Masque, yes, yes, no, maybe, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, maybe, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, maybe, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, maybe, yes, yes, no, no, yes, maybe, yes, yes, no, no, yes, word. Jk,

Yes kisses and hugs to you all too. Looking forward to one day having dual citizenship. Someone who loves above all the planet and all humanity and its promise can love both systems and so many other worldwide and be critical of them, all while still appreciating that who he really is, is the result of both by now and to a degree the rest of the planet too. Brave new world. Both systems need change for the better and can draw motivation from their histories, culture, their people, their worse and best days, as well as each other.

The unification of the planet is inevitable. But it wont be under the umbrella of one ultimately dominant superpower of some present day form or some corporations. It will be because we all joined forces and became something different and better. It may be finally true some time this century even after our deaths.

No. Not sure what you could possibly be pissed off about; I could if you had a lesser mind I guess. With the second misspelled swear, I am reading everything you write in Roman Moroni's voice now. This works, because as every 'merican knows, Greece is part of Italy. IIRC, John Travolta was in a movie about it.

Most of those questions don't even follow loosely from what I said.

At the one that does, no, you aren't capable of the extrapolation. The study (your anecdotal evidence) is so flawed that no inferences can be made.

The bolded part is the important part, but it has little to nothing to do with the subject at hand. Greeks apparently determine whether someone is capable of getting a university degree prior to them taking any university classes. 'mericans let them try to get that degree rather than making the mistake of prejudging their ability.

I don't remember anyone saying that the very small percentage of Greeks judged (by the Greek educational system) worthy of more than a high school education who later graduated from a university with a degree in the sciences was lesser than a 'merican one.

The rest is worth a bit of working through for clarity, I think:

Should I repeat myself? As a person heavily involved in physics it would be horrible if it weren't. We put your lot in ivory towers for a reason. The average folk say "ivory tower" in a derogatory way. I think it is an absolute necessity and a wonderful thing that we act as a collective to build institutions so you can do your work in idealistic peace.

You have done nothing more than pointing out the hands the tournament winner lost as evidence that they haven't won.

I will give you a bit of rope and say that we haven't acted purely in our selfish best interest. There ought to have been many more Northern Cypriots. On occasion we have overplayed our hands as well.

If we are communists we do. Instead, we believe in such things as self-reliance and freedom which requires that a certain large percentage of the population fails to have a high quality of life. It isn't like we can force the people who live in Chicago to move to a more sensible clime.

No. You maintain superpower status by acting in such a way that keeps everyone else's heads down.

Does that follow from anything I have said?

Does that follow from anything I have said?

Does that matter at all or follow from anything I have said?

As an aside, we mistakenly take on responsibilities that are not ours.

No. I expect you to do physics stuff. Lots of physics stuff.

Are you channeling newguy or have you recently been accused of being a terrorist? I fail to see the relevance to the ongoing discussion.

Psychohistory fan much?

And i had started to think for a moment that in fact Brian's effort this morning was to "unite" myself and Bruce against his arguments and achieve through an ultimate form of elaborate altruism the resurface of inner friendship that (the way i perceive) is always residing in the background of any debating, infighting and other polemic campaigns, curses , childish ego fights or whatever one wants to call them.


PS: Brian. Not that i compare myself to Albert but i always laugh at how people take his words with immense respect when he is talking about physics but suddenly when he talks about social issues or peace or other cultural philosophical issues we should all close our ears... hahaha. As if its not all the same complex mathematical game always...You can only have proper philosophy through science and math if at all. Society should give science a chance to be the leader and not the servant of idiots (ie politicians and those that adore them or lobby for them).

Bruce and I can obviously never do close to your job unless we spent time to study things in your field. Significant time. Then damn right yes. But is this going on here really your job?

We generally try to not make jokes about personality disorders.

Just as a random teaching point, splitting would involve complete adoration or hatred (possibly alternating) of either masque or me.*

And he has no way of knowing whether the students were physics majors or just shouldn't have been taking the class.

Yes, and I grew up in the 1970s and there wasn't a care in the world. As far as I remember the economy was wonderful because it had nothing to do with me.

I'd prefer if they didn't. Can you imagine what we could do with the money we'd save if we weren't the world's police force?

It was not.

You really think that if we have a test of innate whatever and those with the innate trait move that the innate whatever doesn't follow them? I think you might misunderstand what innate means.

Ridiculous thing to say. It is like saying that you implied that you pinned an opponent when you were snuggling with them.

Admitting admiring alliterative abilities.

*In a quite technical manner, I might have been misleading because masque and I are not specific to the behavior.

What?!? I was as soft and squishy as a teddy bear in my last couple of posts.

I do very much just assume that we are just having enjoyable debate. If not, I will stab you for being a silly person.

Who said anything about closing ears?

As you know, I enjoy that you are all worried about mankind. I am (at least technically) part of it, so your concern is welcome.

Lol. My job now is keeping people gainfully employed. It has been such for going on 2 decades in various roles. Any darn idiot could do my job with a bit of training and the correct attitude and a nice haircut.

