lemur

The point, and I think the OP expressed it well, is that without a concept of super-human authority, "kings," "priests," or other human authorities claim to have absolute sovereignty. Most recently, absolutism has been justified on the basis of cultural autonomy with the idea that cultural knowledge is always true relative to itself. In this way, individuals fail to question cultural authority because they are told that it is arbitrary and you either accept it or reject the culture as a whole. Super-human or super-cultural authority, whether called, "God," "Reason," "Truth," or whatever, offers the potential of contesting culturally-relative knowledge and arbitrary human authority. In other words, regardless of the status of a human authority, you can contest that authority on the grounds that it is simply wrong, without having to ground your reasoning in some arbitrary paradigmatic assumptions. If all knowledge and truth are paradigmatic and culturally relevant, human authority becomes supreme and the technocracy of an elite who has developed their arbitrary knowledge to a refined level of exclusivity will be able to endless dictate truth without having any accountability to defensible reason. I.e. "there doesn't have to be reason because it is just the way things are because some human says so."

It just occurred to me that maybe electrons could accelerate through the electrostatic field of the nucleus and that their increasing energy could cause them to "jump around" more as an effect of energy-additions at relativistic speeds. I don't understand what governs the trajectory of their motion, if they even have a trajectory. When you say their frequency increases, does that mean they travel in a "beam" similar to light? Why, because the photon emitted outward from the nucleus bumps electrons outward?

Does the electron's position become more sporadic as it accelerates closer to C? Are atomic electrons constantly accelerating/falling into the nucleus and then reconstituting themselves elsewhere as they "dissolve" into wave-energy?

I find the easiest way to think about buyancy is to think about the denser particles of air or water falling down around the buyant object and pushing it up as a result. Think about a bubble of air rising through the water. It's not that the bubble is actually rising as much as it is the case that water above the bubble is falling into the bubble the same way it would fall into an empty container. As the surrounding water falls into the bubble, it forces the air upward where more water falls into it, etc. The net effect is that the bubble/air rises, but the cause is the heavier water falling and pushing it up. This is the same reason a helium balloon rises. The atmospheric air is falling around it and piling up below it, pushing it higher. How much power do you think falling air has compared with, say, wind?

Don't lower frequency wavelengths bend more through a prism than those of higher frequency? Doesn't that also suggest that the lower frequency waves follow a more curved path as the higher frequency ones? Could that also be related to the greater amount of power in the higher frequency waves? Also, since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, I would think that the bending of light would have the counter-effect of straightening spacetime-curvature for other nearby photons. I.e. a lower frequency wave traveling near a higher frequency wave could follow a straighter path than it would if the higher frequency wave were absent. Has this already be observed/tested?

Someone showed me something online about wireless electricity (sorry to be so vague). The basic logic was that a magnetic field could be tuned to some frequency where it would only discharge to a device set to receive the power at that frequency. Is this possible? What would prevent it from discharging/grounding to something other than the intended receiver? What kind of wave would the transmission be? A microwave? An ion chain?

Not sure what that means. I just meant that photons or some other object could eventually curve back around to its point of emission and that there is no possibility of any path that extends infinitely away from all other points. If you would travel in a "straight line" tangent to the Earth's surface, you would appear to be curving with an increasing angle to the horizon. How do you define a trajectory as being straight? How is this different from spacetime curvature causing photons to follow a curved path? Would the universe have to be a single perfect sphere for light to always return to its point of emission? Couldn't it just be that gravity fields tend to link up in a way that always curves spacetime back around toward some other gravity well?

Nationalism often goes deeper than national pride, although that is usually part of it for anyone for whom it goes deeper. For many people globally, even those whose governments are supposed to neutral (i.e. non-ethnocentric) nationality carries ethnic connotations that bring with them ideologies of who "belongs" and who doesn't, who should have rights to work, access to social benefits, etc. Someone who feels no particular ethno-national pride might still feel that they "belong" more in one national region than another and they might feel like "their government" has a responsibility to protect or ensure their well-being whereas other national governments don't. Many people also feel a sense of cultural territorialism that leads them to naturalize their own language, religion, etc. and view others as less natural (i.e. "more foreign"). All these factors add up to systematic exclusivity and privileges for some and systematic discrimination for others. Race-based territorialism and discrimination became visible and questioned during the 19th and 20th centuries and presumably the same will occur for ethno-nationalism in the coming period. As it does, I would expect multiple citizenship to become more common and better regulated because the whole idea of ethnic-belonging would be eliminated from the politics of national identification. Technically, national citizenship should be as insignificant as which bank(s) you have accounts with.

