lemur

so the elephants were attacking the rhinos purely out of adolescent aggression?

Both polyandry and prostitution allow women to maintain relationships with multiple men. In polyandry, husbands are often brothers or otherwise view and treat each other with respect and love as family. While this may not be the case in prostitution, the prostitute has more control over which men she keeps in her clientele with no risk that her mates will bond together to criticize her, etc. So while both forms of heterosexuality allow women to have multiple relationships, they may have different consequences for men, women, and children. What are your thoughts?

I only noticed my alcoholism after many years of freely drinking with the belief that I was just playing at overdrinking but that in reality I was totally in control of my alcohol use. So I would guess that many people understand addiction although they don't realize it because they are in denial.

In the short term, it would be negligible. But I would assume that if fusion power plants were sustainably operational, cheap abundant power would become the norm and the global economy would continue to grow for many millennia as well as all sorts of space-colonization projects being undertaken, so to avoid ending up like a waterless Mars, development of conservative consumption norms still seems first priority to me.

If hydrogen fusion plants were made practical, those would convert water into helium and oxygen, though, wouldn't they? I assume he was talking about fission, in which case you're right, but I thought maybe he had read something about fusion using up hydrogen derived from water and gotten that mixed up with fission, which doesn't use up water.

I always take the bait and respond to your posts but I am starting to think that you just post things to be provocative. I don't think you have any constructive points to make besides generating controversial verbiage. Isn't that just trolling?

Interesting but then why is it that more people initiate contact at bars than at math/chess conventions?

I realized that this was a subjective question. I posted it in the lounge because I was just hoping people would give their general subjective impressions regarding cultural tastes. I think you could say that beyond individual subjectivity, there are cultural-taste factors that influence what people find attractive/unattractive. E.g. alcohol use is generally consider less unattractive than use of harder drugs, although addiction is generally considered unattractive regardless of the substance. OCD may not be an addiction, but it falls into the same general range of personality traits that involve control-problems.

Could such a fan best be positioned in a window or elsewhere to blow warm air outside and create air-movement inside via the resulting pressure-decrease?

My shortcoming is in decoding the meaning of equations expressed in variables and symbols. Simple formulas like W=FD, F=MA, Power=WT, acceleration=speed change T, P=MV, etc. are just shorthand for expressing analogical relationships in my mind. I do think about relationships between such things in a quasi-mathematical way, but I don't think in exact relationships between variables in the sense of processing a mathematical proof. For example, I get confused when thinking about the relationship between energy, power, work, force, time, etc. because I am simultaneously trying to think in terms of empirical situations and logical relationships between terms. I suppose you could say I think mathematically in a way, but I just don't respect my own 'mathematical' thinking the way I respect people who can explicitly represent and manage their thought-process in terms of precise balances between two sides of an "=." However, instead of giving up completely, I try to maintain the more constructive attitude that my methods of thought aren't totally worthless and so I enjoy thinking about physical/mechanical issues in my way and discussing what I come up with with people who think using more formal mathematics or other approaches. I view diversity of thought-approaches as a constructive process, although in practice it does sometimes lead to confounding miscommunication. I do have to admit that I usually get more out of discussions with highly math-literate people than with math-illiterates without rigorous reasoning abilities. Some of the most interesting thoughts can come from such people, or those with some reasoning, but such people are an elite among many more people who are just playing in sandboxes trying to develop rigorous reasoning. Of course, it's also important for them to develop so I can't denigrate their efforts too much.

Outside of debates about what really constitutes an addiction or not, let's just assume that all forms of excessive usage of pleasure-inducers is addiction. In that case, which addictions do you think would be considered more unattractive than others? Is a sober chain-smoker less attractive than an alcoholic non-smoker or vice-versa? Is a healthy non-user sex addict (think Tiger Woods) more attractive than a smoking, drinking, drug-user who is faithfully committed to monogamy? Is food-addiction and obesity preferable in a partner to other forms of addiction? What about obsessive-compulsive cleaning or other work (OCD) addiction? should this topic be for the lounge instead of philosophy, btw?

He could probably position such a fan in a way that would make a nice breeze. It's just a question of distance, isn't it? His fan might even be better because it will be further away, along with the noise it makes. I like ceiling fans for the quiet but they do blow warm air back down. Box fans are my favorite but any fan that generates a horizontal breeze is good, imo. I think a little air-speed (pressure) is good, too. After all, it is the wind-chill effect you're going for. It just becomes a problem when your hair and papers start blowing around.

