Phi for All

The wonderful part about science is it's ability to destroy ignorance. When we're afraid of something, we can learn about it and the fear is lessened if not completely banished. I think it's important for our self-worth to identify what is ignorance, and what is irrational fear impervious to reason. If you're afraid you're too materialistic, there are ways to educate yourself to be less so. If you wonder what the purpose of our lives is, you need to give it some. For me, it seems obvious that humans are the only species that could leave this planet and take other species with us to colonize other worlds. If I can do my 1/7,294,094,656th part to make that happen, I have all the purpose I need. I don't need to worry when our sun will go red giant, or when the universe will end. These are things I have no control over, so worry related to them is irrational, inefficient, and simply adds to stress that might keep me from enjoying life, or seeing a better solution. Falsifiability is a helpful concept. If you suspect everything is happening only in our minds and nothing is real, you need to realize there's no way for anyone to show that's false. It's not important whether it's false or not if there's no way to falsify it. This is what science mainly does, it looks for ways to falsify an idea rather than to prove it. Theories aren't proof, they're explanations that are falsifiable, without ever having been successfully falsified. If you're worried about something irrational, think about if it could be shown to be wrong. If not, see iNow's answer above.

Ethically, you saved he life of a wild creature, so you're responsible for it. At least until it's healthy enough to return the favor. You can't turn your best friend out in the cold when his safety is in question. You've done something many would consider unnatural, because they think humans are unnatural. I disagree, you've done a natural human thing by sharing your resources to keep a life going. One creature gets to live a bit longer, having won the shrew lottery, in a predation-free environment. Thank you!

The process of guessing what is right, then defending your guess assertively, is a poor one. It would be so much less frustrating if you would ask questions (real ones, not questioning responses from members with incredulity) instead of making assertions that are based on ignorance of the subject.

I'm not sure why you want to know this, since it certainly has no bearing on any of the problems you've proposed. It's not like there's a line of cutoff. It's the atmosphere, it's moving constantly, subject to friction and gravity like any matter. The lower atmosphere comes in contact with mountains, the upper layers are in contact with the lower layers. If you doubt that the atmosphere is made of matter, look what it does to meteors and other debris that try to punch through it.

It's not easy to explain it to someone who can't see that if the atmosphere didn't spin with us, we'd be experiencing constant 1000 mph winds. It's not something you'd think you have to keep explaining in different ways.

! Moderator Note Please address some of the reservations and refutations offered by the members. This is why we ask for a synopsis, to find the trivially wrong bits, point them out to you so you can strengthen your hypothesis or recognize that it's wrong. This is how science works. I hope you can see why nobody is interested in investing their time without some assurance of return on that investment? If you only came to plug your book, I'm sorry, that's not our function. If you came for some loose peer review by science-minded professionals and amateurs in a discussion-type format, then let's talk some science.

If we're talking about science, then "everything" should be defined as "everything natural". That's all science is interested in. God(s) are supernatural by those standards. So of course we can explain nature without god(s). Can you name something real we are so baffled about that the only explanations are supernatural ones?

Better the devil you know? It does seem like the passive/aggressive, help-me/STFU, fix-me/not-like-that strategy is designed to maintain status quo. Lots of spotlight time? Maybe. Tragic inaction? Also maybe. But there definitely seems to be an attraction to the unsolvable riddle concept, the knot nobody can untie, the cold heart that won't thaw. Maybe because it makes everyone else try harder to get through.

! Moderator Note OK, our rules state that speculative science goes in Speculations, so we'll move there now. Second, we'll need a synopsis of your idea, something to allow members to gauge their interest in digging deeper into your idea. I'm assuming, since you call it a theory, that you have a mathematical model to share. That would be an excellent place to start. Please take the time (this time) to read our rules, and the special rules for Speculations. Lastly, please, no more advertising. That's also against our rules. No need to respond to this in the thread, but you can Report This Post if you object.

Popular media has made this sound like a reasonable, rational approach to every problem. Unfortunately, as is the case here, one of the "sides" is so sparsely populated that it's ludicrous to think the "controversy" is real. People who didn't learn science in school often look for a "quick fix" that will justify a lack of hard, rigorous, mainstream study. It's so much easier to embrace this crackpottery, insist it's correct (or at least poses a serious "threat" to conventional theory), and then pretend you're a skeptic and claim there are a lot of you. A true skeptic would take a look at these questions, learn for himself what conclusions the preponderance of evidence leads to, and then side with the evidence. Skeptics do NOT remain on the fence long.

Can we stay on topic, please? Starting new threads is always an option.

You should assume good intentions until someone proves otherwise. It's not like I'm above suspicion, but I've been with this community for a long time. I have no reason to not like you. One of the reasons is because I trust I'm dealing with a real human. If you don't, well, that gives me some illumination into some of your comments on anti-social behavior. I have no idea how it was out of context. I'm still trying to figure out how best to discuss things with you. Not easy, but not impossible. Maybe.

