Phi for All

! Moderator Note We're trying to discuss ideas here, which includes attacking or supporting them accordingly. We try NOT to attack people here, so we can maintain some civility and a safe space to have a conversation about a very nuanced topic. Everyone would appreciate your insight into the topic without calling people names or making assumptions about their character. Thanks for understanding.

A head-cuff would be ideal. Happiness and stress seem like measurements of pressure, so something with Pascals for units is good.

Mentioning reproduction reminded me that some slang has been preferred over the more correct terminology. I know a LOT of folks don't use the clinical names for body parts and sexual activity because they think only a Pollyanna uses terms like "penis" and "vagina". That seems to be changing though, and the latest generations are dropping most of the cruder terms as childish and repressed.

This is a specious argument, one that seems to make sense but really doesn't. An atom is NOT a living thing, not if you want to make meaningful distinctions between organic and inorganic matter. You're anthropomorphizing nature, and she really hates that (to steal one of swansont's great lines). Inanimate matter doesn't "want" anything. Gravity and chemistry have an effect on matter, but the matter doesn't "use" chemistry or gravity to achieve some goal. Don't you think a distinction needs to be made between say, a rock and a rabbit? The rabbit is MUCH more efficient at absorbing and dispersing sunlight as energy, and has systems to maintain that efficiency as long as it's "alive". Can you say the same about the rock?

Slang for names is partly bonding, but it can also be used to highlight or hide special relationships. You might introduce yourself to others as Mister McDonald, but I get to call you Mack, or perhaps I've nicknamed you The Farmer so I can make reference without actually naming you, and only those who know you equally well will understand. A lot of slang is used to hide meaning to avoid trouble or judgement. In that way, it can be a survival tactic. You can't prove I was bad-mouthing the king when I said "His Nibs couldn't find his arse with both hands!" A modern equivalent in the US is "tea" meaning "gossip", as in "we spilled some tea together". I'm honestly unsure of the correlation to evolution. Certainly the genes that give us cooperative and communicative tendencies are at play here, but I'm not sure there's evidence that slang has, as CharonY puts it, been actually encoded into our genes.

This could be part of the misunderstanding about our Speculations section. We're still using mainstream knowledge here, so your hypothesis needs to rise ABOVE mere opinion, and unfortunately the scientific method tells us to avoid subjective, personal experiences and draw from a broader, more objective dataset. Your anecdote isn't useless, since you can base further research into the subject on your own experiences, but for discussion purposes, we need to see how you would go about gathering more evidence in support of your hypothesis. Evidence is the key here, and makes the real difference between guessing and speculating. Anybody can guess, but guesses combined with supportive evidence could lead to an actual theory.

I was discussing something similar regarding autism recently. Many folks viewing autism as a "disorder" point out that some on the spectrum find it hard to look others in the eye. Using your argument above, perhaps the reason some autistic people don't like looking at people's faces is because they don't see the parts cooperating. Many in our society slap on a false smile that jars with their eyes or the rest of their body posture, or otherwise exhibit "normal" behavior that can seem false and weird to someone with high sensitivity. So in this instance, who has the "disorder", the person who is giving off mixed signals about their state of mind, or the person sensitive enough to pick up on it? And wrt gender dysphoria, might not some of these folks simply be more sensitive rather than conflicted?

This makes you sound hypocritical, in that you think words are silly yet you use them to explain this concept. And I've got the entirety of human languages as evidence in support of the statement that words are more than words. What have you got? I think you have more words. I hope your reply tomorrow (you have a 5 post limit on your first day) uses a more interesting combination of words than you've used so far.

I don't accept any of your premises. I'm not even sure what can be done with a philosophy like this. What do you hope to learn without words? Could you explain why you think all words are either silly or serious? I observe that words allow us to share patterns with each other that we've found, which greatly aids in our communications, increases our cooperative efforts, and allows us a high degree of precision to complement our high intelligence and tool use.

The one I remember (but not the name or author), the humans there had colonized a planet with about 50% more gravity than Earth. They hadn't evolved there, but they adapted to the planet, and found when they traveled to other planets they had a big strength advantage, at least for a while. They had to go back home occasionally to reacclimate their muscles. As others have noted, I don't think we'd look at all like humans if we'd evolved in double Earth's gravity. So much would change.

