Phi for All

This is what I remember. The "Made in Japan" label was a joke for a while, synonymous with "junk" and "cheap crap" (and oh boy, it really was). Then they turned a corner. Their cars and electronics became sought after. They perfected miniaturization while the US was still making things huge and clunky. China didn't do this, Chinese goods were a response to markets that had already been influenced by the new "extremist capitalism" being practised. Multinational monopolistic companies have been moving their operations towards a flat, generic worker that needs little money or training, and they've simply ceased worrying about customer service since they've been able to merge into bigger and bigger companies with fewer competitors. It's like Lily Tomlin's Bell System Operator character used to say, "We're the phone company. We don't care because we don't have to." China didn't restructure most of our largest megacorporations to exploit this model. Deregulation is at the heart of this fiasco.

While I can appreciate the sentiment, and don't put any trust in a supernatural creator, this is not a reasonable stance given the standard definition of god(s). If they're omniscient, they're supposed to know better than you, right? It's pointless to argue from this position when god(s) could easily allow your brand new puppy to be run over just so it doesn't grow up to kill your newborn child in the future. Most would consider that a loving gesture in context, and they'd probably talk about mysterious ways. So unless you're arguing that life should never have any bad aspects, the argument that a loving god shouldn't let bad things happen is pretty weak. And if we're going to point out weaknesses in belief, our non-belief should be equally strong, no? Again, I'm not a believer, but I think this is a poor argument. God(s) seem to be all about proving your worth, proving that you're worthy of heaven/love/forgiveness/whatever. If the world was perfect, what are you testing yourself against? Sorry, but this part of the doctrine is pretty well thought out, actually. Suffer through all the corruption without losing your faith, stay true to your moral compass, obey the commandments, believe no matter what adversity tries to push you off the path, and ye shall spend forever in the Lord's house. Tough love, sure, but this is the kind of thing one does prosper from, being strong and not giving up, facing whatever life throws at you and still being a good person. I just happen to think you can do it without Iron Age worship and guilt and hanging your hopes on an afterlife.

If someone has 0 physics and maths background, why would studying the hardest part of physics first be a good idea? Isn't this like wanting to design a building without any construction knowledge? Why wouldn't a reasonable person want to study basic physics and maths first, if they have the time to study anything? It seems like a mistake to start with theoretical physics. I fear the OP is thinking that you're allowed to use your imagination more than your actual knowledge when it's "just a theory".

! Moderator Note Just a reminder that if you want to post a video, you need to communicate with the membership about what parts are relevant. Expecting anyone to watch several minutes of video with no input from the poster is unrealistic, and also against our rules. Members should be able to participate without going offsite or watching videos. This is a discussion forum.

No. What swansont was saying is that Star Trek warp drive isn't a viable concept. He's a physicist with the US Naval Observatory, and iirc, he's consulted on Star Trek scripts in the past, so when he says nobody understands it, it's because it's completely made up and non-physical.

You get a link, Count Sensei. I can send it 500 times, if you like.

Send me a dollar and I'll send you a copy of How To Get $1 From Everyone On The Planet. Counting cards gives you better odds than the lottery. What are you implying here? I know Jeff is single...

Imagine how often you could play the lottery!

Not sure why, but this made me think that it might be easier to confuse us than we suspect. Imagine a technology that worked in an extremely non-intuitive way, like the use of perfluorochemical liquids in deep sea diving. You want me to inhale LIQUID?!?! What if the technology involved required you to lean forward when you want to stop, or step into thin air over a great height, or something else that seem antithetical to what we're trying to achieve?

Our species would have overrun the planet by now if we didn't die off. Building in our own obsolescence also helps the species evolve more vibrantly. This assumes two things. One, that this god wanted species from one system to interact with those from others. Perhaps it prefers keeping its lab samples separated? And two, you assume this wasn't a challenge we're supposed to overcome with our big old brains. Perhaps this god subscribes to the throw-them-in-the-deep-end school of thought? Because after all, don't the folks who overcome the biggest challenges deserve the biggest rewards? Maybe this god wants to weed out the ones who are just going to whine about obstacles.

I can't help but see it as anything but a relative relationship. Clarke, in his reference, made sure to include the words "sufficiently advanced". It implies that the technology is always incomprehensible to the humans you're referencing. Cavemen had no concept of a human voice coming out of anything but a human, so a smartphone would seem supernaturally powerful (magic?). But by the same token, there could be technology based on awful smells, or pain, or simply a vastly better grasp of gravity that we have no basis to suspect as such, and would therefore seem supernaturally powerful to even us. Put it this way, if a human is flying without wings or a plane, and we can't detect any implants or known physical reasons why it's happening, and all our tests show us this human is flying despite the predictions of our best theories, we would still believe (perhaps) that there was a natural explanation, but until we find a better way to test this ability, we'd have to call it supernatural.

