MonDie

Four Year Bump I did get a trundle wheel. I recall that, with the sidewalk's bumps smoothed out, the measurement was reliable at something like 12,XXX feet plus or minus 10-20 feet. I think that's right, and I think that was after slowing for the bumps. I remember the last place digit changes so rapidly that I would ignore it in favor of the second lastest digit, but the error margin wasn't more than 50 feet. That is less than half of a percentage point of error, which was better than the several percentage points of disparity by maps. I also wanted to share some physiological tips for anyone who shall run regularly (or daily). None of the physiological insights were obvious, but it was noticed over the years. The most important thing is symmetry, and, per the relevance to backpacks, I thought some protesters or whomever might find it to be useful for some kind of moving distribution system. I have been jogging with backpacks and drawstring bags, and their symmetry will make or break a long distance jog. With backpacks, a box of some kind, a cardboard box, should house all of the items. This will guarantee symmetry. A cardboard box with tape will not become wet and soggy, and a plastic bag can protect the contents from rain. For my drawstring bag I only use plastic bags, and a few layers of bags will fend off flooding conditions. There are a few ways to tie the draw-strings, but I prefer: with each string, to twist that string 360 degrees and to place the resultant loop over that same arm on the same side and then over my head. No choking, no asymmetry, and negligible breathing restriction. If you want to get a better time, your muscles, your calves particularly, should be totally relaxed during stretching. I DO NOT stretch my calves on stairway steps, but if I must I must b grasping a handle that fully supports my body weight. Preferably, I take a chair with horizontal bars that are low to the floor. I relax my feet against those horizontal bars while pulling on it with only my arms. My preferred outdoor technique is what I call the tree hugger, and on those few occasions of its use I reasoned that it was far safer than using a wall. I find a pole with a large circumference, a telephone pole, and, with one tightly snug heel and the other foot nearer rather than farther , I try to give the pole a big ol' hug with my arm muscles. With foot pain I noticed some problematic postures that worsened the pain I already had. Those are the bone tips. Recently I pulled my leg again, and I noticed upon the next jog that my pulled leg wasn't as tight as the other leg. This is the basis for the muscle tips. Obviously, you should not slow too much and accelerate too rapidly else you will pull your calves. Darn traffic. Darn geese. In motion (bones first), your jogs should be turned by both legs and not merely the outside leg. If you grab a pole and twirl around it, you will notice that it relieves the pressure that would be felt in the feet in a jogging turn. In motion (muscles second), it might be wise to walk slowly with outwardly pointing toes. This is what doesn't pull on your calves. In standing (bones first), try not to straighten one knee or the other. In standing (Muscles second), try not to stand on curled toes (...yes, like a girl). This posture tugged on my pulled calf muscle. In sitting with elevated feet (bones first), DO NOT rest the balls of your feet against hard edges, and (muscles second), on any surface, try to rest on the heels of the feet rather than the balls of the feet. In sitting on the floor (bones), try to extend out your feet rather than pulling your feet toward your thighs. Have good jogging! October 13th, 10:40 AM CST

Honestly, it's ironic how we wage counterproductive wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and then recant so hastily as to leave all in shambles (Iraq and Libya). Without the military industrial complex (Raytheon, Boeing,... Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, etc.), this would be the most damning criticism of our two-party system. No consistent foreign policy, but a very clear business model. No foreign policy town hall, and now the war-mongers get to self-righteously bash the brain-dead populist. Oct 11, 6:19 PM CST

