Phi for All

Can you define how you're using "believed" in this context? Is this a gut feeling, wishful thinking, makes perfect sense? Or is this a belief based on evidence and observation, something you could actually trust? I have a hard time with the word "true", since it's often used subjectively, and gets defined however the user wants. Your "truth" could be that the QAnon people are right.

China: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/04/942777448/chinese-moon-probe-to-return-lunar-samples-back-to-earth Japan: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-special-delivery-japan-space-probe.html

Your reasoning is flawed. "Nothing exists as potential" was the statement, and you obviously have no argument against such a basic definition, so you CHANGED THE ARGUMENT into "Potential doesn't exist", which is ridiculous. This is a classic Strawman fallacy. You can't refute the original statement, so you build a man of straw who is much easier to knock down. Now is the time for you to be receptive to modifying your understanding. Are you willing to be enlightened, or are you going to shrug this off? How do you expect to learn with this kind of behavior? I predict (based on observation) that you won't concede even this basic point, but will instead insist on forcing us to accept the sloppy definition of potential you've adopted to make your argument work.

The Religion section is a better place to make the argument. Evolution isn't magic.

No, he's not, and I pointed out both places where he's using sloppy definitions to make his argument seem worthy. Nothing exists as potential. Potential requires that it doesn't exist yet. You're wrong here, as well. There is NOTHING in nature that can't be explained without an intelligent designer.

Poor reasoning. Potential is defined as being capable of existence WHILE NOT YET BEING IN EXISTENCE. Nothing "exists" as potential.

I think you're talking about intelligence in general, but want to apply the argument specifically to human intelligence, which is far from normal or general. When you then switch gears to Intelligent Design, I sense you're arguing in bad faith. ID is an attempt to teach the Christian bible in US schools alongside science. There is no trustworthy science added to the curriculum. The high degree of intelligence present in (most) humans is due to many factors coming together to favor such. It had much more to do with cooking our food than with worshipping sky spirits.

Inventing fractions is impressive, but cutting things up is more concrete than abstract, imo. But I didn't realize they had a concept of zero, and while "no apples" is an observable phenomenon even in ancient times, it took a while for early societies to represent it in their maths. So yes, perhaps better than I originally implied.

! Moderator Note If this turns into an advertisement for a product or service, I'll throw it in the Trash. If this can be discussed without violating our rules against advertising, please continue.

They were predictive when it came to numbers, but not in any abstract way. They knew about time, and the stars, and could predict eclipses. They built huge granaries to fill against future needs, which is smart. Their methodology was based on concrete observations or religious requirements (didn't they invent astrology?). They lacked the abstract thought required to say, observe a person who is ill, and predict a remedy based on what's noted. IIRC, it was the gods who made people sick in their society, so perhaps that accounts for part of why they didn't develop a better scientific method.

Your old account got banned due to your flipping out at one point over some topic, instead of for persistent rules violations. When you finally approached staff asking for another chance, we decided to wait and see if your style has improved. It's not up to me, an Admin would have to make the changes, but I'm inclined to think you're focusing more on the name and less on why you're being allowed to stay despite opening sockpuppet accounts. Will a name change improve the science in your posts? I think the whole staff is still on the fence wrt to this current account. You still have a tendency towards lazy methodology, but you seem more receptive to mainstream explanations, at least. We all figured you were young when you first joined, and perhaps had a bad patch, so you got a second chance.

You guys are applying Relativity to a purely pre-classical situation. The problem with Babylonian science is they had no predictive power. They were inventive mathematicians but they didn't do much abstract thinking, and as an early culture, they mixed their religions in with their science, which is rarely helpful. WRT "not subscribing" to modern science, I look to medicine. Ancient remedies have become modern ones, except we've used what we've learned over the millennia to remove what isn't necessary. Why would we want to eat the whole plant when a derivative of one of its parts is what cures us?

