Mr Skeptic

More of atomikpsycho's greatest exploits

Of course not. Kill them all, of course. Failing that, start a thread to call them names. Conveniently ignoring that they hold different axioms than yours, and you have not offered any evidence that your axioms are true. Different axioms, BTW, almost demand different logical conclusions. Well, "interested" and "hear" have some meanings too, but let's not get into semantics. Yes. However, I note that you have lumped "creationists" with "global warming deniers". These groups are not analogous, as "creationists" are associated with a specific belief. They assert, and it cannot be proven either way, that God was responsible for our creation. "global warming deniers", on the other hand, are associated with a lack of a specific belief. Unless you meant the "global warming is bunk" folks. I think that there is less evidence for global warming (compared to evolution), the evidence there is is harder to see, and showing that global warming will be disastrous is harder yet. And the tv meteorologists makes lots of public mistakes, so the climatologists are viewed with more suspicion. No. --- Also, are you lumping the doubtful with the deniers?

Fred56, be careful not to confuse heat and thermal energy.

That this thread will become worthless within 5 posts or less.

Pica disorder is sometimes caused by mineral deficiency. I would recommend multivitamins. If you think you might eat some chemicals, you should go to a doctor before you get yourself in trouble.

Geodude, all you have demonstrated was that you appear incapable of discriminating between good science and bad science, or for that matter, whether someone is refuting your points or mocking you. Very nicely done, yourdadonapogos. Though you have provided several assertions, you have provided no data that supports your claims (the graph of solar irradiance you provided says nothing about temperature as you claim, btw). So, got any evidence?

And a good contribution it is. Somehow I got that into my head, that volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans. I bet the study was originally about the contributions over the last few million years and got twisted to seem like it meant current emissions by some unscrupulous individuals, or something like that. Thanks for setting that straight for me. Seems we now outdo volcanoes by about 130 times.

Yes, that shows that Wikipedia has quite a few errors with regards to people and politically charged topics. I am interested in that too, but what I had asked was about its accuracy on science related topics (since it is in the science thread) --- Newscientist just had an article claiming that anonymous contributors tend to be about as high quality as regular editors. The original study was done by Dartmouth folks, and they also have a 34 page pdf of the original study.

Or maybe it is because they, like me, realized that the little blobs of amino acids didn't fulfill the requirements for life. And I won't let you ignore that they added enzymes from living things, as well (for their metabolism and stuff). I don't remember seeing any evidence that they can sense their environment. You might as well say fire is alive. So they didn't manage to convince any researchers. Why should I be convinced? I think he asked how to make life, not protocells. Begging the question is not allowed. If you say so Not my fault. I asked for links that protobionts weren't speculative. That's what I got, and that's what I disassembled. Too bad it got removed. I particularly liked the part about their findings being eclipsed by the discovery of life on mars.

I think this is actually the major point of disagreement here. The only logical thing to do given that a breed of dogs causes "too many" deaths is to restrict ownership, or outright ban, that breed. On the other hand, if the breed causes "an insignificant number" of deaths, then banning them is ridiculous. This is obviously a subjective issue. However, what is not subjective is that there are a lot of things that cause more deaths than pit bulls, and should logically take a higher precedence. By higher precedence, I mean that this subject should be ignored until the others are dealt with. Not that this isn't important, but why exactly are you arguing to ban pit bulls if your motivation really was that they cause death or injury? Are you unaware of other things that cause far more than 3 to 4 deaths a year, or do you have other motives?

Meteors, supervolcanos (like at Yellowstone), extinction, sickness, death, and the sun expanding into a red giant and toasting the earth are also perfectly natural phenomena. Why do people think that natural = good? Sometimes the right thing to do is to fight nature. And I doubt you will convince anyone here that humans are not at least partially responsible for global warming. Especially since you admit that CO2 can cause warming and it is obvious we are responsible for emitting a lot of that lately. The amount of warming and the effects thereof are frequently exaggerated in some places, but I don't think that is the case here.

I think that intentionally obscuring language to avoid offending people is a bad thing. Sometimes the truth is offensive to some people, and that can't be helped. But truth should always trump political correctness. Sticking our heads in the sand and saying lalalalala won't make things less true. Rather than forbidding people to say bad things about blacks, women, etc., we should teach people that statistics on groups aren't meant to apply to individuals. Political correctness is what you get when you overdo tact.

You would not be appraising these statements, you would be appraising the entire theory which purports to explain the statement we observe. Newtons, Einstein etc No, I'm pretty sure you said any theory: By assigning limitations on the scope and accuracy of a theory, I believe it is possible to make a useful statement that is absolutely true, even if it is not provable or correct past the stated limitations. Regardless, your claim that the probability of a theory being true is always zero is a contradiction. Take any theory A. Then, according to you, A is false. So you assert ~A is true. So if I say "Einstein's theory of gravity is not true", then your claim becomes "Einstein's theory of gravity is true"

Context is important. Life could survive high CO2 back then, and should be able to survive it now. It won't be the end of the world, and the CO2 levels are not "the highest they have ever been". I understand there will be consequences, probably severe ones. But life will continue. Many things will adapt. Many won't. Some will prosper, and some will die. It has happened before. Perhaps the heating will be too quick. Perhaps some of those genes from 400,000,000 years ago are still floating around. Perhaps life will migrate away from the equator. Perhaps there will be longer growing seasons. How are people so certain global warming is a bad thing?

