Prometheus

This seems to suggest you see inner peace as being the same as having no feeling? Not sure if that is a reflection on Buddhism, but it is a common misinterpretation of the practice. For instance it's quite common amongst people new to meditation to think that they must clear their minds of all thoughts. But the brain is an organ that thinks - to try to stop is as foolhardy as trying to to start your heart from beating. My take on inner peace is that you lose your sense of self and separateness from the world. You don't feel like a dancer dancing, there is only dance. You don't feel like a footballer playing football, there is just the ebb and flow of the match. You don't feel like a monk sitting there clearing your mind of all thought, there is just wholehearted sitting. You don't feel like a husband having an argument with his wife, there is just the full blooded heat of the moment. None of your emotions or perceptions change, it's just that you relate to them in a different way.

@Outrider I think people are asking why the experts think the way they do, rather than a simple restatement that they do or their credentials, and maybe evidence and/or anecdotes demonstrating the harm done to nail home the point.

A case of this?

It's a pretty good metaphor. Everyone understands Hamlet is quite long and everyone can imagine that a monkey could be taught to bash a typewriter but that it wouldn't know what it was doing so for practical purposes it would be random. Together with the revelation that the monkey would eventually produce the work gives a sense of the depth of infinity and the strangeness of some results in probability theory using infinity. Giving a metaphor using a truly random process like the decay of some unstable atom would loose more than half the general population halfway through the first sentence. Or maybe we should just leave it to purely mathematical arguments - rigorous for sure, but hardly any lay people would even be thinking about it let alone discussing it.

I said i don't have a problem with it, here: No group should be held back - but the less privileged will be held back. Poor people shouldn't be held back, but of course for all the social interventions we may put in place, they are. I think the same will happen with any realistic social intervention to ensure unmodified people are not disadvantaged by the presence of genetically superior people. The point is completely lost on me. Could you restate? Again, I said i don't have a problem with it. OK, so we agree the creation of genetically superior people will lead to disadvantages for the rest. I' just think whatever social intervention, laws, customs or otherwise you put in place that gap will ever be bridged. For instance the wealth gap is widening, not shortening, despite various laws and taxes that should diminish wealth inequality. That's why i don't think you can have both. And btw that's the optimistic picture i wish i could share.

So... which is it?

I feel you are overly optimistic - i wish i could take your outlook. Has that gap been widening or narrowing globally? I fear the disadvantaged will not be lifted up, and now they will have to compete with people genetically superior as well as socially superior to them. This at a time when resources as simple as fertile land are likely to become more scarce due to global warming ,and political movements to concentrate on the 'in' group are gaining momentum throughout the Western world. You ask the privileged not to be held back, fair enough. But allowing genetically modified people will necessarily hold poor people back if they share the same geographical, socio-political space. A normal person and a genetically altered person compete for the same job - who will get it? The smarter better looking one of course. This necessarily holds back the poor person whose real reason for not getting the job was not being from a privileged enough background for the requisite modifications. Who is holding who back? I don't mind the view that we should create genetically superior people if that is what people want, i just think it extremely naive to think it won't negatively impact all those left behind so long as they share the same space.

The OP refers to modifying the looks, smarts and athleticism of people, not just eliminating disease. In this case the two groups will be competing for the same limited resources. University places go to those who can pay and have the grades - some smart or athletic poor people may have got through to uni on scholarships, but now they are barely average so no go. Same for jobs. The modified people will be stronger and smarter and better looking (which shouldn't impact on getting most jobs, but the reality is that is does - they even get away with more crime). Social mobility is hard enough as it is, this would erect an iron curtain through which very few poor people could ever overcome. Add to that our track record on how we treat groups different to our own. It would take an extreme optimist to think there would be no abuse of the new under class.

Another concern would be the availability of such technology. I think it likely it would be available to the privileged few who can afford it (estimates seem to be around 5 figure sums, occasionally 6 figure), further widening the divide between those that have and those that have not. Even being on a generally equal genetic footing would be taken from the poor.