I'm aware of that splitting. I was referring to something else that borderlines do that I thought was related to splitting where they turn people against each other.


He said they weren't, and it doesn't matter because apparently nobody who gets into college in Greece are as dumb as these people.


He's certainly knows what the capabilities of Greek students are.


You said that if the test is culturally fair, that the goat herder's would score the same as the city dweller's. That's a non-sequitur. They can have different innate abilities which is the whole point of what the test is trying to measure. Even if the test only measured gf, that could be different. Obviously there would be no reason to test if everyone's score was going to be the same. I think you might misunderstand the concept of a test.


Nonsense. I said that we learned more about the intelligences of the people designing these tests, and I have lambasted the quality of psychological studies and those who produce them numerous times. Masque pointed out the flaws of the study, and if you had read the paper he cited you would know that's its primary focus was to question the conclusions of Buj's study and criticize the methodology of Lynn's study.


Bad analogy. A better analogy for the point he was making would be a big stack with aces calling an all-in against another big stack that obviously also has aces and letting a smaller stack fold instead of letting the other big stack take out the smaller stack.


The point of the argument isn't to learn about IQ differences. I couldn't care less. The point of an argument is to win. Winning is important because it requires you think well, and thinking well is important. It's like when they ask you to do all those integrals in school. The integral of some ridiculous thing isn't important. Knowing how to integrate things is somewhat important. Understanding how to do stuff like that and gaining an appreciation for what is involved is very important. We will solve integrals, and argue about IQ differences, and do this that and the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.


Continually correcting coy captious cad's contentious caustic querulous comments concerning country's cultural cognition correlations conscientiously
(and quoting Kennedy),
Bruce

In an excellent combination move, garage door guy now has a small yapping dog that he was keeping in his garage so it yapped all the time. I told him this was unacceptable, so he moved it outside. I still hear it, but it mainly yaps whenever I or anyone else walks by.

First I thought about using chocolate to solve the problem. Now I'm designing a remote controlled shock collar made from a 9-volt battery, a diode voltage multiplier, and symbolically, a receiver from a garage door opener. It should work like Pavlov's dogs, but if not, I'll just crank the voltage up all the way. I'm actually serious about committing some type of atrocity this time.

Would it not be simpler to just poison the dog. You could poison the owner, as most philosophers would point out that the dog is 'innocent'; but the possible consequences may not justify that degree of action. However you are fully capable of calculating your own risk/reward in this venture. Choose wisely.

That was the idea behind the chocolate. It's poison for dogs, especially small dogs.

buy or rent a burmese python of 5 or 6 ft length

The bolded portion would make an excellent thread title. We have discussed this before I think but always peripheral to some other main silliness or debate/discussion. It may be time for the death match. I'll referee and ring the bell between rounds. We will need a hot babe to flash about the ring announcing the next round with a silly large placard. We'll go ten rounds. Different hot babe for each round. Choosing the ten hot babes will be much more important than the thread itself.

Ah............I did not know that. Very useful information to have at your finger tips. I will catalog it away for future use/reference. Thanks.

"Though not harmful to people, chocolate products contain substances called methylxanthines that can cause vomiting in small doses, and death if ingested in larger quantities. Darker chocolate contains more of these dangerous substances than do white or milk chocolate. The amount of chocolate that could result in death depends on the type of chocolate and the size of the dog. For smaller breeds, just half an ounce of baking chocolate can be fatal, while a larger dog might survive eating 4 ounces to 8 ounces. Coffee and caffeine have similarly dangerous chemicals."

http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/top-10-dog-poisons

If I got some nicotine like this that they mix down to fill electronic cigarettes, and I mix that with some ground beef, that would kill it immediately. But it's very dangerous to handle. I could end up killing myself.

Zeno yes we must make a thread like that at some point. I always wondered if it is even worth it to read philosophy instead of just trying to develop it on your own through math and science and overall cultural education and life experiences (exposure to humanities, classical education as kids etc) and then read for verification and further enlightenment only those philosophers (eg Bertrand Russel style) that were also familiar or active with sciences and math, and the rest only for fun as general education, without taking them too seriously, unless they make sense paradoxically. And even then since these guys, however bright, lived in the past, they didnt have the advantage/benefit of recent progress in those fields that often leads to remarkably different perspective about the universe, biological life, human brain function, the structure of society etc, basically affecting core philosophical issues which depend heavily and unavoidably on the scientific analysis of the details they debate, most of these changing over the centuries or even decades as human knowledge evolves. I have no doubt though one can still benefit from their methods and general style and creative approaches that on occasion prove universally brilliant and timeless. It is a tough balancing game really. But regardless the approach, you cannot avoid the personal requirement to be well versed in sciences, math and history. One can only benefit by the perspective, information and methods. And often without it its impossible to be relevant running on pure intuition.

