But Ler

Unseen wrote:
Question: Can Taiwan realistically be protected from ultimate seizure by China? If you admit that China will ultimately absorb Taiwan, should the United States commit blood and treasure to protecting it?

Somehow I missed this post before. That would be quite a large project for China to take on, but perhaps they could afford to “buy…[Read more]

Hypersonic offensive and defensive weaponry’s been in the making for years now, so this is not as surprising to experts as the article implies (even in the headline). I saw a few errors in the flashy drawing, but the threat of these new weapons is nevertheless real. The most reliable mode of defense has to be space based and/or laser/particle…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
What we ought to be spending money on is on helping India develop into a power rivaling China. It has a larger population, more competent scientists, and is positioned to be a superpower that can balance and restrain China from its goal of dominating Asia.

A tiny Indian archipelago makes China…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Rest assured, it wasn’t my intention to derail Unseen’s thread on Taiwan.

I think it’s ok to go off-topic if it’s ok with the topic’s creator. I probably would have let an off-topic comment or two stay, but it grew into more posts even after Unseen asked to keep the topic on Taiwan… plus I agree that Israel’s worthy of…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
I think the possibility of war over Taiwan is about as important a topic as there is and Pope Beanie actually started such a thread, maybe in response to my plea.

Yes, but I neglected to make a new post here that links to where I moved those posts.

Genetically inheritable adaptation only works when death is programmed into each species, i.e. when old makes way for the new. I didn’t know or remember about the short lives of octopi, but there must be some selective advantage to their having frequent generations… from what I just read, I surmise that their selection pressures are the need to…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Some illusions (e.g., natural camouflage of moths and lizards, for example) operate quite well on very low forms of life that we might think of as having primitive brains but maybe not true minds, but work not so well on higher orders of intelligence.

True, as evolutionary pressures have favored the development of camouflage with or…[Read more]

I’m also increasingly suspicious of the relevance of the term “illusion”. Illusion only exists in thought processes, in brains. Continuing in theme from my previous post, illusions have no relevance in scientific discourse… unless we’re talking specifically in terms of empirical data when trying to measure consciousness, which (btw) is also…[Read more]

Could a counter-question be just as relevant, such as “how real is life”? The only scientific viewpoints I’ve seen on this are just… viewpoints, and philosophical questions that lack empirical data. Regarding standard definitions of life and death, and even the definition of “reality”, I see more opinions than science. Come to think of it, there…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Should taxpayers be forced to provide these and should producers of these good be forced by law to provide them to all?

Yes, to a more reasonable extent than the the current USA’s system. Other countries are quite happy with their more socialized approach to health care. There will always be deeper, philosophical…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
And Islamofascists in the Middle East and the Cartels in South and Central America are the biggest profiteers of Drug Prohibition, just as organized crime in the U.S. was the biggest profiteer of Alcohol Prohibition.

I’m quoting only one example from your post that illustrates how wildly off-topic you can go in order to…[Read more]