The title is straightforward. Most atheists also tend to be methodological naturalists and physicalists so the idea of an afterlife is outside of consideration as well. Although the hard problem of consciousness is a contended topic in philosophy of mind and neuroscience (how does qualia arise from matter, why is detection of stimuli accompanied by subjective experience is how I would word it), there are many NCC's that point to it emerging from the brain: cortico-thalamic pathways involved in perception of sensation and processing of stimuli, brainstem regions involved in arousal-control...etc.
No brain = most likely no experience of an afterlife.
However, for the sake of the argument, if you were to empirically test out the possibility of consciousness survival beyond brain death and lack of brain activity, how would you do so? Lots of proponents and disbelievers alike say its beyond the realm of science, but I feel like it may not be the case. I'm thinking of certain ways one could test it out:
- Demonstrate that the mind can exist independent of the brain by controlled out of body experiences and target identification experiments.
- Whether by NDEs or people who can induce them on-command
- Demonstrate that the mind can exist after brain death: in a hypothetical future where cryonically-frozen patients are revived and talk about what they experienced within the 100-200 years of death, bonus if they mention things like major historical events that occurred during the time they were dead for.
- Information of past-life memories that can be corroborated with the deceased persons life events, might be suggestive of reincarnation if all other possibilities like fraud, cryptomnesia and indirect acquisition of memories are eliminated. Bonus points if the past memories are extremely specific and lead to researchers opening, for example, a lock left by the deceased person (Ian Stevenson, a proponent of reincarnation left a lock just in case his next incarnate could open it).
- Ian Stevenson's methodology has been criticized a lot but Jim Tucker has slightly more promising results, focussing on cases from the US.
- If medium psychics pass the Randi Challenge or Dustin Dean's 10k challenge (obtain secret code left by deceased person) by providing specific information about the deceased that couldn't have been obtained from hot readings, under scientifically controlled conditions. Of course, none are willing to take on any of these challenges.
- Kinda
I make a point too people on both side of this debate that something that seems too be lacking is Empirical Evidence. Nothing stranger is seeing mainstream Economist admit things in economics 101 textbooks are wrong so casually. The head of the bank of England A few years said they the textbooks are wrong in regards too how money is printed. He said the Private Banks Create currency via EX NILLO and not the government themselves. I always find it strange on how confident and above it all "some people" talk about their chosen economic philosophy. I don't like hearing from Right wing Libertarians that they Admit the Austrian school is impossible too prove. And then I don't like hearing from Marxists that "Marxism in a methodology and not a science". I honestly haven no idea what stuff like that means. Marx called allot of his ideas "Theory's" we should be able too test these theories then. Yes I know much economics is more conceptual rather than quantitative, which makes it difficult too model and be a hard science. Let the hate come I don't mean no harm. Just an observation I commonly see from both sides.
INFP psychology student here. I've been doing some research into Identity scales, and though I've always been fascinated by MBTI and Jung's cognitive function theory, there's practically little to no empirical evidence to support most of it. In fact, what empirical evidence there is hasn't even been peer-reviewed as far as I am aware.
I'm particularly curious as to why Te/Ti doms follow this theory on this sub since most of personality typing here comes from subjective analysis rather than full reliance on a computer test.
Why do you follow MBTI? Do you think it is a reliable form of a personality assessment? Are there any long-term prospects for this theory or will it simply remain just a theory?
I was raised in the TrUtH and left when I was 20 (four years ago). I was never baptised so my family remained in contact with me. Certain things have been happening in my family that has shed some light into what it was like being raised in the borg (both my parents were not raised in the borg) and it made my PIMI dad ask what was my experience - I was able to relay for the first time in my life what it was actually like. I told him everything about not being able to sleep because I was so scared about Armageddon and would think about it everyday so that it never came ‘when I least expected it’ LMFAO and even about how hard it was after I left and having to rebuild my entire sense of self. He was so stunned he had no idea it caused this much internal turmoil. He said to me if there was any empirical evidence surrounding The borg and childhood trauma he would read it - so does anyone know any literature that discusses childhood trauma and the borg??
I saw it in a copy pasta, i dont really understand the statement.
I am trying to become a more informed citizen. This Laffer curve comes up in political discussions a lot. When I try to research it I can't find anything that checks the theory against real world data. Maybe you can help me out?
Is their empirical evidence that there is a "curved" relationship with tax revenue and tax level? Is their empirical evidence for self-financing tax cuts?
I was listening to a debate between an atheist and a Muslim.
The muslim said that testimonial evidence is empirical evidence.
The atheist argued otherwise.
I personally don't believe testimony is empirical in any way, given the definition of empirical. But I'm curious what the philosophy of this is.
Thank you in advance.