Well put. I thought about Marx's ideas of species-being (people enjoying expressing themselves in labor) and labor-alienation (people being diverted from the joys of labor to focus on other concerns like money) but I didn't know Hegel addressed this too. The odd thing is that many people seem to actually enjoy the self-worth they feel for having endured unpleasant work. I don't know if this is because they consider it worth it to produce whatever it is they're producing or if it's purely endurance for the sake of endurance. I have noticed that often when people call themselves "hard-working" and call others "lazy," what they're actually referring to is obedience. They could be doing nothing productive all day but because their manager told to do nothing and they obeyed, they feel like they worked hard and all the pride that comes with that. People don't just fear having no money, they fear relatively low levels of income and disposable income. I think this differs according to personal thresholds of consumption-expectations. One person may fear the social stigma of having to take a bus to work or school while another may take the bus because they fear having to steal for money and going to jail. Imo, the issue is also how much freedom is given to working people by their employers. Long work weeks, unfavorable scheduling, and short vacations contribute to unhappiness with one's work, and leads to people being grumpy at work. I don't know if this could be solved by the government giving people more freedom in seeking a new job if most if not all jobs maintain similar scheduling expectations. It's a broad topic so it is all related, I think. I was specifically interested about whether the general culture of economic fear translates into workplace unhappiness in a more immediate sense and how. My general impression is that if someone feels the need to do things against their will, especially if they have real reasons not to want to do certain work, this would cause certain psychological issues. For example, if someone doesn't like to lie but they feel they have to lie to clients about certain things or they might lose their job, they may do this but it will cause some internal conflicts that lead to bitterness, etc.

Good post, though I think you didn't mean "below 35C." I guess I am looking to understand the factors that make consistent cold unhealthy and how those are related to temperature. True, but I'm more interested in how cold you can keep your indoor temperature consistently and remain healthy, including the use of all mitigating factors such as warm clothing, hot drinks, etc. In other words, if someone wanted to win a bet for how low they could set their thermostat for an entire winter, at what point would their health suffer despite warm clothes, exercise to keep warm, etc.? That's a very good point. Core heat is what causes shivering, I understand. Still, I'm also wondering about skin temperature (hands and face esp.) and breathing cold air (throat/lung cold exposure). These are useful numbers, thanks. Imagine that in a good sleeping bag or warm bed with head-covering, you can basically stay 'toasty warm' with just 150W internal heating! And you can generate that perpetually on @2000 calories of food per day. That's @2.5 kwh of energy. That's equivalent to @1 cup of gasoline.

I like the bubble graphic but I'm not sure I'm able to read it exactly. I wish it was somehow possible to show the effects of different forms of conservation in terms of joules per unit utility or something like that. Zone heating, for example, reduces joules per degree indoor temperature by constraining the volume heated. Warm clothing is even more effective in that it maximizes body-heat utilization (why radiate heat from your body into the air when you can utilize it for warmth? Transit/mobility/shipping is also relative to the function of each trip. Geographical consolidation could vastly reduce the amount of joules-per-trip. Currently it seems like fossil-fuel is still burnt for the effect of celebrating wealth/prosperity the way fountains are used to showcase water-abundance. If fuel-use was done very strategically, I think it would be possible to get a lot more utility out of each joule. Maybe the slogan for energy consumption should be, "Every joule is a jewel."

Aren't people only eligible for unemployment benefits as long as they fulfill requirements such as not voluntarily terminating employment and persistently applying for a new job while they are unemployed? Doesn't that cause people to take jobs they don't really like or want and then feel unhappy in their work because they're basically just doing the job because they are required to be employed?

That is something I wonder about too. Does light eventually return to its point of emission due to spacetime curvature or can it radiate infinitely in new directions? Typically I think of a hyperbole as being an open path, but maybe every hyperbolic path through all subsequent gravitational fields ends up connecting back into itself in some/every direction. This would seem far fetched considering that entire regions of the universe seem to disappear from each other because of expansion. But then it was probably pretty surprising to find out that you could go in any direction from any point on Earth and eventually end up where you started without diverting from a straight line path.

True, but you start running into opportunity costs. This was shown very clearly by the move toward biofuel, where it was recognized that using corn to power vehicles would quickly drive up the price of corn and thereby meat and a number of other food products. At some point, I suspect that high energy-consumption will simply evolve into a luxury privilege for a shrinking elite (to the extent that it isn't already).

Imo, vacuum is the product of multiple gravity wells pulling matter away from each other. I don't think that light propagates through empty space but through gravitational field-force by contracting/expanding field-force. Given the absence of empirical data from outside any gravitational-field, what makes anyone even think that space exists except as gravitation? Is it even possible to theorize the existence of EM force outside of gravitational fields?

