Phi for All

"I disapprove of what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall This is not only what freedom of speech means to the person speaking, but it should also be the "attitude" of everyone listening as well. What you're doing here is telling people they'll offend you with their opinion if you don't like what they say. That's not freedom at all.

Because life isn't dangerous enough on it's own. I'm guessing JohnCli finished around the end of August last year, because he hasn't been on since. He's probably either having too much fun with it or it killed him.

I get the feeling you're running out of venom, and now you're going to ignore everything else because you've made up your mind. And since it was made up before you even started this thread, you won't notice that your words weren't forbidden, they're still there. For the rest of you reading this in the future, this is the kind of mindset intolerance breeds. Intolerance stands between humans and learning, like two big middle fingers stuck in your ears, keeping you from hearing what's really being said.

Well, here at SFN we have rules about attacking groups of people as a group. Calling someone who doesn't share your lifestyle a "freak" is inaccurate and hateful. We try to be civil here. Freedom of speech has always come with certain restrictions. You aren't free to yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater because you could harm people in the panic. Beyond that, calling someone a freak just because they don't think the way you do is very dangerous. Are you sure your definition is always going to be used? What happens if everyone turns against you because you post questions on science sites, what if they hate that and start calling you a freak? Intolerance spreads very quickly, and you can suddenly find yourself on the outside if your society is allowed to pass laws that promote intolerant behavior.

First, please avoid calling anyone a "freak". That's an emotional attack aimed directly at a group of people you don't happen to agree with, which makes your label seem intolerant and bigoted. Second, you already had laws in place about what norms must be followed by citizens. If a hooligan vandalizes something, they should be arrested for vandalism, not "hooliganism". If a hooligan violates private property, they should be arrested for trespass, not hooliganism. Third, it's not just one person walking around naked because they feel like it. It's an attention-getting protest motivated by Putin's own topless displays regarding his war. You need to STOP setting up strawmen to knock down because the real questions we're asking you are too hard to answer. That didn't happen in the Kremlin. Remember, we were talking about why Pussy Riot used a church instead of the Kremlin to stage their protest. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that Pussy Riot are performers, rather than a feminist protest organization.

It's kind of upsetting that you continue to say this after so many explanations have been given. Pussy Riot didn't agree that the church should openly support Putin in your democratic society. They're arguing for a separation of Church and State. That's smart, you should want that too. Church and State have conflicting checks and balances, and aren't designed for oversight when they deal with each other. Pussy Riot chose the Church because it's a little difficult getting into the Kremlin to protest. Why is that not understandable? I see why it's objectionable to you, but can't you at least understand why they did it? They weren't attacking your beliefs, they were attacking using those beliefs for political purposes. Do you think your spiritual beliefs should be exploited by politicians?

Exactly. Evolution is dealing out cards from an unimaginably large deck. Homosexuality is present in many different, successful species, which show no signs of dying off because of it. Taking a moral stance against it (and similar controversial subjects, like using a church to protest politically) is futile and unproductive, imo. In the US, we've wasted a lot of resources trying to legislate morality. It doesn't work, and seems to actually work against most of our strongest abilities as a species; our communication, our cooperative task management and our high intelligence. Throwing someone in jail because they love their country enough to want the best for it is not an intelligent action. And neither is pretending they're doing it because they don't love Jesus.

People don't have a choice when it comes to what gender(s) attract them. Did YOU have a choice or did you simply know that you were attracted to women (or men if you are a woman)? Could you change now, convince yourself that you're attracted to the same sex? Not just for a night, but forever? This should show that everybody is a little different, which isn't the same as being wrong or abnormal. But that's science, and what you're really asking about is politics. I think all viewpoints need to be represented in a democracy, and so all those viewpoints need the freedom to be expressed. Each one helps shape your society. It may seem like it would be best if everyone thought like you, but trust me, you won't grow to your potential if you adopt a single political outlook. Bad things don't get better unless you have people protesting about how bad they are. I don't want to turn this into a discussion of religion, but I also think you turned a protest about the division of church and state into an affront to your religious beliefs. Pussy Riot may not respect your particular beliefs, but I don't think they were trying to disrespect them. I think they just wanted to warn people about mixing two powerful entities that history shows should be kept separate.

