Mr Skeptic

How so? We have consistently said to listen to the experts on an issue -- the people studying medicine about medicine, the people studying the climate about the climate. We've always been suspicious of people selling a product and then claiming expertise in a different area -- oil finding and manufacturing experts claiming to be experts in science, tobacco farming and processing experts claiming to be experts in health. And whenever an expert has a financial conflict of interest, we are always wary of what they have to say. The thing about medicine, however, is that the questions relate to the field of expertise of the researchers, and the manufacturers of a specific medical product have done many tests with it to determine its safety and effectiveness, sometimes being the only ones to have done so. If I had a question about the quality of oil produced in a certain oil well, if it were somehow different from other oil, I'd ask the oil experts about it. But really, their area of expertise is not very interesting to most people.

I phrased that poorly (meant leaking into the brain areas responsible for processing other senses). But what of things like letters and numbers having colors or smells? That has to have gotten to the brain already before leaking into another sensory area.

I guess it depends on if the objective is to verify the claimed facts, or to just minimize bias. So long as the same story is rewritten with a different bias (even if not independent confirmation of the facts), citing two sources with opposite bias would still help reduce bias. Put another way, there's facts and there's opinion. Multiple opinions based on the same facts still has additional value.

Don't forget that "the sniffles" does on occasion also have rare side effects, such as death. The common cold kills about a thousand people yearly, and also can have other complications.

Note that I never said that I did not benefit from this. That by itself, however, does not make it fair. Consider this example: A corn farmer and an apple farmer and a merchant are involved in an exchange. The corn farmer grows 10 ears of corn, and values 1 apple at 2 ears of corn each. The apple farmer grows 10 apples, and values 1 ear of corn at 2 apples. The merchant can trade between them, but on the way has to eat an apple and feed an ear of corn to his mule on the way back. So the merchant goes to the corn farmer, and buys his 10 ears of corn, offering 6 apples in exchange. He then takes the corn to the apple farmer, and gives him 6 ears of corn in exchange for 10 apples. After eating an apple and feeding an ear of corn to his mule, he has earned 3 apples and 3 ears of corn. In this example, the farmers have created wealth (10 apples and 10 corn), and traded for something they value more. The merchant has destroyed wealth, but has acquired more than he destroyed, and has increased the value of the already existing wealth. That is, the corn farmer has gained 2 corn-equivalents of value, and the apple farmer 2 apple-equivalents of value, and the merchant whatever he values his profits. Now, lets say the apple farmer has realized that the merchant is profiting off them, and decides that he will sell his 10 apples for 9 ears of corn. Everyone still benefits from the overall transaction, but now more of the wealth ends up with the apple farmer. The merchant still earns 3 apples, and the corn farmer still earns 2 corn-equivalents, but now the apple farmer earns a whopping 8 apple-equivalents. Basically, the moral of the story is that even voluntary transactions which everyone engages in willingly and where all involved profit, can still be unfair. This unfairness need not create or destroy any wealth, only affect how the wealth is distributed. Without creating any additional wealth, in the second case the apple farmer has quadrupled his income, by demanding much more than is necessary for him to profit. It doesn't make him any better nor more productive, only richer at the expense of others. And everyone involved has the right to resent that.

OK, this is done using clocks synchronized by a light burst, right? So suppose we synchronize two clocks separated by a significant distance. Then, we observe a quantum effect at the location of clock 1. According to quantum mechanics, this effect is random, and there is no "hidden variable" that determines what the result would be, yes? But, clock 2 is far enough away that the event has not happened yet according to it. So observers near clock 1 already know the result. I guess they can't really tell the folks at clock 2 before they could observe it though.

He means that on a planet, you'd have to have your stuff bolted to the floor, and construct your habitat out of material with compressive as well as tensile strength. Otherwise, on spin-down the habitat is no longer kept off the ground by centrifugal force, the direction of "down" changes and all your stuff falls, your habitat gets crushed, etc. It would be unnecessary and wasteful to stop the spinning just to move in/out of the habitat. Such motion should be done at the center, where the angular velocity vanishes to zero, essentially a very very slow merry-go-round.

I watched it, and it is a very good piece. I don't think it was biased; it seemed a very accurate portrayal of the vaccine situation -- the facts, the myths, and the reasons for these decisions. I do see some potential problem from a liberty perspective, of requiring people to receive a vaccine from the government. Obviously this would only be done with absurdly safe vaccines, but it would be nice if that requirement were officially recognized rather than a side-effect of democracy. Alternately, if the choice were left up to the parents/individuals but likewise responsibility for any people they infect, including compensation for medical costs, disability, and death.

Carbon tetrachloride, I suspect. Would probably pollute your gas with carbon.

I think that 1) this isn't really much of a problem; also, putting up such a ban would be more trouble than what it would solve 2) this is over-specific. Posts are already supposed to not be provocative, and bad sources are already looked down on. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Seems like a good idea to me.

Well, back in the day this would have been more like a loan. Parents feed kids, parents get old, kids feed parents. Now we have the government taking care of our old folks instead. If the government took care of all children, so everyone got an equal start in life that would be quite fair. Or fairly terrifying. Considering our public schools, I don't think the government could handle properly raising kids.

