Mr Skeptic

So, a crazy idea has occurred to me. How can we tell whether a particle-antiparticle pair disappear after annihilating? If their energy is all in the form of potential energy (with respect to its antiparticle), all the energy will be gone after they annihilate. But how could we tell the difference whether the particles disappear of not? The antiparticle would have exactly opposite charge and magnetic moment as the particle and would be in the same place, so it would cancel out its electromagnetic field. Suppose that all throughout space there were a bunch of particle-antiparticle pairs that have "annihilated" and lost all their mass, but the rest of the particle and antiparticle remained. However, an electric field or a changing magnetic field would slightly separate the charges, and it would provide a weightless medium with incredible elasticity. So if there is an ether, this seems like it would be an ideal composition for it.

Its fusion powered!

Seems to me that cooking would have been discovered mostly by accident. Perhaps someone dropped food in a fire and it got cooked but not burned by the time they fished it out. Perhaps someone found roasted nuts/tubers after a forest fire. Perhaps someone figured out that if they broke through the charred outside of an animal burnt in a forest fire, some of the meat inside was cooked but protected from the fire by the charred outside. Or maybe they found that some plants (incense, resinous woods) smelled really good when burnt in the fire, and decided to try it out on food. As Phi said, the smell of roasted meat would be a good candidate too.

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If true, it still wouldn't be that simple. If you were to put a wheel half in gravity and half in the canceled gravity area, then it would be a perpetual motion machine, continuously creating energy. Oh, and earth would lose its atmosphere since gravity would not hold it down in that area. So no, that is something quite hard to believe, and even if it were true, the amount of energy the device would require would depend on what is over the area that would have its gravity canceled.

In one sense, each electron is identical -- same mass, charge, magnetic moment. In another, each electron is unique, as required by the Pauli Exclusion Principle. No surprise there, if you can tell the difference between two electrons then they need to have some properties different, such as different positions.

So a game that had extremely explicit sex (a sex game) but no violence, profanity, drugs, or gambling, would still score E10+ even with the sexual themes and general attitude at max? Yet it should score adult.

Weren't there more different versions of string theory than atoms in the (visible) universe? Like [math]10^{500}[/math] of them?

As I understood yourdad's posts, it was that species membership is irrelevant to morality, in theory. If other species had the attributes that a person has other then species membership, they would still be a person. You could then have a non-human person, or a human who is not a person. In practice, none of the members of other species (that we know of) have the attributes required to be considered a person. And it doesn't help that a person is vaguely defined in the first place. Anyhow, I do think that species membership should be morally relevant in as much as it is similar to kin relationship, albeit incredibly extended kin.

Well, the birds and other animals don't seem to have too much of a problem spreading the seeds. To do proper agriculture would require some intelligence, but even a bird-brain can plant a seed. Not all plants need weeding, and that would have been less of a problem before we domesticated the plants and made them dependent on us in the first place. I'd agree that they probably can't be taught, but you don't need to know what you're doing to practice agriculture. Leaf-cutter ants can "farm" mushrooms without even having a proper brain. It does seem like it is highly unlikely that we would have learned agriculture instinctually, but the ants did. Anyhow, I should have a look at the links you gave E Coli.

Yeah, I think neurons are a bit big for quantum effects, not to mention a whole brain made of them. Probably the major reason that anyone considers the possibility that thought might be based on quantum effects is because they really want that to be true.

Not likely. DNA serves mostly as a template to (indirectly) make proteins, which function a little bit like machines. Not so much like a computer. In any case, the proteins are useless until they are folded properly and the post translational modifications are applied, and that information is not actually encoded in the DNA. However, there is also the idea that you could make DNA computers.

I like the digital ones. At $5.00, they are expendable, so it doesn't matter if mine gets lost or broken. I also like the digital readout, and extra features like stopwatch that go with them. They're also generally waterproof. I always carry a watch. I find other people's clocks to sometimes be unreliable.

Without looking at it, I could place my bets...

Yay! I think this would be more successful if pseudoscience&speculations were separate forums. Though then I imagine there would be more complaining if something were moved to pseudoscience.

Looks like things go from misunderstanding to misunderstanding. I'll try to summarize what I'm saying. I think it is the same thing that ParanoiA and lucaspa are saying, but don't quote me on that. I'll also add a bit extra to make it more clear. Anyhow, here goes: 1) Anyone who makes a claim must provide evidence to back it up if it is to be considered science. To rephrase that, whoever makes a claim has the burden of proof for that claim. 1a) This applies to all claims, reasonable or unreasonable, that something exists or that something doesn't exitst, initial claim or counterclaim; no claim is exempt. 2) If no evidence, not enough evidence, ambiguous evidence, or faulty evidence is given in support of a claim, you are free to reject the claim. 2a) Rejecting a claim is not the same as making the opposite claim; it is simply refusing to accept the claim. You don't reject a claim by saying "you're wrong" but rather by saying "I don't believe you" or "You don't have enough evidence." 2b) Rejecting a claim does not entitle you to make the opposite claim without providing evidence (see #1a and #2a). So for example, if I claim there is a mammal with a bill and lays eggs, but don't provide evidence, you can reject my claim. But that doesn't entitle you to say that the opposite is true, you can't turn around and say that there is no mammal with a bill that lays eggs unless you have some evidence.

Yes, allowing negative claims to be made without having the burden of proof would be a disaster for science. Then I could claim that there is no life anywhere but our solar system, that element 118 is not poisonous, and that there are no ladybugs with heart-shaped spots. Or does not having the burden of proof only apply when saying that there is no god?

