CharonY

Do you have literature showing the health effects of the prohibition?

Yeah you cannot do that easily anymore. I mean, there is a process you can start (and get the various levels of academic administration involved. And after a lot of time investment, they tend to pass anyway after a stern warning (i.e. nothing). Mostly because administration needs their money as government funding gets slashed.

That is not logical, and the premise is flawed. Cost depends on more than speed, and arguably the overall infrastructure (and scale) is more important.

Even on the sensory levels there are differences. Depending on how many and what types of each chromophore you have in your retina (at the areas where the light is reflected from the object) you will have various levels of excitation. Roughly speaking you will see similar reactions (such as signal going up through the visual nerves to the visual cortex), but it does not really how it is perceived.

Well it does, if you do not know how things interact with each other. For example, in case of weather, we have a generally idea e.g. temperature trends, factors influencing precipitation and so on. So you could just take the recent history (or even just the model) and try to predict things. In the brain our knowledge is much more limited so if we reconstruct what is happening at any time, we have to move back further and further to see how things are connected. The other issue is that things might be handled very differently by each respective brain. For example an apple might be associated with food in one brain, but with a traumatic even in another. Without knowing that, the different activities in a brain in response to showing an apple might not be understandable.

To figure out the misunderstanding here, where do you see the difference between what you describe here and: I suspect the issue might be in the details and/or phrasing.

Well, yes and because the brain constantly changes, you need to know the history of the brain if you want to reconstruct what things mean from a snapshot. Or think of it that way, cognitive functions are a process and in order to understand what is going on, it is not enough to see what is happening right now. You have to understand the full context, as the brain keeps changing (unlike a crystal perhaps?) to interpret what is happening at any given time. This is not entirely true, as there are areas of the brain that are somewhat fixed and can be associated with certain activities, but I think the author refers to more complex cognitive activities.

Well, it will affect its current state, but it depends a bit on perspective. Basically, memory formation is an active process that is associated with some sort of changes in structure and activity patterns. However, the precise activity is highly dependent on the state the brain is currently in at time of creation, as well as retrieval. I.e. if you stimulate the same pattern in different brains, the results for most cognitive elements will be different.

This seems to suggest that the number is somehow hardcoded in the crystal, and it is a matter of finding it. This likely not how it works in the brain, though. There are quite a few different models, created by disciplines ranging from cognitive psych to more neurological sciences. One is called memory engrams , and the idea is that connections and activities in the brain (classic examples are LTPs and LTDs) are changed upon learning and acquiring information, and that activation of those patterns results in recall (i.e. it is an active and creative process as these pattern are themselves plastic and the patterns do not recreate themselves fully). So memorizing a number does not necessarily store the number itself, but it may be part of a the context in which the number is stored. One example is passwords, for example. If you often type complex password, you might note that typing it in sometimes requires little thinking, here the memory is linked to movements that have been strengthened or otherwise activated over time. Yet trying to recall them verbally can be a bit more challenging, especially if one uses many of those. Also, depending on type of memory, those can be quite distributed across the brain, so it requires many parts to recreate memories.

I skimmed the essay (or at least a similar one) quite a while ago, and I think most of the time I had the term no shit sherlock in my mind. I agree with the general gist, the way the brain works is not the way a computer works. It is also true that the way we describe cognitive activities are superficial narratives (including specifically "information processing theory", as we do not really understand the underlying biology. And that is in my mind the overall issue, we have mostly a black box, we can see what comes in and what comes out and we make a story about what might happen in between. Bits and pieces are known, but we do not really know how they fit together. I think with respect to memory, we do not store memory, we (re)create memory, in part when certain paths are activated in certain combinations. I think a claim that memory does not exist is overreach, but memory as expressed in information processing theory, which was and perhaps still is something that has been heavily promoted, in cognitive psych. It also has resulted in quite a vast arrays of self-improvement theories (usually with little evidence) and which also has been liked a lot by tech folks.

Oopsie

I do not understand the question. How do you want to convert molarity (i.e. a concentration) to a volume. Something is missing here.

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I thought I did, there was no sudden collapse in engineering, the Eastern Roman empire continued on with similar feats for a few more hundred years, and decline in engineering capabilities are linked to societal challenges (including not having large entities around to fund infrastructure in many areas), and other challenges (e.g. global cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Antique_Little_Ice_Age, the Justinian plague, loss of trade networks and so on. So it is true that these were challenging times for most, which would slow down innovations. But it is not that there would be inevitable loss of technology or any form of progress. I am not sure about the history of aqueducts (which is a fairly specific thing to anchor a general narrative on), but some were maintained until modern times, from what I understand, but I have not seen any evidence that folks did not know how to build them. Just because something was not done it does not meant that folks did not know how to build them. I will note that at least to me the examples that you have provided are rather selective, and also not really precise. I looked up the Wells Cathedral which was built in the 12th century (so a bit after what at least some folks used to call the dark ages) but the foundation was a church in 705. So if in the period between 705 and the 12th century engineering all but vanished, how did the foundation survive for 400 years? There is also a nifty list on Wikipedia showing all the (surviving) buildings between 500-1000 AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_church_buildings#Europe_2 And again, considering the length of time these buildings have been around, suggests that folks did at least know how to keep buildings standing for quite long times. I will also note that the collapse of the Roman empire hit Britain worse than elsewhere, so there might be a bit of a bias there. Some key developments were made toward the end of this time period (e.g. heavy ploughs, I believe associated with Teutonic tribes), mills saw improvement and spread in that time frame throughout Europe and so on. So really it depends on which specific examples one want to select to build the narrative. It is a time period where written records were sparser and times were tougher, but there is a reason why modern Historians reject the usage in the broad sense.