Funny how often people who disagree with everyone tend to think that way about all the people they disagree with. "Everyone else is wrong, only I know the truth..." Here, I'll give you a logic puzzle. Suppose you have a group of people of roughly the same intelligence. All of them but one agree on something, with one disagreeing. Using inductive logic, which do you think is right?

Of course the study you cited claims the cause and effect for that is the other way around: Of course, none of the above correlations demonstrate that high levels of organic atheism cause societal health, or that low levels of organic atheism cause societal ills. Rather, societal health seems to cause widespread atheism, and societal insecurity seems to cause widespread belief in God, as has been demonstrated by Norris and Inglehart (2004), mentioned above. Incidentally, the Bible also mentions quite frequently how the Israelites tend to abandon God whenever they have peace and prosperity.

Yes. The feeling of tiredness you get doing strenuous exercise is almost entirely mental. You can just keep going... Same with a lot of the limits to strength -- your muscles are capable of contracting enough to tear tissues and break bones, and this in fact can happen during electroconvulsive therapy. As for synesthesia, that's more a case of information from the brain leaking into other senses.

How much difference can one letter make? It still needs to be primary though.

The definition of "valid" suffices for that. The conclusion does not follow from the premises, ergo the argument is invalid. It's like if you asked my by what axiom or theorem I prove that a nonhuman is not human.

The Hofmann rearrangement requires a primary amide. So first you'd need to open up that N-containing ring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofmann_rearrangement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalimide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-Aminobenzoic_acid

It is neither valid, nor a meaningful English sentence. Edit: I mixed up "valid" and "sound". Fixed. No, never. Validity requires true logic; such that true premises guarantee a true conclusion. The conclusion has no effect on the validity of an argument, although one can be guaranteed than an argument is invalid if its conclusion is untrue but its premises true. A valid but unsound argument: If the moon is made of green cheese, then astronauts visiting the moon will get plenty of dairy products. The moon is made of green cheese. Therefore, astronauts visiting the moon will get plenty of dairy products. This argument is valid, because if the premises are true the conclusion is guaranteed to be true. However it is unsound, because one of the premises is false. The argument is an instance of one of the simplest of arguments: If A, then B. A. Therefore B. You can tell that the argument is valid by looking at this form. However to be sound both the first two statements (the premises) must be true as well. The following argument is unsound and invalid: If an animal is a mammal, then it has fur. A dog has fur. Therefore, a dog is a mammal. All of the statements (the two premises and one conclusion) are true. However, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. This is an example of one of the simplest of mistakes: If A, then B. B. Therefore A. In real life, you won't find a single example of something that has (real) fur and is not a mammal. This is because the opposite case happens to be true: fur is one of the defining characteristics of mammals. However, that is just a coincidence and does not make up for the faulty logic. Can you come up with an example that shows how this second example (the generic one) can lead to an incorrect conclusion given true premises?

My purchases are an exchange of wealth I created and sold to my employers for less than the worth of that wealth, for wealth others have created. I have not bought any houses with wealth created by others.

These people have created some wealth, but most of their wealth is wealth created by people working for them, not by the billionaire themselves. The majority of the wealth these people possess, was created by others. These people generate absolutely no wealth at all. So you're saying that having rich parents is an achievement that shouldn't be "punished"? OK, please tell me what I can do to achieve having rich parents. Cause that's something I'd really like to have achieved.

How are clocks synchronized in GR? Or is that an invalid question? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I understand that, but that is still deterministic, albeit unknowable determinism, no? Kind of like Fate -- it's predetermined but often unknown. The house down the street could be yellow, green, pink, blue, etc., but I can't say that it could be any of those until I observe it. It already has been that color, and that is simply information I do not have.

That would certainly put an end to many of the abuses of the federal government. However, it would likely increase the abuses of corporations, who enjoy putting their headquarters in one state with low taxes and doing their business in another. This would only get worse in that scenario, so we'd have to have some way to block this. The taxes should be payed wherever the business is done, not wherever the corporation calls home. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged While partly true, you don't become a multi-billionaire by working hard. You become a multi-billionaire by underpaying people for valuable labor, that is, you pay them significantly less than the value they generate and pocket the difference. Which is legal, and in a sense even fair, but to say that all this wealth was generated by that one wealthy person stretches credibility.

Classical physics is also deterministic.

I recall making a very simple automaton, consisting of two photodetectors and two motors, one on each side of the body. With the signal from each photodetector used to regulate the speed of the motor on the opposite side of the body (brighter=faster), the automaton would move toward the light. I wonder if our ancestor was a light-seeking animal?

Only really really indirectly. There are radioactive isotopes in the earth's core, which decay and produce heat. This heats up molten metal nearby, and the hotter metal is less dense than the cooler metal. Due to this fact, gravity can set up convection currents in the metal. Also due to conservation of angular momentum the metal flows (westward I think) as it rises. Eventually it cools and sinks again. Anyhow, the moving conductor can carry electricity and make a giant electromagnet we call earth's magnetic field.