Math does what it does. Dealing with specific issues/questions determines what is relevant, whether math or other forms of reasoning. The issue of potential energy involves the concept, imo, that energy can be differentiated into active expressions and inactive (potential) expressions. The primary method is to look at a mechanical system and identify what energy is doing in that system, the paths it takes, and where/how it becomes inactive until a later moment in which it is once again activated. This is qualitative reasoning/description, but I believe it explains the basic logic behind dividing energy into kinetic and potential variations. I'm not arguing that it's useless to measure energy quantitatively or that various types of mathematical modeling don't allow you to describe and predict mechanical systems in a more accurate way. I'm just saying that when people are confused about why potential energy is different than kinetic energy, or what constitutes potential or kinetic energy, that it makes sense to analyze and identify what energy is and what makes it kinetic or potential in the first place, at a qualitative level. I'm not in competition with math. I lament my lack of math skills and I try to understand math-references when I can. I just don't appreciate being told that I'm an idiot and nothing I think can be grounded or have truth-value without math. It's just not the case. There is more to physics/science than just math. The ration of math to non-math is also irrelevant. 90% of science can be math but that doesn't mean that the other 10% is any less important. It comes down to specific questions/issues and what is specifically necessary to address them.

Instead of expanding your theory immediately in the most general possible way to account for everything in a completely unfamiliar way, you should start with specific mechanisms that clearly support your more general ideas.

Why is it so hard for people who like math to acknowledge how much of science involves non-mathematic ideas and concepts?

This reminds me of my favorite line from the movie, The Passion of Christ, where Pontius Pilate says to his wife something like, "he talks of truth, what is truth?" She says something like that he knows what truth is, to which he replies something like, "the only truth I know is that there is a mob of people out there who is going to rebel if I let this innocent man go." So you can take sides with authoritarian claiming innocent victims just because the masses are rising up against an individual or minority, but that doesn't make it right. If Pilate found Jesus innocent, he should have protected him regardless of the political consequences. It may be inconvenient to go against an angry mob, but Pilate and his soldiers could have subdued the uprising easily, I think. Being true to the Holy Spirit would have meant that Pilate listened to his own truth that he found no fault in Jesus. Instead he betrayed his better judgment and chose for political expediency. That may create tranquility in the short-term, but ultimately it creates a precedent for the injustice to reverberate and multiply.

I'm talking about the original ideals of capitalism as it evolved from protestant ethics (the Max Weber view). The logic of capitalism as an ethically virtuous economic system made sense in the sense that saving was the individualist equivalent of Marxist communism's devotion to the collective good. For Marx, good communists take little and give a lot. Good capitalists do the same, only the mechanism motivating them is making more money and saving it instead of spending it. You're right that capitalism has been usurped by all sorts of deviation from the original protestant ethics. People use it as a free-for-all to milk as much money as they can out of anyone for any reason in any way and lots of people have lost the saving ethic, although it persists in terms of things like 401k retirement accounts, insurance, etc. Yet, wherever there is a big pool of money, there seems to be a flock of vultures trying to kill it and consume it instead of allowing it to survive as savings. The accumulation only occurs because of insufficient competition to continually drive down profits. If that occurred, everyone would be so impoverished that the bar for new enterprises would be pretty low. Anyone would start anything to make money instead of restricting their investments to the highest CAPs, PERs, etc. Hence mass-markets characterized by wealthy elites (and their managerial class aristocracy) vs. poor masses, more reminiscent of the middle ages than what you would expect from a true free-market. There's nothing wrong with mass-production really, since it's efficient, but it's odd that free market competition doesn't push profits down to levels that prevent capital accumulation among investors and managers. Yes, I see that you subscribe to Marxist economic naturalism where capitalism is concerned. But if you would read about ideal free market behavior, you would see that workers aren't supposed to get disenfranchized of everything except their labor because anyone is supposed to be able to gain competitive access to markets, which undercuts capitalists' ability to maintain exclusive ownership of the means of production. There are numerous deviations from pure competition that cause workers to accept their subordination to capital, which is the means by which the capital-owners avoid competing with ingenuous workers starting their own businesses. High wages, benefits, conveniences of not having to be accountable for one's labor, high liability and corresponding insurance costs, etc. all keep workers deferring their productivity to corporate authority. They do it by implementing redistributive policies that fuel a new investment competition so they can go on betting against each other for relative supremacy. Tax policies that target the rich are like requiring an ante at the casino to stimulate the rich to start betting and getting the cash flowing. Otherwise capitalism would quiet down significantly and make room for grass-roots market activities to emerge.

I just mentioned it as a potential application of this topic. I'm not interested enough in it to post a thread on it. If there was a thread on photoelectric fabric, I would mention sailboats - not to hijack, just to indicate prospective relevance.

