My prediction is, as new members join, new levels of stratification will develop. There will always be the top tier which we see beginning to form now for a few reasons. The obvious cause is that they are top tier for a reason- they post a lot, and they are usually quality posts. This draws in more followers, and thus they stay on top. Another reason is related, though somewhat different. Due to the amount of posts they make, they are often the first people new users encounter. These new users are typically looking for people to fill up their feed, and as such they follow whomever they first encounter.

Likewise, there will always be the lower tier of people for much the opposite reasons as I just listed. While this tier of users may still post and comment, it will not be the same quality or quantity as do the top tierers. Some of this tier may not even post and instead just use hubski to follow people, which is fine.

I predict that intermediate tiers will develop. This tier will consist of people who post similar content as the top tier, but does so in a limited interest range. Obviously if someone is posting large amounts of quality content related to both science AND politics, they will acquire followers from both interest fields. However, if a user were to post in only one of these fields, it stands to reason that they would only attract followers from that field. It is these types of users that will make up the second tier.

What remains to be seen is if mobility through these tiers is easy, or if new users remain in the bottom tier unless they become superusers.

I'm relatively young (17), so I can offer some perspective from the teenage side. I definitely think this is one of those issues where it is going to vary greatly with age.

This article is very accurate, at least with regards to my experience. Ending a text with a period generally indicates annoyance or frustration with whatever the previous text was (and can sometimes indicate anger, too). It's really a passive aggressive way to do so, however. If I received "Ok." in response to a suggestion or statement that I had just texted, I would immediately assumed that the other person is upset in some way. I would follow up with something like "What? We could do something else if you want" or something similar.

"Let's stay in" sounds like a sincere suggestion to me; if I were to disagree I would not hesitate to say it and I would assume you to be open to other suggestions for what to do that night. "Let's stay in." is much more firm, almost like a command. I would expect a lot of resistance to doing something other than staying in, and wouldn't bother suggesting something else unless I was really opposed to the idea of staying in.

Exclamation points indicate either sincerity or extreme sarcasm, entirely dependent on context. The question mark still retains its role of forming a question, but, as the article stated, it can make certain statements seem less cocky. It is almost like casting doubt on whatever you just said. "I think I got the highest grade?" Maybe I did, but I am acknowledging that it is possible or even likely I did not.

This is all really interesting stuff. It's fascinating how certain punctuation has picked up these connotations. I've never thought about it before, yet it is completely true.

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

These lectures are fantastic. I just took a course in Mechanics, so now I am going through Feynman's treatment of the subject, and everything seems to make more sense.

By the way, I love these posts. I always end up adding a couple of books to my "To Read" just based on these quotes.

An excellent quote that I point to when discussing many endeavors of little apparent worth. So many people seem to think that the only efforts worth undertaking are those that bear useful or immediate fruits. Whatever happened to doing things just because?

Also, Kennedy references the "Because it's there" line in his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech. That is another good one.

1. Going slightly against the grain here - philosophically I am pro-life, but I recognize that outlawing abortion creates a host of new problems arguably worse than abortion itself. Conception seems to be the most logical 'marker' for the beginning of life for me, but I know many others here will argue that it is birth.

2. I am anti capital punishment, as I think it is far too easy for us to make mistakes when it comes to condemning people. There's the saying "It is better for 10 guilty men to go free than 1 innocent man be killed", and I agree with that.

With regards to your anecdote, I think the contradiction diminishes if you consider him to value only innocent life. If the convict has been condemned, barring error on part of the justice system, then he is not innocent.

Starting college has been nice. It is great to finally be studying something I really enjoy, and all of the new people I have met have been great. I enjoyed high school, but people aren't joking when they say college is so much better.

Why can't we do both?

I understand where you are coming from: it is frustrating to see trends like this happen, only to subside a few weeks later and everyone going back to their original habits. In the end, it will not accomplish much because people make a one time $5 donation and never think about it again. Furthermore, as you said, they likely did little research into what non-for-profit they donated to. Ideally, we would see people signing up to volunteer their time at a charity that, like you said, makes a visible difference in people's lives. We don't see this however.

But is that so bad? You say you are against awareness, but I maintain that awareness is very important in garnering support for research. With the current state of funding for medical research, the most well known diseases are the ones that get the most funding. If the money for research is not coming from government grants, it is coming from private sources*. How do these private sources know what to donate to? Awareness. You are correct in saying that awareness will not cure a disease, but it will certainly help to get funding for research.

All in all, a "feel good social media campaign" can in fact have a net positive outcome. $10 million has been raised, which is $10 million more than would have been without this campaign. So what if people donate $5 and move on? Realistically, it is more than they would have done if there was no ice bucket challenge. And if the ice bucket challenge had asked people to donate their time to volunteering, no one would have done it. Humans are passive creatures - if something doesn't affect was immediately, we really don't care. This isn't a flaw, it's just who we are.

These campaigns don't harm anybody. They may even help them.

* This is one of the many reasons I think an increase in government funded basic science research is important. There are diseases out there that are not 'popular', so research into them gets very little funding.

There was a less of a concern of where the video was going to end up. Nowadays when people take a video, you never know who is going to see it. With videos going viral all the time, you have to be careful because you don't know if the video is going to have 20 million views. I for one would be a lot more comfortable being filmed if I wasn't concerned where the video was going to end up.

One of my favorite openings:

       Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon 
       when his father took him to discover ice. At that time, Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on 
       the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like 
       prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was 
       necessary to point.

Thanks for the link.

I only managed to get about 12 minutes in, however. There was a lot of pseudoscience stuff by that point, and I felt comfortable dismissing it without having to watch the next 45 minutes.

Doesn't this result mean that humans are contributing, not driving? I totally believe in climate change and everything, but this headline does seem somewhat misleading.

