Pepin

I made a post above to Alan detailing my thoughts. Again, the natural route could have large positive effects if you are deficient in one of those factors, but otherwise you'd need something like TRT.

Not a problem. His critique is certainly one of the better ones. As far as the second part, though the concept that DNA employs all of its power through protein synthesis is true, and that fetal development is an unimaginable complex process, it has been shown that the process isn't that fragile. There has been a lot of research and experimentation in regard to genetic engineering, and it demonstrates pretty well that many changes can be made to the genome without catastrophic results. Seriously, look into this stuff as what they are doing gets kind of weird. Given that a lot can go wrong in development since it is a complicated and delicate process, and that if an organism has no survivability if something goes wrong in development, it would be a very huge surprise if fetal development didn't have means to combat these problems. The organisms which had more margin for error in development would not only survive, but their offspring would be more likely to survive. Of course, if there was too much of a margin of error, it would likely cause birth defects, so there would be a balancing act. Actual changes to fetal development are unbelievably slow, with modifications which do not work not surviving. Though the vast a majority of mutations that occur during fetal development will result in birth defects or not work at all, a very small number will actually be beneficial. What is actually pretty interesting is that the basic starting point of a zygote for most animals is pretty similar, which does support the claim that early development cannot be modified very much without creating large issues. But, once the base structure of the fetus is formed, it is easier for genes to affect the development without much risk of complication. Certain genes for instance, such as the one which creates a 6th finger in humans, is theorized to only be used during the process of development when fingers are formed. Of course the process of fetal development is not really understood, as it is amazingly complex. Though when we talk about genes, we are always talking about the various chemicals DNA makes, it is still appropriate to talk about phenotypes in relation to genes, especially since there are particular phenotypes which are controlled only by a single gene.

Because he's hot.

What occurs to me here is that you aren't trying to so much protect your image, but rather that you are trying to control it. This likely makes sense as your parents seemed to employ the same method. They didn't attempt to understand you as a person or to engage with you on a personal level, rather they controlled how they and others would perceive you through putting out a certain image. Where I am less sure about is how you are dealing with this psychologically. Having gained freedom from your parents, you might fear other's opinions and criticism because it feels like someone is attempting to control you again. The impulse to be a prop in play might kick in, and it would likely be difficult to deal with. With this sort of ambivalence occurring, it would likely be difficult to maintain a sense of self, as you suddenly see yourself in terms of others perception of you as opposed to your own perception of yourself. Or, other people's criticism might conflict with what your parents groomed you to be, which creates a great struggle between your inner parents and your ego. I experienced something like that myself. I was trained by my grandmother to be a good Christian boy. I would never want to bring up the topic of religion with friends because the criticism would cause a huge inner turmoil between the good Christian boy I was supposed to be and my own judgement. I would think about how if I started to even doubt, my grandmother, my pastor, my parents, and so many more people would be disappointed with me. That this image that I had taken so long to build up would be shattered like glass, and I would be unable to even find the pieces. Something that struck me hard a few years ago was that "I am not a concept". It sounds so strange, but for most of my life I had been defining myself through conceptual means. I am Christian. I don't swear. I am shy. I am a thinker. I am a good guy. I don't do drugs. I get along with others. I prefer truth over falsehood. I am chill. I don't have emotions. I don't care about what people think... and so on. I was defining who I was from the top down. For me to act in a way that contradicted any of these meant I was to lose part of my identity. For someone to question me about why I didn't swear, about why I was Christian, about why I try so hard to avoid conflict, was for the person to start clawing away at the aspects that I believed to be me. How would I act if I didn't have these labels? Who would I be if I didn't see myself in these terms? Further, how would others know who I was if I lost my identity? If that struck some sort of chord with you, then I might be onto something. If not, well... sometimes you miss.

