Please remember the first term in the acronym "AI" -- artificial not the genuine article. It isn't just a matter of "intelligence". We already have sort of "intelligent systems" that can do a number of important and complex procedures. What these systems are not, and what your AI - artificial intelligence - is not is "being". It takes more than code to make a being. A rat is far more of a being than AI. Biology is an essential part of being: a body, senses, pleasure, pain, motivation, mobility, will (even the small will of a rat), birth, and death.

As Charleton noted, "This is a contradiction since the subjective mental experience of humans is generated by their bodies."

Shut the damned thing off.

Personally, it seems like a no-brainer debate to me. Most people are not saving enough for retirement -- even a minimally financed retirement. Some people could, but are not; many people want to save for retirement but can not. Wages have not kept pace with inflation, and have actually decreased in constant dollars. People are living longer on average past 65 or 70 than they were in 1935.

And social security has never been, and won't be enough retirement income for most people IF they have no assets of their own. People living on the lower end of social security payments (like $700 a month) generally must live in public housing and must receive a food-security benefit. Medicare is obviously an essential piece.

It makes good economic sense (and good moral sense) to at least maintain the success of Social Security by widening the basis of contribution and assuring the stability of the system. It would also be eminently sensible for governments to assist people in saving and investing money throughout their lives so that they will have some additional income. It will require a share of the income from the richest 5% to accomplish this, and it is only fair that the richest should pay out more taxes.

But I don't think the legal system exhausts the scope of morality. — darthbarracuda

Well, I don't think so either. But if someone conditions the question in this way,

you will get away with it, nobody will ever know or find out — Agustino

it has been put into the category of calculated risk. Whether something is moral or immoral has nothing to do with whether one will get caught or not. Murder is immoral, even if one can get away with it and no one will ever know.

People sometimes get confused about whether they should do what is moral or whether they should do what they won't get caught doing. Getting away with something immoral does not make it moral -- and I am quite sure no one here would argue that it does.

So, if the situation is that there is an immoral act; I will get away with it; and nobody will ever know or find out; I would be tempted. Immorality is generally measured by how much harm it causes others. If the act does not harm or affect anyone, and no one knows that it has been committed, and will never find out, how harmful can it be? If it isn't harmful, can it be immoral?

Let's say I daydream about committing clearly immoral acts. I will get away with these daydreamed acts, because nobody knows what it is I daydream about, and it doesn't affect anyone else. Has something immoral happened?

It could be that the dreamer harms himself by entertaining immoral thoughts, if it sufficiently undermined one's will to resist immoral acts.

That may be, but they are not famous for the cogito ergo sum quip.

Without reading Plato's Republic, one can pretty well predict the consequences of many or most people behaving immorally and getting away with it. Society is degraded -- and not just be the immediate effects of immoral behavior (like by shooting each other). Business can not be done if people aren't honest. Economic activity would decline over time, impoverishing more and more people. The knock-on effects of more widespread poverty would result in more violent thieving and taking of property.

Of course, if many people can behave immorally and get away with it as a starting point, society has already descended into a shithole of the sort which D. Trump famously referenced.

So, the descent into hell begins with the company's pencils ending up in one's car, then more and more free color copies on the deluxe office copier, more and more time spent on-line at work gathering information for non-company purposes. Then more overt embezzlement of minor sums growing to larger sums, and finally the seizure of the company by a gang of thieves. Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, immoral suburbanites are jacking each other's cars, shagging each other's spouses, seducing everybody's children, torching the houses of the un-cooperative, and shoplifting the shopping centers into oblivion. Immoral construction companies are ripping up the concrete in the roads and selling it to the Chinese.

Pretty soon conditions make Cormac McCarthy's grim apocalyptic novel The Road look like the Teddy Bear's Picnic. All because of getting away with the bosses pencils and paper clips.

Opposition to Social Security now comes in the form of privatization. "Let's get rid of the Social Security Trust Fund and invest that money in the stock market where it will get better returns." What privatization accomplishes is a windfall for Wall Street. Here is a comparison of the future of Social Security -- public vs. private:

From Wikipedia

Privatization would mean that retirees would bear personal risk that the value of social security would fall (perhaps sharply) when they needed it, given the vagaries of the stock market. Capturing social security in the stock market is just more of the transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the upper classes -- business as usual

It is true that fewer working contributors are supporting more elderly beneficiaries. That relationship isn't sustainable. There are, of course, non-privatizing solutions.

