I have no truck with postmodernists, but neither do I with the sort of scientifically ignorant dogmatists who claim that determinism and Newtonian clockwork still rule in spite of quantum mechanics, chaos, and the predictive failures of theory and modeling in all areas of science.
The fast, tangled feedback loops of the brain give it a sensitivity to initial conditions that rapidly magnifies differences in initial state at the quantum level to the level of organism behavior. No neuroscientist or psychologist can predict in precise detail what an experiment involving a whole organism will yield, even for flatworms.
Theories do not account for all data - if data comes forth that does not fit, then the data is usually cast out. Simplifying assumptions are forgotten, then denied, then the theory is elevated to a pedestal and given reverence even when it is shown to be incompatible with even more revered theories. (e.g. the Hogkin-Huxley model's incompatibility with thermodynamics and the heat dissipation of real neurons.)
The world cannot be summed up by limited numbers of observations, for there are many things that slip through that net; not can it even be summed up with an infinite number of observations, for measuring changes things, and one of the surest bit of mathematical theory is Heisenberg's; nor is the world under any obligation to fit into our parochial, preconceived notions of consistency, for we are limited to a far smaller region of time and space that the universe which contains us, and purely local theories of mechanics have been disproven.
"I think it is safe to say that no one understands Quantum Mechanics."
and while he is not recorded to have said that "it's a crock of shit" he did say that it doesn't give much understanding of or a good model of Nature:
"One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much."
"The more you see how strangely Nature behaves, the harder it is to make a model that explains how even the simplest phenomena actually work. So theoretical physics has given up on that."
Just because determinism rules in physics above the microscopic level...
Determinism does not rule at any level over a sufficiently long time scale due to feedback loops causing sensitivity to initial conditions which ultimately magnify quantum fluctuations up to the largest scales. What is a sufficiently long time scale depends on the system and the frequency of the feedback loops, but for brains in natural environments must be on the order of seconds at most.
Wrong. There is no evidence that quantum mechanics is not applicable at the macro-level, but there is evidence that it is: see Carver Mead's work with meter-scale superconducting loops, for example, or the quantization of neutrons' energies when falling in a gravitational field that required the combined effects of every particle in the Earth to produce.
Saying that quantum mechanics is not applicable to the macro-scale is just a cover for the fact that it is too complicated to calculate, or even to approximate under all but exceptional situations.
To claim that this implies that quantum-mechanical behavior would be evident in the larger-scale process shows a misunderstanding of the physics.
To claim that the quantum-mechanical nature of the process disappears when it gets too complicated for physicists to describe shows a willful misrepresentation of the facts.
We are currently seeing attacks from some philosophers who refuse to admit the existence of neurosciences or that the brain can be ruled by deterministic phenomenon. Lacking a proper science background,...
If you believe neuroscience (or any modern scientific knowledge) is compatible with determinism, or that quantum mechanics only applies to small things and always averages out to classical behavior for large things, or that the math of theories governs the world rather than describes some past observations, then you might as well believe in behaviorism or phlogiston, or animism for that matter.
No, that's extra savvy. I have heard that the Original Apple ][ manual called for dropping the new machine from a few inches height onto a hard surface to help re-seat any memory chips that might have worked their way loose in shipping.
As Heinlein's character Gwen/Hazel in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" said: "Dear, you have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things, but notional; you have to let them know who's boss."
Or could it be a cover for intelligence agency cable splices elsewhere? Since we know that US agencies have virtual carte blanche to tap backbones but use covert splicing for lines outside the US, these cuts could cover a technically resourceful entity such as China, Russia or Israel putting in taps here in the US. I doubt it's Israel, though, since I gather they already have about as much access to US telcom as they want.
Or, to get more creative, perhaps some industrial espionage organization did it. I can think of some tech billionaires who seem to live as if trying out for Bond villain roles who might find such a spy caper stimulating and profitable.
Then German law is improper. To say that it is illegal to tell the public what sites have been blocked, indeed, disappeared by another government is beyond fascist. The child pornography gambit has always been a ruse to allow censoring whatever the tyrants don't want us to see.
