Phi for All

So you seemed to say that support for the surprisingly effective gun lobby is also support, in this instance, for bigger government and more regulation. I question why any extreme conservative would lend that support. Not with corporations defined as "people". Did you really think I was saying the gun control issue is five years old? Which is why I suggested redefining "people" as someone who is capable of picking up a gun. Corporations certainly can't, but you're right, the step from private security guards to constitutionally approved militias is getting smaller.

You gotta love stereotypes. If the numbers don't make them look bad enough, double them.

And yet, the gun lobby is perceived as a bastion of the far right conservatives. And since 2010, the gun lobby has embraced lots of campaign financing from those good old citizens, the Corporations. Perhaps we should redefine citizenship as the ability to bear arms, then the Citizens United decision could be overthrown using some appropriate ammunition.

I believe that's mixing numbers with semantics. It can cause problems when trying to model reality. Energy isn't a thing, it's a property of a thing. There's no such thing as pure energy. Are you referring to the Penrose process? Hawking energy derived from the rotation is in the ergosphere, outside the event horizon.

It's not personal. It's an observation I'd hoped you could make some useful information out of. NONE of my comments (or anyone else's that I can see) have been meant to disparage you personally. Don't you want to be corrected when you're wrong, or asked for clarification when someone doesn't understand what you've said? Thanks for serving our country, but that's beside the point. What you're doing wrong is embracing your idea so closely that you think your idea is YOU, and it's not. It's causing you to force your idea to fit with what you assume is logic, but nothing says science has to be intuitive. You've been a soldier; if you lay your rifle on a table, and also put a cartridge on the edge of the table, and at the exact same time, you fire the rifle and push the cartridge off the edge of the table, which bullet will hit the ground first? Most people say one or the other; the fact that they both hit the ground at the same time is hardly intuitive, yet it's supported by our theories of gravity. Wrong ideas happen all the time. We don't dismiss them, we point out what's wrong and expect you to reshape your idea, based on correct information. That's how science works, it's not about what makes sense, it's about what we observe in reality. It's like building a bridge you can trust, and getting it inspected by your fellow engineers at every step along the way, to make sure no mistakes are incorporated into the design. The criticisms of your posts have been very constructive. Isn't that why you came here, to discuss science? I'm very sorry you're taking it the wrong way.

Or it's an attempt by a right wing corporation to get access to pension funds, by comparing them to the Devil and making people mistrust them. Spin doctoring against socialism and unions. Workers of the world, unite!

He's putting that in his signature, so good call.

That's too big a blanket for me. You're making a value judgement now, claiming somebody who feels a benefit from their concept of god would be better off without it, that they don't feel what they think they feel. Is that what you're claiming? I'm also a weak atheist. I'm not a philatelist either, but that doesn't mean I'm anti-stamp collecting.

I disagree with this as an assumption. Much depends on what happens to people in any society who don't have a way to support themselves when they retire. Will they be homeless and starve? If the society ensures this won't happen, then the society is paying for elder care anyway, and probably in a less efficient manner. I'm just not sure "the majority" would voluntarily use a pension system. It has the value of being a small amount taken AND dispersed over time. Anecdotally, I've found that many people freak out when suddenly faced with an extraordinary amount of money. Ask any insurance broker how many people get a $10,000 settlement to fix a roof damaged by a hailstorm, only to turn around and spend it on something else instead (woohoo, BOAT! : P), leaving them with no further insurance on the roof, possible leaks in the near future, and now they have to pay for it themselves if they want to fix it or sell it. I think a mandatory system has the best chance of being the most efficient way to handle a problem faced by the vast majority. You can't leave the last part of lives to chance.

Your enthusiasm for science is admirable, but it's clear you didn't take full advantage of the STEM course structure in school, and are now trying to piece together data gleaned from popular sources into a cohesive grasp of the science you're talking about. And it ain't workin'. Now you feel like maybe science is the one that's wrong. That could happen, right? If I walked into the dugout of the St Louis Cardinals during a game (a game they're winning by a huge margin) and started talking about how baseballs should be square, and the bats should be lighter and skinnier and made from baobab trees, and did you know that left-handed pitching was invented by Sandy Koufax in 1955, and the uniforms should all be made from breathable cotton because it's logical, how do you think the manager would take it? I don't know why so many people think they can overthrow mainstream science when they don't know it in the first place. It's like imagining you could beat the best time ascending Everest even though you've only read a few magazine articles about mountain climbing.

Ooooh, I can finally move "Bungee-jumping" to the Professional Experience section of my resume!

I agree with iNow. It's a big leap going from curve balls to shootout scenes from Wanted.

I disagree that your pension system needs to be destroyed, but I'm almost certain it could be improved. Systems like this benefit the majority, who aren't like you (knowledgeable enough to be capable of making their own investments). Without these systems, you'd pay more in taxes to help these people when they retire with nothing saved. It is socialist, one of the best parts of socialism, imo. When the system is working well.

I think you're trying to make this internet interaction into what you feel is a better face-to-face interaction. You should accept that this is different. I like it because I can remove more layers of bias, and not judge people for what they look like. I discussed lots of subjects, for years, with a guy who was really smart but was a real loose cannon when it came to self-editing. He improved rapidly in his style and became a high-quality member (although some of the earliest Mods talked about booting him several times). One day in a PM, he confessed that he was only 13 years old when he joined. I'd like to think it wouldn't have mattered early on if this guy had used a photo of himself, and I'd known at the time that he was in middle school. But I know it would have influenced the way I treated him somehow, and I can't see that that kind of influence being of any ultimate value. I work for that guy now. Any judgments I would have placed on him due to his photo avatar would have been wrong wrong wrong.

