What fucking scientist signs onto the 37 genders noise?

It really doesn't matter if scientists accept there being any number of [culturally invented] genders, it's not their speciality. The real concern is that there are (it seems) an increasing number of bio-medical scientists who are, for plainly ideological reasons, willing to argue that there are not two (2) [biologically given] sexes. TBF such a view is likely to originate from those working in the field of disorders of sexual development. This is an extraordinary context in which the clearly dimorphic nature of human sex in particular, and anisogmatic sexual reproduction (involving binary gametes) in general, seems to break down, temptingly opening the space for ideological commitment to enter. Sadly, it has also been taken up by other scientists simply wanting to signal their wokeness (as against their faithfulness to science).

It is, in other words, another example, albeit from the opposite side of the aisle, of (as GP put it) a "cultural need to fit in with their 'tribe'." Thus, (and remembering that a true signal must be hard to fake) political tribalism in contemporary America demands a sacrifice of sanity. The more stalwart of conservatives are required to deny, for instance, that human carbon contributions provide the only tenable explanation for observed climate change, and the more extreme liberals are now required to deny the biological reality of human sexual dimorphism and what that entails for the relationship of sex to gender.

It is left for the remainder to asses, not only which is the more dangerous of the two delusions, but to carry the flag for sanity against both fronts.

Automated censoring of "toxic" content has lots of false positives? I'm shocked, shocked I say.

With any signal detection system the question of whether it is more vital to avoid Type I or Type II errors needs to be addressed. For example in criminal justice the consequences of falsely rebutting the presumption of innocence are so high that Blackstone was led to observe it was "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

Just like any other commenter, I regard the comment I'm here writing to be of such value that it should be preserved, widely read and digested... but to be honest, on the internet talk is cheap, and it ain't gonna to stop the world turning were this comment to fall victim to AI spam filtering. Which is to say it's arguably better to avoid misses. A right to freedom of speech does not amount to a right to publish on any particular forum and framing this as kind of human rights issue is a little overwrought.

Now it would be a completely different question if comments were deliberately filtered based on the (un)popularity of the views expressed. That 'toxicity' would be used as a mask to filter legitimate viewpoints, rather than any hiccups in applying toxicity filters evenly across the ideological spectrum, is the more serious issue.

The value of money isn't attached to anything either. It's a collective fiction.

Poppycock. The value of money* is attached to a government's ability to raise taxes.

[*money, that is, in the sense of legal tender, i.e. to only exchange technology the state accepts in satisfaction of tax liability]

Have you actually read the IPCC working-group 1 report, The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change. I don't mean, a summary of it ... Have you actually read the report?

I beg to differ. Even reading the Summary could be greatly beneficial for many of the victims of the disinformation campaign. The full WG1 report is a lot of reading. There's an overwhelming amount of science to get through and expecting non-specialists to tough it out is not entirely realistic. That, after all, is why the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) exists.

And the advantage is that on any area of science where you want to get your hands dirty, you can navigate from the SPM, into the the appropriate place of the Full Report proper and via the citations to the original publications in the scientific literature.

And on that point, don't waste your time right now reading the AR4 report. The AR5 report is due for release from the 27th of this month, starting with the SPM, from here.

And the SPM makes it so easy for non-specialists to get a handle on the science, it's simply unforgivable for anyone who presumes to venture an opinion on this issue not to have digested it.

Can't see any problem with carbon based bricks. They'll burn nicely.

Chemistry not a strong point?

Good luck burning C02, (or the carbonates of which these bricks are most likely composed) dude!

Perhaps they should bring them to Canberra. With the amount of CH4 emissions released there, especially now during election time ...

If you're hungry, you're on a fad diet. ... When you're hungry, eat. When you're not hungry, stop eating. It's that simple

So I have to go an on fad diet before I'm ever allowed to eat?! Wow, I'm definitely not buying your book!

What did you expect would happen? You expected the free-market to come in and provide books for a minor profit why?

Exactly! IF privatising the production of school books could lead to predictable negative outcomes, we ought express no surprise when those negative outcomes eventuate.

The difference is that now the cost of the books is being shifted to exactly the people that use them. The school children and their parents.

How do you factor in the free-rider effect of all those people who derive a benefit from living in an educated society without contributing. Left to its own devices, the market seems incapable of doing so.

... about how the "free-market" is evil because it wants to make a profit.

