Phi for All

Mixing philosophy and science has been mentioned in this very thread as a large part of the "crackpots in physics" problem. To me, you're hiding behind the vagueness of "whatness" in order to denigrate the scientific method. Scientists don't put their "faith" in anything; trust is more important. And this statement, " I also carry this on to the small percentages that some theories are wrong", is wrong. MOST theories are wrong, and their flaws are eventually found out, and the scientist moves on or corrects their mistakes (which often shows the idea is still wrong, so they move on). Crackpot theories differ in that they're usually wrong in the basics, something that a science-educated person can spot right off. That's why so many speculations here get discussed and locked rather quickly; they're trivially wrong, but the poster usually wants everyone to overlook basic flaws and focus on the real heart of the idea, which is usually formed only in words, subjective and ultimately meaningless words.

I think another aspect of this phenomena is an overestimation of "how long I've been working on this". Just because you've been pushing the same idea for 5 years doesn't mean you've been "working on it" for that long. A proper theory would have changed a lot in 5 years, growing, maybe starting from scratch a few times, adding supportive evidence, testing predictions, etc. Ignoring refutations and criticisms isn't part of the methodology. If it took you 3 months to formulate the idea you've been insisting is complete for the rest of the 5 years, against all review by peers, you've been "working on it" for -4.75 years. Imagine all the education in mainstream physics you could have gotten in that time!

! Moderator Note Please give us an overview of your new iteration. Our rules have changed a bit, and we require that discussion can be accomplished without clicking on links or watching videos, And welcome back,

The PM system is best when you can't use the Report Post function, like when a thread is locked. Just sayin'.

Tough to say, but I'd think there are more things you can do to reduce your water use than to reduce your use of gasoline. If you can't use public transportation or at least carpool, it's not always feasible to buy a more efficient vehicle to save on gas. Commutes to work are often inflexible. But a little focus will probably show how water can be conserved on a daily basis without spending much.

Your teacher didn't understand what he was teaching. The internet offers a broad range of information, but you need to know the basics (no, no, no you don't) before you can discern between good and bad information.

Did you take physics in school? How long ago was that?

! Moderator Note Thank you. Moved to Engineering.

It's from the Bush era. Cracked is a better description than advanced.

Throw it off a cliff? Or come up with a 3 GW power source you could hold in your hand. In which case, the last thing we'd use it for is an Iron Man suit.

Comprehensive testing might not be cost-effective, but you could test something like blood sugar levels after eating an apple fairly easily. What exactly are you looking for? Nutrition can be measured in many ways.

... but you don't take the time to understand it. Short answer, since long ones don't work with you. You object instead of question. You assert instead of inquire. You insist that if you can't understand it, it must be wrong. Personal opinion: I think you've spent so much time railing against the system, that to admit you're wrong would mean a lot of wasted years. Perhaps you should Google "Sunk Cost Fallacy".

Cities are greedy that way. On a visit to Germany a while back, I saw that many homes had gutters that led to a single downspout, which emptied into a series of large catch-barrels so they could reclaim rainwater for their backyard gardens. I looked into doing something similar and found out it's illegal to collect rainwater in that kind of quantity in Colorado. The water belongs to the people of the state, so I would be depriving others in my zealous drive for personal sustainability.

You know, even if you had a viable power source for an Iron Man suit, and could somehow overcome the impact-related problems, you'd still never have the seemingly unlimited supply of missiles and other weaponry Stark has. I'd rather have an exoskeletal enhancement suit like Ripley's instead. Ever since the summer I watched a Bobcat artist transform the empty lot across from where I worked, I've looked in vain for projects I could do that would require me to rent one. But I could think of lots of things I could do today if only I had a Ripley suit.

