Phi for All

I think People with critical thinking skills outnumber rich People (not to say rich folks don't have them, just that it seems they use theirs mostly for personal profit). And the thing you're forgetting about having a country run on reason instead of hysteria is that it will make more sense over time, as smart processes and programs become the norm again. When we start saving money on healthcare and getting better mortality rates, when People have access to the knowledge that will let them become productive citizens no matter how they were born, when we stop bombing the world and start being an example of peace and prosperity, when middle-class workers can expect their wages to be tied fast to their productivity instead of getting more bits of it shaved off and thrown into the clouds, rarely if ever to settle back down to Earth, when all this happens you may join the rest of the world in thinking that America has solved some of it's biggest problems.

I think you're always going to boil it down in your head this way. It's a seemingly reasonable position that sits the fence while simultaneously blocking the road, mostly because it's the complete opposite of what's happening in reality. It's also a position that allows you to ignore challenges to your ideals. I think you misunderstand what it means to maintain ideals. It doesn't mean protecting them as if sacred, and never wavering from their original script. It means maintaining their value and effectiveness over time, performing maintenance if you will, to insure your ideals match an ever-changing world. To me, it's almost bizarre how the conservatives in this country have blinkered their view of our present situation. I can understand how fear of progress affects many these days. Our technology and knowledge seems to be racing ahead faster each day. That can scare a lot of people who don't bother to learn about what they fear, and instead just listen to pundolt hysteria that feeds it instead. What seems so weird is that these fearful folks have privatized their control of the vehicle of government, handing the keys over to people who only want progress slowed so they can take more profit from existing infrastructure and well-established markets. Change costs money, even really beneficial change. So the vehicle of government slows down to granny speeds, blocking traffic, pissing everyone off, making them blame government instead of the people misusing it. And what these fearful People have traded is a speed that makes them feel safer for chauffeurs that are slowly driving them off the edge of the cliff. They don't appreciate intellectuals, and so don't trust them to be smart enough to handle the pace AND direction of progress. They themselves aren't that smart, so it's hard to comprehend the policies of those who are. Actually, scratch that. It's not about smart, it's about critical thinking, and the lack of it in too many People.

What a ludicrous claim! What if the misspelling actually had a different meaning, like writing "affect" when you mean "effect"? My word (like John's) is "becasue". My left ring finger hits s after a quicker than my right index finger hits the u in between, so I'm in error almost every time I try to type "because". If I didn't correct it, people might get used to it, understand what I really wanted to type, but that will never make it correct.

If we can't get the last of the misogynists to budge, maybe it can be approached from the maternity side. Give working women some kind of allowance for the time they actually take off to have actual babies, to cover expenses while being unpaid. I would hope any sane person can see the advantages of letting women have babies, and so it makes sense that the public can make that kind of investment in the future. We could write that into Medicare, and do away with the age restrictions while we're at it.

You should try moving a mustard seed. 2 milligrams.

Oddly, that's exactly what I promise MY worshippers. If they're good.

Well, the Mahdi is described as being about 40 years old, so it must be Sheldon. I could go with Trump as the Anti-Christ, though. We should probably wait for DarkTheorist to explain what he means. Btw, don't you hate it when people start a discussion using words designed to be cryptic rather than informative? OPs should be written so the first response isn't "What are you talking about?"

Great point. Fear of psychotic reprisal probably lasts longer as an incentive to worship than omnipresent love and benevolence. I wonder if supernatural explanations persist because of the capriciousness of god(s). If they made any sense at all, adherents might become complacent in worship. But when the rules are fuzzy and your deity can do ANYTHING (including something really tragic for you personally), you tend to stay on your toes, and accept ad hoc solutions from the church you worship with ("Let's try this: no meat on Fridays!"). Perhaps it's this tendency that keeps religious people thinking that god(s) have secret knowledge that science will never know. It's a pretty persistent meme that the Christian God's work is done mysteriously. To me, that always suggests no matter how much we learn, religion gets to claim there's a whole bunch of stuff none of us know, including them. It perpetuates itself since it's an unfalsifiable position.

