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Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Regardless, radiation or bats fucking up your brain do not free will make.

Yeah, I suspected this is why you were so keen to argue this point. I am not saying, and never said, that any of this has anything to do with free will. To be clear I don't believe it does.

Even DNA strand is made up of 100s of billions of atoms and considering that out of our 40 trillion or so human cells cancer caused by radiation is rare, we are exposed to radiation 24/7 365, only extremely high doses have a real chance of surely causing cancer due to the sheer number of particles you're bombarded with.

The rarity of [radiation causing cancer] has pretty much nothing to do with whether a single radioactive particle can cause cancer. The reason it's rare is because most radiation doesn't hit your dna, and that which does doesn't do so in a cancer-causing way.

The fact is that one single beta ray impacting the right part of your dna can cause cancer, and this is nearly always how it actually happens (when caused by radiation). The same strand of dna will generally not be hit by two damaging beta rays. This is the linear no-theshold theory which is currently the most widely accepted model.

And if one misplaced particle can cause such an enormous effect, surely literally every single particle in your simulation being misplaced will cause larger effects.

Not to be rude but if your next response isn't significantly higher quality then I'm blocking you. I'll let you get the last word but I don't think either of us get much from these discussions.