lemur

How does this compare with non-sexual ways of getting pleasure from your children that are confusing and not particularly pleasurable for them? Is it ethical, for example, to make your kids sit through make-up and modeling sessions to have photographs of them to show to friends and family? Is it ok to make them give you back massages when they don't like doing it? Is it decent to make them serve you drinks while you get drunk in front of them? All these things seem exploitative to me and even if sex with them wasn't taboo or physically harmful/painful, I still think it would be exploitative.

I can't exclude the possibility that I'm too dumb to get it or that I think in a way that is different the the type of thinking that makes quantum theory seem logical to some people. I do know that statistics tend to obfuscate at the level of human-sciences. For example, when education is correlated statistically with income, it obfuscates any direct mechanical understanding of how education influences productivity and how productivity in turn influences the production and distribution of material and non-material forms of consumption and wealth. Similarly, when you say that a wave-function is a pure mathematical abstraction and spin has no relationship to any kind of classically mechanical angular momentum, it's as if you're saying that qualitative mechanical thought has to be traded in for correlations and predictive equations that don't actually describe anything except the process of getting Y by plugging in X and N values. If you can't reason predictively about possible relationships between different sub-atomic dynamics, what is the point of modeling?

Your making a very broad assumption that because you observe a pattern of invalidity among comprehensible theories that this means that there's some essential incompatibility between comprehension and validity. In simpler terms, you like many other people are content to give up intuitive comprehension in exchange for effective math. Since math isn't as rewarding for me as it seems to be for many others, I'm stuck in a perpetual quest for intuitively comprehensible knowledge. Actually, it's not just about math. I don't like black boxes that process data in incomprehensible ways and spit out results that have to be accepted on the basis of faith in the machine. Even if the machine never makes mistakes, I dislike the fact that the processes are incomprehensible to me. If a shaman taught me a rain dance that ALWAYS worked, I would still consider it unscientific if I couldn't figure out the causal mechanics that linked the dance to the rain that fell afterward.

It's not like I would ever expect someone to say that QM is a project to deliberately obfuscate theoretical physics and replace it with pure math; and I appreciate the logic that it doesn't make wrong predictions. I'm just more interested in understanding nature than translating it into math so I seek theories that explain things in ways that are comprehensible to my mind. I'm not insisting that nature has to make itself understandable in my terms, as people would accuse me of doing. I just don't think I should have to give up physics because a lot of the math is above me.

I don't know if light could ever travel in a recursive loop without some gravitational mass to curve space. I've heard some people say that light can generate gravity in itself, so maybe there's some situation possible in which light could curve into a loop due to its own innate gravity. Either way, the point is that I would like to know whether IF light would travel in a closed loop, would the loop have inertia/mass or could it travel at C as a loop? It seems to me that it would not be possible for such a loop to move at C because as it approached C, one side of the loop would be redshifting while the other would be blueshifting. It seems like particles with mass could resist force for a reason related to this.

From a politics-of-science perspective, it seems like quantum physics is designed in a way that prevent people from understanding it. This is generally similar to statistical approaches to data that effectively prevent subjectivity from playing a role in scientific reasoning by encoding logic in mathematical procedures, which in turn generate encoded conclusions based on pre-defined parameters. The only reason I can think of that people would prefer this approach to science than a more comprehensible one like relativity or something else designed and desired to be understandable is that people are afraid of the consequence of physics being widely understood. So when Feynmans says he can "safely say that nobody understands QM," it seems to resonate with the fact that he witnessed first hand the conversion of atomic science into atomic weaponry/power. To me, once you let fear of the potential power of science exceed faith in its potential to facilitate good, you've lost the capacity to do real science at all because science emerged as a project of enlightenment not control.

