FlowVoid

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, this is very likely driven by fear of a malpractice lawsuit. Medications that can harm a fetus are supposed to be a last resort for those who can get pregnant. So if there are other potential medications for this woman, she will likely find it difficult to get a prescription for this one regardless of the doctor's religious beliefs.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (43 children)

This sort of thing has been common practice since long before Dobbs. And it is usually motivated by the doctor's fear of getting sued over birth defects, especially if there is an alternative prescription that is not known to be associated with birth defects. And there almost always is an alternative.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Imagine a coffee shop ad with a beautiful example of latte art, but when you get your latte you are horrified to find just plain foam. Unless the ad specifically mentioned latte art, I doubt you'd have grounds for a lawsuit.

As for your example, I'm finding it hard to imagine buying a car before getting inside it. A few dealers offer a pre-order option, but you can always back out of the sale once you see the car.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What definitions are in universal use?

No definition is in universal use.

meant to say gender when he said sex

He meant to say exactly what he said, and it was incorrect. He was not using your definition of sex. He was using it in the same sense as "I had a sex change operation".

Or "Now I want to change the sex on my birth certificate". Do you also chime in to inform people it's wrong to do that?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That just makes the therapy cost more per patient.

If a therapy costs too much, insurance will no longer pay for it.

And when insurance decides not to pay for a therapy that is only used by a handful of people, there are often only a handful of complaints.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Very few drugs are largely government funded. The government funds basic research, but it won't fund clinical trials. Pharma companies are almost entirely responsible for clinical trials, and they are way, way more expensive than basic research.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

Most of what you perceive as "taste" is just using your sense of smell on food within the mouth, where it is very close to smell receptors.

To isolate taste informally, pinch your nose, stick your tongue out, and put food directly on the tongue when it's outside your mouth. You'll find that by itself your tongue can't distinguish many flavors, that's why everything tastes terrible when you have Covid or a bad cold.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

No, the paper says it shares a receptor with sour, not that it tastes like sour.

Just as "orange" and "purple" have receptors in common but are not perceived as the same.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Umami is the fifth flavor. This paper is about the sixth, which doesn't seem to have a name other than "ammonium chloride".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

When the first photon hits the screen and collapses, that doesn't mean its twin photon collapses too.

Yes, it does. By definition, entangled particles are described by a single wave function. If the wave function collapses, it has to collapse for both of them.

So for example, an entangled pair of electrons can have a superposition of up and down spin before either one is measured. But if you detect the spin of one electron as up, then you immediately know that the spin of the second electron must be down. And if the second electron must be down then it is no longer in superposition, i.e. its wave function has also collapsed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Right, but in order to get the observed effect at D1 or D2 there must be interaction/interference between a wave from mirror A and a wave from mirror B (because otherwise why would D1 and D2 behave differently from D3 and D4?).

And that's a problem for some interpretations of QM. Because when one of the entangled photons strikes the screen, its waveform is considered to have "collapsed". Which means the waveform of the other entangled photon, still in flight, must also instantly "collapse". Which means the photon still in flight can be reflected from mirror A or mirror B, but not both. Which means no interaction is possible at D1 or D2.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

There are even plenty of questions, like the delayed-choice quantum eraser, that have already been solved

No, it has not been solved. At least not solved to the satisfaction of many physicists.

In one respect, there is nothing to solve. Everyone agrees on what you would observe in this experiment. The observations agree with what quantum equations predict. So you could stop there, and there would be no problem.

The problem arises when physicists want to assign meaning to quantum equations, to develop a human intuition. But so far every attempt to do so is flawed.

For example, the quantum eraser experiment produces results that are counterintuitive to one interpretation of quantum mechanics. Sabine's "solution" is to use a different interpretation instead. But her interpretation introduces so many counterintuitive results for other experiments that most physicists still prefer the interpretation that can't explain the quantum eraser. Which is why they still think about it.

In the end, choosing a particular interpretation amounts to choosing not if, but how QM will violate ordinary intuition. Sabine doesn't actually solve this fundamental problem in her video. And since QM predictions are the same regardless of the interpretation, there is no correct choice.

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