If you mean me, I'm a weak atheist. No need for strawmanning if you meant me, nor for changing the subject if you didn't. I just can't stand to see people corrupting science to bolster their beliefs. Both theists and strong atheists make a claim, and ought to back their claim if they want it considered scientific. Its just how science works. I'm glad ParanoiA agrees with this, and I'm surprised more people don't.

At some point your heart will be stopped. No blood circulation (due to a clot in a rather small artery) is the reason for heart attacks and strokes, because of oxygen deprivation to the heart or brain. But it would be complicated to do cpr on a partly frozen person. The body uses less oxygen when very cold, but still I think the freezing and defrosting would have to be done quite quickly to prevent damage. Or maybe do the freezing/defrosting via the circulatory system.

No, you should be pretty much where you were before, or dead, or partly dead. If you forget anything it will probably be from oxygen deprivation in (part) of your brain while you are being frozen or defrosted.

Well if all you are saying is "I don't believe god exists", that is a statement of opinion, and no one can prove you wrong. If you are saying "there is not enough evidence to show that the existence of a god is at all likely" you're on pretty solid ground. Very few people would challenge these statements, and most of those people will be very stupid to do so. Well, if you say that god doesn't exist, then you are taking the position of a strong atheist, even if that is not your actual position. For one thing, the initial claim was made millennia ago, and the people who made the claim are dead and rotten (or in heaven ). For another, the claim that a god doesn't exist is a completely separate claim. Both are claims of knowledge, and each stands on its own ground. If I were to describe a new type of animal that hadn't been seen before, and claim it doesn't exist, I would still be making a claim, just like I would if I said it existed. Yes, but only if you want to claim that those supernatural entities don't exist. You could instead say that those who claim they exist are ridiculous and that you won't even bother listening to them until they get themselves some evidence. It's the difference between "I don't believe you" and "You are wrong." All I'm claiming is that anyone who makes a claim, has to back it up if it is to be considered science. Re-read the scientific method: you can't have a hypothesis and then just say it's a fact. Even if it is a very reasonable hypothesis. But you can freely reject a hypothesis that has no or dubious evidence.

See what I mean? If an atheist claims there is no god, he should provide proof for that claim too. And if someone were to claim Big Foot doesn't exist, it is also up to them to prove the claim. That's how science works; whoever makes a claim has to back it up. A scientist would never (professionally) claim that Big Foot doesn't exist; he might claim that none of the evidence for Big Foot is conclusive & therefore reject the claim that Big Foot exists via Occam's Razor. But if he did he would back up that claim by demonstrating that the evidence for Big Foot is faulty. An unbacked claim is an opinion, nothing more.

They don't wake up. A team of specialists wakes them up (in the future, when they figure out how to do it). The defrosting process is at least as hard as the freezing process. You'd want to have a very good team of doctors standing by. They'd probably have to do CPR on you as soon as you are defrosted. Being a bit or even very thirsty would be the least of your concerns.

Even if that were so, its not necessarily a bad thing. So what if a particular type of crop eventually gets wiped out? We'll just get another, like with the potatoes and bananas. No one would ever rely on a single variety for our staple foods if there was a risk of famine. Weren't you just picking on someone else for anthropomorphizing evolution? To each his own. People already sacrifice some traits for others, eg with steroids. GM would let them do so better, and probably safer. Say you have a blind idiot designing an airplane. 99% of the airplanes he designed crashed. Then suppose you hire someone who isn't blind to help with the designing (without firing the blind guy). The new guy doesn't know much about designing airplanes, but he's neither blind nor an idiot. That's a better analogy, as evolution has no intelligence to it, but we do. Evolution has made mistakes, and we will too. But we'll learn from our mistakes, as well as plan ahead. And we'll be able to do some new things, and work on a timescale of decades rather than millions of years. Evolution, of course, will still go on. Eh? That's what we're building satellite defenses for. And underground shelters with lots of food. And going to other planets. I know you meant [generic disaster]. However, there is no way we would modify everyone to have the same gene any time soon. The aforementioned poor people who can't afford the treatment, those crazy religious people who refuse to have anything to do with new technology, etc, will keep us safe from that. And soon we will have a colony separate from earth, and then even a global disaster wouldn't cause our extinction. But that is also dangerous. Other than preventing the birth of a baby that is genetically destined to die a horrible death at a young age so as to spare him the suffering, you can't really definitely identify a bad gene. Imagine if we didn't know about malaria, we might try to eliminate sickle cell anemia. In fact, from the way natural selection works, you might expect that most of these diseases have some upside or the gene would have been eliminated (with the exception of simple mutations like the single nucleotide mutation diseases). Yes, variety is extremely important. However, I suggest that a safer alternative is to make sure we have an environment that won't change. Think underground shelters, space colonization, etc., as well as adding new genes via GM for extra variability. So even if there is a change too extreme for our natural variability, perhaps the extra variability from GM, or our special shelter, would allow us to survive such change.

That would be most atheists. However, since they almost always lump themselves with strong atheists, this creates some confusion. A better claim is that god's existence is not necessary to explain the physical universe. And why should they? Strong Atheists won't accept the burden of proof either, and neither side has shown any proof that the other side is wrong. Sure, a few individuals on both sides have made attempts to prove their side, but those are few and far between. Usually, whoever makes the initial claim that the other side is wrong in a particular argument is expected to provide some evidence for that position, since they are the ones making a claim.