Why would anyone accept authority to impose force on them except out of fear for threat of force? On the other hand, why would anyone respect anyone's right not to have force imposed on them except on the basis of their own authority? There seems to be a lot of unchecked assumptions involved with this. It sounds like consent of the governed is assumed in the modus operandi of recognizing state sovereignty as automatically supercedent of any "sub-state" authority. I.e. it sounds like you're saying that international law is basically serving as an instrument for statist oppression/authoritarianism. That is basically the power game that everyone everywhere is dealing with. Consent of the governed is a prerequisite for authority, yet consent is solicited/manipulated and otherwise manufactured in many ways that are less that fully democratic. I'm afraid healthcare and basic human rights are one of the instruments used to solicit consent to authoritarian domination. I.e. people (freely) trade their freedom for health when someone offers them the opportunity. It's funny that you draw a parallel between state autonomy and individual autonomy since these are basically fundamentally contradictory. State/group/collective power means that individuals are subjugated to super-individual authority. I.e. they're supposed to give up part or all their power to external authority. Describing statism as "individual states rights" thus sounds like a propagandistic way of appealing to the idea of individual freedom in order to promote the use of social power to trump individual authority. The question is what do people really want, individual freedom to self-govern or social power to control others? But with democracy comes putting your prerogative on the table for critical discussion. Many people want democracy because they expect it will produce material prosperity or because they think it will increase their freedom to act unilaterally in various ways, but once they find out that democracy involves responsibility and political negotiations, they turn out to prefer some form of autocracy that gives them what they want without having to validate it. This is why many people globally who have access to democracy like the idea of a benevolent dictator because they are frustrated with not being able to achieve their goals democratically. Generally, I think there is a correlation between strength of desire/will and frustration with democracy. This is why it is so popular to use capitalism as a means of authoritarian domination for whoever has money to spend. It gives people a way to stop having to negotiate and just pay someone to do what they want without them having to reason about it. This is an abuse of capitalism, though, imo. I disagree. I think the core values of democracy and freedom are derived from Christian religion. I think you could have a satanist-derived constitution, for example, that would promote deceit, manipulation, and power by force as well as the promotion of destruction and mayhem. I think you're overlooking the fact that it was people with strong Christian values who designed US ideologies of governance. Yes, a good example is the many "blue laws" that were overturned that prevented businesses from being open on sundays or at night, etc. The problem is that even if you favor closing businesses on sunday and at night, that doesn't mean you won't have to work those shifts in order to have a job. So once democracy overturns a religious-based law, religious people get subject to the structural consequences despite disagreement. Anyone can propose anything and anyone can and should apprehend it critically but constructively. If people would do this, majority and minority would be irrelevant concepts. They only come into play as a check against anti-constructive discourse where people start using group solidarity to resist critical reason. In that case, a group can be checked as a minority by the majority or if it grows to a majority, it can be checked according to individual and/or minority rights. Ultimately the point is to balance various forms of power so that no one gets oppressed/dominated. So many people get confused between democracy and majoritarian fascism. National socialism was majoritarianism without freedom for minoritarian opposition. It's still authoritarian, it's just majoritarianism becomes the justification for unilateral power. The reason you hear so many people insist that democracy is majoritarian domination (and note that it is insistence instead of making a case for it) is because this is the most convenient facade for authoritarianism where democracy is an explicit value. Ultimately, however, the point of democracy is to support checking and balancing between multiple powers that undermines unilateral authoritarianism by whatever justification. Power has to be exercised by reasonable consent with constructively critical free cooperation among individuals.

If you like dealing with facts, address specificities specifically. I don't mean to be rude or give you the impression that there is some general "forum culture" that my posts are representative of. I just think, personally, that if you want to discuss something you quote the line(s) you want to discuss and respond to your quote with your thoughts on it. You don't need to conform to any "forum culture." Just be intelligent and avoid rudeness; and of course observe and respect forum rules and other posters. Moderators tend to be pretty easy going, I've found, but that could be due to the low levels of obnoxiousness compared to some forums.

I used to be concerned about fairness in affirmative action. Now I just think of it as a method of marketing higher education. Higher education is an extremely lucrative commodity. People save for years and take out second mortgages to spend on their kids' education. To maximize revenue, you need to maximize the number of people willing to save up and spend on their kids' education. So when you do a statistical analysis of who is likely to skip college and go straight to work, foregoing all that tuition-spending, you target whoever you find for discount tuition because you hope that once they "taste" your product, they will be hooked and want to pay for it for their kids as well. So is it fair for whites that they are denied the discount because they are the most well represented ethnic category in higher ed? No, but is it fair that higher ed cashes in on years of savings and that college students enjoy royal treatment due to their bestowed wealth? Generally, it seems to be just a game designed to allow people in their 20s the freedom to explore every possible facet of life before they settle down and have families that prevent them from exploring as freely. What does it matter who gets more of a discount on tuition and fees, when ultimately everyone ends up paying more for their kids than they got out of the system when they were students?

