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Well, beecee, I hope you are doing well in your followup crusade against philosophy. I find it interesting that you, Krauss, Degrasse Tyson are heavily critisising philosophy, where it is clear to me that you and your scientific heroes have no idea what is actually done in modern academic philosophy. Don't understand me wrong: I have read several books of Krauss, and these are great in explaining modern physics and astronomy for the lay people; and I extremely like the Degrasse Tyson's work in the public understanding of science. However I also recognise without a shadow of doubt that they are fighting a straw man here: philosophy as it was thousands years ago, or hundred years ago. Should I condemn physics as stupid because Aristotle said that F = mv? 2500 years ago? Or astronomers that thought the cosmos is static and exist just out of the stars we see in the Milky Way, not much more than 100 years ago? Of course not, but that is exactly what you are doing when they, and you, are critisising philosophy: as if philosophy has not progressed in those thousands or most recent 100 years (Russel, anybody?). If you say that philosophy has still no answers to the most fundamental questions it asks since thousands of years, then I can only react that physics and astronomy have not either. True, we know much more, and cosmologists can describe the history of the universe until about 10⁻²³ seconds, but the original question 'where everything comes from' is not answered. Even Krauss does not know the answer. So if you would say, e.g., that philosophy still has not answered the thousands of years old question if we have free will, I would say 'maybe not, but we understand the problem much better'. The same as in cosmology: we understand much more about the origins of the universe, but we do not have the definitive answer. You are using different critera for the progress of science and philosophy. In trying to understand and accept the present scientific difficulties in answering this question, one is, eh... philosophising. Thereby: every science has its philosophical assumptions. See my present disclaimer ('There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.') Grappling with these assumptions is philosophy (at least of one of its subdisciplines). Doing unfounded assertions about philosophy is just bad philosophy. (Yes, when a scientist reflects about the status of his science, he is doing philosophy, not science.) Feynman shows a nice example of the ambiguity of scientists about philosophy: on one side, he finds it completely useless ("What is 'talking'"), on the other side you have his reaction on the question of what magnetism 'really' is (I think even you have shared the youtube of that interview here in these fora); there he is clearly taken a well argued philosophical stance, i.e. he is philosophising. Recently I have been reading What is real? The unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics by Adam Becker (Astrophysicist and philosopher). Its historical description shows clearly how heavily influenced the discussions between the 'quantum pioneers' by philosophical stances, and when it is about quantum fundamentals, it still is. With that it also shows clearly how important history of science and philosophy of science are, even for physicists. E.g. it shows how devastating the 'Copenhagen creed' was for an open discussion on the fundamentals of quantum physics, even so much, that you could forget your career, if you showed interest in fundamental questions (e.g. John Bell, working at CERN, helping in calculations for its accellerator/collider, but 'doing work on fundamentals on Sundays' Bell's theorem belongs to this 'Sunday's work'; he even warned Alain Aspect not to strive for doing entanglement experiments, unless he was tenured, (which he luckily was)). Read this book, maybe you get a bit more respect for philosophy and history of science. You will also see that the author himself is not the only one that has both studied physics and philosophy (often in that chronological order). All less talented than Krauss? In cosmology, sure. In philosophy? Definitely not.

