Eliezer, I am wondering why to bother yourself with going into dispute with people who profess a zombie argument :) Do you hope that some of them will change their way of thinking? I hardly believe they visit this site often. In general, have you personally seen a transformation of such type of person who operates seriously by things like zombie argument to a more rational type of person?

For me this article is really actual since I've caught myself few times already thinking about pretty this relation between heat and motion. I am literate and educated person, I've even been learning math BUT nowadays I am trying to rethink all these stuff which is just packed in my head under labels similar to "heat vs motion". So actually it is not that hard for me in 2015 to think that heat and motion are probably different concepts :) I just know that I need to really think a lot and re-learn the basics in a proper way, not just re-reading books again but really "inventing" the subject for myself. And regarding explanation vs understanding, I've read a joke recently: two analysts are having a lunch and one tells "hey, do you understand the situation on the middle east, what's going on there?". And the other one replies "I can explain you, sure". Then the first guys tells "I can explain this to anyone in this room as well, but I have actually asked if you UNDERSTAND it".

How do you measure the quality of internet and newspapers? How do you compare their impacts? What do you know about the postman's knowledge of black holes?

How do you know that?

Which country are you from?

Do all zebras have the same (withing some accuracy range) ratio of black to white, btw?

We should not also neglect the material side of the scientists status. For example, a junior in a family may be told by his father: "look our neighbor Bob, he spent 30 years of his life on science and look what a junkie car he has and what a small house he lives in. Better have a simple but reliable job, like buying t-shirts in China and selling them here or alike, that will give you a reasonable living." I have seen quite a lot of such justifications in real life and this has to be taken into account because it reflects the factual state of things.

Regarding making the products of scientific knowledge hidden and secret, well.... Eliezer has not made this site's content protected by initiation rituals and it is publicly accessible :P If I had that $100,000 I would put on a grey robe, go to that Electricity Monastery and grant it to Eliezer to become my sensei and teach me about blueness and redness implied from atoms :)

I'm not in USA but people here in my country really don't read newspapers a lot anymore. 90% of newspapers are quite low-quality, so called "yellow press". So really internet is a media of a greater quality. Most of newspapers are covering stuff like politics, economics, other stuff which seems more "clear" for the people reading them. But in fact, e.g. a seller of apples trying to argue with a postman about situation in Syria is quite much the same if they would discuss collision of black holes.

This post is different. For it is poetic. And I liked to read it in a different way than I liked to read other posts. Thanks for putting simple words into a beautiful form, Eliezer.

The rainbow is still there, I saw one recently )))