> What I could agree with is a statement that live events can alter our epigenetic regulation mechanisms
For sure they can, and we also get to choose our reaction to said events.
This debate is ancient. Do we have free will, or are we predestined to fate? Knowledge of chemistry and physics doesn't give an answer to that question.
Worked at one softbank backed company for a short time and the amount of money and heads they dumped at any problem was incredible. Literally they tried to grow and scale at all costs.
That doesn't work for mental health though. Money can't buy more therapists to meet patient demand.
Edit: more importantly I would never trust my mental health with a company that takes money from Khashoggi's murderers.
I worked at one SB company and yeah, they had basically unlimited money to throw at problem, but their main competitors had too, from what I heard.
The funding world is _weird_ and I really wonder when the music will stop. I thought (hoped? against my short-time self-interest) that COVID will be such a crisis that will make people reconsider all these crazy spendings, but, apparently not!
> I would never trust my mental health with a company that takes money from Khashoggi's murderers.
It's interesting that Khashoggi's assassination is what seems to bother people most about the Saudis. Not the invasion of Yemen that has killed over a hundred thousand civilians or the littany of other crimes.
Because Khashoggi's murder is so well covered and so just blatantly bold. The war in Yemen doesn't bother people that much because a) who knows where Yemen actually is b) Yemen is a poor and mostly muslim country c) Saudi is buying western weapons and selling us oil d) Saudi is hosting the Formula 1.
Considering what Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen, with implicit support from NATO countries, and what Russia is doing in Ukraine we (as in Europe and the "West") should have stopped all business relationships with Saudi quite a while ago.
Saudi's actions bother me so, up to the point I refuse to work as much as possible with them, for them or with money from them. Luckily, for now at least, that is made easy since (to my knowledge) my employer isn't funded by Saudi blood money. It is funded by Chinese money so, which poses an interesting dilemma.
It's the mental image of a sedative plunge, plea to breathe by an asthmatic, and rapid dismemberment in a plastic wrapped room by a hit squad of private jet flown high level Saudis. He was going to get marriage paperwork completed. The callus calculation left an impression.
It doesn't diminish the deaths of 100k civilians. No whataboutism debate necessary, both are barbaric. One was top of mind, neither is mutually exclusive.
The common denominator between Saudis and Russia is oil and lack of conscience or moral compass. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What I took away from GP was that this medicine helps a person learn and integrate truths that their current neuropathways may be blocking or inhibiting at a subconscious level. It's a neuroplasticity aid of sorts and less of something to be taken as a long term maintenance medication. The change in perspective in a therapeutic setting can be a catalyst to permanent changes in thought patterns.
There is momentum growing in Washington State (US). A therapeutic use bill SB 5660 didn't leave committee but led to some funding for additional studies. [1]
Separately, ADAPT-WA filed a ballot initiative and will be gathering signatures to get it onto the ballot. [2]
If someone was inclined to do mycology research there is a plethora of information here: https://www.shroomery.org/
They talk about your option in 5.11, "Einstein rings." For reasons that I don't understand (but I don't understand anything about optics) they come to the conclusion that the gravitational lens would have to be really large, and it is unlikely that such a large, well-structured lens would exist.
Thanks! I saw three theories listed in the nature article and none of them mentioned lensing or Einstein rings.
Some curiosities behind the question were whether optical and radio frequencies behave the same with lensing. And how to tell if the radio image is in front of or behind the stars.
I'm an armchair astronomer if that, and obviously didn't read the source paper. Appreciate your thoughtful response!
This isn't meant to sound dismissive, but do you really assume the experts in this field didn't consider this, and didn't deem it (ir-)relevant enough to (not) mention in their paper?
Genuinely interested what is the reason behind questions like that. In general, it's definitely cool and understandable to me to question the competency of anyone, but if (as in this case) a researcher researches a quite deep detail of a very specific field, using a very rare resource (a space telescope, which I assume requires some credibility to even ask for observation time) how do you assume they didn't check all boxes before writing a paper?
Edit: To be more clear, I mean the implication (no matter how qualified) that it is remarkable to even ask a question based on how likely it is that experts have already answered the question. That premise doesn't seem to make any sense: First, non-experts have no context for knowing what experts have likely ruled out and what they haven't, by definition. Second, if experts have ruled it out, the answer to the question is still valuable (how/why did they rule it out).
