ydoaPs

You still have a choice. The blame is only shifted if the omniscient one is your omnipotent creator. Consider an car. If your engine overheats because you have a broken coolant pump, is it the fault of the coolant pump itself or the various factors that lead to the breaking of the coolant pump? Either way, the pump needs to be fixed or replaced. Similarly, you could fail by breaking a law. Do we blame you for breaking the law, or do we look into why you broke the law and 'fix' you through rehabilitation. This is where the divide between the two types of justice comes in: you have the pointless kind like the Divine justice(you hurt me, so I'm going to torture you forever), and you have the meaningful kind that involves rehabilitation(you are broken, so we're going to help fix you and make you a productive member of society once more). The predictable pattern is not a problem for free will. In fact, it is what GIVES us free will. For in what sense could it be said that you made a choice if it was random?

No. It just means the lay man's magic free will doesn't exist. That in no way means that no varieties of free will worth wanting exist. Omniscience merely implies determinism. Determinism is not at odds with free will. In fact, free will depends upon some level of determinism. It doesn't make much sense to speak of someone making a choice when the choice is based on the roll of the dice. Let's just take some elementary thought about what free will is for a moment. Free will is the ability for 'you' to contemplate multiple options and choose one output. For any 'you' to be distinct from 'Bob' or 'Ashley' or 'him' or 'her', there must be some regularity; there must be a pattern in the choices(otherwise the phrase 'out of character' is rather meaningless, no?). In fact, that is exactly what we see in practice. If you spend enough time around someone you can pretty well predict their choices given a set of circumstances. How do we make choices? A basic overview of psychology(and just common sense) reveals that our choices are quite unsurprisingly based upon factors including our beliefs, values, and past experiences. These can be seen as some of the inputs into the decision generating algorithm we call Free Will. Some of you are probably screaming at your computer: BUT WHAT ABOUT QUANTUM MECHANICS!?! IT INTRODUCES RANDOMNESS! Ah, but the neurons in the brains are classical structures, so QM is really irrelevant. In fact, we have a pretty good idea of how the relevant part of the brain(the neocortex) functions. If you're interested in the functions of the neocortex and how we can use what we know about it to make truly intelligent machines, you should read 'On Intelligence' by Jeff Hawkins(he also has a good lecture called 'Computing Beyond Turing' available on YouTube). So, we can see that Free will: 1)produces a predictable pattern of results 2)requires known inputs 3)functions in a classical rather than quantum computation device That sounds pretty deterministic to me. If you're interested in Free Will and whether it conflicts with determinism, I suggest reading 'Freedom Evolves' by Daniel Dennett. This does, however, make for interesting theological issues when other properties such as omnipotence are taken into effect. Consider the creation story. The omniscient omnipotent Creator created man with a nature(will) such that they would choose to disobey Him. Being omniscient, He knew that they would act in said manner. Being omnipotent, He could have created them with a nature such that they would choose otherwise. It seems that given both omniscience and omnipotence of the Creator, the blame cannot be put upon the creation for disobedience. It like trying to blame your car engine for not providing DSL.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/49957-tensors-for-dummies/ <= theres a good pdf from NASA in that thread.

Does anyone have a link to mathematical justification of Hawking's claim that nothingness can generate a universe?

Warp drive is inherently unstable and would cook any passengers with Hawking Radiation. Also, the energy required is physically unattainable.

Well, [math]p=\frac{h}{\lambda}[/math]. Rearranging, we get [math]\lambda=\frac{h}{p}[/math]. h=6.626068 × 10-34 m2kg/s, which means the number is most likely ridiculously small. The classical approximation for momentum is p=mv, so we need to find the mass and velocity. The average baseball is about 150g, or 0.15kg(via google). The average pitch is about 30m/s(again via google). The actual values don't really matter as much as the order of magnitude, so I'm not being very picky about the numbers. Plugging in the numbers gives us a wavelength of about 1.5x10-34m. So, yeah, it doesn't really behave much like a wave.

The masses are trying to make you top celebrating Christmas? I don't really care that Christians celebrate pagan holidays.

