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I have experienced several instances where I dream that I am with some friend/colleague/etc e.h. helping him solve some problem. Upon waking up, I check my phone and then sure enough that same friend has in fact contacted with the same or similar message as in my dream.

In several instances these are people I haven't heard from in a long time, with some very hard to guess specific reason why they contacted me. (E.g. a long time friend asking me to help his dad with something).

My memory is very clear that I had the dream and processed it (with some reaction of 'huh strange, fancy dreaming about that guy) before I opened my phone and found the text/email from that person. But is that memory being rewritten somehow afterwards?

Or is there perhaps some kind of vaguely wavefunction/quantum/etc phenomena that leads some information to be transmitted back in time by a few minutes? Hard to say, but definitely food for thought

Democratic != good.

That's one way of looking at it -- another way is to look at something like the Mafia as being analogous to an early form of law and order (albeit arguably a tiny bit more openly violent, ruthless than your average developing world police force). Something still lacking today in most countries.

This.

Surprisingly enough, a human is much more likely to find oneself alive in a world in which humanity was not nearly made extinct by nuclear war.

Exponentially so, if we assume, reasonably, that even if humans survived (technically) a nuclear war, their descendants would take 100s of thousands of years or longer to recover to pre apocalypse levels, vs. non nuclear war realities where the population simply keeps increasing exponentially, leading exponentially many more humans to find themselves existing in that "timeline."

Have had very much the same thought myself.

If there were two opposing forces, always exponentially self improving towards maximum efficiency in two opposite sides: 1) ordered/creative/perfectionist/preservative/etc, 2) chaotic/destructive/disruptive/etc... suppose our universe sits roughly in the middle of these two, does that not seem to explain where we are?

Also, given the seemingly limitless propensity of the universe towards balance, and its apparently limitless capacity in both regards, it would seem natural to infer that both forces keep going in ways beyond that which we can directly observe.

Intuitively, certainly, it seems very right. Of course, it also gels very well with countless esoteric/mystical beliefs going back eons as well.

While, of course, it is technically possible, it seems very reasonable to infer that we may be in a small window in which we haven't connected to other intelligent life. In just 100 years we have gone from being barely able to fly at all, to being close to becoming a multiplanetary lifeform.

The evidence becomes more and more every day that life is not a one in a trillion miracle but a natural product of certain environments. To assume we will never have contact with other lifeforms seems like a huge jump.

I guess it would work if there is some kind of force that leads some timelines to go out of existence or converge back towards heavier nodes, something like a neural network structure.

Somewhat off topic, but I have often wondered if this sort of phenomenon could also occur within 'timelines' (as in the multiverse concept):

As the article mentions, initially our ancestry is basically linear -- one mother and father, two grandparents per parent, etc. But the further back we go, the more our lineage begins to resemble a mesh web with certain ancestors reappearing at other points.

Could the same happen with the flow of time? Say we were to go back 10 years, maybe there is only a single possible 'timeline' between now and then. But is it possible that the further we go back, there are multiple 'nodes' which cross over, much like ancestry?

Is it possible there were two, or more, say, 1900ADs, which then every e.g. 1915 was descended from, splitting again into different timelines before recombining, in much the same manner as biological descent?

Largely off topic, but an interesting thought experiment.

Within a given group value is reasonably correlated to expertise.

As much as I wouldn't give any time to sociologists valuing Alan Turings genius within mathematics, computer science, etc., I'd have equally little time for mathematicians judging his sexuality.

I'm not sure what your point is. Can you clarify what you're trying to get at here?

By which you mean he made a campaign donation.

For each of the questions you have listed, there is opposite viewpoints of some (questionable) legitimacy:

White supremacists would argue that it is multiculturalists who seek the abolition of the white race through introduction of millions of high birth rate other demographics into white countries.

Pro-conversion therapy anti gay people would argue they are saving the individuals from mental problems, social difficulties, and other negative side effects of what they believe is a consciously modifiable behaviour.

"Racists" and "sexists" would argue that being aware of mean average behavioural differences in different demographics is not a negative thing.