What if when the first cars were invented, there was a collision between two cars and both gas tanks exploded and killed the people driving the cars? Was that an indicator that the internal combustion engine was unsafe and could never be useful in cars? No. Something like that may be going on with nuclear power. Just because the early nuclear reactors were not safe enough, does not mean that they will never be safe. Here are some ideas for safe nuclear reactors, thorium molten salt, and the Natrium reactor. Comments to this video: "Advantages of thorium: Much safer than uranium-no pressure vessel, no fuel rods to melt down. Much simpler reactor. Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank. Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining. Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable. Thorium is of little use for weapons. If power goes off, liquid simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails. This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago? Politics, methinks." "I'm a retired nuclear engineer and have worked on nuclear fuel and safety aspects. In those early years in the 1980s, Thorium was not utilized in NPPs. But its potential was always recognized, and India's 3-stage strategy included Thorium utilization in stage-3. Hopefully, good progress has been made in the last 40 years and would not be surprised if Thorium bundles are loaded in the operating heavy water reactors." "...Thorium reactor, which is usually called Thorium battery, has already been used for decades in both US and USSR satellites to power satellites. It's not unknown. It's in fact well-known in aerospace field, but the knowledge of it has been closed for public by big energy engineering companies." "A good talk but he has a number of small errors. The two biggest are: --- Current nuclear reactors burn only 0.5 % of the U235, not a couple percent as he says. --- Thorium is about as common as Lead. We have enough Thorium on the planet Earth to power everyone for 100,000's of years. You can take ordinary dirt, and the trace amounts of Thorium are equal to 12 barrels of oil. Energy wise, we can burn the Thorium in ordinary dirt, and make an energy profit." "The reason we don't use Thorium for energy is because it can't be used for weapons and isn't rare enough to monopolize the market so it can be controlled by governments. It's cheap energy which means no one makes money which means those making money on energy right now which includes renewable energy are not going to support this energy source." "Recycling the nuclear waste is a must and very doable, France is currently doing just that. Nuclear waste holds 90% of energy still even after 5 years of use. Especially with electric cars becoming very popular it will put a huge strain on our current energy grid so nuclear plants will be a necessity sooner than later." I know the consensus here is probably opposed to ANY nuclear power, but renewables have bigger problems. France gets 71% of its' power from nuclear. Finland is spending billions of US dollars on a new nuclear reactor.

Link(s) to satellites acknowledging this needed. (since thorium is not fissile) Conspiracy claims need to be supported. You have quotation marks around all these. Am I to understand you are just collecting random comments from some thread? With absolutely no attribution or suggestion of credibility? Hardly. They reacted to some extent as designed, which showed flaws in their design. But what they were supposed to to was shut down safely, stay cooled, and not release contamination, and they did not “react” this way. One main critique of this is that thorium is not fissile. You can’t make a reactor with thorium as a fuel. You use it to breed U-233, which is. Any suggestion that there would be less waste should be taken with a huge grain of salt. You still have a bunch of intermediate half-life byproducts - too long to let it decay away, short enough that it has significant activity. The “meltdown-proof” claim is suspect. You still have to remove decay heat. There were issues with TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima that were all related to this.

Not sure if the problem, but noticing that the value of x is being immediately overwritten without being used. Will try and look at it when back at home.

I'm guessing a comprehensive list of people who will never go on a Jordan Peterson program and lie about their language.

Good question. This depends on the metric - in Schwarzschild spacetime there should be no net drift for this type of motion, but in other spacetimes that don’t admit time-like Killing fields (eg Kerr), there will still be a non-zero net drift, because the two sections are of different arc lengths in spacetime (!). Actually proving this won’t be very easy, since this path isn’t everywhere smooth. No, perihelion precession is different, because only the orientation of the orbit changes, which follows directly from the geodesic equation; deSitter and Lense-Thirring on the other hand affect the orientation of the spin axis of the body (these two precessions are in different directions). There’s also a fourth kind called Pugh-Schiff precession, which is essentially spin-spin coupling. Yes, rotating bodies in orbit within a gravity well experience this. I don’t know if it has been measured for Mercury, but there’s data on this for the moon: https://www.academia.edu/49380218/Measurement_of_the_de_Sitter_precession_of_the_Moon_A_relativistic_three_body_effect But again, this isn’t the same as perihelion precession, they are distinct effects.

I'll try to describe my question in a more concrete setting. Let's say we have two Stern–Gerlach apparatuses, side by side, and two entangled electrons as before. The apparatuses are parallel to each other. We measure one electron in one apparatus and find out that it moves toward the magnetic N of the apparatus. If we measure the second electron in the second apparatus, it will move to its magnetic S. If the second apparatus were set e.g. perpendicularly to the first, then the second electron could move there to the N or to the S with equal probabilities. Now, the second apparatus is in M87 and we want it to be set parallel to the first for the purpose of the measurement of the second electron spin. How do we determine the correct setting for the second apparatus? Wouldn't it depend on the path of the electron from Earth to M87 through the curved space?