Humans can tolerate wide ranges of temperature variation. With increasing hot or cold, however, discomfort is reached and ultimately health problems may result. I'm wondering about the limits of sustainable indoor temperature. I have read about acclimatization studies where native Alaskans were observed to walk barefoot in very cold temperatures and were measured as shivering at lower temperatures than other students who did not engage in acclimatization practices. Does anyone know what the minimum consistent indoor temperature humans can tolerate without encountering health problems? Obviously clothing and other factors make a difference, but I would guess around 50F and I'm not sure if that is sustainable for multiple weeks without running into health problems. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Ignorance and arrogance are often bedfellows, I think. From the responses I've gotten to this comment, it seems like you don't come in contact with people who are not only uninterested in gaining knowledge, they believe that they are entitled to the perks of modern life in its absence. They stand on the shoulders of giants in their economic-technological privileges but they resent the idea that they should have to know more than how to make a popular power-point presentation. They consider it rude when you ask them questions whose answers aren't readily transposable from their dogma. Ignorance has less to do with not knowing facts or other information as it is rooted in the word, "ignore." Ignorance is about the will to ignore everything except what suits you - and what often suits people is to be validated without challenge. They're not interested in the challenge of progressing - only the rewards of social conformity. Cynical as it sounds, it is the dark side of modern culture - that modernity has more passive consumers than active contributors/producers.

As far as I know, the only organisms higher on the food chain than humans, besides the occasional shark or lion, are microbial parasites, bacteria, etc. If you count viruses, what is the main cause of death for humans except cancer? Cancer is caused by viruses, isn't it? Humans seem to be able to dominate large organisms pretty well but when it comes to infiltration from within, we're still working on it.

Maybe electrons just have a lot of nervous energy

Economic recession. Fear of losing jobs and income. Fear of being uninsured. Fear of inconsistent work history. Etc. All of these are fears that push people to do jobs they don't necessarily like or believe in. Social science has noted that such pressures are necessary to ensure a steady supply of labor. Another result is "labor alienation" where workers don't care about or even understand their work and lead meaningless lives as a result. A related question is whether doing things against one's will or better judgment simply makes employees grumpy and causes general unpleasantness in the workplace. What happens when people make the choice to do things against their will? Does it create cognitive-emotional conflict on a psychological level? Does it cause work to be unpleasant in other ways? Is there any way to have an effective economy where people are under less pressure to work against their will? Or would more voluntarism/freedom just result in more shirking and consumption of other people's labor without contributing to economic prosperity, because it's not required to do so?

Gravity has to be strong enough to condense water into liquid. If gravity was lower and thus atmospheric pressure, so would the boiling temperature of water. Would life have formed in the mist?

Meditation may have positive effects precisely because it produces a certain level of stress associated with impatience with boring (in)activity. In fact, I think one of the main benefits of meditation would be that as you learn to relax despite the stress of boredom, you become better psychologically equipt to deal with stressful situations generally because the breathing and calming that you do during meditation becomes second-nature and may even occur subconsiously in stressful situations where you have to pay attention to more important things. The media seems to always show people actively engaging in breathing techniques and other relaxation exercises in a comic way, as if these are fleeting attempts to deal with stress that people can't deal with. In reality, people who are good at dealing with stress have probably learned by other means techniques similar to the ones practiced during meditation.

Can you respect ignorance even when it is either willful, loved/enjoyed, or both? Some people are in love with their own ignorance because of the benefits it brings. "I can't understand" is like a magic mantra for some people to avoid trying and still expect to be respected for what they think. Ignorance is bliss, but it can be bliss at others' expense which makes it wrong to cling to it stubbornly, imo.

I always found it "annoying as hell" (to quote Ringer) when people prosthelytized (I can never spell this word) and tried to convert me to their religion. Then when I was studying cultural relativism, I learned that tolerance rarely overlaps with total acceptance, so there's a passive politics to failing to spread your culture to others. This can be hard to see, and people debate it, but I'll try to explain. When you have some culture or religion and you fail to attempt to include others in it, you are basically creating a situation of relative exclusion where people who do not assent to your culture/religion will be denied the privileges of social-inclusion. The privilege could be as basic as open communication. So while it is not your belief that you should convert others to your religion/culture, what you are doing in practice is saying, "until you come to share my culture, I'm not going to be friends with you as much as someone who does." So instead of pushing your beliefs actively, you're doing so passively by withholding (for lack of a better word) love from people who don't convert. So the nice thing about Christianity and other cultures/religions that value reaching out to people is that they are not re-actively exclusive but pro-actively inclusive. The problem comes when people don't want to be included or they get exploited by becoming included. But you can't ignore the bigger social problem of exclusion, imo, which is caused by people erecting cultural/religious boundaries and being averse to including others.

I think you have to consider the role that scarcity plays in setting prices. As a good/resource becomes more scarce, its price tends to increase while relative abundance tends to make the price go down. So as oil gets more scarce, its higher price will cause alternatives to become a relatively better value. This in turn should cause demand for oil to decrease and the rate of consumption will decrease accordingly. As a result, it is unlikely that the oil reserves will ever run out completely. They will just get consumed at a decreasing rate until there's practically no use for oil anymore because alternatives have taken the place of oil in most applications.