“The Egg” is an interesting thought experiment and encourages empathy with others (much needed), however in my opinion it doesn’t make sense as a religious belief in a few ways.

Primarily, what’s the point? If “our” soul/spirit/essence doesn’t remember our past lives, we aren’t able to evolve humanity with the aggregated experiences and wisdom. The benefit implied by the story would be a grizzled singular soul with the experience of every human who ever existed… But to what end? Are we a training program for an advanced AI model created for the benefit of another dimension?

What about proto-humans such as neanderthals? Hominids and every mammal in preceding evolutionary chain? If anything, the egg would refer to the collective lives of every living creature to have ever existed. Even single-celled organisms? Alien life forms?

Third, you & I exist now, in parallel. I can’t be you while also being me, unless the royal “we” is not a singular entity but rather a multi-threaded process feeding something one layer up. This might go back to the AI modeling concept, and perhaps “simulation theory”.

If we are a simulation to train or experiment via advanced civic AI model, we individually are expendable iterations. Data points in a massive soup of existence, itself being one of a multitude of similar simulations.

Do what you can to improve the existence you reside in and those sharing it with you.

I can circumstantially pretend to be outgoing and enjoyable for short interactions with strangers or people with little impact on my life. Phone calls and virtual work meetings for 1 hr or less are OK, but you bet your ass I’m walking away from my desk immediately afterwards to decompress.

The kicker is I question whether I’m actually introverted. I’ve always had an incredibly difficult time making friends, even as a kid. The isolation is absolutely soul crushing sometimes. I crave and thrive on very close friendships… Even 1-2 is enough, which in our society is conducive to dating – and I eventually met an extroverted ray of sunshine who I’m still with. I still don’t feel like I belong around her friends, though, all these years later. Social anxiety is a bitch.

A strange observation: I’ve found myself far more comfortable with people from a certain region, about 3 hrs from where I grew up, but had no exposure to as a child. Interactions with them tend to be relatively effortless and enjoyable (is this what extroversion is like?).

In summary, I very much despise the way I am, but most people are on a significantly different social wavelength than I. The energy required to match those foreign wavelengths is measured in gigawatts… except for my wife and a few prior long term girlfriends.

I plan on someday experimenting with psilocybin as a therapeutic tool to better understand and potentially (partially?) mitigate some of my social puzzle and trauma believed to be a source of “introversion”.

Perhaps this resonates with you or someone else reading this.

Discord is OK for real-time chat or VC, but is awful for forum-like discussions. Comment-specific context is lost in the single-threaded noise and search is borderline useless. The true forum-designed format of Lemmy, Reddit, and predecessors is far and away better. In my opinion Twitter - the legacy, ubiquity and tech - would be a better forum than Discord. That was hard to type and I need to quickly bleach my fingers.

It’s back up now. They apparently use Bing as the backend search and Microsoft fsck’d it for a few hours: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/23/24163094/microsoft-bing-search-outage-copilot-duckduckgo-chatgpt

No offense, but you’re not worth the compromise of my privacy. Good day, fellow time-waster.

This is the internet, friend. I could be a nobody, a deputy commissioner at the FDA, or a published researcher. Your mind will not change either way.

Pharmacology implies drugs or synthetic compounds. The RDA stats are officially “guidelines” - Just ask your doctor or nutritionist to explain the fuzzy landscape to you, as well as the interactions & interplay between various compounds as they’re processed & stored by your body. Perhaps get a CBC to determine what you specifically need; they’re usually covered by insurance (assuming you’re in the states).

You’re ignoring the overarching debate, but fine I’ll address your nit-picky distraction.

“Small” is a relative term, and to the amounts that would be harmless in all situations would have negligible health benefits, to the point of questioning “why bother”. Also even small quantities add up, such as the example of 2-gallon consumption on a hot day. What isn’t controversial or subjective, though, is pure water.

The simplest solution is usually best - instead of a one-size-fits-all “medicated” water approach, just take a multivitamin that works best for your individual biology and preferences… assuming you can’t consume foods which contain the variety of compounds our bodies need, being the ideal solution. Even the USDA recommendations for vitamins & minerals are mere guesstimated guidelines which varies per individual & lifestyle.

I was being facetious and think your argument is completely preposterous, but continuing for fun. Let’s say you are dictator of your loyal subjects, and decide to medicate their water with… vitamins, including copper. What if someone is sensitive to added copper, either because of damage to their copper plumbing, copper cookware, or a metabolic issue? What if someone is working outdoors in the summer heat and consumes 2 gallons of water per day, but begins to experience symptoms of copper toxicity due to the volume of water intake? The water is excreted, but our bodies do not excrete most excess vitamins, such as copper. This copper intake then causes an imbalance/deficiency of zinc and subsequently magnesium.

Should we add prozac/SSRIs to our water to thwart depression and make the populous happier?

Most of the world doesn’t medicate their water, and their citizens are surprisingly healthier than us in the US & Australia where we “medicate” our water. How about we give people access to clean, pure water and let them supplement as they & their doctors see fit?

Do you consider water to be medicine, or a resource? Why don’t we add caloric value to our tap water too, for the sake of malnutrition in impoverished communities?

