waserwill

6 ms·

1.
by waserwill 3y ago
An excerpt from one Jewish view of the Sabbath: The rubric under which all the actions prohibited on the Sabbath fall is referred to as melakhah. It is an expansive term, first used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the full range of act
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by waserwill 3y ago
There's truth to this, but in a time and place. There are times being very specific about what you know and don't know is important, but most of the time we are learning little by little, and we benefit from saying things we aren&
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by waserwill 4y ago
My guess: if non-genetic heritable elements -- epigenetics (such as modifications to DNA) -- are necessary for proper development, then the DNA sequence alone will not be enough to develop thylacines. (There are caveats, notably that some m
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by waserwill 4y ago
Domestication and breeding/husbandry aren't always done consciously, but even when they are, people produce selective pressures (e.g. selective breeding). Evolution is ambivalent to intelligent, conscious choice or natural selecti
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by waserwill 4y ago
I've seen similar things. Besides many experiments not being remotely worth the harm they cause (poor design, niche topics without applications, dead end checking-all-the-boxes, etc.), they leave a mark on the people who conduct them.
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by waserwill 4y ago
The issue isn't with machines, but humans as just machines. You rightly point to the assumption: "If we built a human from scratch at atom level detail then it would be reasonable assume it would experience the world as we would
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by waserwill 4y ago
If I had to guess: "You are a machine." It's reminiscent of Victorian authors describing the heart as pistons or the brain as strings being pulled. Less of a fact and more of a metaphor, a poetic interpretation. Then, add on
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by waserwill 4y ago
More horrifying is that our subjective experience is all that there is. Luckily, neither is easy to square with what we experience, and we probably shouldn't try to horrify ourselves anyhow
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by waserwill 4y ago
What's wrong with helping consciousness in the realm of poetry and religion? It's the most humanistic thing we can know, after all. Consciousness, being internal and subjective, exists at odds with anything else that science consi
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by waserwill 4y ago
Or at least tends to increase. Entropy can always spontaneously decrease, or can simply not increase for a moment. This was actually discussed a week ago! [1] As discussed in those comments, entropy isn't well-formulated outside of equ
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by waserwill 4y ago
in case anyone is wondering: - Open the app, and select the 'Shared' folder at the bottom - Find the spam content, click the three dots to open a menu - At the bottom, hit 'Report abuse', select an option, and confirm. S
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by waserwill 5y ago
I'm not sure what sort of data could support this, but I'll just say this: there is a difference between reading quantity and quality. I'm merely echoing greater critics, but the quantity of books sold says little about their
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by waserwill 5y ago
For the entire US, the rate is not very high, and has been decreasing over the last few decades; it's similar to rates in the UK and France. There's likely more variance, though, since some groups and individuals are much less lik
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by waserwill 5y ago
This is maybe similar to some Jewish equivalents to mediation. The focus is ultimately on better action (the concept of commandments places an emphasis on doing over having the correct mindset or beliefs). These forms of meditation range fr
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by waserwill 5y ago
I read this coming from a very different background (secular), but I've seen a lot of these issues around me too. Especially among people raised MO (the chasidish and litvish have similar problems, but frame them differently). for what
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by waserwill 5y ago
I'm interested in how culture changes and where it can go/is going. Knowing about what ideas or forms of thinking different media favor -- this seems useful to me. It's part of the 'selective landscape' of culture.
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by waserwill 5y ago
> But it is meaningless since they did not write about it not they stablished commerce Depends on what you find meaningful! There was almost certainly exchange of goods between Polynesians and South Americans. The presence of early sweet
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by waserwill 5y ago
Anything that needs carbon in its metabolism will, naturally, use what's available. Biological systems are tricky, though. If you dump a huge amount of fruit into a forest, the animals will eat it and grow in number; then, so will thei
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by waserwill 5y ago
This reminds me about a time when some geneticists tried to find genes associated with a particular disease, to try to unravel why it occurs. Complex trait, no single answer, so they genotyped thousands of people with and without the diseas
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by waserwill 5y ago
Convenience isn't a goal, per se. It's a by-product of sorts. When things work and are intuitive, they're very convenient. Economically, it can be useful to design many things this way. A good doorknob is ready-at-hand: it&#x
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by waserwill 5y ago
If anyone is interested in Thiel's motivations and interests in politics, I recommend Geoff Shullenberger's discussions: Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection: Broad discussion of Thiel's writing a
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by waserwill 6y ago
These are good questions. I care most about these sorts of definitions when teaching, since they can orient students and describe what it is you are talking about. Some criteria I was taught about life: > 1. Reproduces itself/makin
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by waserwill 6y ago
The short of it: Turchin advocates for a field of 'cliodynamics' which tries to apply math to meaningfully describe and predict social trends, especially large ones such as collapse. His own description from a decade ago: https:&
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by waserwill 6y ago
Wait till you try to find the boundary between species! Many plants, and some animals such as birds, can produce fertile hybrids after being separated for millions of years. Especially true for organisms that have reproductive barriers besi
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by waserwill 6y ago
The definition I remember being taught early on includes that, so that's on the right track. From memory: 1. Reproduces itself/making things similar to itself (sort of; viruses are on the periphery, prions...). 2. Metabolizes chem
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by waserwill 6y ago
I would caution that we biologists study more than life, but also its environment! So, the abiotic conditions of soil, the function of enzymes (including proton pumps :D), and even the culture of humans (and dolphins and orangutans, etc.).
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by waserwill 6y ago
I understand the source of people's fears here, though I'm not sure whether they are justified. In attempting to clearly articulate ideas, writers too often fall into cliches--the sort of pitfall that might be widely understood at
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Room temperature space-time crystals (STC)(journals.aps.org)
3 points by waserwill 6y ago|0 comments
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by waserwill 7y ago
Re: definitions of shared DNA: Some papers will use different definitions, and it can be confusing. Between species (e.g. humans and chimps), it's most often considering "non-synonymous mutations," i.e. how many genetic diffe
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by waserwill 7y ago
Maybe you know this, but: Interpreting DNA methylation isn't straightforward. Since it's involved in gene regulation and cell differentiation, it's variable across cells. Due to regulatory networks, whether any particular met

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