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Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

LynahFan said:
People who think there must be a planner behind random outcomes must be amazed that anyone ever actually wins a lottery. Yes, that particular person winning really was very unlikely - but it did, in fact, happen, and nobody planned for it to happen that way.
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I remember watching an avid backgammon player practice rolling his dice. :( He'd tell the dice the number he wanted and then roll, somehow expecting the dice to be "trained" as a result if he only did it often enough.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

WisconsinWildcard said:
I would still make the argument that there are very few humans (myself excluded) that can conceive of true nothing. It is such a foreign concept that a tremendous amount of background knowledge is needed to understand the complexity and nuance.
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You would appreciate this website: http://www.nothing.com/Heath.html

it is a wonderful little essay.

Here is a small taste to whet interest:

Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with axiety, nausea, or panic. Nobody seems to know how to deal with it (he would, of course), and plain persons generally are reported to have little difficulty in saying, seeing, hearing, and doing nothing. Philosophers, however, have never felt easy on the matter. Ever since Parmenides laid it down that it is impossible to speak of what is not, broke his own rule in the act of stating it, and deduced himself into a world where all that ever happened was nothing, the impression has persisted that the narrow path between sense and nonsense on this subject is a difficult one to tread and that altogether the less said of it the better.

This escape, however, is not so easy as it looks. Plato, in pursuing it, reversed the Parmenidean dictum by insisting, in effect, that anything a philosopher can find to talk about must somehow be there to be discussed, and so let loose upon the world that unseemly rabble of centaurs and unicorns, carnivorous cows, republican monarchs and wife-burdened bachelors, which has plagued ontology from that day to this.
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"wife-burdened bachelors" says something about Dr. Heath I suppose....
 
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

FreshFish said:
You would appreciate this website: http://www.nothing.com/Heath.html

it is a wonderful little essay.

Here is a small taste to whet interest:

"wife-burdened bachelors" says something about Dr. Heath I suppose....
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It took me about three tries but I made it through it. Once near posting, then I thought beer might help (it didn't), and finally this morning. I guess I like it better when physicists talk about nothing instead of philosophers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNh-pY3hJnY
 
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

But isn't there something in nothing for both philosophers and physicists?
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

joecct said:
But isn't there something in nothing for both philosophers and physicists?
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If it's true that we can't fully know a thing until we understand it's opposite, then we can't understand anything without understanding nothing.

I don't think it's possible for us to, literally, wrap our minds around nothing. We have certain a priori (thanks, buddy) organizing concepts like space and time that we absolutely cannot stop imposing. So when we think of nothing we imagine empty space, which has nothing to do with nothing, since nothing also precludes "space." Same with time, and as soon as you lose time you lose causality -- "In the Beginning" means just that; it's a category error to ask "what came before time" or "what caused time," and we can't handle that because time and causality underpin our particular kind of monkey thinking.

The closest philosophy has gotten to nothing is probably zen koans, the point of which is to toggle those a priori channeling devices off.

Scientists are better, because they just throw it all into some eerily simple (for them) equations and after some shuffling announce, "turns out there were 10 dimensions once." It makes the math work, and since the project of science is to make reproducible predictions, if that leads to better quantum gravity mousetraps we've gotten something we didn't have before.
 
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

But what about the Buddhist who asked the hot dog vendor to make him one with everything?
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Here's one for the scientific/medical experts among us:

My mother is in Reseda, CA visiting her niece.

There was apparently a story on local news of parents taking their child/ren who are NOT inoculated against anything and seeking children with the measles. The parents want their children to catch the measles so they develop immunity naturally. Now, since they aren't inoculated that seems like child endangerment to me, but (unlike the anti-vaxxer crowd) I am willing to seek the opinion of the scientific community and see if there is any rationale to support this. Does this make any sense?
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Priceless said:
Here's one for the scientific/medical experts among us:

My mother is in Reseda, CA visiting her niece.

There was apparently a story on local news of parents taking their child/ren who are NOT inoculated against anything and seeking children with the measles. The parents want their children to catch the measles so they develop immunity naturally. Now, since they aren't inoculated that seems like child endangerment to me, but (unlike the anti-vaxxer crowd) I am willing to seek the opinion of the scientific community and see if there is any rationale to support this. Does this make any sense?
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I have heard of "chicken pox parties" in the past. Once one child catches it, other parents get all the kids together so everyone gets the chicken pox at the same time, so it's planned, and not a surprise. Do I agree with it? Unsure. But it does happen.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Priceless said:
Here's one for the scientific/medical experts among us:

My mother is in Reseda, CA visiting her niece.

