Prometheus

CharonY put forward a good solution a while back, i think it was missed.

I watch MMA. Some women in the sport have raised concerns about transgender athletes, which is how it came to my attention. Some in the medical have put forward scientific reasons to legitimise this concern, others refute these reasons, and that debate continues within the medical community (links have been provided in the course of this thread). To have these concerns just brushed away as ridiculous, and to equate them with resistance against gay marriage is unhelpful at best. It's the sort of rhetoric that pushes people toward Trump and Brexit, as it exacerbates the us vs them attitude that precludes nuanced debate - the nuance here being that having concerns about transgender athletes does not automatically make you transphobic (although it's likely true that all transphobes oppose all trans athletes and will leverage legitimate concerns to muddy the waters). It may turn out that these concerns are unfounded, but i would hope, on a science forum of all places, that the concerns were addressed rather than being dismissed simply ridiculous. It is patronising.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

It's also much closer to the Chinese concept of 'dao' than just about any Western concept of God - Spinoza excepted.

Dawkins is arguing that we are lucky to be alive, hence we should be grateful. How does the fact of suffering make this false? And why are you talking about evidence, it's a value judgement. He could have said we are unlucky to be alive so let's just end it now. All the evidence in the world doesn't make someone's attitude true or false (maybe good or bad, but that's a different discussion). I've come across many people with similar views, but can't agree. First, understanding a thing adds beauty, not detracts. A friend of mine once said that learning to write fiction took the magic out of reading for him, because he found himself dissecting everything he read. I do the same now, but the magic of stories has simply moved from reading to writing. Second, there is so much complexity in the world that we have no idea how close we are to understanding it all. If ideas like Wolfram's computational irreducibility hold, then we'll never know it all. I don't agree science shows there is no such thing as spirituality. Just because as we dissect the universe we find no fragment that is 'spiritual', does not mean it does not exist. Rather it's an emergent property of human (and perhaps other) societies. It would be like arguing economics doesn't exist because we have observed no economic atoms. Otherwise agree.

I'll remind Venezuela.

I ask because sacking someone for writing a fanciful book sounds illegal. Either there's been a miscarriage of justice, which i would have thought the author would have addresses, or something else is going on. It's not mentioned on his wikipedia entry either. Phi addressed this point. Obviously you've still not followed the link i gave regarding DMT - while admonishing others for doing the same for yours - otherwise you'd know that DMT elves have also been well documented by many medical doctors researching this drug. I know of one doctor, personally, who believes in DMT elves. Psychiatrists are a weird bunch. I've nursed maybe hundreds of people through and from death, so i'm well aware of the value of these experiences. I agree the experience of death is something most societies avoid thinking and talking about to their detriment. But the issue you have raised is using them as evidence of an afterlife, which is a different question to value. There's so much wonder and beauty in this universe, yet people still want to make up something even more wondrous, like they can't see what's before them. The Wood Sprite doesn't need to literally exist for it to imbue our world with magic.

Is this true? I couldn't find any documentation. Explain to me why if these subjective experiences are to be considered serious evidence of life after death we can't also take seriously people who report the existence of DMT elves (a real community of people, not one i've just made up).

Why would you think the opposite of random be intention? I don't know what you mean that total randomness is a clock-work universe. What even is total-randomness? The distinction i made between them was that one emerges from the other. I'm no physicist but entropy doesn't predict disorder, but measures it. And chaos is an entirely different phenomenon again (i.e. non-linear dynamics). I think by throwing around these terms you are only confusing yourself. We have regions of high entropy and regions of low entropy. Why would you think you need two laws of physics for this to be? By analogy you might say because there are diabetics and non-diabetics there must be two completely different laws of biology. No, diabetes and its absence occurs as a continuum in a single system.

The laws of physics and the biochemical laws that emerge from them. Randomness is just one part of the evolutionary process. You also need some kind of self-replication and selection process. Evolution has never been understood as a 'completely' random process. Another factor the above quotes seem to ignore is that evolution is a cumulative process. Those probabilities refer to typing out a book from scratch. The chances would be considerably shorter if you can keep intermediary stages - so once you have the first word 'correct' you keep it (as does evolution - each new species doesn't have to go through the entire evolutionary process starting from abiogenesis, just the preceding species). The analogy between writing books and evolution breaks down here as one might ask how do we know what the 'correct' first word, or species, is. In the former case 'correct' is defined by some external criterion, but for evolution correct simply means it survives to reproduce.

Why would we expect exponential growth to continue? Sounds like a mistake in extrapolation. Much more likely is logistic growth.

It's a bit disingenuous to ask people to click your link when it's clear you haven't read the linked article for the counter argument. Especially when your 'evidence' is a youtube video, and the evidence you ignore is a peer reviewed academic paper in a psychology journal.

People's reported experiences with DMT, and other psychedelics, are every bit as profound as as those reported during NDEs. Read the link i provided above if you're interested.

The same effect can be achieved with DMT. The way clinical trials are proceeding it shouldn't be too long before it is available for a number of conditions, including depression.

If you read the article you will see it quotes the scientist who published a letter in Science (the journal) arguing that 'the idea of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 leaking from a lab in China must be explored more deeply'. That's the very letter that has created this round of media attention, and likely ultimately led to your current scutinity. So yes, Nature would publish it. Science certainly did. Are you going to answer me as to which of 'we should not debate the lab leak hypothesis because it annoys China and we need China at all costs?' or 'we should not try to hold China accountable for anything, including possible crimes against humanity?' do you think that sentence supports? Or should i stop asking? Can i just conclude it was politically motivated hyperbole?

