Phi for All

Thank you, Hyper! Although now it seems pretty obvious it was you who made the boomerang key.

Tried that. Cap'n Refsmmat had it remade in the shape of a boomerang.

I thought I remembered a really generous period of time where one could change one's username. Can't find it now. Found the key to the cell we keep the Admins in, so we'll turn them loose on this. It's quiet all right.

Faith: "I don't need reasons to believe with all my heart that my machine creates gravity. I'm sure of my belief in it, and that's all that matters." Hope: "It looks as though my machine creates gravity. I really want that to be true, and I'm going to try to convince others to believe this way." Trust: "I've tested my machine thoroughly, removing any outside influences that might interfere with my experiments. I've studied the underlying principles involved, and made sure to account for as many variables as I could. I've used the results to design other experiments that will test predictions based on those results, and my device has successfully behaved as predicted. As each result adds support to the hypothesis that my system generates gravity, and as the resultant preponderance of evidence continues to support my idea without any falsifying evidence, I feel increasingly stronger about my belief in it.

Skepticism is only a bad thing when you sit on the fence and don't decide which explanation to trust most. You're testing and experimenting, so if you do it right you'll find evidence in support of the best explanation. Many people claim to be skeptics but simply remain incredulous all their lives. I don't want to take your thread off-topic, but it might help your perspective to make distinctions in your belief system. I've chosen to look at "belief" as the trustworthiness of the explanations you accept for various phenomena. Using the scientific method, we remove as much bias, faith, wishful thinking, and interference as we can, so the conclusions we come to are as trusted as we can make them. Faith always claims 100% accuracy. In science, theory is as strong as it gets, and even the most researched theories are constantly being updated as new evidence is discovered. I think when you talk about belief causing war, violence, and ignorance, you're talking about faith, not trusted science.

I get the feeling you think FB is, rather than "too big to fail", it's "too big to regulate"? Is this right?

Bad things only? When a gun stops a murderer or an enemy, aren't they hitting their target market?

Some of the things specifically mentioned by HUD authorities was building owners barring anyone who had expressed an interest in mobility equipment or other handicap devices from viewing their apartment rental advertisements. Presumably, people in wheelchairs are sticklers for maintaining ease of access, and cost building owners extra because of their lack of mobility and snowflakey attitudes about how buildings are maintained. Something else the tools allow is restriction of ads for people from certain area codes. As a building owner, is it important to keep people from bad neighborhoods from "moving on up" to your building? When one is pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, it's nice not to have a foot on one's throat. If a company only hires men (for no reasonable reasons), they'd quickly be singled out for discrimination. But when they can legitimately say they've NEVER had a female applicant (thank you, FB ad tools!), they're let off the hook. I think FB is at least an enabler here. Why is it illegal for me to ask for an applicant's age, but it's not illegal for me to use FB to make sure I only see people between 18-20 years old?

This makes it sound like my knowledge alone could physically change either property.

So regulate their abuse of data, but don't change the advertiser tools that allow illegal discrimination?

Not entirely true, and the point has been made that FB is fairly unique in business history. And in the US, laws can be enacted that can only be fulfilled by a single company. The Halliburton no-bid contracts during the Iraq invasion are an example, as well as the legislation that allowed General Electric to spend $84M lobbying for exemptions only they could meet the criteria for, gaining them $8.4B in tax reductions. So maybe we need regulations that don't name FB specifically, but can only apply to them. It's clear to me, at least, that the current situation is being heavily abused, in a manner that's difficult to investigate. First you use a 2nd Amendment argument, now you're questioning whether we support the troops?!

Do I seem to be saying that?

Ah, like the Second Amendment argument for guns.

Correction, what I'm mainly hearing.

What I'm hearing is that because FB targeting tools can be used for good, it's silly to hold the company responsible, even a little bit, when those same tools are easily used for evil. And I can't get the similarity with American gun culture out of my mind. Many folks also think it's silly to hold the people who make and sell the guns partially responsible for the mayhem they cause, too. We regulate banks when we find their practices allow illegal activity. I think FB deserves no less.

! Moderator Note Don't post ignorance like this here anymore. This is a science discussions site. If you don't know something, ask questions so you can learn. Ignorance is NOT banished by making stuff up.

Dude, I was working on something EXACTLY like that! It seemed appropriate after reading a study detailing the decline of belief in a divine creator among smart folks over the last 32 years. Gaps in a person's knowledge are blind spots, and shouldn't be further spackled over with god.

It's nice that your god has no limits. Very convenient.

It only took you 50 posts to give up on science.

As I told my friend, this is buying a hammer to drive nails. I have no problem with it. If the local newspaper had a way to let the advertiser know that a person from a protected class was making the call so the advertiser could discriminate against the caller, would that be different? Would the local paper bear some of the blame then? If the hardware store not only sold the hammer, but also had a silver version with a holster to conceal it on your person and instructions on how to remove blood, is the judge right when he only convicts Maxwell? To me, it's like only holding the person who kills someone with a gun responsible, instead of also including the easy availability of guns as a factor. And I do acknowledge that FB is a unique entity in our society. No other company has so much product under the mis-assumption that it's the customer.

Beer is a gateway drug. Pretty soon, you're showering while reading a laminated copy of Scientific American.

Why some people think they can solve a physics mystery with only popular science study instead of mainstream coursework in actual physics.

And that was readily apparent, but you also seemed to base your interests on the assumption that the Bible was corroborated by other ancient texts, which isn't the case. I'm not even sure why "ancient books" is part of your idea. I look forward to your reply tomorrow, when your 5 post maximum first day is over.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/21/17764480/facebook-ad-targeting-options-removal-housing-racial-discrimination https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/17/facebook-could-be-responsible-how-advertisers-use-its-platform-justice-department-says/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.aa51c1a63918 So I was arguing with a friend of mine Sunday about the tools FB has that let an advertiser discriminate regarding who sees their ads. My friend is a hairdresser who specializes in hard-to-treat black women's hair. I told him the same tools he uses to target his clientele is being used to discriminate against people some advertisers don't want to do business with. FB allows apartment building owners to exclude ethnicities and age ranges they don't want in their buildings. FB allows employers to discrimination against workers they don't want (such as only hiring young people). People with profiles that aren't in a "select" group simply don't see these ads, they don't show up on their feeds. My friend was trying to justify those tools as productive and useful. In the end, I told him I'm not saying a hammer can't be useful, but I object that the hardware store seems to be openly selling hammers to people they know are using them to hit people with. I think it's an abuse of a system, and I think it needs to stop. How do you feel about this practice?

I suppose exaggerating a major local flood into a global flood is excusable poetic license. But then you have all those plagues, miracles, and bizarre rains that surely would have been noted by more than just the Bible's chroniclers. Does the OP know of any ancient books that corroborate the Bible about these events?