TheVat

It's a reasonable question, I think. These are jumbucks: This is a tucker bag (carried in front): This seems a problem, in terms of fit. I feel there are limited possible explanations for the jolly swagman's achievement of jumbuck insertion. 1. 19th century sheep in Australia were miniaturized, in an amazing secret leap forward of GM technology. 2. Tucker bags were capable of massive elastic stretching. 3. Lyricist Banjo Paterson reported falsified data when he wrote the line, And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag Are there other possible means of jumbuck insertion and containment that have been overlooked?

The question, for me, is how on earth can you fit a jumbuck in a tucker bag? This may be a topic I meander towards in a new thread. Perhaps after my billy has boiled. Fair point. Eastern and Western thought have exerted mutual influence on each other for a long time. I Ching, or Yi Jing, hexagrams guided decision making. Hexagrams formed by what is essentially an ancient form of random number generator, the fall of yarrow stalks. Does this set aside the role of a free will, in favor of some other kind of causality that appears random to us?

In their analysis, levels of confidence with sigma up in the teens. If sigma there means what it does in other fields, that's quite high confidence in Newtonian dynamics versus MOND. Damn. I was sort of rooting for MOND, given that it would upset the apple cart of dark matter. From the chat on MOND over at sciforums, which Pinball started last week, it sounds like there will be hard scrutiny of the data quality.

It struck the funny bone then?

A lot of Christians perpetuate lies or, at best, distorted caricatures of Jesus. JC was a Commie. He would find modern materialistic society to be vile beyond words.

Have you ever seen a philosophy discussion that doesn't meander? I thought the anthropology sidebar was sort of relevant to how we arrived at modern Western definitions of mind and how that impacts our intuitions about free will. TV Judge: I'll allow it. You may proceed, counsel.

The anthropological stuff I've read suggests that the concept does vary somewhat (though I think Julian Jaynes's "bicameral mind" has been mostly rejected). The only way to really get at what pre-literate societies thought would be either artistic remnants, burial rituals, or looking at modern H-G bands that have preserved their pre-agriculture way of life and might be comparable. Jaynes explored this somewhat, but unfortunately (IMO) tended to cut everything he encountered to fit his theory. From what I read, some ancient cultures didn't identify their living essence specifically with a mind or intellect, but in a more general way, sometimes referring to their breathing as a soul, or placing a soul in some other anatomical location, like the heart or the gut. But there are also very ancient peoples (like Cro-Magnon) whose skeletal remains show evidence of trepanation, as if they were trying to fix the troubled brain by incising a hole in the skull. (mean comment about former president deleted)

The cheap ones - they're called bottle jacks - are usually 2 - 4 tons. Mine is 2, iirc. Haven't used in years.

Gullibility. Poor critical thinking skills. Persistent mood of pessimism and fear. They are the clay that extremists mold.

Keeps everything honest, and members are accountable for their mistakes. Also discourages some types of flaming and trolling, by preventing deletion of "evidence." And of course encourages proofreading of your post and prompt correction.

Right-hand corner. Three little dots. Click. (provided you do this within the time window, which is..? Half hour? Mod?)

I think our language tends to cause a creeping in of dualism when we speak of minds and brains, as if those are separate things that interact with each other. The implication is a false Cartesian split. Rather than use umbrella terms like mind, it seems more useful to look at specific cognitive processes in a neutral monism stance, trying to see how that process, e.g. intending to purchase beer, plays out through neurological operations, physical movements (checking in the cellar and fridge, writing beer on a list, placing money or card in a pocket, etc.), spatial shift, vocalizations to other bodies, etc. The parity principle (Chalmers et al) is a useful one here. Thanks to @AIkonoklazt for bringing that. This moves our understanding away from the mind as a thing that influences other things, and perhaps towards a truer understanding of mind as an array of dynamic processes that extend through the world. One pitfall of having created a memory narrative we call The Self is that we tend to defend it by making it separate from the world. This invites the fallacies of dualism, or at least aspect dualism.

I was taught that all elements with atomic number above 92 are radioactive, making me think visitors may want to pack their lead undies. But if there is a way an element with 163 AN is stable, I would be interested to hear how that happens.

We were sent out to walk on fresh road tar so that it would adhere to our feet and form a sock that would last for several weeks. (I feel we are entering The Four Yorkshiremen sketch)

I enjoy some philosophy of science, but agree the free will stuff has a way of going in tedious loops. As you trenchantly point out, we have to go with our gut. Determinist! 😀 I feel we do want a better word. But I'm not really sure what you are suggesting there. I like @Peterkin citing of how aboriginal society deals with these problems. It underscores, among other things, how modern urban society depersonalizes the relation between miscreant and their victim.

