Phi for All

No one has said you can't ask questions. Who exactly is taking your ability to question things away? You seem to think that all new discoveries in science came from unsupported, unscientific, outside-the-box-type thinking. This is definitely not true. Strawman. I never said speculation = pseudoscience. I said that most Speculations that are posted here are unsupported scientifically and usually end up using pseudoscientific claims to stay alive. If you could speculate on some new idea and use the scientific method to advance your thesis, your idea would be more easily reviewed and if no one could find fault with your methodology, predictions and conclusions, you wouldn't need pseudoscience at all.

A woman who used to cut my hair told me that tweezing/plucking gray hairs causes more gray hairs in that area. I've heard others espouse this belief as well, but it sounds like an old wive's tale turned urban legend to me. Any truth to it?

There's a reason the two are together. If the speculation goes no further than it's own thread, is falsified, has no math or can't stand up on its own without using fallacious logic, then most speculation involves pseudoscience at some point. It's always been our hope that someday someone will post a good Speculation, support it with testing and strong arguments, run the gauntlet of devil's advocates that *is* this very SFN, and convince everyone that they might be right. We would have a great holiday with a parade and a real horse (not a pony) and Cheese Nips for everyone as we proudly elevated the thread in question from Pseudoscience & Speculations to it's appropriate Science sub-fora.

You should've just walked away. What's beyond epic?

You have been challenged on this statement. Will you give Cap'n Reffsmat the diagrams you promised? If he's going to make the device, it has to be from plans you approve. If not, you can easily say, "I didn't mean THAT machine! Everyone knows THAT one won't work!" Please, either give us a link to the diagrams you say will work, or retract the statement and tell us you aren't sure if any of them will really work. Very simple.

You mean, you misinterpreted our intent and assumed it was done in a condescending manner just to insult you? Color me surprised. It means he's lying. Which means he's totally the kind of person who is motivated to get a "higher" name. See there? We didn't do it for you.

This would be good. I think a lot of people would like to see this experiment. Documentation needs to be maintained so there's no cry of, "You did it/told me wrong!" This seems extremely reasonable and would substantiate or falsify the claim.

But where can we find any crackpots here at SFN, YDOAPS? It's not like the admins have given approval to yoinking their custom avatar privileges and forcing them to use this one: Yet.

This is to be known henceforth as procrashedination.

The only thing that's truly bad about Miley Cyrus is the parents of her fans. Does anyone remember when their parents took them to their first rock concert at the age of ten? Remember when they shelled out $300 a ticket for floor seats for you and your two best friends (and Mom and your little sister, of course)? Remember when she bought you all that great fan stuff from those nice people in the lobby? Remember when she did it all over again the following year? Yeah, me neither.

Wow, you can actually respond to an accusation of strawmanning with another strawman. That's a rare talent. "Generally accepted" in science is not "opinion", in the same way that "theory" in science is not just "an idea". I see why you would want it to be otherwise; you seem interested in having your "opinion" hold the same weight as someone who has studied and applied what is generally accepted (and understands it).

It seems likely that this is a case of a poor country that will stay poor if it's current regime continues to bleed off any chances of success. You'd think such a corrupt country would be more concerned that it's tax base is dwindling. And what heinous crimes against humanity are they covering up that they don't want other countries to come over to help Burmese taxpayers survive?

Remember also that science is not as much interested in "why"; that's for the philosophers. Science wants to observe, make predictions and understand "how" things work. And even if we discover that all life started from a chemical interaction and grew from there, it still wouldn't begin to answer a question like "why".

Zephir been suspended again, so we're going to make it permanent. This should give him more time to devote towards learning actual science. Best of luck, Z. Aether you're a genius or you're an idiot (had to be done). _____________________________________________________________________ alanejackson has been suspended for three days, for a combination of Flaming, Trolling and Hijacking. Let's hope he can get it together and stop whining about Galileo persecution, but let's not hold our breath, either. Even money says we'll see him listed here again in a few days.

Not subtle enough. You can tell educated people by their lack of fallacious logic. You, on the other hand, get an infraction for Flaming. I'd like to give you another one for the "fruit" comment, but as far as I can see it's just ironic. I guess educated people use their "fruit" for something besides making cake.