I'm not sure about this at all. I know it's been historically correct, but I think the Republican Party is actually going to force the People to take a stance for real change of the system. Not just "the pendulum swinging back" type politics, but a realization that we're damaged badly, and we need a foundational fix in order to deal with our current and future problems. The problem is laying out the damages in a way that even the conservative like tar will have to acknowledge. They keep imagining that alles in Ordnung and we've done it this way so long that THIS is now the proper way things are done. They need to see that the damage is bad, so bad that we need a major fix. When your child screams that he/she is hurt, and you can visibly see blood spurting from an open artery, YOU DON'T GRAB THE BANDAIDS!

! Moderator Note Just a reminder, since this is a long thread, that the subject is whether science has a natural explanation for every phenomena and therefore doesn't need god(s) to fill in the gaps. It's not about the nature of specific gods or their temperaments. It's not about your personal version of god(s). Carry on. ! Moderator Note Upon further staff review, I've split off a pretty large section of posts that were all about preaching B. John Jones version of Christianity. Sorry it went on so long. I've split these posts into the Trash, so if there are points you'd like to re-make, please make sure they're relevant to the topic. As always, if you have a beef with this action, Report it rather than talk about it here.

I'd like to point out how sensible this explanation is. I think we all have "voices" that play in our heads, probably a by-product of our extreme intelligence. I'll get snippets of songs running through my head involuntarily, sometimes vocal (usually a lyric that has meaning for me that day), sometimes instrumental (what the hell was Ringo doing on that trap set at the beginning of Come Together?). Since this is in Psych, let's drop the spiritual angle so staff doesn't have to split any posts off. I think it's quite normal to have mental conversations. We run scenarios through our heads all the time, and often we use the voices to help prepare us for future encounters ("Mrs Smith, I'm so sorry for your loss" "Thank you dear, Mr Smith lived a full life" "Well, he may be gone, but he's not forgotten"). We're amazingly smart creatures, it's the trait we gave up so much to possess, so it's no wonder we find all kinds of ways to use this brain of ours. I'd like to point out that curiosone and Eldad have spoken about diagnoses of schizophrenia causing extremely poor behavior. They're trying to explain these voices with telepathy and supernatural experiences. Rational reasons often don't seem complicated enough for people looking for a cure for something they don't understand. It can be scary if you think something abnormal is happening to you, and it often makes us look for abnormal reasons.

Atta boy, keep terrorism strong! Looks like a growth business model at work to me!

That the speck of dirt might be semi-adhered to the laptop surface is a type 1 error. You can control for that, if you're serious.

! Moderator Note Our Trashcan is not part of the Speculations forum, but the Admins had to put it somewhere. It shows up at the top when you go to Speculations, and sometimes people think their thread's been thrown away. It's just the way the software forces us to organize it. Speculations (the section you're in now) is for ideas that need some mainstream support. Keep telling us more so we can understand the science involved.

Trees, Rb1, we were talking about trees. Not all are visible from outside.

What does the voice say? And do you want to talk about the psychiatric angle, or the spiritual one? Can't do both in mainstream sections.

Indeed. It's probably a disadvantage. Only those with trees can have them catch fire. Or fall off the ladder putting the star on top. Or have a heart attack chasing the damn cats out of it.

"It was a great party. We invited the strippers, Strange, and John Cuthber." "It was an even greater party. We invited the strippers, Strange and John Cuthber." At the second party, you guys really showed us the difference between second and first skins.

