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Showing content with the highest reputation on 08/22/19 in all areas

  1. Is science scientific, when it favors one hypothesis over another, even if they have an equal "lack of evidence"? If we take the example of sting theory. It has gained the title 'theory', despite the lack of evidence, and it's discussed widely and openly in the scientific community. But a hypothesis saying we are simulated is frowned upon, and any discussion is quickly silenced, by demanding evidence. Evidence that is not demanded from string "theory"! When such evidence is presented, it is dismissed as moot. Is the scientific community discriminating between hypotheses, and thereby abandoning its core principles in favor of physicalism? Are most scientists cowards, clinging to a physical reality?
    2 points
  2. I have noticed that this term gets thrown around quite often when people debate what's "scientific" and what is not. What I have NOT found is a definition or explanation of "falsifiability" that is unambiguous, coherent and logical! Apparently it's an alleged "property" of a theory or hypothesis, which for some mysterious reason makes it "scientific" (whatever that might mean - I'll get back to that later) So we need a "test" which could tell us whether a theory/hypothesis is "falsifiable" or not. In the context of science any such a "test" should be rigorously and unambiguously defined. The problem is, the only things I found are ambiguous and nonsensical ramblings made by people who seem very unfamiliar with the clarity, rigor and logical soundness that actual science requires. And I haven't even touched on the issue of how such a "test" would prove that something is "scientific" and what that would really mean. Let's explore a few examples ... first, wikipedia: So we have: "basic statement" - what does it mean? how does it differ from non-"basic statements"? do you just have to "say something"? "successful or failed falsification" - a theory is falsifiabile if [something], which, in eventual successful or failed falsification [some other stuff] - what is the meaning of falsification here, as it sounds like a circular statement "must respectively correspond to a true or hypothetical observation" - what's the meaning of "hypothetical observation"? it kinda sounds like oxymoron! are imaginary things are ok? unicorns? aliens? or just scenarios that are imaginary but seem plausible due to similar actual facts that exists or perhaps laws of physics? OK, let's now explore the concrete example... from the same wikipedia: 1. what if that "basic statement" were not a "true observation" but some imaginary stuff? 2. how about this one: "all swans have two eyes" ... good luck finding a three eyed swan! OK, now let's try to falsify one popular "theory": "The earth is flat!" - well, this is contradicted by many statements and experiments that back them! So "the earth is flat" is a scientific theory according to Popper! WOW! How does it help us in separating non-scientific stuff from scientific stuff? We can even try to formulate theories related to imaginary friends: "In every room in every building on earth, there's a green unicorn!" Finding just one room without an unicorn would make the theory "scientific". You can replace unicorns with angels, gods or whatever. Then there's the nonsense that a theory can only be "disproved" and never "proved" - which is hugely wrong and nonsensical(you might get to "disprove" an infinity of things and won't be able to reach any conclusion)! Actually the whole story about "falsifiability" comes from this philosophical idea of Popper that "nothing is certain" and theories can only be shown to be false. Besides being wrong, is completely unhelpful, as that's not the way we use science to our benefit. I'll stop here for now.
    1 point
  3. im not religious or spiritual or any of those things. Im an atheist. im also not a scientist, but i love science. i was listening to a podcast with some scientists/cosmologists/physicists talking about the universe today. and i heard them mention the theory that in the infinite universe, in infinite time, anything that can happen basically WILL happen. this led me to a question. does that mean that you or i could be born again? i mean even if the universe itself had to go on for ever, or even be born and die itself an enormous number of times in order to achieve this , if the number truely was infinity, then by the law of probability, it has to eventually happen right? and given the fact that you or i will have been dead in the meantime ,we might not have percieved any passing of time at all in between. slightly optimisic view i guess. another problem it poses is what does it really mean to be "you", as a child your body was made up of completely different molecules than it is now, so, arguably you are not even the same person you were then, you just think you were. and in some future universe, even if your life were to be repeated verbatim , would you even be you then? or just a different you, while the current you would remain dead. i dont know. but its food for thought. part of me thinks that this is just way too outlandish to be possible even in an infinite universe, in infinite time. but on the other hand, perhaps that is because my brain cannot truely grasp infinity. I mean. a truely infinite universe just has to keep on trying until it happens, right? it can keep rolling the dice until the numbers come up! im sure there must be a mathematical way to demonstrate that even in an infinite universe it would be impossible to repeat even one person because it it is just infinitely unlikely to happen. i would be really interested to hear feedback from someone more knowledgable than me on the subject.
    1 point
  4. Beside the fact that Greenland is semi-autonomous which, I presume, would make the legal situation quite difficult, the sale of the Virgin Islands was part of the overall imperialist strategies of the 19th/20th century, which are (at least in the overt form) declining from the second half of the 20th century. While negotiations started in the latter half of the 19th century, various negotiations negotiations ultimately failed, despite the fact that the main interest for the US was imperialist expansion, whereas on the Danish side, decline in the same (as well as increasing cost) were a factor. The sale ultimately happened due to militarist threats from the US. Drawing parallel to current political situations are, tenuous at best (hopefully). Because it is either that or things have gone really insane.
