At the risk of sounding snarky or disrespectful, I can't fail to notice how often people suffering from depression become all passionate and fiery when discussing the cause of (their) depression.
No worries, I get what you're saying and it's something I've observed in myself. I'm usually very calm when discussing my depression with an open-minded person. And by open-minded I mean someone who just genuinely wants to know, asks the question and then listens to the answer.
The thing that gets me (and others) worked up is when people make sweeping generalisations regarding the causes and treatments of depression. No one likes being painted with a broad-brush, but it adds insult to injury when something that has caused me so much suffering is dismissed as trivial and easy to solve. I've spent more than a decade trying to treat my condition. It's not as simple or easy as most people think.
I guess it's also an issue of semantics: 'depression' is a very broad term that gets narrowed down in our minds, based on our own personal experiences. When I hear it, I tend to think of the more serious kind because that's what I've lived through: not leaving my house for two weeks, not showering, eating or sleeping for three days etc... I can understand why some others might think of it more like 'that time my goldfish died and I was sad': this is the fortunate extent of their experience of low moods.
Or maybe I just envy those without brain cooties...
I wouldn't call Richard Dawkings close minded. Here's a man who abandoned a successful career in biology because he found contemplating God more rewarding.
Don't want to be the negative guy, but sometimes I wonder why people would spend their physical energy on gym equipment while you may just as well learn a construction skill that leaves a tangible result and has some use in the real world - like bricklaying, plastering walls or wiring electricity.
Just my 2 cents, if you enjoy your gym all the better for you. But I also think that many people give up because they find it boring.
I think the primary difference is efficiency. You won't gain strength as quickly doing construction as you will following a strength training program. If your goal is to gain as much strength as possible with the lowest time commitment, doing exercises and using equipment specifically designed for strength training is the better move.
That said, not everybody has exactly these goals, so if learning construction skills is more appealing to you than spending time in a gym, by all means.
Cassini and Richter had measured the parallax of Mars (and therefore the distance to Mars) a couple of years earlier. Using Kepler's law they could then deduce the distances to the other planets.
Amazing. If you know of a comic (or graphic-heavy article) or a video that can explain to a complete astronomy-noob what parallax is and how it enables one measure the diameter of planetary orbits, please put the link below. (I can only learn science with visual illustrations, and can't mentally process equations.) Thanks!
The Chinese room argument is actually needlessly convoluted. Just imagine a piece of paper on which three words are printed: "I AM SAD". Now is there anyone who believes that this piece of paper is actually feeling sad just because "it says so"? Of course not. Now, suppose we replace this piece of paper with a small tablet computer that changes its displayed "mood" over time according to some algorithm. Now in my opinion it is rather hard to imagine that all of a sudden consciousness will "arise" in the machine like some ethereal ghost and the tablet will actually start experiencing the displayed emotion. Because it's basically still the same piece of paper.
The Chinese room argument is actually needlessly convoluted. Just imagine a piece of paper on which I draw a face that looks sad. Now is there anyone who believes that this piece of paper is actually feeling sad just because it looks sad? Of course not. Now, suppose we replace this piece of paper with an organic machine made of cells, blood and neurons which changes its displayed "mood" over time according to some algorithm. Now in my opinion it is rather hard to imagine that all of a sudden consciousness will "arise" in the machine like some ethereal ghost and the organic machine will actually start experiencing the displayed emotion. Because it's basically still the same piece of paper.
For Christ sake, this is a guy who writes a very useful text editor and hands it out for free. He's not the UN ambassador of global political reconciliation, as you seem to believe.
