John Cuthber

Do you agree that an islander posting a notice saying "I can see blue eyes " has the same effect as the traveller ? Proof by induction is the root of the unexpected hanging paradox. It gives the wrong answer.

Immortal, I can count the letters etc. in your post. I can do some maths along the lines of k ln(w). I can calculate the entropy. In short, I can make measurements on it. I could also add entropy to it by randomly scrambling parts of it. At some point it would become meaningless. I can ascribe a measure of how much meaning it conveys by how much entropy I need to add etc. A cheap joke here would be to say it was meaningless before I started, but I will resist that. More importantly, I think you need to do more than simply state "meaning is not measurable", you need to show that it is actually true. (otherwise the cheap joke is true) "The origin of the forerunners is the main problem." Not really. because they could have been truly bloody awful at their job so they could have been pretty much anything. That's the beauty of evolution- it just gets better. ". You're still finding it hard to distinguish redness from a photon, there is no such thing as a red photon, redness exist in the mind." Utter bollocks. I don't have any difficulty with that distinction. It seem you just won't accept it. I agree that, strictly speaking it is true- albeit not in the usual use of language- no photon is red. Not least, because, by the time the brain perceives it, the poton no longer exists. "Redness" is a set of patterns in the neurons of the brain. That pattern is a real physical thing in just the same way that a 700nm wavelength photon is a real thing. As I pointed out, Mary could experience redness in a way which would let her recognise something as "red", even if no red photon had ever met her eye. That's because "redness" is a thing that can be copied (in principle, but not in practice- yet!). I'm quite happy with the idea of non overlapping magesteria. The problem is that, as far as I can tell, one of those realms is the empty set. (And religion is welcome to it, as long as it keeps out of the real world.)

OK, a couple of points. 1 I misread the "given" answer so ignore what I said about who dies first. Secondly, I'm still not sure that the traveller gives them any information. How about this version. The tribe, their island and the taboo are all the same as before. I'm a thief and I have heard that the tribe has gold and I want to steal it. The tribe has another new policy that makes it difficult for me. Any "newcomer" is accompanied by a minder while he is on the island. the minder's job is to discourage breaches of the taboo. It's an easy job- if you mention eye colour he cuts your head off with an axe. No court- no appeal- no exception. But I still want the gold. So I dress up as an anthropologist and I visit the island. I talk to them about dull safe stuff like farming practice for a while. At the end of the day I get some whisky out of my bag and pass it round. Over a few drinks I tell them about another tribe I studied in the past. This tribe were foresters. They lived in an isolated forest fed by a spring in the middle of the desert. There was one odd thing about them; some of them had a red birth-make in the middle of their back. This didn't matter much because their local lore forbade any mention of birthmarks. Also, anyone who found out that they had a birth mark had to kill themselves. So did anyone who found out for sure that they did not have such a mark. I then explained that I'm not studying the foresters any more. They died because one day one of their number got a bit depressed and left a note on the local notcie board. It said "I can see that some people here have birthmarks". Then I went back to my tent and, in the dead of night, I ran away and hid for a hundred days or so. I went back and took the gold without any difficulty because the Islanders were all dead. Here's why. In the morning they sobered up. They realised that their situation was practically the same as the foresters (after all- they do have perfect logic once they are sober). They realised that there was already enough information on the Island to lead to their deaths. The notice board had told the foresters that one of them could see some birthmarks. But the notice board didn't offer any new information- it was written by one of them and it said something which they already knew was not just true, but obvious. Having perfect logic the islanders realised that if they knew that someone knew about blue eyes then they were doomed. They didn't need to know who it was or how they came to this knowledge. It didn't matter if it was a traveller or an islander. As soon as they all knew that someone knew, they had about 14 weeks left. But they also knew that 1 they could see plenty of blue eyes. and 2 Others round them could see plenty of blue eyes. So , with perfect logic, they deduced that everyone on the island was already in the same position as the traveller. They all knew it so nobody had to say anything. They could, with their perfect logic, deduce it. So they died shortly afterwards. But hang on. Nobody told them anything. I (sneaky bastard that I am) made sure I never mentioned eye colour- because my minder would have killed me. I didn't provide them with any more information. Apart from anything else- the foresters were not real. I made them up just so I could get the gold. If I can work that out- motivated by greed, they could work it out too, because they have perfect logic. They would have no choice but to work it out. They would have worked it out before I got there. (after all, I brought them no new information) They would have died out before I or the traveller arrived. Sorry it's a bit long winded. The bit about the whisky is just a ruse to stop them killing me immediately. It's not vital to the plot as long as the only thing on the island with a death penalty is being an outsider who talks about eye colour. It also wouldn't matter if they killed me, by then it's too late, but it spoils my fun. Have I missed something or would the islanders automatically die out 100 days or so after their "society" was set up as described in the puzzle?