The bouquet/garter contest may have some function there, even if it only serves to spotlight those eligible for marriage. It can get downright gladiatorial, and may influence selection. "Did you see Emily body check that bridesmaid to intercept the bouquet? She'll make a good wife!" :

It's not necessarily about intentions. It's because a modern business model always calls for growth, which means it's really good at making money, and employing people, and GROWING, but shouldn't be applied to sectors where growth is a bad thing, like with law enforcement and the prison system. We're the biggest warden in the world, we don't need to grow that sector. Even Republicans like John McCain, who tried privatizing prisons in AZ, have said it's not cost-effective. I've also argued in the past that the Germans have a better national system for maintaining roads. They contract privately, but the company has to guarantee no potholes for 10 years. Et voila, they get the Autobahn, some of the sweetest roads on the planet. Here, we put asphalt down every year because we don't let it cure, resulting in huge maintenance costs. It's not about government take-over of commerce. It's about using public funds where they're most cost-effective and efficient. I've tried to emphasize that, and you usually go off on a tangent about redistribution of wealth, another idiotic misrepresentation of my stance. I'm glad you're asking questions, but historically you're not going to take anything on board. 27 pages and you can still say you don't get a good response to this question. The responses have been detailed and excellent. They just don't fit with what you believe. I've swung back now, after seeing how many stupid concessions we had to make to Republicans to get Obamacare passed. The most effective way we can have a national healthcare service is to abolish the age limits on Medicare. Simple, and if we can get a few administrations that won't starve it because they want it to fail, I think this system is already better than the hodgepodge we have now, and farfar better than the Nixon/HMO disasters that have led to us paying twice what smart countries pay. So no takeover of anything. Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, and we should really kill Bush II's treasonous crippling of our country's bargaining power with the drug companies. Your employer would tell you about your choices of insurance, the private one they've always had, and the Medicare option. You can decide whether you want to pay $5000 a year for Medicare coverage, or $8000 for private health insurance.

But nobody would think you should change your skin color because it's inappropriate for the venue. I think the OP is wrong. For modern humans, clothing has become the first skin. Nowadays, even when people show you some real skin, it's been adorned by tattoos and piercings, and almost emulates clothing by creating patterns where there were none. I also still don't like all the automatic assumptions the OP loves to take. I definitely don't agree that "attire is the window to your identity". That's ridiculous. Dressing like a policeman doesn't make me a policeman. It won't make others think I'm a policeman either unless I act unnaturally like a policeman.

Thanks for the quote marks around "special". It's a "specially" folded piece of paper, balanced on the head of a toothpick, weighing around 4.5 grams. Unless you're claiming that telekinesis operates by making the air move? I take it you don't think you can move a grain of sand? Why do you think it wouldn't be a thousand times easier?

No. The meme isn't about loving cigars. It's about a ritual fathers go through that has no more function, other than "this is what all fathers do". Have a cigar, it's a boy! It was a ritual to enjoy the cigar with the new dad, but nowadays most people just either pass altogether, or tuck the cigar in their suit pocket, thank and congratulate dad, and throw the cigar away at their earliest convenience. I'm sure there are aficionados who keep this ritual, since there are a lot of premium cigars out there. For the most part though, I think this is a ritual that no longer functions the way it was supposed to. I'm also reminded of tossing the bouquet at weddings. Does anyone still believe in the superstition that you'll be next to marry if you catch it?

The more I think about this, the more I realize how right swansont and Arete are. Tom argued that this whole experiment would be much more credible if it didn't use a paper wheel designed to take advantage of air currents, and Arete is saying this current setup to eliminate air currents won't be valid either. What about this? A grain of sand weighs about a thousand times less than your psiwheel (sheet of A4 paper = 4.5 grams, grain of sand = 4.4 milligrams). Put a grain of sand on top of a layer of graphite (just to show contrast and movement). Try to move the grain of sand with your mind. It should be a thousand times easier to move with a mental force if it exists, and the contrasting graphite will show any movement (kind of like putting flour down on the kitchen floor to see if you have cockroaches - they'll leave trails in it without eating it). Keep the bowl over the whole thing, since you still have to worry about air currents.

Passing out cigars when your wife has a baby. The original function was sharing an expensive, uncommon treat between father and friend, but carcinogen awareness and the proliferation of cheap cigars has made it fairly non-functional.