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Well, if there was a systematic survey showing that buildings in the time period were poorly built in general it might be indicative of some decline in architectural achievements, but I posit that a small selection of buildings is not indicative of that. There are famous buildings still standing from the time of the Justinian period all the way to Charlemagne (and later, of course). I may be wrong, but I doubt that all of them had structural issues, yet survived (in one form or another) to this day. Again, there were areas that clearly fell into disarray due to societal upheaval, conquest etc. But using a broad brush for most of Western Europe for the whole time period is a bit inaccurate.

Yes, the remaining part of the Roman empire did not suddenly lose the information. In the Western part, however, there was slow governmental collapse into smaller entities. These shocks did change trajectories and considering that most of the Roman population was illiterate, and that trade routes started to break down, it likely led to localized loss of crafts and skills. So if we really look at a very localized level, there are for certain periods where knowledge could get lost. And if a society gets eradicated (which does not apply to the Romans as such) their societal development could be lost entirely. So at least in that regard it is obvious that the idea of a constant and inevitable advancement is incorrect. I will also add that in some cases, the ability to create something is lost, because folks did not understand it in the first place. Rather, they followed specific instructions, using materials form specific places and once those ran out (or access was disrupted), things stopped working. This again speaks against a narrative of continuous advancement. Only when knowledge became more consistently analyzed and stored did we enter a phase where continuous advances became more likely. That being said, the Dark Ages idea is often associated with Petrarch in the 14th century, who wanted to use the light vs dark analogy to highlight the classical antiquity. This is unfortunately imaginary that has survived to this day. A part of the issue is that folks likely did not really understand the society in the 11th century and before, and for a long time the narratives of enlightenment and Renaissance has dominated or at least strongly influenced historic scholarship. However, in the 20th century more evidence-based history has come to the forefront and I am fairly certain that most modern historians would not use that term any more (at least not in that context). Can you provide context regarding the 300 years of collapsing churches? I am not familiar with that.

You could spin it around, it is more that the in democratic countries you are legally protected as part of some variant of freedom of religion and/or expression. I.e. compulsion has to be executed wither hidden or at least not in violation of such laws. There obviously are religious areas where one would be a social outcast if one does not go to a particular church, but there would be legal protection if they forced you to attend (whether that helps, is another matter). And actually I am not so sure whether one would need a lot of imagination to see what a modern Christian theocracy would look like. The ultraconservative theocratic movements in USA demonstrates what they like to have enshrined by law, for example.

On the PhD level only few (<20 % decades ago) got an academic appointment. While there are private sector R&D, and similar public positions, they are also rather rare. More typical jobs are project managers, sales,product managers, tech support, etc.

Generally speaking, researcher positions are fairly limited, especially purely research ones (i.e. without teaching, for example). Also typically that requires a PhD in most disciplines. In experimental sciences, a Master's would be required for a research technician position. A BSc basically just indicates that you might be qualified to get more specialized (graduate) training.

I would be careful to exclude folks who do not support Trump from that. Folks easily fall into populism traps once they feel threatened somehow (regardless of actual situation). The Far Right wannabe Nazi party in Germany is on track to become the second strongest party, despite until recently none of the established parties were willing to work with them. Not so long ago, that would have been unthinkable. Now at least the some leaders of the established conservative parties have been making noises that they might be open to collaboration (though partially retracted). Some historians have been alarmed by the parallels to the Weimar republic (especially letting the NSDAP to linger around after the failed coup attempt) and generally being dismayed that the memory of WWII and the holocaust seems to be fading from German consciousness.

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Common sense?

That was a while back and I thought it was a bit of a mismatch in skills. Ultimately the question is more one of developmental biology and there are still huge gaps in our understanding regarding regulation that goes on there. I am moderately certain that since then folks have managed to get some regulatory elements identified that may be involved in differential morphologial developments, though most results will be some malformation. Typically these developments are rather complex with precise interplay of many signals and effectors and studies typically are rather blunt (e.g. knockdowns) which gives us hints regarding function, but does not allow us to precisely control developmental programs.

Indeed. One should add in addition to human nature, the system plays a major role. And while bad times tends to make simple populism more palatable, it is more important that folks feel threatened (regardless whether it is true or not). The migrant crisis has caused political turmoil in Europe, despite the apparently relatively modest effect (economic or otherwise) on broader society. I.e. the perceived impact was higher than the actual one. Also historically one of the great lessons of German education was that kids learned that Nazis were not just a bunch of bloodthirsty madmen. They were, by all accounts, regular people who operated in a system which normalized industrialized murder of people. As such, it is often easy to imagine that one would be one of the good guys, but the reality is likely going to be very different.