Phi for All

The key here is that you're holding to principles that conservative political leadership also claims to hold, yet vote against on a regular basis. I can see where you could say that these conservatives aren't insane, they're just lying to support some hidden agenda. But then that really points out how crazy people are to keep voting for them. I get so sick of hearing conservative politicians talk about recognizing some personal responsibility, not making the government be responsible for me and my actions. I've never heard a single one of them that didn't take out an SBA loan, or accept a subsidy, or take advantage of any of the programs a progressive, modern society is capable of providing. I guess that's more hypocrisy than insanity, but it still gets gobbled up by many conservatives. And as the study we're discussing mentions, right-wing authoritarians often think you're talking about someone else when you list their characteristics, so it's unlikely an RWA will ever be persuaded by reason. And this is where we seem to be arguing about different things. You're still defending conservative principles, and the rest of us are saying that the conservative political leadership is only agreeing with you in principle. Their real-life actions are completely different, so it seems crazy to keep thinking you're being represented well.

We've all been waiting for you to comment on the arguments against fair skin being preferred all around the world. You're the one who jumped on the use of tanning beds as extremist behavior, instead of as supportive evidence that Americans, at least, are willing to spend almost $5B a year to darken their skin.

Here's a great example of insane actions. The most outspoken conservative Republicans are also the most outspoken proponents of Christianity. Much of what they do they attribute to their relationship with their religion. Yet... Studies have shown that it's the far-right conservatives that are driving Americans away from organized religion. Yet another example of claiming to act on certain principles while reality shows the opposite. When people claim to be close to Jesus, then turn around and vote to starve the poor and feed the wealthy, that's just crazy.

! Moderator Note Even in our Religion section, you can't make assertions like this without some supportive evidence. And no, telling people to Google it doesn't count. So either provide some evidence to support your conclusions, or stop making assertions. Because without that, you're soapboxing, and that's against the rules here. If you have any problems with this moderation, use the Report function, or send me a PM condemning me to some numerologically significant time in Hell, but don't discuss it here.

I've heard it explained this way. As hunter/gatherers, we went on the move in the Spring when the weather permitted, and staying on the move helped us lose fat stored over the winter. While we were on the move, we ate mostly meat, greens, fruit, nuts. When the cold comes back, we look for a place to spend the winter. We have more time for gathering since we're staying in one place, and that also means digging for roots and tubers. Now we lay in a store of starchy foods that will last the winter. Complex carbs stimulate insulin production, which tells the body to store fat and salt, tells the cells to produce their own cholesterol, and also raises blood pressure and skin temp. So we get a little fat, we're warmer, and our lack of meat gets supplemented. Of course now, we eat the roots and tubers all the time, and other worse sugars. We're on cold weather diet even in the summer.

Creationism is the height of intellectual dishonesty. Creationists have had their tired old arguments refuted over and over, yet they still haul them out whenever they think they have a new, unsuspecting audience. For some reason, they're so afraid of what evolution represents to their belief system that they'll ignore real-life evidence in favor of a literal interpretation of their bible. Like sheep that enjoy pulling the wool over their own eyes.

I don't know, but it definitely means you and I aren't talking about the same argument. There's a difference between insane people, and a conservative political stance that leads some to react more emotionally. As has been pointed out through the last several pages, this political stance has caused many conservatives to make decisions that seem more than a little crazy. So it's not about the people, to me. People can have crazy ideas, doesn't make the people crazy. But all too often, emotional decisions get taken advantage of, and we end up with way too much crazy. I don't think political conservatism is something that has to be unlearned. It's something that just has to be examined more closely, more rationally.

! Moderator Note Welcome to SFN! No offense, we keep the mainstream sections free of anything but mainstream science. We get a lot of students, you understand, who come here for help with schoolwork. Soooo, I'm going to move this thread over to our Speculations section. Hypothesize all you like, try to back up any assertions with evidence, questions are always a good sign, and again, welcome.

I would suggest you read my post again. I brought up god(s) as an example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis, not as an alternative topic. And it still applies to this question. If philosophy can't answer this question, science won't even touch it until there's a way to refute it.

It's beyond all of us, because there are more explanations than just these two. There's no reason to be uncivil, Acme's response was completely relevant. Not spitting at people when they try to talk to you is a good basic strategy in discussion.

Interesting. Systems used as a measure of emphasis. In the US, we'll use meters instead of yards to denote accuracy on a large scale (although yards are still used in American football), but for small-scale accuracy we use our lovely fraction-of-an-inch scale. Nothing says you care like measuring that board to a 64th of an inch.

