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He said on a computer plugged into the internet... 🙄 What happened, you run out of stones?

Sad news :

Registering more than one account to yourself is not permitted without administrative approval (from rule 2.9) They got approval Yes, it was banned, and I think it would be a bad idea for people to be able to look through your posts that got you banned, and see that you are active, rather than associating the marginally better posts you’ve made since your return with your current name. So this would not get my vote.

There are two ways to look at this and I'm going with "Nobody got hurt and it's a great opportunity to modernise this facility which has been an epic emblem of astronomy for eighty years". Is anyone with me? Incidentally, when it was built in 1960 there was rather less focus on ensuring that planned maintenance could be done safely.

Your old account got banned due to your flipping out at one point over some topic, instead of for persistent rules violations. When you finally approached staff asking for another chance, we decided to wait and see if your style has improved. It's not up to me, an Admin would have to make the changes, but I'm inclined to think you're focusing more on the name and less on why you're being allowed to stay despite opening sockpuppet accounts. Will a name change improve the science in your posts? I think the whole staff is still on the fence wrt to this current account. You still have a tendency towards lazy methodology, but you seem more receptive to mainstream explanations, at least. We all figured you were young when you first joined, and perhaps had a bad patch, so you got a second chance.

I've been thinking about this too. They had a lot of practical knowledge and "played" with the maths very cleverly, but they didn't have the real drive to relate and understand, the basis for prediction. They were basically concerned with measuring the land, accounting, and measuring time.

Your subscription contains numerous flaws which have been addressed in more recent updates. How do you overcome such an inherent handicap? How do you draw a line in the sand on accumulated human knowledge ("NO, from here on the information can't be trusted!")? Where does the ancient power stop and science starts to decline? Can it be anything but arbitrary and subjective? I made a table using an axe only, and it didn't turn out nearly as nice as the one I made with my power tools. Why is that? This is the type of question one asks when one is determined to argue against any answer, no matter what. I'm truly sorry you see no wonder in our best current explanations.

Trump losing the popular vote by 7 million is even more significant considering the investment Republicans have made in voter suppression. Thousands of polling locations have been closed, new registration laws instituted, new deadlines, ballots designed to confuse, etc, etc. In the past Republicans hid their efforts but in the months leading up to this election were brazen about their desire to prevent people from voting. Despite the carefully imposed inconveniences Biden received 7 million more votes. I think it is obvious the number would have easily been in the double digits if elections were manage in good faith. Trump won NC by a percent and Texas by just 5.5%. Both potentially would've been Biden's if not for disenfranchisement. I keep seeing people discuss that we (USA) is a divided nation and implying we are split equally but that isn't true. Democrats have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 general elections. won the popular vote by millions that last 4 straight general election. The majority of the nation has a preference.

! Moderator Note Vague generalizations disguised as slurs towards a group of people are against our rules. This sort of thinking has been debunked MANY times over, much like creationism and phlogiston, so we don't waste our time wallowing in such ignorance. If you persist in this, you'll be required to leave. Nobody here is interested in going backwards; discussion should be meaningful, and promote learning. IOW, stop making moronic monkey noises.

! Moderator Note Blaming your failures on others isn't productive. We have rules to help us focus on what can be supported, so our members limited time isn't wasted on Wild West guesswork. Thanks for your understanding.

Your response here indicates that I did not manage to communicate my point. Sorry. I am not saying it is an either - or situation. I am saying that there is a scale between opportunity and result and the question of where a particular activity or situation falls on that scale is a question of ethics that can be discussed scientifically, particularly in the context of education, as required in this thread. Here are some examples from real life. Consider a runing race. 1) If everyone has the opportunity to run then they will not all reach the finish line at the same time, because they do not all possess the same ability or luck. 'Affirmative action' has lead some educationalists to ban races in some schools and try to ban exams. Where do you draw the line here and why ? 2) I have zero or even less than zero talent fo music, no matter how much musical education I am offered or receive. There are a limited number of stradivarius (and similar) violins in this world. Should I therfore be offered the opportunity to play such an instrument, therby depriving another player the opportunity or maybe breaking one ? Should I waste the time of the few people in this world capable of teaching the high standard necessary to obtain the best from such an instrument ? 3) Would you get into a taxi driven by a blind taxi driver, or should taxi drivers be drawn only from the ranks of well sighted persons? If so how well sighted ?

! Moderator Note Repetition is not explanation, nor is it clarification. There’s no actual model, no way to make testable predictions, and you’ve not identified ways to falsify it. You don’t have a theory, and this isn’t rigorous enough to be in compliance with our rules for speculations

The middle ground here would be ethics. If you're asking questions of the meaning or distinction of positive and negative values then we are in meta-ethical territory. That's not me saying, the middle ground is being ethical, the middle ground is thinking critically about what the good and bad are and what they mean. Also, google everything you can. If I had a dime for everytime I forgot to google something or go to the library, I'd be a rich man who's probably about to forget where he left that bloody fortune. Why you should research what you're thinking before you say it out loud; to avoid calling yourself stupid later. Not other people, yourself. Which brings me to the situational context sensitivity of things like being egotistical. Sometimes, it's beneficial, other times it is not. It depends on how the ego manifests itself. Imagine this scenario, a group of students file into an exam room. Two of the students are extremely arrogant. One believes outright that he will pass, because after all they are amazing. The other, believes outright they will do the right thing and use all the time they are given to complete the exam, because after all they are amazing. Both students believe they are going to perform really well, but only one of them is going to rush through the exam and leave early without checking over anything. As INow says, it's best not to build a bias toward egotistical thinking. Just because an egoic asshole says something which is true every now and then doesn't mean they will corrupt the knowledge, just their view of themselves. They might not even be corrupting that. You should also be aware that there are some theories that speculate that every act a human does comes from a place of egoism, even if they think they are being selfless or altruistic since even those acts can have positive benefits besides financial reward or thanks. I don't actually agree with them but the work behind them is still pretty insightful amd true to a limited extent.

I totally agree, as did our lecturer, he was very persuasive that current classification systems are very wide of the mark. Interestingly his lectures were very well presented, although he spent quite a bit of time telling us that he was classified on the scale. So yes, I think these alternative ways of thinking can be a gift and a great one at that, not a disorder at all. My way of thinking is different again, and I'm not totally sure how it can be described in the context of free will. Edit (whoops wrong thread) As regards communication with such persons, I suggest everyone is different so each communication must be treated on its merits, difficult and frustrating though that may be.