    1 point
  5. I would avoid any of them that advertise on discussion forums. Also, stay away from those that are vague and unclear, or don't give enough information. Above all, don't let them suggest that price and experience are the most important factors in academic editing.
    1 point
  6. i think as a child i took a kind of pascals wager stance on it as in "i might as well go along with it because it doesn't hurt and if I'm right then good, if I'm wrong then it doesn't matter then there was this one pivotal moment for me when some catholic cardonal spoke out against heavy metal music, and my mother innocently read the article in the newspaper, and following that she went to my room and took all of my heavy metal tapes and threw them out. I never forgave the church for this LOL I think if you could trace it all back to one point that might be it. I went to a catholic school and we used to have confessions in the school chapel once per month on a Friday morning. This was always a pleasant surprise to hear we had Mass this morning ,because i would get to miss mathematics or Irish class which i invariably had not done my homework for anyways. always nice to dodge a bullet ! but i never played along with it. i was the only kid in my year who sat at the back of the church and refused to go into the confession box like the other kids. they used to look at me strange as though i was the one being ridiculous. When i was about 13 I also remember asking the school principal if i could be allowed to not attend religion class and instead go to the study hall to study like another kid (Jehovas witness) was allowed to do, i was refused. that was in the 1990s when a lot of scandals about clerical abuse in my country were suddenly made public for the first time. from this moment on i lost ALL trust in the church but since the story of god had been instilled in me as a young child i still found it hard to let go. its as though there is a slight feeling of guilt attached to it that i could not explain. I finally wrote the whole thing off once i discovered Christopher Hitchins, read his books, listened to his debates, and I feel the process was completed when i discovered the work of Dr. Richard Carrier who has effectively proven that Jesus was also a mythical character. I identify a lot with what these guys say, it resonates a lot with the thoughts i had growing up. Believing in god or Jesus is , to me the same as believing in Zeus or any other obscure god, or indeed believing that David Koresh was a god, I don't see any difference between them.
    1 point
  7. In a world of >7 billion people, one has to allow for the possibility that two of them will independently have similar ideas. The notion that one's ideas were stolen is vanity on steroids.
    1 point
  8. There’s a lot right with your post (which is admittedly more philosophical than astronomical... don’t feel hurt if mods move it). A few points stand out to me: - We ARE different now than before. Every cell in our body is always getting recycled. I think the average to complete this for every single cell is 8 years. You’re not even exactly the same person reading this as you were when writing that original post. You’ve drank water, eaten food, the connections in your brain have been pruned and reinforced, the bacteria in your belly has evolved countless different colonies. Change is the only constant. - Infinity IS hard for our human minds to grasp. We evolved counting seeds and arrow head and antelope. We can barely conceive of thousands or millions, let alone infinities. With that said, it’s important to recall that infinity is just another abstraction. A useful tool in math. It’s not somehow magical and doesn’t make impossible things possible. It’s another type of number. - Probabilities DO get really interesting when considered over vast epochs of time. The probability that something unlikely will happen changes when considered in the next 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 months, 5 years, 5 centuries, 5 millennia, 5 infinities... Its easy to speculate that another “you” could exist, but the amount of time required is likely several times older than the universe itself. - Not everything can be compared to a roll of the dice. If you roll a dice enough times, you can achieve nearly any combination of results. In our reality, however, certain rules apply. Certain chemicals attract and repel to form certain molecules. Certain forms are more successful in an environment than others and evolve more successfully. Certain forces apply, and all of this is well before you get to the level of complex organisms and life forms, or even cultures. Given enough time, nearly anything is possible, if considered within the rules of the system. The main problem here is the amount of time required for these things is several times older than the entire universe. - Most concepts of reincarnation are pretty silly. We are formed from atoms formed by exploded stars, and we do get recycled by other organisms when we die. Our molecules decompose or get eaten by a beetle or burned into the air or absorbed by a mushroom or a tree. In that sense, we reincarnate, sure, but much like you’re not even the same person now as you were when you wrote that post, you’re most certainly not the same “person” after death as you were while alive... while you were “the universe expressing itself as a human being for a little while.” I probably missed the important parts of your question. Sorry for that. These are just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Thanks for letting me share them with you and for the opportunity to do so presented when you asked your kind thought provoking questions. Not all questions have answers, but that doesn’t make it any less fun discussing them. Cheers.
    1 point
  9. ! Moderator Note You have had several threads on the same thing. All have been closed because of your inability to present any evidence or math to support your ideas. Do not bring the subject up again.
