MonDie

Perhaps a good point is that they are using simarity/difference on the ratio level, for they say that non-identical twins are half different (presumably with respect to the average degree of difference between people). If you're lost: The quantifiability of variables is sometimes split into the "interval" and "ratio" levels of measurement. The former allows for the quantification of differences between values, but only the latter allows for ratios since there is a point where the property is absent, assigned the value zero. In the case of genetic differences, it would be extremely rare that any two people would be different in every way possible (within the confines of their gene pool), and the degree of difference will vary with how closely related they are. Therefore it only makes sense to assign the value of zero to absolute similarity, and to speak of ratios between degrees of difference. Returning on the 17th.

folk then Miracle Mile youtube.com/watch?v=R9IZ6fUyXPo I'll be back October 17th.

Your thoughtfulness is noted. I think "Solve" is the wxMaxima tool I wanted.

My calculator won't finish it, and wxMaxima can only plot 1 line at a time.

^ He sounds more psychotic than narcissistic, but he could have some of each. Maybe we're all alittle psychotic, but it's just not a problem until we're in a bad mood.

I can seemingly lower my heart-rate, but not raise it. Isn't that just called relaxation?

1. Not reasonable for me given my personal experiences so far, and I infer that it's probably not reasonable for most other people either. 2. No 3. Not actually true, but maybe a good idea regardless. It buffers the effects of death salience in terror management theory. 4. No clue. We have the choice to privately say to ourselves that the propositions are true or false, but that's too superficial to noticeably effect cognition or behavior. Is anxiety rational, or a compulsion that you can't control?

I would agree if I knew that legalization wouldn't make these drugs more accessible to kids. There's accumulating evidence that adolescence is a sensitive period for cannabis-caused psychosis. I'm not saying alcohol is any better.

A occurred, so any bias was probably a bias toward A. Any bias was probably a bias toward A, and A ocurred, so there was probably a bias. That's not to say you can't argue it non-circularly, but this circularity is particularly insidious.

I got the warning when I tried to visit this page without logging in on September 14. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/85500-more-complicated-experimental-designs/ I'm awfully paranoid since yesterday I was responding to my autism-nonconformity thread on another forum it would be against the rules to advertise when my pointer began to move up and down the length of the screen erratically until I cleared my history and closed my browser. I should probably report it to them.

A twin study quantifies the relative influences of A, C, and E factors on the response variable. Regarding culture/ecosystem, the sample shared the same culture, so its relative importance is unknown. Furthermore, IMO the A, C, and E factors could operate differently in another sample, such as a muslim sample, and IMO they might have different quantities. In the opening post, I was thinking of those who believe in free will, which would be an unique environment factor. Even if we have some free will, the overview of twin studies shows that free will is less than half—probably much, much less than half—of the story. I would however like to know how counting "I don't know" as missing would have affected the analyses. I'll be back October 3rd.

Environment is necessary, but not sufficient. You're nothing without your DNA. Only "How important is God in your life?" was evaluated on a Likert-type scale. Frequency of church attendance is objective. The rest were qualitative variables, and I don't see the problem with that. Frequency of praying to God was dichotomized between seldom and never to distinguish prayers from non-prayers. Belief in God or afterlife and finding comfort/strength had the options Yes, No, I Don't Know, but they don't tell us exactly how they phrased it.

I don't think you discard it, you use a pipette to take out the amount you want in the Petri dish. I could be wrong.

They're less likely to rely on heuristics (mental shortcuts). Mood and heuristics: the influence of happy and sad states on sensitivity and bias in stereotyping. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10870905

The scientific method is always accompanied by a description of the standard experiment that holds everything constant except the variable of interest, [math]x[/math]. Suppose it would be very difficult to design an experiment that separates [math]x[/math] from [math]y[/math], so your experiment instead quantifies the effect of [math]x + y[/math]. Am I right to think the problem is solved if you can run experiments to quantify [math]y[/math] or alternatively [math]x + z[/math] and [math]x + y + z[/math]? If the scientist can verify that there's no interaction, it should be simple math. There might also be the option to decompose [math]x[/math] into simpler variables that could be tested independently. x + y= 6 y = 4 x = 6 - 4 = 2 x + y + z = 12 x + z = 8 x + y = 6 z = 12 - 6 = 6 x = 8 - 6 = 2 or y = 12 - 8 = 4 x = 6 - 4 = 2

Autistic Traits in the General Population (Constantino, Todd, 2003) "Most cases of autism follow an oligogenic pattern of inheritance, with heritability estimates of 0.6 to 0.9." However, I don't know whether those estimates compensate for measurement error. Table 3 looks like their results, but they used a social responsiveness scale (SRS), not an autism scale. The correlation with advanced paternal age suggests that it's caused by mutations. The problem seems to be extra synapses. http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2014/08/21/children-autism-extra-synapses-brain/

Fair point. I should have stipulated the perspective of the State in my comment. Churches should expect tolerance from the State regarding how they worship, but the State should be free from undue influence from the Church as well. The first ammendment doesn't read to me as "Treat religion fairly" because the free exercise clause seems broader in scope than the establishment clause (no laws respecting an establishment of religion). Obviously they shouldn't pass laws that specifically target a religion. However, while they can pass laws that are concordant with religion as long as they don't justify them religiously, a law that is discordant with religion may be ruled to violate the free exercise clause even if its justification was religiously impartial. When do these exceptions for religious beliefs become special treatment, particularly when it seems like most of them accomodate Christians?