Both sides of the aisle agree that the government has a responsibility to intervene. It's just a matter of degree. Is that how you see it? — frank

Yes, but the difference in degree is significant.

Today's economic conservative would have been a liberal in the past. Today's rightist would have been yesterday's leftist? — frank

No. There have been political shifts rightward, but the Democrats (liberals) who passed Social Security in the 1930s are not todays conservatives.

People do behave in ways they know to be immoral, and fairly often get away with it. For instance, many people engage in sexual activity that is defined as immoral -- they may even agree that it is immoral -- but they do it anyway.

Many people engage in petty theft (not just pencils, but maybe small amounts of cash) which they know to be wrong, immoral, sinful -- whatever term is used, but they do it anyway, and quite often get away with it.

I am not entirely sure why people do these sorts of things. Sexually immoral acts have very strong biological drives as an explanatory factor. People who steal small sums or inexpensive objects have some other kind of motive.

The question arises, "Why aren't people behaving more immorally than they are behaving?"

But American "conservatives" have a long track record now of actively dismantling depression era regulations, lowering taxes in the name of economic intervention; in short, being something other than conservative or rightist. It was done in the name of capitalist principles. So what's the name for that? — frank

Good. We need a longer-term view.

The US built some of the European style social programs like Social Security to reduce economic hardship among the elderly or Unemployment Insurance directed at on-going unemployment. Local level welfare programs were expanded. Other programs addressed the immediate problems of the Great Depression, like the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Federal Housing Administration, and various other programs. Aid For Dependent Children (AFDC)--the "Welfare as we know it" dismantled under Clinton's administration followed. Thirty years later, Medicare and Medicaid programs were introduced.

There was strong opposition to the expansion of activist-government programs in and since the 1930s. There were other developments such as the expansion of unionism during the 1930s-1950s that was resisted by business interests. There are currently efforts to reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of public-employment unions, the strongest section of a much-weakened labor movement.

Whether we call the various forces involved left wing, progressive, liberal, Democratic, reactionary, conservative, right wing, or Republican or something else isn't the point. The point is that the roll of the central government in ameliorating suffering affecting individuals and families has been contested for 80+ years. The resistance has been framed in various ways -- individual responsibility for one's well being, state's prerogatives vs. federal mandates, business vs. unions, public spending vs. (Other issues have been contested too, longer, but that's another thread.)

The current political situation though muddled and muddy--perhaps more than usual--has continuity with the past. The current shape of the Republican Party also has a history. The 1964 candidacy of Barry Goldwater from Arizona vs. the more moderate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller from New York marked the beginning of a major shift for the Republican Party which gradually became more conservative, or reactionary. The Republicans and Democrats changed places in the south. That change was really quite significant. It led to a redistribution of political influence and power.

Agree? Disagree?

Well, we haven't actually found any dark matter yet, so how does anyone know how it would behave in a "universal black hole" whatever that is? Something... dark matter, dark energy, may exist and may have to exist to explain the accelerating expanding universe and the gravity that holds galaxies together -- isn't that the theory?

It seems to me that you have run out on thin ice covering cold deep water. It won't turn out well. I suggest (a la cartoon) that you circle back to solidly frozen land without stopping to look down--at which point you would plunge into the icy deep

Well, as long as he gets to appeal to authority, then I might as well, too. On the topic of white privilege, I would recommend the following excellent essay (written by someone center-left, no less): https://theamericanscholar.org/the-privilege-predicament/#.WrLEgegbOUk — Thorongil

I like The American Scholar. Good mag. I also like this response to the article to which you linked. Thanks.

The better team apparently won the privilege game and took home the trophy. The 2nd place team took home -- well -- 2nd place.