I have never been able to find empirical evidence that demonstrates trigger warnings help people with PTSD. All evidence points to them having no impact or even having potentially long-term negative impacts by promoting avoidant behaviours which increase anxiety. I want to believe they work, so that all the fights and bullying I've seen emerge around trigger warnings could've been for a just cause and it wasn't all for nothing. So uh, change my mind! Please!
It's weird, because I actually agree 100% with the concept and reasoning behind them. I'm just a bit pissed off because I saw people become very aggressive when people didn't use them when there's no evidence that they work. And whenever I've brought this up with people I either get dismissed or get brought up a bunch of red herrings (ie "they work for me"* "it's the empathetic thing to do" "movies have content warnings")
*The reason I dismiss personal experience that no objective data supports is I think most people, including me, are a mess of cognitive biases.
My ECN professor said there are (many?) studies about the US having a top marginal tax rate of 92% under President Eisenhower, and these studies found the people who fell in this income tax bracket (which weren't many) were hardly incentivized to stop earning income or working; there was virtually no disincentive to be less productive.
My question is: why wouldn't people who fall into high tax brackets try to exploit tax arbitrage or entirely export their capital overseas?
Furthermore, if there is no strong incentive for capital flight (and since empirical evidence says it has little to no effect on productivity), then would high tax rates (on the wealthiest agents) be beneficial (given our large budget deficits and amounts of income/wealth inequality)?
I read in “The origin of wealth” that there is little empirical evidence for the core theories of microeconomic theory.
I’m not looking for views on that book but am interested in whether this statement is true. And if not, what such evidence exists?
This is a really good research review on posttraumatic growth. I recommend a thorough readthrough, however some highlights are below.
Taken from the required reading of module 2 for CSAT training.
Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence
My takeaways here are that we have to feel the pain in order to grow. If we avoid it or bury it then we are unable to move through the process to greater personal growth later on. We need to find a way to let go of what was, the life we had while building the new one for ourselves and rumination on what could have been or what we could have done actually keeps us from rebuilding the new schemas required for this posttraumatic growth.
Surprisingly, neuroticism has nothing to do with how well one grows after trauma, but extroversion and openness to experience, does. While we need to learn how to manage distress, it is also through distress that we process what has happened to us and it is an important part of the process.
-----
Posttraumatic growth refers to a change in people that goes beyond an ability to resist and not be damaged by highly stressful circumstances; it involves a movement beyond pretrauma levels of adaptation. Posttraumatic growth, then, has a quality of transformation, or a qualitative change in functioning, unlike the apparently similar concepts of resilience, sense of coherence, optimism, and hardiness (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1995).
Although we are not aware of any direct tests of the relations of hardiness, sense of coherence, and posttraumatic growth, it may be that persons who are highest on these dimensions of coping capacity will report relatively little growth. That is because these people have coping capacities that will allow them to be less challenged by trauma, and we posit that the struggle with the trauma is what is crucial for posttraumatic growth.
Personality characteristics. -There appear to be two basic personality qualities that may affect the likelihood that people can make positive use of the aftermath of traumatic events that befall them: extraversion and openness to experience. Especially interesting is the lack of relation between neuroticism and posttraumatic growth. Park (1998) pointed out that positive and negative aspects of adjustment may be independent, and that compared to persons who report o
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hey,
I am currently taking 3 different antihypertensive drugs (Ramipril, Amlodipine, Chlorthalidone) in order to keep my BP below 130-80 as I cannot bring it down to those values with less medications. I take them as follows:
-morning: 12.5mg Chlorthalidone -evening before bed: 10mg Ramipril, 5mg Amlodipine
So my question is if there is any scientific recommendation regarding the outcomes of triple combination antihypertensive medications on cvd risk, mortality and so on. The only study regarding combination treatments and their effect on clinical endpoints I know about is this one were Amlodipine + perindopril are clearly superior to a thiazide diuretic + beta blocker.
My rational for choosing these 3 medications together with my doctor is that these are the ones that have the most evident regarding cvd and mortality reduction and the greatest risk reduction and benefits. Both compared to other classes of antihypertensives and within their own class. But the problem is that the evidence is based on studies involving mostly only one drug vs another or placebo instead of directly assessing the effects of a combination triple therapy. So does anyone have evidence for the best triple antihypertensive drug therapy regarding the most cvd and mortality risk reduction. Thanks!
I thought that you mind find this book by David Lester interesting:
It's very thorough, fair, and thoughtful. I'd love to hear others' opinions of the arguments, and the conclusion that what empirical evidence is available does not support the idea of life after death.
