swansont

The report post function is for rules violations. I’m not sure what rule you think is being violated. Is this an example of being “polite and courteous”?

1. Being wrong about something is not against the forum rules. Nor is it evidence of trolling, and I should note that “troll” and “trolling” are not well-defined terms. Trolling is often in the eyes of the beholder, and ultimately it’s a judgement call that the staff makes. What you consider trolling may not be what I do. 2. Being wrong does not make one a liar. That’s a term I am hesitant to use, since it implies intent and the knowledge that one is wrong - that the liar knows the truth and is deliberately posting false information. 3. As such, discussion of a factual nature are left to the interested parties to arrive at a solution supported by mainstream science. Where moderators will get involved in such threads is when rules are violated: if discussions go off-topic, if posters are soapboxing, or if they are hijacking threads. We will also step in when civility is lacking - but note that correction or contradiction is not inherently uncivil, while name-calling is (and childish to boot) - and that includes when one attacks the person rather than the argument. But there is a limit here - sarcasm/snark is not outlawed, and we do not operate in the thin-skin limit. As I’ve said before, “Civility is required, but this does not extend to walking on eggshells to accommodate fragile egos”

What rules were being broken? Was it reported? As far as knuckles being rapped, calling someone out as a sock or a troll is off-topic. We prefer not to have members go vigilante and deal with these situations on their own. And we’ve had instances where suspected sockpuppets we determined to not be the previous poster that was suggested. We have some threshold of proof needed before we pull the trigger on banning people. We’ve had cases where we’ve had IP address matches of a suspected sockpuppet with long-standing members (with a gap of several months) Such is the problem of dynamically-assigned IP addresses. It makes confirmation more difficult.

When people refer to air, I think they are generally referring to the gas mixture, under normal atmospheric conditions.

And? You are assuming that “lightning” does not refer to the bolt, but to the process. But that’s your interpretation (and circular reasoning)

How would you do this? Space isn’t defined by the EM field. And there’s no indication you understand how complex this question is, and what would be needed to address it.

”problematic” is your bias applied to the situation. If you made a blanket, generic syllogistic argument you couldn’t assess anything as “problematic” 1. Z is true 2. Z is not true There is a contradiction, but you can’t say which one is the false premise Neither does the premise A is true lead to the conclusion A is false. There is more than one premise. Buried in your charade is a premise that A is false. Making it more complicated does not improve the argument. It’s a fallacy of distraction.

It’s both. Which one depends on the context of its use. A magnetic field does not have “a level of permitivity and permeability” Materials do, and the vacuum does. https://www.plasmacoalition.org/plasma_writeups/lightning.pdf (emphasis added) “a typical lightning bolt carries a peak current of tens of thousands of amperes and has a peak temperature greater than 50,000oF, about five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. At that high temperature the lightning column is a plasma, a gas with many of its atoms broken into electrically-charged particles, both negatively-charged electrons and positively-charged ions”

No, any E or M fields of the earth are too weak to do much. We don’t see things flying off into space spontaneously Wormholes are not so easily created. You need to provide more detail as to how this might happen, or narrow the scope of the question you ask. This is too broad. Space isn’t going to get closer.

! Moderator Note If you feel someone is wasting your time, don’t participate. Tangential posts are not helpful. As for sockpuppets, we appreciate reports bringing the situation to our attention, and the staff will take appropriate action if we have sufficient evidence. Until that happens we give people the benefit of the doubt that they are posting in good faith.

It’s a plasma, so it’s a substance. What do you mean by “relative to permitivity and permeability“? A plasma has a permittivity a permeability but it’s complicated https://cds.cern.ch/record/1693043/files/p85.pdf (equation 98) https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/169454/calculating-the-magnetic-permeability-of-a-known-plasma

The buoyancy of helium as compared to air at 1 atm is about a gram per liter. So 1000 liters will lift a kg.

! Moderator Note “retarded” is something that crosses the line of civility, as does the intentional misuse of a user name, and sarcastic substitutions for user names. It needs to stop.

! Moderator Note Arguing isn’t against the rules, and violating the rules is what leads to banning. (going off-topic, though, is against the rules) ! Moderator Note You need to report the offending posts so they can be evaluated, and it’s not the job of members to “shut down” trolls. Participation is voluntary; you should choose to simply not feed the alleged troll.

You’re missing the point. “D is false” is the conclusion from the contradiction, not the premise. The premise is, as you say, that D is true, but that leads to a contradiction. S2 is not true. Therein lies the problem. So D and A can be true at the same time? You were arguing that this isn’t the case.

If you think rules are being violated, use the “report post” function. But please don’t conflate sincere disagreement with trolling.

“ I do not have access to external information or the ability to browse the internet” But it’s been “trained” so it has had access to internal information of some sort, so this sounds like some clever sleight-of-hand. Not with my current programming

I’ve seen a number of examples where the bot gets it wrong, so it still can be convincing-sounding nonsense. A Sokol-bot. But how can you tell, if it’s outside your area of expertise?

No, what you’ve shown is that A and D aren’t true at the same time. As you’ve demonstrated, it’’s possible to create contradictory logical premises (A, and not A) The fact that there is a contradiction only shows that one or more of the premises aren’t true. You can also conclude that D is false. You’re also playing fast and loose with “situation” Your later logic is similarly flawed.

The number of deaths is down, but the number of conflicts is up. One factor, I suspect, is economic. https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace Armies are smaller, but the cost of deployment per combatant is much higher than it used to be. Another is advances in medicine, which reduces fatalities and also has an economic impact, if one’s society cares for its wounded soldiers. So it’s possible one contributing reason countries avoid escalation is because they can’t afford it. Interstellar war would have a really large economic impact.

! Moderator Note ChatGPT is not a scientific source and I think we’d provisionally consider this speculation since the credibility is not established

This time line assumes that we were discovered just recently. If one takes this scenario at face value, you destroy all alien life, not just advanced civilizations - you don’t give them the chance to become a threat. That expands the response time by hundreds or thousands of years. The time it took us to go from earth-bound to landing on the moon depends on when you started the clock. It could be millions of years, if you go from bipedal, tool-using creature. You could entertain the idea that the K-T extinction was an annihilation attempt ~65 million years ago.

Also from the link This doesn't mean that we haven't heard from other species because they have all been wiped out, the book argues. If even one species out there acts like this, it makes sense for all others to keep quiet, and not advertise their existence to others. However there is one factor that the book expands on, that though wiping out others before they can do the same to you is the most rational course of action, aliens may not do it for practical reasons. Say you send out a fleet of destroyers to another star system. By the time it gets there, your fleet will remain at the same technological level you sent it, while the people you are attacking will have advanced by centuries or even millenia. As such, it may be beneficial to most civilizations to simply sit out there like many other forms of benevolent lifeforms, all hiding themselves in the forest in fear.

! Moderator Note Which is irrelevant to my modnote. Shielding is off-topic (which is what I said) and arguing about it is off-topic.

My understanding of DF is the fear that one or more civilizations might want to wipe everyone out, not that all of them do. So it includes hiding from potential threats, and being hesitant to attack because the time (and therefore technology) lag. https://www.iflscience.com/the-dark-forest-hypothesis-an-unsettling-explanation-for-why-aliens-havent-made-contact--59407 None of that implies FTL travel.