I would need to go through all of them again, but most of the time income as a measure is used. That being said, there are a few studies looking at wealth separate from income and overall it seems that income had a higher effect on improving health outcomes rather than incorporating wealth. An older study showed that African Americans had a 67% higher likelihood of dying than White Americans when accounting for age sex and marital status. Including wealth reduced it to 54% and introducing income (without wealth) the difference was "only" 43%. So while wealth and income attenuate issues, it clearly does not come close to closing it. The other observation in other studies is that whenever there is an economic downturn, black folks are more vulnerable to these effects. That is an interesting question, and there is no clear answer, mostly as universal health care system differ quite a lot. In Canada provincial differences are huge and depending on racial composition it could be difficult to compare national data. However, I do expect that with improved access much of the bigger issues we see in the US to be attenuated. A lot will also depend on the characteristics of the non-white population. In the US native black Americans fare much worse than recent black immigrants, for example. And in the UK and Canada, recent immigration of highly educated folks with high income would need to be separated out from these issues. That being said, there are still erroneous assumption and mistreatments in happening in universal health care system even fairly recently (forced or coerced sterilization, for example), but I would need to see what is out there in literature. I should also add that for about the last 10 years the medical community has become more aware of racial inequities and also has allowed more research in that area to happen. As such, practices are (slowly) changing relevant to racial disparities and I know that these conversations are also happening in Canada. I would need to take some time to find numbers but I will say that in order to uncover issues, it would be necessary to conduct research that actually tries to quantify inequities. As an anecdote, when I was doing more research looking at biomarkers of health, several of my proposals were shot down because the area I had collaborations with serviced more black folks. The reviewers contended that those were not representative of the majority white population and were therefore not of interest. I am moderately sure that today I had a much better show to have this cohort included. It depends on the definition of racism, and I think you might think of something else. Racism in this context is refers to a system that does something that somehow results in different outcomes, depending on your race. It may or may not have roots in some racists ideology and it really does not matter for this. Often, it is a mix. As I mentioned, wealth or income affect the outcome, but do not explain it sufficiently. Others include things like living in an area with little to know medical services or with underfunded schools or any of the dozen positive factors that even poor white folks have access to. The way to think about it is that we have a black box (the complete system that affects health) and if we put a white person in and a black person with same income wealth and so on, we get different outcomes. This is the issue with systemic racism. It is not about someone being shitty to someone or even someone thinks badly about a race. It is a system (such as a medical algorithm) that somehow and even inadvertently creates inequity, even if it was not designed to so. As such race-blind measures require at minimum non-race blind analyses to figure out whether they do create equity. Historically, we have been really bad at it. Of course, not political party in pretty much any country is free from blame. I am not sure why it seems to be a kind of revelation to you. The main difference I would say is that at least in recent times Dems try to say they are better than that whereas the GOP has weaponized racism to rally their base. So I think the way to look at it is that there is a weak hope that the Dems are willing to undo some of the harm they have done and the GOP is hellbent not to, as it seems to be their new identity fetish. Not sure, but the GOP has shown how powerful identity politics is. You can do whatever you want and lie the heck out of it and still escape repercussions. Meanwhile, Dems have to acknowledge that black folks exist lest they lose their elections.

You can duck the whole issue, if you take your first bite in the right spot.

Like I said, it's a way of distinguishing themselves as a more 'legitimate' inhabitant because they have been in a place far longer.

927 A.D. when it became the Kingdom of England, led by King Aethelsten. Prior to that it was a group of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. 'Anglo-Saxon' is an archaic descriptor. It's like calling modern Canadians 'Franco-English'.

