Phi for All

Mandlbaur has been banned for repeatedly bringing up non-mainstream topics they're unable to support, and are now being foul and hateful about it.

The reputation system is a weird blend as a gauge of how much a poster contributes. Every member gets one vote on each post, even staff. You talk down about science quite a bit, so perhaps you've acquired some haters (or misread your audience?). You seem to enjoy an aspect of competition that embraces denigration of a perceived "opponent", which is very common in people who like to "debate" what they think they know. All of this tends to sit poorly with people who just want to discuss science and learn. We have to hope you don't start really trying. It's all about expanding my own ego. The more I know, the more everybody has to listen to me and do what I say and be just like me. Eventually, I'll just kick you all out and write all this stuff myself. My brain is all that's needed to explain everything to everybody. Or... or, discussion with peers is part of a successful methodology, and it needs a place where that's respected with as much rigor as we can apply with volunteers.

You spread ignorance with such conviction. That's a dangerous trait, and one that seems to be gaining strength in our society despite access to so much information. See Dunning & Krueger. The original owner of the site (aka Administrator) was in med school when he asked me to moderate. He's a doctor now, expanding his own ego in the pursuit of medicine, saving lives, but he still checks in every now and then. The current Admins/owners are brilliant as well, expanding their egos in the fields of computers and chemistry. It's easy to see how big their egos are by all the advertising dollars they reap from this site, and the way they stop people like you from saying bad things about their science discussion forum.

! Moderator Note Due to the non-mainstream nature of the topic, I'm moving this to Speculations. Please support your concepts with evidence and sound reasoning. "Things that could seem physically impossible", for instance, needs a more rigorous approach as an explanation if it's to have any meaning at all.

Wow, I've never tried to discuss anything with someone who's blind to context. You really can't see why I used those particular words wrt the freedom of speech argument EvaWillis89 made? That would explain this strawman. Oh, I see. Arguing in bad faith about our first amendment so you can sneak in a poke at our second.

No, they're a reply to sophistry. To show that some things can't be allowed, by constitutional right, to be spoken at any time a person feels like it. No, it's to show that some things can't be allowed, by constitutional right, to be spoken at any time a person feels like it. What a bizarre strawman, btw. I'm sorry you feel so intellectually cornered that you resort to fallacy. Is it because you don't understand what free speech is in this context?

! Moderator Note Links, pictures and videos in posts should be relevant to the discussion, and members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos. Videos and pictures should be accompanied by enough text to set the tone for the discussion, and should not be posted alone. Users advertising commercial sites will be banned. Attached documents should also be accompanied by a summary, at minimum. Owing to security concerns, documents must be in a format not as vulnerable to security issues (PDF yes, microsoft word or rich text format, no)

! Moderator Note Links, pictures and videos in posts should be relevant to the discussion, and members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos. Videos and pictures should be accompanied by enough text to set the tone for the discussion, and should not be posted alone. Users advertising commercial sites will be banned. Attached documents should also be accompanied by a summary, at minimum. Owing to security concerns, documents must be in a format not as vulnerable to security issues (PDF yes, microsoft word or rich text format, no)

I was talking to Randyjohnson, who is obviously religious. Quando a Roma, parli inglese, amico mio? I have VERY religious neighbors down the street who support the current POTUS. Half their ten kids are female, so I'm always curious why folks like this are OK with him admitting he abuses women. He didn't even have to promise never to do it again, he just deflected it as locker room talk. Hallelujah! On a moral level, I don't wish anyone poor health. That's beneath us as thinking humans. Trump was only part of what happened with the stimulus, and where he could have truly used his executive branch clout, he fumbled badly. He's getting the best of care, while millions went without even PPE because of his direct inaction. Jesus, can you please do something about this sick, sick president we have? His head is congested with all kinds of foul filth, his viral messaging is diseased, and the evil he breathes out is going to be the death of all of us. Good lord, we need help!

Perhaps using this kind of negative generalization as a basis for starting a complex discussion is unwise. It's possible to dislike how someone behaves without wishing them ill-health. Some people use their emotions to judge people, and others use observation and context. Assuming I don't approve of something this POTUS does because I don't LIKE him is ridiculous. I can judge him by his attitudes towards public ownership, and his actions I disagree with (doling out public lands to friends, inhumane immigration policies, a general dislike of expert knowledge, his attitude towards women, et cetera, ad nauseum). Also, Randyjohnson, I'm fine with wishing the president a swift recovery from his illness, as well as hoping he rots in hell for all the pussy-grabbing he's done, all the citizens he's killed with his inaction, and all the shame he's brought upon the country. What's unbelievable to me is a person of prayer like you thinking so highly of such a moral stain of a man. Are you a pussy-grabber too?