I think it is fair to say that most of our intelligence is due to genetics. If you disagree with that, feel free to show me a monkey with even close to the intelligence of an average human. It is therefore likely that at least some of the difference in intelligence between humans is due to genetics, but it is not clear how much.

Hm, do you think that we will have a pissing match with China like we had with Russia? They will be landing rovers on the moon soon, and will brag it up bigtime. Nothing like a little competition to get space exploration going strong again.

Education. Lots and lots of education. If enough people demand it, it can happen.

The graph with the pictures of smoke and stuff, scaled to almost the maximum, might also be a little misleading. What if it were scaled to about 6000 ppm, as comparison to the estimates of CO2 levels millions of years ago? Well, CO2 isn't nerve gas. I would be completely unworried about 1000% increase in, say, a noble gas (other than radon) in the atmosphere. Though I am fairly sure that CO2 will cause warming, I do not believe the end of the world scenarios that some of the more crazy people are suggesting. It might even be a good thing, if it didn't happen so quickly.

Well, when you eliminate pit bulls, you will end up with a different most dangerous breed. Let's eliminate every breed, one by one, until there are no dogs left. It's the only way to eliminate all the most dangerous breeds of dogs. Or, at some point, we can decide that they are not too dangerous, and just keep them. I think that point is now. There is almost zero pit bull deaths.

But you did. To be completely at rest, a particle must be at 0 K. An object might be considered to be at rest despite its temperature, but it will be composed of particles that are not at rest unless it is at 0 K. Hence, the prerequisites for your proof will never happen, since things cannot reach 0 K.

Here is a link to the study on Wikipedia being as accurate as Britannica (on science topics). The study is from 2005, so the numbers may be different by now. The original study was done by Nature, and disputed by Britannica. I was too lazy to look it up yesterday night.

No, I consider "true" and "demonstrably true" to be very separate things. Also, I believe it is impossible to have a system where any statement has a zero probability of being true. For example, I would expect one of the phrases "things fall down" and "it is not the case that things fall down" to be true, even if it were impossible to prove which one is actually true. I hold that while it is possible to say true things about the universe, it is impossible to prove that they are true beyond any shadow of doubt. So every theory must forever be considered potentially false. I also believe that it is possible to estimate the probability of a theory being true, and its accuracy.

What do people think of the accuracy of Wikipedia in science related articles? I read a study that said that Wikipedia's accuracy in science was comparable to that of Britannica. Others say that Wikipedia is inaccurate and unreliable. A few professors have allowed references to Wikipedia (but only if the reference is static). What do people think of the accuracy of Wikipedia in science? On a related note, what do people think the potential of Wikipedia is? Will its accuracy continuously increase, or will vandals and incompetents keep it low? Will Wikipedia become the ultimate dictionary of the future/repository of knowledge, or is it the predecessor of the Hichhicker's Guide to the Galaxy version 0.001 (the guide, not the book)? Will wikibooks replace textbooks? What do people think? My apologies. I usually don't care much about grammar either (until it starts interfering with communication, which is not the case here). But I thought it ironic how many mistakes you made, while claiming wikipedia is full of mistakes. No, according to wikipedia your physics is just fine You could help an awful lot of people by correcting wikipedia instead of telling people to stay away from it. Wiki is very popular, for good or ill. Even if you just point out the errors you saw, I am certain someone else will fix them for us. How so? I am only concerned about how negative you are about what I see as a very useful resource, and one that is growing rapidly. I don't believe in accepting anything, from anywhere or anyone, without thinking. Why the focus on Wikipedia? Don't other encyclopedias, professors, and research papers make their fair share of mistakes too? And I hope that people help make Wikipedia reliable. I did.

I'm sorry, I was not aware that we had started a competition on who can make the longest post. Isn't there a size limit or something? Remember, any theory can show some evidence of corroboration but no amount of corroborating evidence increases even the probability of a theory being true. The probability is always zero. Uh, no. That would mean that it is impossible to ever state something true about the universe. I think you meant "we can never be 100% certain that any theory, no matter how good, is true"

That does seem troubling. I'll add another, what is seen as a neutron star in one frame might be seen as having enough matter density to be a black hole in a different frame. I think this is evidence that while all frames of reference are created equal, some may be more equal than others And yes, I know this violates the fundamental principle of relativity. There is one specific frame of reference that always seems to be more important: the center of mass reference frame of a system. Which I think also minimizes the energy of that system. Perhaps the center of mass frame of the universe is somehow special?