Phi for All

Hope is what you believe in sometimes when it can have no real effect on the outcome. Hope is already sort of a -1, waiting for something >0 to fill it.

It was the "rigorously defined" part I was questioning. To me, that means blocking out exactly what is and isn't creative. I think you can simply define creativity, and then be rigorous in applying that definition. So if I do something artistically creative only for my own enjoyment, it's not art until somebody else sees it? Define playfulness. Aren't you just describing a mindset that's having fun changing a typical pattern? I think creativity is fun, it's expressive, it feels brand new because you're doing something differently, something outside the normal pattern of things you're used to doing. The creative impulse emerges from our thinking processes rather than resulting from stimuli. It seems to be part of our consciousness.

The more rigorous a definition is, the less it usually applies to. Don't you need a definition broad enough to encompass what most would call "creative"? To me, being creative can be as simple as putting things together in a way you never have before. Only if you're talking about art, and even then I don't consider an observer essential. Much of what we do in life is about following familiar patterns to get what we want. We know the formulas for many mundane acts, and we know exactly what should happen when we invoke them. To me, creativity is an attempt to change the pattern without knowing what the outcome will be. It's like stepping off the road to investigate a narrow path. It might end up being a shorter route, it might lead to a dead end, or it just might lead to the most beautiful place you've ever been.

! Moderator Note New poster + eager mind = a few mistakes. Let's electronically crumple this one up, hit the bin, and start over. prashantakerkar, being more specific about what you wish to discuss will result in a better conversation. Does being left-handed change the physics of archery much at the Olympic level? This is an opportunity to ask expert level questions. Feel free to start a better opening post.

! Moderator Note This is a science discussion forum. Threads in the science sections should be about science subjects. Moved to the Lounge.

Every experiment that measures observable phenomena has had an opportunity to detect such qualities as you describe, yet they haven't. Similarly, we've tried to detect measurable amounts of what people call ESP, again with no significant results. Nothing that's repeatable or predictable. It's a fairly common argument, that there are things we're not evolved to perceive. It certainly seems conceivable, and when we find out there aren't, our incredulity kicks in. There are certainly types of light that we can't see with our eyes (but we can detect through other means), and there are senses other species possess that we don't. But what you're suggesting is fairly super-natural, things outside the natural world that science is able to measure. We observe that fish have an ability to follow close movements in shoals, and we know it can't be their eyesight or any other known sense, so we keep experimenting until we discover they have lateral lines that create a network capable of sensing pressure due to movement and vibrations. Their behavior told us they were perceiving something we weren't. You're also thinking that our brains are "conditioned", as if they're on a narrow path that won't allow deviations, and nothing is further from the truth. We hold vast amounts of data in our heads, and use our brains to manage that data and form it into useable information, and we do it extremely quickly. We may have some trouble fixating on patterns that please us, but when there's something anomalous in what we observe, science helps us remove as much bias and preconception as possible, and figure out what doesn't fit. If there are things that exist that we don't have the capability of sensing somehow, then those things ALSO don't do anything else that might impact our existence. Could there be ghosts? Only if we can't sense them and they can't affect us or the world around us in a meaningful way, so does it matter?

https://phys.org/news/2009-11-rightleft-handedness-snails-lab.html

After this statement blew up my active irony meter, I found my spare, switched off and in a drawer downstairs, with a crack in the faceplate.

First, stop looking at physics in such a black and white way. If you're thinking along these lines, your teachers haven't prepared you as well as they should have, or you've been thinking these thoughts instead of listening to them. Second, energy isn't a "thing", energy is a property of things. Third, well, Sensei covered the first dimension mistake. Fourth, the Big Bang wasn't an explosion. It was an expansion, and the theory describes the evolution of that expansion from an extremely hot, dense state to the present, and uses the LCDM mathematics as a model. Fifth, please, please, PLEASE, use this time very well that you have studying mainstream physics with an actual instructor. When there are things you don't understand, please ask questions instead of guessing and filling in the gaps in your knowledge with "things that make sense to me". It's not totally your fault, humans are amazing pattern-recognition machines, and when we don't have a piece of the puzzle, we sometimes make one up. This is NOT doing science!

