Phi for All

The first time I heard someone arguing for a FE, it was a religious argument that went beyond eccentric. From everything I've seen lately, the religious perspective has been spread by the popularity of YouTube. Like creationists before them, the FE proponents add in a slurry of misunderstood science and flat out lies to fool those who know no better.

I just went through this in April too, and I can attest that the one-eye-covered part is the worst! Reading should never make one nauseous unless it's the news.

Evidence shows there are some measurable effects: The brain grows in size: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121008082953.htm The brain is better integrated: https://news.psu.edu/story/334349/2014/11/12/research/learning-languages-workout-brains-both-young-and-old

It seems like they're just re-phrasing what most scientists know, that our current models (and our understanding of the universe) aren't complete. New data has shown this hasn't changed. Popular science articles never seem to tire of using sensational headlines that make it sound like everything we know is wrong. I think it's because there are a LOT of folks who would like that to be true, because everything we know is an awful lot of complex information to learn. If all of it were wrong, we'd all be back at square one, in their minds. Seems that way to me, sometimes.

! Moderator Note This is a science discussion forum. Proof is for maths and philosophy. What you haven't done is support your arguments with more than hand-waiving and aggressive assertion you can't back up. Your extraordinary claims haven't been supported with extraordinary evidence. And you really need to dial back on the uncivil tone. It's unnecessary and provocative and makes it look like you're trying to bully rather persuade people who are used to using reason. More rigor, or more of your posts go to Trash.

! Moderator Note Hyperbole and ranting don't work well with discussion forums, especially science discussion forums. You need to step up or step out.

! Moderator Note If you can't be bothered with scientific rigor, perhaps you need to keep searching for a forum that accepts your lazy arguments. It's not this one.

! Moderator Note I believe you can try to persuade us with evidence, rather than forcing acceptance and ranting like some kind of cult leader. No need to respond, I'm not a participant in this thread, I'm moderating it for reported rules violations.

! Moderator Note I warned you about this kind of crap here. You need to stop attacking people personally. If you have evidence to support this kind of statement, then please provide it, otherwise you're just trolling, soapboxing, and being abusive. It needs to stop now.

! Moderator Note You're going to need a WHOLE LOT MORE than your personal incredulity in order to continue making statements and assertions like this. This is a science discussion site, and we require EVIDENCE to support the things we assert.

! Moderator Note This part is unacceptable here, as it violates our civility rules. We attack ideas here, not people, not groups of people, not ever. Attack ideas, that's what discussion is for.

! Moderator Note Waaaay too personal. Attack ideas, please, not people.

Just saw a documentary about a male spider that's evolved a red face to make the voracious females hesitate just long enough so they don't get eaten immediately. She first assesses whether they're poisonous or not, then decides if they're pretty enough to mate with. If not, she eats them anyway!

I hope his expansion of the IRS will include efforts to remove private interests from the relationship between the average citizen and their government. Those private interests are the ones who lobby to make the tax structure far more complicated than it needs to be to force People to use accountants and services like TurboTax and H&R Block. The IRS (I think it was Hassan Minhaj on The Patriot Act where I heard this) has the ability to simply send us a bill (or a refund check) based on the records they keep, and you would only send in a return if your figures were different. I can't help but think how Republicans of 30 years ago would have jumped on board wholeheartedly wrt infrastructure. What's happened to them? Biden obviously wants to put a LOT of people to work, fix a bunch of roads and bridges, and today's GOP is shaking their heads like it's a bad thing. Are they still fixated on building walls? Every Republican friend I have has been raging about fixing infrastructure as long as I've known them, and I can see it in their faces that their current leadership is leaving them baffled as to why they don't want to work on roads and bridges. And I'm so glad about the family and education support. This is why a society has a government in the first place, imo, to provide a high base level of opportunity for as many of its People as possible. The US has a VERY big ignorance problem right now, and better education has to be a priority.

You seem like you're going out of your way to be "difficult to understand", despite the evidence that your points are being lost, and that at one point you were concerned about it.

! Moderator Note Please open another thread for a different topic. "Solid evidence" means you're no longer talking about conspiracies.

! Moderator Note In this section, you need to show us why we should bother to redefine concepts that are already well understood in favor of your idea. So far, it seems like you simply ran into some social science you didn't understand, and rather than ask questions until you did, you chose to make up this stuff instead. So please show us why it's not only necessary, but should replace the science we have.

This is basically correct. And the BB theory doesn't quite go all the way back to t=0, so not only can we not know anything about the universe prior to that time, it's also, by definition, NOT "the creation". There you go, trying to describe pre-BB existence again, even though you said you assumed it's unknowable. 😁 "Beyond our physics" isn't a valuable phrase. We exceed our own knowledge on a minute-by-minute basis, and expressing our best current explanations as theory allows us to constantly update the sum total. "Just popped into existence" is particularly unhelpful when trying to map all the variables that went into the LCDM model. It's inaccurate, misleading, and trivializes the rigor with which these calculations are currently applied. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with it, but like any theory it has its areas of application, and it has its limits (extrapolating back to the moment of the Big Bang using GR yields infinite temperatures and densities before we actually get to t=0).

VenusPrincess has been banned for continued breaking of the rules on civility and bad faith arguments.

I'm sure you have some unevidenced position that lets you define "this" in a way that's only meaningful to you. Your statement has no reasoning behind it, it's vague and retaliatory, and just like conspiracy arguments, it has no evidence to lend it credibility. Or were you waving your hands goodbye?

! Moderator Note This kind of waving-hands bullshit doesn't fly here. You've made multiple extraordinary claims with no intention of backing any of them up (not like you really could, since so many are incorrect) even after being told to do so or be in violation of our rules. We don't skimp on rigor in discussion here, and your style of making unevidenced claims as an argument against current mainstream explanations simply isn't worth the time it takes to respond to you. Nobody is learning anything from your posts except the bizarre things you believe. Evidence is the key here; if you post again on this forum, please use some to support your statements. Any more of this style will be fodder for the Trash Can. Thread closed.

! Moderator Note This question is for members only. Anyone who joins to answer this with a link to commercial software will be spam-banned.

! Moderator Note This, among other posts, is an example of bad faith arguments. You appear to have no intention of supporting your extraordinary assertions with even a minimal amount of evidence, let alone the extraordinary amounts it should take. You mention "skews" and "rapes" and "flaws" that show a limited understanding of the science involved. You make statements when you should be removing ignorance with questions. Step up the rigor or this gets shut down. This is a SCIENCE discussion forum.

This is why conspiracy is exactly the wrong thing to promote. It preys on a natural suggestibility we have when we don't feel comfortable, and reduces the standards we normally hold ourselves to. If a conspiracy had any actual evidence, it would be admissible in a court. It could be shown to have happened. It would no longer be just a conspiracy. But since it has nothing real to support it, those proposing it rely on suggestion and misdirection to form fallacious arguments, the only kind they can support ("Science can't explain why Polaris remains perfectly aligned above the North Pole without a flat Earth").

As soon as conspiracy enters these debates ("Scientists are deceiving us with this round Earth lie"), facts, logic, and critical thinking take a second place to suspicion, fear-mongering, and incredulity. If a person's biases become even more strongly confirmed in the face of facts that show how wrong they are, that person isn't being rational, and further debate with them is pointless. Something besides a conversation is needed to help them.