Lord Antares

They might or might not be. We don't know that. That's why I'm saying you can't dismiss genetic factors just because it seems racist. You can dismiss it for valid reasons, though. It's not that simple of an issue. Define ''thrive''. I cannot really apply that word for Sudan or Papua New Guinea.

This bears repeating as it refutes your whole idea. It's a very simple example and it clearly shows why you're wrong. I think the focus should be on this now because it's the simplest possible way for you to understand you are wrong. You answered: This makes no sense and completely ignores the question. I will repeat. The people on the ship will see the clock running normally. They may be aware of relativity, but to them, the clock runs NORMALLY, whereas you, who are stationary would see it run slow if the ship passed by you. HOW can it be just an effect of the stretching space if 2 different people will see it differently? Surely this would be detected if it were the case, as there WERE numerous experiments done on exactly this sort of thing. You must answer this to clear out the misconceptions.

But it must mean something if the results from different studies match consistently. It does. Some countries have larger average IQs and a different culture. I feel like generalizing Africa is a huge problem for you in this discussion, so fair enough - we will not generalize it. Here are the results for the first 3 maps I ran accross: As you can see, different parts of Africa have different averages. This is true for all continents, not just Africa. But Africa CLEARLY has the highest percantage of the low ones. Coincidentally, (right?) the countries which are higher in IQ are the more developed ones. It could very well be that the people there have lower IQ BECAUSE the conditions are poor and the country is undeveloped, not the other way round, but the issue persists that it is undeveloped. Also, as you can see, the Balkans have lower scores than the rest of Europe and are less developed. As someone who lives in the Balkans, I can only say that it matches my observation, so to me, it clearly has some validity, even if it is anecdotal from my side. The results seem to point that the countries with lower IQs are less developed. Or, that the countries which are less developed has lower IQs, whichever sounds more right to you. So, objectively speaking, it would seem that someone born in China has a higher chance of having a high IQ, whereas someone living in (pick a country in) Africa has a higher chance of having a low IQ, just like the OP said.

OK, there are no metrics so I cannot answer ''how much'' and ''of what'', but you cannot deny that the standards of life in Africa are good. If you want to be picky, take central Africa for example. Look at their technology, economy, infrastructure etc. and compare it with other ''several-country'' regions in the world. Maybe you can find one which is worse, but that does not refute the fact that Africa is poverty stricken. Even better, compare the ratio of impoverished countries in Africa to any other continent. Of course, the issue is that you seek precise definitions of what it means to be impoverished. I understand that I cannot provide them to you, so we must agree on some things. For example, Europe in general is doing better than Africa in general, whatever that means. We do not have the metrics, but you agree with this statement, right? The OP did so and I don't rmember seeing it properly addressed. He asked about intelligence, the one thing we actually have metrics for. It would seem that statistical data agrees that Africa is a place with the lowest average IQ: Some parts being substantially different from others, of course. It would also seem that the data, on average, agrees that China is the most or one of the most advanced countries in that regard. He asked some more precise questions, such as to which the answer is technically yes, right? He asked some questions about why that was so and what connection there is with disease and intelligence etc. I don't remember seeing it properly addressed. It does follow, from statistical data, that Africans (in general) have lower IQs which is a considerable factor in demographics. What do you think about that? To be clear, I'm only discussing this from an academic point of view with no agenda. It is interesting because it tends to get avoided in fear of being called a racist, but it is possible to make some technical points on the topic.

This is incredibly wrong. I agree with the others; it's completely ridiculous that you would think that time dilation only occurs for clocks and nothing else in the universe. Us and clocks are both physical objects, it time dilation affects one, it affects the other. Yes, the clock runs slower due to dilation, but so does everything else. If you intend to be as stubborn as you have been so far, then please prove that time dilation doesn't exist. It should be very easy to design an experiment. You will win a Nobel prize if you are correct. But you are wrong.

He is making general statements. Obviously, countries in Africa differ in all of these categories, but the statement that Africa is, in general, lesser advanced, less educated and in greater economic peril than other continents is true. Which bring me to your point: It doesn't matter if it's not the worst in ALL of those categories. It may not be the worst in a single one, but it is a bad in a greater number of categories. I know you are aware that there are issues in Africa, more notable ones than in other continents in general, so I don't see what point you are trying to make? If you are saying that the OP is strictly a question of economics, and not one of genetics, race etc., then yes and no.

I see what you mean. A finite universe makes much more sense to me than an infinite one but we are dealing with a complicated subject so that's nothing more than an opinion.

Whether there is a better way to describe it or not is irrelevant if what you are trying to say doesn't mean anything to physics.

No, you have it all wrong. It's not that movement makes clocks incorrect, it's that there is no universally correct time. A slowed down clock is correct when moving. You are speaking of universal time which ypu would compare to "moving" times, but there is no such thing. This has been brought up a billion times here and it comes from the lack of understanding of relativity. And yes, you would actually age slower in a moving frame of reference. It's not just that only clocks run slower. That would make no sense.

No it isn't. There is as much substance now as there was at any point after the big bang. Space is just expanding and matter is getting further apart. Firstly, the first sentence is incorrect. Science doesn't know and makes no claims about anything before the big bang. I don't follow your second sentence. If there was really nothingness before the big bang, it would me lead to assume that space is FINITE, not infinite. But it's irrelevant since the premise is wrong. This point contradicts your point 1. And again, it's just a guess.