This is an educational problem now. You need to study a bit more about how homosexuality really affects a species, because this is NOT how it works biologically. You are basing your stance on the fear of the worst of what might possibly happen. You assume that if you allow protests against state supported religion, people will end up running around naked violating each other and making everyone gay so the species dies off. This is a fallacy called the Slippery Slope, and is a weak foundation on which to build an argument about a whole country. You assume everything goes from how it is now to total disaster with nothing in between. That's rarely how things really work.

But this isn't the problem. Arguing against public nudity is easy, but it really isn't what these people really want to do, is it? You can't argue against what Pussy Riot tried to do by claiming public nudity is bad. That's avoiding the real issue in favor of knocking down a man made of straw. Anarchy isn't the problem here either. I think you have a lot of people who are used to thinking and acting very conservatively, and you have a lot of people who are progressively exploring the freedoms offered by a democratic government. You need both perspectives in order to grow. One side says, "Hey, let's try this!" and the other side says, "But we need to be careful!" Things balance out but both sides need to be willing to compromise and cooperate. And Pussy Riot was right about arguing against church support of state leaders, imo. It's very dangerous and I hope they made some people think about separating those power bases.

But you should already have laws in place that cover such acts. Is there any act covered by your hooliganism law that wasn't covered before the law? One thing I've learned in my life in the US is that politicians have hundreds of deals going on all the time, and they look for laws that that will help them close deals and stay in office. They love emotional, morality-based responses because people will allow a lot to happen when they feel outraged or violated. You have to be careful how much power you give these people, you never know when YOU might be considered a hooligan.

I don't know Russian law either, but "hooliganism" sounds like a law enacted as a knee-jerk response to your gang problems. You probably have individual laws that cover most anything a hooligan can do, but your conservatives argue it isn't enough, so they pass a law that supersedes the regular laws against vandalism, loitering and whatever else hooligans do. And so you end up sending someone to jail for seven years for trying to make a political statement that some found offensive. I'm not a big fan of things that are held sacred. It basically means "if you don't agree with me, I don't want to hear from you about this". I think that stance is antithetical to learning anything.

! Moderator Note Attacking ideas is what scientists do. As long as the attacks aren't personal, they shouldn't be taken personally. If an idea is based on something shaky, pointing this out as quickly as possible saves everyone time and effort. The Speculation forum doesn't require an idea to be perfect, but demonstrating as much rigor as one can keeps the discussion more focused. If you want to discuss your idea, don't shoot it in the foot by first needing to show that Einstein was wrong. And you do need to support your statements as much as possible. I think people will be more forgiving of the communication if you match the strength of your evidence with the strength of your assertions. Don't look at criticism as an irritant, but rather as a chance to grow your idea. Each question is an opportunity to branch out further and more deeply.

My profession currently deals with demand-side energy management. I can't imagine a better place for me to be to help research efforts in all areas of science, as well as interests in commerce and social areas. And I can't imagine science having a single main goal; I don't think it's healthy, I don't think it's efficient and I don't think it's wise. I used to feel this way about finding a way to affordably and effectively explore our solar system. Put all our efforts into making inexpensive drones to bring resources so we can build more facilities offworld and keep Earth's resources for Earth. But this isn't the way our knowledge should grow, focused on a single area. I think we function better when our overall knowledge grows at a more consistent pace, rather than neglecting possibly important research to focus everything on one overarching goal.

If you follow this anecdote back far enough, you'll find that it's really in reference to the psychological trauma felt by some upon learning they're about to die. The mind is responsible, but only in that it follows mechanisms the body actually has, such as causing acute depression so the subject stops sleeping, eating and hydrating, making them subject to all kinds of illness from which they are now too weak to recover. So the mind doesn't cause the actual fatal trauma directly, but rather uses a physical system already in place that achieves the same end. BUT, no such physical system exists that could cause wounds consistent with trauma like being beaten with a stick. This reminds me of a discussion about those ionic foot baths where they have electrodes in the water running a mild electrical current that's supposed to detoxify the body. The water turns reddish brown from the electrolysis, but they claim it's "toxins" being somehow pulled out through the soles of your feet. Trivially refuted by showing that you don't need to stick your feet in for the water to turn yucky, but the real point is that the body has no mechanism for removing anything through your feet, except some skin cells.