Speaking of reality TV, the key witness in the trial of Amber Guyger for the murder of Botham Jean has been killed (in a "drug deal gone wrong" per CNN). Any re-trial will be even more tainted now. It's like watching a highly charged football game playing out on a densely foggy football field. If somebody said that Neo from The Matrix ran across the wall, I suppose the duped fans would still be as enthused and enthralled as any movie-goer. If somebody lit a firecracker, certain people would immediately and unthinkingly duck or vigilantly scan. For the sake of society, I think we should be more assured that we all are watching the same game, and it comes to how we verify information, how we verify the relationships that aren't within seconds gathered, merged, and double-checked by efficient sensory/perceptual processing. We all can identify faces, so imagine one. Now, try to imagine any specific part of the face. Your expectations are absolutely fulfilled by the first request, but the latter attempt is more jarring. What did you think you were imagining that you could not imagine again? Some things are just "seen", perceptually processed as stand-alone and entire. Faces are, including their easily perceivable color. Courts address laws that are just the opposite. Nobody is good guy or bad guy, nor an ally except my lawyer, but a specific clause of the legal agreement might have been violated. In videogames, we have allies and enemies and everyone gets killed (no comma), and this is how emotions like resentful anger or traumatic fear are tuned. The behavior may or may not have consequences, but the behavior always reflects on the behaver, who will ever receive our admonishment, admiration or fear, our "first impression", which is anchored by that face of theirs (plural or singular). If stereotyping or racism are as automatic as I have suggested, then what other recourse does a minority have except to make corrections after the fact? If we can't correct all of the cases on their individual merits, then should we make broader, more approximate corrections? Maybe we should, but this Vox video on the failure of Batson vs Kentucky (5:40) shows that sometimes we don't even institute common-sense reforms that could prevent these errors to begin with. I certainly think that would be the preferred reform, and moreover, any broad-brush reform will certainly enrage some ignorant people who won't need any technical knowledge to realize that those people are getting a boost. If we can have our cake and eat it too, we should. If it comes down to well-researched designs rather than brute-force political action, maybe the path of least resistance is, coincidentally, the best path. On that note, I know Bernie has been criticized for policies that don't specifically mention race, but maybe that is what an informed policy will look like. Personally, I would be interested in appropriately enforcing the law, and that means being more objective in all matters. If Amber Guyger made a mistake, we can learn from that. If racism is a pervasive problem, we can learn from that. Everybody wins. If everybody wins, the opposition might not be so fierce. October 10th, 4:58 PM CST minus a few minutes

I think you are particulating instead of waving. Eloise's picture would be wrong if the motorcyclist had lassoed me and was driving me in circles.

Maybe I should be a psychological physicist. We humans try to subjectively model the objective world that we must survive in, and we generally communicate in objective terminology such that the only motion is the objective motion that is the same for all observers, although we might occasionally discuss (inter)subjective motion with a person who shares our perspective. That is, subjective motion isn't really motion in the same way that the alien in AVP doesn't really exist. The more interesting quandary is not that subjective thought is accomodating the objective world it occupies, but that objective laws have constrained the way that we see the objective world. Factor analysis techniques might suggest that, psychologically, the concept of dimensionality might be more fundamental than the concept of space. Spatially, we don't see a two-dimensional world, but a three dimensional one. This tendency/ability is measured by the Mental Rotation Task (BTW girls are still better at algebra, statistically). I think we intuitively, and mistakenly, associate three-dimensionality with the cube⁠—perhaps this reflects our bilateral, rather than radial, physiological organization, or merely our third-grade indoctrination with Cartesian coordinate grids⁠—, but squares are polygons and there are no polygons below the triangle. What we really have is two circular lenses placed upon a spherically moving head, but the planet might be a better example. We live in cubical homes and use four-directional compasses that reflect our two-dimensional system of longitude-and-latitude, but we also move altitudinally up above or down below. Below motion is with gravity and toward our planet's center and above motion is against or away, and nobody can dispute the profound relevance of this axis of movement. However, why do we always plaster our globes with a checkered, longitude/latitude surface? With three directions, we get a honey-combed surface, and with three dimensions (six directions), we might have something like longitude/latitude. It seems more reasonable to illustrate two-dimensional, circularly-oriented movement of an entity who is placed upon a two-dimensional, spherical surface which exists within a three-plus-dimensional world. What remains unclear to me is how we could use this terminology to describe the subjective-objective interplay of your examples. The spherical perspective still permits applications of the inverse square law (although one might wonder why it isn't an inverse honeycomb law!?!?!). This allows for the objective space being covered to expand as the distance from the observer increases. This means could explain why the objective motion looks like less motion subjectively. October 8th, 11:45 AM CST

