Phi for All

! Moderator Note Our rules state members can't be forced offsite in order to participate in discussions. Can you summarize, or tell the story in your own words?

! Moderator Note The thread is in Astronomy, so let's back up these assertions if we're going to make them, yes? Science discussion is frustrating without rigor.

Michael Carbonaro does some impressive close-up illusions, mostly sleight-of-hand, but his real trick is that you don't know he's a magician. In one of his stunts, he's the clerk behind the counter at a sporting goods store. A customer walks up and starts talking to him, but he stops her and asks her to please hand him the box on the floor in front of the counter that UPS just delivered. She hands it over to him, and while he's talking to her, he opens the box and dumps out a basketball which filled the whole box. He sets the box on its side, still talking (and perfectly distracting her at this point), then reaches back into it and pulls out a bowling ball like it's no big deal. The woman knows the box wasn't that heavy, nor could it have held both balls, and says something about it. Carbonaro explains that they ship them that way to save weight, since the basketball is lighter. When she objects because of the size of the box, he explains that the bowling ball is smaller than the basketball so it can fit inside. He has an answer for everything, and it drives the lady crazy. But it's really all about distracting her after he puts the box on its side so the left hand can lift that bowling ball from under the counter (without any obvious strain) up into the box smoothly, and then the right hand can reach in to remove it. What's magic is being able to fool someone standing across the counter from you.

Remove the need for the plastic or glass?

Show this, offer evidence in support, because you're swimming against a LOT of mainstream knowledge that works. Most of what you're saying shows you've misunderstood what many of the words mean. You've stitched together some information, and filled the gaps with stuff you've made up. NOT science. Please support your assertions. Waving your hands and making unevidenced claims is a profoundly uninteresting thing to discuss. More rigor, please.

First OR zero? Which is it? In spacetime coordinates, the zero dimension is a point, and the first dimension is a line. And it works so well I'm wondering why you have a problem with it? Since time is a temporal dimension, it doesn't "exist" in another spatial dimension. Rather it's a continuum, 3d space + time, that lets us plot positions for events. What do you mean by dimensions "dropping down"? How can a dimension disappear? Are you suggesting there are 4 spatial dimensions? There are very sound scientific reasons why a universe with 4 spatial dimensions would be unstable.

Delta's popularity has always been variable.

And our current best model uses them as a continuous coordinate system called spacetime. The first dimension is length, represented by a line, or x. Now move out 90 degrees from EVERY point along that line to get the second dimension, width, represented by a 2d square, or y. Now move out 90 degrees from EVERY point on the square to get the third dimension, height, represented by a 3d cube, or z. When we add a temporal dimension, time, or t, we can use this system to plot any point in the universe, as well as a point in the past, present, or future in time. We use this system for everything from scheduling a lunch date to studying history to landing a module on an asteroid. It allows us an extraordinary degree of accuracy, and anybody can make it work. What are the benefits of your idea over our current best explanation?

Many folks are literally switching to overusing the word "actually" now. As in, "They actually look exactly the same", and "You can actually change that in the pulldown menu", and "That water actually had my retainer in it". Both words can literally mean the same thing while actually being slightly different. Actually, I prefer actually. There's an air of surprise involved, like I can't believe you just said that. "We were actually going to take pictures, but if you want to actually pet the hippo, there's actually not much we can do."

! Moderator Note This is a science discussion forum, and these are extraordinary claims not observed in nature, so they're speculative and belong in Speculations. I'm moving it there. Please support your ideas with evidence. Right now you seem to be using a kind of logic that is more "this makes more sense to me" than it is reasoned thinking. We're going to be using trusted, mainstream science explanations in our responses to what you've substituted, and it's expected that you do more than wave your hands and insist you're right. If you have any maths that could be used to model what you're talking about, that would help tremendously. I hope the discussion helps everyone involved to learn something new.

