Songbirdo

Educate yourself.

Reading out loud for me was the same. We had audio books on tapes that would read to us other times and they also did not stick. With either of these I would have to go back later in the evening and reread it all to myself. In high school I realized I could better utilize the classroom time by getting back some of the sleep I would be spending later to make up the work. The teachers did not bother me because they knew I was one of their better students and the quiz and test scores were excellent to match. After listening to FDR for the last few years, as well as consuming a ton of other podcast-y type content, my audio retention seems to have improved. I might have to give audio books another try.

More value, yes. Would a superior, sentient machine have more value? (or aliens or vampires, etc "higher" forms of life) Yes. I think the cognitive dissonance in the question is not thinking of animal's value on a spectrum. You're putting a huge gap between humans (and some pets) compared to the rest of the animals on the scale of cognition. Ask Yourself did a good job covering this in his response to Sam Harris (moral stuff starts at 5:25): A more pragmatic approach: If it comes to choosing between saving your daughter or a lobster from dying, you wouldn't be OK with just filpping a coin to decide 'cause all life is equal. It's a spectrum. Vegans take one step further when it comes to animal rights: "Although it's worse to kill a human than a fish, it is still wrong to kill a fish." So even if higher beings do exist that are worth more than humans, it would still be wrong for them to harm us.

10,000 lifetime*** views to monetize for channels just starting out will not make or break you. You start out making videos as a hobby because you like to do it, not because you want to make a living from it. It takes significant amount of time, energy and work before you can make a living doing that. What may or may not be known is that there is also a minimum $100 revenue generated before you can even make a withdrawal from the adsense system. The 10,000 views doesn't come close to that $100 minimum unless you have a high CPM (>$10 per thousand). Between my two channels I'm at @48,000 lifetime views with only $85 of that $100 threshold in revenue generated from those views. It's not all monetized content, but you get the point.

1.) Does a deaf person have freedom of speech? They communicate non-verbally. Speech is the expression in any form and therefore encompasses art. 2.) I'd argue they would say the government shouldn't be involved - it is a social issue, not a state issue. 3.) Is that in reference to "I can't define pornography, but I know when I see it."? Or is that saying visual-only communication shouldn't be covered as free speech? Ever read a novel describing sex? You can translate porn into a written message if that's your measuring stick. Saying it cannot be written down is just incorrect. 4.) 18 year old girls sign up and masturbate on camera from their own homes. They make pretty damn good and easy money doing so. Their lack of "civilized" career prospects is offset by their good looks or willingness to perform a niche fetish for disturbed individuals. How is that -not- capitalism? 5.) Incoherent and unrelated sentences. What are you trying to say? 6.) -That- is the defining feature of civilization? Clothes? I don't understand your reasoning. Are nude beaches uncivilized? If I'm walking around my house naked at 2 A.M., am being I uncivilized? When I shower am I uncivilized? When I have sex with my wife am I uncivilized? What exactly do clothes have to do with civilization?

Despite statistically significant evidence showing what will most likely happen, it doesn't dissuade you from doing potentially dangerous things. Or am I misunderstanding your view? Making general claims about what is healthy or not healthy is like saying to this community "Children brought up in single parent households are more likely to have a negative outcome compared to two parent households" or "most terrorism is committed by Muslims". NOT ALL. Yes, we know and acknowledge there are exceptions to the general trend. The exceptions do not invalidate the general rule. This is biological science, not physical. A two headed horse does not invalidate the theory of evolution; it is identified and classified as a deviation from the norm. The 1% of the population with gluten intolerance does not mean everyone should have to avoid gluten. Medication gives intended results in the majority of people and has side effects in a minority of people. Are you going to reject a modern medical procedure or pill because "It's fad medical science and in 20 years we'll be doing something way better!"? (Maybe you will. I don't know.) You are told the risks, you keep an eye on the symptoms and report them to your doctor if they appear because you could be the exception to their general trend. Even if you had an adverse effect to the treatment doesn't mean the medicine doesn't work for most other people. The FDA requires not only safety but effectiveness in their drug/procedure trials or else it doesn't get approved. To your last sentence I need to add something: "Based on the available evidence at the time, this is so." That's the beauty of science: when better information comes along the theory changes. (Edit: phrasing)

And some smokers can live that long and not get lung cancer... doesn't mean smoking is not unhealthy.

All hail Gabe.

Good news, art students, your career as an artist is now on par with the hard science STEM fields. Heard of the STEM fields of study? Now the Rhode Island School of Design is trying to add Art (art+design) to the acronym. STEM is now STEAM http://stemtosteam.org/ I was in a meeting today and someone brought up volunteering at the elementary school to promote the STEAM fields. Having not heard of STEAM, I asked them to elaborate. "You know STEM? Well now it's STEAM." Art is now included. I guess I need more sensitivity training, but I scoffed at that notion. Is art and design important to engineering? Yes. But, I ask, are the high school students going to four years of college for art planning to work with an engineer or to become a famous artist and express themselves? The ones pursuing performance art, are they planning to use that as a presenter/salesperson or are they trying to go into theater/acting? So make sure you go to college and get that liberal arts degree. The STEAM fields need you!

The traditional “five senses” model (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) is credited to Aristotle A simple Google search for "How many senses do humans have" comes up with this: http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/

As of December of last year (2016). http://www.eatrightpro.org/resource/practice/position-and-practice-papers/position-papers/vegetarian-diets

These attitudes justifying inaction have been bugging me: "Most research is wrong." "Nutritional science is spotty because it doesn't control for the individual's genes." What you're saying is "It's too complicated for us to get the right answer for everyone's circumstance, therefore I won't make any changes to what I'm putting in my body." That's like asking an anarchist "Who'll build the roads? What will happen to this one niche industry?" It's just an annoying series of questions used to shut down the conversation and paralyze people from making better choices based on the current available evidence. The hypocrisy in those justifications is when your doctor prescribes you something to cure an ailment and you take it without asking about the studies or whether took into account your specific genetics. He/she will also disclose possible side effects to be aware of in case they present. You are comfortable taking the drug knowing some study showed it is safe, the active ingredient does what it's supposed to (as required by the FDA) and those studies reported on the side effects. (They used large samples to help mitigate for individual circumstances like genetic predisposition.) But when the W.H.O. says red meats are carcinogenic, you hesitate? Overweight? Obese? Type II Diabetic? Other cardiovascular-related issues (like E.D.)? Remove the animal products, the processed foods, the added sugar, salt and oil. See what happens. It's cancerous anyway, right?

Who said they were non-profit?

Wasn't that Ayn Rand's justification for why she collected Social Security? Because she's just taking back the money she put into the system? The issue with her reasoning was that she wasn't taking from the Social Security payments she put into the system, but the newly extracted funds from the current tax livestock. Social Security is a pyramid scheme of pure cash flow; there is no investment of the money you paid into it. No personal bank account with your name on it. The money you put into the system is evaporated immediately when it is paid out to the elderly on the receiving end. In the stealing a bike back example: If the person took your bike, salvaged it for scrap, went out and used that money to help buy a new bike, would you be justified in stealing that new bike? Is Employment Insurance a similar system? If so, you wouldn't really be taking back your taxes but instead taking them from the current tax base like Social Security. You could argue if you claimed Employment Insurance during the same year you paid taxes it would be taking that money back. Subsequent years get fuzzy on the details.