Delta1212

Let's take a moment to look at a four-way race. For convenience, I'm going to plot four hypothetical candidates along a left/right axis. This is a bit oversimplified, but you can do the same analysis using more dimensions for various issues by adding coordinate values instead of just using a single number, and the end result winds up being the same. So, using a negative/left, positive/right scale, let's say you have candidates A, B, C and D. A is -0.9, B is -0.1, C is 0.5 and D is 0.7. Let's assume that the electorate is evenly distributed along this line (in reality this would probably not be the case, but it's easier that way and the conclusions that can be drawn are ultimately the same), and that everyone wants the winning candidate to be as close as possible to their own position. If we assume everyone in the electorate simply votes for the candidate closest to their own position regardless of what everyone else is doing, the vote breaks down as follows: 25% A, 35% B, 20% C, 20% D. Now let's see how each voting group did, and whether there is anything they could have done differently to improve their results. For A voters, the only candidate better than B is A. They all already voted for A, so there is nothing they could have done differently to improve on the result that they got. They could be happier, but they didn't do too badly. B voters got the candidate closest to them on the line, so there's no way they could do any better in this election. C is a mixed bag. For half of C voters, B is the next closest candidate, for the other half, D is the closest candidate. For the B-leaning voters, the only candidate better than the winner is C, who they voted for, so they couldn't have done anything differently to improve their result. For the D-leaning voters, D would be a better result than B. Now, if that group of voters had voted for D instead of C, the result would be: 25% A, 35% B, 10% C, 30% D. Well, B still wins, so there is nothing any of the C voters could have done to improve the election results over what they got. Now let's look at D. For all D voters, C is preferable to B. If all D voters had voted for C instead of D, then the vote breakdown would have been: 25% A, 35% B, 40% C, 0% D. So D voters would get a better result in the election if they all vote for C. But now let's take those results and run back in the other direction. With this new vote, D voters get the second closest candidate to themselves. The only candidate that would be better is D, but if they vote for D, B wins and they get a worse result, so there is nothing they could do to improve the election for themselves over voting for C. C now gets the candidate that is closest to them. B is now the one that is split. For 4/7ths of B voters, C is their second choice, so there is nothing they could do to improve on C. For 3/7ths, A is a preferable choice. If they switch their vote to A, then A reaches 40% and ties with C. However, the remaining B voters are all C-leaning, and if they switch their vote to break the tie, you get 40% A, 60% C. So B voters switching their votes still results in a C victory. Now, for A voters, B is a preferable choice to C. If they vote for A, C wins. If they switch their vote to B, then the vote breakdown becomes 0% A, 60% B, 40% C, 0% D. You've now reached a point where no one can switch their vote in order to improve the outcome for themselves. And in any voting system that is "winner take all" rather than proportional representation, you will get a similar collapse down to two viable candidates, regardless of how many you start with, because if you have voters for two or more losing candidates who are closer to each other on the issues than they are to the winner, they would have been better off joining together to support a single candidate rather than splitting their votes. Splitting the vote multiple ways does not change this as it still rewards the group that is most effectively able to coalition build around a single candidate. You can get around this to a degree by having a Parliamentary system where the coalition building can take place after the vote, so that smaller parties are able to accumulate votes with the understanding that they will still have a say in the final shape of the government even if they don't win outright, or by having something like an instant run-off vote where you can rank candidates and have your vote thrown to a second or third choice if you initially vote for someone that doesn't wind up having enough support to win. With the way we currently vote, people have to try to estimate how others are going to vote and who the best viable candidate is ahead of time with only very rough information to going on, which means that having two big brand names works to their advantage, because it removes the concern that you may misconstrue who the closest "consensus" candidate is in favor of someone who winds up ultimately being a fringe candidate. It also makes the primary the battle ground for moving the "consensus" candidate as close to your position as you can, preferably without compromising their electability, which is where that talking point comes from. There are some institutional obstacles that have been put up in the way of third party and independent candidates Ina lot of places, usually by the established parties as a means of protecting their positions, but unless you fundamentally reform the way that we vote in order to alter the strategic equations away from collapsing to 1v1 elections, you're not going to get long-term viability for any third (or fourth, or fifth) parties. Especially not on a national scale. The best you can hope for is for one of the established parties to eventually be replaced by a different one, but I don't think that's really what you are looking for. Otherwise, a third party or independent candidate needs enough of a base of support to make them seem like they are more likely to win than at least one of the candidates from a typically more viable party, or else a situation where the only alternatives are so unpalatable to voters that it opens door to someone else. That's a possibility for certain candidates at certain times, especially regionally where a national party may be less viable and therefore less of a threat, or where a candidate may find it easier to become personally popular or influential enough to mount a campaign on their own, but even with the craziness of the current election season, we haven't reached that point on the national level yet, and as I said, even if we did, it isn't a stable scenario over the long term. Ultimately, the only real way to change the two-party system is to change how we vote. Anything less isn't going to work, because it actually is the most rational way to vote under the current rules.

