Phi for All

I know, right? It seems to describe so much of what's going on with politics and religion these days. Arbitrary?! It's most definitely NOT arbitrary. Alpha on top, lessers below in ranked order. It's like a thermometer, and men are assuming hotter is always better, and you're not hot enough if someone hotter says so. Do you see that as inherently fair and equitable? You obviously don't understand me properly if you can argue using this stinky False Dilemma. I'm arguing that there are many ways to change our societies to be more inclusive and favorable to the overwhelming majority of people. You can't let the past make you afraid of trying. What kind of scientist says, "Well, they tried a Socialist experiment and it failed. Let's never test THAT again!" Communism/Marxism was a major smokescreen back in the 50s in the US. We actually didn't hate the Communists so much as we hated that the American Communist Party was siding with women, Jews, gays, and Blacks in the US and threatening to push forward legislation that many white people also favored, like an anti-lynching bill. Anti-communist rhetoric worked so well they used it to erode the Socialist programs we had in the US, like public schools and utilities. So I'm not convinced about your monarchy argument. The vertical assignment assumes anyone above you is "better", or knows more, or has more power, or is more capable, and anyone below you is "lesser", or knows less, has less power and capability. The horizontal assignment is forced to assess the situation and the capabilities of the people involved, and solve problems based on THAT rather than on the say-so of a higher-up. I keep trying to make this simpler, and I worry that this will continue to fail. OTOH, I'm not convinced a more detailed explanation will help if you really don't want to hear about this. Of course it includes me, from anyone else's frame of reference. And I can speak for you in this instance too, because from a woman/BIPOC/LGBTQ frame of reference, you and I are identical. 77% of domestic homicide victims are female, and 96% of the suspects are male. https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime/ Do you know what hoops some people have to jump through just to please the average 65 year old white male? I can wear my grubbies to the store if I want and still expect everyone to treat me well, but BIPOC people have to be dressed immaculately or they're frowned upon. You and I might say, "You don't need to do anything special for me!", but again, there's no toxicity meters for men, and there's more than you and me, so they have to assume it's all of us.

Really, "not all men"? Until an alpha male toxicity meter is invented that works at least as well as my irony meter, I'm going to assume it's all men. They're free to change my mind by doing more than just talk about equality. I think you make a mistake in taking it personally, rather than accepting that modern patriarchal capitalist societies have created a hostile environment for women and other non-white male groups. You need to understand nobody is calling you a shithead, but they are asking you to help stop shithead behavior by not encouraging it or even accepting it tacitly from your male colleagues/friends/family.

Perhaps you know of some good studies, Arete, but I think this is exacerbated by the way men specifically tend to organize in a hierarchy with some kind of alpha at the top controlling those below who are stacked vertically the same way. Some men have a hard time letting women be in charge partly because they assume women just want to usurp them in a similar hierarchy. But a matriarchy or a woman-owned organization might not be set up that way at all. Women might feel a council is a better approach to politics or business as opposed to having a president who's over a VP, who's over the next in line and so on. Men worry about being displaced from a pecking order, and don't see a female dominated group as a rearrangement of responsibilities.

Until they whine online about how life is stacked against them now that non-white people matter. Poor white men, denied their right to abuse their families as they see fit by a system created by rich white men. Poorly educated monkeys who can't grasp the complexity of the systems they rely on, yet have enough human capacity for intelligence to realize something is very wrong. Unfortunately, they turn away from the one group that could actually help improve their lot in life, the intellectuals and progressives who crawled out of ignorance one book at a time to accept the responsibility of accumulated human knowledge.

What if the men are getting kicked out of their marriages because they're abusive, ignorant, malicious SOBs who hurt their wives and children? That seems to be the trend. Why are you boohooing over them getting the treatment they deserve? Or do you think a woman is just supposed to stay quiet and take it when they get beat up by their man? What if a man loses his job because a woman came along who was better at it? Isn't that what the standard hierarchy says, best person for the job gets it? Do you believe men are always best for every job except raising children, cleaning, or cooking? I hate to assume you know anything, so it would help if you answered some of these questions. Your stances seem to ignore a great deal of reality in favor of some kind of Tucker Carlson spin-vomit engineered for those whose education left them in a steep deficit.

