PopeBeanie

Awesome.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Exactly. Believing that Evolution has “intent” as a driving force behind it is one of the common misconceptions about the Theory.

I don’t see any posts in this topic inferring “intent” as a driving force behind evolution. However, since you brought it up…

When one coalition of people commit genocide against ano…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:

As far as the concept of devolution i cant recall which authors but i know i have read that it is a misnomer-no such thing.

I like the term devolution as it still conveys meaning intuitively, e.g. in-breeding generally undoes evolutionary “progress” by reducing variation in the gene pool. Imo it should work when used within a…[Read more]

PopeBeanie wrote:

Short question: should we act more like chimps, or bonobos?

Accidentally was (while researching something else) offered a video to watch by some YouTube algorithm (are they in my head, yet?) but took a chance and found it very interesting:

Unseen wrote:

She will actually chase a fruit fly around my apartment hoping for a chance to kill it.

A truly sincere, egalitarian treatment of all life forms, including (it seems) the venomous and large clawed and toothed.

I can’t think of “evolution” without breaking it down in to its types. Natural Selection drives the most classically discussed type, along with natural genetic drift mentioned (but not by name) in the article referred to above. There’s also cultural, scientific, and to be honest, even religious evolution, making it unreasonable to infer that…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Just as he was about to swipe the bird I clapped my hands and the bird escaped.

and then

The upshot was he now left all his “presents” in his own garden.

Maybe he/she realized later that you saved it from a very slobly, uncomfortable fall, and it’s finally time to forego some calories.

_Robert_ wrote:

at around 00:18

Yeah, I saw that too, but the fangs seemed to have missed, unless it was in between video frames. But it did look like like a lucky/accidental inch to the snake’s right would have been fatal for the cat, and/or both of them.

My question is, WHY? Surely the cat had a choice, so was it just for fun, or to catch…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

1) it takes some hypocritical nerve for humans to decry an invasive species. Mankind is invasive everywhere but Africa.

I believe in most cases, responsibility for the introduction of an invasive species belongs to one or more humans. The range of these species is huge, from microbes and prion diseases (e.g. HIV, ebola, plagues, mad…[Read more]

Yup, I have my own stories about the 2017 and 2018 fires, but they pale in comparison to tens of thousands of others here. I even made my own breathing mask out of a CPAP mask, a trimmed HEPA filter, and a gallon plastic jug during some days that were so smokey that most people left town (as recommended by health and emergency authorities), but no…[Read more]

Strega said it for me. To make it clear to my kids I told them if they want a permanent resting place they could even sneak my ashes into a construction site and dump them into a cement mixer, but it’s totally their call.

The following clip is especially for younger people who haven’t watched The Big Lebowsky, and it’s from Coen Brothers (whom…[Read more]

Davis wrote:

The closer you approach 100% the more likely you live in a failed state.

I looked into Ethiopia today, found it quite interesting wrt religious mix and its purported secular government, and so added it as an AZ topic. Not knowing beans more about them, I wish them luck, especially those in an apparently really really small secular minority.

Historically, free will is defined as either

1. A gift from God, potentially making everyone completely accountable for their choices and actions; this definition invokes dualism, the assumption that mind/spirit can exist separately from one’s physical brain
2. A meaningless concept in light of a deterministic (albeit unpredictable at quantum…

[Read more]

Did you know you can whisper to Alexa, and she’ll whisper back?

Now here’s a trick I learned all by myself, which is more fun to do to someone else’s Alexa when the owner is not listening closely:

• “Alexa, give me two hundred decimal places of Pi”

(This works while whispering, too.)

Strangely, wording it as “What is Pi to two hundred decimal…[Read more]

I think that just declaring that we don’t have free will doesn’t automatically invalidate “responsibility”. How we define it and enforce it still has consequences.

I curse you, Determinism! Or I defy you, at least, perhaps in vain, perhaps not, or perhaps because I just don’t know you as well as you know me.