However invalid these arguments may, or may not, be, it is not our job to attempt to generalise our expertise and judge anyone who holds a differing view.

Simple statistics says that there is at least one or two major issues which you are extremely passionate about, but simply mistaken. Same for me, same for anyone else.

That does not matter. As long as my opinions do not measurably affect my behaviour within a specific community, then it is not relevant. People should be judged by their individual actions within a given 'organism'/community/company/etc, not their viewpoints on tangentially related subjects shared with others in other communities.

Your logic is exactly what led to the exclusion of gays, blacks, communists, non christians, and other groups, in the 1950s and before.

You risk going so far in the other direction that you become exactly what you opposed.

No more relevant than a CEO of a company that hires people of all diets being a passionate vegan who believes eating meat is immoral.

As long as his personal views don't impact his professional behaviour, the two are not connected.

No, displaying those passions or emotions does not belong in any work environment.

One should be able to hold whatever views they like, and even share them with others in other communities without it affecting their work life, or status in a community without a direct interest in the controversial topic in question.

No, the only people you are making unwelcome are either:

1) those who don't know the time and place for their non community relevant outbursts ('meat is murder', 'homosexuality is a sin' are both irrelevant to 99% of tech or other industry community/work discussions) -- leave that for your vegan blog, or your church group.

2) those who are unable to behave courteously in the presence of someone they know holds differing views in some area they are passionate about. Just because I have read Jennys vegan blog, and know and disagree with her 'meat is murder' sentiment doesn't mean I can't work effectively with her.

People need to be able to separate their general leanings and passions from their commitments to a job or other community.

Can a vegan work with someone with a non restricted diet?

Can an atheist work with a muslim?

In either case, the answer is the same: if the individuals behave professionally, yes.

If the married gay couple are the ones freaking out at work about my hiring someone who posted against gay marriage on his blog two years ago, they are behaving unprofessionally and should be let go.

If it is the anti-gay marriage advocate who is making snide comments about his colleagues at work (or, in the context of a non work environment, in a shared community forum), then it is he who should be excluded.

This whole question really stems from a sad and pervasive tendency for 'intelligent' people to overestimate their general expertise, and then apply their value judgements to individuals in their social circle, regardless of its utility or relevance.

Examples of this:

Alan Turing -- father of Computer Science shunned, at the time, because everyone had value judgements regarding his homosexuality (completely irrelevant to Computer Science).

The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).

This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting (today) Conservatives, and formerly Communists.

The solution is simple:

Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.

If I am deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.

If I strongly believe in UFO visitations, and disbelieve climate change, but am a great graphic designer, that should not affect my reputation as an artist.

Everyone is not expected to be right, or agreeable, about everything, with everyone else. Aiming for this is pointless.

This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.

There are enough problems and difficulties getting skilled people together to work on something great -- there is no use at all in reducing that crowd of people further by limiting it to those who share ones views in any number of hot button issues.

Leave politics to your political circles, make your own impressions of people before making personal judgements from reputation, find every reason to work together, not any excuse not to.

So much stupidity in this post I don't know where to begin.

What does this analysis show? Nothing except that one of the Wikileaks.org servers is hosted in Russia. And another two are hosted in Western Europe. No single point of failure. No reliance on US friendly countries not to shut down their servers.

Be Wikileaks about to piss off the governing party (at the time) of the world's major superpower.

Servers all hosted in countries friendly and under the thumb of the USA (Most western European states)

Add a server backup in Russia.

This doesn't mean the servers operators had access to any files the public hasn't. As far as we know there is no other data on Wikileaks.org.

Given their propensity for encryption, cryptography, etc., and the knowledge that most major states can access near enough any traffic or server it is highly unlikely that there is anything on there that could be stolen by the server operators.

In other words the Russian server contains near enough the same data as we see by browsing the site.

Regarding being able to log visitors to the site -- Wikileaks forces the leakers to use Tor and access their hidden service, which eliminates the possibility of the Russian sysadmin from seeing who is leaking.

Two things:

One, academia (for many reasons) tends toward liberal group think.

Two, interestingly, many of the most intelligent and successful (especially self made) people tend to be libertarian or conservative.