If they say the game was rigged, then my ancestors were smarter than theirs and figured out how to rig the game and theirs didn’t. If they say my ancestors were more savage than theirs then that means theirs were weaker than mine. If they say there were more of mine, then that means that mine were simply better at understanding how to use the environment and technology to sustain a greater population. If they say that my ancestors were better geographically situated that means that they were better realtors, able to find and hold superior territory. If they say my ancestors had bigger, badder, and more destructive weapons that means than their ancestors were probably stuck in a stone-age existence for 10,000 years past their time.

Here are the Earthlings 30 declared universal human rights. You might ask yourself just how universal these are on earth, let alone among organisms from distant planets. (These are in briefer simplified form, not the regular edition.)

Just how committed are earthlings to these 30 rights? I suspect we are very committed when we consider these rights our own, and don't care that much if other people don't have these rights.

1. We Are All Born Free & Equal. We are all born free. We all have our own thoughts and ideas. We should all be treated in the same way.

2. Don’t Discriminate. These rights belong to everybody, whatever our differences.

3. The Right to Life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.

4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.

5. No Torture. Nobody has any right to hurt us or to torture us.

6. You Have Rights No Matter Where You Go. I am a person just like you!

7. We’re All Equal Before the Law. The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly.

8. Your Human Rights Are Protected by Law. We can all ask for the law to help us when we are not treated fairly.

9. No Unfair Detainment. Nobody has the right to put us in prison without good reason and keep us there, or to send us away from our country.

10. The Right to Trial. If we are put on trial this should be in public. The people who try us should not let anyone tell them what to do.

11. We’re Always Innocent Till Proven Guilty. Nobody should be blamed for doing something until it is proven. When people say we did a bad thing we have the right to show it is not true.

12. The Right to Privacy. Nobody should try to harm our good name. Nobody has the right to come into our home, open our letters, or bother us or our family without a good reason.

13. Freedom to Move. We all have the right to go where we want in our own country and to travel as we wish.

14. The Right to Seek a Safe Place to Live. If we are frightened of being badly treated in our own country, we all have the right to run away to another country to be safe.

15. Right to a Nationality. We all have the right to belong to a country.

16. Marriage and Family. Every grown-up has the right to marry and have a family if they want to. Men and women have the same rights when they are married, and when they are separated.

17. The Right to Your Own Things. Everyone has the right to own things or share them. Nobody should take our things from us without a good reason.

18. Freedom of Thought. We all have the right to believe in what we want to believe, to have a religion, or to change it if we want.

19. Freedom of Expression. We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people.

20. The Right to Public Assembly. We all have the right to meet our friends and to work together in peace to defend our rights. Nobody can make us join a group if we don’t want to.

21. The Right to Democracy. We all have the right to take part in the government of our country. Every grown-up should be allowed to choose their own leaders.

22. Social Security. We all have the right to affordable housing, medicine, education, and childcare, enough money to live on and medical help if we are ill or old.

23. Workers’ Rights. Every grown-up has the right to do a job, to a fair wage for their work, and to join a trade union.

24. The Right to Play. We all have the right to rest from work and to relax.

25. Food and Shelter for All. We all have the right to a good life. Mothers and children, people who are old, unemployed or disabled, and all people have the right to be cared for.

26. The Right to Education. Education is a right. Primary school should be free. We should learn about the United Nations and how to get on with others. Our parents can choose what we learn.

27. Copyright. Copyright is a special law that protects one’s own artistic creations and writings; others cannot make copies without permission. We all have the right to our own way of life and to enjoy the good things that art, science and learning bring.

28. A Fair and Free World. There must be proper order so we can all enjoy rights and freedoms in our own country and all over the world.

29. Responsibility. We have a duty to other people, and we should protect their rights and freedoms.

30. No One Can Take Away Your Human Rights.

Yet another Eero Saarinen structure, the Gate Way [to the west] Arch in St. Louis, MO. The arch was built in a former slum on the river, occupied mostly by blacks, many of whom moved to (or were relocated to) Ferguson, MO which they and their police made famous recently.

Unlike the son, the father liked boxier shapes. This is Christ Church Lutheran in Minneapolis. by Eliel Saarinen, 1949. It is a national historic landmark (which, I believe, TWA is also).