Nobody asked you to look at it that way, though. What will it take to get you to put away your wide brush for a bit? I was pretty specific about the kinds of competition I'm referring to. Like many things, competition and cooperation are tools we use to shape our lives. There are obviously situations where competition may be the best tool to use, so I'm not sure where you get "evil" from. On the other hand, when is competition ever the right response while driving a car that isn't in a race? I see cooperation as higher-order thinking, and I think it produces higher-order solutions. All animals compete, but not all cooperate, and very few can be as successful at it as humans. Competition has its place, and I think it's overused because it's easier to pit people against each other than to get them to work together, but I feel cooperation should be a more modern, evolved solution. Evolution supports my arguments better than yours. Adding cooperation to our skillset (along with bipedalism, tool use, and wicked-intricate communication) elevated us above competing animal groups looking only for their next meal. More telling, our societies wouldn't be possible if we didn't see the benefits of cooperation as opposed to competing for resources. Competition elevates individuals, and that can be a great investment, but everything fabulous humans have accomplished for the species has been more cooperative. Especially with intellectual endeavors, I'd rather see the results of 100 people cooperating to solve a problem than those same folks competing.

It makes you look lazy, not crazy. You've developed a narrative that allows you to reject anything you deem too difficult or technical ("I think in 3d objects and complex emotions, not words") and substitute it for something you've made up by intuition and guesswork. Somewhere along the line, you got the idea that everything in science has to make intuitive sense to you before you'll accept it. It's pretty common in the age of the internet, where people learn science in the form of popular articles trying to get you hooked on "the mysteries". It's all too easy to take various bits of trustworthy information and stitch them together, filling the gaps with stuff you've made up based on a limited science education. ! Moderator Note I would take offense if I thought other members were mocking you. Please remember that part of the scientific methodology is removing unnecessary elements that might taint the findings of your experiments (there's nothing personal or mocking in correcting your use of common definitions). Ideas in science are meant to be reviewed with rigor to find their flaws, so please don't take replies helping you shore up the foundations of your idea as mockery. Isn't this why you came to a discussion site like this?

I carefully framed the competitive concept of DOMINATION as an overriding concern that turns competitive spirit into bullying. I think your argument is weak for not addressing that most important part of my argument. We've all seen it in sports, where the drive to be the best causes some players to unleash brutal, inhuman injury on fellow players for the sake of the win. How many people watching on TV cheer for their team when things like that happen (I was particularly disgusted by a clip showing one US football player ripping the helmet off another player and then use it as a weapon to hit him in the head)? Perhaps the parts of competitive sports you're romanticizing are the parts where you pull together as a team to do your best to win? I see that as more of a cooperative endeavor, but maybe you played tennis or golf rather than baseball or basketball? Teams may compete against each other, but they're only good at it after a LOT of healthy cooperation. In the example I used, the students were monitored during their projects, which are set up so they have to apply what they've learned in order to complete the work. You know exactly who has learned what, but the projects aren't judged on whose is good/better/best. And all those folks working on Apollo were competing individually to be one of the people whose designs or ideas actually got used on the mission? NASA used teams of people cooperating to achieve what they did. The USSR also wouldn't have been able to do as well as they did without massive cooperation. And think about what they all could have done if they'd cooperated with each other instead of competing? Think about how much further those missions could have gone without all that duplication of effort? JFK thought about it, and when they installed the red phone with Moscow after the Cuban missile crisis, he actually proposed that the US, the USSR, and other countries work together to reach the moon. The suggestion fell flat initially, and JFK didn't get much time after that to push for cooperation over competition.

When domination is more important than sportsmanship, competition equals bullying. Bravo! Less life-long injury and overfocus on primitive toxic behavior. I'd vote for you. Another excellent suggestion. I watched a special about a school in Costa Rica where the students learn as they work on projects rather than memorize and take tests. Imagine approaching every subject as if it were a Science Fair! And given us several hundred companies, with several thousand designs, and wasted untold amounts of resources trying to keep their secrets from each other, all the while maintaining high profit. Cooperation is practically guaranteed to come up with a better mouse solution, and may not care about selling traps at all.

I think humans use the concept of an unseen soul as a reflective surface for our own intelligence. Constant mental bouncing of thoughts and ideas as internal dialogue probably lends itself to the creation of a separate entity or soul we see as a basic, pure, default state (that might even survive the death of the body). Many treat it like an imaginary friend, and speak about it the same way they do about their "conscience" (as in, "Let your conscience be your guide"). There's no evidence to support the scientific concept of "soul" as anything but psychological. I'm not sure why so many folks need more than high intelligence to explain this non-phenomenon.