These were from 2017, but I read it. Primary psychopaths probably resemble narcissists in having statistically lower emotional empathy and, at least, statistically normal cognitive empathy. Autism has several components that include below normal mentalizing or theory of mind, which might be similar to cognitive empathy. The link between autism and psychopathy is a myth, although both aspies and secondary psychopaths statistically tend toward lower mentalizing ability and lower religiousness. Ara Norenzayan published his findings linking "belief in God" to mentalizing. See above. Secondary psychopathy is linked to childhood adversity and lower mentalizing ability. Overlapping syndromes have shown an ambiguous relationship to mentalizing and, unexpectedly, they showed higher performance on the RMET (Reading the Mind in the Eyes), which was originally designed to measure autism. The reason is very much unclear. Confusingly, depression severity has been associated, but being in a depression is inversely associated. Schizophrenics have a better prognosis with more positive symptoms, which can include blatantly psychotic audio-verbal hallucinations, ambiguously defined "delusions", or even obsessive-compulsive symptoms or dissociative symptoms, which I would expect to be statistically more common in STPD or BPD, respectively (i.e. misdiagnosis). Those so called "delusions" can include beliefs of "thought insertions" or mind reading. These people might actually have a better prognosis. They might even show higher social functioning rather than lower, and social support does probably decelerate the schizophrenic deterioration. Confusingly... In summary, believing in things you cannot prove is normal, and it might suggest higher or lower "empathy." P.S. That other thread is about REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, but maybe she should be told by a friend. Like OCD, this disorder is also linked to STPD. I imagine such patients would in need of some kind of explanation. *be* in need of

Although you scientists might recollect interactions with journalists, I think this is the wrong framing. Journalists who expose corruption have a documented tendency to turn up dead, recently: Jamal Kashoggi (US/Turkey), Daphne Galizia (Malta), Viktoria Marinova (Bulgaria). Or imprisoned in Asia and the Middle East (Wa Lone). However, editors and other higher-ups do censor certain kinds of discussions. One example was Nick Hanauer's Banned TED Talk (TYT) on income inequality, which seems to be back now. Coverage Discussion of climate change is abysmal. War coverage -mongering gets ratings (William Arkin, Phil Donahue), but the journalists in those places are heroes. The problem appears to be an after-the-fact censorship or omission of certain framings, and this probably has a top-down effect on the journalist's paycheck if he doesn't shift his coverage as well. However, I would be interested to investigate other differences in the framing. Maybe scientists tend to want to include practical tips for bettering society, while perhaps the reporters have to entice people by activating them emotionally, emotions that will go to waste.

That was a rushed post, but this will be more careful. BTW, I have been reflecting on human communication for some months now, so following my links will give a pretty good overview of what topics can be contemplated through mere reflection alone. I don't know which science requires sitting around and thinking about one's own thinking. I have begun imagining what the information flow between scientists might look like and what its short-comings might be. It revolves around individual observations (1), individual experimental designs (2), individual searching and collective sharing (3), and individual or collective "dark spots." (3) Firstly, I've had this idea that we expand language to accommodate new observations that arise from the exploration of new aspects of our reality. That is, language is like words on a map, and the vocabulary expands when a part of the map is illuminated. Each scientist illuminates his respective portion of the scientific map. Secondly, each scientist uses his or her (but not anybody else's) observations to formulate hypotheses, and the scientist designs the experimental testing of the hypotheses. However, thirdly, scientific discussions probably tend to be driven by the individual's searching rather than the collective sharing, and the search probably tends to pertain to the design of experiments and not the design of hypotheses. I explain, in my Ubuntuforums quote of myself, how we are driven to generate means toward ends in such a way that our understanding of "success" is limited by our definition of our own ends. In science, the scientist does not know what he does not know, so his current hypothesis is probably what anchors his success and his interdisciplinary inquiries probably pertain to experimental design and not hypothesis design. Fourthly and finally, each scientist has a dark region that will include whatever observations he has not made and whatever he does not learn through inquiries about his experimental design. In general, the scientist should only observe what is not present if it is something that was present in other observed cases, but yet unclear might be how this could illuminate the observe-able cases that have not been observed, and not merely the missing or present features of a case that allow comparisons between observed cases. Such a mechanism would explain how an individual illuminates his own dark areas, but these dark areas might also be illuminated interpersonally. However, this might be limited by two things. (A) The scientists might have a tendency to search for information rather than to share information, and those scientists might actually be more personally successful. (B) Ideally, if the "map" is dark in some region, a new specialized field ideally should appear to fill the void, but this may or may not happen. If I were to draw an analogy to biological pathways, I might choose a biofilm rather than a living organism because it might be a better reflection of the individualistic tendency to search rather than the collectivistic tendency to share. Specialized cells release signaling molecules that binds to receptor sites, but this is probably more comparable to a person who shares the information with somebody who didn't know he needed it. The receiving cell had the receptors, but he didn't know what should bind to them. In a biofilm, the organisms are interdependent, but they are still members of separately evolving species. This means that the pathway, rather than being branched for the sake of flexibility and adaptation to chaotic selection pressures, will probably be branched for the mere reason that it is a meandering pathway that is driven forward, from means to ends, by randomness instead of being driven backward, from ends to means, by selection pressures. Anyway, I have to finish this post, but that is the jist of what I could come up with. October 4th, 10:42 AM CST

