Strange

This doesn't really have anything to do with confirmation bias. But never mind. When there is overwhelming evidence replicated by many people in different ways. So far you have no evidence and it isn't even clear what your hypothesis is. It is not to do with picking one pixel (but that doesn't help). It is because you are not doing anything to show that the colours you see are connected to that species. For example, lets say someone develops a hypothesis that you can identify a species by the number of legs. They show you a picture of two people: "look they both have two legs". Then they show you a picture of two horses: "look they both have four legs, therefore my theory works". This is exactly what you are doing (apart from the fact that there is much more variability in colour than number of legs). You would point out to your friend that dogs have four legs and they are not horses. "Ah, but first you have to make sure you are looking at a horse, then count the number of legs". Your original claim was that a species (in a single location) has a unique colour. Carrots (like many other species) have a range of colours. You didn't. Others did, in order to show that your idea doesn't work. Ah, you have added the "No True Scotsman" fallacy to the list. So your method doesn't work with all species, just the species it works with... Say I was arguing with someone over a flower being pink color with someone. Science works by looking for counter-examples, not continually cherry picking successful examples. You are not doing this, therefore you are deluding yourself and boring everyone else. As you have changed your hypothesis but are unable to say what it is now, I can't help. That is a good attitude. However, ignoring all the flaws and contradictory evidence isn't really compatible with that. There are well established ways of identifying species by looking at all aspects of their morphology: leaf shape, habit, where they grow types of flower, types of seed, etc. And, ultimately, DNA testing. Oh yes, colour might come into this (particularly colour of flowers, very occasionally colour of leaves) because this can be, but isn't always, a distinguishing feature. After all, most plants have leaves of the same shade(s) of green. Do you know why? Maybe you should try one of those online guides to identifying wild plants: they lead your through a series of questions. They will often give you the right answer even if you don't know what colour the flowers are. Obviously colour can be significant, that is why there are so many species names such as aurea, alba, glauca, etc. It sounds as if you have just listed a number of cases where people are doing what you say, but in a practical way (i.e. looking at the general colouration as part of the species identification). But we can't really go on until you state exactly what your hypothesis is (in one or two sentences). And then state, in advance, exactly what the exceptions are (e.g. no domesticated animals or plants) so that you don't kepp adding ad-hoc excuses when things don't go your way.

There are two parts to this: (1) finding things that match (and ignoring those that don't) and (2) not checking that the matches are unique to that species. 1) You are looking for photos you can analyse that will confirm your idea (rookie mistake No. 1). In addition to this being the wrong approach, there may well be some (subconscious) selection bias going on: you look at photos (or objects to photograph) and think "that's a good candidate to confirm what I think". So you shouldn't choose the photos/objects yourself (rookie mistake No. 2) you should get someone else to choose them for you. This will produce results that falsify your theory, as already shown by the simple example of carrots. But you have chosen to ignore that contradictory evidence (rookie mistake No. 3). 2) You are only looking for things that confirm your idea (rookie mistake No. 4). You claim to show that the colours of two examples of a given species match, but you must also show that the colour (or colour range) is unique to that species. Without that test, your experiments are pretty much meaningless in terms of confirming your hypothesis. You need to show that no other species has the same colour(s) as each of the species you look at. These basic flaws in methodology are on top of your almost total lack of knowledge of colorimetry, colour spaces, how colours are generated by animals and plants, how the human perception system works and what its limits are, and so on (rookie mistake No. 5). Finally, despite the fatally flawed methodology, evidence that falsifies your idea and your lack of even basic knowledge, you are still absolutely convinced you are right (rookie mistake No. 6, and the one that confirms you as a crackpot). To address that last point, answer this question: What evidence would convince you that your idea is wrong? Having answered that, the next question is: Why aren't you devoting all your effort to finding that evidence instead of wasting your time (and everyone else's) looking for yet more confirmations? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect I thought that is exactly what you were claiming. If you are not saying that, can you state clearly what your hypothesis is? So, first you have to identify it as a carrot (Daucus carota). Then you can use colour to ... what? Decide what colour carrot it is? This doesn't sound very insightful. Certainly not the "huge benefit" you initially claimed.

I had never heard of them before, either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river

No one will disagree with that. It isn't. Because there are no such examples. Not rare on science forums. (I seem to be talking to one now.) There are too many who reject relativity, quantum theory and many other well established scientific theories for no good reason.

OK. Please feel free to start your own thread (with your preferred title) to provide some examples of people who 'try to "debunk" such flying pattern as the movement of an inanimated object'? I think it is a very interesting statement.

Clearly, I misunderstood you. I apologise. Could you provide some examples of people who 'try to "debunk" such flying pattern as the movement of an inanimated object'?

OK. Here is a new thread for you to answer the question in: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/89751-inanimate-butterflies/

jeremyjr said that many people claim that butterflies are not animate objects: I thought this was interesting so I asked for some examples. Jeremyjr, quite reasonably, said this would be off topic but would be an interesting subject for a new thread. That will be off topic and somehow we already know what will be presented, the "fun" will be spoiled. But that could be a perfect topic for a separate thread, if I am not suspended again for "bad behavior", people with "authority" are bound to use that "authority" and will not tolerate other people that appear not to "respect" such "authority", the "human" component is inescapable. So here we are...

I have never heard of anyone claiming that butterflies are inanimate objects. Do you have some examples? (It should be easy to provide some if "many" people claim this.)

Yet more examples of cherry-picked data and confirmation bias. Until you start looking for data that disproves your beliefs (and stop ignoring the many counter-examples provided by others) you will not get anywhere. Not on a science forum, anyway. It would be trivial to write a program to do a correlation of the colours between two images. So don't blame technology.

