Phi for All

We could have ships that are designed to reach a habitable planet with a colony that will spend a few generations in space, eventually depositing the descendants on their new planet. But this might violate your "living in space is not possible" clause. If life on that scale can't survive living on ships, I'm not sure what alternative there would be. We need to move the whole shebang eventually, or at least everything we think is important besides us. If space is too toxic for Earth life, there's really no point. End of discussion. Unless you want to allow that we can probably overcome most problems to do with space.

What about people like me, who don't think about god(s) much at all? I don't state there aren't any, but I see no evidence to support their existence, so I'll wait until there is. In the meantime, trying to say I have "beliefs" about god(s) because I don't participate in any belief system is like saying I'm anti-stamp collecting just because I don't collect stamps. Weak atheism and Humanism aren't a set of beliefs. Just like bald isn't a hair color.

Because the alternative is learning like everyone else. For some reason, you resist this, and squat instead. You think it makes you interesting and unique, and you're wrong.

When Burger King was just thinking about moving their HQ to Canada to avoid US taxes, we stopped eating there. It was just a personal boycott, and we only ate there a couple of times a month, although I'd tell anyone who was interested why I was pissed off at them. But the other day I noticed the BK we used to frequent went out of business and they actually demolished the building. I know there's a deeper story, but until I find out what it is, I'm claiming responsibility.

How is your preaching different from anyone else's? Why should anyone believe you when you tell them where they must go to "find the more coherent story of GOD"? You're just making it all up like everyone else, aren't you? You have no evidence for anything you say, so why should we believe you? Aren't you just hijacking the OP's idea of god(s) with your own version? And isn't that exactly what every religion does, try to supplant their version for a different version of the same lies?

! Moderator Note NO! Please be very careful what you accuse others of. NOBODY called you an idiot, or implied it, or disparaged you personally in any way. That would be against our rules. We attack ideas ruthlessly, because that's what keep science strong, but we do NOT attack the people who have them. Attacking a person to discredit their idea is a logical fallacy. Report this note if you disagree, but please don't discuss it off-topic here.

I blame this on adamancy. Most of these ideas come in as rants of "I've proven Einstein WRONG! My idea is the right one!!" Almost NONE of them start by asking questions, or posing the concept that they've found a discrepancy they don't understand, and can this be right? They immediately trigger the braking mechanism on most of the membership, and the threads get bogged down in half explanations, half incredulous admonitions. I like the way you've put this. Education and training doesn't slave one to mainstream concepts, but rather they allow one to see in greater detail, nuance, and depth from the start of an idea. Speculation of the sort we get here probably looks like grainy old sepia tone photographs, when a professional physicist is capable of seeing at extreme resolution in millions of colors.

But this doesn't address the problems with the news. Do you think the news should be treated differently than the sitcoms and game shows, since it was originally developed to inform the public with multiple perspectives? Without that, station owners get to use an outlet they should NOT be able to exploit to promote their own agendas while unfairly detracting from competitors. This is so true. I laugh when I hear people say they aren't influenced by advertising because they've been around the block a few times. NOTHING can save us from the levels of spin generated at us by marketers who've studied the us meticulously for the last 60 years or so. Thanks for that. The first one sucked, but it's just a corrupt, greedy maneuver. The second one is different, imo. Eliminating the Fairness Doctrine removed the heart of what government mandated informative journalism meant to the public. It removed our trust in the stories being told to us, and allowed that third bit of jackal legislation to get passed, giving rise to networks like Fox, who pissed lighter fluid over the rest of our hopes for unbiased information and flipped us the Zippo.

Since the supportive math = 0, logic shouldn't get a mention here at all. It's a mathematical concept of validation, but it's not really applicable if there's no math, right? Mr Spock messed up the scientific definition of logic.

It's mostly the thug-type scientists, roaming in street gangs armed with over-sized calculators, coercing people to read labels and bicycle more.

Some might say tough and ludicrous. Like me trying to teach Peyton Manning about being an NFL quarterback: "I know, I know, I didn't even play in high school. But I'm telling you Pey (he let's me call him Pey), I've discovered that if you deflate the football, it's a LOT easier to keep hold of. That's been the problem behind virtually every fumble in the history of the game, and it took ME, an amateur, to point that out to you. Hey, you make sure I get credit for this, OK?" Dude, this is really not a scientific approach. If your ideas are strong, you should want people to try to show where they're wrong. This emotional attachment not only blinds you, it makes you deaf to all the times people have told you, SCIENCE DOESN'T CONCERN ITSELF WITH "PROOF". A very, very limited analogy (don't stretch it too far). An hypothesis that you're actively pursuing is like sculpting something out of stone. You pare away what you don't need, what is wrong for this piece, what is observably not part of the sculpture. You aren't creating anything new really, you're just removing what doesn't work for that piece, like science falsifies instead of "proves". When you're done, you didn't make what's left, you just removed everything it didn't need. If the piece then satisfies all the artist's requirements, and the requirements of anyone else viewing it, it's deemed a worthy piece.

It is a bit fascinating that it goes from "This theory has some difficult concepts that don't make sense to me" to "It MUST be wrong!", completely bypassing the normal "Maybe I misunderstood...."

This is two threads now where you talk about this idea, and claim you've overturned science, and now you're using the "this is my big science idea that makes up for snoozing in Physics, so I want full credit" stall tactic. More rigor, please, more meat and less waffle would be nice. We all get tired of these "pre-discussions" so you can feel up the crowd before committing to actually showing us something. I think you have two choices, my friend: 1. Put up. 2. Shut up. Take the plunge. It will be better for you to ask questions (in your real thread), but I know you don't work that way, so please be prepared to support any assertions you make. If you're going to tell us, "This is the way things are!", you need to show why, with evidence.