I find that math theories are easy to understand when you look at proofs, because then you can see the arguments being made. A big issue with math is that it is easy to confuse algebra and trig with a lot of concepts. Like when I was learning calculus in college, I kept missing the point of the concept because I was focused so much on the algebra and trig. A major part of the problem is that 95% of the time you spend solving a problem will be doing complex algebra and looking for trig identities, while you'll only spend about 5% of the time using the actual concept you are being tested on. It gives the false impression that the algebra and the trig is what you are being tested on. When I was in calc II the hardest part about the problems was the extremely difficult algebra and the extensive knowledge of trig identities I needed, not so much the concept. If I were to get a problem wrong, it would be because I messed up somewhere within the 45 lines of algebra, not because I didn't know what I was doing. I think that a lot of educators have realized this and have moved towards more of a conceptual framework. Khan academy for instance clearly defines the concept and will always point out all of the parts which are just tools used to solve a problem and not the actual concept. At least at my school, a lot of teachers were giving problems that tested only for the concept by making all of the algebra pretty easy.

Imagine we are on a fitness forum and the thread "how much do you bench comes up". People are posting numbers, and someone responds "now I know who the narcissists are". Upon being downvoted, the person acts all confused and states "well I truly believe that people who post how much they bench are narcissists and I don't know why people would have a negative response". Well, that is pretty obvious baiting for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that they are calling everyone who posted in that thread narcissistic. The idea is to get people to defend themselves against the claim that they are narcissistic. Also, just making a statement and calling it an argument or a theory is also a good strategy because you don't have to do any work and rather you just let people's insecurities do the work. Anyway, I'm not saying that you are baiting on a conscious level, but you certainly are on some level. I wouldn't make this response if I didn't think there was a good chance that you weren't aware of what you were doing. Let's put it this way. If you went to a conference for magicians and said publicly "I believe that people who get into magic are all narcissistic", it would be pretty obvious why everyone at the conference wouldn't react too well to this. Acting like you don't know why most everyone is annoyed would be a little concerning. Or how about if you went to a Justin Bieber concert and you kept telling people about how much Justin Bieber sucks and you even backed it up with a number of well thought arguments. Well... That is trolling at its finest.

Some people can actually do pretty well with low levels of test. Others not so much. It is certainly correlated with negative health effects, but there are plenty of exceptions. The main complications come later in life. What is weird is that though very high levels of test are correlated with increased strength and hypertrophy, that in the more normal ranges the amount doesn't matter all that much. It takes a pretty decent increase for the effects to matter.

There really isn't a way to boost testosterone in any significant manner. Supplementing with vitamin D and zinc can technically increase your testosterone, but more because you were already deficient in those those nutrients. If your diet was already in check, there isn't much you can do. The same with all the other factors. If you aren't getting enough sleep, your testosterone will suffer. But if you were already getting enough sleep, then more sleep won't do anything. The topic of naturally boosting your testosterone is more around identifying what you are doing to lower it. Alan, if you find your test levels are low and causing issues, you honestly might want to look into Testosterone Replacement Therapy. Of course it would be best to try improving your diet, getting sleep, and so on... but if you have a legit issue, TRT or something similar would be the only effective way to deal with it.

Hard to say as it wasn't tested officially, but the two unofficial tests were at 140.

The Selfish Gene and The Greatest Show on Earth are both great books. It is difficult to say which one to go for first, as the second book is less technical, while the first is more informative. It isn't that the genes were never expressed, but rather that they were shut off at some point. If you look at most mammals, you tend to find that they share a lot of the same DNA, but not all of the same DNA is in use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA As far as the Cambrian explosion, you'd have to read a book or talk to an expert to get all those answers. The area is very difficult to understand because life prior to it did not fossilize as easy and because so much was going on. There are many competing theories, but this isn't a problem. I think it is good to understand that evolution is a theory which is heavily based on math. This was my biggest surprise when I started learning about the subject. I mean to say this because if the math was that far off, it would be like the "dark matter" for the theory of evolution. I found an article which goes into the math criticism below, unfortunately the tone of the article is a little annoying. http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/08/28/stephen-meyers-fumbling-bumbling-amateur-cambrian-follies/ If we are talking about the Cambrian era again, it was more in the order or 30 million years. Again, the biggest issue is more that it is difficult to probe before that time. Also, if you look at my previous posts, I make the case that fossils are nice, but they aren't needed to prove evolution. We could live in a world without fossils altogether, and scientifically evolution would be just as accepted. Fossils can provide a lot insight into the specifics of evolution, but their accuracy decreases the further you go back, with the big issue being that it is very rare for billion year old fossils to remain intact.

