Phi for All

I just think in some cases we relate better to animals because they do more of the same things we do than plants do. Walking, making vocal sounds, eating with a mouth, that sort of thing. We know plants are essential but we'd rather share pictures of cats. But I think it's a mistake to look at it this way. It's not that one part is more important than another, it's that the whole system works well together, that should be our perspective.

Don't forget logic! If it makes sense to me, it must be logical.

And our parents were accused of being addicted to unnecessary luxuries their parents made do without in the 30s. But 1950 or 1930, middle class wages were still tied to productivity. But they haven't been since the 70s, when the shift came to start reducing middle class wages, and give that extra money to the guys who came up with the idea to reduce middle class wages, the CEOs. The same CEOs that have taken our once robust economy and sold it overseas, pocketing even more profit and sheltering it from taxation.

There is no such thing as "less relative". You either measure something relative to something else, or you don't.

Seriously, definitions in science are MUCH more precise than in any other area. Words need to have those meanings, and people need to agree upon them if we're to discuss ideas using words instead of math. It's like you're saying, "I don't speak your language (math), so I'll speak my native tongue, but I'll use words with definitions you aren't familiar with. Will that make me easier to understand?"

Clear up this misunderstanding and I think you'll be better off. Relevant and relative are completely different in this context. Take the furthest away "thing" you can think of, and measure its motion relative to Earth. This is the measurement I want, so how does its distance from me decrease the relevance of what I want to know? It really doesn't, does it?

It seems like people well-grounded in the math can make these calculations and detect fairly easily whether their ideas have merit, whereas we spend pages trying to figure out what people mean using only words. While it seems reasonable to do-it-yourself when it comes to most plumbing jobs (please bear with me), most handy folks know you should trust a professional if your pipes need a high degree of work. I can unclog a toilet, but I should trust a pro to put in a water heater. For some strange reason though, amateur scientists often think they can come up with a TOE that has eluded the rest of science for a century. They want to tackle GR using words, and claim they don't need math to do it, but can't make anyone else understand what they see. Worse still, when another member does do the math to show why an explanation isn't right, it gets dismissed because "you don't get it, I'm thinking outside the box here".

But it's in the rules you agreed to when you joined. I even pointed out the special rules for Speculations, and explained the value of this over sites that don't require any rigor. Why is this our folly and not yours? But we're not. Look back and read what's been written. You're getting specific reasons, not blanket rejection. Open minds are easy to spot if you can find one in the mirror.

I use "wish". When I want something to be true, but I realize there's very little chance of it happening, or that what I want to be true has nothing to support it, believing a little is like wishing it were true. Or hopeful thinking. Faith is supposed to be stronger, by every definition I've found. I think faith in religious circles is defined differently than the kind of faith you can "have a little" of. Perhaps faith is as misused a term as "theory" and "logic". If trust is at one end of the spectrum, with all its supportive evidence and rational thought, and faith is at the other end, a form of belief that persists strongly in spite of a lack of evidence, then it would seem that the more trustworthy something is, the less faith is needed to believe in it. So your point #1 is unclear to me. I don't think faith is required if you have a decent amount of trust in what you believe.

Protip: Drop this kind of talk immediately. I've been discussing science with this community for 10 years now, and although I've seen a couple hundred people make this kind of claim, it never works out for them. You're already claiming to have done what 100 years worth of experts haven't done yet. You have a lot of explaining to do, so stay focused and leave "the entire scientific community" out of it. Also, always stay away from generalizations.

! Moderator Note Since this is a TOE, not mainstream physics, I'm moving it to our Speculations section. Please read the special rules we have there. We want to help you be as rigorous as possible in developing your idea, so we have guidelines that will help. Please read the rules, really. Thanks.

I don't want to derail the discussion, but when in real life does this EVER work? Where else would you expect someone to come in with limited knowledge, not speaking the language, and declare that they're here to figure out everything we don't know about a subject? Would you go into an auto shop and tell the mechanics that you're going to figure out what they're doing wrong, despite not knowing very much about cars? How would they react if you told them you had a better way to fix cars, but it's just a concept and they'll have to figure out how to do the greasy bits themselves?