That's very interesting. The increased likelihood of having kids, is it because higher education provides more opportunity for relationships that result in children, and better education usually means better earnings so people can afford children in the first place?

I think the entire population should be extremely well educated so we understand how important it is to be Earthlings before colonizing elsewhere.

Education is always good if you're looking for smart solutions. Access to affordable healthcare is also good. If we took MUCH better care of our environment we could have a lot more people without stressing natural resources or endangering other species. If we did all three of these things, I think our population wouldn't get to become a problem until we had perfected offworld colonization technology. That seems like the most rational course for mankind, to me. But we really should learn to respect ourselves and our home more.

This is the side that Fox News has been trying to mold emotionally into a single block of fearful people composed of millions of differing views on what "conservative" really means. Fox News is comforting entertainment, chipping away at the reasoning power of an electorate that wants to keep what they have from disappearing any faster than it already is.

I think he uses the air toss/kick the anthill/knock over the chessboard tactic a lot when things go badly for him, but I do think he has some clear goals. They just aren't goals that are aligned with helping to lead the country/free world. Virtually every move he's made has weakened either the US, the EU, or NATO, and has given strength to states that actively pursue the same. If he didn't have clear goals, I don't think he'd have this clear pattern of shifting strength from "the good guys" to "the bad guys", and promoting the kind of leadership he wants America to have.

Look at the transcript of the press conference, and substitute "wouldn't" for "would". He'd be calling Putin a liar straight out, something he's NEVER done, and something that would have changed the entire tone of the event. If Trump had decided to call Putin out, claim there was no reason not to believe his intelligence services over Putin, why wasn't it clearer, Mr Fearless Negotiator? If this was just confusion, why didn't he act confused at the time about the response when nobody reacted to his calling Putin out?

Perhaps it was a bad idea to let extremist wealth control our sources of information for profit. Our best tools for change have been corrupted.

I was just trying to show mistermack why it wasn't philosophers who misused the term "logic".

The dissonance, imo, comes from adopting a belief emotionally (faith), then later trying to rationalize it into something more reasoned (trust). Emotions can bridge the gaps in knowledge easily (though poorly), but critical thinking requires a chain of evidence that religion always fails to provide. It must tear some followers in two, emotional belief telling you it MUST be true, and rational belief telling you it just doesn't tick all the right boxes to be trustworthy.

Show us some interesting Theoretical Computer Science threads, and post them in Computer Science. Bump out all the repair threads, attract the traffic, make it look like we need a sub-section for theory. One day you may turn your computer off, and when you turn it on again, your dream will have come true.

I've always suspected that those who try to make their religion reasonable respect reason more than religious stances. I feel it's worth some lumps since they're at least thinking, and they come to science discussion forums to defend their faith. The toughest part about folks like this is they want to call everything we believe "faith". Most of the people I know who would NEVER change their attitudes about religion (the ones it's truly futile to talk to) don't want to talk about it much anyway. They don't question things like that, because their religion gives them exactly what they need from it. Jesus would do exactly as they would do.

I'm sorry you don't see a need for clarity, rigor, and precision. These are some of the hallmarks of reason.

I come here instead of going to languageforums.net. The scientific method works best when people don't abuse standard scientific definitions.

Urban needle exchange programs are often met with outrage, until citizens hear about all the good they accomplish. I knew a manager who gave an employee a promotion, which was considered great. I found out later he didn't give the employee as much of a raise as he was supposed to, though. Here's a good one: Cable TV. Hundreds of channels, nothing good to watch.

Right, and I'm telling you they're using it incorrectly. The words you want for what you're describing is "reasoning", or "critical thinking", or "rational thought". Why drag a mathematical or philosophical concept like logic into this discussion when you know it doesn't work? Didn't you say: ?

Maybe it's the Brits who misuse the English language so the Americans and Canadians had to improve it. But your version of "logic" is worse. It attempts to foist validity on mere opinion. Many people claim to invoke "logic" because they're a "skeptic" and have a "theory", all without knowing what those words really define. Their "logic" is based on what they want to be true, they remain "skeptics" their whole lives because they don't bother to learn, and their "theory" is something they stitched together while showering last week. And maths is exactly where I'd expect to find logic being applied correctly.