How do you think this impacts the Second Amendment right to arm bears?

Hi, Dim. In terms of justice systems, it seems we rely on the idea that people have some free will. When someone commits a crime, and is determined to be of sound mind, then it is held that they could have chosen to do otherwise. In a determinist view, however, they were fated to transgress (however society was equally fated to devise a criminal justice system and punish them). Indeed, from a deterministic perspective, all beliefs in free will and moral responsibility were predetermined, and any future retooling of that social consensus will also be predetermined. One could argue as a determinist that society should embrace immediately the view that there are no real choices and set about eliminating all choices as illusory nonsense. Which would sort of end life as we know it. Prisons would be gone, but so would the most minimal assurance of public safety, and democracy, and probably a vast array of other social structures that presume human moral choice. That's not gonna happen, so we remain with a belief in real moral choice, and the institutions that follow from that. But if you are asking about gray areas, about degrees of belief in free will, then there is certainly wiggle room. E.g. we now identify mental illnesses that deprive people of the capacity to make moral choices, and can move in the direction of therapy rather than incarceration.

Me, too, as per my reply over at the dot org website today. Paternal grandmother had some Sámi roots. (paternal grandpa could also, but not known to him)

Thread seems more like a vehicle for the OPs narcissism than about genetics.

I think I mentioned downward causation yesterday (to massive yawns, apparently). Epi forbids it, in ways that do seem to create logic problems. How would we ever discuss such things as qualia, if they had no causal role? Epi is like emergence without downward causation .

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/26/2/384/508233 In vitro mutagenic activity and carcinogenic potential of metronidazole in certain animals raised concerns about its possible carcinogenicity in humans. We studied the late incidence of cancer after metronidazole use among persons enrolled in the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, Seattle, a health maintenance organization. Randomly selected nonusers were matched on a one-to-one basis for age, gender, and year of enrollment to persons who used metronidazole on an outpatient basis during the period January 1975 to December 1983; 5,222 metronidazole user/nonuser pairs, for whom the median follow-up was 12.6 years, were analyzed. Forty-nine percent, 39.2%, 9.8%, and 2% of users had 1, 2–4, 5–9, and ⩾10 prescriptions or refills of metronidazole filled, respectively. The late (after the first 7 years of follow-up) incidence of cancer was nearly identical among users and nonusers (652 and 662 per 100,000 person-years, respectively; relative risk, 0.98; 95% confidence interval, 0.80–1.20). Age-gender stratified analysis did not reveal any association between metronidazole use and cancer. These data support no association between short-term exposure to metronidazole and cancer in humans. Although the results are reassuring, they may not extend to subjects who have used metronidazole for prolonged periods; further epidemiological studies should focus on these individuals.

There is a slight cancer risk from any diagnostic using X-rays. Also from moving patients to specialized treatments by air travel (stratosphere increases exposure to radiation). It's not that difficult to weigh relative risk and use such technologies. So it is with antibiotics et al. If I have tetanus or gangrene (anaerobic bacteria), I definitely will risk the metro. Especially given exposure would not likely be more than a week. Common sense is applicable here. Rather than name-calling.

Another problem with decreased potency is that, if it's an antibiotic, say amoxicillin, you might actually help any offending bacteria develop an immunity to that compound by offering a weakened sample. You really want the full potency. For a toothache, you also want a dentist - the problem might not be bacterial at all. NSAIDs are probably okay for a few years after expiration, and I've used old acetaminophen (paracetamol to you Limeys) to good effect up to seven years iirc. There are no hazardous decay products, they're just weaker.

When I hear "emergence" I am reminded of the ancient maps that would show unknown areas of the world with the caption, Here there be monsters. It is a nonexplanation of a casual structure we simply do not understand. The big question for those who wish to confer causal powers on mind is of emergence and downward causation. Emergence and downward causation are best understood in light of one another. Downward causation would occur when a whole, which includes various parts, influences the behavior of those parts. A whole, or a property of a whole, is emergent when it is capable of exercising downward causation, so again the question of how we would discover and demonstrate downward causation. This seems really challenging with conscious creatures who are interacting with their environment. You have lower order signals from outside interacting with higher order mental states. Sometimes there is thought without behavior. Sometimes, as we have seen, there is behavior without thought, or only thoughts post hoc. Sometimes mind seems to exercise prior restraint (to borrow lamguage from my nation's first amendment) and block behavior, e.g. I'm just going to ignore that. We don't understand emergence because we don't understand what is the possibility of downward causation.

Though my wording was ambiguous, that's what I was getting at. The poll figure only shows support for a generic Dem platform. And as I said, any real potus will drag the chains of inflation, border surges, personal warts, etc.