The reasoning is ever-expanding: child rape -> child sex -> child molestation -> child nudity -> teenage nudity -> clothed children in "arousing" poses -> breast-feeding photos -> clothed teenagers in "arousing" poses -> making photographs -> making drawings -> selling pictures -> sharing pictures -> posting pictures -> downloading pictures -> looking at pictures -> thinking unapproved thoughts about otherwise legal pictures -> linking to sites that have posted pictures -> linking to sites that link to sites that post pictures -> posting which sites are censored by your own government -> posting which sites are censored by other governments -> pointing out that some censored sites are not anarchist-communist-terrorist-liberal-necro-copro-sado-boogyman kiddy porn.
And if a policeman or prosecutor claims that you have gotten too close to doing any of the above, she can take down your whole site, especially the bits that are exposing government criminality, seize the domain name, take all your stuff and lock you up. Now there is no way of knowing what they have censored or redressing the intentional or sloppy misuse of the thoughtcrime statutes by the private companies that implement the secret laws. But - think of the children! It's for the children! Anyone who claims otherwise must be a anarchist-communist-terrorist-liberal-necro-copro-sado-pedophile-boogyman!
Exactly how long is Obama planning to keep blaming everything on Bush, especially with a Democratic House and Senate at his beckon call? That may work for dyed-in-the-wool lefties, but it won't work with the swing voters come next election.
Obama will have good cause to blame Bush for as long as the crisis continues. Obama has been in office for what, 80 days? The roots of this crisis date back at least 10 years, but Bush did nothing to ameliorate it during his entire term in office. Nor will Obama. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if Bush had handed over the Social Secutity trust fund to his criminal friends on Wall Street? They couldn't get the money that way, so the present looting is plan B. Truth is, the GDP has been shrinking every quarter but one since Bush took office when inflation is reconed as it was in the pre-Clinton era. Clinton was a Republican in all but name, too, with his slashing the safety net and signing everything his corporate masters requested. The hate from the so-called conservatives was just whipped-up theater. There is only one party in the US, and its two wings are there as a means of the oligarchy's controlling both sides of the Hegelian dialectic and hence the synthetic outcome.
Obama is just as solicitous of his owners' desires as any of the presidents of the past century or more. The bankers are looting the nation, and they will never be held to account. The situation is managed. We are owned. Believing the rhetoric of one side or the other, especially the rhetoric that there are just two sides, is how we are owned. The only way to break out is to organize to throw all the bastards out, politicians, judges, executives, officers, administrators, media, and the major stockholders of large corporate entities and controllers of foundations. Deprive the reigning reptiles of power, then make it clear to the rest of the ambitious psychopaths that seeking or misusing power over others will lead to being found out, shunned, and the ruin of their ambitions. We as a nation, as groups, as individuals can do this - the only thing stopping it from happening in a week is programmed false beliefs in the power of the "authorities", in inevitability and strength of the unsustainable and insupportable status quo.
Hanging can be quick, but it's not instant, nor was the guillotine. It takes about 10 seconds after being decapitated for brain activity to stop (someone actually did an experiment with this in France, with a friend, when he was to be beheaded, a blink signal).
My guess, is oxygen will be going to the brain longer, so in terms of pain, having your neck broken is just like lethal injection - you suffocate and can't do anything about it.
Or if the rope is too short, you wiggle around a bit before hand.
As far as I can tell, the only humane method of execution is a firing squad, aiming for the the head.
Hanging in such a way as to break the neck at the top vertebrae may well cause instant loss of consciousness due to hydrostatic shock. It might not, though - I haven't heard of anybody doing an EEG. Some brain activity will still be there for a few seconds to a few minutes, but that does not necessarily imply consciousness unless the EEG frequency is alpha or higher. If there is consciousness, the sensation of suffocation will likely be absent if the vagus nerve isn't giving feedback from the torso, as is likely when hanged from a drop high enough to break the neck. The sensation of suffocation comes from high CO2 rather than low oxygen - breathing inert gas does not cause a feeling of suffocation, for example - and that feeling of high CO2 is transmitted along the vagus nerve.
Lethal injection with potassium and inadequate anesthesia, while very painful, does not cause suffocation directly, but rather interferes with all muscular action, particularly that of the heart. Lack of blood flow typically causes unconsciousness and death before the lack of breathing can cause fatally low oxygen levels. The gas chamber, OTOH used cyanide which causes irreversible lack of oxygen by binding to the hemoglobin. It can also often be quite painful, but likely does not cause feelings of suffocation if enough is given to kill quickly.
