TheVat

Just a quick thank you to the mod who moved my political cartoon, which I had posted in the general Jokes thread before my site explorations had discovered a political humor thread. Kindness and assistance to this newbie much appreciated. (this post can be deleted, once read by the relevant party, if it minimizes clutter) Cheers.

Inow and MacS... I wonder if the fulcrum of your disagreement may lie at the degree to which traditional female sports are impacted. INow said "Due to the risk that like 6 total female athletes MIGHT not win a cheap trophy or medal if we do so." This suggests a Spockian "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one" ethos, which is often sensible, but here lacks foundation in establishing that a mere handful of cis women would be impacted. If more people are making the choice to transition for whatever reason, and so there are more trans-females who, with their XY legacy of aerobic capacity, muscle mass, fast-twitch fibers, bone density, etc. are looking for paths in which they can achieve distinction and success, it's worth considering that many could see competitive league sports as an attractive choice. Asking questions about such a possible future trend now seems like a good idea, especially in those sports that are NOT diving, ultramarathons, or volleyball. I don't think one has to enter into a culture war or wave an ideological flag to take a humane interest in the welfare of those who compete.

This study found some relation between ejaculatory frequency and lowered rate of prostate cancer. Given that it uses self-reported data (often the wobbly leg on the chair of medical research), take with a grain of salt... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0302283816003778 LoL for the "clear cache" quip, MacSwell. Your forum moniker seems rather apt for this thread.

A larger solution to ending plutocracy (as well as kakistocracy) in the US is campaign finance reform. All candidates, at all levels, are given equal airtime, preferably in a debate format, with bad faith arguments and lies challenged by moderators. Attack ads are banned. People run on the merits of their policy ideas, not on their knack for slandering opponents and fear-mongering. Otherwise we are headed for minority rule, bankrolled by Koch Industries, and their ilk.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ynm5/scientists-studying-temperature-at-which-humans-spontaneously-die-with-increasing-urgency In the recent heat wave afflicting the Pacific Northwest (US and Canada), the rise in weather with "wet bulb" conditions has been brought into the media spotlight again. As I see it, one of the unfortunate feedback aspects happens when you have people using more fossil fuels to power their AC systems in extreme heat, which in turns puts more GHGs into the atmosphere. Longterm, we should look at not only alternative energy sources but also architecture which allows homes to handle hot weather events better with passive modifications. There may be, for example, parts of the globe where it will make more sense to have berm houses and other underground living spaces that are naturally cooler, and not just air condition massively.

This is a bewildering mass of unwarranted assumptions on the nature of a deity. Why would a deity have to observe everything? Thomas Jefferson and his Deist buddies believed God sets the universe going and then sits back, rather uninvolved in its operations. Pantheists believe the divine is basically in everything but not necessarily in control in any way we'd call omnipotence. Perhaps God lets all the quantum state vectors evolve and it's we who do the observing and wavefunction collapsing. Maybe God sees all the superpositions. You can't define God away simply by saying "you're only a real god, if X. " This is akin to the fallacy of No True Scotsman.

I agree. I would have done better to write that scientists should proceed as if they do not have beliefs, not that we don't have them. I was suggesting an epistemological attitude, not some impossible purity position. IOW, approach with "it is very probable" rather than certainty. As the philosopher of science Willard Quine talked about, every scientific fact is predicated on a "web of belief" we have about all sorts of matters related to that fact. Nor was I suggesting that. Indeed, you make the point I thought was implicit, that science and religion/spirituality can exist as separate domains without getting in each others way. Hence my paragraph beginning "I have no problem with... " My point was the epistemic stance of faith in entities unevidenced, which may have use in religious practice, is a hindrance in a lot of science. Indeed, areas of physics like string theory, where there is no observational evidence, are often subject to critique for relying on a quasi-religious faith in the theory's elegance and beauty. (following section intended as separate post) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/#FirLooDuhQuiProUnd Not for the faint of heart, but this entry gets into some of key problems with belief. And, again, this shouldn't deter anyone from having a spiritual life and stepping outside of ordinary empirical channels to posit an intelligent cosmos or some pervasive consciousness. I admit David Chalmers brand of panpsychism has some appeal for me. I don't believe it, but am open to it. (following section intended as separate post, arghhhhh) Godammit! That last bit was meant as a separate post! Mod, is there a way to separate out a post? That last about the SEP excerpt was intended as distinct from my replies to the others. Sorry for the newbie confusion.

