swansont

US coins, other than steel pennies from WWII, aren't magnetic. So magnet fishing isn't using the right bait for those coins. (even nickels aren't magnetic. Ni-Cu alloys require at least 56% Ni to show ferromagnetism at normal temperatures, and the coin is 25% https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.38.828 )

Star Trek shares a similarity with AI - not based in facts, but generating vaguely plausible-sounding jargon. It’s fiction.

From what I read: The time is inferred from the Larmor precession of the spin in the magnetic field of the barrier, which is inferred from the spin measurement after tunneling. IOW the particles going in are prepared in a spin state (up) and the spin precesses in the barrier, which puts them in a mixed state of up and down. You measure the spins, and the ratio of up/down tells you how much precession occurred, which depends on how long they were in the barrier region. Without seeing the paper itself I don’t know more. Since only a fraction of particles tunnel, there might be some systematic effect in play. I don’t know if they looked at the reflected particles. How far does the particle penetrate before it’s reflected? Does the precession effectively change the barrier height? Steinberg has a good reputation in the AMO community, but I know that not everyone is convinced that Larmor time is a measurement of the tunneling time.

One might infer from this that it’s not a crisis Also, you wrote “science” instead of “cognitive science” but your examples do not give support to this issue outside that area (and political psychology? You’re really desperate for citations) At least one more. It’s not the number, it’s the credibility. Eyewitness testimony is among the least reliable in legal proceedings, because it’s often not reliable. Eyes can be deceived, memory is fluid, and, given your thesis here, you should be painfully aware that confirmation bias plays a role in. Bigfoot doesn’t exist until there is credible evidence that it does. Just like the unicorn and pegasus. A platypus seems fantastic but we can actually capture them. Other fantastic beasts leave behind skeletons. Actual physical evidence. —- Approaching this from another tack: if one wants to consider dualist and spiritualist approaches, or altered states of consciousness, what successes can you point to that use these to explain the world around us?

Agree. There were articles years ago about FTL signals through an atomic vapor (Lene Hau was one of the researchers) when all it was was the light pulse shape was changed; the peak of the pulse moved FTL but you couldn't say that any photon did. This sounds similar in nature.

Beavers that have been raised in captivity have been observed to build dam-like structures even when there is no water, so for them it seems the instinct in built-in.

Yes, and plants don’t move around. A bunch of trees is still rather porous, so there would need to be a bunch of water flowing through to make a reservoir. i.e . there’s water there already. Can one say for sure this wasn’t coincidental?

Beavers have a pretty small brain, but I suspect that any elephants’ blocking of waterways by pushing trees into it is accidental rather than instinct. Elephants require a lot of food, so they wander around. Triceratops probably were similar. What would be the advantage of a dam?

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Sure. You could find out what conditions feel hot and correlate it with many factors (age, sex, weight, climate they are acclimated to) but what you can’t do is objectively say that it is hot because you feel hot. Without details, I can’t comment on what that would tell you, other than some people have that experience. Same as above. The issue with mystical experiences is the attribution of the cause, not that some people have such an experience. But I can subject anyone to a temperature of 25C, while one generally can’t induce a mystical experience. By not being specific you’re potentially mixing scientific and non-scientific effects. This is just as bad as your extrapolation from a specific to general behavior. QM is based on probability so outcomes sometimes happen and sometimes not, but the math means you can predict outcomes with precision.

Science doesn’t do subjective reality. I can’t examine data that only you can see (i.e. a subjective experience) and you can’t have a law of nature that only works for some people. A rock either falls or it doesn’t. Atoms either form a compound or they don’t. You can have subjective experiences; 25 C might feel hot to you but not to someone else, but the temperature being 25 C is objectively true. You might not like that this is the case (subjective) but your preferences are not science.

You devise experiments that don’t depend on it. Your position seems to be that you can’t, and yet we have a while bunch of science that works, and we know it works because we build technology based on it. These things wouldn’t work if the science was flawed. Science has a number of questions that took a long time to answer, and many are still unanswered. Not having an answer is not evidence that bias is the reason for that. I’m not dialed in to the state of cognitive science, so I don’t know the details of why certain models are not considered or if they were and subsequently rejected, but the latter does happen — incorrect conjectures are discarded all the time when the model does not match the evidence, and it has nothing to do with bias.

Dawkins does not refute what? We’re talking about subjectivity, so he’s equating subjectivity with itself? Science can only study that which can be studied with the methods of science. It doesn’t study metaphysics because it can’t. You keep steering this back to consciousness, which is a tiny, tiny slice of science, and pretending this issue is representative. It’s not. It’s been pretty successful at it. IOW, your issue is with one topic, and have not shown this concern applies to the rest of science. Lack of success in one area does not mean the endeavor has failed overall. You act as if this issue is stopping all of science from progressing, which is ludicrous.

