Phi for All

! Moderator Note Duplicate thread closed. One thread per topic, PLEASE.

! Moderator Note You seriously need to go back and read this thread over and over again until you pick up on how many times this has been answered so far in just two pages. It's frustrating in discussion when anything needs to be explained so many times. One is left with the feeling that you aren't reading what anybody else is writing. Please correct this or the thread will be closed.

This is a science discussion site. If you're going to make extraordinary claims, you need extraordinary evidence to support them. People who discuss something here want a reasoned, rational argument to persuade them intellectually. You'd have gotten similar backlash if you'd claimed physics was wrong because your paper airplane crashed. Now this, THIS shows you can appreciate the perspective one gets from rational conversation, as opposed to soapboxing a strong opinion. Keep it up. Frankly, you're trying to defend a really weak position. Psychiatry wouldn't be sustainable if it didn't help the vast majority (I usually mean 75% when I use that term) of patients at least a little. Yet you've adopted a stance where, because it hasn't worked for some, or has actually had a deleterious effect on others, the whole practice should be abolished. That sounds like the anti-vaxxer's stance. Average?! Koti, you're exceptional!

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On the contrary, many people who eat shark fin soup describe feeling stronger and more alert because of the medicinal effects. That makes it OK, right?

Along with eating shark fin soup and mutilating women and homeopathy. Good company.

Perhaps I should have said "religious claims" instead of religion, but the gist is the same. Show me some evidence and then we can see if it supports what you claim. You really can't get any fairer than that dealing with gods that can avoid observation.

To me, this isn't even something you can be skeptical about. You'd be on the fence your whole life! I think the only rational reconciliation between science and religion is that science needs evidence, and religion isn't interested in evidence, so science can avoid sitting on the fence by requiring evidence before analyzing religion.

Now THAT is the definition of faith I grew up with. Unshakeable, unwavering, unalterable even in the face of reality. Strong belief that needs no reasoning, quiet and proud in its defiance of observation and measurement. With this kind of faith, one could easily see God helping the Russians curse Hillary.

Then your perspective is far too limited for such sweeping generalizations. You read one study and decide nobody benefits from psychiatry? That's not rational. From your virulence, I expected you to have had a bad experience with psychiatry. This is more like you found out how the sense of smell really works and now you think everyone should have their noses cut off.

This is the only correct part of your sentences I could find. Science relies on theory for this exact reason. It doesn't rely on "truth", it relies on the best supported explanations. Because when you think you've found an "truth" or "the answer" or "proof" that you're "right", you stop looking. Science never stops.

I do. You want to perpetuate a patriarchal system that favors you as a man and forces women to serve you as their master. It's rooted in a deep-seated fear of spending resources on children not from your loins, and seeks to control women's bodies for your own use. It's a pathetic, greedy, unmanly way to view the world, imo. But other than that, how's your day going?

I find that kind of generalizing repugnant. What mistake did all women make?

! Moderator Note Absolutely not! I'm not sure what kind of blinders you're wearing DanielBoyd, but they're effectively blocking the help that others are offering you. Five pages of comments and you're still ignoring everyone and repeating your mistakes and misunderstandings. "Mindset" should be a perspective, NOT fixing your ideas in stone. That's not how science works. I'm closing this. Don't open the subject again unless you're prepared to support your assertions with evidence and respond when someone asks you to clarify what you mean.

How about almond scrimshaw?

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Do you mind if I try talking to BillNye123 obliquely through you? It's practically impossible to be reasonable when you aren't weighing available evidence before making conclusions, especially broad ones like this. If you don't listen to other arguments, you're just soapboxing your own ignorance. I understand the urge to lash out when something that helps others fails to help me. Twenty years ago, I might have become irrational and unreasonable about it, but I've learned a LOT about stepping back from emotional outbursts and just analyzing the evidence in front of me. The personal frame of reference is often myopic and self-centered, and we're often much better at seeing other people's problems than our own (which is one reason I think psychiatry works for so many).

Women gained knowledge, so God punished them by making them subservient to men. Men get to rule, but women got the first bite of th goe apple, so they're probably smarter. I think it was a woman who first figured out apple trees don't grow from the ground. They grow from the air.

Whoa, choking on all that STRAW!

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Like any theory, the "how" is ALWAYS open to exploration. That's the power of theory, and you should full well know that. This is what I meant earlier about really studying evolution. When you see the evidence that supports modern mainstream evolutionary theory, you begin to see that evolution can't NOT happen. Given everything we've observed (especially since Darwin), how would you stop it? "Why" isn't in the purview of science, and you should full well know that, too. Why is a philosophy question. Two doors down on the left.

That is SO ugly. Thanks for the heads up about Airliners.

How well do you understand Copernican orbital mechanics? Or Heronic thermodynamics? Sorry, but it always irritates me when someone uses the early pioneering efforts in a field of study in their arguments against that field, as if theories don't improve. It's basically a strawman, since everybody else is discussing the modern mainstream theory, and not just the earliest parts you claim to have studied full well.

This is a poorly worded argument. Come on, you can do better than this. Of course it EXISTS, it's here, it's a real thing, despite what you might think about its efficacy. Your argument is trivially proven false. Whether it should be taken seriously as a study is what you're really talking about. The fact is, MANY people have been helped by psychiatry. I can EASILY provide many citations supporting this argument. That some didn't get help doesn't mean it should be "dismantled". Would you dismantle Alcoholics Anonymous just because it doesn't work for some people?

This seems intuitive to many who don't understand the process, but the more I actually learned about evolution, the more I realized this is completely false. What was beneficial to one generation may not be to the next. How can there be a goal to a process that reacts to changing environments? What's the goal of routing the laryngeal nerve under the heart in vertebrates? The larynx served a gill function in fish, but as vertebrates evolved, it was used to produce sounds from the throat. The distance from the larynx to the brain in most vertebrates is pretty short, yet the nerve that connects them goes down and under the heart before looping back. In a giraffe, the brain is mere inches away from the larynx, yet the laryngeal nerve is 15 feet long! If there was some sort of optimization going on, some kind of goal driving the process, wouldn't it correct some of the biggest flaws? What's the goal of bipedal humans having retinas that detach far too easily, and optic nerves that end in the field of the retina, creating a blind spot in the center, with eyelashes that are supposed to protect the eye from debris but fall out into the eye? We have too many sweat glands for efficient thermoregulation, our backs aren't meant for bipedalism, our pelvises are too small, and tiny blood clots can kill us. None of these design flaws is improving over time, so what kind of "goal" is working here?