One problem I often see understanding philosophy is the notion that it is a single discipline, when it is really half a dozen (axiology, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc.), each with its own set of logical and analytical tools. As regards some scientific undertaking, an ethicist and an epistemologist might have very different concerns, and lumping them together would be a muddy mess. The branch that is actually called "philosophy of science" is the one that is usually most relevant here, since it is concerned with how best science can shape methods for observing and understanding the world, evaluate the reliability of theories, and find what are the boundaries of science. If science was your car, PhOS would be the mechanic who understands the car's functioning and how to make repairs and keep it running well. However, if you were wanting to understand the fundamental reality of cars, you might contact the specialist in metaphysics. Or, if you wanted to know where it might be wrong to drive your car, you might contact the ethicist. But mostly, you would be looking to the PhOS specialist. Anyway, main point I'm trying to make is, it's really important not to treat philosophy as some easily demarcated singular field; much better to pick a branch and try to understand that branch.

Math, or better, numbers are embedded in the fabric of reality. Better yet, numbers are what makes the fabric of reality, as will be shown. By that it is meant that numbers are in effect representations of forces and their relationships. Moreover, numbers are also the best "language" system to also store and transmit information, which is an essential quality especially for complex systems such as living systems. It is becoming increasingly evident that information is the basis of the universe but especially of living systems. Physicist Paul Davies states: "Historically, matter has been at the bottom of the explanatory chain, and information has been a sort of secondary derivative of it." Davies also stated, "There's increasing interest among at least a small group of physicists to turn this upside down and say, maybe at rock bottom, the universe is about information and information processing, and it's matter that emerges as a secondary concept." Seth Lloyd, an MIT professor specializing in quantum information, responding to the question, "So, what is the universe?" responded. "The universe is a physical system that contains and processes information in a systematic fashion and that can do everything a computer can do." Raphael Bousso, a theoretical physicist and string theorist of UC Berkley, believes that information is not just a tool of measure, but it is a primary constituent of what is happening in the world. He stated that “Information is not so much "modeling the system" — it is the system.” Bousso also stated, “Reality won't work unless information is, in some sense, real.” The founder of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, physicist Stephen Wolfram, whose research focuses on the role of information in physical and mechanical systems, with an emphasis on quantum mechanical systems stated, "information is the most prominent thing in our times." He postulates that "simple rules… generate what we see in nature." Wolfram described "an ultimate representation of the universe" in terms of "simple rules," which "govern fundamentally" and are "best conceptualized in terms of computation." When the matter is deeply studied it becomes obvious that living systems are mainly information-based systems, hierarchically structured in a complex integration of systems within systems. However, information requires a mathematical structure as infrastructure for its operation. The idea that numbers are invented and not discovered is totally false and it is clearly evidenced by the Menorah Matrix (MM) study. It is part of the false worldview pushed by modern science onto the world. The ancient world was aware that 'number' was the base of reality and indeed it has also handed down to us the major patterns, such as 24, 7, 360, 12, 108, and other patterns in texts, monuments, and symbols. Because of their false worldview, scientists have not looked into numbers as deep as they should to find the answers to the many "mysteries" of present science. The Fibonacci sequence and its emerging propriety, the golden ratio, are known to control many natural structures and phenomena in the universe, but instead of looking deeper into the matter, scientists have totally dismissed the correlations as if they didn’t exist. In reality, it will be clearly shown in the MM paper published on ResearchGate.net that everything around us is based on “number” and specifically on the base-10 number system, and specifically on its inner-dimension and the Fibonacci sequence. But let us start from the beginning. It is in the inner-dimension of the base-10 that the repeating patterns at the foundation of the universe’s structures and phenomena are hidden. What is the inner-dimension? The inner-dimension is what mathematicians refer to as the “digital root” of a number. I