If properly hanged people were conscious, they should be moving their faces since most of the cranial nerves wouldn't be affected. The traditional hood / black bag over the head prevents observation of facial movements, and maybe that's no coincidence. OTOH the bag may just conceal the image of he final involuntary and unconscious spasm at the moment the neck is broken.
Firing squads seem a little uncertain unless several of the bullets hit the head. Messy, too... might better just use a guillotine fitted with a big head-smashing hammer instead of a blade. I don't see it catching on outside of maybe Texas, though.
All in all, breathing inert gas free from CO2 is likely the quickest, surest and least painful way of killing somebody.
BTW, the blinking guillotined friend was Lavoisier, the tax collector for Paris and, ironically, the discoverer of Oxygen. It's odd that he was able to hold on to consciousness for so long considering that his blood pressure was zero. By all medical science claims to know about physiology, that should certainly cause an instant faint.
[YMMV. Do not try this at home. Void where prohibited.]
If you as a lawyer know that someone is represented it is considered a gross violation of the "Lawyers' Secret Handshake Club" customs to ignore your fellow lawyer and correspond directly with the layman at all, though this may be mitigated in some unusual situations (e.g. initiated by the opposing client) by sending copies of the correspondence to the opposing counsel. Service of process may be different from correspondence - the rules sometimes allow or even require service on the client in person. (For instance starting a new suit in which the original opposing attorney is not yet the official representative of the client.) It's still generally considered a dick move, though.
The purpose of representation is subverted when the attorney is bypassed - it's like accessing a private method without going through the encapsulating object, if that makes it clearer to you. It also makes it difficult to keep the law office client files comprehensive and up to date.
I recently experienced an Addisonian Crisis, in which my cortisol levels dropped very low. It was a nightmarish state to be in, and I could not think or function properly until weeks later when my cortisol came back into balance. If AS is even a small step in the direction of that low-cortisol dementia, I would highly recommend at least trying the treatment. One might discover entire aspects of their mind and self that have been unavailable before.
Low cortisol levels may predispose individuals to PTSD; following war trauma, Swedish soldiers serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina with low pre-service salivary cortisol levels had a higher risk of reacting with PTSD symptoms, following war trauma, than soldiers with normal pre-service levels.[16] Because cortisol is normally important in restoring homeostasis after the stress response, it is thought that trauma survivors with low cortisol experience a poorly containedâ"that is, longer and more distressingâ"response, setting the stage for PTSD.
From reading dozens of 1st-person Asperger's and autistic blogs it seems like PTSD is almost a defining characteristic of autism-spectrum disorders. Certainly the way parents, psychologists and teachers often treat people with ASDs seems to be universally perceived as traumatic by such writers. If cortisol supplements might ameliorate the harm to people who are not just treated badly but predisposed to be traumatized by such treatment, then I think it is certainly worth researching.
Autistic self-advocates are right to cling to their right to neurological freedom, but I think it is very unlikely that cortisol would be anything like a "cure" or a means of enforcing conformity with society; rather, it holds out he possibility of giving autistics a line of defense against the assault of unreasonable demands of neurotypical society. If so, then this could give autistics greater ability to effectively challenge the causes and perpetrators of traumatic experience, rather than being derailed so often by needing to deal with the emotional effects of trauma such as dissociation and meltdowns.
Property isn't supposed to be democratic - when it is, that's called communism. (And HOAs are petty corporate communist tyrannies based on EULAs with terms that can be changed by your neighbors at any time.) What's BS is your attempt to define freedom to hang clothes as "totalitarianism."
I don't consider myself particularly agressive or petty,...
But you sure do a good impersonation...
The above-ground pool is the only one I find tacky. Given that he has one, though, it's a great idea to fence it. Pools are the prototype of the legal category of "attractive nuisance", and having a fence is just about the only defense to a homicide charge or wrongful-death suit should some rugrat take a swim when no one is looking and drown.
Seems to me that one of them conservation thingamajiggers rules it out - baryon number. You'd get as much anti-Helium as Helium starting with photons. Plus with that kind of energy it'd be fast alpha particles, protons and neutrons and electrons everywhichway, not Helium per-se. Besides, if it makes nucleons, it's a nuclear reaction by definition.