That's the bumper sticker version (and I love it!). It really should be equated with one of those fancy ball dances where there are no divas, and the whole idea is that everybody works together to make sure all do the same dance well and nobody collides. Have they ever tried this with driverless cars? If they were networked, this could be part of their programming. I wonder if we aren't headed in that direction. I used to commute back home on a 3 lane, one-way street with lots of traffic lights, and learned quickly that they were timed for about 32 mph, meaning you'd hit every light green after the first one if you kept it at 32. Unfortunately, so many people wanted to race to be first, and would inevitably get stopped by the red light. Only a few times in about 3 years did I find myself surrounded by others who'd figured it out too. We all cruised along at 32, making all the lights, with no annoying leadfoots stopped at a light that's about to turn green. Good times. I've heard traffic in DC can be a nightmare. All those people making laws, then get in their cars and break those laws. A cop friend once told me that lawyers were the worst people to pull over for traffic violations, for various reasons. The movies haven't helped. Toxic driving = cool stunts. Following the laws and speed limits have become a meme for "boring, basic, brainless". The idea seems to be that, if you're moving fast enough, they won't see your turn signals until it's too late anyway, so why use them? Making others eat your dust seems to appeal to those with a more competitive than compassionate outlook, and it's the plot of too many of our stories.

Most of the behavior that needs to change hinges on simple compassion, like letting others merge, but I think we need to train new drivers about what really goes on in traffic. We all know people who consider themselves to be stellar drivers, yet they make aggressive lane changes, tailgate, and constantly move to the lane they feel is moving the fastest. They believe they're driving better than everyone else, and that's going to be hard to change. How do you convince someone who's a Fast & Furious franchise addict that their bold driving styles are causing the very traffic they're trying to overcome? Another part of educating new drivers is getting them to understand about defensive driving. I cringe every day looking at cars following each other so closely. Those folks believe their reflexes are fast enough to match the braking of the car in front of them, and they might be if that car is only slowing down. If the car in front hits the brakes seriously, there's nothing to be done. Physics is a bitch, and I think most people forget that.

Can I make it a little stronger and more focused? The MIT study you cited spotlights tailgating, so that should be called out in any hypothesis about it. How about: The use of cooperative driving techniques combined with anti-tailgating technology will improve traffic and result in fewer accidents and delays. The study talks about the sensor technology available even now. I recently rented a big vehicle equipped with cameras all around, and alarms linked to proximity sensors. The car warned me of vehicles approaching on the sides, and showed a little green "car" when I was the proper distance from the vehicle in front of me. A couple of times the car thought I came up on another car too quickly, and lots of lights and alarms flashed. I don't know if the car had the ability to initiate the brakes on its own, something I'm still on the fence about. It's anecdotal, but I think this is evidence in support of how following too closely causes more traffic, and that changing our behavior and also adopting new technology can improve the situation.

I couldn't find it quickly this morning, but a few years back there was a meta-study on traffic which concluded that virtually ALL modern traffic was caused by brake lights. You see people brake ahead of you and back off the gas, or step on your own brakes, continuing the signal back down the line to remove energy from the system. And most of the brake lights could be avoided if folks backed off and stopped tailgating, which would allow for more merging to smooth the flow. MY hypothesis is that if more people practiced cooperative driving rather than competitive driving, we'd all make it to work/home/wherever more consistently.

I did read Genady's post. He asked for references for a statement you made. Why do you find that odd? You claimed that the trampoline model for gravity is the kind of thing that will get young students interested, and Genady asked for maybe a link to a study or article where some rigor was put into the statement. Do you think it's bad to be skeptical of things we seem to take for granted? There's no evidence that he's being "deliberately obtuse", and plenty of evidence that he doesn't necessarily agree with you. He might be asking for a citation for your statement in order to get you to think harder about it or question it. Instead of guessing at people's motivations, perhaps just answering their questions might be a good strategy. You may think your statement is easy to understand, but you thought of it, so it makes perfect sense to you. Genady has a very good grasp of English (and a few other languages), so I'm sure they'll be happy to discuss this with you if you can avoid disparagement. FWIW, moderators here don't usually moderate threads they're involved in. All my statements have been made as a member.