Eero Saarinen designed a social hall and education annex adjacent to the church (1962). I has classrooms, a commercial kitchen, dining rooms, and a full sized gym. All this used to get used quite heavily when the church was much larger and city churches had basketball leagues, and there were many more social activities in the church.

The 1960s were the first and leading decade of dramatic membership losses in most American churches. Quite a few churches expanded at this time, expecting to see decades of solid growth which just didn't happen.

Here is the Luther Lounge, s nice meeting room, and the gym





It is an ordinary gym, but the floor is about 18 feet below the the lawn, to avoid having the structure overpower the neighboring houses, which are close to the north side of the church.

I live across the street from the church, and am the resident atheist member. My main project in the church at this point is cleaning. Cleaning has a nice concrete quality, (especially in a building with concrete floors) and unlike social service, you can tell immediately what you have accomplished.

If you didn't like that Saarinen facility, then you will really hate this one:

Eero Saarinen and his Detroit-based firm were commissioned in 1955 to design the TWA Flight Center. Saarinen, who projected a high patronage for the terminal, conceived the terminal to speed up processes.

I bet you’re speaking from experience. — CuddlyHedgehog

Now, now...

I thought yogis had mastered the art. — CuddlyHedgehog

Yogi's can master the practice of meditation so that they can voluntarily lower their various biological markers of wakefulness (heart rate, respiration, etc.) -- if reports can be believed. I haven't witnessed it myself, and I don't know how much research is done on this. But it seems possible. Reports have said...

I don't think we can apply similar levels of mental control over our own mental processes, because there isn't a biological or mental mechanism available to get control over our non-conscious mental activities. We don't even know what, exactly, the non-conscious mind is doing at any given moment (it's non-conscious, after all).

Respiration, heart rate, temperature, etc. are all readily knowable, and one can act on them (by entering a deep relaxation or meditative state).

Did you give free rein to your emotions because you had studied that one shouldn't bottle up their emotions, or was it more of an instinctive thing? — Agustino

Well, I didn't do formal study of psychology until I got to college, and as a child I had definitely learned to repress emotions. Hey, I grew up among Scandinavian midwesterners where repressing emotions is a way of life. As a child, I was about as disturbed as maybe 40% of children are -- some odd ticks, but nothing too disruptive.

Back in the '50s most young gay boys learned that they were much better off not expressing sexual interests. So that got repressed straight away; then, the midwestern Scandinavian influence was there (I think it is a real thing) so I was used to not doing too much emoting.

In college, psychology helped to some degree. But this was still back in the mid 60s, before the American Psychological Association about-face on homosexuality (1972 or 1973) (which I didn't hear that much about until later). Most of the benefit was just being in college, maturing, and so forth. The sexual revolution may have started in the 1960s, but in many ways and in much of the country it didn't get up to speed until the 1970s.

The sexual revolution opened up a lot of doors that had been closed for many people. It was a good thing. The social wave of being more open about ones feelings, and expressing wishes and desires made it possible for individuals to change behavior without the penalties that would have been applied in 10 or 15 years earlier.

Interesting. Why do you reckon I am fairly formal? — Agustino

It was a guess - pure and simple.

GAD, hypochondria, and OCD — Agustino

You seem to be doing fine now, despite all that. It is a matter of resilience and adaptability; it's also a matter of control -- sometimes one has to keep a very tight rein on one's anxieties if one wishes to function at all.

I could rein in my emotions very tightly when necessary, but I tended to give them pretty free rein a good share of the time. One of the theories of mental health (maybe a pop psych idea) is that one shouldn't bottle up one's emotions -- one should let them out.

There are two downsides to letting one's feelings out: First, one has to put up with the damage of all that emoting (other people often don't like it and don't forget it). Second, expressing emotions can have the effect of amplifying feelings rather than resolving them. The expressed anger or fear tends to confirm those feelings, just as expressing love tends to reinforce that feeling.

So, if one can adapt, bounce back, forget and move on -- one will often do better. This approach can be learned, but it is necessary, I think. to have some native capacity to operate this way. One can nurture what nature has given one.

Social intelligence helps too -- the ability to understand other people individually, but also other people in groups and in social systems. This is something I've never been good at.