Romulox, I appreciate the effort you put into your post. I'm not exactly knowledgeable to argue against the first point as it is a technical one. The second point is where things get a little confusing because though there are events which can give the impression of very fast complex adaptation, when it is more likely to be turning on of dormant genes. The dormant genes will have already gone through the whole staggeringly slow evolutionary process and simply need to be activated. There is also a sort of adaptation where it uses the same code to create duplicate appendage. To create an extra pair of wings, you don't need to go through the whole evolutionary process to create that extra pair of wings, rather you can just use the already existing wing code. How it might work in practice is that a gene simply allows the stem cells which create the wings to split a second time, leading to the creation of a second pair of wings. These sort of birth defects are somewhat common, and some small percentage of the time they are beneficial. To go a little further with that, genes that would inhibit a second pair of wings might also be beneficial. It may be beneficial for a particular species of squid to reduce the number of arms they have as the amount they currently need isn't needed. In humans, there is a gene for a sixth finger which lies dormant for the vast majority of the population. The third point I can't figure out a way to argue against because I can't fathom a physical reason why all of the instructions can't be encoded in the DNA. This is omitting a few of the various complexities of mitochondrial DNA which can somewhat be considered "non-human" DNA from a technical point of view. Have you read any of Dawkin's books? I'd read a couple as they are really quite good. It is really vital to understand the interplay of non-mutation components in natural selection, as they do the majority of the work. Mutations play a key role of course, but they aren't exactly the main focus.

Being a person who has analyzed the album myself, I am hesitant to read it as it may become less of a mystery. There is really a lot of interesting stuff in the album.

No, not at all. It is a miracle there are any fossils as the circumstances needed to create a fossil are hard to come by. This is why when there are the right circumstances, you get a lot of the same sort of specimens from around the same time. Look into how fossils form if you are interested in that. Also to reiterate, fossils can lend some support, but they aren't needed to prove evolution. If the conditions on earth were so that no fossils could form, the theory of evolution would be just as accepted because the theory of evolution doesn't have anything to do with fossils. Having fossils is great as you can illustrate how evolution works by pointing out a very large number of species in transitions and gain a lot of knowledge into how life evolved, but they simply aren't needed to prove that evolution is true. Dawkins has a great book where he actually makes a case for evolution without reference to fossils. If you want possible explanations of the Cambrian Explosion, either read some Dawkins or at the very least this wiki page. It isn't like it is some imaginable embarrassment, it is rather just an area of intrigue. But seriously, read some Dawkins. I can assure you that you don't have an understanding of evolution.

This is a misconception as most changes in evolution are not the result of mutations, but rather the result of natural selection. Changes via mutation would be extremely slow, but natural selection is much faster as it simply requires genetic variance within a population. With enough time, you could breed a large number of vastly different animals through artificial selection. The DNA base structure would look the same as mutation isn't involved, but the DNA instructions would be very different. Though not an extreme example, all of the different dog breeds we have now draw from the same gene pool as wolves. This is to say that the genes for a pitbull, the genes for a corgi, and any other dog you can think of were already in the gene pool, it just took some selection to bring out those particular traits. If we to start breeding dogs to be good at swimming, the dogs with their hind limbs further back will likely be the most successful. The dogs whose feet are more able to push against water will also be more successful. Over a number of generations, the hind limbs would move further and further back, to the point where they may fuse together. Of course what I am getting at is that you could create an animal which has the DNA structure of a dog, but is actually like a seal. What is interesting about this is that you could say that there are the instructions for creating a seal like animal within the wolf population, but that the instructions just need to be arranged in the right way. This concept can be taken further to say that you could create almost anything by combining the right instructions. Richard Dawkins has a great book called The Blind Watchmaker that explains a lot of this better than I can. The fossil record can provide great insight, but there are also many limitations. For instance, it can give the impression of lots of life emerging all at once, when it is instead that the conditions for fossilization greatly increased which lead to more fossils. Organisms might be transitioning from soft bodies which would not be capable of fossilizing, to hard bony bodies that are capable of fossilizing. There could have been more diversity prior to the Cambrian explosion, but that life might have just not have been as well suited to fossilize. As Dawkin says, it is amazing that we any fossils at all. Though the fossil record can help us understand a lot about evolution, the theory of evolution by natural selection can easily stand on its own without any fossils supporting it.