In Spinoza's letter to G. H. Schaller, he wrote: "men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." (Letter number 62)
In the film "Lawrence of Arabia" Lawrence says: "A man can do whatever he wants, but he cannot want whatever he wants."
People do not really have desires, people are had by their desires. This is part of the reason why the Buddha's "second noble truth" is: "suffering is caused by desire."
In the direct mystical experience of unity there can be nothing to desire, since there is nothing apart, nothing lacking. The distinction between free will and determinism is resolved by the inescapable wholeness of all.
That's an insightful way of looking at it, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with Heisenberg's original derivation showing that using photons for measurement knocks the electron out of its initial state. The Fourier-windowing way of looking at it is the time-energy form of the uncertainty principle, while the photon-electron way of looking at it is the position-momentum form. The first is more mathematically intuitive, the second more physically intuitive.
We have very strong reasons to believe that our mind follows deterministic natural laws, but we cannot completely eliminate the other possibility.
On the contrary, the activities of our brains are full of nonlinear feedback loops which are sensitive to conditions both internally and from outside impressions received by our sense-receptors. Thermal and other fundamentally random influences are magnified over time, so the state of the brain is not predictable even in principle. Unless the mind is unaffected by the state of the brain, (a proposition thoroughly disproven) then the mind is not deterministic.
There is literally no chance that the mind is completely deterministic.
This typo is not caused by not knowing the difference between the two words. It is usually caused by either a sticky "o" key or just holding the key down a millisecond too long. Since "lose" and "loose" are both correct words the spellchecker will not catch the error.
It is quite an easy error to miss when proofreading, unlike your own exuberantly odd punctuation.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no truck with postmodernists, but neither do I with the sort of scientifically ignorant dogmatists who claim that determinism and Newtonian clockwork still rule in spite of quantum mechanics, chaos, and the predictive failures of theory and modeling in all areas of science.
The fast, tangled feedback loops of the brain give it a sensitivity to initial conditions that rapidly magnifies differences in initial state at the quantum level to the level of organism behavior. No neuroscientist or psychologist can predict in precise detail what an experiment involving a whole organism will yield, even for flatworms.
Theories do not account for all data - if data comes forth that does not fit, then the data is usually cast out. Simplifying assumptions are forgotten, then denied, then the theory is elevated to a pedestal and given reverence even when it is shown to be incompatible with even more revered theories. (e.g. the Hogkin-Huxley model's incompatibility with thermodynamics and the heat dissipation of real neurons.)
The world cannot be summed up by limited numbers of observations, for there are many things that slip through that net; not can it even be summed up with an infinite number of observations, for measuring changes things, and one of the surest bit of mathematical theory is Heisenberg's; nor is the world under any obligation to fit into our parochial, preconceived notions of consistency, for we are limited to a far smaller region of time and space that the universe which contains us, and purely local theories of mechanics have been disproven.
Well, Richard Feynman said:
"I think it is safe to say that no one understands Quantum Mechanics."
and while he is not recorded to have said that "it's a crock of shit" he did say that it doesn't give much understanding of or a good model of Nature:
"One does not, by knowing all the physical laws as we know them today, immediately obtain an understanding of anything much."
"The more you see how strangely Nature behaves, the harder it is to make a model that explains how even the simplest phenomena actually work. So theoretical physics has given up on that."
Just because determinism rules in physics above the microscopic level...
Determinism does not rule at any level over a sufficiently long time scale due to feedback loops causing sensitivity to initial conditions which ultimately magnify quantum fluctuations up to the largest scales. What is a sufficiently long time scale depends on the system and the frequency of the feedback loops, but for brains in natural environments must be on the order of seconds at most.
Wrong. There is no evidence that quantum mechanics is not applicable at the macro-level, but there is evidence that it is: see Carver Mead's work with meter-scale superconducting loops, for example, or the quantization of neutrons' energies when falling in a gravitational field that required the combined effects of every particle in the Earth to produce.
Saying that quantum mechanics is not applicable to the macro-scale is just a cover for the fact that it is too complicated to calculate, or even to approximate under all but exceptional situations.
To claim that this implies that quantum-mechanical behavior would be evident in the larger-scale process shows a misunderstanding of the physics.