That is probably so, but is there no alteration of the unconscious from the conscious as well as the other way around? I would say there is - the conscious mind can also shape the unconscious to some extent. — Agustino

I don't know, I guess, really. My working theory at this point (it's fairly new in my head) is that the mind is essentially non-conscious, and all the memory, calculating, planning, etc. that it does is largely unobserved by the individual. The conscious mind does benefit from a running account of reality through the flow of sensory information. The wind blows, the trees wave, the sun shines, the water sparkles -- and we experience all that (it seems) in real time. We feel it.

So, sure, there has to be some 2 way communication between the conscious and unconscious mind--whatever those two actually are. But most of the activity is in the unconscious, or non-conscious or subconscious--whatever one wants to call it.. How the brain operates seems to be, as I said, genetically controlled, because everyone's brain seems to operate the same way--different thoughts for sure, but the same mechanisms of delivering thoughts for expression.

It's like with dogs (a non-human animal we have all observed): most dogs behave in very similar ways, despite having been raised apart from each other. For instance, if a dog would like to get up on the bed but isn't certain whether it will be allowed, it will put an exploratory paw on the bed and look at the human occupying the bed. I've seen a number of different dogs perform this inquiring maneuver. Or, dogs are pretty similar in the way they invite play from us or from other dogs.

I would guess that a space alien would notice the same thing about humans -- they all seem to have many similar behaviors. For instance, they all cross their arms in front of them when they feel uncertain / hostile / disbelieving. The aliens say to us "we come in peace" and the humans all cross their arms in front of them.

IF you design military equipment strictly according to orders, and are loathe to measure the moral implications of your work, then you may end up being engaged in plainly immoral work, let's say for example, designing a weapon to disperse the small-pox virus as a biological weapon. How about nuclear bombs? Had you the opportunity, would you have deemed working on the atomic bomb a moral activity? (Some of the people who did critical work certainly had second thoughts about it.)

It depends on the circumstances of the times. The Americans' Norden Bomb Site (see picture below) improved the accuracy of bombing during WWII. Presumably more bombs exploded on the targets and fewer bombs exploded on houses. The Norden Bomb Site would seem like a moral device.



Antipersonnel devices like bombs which explode above ground and blast flesh-destroying shrapnel into the bodies of whoever happens to be in the vicinity, or antipersonnel land mines which is a weapon that keeps on blowing people up for decades after they are put in place and forgotten, both seem to be immoral because these weapons can not be used with any precision.

Just because you start doing military work doesn't mean that you have to continue doing it, no matter what.

What do you reckon? — Agustino

I reckon that you are fairly young, religious, heterosexual guy; you have received a baccalaureate degree, are entrepreneurial (database design, programming, business applications), sociable but fairly formal (guessing about that), and that you have been, so far, quite "resilient". Your resilience allows you to believe that you have successfully sorted out the mind from the nervous system (a flat-out impossibility, IMHO).

We can observe our CNS operate (like when there are sensory glitches or reflexes, that sort of thing) and we can think about what we are aware of about our minds. But most of our mind is not conscious and is largely invisible to the conscious mind. So, your capacity to separate out mind from the CNS is just illusory. Indeed, our conscious mind is probably the creation of our unconscious mind, which is actually running things.

We can learn to suppress psychophysical responses, though. For instance, limburger cheese used to be quite popular in the upper midwest of the US. It's an inordinately earthy, smelly, creamy cheese. It reminds me of the aroma of a dairy barn (which I consider pleasant but definitely "earthy"). Most people find the odor of this cheese revolting and disgusting. It tastes good in a sandwich of rye bread, a sweet onion, liver sausage (braunsweiger), and this limburger cheese. Add beer for an extra plus. I learned to get it past my nose (and lips), suppress the gag reflex, and finally sort of like it.

A little bit of mind and a little bit of the CNS had to be mastered to eat the sandwich.

We can, and do, learn to suppress responses that would get us into instant hot water at work. Someone might like to tell their boss that he is a fucking moron (which our recently fired Secretary of State called the POTUS). One might wish to insult the cop who is giving one a speeding ticket, but one does not. One suppresses the impulse because one has learned that things can get a lot worse after one has aired one's feelings.