I have produced crystals of boric acid like those in the picture. I did it when I was a school kid "playing " with chemistry so it certainly isn't difficult. Exactly what did you do that didn't work?

There are two separate aspects to the latest bit of this discussion. I cannot verify someone's asserted credentials. I do not care. If I claimed to have a Ph.D. I could probably get away with it. People might very well believe it. It works both ways. If someone says something dumb, it really doesn't matter if they have a Ph.D. or not.

Any evidence that this might ever happen?

I could answer that but aiding a suicide isn't legal.

Does Matthew have anything to say about self righteousness? "I did put evidence. If I didn't then that was in another topic. Tell me if I did put it in another topic." Stop being all talk and no trousers and cite that evidence (again if you cited it before). Please note that the bible is not evidence. "Good post. I'm not sure how someone could press the minus. " I worked it out.

Reliably pointing a telescope in the right direction would also be a bit tricky.

OK, I deserved that. Now, can anyone tell me what OEI means in the context of this thread?

Nope, sorry. 72 is my IQ. And I think stringjunky has a point.

I'm not sure, but I think it might be a more efficient way of finding the number of factors of a number than the obvious (find them all then count them). However, finding the number of factors of a number is not something I have ever had occasion to do. (As opposed to finding what the factors actually are which is relatively useful) For example for a large number that is of the form 2^n X 3^m where n and m are large, it's quicker to find n and m than to try to divide the large number by all integers less than it's square root (though there must be better algorithms than that). It seems to work best for number with a few prime factors raised to large powers- and those are rare.

There are a number of rules here. If you break them then the mods point it out. What did you expect? That's what you signed up to. Had you forgotten- or did you think the rule about "no preaching" didn't apply to you? (On a related matter, what part off "do not reply to this modnote" did you not understand? It's not a thing about religious people- there are plenty of them here. It's a thing about the utter waste of time that arises when "believers" keep on stating their opinion as if it's a fact and don't (or won't) realise that no book is evidence. It just degenerates into a childish argument "It Is!" "No it Isn't!" so it's sensible to ban it from the start.

Some of that investigation might not take long "Beginning in 1975, Meier says he began his official contacts ("official" in that evidence was to be provided publicly, unlike earlier contacts), communicating both directly (face-to-face) and by telepathy with a core group of the Pleiadians/Plejaren, or Errans as he also refers to them (Erra being their home planet), who gave their names as "Ptaah", "Semjase",[9] "Quetzal" and "Pleja",[10] among numerous others. According to Meier himself in the video documentary 'Contact', he says that his first contact with extraterrestrials began on January 28, 1975." from Wiki

Do you plan, at any stage, to criticize the liar who started this thread by making a false allegation, then casting aspersions on our maturity? The victims of that slur are PEOPLE too.

What is a "Flux compression event"?

The fact that it seems to have been created as a jpeg file shows that, at some time, it was a digital image. The thing about digital images is that they may have little or nothing to do with reality. Someone could have just messed about with photoshop and some pictures to make something "mysterious". How much effort s it worth spending on this?