Clearly the market is driven by the profit motive of participants. And you would have to be blind to ignore the great social advantages to be gleaned from an exploitation of the profit motive via market mechanisms. Nor is it anything other than a platitude to observe that any intervention in market processes carries to risk, all too often realised, of slaying the goose who lays the proverbial golden eggs. However, it is an equal blindness to accept as a matter of faith, or of definition, that the outcomes of the free market will always produce the most "desirable" results --even on the basis of purely economic criteria, let alone on any criteria which may otherwise issue from human intelligence.

A free market cannot exist --or rather there is as yet no way available for it to exist --without the aid of the state (if only for the enforcement of proprietary rights and contractual obligations). Thus the basic question of market governance must be how much intervention is required. And this carries with it the corollary question: will that intervention be economically efficacious ( i.e. all to often "obvious" interventions negate the very outcome their authors wished to bring about).

Thus most governments make provision for the creation of corporations, because of the clear advantages the corporate form bestows on any economy where this intervention in the free market is tolerated. Indeed it would scarcely be possible even to conceive of the contemporary world without the contribution of the modern limited liability corporation (a creature of state, once again harnessing the profit motive of individuals for the greater good).

Arguably, the privatisation of school book production, in the naive belief that the private sector could more efficiently (read cheaply), do what the government printer was then engaged in, is a failure to anticipate how involving the market in educational policy would pan out. Ironically (in the sense of irony of fate), privatisation in the example turned out to be a poorly planed 'intervention.'

Sounds like it is time for the government to step in and break it up in smaller parts then. That should encourage some competition.

Except that in Australia it is Murdoch who generally gets to decide who the government is. HINT: If your policy is "to break it up into smaller units" you almost invariably loose government.

Rudd might just scrape in before the Tele & friends has had enough time to throw sufficient mud. Though they are throwing it by the bucket-load right now, it still looks pretty tight at the moment. It would be a bad loss for Murdoch should he fail to get his man in power this time round, so News Ltd will be at it no holds barred. Expect a propaganda campaign not seen since ... oops, almost Godwineed myself!

I agree that they didn't enhance the number system.

Are you seriously saying that you never use numbers smaller that 1?

Such as?

Change: they reversed the direction of position, which reversal, for better or worse (worse imho) we adopted. The Brahmic number system starts with cattle-grid (except horizontal) numbering, ie . 1 is one line, 2 is two lines, 3 is 3 lines, 4 is two lines crossed. The Arabic system gave each of these numbers an individual symbol which convention (albeit with different symbols) we still use (as incidentally do modern Indian numeral systems).

Enhance: The decimal point.

The Arabs didn't change or enhance anything that the Indians did ...

Sure they did.

Oh and I meant to write, the point of the post was not to claim Arabic invention ex nihilio of these disciplines, but to address the ignorant notion implied by the GP, that for the past 2000 (ahem ..) years, Islamic culture has been barbaric in comparison to that of Europe.

These achievements where not made in a vacuum Algebra for example being a development on earlier Greek and possibly Chinese work.

Of course ... human knowledge always progresses by out standing on the shoulders of earlier generations. And as regards Algebra and number theory, my understanding that it is Indian, even more than Greek mathematicians, who influenced Arabic scholars.

[T]he whole history of the "Islamic golden age" is more properly titled the Arabic golden age ...

Which term I employed elsewhere.

... and an example of exactly how bad fanatics are for science and progress.

Well in any number of ways. Not only do we have Christian mobs skinning Hypatia, but it has been argued [citation needed] that one of the effects of the crusades was to shift the Islamic world from a relatively tolerant and free-thinking culture to one of defensive belligerence and fundamentalism. And in turn the adoption of this defensive posture re-inscribes the danger fanaticism poses to the growth of human knowledge.

Well, we lifted it indirectly from the Arabs, as Arabic numbers came from the Western Muslims in Spain.

Yes, I should have written we lifted them from the Arabic rather than the Arabs. Though I thought that Fibonacci learnt the numeral system in Algiers (still Berbers not Arabs) rather than in Spain. Nor was Fibonacci necessarily the first to attempt to import them into Europe. But yes, still Western-Arabic.

The numbers used by actual Arabs look quite different.

I'm pretty sure the numerals used by Fibonacci looked a tad different from those we use today as well. At least the 1 and 9 in modern Arabic numerals look similar :), none of the Brahmi numerals bear any resemblance to ours.