I don't have a degree. I just brainstormed this privately.. Previous brainstorming was locked: (UbuntuForums, Smart Videogames) Page three was interesting. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2424256&page=3 Summary: There may be shared mechanical properties of biological pathways and other "pathways" such as my "informational pathways." Their apprehension might be more convenient with certain visualizations. Information flow innovations might protect humanity's social progress. Start graphing information flow! One day, I was imagining possible biological pathways for certain hormones, and I found that certain visualizations profoundly accelerated my thought process. More recently, I was groggy from doxylamine succinate sleep-aid and I noticed mathematical memory lapses. Trying to multiply through numerical decomposition (base-ten separation, separate multiplication, then addition), I found myself forgetting the numbers that would have to be summed. I think, in the biological case, this is the function that my visualizations had served, the function of an interface. In the biological case, the visualized interface stored the hypothetical changes to biochemical quantities, which might have made it easier to simultaneously contemplate different possible pathways without forgetting my previous thinking. I think memory is part symbolization and part inference, and the symbols can serve as "anchors" of sorts. We use inference to again arrive at the meaning of an old symbol, and the match-up between symbol and meaning provides confirmation that memory has succeeded. In a similar way, these visualizations of changes to biological pathways might have served to anchor thought. The discrete/continuous distinction might be important here. I have been thinking that language disposes us toward categorical thinking, and without a good way to accommodate continuous variations or fuzzy set memberships. Perhaps these sorts of continuous variations, e.g. molecular composition of cellular fluids, are more easily to represent visually. Before I was fascinated by the possibility of a visual "language", but how this could become an alternative language is not yet apparent. What other problems could benefit from similar visualizations? I started working this out on UF, and since I realized the most interesting possibility, which is information flow, which I will get to later. Information flow might be comparable to the binding of biologically active molecules to receptor sites within biological pathways. The potential to bind is the "affinity", but the binding of ideas might be described as "subjective utility", or something like that. Perhaps scientists might be able to quantify and map the flow of specialized knowledge or discoveries. In any case, Although an understanding of language might only result in censorship or algorithmically driven surveillance, information flow could potentially be important to social progress. (Moreover, like ages past, such generalizable concepts might empower the ordinary citizen more than anyone else.) Social progress began with our use of shared information, but now the information is too much for any individual to handle. Meanwhile, we have other examples of what happens when more and more people are confined to a small land mass, and they include Israel, India, and the Philippines, although these people probably aren't intentionally congregating in one place like many urbanites. Although US cities and suburban neighborhoods are left-wing strong-holds, those three countries do not show the same trend—whatever you might think of the trends they do show. It is my opinion that these unexpected developments only intensify our need to understand how information has—and will continue to—produce social progress. I have become guarded with the ideas I produce, but I will probably return to this IMO exciting topic. Be sure that I will be reading any contributions. P.S. Feel free to share what I was PMing if you liked it. Until now, I was PMing my brainstorming to unwitting SFN users.

