ptoo

Exactly.

Share everything to the world, and let everyone make their own judgement based on what they see?

What's the alternative to this? They don't share all the information with the world and we're expected to believe their evaluation of the evidence?

There will always be things humans can do that AI cannot. And if there ever comes a point when that's not the case, there will be no need to distinguish the two.

I'm leaning towards there being no causation between skin microbiome and wrinkles.

Did anyone in the study have botox? Crow's feet wrinkles are generally caused by two things: UV damage, and movement of facial muscles breaking down collagen. Which naturally tend to increase with age. So that's where I'd wager the causation is.

If a person uses factor 50 every day on their face and gets biyearly botox injections on their crow's feet area, they'll likely have no prominent wrinkles but they will still be old and with a greater skin microbiome.

I was hoping to do this as a project. The issue I had was having access to a database of all books with an ISBN, or which books to include.

People have tried to create alternatives to Reddit numerous times over previous controversies. It never sticks. I don't see this time being different.

The premise isn't exactly that people shouldn't select for traits that they desire, rather that it is irresponsible for journalism and other forms of media to make allusions to height being a positive trait.

If people want to make judgements about a person's worth based on their racist or heightist tendencies that's their prerogative, but we have seen with racism that negatively portraying people of colour only serves to propagate negative stereotype beyond that which is "innate". It is clearly equivalent for height, given the many examples people provide of height not providing societal advantages in certain other cultures. It's by and large a cultural phenomenon, not biological.

Is it really that preposterous to expect the media not to mischaracterise people born with an arbitrary genetic trait as lesser individuals?

Sure, some forms of intelligence or other personal qualities could be opted for when choosing a mate. Should inconsequential physical traits such as race and height? You tell me. Or at least explain the distinction between the two as you see it.

To me, that's even further evidence that both race and height are totally inconsequential. That fact that these things can bestow social advantages is no reason to view either of them in a positive light.

Racism is certainly bad and should be discouraged. Somewhat controversially, apparently, so should heightism.

I'm not implying anything about the biological racial differences between humans. When I say racism, I'm talking about people of colour who experience prejudice based on the colour of their skin which is indisputable.

I think we can ignore the outlier of basketball players playing at the highest level. We could also point to CEO's of Fortune 500 companies and their races but that shouldn't lead us to make judgements about which phenotype is better.

That's a good corroboration of my point that height being a positive characteristic is largely cultural/societal and of no true importance as it relates to a person's worth.

The majority of women, especially before we began to actually combat racism, would also agree that being white is preferable, as would black men who were subjected to the results of living in a racist society. We currently live in a heightist society so naturally being taller is perceived as better. The crux of the issues is that it shouldn't be considered better. It's a totally inconsequential trait.

My point doesn't relate to whether rural or urban children become taller. Height is largely genetic, and discounting malnutrition it has no bearing on a person's health. Shorter people actually live longer on average.

Social advantages based on arbitrary phenotypic traits should not be encouraged. White people generally have social advantages given the fact that racism exists.

Again, substitute the "socially beneficial" arbitrary trait of height for race and ask yourself if that sounds acceptable. Should people opt for white children simply because racism exists? Should people opt for tall children because heightism exists? How do you make the distinction in your own mind?

Height certainly exists, but it has no bearing on a person's worth, despite what this article or society at large would have you believe.

Why does it matter if they reach their full possible height, barring health complications? At least 80% of height is genetic so creating a value system based upon something that has no bearing on a person's qualities, aesthetic or psychological, is of no importance. Always substitute race for height and see how the line of argument sounds. The only difference is that one trait is generally culturally acceptable to disparage while the other is not.

Using the terminology of children turning out slightly "better" in cities in the context of height is slightly distasteful, even though it is societally quite prevalent. Height is an arbitrary physical trait, much like race. Who cares who turns out taller? Discounting malnutrition, there are no health benefits to being taller. There are of course social advantages, but the same can be said for race too. When will we begin addressing heightism in the same respect as other obviously unimportant phenotypic differences?

Re the AppleCare+ point. If you are unlikely to break a screen more frequently than every 2 years on average, it's more economical to just not get the service. This is ignoring other benefits the AppleCare+ may provide.

Could you elaborate on Sapiens' anti-human bent? I was going to get around to starting it soon.

This comment is nonsensical, it genuinely feels like it was written by GPT-3

My solution was to generate random sentences in my head. I then iterate through the letters of each sentence, and if the letter is M or later in the alphabet, I select right. If the letter is before M in the alphabet I select left.

How do you reconcile point 1 with the fact that atheists on average have higher IQ's than non-atheists?

But every trait or behaviour that survives on evolutionary timescales does serve (or did serve, in the case of vestigial features) a purpose. I'm not sure what the exact mechanism is for one's life flashing before the eyes, but the researchers mentioned a very specific alignment of brain wave patterns that seems a bit too intricate to be purely random.

For a complex feature to pass through generations, it has to have some relative positive fitness associated with it. If it didn't provide some survival or fitness advantages, random genetic mutations would simply prevent the effect from being created. It is likely a very ancient survival mechanism based on these NDE existing through many different cultures and eras, and possibly not even specific to humans.

I don't think mimicking someone's Tourette's, which is what these children are doing, makes them mentally unwell.

It's very possible that they are simply attention-seeking or enjoy the idea of being special. It reminds me of the relatively new phenomenon of a community on YouTube where kids faking multiple personality disorder upload videos displaying their "systems", and each persona in the system has some time on the camera before being taken over by other competing personae.

Most people are in agreement that these kids are faking it, and it doesn't necessarily follow that they shouldn't be deemed "sane". It's more likely that they don't value the time of medical doctors and are willing to mimic a YouTube celebrity's tics for self-serving reasons, even if it is wasting their parents' money and the time of others.

They should perhaps have said digital assets instead but their point is valid. Not all property has to be physical. We live in an era where digital and intellectual property exist and are rightfully protected by law.