! Moderator Note Please don't post it as support for your arguments. By our rules, you can't require someone to watch a video in order to participate. And making a video isn't going to correct problems with terminology, and may make things worse (since it's much more difficult for us to be precise in our response to a video). Can't you simply take the replies into consideration, correct your thesis, and find a way to support that scientifically? Perhaps look up experiments where photons moving at c is observed and not assumed? Maybe ask questions, like why isn't entanglement a force? There's no need to make up new science just because you don't understand a mainstream explanation. We're all here to learn more about our best current scientific explanations for various phenomena.

! Moderator Note The key to discussions here is the support you bring for "out there" ideas. Nobody wants to bother if this is all the rigor you're going to invest in the conversation. It's up to you to take replies on board and fix your idea accordingly. Or admit that, after further study, it's wrong, like most ideas. But PLEASE be more specific, and do more to support your ideas than make statements and wave your hands. This is a science discussion site.

! Moderator Note Hello! Our rules don't allow advertising your website in a thread. I'm sure there are members who'd like to discuss this with you, but all discussion must take place here, and you shouldn't require people to go offsite or watch videos. We just want to talk, and we aren't interested in promoting this idea or your website. Please use us as an intellectual resource, but not a marketing one. Thanks for understanding.

... and barking at the stupid, small stuff makes one look unhinged, which is exactly how the GOP would like everyone to view the left. When one doesn't focus on the actual crimes and injustices, and instead pick on everything they do, one makes it easier for their supporters to blow it ALL off as liberal angst. It's entirely possible some folks get paid to be vocal about stuff like this online. It's very compelling for the alt-right to show how the left hates the Trumps without reservation, so they can take the sting out of legitimate criticisms by lumping them with rants about Melania's attempts at diplomacy.

! Moderator Note First, without the maths, you don't have a model. Second, we won't be discussing religion-related ANYTHING in a scientific speculation. ! Moderator Note Third, science isn't interested in proof. Science works with theory, which is our best current explanation for various phenomena. Your whole approach is flawed because you think your "answer" is right and now you're trying to "prove" it no matter what, and that's NOT doing science. Belief is based on how trustworthy the explanation is, and the current model proves itself constantly, every day. You've had six pages to defend your idea, and you've gotten some EXCELLENT replies trying to help you form a more reasoned methodology. You've shown some improvement about taking new information on board, but you still ignore most posts that refute your idea. This would be a great time to re-read, re-calibrate, and reflect on the rigor with which you wish to approach your proposal. If you can find scientific ways to support it, and develop a mathematical model that allows you to make predictions based on your proposal, then PM a staff member and you can open a new speculative thread to discuss these new perspectives. Thread closed.

I predict they'll claim they already sent the check.

Only my perspective, but behind much of this are the extremist folks who want money to be the litmus test for all of society, because they already have a lot and are very good at making more. Paint state and public ownership as evil and what do you have left? Capitalism must be the best because private ownership is all that remains. Capitalist extremism requires everything to be an opportunity for profit, including people's health, or prosecuting criminals, or running for public office, or teaching children how to read. The ultimate manipulation is done with the staggering sums of money these folks have basically stolen through corrupt behavior.

It can be argued that the right to left spectrum also indicates how much one's fears are focused around oneself, and how much one's fears are centered on a group. The left is probably more easily motivated by fears for society as a whole, but fear is a powerful motivator for all humans.

Even if you could get consumers to stop crumpling the foil before recycling, as swansont mentions, trying to re-purpose thin foil for use as a reflector would be very labor-intensive. Not sure it would be efficient enough to warrant the resource expenditure. I LOVE re-purposing stuff, but it's just not practical sometimes. I clean the foil I use and re-use it at least once (baked potatoes!), then recycle it (while imagining it's going to be precision made into something insanely fabulous, like a reflective solar collector). studiot, I had to hunt for a garbage collection company that takes lightly soiled aluminum foil. Not all of them do in the US, so perhaps that's where pressure should be brought to bear (apparently a lot of Americans eat TV dinners and nobody rinses the aluminum trays before trying to recycle them).

I still think conservative/liberal are too broad to use as identifiers for anything. It will be nice when folks finally admit that all behavior is on multiple spectra. I'm extremely socially liberal, and COVID-19 has shown me the value of that side of me, and I'm embracing my conservative feelings as well. We need all our tools as humans if we're going to be smart about our lives (and not be manipulated).