It's also because it assumes people who can speak maths fluently haven't already done the calculations in their heads and dismissed the idea as unphysical or unworkable. And the irony is, if the mathematician took the time to show how the math disproves the idea, the overconfident person wouldn't understand it anyway.

This is me, showing you where you're wrong. Please take note, since you seem to have missed all the other times. You're wrong: https://fortune.com/2020/07/14/billionaires-philanthropy-coronavirus-crisis/ I have more statistics that support where YOU'RE WRONG about the rich hoarding wealth. You're wrong about them not hoarding commodities because they can't consume them all by themselves. That shows an almost childlike naivete about how supply and demand work. And nobody said anything about "wasting" resources, we're talking about hoarding. The working class can't afford to hoard. What you think you know about the economy is WRONG.

Nobody but YOU is calling anyone stupid sacks. You have no respect for the reasoning process. The fact that none of the arguments against your stances got through to you shows none of the mistaken information was corrected. I showed you some statistics about which party OVER A SEVENTY YEAR PERIOD has grown the economy more, and your response was some bullshit about lag time. Between presidencies, your lag time argument can affect the economy, but over a long period the trends are clear and precise. The Dems have grown the economy more, and you continue to lie about that. But the real problem is that you don't understand the basics of a lot of these concepts. We can explain it to you, but we can't understand it for you. You seem to have adopted a worldview first, and now only listen to "facts" that support that view. Sorry, but I don't think discussion, especially science discussion, is for you. I would recommend some online courses in various studies, because you need to learn more before making arguments you're going to base your whole life on. Wouldn't you hate to find out you were mistaken AFTER you did something really dumb based on what you've been told? I know there are some folks who found out recently that their ignorance can be weaponized by unscrupulous leaders.

The maths misunderstanding comes to mind. "I came up with an intuitive idea that makes perfect sense and solves all the problems of the universe, now someone else should do the math!"

Spammers used to start two accounts and sockpuppet each other. I think this one is a bot that will come back soon, quote their own OP and then reply, slipping a commercial link to their business in the quote, hoping we won't notice.