But stuff like this doesn't amount to disentangling the nervous system and the mind.

I have watched films of Yogis who managed to drop their heart rate, respiration, temperature, and basic metabolism to a very low level, and hold it there for... like an hour. Then they brought themselves out of this state. That's control of the CNS.

I don't think we can do something comparable with our minds.

This question is in chartreuse with pink polka dot ink representing the category of completely irrelevant to the current discussion. These cards go into the beige box on the mauve shelf in the ochre room:

How do you pronounce Polish names beginning "pryz.. like "Przybylski... or prz,... as in Przewalski?

It's amazing technology, totally game changing. How did anybody get along without these invaluable devices?

Since you are taking notes for posterity, be sure that the ink in these pens is waterproof and resistant to fading. Naturally the paper you write on should be acid free -- then kept in climate controlled storage bins.

In answer to your last question, yes. I love devising color coded conceptual schema. But then I forget which color meant what in the current conceptual scheme, and soon I am overwhelmed by confusion. Have you tried writing your ideas on note cards with different colored pens and then sorting the cards into yet another schema of various colored boxes located on a third conceptual schema of various colored shelves?

It seems to me most people in the world are not subject to the relentless demands of human potential. 95%, give or take a dozen, are born, might survive childhood, may not become cannon fodder, have a fairly good chance of mating, may or may not be able to feed their children well, will hope for the best, expect the worst, and then die. That's obviously a condensed version of the much longer book, but most people do just get along with living ordinary lives.

Some people, maybe as many as 5% are benighted by the expectation that they will PRODUCE something really big, great, wonderful, expensive, long lasting, profitable, or fantastically fatal. They study, they condition their lovely bodies, they excel, they work very hard, the mate, produce children, put them through the same damn thing, and then they die. They may or may not have produced so much as a fart in the windstorm. But they had high expectations.

These are the lesser sisyphi, who are condemned to carrying a 15 pound rock in a gym bag up and down a fairly small mountain for eternity. They make it to the top every time, then they have to trudge back down the way they came and do the same entirely achievable thing over again -- for eternity. Big Sisyphus at least gets to feel a bit heroic as he struggles away. Little Sisyphi just feel like chumps.

I have not read Sisyphus's contract, but is there an option for him to just let the rock roll over him and be done with it? Can he just give up?

I am quite certain that those declaring their Christian faith truly believe, which means the object should be in figuring out how they can consistently reject the idea of providing the public good through an institutionalized economic system yet truly believe the public should be cared for. The answer lies in the capitalist's profound distrust for government, believing that any good that ought be doled out to the public ought be done privately, voluntarily, and with as little government intervention as possible. — Hanover

Yes, good points.

Yours is a far more charitable, and likely the more accurate view of the typical capitalist believer.

and perhaps ironically proclaims the avowed Marxist atheists the truly religious — Hanover

No, I don't think marxists are the truly religious ones. Some marxists are good people, some capitalists are good people. Hypocrisy is universal, afflicting marxists and capitalists alike.

Re: The morality of capitalism

The bourgeoisie, the owners of capital, may profess the morality of Christianity, or another religion, but in general find the demands of an otherworldly faith to be of little value, except for public relations purposes. Naked capitalism is the ruthless pursuit of wealth.

Capitalist morality is driven by profit. The purpose of capitalist morality is to facilitate the operation of the market place and the creation and accumulation of wealth by individuals operating alone or through a corporation of individuals.

The use of property to create more value is its highest and best use.
The pursuit and possession of property is the fulfillment of capitalist morality.
Productive capacity is the measure of human value.
Profit is a fundamental good.
Contracts must be honored. [1]
Beyond the efficient operation of markets, individuals have no responsibility to the larger population.

Individual pleasures, diversions, relationships, and interests are subservient to the market.

Society is the setting in which the market operates and the good of the market defines the value of society.

[1] Contracts, for example, to sell something at a certain price, to perform a task for a given rate of payment, or buy something for the stated price at a later date. "We can't do business if people are not honest."

Without the obfuscations of public relations and sentimental or religious decoration, the operation of naked capitalism in the market place causes the religiously, or morally romantic observer to quail in distress.

