy section, so an eschatological meander is permitted. If not of interest to you, that's quite okay, and I am happy to discuss other aspects of the OP questions. (see also my earlier post, above, about the possible evolution of AI to systems that incorporate both digital and analog processes, which could somewhat shift the limits)

Those of you who persist with this discussion are as hardy as tardigrades. Impressive stamina. The question of free choice probably would thrive more in a philosophy thread, is my guess. Part of the feeling of choice is the awareness of having one. It is probably more likely that, prior to sexual reassignment treatments, most humans tended to see their gender as locked in and would therefore be more likely to find ways to adjust to that, however awkwardly. This spectrum of choice growing is also seen in various medical limitations: when a surgery or medicine came along that could keep someone from being an invalid or confined to a wheelchair, the perception of choice changed and people tended to choose the medical intervention that allowed them the most unrestricted participation in the life around them. As Joseph Campbell et al have pointed out, for most of human history mythology was used as a metaphorical path to go in search of one's true inner nature and be that in the world. It might be that our present culture will evolve new mythologies, allegories, legends, etc. that can help with that journey, side by side with medical procedures. And there may be ancient ones that are revived, also, for that purpose of getting past dyphoria in one's body.

And I have neglected to point out that the brain has elements of both digital and analog operation. So the digital computer and its limitations can become something of a FSM Straw Man in these discussions. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(06)01825-2.pdf https://news.yale.edu/2006/04/12/brain-communicates-analog-and-digital-modes-simultaneously ETA: editor chopped off my last comment: Good point, Genady. The change in sequence introduces infinite variety.

Several assumptions here. One, that present digital-only computer architecture is all there will be. Maybe, who knows? Two, that no platform could support continuous cycles of self improvement. After millions of such cycles, who knows? We are speaking of possibilities beyond our present lives as apes with cellphones. There could be eons of growing wisdom leading to some kind of cyber-nirvana that no one could describe to a 21st century human. How can you rule, from this limited perspective, that there aren't information densities that would render a profound and blissful satisfaction in simple contemplation?

I'm not a member of Twitter. Posts are open to read AFAIK in most countries. If it contains "sensitive" material, I think you can just click a permission button to choose to remove the block. It may be different in the UK, though. See my reply to John. Thank you, @Phi for All

Internal combustion operates on the scale of atoms interacting, especially hydrogen, carbon and oxygen atoms. Automobiles are too macro for this. 😏

Not mutually exclusive.

For a long-lived and reliable quantum bit, and processing, don't you need some sort of Bose Einstein condensate to have superposition states in the brain? I never understood Penrose's idea of how this could be achieved in the warm noisy environment of the human brain. Brains seem pretty classical in their functionality, but that's really an open question I guess.

Yes, that was a bit OT reply to PKs comment "To a large extent, film stars have been steadily pricing themselves out of the market." One reason I hope indie film survives is that it will provide a place for the large pool of skill and artistic passion to be found among the B-list actors who cannot pick and choose so much.

Yes, and some actors have gotten the money fever and turn down interesting work (in favor of juvenile comic book movies) that other more serious actors long to be offered. Which is why I hope independent film, with its many handy rowboats, survives. True. I hope the younguns aren't allowed to forget what live actors can bring to a film, much the same as hoping they don't forget what reading a book (with its longer attention span) does for the mind. Like the broom or rake, some technologies are already matured and don't improve with the addition of an engine.

I'm sort of a movie buff (indie films, foreign, surrealism, sci-fi, mysteries, political thrillers, spy thrilers, comedies, period dramas, well, a pretty broad range) and IMO it is real human actors, inhabiting a character, taking risks, experimenting, getting caught up in a moment, that are at the heart of a story well told and what distinguish great film from the vast cesspool of CGI shlock that is out there now. To put those hardworking professionals on the street while you use soulless digital simulacra in their place would be a crime against humanity and a death blow to the art of cinema. This is a case where the Luddites should not just smash the looms, but also burn the mills and toss the owners into the inferno. Yeah, strong opinion here. 😀

The usual objection is the human brain cannot host the quantum phenomena required since it is considered too "warm, wet and noisy" to avoid decoherence. But Orch OR, as Penrose and Hameroff's theory is called, is intriguing. (most forums like SFN have an old thread somewhere on classical brain v quantum brain) Yes, that is one of the better counters to the idea that no real transition of consciousness is possible. I have heard the example of the coma patient who has been completely unconscious and her brain has changed enough since last being awake that we could not say the same person is awakening. Yet we do assume a continuity. And the same goes for the "little death" of sleep. (I know little death means something else in French)

Raised body temperature activates the immune system and helps it work more efficiently. It also creates a less receptive environment for bacteria and viruses that are very acclimated to a specific narrow temperature range and will replicate more slowly if it gets too warm. The trick is to get these good effects without driving the temperature so high that it harms or kills you. Which is why fever management, figuring out when to hold off on fever suppressing drugs and when not to, is an important part of modern medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7195085/ The Fever Paradox.

So, to make sure I'm following, this is like I read a novel where some scene took place at Cawker City, Kansas, home to the world's largest ball of string, and then I later opened YouTube and its homepage prominently places a video on this very roadside attraction in Kansas. Is it possible that, as you read the book, you stopped and did a quick Google search on the place/agency and then forgot you had done so? Or mentioned the story element to a friend via social media? (either that or, as others suggest, the place/agency is trending in popular culture these days and this led the author to use it. It could have been on previous YouTube homepages you opened and you didn't notice it until you read the novel) If your example had more specifics, this could be helpful in gauging the degree of coincidence.