Gosh no, GregA. It's rich white men that have failed these People (as in We, the People). They've set up a vertical system that reaps them hoards of benefits at the expense of everybody else. They want us to compete like animals instead of cooperating like intelligent humans. The solutions we already know would be adequate if they weren't hobbled, manipulated, and leeched off of by wealthy white men. And as swansont points out, your older brother was mistaken. The real problem here is that you're NOT going to admit that, or let it shift opinions you've held since the 80s, yet they're based on wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong that you'll just keep repeating because it fits with your mindset. A liberal mind would accept that they're mistaken and take another look at their worldview in hopes of improving it. Your perception is that we ignore men dying in battle? I know that Trump was highly disparaging of the rank and file military, but since when does the USA not acknowledge its fallen soldiers? What source did this come from (hopefully not your older brother)? If any of this is true, it sounds like the natural way to correct a problem. If my shower gets too cold, I favor turning up the hot water. What's your problem with this solution? It's used in all kinds of physical systems. You're really mixing up the goalposts here. Again, we don't have that kind of Left in the US. The right had to make up the name "Antifa" to make it seem like our leftist radicals were united, but being against fascism is about the only thing these groups totally agree on. The US Civil War was about destroying white males? GregA, that argument is the stupidest I've ever heard. Let's be clear about this: I don't think YOU are stupid! In my opinion, this argument you wrote here, on this site, for all to see, is stupid because it ignores historical reality, attempts to paint white men as real victims in a situation involving kidnap and enslavement, and because it takes a kind of delusional mental gymnastics to unpack, which makes me believe you're just repeating someone else's Bannonized shit-flood of misinformation. Do you think we need somebody really good in charge to decide if The People are being responsible enough? More likely? I know that's not true. I had choices when my life was happening around me. Those instances happened, but I was the one who shaped my responses to them. Life might have limited my palette, but I chose which colors to use out of the ones available. Also, I have a huge family, including some very Blue relatives in Indiana. Half of those aren't religious at all. Soft outlook, that sounds like something you really believe in strongly but you won't be able to adequately define it for me. It's whatever negative aspect you want to assign to someone, right? Again, you're wrong. In Eisenhower's day, he taxed the upper end of earnings with a marginal rate to encourage investment instead of hoarding. One of the worst things about the economy in the US right now is that the tax rates favor sitting on large piles of liquid assets like cash. The uber-wealthy (and yes, they DO have lots of money, in cash) can sit like vultures and wait for desperate sellers. They can make short term investments that don't help the market or the economy, but divert billions from where they should be going. Sure, capitalism isn't "in charge", but that's because it's a system. It's one way to determine ownership in a democracy. It's a system that's designed to favor wealthy resource owners over workers who produce goods and services using those resources. Unfortunately, for the last several decades, those in charge have pushed more and more "favor" towards the wealthy, taking it from everyone less wealthy. I don't call myself one thing or another. I wear conservative clothes. I believe in the rule of law, but only if it supports the equality of all citizens before the law. I also believe access to clean water and air are human rights. Same with food and shelter. And if we started investing in The People and show them they matter, I believe a ton of problems will just cease to be. Labels are easy prejudices we often pay a heavy price to wear.

This fantasy probably makes you feel better, but it's not the way it works here. Your post/thread was reported and reviewed, and because I hadn't been an active participant, it fell to me to close the thread. My reaction was to the poor job you did trying to persuade the other members of your points versus the adamancy with which you made them. You have a horrible signal-to-noise ratio as a discussion participant. Your posts are very blog-like, as if you don't expect your science to be challenged by reasoning people. The rest of your comment made me yawn. I don't find you interesting, sorry. I wouldn't need to if you made sense or did anything to help me dispel my own ignorance, but you don't. So far, big PITA to the volunteer staff, nothing interesting to me as a member.

! Moderator Note The Sandbox is for testing LaTex and other visual techniques. Angry? About your baloney? It would have to be interesting first.

! Moderator Note Moved from The Sandbox to The Lounge.

#1 - The bigger outside coil should be pushing more refrigerant to the smaller indoor unit than it can handle, which makes me wonder if your brother has this right. The inside unit should be bigger, but if it's smaller by a ton there would be some problems. Some of these units give a range (it can push 2-3 tons), so have him double check the size. #2 - Carrier systems pushed R410A through the EPA, and it's caused compatibility issues. I'm told R410A operates under much higher pressure than R22, but as long as the system is tightly sealed you should be OK.

! Moderator Note Please don't EVER stink up this site with garbage like this again. You've shown us you can't force yourself to make sense or be civil, so you should contain your postings to mainstream science or nothing at all.

I know there's a lot to learn about the color of the metal, since different processes require different temperatures. I could probably watch a bladesmith in a video and get most of it, but colors are often different in videos under varying lights. Even veteran master smiths have trouble forging outside in sunlight. It just seems like I could learn more faster by apprenticing, in this particular case. I just saw an episode where this color-blind smith used table salt to tell him when his blade reached the proper temperature for quenching, since he has trouble seeing reds. All of the judges seemed like they'd never seen this done before, and were amazed. I get the feeling the learning under talented smiths is endless. "It will cut!"

