Phi for All

So you spend your life trying to find a reality you're not developed to exist in? Constantly questioning whether yours is the real world and if you're only fooling yourself to think you can rely on your own intelligence?! This is the face I'm making: And a little bit like this: I think this would make me miss out on reality a lot. But maybe it's just me. I also like to experience my daily adventures rather than take pictures of them.

! Moderator Note Agreed. Don't do it again, and please stop wasting member's time with your trolling of science. You seem to have no point to make. Thread closed.

No, I would argue that trust, hope, and faith are all forms of belief. Your way doesn't make much sense. It's belief that takes many forms.

How could he? Newton had no empirical evidence of god(s), so he believed using faith, not trust. You have some very glaring misconceptions about philosophy and science in general. What's really unfortunate is that you're in a place that could help if you would start asking questions rather than trying to re-write what's already been established.

Trust is all we can expect from good science. Trust is a form of belief that works best with science. Faith is good for religion, but science doesn't prove anything and instead relies on theory, which in turn relies on preponderance of evidence. If the evidence is trusted, the theories based on it can be trusted. Time and experience enforces that trust. In the end, the way we believe in a theory is by finding it worthy of our trust. So yes, most definitely, I'm saying that you must trust in order to progress in science. Not hope, that's just wishful thinking, and not faith, which is strong belief without reason. Trust is very important.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-shimkus-prenatal-care_us_58c1e4fae4b0ed71826b6e4e More resentful judgements? Women don't complain about having to pay extra for insurance to cover prostate problems.

There are certainly those types around. I'm thinking of an acquaintance of mine who had a product he invented and sold to Walgreens. It was a shoe accessory, packaged and put on a rack. It was a clever product though, and not that intuitive, and so it did poorly at Walgreens (where there are only clerks to ring your purchases up). Walgreens also owned Foot Locker though, where the need for a salesperson to fit shoes lent itself well to explaining my friend's product. He sold a ton of them through Foot Locker, and the difference was in the presentation by someone on commission.

And the difference is usually whether or not commissions are offered by the store. Clerks usually do no more than a feature dump, telling you what-all this thing does. A salesman is usually needed when the thing doesn't sell itself so easily, and a more presentational style skill is needed, and usually compensated by a percentage of the sale.

! Moderator Note If you need to say this, you need to start your own thread instead of hijacking someone else's. I've split this off by itself. Good luck defending this position on a science discussion forum.

As long as you don't think this person has disturbing issues as a scientist (like I do with Ben Carson), is there any explanation other than corruption? Isn't this a sign that somebody is getting something for their on-the-record anti-consilience statements?

When a society decides that the most extreme wealth should be used to offset the most extreme poverty, wouldn't it send a message that the health of even the most vulnerable is worthy of support? Rep Marshall's shoulder-shrugging attitude suggests his own self-esteem comes at the cost of other's. I would also posit that anyone in this age of medicine who fears it enough to forgo their own healthcare lacks education, something Rep Marshall and his party have also fought hard to keep from Americans. These people demand that "healthy" and "smart" should only be attributes of those who can afford it. Circumstances of birth are shit to these folks, they just don't care.

There seems to be a FU point where American people can be rich enough they don't need help with anything. Their homes are museums, on parklands with a pool. They can even hire their own police and fire suppression systems, so they pretty much just need the military to keep their business interests safe. That's when they want to stop paying taxes, and start resenting everything that doesn't benefit them directly. Having so much, they resent those judged undeserving. I don't mean to generalize. I know people with fabulous wealth who fund worthy causes, and believe in supporting a higher level of economic security. But we chose this system. We've voted people into office who have ensured it's this way, and when they didn't believe this we voted them out. It's a system that heavily favors an already heavily favored upper class, so it must be what makes the majority of us happy. We're in a democracy, we can set it up the way we want, and we've chosen this. Italy decided to structure the way workers are compensated by dividing up pay so they get a 13th month payment in the middle of December, which most turn right around and spend on Christmas and vacations. They like it that way, it helps everyone participate in their own economy more, and just gives everyone in general a great feeling of national pride. You could point out to everyone that the Italian companies don't pay their workers more in order to do this, that it's just a restructuring of compensation benefits, but you could never sell this concept to the US job providers. Eventually, the question of whether an employee deserves such a benefit would be raised.

I was going to start a thread about the AHCA proposal, but I realized what I really wanted to talk about was the heavy focus on how to disallow medical coverage to lottery winners. The Republicans are very concerned about NOT covering medical costs for people who've won the lottery, taking up 6 of the 60 pages in the AHCA document. Whaaaaaaat? There seems to be a pattern here, and I'm not sure if it's a conservative one, or one influenced by massive wealth, or if it's just a general human proclivity. Lots of folks seem to be under the impression that lots of other folks get lots of things they don't deserve at all. They resent it to the point of irrationality, and ignore facts that refute their fears. I think this is at the heart of why the US is the only large developed nation without universal healthcare. Many still look on public funding as a charity that demands to be appreciated or you don't deserve it. Is that conservative fear? Wealthy paranoia? Human shallowness?