Consider this a question about rule #6 then. "Posting pornography or other sexually explicit material intentionally (or linking directly to a site containing such material, either on the site itself or popups launched by that page) will result in a permanent ban from the site." Clearing up misconceptions alone is beneficial, plus sexology is important to topics such as sexual selection, the etiology of peadohpilia, healthy sexual habits, etc. However, these discussions of sexuality seem to engender highly subjective personal accounts that are virtually useless (e.g. see the middle section of the post immediately after mine). Given rule #6, I infer that we should try to convey pertinent information while keep vulgarity to a minimum. Accordingly, I infer that useless personal accounts should recieve less tolerance.

If a true Buddhist kills people who cause harm, then a true Buddhist causes harm.

A good discussion of sexology will be slightly sexual. Is that okay? Does it depend on how personal the content is? For example, see my posts here (Why do men like lesbians so much?).

In that case, a true Buddhist will kill himself first.

If you don't understand a twin study, the "Statistical Analyses" section gives a good quicky. Read it up to where it mentions ACE versus ADE models. Terms like "gay-gene" are terrible mischaracterizations. Firstly, not everything reduces to a single gene or control sequence. Secondly, genetic variables have degrees of influence, not either/or. This is what Skeptic means by "predisposed". If you don't think A is actually genetic influences, then tell me what else is shared by identical twins, is not shared by dizygotic twins, and could influence religiousness. I messed up the OP. I was only reading the concordance rates for female MZ twins. All response variables were less concordant for the male twin pairs (MZ or DZ) with the exception of "importance of God" for MZ twin pairs. This means that, on average, men were less influenced by common environment for all six measures of religiousness, and more influenced by unique environment for 5 out of the 6 measures. Hmmm. If belief in supernatural beings is cso superficial, why has it persisted throughout human history? There's evidence for a neural basis, which would place religiousness closer to our DNA. A recent study showed that autistic brains undergo less pruning during adolescence*. High-functioning autistics are better represented among atheists and agnostic (and especially among those who construct their own religion)**. This could be cultural, but the autism-atheism relationship was largely mediated by mentalizing (mind-reading) skills even after controlling for church attendance,*** and brain scans show that mentalizing occurs during prayer****. This could mean that some autistics are born atheists, or that some neurotypicals are born believers. Autism is four times as prevalent among males, and males tend to score higher on autism scales, but alas, Table 2 is of no help because the data from the male pairs have very, very wide confidence intervals. * Children with Autism Have Extra Synapses in Brain, CUMC ** Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism, Cladwell-Harris Murhpy & Velazquez *** Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God, Norenzayan Gervais & Trzesniewski, 2012 **** Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer, Schjoedt et al, 2014 (I haven't read this one yet) I think I just weakened my opening argument a great deal. Take that, MonDie, you atheist scum!

I just wanted to post this quickly. I'll see the replies in a few days. “… And thank you to god for making me an atheist.” —Ricky Gervais There was a recent discussion about whether people raised in other cultures would be damned under Christianity. It's an easily grasped dilemma—why should the fate of a soul depend on the time and place of birth? Twin studies add two new variables: the family you're born to, and your genetics. Identical twins share both of these. Familial Resemblance in Religiousness in a Secular Society: A Twin Study Dorte Hvidtjørn, Inge Petersen, Jacob Hjelmborg, Axel Skytthe, Kaare Christensen, and Niels C. Hvidt http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8871485&fileId=S1832427413000030 In Table 2, we see that for identical (monozygotic) twins (MZ), belief in God, belief in an afterlife, and prayer to God had concordance rates of 0.79, 0.79, and 0.76, respectively, and even church attendance and the importance of religion ranged from 0.50 to 0.65 (although church attendance had a much higher tetrachoric correlation). Furthermore, in their review of the research, half of the religiosity-measures used were 40% influenced by genetics. Here's a quick numerical summary, excluding the sample of children. additive genetics: 00, 10, 20, 40, 40, 40 common environment: 10, 10, 20, 50, 50, 60 unique environment: 30, 40, 40, 40, 50, 50 In more detail (in case anyone wants to check my numbers): Thoughts?

Here's one for S1eep to keep him awake. youtube.com/watch?v=tY1YKHSTIi0 I should listen to more docile music, like I used too. The Magnetic Fields - Irma youtube.com/watch?v=KwLuueV6XSk I'll be back September 12th.

The moderators have considered meaning too narrowly. By their standards, the words Hello, Aw, and yum are meaningless. Cuss words express subjective associations like frustration, contempt, or surprise. Coitus is technical. Making love is tender or romantic. Fucking is contemptuous or debasing. What the fuck is frustrating or freakish. Holy fuck is daunting or impressive. I can think of a few reasons for discouraging their use. 1. Mundane use reduces their impact in serious situations, e.g. What the fuck! 2. Some provide an outlet for the (often impulsive) expression of socially unacceptable feelings. 3. Some are debasing, and using them conveys that these debasing attitudes are acceptable or even cool.