NielsBohron

Autoionization and the reverse reaction are constantly happening in water, and when the reaction is happening at the same rate forward and backward the system is said to be “at dynamic equilibrium” (aka, stuff is happening, but there’s no net change)

In pure water, the equilibrium concentration of hydronium and hydroxide are equal, so it’s said to be neutral. At room temperature, that equilibrium concentration is approximately 1*10^-7 moles per liter, which gives a pH of 7 (since pH is defined as the negative log _10 of hydronium concentration)

The Paradox of Tolerance writ large in real time

Friend, that’s a possum

Yeah, I’m gonna need some more of these to surprise my science-y spouse on Friday

The burden of good taste is always knowing that nobody you met will ever know what the fuck you’re talking about when it comes to music.

Man, I just started Man on the Inside by Michael Schur with Ted Danson, and it’s pretty good, but it’s not The Good Place. Looks like it’s time for another rewatch

Folks, if your boo:

• Calls their personality quirks “functional groups”
• Tests you by demanding you elucidate their mechanisms
• Has unexplainable peak splitting between 0 and 10 ppm

That’s not your boo; that’s an organic chemistry

Rounders has a young Matt Damon and Edward Norton and is entirely about gamblers making their living as poker players in the late 90’s or early 2000’s.

It’s pretty good

Edit: I just realized you said not entirely about cards, but I still highly recommend the movie. The plot revolves around cards, but it’s also about ambition and knowing when to cut off deadbeat friends

That’s because you’re thinking of it like a particle moving a distance, but matter at that scale actually behaves more like a standing wave that only has discrete solutions.

Or at least that’s how I think about electrons and Schrodinger’s equation. I dunno, I only teach about stuff that’s as small as an electron, but it’s a useful tool for thinking about quantum numbers, so I assume it applies to smaller matter, too.

Paracetamol is acetaminophen (Tylenol) for those of us in the States.

Cheers!

Once I got past the first few paragraphs, all I learned from that is that I don’t understand the Poincare conjecture or really anything about topology

It gets used as the in-house chat client at my place of employment. I work in a rural area in an old building so cell service is spotty at best, so it’s handy to be able to shoot a chat to anyone instead of an email or walking over to their office.

You seem unable to distinguish between nuance and pedantry, so it’s unlikely that we will be able to have a productive conversation on a topic that revolves around nuance.

Have a nice day.

Fair. I could have been more accurate by saying “they are exhibiting behavior that has been reinforced by certain positive responses,” but that’s a little wordy.

Do all of us experience ennui for that matter? Envy, to the same level as one another?

As noted elsewhere, this is an ongoing philosophical discussion called The Problem of Other Minds. I’d link it, but since you can’t be bothered to read the links already present, I don’t think there’s much point.

Which leads to a paradox of how one defines a conscious, human mind at all, if it were indeed based only on what emotions are present when presented with a similar stimulus.

You’re missing the point that all humanity, collectively, as a species has largely the same senses, evolutionary history, and brain structure. Therefore, despite experiencing the emotions differently and to different extremes, we are mostly capable of experiencing the same emotions. Take away that shared brain structure and shared evolutionary history, and it’s a very large, unfounded assumption to think that other species have the same emotions.

Further, I’m noticing that you’re focused on dancing around “are they human”, not “are they conscious”

No, I literally agreed with you that consciousness is a spectrum and that most life falls somewhere on that spectrum. Buy hey, go ahead and ignore that so you can build yourself a strawman. I never said anywhere that I eat meat, so you’re just imagining things so you can build an argument against a statement I never made.

Do you think animals are capable of being curious, even when there’s no impetus for them to be? I certainly do.

This sentence right here is everything I need to know about your stance. You’re either not willing to consider or able to understand that different species experience consciousness and emotion as an evolved trait, and when the evolutionary drivers are different, the emotions are different. Any species that evolves the ability to be curious will have done so because it’s an evolutionary advantage, but if the evolutionary pressure and the senses and the literal brain structure is different, then the emotion of “curiosity” will be different. Assuming that other species experience curiosity the same way as humans is exceptionally close-minded.

You’re not doing other species any favors by anthropomorphizing them; you’re just limiting your own understanding.

using names of human emotions instead can be a good approximation

It can be, but it can also be a gross misrepresentation. Outside of higher mammals, it seems safer to me to assume that their emotions are extremely dissimilar and human emotions are poor analogues at best.

My pets express themselves pretty clearly, despite having much more limited ability to communicate across species lines.

They express wants and needs, not emotions. Assuming that they have emotions that are the same as human emotions is anthropomorphization. They might have some analogous emotions, and boredom in a mammal might seem similar to human boredom, but where do you draw the line? Can a dog experience ennui? Can a cat experience a lack of fulfillment? Can a snake experience depression?

I feel reasonably confident in stating that I believe animals are conscious, just to varying depths.

I don’t disagree, but you can’t say that animals that evolved consciousness in completely different environments and with different senses and neurology would experience emotion in the same way as humans. Apes, sure, they are really close and probably the easiest argument for human emotions in non-human species, but other mammals get farther and farther from human experience and emotion, and it’s presumptuous of humans to assume that they experience emotions the same way. Read “What Is It Like to Be a Bat” for some of the philosophical and scientific issues with assigning human emotions to other mammals.

And other intelligent animals that are further removed from humanity on the evolutionary chain would have even more alien emotions. Humans can feel empathy for an octopus or African Greys, but can either of those animals feel empathy for humans? What about curiosity? They seem curious, but how can we know if they experience curiosity that is anything like human curiosity?

But they are not human emotions, so to assign human emotions to animals is a misnomer.

Yes, thank you for making the same point the other poster had already made.

Gotcha. I knew they had spread from Alaska to Panama, so I thought they’d moved into South America and Eurasia as well