Phi for All

Consider yourself NUDGED. Start a blog here if you want (just not in the discussion sections). You need to be the change you want to see in the world. The leader you're looking for is YOU. Everyone else has been waiting for you to stop complaining and take charge. They all feel the same way, just waiting for the leader to start caring enough to man up and grab the reins. What system are you going to use for organizing?

You need to give us your definition of consciousness. It's clear that humans and other species are different in their levels of awareness regarding the existential properties of the world around us. Do you mean consciousness as in " being awake", "aware of your own mortality", "cognizant of your impact on the future"? There are many distinctions, so how do you define it in this context? I would take our own experiences as supportive evidence that extraterrestrial species might naturally have varying levels of what you may call consciousness.

Only if you torture the definition of "universe" to fit your needs.

! Moderator Note This is a public forum, so no. we can't do that. Why would you come here for that? In any case, it seems once again that you have lots of assertions and nothing to support them. You say you don't want to discuss things that aren't fully clear to you, yet you claim some mystical knowledge you can't explain gives you "full appreciation" and a "deeper understanding" than anyone else has. How convenient! If you can't explain yourself, and can't support your assertions (historically noted), then your guess is as good as anyone's. No reason to discuss wishful thinking on a science site. You failed your homework assignment too. Thread closed.

Personal incredulity = 100% correct absolute personal certainty. Success using reason to refute it is improbable, since it was never used in the first place. This is a personally deployed anti-knowledge defense, designed to justify all the hours spent on popsci instead of studying in school, in my experience.

Minds have little to do with it. It's about facts, data, and a reliable methodology to gain information from those things. You are ignorant about physics, you don't understand it, and therefore you think it's wrong. You don't know what you don't know, it's really that simple.

Wow. I thought you were serious about this, but you're a complete crackpot. You have no idea what you're talking about. You should stop talking and go back to school. I can't believe you said this.

Personally, I would try switching from your normal lotion to a gel-based moisturizer. It seems odd that your oil-based lotions wear off so quickly. Perhaps less oil will help, even though it seems contraindicated.

Desire to share prosperity is part of it. It's also recognizing that some investments are best done without private profit interests attached. I realized recently I was a pretty conservative driver for many years. Pack mentality, wouldn't let anyone I didn't trust into my lane because I didn't know them, they might slow me down. Rode my brakes a lot, and tried to take advantage of every lane opening, every individual opportunity for personal advancement, so I'm sure I caused a lot of brakes to be applied. Then I read a study where that's what's causing traffic to begin with, brake lights. It made a lot of sense, even to me, that brake lights take energy out of the system. So I started leaving space for merging, backed off the aggressive driving, started thinking about the system as a whole, how to make it better by cooperation, and give up trying to use this public system for my personal advancement. The result? Way less stress, traffic moves better for me, people smile and wave because I give them a break, I actually spend less time driving and enjoy it more when I do. My personal advancement is actually greater because of the proper use of a public system. The drawback? I have to think back about what an asshole driver I was for so many years, thinking I was doing it the right way, and how I helped hamper the system everybody was trying to use. Thanks for the discussion.

! Moderator Note Bjarne, it's clear you have a warped view of how scientific methodology and theory development works. You've misunderstood many things our members are trying to help you clarify, and you reject that help in favor of your own caricatures of science. You claim our research is inadequate, it's shown you're wrong about that, but you never change the caricature in your mind. Moved to Speculations. Please don't introduce your pet theories into mainstream discussions, you've been warned plenty about that. You're not trying to do anything mainstream here. Please report this note if you disagree, but don't talk about it here.

So you're still 100% with the misunderstanding. We've been talking about a basic level of public assistance AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE just because they're Americans. If you lose your home, if "they" lose "their" homes, I don't want any of you homeless. It's inefficient, inordinately more expensive, and inhuman to boot. I don't want the inability to pay for accumulated human knowledge to stand in anyone's way of their pursuits. So now I've concluded you're just being an asshole about this whole thing. Nobody could possibly misunderstand such good intentions and continue to obtusely discuss what's been patiently explained in basic terms and numbers. Last word for me on this. Look at it this way. The liberal solutions we've recently been trying to argue for are basically making available all the efforts of Americans and their long line of ancestors before them. Hard working, cooperative, social people who have worked on developing civilization (not individualization) ever since we started staying in one place instead of hunting/gathering. Why should any corporation or government have the right to withhold that from us? Why should we be charged for what our species has worked, sweated, and bled for in accumulated knowledge? This at least should be made available to all. You may not think health is something worth bestowing as a right, but it's clear that some people would benefit greatly from being better educated, especially with regards to critical thinking.

