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I love how people who are skeptical of a given scientific consensus seemingly without fail will tell you, "It's all so much simpler than people are making it out to be!" This is commonly heard talking about evolution (monkeys can't become human lulz), and was amusingly lampooned in this xkcd...

I'm pretty much with Aught on this. In a little more detail.... My understanding of the dangers of inbreeding is largely that you can get very exaggerated traits and you get a lot of recessive disorders manifesting because you end up with a concentration of them in the population. However, even...

I'm having a hard time remembering exactly. It seems like something I always just kinda accepted on some level. I remember when I was maybe 6 or so having my dad explain to me that my understanding of evolution was flawed... because at the time I visualized a kind of Lamarkian evolution since...

How funny.. that's almost exactly why I looked this up in the first place. Was planning on making a youtube video about consciousness and what it actually is but the script was getting waaay too long.

I'm by no means the person who should be talking about quantum physics but I think I can answer your basic question.. The word quantum refers to the idea that on very small scales energy states are quantized, not continuous. This means they have specific levels they can occupy rather than a...

Hah.. I haven't played in about 5 months.. maybe 6. I was recently saved from starting again when I tried reinstalling and the whole thing wouldn't run even after hours of me messing with it. My subscription's still active an everything >.<

The things that I can think of that this would be incredible for... Chemistry - specific structures of compounds and specifics of reactions mechanisms. Knowing all these off the top of your head would be hot... Languages - My first thought was programming. Being able to remember the precise...

My take on it has always been that bisexuals are seen as weakening their position that being gay is something you're born as. It also must come in part from the fact that people have a hard time understanding other people having fundamentally different feelings than they do... I have a hard time...

My parents were/are both atheists. They both grew up in a very religious environment (the southeast in the US) and so they moved out to CA to have kids where we wouldn't be corrupted. I remember as a kid being asked if I believed God existed on a playground and I think I said yes because it...

I would be interested if you did it again with a control where you poured in water. I'm just having a very hard time imagining an effect that alcohol would have (like what you describe) that plain water wouldn't. The alcohol is already a solution with water (since it's 30% water). If you do tape...

How funny... I was going to say I never read the book, I listened to the recorded radio show.. though I think I own a copy. It's a pretty short read. As for numbers.. all the good ones have been taken. e is probably my favorite.. and 0 is probably the best in terms of absolute utility. Most...

Well... the easy way to know if you created any chlorine is if you had you would smell it. If you've ever been to a pool you know the smell of chlorine, it isn't particularly subtle.. and I'm pretty sure you aren't going to pull it out of solution running a current through a saline solution...

I recently looked this up and am still not completely clear but I can tell you what I learned. For a long time scientists were sure that you enter adulthood with all the brain cells you'll ever have. This turns out to be wrong, sometime in the mid 90s someone found new brain cells growing in the...

My initial thought was that the whole concept is disgusting with no redeeming value.. The trouble of course is that as disturbing as it all is censoring it is still censorship. Also, when I stopped to think about it I came up with this important point. The game isn't disgusting, it's the...

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Historically we (humans) have had no problem at all labeling different groups of people sub-human whether they be of distinctly different race or just a different tribe. In a case where there are deep enough genetic differences to call the other group a...

Hm. For some reason I thought you were supposed to drop you attachment to things rather than your desire for them.. maybe because that makes a lot more sense to me. I was about to start reading into Buddhism things that actually make sense to me but realized that's giving it too much credit...

I dunno. I'm with MGK on this one. Seeing in science really refers to detection by some means. Because you can detect a photon that's blue then you can have "a blue photon" even if saying "a blue" isn't grammatically correct if you don't stick a noun on there. I can see what you mean about...

I just wanted to respond to this quickly, My feeling is that randomness is just how we describe a system that is too complex for us to predict. While molecular dynamics are unfathomably difficult to predict in a deterministic way, they can be predicted as a statistical system with incredible...

Hm. I can see both sides of this argument. There are limitations on what the hardware can do, but the question is whether those limitations are more constraining than the physical limitations that biochemistry imposes on our brains. Master Ghost Knight, my thinking is this; while it's true...

Hah. Do you want specifics? I suppose I should have been more detailed... Stimulation from pressure on the shaft of the penis through the skin? Yes. Stimulation from anything that's only messing with the skin, for example forskin that's hanging past the tip? No. Now you have me wondering if...