I don't like the term "faith" as applied here. To me, faith is a strong belief with little or no support for it, basically claiming to know something you can't possibly know. While it's correct that in science we work with theories instead of proofs, and avoid saying something is "true", a theory is hardly unsupported, something you'd need faith in order to believe. I think a degree of trust develops as you learn how something you were told was observed and tested, and the trust becomes stronger as you learn the methods used to reach any conclusions. Skeptics don't distrust everything, they withhold judgement until they know how conclusions were reached, then they support the explanation if they find the methodology sound. They don't stay skeptical forever.

Oh great, more technical jargon to define....

There are tons of places on the web where you can talk about ideas in a kind of wild west, free-for-all style where evidence isn't necessary, and you can make all the wild guesses you want. At SFN, we want a more rigorous approach to posing them for serious consideration. We want to productively discuss hypotheses, not opinions or guesses, so we need to follow the methodology more closely. We're not trying to be harsh about it, and everything said should be about the idea instead of the person having the idea. A loose basic peer review where a blend of pro, semi-pro, and amateur scientists can apply critical thinking to a rough hypothesis. We want intellectual honesty to prevail. If an idea is flawed from the start, best to point it out and save everyone some time. Again, there are plenty of places on the internet to talk about your ideas without jumping through all OUR hoops. They can be fun if that's what you want. We want discussion HERE to be scientifically meaningful, and we assume that everyone posting in our Speculations section feels the same way. We assume that everyone who starts a Speculations thread has read the rules, which covers all this nicely, especially when they're specifically asked to. We should be able to assume that, right? That's not unreasonable, is it?

A rectangular mathematical array that helps you carry on?

We have a translation problem. By "unlimited is not existing", are you stating that the universe is not infinite? If this is true, then your second post seems to ask if a finite amount of matter can exist before "nothing" exists. And it looks like you want "nothing" to be defined as "'Nothing' with 'limited'", but that makes no sense in English. You may need to give us more detailed information. Be specific, because short sentences are not working well with your translator.

Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_%28animal%29

They could interpret having a bomb thrown at them as an attack. The folks on the other side, who now have the bomb, have no idea it was thrown to save other lives. They only know someone threw it over to their side of the wall. Of course they should throw it back, based on the data they have.

There's no ethical dilemma here. There's no evidence anyone is on the other side of the wall, but there is an immediate threat on this side that can be solved. You throw the bomb over the wall instantly, as fast as you can to save your family, so that if there really are people on the other side, they can throw it back.

Unless you understand science, or cooperation, or critical thought. Then you realize that superiority is contextual, and not an overall state. And ultimately meaningless. You never supported that argument. You don't get to keep making it without support, not here anyway. What kind of person accuses a whole group of people of fraud, and then refuses to say why? You became a stakeholder the moment you decided to start a discussion about it. Your post is one of the reasons critical thinking should be more of a priority in education. If you leave here now, you're going to spin your wheels for a loooooooooong time with the mindset you have. You're going to keep rejecting mainstream knowledge in favor of your bitter resentment. If you stick around, you could learn from an amazing variety of people who all love science and can help you with the misconceptions you have. You're smart, that's obvious, but you've chosen to reject opportunities to actually learn about the subject you're deriding. Think about it, does that sound rational?

This should be a very telling point. Everybody who claims to "think outside the box" assumes that lots of solutions happen when folks do this. It's almost a given from the phrase, like Begging the Question that thinking this way is the best. Can anyone give a specific example of successful, real life out-of-the-box thinking?

That's a good way to put it. We see this a lot in the Speculations section. People come in with ideas all the time that have some basic flaw, so without giving them an answer about their idea being wrong or right, we say it's trivially dismissed because they made this error here, and then based the rest of their idea on that. They still want an answer, and we have to tell them they need to fix what's wrong before we could even read the rest of it.

I don't know about how Shell uses them, but Best Western Hotels has taken a lot of flak from consumer sites like Yelp for outdated business technology. And if I was needing a serious business hotel, I wouldn't choose Best Western for that reason. And again, many businesses have limited applications they need computers for, and their needs for that application are met with Windows XP. That doesn't mean it's a good general OS for most people. I used to have a program I loved, that did exactly what I needed it to do, on an Amiga system. It was great, but my needs expanded and support didn't.

Until it's just us top 5% left. And me and the other 96-100 percenters are starting to question you 95% folks.