It must look so insane outside the US. Do other countries have agencies that either do their jobs or not based on which party is in power? It's unconscionable to me to have an agency that's supposed to protect the environment that can slack off just because the polluters are in charge. How can anyone think that works in real life? Just because the new CEO is focusing on shoring up the brand, does that mean the Director of Operations gets to stop doing half his job? Didn't any conservatives learn the lessons of FEMA, and the differences between the ways we handled Katrina and Sandy?

So you think it's wrong because everybody for the last century forgot to adjust for time in their calcs? Like they would measure x, y, z and skip t? This is why math is important.

I'm torn. I can't decide whether conservatives just don't want to lose profit by changing behavior, or if this is some kind of pundit-fueled irrational hatred (like the Clinton email server thing), or if some 1% group actually wants there to be some catastrophes they're poised to profit from somehow. Conservative fear seems prioritized for the short term. Better to fear losing profit this year on a "hoax" than to fear losing everything when your environment turns sour. Or is this more collateral damage from the party that claims to represent workers by destroying their healthcare, represent the religious by using them to defund programs for the poor, and represent small government fanatics by sticking their nose into who we sleep with and what we do with our bodies? It's hard to tell if this is just monumental levels of stupidity or a coordinated lockdown of basic freedoms. Much of what the WH is doing seems like it's softening us up for a Russian invasion. Remove sanctions against them, divert funding from the TSA and Coast Guard to the Idiot Wall, defund FEMA, it all looks a lot like unbarring the gates from the inside, doesn't it? But the EPA, this is just paying back donations from polluters. I understand many corporations are sending notes to the WH about regs that cost them profits.

The energy in the stick propagates through a solid much slower than the speed of light, so it's far from instantaneous.

There's no better way to grow an economic system, but not every project needs unrestrained growth. Capitalism isn't evil, it's just a wild animal that needs to be caged for public safety. Unfortunately, when you put the lions in charge of the zoo, they get rid of the locks right off.

I love this one! Another snickerfest is the bit he does where his bulldog eats his golf glove, but he doesn't realize it until he finds a turd in the yard with the word "Titleist" on the side ("I go in the house and get my glasses, 'cause I can't read shit without my glasses...").

! Moderator Note Perfict_Lightning, it's clear that you need to study some science basics. You don't have a model, since you have no maths. You don't have a theory, since theories are the best explanations science has, and a theory has been thoroughly tested by many people over time, and maintains a preponderance of evidence to support it. You really should study what has been discovered instead of just making things up to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. You sound like a very intelligent person, and science could use people like you, but not for making wild guesses or wishful thinking. I can leave this open for a bit if you think you can find some support for your ideas, but it's pointless to discuss any idea that doesn't have a solid grounding in reality. Our rules require a bit more rigor. Can you pick one of your concepts and support it?

I think you've misunderstood. It's not bullying to ask for supportive evidence for assertions made the way you've made them. You're not asking questions about the science, you're saying "This is the way it is", and people are asking you to back that up. Nobody is asking you to "prove" anything. Another misunderstanding, since science isn't after proof of anything. It's all about the evidence you can find to support your arguments.

! Moderator Note This is not your blog. There's obviously nothing to discuss here, since you're claiming your opinion is the only correct one. Please don't post more "philosophy" like this. This is just preaching, and that's against the rules you agreed to when you joined.

This is one of the many reasons everything in the US costs so much more than anywhere else. The corruption on public projects is a national disgrace. If this gets approval, it's going to be the People's taxes paying for a hideously expensive boondoggle that will line the pockets of every contractor the WH owes favors to. This seems like another vivid example of fleecing the sheep, and this time the wolves are claiming it's to keep dragons out. This is a goddamn body cast to treat a broken toe. It also seems to me to be a pretty obvious push to shift some heavy investments back into favor, just like all the maneuvering with trade deals and pipelines. WH obviously doesn't profit from business in Mexico, so they're being frozen out. The wall lets the WH kill four birds with one stone (I'm betting he touts the wall as infrastructure improvements as well as border enforcement), since it also appeals to racist WH supporters.

steveupson has been suspended for a week for continued hijacking of threads. Remember folks, tangents are often important enough for their own threads. If it's not in the opening post, think about starting a different thread about it.

! Moderator Note Randolpin, this has degenerated from a thread about lack of belief into a soapbox critique of every response. Worse still, your preaching often seems out of context to the replies, enhancing the perception of canned, kneejerk copypasta and robbing it of the last bit of meaning one might glean from it. This is a very poor way to discuss anything with anyone. This is more of a blog strategy. Thread closed.