To claim that the quantum-mechanical nature of the process disappears when it gets too complicated for physicists to describe shows a willful misrepresentation of the facts.
We are currently seeing attacks from some philosophers who refuse to admit the existence of neurosciences or that the brain can be ruled by deterministic phenomenon. Lacking a proper science background,...
If you believe neuroscience (or any modern scientific knowledge) is compatible with determinism, or that quantum mechanics only applies to small things and always averages out to classical behavior for large things, or that the math of theories governs the world rather than describes some past observations, then you might as well believe in behaviorism or phlogiston, or animism for that matter.
0) Percussive maintenance.
No, that's extra savvy. I have heard that the Original Apple ][ manual called for dropping the new machine from a few inches height onto a hard surface to help re-seat any memory chips that might have worked their way loose in shipping.
As Heinlein's character Gwen/Hazel in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" said: "Dear, you have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things, but notional; you have to let them know who's boss."
You have a point. An imbecilic, off-topic point, but a point nevertheless.
Or could it be a cover for intelligence agency cable splices elsewhere? Since we know that US agencies have virtual carte blanche to tap backbones but use covert splicing for lines outside the US, these cuts could cover a technically resourceful entity such as China, Russia or Israel putting in taps here in the US. I doubt it's Israel, though, since I gather they already have about as much access to US telcom as they want.
Or, to get more creative, perhaps some industrial espionage organization did it. I can think of some tech billionaires who seem to live as if trying out for Bond villain roles who might find such a spy caper stimulating and profitable.
Hmm... a cable cut would be the perfect cover for a splice elsewhere.
There were no Aztecs or Mayans in what later became the state of California.
California Pre-contact Tribal Territories Map
Then German law is improper. To say that it is illegal to tell the public what sites have been blocked, indeed, disappeared by another government is beyond fascist. The child pornography gambit has always been a ruse to allow censoring whatever the tyrants don't want us to see.
The reasoning is ever-expanding: child rape -> child sex -> child molestation -> child nudity -> teenage nudity -> clothed children in "arousing" poses -> breast-feeding photos -> clothed teenagers in "arousing" poses -> making photographs -> making drawings -> selling pictures -> sharing pictures -> posting pictures -> downloading pictures -> looking at pictures -> thinking unapproved thoughts about otherwise legal pictures -> linking to sites that have posted pictures -> linking to sites that link to sites that post pictures -> posting which sites are censored by your own government -> posting which sites are censored by other governments -> pointing out that some censored sites are not anarchist-communist-terrorist-liberal-necro-copro-sado-boogyman kiddy porn.
And if a policeman or prosecutor claims that you have gotten too close to doing any of the above, she can take down your whole site, especially the bits that are exposing government criminality, seize the domain name, take all your stuff and lock you up. Now there is no way of knowing what they have censored or redressing the intentional or sloppy misuse of the thoughtcrime statutes by the private companies that implement the secret laws. But - think of the children! It's for the children! Anyone who claims otherwise must be a anarchist-communist-terrorist-liberal-necro-copro-sado-pedophile-boogyman!
Thanks for the correction re Cytochrome-C / Cyanide.
Also, it turns out that the story about Lavoisier being the blinking head is a myth.
Exactly how long is Obama planning to keep blaming everything on Bush, especially with a Democratic House and Senate at his beckon call? That may work for dyed-in-the-wool lefties, but it won't work with the swing voters come next election.
Obama will have good cause to blame Bush for as long as the crisis continues. Obama has been in office for what, 80 days? The roots of this crisis date back at least 10 years, but Bush did nothing to ameliorate it during his entire term in office. Nor will Obama. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if Bush had handed over the Social Secutity trust fund to his criminal friends on Wall Street? They couldn't get the money that way, so the present looting is plan B. Truth is, the GDP has been shrinking every quarter but one since Bush took office when inflation is reconed as it was in the pre-Clinton era. Clinton was a Republican in all but name, too, with his slashing the safety net and signing everything his corporate masters requested. The hate from the so-called conservatives was just whipped-up theater. There is only one party in the US, and its two wings are there as a means of the oligarchy's controlling both sides of the Hegelian dialectic and hence the synthetic outcome.