It is a hard choice no matter what you do, because ultimately you want to be unbiased in order to matter and be original and permanently demanding self consistency, in how you form your ideas (i apply that for example with philosophy and sci fi, i rarely read the relevant literature by others in either subject). Of course in doing that you risk losing a ton of opportunity to see perspectives you never considered and also you are unable to participate in advanced technical discussions often lacking proper terminology/definitions etc (that last part is not so bad though lol).

As for the dog nuisance issue (parents back at home have often similar problems lol);

Bruce what if you talk to the guy that his dog is still noisy? Why doesnt the normal approach work in this world anymore lol? Then you have the old time suggestion of the lion roar and elephants screaming sound library that would be very cool/funny (and ultimately the main satirical message towards the neighbor) to have it follow every time the dog barked or yapped or whatever from some loud speakers lol. Would make for some cool programming/engineering project too to develop it to act on its own (like yapping/barking sound recognition triggers it lol)

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Elephant_Audio_Sounds

http://www.soundboard.com/sb/Lion_Sounds_audio

I did talk to him about it, and he moved it outside and tied it to a tree. By that I mean that he tied one end of a rope to a tree, and attached the other to the dog, not that he tied the dog to a tree like Bettie Page or something. It's a complicated situation because he does lots of things that make noise, and I have to choose my battles. I can't complain about everything that bothers me or I'd be complaining constantly about a million things. Also, it's a subjective world, and everyone feels they are entitled to make a certain amount of noise. Like this same guy disturbed me for the past 3 days with construction. Now everyone is entitled to do some construction from time to time, so I can't really tell him not to do construction. But he does a lot of construction, and on top of everything else it is too much IMO. I went down just now because it sounded like he was still doing construction at 11:00 PM at night. But the construction is done, and he was just taking out garbage from construction, and he was apologetic because he knows it annoys me. That's what happens, I stew and stew constantly trying to figure out if the noise is sufficient to warrant a complaint in the eyes of a rational person who isn't me, until I finally can't take it anymore, and then when I do go over there, it's some old lady taking out garbage or something and I shoot my wad at the wrong person at the wrong time.

Oh. All of their behaviors are inter-related to their emotional and cognitive deficits. No real point in trying to tease out all the details.

Yes, I am sure that all of their business, literature and social science majors are as well-versed as our top future Nobel Prize winners.

Do you know what the capabilities of US students are? I certainly don't and I taught a class with pre-med students. Interestingly, they didn't do as well in it as you would expect.

It was a paragraph. Either the goat herders are unaffected on the test by their goat-herding lifestyle or when they move to the city their spawn ruins it for the city folk or it is not a culturally fair test of innate cognitive ability.

I wasn't claiming that you made a factual mistake. It is a tactical error to not make fun of the paper itself for being horrific.

When your wrestling coach told you that you should have went for a pin, did you argue that it was better not to?

He mentioned no big stacks.

Part of thinking well is recognizing implicit and explicit assumptions. Part of arguing is pointing out the ones that are probably correct or incorrect and the ones that are questionably true.

Consuming Carl's Kid's California cattle conquered cognition.

Bose QuietComfort 3 headphones are a nice possible solution. Possibly some nice relaxing music on it.

I looked into those. They only really work for stuff like engine noise, not intermittent impulsive noise like dogs barking or hammers banging, etc. I have some Hearos earplugs that have like a 40 dB attenuation at many frequencies. They are made of memory foam, and you roll them out into a thin worm, and shove them into your ear canal where they expand. I had them on for the past 2 days, and they're great. It's like someone hit the mute button on the whole world. But some stuff still gets through.

Mute on the whole world and technology for a while is maybe what is needed to produce an original, clean, brilliant thought these days. Too much noise indeed. A lot of it technological of our own making and choices (well free will etc again call it collective world that takes us here). 18th, 19th century might have had their advantages too. When there is peace and nothing else to do the light comes from inside...

It is all about balancing your needs with what reality thrusts at you.

Perhaps you can do many experiments into what the maximum that the earplugs together with the Bose headphones can make palatable, then offer to stop doing such experiments if your neighbor quiets down a bit.

I fear that your attention on the dog will not go well. Most people compensate for the loss of a pet by purchasing 2 pets. You can't fight exponential expansion by encouraging it.

We need better noise cancellation technology that can cancel even impulsive noise, not just periodic noise, with microphones placed around a room and sensors to detect the position of the head and produce the exact canceling waveform at the exact time it is needed with very fast response time.

I thought about the fact that they might buy another pet. The problem can be solved either by a) repeated killings, b) training the pet through the shock treatments, or c) by making the wife force the family to move for fear that her children are threatened.

Noise is like an infection. Once you get subjected to some sufficiently annoying noise, you are then irritated by noises that didn't irritate you before. Then you get even more irritated, and pretty soon every little sound is irritating.

Bruce would never kill the dog unless the dog threatened something important like a kid or a cat lol. He is only talking from a quantum mechanical perspective about another world and its possibilities. A dog that was treated better would have better habits. A little friendship would calm the dog down. But when you get a dog and you ignore him and treat him bad what will happen? People are indeed aholes and Zeno is right. But there is still hope. We get it with each generation one more time.