Peterkin

Thank you! It's thoughtful and intelligent; more in the realm of prediction than depiction. And it offers no path to solution - other than the one she hoped to nudge people into: voting. (However, given what's been done to voting practices....) I have a serious quibble with only one line: They were squeezed out decades before, which is what made room for a Trump; all he did was push overboard the last 5 conservatives who retained a vestige of decency.

I guess lying down in front of tanks is more effective. Just, you know, some people refuse easy martyrdom. AKA the story of mankind.

I wasn't suggesting that. I was asking for examples of public manifestation by which to compare the two. And now I'm saying that the 'extreme left' in the US, officially includes animals rights and environmental activists - neither of which is a political stance - as well as anarchists, communists etc, most of them diffuse and unorganized. The right, otoh, is organized, highly visible, intensely active in mainstream political processes, heavily armed and far more numerous. https://www.counterextremism.com/content/extreme-left-groups-united-states A response, as you said. It all started when the designated victim hit back.... (I don't think you can use the Black Panthers - themselves, a reaction to discriminatory and violent action by agencies of the state, as a manifestation of currently rising extremism.) Had that been the case, and the moderate centrists lefts and rights been at all effective, those would no longer be issues of contention in the Unites States (which, with respect, is not in your experience, and only peripherally in mine, so we're neither of us in any position to adjudicate how Americans ought to address their severely damaged political system. If the state is unable or unwilling to protect citizens from violence by the far right, or to ensure their liberty, those citizens very few options but to defend themselves.)

Clearly. That's just my subjective view of how the radicalism manifests in public demonstrations.

Ok. People in the US demanding the rights and services we're accustomed to in Canada, Australia, France, Norway, Japan, etc. equate to people storming the Capitol with lead pipes and explosives to overturn a legitimate election. It's all very subjective. I don't subscribe to the Atlantic.

I have seen many public examples of how the right manifests its radicalization. Can you point out public manifestations of left radicalism in the US?

It's the only one each of us has to answer to. Seeing another's POV is fine; siding with every other POV is impossible. How many ways can you divide you convictions?

What do you suppose happens to the guy who gets off his high horse and walks among them? And why do you think 'the left' is generally perceived as soft, weak and lame? There is a distinction - however subtle - between scientific open-mindedness and abandoning one's principles. Science is relatively clear and well defined. Politics, philosophy and sociology are muddy. Unfortunately, it's the muddy bits that need a conscience.

That's gold!

So it is! Been suggested already.

Neither do I. But if they thought something was there that could be put on a slide, photographed and submitted as an original paper, believe me, they would. Not that I think there are lots of MRI images of frogs and sparrows on file.... rats, maybe.

You didn't say that you personally would do it. But I honestly can't imagine finding structures in brains without somebody looking inside the brains. You don't have to be aware of your endocrine glands in order to need them. Only in that the answer for most people is: I don't know, but we mostly have an opinion anyway. That's why I keep asking for precision in vocabulary. Otherwise, the only accurate answer to every possible question is: 'depends what you mean by --- '

You were talking about the possibility of hunting down some 'structure' - by which I understand a nexus of specialized cells in the brain of an organism - that enables it [that brain which has grown such a structure] to "to take some of its own processes as input"; that is a reflexive, or feedback function, which would perhaps constitute a "mind". Then, having isolated such a structure, you would look for a similar structure in the brains of different organisms, to see whether they are capable of having a mind. The only way I can imagine looking for structures in brains is by dissecting brains. This means killing (I assume that level of compassion, anyway, that you'd kill them before cutting their brains open) a great many organisms suspected of having the potential for minds. I can further imagine that many, if not all of the specimens would either lack the structure you're looking for or use a different brain configuration to achieve a similar result. Therefore, a great many organisms will have been sacrificed in order to discover some, a few or no new animal species with the potential for minds. I wondered what all this carnage yields, and in what way that gain - if any - is to be used.

the attempt to discover whether do that Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to Dory.

That's a lot of gratuitous dissection! What shall be gained?