“The authors conclude that available evidence suggests that fluoride has a potential to cause major adverse human health problems, while having only a modest dental caries prevention effect”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956646/

I’m against removing it completely is because it’s not clear that it isn’t helping prevent tooth decay

^ I think this logic needs to be reversed - the burden of proof must be abundantly clear with few to no risks before it should be considered. The paper above also highlights interesting aspects about the initial test which spurred water fluoridation in the US. This was also a time in which broad public awareness of dental hygiene was first entering mainstream - was the causality due to amended tap water, or more tooth-brushing?

There’s a reason most of Europe (and most of the world) doesn’t fluoridate their water, and their teeth are statistically healthier than the USA & Australia, where most tap water is fluoridated.

In my opinion the water fluoridation debate has become associated with nut-job conspiracy theorists and the “don’t tread on me” crowd. There are legitimate concerns, and the debate has been ongoing prior to Roswell, etc. There are literal conspiracies diluted in public perception/sentiment by wacky theoretical conspiracies and the types who espouse them.

The delta between fluoride levels considered “theraputic” and “harmful” (per the WHO) is quite small. The most effective use of fluoride is topical (applying to teeth) rather than oral.

Without chlorination people would get sick and possibly die. Amoebas & bacteria can enter our bodies when showering or even flushing a toilet - via aerosolization. Chlorination is also important for the water infrastructure itself, and to prevent buildup within home pipes and appliances.

Should we put multi-vitamin compounds in our drinking water too? It is strange that this one thing is added to water vs the host of other compounds which are shown to benefit human health.

The website in the article, had anyone read it without their personal bias scoffing at the title and going straight to comments, contains much of this info - I recommend giving it a gander.

98% of Europe doesn’t fluoridate their water. IATP provides statistics and primary concerns: https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Facts_about_Fluoridation.htm

Per the NIH: “Children in endimic areas of fluorosis are at risk for impaired development or intelligence”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409983/ Note: the “high” level in the report below is easily achievable by a standard diet and recommended water intake, assuming fluoridated water is both ingested and used in food processing and cooking. This excludes exposure via fluoride toothpaste.

Fluoride and cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3283934/

There’s quite a list of well-documented risks, actually. The anti-fluoride website highlighted in the article goes into some of it, but the one I’m intrigued by is the established link between IQ and fluoride. The “high” level in the report below is easily achievable by a standard diet and recommended water intake, assuming fluoridated water is both ingested and used in food processing and cooking.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3409983/

You can’t remove fluoride using standard water filters, or even high-end RO filter systems. A specialized fluoride-specific filtration system (multi-stage) is required due to fluoride’s chemical bond.

Please do your own research, as this is a very controversial subject which has been fought since its inception, with entrenched opinions. Here’s a primer:

• Too much fluoride is bad for humans, and the threshold can achieved with a standard diet and recommended intake of water, assuming fluoridated water is used for both consumption and food prep. This excludes fluoride toothpaste.
• Fluoride can not be removed from tap water using standard water filters, or even R/O filters. Removal requires highly specialized filters which utilize aluminum to chemically un-bind the fluoride, which then require a separate filtration statge to remove the aluminum.
• This is because fluoride creates some of the strongest chemical bonds, and is the reason it is the primary component in PFAS, or “forever chemicals”
• Very little of our tap water actually touches human teeth.
• Fluoride is a problematic byproduct of the production of aluminum and fertilizer industry.
• Buildup of fluoride in urban/suburban soils is becoming a crop & gardening concern for which there is no viable solution.
• Fluoride tablets were administered as a remedy for hyper-thyroidism, as it decreased thyroid function. Fluoride is believed to be a factor in the increase of modern hypo-thyroid ailments
• Fluoride is a known carcinogen.
• Fluoride is a known neurotoxin, shown to reduce IQ - particularly for children. Many pediatricians advise against fluoride toothpaste at young ages.

Most of the research done on fluoridating tap water was done in the early 1940s & 50s, well in advance of modern dental hygiene and fluoridated toothpaste use. Studies do definitively show applying fluoride directly to teeth does strengthen tooth enamel, but modern studies are mixed, at best, regarding efficacy of fluoridated tap water between equivalent socioeconomic communities. No studies have been conducted regarding dermal absorption of fluoride , believed to further elevate intake.

I think the simplest solution is to let people choose for themselves, and add fluoride to their personal drinking water if that’s what they choose.

We don’t need to fluoridate water in our toilets, showers, or irrigation.

All plans use mm exclusively. Airport blueprints, for example, are in mm. At first blush it seems excessive, but it makes sense from a consistency & accuracy POV - 6.096m takes up 2 more characters than 6096 - they don’t even need to specify the units “mm”, because it is assumed, and anything else introduces room for error.

Woodworker in US here, and I prefer metric. Also consider the thickness of plywood is actually in metric now - “3/4” is actually 18 mm but they have to market it as 23/32.

I’ve chosen to join the other 8 billion people on earth.

For anything construction-scale, all supplies sold in the US are based on 4x8’ sheet goods and 16-24" on-center framing. I also concede that king George the 74th’s foot length is more human-scale when dealing with large measurements: 20 feet vs 6096 mm. I still use metric when possible, however - I find it easier and more accurate.

For EVERYTHING else I’ve switched to using metric.

Context: I grew up in the US using imperial units and only pivoted to the metric system in 2020. If I grew up thinking in metric and building supplies/standards used it, it’d be superior in every way.

TL;DR I like my imperial/metric combo tape measure.