FFS there are hundreds of things in the bible that do not make sense. Here's just one of the first mentioned on that web site. EXO 15:3 The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. ROM 15:33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen. So is God a God of peace or a God of war. He can't be both. How about MAT 1:16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. LUK 3:23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli. Who was Joseph's father? Was it Jacob or was it Heli? Again, they can't both be correct. That's not an issue of miracles- it's bollocks. And those are just 2 of the first examples among hundreds. How can you pretend the Bible doesn't contradict itself Re. "Exactly. Later you say that just writing stuff down doesn't make it evidence. So where?" From observation. For example the observed way in which the horizon recedes as you get higher up shows that the earth is round, provided that you can understand the maths. You plainly don't, or won't understand what an un-evinced statement is. Saying "Only a god could have done it" is not evidence, never mind proof. You need to explain why it could only have been a God. "You can't see that far because of the fog. How can you see that the earth is round, if you can't see far enough to see it recede? " How far is the horizon from ten feet up? You can calculate that from the equations in WIKI. Now, since in that picture you can clearly see further than that before the fog obscures things your argument is just plain wrong. If you won't actually think about this sort of thing there's not a lot of point to you posting here.

What does OIE mean?

Indeed, so you just made the problem 20,000 to 1,000,000 times worse by using radio waves. You now need a mirror 1,000,000,000,000 metres across to "see" the earth with a 1 m resolution from Pluto using 50cm radio waves. And Pluto is a lot closer than most of us might expect to find any little green men. Essentially the numbers get silly here because the resolution is comparable with the wavelength- so the size of the mirror has to be comparable with the distance. Can we go back to visible light please? For visible light- say half a micron, and a resolution of 1 metre the ratio of the (Earth to "ET with a telescope") distance to the "size of his telescope" is something like 2,000,000 If he's a kilometre away he needs a telescope with an aperture of about a 2millionth of a kilometre to resolve a 1 metre object. - about half a millimetre aperture. Our eyes have pupils something like 10 times that so we should theoretically be just about able to see a 1 metre object at 10Km. Sounds like roughly the right order of magnitude- perhaps a bit optimistic but our eyes are not perfect. If Mr ET is near alpha centauri he would need a 'scope with a mirror about 4X10^10 metres across. And he would need to make it the right shape to an accuracy of better than about 0.5 of a micron across that whole surface. That's quite a challenge.

Only as far as the diagram.

With a fobbing drink you are trying to let gas through, but not liquid. That's a solved problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore-Tex But that still leaves the problem of how to drink the product. You would need a second path as Swansont says. And that leaves the question of stopping that opening from fobbing. BTW, is a Nisky alum like chrome alum?

OK, for a start I already showed you where. It's really helpful if you look at things. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html#contradictions This "Science is true, but it could not have come with out a god"is an un-evinced statement. It doesn't get close to counting as evidence. Science can, perfectly easily be true without a God. I said it because it answers your question. Yes, I see it gets foggier as you look at stuff that's further away. And that has nothing to do with the issues. The fact is that you have chosen to show the view from a tall building because, unless you are high up, you can't usually see far enough for that fogging to be visible. You have just proved my point. You can see further from higher up. The way in which the horizon recedes as you go up is dependent on the curvature of the earth. Have a look here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon So, by studying how far away you can see things ( of known heights) you can tell not only that the world is round, but how big it is. As I said, you have done the experiment- but you didn't understand the answer. Perhaps you have not spent enough time reading the right books. I am still waiting for the paragraph that rebuts my view that it's silly to believe a book that claims to be the work of God, just because it says it is. And, though the questions were not really directed to me. Who gets to decide which beliefs are respected and which are not? Re. "Evidence from where" Anywhere. You just need to realise that simply writing something down doesn't make it evidence. So the bible is not evidence any more than Lord of the rings is evidence of trolls, magic rings etc.

I don't think that using mercury would work. Under any conditions where mercury reacts with oxygen (i.e. rather hot), the mercury oxide would react with hydrogen and give water. This pair of reactions would give out heat and would soon cause the gas mixture to explode. Some sort of membrane separator would be the way to go but the "traditional" way to do it is to use a hot palladium membrane and that would catalyse the reaction of H2 and O2 to form water. Part of the problem you face is that mixtures of H2 and O2 are damnable dangerous= people try to avoid producing them so relatively little work will have been done on separating them.

loc cit Failure-of-Rossis-Energy-Catalyzer-Caught-on-Video http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/Failure-of-Rossis-Energy-Catalyzer-Caught-on-Video.shtml There's not a lot you could add to that.