So the quote comes from some scientists. A scientific journal reporting on what some scientists say in the news section of that journal seems reasonable. Which of 'we should not debate the lab leak hypothesis because it annoys China and we need China at all costs?' or 'we should not try to hold China accountable for anything, including possible crimes against humanity?' do you suppose that sentence infers?

Where in that article does it state that we should not debate the lab leak hypothesis because it annoys China and we need China at all costs? Where in that article, or any other Nature article, does it imply we should not try to hold China accountable for anything, including possible crimes against humanity?

Science and morality are different disciplines - one is what we observe in the universe, the other is what we bring to it. Morality is not so straight-forward that we can afford to discard the millennia of thinking that has shaped our cultures. Instead we should be building upon that base, taking what is useful from our mythologies, and creating new ones in the shape of our aspirations. If they are such idiots why give them credence by engaging with them? Such people have the same mentality that has people believing in a flat earth and lizard people ruling the world. No one believing it will be reasoned out of it and it just raises their profile by putting them on the same platform as respected voices in science. It would be better to give a platform to reasonable people of religious leanings (yes they exist), so we can more quickly transform our mythologies and incorporate our scientific understandings. This is why i believe Sagan was the greatest communicator of science - he didn't just tear down old ideas, he offered a tangible basis for new ideas. And that basis is the same one that can be found in all spiritual traditions: wonder.

I think socio economic status is the larger factor here. Poor white people are just as uncomfortable in rich white mens meetings or business environments. There's a reason only 4% of UK doctors are from a working class background. Personally, i have far, far less in common with the likes of Boris Johnson than i do my Pakistani friends i went to school with and lived next door to, despite there being some real cultural differences between us. Maybe the experience is different in the US? It's perhaps a different thing if we are talking about someone migrating to a new country. If i migrated to China, India or Nigeria i would expect some pretty jarring cultural differences in the workplace that would likely impede my progression.

Fungi constitute ~2% of all biomass on Earth, humans 0.01%. Not quite useless.

Cryptocurrency is not beholden to national boundaries: it can be mined anywhere. Iceland has seen a huge influx of server farms making use of their hydrothermal power supply to produce coin relatively green and cheap.

As sub-orbital flights start to, er, take off, a more accurate estimate of the commercial safety profile can start to build. It's not fixed, as with aviation safety will likely improve with time. How much risk to tolerate is a personal choice. I imagine there will be an initial wave of intrepid tourists willing to take the risks, and as price goes down and safety increases more and more people will consider it an option (i guess it will remain the domain of the wealthy for a few decades though). I imagine the fledgling space tourism companies will understand how bad any fatalities will hurt their PR and so take it very seriously. With the New Shepherd starting to take tourists this summer we won't have long to see how the industry approaches things.

I think it was a political move to keep ex-Soviet scientists from taking their expertise to places like North Korea and Iran. They're going to China now by the look of it. Fair enough. Blue Origin will send their first passengers up this July - one ticket is up for auction, the other three tickets are gone to unknown people. Hopefully it will be some of the development team. Another way to think about this inspiration. In a world of war, famine and pandemics having a prominent person dreaming of going to Mars can help people look up and dream big. I know dreams can't power rockets or feed a family, but i think it is sorely under-valued - we can never achieve more than our dreams, so dream big, work hard and see where it takes us.

ULA launch the Atlas rockets, which are the workhorse for American launches after the shuttle - including military payloads. They use Russian made RD-180 engines which cost about ~$10 million per launch and are non-reusable. ULA have been trying to get away from buying these engines from the Russian company NPO Energomash since at least 2014 but for whatever reasons have been unable. ULA also approached Blue Origin about developing new engines but have nothing serviceable yet. I guess the USAF are getting impatient with ULA on this so are looking elsewhere. In this context the ~$80 million the USAF gave SpaceX in an attempt to move away from reliance on Russian companies seems money well spent. I raise this because government money going to SpaceX was generally characterised as being a frivolous waste going on some eccentric billionaire's pipedream of going to Mars. Government agencies are getting tangible benefits for their investments. I'm not an economist, but that estimate comes from UBS research, part of a Swiss investment bank that perform economist forecasts. I couldn't find a break down of how that figure was derived. They wouldn't go to the ISS long-term, it's only got 4-8 more years left. SpaceX plan to launch tourists with the Starship currently being developed. Axiom, another company, plan to build a commercial space station starting in 2022 which will take tourists, amongst other revenues (e.g. research). Then there are sub-orbital flights which can cut 15 hour flights to less than an hour, in addition to any 'pure' tourism value. Yes, the first commercial disaster will be something. But i think people willing to launch into space won't be the timid type, so i'm not sure how much it will impact the industry long-term. You can get tickets to space for $250k with Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin - accessible to millionaires. Like i said, that quote was from quite a reputable economic forecaster, independent of space industry. If you know of other reputable forecasts i'm interested in seeing them. I understand people get annoyed at Musk's cheerleaders, but i think it's possible to go the other way and paint his ambitions as nothing but hot air. The truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere in between.