I would avoid this generalization. Parasites feed off a host but tend not to kill it or benefit it. Symbiosis is more what you're looking for. And I wouldn't look at life as exploitation of the environment. There certainly have been some exploitative practices but there are ways to use the environment that are more sustainable and we are coming to realize how they are better. Taking advantage of natural occurrences is not necessarily exploitation.

It's always been this way, unfortunately. I never had a math course that taught me something as basic as how to balance a checkbook. I always wanted a "Math in Everyday Life" course. Or a course on how to organize yourself for studying. I'm not sure how much pressure has been placed on education by corporations interested in making a profit from higher education, but I suspect at the very least that little will be done to improve public schooling. I think the purchase of consumer debt and specialized education will become the next two big markets. I see it going something like this: you get approached in high school to either go on to college or take up a trade. Either way you're going to have to pay for some training and education, and potential employers from the really huge mega-corps will pay for it if you agree to work for them on contract till your debt is paid off. They might even help you with a loan for a house (if you agree to extend your contract). I think a good science education before this happens will allow a young adult to make more reasoned decisions about his/her future. I think a mind that has been groomed by science is less likely to fall prey to grand claims and marketing schemes. A well-educated person is more likely to be a good citizen, instead of just a good consumer.

Why don't we spend an extra hour of our time making sure to scrape the very last of the peanut butter from the jar? Because at a certain point the energy required exceeds what we get back. I think that's where we are with ZPE. It may exist but not as you think it does. No machine has passed any sort of scientific review. Because it must be a conspiracy. Or it's not viable at this time.

When gas got to a certain price, UPS drivers were told to plan their whole route using nothing but right turns, to save wasting gas idling at traffic lights. http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/12/22/ups-expects-to-save-600-million-by-favoring-right-hand-turns/

Yeah, and pretty soon you'd look just like Buddha...

Yes, we should never forget that part. I think the concept of religion is sullied by the extremists who make it all about unworthiness and sin and worshiping perfection while denying our curiosity and intelligence.

I think science is all about reducing the need for faith, but not about eliminating it. If my hypothesis is that, when I die, my consciousness can exist on its own if I can keep my sanity (which may be hard without all the familiar sensational input I lost when my body died), there are few ways I can test it without actually dying. If I further believe that a collective consciousness might exist and that I could be a part of it if I'm deemed worthy (no one wants to share consciousness with a mass murderer, after all), then it goes a long way towards explaining why so many people mount whole religions around the concept of moral worthiness. And lastly, if my hypothesis is that a being of pure consciousness might have access to higher dimensions predicted in other theories, then why is my idea of religion so at odds with science? I'm just waiting, after all, for testability to draw some conclusions from my predictions.

This is done automatically by the vBulletin system with multiple, concurrent posts only. It saves database space due to less framing, it's more efficient and it looks cleaner. It also keeps people who try to boost their post counts honest. It was not done to control and persecute alanejackson, no matter how much it appears just that way to you. But thanks for the rigor you used to ensure your paranoid conclusions were properly jumped to.

Darwin never posted here. I'm not sure what the guidelines for pseudoscience on an internet forum was in his day. His theory has grown to become more accepted because rigor was applied to it. We don't discuss Darwinian theory much anymore. We discuss evolution. I think you will always have trouble with science if you don't understand how to apply it's methodology. You claim we are limited by its rules but those rules keep us from basing our knowledge on faulty premises. You are like a builder who ignores his foundation because he has found a new way to make the roof more beautiful. And when others point out that the building will collapse you keep shouting and pointing at the beautiful roof and telling us we're too hidebound. AND you keep shouting and pointing at your roof when someone else is trying to build his own house, even when they're trying to listen to the people who've been building sturdy buildings that have been tested and proven over a great deal of time. Your roof may be better but unless you support it correctly, its difficult to trust that it will remain standing.

We mean for this sub-forum to be a place for two types of non-accepted science, Pseudoscience AND Speculations. We leave it up to the reader to decide which he/she is viewing. Alternatively, the OP can clearly state that he/she will be Speculating about a certain hypothesis they've formed and would like to discuss it and analyze the idea from a serious scientific perspective. Ideas that are based on faulty logic or have no math to support them or offer no better solution to accepted theory are Pseudoscience, and while it is interesting to talk about, one goes too far in saying that it challenges accepted science. You can't challenge science without using scientific method. Your idea may be a step in the right direction but you need rigor, attention to detail and logic if you are to be taken seriously, and a teensy bit of humility and skepticism to avoid being ridiculed.