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  2. There is no dimmer in the kitchen. Could the transformer behave like a dimmer for some reason? I had naïvely assumed it would just be coils wound on a magnetic core, as of old, but from the behaviour I suspect there is some kind of solid state step-down gizmo which plays up under some circumstances.
  3. It's likely to be the dimmer switch. Went through this a couple years ago. Not all dimmers are rated for LED lights and not all LED bulbs are dimmable. If your wall switch still uses the old incandescent dimmer, the LED bulbs may not respond well. Similar response. LED bulbs should outlive you unless your light is stationed on a paint shaker. If they're starting to fail you have an incompatible dimmer/LED situation. The average bulb is rated for 50,000 hours. LED bulbs have not been residentially installed long enough to be failing now.
  4. 1- <sigh> thought that I was moving towards firmer ground. 2- My evidence is not quantifiable, but at the very least, I am not the only one upholding these views 3, 4- I often see new ideas popping up in the literature, but when I look at the same literature a few years afterward, I rarely see any follow-up on them nor integration or movement of models. Best example for me in my reading through the years is Evolution Theory where it started as "evolution, one random mutation at a time" to an almost avalanche of processes for evolution being uncovered (from vertical to horizontal gene transfer; a big deal), but the theory, at least for me, seems generally unchanged, lying on top of the same foundation as before. I say that based on acquired evidence of the last few decades, this same foundation should have shifted, and it did not, at least not as much as it should have. 4, 5-Much less resistance to innovation of the same kind, much more resistance to innovation of a different kind. My first two points of contention indicated above would not slow down the quantity, quality of studies nor the speed of change, or immense success of science as long as these innovations were not putting into question models. If I have an idea based on different basic science assumptions it might not be given a fair chance, hence less possible paradigm shifts. Not saying that models cannot be challenged, but that you have to wake up really early to do so. 6- Causality, determinism and reductionism are ways of skinning a cat, but other ways exist as well that might bring a different-new perspective to things. 7- I think that the point is that the process is close-ended not open-ended
  5. CrO3, H2CrO4, H2Cr2O7, etc. All are chromic acid.
  6. Today
  7. Hi all above, thanks for all the advice, I am going to read and study them in a few days. Meanwhile, I have copied a comparison of my current old Android phone bought a few years ago and the phone I am now interested in. Will these "better" worth an upgrade? Because my old Android phone can still be used correctly, only the battery is a bit failing. 1.67x more battery power? 5000 mAhvs3000 mAh 4GB more RAM memory? 8GBvs4GB 4x more megapixels (main camera)? 50 MP & 2 MPvs13 MP 32.14% faster CPU speed? 2 x 2 GHz & 6 x 1.8 GHzvs8 x 1.4 GHz 22.55% bigger screen size? 6.74"vs5.5" 1.6x more megapixels (front camera)? 8MPvs5MP 192GB more internal storage? 256GBvs64GB
  8. Hi, what did you mean by "A wig is sure to be 100x harder than a cap" ? harder? What does it mean? Harder to choose the best fit? I am not embarrassed to go to an offline shop but I don't even find one nearby.
  9. You're coming across as relevant to me and you seem to understand intuitively that the shape of the universe dictates the shape of intelligence so I fail to see what the BFD is. I can't speak for Genady but Swansont doesn't strike me as the god fearing type so I think he's just logic checking folk more than anything.
  10. What you describe is what I find when my LED bulbs are beginning to fail.
  11. Agree. And what we did was find something in nature that provided lift (presumably before we even understood 'lift') and used it in our own way to design wings for airplanes. Of course. But I don't think that is what we were doing. We were comparing bird wings to plane wings, and finding design features that would be useful to us. The design features we find in some things in nature are very coarse, and the design features we find in other things is much more fine. I'm still not understanding why these aren't relevant, but philosophy is not my strong suit and that may be why.
  12. Don't think it's that as the flashing is too regular. Looks more like the sort of thing a solid state device might do under conditions it doesn't like. But certainly it's curious that it eventually seems to settle down. I wonder if I can still get halogen bulbs somewhere and see if that fixes it.
  13. Okay so here I agree with you in most ways (because it sounds like something I'd say in a free will debate in favour of compatibilism.) Although I'd be willing to bet you can't imagine a colour that isn't just some shade of a colour you've seen before. There are limits on our imagination in that respect, or imagining what a 5 dimensional existence would look like, but definitely fewer limits than physical reality. Our own natural form is going to have it's way with shaping the form that provides the function. If our bones weren't so dense and we had dedicated wing muscles we would be able to design and use wings that are designed closer to that of a birds over the rigidity required in plane wings we see today to lift heavier and denser loads. And you critique language without knowledge of the history of the philosophy of language. What's your point? The universe still came before intelligence and nothing you have said has convinced me otherwise. And I'm sorry but a self contained underwater breathing apparatus can absolutely be described as like an external lung still. So while it's nice that you felt the need to list your alleged credentials, you seem to be demanding that things be exactly so and that similes aren't acceptable in your world. See here is the thing, I didn't have access to a fancy and expensive education so I had to make do. At least I know I can do more with less. And honestly if this is meaningless game to you, then by all means feel free to not participate in the discussion.
  14. One possibility is that something is heating up. There could be an intermittent connection that works better once things expand upon heating. (I had some vanity lights that had wonky behavior because some wiring had come loose and made contact with the metal chassis, which gave a path to ground. The wires lengthened somewhat as they heated, changing the connection.)
  15. Not only I know well the history of human innovation as I have studied it professionally (my PhD thesis), I know also that computers do not work like brain (having MSc in Computer Science) and that SCUBA is not a tank with compressed air (being a PADI SCUBA Instructor.) You philosophize without knowledge.