You're still trying to pull the journalism trick of making both sides seem balanced in this. They aren't. There may be wingnuts on both sides, but the vast majority (like 75% plus) are conservative Republicans. I thought we established that successfully back in the first few pages. You're also still trying to strawman the insanity language as well. It's the political stance, the ideas they engender, and the almost comically destructive actions that result that are being called a mild form of insanity. You're making it about people, and then including yourself in that number and taking umbrage at being personally attacked. I actually can't think of too many conservative stances I have, other than my personal taste in fashion. And in most cases, my conservatism is motivated by fear, not by a belief that it's the right or smart thing to do. I see far too much manipulation of American values being done by mock conservatives pretending to be rational humans but are instead just self-interested liars who hide behind self-constructed "common sense" in order to benefit at the expense of their fellow citizens.

As Greg H says, the real problem isn't the general public. I think they'd just like some consistency instead of the mix we have now. If they grumbled significantly, it would be about having to buy new tools, although many of the measuring devices in US home already have metric equivalents. I think Americans would figure out the gasoline thing pretty quickly. Celsius temperature is another matter. It might take a while for us to figure out that the old 68 feels just like the new 20.

It's not about the need to witness the event. It's about the fact that the energies and densities involved are so incredibly huge that we have no way to work through them. In science, an explanation needs to be falsifiable, it needs to be capable of being false. We don't know what was going on at T=0, and since everything we understand began at that moment, the speculation as to what was happening before isn't falsifiable. So there is a difference between "what it's possible to know" and "what we can't possibly know". The existence of god(s) is a good example too. Since none of the gods allows themselves to be observed directly, there's no way we can possibly know that they exist. We can't set up an experiment to prove it or falsify it. It's unfalsifiable, and therefore not in the purview of science.

! Moderator Note You were unable to show any supportive evidence for your claim, and the thread was closed. Please don't speculate about someone else's speculation. We're trying to maintain some rigor around here, you know, so our ideas might actually have merit. We don't hate out of the box thinkers here. Most of us would prefer they familiarize themselves with what's in the box first, since it seems very rational to understand something before criticizing it.

Wow. That's right up there with "If evolution is true, why don't we have wings by now?" If you had corrected the misconception, knowing your friend, would that stop him from using that argument ever again? I find that the same kind of person who finds a sound byte they like ("If we evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?") won't give it up even after it's explained to them how wrong it is. I had a client tell me my workers showed up at a project, did a little work, then left for lunch and didn't come back. I explained that this was not the case, that after they had started working they found we got shipped the wrong parts. They finished what they could and then left to do other work, and rescheduled the installation. I didn't mind that she had been misinformed, but a week later she again mentioned that my workers better not leave for lunch and not come back this time. I find this intellectually dishonest, and it's the same thing that happens a lot with creationist arguments. The same old, tired, refuted arguments keep getting pushed on us because some people prefer justification to reason.

Ideals in society change. Fair skin in some countries used to denote a person of wealth, who had servants to shade them when they were outside, and never had to toil. It was the same with body shape. Fat men and voluptuous women used to be preferred for the same reasons, it's a visual cue that this is a person of standing, someone who can afford to eat well. But as dimreepr mentions, having a nice tan (with the right clothing style) can also denote prosperity, since who else has time to lay around the beach? Just as skinny is the preference for women now, since designer dresses are also a visual cue of wealth (and for some reason, the best designers can't seem to do voluptuous). I think if there's any preference going on here, it's probably that looking prosperous is usually preferred. Skin color has little to do with it.

Of course we didn't mean you, you're a good lawyer. And please forgive my use of the No True Weasel fallacy.

Even if this were true, our present knowledge only goes back to a split second after the universe expanded from a hot, dense state. We can't know what happened before that, and the energies are so incredible that even our guesses would have little meaning. Personally, I think it's a waste of time trying to guess when everything began. Rational methodology tells me I shouldn't pretend to know what I can't possibly know. That's straying uncomfortably close to religion.

Yes, and they're also called peckers. Huh.

If this makes either species more successful, in a few hundred generations we'll start seeing really big woodpeckers and weasels with luggage.

Are you sure that's a woodpecker? Looks more like a shuttlecock. I just hope the squirrels don't hear about this, or we're going to have acorn bombers to watch out for.

If the universe expanded from a point, then you really can't say it started from nothing. And the Big Bang theory doesn't cover the very start, it just details the development of the universe once it started expanding from an extremely hot, extremely dense state. It wasn't an explosion. Space, time, and energy expanded rapidly, but that's all there was, there was no space to expand into, so no center. Making sense of existence really isn't what science does. That's philosophy. Science looks for the explanation that has the most evidence to support it. And lastly, be careful about looking for "what makes sense". Many aspects of our universe are far from intuitive. And many things that "make sense" aren't reasonable at all. Edit: Cross-posted with Strange.

These two statements seem to be at odds with each other, though they're from the same post. Which current theory are you basing your understanding on?