---

On the other hand...

---

Even if the market is the most powerful force in a society (or on earth in all societies) it isn't the only force. There must be workers to generate new wealth, and a society large and rich enough to buy the created goods on which wealth is based.

Individuals who are not capitalists (most people), the various cultural institutions which people establish, the family, and the government which must seek to contain unrest and maintain order all moderate the raw brutality of naked capitalism.

There are always other interests and other moral systems which weigh against the values of naked capitalism.

How do you account for the fact that religious liberal arts colleges do an excellent job of teaching critical thinking? Some schools -- secular and religious -- fail to do a good job with critical thinking because they are just not very good schools.

Bitter Crank meditating! I would think you are the sort of person who doesn't believe in meditation — Agustino

I've taken classes in yoga and meditation and have practiced it at times, purely as a secular practice and mostly to improve calmness. As a technique it works fairly well if one practices it regularly; since it isn't magic, one has to learn how to do it. There is a bunch of that stuff, yoga, tantric sex, meditation, and so forth that work because the body has certain potentials which can be called upon. There is nothing mystical about this, if you don't want to be mystical.

It is, though, definitely limited. When a major crisis comes along, I prefer a dose of Ativan, Xanax, or alcohol--whatever is on hand--to meditation. But... if nothing else were available, meditation would probably help.

Why do you think inheritance plays such a strong role? — Agustino

Traits for one thing, and how we get them for a second are not all that well understood yet. For instance, if some one is inflexible and easily agitated, is that a feature of the endocrine system (too much adrenaline aka epinephrine produced) or is it a problem of interpreting sensory information to recognize threat? Or maybe an insufficient amount of cortisol (activates antistress and anti-inflammatory pathways) is a contributing factor. The function of the adrenal glands is genetically controlled. The way sensory information is interpreted could also be inherited. Our primate relatives, and I think ourselves, are pretty much quite ready to fear snakes and spiders--because both of them have posed an existential threat for about as long as mammals have been around. Well, polar bears haven't had to worry too much about snakes and spiders. So far, anyway. We have to work hard to learn how to tolerate or like snakes and spiders. Most people don't learn that tolerance.

Another reason for thinking that inheritance is important in the way people behave is that the organization and function of the brain is genetically guided and controlled, and normal brains all seem to work pretty much alike. Considering 1000 people with normal brains and normal upbringing (weren't raised by braying jackasses), they seem to fall into groups: excitable; pessimistic; optimistic; resilient; fragile; calm; nervous... and so on. Obviously the circumstances of one's life influences this. Someone who has been subjected to an abusive childhood, or experienced torture or severe battle trauma, and the like are not going to be just like everybody else. Still, of 1000 people experiencing severe battle stress, many? some? will not have PTSD.

Conversely, some people with a high IQ, good childhood rearing, excellent education, and parents who know how to advance an offspring's career, still don't amount to much. It isn't that they can't -- they just are not interested in life's competitive race. And there are people who don't have all these advantages but have a lot of ambition and 'sitzfleisch" (can sit still till a difficult task is completed) who do quite well.

Generally people want to give themselves credit for their successes and blame something else for their failures; but I think success is somewhat dependent on factors one can't control--like having ambition.

No one can build an airtight case for inheritance at this point, but it seems to me to be tighter than the case for chalking everything up to voluntary characteristics, will power, preferences, learned behaviors, and so on.

But there are people like Stephen Hawking, who don't seem to be either interested in religion,n or philosophy nor meditation - so maybe mental resilience cannot be attributed to those factors, — Agustino

"My disability freed me from a lot of ordinary activities and allowed me to spend long periods of time thinking deeply about physics", he said. If he was optimistic and resilient, this was perhaps a gift of inheritance. There are just a few emotional/affective models for us -- resilient, fragile, reactive, imperturbable, calm, excitable, hostile, friendly, stingy, generous... and in combination with intelligence and verbal prominence, account for a lot of what we are.