^ That is correct.

Hydrogen atoms aren't fundamental, so as stuff gets closer together, you have to break it down further. Beyond that, though, The Big Bang is not an actual bang. It's an expansion. In fact, it's an expansion along the lines of what you just described as happening in your reversal of said expansion, so it's rather confusing to see you describe the Bing Bang as part of your idea and then state that the Big Bang didn't happen.

If we're talking about a literal "that specific situation happening as of right now" beyond the obvious game theory issues with running an independent campaign and the effect it has on the race as a whole, there are also some obstacles to getting on the ballot especially for independent candidates. Some states are more restrictive than others, but what it generally boils down to is getting a set number of signatures from registered voters in the state by a certain deadline. There isn't enough time to reasonably reach that threshold in a lot of states with the deadlines being what they are, and even were that not the case, the deadlines for many states pass before the conventions for the major parties, so if you wait until you find out that you aren't going to be the nominee for your party, it's too late to mount an independent bid as anything but a write-in. You can somewhat get around the signature issue by running as the candidate for a recognized third party, but they're all going through their own primary process at the moment.

Under the current voting system, that's an absolutely legitimate fear because it is exactly what would happen. You need some combination of proportional representation, the ability to coalition build post-election or the ability to capture people's 2nd, third, etc choices in order for more than two parties to be viable. A group needs some degree of concentrated regional support in order to do well in our democracy.

I think part of the problem is that accumulation of power seems to be a self-reinforcing problem in most human societies. The more power you have, the easier it becomes to accumulate power and the harder it becomes to curtail your accumulation of power. Especially when money and power are so intertwined. A purely egalitarian society, on a large scale, appears fairly unstable, as eventually someone comes along to who finds a way to increase their status and then you're off with another run of concentrating power.

I've always liked LET simply because I figured early on in studying SR that you could start with a universal "true" rest frame and apply SR and it would still work, you'd just lose the ability to detect which frame was "really" at rest. I was sure I was missing something big until I stumbled on LET and suddenly had a solid framework for that niggling little thought in the back of my mind. Not that I'm a proponent or anything. I recognize that an undetectable aether is completely superfluous, but it's always nice to find that you are merely overcomplicating things rather than completely misunderstanding them.

Having an idea doesn't get you much in terms of accolodates in science, even if you are really sure and the idea turns out to be right. It especially doesn't get you much if it's an idea that everyone is already aware of even if not everyone is onboard with it being correct. The way to win accolades is to provide new evidence in support of an idea, or figure out the specifics of a test that could feasibly be done to show evidence for an idea. And note that, again, it can't just be an idea for a test; you have to work out the details of what is required to perform the test and some specific way of evaluating the results one way or another. As with most things, you get credit for doing actual work in science to flesh out and support an idea, not just for having one, a fact which frequently gets glossed over in popular tales about scientific figures throughout history. Newton didn't just see an apple fall out of a tree and say "Eureka! Gravity!" and become famous. He figured out quite a bit of the math that describes the strength of a gravitational pull and the way that objects move under the force of gravity, and further demonstrated that the same math that accurately described a falling apple also correctly described the movement of the planets in the sky. You don't get celebrated for the apple. You get celebrated for doing all the rest of it.

What if there is a multi-multiverse wherein there is one multiverse where there is no multiverse (i.e. Only one universe in that "multiverse")?

Just because of the site that this is posted on, I feel the urge to point out that that is not actually a logical conclusion that follows from that premise.