  16. They have to share features if you look at things coarsely enough. Wings provide lift, and have to follow the laws of aerodynamics. That often constrains the form that provides the function. IOW, everything is made of atoms, so pointing to that commonality would be meaningless.
  17. Well you just must be the natural analog for a projector then. The meaning of a word is dictated by the context of it's use, not on the interpretation of the listener. We do take design cues and inspiration from nature, always have. You can disagree all you like but you'll just be wrong as the history of human innovation isn't going to change to match your belief anytime soon.
  18. Possible futures can be fueled by imagination, and not limited by what we’ve observed. Lasers were not something found in nature. The first nuclear reactor was not, even though we later found examples of that happening.
  19. In the case of planes and birds, sea creatures and submarine's you can say that both sets are aerodynamic and aquadynamic respectively and whether we say designed to be like or inspired by the meaning in the case of arguing against the teleological argument is pretty clear and it seems the lines are somewhat arbitrary as someone could make a fully functional crow wing and then I could nitpick and say it wasn't designed properly because the wing isn't made of actual crow.
  20. You are playing with words. Meaningless game.
  21. <sigh> Your evidence? Is there any way to document and/or quantify this? I suspect that if you reviewed the appropriate literature you would see new ideas popping up, all over the place. What you won’t see is this happening on a large scale, but if current paradigms are correct, that’s exactly what you’d expect. But at a lower level, you would, in areas that were not accessible in years past. When I started grad school, laser cooling and trapping was a pretty new subfield of atomic physics, made possible by advances in laser technology. As more was learned it blossomed into a huge area of research, and branched out as people thought of new applications. So I reject the notion because I spent my career experiencing it. If current paradigms are not correct, you’d expect more and more examples where the science fails. If your premise is correct, nobody would be stepping up to come up with models to explain what’s going on. Finding examples of this should be easy - there should be a whole bunch of unexplained phenomena, with nobody studying those issues. Things that science is based on are assumed to be true, since you’re not going to reinvent the wheel every time you start a new project. Science isn’t seeking any objective truth. We seek models to predict how nature behaves. There’s a bunch of stuff in physics that we know aren’t real (i.e. we make them up) — they are useful tools for such predictions.
  22. I mentioned analogues because someone claimed there were none for certain things. Also getting bogged down into semantics is unrelated to the OP which is simply pointing out that the universe itself predates how we conceptualize intelligence so how can anyone's claim the younger of the two inspired the older of the two, be taken seriously? The reason people are getting so focussed on nitpicking over the design usage aspect is because design is in the title of the term "intelligent design" which to be honest is badly named AMD assumes the thing it argues for in the first place as the universe is in no way designed in the same way a specific building has a design/blue print drawn up by a living person. I'll rephrase though, all human creation is inspired by natural observation of past, present and possible futures.
  23. If you mean they are not an exact replica I agree. If you are saying they don't share 'design' features then I disagree.
  24. Do we have wings that are shaped like a bird’s? Or submersibles shaped like a fish? They might be out there, but airplane wings are not like a bird’s and submarines are not shaped like a fish. That’s terminology, not design. I’ve never heard anyone describe it as swimming. Certainly not like a fish. And again, that’s terminology. Not like brains. You seem to be appealing to analogues, which (again) is terminology. It’s not duplication of design
  25. But airplanes do fly and we still call their wings, wings. Submarine's still swim. The analog of automobile or at least the wheel they depend on isn't horses but just noticing how circular and cylindrical objects roll along the ground. But computers do in fact do work, like brains without being brains. Telescopes, improved eyes. Spacecraft, objects floating through space as mobile shelters. Electronics, natural electrical currents, eels. Assembly lines? Have you ever heard of the phrase "Nature's assembly line"? Transmitters, I wonder if there are some kind of animals that have Antennae or some kind of hive mind? Or I wonder what neurotransmitters are hmmmmm. Refrigerators... You mean cold? Trapping cold in a place. Like a glacier. Steam engines I'm legit drawing a blank on for now, will put a pin in that but won't be long. I mean you put fuel in it which is it's form of food to keep it going so I mean... Wheel I've been over and around already, pardon the pun. Railroad? You mean Train trails? A scuba is just an external lung filled with enough air to supply your internal ones for awhile. Every single one of those things you mentioned does have an analog. Sorry to steelman your points but you're not convincing me. See you keep saying we don't then using words like almost never to cover yourself, which tells me that even you aren't buying what you're selling.
  26. Upon more careful reading of the references that I provided, I am more inclined to believe that the scientific process has checks and balances to weed out many of the unwarranted effects of biases. However, I maintain my position that there aisle bias in science based on the following 1- that « many fields become attached to current theories and new ideas are not given a fair chance to compete, as established scientists and proponents of currently accepted theories influence funding, tenure decisions and pre-publication peer review. ». 2- « all scientists also make assumptions of a non-empirical nature about topics such as causality, determinism and reductionism when conducting research » 3- that « The human mind is liable to make biased interpretations. The paradigm supposes that an objective truth can be reached with rigorous scientific methods. Human risk of bias is defined as threats to validity of study results that cannot be controlled even by rigorous scientific methods. »
  27. I have 6 spotlights in the ceiling of my kitchen and one of them has started flashing a short while after they are switched on. The flashing is at a rate of once every second or so, and after a while it stops and stays on continuously, though sometimes one of the others then flashes or even cuts off. I’ve tried changing the bulb but that makes no difference. Must be something to do with the transformer I think. Web search suggests it could be replacement of halogen bulbs by LED, causing too little current to be drawn for the transformer to work properly. Does this seem plausible, why should that happen, and what can I do about it?
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