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  1. I would add that it is a futile task to prove or disprove an assertion to someone who is strongly bound emotionally. Lack of knowledge driven by primitve fear is such a strong motivator that attemtps at coherent discussion are useless in most cases.
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  2. I would like to know exactly what is the difference between the meaning of the terms "proof" and "evidence" since I feel like a lot of people use the term proof when they discern something that is explicitly indicative of something else happening, but can possibly still even yet be dismissed by further "proof" that the previous "proof" is untrue and must be debunked. If someone could clear up the meaning of these two concepts, that would be great!
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  3. The thread is about I.Q.s and/or intelligence required to enter the military and/or become a doctor. Your post, which may or may not be true, seemingly has deviated from the issues and become (in your mind), become a psychological and a moral issue.
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  4. bold by me: By using the same argument as above, Tolken's work The Lord of The Rings should be considered a true story? Tolken could not come up with his ideas without solid proof of something? Or did I misunderstand something in your arguments? I haven't seen that show. But I had to check, and you do sound like "Ancient Aliens"*: *) Episode 41 according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Aliens
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  5. No, a clock is a basic measuring tool...It measures time...how much time has passed between successive events. Time is there, it exists, just as space exists.
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  6. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. They are unidentified and most are scientifically explained by weather phenomena, illusions and delusions, weird cloud shapes, or just plain old trickery by pranksters. While some UFO's remain unscientifically explained [around 5% from memory] It is an extraordinary claim, to claim they are controlled by Alien intelligent beings, and as a great man once said [Carl Sagan] extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence. In saying all that, most scientists do accept that life should exist somewhere, sometime, for many reasons....the sheer vast extent of the universe, the incalculable vast numbers of stars and planets, and the stuff of life being everywhere we look. But sadly, we as yet have no evidence of that existence.
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  8. Not everybody disagreeing with a point wants to jump into the fray, and/or anything they might have to say has already been said, so there is no point in responding. But it's still a way of giving feedback. Personally, I tend to do one or the other, but not both, if I have an interest and also disagreement.
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  9. This looks like you are asking about burettes and titrations. A general rule of thumb in Science (and engineering) is that accurate measurements are made when you 'measure by difference' For a burette this means you never empty the burette. So when you draw off a desired volume of liquid the amount drawn is the difference in readings on the burette. You should always measure from the same part of your meniscus and the most suitable part is the centre of the curve, away from the sides of the burette. You want the centre because it is difficult to visually estimate where the top of the liquid actually lies at the edges. This is partly because the triangle becomes thinner and thinner and you can't tell exactly where the top lies against the glass sides. And partly to avoid a phemenon known as parallax. Parallax is where you get the reading on the scale slight wrong because you are viewing at a slight angle (to the horizontal in this case). So if you open the burette tap until the bottom of the meniscus at the centre reads 21 in your picture, you will have drawn off exactly 1mL as there is still just the same amount of meniscus liquid above that line as before. Finally I commented that colour has a minor impact. Some liquids are hard to distinguish from the background because of their colour. Good practice would suggest holding up a card (usually white but a contrast colour) to improve the image. So can you think of a situation where we might want to do things differently and so minimise any other characteristic of the meniscus?
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  10. Good morning and welcome. Yes it is true that too many folks talk of proof when mean something else. The meanings of proof and evidence are pretty much the same in Mathematics, Science, Philosophy and the Law. Proof requires a proposition, evidence does not (although evidence may be offered, rightly or wrongly, in support of a proposition). Consider the equation a + b = a * b Now the statement a = b = 2 is evidence that the equation is sometimes valid, but it is not true since for example it is not true for a = b = 3 So the proposition that the equation is always valid is false and cannot be proved. But the proposition that the equation is sometimes valid is true and is proved by the evidence of the eaxmple a = b = 2. But consider the forensic science statement "Mr B died at 8 pm" This is just evidence, there is no associated proposition. By itself it is not proof of anything. Proof finds most use in Mathematics and Philosophy since it can be taken to mean, "The proposition is consistent with the axioms or premises" Since most parts of maths and philosophy concern abstract constructs this does not mean that a proof has any substance or validity in 'reality' or the observable environment. This also confuses many. Other areas of scientific thought and the legal profession tend to consider "The balance of the evidence" , rather than proof. So we have no absolute 'proof' of the Laws of Thermodynamics. But they have never been observed to fail so every instance is supporting evidence for them.
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  11. I think I've previously mentioned that I wrote an article that was recently published in a scientific journal, regarding to a critical analysis of Charles Cooley's theory "Looking Glass Self" (1902), where I also mention the virtual world and people's various behavior based on their status in the real world. However, It would be very interesting to actually conduct a research and possibly write a paper about this topic as well. Thank you so much for your recommendations, since I am not really a gamer girl and I don't have much knowledge about games... I completely agree with the last sentence of your comment about escaping the real world; But I must say that every person is "escaping" from the real world and that does not have to necessarily mean into the virtual world. In other words, people often escape in their psychological world, were everything is an illusion, but they want to believe those illusions are a reality, trying to act like that in the real world. Here, rationality is sometimes an exception, as most of people's psychological illusions are not realistic or easily achievable for them. Reality is often cruel, and in order for humans to cope with that, they have this habit of turning reality into an illusion, and vice versa. Although it is physically impossible to escape from reality as a concept of existence, people often mistaken their psychology as a different world, and that is not correct because psychology comes and is developed in our brain, and our brain is an essential part of our body which allows our existence on this planet in the first place. Still, even when a person manifests and lives in a perfect illusion of his own creation, there is some conscious present at the back of his head, a consciousness that simply cannot be fooled with lies and self-manipulation. That is often that tiny voice which gives the person a dose of reality in order for him to not get carried away by his illusions and start acting like that in the real world. Thank you, nevim I complete agree with you, as I also don't have tendencies to use social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter... My intention is not to offend anyone who uses social media, however my personal opinion is that they are a waste of time and have a very negative influence upon one person's self-image and confidence. In other words, I view social media as unrealistic worlds that are filled with illusions, which make people to often mistaken them as a reality.