Obama is just as solicitous of his owners' desires as any of the presidents of the past century or more. The bankers are looting the nation, and they will never be held to account. The situation is managed. We are owned. Believing the rhetoric of one side or the other, especially the rhetoric that there are just two sides, is how we are owned. The only way to break out is to organize to throw all the bastards out, politicians, judges, executives, officers, administrators, media, and the major stockholders of large corporate entities and controllers of foundations. Deprive the reigning reptiles of power, then make it clear to the rest of the ambitious psychopaths that seeking or misusing power over others will lead to being found out, shunned, and the ruin of their ambitions. We as a nation, as groups, as individuals can do this - the only thing stopping it from happening in a week is programmed false beliefs in the power of the "authorities", in inevitability and strength of the unsustainable and insupportable status quo.
Hanging can be quick, but it's not instant, nor was the guillotine. It takes about 10 seconds after being decapitated for brain activity to stop (someone actually did an experiment with this in France, with a friend, when he was to be beheaded, a blink signal).
My guess, is oxygen will be going to the brain longer, so in terms of pain, having your neck broken is just like lethal injection - you suffocate and can't do anything about it.
Or if the rope is too short, you wiggle around a bit before hand.
As far as I can tell, the only humane method of execution is a firing squad, aiming for the the head.
Hanging in such a way as to break the neck at the top vertebrae may well cause instant loss of consciousness due to hydrostatic shock. It might not, though - I haven't heard of anybody doing an EEG. Some brain activity will still be there for a few seconds to a few minutes, but that does not necessarily imply consciousness unless the EEG frequency is alpha or higher. If there is consciousness, the sensation of suffocation will likely be absent if the vagus nerve isn't giving feedback from the torso, as is likely when hanged from a drop high enough to break the neck. The sensation of suffocation comes from high CO2 rather than low oxygen - breathing inert gas does not cause a feeling of suffocation, for example - and that feeling of high CO2 is transmitted along the vagus nerve.
Lethal injection with potassium and inadequate anesthesia, while very painful, does not cause suffocation directly, but rather interferes with all muscular action, particularly that of the heart. Lack of blood flow typically causes unconsciousness and death before the lack of breathing can cause fatally low oxygen levels. The gas chamber, OTOH used cyanide which causes irreversible lack of oxygen by binding to the hemoglobin. It can also often be quite painful, but likely does not cause feelings of suffocation if enough is given to kill quickly.
If properly hanged people were conscious, they should be moving their faces since most of the cranial nerves wouldn't be affected. The traditional hood / black bag over the head prevents observation of facial movements, and maybe that's no coincidence. OTOH the bag may just conceal the image of he final involuntary and unconscious spasm at the moment the neck is broken.
Firing squads seem a little uncertain unless several of the bullets hit the head. Messy, too... might better just use a guillotine fitted with a big head-smashing hammer instead of a blade. I don't see it catching on outside of maybe Texas, though.
All in all, breathing inert gas free from CO2 is likely the quickest, surest and least painful way of killing somebody.
BTW, the blinking guillotined friend was Lavoisier, the tax collector for Paris and, ironically, the discoverer of Oxygen. It's odd that he was able to hold on to consciousness for so long considering that his blood pressure was zero. By all medical science claims to know about physiology, that should certainly cause an instant faint.
[YMMV. Do not try this at home. Void where prohibited.]
If you as a lawyer know that someone is represented it is considered a gross violation of the "Lawyers' Secret Handshake Club" customs to ignore your fellow lawyer and correspond directly with the layman at all, though this may be mitigated in some unusual situations (e.g. initiated by the opposing client) by sending copies of the correspondence to the opposing counsel. Service of process may be different from correspondence - the rules sometimes allow or even require service on the client in person. (For instance starting a new suit in which the original opposing attorney is not yet the official representative of the client.) It's still generally considered a dick move, though.
The purpose of representation is subverted when the attorney is bypassed - it's like accessing a private method without going through the encapsulating object, if that makes it clearer to you. It also makes it difficult to keep the law office client files comprehensive and up to date.
I recently experienced an Addisonian Crisis, in which my cortisol levels dropped very low. It was a nightmarish state to be in, and I could not think or function properly until weeks later when my cortisol came back into balance. If AS is even a small step in the direction of that low-cortisol dementia, I would highly recommend at least trying the treatment. One might discover entire aspects of their mind and self that have been unavailable before.
