jhedwards

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31.
by jhedwards 2y ago
But aren't alterations confined to the epigenetic proteins found in chromatin? I may be mistaken but I thought the DNA itself stays the same while the epigenetic annotations change dynamically.
32.
by jhedwards 2y ago
> reproducing a different structure with the same genes This a-ha moment for me with respect to this is that some biological processes are of the type [random process -> selection -> stable result]. This means that the genetics act
33.
by jhedwards 2y ago
This doesn't seem like the right calculation to me. Doing some quick lookups, I find that the number of galaxies in the universe is estimated to be between 200 billion and 2 trillion. As for stars in a galaxy, there are around 100 bill
34.
by jhedwards 2y ago
I highly recommend the book Causality and Modern Science by Mario Bunge for a thorough and scientifically grounded treatment of the philosophical problems of causality and determinism. This article seems to be going in an interesting direct
35.
by jhedwards 3y ago
The political thought of Louis Brandeis and George Kennan. These two men are very different, but between them they seem to have comprehended and sometimes even developed solutions to nearly all the large issues facing our country and world
36.
by jhedwards 3y ago
Humans are just another animal and we behave as such. The fact that, as an animal, we have comprehensively analyzed our own destructive forces and developed technologies to mitigate them, I find that really incredible.
37.
by jhedwards 3y ago
I don't necessarily agree with this sentiment. Scientists have been aware of climate change for over 100 years, and we have developed a pretty deep understanding of the mechanisms at play and the factors affecting the climate. In addit
38.
by jhedwards 3y ago
I know this is kind of silly, but it annoys me a bit to see this portrayed as some creative innovation of the Japanese on top of some ancient Chinese system, when it's really just a simplification of the Confucian text Yue Ling: https
39.
by jhedwards 3y ago
What I find extraordinary is that you can in good faith (which seems a little questionable tbh) say that the absolutely incredible amount of sophisticated evidence that scientists have developed in the last 100 years to repeatedly affirm th
40.
by jhedwards 3y ago
I think the answer to a) and b) is actually quite obvious: we are not an automaton that simply eats when the need arises. The experience of hunger decouples our behavior from the need to eat, and we can plan according to the strength of our
41.
by jhedwards 3y ago
> incentivizes schools to improve. Doesn't school choice divert funds away from public schools, depriving them of the means to improve?
42.
by jhedwards 3y ago
I have a small bit to add to the story of Pitts in the form of an article my grandfather, an ecologist, wrote with him in the Journal of Mammalogy: Dog Locates Winter Nests of Mammals[0]. The article reads as a charming account of scientist
43.
by jhedwards 4y ago
I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but the fact that I can write my thoughts/thought process down in a form that other people can independently consume and understand seems sufficient proof of their existence to me.
44.
by jhedwards 4y ago
I love the story of Faraday and Maxwell precisely for this reason. Maxwell was a bonafide genius, but Faraday was just really good at note-taking and doing experiments. Because of those talents, Faraday was able to document a lifetime of ex
45.
by jhedwards 4y ago
Just for reference I believe that the "more speech" idea originated with Louis Brandeis, who was a brilliant thinker and one of the important liberal Supreme Court justices of the 20th century. The actual quote is: "If there
46.
by jhedwards 5y ago
I'll take the bait here and be the one to point out that the usage of literally to mean "figuratively" is recorded in dictionaries at least 100 years old, and there are probably even older examples of that usage.
47.
by jhedwards 5y ago
Quantity has real concrete measurable effects that exist irrespective of the philosophical problem of classification. If I have two acorns I know I can potentially grow two very real trees. They are countable and that directly relates to th
48.
by jhedwards 5y ago
I've thought about this problem quite a bit and, while my initial position was the same as above (math is not "real" per se) I had to concede that integers are real, because quantity is self-evidently real. If you have four o
49.
by jhedwards 5y ago
On the contrary, I find Finnegan's Wake easier because it's more "fun". It's filled with silly word-play and funny sounds, and I don't feel compelled to try to make any particular meaning out of it or find a co
50.
by jhedwards 5y ago
> "Experts" are just people with their own inherent biases I get where you're going here, and I don't totally disagree, but that's not "just" what experts are. Typically experts are people who have spen
51.
by jhedwards 5y ago
> Is it possible that everyone has "aphantasia" but some people confuse remembering having seen something with actually seeing it? Memory doesn't necessarily play a part. I can close my eyes and watch imaginary movies, ima
52.
by jhedwards 5y ago
Fair enough, I apologize for reading that into your comment. The difference is that COVID is far more deadly than the flu and often requires intensive care, so the impact on families who lose family members as well as the health-care system
53.
by jhedwards 5y ago
I don't understand where this black and white thinking is coming from. The vaccine is proven to reduce the risk of infection and reduce the risk of transmission and reduce the risk of hospitalization and death by a huge amount. This is
54.
by jhedwards 5y ago
Memory cells do not prevent infection, they live in the lymphatic system and are only activated if a pathogen gets past the "innate immune system" and gets to the point we typically refer to as "infection". So, to re-use
55.
by jhedwards 5y ago
"...protection against hospitalization and death persisted at a robust level for 6 months after the second dose" (from the above linked article) This is the important part in my opinion and I've heard it explained thus: the l
56.
by jhedwards 5y ago
It's not self-evidently untrue, this is an incredibly complex philosophical question with no easy "right answer". There is also a spectrum of positions about this. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a good resource fo
57.
by jhedwards 5y ago
The book that bears his name is very old and its origins are mysterious. There very well could have been a philosopher named Zhuangzi who wrote down (or had his pupils write down) his dialogues and stories, or he could have been a fictitiou
58.
by jhedwards 5y ago
Is it that much different from aphantasia? My sister cannot "see" anything in her mind at all, whereas for me mental images are so strong that I sometimes stop seeing the world in front of my eyes in favor of the one in my head. T
59.
by jhedwards 5y ago
This seems like a very bizarre characterization. Technically On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin and Relativity by Einstein are non-fiction. I'm very happy to say I've had my mind warped by their pet theories.
60.
by jhedwards 5y ago
While I wouldn't rule out that this is true, it's difficult to trust numbers like that in China since people are so afraid to voice their true opinion. When I lived in China I learned that it was a basic rule of society that you d

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