One might add that Hawking had an built-in delay mechanism between a thought and a feeling and its verbal expression. If it took me 30 minutes to compose an angry sarcastic comment on the computer, there are a lot of things I would never have said or written, and the feedback loop of saying them wouldn't have existed. (Hawking's life had some troubled elements, apparently -- not surprising for any human. He divorced and noted that one of his wives (can't remember which) had been abusive, for instance.)

So, perhaps between a natural born resilient personality and lots of time to think about what he liked to think about, he lived well.

I know I don't have as resilient a personality as some people's. I am more reactive and am more agitated than some. When I can manage my life to incorporate lots of time alone, reasonably pleasant activity (like enjoyable work), I do quite well. There have been times when I couldn't arrange that, and life was very stressful for large blocks of time. In this respect, I am much more like my mother than my father. Three of my six siblings are like our mother, three are like our father (in the category of resilience).

I have found that mediation and religion have been only somewhat helpful. But so have really good books and great music been helpful.

Why did they change the name of the Triborough Bridge to the RFK? — T Clark

It says they changed it at the request of the Kennedy family.

So, just like that. Somebody at Kennedy HQ picks up the phone and calls Mayor Bloomberg and says, "you know, we'd like the Triborough named after Bobby. Don't you think that would be nice? When will the new plaque be ready?" (It was in... 2008?)

I'm reluctant to believe anything you write — T Clark

A wise policy.

Is this in South America? I suppose the ants on the underside of this bridge manage not to drown, or not?

Leiningen Versus the Ants -- great story.

It seems like there is a large hairy bushy-tailed animal menacing the abandoned termite mound.

Now, it says that fireflies are beetles. Didn't know that. But they don't feed much as adults (which is when they do their light thing, I suppose) but they are vicious predators when larvae -- they throw up stomach acid on their prey. That would make a great horror film.

I commend the bower bird for it's excellent taste in blue plastic.

Here we have a man on his knees in the snow apologizing to a woman he hardly knows for making a possibly inappropriately sexually suggestive comment. You can't be too careful these days. She might have just grabbed him and thrown him off the bridge. And gotten away with murder!

The pile in the background is Minneapolis.

Houses, skyscrapers, bridges — T Clark

If you like bridges, you might like the 'Stone Arch Bridge' across the Mississippi in Minneapolis. It was built by James J. Hill for the Great Northern Railroad in 1883. It served railroad traffic until 1978. By then passenger service had ceased and the large Great Northern station had been torn down. Freight traffic was routed on other lines that didn't go through the middle of DT Minneapolis. It's about 2100 feet long and 38 feet wide. It's the only stone-arch bridge on the Mississippi.

Today it's part of a very popular bike/walking trail and historical park scene.



The SAB is next to the former center of Minneapolis's flour milling industry. Water from above St. Anthony Falls was piped to turbines which drove milling equipment. Shown here are the out-fall streams from the turbines. All of those mills are now gone, though the foundations are buried under the West River Road embankment.

This is the site where Gold Medal and Pillsbury flours were once milled and shipped to a store near you. Milling is now done elsewhere.

I don't see an emoji in your post. — T Clark

Why should you?

After second grade we were moved to a cheesy new elementary school building in like...1955. They attached it to this old building and to the high-school which was built by the WPA in the '30s. They recently tore it down, much to everyone's relief. Nobody misses it. That's a sign of bad architecture.

Did you really have to go in the mines? — T Clark

Didn't everybody?

Here's a picture of my hometown in 1890, about. These two blocks on opposite side of the road are partially intact. The park is still there.



A few years later, around 1900-1910, the place was looking a lot more prosperous.



Here's the place quite recently.



I attending first and second grade in this nice old brick and limestone building with slate roof and copper trim. After second grade I was dragged off to work in the iron mines of SE Minnesota with just my little pick, shovel, and little tin pail. Life was cruel back in the 1950s. People don't realize how much we suffered. It was salvaged in the 1960s--taken apart for the fine old-growth lumber in it, and nicely cut limestone. There were only 8 rooms -- but big, with very high ceilings. Maybe it could have been adapted for some use (don't know what, really). Salvage was probably the best way to reuse it.



Chatfield has a Carnegie Library. It had a distinct bookish odor to it. It's still there, but has had an architecturally appropriate addition.