padren

I am somewhat concerned about that, but I think what will happen (though I can easily be wrong) is that most jewish groups including most israeli ones, will simply condemn the holocaust cartoons as being groseque, but they won't riot and kill people over it. They'll attack one of the most sensitive topics for jewish people (the holocaust) with words and cartooning, and end up witnessing how they handle such BS in a much more sane manner.

If I wake up in a house I don't know, I am alright if there is signs of a party. If there is just some freaked out guy poking me with a baseball bat wondering who the hell I am, then the oh-ohs start to kick in. I have vivid dreams often when drinking, not nightmares. I also get something I don't know how to describe, whenever I drink too much, or when I read too much QM/physics before bed. I tend to get "gotta think-its" where I am half a sleep, and I feel like I am on some mission to solve something. Its always wierd, makes no sense, but keeps me half awake because I worry if I fall asleep I'll not finish my "work" and if I do, it carries over and I wake up again still trying to solve it, several times through the night. Those I just hate.

What is the sim half doing while this is happening? Wouldn't it sleep too, since it is a sim of the physical half? Also, if your goal is different experiences for the left and right half, and see which "win" in the end, then tests on this in epileptic patients who have had the surgery tell us that, the person will experience both - it just depends on what side of the brain you ask. This is why these subjects are taught coping mechanisms like "talking across information" whereby they speak something they know out loud, so both sides of the brain can know about it and stay in relative synch. Can you explain the experiment in a bit more detail? I think I am missing part of it.

...and here I thought no dialog could appear more staged and hokey than a presidential Town Hall meeting. When will the Atomic Christ-Force be peer reviewed?

That is tough, they may not even exist ( girls=0) However, I am more concerned about the profound implications as to the nature of both sugar and spice. In fact, if I recall, then everything nice will also have to be rethought.

I hate to say it, but I still don't think you would transfer. I tried to play with similar ideas a while back, but I came to the same conclusion. If your left half entered the system, your right half would be kept alive via a "virtual prostetic" left half of a brain. As you continued on into the portal, you would be more and more replaced by the prostetic until the original ceased to exist. In any transfer process, the main question I would ask is, "Is it a copy process in which a destructive element is added out of convienance, so that it resembles a transfer?" If the exact same portal didn't destroy the physical components, but still did the virtual copy part of the work, where would your conciousness be? Its safe to assume I think, that unless all continuity is a pure illusion, then your original consciousness would still be in your physical body in that case. Therefore, how would adding a destructive element, actually change that factor? The only thing I can see it doing, is ensuring the copy is convienced he is in fact, the original having transferred, instead of being newly born with identical knowledge. Do you think my qualifying test question, about the destructive process is a fair one? I am interested in new ways to think about this topic, but still can't get over how convienant just throwing in an extra "delete the original" step is in attempting a transfer of consciousness, even if it is clever and gradual.

If you have four times the money, it takes a quarter of the amount of time. If you have half the money you should, it WILL take you twice as much time. I definately think this demonstrates a time*money relationship. Of course, things get really interesting when you increase both time and money.

As much as I do everything I can to keep up with the serious aspects of life, I also try and just enjoy my dumb luck of having a front row seat to something as amusing as my own personal plain old human folly. Its been incredibly entertaining so far. I tried that and I came to learn over time that it is not a very effective mechanism for....wait, I probably shouldn't spoil it for you.

3ch

I don't have the exact study sorry, but I heard from a relative that they did a pretty major one in Canada, which turned up that despite the costs of care at the end of their lives, the early end itself more than compensated in terms of expense. They did it to try and find out how much smokers were costing health care in an anti-smoking campaign, and quickly dropped that approach when they realized the evidence was pointing the other way. Besides, you make alcohol illegal and you will turn me into a criminal. Either a bootlegger or a rioter, I am not sure, probably the latter if I am no good at the former.

Did you say polonium-210? More like bullonium-210 Sorry' date=' once in a while I can't resist a bad pun, which has nothing to do with any challange to the validity of the comments above. I would consider theoretical legistlation that put caps on the profitability of things like cigs and other "poisons of choice" as I think part of the problem is these corporations grow to cartoonish levels of political influence. I am not sure how something like that would work though. I am not in favor of banning cigs or anything really. Self destruction is a time honored route to self discovery, I think cultures that try to fight that just end up more messed up in the head than if they'd relax a bit. I certianly think there needs to be regulation, and selling addictive harmful products requires lots of oversight just like mining uranium does. A side note: Considering gambling addictions tend to make people loose their entire life savings and homes, why do we say its up to them to have self control, yet try to protect everyone else from harmful chemical addictions? Maybe Nevada [i']will[/i] legalize crack, who knows.

I've had a few thoughts on this subject lately, my general take is you can measure the volatility of a system, based on how many unlikely conditions need to be met in order for a small influence to have a large effect and to what degree of amplification. I think its worth suspecting that our social system is very volatile, and if it wasn't for the very wide array of means by which the culture can adapt to change and compensate for any given change we'd have a lot of trouble getting by. (Of course we still have a lot more people quitting smoking than we have nuclear wars, so its not that volatile.) A system like the oceans, would be very non-volatile, since basically every major effect (tsunamis etc) can be traced to other large causes, such as earthquakes, which have causes such as continental drift. Systems like weather systems, while fairly complex and more volatile than the oceans (macroscopically) still don't appear to be so volatile that factors as small as butterflies are likely to have much effect. So as far as volatility goes, social systems appear the most volatile (imo) and things like the oceans would be some of the least. Its not a measure of what is possible, but what is likely and how likely. I think the butterfly effect pertaining to weather is more interesting because of the truth behind the fact we really don't know how to trace a weather system back very far - its volatile enough that it may as well have been a butterfly (no matter how unlikely) because we just can't track what will and will not turn into a storm to earlier than a couple of super-cells.

