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Only when paid to do so.

Yes indeed. Sorry about that. I did dispatch it, but it seemed to get sidetracked and last time I saw it some idiot had sent it out towards Mars.

Dear science forum I have a problem with the Big Bang because of a mathematical discrepancy that makes no sense to me. As far as I can figure out, evidence proving the Big Bang is coming from electromagnetic radiation (i.e., light, ultraviolet light, infrared light, gamma rays, x-rays, etcetera) which I understand is travelling at the speed of light, approximately 300,000 km per second. Yet, we are standing on earth which is apparently hurling through space 300-400 km/s - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-fast-is-the-earth-mov/ - which is less than 1% the speed of light. My problem is that I do not understand how we can be intercepting data that is moving at the speed of light while standing on evidence that is moving less than 1% of that speed and conclude the high velocity evidence proves the existence of the low velocity evidence upon which we are standing. This is a simple model to illustrate my confusion: BB - - - - > LV - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > HV BB - the Big Bang LV - low velocity evidence, i.e., matter HV - high velocity evidence, i.e., electromagnetic radiation According to the present conclusion, planet earth is made from the matter (low velocity evidence) that was expelled from the Big Bang. Yet, as far as I can figure out, we are intercepting high velocity evidence that should be travelling away from the low velocity evidence, including the earth if the earth was made from the ejected material. If our planet was formed from the physical debris ejected out from the Big Bang and it is travelling at a fraction of the speed of light, then we should not be able to intercept any high velocity evidence of the Big Bang that is travelling at light speed. It seems to me, this is a basic rule governing all explosions. For instance, when a star explodes and we intercept the high velocity evidence (i.e., light waves, gamma waves etcetera), we do not argue that we are made of the atoms being ejected from that event. We may argue we are made of the atoms created inside similar events, but not that particular event. From my grade six calculations, we should be situated in front of the high velocity evidence like this: BB - - - - > LV - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > HV - O (earth) and not like this: BB - - - - > LV - O - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > - - - - > HV where O represents planet earth So, am I missing something? Is there some force that is causing the high velocity evidence to circle back and hit earth? Is the high velocity evidence bouncing off the edge of the universe and then crossing paths with the earth? Or did somebody forget a small calculation when they concluded the entire universe started with a single Big Bang? Because, if somebody missed a calculation, then we are living in a very interesting universe because we still have evidence of a Big Bang, though we may not be able to conclude the entire universe began with a single Big Bang. However, we could still surmise this planet has its origins in a Big Bang, just not necessarily the event we are witnessing. And that means we have a very interesting universe indeed. Thank you, gwb

FWIW, I think Phi was referring EXACTLY to DJT

I see. Thank you. I think I prefer my misinterpretation.

Great. So the mention of a guy who's successful in business starts you on the path to complain.

Truly the only orange cracker you can trust.

That's a tough one to swallow! This link is for a plethora of vidoes showing, or purporting to show, examples of intelligence in octopuses (octopods,octopi, take your pick).

There's a flip side to that; jokes that only make sense in a language other than that in which they are written. Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit Tout gai de Reguennes. Which looks like (fairly bad) French poetry meaning something like A child of a child Is surprised at the Market A child of a child Oh, degrees you needed! Lazy is he who never goes out Lazy is he who is not led Who cares about a little one All happy with Reguennes but which is remarkably funny when a natural speaker of French reads it to an English audience who instantly recognise it as this nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty Sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty Had a great fall. All the king's horses And all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty Together again. (I have pinched most of that from the wiki page) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mots_d'Heures

Probably search engine bots that up the numbers so high, when they are crawling websites for info.