This seems like a productive approach. Personally, I think anyone that uses faith (as I've defined it) is not using reason. To believe in something so strongly without anything but gut feelings and peer pressure to support it is not reasonable. And we've all seen how this type of belief is pervasive and persistent, defying all attempts at rational explanation, probably because this faith developed without any kind of rational thought. The less someone knows about what they believe, the less likely they'll be persuaded to un-believe in it. And the more likely they are to make a lot of lifestyle changes (going to church, tithing to support their religion, trips to the Holy Land, evangelizing, etc). I think faith is attractive because it gives many people answers they like and don't have to work very hard for. Hope seems similar to faith, just not as strong, and therefore not likely to cause a lot of assertive lifestyle changes. Hope is probably like fence-sitting; I believe this but it truly could go either way and I wouldn't be surprised. Like, I have a good feeling about winning the lottery, but I'm not going to go out and buy a new car with the money I haven't won yet. I have nothing to back up this feeling, but I still feel it. And when I take the time to study probability, my hopes of winning dwindle. Reason kicks in and I realize it's a very low probability event. Trust is attractive to me because it's realistic and testable. If I'm attempting to base my decisions about right and wrong on what I believe, trust is really the only type of belief that makes sense to me. It may not give me answers I like, but trust will better reflect reality and reason, and that makes me feel better about my decisions.

! Moderator Note jeremyjr, per the rules of the Speculations section, I'm closing this thread because you've failed to provide evidence that matches your extraordinary assertions. Further, you fail to actually discuss this topic with other members, and are resorting to soapboxing, which is also against the rules. Members have brought up excellent points in trying to help you shore up some shoddy methodology and you've rejected every single one. The best point made recently by Bignose really says it all. You've set up a situation of "heads I win, tails you lose" by only accepting posts that agree with you, and dismissing those that don't as being hidebound or non-rigorous. In point of fact, it's your arguments that lack rigor, especially when your speculations are made with such assertiveness yet lack appropriate supportive evidence. I'm closing the thread. You had your chance and chose to pursue a non-productive approach. Don't open this subject again, unless you're prepared to provide the appropriate support.

Like the awesome enhancement suit Ripley wore in Aliens? Much more doable than an Iron Man suit, imo.

Here's an article (I haven't finished reading yet) that talks about Portugal and the results of decriminalizing all drugs (or at least in reasonable personal amounts).

At the risk of sounding like a broken record to other members, I'll repeat that the best "short answer" evidence I've ever seen for speciation (which is crucial when talking with creationists since they tend to know very little actual science) is the presence of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in vertebrates. Forget evolving from apes, with the laryngeal nerve you can go all the way back to our fish ancestors. With a single piece of evidence, you can show speciation, as well as how our design is far from intelligent. If I were designing a car, and the battery is six inches away from the horn, why would I use a wire 7 times longer than needed and loop it around the motor?

Explain what you mean. What basic physics is being ignored here?

The US Army (supposedly) has a version, but I don't think they ever considered making it fly. Looks like a lot of hype, but recruitment probably went up when they announced they were designing one.

I've always heard overfilling oil or transmission fluid risks blowing out your seals due to pressure. I've owned mostly manual transmissions (until my present vehicle), and I've never heard about the foaming. [/non-professional hearsay]

Your farmers are already paying a whole order of magnitude more than they paid last year for water. There are already penalties for using more than the average. And remember that one big reason water is so cheap is the same reason prostitution makes good business sense: You got it, you sell it, you still got it. IF it ever decides to rain again in California. Tell you what, we've had a really wet summer here, so your percentage of the Colorado River lower basin (58.7%) should hopefully make up for some of your drought. Even in a wet year, we Coloradans know how to conserve.

So imagine taking all the money used to enforce the drug laws (not the money used to prosecute individual offenses of operating in public under such influences), and using it to shore up our process for keeping kids poison-free. Surgical application of resources instead of attempting to fix everything with a badly-patched blanket. Prohibition doesn't work as well as education. Teenagers are extremely self-focused, and it seems likely that a message appealing to their mental health will be more effective than prohibition. Is it hypocritical to decriminalize all drugs, but increase the penalties for selling to minors?

Perhaps the first thing to do in this case is look for falsifiability of the hypothesis. I can't think of a way to show that what you say isn't true, so this may never be scientifically testable.