Best,
Artem
Hi guys,
I am currently researching on the broader topic of state indicators and labels such as the DBI and CGI or the notion of a "failed state" respectively. While literature keeps mentioning potential harm from a bad ranking in one of the indices / a frequent labelling as "failed", "fragile", etc. there seems to be a lack of empirical evidence that manages to prove this except Georgia's actions in relation to improving its DBI index a few years ago.
I am looking for data / paper that underline that e.g. being labelled as a weak state (either via bad rankings or in terms of speech) does lead to less foreign investment or foreign aid. More generally, the general implications in terms of international trade, economics and foreign affairs of these kinds of labels are of interest to me, but after a few days of research, I am starting to wonder if there really is a lack of empirical research at the moment or if I simply cannot seem to find it.
Anyways, would be extremely thankful if any of you knows about a paper or a dataset in that regard.
There's a lot of rules out there for "clean code", what's considered good and maintainable, and what's anti-pattern, code-smell, and so on. But which evidence do we have that these rules-of-thumb are actually correct?
I've read a couple of papers about the correlation between fault density and some code metrics. Another important thing is correlation between changeability and metrics. Does anyone have a good overview on this topic?
Please note that "it worked for me" is not research. ;) You have to be able to factor out dependent variables. Otherwise, things like company culture/structure can play a large role, unknowingly.
Logical arguments are also not research or proof in itself, only a hypothesis that can potentially (or not) be tested empirically.
One excellent research example is Do code clones matter? (PDF). This of course only analyses code clones (duplication), no other "best practice". Also, as good scientists, results should be reproduced more than once before being considered "true". :)
So I am a bit of a career woman. A workaholic. A boss lady. you get the gist. I have been for the past few years. I tried dating but most guys I meet are childish. I resorted to online dating and met a few guys who lived overseas. I have had mature and witty conversations with attractive men who understand my ambitions. I have been friends with them but I am hesitant to be more than that with them. I am absolutely terrified of it not working as planned, and it would end in shambles. That would affect my overall mental well being at work and I cannot risk it.
I honestly would love to meet someone who is tired of games...however...is online dating/e-dating working for people like me? Its tiring to start over but I would hate wasting my resources to end up with dishonesty.
This seems to be some sort of Marxian analysis of capitalism, in which capital continues to centralise under the control of fewer and fewer people, until eventually all industries are controlled by just one firm, which has seeped into modern economics and is treated as almost a truism. Only by governments monopoly power of anti-trust and regulation can we protect the people from..... other monopolies?
It just seems to me from observation that markets do not tend towards inevitable monopolisation by a single firm. Even in our 21st century corporatocracy/fascist "capitalism", the giant firms who employ lobbyists and take advantage of regulatory capture to gain an unfair competitive edge over other firms still don't acquire a monopoly.
And it is far from the case that once a company obtains a large or even dominant share of the marketplace within a particular industry or sector of the economy that monopolisation is inevitable or even likely.
Standard Oil's share of the petroleum market rose from 25% in 1874 to 85% six years later in 1880. (Incidentally in that time the price of oil plummeted from 30c a gallon to 8c a gallon.)
If the Marxian story of capitalism were accurate, Standard Oil's eventual control of the entire petroleum market should have been inevitable. In fact, by the time the Supreme Court had declared Standard Oil a monopoly and demanded they be broken up in 1911, their market share had actually shrunk from just under 90% to 65%.
This myth that market competition leads to monopolies doesn't even really have a logical argument to support it. Companies expand and become more efficient by utilising economies of scale which streamline the production process and allow them to make more of their product at minimal extra cost.
However, eventually these economies of scale become diseconomies of scale, whereby a company becomes so big and cumbersome that inefficiencies are allowed to creep into their business model, which competitors can take advantage of.
If a firm were to somehow overcome these issues and remain hyper-efficient despite controlling the entirety of a particular market, then surely we should want that company to be supplying its product to the entire marketplace, because they will be able to do so at a lower cost than their competitors, which is good for consumers.
But regardless, as far as I am aware, there are no examples to speak of in history of a company gaining a monopoly over a particular market purely through out-co
... keep reading on reddit ➡There are lots of code metrics that claim to measure maintainability, e.g. CK and Li & Henry metric suits. However, it seems elusive to me to find a meta-study that compares different metrics to decide their current empirical status.
In contrast, here's a quite brilliant such study about fault prediction: https://romisatriawahono.net/lecture/rm/survey/software%20engineering/Software%20Fault%20Defect%20Prediction/Radjenovic%20-%20Software%20fault%20prediction%20metrics%20-%202013.pdf
I'm looking for something similar for maintainability/changeability prediction.
To be clear, there are multiple meta-studies on maintainability metrics, but they don't seem to compare their evidence, more like listing what's been researched about and what not.
Shameless double-posting: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69750291/which-maintability-metric-has-the-strongest-empirical-evidence