Hey! What the hell? You don't get to talk to people that way here. Civility is our #1 rule. And FYI, lots of pop-sci mangling of explanations have been very detrimental. You argue that it makes science more accessible to kids, but many popular science articles are extremely misleading. I think it's MUCH better to teach correct science, even if it's harder, than to dumb it down to the point where it's causing more problems (like the rubber sheet analogy). Please don't use Strawman arguments here. Nobody, NOBODY claimed kids don't find experiments cool, and I think you know that. You need to get used to people asking for clarity and citations. In science, we want to use the correct terminology, definitions, measurements, and calculations always. Many times, responses are digging deeper into what you claimed so we can either agree or disagree with you. Saying nothing is like tacit agreement, so you may get pushback on some assertions until we better understand what you're saying. We attack ideas here, but never people. This is scientific rigor, or what passes for it on a free science discussion forum moderated by volunteers.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010218021003345 The missing bit of information is what replaced the missing bit of oxygen in the atmosphere. If the 10% oxygen was replaced by CO2, it could be a huge problem. Also, the study I linked to above states that you won't get flames until you reach 15%, at least with particleboard. I'm not sure blowing on it will increase the O2 enough.

I don't think 10% is enough to keep mental functions operating, so whether you could understand what you were seeing is questionable. It's also doubtful you would have the strength to blow on anything, much less drag yourself to where the embers are. It wouldn't take much effort to exhaust you.

I disagree that the fundamental issue here is "What wouldn’t you pay to save your life?" I think it's "Why should saving lives be based on what you can pay?" Sorry if that's too pedantic. It's for-profit thinking that drives stupid decisions like the one you describe in your OP. Money over medicine. It's cheaper to jab you than to pay an outsourced third party extra to have the right meal on hand. What if the fire department worked that way? "Your house is on fire? What wouldn't you pay for us to put it out?" Me personally, I think making meals friendly to ALL patients recuperating from medical procedures is a big step towards humane healthcare. I can't imagine recovery without the right food to eat. Also personally, I think 11 out of 100 is a huge fraction when it comes healthcare. If it were up to me, I'd make fewer bombs and sink more money into cures. And in the meantime, stop wasting insulin.

Even outside of medicine, we're seeing that the only loans the banks are interested in are the ones that offer a small but almost guaranteed ROI. The mediocrity this is unleashing on the American public is disgusting. We're seeing a LOT of new restaurants that don't actually cook anything on their own, but rather have some kind of arrangement with their foodservice provider for instant meals of an astonishing variety. Many US restaurants now offer everything from pizza to tacos to fish & chips to cheesesteak sandwiches to burgers, with an emphasis on variety over quality. It wasn't an implication at all. And why are you using a definition of "tiny fraction" based on you or me? Ultimately, it's the executive suite at the various healthcare providers who define the kind and amount of resources they'll spend on you or any group.

What are you "countering"? There's a percentage number where the bean counters determine that a new process will be more profitable for them, and they don't change until that percentage number is reached. Right now you're just 11 people out of 100 to them, so obviously that percentage is too low, and they continue to NOT offer anything that will cost them extra. The fact that you have "a greater propensity to be hospitalized" means that saving money when treating you helps them maintain profit more easily. I also worry that some cell therapy recently introduced will struggle if it works well, simply because it would impact the sale of insulin and all related products. Medicine and profit are not a good mix. When Salk developed the polio vaccine, there were DOCTORS who objected because they made a LOT of money prescribing braces and treatments for polio patients. They were angry that he ruined their investments. Insurance in the US changed just before I could take advantage of the old system, where one could buy medical insurance based on actuarial tables with premiums based according to your age. They knew by the numbers on average how much medical attention their clients would need in their lifetimes. If you were 20 when you signed up, you paid very little. The insurance company assumed you'd be with them for life, since a change in insurors means they base your premiums on your new age. Then Nixon and Kaiser got together and cooked up the whole "managed" healthcare system we have now. Monumental joke.

The cost of the extra insulin is less than the cost of maintaining meals for a specialty group. These types of decisions will always be made as long as medical treatment is administered from a privately-owned model. Profit is #1 and healthcare follows somewhere after that. It becomes obvious when you look at the insurance side. Most insurance actually makes some sense. You have a house/boat/car/life that you can figure out the exact worth of in order to insure it properly, but medical insurance isn't like that. You can't know how much or how little medical treatment you may need over your life. I'm not sure how to do it, but medicine in general needs to stop thinking about how much money it can generate and start focusing on helping people live a higher quality, more healthful life.

! Moderator Note We don't allow plagiarism at this forum. If you quote the work of someone else, you need to cite the source and give credit where it's due.

I'm asking for a response from richard01, to see if they're posting in good faith on our discussion board. The evidence points elsewhere.

Citation?