Phi for All

It's disturbing that scientists have been accumulating human knowledge for quite some time now, but you refuse to take advantage of that, and prefer filling the gaps in your own knowledge with guesswork and jumped-to conclusions.

I'm so sorry for your loss. Just a couple of years of formal, mainstream study and you wouldn't have to make things up to fit the gaps in your knowledge. We can help if you're willing to listen. Not sure what to do with the "Creator" issue, but I would ask that you leave it out of this discussion if possible. Much like infinities, all-powerful entities tend to remove our ability to measure accurately.

! Moderator Note Our rules require discussion stays here, and you can't require people click links or go offsite in order to participate. We don't allow commercial advertising here.

! Moderator Note Moved to Speculations.

Why do you think this means we aren't good at poking holes in established theories? And if we aren't coming up with fundamentally new principles in molecular biology, can you show evidence that it's because we aren't good at poking holes in established theories? Maybe science is just not good at jumping to conclusions as fast as some would like.

This is completely wrong. Established models are tested EVERY DAY in the course of their use. It's not that we're bad at poking holes in established models, it's that the established models are established because we can't falsify them. No place to poke, which means it's our best current explanation until someone using it finds a flaw. Your argument is assuming that once a model is "established", we never test it again. That's absurd.

Liquid hydrogen made from coal tars or gasoline? Are they using fuel cells to power the buses? They tried that here under Bush II, with cells that used petroleum for the hydrogen. It was about as efficient as our burning ethanol from corn to fuel our cars. Have they come up with a way to make H fuels not so dirty? Iirc, it used more gasoline than just burning gasoline.

It seemed to me that what Sensei "was getting at" is that swansont and Musk both work for the government and are "self-made men". If you want that definition to stand, you're welcome to it. It seems worthless to me as an argument about billionaires, almost as worthless as continuing to nitpick about it. Thanks for the input though.

I don't know anything about that. I was responding to the post where you conflated the financial aid Elon Musk got from the government with swansont's government salary. It was wrong when you said it, it's still wrong, and it really has nothing to do with how you define "self-made". It's about the difference between getting paid by an employer and getting financial incentives, tax breaks, and infrastructure help from a government entity. I don't think you can defend this point, and I was really hoping you could admit you had this part wrong so we can move on to other areas in this discussion. This is NOT semantics, and it's not a translation error. Being hired to work for the government is different from being awarded government contracts, subsidies, and tax incentives. Does that make sense?

Or you were simply wrong to conflate a private salary from the government with subsidies, tax breaks, and other economic incentives Elon Musk got from the government. I'm going to go with that rather than chase this red herring.

Or in neighborhoods that don't necessarily reflect their income. I read The Millionaire Next Door quite a while back, and the folks they talked about were as close to self made as I can imagine. They lived in modest homes in modest neighborhoods, bought clothes on sale off the rack, drank beer instead of champagne, and basically avoided most of the extravagant behavior many wealthy folks indulge in. But most of the folks in that book were worth between a few million up to thirty or forty million iirc, nowhere near billionaire status.

Not sure what you mean by "proper knowledge", but it's not disrespectful to correct someone's mistakes. It's what scientists do. You can't build anything good if the foundation isn't right. You talk as if your book is correct, but we've seen that you're mistaken about quite a few things. No. Experiment is one of the backbones of proper methodology. You experiment and test your hypothesis to see if it holds up, long before anybody starts to call it a theory. Mistakes have been pointed out. Dr Swanson is trying to help. I think your work needs more work before it's shared with anyone, much less swansont's old work buddies.

! Moderator Note Your idea hasn't been discussed enough in Speculations to merit a recommendation in Book Talk, which is for mainstream science books. Please continue the conversation in your thread in Speculations.

! Moderator Note And the place to talk about that is in its own thread in Speculations, not in someone else's speculative thread.

I am surprised, and actually shocked, to see you trying to claim that a government salary is the same as government subsidies. Subsidies for Musk, for example, include favorable loans, incentives, tax breaks, and environmental tax credits. They even built him factories. I haven't seen any good arguments about billionaires pulling themselves up solely by their own bootstraps. It's well known that billionaires can only exist if they steal the money legally from everybody else. Does anyone have an example of a billionaire whose employees love them as much as the stockholders do? All I ever hear about is how the people who do the most work get the least pay, and the person who gets paid most does nothing but figure out how to get paid more.

! Moderator Note The theme seems political, so moved to Politics.

! Moderator Note Links removed.

That's not something I thought the AI would get wrong, and it seems obvious you can't trust it for even basic facts.

Paraphrasing: "While trying to survive outer space and see if other organisms have different processes, we need to ask these questions carefully. Figuring out if you can switch water with ammonia is complicated, so we need experts in many fields to talk to each other to figure out how it all works." This looks a LOT like what a language program would do, make something sound good to those who don't know any better. To those who do know better, it reads like you've taken something blindingly obvious (or patently untrue), glued sequins and glitter all over it, and now present it as science.

! Moderator Note Before you start any more new threads, there are replies to your other thread that have no response from you. This is a science DISCUSSION forum.

If I put my bowling ball in its bag, I still call it my bowling ball, but I need more volume to store it. But then it would be fairly easy to make a formula that anticipates how much more volume a bra adds to a breast, so perhaps that's not what the OP meant.

Does it change your idea to know that the above isn't true? Science doesn't say "there was no before". Science says "we don't know what there was before, if anything". There's a difference.

! Moderator Note Opening new threads without responding to replies in your old threads makes it look like you have an agenda that isn't discussion based. Don't do this again, and please stop pushing the drivel of this author. It's not science, it's not philosophy. It's nonsense.

Generations of Americans were abused using the Christian Bible to justify the acts of morally bankrupt men. It's become a hallmark that lets them embrace their inner sinner and get away with both sanctimony and sexual abuse. When I think about most church leadership in this country, I picture a corrupt, hypocritical man exhorting everyone else to be better. So actually, I think the Bible is the perfect weapon for TFG to wield. He's a rapist, lots of rape justified by churches in the US, and there's always a way to support the patriarchy if you use the Bible. And this Bible has extra irony built right in by including a copy of the Constitution, knowing the purchaser will never make it to the part about separation of Church and State!

! Moderator Note We're a science discussion site. Advertising other sites isn't allowed here. You're welcome to stay and discuss your interests here, but keep in mind it's not a pulpit or your blog, it's a science discussion site. Nobody is here to be preached at, but we love talking about interesting topics. We discuss science here.