Reaper

Just something that caught my attention while reading the "God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, page 56. The exact quotation is : *This also holds for all other languages in case it isn't clear. Anyone care to discuss?

No, not really. Officially, science doesn't have an opinion on it.

I award Chuck(full of crap)West the Wack-job of the Year award. Seriously, this thread really made my day. ...............Farsight, you seem to be losing your edge here! Gotta start racking up those Baez points if you want to hope to compete with this one.

Isn't that supposed to be a pink elephant?

* "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." * "You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." -Both by Richard Feynman

So, what is the status of the P&R sub-section right now? Yay, or nay?

I don't know about this, this report seems to smack of some good examples of bad scientific reporting to me, that or extreme misuse of the anthropic principle. I have not read anywhere of the idea that we might be actually shortening it's lifespan by us observing it. For one, quantum mechanics cannot be simply "extended" to the entire universe, it can only deal with the sub-atomic realm. And when they speak of collapsing wave-functions, what they really mean is that until we observe it, we cannot know the state of the particle (Schrodinger's cat anyone?). The act of observation collapses the wave function. But this only applies to small scale (read: on the order of < 10^-15 m). Macro-size objects tend to have a much smaller wave-functions (and hence most nearly one possible state).

Anybody heard of Real ID. Pretty much, this is another proposition by the US government to give it 1 more excuse to strip away and intrude on someones privacy. It is intended to be required to go in any facility ranging from government buildings to national parks. In addition, the information is required to be kept in massive data banks. Needless to say, many states are already revolting against this. Here is some info on it right here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/16/real.id/index.html So, what do you Americans think? Coming soon in 2013, Big Brother I mean, if we really are that paranoid about terrorists, why not just start bar-coding our citizens or something....

[Response to racist rant removed] By the way, you spelled "genius" wrong.......idiot You should probably do that now, I don't think he will be presenting any, ever.

-Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0141026170/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195879059&sr=8-1 -Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos by Michio Kaku http://www.amazon.com/Parallel-Worlds-Journey-Creation-Dimensions/dp/1400033721/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195879162&sr=1-1 -The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose http://www.amazon.com/Road-Reality-Complete-Guide-Universe/dp/0679776311/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195879197&sr=1-1 -The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction by John Leslie http://www.amazon.com/End-World-Science-Ethics-Extinction/dp/0415184479/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195879238&sr=1-1 -Richard Feynman's Nobel Lecture http://users.wpi.edu/~ck/feynman_Nobel_Lecture.pdf

It is also said that in Armageddon, Christ is also very clear that he will slay the non-believers and the "sinful", and then throw them in a pool of burning brimstone. The bible, in both testaments, and the Quran for that matter, also makes it clear to slay or enslave anybody who doesn't agree with the current religious dogma Here's a small sample: "Psalm 3:7: Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly." and 2 more from Revelations "Revelations 20:10 : And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever." "Revelations 21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." Yay! We get to die three times (if you count the first one before Judgment Day).

When I was a little kid, I wanted to be some sort of athlete. In particular I played quite a bit of basketball. Since about age 7 though, I wanted to be a scientist or a mathematician of some sort. I focused more on doing something in the field of physics since I was 16, when I read some of Hawking's and Kaku's popular books on theoretical physics.

But the incompleteness theorems aren't using circular logic. Far from it actually. Look at your other thread about the incompleteness theorems, I posted a link about it there. I'll post a wiki link to it here too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompleteness_theorems No he did not. He said that mathematics is incomplete, hence the name "Godel's Incompleteness Theorems". But just because something is incomplete doesn't mean it is false. Oh really? Since you claim to know it, you then presumably know that one of the basic no-no's of philosophical thought is unsubstantiated claims and/or baseless assumptions. Many philosophy students know this, look on the net and you will see, or better yet spend more time studying philosophy and the theory you are trying to disprove and then we will talk.

You guys are such horrible philosophers. Godel's theorem is a mathematical statement, which has so far been proven to be consistent. It does NOT say that "you can't prove anything"; rather, Godel's first theorem says that it is possible to construct a true statement that is consistent, but not provable in theory. By theory, I mean axioms. What that basically means is that in any branch in mathematics, there lies statements that are true, or false, but cannot be proven with basic axioms or with first order logic. You can read more about it right here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompleteness_theorem or http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html =================================== The theorems themselves have not been proven false. Also, there are actual practical applications for them, such as in computer programming.

I want the Infinite Improbability Drive, as long as the normality device works...

Nice! So I guess a first supernova in these stars doesn't really throw off enough material to prevent a second collapse, does it.

It was deleted. It's really nothing to worry about, the site had a terrible lack of content anyways. It's basically a bunch of noobs trying to be cool and not succeeding at it, and complaining about how much they suck at life. To think, I was wasting my time on SFN instead of watching teletubbies!

That's actually a myth, if you weren't already aware of that.

You know, I just noticed, anemic-psyche was spamming a link to a site in his/her latest incarnation. Might be their home page or at least an associate of his. Seems to me that the people on that site have some really serious problems in real life... EDIT: I just looked at the site content. Apparently the owner has no friends in real life. Now thats gotta be painful.

I want one of those mind control devices, or those mind reading computers that are being developed

Sometimes I wonder if this is something that is hard-wired into your brain, along with some other personality traits.

Are you also willing to invent the power source for such a device too

Then you might want to read this, because impredicativity is absolutely necessary in mathematics in general. Just because it is self referencing does not mean that it is invalid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impredicative

I want a flying car.

Just....wow. You go from mere speculation to outright denial. "I don't have to know what it is, its wrong because I don't understand it". Classic