The flipside of that is divisiveness between groups.

I was under the impression that the compromise that Pangloss is claiming is nonexistent is why our healthcare bill blows. More or less.

Cypress, how about you go and remake the "skeptic" side.

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html The following figures demonstrate that, if religion has a positive effect on society, it's not statistically relevant. In fact, there is a negative correlation between religious adherence and societal health. A = Australia L = Switzerland C = Canada N = Norway D = Denmark P = Portugal E = Great Britain R = Austria F = France S = Spain G = Germany T = Italy H = Holland U = United States I = Ireland W = Sweden J = Japan Z = New Zealand So, what if someone ruined your entire life for a bet? They even gave you diseases and killed your entire family. When you question them on it, they tell you off. Eventually they give you a new family to make it all better. You left out the part where the guy who falls in the river is the one that steered the boat toward the waterfall and that he was only dead for 3 days.

I used this in a thread on FaceBook, and the result was, imo, hilarious. Instead of modifying their simplistic lay definition of omniscience, they decided to deny 'human logic' and claim that God uses a different logic that we do not have access to. On the surface, this seems like a cop-out. A little thought, however, reveals it to be a gift to their debate opponents. If the Bible if the word of God, we have the revealed message, but not the relation of the statements. That makes the validity of any interpretation of vague statements impossible to verify. There's thousands of differing denominations and it is impossible to viably reason our way to which has the correct interpretation. How do we determine which church to attend? If God abides by an unknown alternate logic, then any reasoning about God cannot be determined to be valid. This means that all interpretive theology and all philosophy of religion are tossed out the window. Thanks facebook guys!

It would make it more inefficient in its use of fuel. We do, however, have alternators. Also, electric cars can recoup battery energy similarly using Dynamic Breaking.

Egh/c^2≠gh/c^2 Also, E2=(mc2)2+(pc)2 E=mc2 is a special case in which the system being studied is at rest with respect to your chosen reference frame.

Good thing the idea being discussed has the federal government's only regulatory role in relation to commerce being interstate commerce. Other than that, all commerce would be state regulated. That's part of the whole limited government thing.

It's a little more complicated than a a communicator, but not by much. You just need a communicator, a scanner, and some flat strips of copper.

Yet again, I feel that limited federal government would solve this problem. Any commerce regulation would be state issue with the exception of interstate commerce.

o.O

While that is certainly true, there are also benefits for making interstates into toll roads. By only taxing those who actually use the interstates, one could argue that it is more fair than being taxed for a service that one does not use. The increased cost of interstate travel would provide incentive for people to live closer to work reducing their carbon footprint and the fuel demand which could lead to fuel price rises happening more slowly. And the toll road idea could make it so the program is not underfunded. As with most decisions, there's pros and cons; I guess it's down to whether the pros outweigh the cons.

As ajb said, a frame of reference is a choice of local co-ordinates. I'll demonstrate with an example that should give an idea of what frame of reference means and that show that energy is relative to the frame of reference. Imagine a universe in which all that exists are three balls(one red, one blue, and one yellow). Each ball has a mass of 1kg. The red and blue balls are at rest with respect to each other, but are moving with respect to the yellow ball. From a reference frame in which the yellow ball is at rest, the red ball and the blue ball are moving at 100m/s and thus have kinetic energy. Now, let's move our reference frame to one in which the blue ball is at rest. The red ball is at rest relative to the blue ball, so has no kinetic energy(and neither does the blue ball). The yellow ball, however, is moving at 100 m/s and thus has kinetic energy. The red ball has more energy in the reference frame of the yellow ball than it does in the reference frame of the blue ball. One reference frame thus has KE of 100J while the other has KE of 200J. Which is correct? Both. Energy is dependent on the reference frame and is not invariant between frames.

Wouldn't that only be the case if it were the only pie shop in town?