I get nervous when I ride in packed subway trains, and I find that yelling out my biggest fears helps me overcome them. I wish you were in charge, because I keep getting arrested whenever I scream "FIRE" or "POISON GAS" or "SNAKES". I'm only trying to show who I am by expressing myself this way. Why do they keep taking away my freedom of speech?

! Moderator Note A major hijack has (finally, sorry) been split off. Unfortunately, the discussion was so full of willful ignorance and misinformation that I couldn't find a better place for it than the Trash. Please carry on with discussion of the OP.

He's an example of the extremist capitalists most of the run-of-the-mill politicians work for. He just cut out the middleman, and now he's draining the swamp right into our own living rooms. When our root problem is extremist billionaires who don't care about our society, why make one of them chief?

This statement is extremely hypocritical, uncivil, and reflects poorly on your reasoning skills, imo.

Beware Skitt's Law. An ellipsis is three dots, not two. Also, there should be commas before "at" and "not", and you should be using double quote marks, not single.

But violators represent a HUGE opportunity for private profit. The police department would basically be defunded, and traffic enforcement would be taken off their plate and given to private security. There are already examples of how lucrative it can be for a private company to issue tickets for running a traffic light, especially when you control the timing of the lights.

If We (the People) take the perspective of owners instead of consumers of a service, we see that possession of the roads is an extremely strong bargaining chip. Owning something should give us more clout, unless we let con men take that away If We own the roads, We can demand a single-payer option for healthcare insurance, and charge extra for the healthcare industry to use the highways until they help us get one. Roads are power, see Rome. .

A separate private company is set up to cover promotion and payments to the various road owners, and commuters simply pay the separate company (let's call it Roadmaster, like buying tickets through Ticketmaster). You get a monthly electronic "pass" like any toll road. That ensures all the owners get a guaranteed cut, and the consumer pays extra for the convenience, to cover Roadmaster's costs. And if the roads are truly privately owned, and get no publicly funded maintenance subsidies, the owners would quickly revert back to curing their asphalt properly by NOT letting anyone drive on it for 90 days. Then they'll really see profits increase.

I didn't say faith was the benchmark. You use "degrees of certainty", and the folks I know who claim to be the most religious all believe in their god using faith. It's supposed to represent 100% certainty that the Christian god of the Bible exists, no matter what anyone or anything else says. In the US, a great many profess enough faith to say they're absolutely certain the god of the Bible exists. The details may vary, and some claims aren't as deeply held as others, but the idea of believing "with all your heart" that there is a god is common in the States. I would think that at least would hold true even for the CoE. When you add Jesus into the mix, you lose some folks in the US, but others are just as 100% certain that Jesus is watching them to see if they have enough faith in him to get into heaven. This doesn't seem wrong to you? Faith is usually defined as accepting a truth or proposition that has no evidence to support it. I acknowledge a difference between having faith in something (the old car will get me through another winter), and having religious faith in something you believe will ensure an eternal afterlife. Perhaps that's where we aren't agreeing?

! Moderator Note Please don't bring this subject up again, since you're unable to support it within the context of our rules.

But the faith-driven believer is 100% certain, and you'll never be more than 99.9%, so that's not a good benchmark. I think how you arrive at your certainty is the key here. Do you just have a gut-feeling about it that won't go away, or have you rigorously researched, observed, tested, discussed, and predicted enough about the subject that you've come to trust the explanation?

Believing anything based on faith alone is antithetical to a methodology that needs to trust only empirical evidence. That's always been a sticking point for me. The religious folks I know are joyously proud that they believe using just their faith. They claim it's strong and abiding, and the more blasphemers claim there is no God, the stronger their faith and certainty becomes. To me, if we aren't using our reasoning powers to explain things, then we're using our emotions to convince ourselves we're right. I think it's easier but less intelligent to let ourselves be led like that. Using our brains to move beyond our primitive reactions is always harder, but it's always our best long-term investment.

I think the difference in people's minds is one of profession. I'm a writer and a barista and a scientist and chef and a builder, but I don't get paid to do those things.

! Moderator Note John2020, I would suggest you go back through the thread and pay close attention. You've had three pages of objections and problems with your device that haven't been addressed adequately for the Speculations section. You need to support your ideas with evidence, and address the reasonable objections you're getting. The people involved are only trying to help, but you seem more interested in teaching something wrong than in learning something right. I hid your last post with the links to past experiments, since it was completely off-topic. If you're going to swim against the mainstream, you need to be more rigorous. Thread closed.

Actually, a tick can sense a LOT, mostly body heat and smell (I believe they're attracted to ammonia in sweat). They try to latch on to you with their front legs, then crawl towards skin. I suppose they might have different behavior when on a flat surface, but since they need to latch on to their dinner, it doesn't seem likely they're trying to flea. 😁