Dragging a BB from one's arse sounds rather painful. In terms of Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability, religion has no "black swan, " and cannot be in the domain of scientific inquiry. Why do message boards devoted to science almost universally contain religion threads that seem to never end and let Popper have the last word? I think it's the seductive hope that somehow superstitions can be given a sheen of respectability by somehow making untestable conjectures testable. If I had a nickel for every time someone posted on the Web "perhaps some future technology will find a way to detect souls or God bits or angels..." I would have enough money to join Jeff Bezos in outer space. I have no problem with meditation, contemplation, prayer, or other inward means of comforting the spirit, calming one's thoughts, developing compassion, and gaining introspective insight, but when people start insisting on their metaphysical fantasies and harming others who disagree, it's hard not to see organized religion as a memetic poison. I would go further than saying scientists can't believe in a religion: I would say scientists really should avoid beliefs generally. I think expectations, based on probabilities, are as much as we can get away with in our limited epistemic domains. I'm not an atheist, which implies belief, but am agnostic in the common sense of seeing god(s) as unknowable and incapable of verification. Or falsification. As Descartes pointed out, we are easy to deceive.

One of those topics which it's almost impossible not to greet with double entendres and such. I'm unsure if any serious studies have been done of male physiology post-ejaculation, so what most of us have mouldering in our mental attics are various old wives tales, or mystical allusions to chi, vital essence, all that kind of blather. And all the subjective anecdotal stuff about feelings of lethargy and fatigue. Of course, one man's fatigue is another man's blissful relaxation. If I come across (ha!) any research, will post here later. Duty calls, atm.

Women do seem to have an endurance advantage - thanks, Charon, for the ultra running link. Curious as to where the advantage might come from, I came across this.... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49284389 I may be too easily amused, but I smiled at the phrase "shorter distances like a marathon...."

You will only see 16 minutes ago if there's a largish mirror on the moon and it catches the reflection of you (hopping around, crying ouch ouch it's so hot) as you were when those photons began their journey out from the sun.

Since my children are in their thirties, I consider myself to be gloriously child-free. Neither have gone into science, though my son is now toying with the idea of going back for a degree in atmospheric science.

It might be worth looking up Bose Einstein condensate, to get an idea of atoms which can all merge into a single quantum entity and lose any distinct individual identity. Also reminded of the famous quote (I think John Wheeler? Or Feynman?) in which it was said that there is really only one electron in the universe. It just happens to be everywhere we measure an electron. Probably Wheeler, sounds like something he'd say.

I love the notion that old Cheech and Chong movies can generate science threads of any size! I think the answers lie in determining a broader question: what are the combustion products (aside from CO, NO2, CO2 and volatiles) of dog poop? I'm leaving aside the bacteria question, as I think it's reasonable to assume that they don't survive incineration very well. Your biggest concern would probably be the PM, which could be highly oxidizing in the lungs. Check with studies of biomass burning done in the homes of developing nations? Dung cakes are often used, along with other agricultural waste. If there were a lot of PM10 or PM 2.5, that could be the real threat to your hapless movie stoners.

I appreciated the MSN article's observation that "correlation is not causation." My testosterone is likely to be considerably higher than that of the two Sub-Saharan women, yet I'm entirely sure they would complete any footrace with me laps behind them. (unless the starting gun contained live rounds and was fired directly at them) The multitude of physical factors is so large -- skeletal proportions, ratio of fast-twitch fibers, hormonal balance, variations in mitochondrial DNA (yes, some folks do have better mitochondria for certain sports where endurance matters -- we're not sled dogs, but there's a variable range in the human species), allergic responses, erythrocyte count (do you live above 2000 m.?), innate joint flexibility (woman do better than men, on this one), and so on. In some competitions, like running, specific physical factors are strongly linked with cis-gender and are understood to relate to the mechanics of running. Narrow hips allow for more efficient bipedal running. Paired with a deep chest, you get the classic physique of the long-distance runner. All the training and fierce spirit in the world is not going to make a cis-female competitive in that particular sort of competition, because race outcomes are so dependent on anatomical factors. It's not like basketball, where a short man can get onto a team with speed, lightning=fast moves, and amazing outside shots (Nate Archibald is the classic exemplar). So, you would be left with two choices for aspiring female long-distance runners. One, you can compete, but you will probably lose all the time. Two, you can compete only with people whose bipedal mechanics is somewhat similar to yours, which would be the traditional women's event. So, where do the biomechanically-different trans-females go, then? With larger chest cavities and vital capacity, and narrower hips, they would seem to be competitive in the men's event. Does the problem then become one of nomenclature? (forgive my longwindedness, and my likely rehashing aspects of this discussion that probably were already covered somewhere back in the 17 prior pages of this thread.)