Terrorists are all bad, freedom fighters are all good, and often this is just different perspectives on the same group of people.

It's been explained several times. It's most likely that she hit herself while dreaming, which caused her dreams to match the pattern of the trauma, making up a man who hit her. Her husband was up late, it was 2am, and he says he first heard her crying. He could have nodded off himself, was woken up by the sound of his wife twitching in her sleep and hitting herself. His first conscious recollection is that he's been awake and now hears his wife crying. He assumes her dream caused the bruise because he didn't observe her hitting herself. Occam's Razor. This is much more probable than the mind magically creating a laceration or contusion with no outside stimuli.

This is just wishful thinking. There's nothing that supports this other than random anecdotes. Don't you think if this were possible that we'd be seeing a LOT more of it? And if we saw a LOT more of it, somebody(s) would set up a double-blind experiment to gather some data. This is the kind of support you need to move from wishful thinking to trustworthy explanation. You're just assuming it's possible because "the mind is capable of amazing things", but it isn't capable of changing physics. The mind doesn't create the bruise. Trauma to the area is the trigger for the body's responses. Contusions are broken capillaries that bleed into the surrounding tissue, the brain has nothing to do with the process. There is no mechanism for the brain by itself to create physical trauma consistent with bruising, other than manipulating your other body parts to do it. Does that make sense? The mind is capable of a lot, but it has no mechanism to affect the body physically like that. It can affect your heart rate and respiration because it's wired into those systems.

This is classically written to manipulate, stating a truth to begin ("no scientific proof") so you feel you might trust the statement, then moves on to a gross and vague assumption ("what we already know") that attempts to lend authority to the questionable statement ("the power of the brain over the body"). No protocols typical of even the least rigorous experiments were followed. Trusting these anecdotes as supportive evidence is the equivalent of leaving the magician alone with the locked box, then assuming he must really be magic when you re-enter to find the box open. We shouldn't do science this way.

No, YOU'RE talking exclusively about that, and accepting it as fact. That's called Begging the Question, and it's a shaky foundation for any argument. Everything that can be found on this subject is full of anecdotal stories that are conflated as evidence (they aren't). Every instance seems to leave an element of doubt as to its authenticity. Occam's Razor says the dream is mirroring reality, and that the injuries are sustained or self-inflicted while the subject slept. There are no records of professional experiments done that would satisfy a scientist that the mind could cause even a bruise without accessing the standard mechanisms that trigger such a process.

You've never had a dream put a different context to an actual occurrence? I had a dream where it started raining on me, then woke up to find a roommate dripping water from a glass onto my head. I've had other dreams where something happening in the real world was explained by my dreams in their own context. Couldn't this be a case where someone thrashed in their sleep, received an injury, and then the brain concocted a dream to make the patterns consistent? That's a big part of what our brains do, figure out patterns.

I don't really like the definition. What you're describing isn't foolish, especially if it works as well as you claim. It's either dishonest or it's just fallacious logic, depending on the person's intent and the context of the argument. Also, I think you're making some assumptions you really can't know for sure, like these two: ... or they have plenty of faith in their own ability to make you look wrong. Or they don't discern much between tactics that let them win an argument. Or they have learned that it's easier for them to use such tactics and that's given them tons of confidence in their own ability to argue the point. Or.... I don't think this is true at all. When your opponent's dirty tactics are pointed out, it often means a loss of support. You don't ALWAYS lose. Intention is the key. Are they arguing this way because it's been effective in the past, or are they deliberately skewing facts and using fallacious logic because their arguments will fail without such tactics? Are they out to "win" the argument, or are they interested in productive discussion? These things lend perspective. If you know someone is arguing to win at any cost, their actions may or may not turn out to be foolish, but they're definitely intellectually dishonest.

Understandable, since they don't have any. But how will they know when they've found one?

Alcohol lamps aren't as hot and you can't control them as easily as a Bunsen burner, but they're good for many things.

I love his advocacy for sustainable use of space, and his efforts to deal with space junk. Policy governance is shaped by such well-respected people. Always good to see you, Bee.