Could you point to some supportive evidence that our intelligence has reached a point where we can't trust this platitude of Clarke's? What is it about us that makes us less able to wonder at things we can't figure out? I'm a big fan of our high intelligence, but I also recognize the limitations of not-knowing, and how our ignorance can leave us with nothing on which to base an analysis. I think you're making the mistake of thinking intelligence gives us more protection from a lack of knowledge than it really does. Mostly I think you're taking a personal view of something that was meant as an observation about humanity in general. Do you know how many people believe in the supernatural in the world today?

While I can appreciate your appreciation of our intelligence and imagination, I have to agree with Strange.

Well, no. Facts aren't wrong, by definition. It's Truth that is subjective, and seems to change between peoples, cultures, and other arbitrary groups. That's why I say truth isn't what you should be looking for, even though so many people put such store in it. Truth has too much emotion attached to it for it to be very useful in describing the natural world. Here's a fact for you. The Big Bang Theory doesn't leave any questions about what happened before, because the model for it doesn't start until slightly after inflation began. It's not a creation theory. It's a theory about the development and evolution of the universe from a previous extremely hot and dense state. Also, I'm fairly certain you don't know what it means to "lack the mathematics of how it always existed". How can we know anything about what happened BEFORE the universe was in such a hot, dense state? If you crushed the Empire State Building down to the size of a pea, how would you go about figuring out what it was before it was made so small and dense and hot? I think you're wrong also about the Truth keeping us searching. Think about it. What do you do when you think you've found an answer to something? You stop looking. That's why theory is more powerful, because we always refine and update our theories to be the best current explanations. I think you have a very emotional, romantic view of the Truth, and it's clouding your reason.

Salud, amor, y pesetas, y el tiempo para gastarlos.

Seems pretty clear then. DrP should go as Mike Pence. Scary.

Court them, then. "Exercise a little more care to retain the interest and participation of those individuals." Our judgement is being called into question about this, and our quality over quantity policy needs to be reexamined, it seems. The point seems to be that some of the membership is more interested in our decision-making process than we previously thought, and wants us to treat all ideas as viable for discussion. Personally, I think it makes us look terrible when our home page is full of nutter garbage, and I doubt seriously that courting crackpots helps us attract more desirable scientific sorts. But it seems important that everybody gets a chance to put in their two cents when someone like Ilige posts an off-the-wall idea, more important than our wish to keep conversations meaningful. I promise to be more careful in applying the rules to those who break them the way Ilige did.

The poster the thread was started for. The one who didn't want to give details on his idea.

You absolutely need to make a costume for this year. I suggest you put on Harry Potter glasses (do the lightning scar too), devil horns, carry a broom, and wear cloven-hoof boots. Go as Blasphemy!

I'm willing to exercise a little more care so we can keep more posters like Ilige, if that's what the membership wants. I think it's a fairly masochistic request. Obviously it means a great deal more than I imagined that we increase the membership by courting this type of poster.

This is where a formal education in science would help a great deal. Without a firm knowledge foundation, we humans tend to make things up so the patterns feel right. As soon as you start guessing, and then basing more ideas off the guesswork, you're filling in your ignorance with junk that makes PERFECT sense to you (because you made it up using limited resources rather than learning from mainstream science). Gaps in our knowledge should be filled in with trustworthy information. As others have mentioned, learning science from YouTube is pretty sketchy. It's as hit and miss as many popular science articles, where sensational concepts are exaggerated to gain readership rather than educate. If you knew mainstream science a little better, you wouldn't be spending ANY time on overunity devices and buckets of energy. The problem is you're obviously smart, and curious, and capable, but lack special knowledge that would focus your efforts. Without a path, you're floating on this weird stream of consciousness that will always agree with you, always tell you you're right, and always make perfect sense, but only to you. Does THAT make sense?

It's always existed.

This isn't even something a person could be skeptical about. What people usually define as miraculous isn't testable or repeatable ("God cured my aunt's cancer"), or it can be easily explained by natural means ("My toast has the face of Jesus"). Miracles are inherently supernatural, so science can't even consider them phenomena. Something else is ALWAYS at work, something natural and explainable. And btw, any time you find yourself saying "without any doubt", you probably aren't doing science.

For the same reason a Humanist might prefer to focus on humanity rather than invest in religious guesswork. Since nobody has ever successfully uncovered "the Truth" (as well as too many conflicting Truths everywhere), it might be more rational to focus on facts instead, and rely on the constant advancement of theory as the best currently available explanations for various phenomena.

The biggest problem with your answer, besides being observably false in multiple instances, is that you made it up to fill the gaps in your knowledge, your ignorance, if you will. We're all ignorant about a LOT, but hopefully we fill those gaps with trustworthy information. What you've done here is to cherry-pick things you think you understand to fill the gaps in what you don't. The result is you have an answer that makes absolute PERFECT sense only to you, because you designed the answer to fit your level of knowledge, rather than actually learn what many others have formally observed. It's caused you to join a science forum with the idea of teaching others, that's how strong and misleading this type of guesswork can be. You've become convinced that everybody else has it wrong, except you. I sincerely hope you'll do some formal study in physics, maybe through Khan Academy or something. Stop studying popular science as if it's a textbook. It's rotting your brain.