But somehow, people who get only the popsci education think that accepting mainstream means blind obedience, rather than simply standing firm by the best current explanation, while constantly testing, observing, and measuring to find an even better explanation. And even when corrected, the image of hidebound ivory academia towers breaking under their own rigidity persists. Reason will not penetrate. And they always want to believe they don't have to study formally. Yootoob is enough for one to overturn Relativity, apparently.

We have an Official Jokes section we could move it into. Bit of a compromise. Not really mainstream science, but not really funny either.

I think we only got honest journalism in the early days of television because the US government required it. I've never looked up the regs before, but I know broadcasters were required to do an hour of news every day to inform the American public, and iirc, they kicked and moaned about it at first, but it was the price for using the government owned airwaves. Then they saw how popular it was, how thirsty for real news the public was, and they got behind the idea fully. But somewhere along the line, earlier than when we went to 24/7 cycle coverage, the news was allowed to be treated like game shows, sitcoms, and soap operas, and journalism died a lot. We have no more trusted journalists like Murrow or Huntley or Cronkite. People we counted on to dig deep and tell it like it is, without letting their personal views taint their reporting. This gave rise to schmucks like Peter Jennings, who used to smile and nod on camera whenever Reagan was mentioned, or Reagan said something, or Reagan farted. Part of the whole media mechanism that kept such incompetence in office for 8 years.

Since the Big Bang theory doesn't say anything about the "beginning of the universe", referring to it in this context isn't appropriate. It's like saying, "I have issues with the theory of evolution because I believe trying to predict when the sun will set is a contradiction in terms". It helps if you can understand the work you're criticizing.

Cue the music, get ready for the close-up, switch on the CG light bulb. Welcome to science.

The idea has always been that if someone supports a speculation well enough that none here can refute it, we'll move it into the appropriate mainstream section and continue discussion there. I've never seen anyone come close. Mostly, they just toss out guesses with little evidence to support the ideas, then ignore everyone who refutes their arguments. Or they ask the same questions over and over, like they either don't like the answers or they can't hold more than two things in their head at a time. This type of person typically bulldozes his way through thoughtful, intelligent replies like a rhino through lace, cherry-picking what they like and ignoring all else. It's still all unsupported guesswork, and we wouldn't mind talking about it so much if we thought there was a chance this person might actually listen to replies.

! Moderator Note I think that's the best advice for anyone following this thread: study up and come back armed with science knowledge! Thread closed.

I think it's clear what happens when the media that's supposed to keep us informed is focused more on money than on information. They feel required to do anything to keep you viewing to promote their numbers, and sensational terrorism like Trump means they don't have to do anything but point and record. The public is glued, screwed, and tattooed. And ultimately, it's auto-accident journalism. The public is at fault for not demanding better from the regulatory system governing the media, and from the media itself, but they can't look away. It's almost impossible to ignore it and take the high road. But why doesn't someone in the media realize the voice they're giving to terrorism, which would wither without global media coverage? When do they become responsible, when can they be held accountable for skewing elections, breeding more jihadists, creating gridlock by equating all sides of an argument?

You're delusional. That doesn't help.

To be fair, our brains lie to us a lot. I've come to think that science speculations like this happens because this is what the general public think scientists do, they guess and then check it out. It's what the general public does with lots of things. The average person who snoozed through science classes, only to later learn how important it was going to be, has no idea how much learning the way science works eliminates most of this type of speculation. As a working physicist, you probably have LOTS of ideas you're able to easily dismiss five minutes after you had them, because you can work out so much of it in your head, and recognize through finely honed critical thinking skills that "this idea will never work". I think some people without training and education in science spend years chasing down these rabbit holes, while you calmly run some calculations and easily see things are off by several orders of magnitude. I think people without this training and education would like to pretend it really doesn't matter, because they just KNOW they're right.

Here is what you're doing. You've done some research, but only very topically. You've grasped some concepts, and ignored others that didn't make sense to you, but are critical for understanding. But since you're only skimming, and not digging deep into the knowledge you're criticizing, you have patches of clarity in your explanation (the one only you can see in your head) but no continuous thread of evidence maintained rigorously that supports you. So you do what humans do better than anything, your brain stitches together those patches of clarity to make a pattern, and you end up filling in the blanks with guesswork, to make it seem "logical" to your brain. And the filled-in blanks make you think you've got a Eureka! moment on the horizon. You can't seem to grasp the right words for it, but you convince yourself you are right! The real problem is you don't know what you don't know, because you lack formal study. You probably also think it's too late for you to go back to school, or it would be too much work, or you have another excuse. You should combat your own ignorance, not compound it with this pointless guesswork. You should be asking questions, not telling everyone how things really work.

Questioning is great. What you do, the thing that removes you from the ranks of true skeptics, is your unwillingness to listen to informed rebuttal of your arguments. You tend to create a soapbox derby, where you make assertions, replies show where you're wrong or have no support, but you ignore them and just keep preaching. That's not what a skeptic does. You're no skeptic. Skeptics question, then they find out the best supported explanation, then they don't need to question that bit until there's conflicting evidence, and they move on with a bit more knowledge. Remaining an eternal skeptic is so counterproductive to science as to be a crime, imo. A crime against the learning process.