I think it's groovy, baby! He's been trying to change it for years, but then we get someone who can't argue rationally, so they make a comment about Bond threatening them with a gun, so of course swansont can't change it then. Now they'll probably complain that Powers is threatening them with his teeth.... Either avatar, swansont has the physics mojo, baby. Shall we interact now, or interact later? Spoken like a supervillain with his priorities straight. Lost his hair in a tragic frikkin' laser shark accident.

! Moderator Note In the future, if you have no intention of giving enough detail to support a modest discussion, please don't post in the science sections. A building's use is foundational to it's structure, so withholding details like this kills the discussion.

! Moderator Note This is why we ask you not to respond to Moderator notes,. You take the whole thread off-topic because you can't be bothered to read the rules you agreed to when you joined. You have no rights here. You have no freedom of speech. The site owner will tell you that himself. Members are guests, and civility is one of our foremost rules. You joined, and are now proceeding to ignore everything you've been told, everything you were supposed to have read, and you're flaunting your ignorance of science by trying to lecture some very accomplished professional and amateur scientists about the uneducated ideas you've dreamed up to explain what you failed to study. Please get off your high horse, unplug your ears and start listening to what people are actually talking to you about.

! Moderator Note You're getting help, but half of it is aimed at the things you're asserting (look this up, please) to be True. Please stop phrasing everything like you're trying to teach a class, because you make too many mistakes to be a teacher (the matter in the universe at the time of the BB wasn't a tiny speck in the universe, it was the whole universe in an extremely hot, dense state - no explosion into existing space, but rather an expansion of space-time that's still happening). Members are commenting on the "parts" of your idea (NOT theory) that they either know to be wrong (not the whole thing, just those parts), or that they'd like you to support with some evidence. You're making the mistake of thinking that criticism of your idea is criticism of you. Nobody is "speculating that [you're] wrong", they're saying parts of your idea are demonstrably wrong. There is a difference in science, and it's important.

Free will is a bit of a misnomer, when you think about it. Even the above prisoner has some decisions to make, some ways in which his will can influence a choice. He's free to choose whether to nap or talk or play cards, or any one of a limited but not non-existent list of things he/she can do. There really is no completely free will, you can't do *anything* you feel like doing at any time, so what kind of freedom are we talking about? I have a much broader range of things I can do since I'm not imprisoned, but I don't have the freedom to do *anything* my will can envision. It seems like free will is determined by degree no matter how you look at it. I'm free to walk downtown, but I'm not free to walk into the Federal Center without clearance. If I did anyway, and got thrown in prison, I'd be free to walk around the exercise yard and talk to anybody I wanted. If I did, I'd get into a fight with one group or another and end up in solitary confinement. Even there, I have choices I can make, but do I have still have free will? Where exactly did I lose it? Was it ever there to begin with? Is free will completely free will, or some limited version thereof, determined by... who? I would say that a device that controlled your choices would completely negate any free will you might have, if our will is ever completely free.

! Moderator Note We allow scientific speculation following moderate guidelines for rigor and evidence. Religious speculation is just you claiming whatever you want, with nothing to support it. It's not as interesting as you seem to think. You're asking us to believe rather than trust. That's not science. This is a science discussion site, with some sections for religious topics discussed in a rational, methodical way. It's not a place for preaching YOUR way that you made up. If you think your beliefs have some rational ramifications, please discuss those and the science behind them. You're trying to blend your misunderstanding of black/white holes with some personal religious epiphany you can't explain using science, and you're failing because it isn't science. It's unsupported guesswork. Please, this isn't personal. This is about the difference between what you believe, and what you can persuade us to trust because you've given us reasons to accept your explanations. This is NOT the place to preach your gut feelings about how the universe works. We want evidence for bold assertions, the bolder your claims the more evidence should support them. Thanks for listening, no need to respond in this thread to this modnote. If you have a problem with it, PM another moderator and they'll help you.

! Moderator Note Mike, you need to start a blog. I think you would be fantastic at it. You have several threads that are all turning into "Mike Smith Cosmos shares what he found today". No offense, please, but we're a science discussion site, and we like a fair bit of get-to-the-point when we talk about science. Discussions really should be aimed at defining a foundation for our ideas, supporting them every step of the way, ensuring their trustworthiness. Most of the threads you have open are doing what you like best, skating on new ice, jumping from floe to floe. You like throwing ideas out and seeing if there's merit in them, sometimes the wilder, the better. THAT is why you should blog about that kind of thing, the ideas you can't really support with the level of evidence everyone here is always asking you for. We have the mechanism for blogging right here, if you're interested. And for the types of science discussions you can support with evidence, we welcome them wholeheartedly. But we need to clean up some of these open, ambiguous ramblers that are more wishful guesswork than science discussion. I hope you understand.

! Moderator Note NO Speculating in the mainstream sections, please! You started out asking about legitimate science. If you want to go out onto the ice, please start a new thread in Speculations. There's no need to respond to this in this thread, but you can report it if you object.

We're a science discussion forum, not a "Let me make some wild guesses with no evidence" forum. You gave an hypothesis (not a theory, theories have been studied by multitudes of scientists, have mountains of evidence and withstood every experiment trying to refute it, and is the absolute best you can get in science) and you should try to support it with something tangible, some evidence that turns this from a guess into a possible line of speculation with a bit of rational foundation. That's what the scientific method is for, so we're not guessing, we're mapping out the differences between what we're almost certain of, what we trust as the most current best explanation, and what we suspect is correct but are still developing our ideas about. It's not about proof, it's about trusting our most-supported explanations for various phenomena.

Some science needs to be discussed soon, or someone's going to close this thread.

! Moderator Note Not Science News, moved to Lounge.