You might be interested in this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220433962_Concepts_and_Semantic_Relations_in_Information_Science I've ...
Sure, you can justify it in some cases. Predation is necissary to ecosystems. Given we have killed all the wolves where I live, if we don't hunt the d...
Permutations for calculating entropy would be the number of possible outcomes in the message. So a 2 bit configuration like you described would have f...
I get your point here, but the thing is, for that same brain, there are orders of magnitude more possible permutations of how the matter that composes...
By the way, another interesting thing about the library is that there should be a size at which every possible thought or occurance is expressed. Borg...
Right, you could have it, but obviously we don't have it at the macroscopic level, as entropy is observably increasing. However, given many worlds, th...
Since the vaccines don't prevent transmission of the virus, I'm not sure if they reduce the risk of mutations. On the one hand, yes, people who have b...
I guess it depends on what type of multiverse you're talking about. In the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, every possible quantum out...
This is a very interesting thread. I've been mulling over just this idea for a short story I'm writing, set on China during the Cultural Revolution. I...
I think you're right. The deeper problem for me is that such fuzzy definitions, applied to core concepts like "alive" or "having being" seems to not o...
I assume you mean returns on the stock market? I'm not super familiar with the period like I am with 2008, which I've read a lot of books on. My under...
A lot had been written about that. Appears to be a combination of things. First, the demand side. Part of that was too much government spending going ...
For it to be stagflation GDP growth needs to be flat with inflation. But GDP growth is the highest in decades, 6.7%. Plus, a good deal of that inflati...
No one has actually pushed the US to default on its debts when they had the votes to do so, and the logic there is clearly that sparking a financial p...
My guess is no one. He's part of an "old left" with an ideology based mostly on class. Not totally sure what to call it, maybe "classical socialism." ...
In retrospect, it probably would have been in the best interest of the progressive caucus to blink on the infrastructure bill before their party lost ...
I suppose one take might be that salvation is sort of like anesthesia. Since we don't know how conciousness works, we can't really say how anesthesia ...
I wouldn't say hopeless, those jobs do exist, they are just hard to come by. It's easier if you aren't picky about where you live and can move anywher...
I can only echo this. I went to undergrad before neuroscience was a common major, so I got degrees in biology and psychology. I graduated summa cum la...
Joe Biden will be almost 83 by the time the next election rolls around. It's not unreasonable that his party wants someone else. He wasn't an overwhel...
This logic holds if one assumes the unit of analysis for guilt is the individual, not the people. However, in the doctrine of Original Sin, mankind as...
I get the logic. What I am rejecting is the premise that humans could somehow be guilty outside of their relationship to being in the world. The probl...
I'm not sure how this logic works. Surely we are the result of our enviornment, no? Our morals are shaped by our culture. Our personalities are hugely...
But it is true, he fairs worse with independents than Trump did during a major crisis for him: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/04/bide...
I only have an anti-progressive bent in that they frustrate me because I tend to agree with their policies, but then their political execution in enac...
Potentially a great thing. It's 50/50 that they in fact pass absolutely nothing as progressives vote down the infrastructure bill and then can't get t...
I feel like that's a very myopic quote. Plato and Aristotle didn't start being forgotten with the rise of Christianity; the process began soon after A...
Only a few I can think of. Bacon, Saint Augustine if you count Bishops, which I think you can. Marcus Aurelius obviously, the equivalent of a US presi...
Democrats have an easy way to raise the debt ceiling alone. The entire "crisis" is fabricated bullshit, the type Dems are supposedly "above." Mitch lo...
I find this doubtful based on the evidence from Landslide, and various other interviews. Trump's Jan 6th involvement with the crowd was quite limited....
If you want a check on bad leaders being elected, a body of people chosen for party loyalty and donations who only meet once every four years, with no...
I'll be interested to see how mid terms go. Trump voters are mad at the GOP leadership, rightly intuiting that they despise their "God Emperor." Meanw...
I don't totally disagree with the sentiment but there are a few things to consider: 1. The GOP base would be the one less likely to be dissuaded by a ...
US elections wouldn't be polarized dumpster fires if we didn't have such an incoherent and broken election system. If we went via the popular vote, th...
I'm big on Presidential histories, but I always avoided the Trump ones because it seemed like so much leaked that they wouldn't reveal much. However, ...
Don't think it's a moral debate worth having. If it can be done it will be and I don't suspect any of us are going to win an argument with a 400 IQ po...
Everyone. There are more humans on Earth than we have the ability to sustain without releasing GHGs that in turn warm the planet. Some have a larger i...
In reading a lot of this thread, it strikes me that the many competing theoretical physics models of how the Big Bang might have occured are not parti...
Yes. Don't know. How would it be rolled out? There are gaps in the current system. All most people got as proof of vaccination is a flimsy paper card ...
Surely the Reptilians would resist that though. They already have a monopoly on powerful people. inanimate matter -> animate matter -> animate, thinki...
That's how I think of the simulation problem too. I think people are getting ahead of themselves when they start worrying about stuff like the speed o...
Who is thinking? It's probably better to think of what is doing the thinking. While folk psychology generally has an individual as a unified whole, an...
Right, when memes are said to live in the host, it isn't in a particular set of synapses we're talking about, it's a set of processes that give rise t...
I never really bought the idea that reducing the number of forms and making actualities be the product of mixtures of a smaller set of forms solved th...
Yeah but for the materialist, these mental objects are located in the brain. There is a model for explaining how concepts like God or math can spread ...
Maybe it's the framing of physics that is throwing me, but, at least in that context, "universe" does not apply to a class. Nor does it do so vis-a-vi...
I think the idea would be that several aspects of the universe, namely physics' fundemental forces, would be uncaused brute facts; they simply are and...
Is good then defined by the absence of evil? I suppose many philosophers would have said yes. I like the Gnostic argument that the material world as a...
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