have changed the name to inner-dimension because the base-10 is a "dimension" on its own and producing numerous repeating patterns, which are connected, and with direct links to geometry as well (not shown in the MM paper). The inner-dimension has also a different way to subtract numbers than its "outer-dimension." Some of these properties are analyzed in the MM paper, however, the relations to the prime numbers and other sequences will not be discussed. Following are a couple of examples of the inner-dimension (digital root): 12 = 3 in the inner-dimension because 1 + 2 = 3; 864 = 8 + 6 + 4 = 18 and 1 + 8 = 9, so the inner-dimension of the number 864 is 9. The Fibonacci sequence (third digit is the sum of the previous two digits) goes like this 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34… etc. In the inner-dimension it produces a repeating pattern of 24 digits to infinity (shown in the MM paper and starting with 1,1,2,3,5,8,4,3,7,1…). The 24-repeating digits when when paired with a second 24-repeating pattern, staggered halfway like bricks, produces pairs summing nine of all adjacent digits (and every 9 is paired with a 9). With a second 6-repeating pattern produced by the exponents of the digits, we get to the final structure 1 + 6 dual-sequences, or 336 digits all together, which has been named Menorah Matrix (MM). The MM predicts/correlates the atomic nucleus (protons and neutrons), the subatomic quarks (predicting also three subquarks to each quark, which have been hypothesized by few physicists), predicting/correlates all their corresponding anti-particles as well. It predicts the quantized/discreet shells (K, L, M, N, O, P) and subshells (s, p, d, f) model of the atom, including the maximum number of electrons that each can hold. Basically, it provides the answers as to why the atomic structure is the way it is. The same mathematical infrastructure is the basis for the 64-matrix of 64 codons (each a triplet of nucleotides) predicting specifically 20 amino acids, excluding any other number of them (mystery for present science). It predicts a DNA shaped as a double helix with a two base-pair system (AT & CG) and why it could not have been different (i.e., 3 base pair system), and much more. Moreover, new findings demonstrate that the genetic code has information superposition capabilities. This propriety is predicted by the inner-dimension’s numerical properties as well. The MM's linear and spiral pathways produce a toroidal/dual-toroidal dynamic flow structure, predicting a fundamental behavior/structure observed in countless of physical phenomena. Being a self-similar universe based on the MM it predicts a finite toroidal/dual-toroidal pulsating universe, which implies an apparent expanding/contracting-like motion from every point in it (long-range expanding/contracting periodicity), which reflects indeed the observed phenomena. Through the same MM’s linear (electric) and spiral/vortex (magnetic) bidirectional pathways (the opposite pathways are in Fibonacci by subtraction), it predicts the electromagnetic force, the likely cause of the attractive and repulsive forces (vortex/spiral interactions), the interrelationship of electricity and magnetism, explaining why they are both separated and indivisible. The MM's bidirectional pathways also explain the origin of the right-hand and left-hand rules. In other words, the MM provides evidence that the fundamental structures and phenomena of the universe, and the basis for the proto-single cell organism (LUCA), the "common ancestor," are not the result of any evolutionary process but the product of a mathematical structure. To top that off, the MM study shows that MM’s patterns are the basis for the Earth♦Moon's blueprint as well. Particularly in this case, the complex numerical and geometrical integration of patterns clearly indicate the necessity of an intelligent agent. In fact, the Earth♦Moon's blueprint is designed with the fundamental patterns of the MM and other inner-dimension's major patterns. This includes the dimensions in miles and the ratio of the Earth and Moon (the study explains why miles and why they are not arbitrary), and integrating in it the golden ratio and pi, and also the squaring of the circle. The MM predictions include the axis tilts of the Earth (23.4°), which is numerically and contextually predicted by the MM’s axis value, and if that wasn't enough, the axis is also predicted by the values of the Pythagorean triangles/triplets, which are also integrated in the Earth♦Moon's blueprint. In addition to that, by integrating the MM fundamental patterns (12 and 7) to the square pyramid, it also the predicts, with its total surface area, the Tropical and Sidereal cycles (365.242 and 365.256, respectively) to the third decimal digit, while its volume being the sum (336) of the MM's digits! The MM is truly the basis for the theory of everything. And yes, numbers are discovered not invented by our minds. The Menorah Matrix (condensed paper- 47 pages) can be found on ResearchGate.net: http://researchgate.net/publication/358672691_The_Menorah_Matrix_Revised