Viewing profile — waserwill

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 use…

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 …

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…

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 t…

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, et…

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 …

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 met…

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 ourselv…

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, ex…

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…

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 …

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 q…

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, s…

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 cor…

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 …

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…

> 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 Pol…

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 ani…

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 th…

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…

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 Conne…

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 …

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 collaps…

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. Especi…

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…