Sayonara

While you wait for replies I suggest searching the forums, as we have had many a discussion on the MM experiment. Some of those threads may help.

It seems like he is saying, in a VERY roundabout and complicated way, that a compound made up of the elements A, B, and C will always yield those elements in the same proportion. For example, 1 molecule of triose will always break down to 3 carbon, 3 oxygen, and 2 hydrogen. Increase the number of molecules of triose, and you increase the number of atoms of the elements that make up those molecules accordingly, but they remain in the same proportion.

Lance, you are repeating the same tactic here that has led you into these protracted arguments in many other threads. I have no idea why this thread in particular has resulted in everyone deciding not to let it slide any more, but I can point to the nature of the problem for you. You take a set of data and draw an inference from it. This is absolutely fine. You then skip a number of steps ahead, disregarding necessary tests of the involved proposals. This is NOT fine. You then declare by fiat a conclusion based on those proposals, disguising the declaration as the logical conclusion of the arguments, and refuse to acknowledge valid objections. This too is very much NOT fine. The approach is unscientific and disingenuous, and you have a nerve levelling the same accusation at the people who have spent their free time discussing the issue in this thread. There have been several warnings, which were all ignored. The result is that this thread is now closed.

So basically, what you are saying is that you have made your point, and that you don't have anything scientific to bring to the table. Thread closed.

From his posts, I am going to go with absolutely none. He does not seem to be interested at all in the various suicidal mind-sets and is instead focusing on broadly-harvested percentages from data which has lost all granularity. I tried to point this out to him a couple of posts ago, but he has ignored and hand-waved his way around it, as usual. Well, that explains a lot. Someone who is serious about killing themselves will not change their mind just because they cannot get a gun. As has been repeatedly stated in this thread, the vast majority of "failed suicides" are from habitual repeat practitioners who know perfectly well that the method they choose will not kill them before any medical intervention is carried out. They have no intention of dying, which is why we all keep putting "failure" in quotation marks. Did you not wonder about that? Your high-level data ("90% of ALLLLLL suicide attempts!") does not have enough granularity to show these details, and that is why your conclusions are erroneous. Flawed assumptions; flawed argument. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. That is not the argument, so your red herring is actually a straw herring. Yes, assuming you see increased creativity as being "substantial positive results".

So basically, you are going to cut and run, being incapable of or unwilling to demonstrate your argument in any rational and logically constructed fashion. You then plan to come back in a short time, when we have all forgotten the mundane blip on the radar that was your undemonstrated proclamation, and cite the lack of replies to this thread as some kind of ultimate "prooooof!!!!!!!1112" that you are right, whereas the cold harsh reality is that nobody here has the inclination to reply to a topic which doesn't make any scientific or even pseudoscientific proposals, and where there is no requirement for refutation. I have to say that is a tremendous plan. It must make you feel very intelligent coming up with that. Certainly it has put all of modern science to shame, the fools.

Or you could re-read. You seem to do a lot of overlooking and I am not going to get into the habit of repeating everything I say to you just to get a response.

We are not being "emotional" or "prejudiced", we are pointing out the shortcomings in the way you interpret the data. I don't think any of us are on the NRA payroll. You are being most uncooperative. I notice that as usual you ignore the parts of my posts where I suggest factors which are significant in demonstrating the veracity of your case.

Lance seems so dead set on the idea that the USA's figures prove his hypothesis, that he is ignoring alternative explanations to the extent that he dismisses any data supporting the alternatives (e.g. the Japan data). I have to say that the vast majority of the suicides which occur in the UK on a day to day basis are executed without the use of a firearm. Usually it is some kind of ligature, the front of a train, or a nice long fall. I have responded to plenty myself, and believe me they are very very effective methods for those who are serious about ending it all. It is not a trivial matter to change one's mind when one is liberally scattered over a large area of ground. The "failure" rate is easily explained by a lack of conviction on the part of the attemptee, and this is well documented, understood, and handled by all the mental health, social support, and medical agencies who deal with the depressed every single day. This failure rate is usually down to one of three factors (incompetence, pathological compulsion, or the fact that it was simply a cry for help), and the latter two take the vast majority. Neither has anything whatsoever to do with the availability of firearms. Taking no other data than that already presented in the thread, the correlation between increased suicide rates and poor gun control is just as easily ascribed to social misery as it is to a direct link. Perhaps people are more likely to top themselves when they live in a culture where any half-witted idiot or mentalist can buy a gun and slaughter a class of school-children. Just a thought. The OP's hypothesis is in serious need of substantial scientific support.

Incidentally, you cannot make this claim without more detailed data. You seem to be completely ignoring the successful suicide attempts which occur without any firearms involvement whatsoever, which means you cannot have considered whether firearms access plays any kind of role there at all. Perhaps I need to re-read the thread, but I don't recall you dealing with this aspect at all, or producing data which would specifically and conclusively support that claim. No matter how many times you repeat "the data clearly shows", you cannot circumvent the holes which result from a poor analysis of that data.

That correlation may lead you to deduce that tighter gun control reduces suicide rates, but it is not necessarily a direct or even indirect consequence of said control. Have you checked to see how these states compare in terms of the proportion of suicides (attempts and successes) where a gun was used as the method? That might be closer to the mark. "The data clearly shows..." is only a good phrase to use when the data can only support one conclusion, so I think it's fair to say there is an element of pot, kettle going on there. One doesn't take a correlation and simply decide on a causal factor which suits one's beliefs. p.s. This thread is on suicide watch. That means that if it recycles, it will probably get locked.

The model proposed in this thread (or rather, lack thereof) doesn't meet any of the standards we expect on SFN. It does not qualify as science or even pseudoscience. Nor does it speculate, other than to say "I disagree". Opinions are fine, but they need to be backed up with something other than denial or random analogies.

I think the problem we have there is that any evidence for it would be unlikely to survive the test of time. I don't think there is anything wrong with setting a limit such as your 50 million years based on what we do know, as long as we acknowledge the uncertainty in the figure with a caveat.

Lance, I don't understand your thought processes at all. You say you see my point that we cannot be sure, then on the very next line you state that near intelligence has only arisen in the past 50 million years, as if it is a flat fact.

Fossils aren't the best way to establish the intelligence of every animal that has ever lived, especially when we are talking about this "near intelligence" (which you introduced), or intelligences which are measured differently to our own. I'm quite sure you realise I am not saying you are wrong. I am simply saying we can't know if you are right.

I think it would help the posters with vested opinions in this thread if they got some practical experience of dealing with suicidal people. Even if it's just voluntary work on the phones at a hotline; it doesn't have to be talking someone down off a roof or trying to establish what pills someone has taken (which unfortunately is standard fare for me these days).

Just to be clear, I wasn't making any judgement about the accuracy of the comment; that is what replies like yours in a threaded discussion are for.

We can't say "less than" here; that's speculation.

I don't see why that comment should lead to this topic being locked.

Thread closed. Reasons: 1) Adds nothing that has not already been covered here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2941 2) Same post was made to that thread 15 minutes before this thread was created. Replies have been moved to the other thread.

Agreed.

I agree with the civilisation point. There is a difference between considering a pre-industrial sub-civilisation, and considering a fully-fledged species level civ which has the capacity to communicate with other worlds.

IOW, "sometimes a particular reason can be ascribed to a behaviour". IT'S LIKE MAGIC.

Me too Mooey.

Analogies which ignore 99% of the data are not really a good start, are they?