And how is that racist? You would have to define ''superior''. He asked if one group was more intelligent than another. According to various researches and statistics, the average IQ differs from country to country, therefore in some countries the ''average Joe'' is more intelligent than in other countries. It's not racist to ask that question, especially if it seems to be supported by statistics. Now you could argue that if the life standards of the two countries compared were switched, the IQ difference would be switched in the other's favour. Perhaps, but the general point is that there is a difference in average intelligence between countries and even continents differ. As far as I've seen, he hasn't escalated the issue into a more ''racist'' one.

This is incredibly poor reasoning for science. Shameful, really. First, you start off saying this: but you talked about nothing but argument from authority and no math. Will you please ditch the idea of godly people in science? A theory's correctness is NOT decided by the esteem of the author, but on the validity and evidence of said theory. This is also exceptionally poor reasoning. You say you have full confidence in what Einstein says. So, you had full confidence when he said that the cosmological was correct. Then you had full confidence when he said it was a mistake. If he hadn't lived long enough, he wouldn't have the time to change his mind and so you would believe in his first assumption just because he said so. If he had lived longer, he might have changed his mind again, and you would consider that correct again. This is a great fallacy and I'm glad this is what scientists don't do. I suggest you start making sense in the near future.

I think his question, in essence, is as follows: Let's say you have 5 different clocks in 5 different frames of reference. How can you compare them absolutely if time is dilated for all 5 frames of references? That other guy (John Lesser, I believe) was asking the same question.

It can't link anything to anything without mathematics and a model. But there is nothing to link anyway. You call it complexity, someone else calls it physical forces. In essence, you are just introducing a word (complexity) into it. What other link to sciences do you see here?

Explain it then. Don't just exclaim that you can explain it.

Honestly, you didn't say anything here, pretty much. It reads more like a rant, than a hypothesis. No offense, but there is no substance here. No propositions or mathematics, it's just a ''view'' on things. Hence, I agree with imatfaal that it's philosophy, rather than science. Do you think these thoughts have some kind of relevance to physics? If so, how?

If this is your reasoning for this conclusion, then in addition to learning physics, you need to learn English as well. Adding -less to the end of a word negates the word. Like in the word ''senseless'', meaning ''no sense''.

Didn't you speak Russian in another thread?

Yeah, that's more correct. The light that IS picked up by the range finder is reflected back perfectly, but the light from the laser will be reflected in all directions, generally speaking. He was just guessing.

Yes, this makes the most sense to me. A random dude gave his interpretation of the experiment and didn't actually get the point. The quote leads us to believe that they were flipped under the same exact circumstances, which again, seems wrong to me. Again, your suggestion that they wanted to test out how large the deviation would need to be to affect the result seems the most likely explanation to me.

We have undoubtedly tested the ways that balls and other objects bounce countless times, but fine. What makes me think that it wasn't just that is this quote: ''Started to wonder'' implies that he didn't know this and genuinely wanted to find it out. This may be a fault of the article, and not the person, though. The other quote displays the same ignorance as well:

But you are wrong. ??????? You have a roughly 1 in 6000 chance of landing the coin on its edge on the first toss, as well as any other toss of your choosing. 6000^2 is incredibly wrong. This makes no sense to me. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's a language barrier. No. You need to understand. I appreciate that you think I'm logical but you must understand that I am using actual confirmed mathematics. What you are saying either makes no sense to me or it's just plain wrong. NO! 1/6000 is for a specified toss of your choice and for a random toss as well. You choosing a specific toss has no impact on the outcome. Whether you choose a toss or not, the yielded result will always have been 1 in 6000. This is what you need to understand. No, that makes no sense. There is no need to multiply anything. You would destroy mathematics with your ways. Specifying a toss will ALWAYS have a chance of 1 in 6000. To put it as simply as possible: Let's say you have just one toss and you need to choose either heads or tails. There will always be a 50% chance for either heads or tails, regardless of whether you specify which. You must understand this.

No, there aren't. If you toss it with the same exact motion, you absolutely cannot get different results. It would violate Newton's third law. And it seems to me they were considering the problem from a technical perspective, not engineering, which is even worse. It was a waste of time.

To assume that the coin may land differently if tossed under the exact same conditions is to assume that a ball might bounce differently if thrown into a wall at the exact same angle with the same force. It violates at least Newton's third law and common sense. I really don't see why the experiment was necessary. It's exactly the same as testing whether an object would fall downwards when released from a building. It's reduntant.

Surely, the machine can technically be calibrated to land the coin on the edge every time, but it's a question of very precise engineering, physics and mathematics. I cannot answer your question about the price (I'm not sure anyone can since the machine has never been built to my knowledge), but I want to comment on the article. It seems incredibly ignorant and unscientific to me. Take this quote for example: How could it be any other other way? How could a sane person, let alone a respected statistician not understand that coin flips technically have nothing to do with chance? How stupid do you have to be to not understand that if you launch the coin the same way, you would always get the same results? I cannot fathom the thought process here. Otherwise, the coin would surely violate several laws of physics and logic. Very obviously. When we speak of probability, we use coins as a visual example. Obviously, mathematical (perfectly unbiased) coins differ from actual ones. My question is why do you think they even did the experiment in the first place? What did they expect?