Everything that involves reason and logic is philosophizing. You may be using a different meaning of the word that I am. I am just talking about conceptual processing, the application of logic, etc.. You are making philosophical claims when you make the arguments you are making. I could take your bait and philosophize with you about whether philosophy is necessary, but I would be proving myself right by engaging in a philosophical discussion with you about it in the first place. It's not a question of whether it's a good read or not. Texts contain concepts and ideas that can be applied. Once you apply them, you can see whether they add any value to your analysis. This is as true of Foucault's work as it is of Einstein's, Newton's, or Feynman's. I'm not sure what you're reading or why you're discussing it here. Are you saying that you're purely interested in excluding people from your discourse? It is not necessary to classify a model to subject it to critical rigor. However, subjecting anything to critical rigor in any way requires some level of philosophizing. Don't think of philosophy as a canonical discourse defined by a disciplinary, etc. That is "P"hilosophy. I'm just talking about the application of reason and logic, whether in the form of math or other language. It comes down to making valid arguments that hold up to critical scrutiny. Simply trying to assert validity by excluding people from criticize you doesn't strengthen your arguments or evidence for anything. I don't think it is possible for many people to think logically without equations once they become accustomed to thinking in terms of equations. So if you can't relate to how I think without math, how can you evaluate my knowledge, reasoning, and how I apply logic? All you seem to know is that the math works for you and I don't know it, therefore my knowledge must be incapable of conceiving of anything relevant. All you're really doing here is discussing your impressions about me and about the nature of scientific theory as you understand it, but I really don't think you have any basis for proving anything about your point. All you can do is say that you know something I don't know, therefore you must be right and I must be wrong. Am I wrong and there's more to your reasoning than this?

I agree with this interpretation, but what I find interesting about it is that it says what most people seem to be unwilling to say directly to Christians: i.e. that Jesus was a trouble-maker and that he caused his own persecution and killing by provoking existing authorities and that the righteousness of himself and his teachings are really peripheral. The view is that authority should be obeyed, whether right or wrong, in the service of keeping the peace regardless of corruption or injustice. The fact that people would take sides with corrupt authorities in persecuting and killing someone just for making them look bad or preaching inconvenient truths supports the idea that Jesus died for everyone's sins - insofar as everyone has the sin of cooperating with unjust authorities against 'trouble-makers' like Jesus. This was, in fact, Jesus' main message: that blasphemy of Holy Spirit was a worse sin than blasphemy or disobedience to any worldly authority and he was persecuted and killed for putting holy authority above the authority of the secular and religious elites. So, indeed he was an anarchist who was persecuted and killed for anarchy - but would you honestly claim that persecution and killing of people in the interest of reinforcing social hierarchy is legitimate? If Jesus would have supported the authorities and cooperated with them to save his own life, wouldn't that have made him untrue to his faith? So, considering that everyone who survives authoritarianism has cooperated with it in some way, aren't we all indeed sinners responsible for Jesus' death by cooperating with the system of power that persecutes and kills people like him?

I think that I have a clear way of explaining what it means for space to curve, but it may be that someone corrects me: If an object moves from point A to B as a result of its own inertia/momentum, with no external force applied, it can be said to have moved in a straight line inertially. However, just because an object moved from A to B doesn't mean that the path it took was the only possible line connecting A and B. So, for example, the Earth may be at point A on January 1 and be at point B on December 1. The path between A and B is a straight inertial path within the space-curvature of the Sun but there can be other paths between the two points that are also straight inertial paths. The curvature may be different for different kinds of objects/particles moving at different velocities, I think, so light curves very little at the same distance from the sun that causes the Earth to remain in orbit at its velocity. I believe this basically explains space-curvature, but someone will probably correct some aspect of what I have said so don't take it as a perfect explanation. I just offer it as a simple basis for going further.

Hi Anilkumar, are you asking about how mass-space curvature is explained and represented mathematically or how mass actually causes space to curve and/or what it means for space to curve in the first place?

This is a physics topic but since it is more philosophical in character, I'm posting it in philosophy. It may also be viewed as speculation, though, so please feel free to move it where appropriate. Consider that there are four types of force and that each type corresponds with a particular scale of events. This is logical since stronger forces do more work at smaller distances. Nuclear: Strong nuclear force holds the core of the atomic nucleus together and the weak force becomes prevalent as atomic nuclei grow beyond a certain size. Electrostatic/Electromagnetic: Far beyond the nucleus lies the electrons which are held to together in the atom by electrostatic force and interact according to electromagnetic force. Although you could say that the nucleons also exhibit electrostatic force and that electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields operate at every scale, I would argue that the electrons are really the central particle for this force. You could say that the electromagnetic force is what extends the nucleus of the atom outward to its electron shielding. Gravity: Far beyond the level of the electrons/atoms, gravity becomes significant as an organizing force of large numbers of atoms. Quantized Forces: So arguably each force can be associated with its own scale and the scales are not continuous but relatively discreet with large amounts of scales fathomable between them that do not exist. So it is almost as if physical force itself is quantized into radically disjunct levels in the same way electrons are quantized into separate orbitals with no in-between states. Is this a meaningful analogy or just aesthetic pseudo-parallelism like comparing an orange to a basketball because they're both round, orange, and have textured skin?

When people express hate for a particular candidate or party, this hate has the potential of causing weak supporters or those who are undecided to avoid supporting or associated with the hated party because they don't want to be hated themselves. Does this make hate one of if not the most effective political tactics?

And women are also the ones who are put in the position of aborting pregnancies and don't forget that while ideally women should be able to say no at any point of feeling discomfort or unhappiness during the act, doing so prior to male orgasm completion can be met with frustration and its reverberations.