    1 point
  10. String Theory is attractive to many physicists mainly because gravity emerges from it as something inevitable and not a forced feature that has to be cramped in unsuccessfuly as in other attempts which try to mary QM and GR. This is the reason physicists pursue strings despite the fact that experimental data is more or less impossible to obtain at our current state of technology. I'm not familiar with the "we are simulated" or the Simulation Theory enough for that matter, what scientifically attractive features do these offer or at least what indirect signs they are giving us that theyre worth pursuing? PS. Elon Musk saying in an interview that „we just gotta live in a simulation, no question about it” doesn’t exactly do it for me
    1 point
  11. It is also important to give credit where credit is due under any circumstance.
    1 point
  12. We've recently had a few posts by newer members asking for advice and expert input on ideas they are unwilling to disclose publicly for reasons of IP protection. Staff feel that this goes against the spirit of this forum as a place for open discussion, and we have therefore updated the rules under Section 2 to include the following:
    1 point
  13. "Don't post anything you might come to regret or be ASHAMED of at a later date" I don't know Studiot, if you make appropriate use of the forum, and learn new things, you may be ashamed at the lack of knowledge you previously had. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
    1 point
  14. Letting a target person hear sounds using microwaves is well-established science. It was observed during WWII as the first radars were put into service. You all have had enough time to hear about it. It was investigated during the 1950, and even published in peer-reviewed science journals - just in case someone imagines this is what makes science. It's called the Frey effect, and the experiments let the target person hear distinctly the figures from 1 to 9. The company Raytheon proposed the US navy to build hardware for it. All people here are not scientists who criticize or insult the OP based on their wrong believes and prejudices. They should ask themselves how to improve their reasoning to avoid such gross mistakes in the future.
    -1 points
  15. I beg your pardon if I did not answer any question. Ready to answer any question! There are no secrets! True?! [math]\vec F = \frac{{{\rm{d}}\vec p}}{{{\rm{d}}t}} = \frac{{d(m\vec v)}}{{dt}} = m\frac{{d\vec v}}{{dt}} = m\vec a[/math] Something is wrong? Butov did not study well at school ?! In general, the change in momentum looks like this: [math]\vec F = \frac{{{\rm{d}}\vec p}}{{{\rm{d}}t}} = \frac{{d(m\vec v)}}{{dt}} = m\frac{{d\vec v}}{{dt}} + {{\vec v}_r}\frac{{dm}}{{dt}} = m\vec a + {{\vec F}^{jet}}[/math] And, once again, you have failed to explain what is going on in your diagrams, that people might have a chance to make some sense out of them. I will show how the Mass Center of the Varipend system is calculated: [math]{r_c}(t) = \frac{{{m_{liquid}}(t){r_1}(t) + {m_{case}}(t){r_2}(t)}}{M}[/math] In order to calculate the coordinates of the CM system at any time, it is necessary to know the masses and coordinates of the parts of the system. And the masses and coordinates of the parts of the system change over time. These CHANGES are subject to conservation laws: the Law of Conservation of Momentum and the Law of Conservation of Energy. In order to calculate the coordinates of the system at any time , it is enough to solve the differential equation of the momentum balance of the parts of the system: [math]{p_{var}}(t) = {m_{liquid}}(t){{\vec v}_1}(t) + {m_{case}}(t){{\vec v}_2}(t)=0[/math] Oh! Or maybe you want to solve the differential equation of a "brick" of the same mass as the Varipend system? [math]{m_{brik}}{{\vec v}_{brik}} = 0[/math] Because there is a very respectable competent reason for this - is this equation a little easier?
    -1 points
  16. In my many many many discussion online, over the years, I've argued in a similar way to what you do here. People called that hand-waving.
    -1 points
  17. The center of the mass system of bodies is a function of 2 (two) time-dependent variables. [math]{{\vec R}_c}(t) = \frac{{\sum {{m_i}(t){r_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} (t)}}[/math] The velocity of the Center of Mass is a derivative of the radius vector: [math]{v_c}(t) = \frac{{d{R_c}(t)}}{{dt}} = \frac{{\sum {{m_i}{{\dot r}_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} }} + \frac{{\sum {{{\dot m}_i}{r_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} }}[/math] If you want to know the antiderivative of a function, try to integrate the derivative of this function: [math]{R_c}(t) = \int {{v_c}(t)} dt = \int {\left( {\frac{{\sum {{m_i}{{\dot r}_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} }} + \frac{{\sum {{{\dot m}_i}{r_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} }}} \right)} dt = \int {\left( {\frac{{\sum {{m_i}{{\dot r}_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} }}} \right)} dt + \int {\left( {\frac{{\sum {{{\dot m}_i}{r_i}(t)} }}{{\sum {{m_i}} }}} \right)} dt[/math] The radius vector of the CM of the system of bodies is the result of the addition of two "vectors" - the radius vector of inertial displacement and the pseudovector of deformation of the system of bodies.
    -2 points
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