Note that the structures described do not appear in empty space but in a plasma containing small dust particles. Also, the structures are a few millimetres in length and difficult to observe directly (if that is at all relevant ...) I have never heard of anyone claiming that butterflies are inanimate objects. Do you have some examples? (It should be easy to provide some if "many" people claim this.)

All the scientific evidence I have seen contradicts your beliefs. (Note that I carefully providing exactly the same level of citations to support this statement as you did.) Based on that second sentence, apparently you did misunderstand.

So you are not going to answer any questions or provide any evidence. OK. Good luck with that.

Then, perhaps, a more constructive approach would be for you to say exactly what you do not understand, or what you disagree with. Then people could clarify those specific aspects for you. Just ignoring the reasons given and requesting other reasons is not going to help anyone. The chances are you wont understand or like those and will just ignore them to. So, I would suggest you ask questions about the parts you don't understand ... Yes, but unlike my example, which happens with tedious regularity, yours never happens.

There was an interesting comment in a discussion on whether mathematics is discovered or invented (1). Someone suggested that if there were intelligences made of gas/plasma then their most basic mathematics would be things similar to real numbers, fluid dynamics and calculus, which are subjects we find quite advanced. One day, one of their more advanced mathematicians would discover these truly bizarre things called "integers" ("useless of course, but fun to play with"). (1) BBC radio, some time ago - I might be able to find it if anyone is interested... Well, scientific in the sense that it is discussed by scientists. Not in the sense that there is any evidence for such a thing.

The rotation curve is easily explained by the addition of extra matter. And, nicely, there is lots of other evidence consistent with that. Also, simulations of the evolution of galaxies and the large scale structure of the universe require exactly that amount of dark matter to match reality. The Higgs mechanism is completely over my head. And I have never seen a non-mathematical explanation that makes sense. So the best I can do is refer you to Wikipedia as a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism If you can understand that, perhaps you could explain it to me Inflation and the inflaton are completely hypothetical, with no real evidence for them (yet). But it seems I might have misunderstood you again. Sorry about that. I am happy to agree that in the early universe there may have been no matter (depending how that is defined). I thought you meant that there was nothing, which is a common misconception. It is not because it is "too great"; it is because expansion by scaling means that the speed of separation between two points is proportional to how far apart they are (this is just basic arithmetic or geometry - nothing to do with physics or cosmology). It can and does exceed light speed. Read some of the articles Mordred suggests (I haven't looked at it but I should think the one based on the Lineweaver and Davis paper is good). The observable universe currently has a diameter of about 93 billion light years. Can I suggest you study a little before pontificating with such certainty on things that clearly have a very limited knowledge of. The whole universe is very much larger than that and may be infinite. Life is too short. Read some Mordred's suggestions. Apart from the fact that the "zero time" thing is just a pop-sci simplification, we are not measuring the time taken or the distance travelled in the photon's frame of reference (which doesn't exist) but in ours. In our frame of reference, it took the light 13.8 billion years to get here. It may be irrelevant to the photon, but it is highly relevant to us. Gibberish. Correct. So you are capable of learning something. So if you study, you can fill those big gaps in your knowledge. Also correct. Well done.

I suggest you read through this thread. There are some very good reasons. Do you have problems reading? Or maybe we are into that common trope: Speculator: "please show why my idea is wrong" A: <detailed explanation in the flaws in the argument> B: <further analysis and other reasons why the idea won't work> Speculator: "well if no one can show where I am wrong, my theory must be correct." A: "No as I said, ... "<repeats detailed refutation> C: "And in addition ... " <adds further analysis of the flaws> Speculator: "If you think my theory is wrong, can you provide some specific reasons." A, B, C, D, E and F repeat ad nauseum the explanations with yet more evidence, mathematics, analogies, etc Speculator: "So no one can show my theory to be wrong." Yes it is. It is not nothing, it is an empty universe. It contains nothing. Many of your comments are very sloppy like this. I'm not sure if this reflects the lack of clarity of your ideas, or problems with reading. So "nothing" is an abstract concept and therefore, by your definition, it exists.

Clearly, colour(s) is one of the parameters to identify a species (or a mineral). But to claim that it alone can uniquely identify species (or anything else) is clearly bogus. The nearest thing is the use of spectroscopy to identify chemical elements and molecules.

Here you go: http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8

What is it moving relative to? Which direction is it moving? How would we measure this movement? I don't understand the relevance of that. All massless particles ravel at the speed of light. Space is not a massless particle. They exist in, travel through, space. They do make up space. If by "smallest" you mean mass, then neutrinos are less massive (smaller) and have no charge. Other particles have the same mass but opposite charge. Basically, you have provided no reason to connect the movement of space with electric charge.

Well spotted. Zero is not undefined. It is very well defined. One simple definition is that it is the cardinality of the empty set. (But I suppose you will struggle with that as nothing is ever truly "empty".)

Ah, yes. Good point. (Does turning on and off count as modulation? )

In the quantum description, photons don't slow down when they enter a dense medium. However, they are delayed by interacting with electrons in the material; in between those interactions, they travel at c. There are some good lectures on QED by Richard Feynman online where he explains this very well.

Really. So all those representations of unicorns prove that unicorns exist. Got it. Thanks for clarifying that. Let M represent the number of mammoths on Mars ... That is not what I said. I said that saying you have zero apples, does not mean you have nothing. I also said, you can choose to use zero to represent nothing. For example, consider a hypothetical universe containing no matter or energy. Then this universe contains nothing: the number of electrons is zero; the amount of energy is zero; etc. Note that there are mathematical models of such universes (they are useful for exploring the implications of the Einstein Field Equations) and so according to you they must exist. I, and many others, have given you several reasons. Do you need more?

Optical fibre [fiber] communications was the first thing that came to my kind.