That makes sense, since life is more efficient at using energy from the sun. Once begun, it seems to have kept looking for even better ways to develop.

The formation of the ingredients and conditions.

This is a very good perspective on what I've been trying to get across. I appreciate that I'm not spitting into the wind with this, that somebody can recognize sound, valid arguments that don't ignore simple math because it's too scary. And I've been aggressive about it, too, perhaps overly so. It's frustrating when you point out all these problems, present evidence, provide solutions based on reason and rational behavior, and all you get in return is empty heads looking around in all the wrong directions, denying anything is wrong with the way we're being led, and purposely feeding their own ignorance by hugging all their fears and liberal caricatures real close, and trotting them out often despite the silliness of the stance. But you're right, this is about People. American People. We started this country to avoid this type of oppression, no matter what anyone claims about their own personal status. This isn't about individuals. This isn't about what you have now. This is about setting a standard for human development that paves the way for success for as many as we can possibly help. This is NOT about judging their worth as human beings, it's about acknowledging that they ARE human beings, and represent potentials we need to invest heavily in. I know the tars and the MigLs and the waitforufos are really on about personal responsibility. They've judged that some humans don't have it in amounts that satisfy their arbitrary, subjective assessments. I had hoped to show that privilege skews those assessments, that the circumstances of your birth are such an important factor that we need, as a country, to remove obstacles that keep us from fostering the potential brilliance of fellow Americans. We need to take our foot off the necks of these People the conservatives mock for their indolence. Educate them, fully fund social programs that have proven, smart histories, then see if your stereotypes and caricatures are valid. We really can't call ourselves civilized until we do at least that.

! Moderator Note David, you're certainly not stupid, but you're ignorant in this area, and you're refusing the very help you need by not learning basics. Arguing from incredulity, waving hands with no evidence to support you but your own insistence is NOT what science is about. Closing the thread. Don't open another on the same topic, unless you're willing to show more rigor.

Packing peanuts and thermometers.

Look up the definition of the fallacy. I never mentioned breastfeeding, yet you quoted me for my "awkward thinking", and then brought up breastfeeding to rebut my thinking about public sex. PUBLIC SEX, not SEXUAL ACTIVITY IN PUBLIC. Two different things, so STRAWMAN. Moontanman stated that "kids shouldn't interact with adult sexuality". I responded with what you quoted me on, "This is exactly my point, and I don't think allowing public sex is in line with that stance, even if it is a natural bodily function." How many ways are you able to interpret THAT? What about that exchange led you to believe I was using emotion to decide what's wrong? Seriously, if you're just going to blog at us, please stop quoting members and re-interpreting their words.

The GOP needed to elevate someone to sainthood. Nixon and Ford were poison, and Eisenhower was too intellectual and progressive to use as an icon. Too bad, Ike was a pretty well-grounded package. I ordinarily don't quote your entire posts because they are such a mixture of misinformation, misunderstanding, and irrelevant ramblings. But I wanted to point out to you the patterns you fall into in your weak rebuttals. You claim were doing fine, doing it right. Then you throw your vague and irreconcilable fears into a sentence or two. Then you go back to claiming we're fine. Then you argue (again, irrelevantly) about generalities in response to very specific questions and concerns. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's more than aggravating. You spit out what you think is right, iNow and others show you how wrong you are, yet you still maintain you're right, we're all right, everything is goooooooood. It's more than aggravating, it literally makes me sick to my stomach that people with your mindset are running this once proud country into the ground. Glad you're doing fine. I am too. Many, many, many more aren't. I'd like to fix that in the most effective, efficient, and profound way possible, by sharing my prosperity to help blend equality and justice again in the measures that made us great before. I'm going to go with the preponderance of evidence at my disposal, and predict I'll just waste my time in further discussions with you. It's a fair bet, considering the good it's done neither of us.

