Phi for All

I re-read what Greg H. said, and he didn't say believing or having faith was wrong. "So long as you don't base your scientific conclusions on that belief", is what he said. To be as objective as possible, science needs to be as rational as possible. Faith is strong belief with no rational support. You just believe, and you believe hard, but without evidence to support that belief and make it trustworthy. If you start looking for proof, is it still faith you're using? Faith is useful, just not in science. Trusting in an explanation because you can take it apart and understand it on a deep level, and verify how the explanation developed, that's what you need for science.

Are they both math-only teachers? Could you open the speech up to other education subjects? You could start with their "History" together, how the "Chemistry" came about, and how you're not allowed to talk about how they study "Physics" or make "Music" together. Maybe end with the line, "Today, I'm not subtracting a brother, I'm adding a sister, and I wish them happiness without division, and as much multiplication as they can handle."

Is there any more point in discussing this? Ten pages ago, conway asked for detailed reasons why dividing by zero must remain undefined. The more reasons he's gotten, the more he digs his heels in and insists he's right. This was obviously NOT a conclusion he reached rationally. If it were, he could be reasoned with, and this thread would have been no more than a couple of pages. He has an idea he feels is right but he doesn't know enough to know why it feels that way. He's made an emotional attachment to the idea, not an intellectual one, something that happens when you don't have enough data to analyze meaningful information. It's like only eating with your favorite spoon, you don't know why you have to do it, it's irrational, but it just "feels" right. It doesn't matter that multiple amateur and professional mathematicians, people who work with numbers all the time, tell him why it's undefined and must be that way. It's a deep explanation with many layers, and I think conway is only looking at the surface. Mainstream study equips one with an adequate shovel, but one must be willing to trade in their favorite spoon first.

Nerf the winner-take-all voting system. Buff by making it a proportional representation system, and stop electing the president by state. The game starts by defeating the evil Electoral College.

Can you elaborate on "Recently it was discovered"? Where did this information come from? Is it credible? If I had that same old comic book and wanted to increase the value of it, I might try something to get other owners to break the seals on their copies. Speaking of which, is the packaging airtight? Is there any way at all to legitimately poke a small hole in a corner? Would that reduce the value? A stylus reach flashlight ($20?) has a small light on the end of a flexible neck, so you could poke a hole in the corner, slip the head inside and get it underneath the cover. This should highlight any writing on the other side. I just tried this with a regular flashlight and the cover of my Space Symposium guide, which is a thick, full-color, glossy magazine-type cover, and I could see the writing on the inside cover. Would a buyer forgive a small hole in the packaging that was done for confirmation purposes?

Elevation (height) isn't measured north to south though, is it? The poles are NOT like a lower elevation. If what you're saying were true, gravity would be pulling things south or north instead of towards the center of the Earth. Think of the different nature of the poles. The Arctic is a sea surrounded by land, the Antarctic is land surrounded by sea. Which is colder, water or ice?

And you got all these "facts" from NOT studying science? I'm sorry, but there was a lot of process information you missed when you skipped those classes. The result is, you don't know what you don't know, and it's causing you to take separate bits of data and put them together incorrectly as erroneous information. It's a very common misconception that the BB was an explosion. It wasn't. That's one of your "facts" you have wrong, and since you haven't looked at the evidence, it's messing up the rest of your thinking. Now it's like you've just walked into CERN and told the scientists that particle physics is completely false because it's a fact that the Earth is the center of the universe. All the scientists are wondering why you didn't study more in school, because you've definitely goofed up somewhere. Seriously, this is like saying "Since I can't even imagine a beginning to the universe, there's no way it has one. End of story, don't even try to convince me otherwise, get that evidence out of my face, I can't hear you with my fingers in my LA LA LALALA!!" The real problem this poses is it tells us you've arrived at your conclusions emotionally, based on incredulity and frustration at a lack of reasoning process. You haven't reasoned out the specifics, based on what we know and have already tested and observed about our universe. Therefore, we can tell you all about the specific experiments showing that our ideas about time dilation are correct, but since you're emotionally attached instead of intellectually attached to the idea that it's wrong (we know this because you can't say why it's wrong, but you assert it as "fact"), no amount of reason and rational thinking will help you.

It seems like part of the professional manipulation mentioned in the OP. Corporations that can afford that kind of spin benefit from the lack of change conservatism spawns. It may not be the best thing for the market overall, or the best thing for the consumer, but it helps extend returns on investments when innovation is squelched. Of course, corporate conservatism means picking and choosing when to exercise that conservatism. It's definitely good when arguing about taxes and regulations, but it's so awkward when it comes to subsidies. I don't think most Americans understand conservatism. I think the pace of life is very fast, and they somehow think that putting the brakes on any way they can is the "safe" thing to do. In my lifetime, between 24/7 news and the new "conservatism" that sprang up in the Republican party after Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, fear has sprung up everywhere. Parents can't let their elementary school-age kids walk home five blocks from the park, and yet we have more police and prisons than we did in 1965, despite overall crime being about the same. We have a prison-industrial complex now, that reams the taxpayers for everything from uniforms to food to bedding, all because conservatism tells us falsely that things have been going downhill for quite some time now.

Why does cold air sink? It's because the molecules in cold air are heavier than air that's hotter. Hot air is moving around more, less dense and more spread out. So gravity pulls the heavier cold air down. Where is the gravity pulling at the poles? At the equator? When you look at it like this, is there a bottom or top to Earth? If the poles are like the bottom, why hasn't everything been pulled down there?

