swansont

! Moderator Note If you have a new proposal, post it in speculations. But post the science, not a promise of what you will post later.

! Moderator Note Posting to advertise your youtube channel violates rule 2.7 Also, this is a discussion board, not your blog

That is in support Schrödinger’s point, but OTOH the demarcation line of systems behaving in a QM fashion moves toward larger systems as people gain expertise and the equipment gets better.

None, of this clarifies what you mean by "experiment" (or worse, "pure experiment" — what is a "pure experiment"?) and why observations don't count under that category. If I observe cloud-chamber tracks and identify particles, is that an experiment? And to extend this: every new observation/experiment is a test of the validity of the axioms. So even though an axiom can't be proven true (which is something one must deal with in math) in science you can potentially falsify anything you have provisionally accepted as being true.

Which didn't originate with Stigler, of course

It was his wife's cat

! Moderator Note We'd prefer if responses were well above the "Goop line" of credibility and rigor.

Drakes has been banned as a sockpuppet of Delberty

! Moderator Note That’s what blogs are for.

! Moderator Note Please stick to the topic

! Moderator Note What is the point of discussion here? Anecdotes are not a substitute for peer-reviewed journal articles.

Is there some reason a standard test tube rack will not work?

I don’t see how. AFAIK that’s so you don’t crack the windshield

That’s a very narrow view of “experiment”

They debunked something, but it wasn’t the Mpemba effect. The original observation was about a hot liquid freezing faster than a cool one, and this article limits itself to cooling. Also, they fall into the Mythbuster trap - that because they couldn’t replicate an effect with poorly defined initial conditions, that the myth is busted, rather than admitting that they haven’t explored all of the possible situations. It’s tied in with “X can happen” vs “X must happen”. Only the latter can be excluded by such attempts at replication

“God” is not a testable hypothesis, and therefore, not science.

You keep using "scale" so this doesn't solve the confusion about how you are using the term. If length were scaled, interactions would change. The Coulomb interaction, which varies as 1/r^2, would change relative to the magnetic interaction, which scales as 1/r^3 (for a dipole). Which means that the Hyperfine splitting (magnetic) would change at a different rate than the energy-level spacing (electrostatic). Certain molecular bonds vary differently with distance, so you wouldn't necessarily get the same chemistry. Given that we have not unified the gravitational interaction with the others, I don't see what the basis is for this confidence that GR tells you anything about other interactions. Changing gravity would have no known effect on the other interactions. The dynamics of stellar and planetary evolution would change, of course, because multiple interactions are present. Further, space has the same laws everywhere because momentum is conserved (and vice-versa) — the laws are symmetric under translational symmetry. If this were not true, we would be able to see the effect, and we don't see it. The above-mentioned hyperfine transition in hydrogen would be an obvious thing to check, but no, we see 1420 MHz coming from everywhere (adjusted for known effects, of course)

This seems contradictory. You say you are scaling the length, but then you are saying you aren't scaling the length.

You keep using that word, but it makes no sense. If you scale length by a factor of 2, there are other parameters that do not scale by a factor of 2. If you are simply changing the value of all terms as you might if you went from MKS to cgs (or other) units, that's not scaling.

That's not really helpful, nor is it consistent with "things that are bad to the species, individuals, or the commonweal." You were obviously describing effects and not the philosophy itself. And if this is the stance, instead of "good" perhaps we describe it as "valid" so that we are separating ourselves from subjective descriptions. To first order this is probably a decent distinction

motlan suspended for spamming us with variations on rigor-free time reversal ideas

We shouldn't ponder things that might be bad? How else do you prevent them from happening? Isn't pondering bad things that you might prevent them good for the species? Having knowledge and using knowledge are two different things. Which brings us back to the poll. I would divide things between useful and not-useful. Good and bad are somewhat arbitrary distinctions. Eise mentioned fission. I'll make it simpler: the knife. Is it good or bad? People use it as a weapon, but surgeons use it to save lives. A lot of people use them to prepare food. I don't think you'll ever get a clear answer because good vs bad is too simplistic a distinction and driven by context, IMO. "Unchecked by philosophical concerns" doesn't cut it, I think. You can't know the results of an experiment when you are delving into new territory, and can't know how people will use the resulting scientific knowledge. All we know is "here be dragons" probably applies.

You don't seem to be using this consistently. Scaling something up or down is not the same as using a different set of units.

What errors does this introduce, and how big are they? You can solve for the effects when you accelerate an electron, for instance. You say this, but have not actually shown it to be true. You have not done any analysis of the light path in the moving frame when accounting for the motion of the light. edit to add: consider light traveling vertically and hitting a small aperture. If that frame is moving to the right, the light also has a component of motion to the right — it still hits the aperture. (this has empirical support) Your assertion that the light would escape appears to fail to take this into account.

Except for the instances where they have. Special relativity, for example. Virtual photons, in the case of E&M phenomena. Can you show, starting from “God did it” that the electrostatic force is 1/r^2?