Certainly not if he can't remove other possibilities. Tell them you can do it no matter how they set up the test, and they might bite. But give them results of your own tests, give them no reason to think you've faked it or misinterpreted it, show them some supportive evidence and you will probably get someone who will at least give you some more feedback. Which would most likely be more tests, but that's what he wants. Without the bowl, you can remove the word "academic" from this sentence. Any testing without removing outside influence will yield NO results. It won't support either option, true or false. It will just be flawed methodology.

I'm not surprised at all that youve once again missed the point, and tried yet again to say that the state we're in is all normal, that we're doing it right. What I've said, over and over, is that the programs keep getting underfunded, yet you still expect them to work well or be scrapped. The conservative mindset has done this with every program they disagree with, and pretended later that the liberal "way" just doesn't work. Like Bush II did with FEMA and the EPA. Put some gratuity appointees in those positions whether they have experience or not, and then wait for Hurricane Katrina to overwhelm him, calling into question the whole agency. Compare that with what the liberals do, making sure there's competence and funding involved, so much so that even someone like Chris Christie thanked President Obama for his timely and efficient response to his state's disaster hurricane. Even you have posted in the past, wondering at the sanity involved in setting up No Child Left Behind without adequate funding. Now, of course, we see that he purposely cut the funding so the private sector could cash in on what he did with public funding. His brother Neal is still making money from that. So this isn't just a cyclical, Oh-well-we-tried, some-things-don't-work-out situation. It's been engineered to benefit a small percentage with general public funds. And let's be honest here, kissing corporate ass, bending over and hiking up our skirts for them just because they create jobs using the People's infrastructure is exactly what fascists like. It's like the lube that makes the rape more pleasant for both sides. I guess I just don't get it when you and waitforufo say we're doing fine, doing it right, when we can point to greater periods of overall prosperity historically, and identify what made it that way using hindsight (it's supposed to be 20/20, isn't it?). You don't seem to see the massive problems we've got since you're both calling for status quo. Even when the historical solutions have provided so much more return on investment, and given more people the opportunity to achieve what you've both got. It makes it seem like you want to keep a lot of people below you, people who might just achieve more than you did if they had the same privilege. But I'm a humanist. I think we all prosper when we remember our humanity, and stop judging the worth of others when there's such disparity in privilege and circumstances.

Well, the programs available keep getting robbed of funding by a conservative mindset that thinks the way you do. It's really no wonder that you think poorly of them. But it's a lot like holding your foot on someone's neck and then mocking them for not standing up on their own two feet, don't you think? What if some of the liberal ideas were put in place, the ones from Eisenhower's days about taxing the wealthy, and the new ones about educating our People to a modern, post-American Revolution level? We could actually stop pretending the meth addicts in West Virginia had all the options you have.

I'm thinking the big glass bowl on a small portable flat base so he can place that on a multi-folded blanket or something that will remove vibrations from the table/building. Place the camera so we can see everything he does, no flipping or jump cuts or hand-held shakiness. Maybe add some clear tape around the base to seal the bowl, and stay at least a meter away from the apparatus while he's trying to move the wheel. And swansont had an excellent point earlier, Eldad. Since you're trying to move this with your mind, can you use a wheel that isn't designed to take maximum advantage of heat and air currents? Again, if you can do this and there's no evidence of outside influence, it advances your idea and gives it more strength. This is how science tests phenomena.

Forget the accusations of you "tricking" us, and move forward with your experimentation. The suggestions made will help you convince skeptics you're doing this with your mind, or show that something you simply forgot to take into account is responsible. We should all accept that you're not deceiving us until there is evidence of that. Let's move on.

See how much time you re-wasted making your obtuse, strawman points, that don't actually address what was said? See how little time it takes you to give a complete non-answer to the actual question? So your little brother's happiness trumps the overall social trends of a mighty nation. You think your personal support of him alone is a better than re-organizing a national effort to help him and millions more with fairness and justice. You don't understand investing in Americans, except the ones you know are worthy. Can I put this down as a stance from you, finally?

Missouri Revised Statute 191.918 has a caveat about discretion that basically invalidates a mother's right to breastfeed in public, if an officer deems too much was shown or it was too enjoyable. Idaho has NO LAWS that protect a mother breastfeeding in public, and to me that's inviting charges of illegal public sexual conduct. The threat of being placed on a national sexual offender's database is as good as an anti-breastfeeding law, imo. Shaming is powerful, and erodes so much of our society.