Strange

! Moderator Note I have hidden some posts that were responses to a spammer

! Moderator Note Stop spamming your blog. I don't think we need more one thread open to demonstrate your profound ignorance of mathematics so I am locking this one

! Moderator Note Stop spamming your blog. I don't think we need more one thread open to demonstrate your profound ignorance of mathematics so I am locking this one

! Moderator Note Stop spamming your blog. I don't think we need more one thread open to demonstrate your profound ignorance of mathematics so I am locking this one.

Worth noting that Mr Goat has used up his five posts and won't be back till tomorrow....

You know that's partly because of standing waves? (Which is way they added rotating turntables.) And you can use that to measure the speed of light? Good point. If you are cooking up a mountain, you need to be sure you are measuring the mass and not the weight, as well as accounting for the change in boiling point.

There is always theft and murder. That doesn't mean we should just shrug and ignore it. "Bloody victims, complaining about having their stuff stolen. They should just get over it." That may well be true. And the propaganda (whether it was Russian or from the Leave campaign) exploited that by playing on peoples fears that the EU would mean more of those weird foreigners coming over. Even though most immigration into the UK is nothing to do with the EU. And immigration is a net benefit. And ... But the argument was certainly won on emotional rather than rational grounds.

I'm not sure it assumes that. Unless your question requires that the result be different by 10%, in which case it is impossible to answer because we don't how people will vote. But we can estimate the time it will take for the make up of the electorate to change by 10% (which looks to be roughly 3 years). However, in this particular case, we do know that those who have left the voting pool overwhelmingly voted one way and those coming in generally voted the other way. So with a 6% change in the electorate we might expect, say, 3% swing in the result (I could look up the numbers and get a more accurate estimate, but I'm not sure it is worth it for a discussion of the general principle). It seems to me that if you are going to ask "The People" for their opinion on a major decision that will take years (possibly decades) to fully implement, then it makes sense to track their views in some way as the process goes on. For example, are they happy with the current withdrawal agreement (anyone who wants to leave the EU and minimise the damage to the economy should say "yes" to that). Then, in a couple of years, "is this the sort of future relationship you want with the EU?" Then, further down the line, "is this the sort of trade deal you want with the US, China, etc?" But if one thinks that those questions of the preferred trade deal with the EU or the US should be left to the "experts" then we should never had the referendum in the first place!

That sounds like Wheeler's "Many Worlds" interpretations: all possible outcomes exist in "different universes".

Profound, depressing and also slightly cheering! Yes, and yes! Could be worse, then.

Time is defined mathematically and does not require the presence of mass. For example, we can study theoretical universes that have no mass or energy but still have space-time coordinates. And a photon has zero mass. That is what massless means.

This is a "hidden variables" model. This is ruled out by Bell's Theorem. Also, the fact that things are probabilistic, doesn't mean they can't be accurately measured. We can measure to whatever precision our technology allows.

Absolutely. But with a large enough majority, you are not going to be flipping your constitution back and forth every couple of years. Doing it every couple of generations is not unreasonable. (And Brexit is, effectively, the equivalent of a constitutional change: it requires hundreds of laws to be modified or created, new civil service departments, new agencies for testing/approving all sorts of things. And that's before you get to the supposed benefits like spending decades trying to get something close to the large number of trade deals the country currently has around the world.) Does the constitution include the ability to abolish itself? What sort of majority would that require!? (And I wasn't saying that having a constitution is necessarily a good thing; there are probably advantages to the UK's less formal approach.)

Then you would be wrong.

Most countries have a well-defined mechanism for changes to the constitution (*). This typically requires either a popular or parliamentary vote with a significant majority (like 67% or 75%). I'm sure one could argue for ever about exactly what the majority should be, but I think the purpose is to ensure that it is convincing and, presumably, wouldn't be changed by a relatively minor change in demographics. And maybe even that it represents a majority of the population, and not just those who voted. People might feel differently in a few generations, but things can be adjusted again then. With a near 50:50 split (of less than 100% turnout) it only takes a small change in the number able to vote, or the employment rate, or the proprietor of a newspaper/TV channel to swing things one way or the other. (*) Note that the UK has no such mechanism as it doesn't have a constitution. That is another reason this is such a shitshow.

You presented no science. Just some vague waffle.

We know that. It is quantified by general relativity. Is that what you are talking about?

And the fact that Cameron promised it would be.

And you know what is so crazy? There was an amendment to the original referendum bill to require a supermajority, but this was rejected by the government because the referendum was not binding. You could not make up the levels of fractal idiocy this whole process has involved. It is not surprising it has ended up a total omnishambles.

I think parliament is trying to stop the government (and, particularly, the PM) from doing that. Parliament as a whole seems more willing to consider alternatives. But it has the problem that it is able to rejects lots of options but not say what it wants. (That is partly a procedural problem, in that parliamentary processes do not provide a mechanism to extract a preference from parliament.) So you have invoked Poe's law in response to my Godwin? That's not in the rules!

And that is a good point. A democracy is guided by the majority but must also support the minority. You can't just ignore the wishes of 50% of the population because 50% voted for something else. (And, of course, it was less than 40%.) And if it hasn't changed, then those who are opposed to a referendum on the deal won't have anything to worry about... Well, I gave you examples of reality. In cases where a 50:50 vote meant that parliament was unable to govern (as now) then it is normal to have another vote. You can argue that principle trumps reality, but that is not very rational. IT IS NOT THE SAME QUESTION! Sheesh. Come on, you are smart guy. No one is suggesting we run the same referendum again. No one. So why come up with silly arguments like this?

That makes little sense. The entire premise of science is that we build models, make predictions and then test them by making measurements. What are you suggesting? That we make random measurements in the ope of finding something that is not predicted by your model? That sounds silly, but I have no idea that your statement is supposed to mean. What??? What "binary nature"? What does "no concept of degree" mean? I have no idea what you are trying to say. Maybe you could show the math behind your model. That might make things clearer. The "rules" are the Einstein field equations. The "something" is geometry; you know: lengths, angles, distances, etc. Obviously not, or you would not be proposing an alternative. This is just word salad. Show us the math. Relativity (both special and general) were accepted very quickly because (a) they solved problems and (b) there was quickly observational evidence for them. You do not, as far as I can tell, have a new model. You have some poorly worded discontent with current models (that you appear not to understand). As such you have no evidence to support your ideas (it is impossible for you to have supporting evidence until you have a model that can make testable predictions). You also claim that your unscientific beliefs about spacetime lead you to a factually incorrect conclusion (the earth being flat). Therefore your beliefs are ill founded. As such, this thread seems fairly pointless. I suggest you report your last post to the mods and ask for them to close this thread.

I hate to invoke Godwin's law but ... As I say, there are plenty of precedents for a near 50:50 vote being held again within a year or two.

Denying democracy is not a great principle to live by. The PM is going to get the MPs to vote again on her deal, despite the fact that they voted decisively against it. By the biggest margin in history. It hardly seems to be inconceivable to hold another vote on something so important when the original result was a knife edge. It is not unheard of to have a second general election if no party can command enough of a majority to form a government. This happened in 1910 and 1974. That is a perfect analogue of the current situation, where not policy commands a majority. And lets not forget that May called an early election even though "the people had spoken" two years earlier. Two years. Two years? Why does that sound so familiar.

I assume it is a reference to the Leyden speech (beloved of ant-relativists) where he said it had not material properties. It certainly has tangible, ie measurable, properties.