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  12. While D Trump makes for an easy target because he's an ignorant buffoon, the world had plenty of problems before he came along. Not everything is directly attributable to him.
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  13. How so? No. It doesn't make you socialist. Before you give into fear and irrationality of that ad being a pre-lude of world war 3 or something, perhaps you should take a step back and think it through for a moment. You're scared of a video explaining why primarily socialist countries are failing. Why? It seems like you've bought into the idea that just because someone opposes socialism makes them an evil capitalist nazi or something. I mean read what you've said. You already think of people who oppose socialism as only supporting healthcare, education, and food for the rich. Do you really have absolutely no idea what that's about? Brainwashing conspiracies now? This is a forum of science, is it not? The FB algorithm isn't so basic that it doesn't identify by region. It knows what country you're in. I've worked with it before, you can literally select states, regions, countries, or distances to a certain point for the ad to show. Come on iNow. You, as much as anyone, know's to fact check this stuff. The advertisement was not sponsored by the Trump Administration in order to prepare for a 2020 election. There's no way you really think Trump is as far right as Nazi Germany was. That's just straight out insulting to millions of people who genuinely suffered and died under them for you to even compare it to that. Additionally, you're way to paranoid about Trump planning some grand war or something. You do realize we're still a democracy, and that you need to get the support of the president and congress to launch an offensive war in any meaningful manner? You're about as bad as all the far right extremists in terms of fear mongering.
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  14. Agreed, I don't have much to add. If you're into doing research on this, I recommend looking into Roleplaying worlds online. Games like World of Warcraft have servers solely dedicated to roleplaying. Basically, everyone (or most players) adopt a role in a makeshift society. There are also many roleplaying scenarios in the game Second Life. One of the most obvious patterns is that players will usually be insecure people, unhappy with their real life, escaping into a virtual one.
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  15. It's pretty easy, and it's been done to death. Most of their arguments are strawmen, in that they make a false or misunderstood claim to attack, instead of a more difficult, legitimate claim. For instance, that the creation of proteins is astronomically improbable, therefore it couldn't have happened. Since they mistakenly think the universe is only a few thousand years old, they can't accept that evolution had millions of years to miss before it finally hit. Many of the arguments are nitpicking Darwin, as if the theory began and ended with him. They ignore what every scientist knows, that theories are dynamic, changing as new evidence shapes them into better and more accurate predictions. And they keep repeating arguments that have been refuted, which is seriously dishonest from an intellectual perspective. I still hear "If we descended from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?" being spread to ignorant audiences. They study evolution only enough to cherry-pick the parts many don't understand, and then ask questions they don't want answers to. If they really studied evolution sincerely, with an open mind, they would come to the obvious conclusion that there's no other way it could work. Evolution is a fact, and the Theory of Evolution describes how it works, with observational accuracy backed up by more evidence than almost any other theory.
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  16. ! Moderator Note Please return to the topic. OT posts will continue to be removed, and we will be adding official warnings and other sanctions if this continues.
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  17. The reputation was propounded by anti-Semites as in The Merchant of Venice .. Shakespeare. Fun, okay. My opinions are certainly almost never opinions according to definition of opinion except in this case: an estimation of the quality or worth of someone or something. My opinions are certainly almost never opinions based on these two definitions: "a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge." (The language of that definition is as vague and obscure as my thinking right now.) My opinion is certainly NEVER an opinion based on this definition: " the beliefs or views of a large number or majority of people about a particular thing." Unless a large number is more than two or three. Fun we can have. Yes, I doubt Curry is served often at State dinners except when wealthy influential East Indians are hosted. Pardon the fun. iNow suggested it.
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  18. Exactly!! No one knows the answer, particularly in the circumstance someone used re children being marched in front of advancing troops. How could any reasonable decent Soldier handle that! I can thank my lucky stars that I was born at the end of WW2, obviously too young for the Korean war, just missed out on conscription for the Vietnam war, and was too old for any participation in the Iraqy war. Truthfully, I don't know how I would act with bombs and bullets flying around me...I hope responsibly and if necessarilly, heroically, but I just don't know. Two points, most all wars are immoral and wrong, and with regards to WW2 the Allies really had no alternative with Hitler, Mussolini and Japan, other then to do what they did. The only question I would raise is the dropping of the Atomic bombs...just questioning though. The worrying thing for me is how close the Allies [Europe and the British Empire] came to losing the war....if the Brits had not invented radar, If the Luftwaffe had continued bombing military bases instead of switching to surban targets, if Hitler had not invaded the USSR, if Japan had not bombed Pearl Harbour, if Hitler or Japan had of perfected the bomb first, if the Japanese had not been stopped on the Kokoda trail...the list goes on and on.
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  19. Accurate stereotypes aren't "anti" anything.
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  20. Not taking appropriate precautions against types of people who tend to exhibit certain types of behaviour can be damaging to you.
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