Would you mind going into a little more detail about the process? I've always been interested in submitting some opinion pieces but I am not quite sure what it would entail.

In any case, congratulations!

And here is the point I have reached: I might as well live in such a way as to maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain. Accordingly, I try to eat delicious food, to support my family, to create beautiful things, and to help those less fortunate than myself because those activities bring me pleasure. Likewise, I try to avoid leading a dull life, to avoid personal anarchy, and to avoid hurting others because those activities bring me pain. That is how I should live.

Holy Epicurus Batman! It is interesting how Mr. Lightman has come to the same conclusion that was reached by Epicurus centuries ago, yet followed very different lines of thought. I am always fascinated by using different paths to reach the same answer.

As always, a quality article from Nautilus. I am beginning to consider subscribing to their print quarterly.

I agree. I'm just saying that such a viewpoint is, theoretically, consistent. In practice it is not however, which limits its credibility.

Knowing the name of something != Knowing what the things is.

Even if they learn that it is a motor neuron disease, they are more aware of it than they were before.

Have you read One Hundred Years of Solitude? It is one of my favorite books, and is a book that profits from multiple readings.

How is One Summer, America 1927? I've never read anything by Bill Bryson, but that one certainly looks interesting.

Out of curiosity, what is your hesitance with Windows 8? I had been running 7 almost exclusively up until about two weeks ago when I got a new system that had Windows 8 installed. To my surprise, I actually quite like it. The start menu takes some getting used to, but it has some really nice features that make it worth it. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, or as bad as I had expected it to be based on all of the reviews I had read.

I'm not saying either of these are groundbreaking films in their own right, but they are enjoyable watches and available through instant streaming.

180 South - A documentary about a man's journey to Patagonia. Very enjoyable travel documentary that was very relaxing to watch.

Valentin - A Spanish-language movie about a young child in Argentina (or maybe Uruguay, I can't recall) in the 1960s who tries to solve his family's problems on his own. It shows many of the problems from a child's perspective and is a good film.

I speak English natively, and am somewhat proficient in Spanish. So, I am still learning Spanish and will be for a long, long time. I also have been interested in French lately, and despite a few attempts at seriously learning it, I have not made much progress.

I hope to take some French course in school so I can get a good introduction to the language, and eventually I'd like to study in France for a time. I hope to be able to maintain my Spanish in the meantime. I'm active in a language IRC channel, so I get to at least use it every day. Languages are fascinating!

This is a joke as long as the US is dependent on Russia to launch astronauts into LEO. We can't claim to have 'severed' ties with Russian science and still rely on them for one of the most important parts of our space programs. Such are the penalties of not investing in the space program - we could have had manned launches with the SLS early next year if the original budget was kept. Instead, we are looking at continued dependence on the Russians until 2017 at the earliest.

NASA's manned space program is rapidly becoming a joke, but with companies like SpaceX working to filling the gap, Washington doesn't see the need to invest in it. A similar pattern can be seen all throughout American science - the government is content letting the private sector fund research, when in reality the private sector is unable or unwilling to fund those endeavors which are most important.

I have seen this type of proposal before, and I am curious: How does this prevent people from squandering the UBI money on non-necessities and then still requiring welfare? I'm not saying everyone would do it, but there would definitely be some who don't manage the money well and require extra support. Aren't we just paying more then to fix the same problem?

It seems as though there is at least some experimental evidence that supports that view as well. Now, I don't pretend to understand that paper as I have never taken a formal physics course, but the explanations I have read seem to indicate that it suggest time is emergent.

What do you mean by your statement that our consciousness requires the universe to have new characteristics?

While educators do require an incentive, this is not necessarily the case for just experts in the field. There are numerous sites I can go to and converse directly with people who have PhDs or other education in the relevant subject matter. Of course, just because they are knowledgeable with the subject does not imply that they will be good at explaining it, so there is definitely a trade off. I think it would be accurate to say that as the difficulty of the subject increases, the need for a educator at hand increases. It is easy to teach yourself, say, calculus online, but more advanced maths such as topology require a teacher. The question now becomes- are these more advanced topics harder to teach yourself due to difficulty or due to lack of online resources?

1080ish, I forgot as soon as I closed the tab. I'm on and off with activity around here, it usually comes in spurts. The place has changed quite a bit since I joined and I haven't kept up with all the new features and what have you, so I feel even more lost.

I've seen some very interesting and in depth discussion generated by this article on the web.

Overall I agree with Ellis and Silk - empiricism is vital to the scientific method and progress, and these notions of "post-empiricism" seem, to me at least, to be a dangerous path to go down.

I think what it comes down to is the degree to which we are willing to investigate hypotheses which have not been confirmed. I have not read the criticisms mentioned in the article, such as Smolin's or Woit's books, so I do not know exactly what they are advocating. If they are saying we should completely halt research on string theory and focus our efforts elsewhere, then Dawid's post can be seen as appropriately reactionary. I don't think string theory is without use, even though it has not (and likely will not be) experimentally confirmed, and research should continue. However, if the message in this criticisms is much more modest, then I don't see the use in Dawid's arguments. What do we gain by treating String theory as confirmed that we do not by treating it as unconfirmed? I guess I just don't see the point in Dawid's arguments, unless they are to argue for continued research in String Theory, which is already happening.

As with any fusion announcement, I am skeptical until there is an actual working prototype.

It is exciting, however, to see such a big name behind the announcement this time. It does lend it some credibility.

What would you say the best essay in Baseball's history is? I love reading these types of things.

Definitely not too encouraging to be reading as someone going into the sciences. I suppose that it has always been a struggle, though.

Uh, what makes you think that?

Oh wow, I opened this link having never wanted to buy an island, but now I certainly do.

In any case, I need to get out in nature more.