Yes, you must distinguish between truth1 and truth2... Just kidding. To be honest, I do not like the substantive 'truth', even less when written as 'Truth'. I think the first thing is to look on which 'objects' the adjective 'true' applies: these are propositions, or complete systems of propositions, where I think about e.g. scientific theories. What it means is that they fit to what they describe. If they do not, they are false. (Or they are meaningless ('colourless green ideas sleep furiously'), or they do not describe a situation unambiguously ('One cannot see light' )) So simply said, one can define 'truth' as the correspondence between a description and reality. So it characterises a relationship between propositions and facts. Which e.g. means the 'Truth' is not out there. We find out if a proposition is true, if we find out that the description corresponds to reality. It is an attribute of propositions ('in there') and reality ('out there'.) I think this meaning of 'true' is simple. But that does not mean that it is easy to find out which propositions (or theories) are true. The two topics should not be confused: what 'true' means on side, and how we find out on the other. I think that some of the examples given are wrong: e.g that about simultaneity in relativity. Are two events simultaneous or not? Well, we know exactly how this depends on from which inertial frame you are observing these events. So we have to amend it to 'for observer A the events are simultaneous, for observer B they are not'. If we know how the perspective has influence on what people observe, then we know that there is nothing to quarrel about. It is as if two people are facing each other, and quarrel about the question if the chair stands at the right or at the left. If you take the perspective in account, the whole problem has vanished. Same with what is true today is false tomorrow. If it was an 'eternal truth' (something like F = mv, like Aristotle thought), and today we know it is false, then it was false all the time. We erroneously took it for true. But truth hasn't changed, because reality did not change. Same with the opposite: reality changes. It is drizzling. It is really true! I see it when I look out of the window! But of course this event is local: where I live, and am now, it is drizzling. It makes no sense to quarrel about the truth of 'it is drizzling', if I do not take the context in account. When I am going somewhere else tomorrow, then it is still true that 'in Switzerland at 17.03.2018 16:30 local time, it is drizzling'. Even if it is beautiful weather at the place where I am tomorrow. Personally, I would prefer to separate some concept pairs: For factual knowledge, 'true' or 'false' apply, because there can be a kind of correspondence between factual propositions and reality For morality, I would use 'right' or 'wrong'. There is no way that science can find out what is morally right or wrong. It can help if facts play a role in a moral decision ('if you do this some people might be killed, if you do that, the risk is negligible'). But this already presupposes that both agree on the norm that killing people is wrong. For aesthetics it becomes more difficult: beauty, interesting, fascinating or ugly, boring, ...The difference with morality is that it has a very strong personal factor. The compulsion to come to an agreement is less than in morality, but do not underestimate the intersubjective character of these aesthetical norms. If these is a discussion on how to renovate the old city centre, it can become very important that people agree. Well, then they are wrong. Truth is not subjective. Beauty has a strong subjective side, morality less, but truth is definitely not subjective.

Koti; +1 Because you have obviously spent some time considering truth as is evidenced by many of your posts in this thread. Yes. In my threads regarding consciousness, I have learned that people can only deal with so much truth, so it is often necessary to give them little pieces and let them stew on those ideas for a while. I am reminded of the movie, A Few Good Men, where Jack Nicholson states, "You can't handle the truth." (chuckle) A few years back, in another forum, I wrote a thread entitled, A Measure of Truth. In that thread I tried to establish rules that would help me to define and understand what is true and what is not true and how I would determine and measure truth in order to create more valid premises. In this thread, I had noticed that many people seem to confuse right and wrong with truth, so I wanted to explore that idea. What I have learned is that there are social truths, political truths, emotional truths, and others that I had not previously considered. These truths are often related to right and wrong, so they can be confused with right and wrong; this thread has already given me much information and much to think about. Well, knowledge is subjective and truth is knowledge. If you remove all of the people and all of the conscious life, can there be knowledge? Can there be truth? How could you possibly know or prove it? You can only know something if there is someone to know it. That makes it subjective because knowledge and truth both require a subject. I don't agree that truth is unreliable, but will acknowledge that it can be elusive. This is why we need philosophers and scientists to help us find it. Truth is measured. This is why we can say that something is more true than not, or more or less true, or somewhat true. I don't remember anyone ever telling me that something is somewhat a fact; it either is or isn't a fact, so I think we can find a decent consensus in some things. Gee Strange; +1 For understanding that truth is complex, and I think I owe you a point anyway. In the thread, Science is a Subfield of Philosophy, Itoero made it very clear that truth was subjective and therefore unreliable and unprovable. I think that this recent example is what brought it to my mind, but I have heard similar arguments before. Truth is relative, so it also relates to time. What was true a moment ago may not be true now; what is true now may not be true in a moment. This makes some truth as changeable as the wind -- which may be blowing now, but not in an hour. Regarding right and wrong, I am reminded of an old movie that I saw many years ago about Jim Thorpe. (I think I have that name right -- Burt Lancaster played the part of Thorpe) Anyway, he was an American Indian, who won a lot of medals in the Olympics and then had them taken away from him. In the story, he was in a "white man's school" with another boy and they were discussing their history books. One boy said, "Why is it that when the white man wins, it is a great victory, but when the red man wins, it is a terrible massacre?" He had a point. For that matter, what were they doing in a "white man's" school? Well, that is easy to understand. When the Europeans "discovered" the new land, they did not seem to notice that more than 300 tribes and nations of people had already "discovered" it. What the Europeans did notice was that the red man was different. Being linear thinkers, the Europeans realized that because of this difference, one group had to be wrong, and the Europeans did not intend to be wrong. That made the red man wrong by virtue of his existence. Putting the children in a "white man's" school was just another way of trying to make the red man more right. Which part of the above do you think is not arbitrary? Where is truth in this morass of right and wrong? The nature of truth is subjective and that makes it relative. It is relative to time, perspective, and circumstance, but more than that it is often measured and even balanced with other truths, so it is difficult to know. I think that when people do not trust truth it is because they do not know whether or not it is truth, or they don't recognize it. Gee Migl; +1 For making a good point. Digging around in a mess does not often solve much, but it can bring things to light. Although Koti, Strange, Ten oz, and Dimreepr are all blind in this scenario, they can still talk and type, so they can share their findings. Maybe we can learn something about the elephant by sharing our thoughts. That is what forums are for, aren't they? Maybe we should hurry this up before Dimreepr gets wet. Gee There are other posts that I would like to address, but this is St. Patty's day and I have Murphys, Heffernans, O'Gradys, and O'Briens in the family tree, so I will be busy for a while.

