Sisyphus

Half of the unsolved problems in physics! In 40 pages! Awesome.

Yes, I see what the article says, it's just obviously poorly worded.

An imperfect proxy, obviously, but not a useless one. But that's not the point, is it? It's not that these drugs can only help a particular race, but that statistically they work better for a particular race. And so taking race into account could make the difference between whether one or another drug is more likely to be effective. But it is possible, because it's been demonstrated. Again, it's not drugs that only work for a black person. It's drugs that, statistically, are more likely to work better for a black person.

My views mostly correspond to Phil's. It's not about being an expert in everything. It's about listening to people who know what they're talking about. The President is probably not going to make any decisions based on whether or not evolution is true (but he might!), but if he doesn't believe in evolution, then he necessarily thinks that he personally knows better than what science unambiguously has to say, which is certainly an attitude that could have disastrous consequences in other areas where he will be making important decisions. So no, I would never vote for someone who said he didn't believe in evolution.

Everybody loves Risk.

Obviously whatever works, works, and so I agree with ecoli. However, it was also my understanding that, genetically, the "races" for which you could show such overall tendencies don't necessarily correspond to what are culturally recognized as races. For example, there is more variation among black people than in everyone else combined. (That's a hypothetical and I don't know if it's true, but I seem to remember something like that.) So considering "race" in terms of genetic groups in assessing the chances a particular drug will work is a good idea, but unfortunately "race" in terms of cultural groups is a quite crude approximation of that. But still, I guess a crude approximation is better than intentional blindness, right?

I'm wondering if there ever really is such a thing as a "fitness peak." Surely even in a stable environment there is almost always some change, right? Or am I just being too pedantic in demanding an absolute interpretation, and these are just abstract forms that represent always competing tendencies? Also, I've been told that natural selection is "more like a sieve than a selector," and any mutation that isn't harmful above a certain threshold gets absorbed into the population. That would mean there would always be change, right?

That's not really an accurate description. Male and female both have normal "bell curve" distributions, it's just that males have a slightly larger standard deviation. Both sexes, in other words, are much more likely to be average, and both can be at either extreme. Males are just slightly more likely to be at the extremes. Of course, with that small a difference, it might say more about IQ tests than it does about intelligence.

No, there's no way. Even if the bullets were made of some ferromagnetic material - unlike lead - which is the only way you'd even get repulsion, it would be many orders of magnitude too weak.

With all due respect to yourself, that's not quite true. Medieval Europe was at least as well populated with savage and unruly despots as any other place and time - and more so than many. It was the humanism of the Enlightenment that (eventually) changed that.

Yes, it is. College and university are the same thing in the U.S. Well, technically there are some differences - a university is usually an association of colleges forming a single institution, and/or if something is called a university it is generally a research institution first and if it is called a college it is an undergraduate teaching institution first (often liberal arts centered). However, the distinction is not absolute, and "college" is the usual generic term. Most college students will be at least 18, in other words. [/OT culture lesson]

I think somebody high up in Verizon probably heard about these messages and (stupidly) tried to block them to avoid controversy. Not that they believed they were responsible or were trying to make a political statement (quite the opposite), but more of a "why would we have anything to do with this when we don't have to" kind of thing. Obviously, that has backfired tremendously.

Seems like hate littering to me.

I disagree completely. The constitution protects the rights of private individuals to practice whatever religion they want. That the government cannot endorse any one religion is not the same as saying it has to endorse every religion at all times. By your premise, no public servant would be able to say almost anything at all, since anything contradicts somebody's religion. Also, the religious right has been complaining about oppression since the founding of this country, and fighting it with legal means almost as long. Usually it's under the same flawed premise that you have used, like in arguing that not allowing the Ten Commandments on a courthouse lawn amounts to persecution of Christians.

You don't know what the speed of light is without knowing what velocity is. Maxwell's equations are not magical (though they certainly seem to be!). I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I'm just saying that's how it has to be.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. They could have gone to Bob Jones University or something. Instead, they chose to go to this community college.

It seems to me you've just used distance and velocity instead of distance and time.

You're talking about very different things. Differences in basic sensory interpretation is obviously unprovable as long as it's consistent. And if it's consistent, then it wouldn't affect our personalities. Certainly not the "extreme cases" you talk about, which are not extreme cases but different phenomena entirely.

PCs of equivalent specs and quality are significantly cheaper? There are PCs that don't come with windows that have technical support, warranties, etc.?