The only way I can think of to devolve would be to be managed as a species and bred for food, like most domestic animals today. We control their breeding, and select those that are more docile or otherwise have traits that make us happy instead of enchance the independant survivability of that species. Granted, that is not a process of evolution (with mutation) but a selective breeding program whereby IIRC resessive genes that already are there. Still, the result is that of a genetically inferior "devolved" subset of the species. I would assume genetic evolution has greatly slowed in humans because what we learn has become exceptionally dominant in our survivability and success. Even a genetic advantage will not likely help a human with a poor education over another with an advanced education. Regarding the pyramids...I am sorry, but they really are just stacked rocks. Mixed cement ones at that. They are just not worth building today, but its more than doable. Also, don't be too quick to jump on people that don't buy the "we killed off the dinos when we came from mars" argument - you have to admit that is rather far fetched. This is a speculation forum area but people will still be critical, its just here if you defend speculations without affording strong evidence, the thread doesn't get moved or closed.

Well, I am a firm believer in the importance of corporate ethics, just because they are often abandoned doesn't mean they should be given up on. Still, with google, and specifically with China, I would really like to see them more dependant and tied into western based services. If they can get better telecom through our satilites, use more western based web services for finance and research, I'd say all the better. The more both the US and China can benefit from bridging the divides the more costly potential future conflicts and isolationist movements would be. There is room for improvement, and I definately have a very different point of view on the sale of military goods to dictatorships. (Don't those nations always end up overthrowing their dictators, then somehow get stuck with the national debts chalked up by those same dictators to keep guns at their heads? How do we end up looking them in the eye while we deliver that bill anyway? /wayofftopicrant)

What you say is contrary, is IMO, more an indicator of when roughly we branched off towards intelligence as the strongest survival aid. Bigger brains trumped bigger teeth and claws...so the humans with bigger brains did better than the ones with bigger teeth and claws. The moment we could make and wear clothes and weapons, there was no evolutionary pressure to evolve towards having fur or claws. Interestingly, a theoretical mutation that caused us to have worse "fur" would actually be a survival aid, as we would be smart enough to wear animal furs in the cold, yet be adaptable to hot areas. I am really not sure how much general mutating went on from the time we became intelligent till now, since I think humans with our intelligence are very new on an evolutionary time scale (a biologist would know more). A Gorilla evolved to deal with its environment based on its raw physical form and instinct, with limited learning skills. It got good enough at it unless it's environment changes significantly, there will be no evolutionary push towards utilizing tools including fire.

The link didn't work for me, but the real question is causation vs correlation. We have found polution from China over Utah, for instance, but that doesn't mean chinese polution is likely to increase the chances of people adopting mormonism. I am not saying its a pure coincidence, just that it is not known. Last I heard the concern about aerosols was they damage ozone, not cause clouds. Just that such situations are unlikely, and when they do occur, they become near-inevitable, because any number of equal or greater triggers are likely to set off the volatile condition.

Bisexuality aside, I think that from what I gather, the average gay individual is as turned off by the idea of sleeping with a woman as most men are turned off by the idea of sleeping with another man. I think if more homophobic people thought about that from that perspective, they would be a lot more sympathetic to homosexuals, instead of assuming they are just "choosing" not to "get with the program" or some such. From what I've lightly gathered there are genetic reasons that are associated with that. I would say that homosexuality is unnatural for hetrosexuals, but that it is perfectly natural for homosexuals. Still, I don't think the "natural" argument is a good way to evaluate any behavior. Nature is barbaric in at least as many cases as its elegant.

Just a few notes: Its a hard question to answer, and I can at best render a personal opinion. I'd say "yes" because the question starts with "can" instead of "will" and therefore only needs the possibility to be valid. I don't think anyone can crunch the numbers on our survivability regarding the potental threats that are yet unknown, or the ones you mentioned. Also, its been mentioned before that the "butterfly effect" isn't very valid. Its poetic, but not very well founded on any working theory. A hermit crab fart isn't any more likely to cause a tsunami than a butterfly's wings are to cause a hurricane. Its like saying its true a worm can crush a village, but only if that worm is wiggling under a boulder that happens to be very unstable on a mountain that happens to be prone to avalanches and just about ready to go that happens to be right above a village. You need a very exacting setup for it to happen, and such an unstable one its actually as likely to happen by any other number of causes (breeze, falling leaf, tempurature contraction/expansion had the worm not been there) as it is by the noted source cause.

I think you could argue there is a difference between recreational drugs and get-through-the-work-day drugs. People smoke cigs because they can't cope with the stress during the day as part of its normal use. With Alcohol, you drink recreationally on your own time when you are not otherwise required to perform in some capacity. People taking stims to stay awake driving rigs are more frightening to me than a guy at home smoking pot eating a bag or two of dorritos. I think our culture is more suseptible to "get-by" drugs because we are a bit of a quick-fix pill culture. We'd rather get by with numbed symptoms than stop and treat a problem. (/gross generalizations) I do think we are better off with the alcohol laws we have now, than we did under prohibition. By policing bad behavior from chemical abuse is the best solution IMO, instead of banning them outright.

There is very little reasoning if you assume that the politician is trying to state a factual case. In most cases, I think politicians on both sides simply state whatever statements they reason will resonate in the manner they want, towards the ends they want to forward. When viewed as a strategy, its often quite rational. Its when you view the content of the statement itself on the assumption its based on direct fact, it appears to make little rational sense.

Anyone old enough to remember playing this old Orbiter? http://www.mobygames.com/game/orbiter (was my first or second computer game growing up) (I had the mac version, with the graphics on the left) I am going to have to try out this new version, 20 years can make a lot of difference.