Whether there would be no taxes or lowered taxes would really depend upon the revenue provided by the federally-owned competitors. Agreed. I thought that was implied, but it probably should have been spelled out. But assuming all of that is possible, I wonder if there might be conflicts over the nature of regulation. It may be that some regulation could not be logically applied to a "government store". That's where the competition comes into play. It's not like I'm suggesting we remove all taxes and then have the government open up a convenience store. Once we get a feel for how the store would do, THEN the tax change would be configured. Also, the federally-owned stores would be for running the nation(with, as i pointed out before, a more limited and therefore less expensive) government that combined with the fact that a Walmart-esque chain wouldn't be the only government competition in play might mean the prices could be lower before the competition even begins to take effect. Again, I said it would use a limited government. That means that border patrol would be a state issue until any challenge of the constitutionality of the law, such as racial issues, reach the supreme court. State/local issue. My version of a limited government includes the part of the government that is the military. Think withdrawal plans for all offensive troops not on assignment from the UN. Think the US actually pretending it's in the UN. Think lowered recruiting quotas. Also, financial responsibility in the DOD would be nice. You know, justifying expenditures. It's crazy how a limited government lowers the budget. Whether there would be no taxes or lowered taxes would really depend upon the revenue provided by the federally-owned competitors. Agreed. I thought that was implied, but it probably should have been spelled out. But assuming all of that is possible, I wonder if there might be conflicts over the nature of regulation. It may be that some regulation could not be logically applied to a "government store". That's where the competition comes into play. It's not like I'm suggesting we remove all taxes and then have the government open up a convenience store. Once we get a feel for how the store would do, THEN the tax change would be configured. Also, the federally-owned stores would be for running the nation(with, as i pointed out before, a more limited and therefore less expensive) government that combined with the fact that a Walmart-esque chain wouldn't be the only government competition in play might mean the prices could be lower before the competition even begins to take effect. Again, I said it would use a limited government. That means that border patrol would be a state issue until any challenge of the constitutionality of the law, such as racial issues, reach the supreme court. State/local issue. My version of a limited government includes the part of the government that is the military. Think withdrawal plans for all offensive troops not on assignment from the UN. Think the US actually pretending it's in the UN. Think lowered recruiting quotas. Also, financial responsibility in the DOD would be nice. You know, justifying expenditures. It's crazy how a limited government lowers the budget. It might be obvious by now, that I'm talking about an actual limited government vice the imaginary one the TEA partiers want. Mine includes things like gay marriage, abortion, and the legal status of marijuana being state issues.

Despite the USA's relatively low taxes, its citizens often complain about how high the taxes are. While playing Fable 3, I got a half baked idea. What if we could put in place a program to eventually eliminate federal taxes altogether? In Fable, as King, I got rid of the taxes to up my morality status. To pay for the federal budget, I then went to work in a pie shop. What if the Federal government does the same? What if the government sets up low cost competitors and uses our free-market economy to fund its programs? A government-owned Walmart-esque chain could potentially bring in a lot of revenue. Such things could stimulate the economy by competition and job creation. After the infrastructure for government-owned competitors is in place, the tax rate could theoretically be lowered and even eventually removed. A small scale real world example would be states with ABC laws governing the sale of hard alcohol. Virginia, for instance, requires that all liquor be be purchased from the state government or purchased/consumed at a bar/restaurant. This is not quite the same, however, since it is a monopoly rather than a competition. Moving toward a more limited government could help things along in this plan. Several things could be done along these lines. Social Security could be faded out(and any similar benefits become a state issue should the people desire them) and the Thrift Savings Plan could be opened up to all citizens as a retirement option. Medicare/Medicaid could be faded out(and any similar benefits become a state issue should the people desire them) while a low cost federally-owned insurance coverage option would be put in place(and the healthcare bill removed). The bank reform could be repealed and a federally owned bank could be instated to help drive down interest rates through competition rather than reform. Is this idea even feasible? If so, what kind of revenue are we talking about here?

The diagram is an attempt to show that energy alters the magnitude of distance. As for time 'slowing down', that is just saying that gravity alters the magnitude of duration.

Space and time are two very similar and connected ideas. Think of a state as a snapshot of the universe. Distance(space) is the separation of objects within a state. Duration(time) is the separation between states themselves. The magnitude of distance and duration are relative to your frame of reference and depend upon the energy density in that frame of reference.