There was apparently a story on local news of parents taking their child/ren who are NOT inoculated against anything and seeking children with the measles. The parents want their children to catch the measles so they develop immunity naturally. Now, since they aren't inoculated that seems like child endangerment to me, but (unlike the anti-vaxxer crowd) I am willing to seek the opinion of the scientific community and see if there is any rationale to support this. Does this make any sense?
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I would say a pretty terrible idea. Possible child endangerment but that line is out of my expertise. I would think one could make the case but I do not know what the results of it would be.

On a side not, I know they are not your words, but I never really understand the distinction of natural immunity. The vaccine and "natural" disease share antigens, that is why it works. It is still the same **** immune system. To be honest, I often tune out when someone seriously uses the word "natural" in real conversation since I contend it is one of the most meaningless terms out there.
 
WisconsinWildcard said:
I would say a pretty terrible idea.
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Definitely a terrible idea. There are lots of nasty potential consequences from the measles, which is why they went to the trouble of developing a vaccine in the first place. Those are far worse than whatever risks they think they're avoiding by skipping the vaccine.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

WisconsinWildcard said:
I would say a pretty terrible idea. Possible child endangerment but that line is out of my expertise. I would think one could make the case but I do not know what the results of it would be.

On a side not, I know they are not your words, but I never really understand the distinction of natural immunity. The vaccine and "natural" disease share antigens, that is why it works. It is still the same **** immune system. To be honest, I often tune out when someone seriously uses the word "natural" in real conversation since I contend it is one of the most meaningless terms out there.
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In this case, I think the idea is that they get the immunity from "nature" rather than having a government/pharmaceutical owned doctor inject it (along with the mind control drugs and nanobots).
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Chicken Pox causes on average, 31.25 deaths per million cases (US stats before the vaccine was widely available)
Measles numbers are harder to find, and the only similar stats I could find were from an anti-vax site, but it says it was around 3-4 million per year with around 450 deaths per year. Split that total cases into 3.5 million and that's 128 deaths per million.

Ya know, maybe that's still relatively safe, but four times more lethal than Chicken Pox. Another anti-vax site says there were 96 deaths from the MMR vaccine over 12 years. Given around 4 million children are born per year in the US, that means 2 deaths per million over the time frame.

Even the anti-vaxxers stats go against them. Sure, they can rely on herd immunity from those who get the vaccine which would in theory give them a 0% chance of catching it, but if everyone doesn't get the vaccine like they want, deaths from measles related events would rise 4800%.
 
Spartanforlife4 said:
Chicken Pox causes on average, 31.25 deaths per million cases (US stats before the vaccine was widely available)
Measles numbers are harder to find, and the only similar stats I could find were from an anti-vax site, but it says it was around 3-4 million per year with around 450 deaths per year. Split that total cases into 3.5 million and that's 128 deaths per million.

Ya know, maybe that's still relatively safe, but four times more lethal than Chicken Pox. Another anti-vax site says there were 96 deaths from the MMR vaccine over 12 years. Given around 4 million children are born per year in the US, that means 2 deaths per million over the time frame.

Even the anti-vaxxers stats go against them. Sure, they can rely on herd immunity from those who get the vaccine which would in theory give them a 0% chance of catching it, but if everyone doesn't get the vaccine like they want, deaths from measles related events would rise 4800%.
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Plus, you have to factor in the blindness and other non-lethal effects.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

I'm not anti-vaccine, but I am anti flu Vax for myself personally.

Save the flu shots for the young, old, and otherwise immune deficient. If there was a permanent flu vax then I'd take that.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

JF_Gophers said:
I'm not anti-vaccine, but I am anti flu Vax for myself personally.

Save the flu shots for the young, old, and otherwise immune deficient. If there was a permanent flu vax then I'd take that.
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If supply is not an issue, anyone able to get it should (broad brush noted). Higher vaccination among the "healthy" saves young, old, and immune deficient lives and morbidity.

A more permanent influenza vaccination is difficult but I have read some promising proof of concept studies for a few strains. Might be available in the near to distant future.
 
WisconsinWildcard said:
If supply is not an issue, anyone able to get it should (broad brush noted). Higher vaccination among the "healthy" saves young, old, and immune deficient lives and morbidity.

A more permanent influenza vaccination is difficult but I have read some promising proof of concept studies for a few strains. Might be available in the near to distant future.
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I just am not a fan of taking drugs for things that it's not necessary for. I understand the concept of community immunity. It just doesn't sway me in the case of the flu.
 
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