The first method is by making arguments through your characters. You'd want to give all of the characters motivations and good reasons. My personal method would be on focusing on the measurements the characters make. In a way this gets into how they think and how they perceive the world, but it is a step back, as it allows you to draw your own perception from those particular measurements, and it allows you to understand the character more by understanding their perception of the data. It also allows for reality to be the arbiter between differing measurements. For instance, if you give a description of an interchange between two individuals, you could have two distinct accounts of it. With a liberal minded person, the focus might be on the race, sex, and wealth of the person. With someone who is more libertarian, it is likely to be more on their words and arguments. With someone who is emotional, it is likely to be the body language and how they are feeling about each other. And so on. The idea is that if a character is going to draw some sort of meaning from an event, that you want to describe the base components that are involved in that character's perception. You would also want to compare this to the measurements that other people make of the same or similar event. I think this is useful because it is easy to get lost in high level concepts. I mean, instead of actually figuring out why someone believes something, we say that they believe in justice, that they are for equality, and so on. Sure, explanations are often given, but we so rarely get into the other person's thinking and how their perceive reality.

I don't think there is exactly one cause or one answer. It may mean that we are not sleeping as well. Not sleeping well could be due to stress, or it could be because we consumed caffeine that day. It could be because our minds are racing because of an awesome night we had with friends. It could be because we are having a problems with our love life. It could be because our natural neurology allows for lucid dreaming more. Or it could be because our neurology was shaped when we were young in a way that caused more lucid dreaming. I think there are plenty of instances where it could be from everyday events that tell us nothing about ourselves, and that there are plenty of other instances where it might have more to do with ourselves. It might be because we unintentionally trained in the methods of lucid dreaming. I work in a job where the time is pretty important and so I look at the clock a lot. In my dreams, I also check the clock a lot. It just so happens that this is a method to induce lucid dreaming. There isn't anything special about my checking of the time in real life or in the dream, it just so happens that I have a behavior which just so happens to induce lucid dreaming. I am pretty certain that a lot of my lucid dreaming comes from the fact that I have a very high acuity for noticing things that are off or don't make sense. Noticing that something doesn't make sense is more of an unconscious and very linked to long term memory. This high acuity continues when I sleeping as many parts of the brain are involved. When I am sleeping, when some part of my brain notices that something that doesn't make sense, it naturally forwards it to my pre-frontal cortex since that is a very strong connection, and as a result it causes me to be more conscious. Of course the above is just arm-chair theorizing. I don't know the answer, but I assume that lucid dreaming happens in many different ways, with some being positive, others negative, and many being neutral. Weighing it on a case by case basis seems more apt in my opinion.

It is a similar situation to making a contract with someone with is extremely intoxicated. They do not at that moment have the reasoning ability to understand the contract or the terms, so they aren't really able to consent. Someone who makes a contract with someone who is intoxicated is exploiting this. For instance, tricking a mentally handicapped person into giving you $100 through misleading math is theft. A child's rational faculties are not at the point where they can understand sex and they aren't really able to give consent. To put it this way, it is the equivalent to drugging someone and having sex with them. While their rational faculties are diminished, they may "agree" to have sex, but in reality they are in a state where they have little to no control of their body and have no real capability to agree or disagree. In the case of a child, they are always under the influence of childhood. For an interaction to be UPB compliant, both parties need to have an understanding of the interaction and the theory behind it.