How long would it take you to make me one of your chessboards with an axe? And don't look at your watch! Use a water clock, or an orrery, or something ancient.

Spacetime curves due to mass and energy, but it doesn't have to do so gently. Consider tossing a baseball on the Earth's surface, or what happens to spacetime too near a black hole. That curvature of spacetime is what we perceive as gravity. Three spatial dimensions and a temporal one is the continuum we call spacetime. It's a coordinate system we can use to plot when and where in the universe an event happens. Matter has mass, mass curves spacetime. But the dimensions would still be there without the matter, so it's not a natural extension of them. There isn't a way anybody could possibly know anything about a time before the Big Bang. Our best maths fizzle out before we can get all the way back to t=0, where the heat and densities destroy any information we might be able to get. A model is the maths a theory is based on. Do you have a model, or want help with a model? You may have some gaps in your science you've filled in with popular misconceptions. It happens a lot when smart people get hold of parts of the puzzle, become hooked, and then make up the rest. I'm sure it makes perfect sense to you, now you have to explain it so peers can understand it.

Your subscription contains numerous flaws which have been addressed in more recent updates. How do you overcome such an inherent handicap? How do you draw a line in the sand on accumulated human knowledge ("NO, from here on the information can't be trusted!")? Where does the ancient power stop and science starts to decline? Can it be anything but arbitrary and subjective? I made a table using an axe only, and it didn't turn out nearly as nice as the one I made with my power tools. Why is that? This is the type of question one asks when one is determined to argue against any answer, no matter what. I'm truly sorry you see no wonder in our best current explanations.

MSC has been suspended for 3 days to help him sort his feelings about recent staff actions.

PG should act as a solvent for whatever volatiles are causing that bad rubber odor, so PG by itself should remove it (a scented product with PG would probably remove AND supplant the scent). You should be able to use any sort of cleaning product with a neutral pH (no ammonia, no vinegar).

Overall, I think the term is misused a LOT. I think many people who claim to study ethics consider themselves beyond reproach when it comes to ethical matters. It's very much like those who claim they're skeptics, because you can't possibly be wrong if you're questioning everything, right? It's tails I win, heads you lose, because I've already claimed the high ground. I also think too many people invest too much emotion in this sense of rightness. If ethics are so basic, we should be able to dispassionately cite why, instead of feigning moral outrage when the basics don't seem clear to someone else. I think too many people are motivated by love and hate because they've started with that emotional premise rather than finding an intellectual motivation and investing their passions in THAT. It's far too easy to react with a jerk of the knee rather than a reasoned response.

! Moderator Note So you're not both holding your collective breaths, POVphysics turned out to be a sock of someone trying to get around the mod queue (put there originally because they couldn't support their assertions).

! Moderator Note Vague generalizations disguised as slurs towards a group of people are against our rules. This sort of thinking has been debunked MANY times over, much like creationism and phlogiston, so we don't waste our time wallowing in such ignorance. If you persist in this, you'll be required to leave. Nobody here is interested in going backwards; discussion should be meaningful, and promote learning. IOW, stop making moronic monkey noises.

The Pine-sol disinfectant I used had propylene glycol in it, and I would imagine this solvent did more to remove the bad smell than the pine scent. Perhaps try a mixture more focused on PG (should be readily available with people making hand sanitizers these days).

We have a couple of past threads that mention this, if it helps. As Markus says, as long as we're not put in a position where we're advising anybody about a medical situation, it won't run afoul of our rules.

! Moderator Note Blaming your failures on others isn't productive. We have rules to help us focus on what can be supported, so our members limited time isn't wasted on Wild West guesswork. Thanks for your understanding.

I had a rubber mat that smelled bad. I cleaned it with a strong solution of water and Pine-sol, and let it dry in the sun. It worked pretty well, but I know some folks feel the same about the smell of pine (I'm talking about YOU, Finland).

QFT. Three cheers for accumulated human knowledge!