Strange

And I suppose this comes back to a version of the anthropic principle. A universe where these sort of basic symmetries did not exist would be unimaginably different from this and would quite possibly not be able to support life (or even any sort of consistent structures such as stars and galaxies).

If this is true, maybe it is because they are trained to take a careful, thoughtful approach to the job. I suspect I would do very badly on a test like this because my entire career has been focussed on solving problems where millions of dollars are at stake. Therefore you do not try and reach a conclusion quickly. I would probably hit the time limit while still thinking about the first question and triple-checking the possible answers to see which could be the best fit.

No I didn't. I have never used Mathematica.

Do we? Really? Can you provide references for the above? We cannot know anything about the inside of a black hole. This sounds like the “firewall hypothesis” a result from attempting to apply quantum theory to black holes. But I’m not sure anyone thinks it represents reality; it is a problem to be solved.

What is it? I have never heard of it. It looks like the word can apply to all sorts of things: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofield Which are you thinking of?

Exactly. I am not assuming any such thing. (How dare you! )

It is a rather vague term. The usual meaning is a theory that combines quantum theory and general relativity, but also answers questions about how the fundamental forces are related (eg. do they all appear to be the sam thing at high enough energies). More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything To reduce spam, new members only get a limited number of posts. in their first day.

One was this, I think:

No that isn't the assumption. But if you can't understand why it is a problem to say that or, equivalently, "being female enables rape" or "having a home to live in enables burglary" then you need to think very hard about why not: the problem is with you, not the rest of the world. But you selected only bad things. Why would you deliberately do that if not because of your prejudice against religion. (I might have to report myself now for dragging the thread further off topic.)

I should say that, like Raider5678, I was never offended by these attitudes and experiences (perhaps for similar reasons). But I was bemused to see some other white males get very angry about being treated as "different". I was like, "dude, this is what other people have to put up with all the time where you/we come from".

I have explained earlier. I don't really want to go over it again. See how dangerous it is to make assumptions! And I apologise if that assumption was in any way offensive...

The problem is, you are a white male (as am I) so you don't experience people constantly putting you down (however subtly) or expressing surprise at your abilities (however subtly) because of the colour of your skin, your gender, your accent, etc. I have experienced these things (because I have lived in countries where I am the minority) and it brought home to me exactly what female, black, Indian, etc. friends had been saying for years. They experience crap like this every single day. It is very rarely anything you could object to and claim someone is insulting you, but you are constantly being treated as "different" and either undeserving or remarkable for what you do.

Maybe "kid" isn't a good example, because maybe you genuinely are smarter that the other kids around. But when you are just a member of the adult population, and therefore don't think people should have any particular expectations of you, I imagine it can get frustrating to be constantly either talked down to or praised for doing what any other member of society can do. I think it is exactly on topic. Unnecessary or irrelevant compliments may be just as insulting as explicit insults. Take another look at Ten Oz's post if you still don't get it: (Of course, I don't agree with you.)

There is a fairly good argument to be made that "guy" has become (fairly) gender neutral. We are also limited by the fact that English requires a noun phrase in a sentence like that and there aren't that many good choices (using "one" or even "person" sounds a bit stilted in informal conversation).

What if the implication appeared to be "you're surprisingly smart for a kid"? (Or, even more so if the implications was "Jewish kid" or "black kid" or "immigrant kind" or "female kid") And what if you were convinced that was the implication because every day you got people referring to your "kid" status even when it wasn't relevant? This example reminds me of the Monty Python sketch with Jon Cleese: (Ironically, I had to "censor" the name of the woman as it would not be considered acceptable nowadays!)

Of what? That we dream. Not that "the universe is projecting into our minds". That is just fantasy. You can suggest that there are hyper dimensional white mice that feed off the the rhythms of pulsars. But it is all just made-up delusion without any evidence. No, that is not what evidence means. If we have no evidence, then it is logical to say "I don't know" not make up intelligent space platypuses that inject dreams into our heads. Obviously. But that doesn't make it real. Or even plausible. Stick to science fiction.

And (in addition to Phi’s point) that looks like another straw man. I don’t think that anyone is saying it was addressed to all women. (But it may be symptomatic of more general attitudes to women.)

But you don’t “know” anything. You are just inventing a designer because you like the idea, not because there is any evidence for it.

Because there is no evidence or mechanism for such a thing. Why cant the universe be considered the dream of an invisible pink unicorn? This is a science site and I would expect rational arguments. This is shifting the burden of proof. Your claim, up to you to support it. Evidence?

So this is a “designer of the gaps” argument. Anything we can’t explain, you can say “designer” (or “gods”) as an “explanation”. But as that guess has no evidence or explanatory power, you might as well say unicorns or fairies.

Because you didn’t answer the question several times. But I see you have one example - I can see that this specific problem might be easier to handle in terms of the angles of the forces on the surface of the sphere. (Although without the ability to transform the results back to a more general coordinate system, that may be of limited use.) I can’t see it easily generalising to different cases, though. What was the other example? I must have missed it.

Can I assume the answer to this is "no", then?

Because there is no evidence for a designer. And, because naturalistic explanations appear to work, there is no need for a designer. As such, belief in a designer is a purely faith-based belief unsupported by evidence. And therefore unscientific. Also, if there was a designer, they weren't very bright because they made some really bad design decisions.

Another related article here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-black-hole-interiors-grow-forever-20181206/

As I started reading, I was going to suggest ... Quanta. Not sure about other magazines, but there are a couple of blogs I follow https://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/ has a summary of interesting stories from around the web https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang Blog by Ethan Siegel on astronomy / cosmology