That you are conscious during your dreams, that you are aware you are conscious, and that you can achieve some level of control of your dreams when you are conscious. I have a big issue with lucid dreams. I have a tendency to think in my dreams and to analyze various aspects. The more I do this, the more awake I become, and I usually wake up. This is frustrating because I have issues staying asleep and this causes me to wake up over and over again. Oftentimes I start noticing things that don't make sense, or continuity that doesn't follow, or what I will call dream blurriness. I often figure out that I am dreaming. It is kind of weird because there is part of my brain whose job seems to be to keep me in the dream. If I start to catch on that it is a dream, I usually jump to another dream as if nothing happened, or the issue tries to resolve itself. For instance, I had a dream where I was talking to my friend Nate, and all of a sudden he changes into somebody else. I said "I was talking to Nate", and he changes back to Nate, and the conversation continues like nothing happened. There are lots of other methods, with jump cuts being very effective. Another dream I had was where I was on a blimp and it crashed in an usual manner. That part of the dream replayed over and over again to try to correct the mistake, which made it ironically obvious that I was dreaming. Now if I put in an effort to lucid dream, weird stuff starts happening. That whole waking up in your bed thing but you're still dreaming cliche happens way way too much. The point of it is of course to make me think that I am awake and not in the dream. When I started doing dream analysis, I started to actually analyze my dreams while I was dreaming. My brain fought back against this by making my dreams overly long pieces of abstract art which I was incapable of describing. I could go on about this. Lucid dreaming is not something I set out to do, and is something I'd prefer to stop doing. It might be more alright if I had more time to play around in the dream, but I always wake up shortly after, and then my subsequent dreams become very weird and abstract. I don't believe that it says anything important about you besides that you prefrontal cortex is a little too active, or that you've naturally learned or used various method to induce lucid dreaming. If you look into lucid dreaming, the usual ways of inducing it is to look at the time. People say that you can't read in a dream, which isn't true as I do it all the time, but sometimes you can't, other times it is a very strange process where you can only see one word at a time.

I'd read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins to get a good understanding. Below I'll provide a basic summary of how it probably happened. As far as life started, a molecule was formed which replicated itself using its surroundings. Though that may sound very unusual, molecules that do this are pretty common, like crystals, but they are a long away from being considered alive. The molecule had the right conditions to replicate to extreme numbers. One theory has this molecule covering large parts of the ocean. Every once in a while an error would occur in replication. If this slightly different molecule could replicate and could do so at a higher rate than the previous, it would increase in frequency. Overtime, the amount of replicating molecules increased as more successful variations improved their ability to replicate. Replicating molecules that did not succeed in replicating due to others ceased to be. Though all of the replicating molecules likely started from the same point, the more adaptations that are made the more they diverge from the original replicator. If you think through it, you can imagine how competition emerges.

I'm quite sorry about your experience. Sounds very difficult. Have you considered going to see a therapist? Often times we cannot feel the emotions of others when we don't allow ourselves to feel our own emotions. If we repress sadness within ourselves, when someone tells us something sad, we are unable to empathize because we are still blocking sadness. I was somewhat similar, and with self-work and therapy have gotten much better. I used to think I didn't have really have emotions, but it was rather that I didn't really experience them. Ironically, I think I understand people a little too well as I always have a good idea of how they are going to act and what they are going to say. It is pretty easy to understand their emotional states. My issue is more with being open with them and connecting. What I don't understand very well is social convention and what people find offensive.

I'd be more ok with these arguments if there was any consistent application of them. But there really isn't. It irritates me.

As a rigid scientific theory, it is likely not complete, but the basic concept is pretty valid and useful.

Is that a riddle? If not, it should be.

I would first get a test to verify he is your child before deciding contemplating anything.

I think what is often referred to as being open minded is more about having an ability to defer gratification in argument. People are usually a little too eager to jump in and attempt to disprove an argument without hearing it in full. This is a little issue I have with Stefan in listener calls sometimes because just listening to the whole argument can be more helpful to the other person, as opposed to teasing out the first couple of premises and losing sight of the argument. It isn't of course that I don't think teasing out premises to be important, but the way we often make arguments involves simplifying premises to make the process quicker. In other listener calls when the caller expands too much and explains every little detail as to not engage in the premise interrogation, Stefan and everyone else gets a little annoyed because it is a slow and tedious process. The issue is that if they were to condense it, they would likely be have the focus on the first couple premises. It is a bit frustrating because finding the right middle ground is difficult. The other use of open minded is more of a method of stopping an argument. In conversations about ghosts and telepathy, the other person has said to me "you should be more open minded". They don't have an argument and need a way to stop the debate because they aren't getting anywhere, so they incite self-attack through the odd wedge of open mindedness. I mean you can continue the argument after that, but it is very awkward, and that is the point. It is like talking to someone after they said "bye" and started walking off.