I enjoy the inspiration that stems from collaboration. Bouncing ideas off a fellow human never fails to enhance my perspective.

You know, there's something you can do very easily to show the Earth is NOT flat, with just a smart phone and two popsicle sticks. Call a friend in a different time zone, ask them to get the same size popsicle stick you have (or any other stick you and your friend agree are identical), and put the stick somewhere under the sun, sticking straight up at a 90 degree angle. Call your friend in a different time zone, ask him to do the same thing with his stick. Both of you take pics of the stick/shadow and compare. If the Earth was flat, both shadows would be identical since they were tested at the same time. The atmosphere extends out around 300 miles, but air pressure drops the higher you get, so most of it is about 10 miles from the surface. Actually, I was convinced then that it was YOUR video. We've had a lot of people try to post their yootoob stuff so they can gain some credibility by having it on a mainstream science forum. I'm happy to be mistaken about that in this case.

Hey, I've reported this because it's waaaay out of bounds here. If I wasn't involved in this thread, I'd boot you till the first of the year. This is just a hateful thing to say to anyone, and it was completely unwarranted as well. Civility is rule #1 here. You definitely have a chip on your shoulder. You may want to think about finding another site that will let you say whatever you feel like saying. I don't care how bored you are.

Ahhh, light bulb.

That allowance automatically comes from laying all those things in sections. Your question assumes rails, asphalt, pipelines, and bridges are extruded in toto. Even without wind, you still have an atmosphere, filled with air, which isn't nothing. If you fire the cannon into the atmosphere, the atmosphere is moving with us. Same with your airplane in question 3. I fixed this sentence for you. One Physics class and all his 200 "proofs" show up as misunderstandings based on ignorance, set to video to fool those who also skipped Physics. Do NOT post your video, if you were thinking that's a good next step.

Last I heard, both H Clinton and Obama are slightly right of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Neither would dream of raising the top tax brackets to what Eisenhower or Sanders would, though. I don't think of Bernie or Dwight as Communist. Hey, that's probably why the Republicans the megacorporations revere Reagan over Eisenhower. Ike has to be something bad/evil to tax the wealthy like that. Just look what that pinko did to this country!

Perhaps some ridicule will act as a dash of cold water in the face for you, Strange. It's absolutely ludicrous to make these irrational leaps and assumptions that are so often wrong and always based on Begging the Question, and this-makes-sense-to-me "logic". Some of the pink unicorns might be depressed, but it's much more likely because they want poo that tastes good instead of that healthy blue shit. The green ones only seem outgoing; they're trying to pick your pocket so they can go to McDonald's.

! Moderator Note Let me know if you're prepared to discuss this "new description of numbers" in its proper place in its own thread in Speculations, and I will split this post off as an OP. Otherwise, please don't pollute mainstream threads with pet theories that are only going to hijack someone else's thread, and steer genuine interest in the original question off into the weeds. You've been around long enough to know, so here's a warning point piece of coal from Santa. Respond to this via Report This Post if you object to our rules, but not in pengkuan's thread, please.

So you're not in a madhouse, you're part of a madworld. That makes us all normal now.

You've misunderstood the article. The point is, when the evidence mounts up against what you want to be true, a scientist must be willing to trust the evidence over what they initially believed. Einstein, Hawking, Bohr, we've taken their wonderful pioneering work and continued to develop and strengthen many mainstream theories. They all made mistakes (we really should remove the Bohr atom model in our logo). But that has nothing to do with the kind of consilience (thanks, swansont!) we see in the climate change issue. When so many different lines of evidence converge to support a conclusion, you can't just ignore it and call it a normal cycle.

I honestly despair that you're ever going to understand the difference between an observation about a political Party, and one about its members. The two shouldn't be conflated, but you consistently do so, to the detriment of any kind of nuance in discussing things with you. It's depressing when one says "The Republican party is doing some incredibly bad/stupid things", and somehow you translate that to "If you're a Republican (Tea Party member/Texan/Muslim), you're bad/stupid." In six years here, you should have picked this up. That's an inane thing to say (no, not you, the thing you said). It makes no sense, it doesn't look or sound clever, and it's certainly not applicable. I respect your POV, but I wish you would stop filling in the gaps in your arguments with garbage like this. Sorry, but I know I'm not alone in this.

I had high hopes you were going to present some good scientific arguments, based on other posts (hard to believe you called science a religion after your views in another thread about atheism and religion - it's almost like you're two different people). You can't have read even a small portion of the rest of this thread. Science isn't about proof. It's about accepting the preponderance of evidence for any explanation, especially one as heavily studied as the science surrounding climate change.

Except this one: But I suppose consistently NOT caring about anything is a type of control. Sort of like vowing never to use your thumbs for anything. Or refusing to ever cooperate with another human to achieve a goal. Or taking a vow of silence.