I think these two quotes sum it up for me: the reality of the elephant is absolute, impersonal and objective; the perception of the elephant is relative, personal and subjective. I'm reminded of a brilliant 80's Irish sitcom ( Father Ted ) where Ted was explaining to dumb Dougal that cows are normally the same size but the very small cows were " far away ". Regarding the OP, my perception was that Gees , in this case, was using truth to mean honesty, when asking if truth can be trusted, so i would say that absolute, objective Truth/Reality can be trusted, ( if we can recognize It as such ), whereas relative, subjective truth obviously can't be completely trusted. That seems pure and simple but, as Oscar Wilde said: " The truth is rarely pure and never simple ". As for sticking to unwavering, absolute honesty, i would say that a benign expediency, or even silence, is sometimes the better course to follow. Are right and wrong related? I would say no - if something is right, it's just right; it isn't right because something else is wrong: 2 + 2 = 4 isn't right because 2 + 2 = 86* is wrong. ( * That is wrong, right ? ). .

I think Gees introduced the topic of an elephant. Koty is the blind man holding the trunk, and trying to describe it. Strange is the blind man holding the ears and trying to describe it. Ten oz is the blind man holding a leg and trying to describe it. And Dimreepr is the blind man holding the tail and trying to describe it. Sorry Gees, but you've created a mess. I think you're gonna have to re-state and clarify the OP.

As when billions of people, for centuries, all believed that the sun and planets orbited the earth? Ever hear of the Liar paradox?

Do you have others?

Someone's probably already said this. But anyway, just in case : What are the odds of a being so advanced as to be able to create an entire universe from nothing existing from infinite time ago, deciding to create the entire universe so that it looks 14 billion years old from every angle, and then create various forms of life, and cunningly designed it all to give the illusion that life started and evolved without any outside help. I would say that the odds against that are nearly infinite. Billions of times longer odds, than life starting through non-directed chemical events.

Yes they do have blood, their blood is based on copper instead of oron .............................................................................................................................. That's why they are smarter than humans.

It seems blindingly obvious to me that the odds against life evolving/developing from non-life are infinitely huge. But even if it were possible for life to come from non-life, there remains the basic question - 'How did it all start?' Not just how did life start, but how did the non-life start [the basic atoms, molecules, chemicals etc etc] from which life could have developed? The only answer which can explain or answer this question with any degree of certainty, is the existence of a designer or higher intelligence, which had no beginning and has always existed. In human terms, this seems impossible, since experience tell us that everything must have a beginning or start-point. However, those who have faith in God - the Creator - have an enormous advantage, because believing in the existence of God can instantly explain everything about life and the origin of the universe. Now I hear the atheists saying 'codswallop' - but its easier to prove the existence of God [if you don't have a closed mind], than to prove that life came about by random chance.