Speculation! Speculation! I think homeostatic processes came first. An instinctual behavior involves a response to a stimulus that continues until completion, but homeostatic responses do not continue until completion. Instead, the homeostatic responses controlled by our hindbrain are cyclic: they turn on and off with the presence or absence of certain environmental conditions. At some point the stimulus conditions narrowed to a particular event, and the response was shaped (see shaping) into a highly refined sequence of responses that continue until completion.

Probability depends on the perspective. If determinism is true, life always had a 100% chance. Language is a map of internal map of the external world. Our concepts are within, but they come from without. If an instantiation of some concept, e.g. the wing concept, has to meet functional criteria, e.g. allowing aerodynamic flight, then the notion of a non-functional, never-functional wing is absurd. Maybe you can clarify?

The biological species concept, the most common version, relies on the ability to interbreed. However, barriers to hybridisation come in various forms. If you breed a subspecies that has a different appearance, these new individuals might be less attractive. This would be a pre-zygotic barrier. Post-zygotic barriers prevent the normal development of the hybrid zygote. For example, the mule embryo does not abort, but the mule doesn't develop sexually. Although the point might be moot, I believe sexual selection is ultimately the selection of zygotes. A male can be fit and attractive, but he also releases many sperm with varying degrees of health. The selection of healthier sperm might be more important for organism that release spores, or the aquatic sperm involved in alternation of generations. Perhaps the right environment would cause their sperm to evolve more rapidly than either the gametophyte or the sporophyte. This thread is from a decade ago!

Capitalism begins when entrepreneurs acquire capital; democracy ends when they buy the truth.

Yes, context. First tweet: Israeli lobbyists in the US. Second tweet: Israel's anti-muslim prime minister. No tweet: Nazi Germany, although the death toll really is unfathomable. Speech is a two-way phenomenon. It influences the listener's thoughts, and it's a window into the speaker's thoughts. Generally, the speaker desires the former and the lsitener is more interested in the latter.

Correction: West Bank =/= Palestine This is not a trolling! Obviously I rely on stimulus generalization to recognize related concepts, but the mechanisms of stimulus discrimination are failing me. Hmm. Could the people judging this matter have extra leeway in being more generalistic or more discriminative? We are a very, very big country united only by the national celebrity of the presidency.

Perhaps groups like Al Qaeda are disproportionately concerned about Israeli-occupied Palestine, but the oppression of muslims is apparent in Israel and beyond. Watching Al Jazeera, I noticed the bias in the word "terrorist." Although not "terrorism", muslims were targeted in various "genocides": the Boznian genocide (serbs mainly, muslims incidentally); the Gujarat riots (muslims mainly, Narendra Modi still got promoted); and the recent Burmese genocide. AFAIK, the last muslim-perpetrated "genocide" was the Armenian genocide in 1910. In this case Turkey, the former Ottoman empire, does not callously boast about it, but callously denies it. Concerns about the oppression of muslims are real, although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might involve an unusual mixture of religious fundamentalism and humanitarian concern. Al Qaeda did reference the conflict in relation to an attack in Mali—and I did hear it on France 24 rather than Al Jazeera. Addendum: Maybe Al Qaeda's news source is as euro-centric as yours! Sorry Botswana. Correction: Boznians killed in Boznian genocide. Rohingyan genocide perpetrated by Burmese military.

Corrected error regarding Donamin Trumpyahu.

Oh... Um..., I already used the campaign funds to create a political search engine. https://www.google.com/search?q=Elizabeth+Warren+versus+Bernie+Sanders&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS771US795&oq=Elizabeth+Warren+versus+Bernie+Sanders&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l4.18341j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I'm with RangerX. Sounds like a somatosensory issue.

Jewish ⊇ Israeli ⊇ Israeli government ⊇ Benjamin Netenyahu, a far-right Israeli politician who bribed news outlets during his presidential campaign. I think the appearance of this supporting evidence is partly responsible for our congress's change of heart. https://www.vox.com/2019/2/28/18243493/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-indictment-bribery-fraud

Depressed or sad people and people with a perceived lack of control usually contemplate their circumstances more deeply. Ordinarily people will bolster their self-esteem, i.e. how they perceive themselves in relation to others, bolstering their confidence and assertiveness. This tendency seems to prevent depression and anxiety. thread started 8:55 Sunday or 3:55 Monday? Oh boy.