How thick is the ice? Maybe you could build systems of caves and tunnels that could be heated and the water-runoff collected and used in various ways. It could be an interesting prospect to view the methane atmosphere as a fuel resource while viewing the ocean/ice as habitable terrain since on Earth we usually think of fuel as coming from underground and the atmosphere as being the primary habitable terrain. It could be interesting to design a method for burning the methane for heat within the ice caves/tunnels while expanding the network and at the same time re-capturing the CO2 that exhausts from burning methane with scarce, imported oxygen. Assuming the CO2 would rise, you could have a top level of ice-caves devoted to hydroponic gardening and subsequent levels for other purposes below that.

It's callous when the primary concern is statistically differentiating between ethnic populations. It is not callous to investigate a risk factor, but then you could just be concerned with ways to prevent early labor. OR you could be concerned with means to better care for premature infants. Comparing death rates is just a dramatic way to make the research more about comparing different populations than about studying and promoting better health care, imo. I didn't mean so much to accuse anyone of being callous - just to note that it is implicitly so, imo.

That's the first time I've ever read a post and saw a parallel with the user avatar. What's with the ad hominem attacking? What does it matter what Einstein was like or whether I think I'm Einstein, Moses, or Tiger Woods? Am I supposed to not post what I think because I might sound like I'm trying to be Einstein? It beckons the question who you think you are to attack me like that.

There's no point. If not even a single sentence or phrase caught your attention enough to ask about it specifically, I doubt I could summarize anything in a way that works for you. My guess is that you don't think about culture at the empirical level of everyday details. You probably just think in terms of broad macro-social lines, which usually totally misses what's actually going on at the individual/interactive level.

I don't think gravity will end up requiring a mediating particle because it think gravity and inertia/mass will be found to exist as resistances to propagation. Electrons, imo, seem like photons that resist propagation, for example. I hope it doesn't divert too much from this thread to mention my personal opinion, and I hope it's not too speculative to be legitimately posted.

You're assuming a politically uniform "they." The concern people would have with religious governance is that religious/cultural minorities would get oppressed by religion-motivated laws. For example, people who are for allowing sexual freedoms like birth-control, abortion, divorce, pre-marital/extra-marital sex, etc. want those freedom protected AGAINST religious/government interference and would probably prefer that the government would actively protect and support sexual diversity (though the question is whether support isn't also linked to control). This could cause political conflict considering that for many religious people, the whole point of political power/governance is to attempt to legislate morality and ethics in a way that essentially saves people from themselves (and others), in their view. The big question these days seems to be what to do with sexual diversity, including that between religious conservatism and secular naturalism. Should these conflicting cultures be partitioned or should people be allowed to engage sexual differences and attempt to intervene? You can think of such interventions in both directions: e.g. sexually liberated people offering asylum to refugees from sexually repressive social situations OR sexual conservatives attempting to resist culture that sexualizes people through media and other forms of sexuality-promotion.

Perhaps naively, I would assume that all tall buildings are built in a way that minimizes the possibility of them toppling over in any direction, no matter how much wind or fire damage occurs. It seems somewhat obvious that that would have been the main concern in the engineering of progressively taller structures, though I don't have any direct evidence to base this on.

But is it enough to prevent overnight frost? I would expect that before any kind of sustainable gardening is attempted on Mars, a system will have been developed and tested on Earth that is totally self-contained and filters sunlight to imitate the prospective Martian situation. I would also say that similar temperature patterns should be sought but I wonder whether the lower gravity and atmospheric pressure alter the effects of heat and light on plants.

I think there's a general psychological reason that sexually open people prefer to be free of sex sometimes/often. Sex is a very draining activity cognitively and emotionally. This doesn't just apply to actual physical intercourse but also sexual fantasizing, dating-negotiations, dealing with sexual rumors, etc. So it makes sense that people want sex sometimes and want to be free of it at other times. The problem is that because there is so much sexual structuring, many people are excluded/isolated/repressed and thus don't get the opportunity to desire freedom FROM sexuality because they have yet to experience sexual freedom, imo. Good point about weakness or the feeling of. I think this feeling can also be traced to the nature of sex that goes beyond cultural programming. Children look up to their parents and struggle throughout childhood to develop physically and in terms of skills to rival their parents in terms of physical/economic/social/cultural power. Sexuality is a big part of this, imo, because it is closely related to the bodily and hormonal developments that impress children about adults, such as beards and other body hair, etc. So while it can be just as belittling to rigorously police them from learning anything about sex, it's also not nice to flaunt it. I think maybe it should be treated like alcohol. I.e. it's ok to talk to kids about it and have a drink in front of them at dinner now and then but it's better not to get drunk and it is also better to stay sober with them most of the time so they don't feel alienated from you. Since children enjoy many forms of erotic affection, such as hugs, kissing, non-sexual touches, etc., why not limit sexual interactions between adults to these forms and explain sex, the purpose and risks, but tell them that it's better to wait as long as possible to become sexually active because it can be addictive and it's better to establish yourself as a non-sexual adult before acquiring sexual experience.