In general LDL ('bad' cholesterol) does lower. But there is never a guarantee that it will necessarily go down, especially if we consider a vegetarian diet isn't a homogeneous thing (you could just exclusively eat crisps for instance - vegetarian but LDL would likely go up).

When first i read the OP i first thought of Martin Luther King saying: or the quote misattributed to Einstein: But the rest of the discussion seems to be along the lines Carl Sagan's thoughts: Which is a slightly different query so thought i'd clarify which the OP wished to discuss. I know life isn't very well defined but isn't being able to control the environment to some degree generally agreed to be one of the key characteristics of life? Also, the idea that religion offers solace in god's plan is very eurocentric: many religions do not offer that solace. It has not developed independently in separated parts of the world, which we might expect if it were a common feature of our psychology. Instead we see the Abrahamic monotheism that dominates the world now spring up once in the world, be particularly aggressive in its ideology, and spread quickly around the world.

If the only thing exists is a strawberry tree then there would be no one to argue why it exists instead of a coconut tree. There would also be no air or soil so the 'tree' wouldn't last long. I'm not sure but i'd guess the minimum requirements for a strawberry tree to exist would be a solar system with a very similar configuration to our own. I even doubt a single sun could exist in isolation, but that only clusters (i.e. galaxies) of stars could come to being. The universe is everything, whereas a strawberry tree is a particular thing in the universe and that is why your analogies using particulars to explain why there must be a reason are completely missing the point. We didn't come into the universe, we grew out of it - a subtle but important distinction between the Abrahamic and the Vedic religions.

To give a different religious view before this thread is inevitably dragged down the theistic route: Purpose and no purpose are two sides of the same coin constructed by man. There isn't purpose, and there isn't meaninglessness either - both of these are things humans impose upon existence. Purpose or meaningless isn't a category will can apply to existence in general, but of course every one is free to impose any meaning, or meaninglessness, onto their existence they see fit.

Quite agree, which my first post addressed. My second post addressed Lord Antares who sought a practical perspective.

Fair enough, but then why are we talking about an infinite deck of cards? I mean it's so tall it extends way past the Magellanic cloud - not really practical.

I agree with Strange that this problem is undefined, but for different reasons (or it may be the same reason but i can't tell). I assume each card has the same probability of being selected (which was implied but not explicitly stated)? By the axioms of probability the sum of all probabilities must be one (we will pick one in the set, right). However, if the probability of any one card being selected is zero (as you have stated) then the sum of the probabilities is zero too - breaks the axiom. Also, if we insist the probability of picking any card is some very small constant then the sum of the infinite series will be infinity - also breaks the axiom. In short the uniform distribution is not defined for a countably infinite set. A valid distribution would be if we labelled each card off with the natural numbers, n, then defined the probability as being 1/2^n, as this sums to one, but is very contrived. It might also be possible if you are willing to relax the third axiom but that's beyond my ken.

For the first one an infinite spark implies a full rank anyway. Not sure why the spark is 1 iff a matrix has a zero column (is it just defined as such?).

I understand the rank of a matrix to be the maximum number of linearly independent rows (or equivalently columns) in a matrix. The spark seems to be the minimum number of columns which are linearly dependent. I'm missing some subtlety because these seem to me to be the same thing. Does anyone know any good resources on the distinction, i could only find the wikipedia page and that is a bit sparse.

They are pretty much different stories now. I don't think we'll ever see the books completed unfortunately - 21 years so far and the guy is about 70.

This is the most comprehensive review of the effect of food, nutrition and physical activity on cancer (should be updated soon). Meat starts on page 116.

According to this article female on male rape is not recognised in law. I was surprised. I'm sure that will change though, so long as enough people complain.

Are you complaining about it?

Is that the same hundred years or so that has seen the most scientific, technological and medical advances in humanity? Planes fly. Get over it.

So basically you don't like that scientists will change their beliefs based on new evidence? Says it all really.

Urine is not sterile but the bacteria it does contain are part of a normal microbiota (assuming she doesn't have a urine infection). As long as she has no wounds there is no problem for her. In terms of the carpet there was probably more bacteria on it than in the urine. You should get it cleaned though because stale urine stinks.