Did you read my post? Did you give it much thought? Here is the test: Without re-reading the previous post, try to remember whatever words you can. The levels-of-processing model describes how elaboration helps to embed the contents of working memory into long-term memory. Therefore, an analysis of what you remember might give clues about what was most important/meaningful. For now I will hide my analysis of other users' posts, but I will offer a general model of what we're analyzing. Here are the facts. Unlike the visual register, the auditory register holds content for up to twenty seconds. Moreover, there is evidence that visual words are still processed as acoustically encoded content. For example, we will confuse letters that sound the same rather than look the same. I would personally propose that, unlike visual content, auditory speech lends itself to a linear, chronological sequence wherein each grammatical cycle* has a beginning and an end. Linguistic processing is accelerated when each word creates realistic expectations about upcoming words. Moreover, the context-dependent probability of a word tells us something about how important or meaningful it is. Totally predictable continuations add little (although an unexpected end might actually be more meaningful). The unexpected content tends to attract deeper processing. If this is accurate, one could use probability theory to analyze the semantic density of any string of words. However, linguistic processing is not totally Pavlovian. Research on classical conditioning eventually uncovered a processing called backward conditioning, which has a different kind of effect. A backward conditioned response may actually indicate that the event is over rather than upcoming, inhibiting the response rather than facilitating it. In contrast, you can try to read an obscured sentence that has every other letter replaced with a dash, and you will notice that some words become clear after you have moved on from them. I take this as evidence that working memory can hold a dozen words simultaneously, allowing for simultaneous processing rather than the sequential kind of processing studied by Pavlov. grammatical cycles: My word for sentences, prepositional phrases, participle phrases, introductory phrases, dependent clauses, etc.

Two Years Later: Grammar!?! Verbal cognition is the new frontier. I have spent too much time contemplating verbal cognition, and without reading the official sources. I guess I expected it to be easier, but it is a great example of how we carelessly equate unarticulated knowledge (or potential language) with verbal knowledge (applied language, formalized language, whatever you wanna call it). In any case, this thread might be ideal for exploring verbal cognition. Language doesn't work without a shared set of rules, and here I could observe how we humans articulate the rules that we think we are applying every time we communicate. If you participate, I will dump my ideas onto you free of charge. For now, however, only my ethical concerns are de-classified, and I think the the case for increased knowledge wins. Verbal cognition ties into attention, learning, memory, and indoctrination. Unfortunately, in the age of information, technology and information could be the tools of dictators (e.g. surveillance) or their demise (e.g. journalism). Openness to Experience is tied to IQ, authoritarianism (RWA), and religious fundamentalism. We might ponder whether authoritarianism stems from a desire to control manipulatively, or an over-simplification of psychological learning processes that de-emphasizes the value of education. Language is the first unscientific thing we learn: in science, beliefs are evaluated by their external efficacy, but, developmentally, languages are probably the earliest beliefs to be rewarded for their own sake. Moreover, dispersing this information could compromise some psychological research, but, on the other hand, a cognitively aware populace might be more scientifically literate and less vulnerable to indoctrination. After all, science involves a formalization of something that we implicitly use everyday, probability! In contrast, sometimes expertise can create counterproductive "mental sets", and I think indoctrination is a kind of false expertise. Lastly, a global understanding of verbal cognition could facilitate inter-cultural discussions, creating a global economy of ideas rather than cheeseburgers and fighter jets. Who's on board?

Russian elite influence. Income as GDP per capita is increasing, but income inequality is increasing too. Sadly, one proponent of economic globalization, France's Macron, is still biased toward his elite pals. Putin was among the many wealthy elites implicated in the Panama Papers, elites whose offshore "shell companies" were actually tax havens sometimes used for money laundering. In contrast, RT America is a Russian, state-run, news outlet that still provides a critical portrait of other countries (e.g. the United States), which isn't necessarily propoganda. Meanwhile, the mainstream american media has largely ignored the influence of the Koch brothers. If this collusion is merely more elitist cahoots, the victims are the weak and powerless. The consequences for the Yemeni people may be the most dire of all. Credit to TYT, and moontanman, who posted TYT at some point. and Al Jazeera, etc. etc.