But only the creature itself knows that happened at all. Most living things don't even know their parents, let alone place themselves on an evolutionary tree. Humans know about evolution. Humans have some concept - however vague - of 'mind'. But can a human tell whether another biological entity has or does not have a mind? If humans determine that a dog does have a mind, and a sea-slug does not, can they then locate the stage of evolution where mindlessness ended? I don't think so. I posited social interaction as - possibly - one of the behaviours reserved for entities with minds. I very much doubt it. Aside from the fact that I think it's invalid for species less vision- and image- dependent than we are. Most animal social groups identify by scent and/or sound. I believe that is the case. I don't know about insects, am extremely skeptical of protozoa, fervently hope plants are not conscious at all, and reject the idea of spirit-infused asteroids and stalagmites.

PGA player of the year is a political appointment? I thought it was elective. I should think, quite a lot, especially given that Supreme Court judges literally hold the power of life, death and the direction of a nation in their hands. Aside from which.... But, hey, that's a good idea! Why don't they make it it really fair and institute a Jurisprudence Tournament? The judge who takes most gold medals gets to sit on the big bench for a year.

Which, of course, leaves open the next big question. What's "a mind"? At what point in the evolutionary time-line of a modern organism that clearly does 'have' a mind (possession is another problematic concept here) - let's say, rather: that clearly does exhibits some or all of the characteristic functions of minds: desire, intention, volition, memory, curiosity, pattern formation, problem solving, purposeful action... not sure there is any consensus on emotion, sociability and communication... At what stage or bifurcation or documented mutation did a mindless awareness become a mindful one? What is the adaptation or modification which shows that Organism X has/had a mind, while its recent forebears, Organisms W(m) and W(f), had none?

No animals synthesize lysine. They all get in their diet, from various plant sources, but the enzyme activity is similar in all species. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1165958/ I don't see why. It's a question of farming style. Industrial-scale farming methods require vast acreage and flat land. Vertical, container, indoor, forest, terraced and other kinds of farming arrangements produce more food in less space, and incidentally require less transporting of food. One example is a food forest.

There are two variables that determine whether quarantine measures are effective: consistency of application and rate of compliance. Many governments, both local and federal, delayed in imposing wide-spread quarantine measures, travel restrictions, venue closures, etc., then did impose those measures for a while, then lifted or relaxed, or relaxed, then reimposed, then lifted, then reimposed a more relaxed version... That kind of inconsistency both reduces the effectiveness of the measures and confuses the population - and, even worse, invites a counter-offensive from the fringe religious, conspiracy nuts, anti-vaxers, libertarians, financial interests and disruptive elements that attack government on any pretext. It would have been far more effective, both in reducing fatalities and in flattening the curve, incidentally relieving the worst stress on the health care system, to lock down fast, hard and long enough for the majority of the population to be vaccinated. And many citizens, including some government officials, failed to comply from the beginning and dropped all pretense of precautions as soon as they could get away with it. Right now, there are some stores I felt safe to enter before the mandate was relaxed that I now avoid. As one who does take precautions, my activities are more constrained now than they were during the first mask, distance and quarantine mandate.

The presidential candidate said: "I will appoint a Black woman." He should have said: "From among the qualified, experienced, ratifiable high court judges willing to take on the task, I will select a Black woman for this appointment." Optically challenged, fallible man that he is, he assumed that the 'qualified, experienced, ratifiable high court judge willing to take on the task' part was a generally assumed set of prerequisites for a Supreme Court appointment. Oh, well, too late now!

All we have to do is give up carnivorous companion animals, and we don't need food animals at all.

In that case, why not give people the supplement instead, bypassing the pig and chicken slaughter? What for? If bacteria can do it fast and cheaply on a large enough scale, why implement a more expensive and complicated procedure?

Simple policy: If it runs, squawks, bites, flaps or growls, it's conscious and self-aware. If it just sits there and lets you kick it, it's a car tyre and used to human stupidity. The less silly version of that: Yes, it's pretty much down to observable behaviour. What looks like purposeful action probably is, and whoever preforms purposeful acts is probably both conscious and self-aware. When in doubt, assume it is.

But then, how will you catch the heffalump? Or weasel?