Classically, you really have three starting points. Distance, time, and velocity. You can't really give a definition of any one of those without the other two that isn't simply tautological. So traditionally we just start assuming we have an idea of what distance and time are (since they are slightly more intuitive than velocity) and go from there. Then you add mass, and pretty much everything follows from that.

Awful? Reminds me of terrific, terrible, and terrifying. All three words technically mean basically the same thing, but overuse reduced terrific to "very good" and terrible to "very bad" in common usage. So we invented "terrifying" to to cover the original meaning, but even that is starting to slip. Never underestimate English speakers ability to mangle their own language, then put it back together with duct tape.

Pangloss: I don't think something like fascism is simply a black or white situation. You can be more or less fascist. How could it be otherwise? Is there some fundamental difference, a huge, "irreducibly complex" change that takes place that makes the difference (like conception, if you want to stick with pregnant thing)? Alternatively, can you say that you are closer or farther from fascism, where fascism is defined as a particular point on a spectrum? Ultimately it amounts to the same thing, no? I do agree, of course, that making that comparison is usually an unhelpful political statement. To most people, fascism and everything associated with it are simply synonymous with "evil," and so admitting that your position is closer to fascism is basically equivalent to admitting you are wrong. That is a pretty obviously silly perspective if you think about it at all, but the problem with throwing the F-word around is that it tends to incense people before they have a chance to think about it. It can be a useful (or at least interesting) comparison, but it so often isn't for exactly that reason. For the record (in order to preempt some foreseeable stupidity), I am not a fascist , and anything that I would actually call fascism would be a very undesirable state. But I believe that what is intolerable in extremes can often be desirable or necessary in moderation. I also believe that a good way to safeguard that moderation is to be aware of what the extremes might look like. We should therefore keep something like fascism in mind in order to safeguard against plausible routes to something similar, but also not let mere associations scare us away from a reasonable course of action.

That is a poor description of compatiblism, actually. Replace holding a gun to your head with physically grabbing your hand and forcing it onto the delete button, and it works. The difference is that with the gun, you're still choosing not to get shot, and the deletion is an act of will. The other way, your will doesn't enter into it. The idea is that "free will" is defined as the capacity to make conscious choices, i.e., the capacity to be aware that you are choosing between two alternatives, and then making that choice. It is an experience. The fact that you experience it, obviously, proves it is real. You'll notice, here, that it does not matter whether there were specific reasons you made one choice over the other (i.e., strict determinism), or not, (i.e., some element of randomness). Free will, defined in this way, is secure from any such discoveries in physics. For that matter, it is immune from "spiritual" alternatives, as well. For example, if it is not the brain but some intangible immortal soul that is really calling the shots, the situation is still exactly the same: either there are reasons the soul makes a particular choice, or there aren't. So what is the point of defining free will in that way? Well, the idea is that we already do, really. What do we mean when we say free will? We mean conscious choice. The only problem arises when we assume that certain other things have to go along with it. Most commonly, people erroneously associate determinism with "being forced" to make a particular choice, and so it is "not free," since in other contexts "being forced" means "enslavement." This is pure equivocation, however, since we're taking "free" and "forced" to mean the same thing when in fact they mean different things in different contexts. So ask yourself this. What do you mean by free will? Don't tell me "non-deterministic." That's what (you think) it isn't. Tell me what it is. More specifically, is "free will" different from "will?" How? Also, think about what determinism and non-determinism actually mean. Determinism means there is a reason one thing happens and not another. Non-determinism means there is not a reason one thing happens and not another. Non-determinism, then, is synonymous with "randomness." Is that really what you mean when you say "free?" That there is no reason you make one choice over another? Doesn't that seem a little bleak and meaningless to you? And as for that last question... does it really matter? Do you really believe that the universe is obliged to be a certain way simply because we want it to be so? When you say it "fails to address the problem," is the "problem" that you don't like what you see? If that is the only reason for pushing this, then surely you must admit that it's pretty bad science. And if there is another reason for pushing it, say, that we experience free will, then surely you can admit that free will is the experience?

I have decided to get a new computer soon, and I'm thinking of switching to Mac. What I have now is a 4.5 year old Dell Inspiron 5100 which I have come to loathe for all it's various hardware and software problems, and that's part of the reason I'm considering switching. Any advice? Particularly from those with experience with both PCs and Macs?

That's a little narrow-minded. A bomb could also be a bundle of dynamite sticks attached to an alarm clock.