> could the same happen for these radio wave patterns
Perhaps he was just seeking knowledge. There may be an interesting reason why these radio wave patterns may or may not be affected by lensing.
Also, if you have been around as long as I have, it is not that uncommon for experts to be missing something obvious, or for science articles to exclude certain details in order to appear more fascinating.
But what would be an appropriate answer? Yes probably, this would mean they were wrong. No would be quite complex, I suppose.
I didn't assume the GP to be ignorant or distrusting the credibility of the researcher, and the question was valid in my point of view as well from that perspective.
The answer to your question is simply linguistic shortcuts. That is, the question could have been phrased such as this:
"I am but a casual reader with an interest in this topic. I have read about Gravitational Lensing, and the pattern matching algorithm in my brain finds a loose match between that an this phenomenon. I am curious as to the particulars of this that makes it different from what I've read before, such that this requires a different explanation".
Of course, that is way to many words, an the shortcut of "Why isn't this Gravitational Lensing" is a more succinct way of asking the question. Which is a major reason why HN has as one of their guidelines "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "
I wonder how it's possible for people to read a comment so differently. Like others have said, I read the comment as more of a "Why is this wrong?" than "Why are they idiots and didn't think of this?" which isn't an interpretation that would have occurred to me.
I could parrot your own comment back to you and say, do you really assume that the person didn't realise that only experts use giant telescopes and know what they're doing? Maybe they're hoping one of those experts will somehow come up with a good explanation and maybe some links to further reading.
Sometimes people read an aggressive or condescending tone into perfectly neutral comments and it really confuses me.
I'm not sure I understand you. We're talking of an analysis of a very specific, very rare (1 of 5) occurrence of an as of now unresolved physical phenomenon. I think to get into the position to research phenomena like that, you need to prove your worth a bit. I'm not referring to meritocracy but to money, since that's what observation time comes down to.
So, to me it boils down to: is there's something about the GP's question I missed, which is what I'd like to learn about? If not all is fine. If so, I'd like to learn the reason behind it.
OP has a legitimate inquiry, but you dismiss it with an appeal to authority? Researchers miss things all the time. But if they considered it and rejected it, then it still makes it a valid question doesn’t it?
My question was equally valid to me. I didn't understand the GP's question to be dismissive or ignorant, I just want to learn where they're coming from.
>... I just want to learn where they're coming from.
Ignorance is all it is - and not in a bad way. They don't know something, they're curious about it, so they're asking. It's legitimately as simple as that.
This is a valid criticism in general, but I think in this case, user was asking for instruction. "You say this is strange, but this other simple explanation would explain it to my knowledge. Why is this different?" is intended in this case to be "Instruct me so that I may detect my error and update" rather than "Have you considered X?"
Since I believe you are also asking genuinely, I will attempt to disambiguate the two cases with illustrations:
1. OP states the question as "Could this be the same?". This expresses uncertainty of the form "Is this possible?" and "Are these simpler explanations still on the table?"
2. OP may have stated the question as "Did they consider X?". I think this moves closer to the idiot advice that is often of the form "Did they consider correlation is not causation?" etc. etc.
3. OP may have stated opinion directly: "They did not consider X". In this case, lacking knowledge of OP expertise, you may safely conclude that this is a statement from an armchair expert.
Of course there are an infinitude of statements and responses. But hopefully these 3 examples will help.
IANAL but Oracle v SAP was about accessing and downloading files from a competitor. I vaguely recall that Oracle won a settlement because their TOS had an enforceable provision about commercial use and licensing.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-sap-se-settlement-...
> Has someone asked you to do something recently that you know you don’t have time to do but felt like you needed to do anyway?
"When is this needed" is a great alternative to a hard "no". It opens up a conversation about priorities. And lets you transparent about what needs to get delayed so that this new priority can be worked. It's a perfectly reasonable conversation to have, and helps you keep healthy boundaries.
This reminds me of a former director who liked to say to some of our partner teams, "poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.". She was good at putting a buffer in between IC's on our team and partner teams so we could focus more on planned work.
The "yesterday" need-by date maybe works the first time. Beyond that, if that's really the company culture or management style, I'd be quietly looking for a new job. Same category as Friday afternoon requests for things due Monday morning.