An issue with a loop is that it needs to match up with the wavelength of the signal you are trying to detect. A few cm should be fine for signals of order of a GHz or so (30 GHz has a wavelength of 1 cm) but as the mismatch grows the detector efficiency goes down.

Except you haven’t supported this idea for many disciplines. Not knowing the answer is an acceptable position in science. And they only discuss the brain with computer analogies? Even as they say it doesn’t work like a computer? You said you believed they did, so one infers that you have reasons for this belief. I don’t believe this, and further I believe they don’t, because intelligent, rational people likely understand that there is personal preference, which is subjective. If you contend something is true, you must have evidence which leads to that position. If people reject science then science is not imposing a view. At best, it is suggesting a view. But it’s not even doing that. It’s setting up the boundary of what it can investigate. What impact can this possibly have on identifying a rock or mineral? This is your contention, so you own the burden of proof. People had ideas and thoughts long before they had any clue whatsoever about how the mind worked, and have had mistaken ideas about how it works, so this doesn’t seem to be an impediment outside of this very narrow slice of science. If we overturn every mainstream idea about the brain tomorrow, will that somehow make E=mc^2 invalid?

10 microns is mid-IR, beyond the range of standard silicon photodiode; the energy is too low. You’d need a more exotic type, like HgCdTe, or possibly some other material. Hamamatsu is one company I recall that makes photodiodes. 10 microns is in the thermal IR range; bolometers are one detector that are used. Such as in IR cameras; I have one from FLIR that attaches to my iphone Pickup loops can be purchased; I recall being shown one that were marketed to people checking their microwave ovens for leakage. (the person showing it used it to detect pulses from a step motor in a watch)

Repeating this strawman does not make it true, but if there are things not materialistic and mechanistic, how would they manifest themselves in a way that can be objectively observed and measured? Which it doesn’t. Some people reject science. How does the issue of living and consciousness affect the study of chemistry, physics and geology? Or even biology, outside of neuroscience?

Especially relevant given all the empirical evidence to the contrary I would want evidence of this (they don’t believe the subjective exists? seriously?), but more to the point, these science folks are trained in is limited to biology, and the “four horsemen” discussion the had was about atheism. You’re making a massive and unsubstantiated extrapolation from a narrow field to all of science.

! Moderator Note Declaring things to be facts, that will not be disputed: not science. This is a discussion board, not your blog. Soapboxing is against our rules

Photodiodes are directional. Even more selective if there’s a lens in front of it, so off-axis rays can miss the diode. The casing is opaque, so flipping it won’t allow light in. For microwaves you can build a loop antenna. A mask behind it would eliminate signal if it were flipped.

Then it’s not an indictment of science in general, as you had suggested, but about one slice of science. As I said, your beef seems to be much more focused, but you are not presenting your arguments that way. Physics, in particular, incorporates concepts that are readily admitted to not be real. Reality is not the goal; the outcomes are real, but the models are not necessarily based on any reality, since it doesn’t matter to the outcome. Newtonian gravity tells us that an object accelerates according to a = GM/r^2. It doesn’t explain the reality of why or how. Just the result. Physics is lots of fun. I got paid to teach it, which I enjoyed, and later play with expensive toys which was even more so. But electric fields, and phonons, etc are not real They are calculational tools. QM describes things as a continuous field of operators on an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. Is that the reality of what you are? Science assumes there is an objective reality that can be measured, but you have to accept the measurement part of that if you’re discussing science. If you can’t measure it, it’s not science. If you can, then measure it and compete with the existing paradigm and see what gives the best result.

It’s because F= GMm/r^2 Physicists quantify things, which is usually required to solve problems, so they typically use math as a basis for understanding. Not “visualizations”

Why should it be? If you can’t justify the effort, complaining that it’s not done isn’t a good-faith argument But also way too general. As I mentioned above, you need to justify the reason some other approach should be used, especially at the expense of the one with an excellent track record. You needto bring something to the party. Reality? We’re talking about science.

Which is it? That we haven’t considered all the evidence, or that there needs to be a broader look at the evidence? If it’s the former, what evidence hasn’t been considered? If it’s the latter, what is it about the conclusion that suggests a broader look is needed? You seem to have a beef with one narrow area of science but are extrapolating this beef onto the whole endeavor, and I haven’t been able to eliminate the scenario where you are blaming bias for people not being credulous about your approach to the topic.

This would be reinventing the wheel. How does a paper on holism help me align a laser into an optical fiber? What bias has been introduced?