I agree. There's something universal about the aversion to knowing about sex between one's parents. It surely has to do with the special relationship between a child and each parent. There must be some terrible trauma that comes with feeling like either of your parents can be pleased in a way that you are absolutely of incapable of doing for them. Once children are mature enough to identify with their parents as adults, it is probably a good thing to share experience, advice, ethics, etc. about sex. But while they're young enough to still just identify with a parent purely as a caregiver and source of affection, why make them feel denigrated and inadequate by confronting them with something that inherently belittles them in their pre-pubescence? Of course, when they engage in sexually-oriented behavior you have to gently enlighten them as to potential consequences for that kind of behavior if they do it in public, for example, but all sexual exploration should be initiated by children themselves, imo, until they reach adolescence when they may require some explicit confrontation in order to overcome the shame of addressing the issue.

Why? It might be interesting theoretically but in what sense do westerners ever defer to non-western cultural authority in sexual matters? Western culture only recognizes western rationality and ethics. If you can use a form of non-western reason to appeal to western authority, you may be able to establish viable cultural alternatives, but otherwise they'll just eschew you as pedophile, child-abuser, etc. if you claim cultural primacy for a conflicting culture of youth incorporation into sexuality.

I don't really see any difference between calling someone a subject of a sovereign and calling them a slave of an owner. In one case, the individual 'belongs' to the 'nation,' while in the other, collective ownership is replaced with direct ownership of one individual by another. Either way, claiming that some other national (or other) authority doesn't have any power over someone because they're not "your subject" is like saying that I can't discipline or protect your children because they're not mine. This logic works fine to the extent that people accept the legal-governing authority of 'their sovereign protector/owner' but it becomes problematic, imo, in situations where the subject(s) in question don't have any interest in submitting to the authority of 'their sovereign.' Ultimately this comes down to the issue of whether people should be free to choose their nation of citizenship or whether it should be assigned to them on the basis of birthright or some other criteria. What's more, why should people have to forego one national citizenship in order to claim another? Why can't people simply acknowledge feelings of belonging in multiple nations?

It's not a good idea because the kids could want to participate and then feel hurt if they were excluded in some way. Also, if they get the idea that sex is a fun activity, they could expect to be able to do it in some way and then get hurt and frustrated when told that they have to wait until adulthood. Generally it's better to just engage in activities with them that they can understand and relate to except when necessary. Generally, you can explain to them the necessity of doing something that they're not allowed to do if they ask. If that activity is sex, they may want to participate in various ways that would cause all sorts of problems so better to just avoid exposing them to it, in practice at least anyway. You can explain aspects to them in a theoretical way if you can do so without freaking them (and yourself) out about it. They may want to know where babies come from at a young age and if they can understand that sex is something that adults do when they get to an age where they can become parents, this may satisfy them that it's not something they want to be involved in before they are adults.

I find it callous when people compare infant mortality rates without discussing specific causes of infant mortality. Babies don't die due to general causes. They die because of the specific details of their situations. You can't simply correlate their mortality to societal factors. You need to do individual case studies.

Yes, maybe there's another way to propose it: as an object approaches C, it takes increasing amounts of energy to accelerate it relatively less, right? So, for example, as an object orbiting a black hole approaches C, it doesn't accelerate to a higher orbit but continues at the same speed and altitude but with higher energy, right? So isn't that higher energy that it expresses at relativistic speeds similar to the propagation energy expressed by photons, which express mass only as momentum over spacetime? In other words, isn't energy through spacetime the same thing as gravitational mass? I.e. a photon or material object in motion expresses energy as mass to the extent that its speed approaches C? E.g. light expresses mass as energy moving at C, but material objects may express mass-gravitation AS WELL AS gravitation due to motion-energy according to their speed relative to C. This idea is making loads of sense to me, but maybe I need some clear explanation as to how its misguided.

Wouldn't "increasing curvature" imply strengthening of the gravity well being orbited? I was thinking in terms of increasing curvature relative to the thing moving, or in relation to a gravity well, straightening of the curvature of the gravity well due to counter-curvature caused by the satellite and its motion.