Your account of how low cortisol feels "nightmarish" is interesting in light of this bit from Wikipedia on post-traumatic stress disorder neuroendrocrinology:
Low cortisol levels may predispose individuals to PTSD; following war trauma, Swedish soldiers serving in Bosnia and Herzegovina with low pre-service salivary cortisol levels had a higher risk of reacting with PTSD symptoms, following war trauma, than soldiers with normal pre-service levels.[16] Because cortisol is normally important in restoring homeostasis after the stress response, it is thought that trauma survivors with low cortisol experience a poorly containedâ"that is, longer and more distressingâ"response, setting the stage for PTSD.
From reading dozens of 1st-person Asperger's and autistic blogs it seems like PTSD is almost a defining characteristic of autism-spectrum disorders. Certainly the way parents, psychologists and teachers often treat people with ASDs seems to be universally perceived as traumatic by such writers. If cortisol supplements might ameliorate the harm to people who are not just treated badly but predisposed to be traumatized by such treatment, then I think it is certainly worth researching.
Autistic self-advocates are right to cling to their right to neurological freedom, but I think it is very unlikely that cortisol would be anything like a "cure" or a means of enforcing conformity with society; rather, it holds out he possibility of giving autistics a line of defense against the assault of unreasonable demands of neurotypical society. If so, then this could give autistics greater ability to effectively challenge the causes and perpetrators of traumatic experience, rather than being derailed so often by needing to deal with the emotional effects of trauma such as dissociation and meltdowns.
Property isn't supposed to be democratic - when it is, that's called communism. (And HOAs are petty corporate communist tyrannies based on EULAs with terms that can be changed by your neighbors at any time.) What's BS is your attempt to define freedom to hang clothes as "totalitarianism."
I don't consider myself particularly agressive or petty,...
But you sure do a good impersonation...
The above-ground pool is the only one I find tacky. Given that he has one, though, it's a great idea to fence it. Pools are the prototype of the legal category of "attractive nuisance", and having a fence is just about the only defense to a homicide charge or wrongful-death suit should some rugrat take a swim when no one is looking and drown.
Don't use erlenmeyer flasks for things that explode - too enclosed. Use beakers or other open containers. Preferably shatterproof plastic.
Seems to me that one of them conservation thingamajiggers rules it out - baryon number. You'd get as much anti-Helium as Helium starting with photons. Plus with that kind of energy it'd be fast alpha particles, protons and neutrons and electrons everywhichway, not Helium per-se. Besides, if it makes nucleons, it's a nuclear reaction by definition.
In Spinoza's letter to G. H. Schaller, he wrote: "men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." (Letter number 62)
In the film "Lawrence of Arabia" Lawrence says: "A man can do whatever he wants, but he cannot want whatever he wants."
People do not really have desires, people are had by their desires. This is part of the reason why the Buddha's "second noble truth" is: "suffering is caused by desire."
In the direct mystical experience of unity there can be nothing to desire, since there is nothing apart, nothing lacking. The distinction between free will and determinism is resolved by the inescapable wholeness of all.
That's an insightful way of looking at it, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with Heisenberg's original derivation showing that using photons for measurement knocks the electron out of its initial state. The Fourier-windowing way of looking at it is the time-energy form of the uncertainty principle, while the photon-electron way of looking at it is the position-momentum form. The first is more mathematically intuitive, the second more physically intuitive.
We have very strong reasons to believe that our mind follows deterministic natural laws, but we cannot completely eliminate the other possibility.
On the contrary, the activities of our brains are full of nonlinear feedback loops which are sensitive to conditions both internally and from outside impressions received by our sense-receptors. Thermal and other fundamentally random influences are magnified over time, so the state of the brain is not predictable even in principle. Unless the mind is unaffected by the state of the brain, (a proposition thoroughly disproven) then the mind is not deterministic.
There is literally no chance that the mind is completely deterministic.
This typo is not caused by not knowing the difference between the two words. It is usually caused by either a sticky "o" key or just holding the key down a millisecond too long. Since "lose" and "loose" are both correct words the spellchecker will not catch the error.
It is quite an easy error to miss when proofreading, unlike your own exuberantly odd punctuation.