Could you point me towards some of the foreign policy stuff? I haven't see as much of that from him and I'm curious.

Compared to today's GOP, W was a saintly genius.

Here's a question: Do handicapped parking spaces discriminate against able-bodied persons?

Would that mean anything, legally speaking? He or she would still be the person elected to the position. At most, you could maybe require candidates for office to undergo a polygraph and then publish the results for the public prior to voting, but that doesn't seem likely to occur either.

I don't mind the cupcake thing because that might as well be considered performance art. It's also not like any men involved were blocked from getting anything truly important. We're talking about a slightly more expensive bakesale cupcake. If you want to make a point about a real life problem in a way that isn't going to actually negatively impact anyone's life, I'm willing to tolerate some simulated "dickishness." Sometimes it's the only way to get people to pay attention.

There is nothing about evolution that precludes Bigfoot from existing. There are quite a lot of other things that do, though.

Trump doesn't care what you losers think. He knows what a smart guy he is. After all, he got a perfect 100 on his IQ test.

It was already linked in the thread, but I'll link it again since you may have missed it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel

As pressure increases, temperature increases. As pressure decreases, temperature decreases. If you could only cool something by mixing it with an even cooler environment, your refrigerator wouldn't work without having to be constantly refilled with ice. It works on the exact same temperature-pressure relationship we're talking about now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump_and_refrigeration_cycle Simplified: You take a liquid, put it under pressure, pump it into the insulated box of the refrigerator, drop the pressure which flash cools it, it absorbs the heat inside the refrigerator, then you pump it back out where you can repressurization it, expel the waste heat and restart the cycle. You literally rely on this principle that you don't think exists to keep your food cold.

But you're not just expanding the distance between the cakes. You're expanding the distance between the molecules of air as well. And that being the case, yes, the temperature will decrease.

Yeah, one thing I've learned: Being smart doesn't insulate you from being stupid, it just makes your stupidities more elaborate.

If you have two houses across the street from each other and one is on fire, do we demand that the fire department spend an equal amount of time and resources on each when they arrive for the sake of fairness? Men have had a much larger voice in the world than women for some time. If we want equality, our (i.e. men's) relative say in the world is going to decrease. It has to because we already have a disproportionate amount of power and the only way for women to get an equal piece of the pie is if we give them some of the extra that we've been hogging. Yes, that means that we're going to occasionally shut up and listen a bit more than has been the case for our gender in the past. No, that doesn't mean that we're currently in danger of women having more power than men. Take a look at the gender ratio in government. There are 435 members of the United States House of Representatives. 84 of them are women. There are 100 members of the US Senate. 20 of them are women. That's not even close to parity, let along "women taking over." The trend is going to have to be a shift in the balance of power towards more for women and less for men until we reach reach a more equitable balance. Yes, that's in the direction of what you are afraid of, but there is no way to make progress without heading in that direction and then stopping when we get to the correct place. Trying to make progress without moving in that direction is like getting on an elevator at the 10th floor and trying to get to the ground floor without hitting any buttons for floors below the one you are currently on because you are afraid that if the elevator starts going down, you'll wind up in the basement.

It's important not to confuse thought exercises that examine different ways that time travel could function, hypothetically and usually from the perspective of dealing with paradoxes rather than nitty gritty mechanics, with a scientific discussion about how it would work (if at all) in reality. Just because you've found a way that makes the most sense to you (and as an avid science fiction reader who likes time travel stories, I have my own ideas about the "best ways" for it to work) doesn't obligate reality to conform to that idea. We have no idea whether any kind of time travel is even physically possible, and in the event it is, there is no reason to think that it would look like your preferred method just because you think that's the one that makes the most intuitive sense to you. Even if we take it as a given that time travel is somehow possible (which is a huge leap just to start with), speculating that it will look like what you've outlined is like someone from ancient Greece speculating that humans will eventually be able to build things that allow them to fly, and that those things will be wax wings with feathers on them because that's what Daedalus and Icarus used in that story they like, and that just seems like the most natural and elegant solution.

I got "Robot." 35 correct with 6 total errors. I got to 29 without a mistake and then it took my on average two attempts to get each of the following ones from that point forward. This one is probably better from a differentiation standpoint: http://www.colormunki.com/game/huetest_kiosk