I agree politics should be left out, and medical science should help us decide parameters. And in that case, I still believe the woman should have complete rights to the medical treatments she and her doctor approve. Which decisions about YOUR body are you willing to hand over to the government? Remember, if it's not a right, it can be taken away by partisan whim. Well, studies actually show that Democrats, overall since the end of WWII, have improved the economy by an average of 4.4% each year, while Republicans by the same standards improved the economy by 2.5% each year. National Bureau of Economic Research, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w20324/w20324.pdf Sorry, but you built this argument on a faulty foundation, and I hope you can see that now. Why do we need a patriarchy? Why do you think it's important? If you're talking about natural order, the animal kingdom is full of matriarchies and all sorts of leadership combinations. Why would you pigeonhole modern humans as only fit if led by the male of the species? Be ready to face mountains of evidence that show how suited women are to leadership and innovation.

Didn't you just make a decision based on the situation and the skills of the people right around you (you obviously asked about employment)? That's horizontal morality. You didn't decide based on what you think their appearances makes them capable of. You didn't rank them based on "Asian woman in a wheelchair" and "6' 3" white man".

I've made knives, but I've never forged my own blade. That part seems like I'd need a teacher, a ton of materials, and a lot of trial and error. It looks like a whole bunch of fun, sweat, and tears.

Not sure about a spring, but I've seen blacksmiths use the spark test to check carbon content on Forged in Fire.

Gender pronouns come to mind. Vertically, I'm ranking your choice based on what I think it should be, horizontally I find out your preferences because our encounters are more productive when you're comfortable.

! Moderator Note Copy from your original Word doc, drawings and all, then Paste it here. Do everyone a favor and Paste two or three pages at a time, so comments can be made before we move on to the next. There's a LOT to comment on.

This shows how you're thinking, assigning an above/below hierarchy instead of looking at efficacy and impact on those around you. It's more akin to choosing the tools you work with for specific parts of your job. A hammer isn't a ranked choice if you're trying to calibrate gas mixtures on a sensitive machine, it's just not right at all. The hammer isn't a poor tool, it's simply not a choice in this instance. Trapped in an elevator with five other people and no outside communication, some folks make vertical judgements about how to organize their rescue. They might immediately dismiss the idea that women could help beyond screaming for help. They might think a foreigner knows nothing about this country's elevators. They might consider anyone in a wheelchair to be useless in this situation. They probably look for whoever among the six is the strongest. Horizontal thinkers in the same situation might get everyone's ideas and input, and assess the situation based on that. They might get rescued by an idea the foreigner had, or by having a smaller woman stand on the arms of a wheelchair to reach the escape hatch in the roof. It seems to me that this way of approaching problems has a higher degree of correctly valuing the people involved. There are situations where vertical ranking is appropriate, but I think it's being applied incorrectly when used as a general rule. I think it does get me somewhere to avoid vertical ranking. And again, horizontal morality is absolutely NOT about feeling superior to others. Horizontal morality is saying nobody is better than anybody else, we all just make choices based on who's around us in the situation we find ourselves in. My religious aunt thinks sitting naked in a hot tub is immoral, period, every time, all the time. I think it depends on who's with me, if anyone. That vertical, ranked thinking is hard to get away from, isn't it?! Actually, the way horizontal morality works is that seeing you loving your family shows me how I should interact with you. I immediately know some behavior choices that would be appropriate, and some that would be inappropriate. I don't have to judge the way you love your family, I just have to smile, use appropriate language around your spouse and kids, respect that you're here with them, and let you all find your own joys with each other. My interaction with you and your family is then free to change depending on circumstances, and isn't rooted in some vertical hierarchy that can't change and often makes incorrect objective judgements.

I'm quoting this to increase the odds it gets read. Greg A, when we ask someone to support their ideas somewhat as rigorously as mainstream science does, it's so we're not wasting our time discussing unphysical/wishful/mistaken explanations for various phenomena. If you can't support an idea with at least some evidence (certainly more than your repeated insistence), then we reasonably prefer the mainstream explanation that DO have mountains of such evidence. We would love to examine the evidence that drives your trust in your belief, but if you can't give us any, we'll stick with what we know works. I hope that makes sense to you. It's not censorship, it's setting standards.