In terms of climatic tipping points, it seems to me the media have not brought the importance of albedo change sufficiently to the public's attention. Both temp rise and particulate deposition on ice fields (diesel soot, dust, and so on) seem to be major players in ice shrinkage. Those are scary numbers (but these days what numbers, in climatological data, aren't scary?). The potential effect on the AMOC, of dumping lots of cold glacial melt in to the North Atlantic, is also something that Europe needs to be crisis planning for. Especially UK, which dips its feet right in the middle of the AMOC. Thanks for posting this.

Thanks, iNow. I like the "meta" joke in having such a thread. And I suppose the topic can help more reticent members come out of their shell. Some topics, however, are only of interest in (m)academia. I will recommend Christopher Guest's nuts monologue, in the film "Best in Show. "

What a silly thread. Let me completely embrace that spirit.... I've been aware of the almonds-drain-aquifer problem for a while, but never felt any deep sense of loss when I quit eating them. I ate them raw (the most nutritive form) and always had the feeling I was only one step removed from gnawing on wood chips. That first chomp on the nut always sent reverberations through my skull that reminded why they are, technically, known as stone fruits. More importantly, why bother with almonds when you live on a planet that grows pecans, walnuts, and pistachios? (the first two require no sculpting whatever to resemble little brains...)

I think the point made about basketball (it tends to discriminate towards very tall people) is a fair one, as it underscores that all sports at the higher levels are going to be somewhat exclusionary and attract people with a certain anatomical blueprint. No one has proposed "professional short people's basketball," or "football (American usage) for the small-boned." In this sense, all sports (except those based purely on grace and finesse, like diving) tend to filter out those whose body type does not adapt well to its contact situations or need for inertial mass. The problem seems to be mainly with limited cases where someone can be overqualified with respect to a woman's league due to having been a biological male in the past and thus attained a bone structure and mass that might lead to rather brutal outcomes for other league players. If gender leagues were eliminated, then the tendency would be to recruit, in contact sports, those with more formidable musculoskeletal systems and we would have a sports world composed almost entirely of cis-males and trans-females, and very few cis-females who were not extreme outliers. Which would bring us back to the question of having some other criteria for leagues that somehow permitted the smaller and more gracile a venue for play. It's possible we would need to redefine sport, and what societies want from it. Do we want sports to be a professional business in which we can marvel at superb physical specimens far beyond the average human? This is somewhat akin to advertizing wherein we see stunningly gorgeous and idealized representations of ourselves using or wearing a product. We are invited to project ourselves into some realm of perfection well removed from our own. Now I'm rambling a bit. A sure sign I have no good answer to this whole conundrum.

A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a bar... The rabbit says, “I think I might be a typo.”

Hello. Background in life sciences, but have ranged widely into other areas including AI, cognitive science, astronomy, and cosmology. Also some interest in bioethics and philosophy of science. I was, until a month ago, the Admin of sciencechatforum.com, a website that crashed after it was bought up by a "web development" company that turned out to be running a Ponzi Scheme on its investors and was seized by the U.S. SEC. The receivership handling the liquidation of its assets could not, for reasons obscure to me, keep the website up and running. One day, we all woke up and the site was gone. ScienceForums seems to be a website with a rather similar structure and a pretty good signal/noise ratio, which suggests good moderation and tossing of trolls. Well done. This refugee from late-stage capitalism is happy to be here!

Hello. Some speculate that a quantum mechanical system which somehow uses an infinite superposition of states could compute a noncomputable function. This is not possible using the standard QUBIT machine, because it is proven that a regular quantum computer is PSPACE-reducible (a quantum computer running in polynomial time can be simulated by a classical computer running in polynomial space). What is potentially non-deterministic is extracting the output of a computation in classical terms. The same final quantum state may be measured as different classical states with varying probabilities. However, if you choose your computation such that the final state is an eigenstate of whatever value you intend to measure, such that the probability of one particular classical output is 1 and all others are 0, then it is effectively deterministic. This is not always possible or practical to do, in which case you may need to to run the quantum algorithm many times to extract the effective classical probability distribution, but effective quantum computation depends on structuring your algorithm to boost the amplitude of the intended output as much as possible, while getting all of the wrong answers to destructively interfere, such that you don’t have to re-run your quantum computation an impractically large number of times. I guess there are nondeterministic models (as noted above), which are just that, models of a hypothetical device sometimes called a hypercomputer. But in the RW, computations are deterministic.