A yes or no philosophy question? Somebody's gonna rupture something. Even with a decent definition of "created", we have no way of verifying either answer, so "don't know" has to be the default. The unknown is interesting, the unknowable is a waste of time, imo.

I'll admit to some frustration over this type of scenario. Someone questions a well-established explanation or theory (which is great), but then isn't satisfied with the replies, most likely because they didn't understand the concept fully in the first place. Several pages of replies attempting to correct the information displayed doesn't help because the original questioner arrived at his/her conclusions emotionally, rather than rationally. They used "intuition" or "common sense", and science often doesn't agree with such subjective criteria. I stopped trying to correct creationists in lengthy posts slathered in reason and evidence refuting all those tired old claims, but ultimately they aren't listening to me. They prove that by moving from site to site, repeating the same old lies and misinformation, even after I showed them exactly where they went wrong. Now, I just send them over to TalkOrigins.org, where everything I could say about the subject of evolution vs creationism has been written down. The same thing with relativity deniers, flat-Earthers, geocentrists, and people who divide by zero. I try to send them to where they can learn, rather than a discussion board where all they do is argue from a misinformed perspective. It's not the facts that are missing for these people. They aren't going to learn until they study what we know, the way we know it, and look at it rationally instead of emotionally. Until they decide to take that step, most of what I can do is pointless. It's good that the warning bells went off for the opening poster. That's what rational thinking should be doing, helping us spot inconsistencies in the explanation of various phenomena.

You owe me a new irony meter.

It seems you're the only person who thought it deserved that much time. ACG52's link was sufficient.

You still don't seem to understand that the choice you've made, to place your own special meaning on words that nobody else will know until you explain it to them (while they explain their special definitions to you), isn't as good as the choice most people have made, to use standardized definitions so everybody is talking about the same thing. Order is usually better than chaos when it comes to communication and cooperation. That is NOT what that averages.

Except the ones they wouldn't really know, or care about. Wait, are you a scientist, or a philosopher?

And even if he went off-script on a prepared speech, he's now missed his chance to use that as an excuse. He's not saying, "You're taking this the wrong way...". He's defending the words that came out of his mouth, and I think it's shameful that so many reporters are willing to provide a softened interpretation, and one not offered by the candidate himself.

I think Jon Stewart nailed it. If Trump had done his own backpedaling, one could chalk this up to being misunderstood, or using the wrong phrase. Since Trump decided to double-down and defend his choice of words, it's inappropriate for reporters to backpedal for him now. He said what he said, you heard him right, now it's time for the "journalists" to stop trying to explain what he "really" meant.

Nobody understands the point better than you, my friend.

! Moderator Note Right you arrr, Captain!

Ugh. You're shamelessly proud of presenting your ideas in a scatterbrained, sloppily organized way to me and others?! I'm unmotivated to read them. Your presentation tells me you're either more interested in sounding a certain way than you are at supporting your explanation, or you're used to wishful thinking as opposed to rational thinking. You come to a science site for science discussion, but instead of precision, you flit from one bit to another like a pinball and hope we're following along. We like evidence with our assertions, and we like our ideas to be as focused as possible. If we were playing darts, I'd ask you to throw them one at a time instead of ten at once. Since you put this in the Lounge instead of Speculations, are you hoping for a more casual approach? We just don't do that with scientific questions. You can't make a statement about "the inexplicable aura felt by all living things" without citing the study that offers evidence such an aura exists, even in the Lounge. And most of the sources you do cite are hardly credible (I love Morgan too, but his producers are selling sensationalism, like most pop-sci panderers). Can you try again, lose the buzzwords, lose the tangents, and try to treat this like a case you're presenting to a jury in a court? We're not asking you to prove anything (proof is for maths), just that when you make an assertion that goes against mainstream science, you provide some evidence that leads you to believe so. Assertion -> Evidence, stick to that pattern with each concept before introducing something new.

My dog was a rescue, a puppy that didn't spend much time with other dogs before we brought him home. He didn't learn anything from his parents, yet when he poops, he does that scratching with his hind legs that looks like he's trying to cover it up. I've heard various reasons for this. It seems unlikely that a dog would want to hide itself, and a little dirt isn't going to fool many animals who rely on scent. He spends just as much time scratching in grass as he does dirt, though the grass is much less likely to cover anything. It's more likely that the dog is giving a visual cue by scratching, as if to draw an arrow to the fact that he's claiming this area. But my dog wasn't taught this behavior, not unless he's figured it out himself from our daily walks. I think aggressively marking territory is a trait that has been selected for over generations, and the individual dog finds ways to apply it effectively, with olfactory and visual cues. It may look "instinctual", but it's really just behavior that works for an animal that's smart enough to use what it can. Dogs have all the evolutionary tools for aggressively marking their territory, and it works well for them, so they naturally use it to their advantage. But we favor our own intelligence, so we attribute it to "instincts" in animals.

That's pretty annoying. You post a video you know isn't representative, StringJunky shows you one that is, you then claim there are no videos, and when we remind you of StringJunky's video (again), then (again) you post the same video you started with. I think you're trolling now. And I think you're a flat-earther.

Hey, you don't get to say that, one was linked to in post #12, you even said it was a good video! There's no reason for you to willfully forget that, unless... ah, there is no friend, is there?

Have you noticed that, if people have studied something and know quite a lot about it, they don't have notions like this? Only people who don't know what they're talking about, and have to decide what to believe based on emotional incredulity, get into silly arguments against reality like this.