uncool

The traditional question is still the best: Sammy7, define "genetic information". Your entire argument relies on it, and on there being no way to increase it; you must therefore have a way to define whether it has increased or not, and therefore should have a way to quantify it. How do you quantify "genetic information"? =Uncool-

The anger is over the fact that you continue to post this crap after people have repeatedly asked you to post things of substance. =Uncool-

Do you have a link to the full video? The videos I've found all cut off at that point, and it still seems like it's a good chance of being a joke. I haven't seen any discussion along those lines - the entire line of discussion has been mocking Romney, with very little discussion about the oxygen masks thing and no discussion about how that affects his credibility. =Uncool-

Honestly, the entire discussion about this really seems to me to be a distraction from any issue that matters. I don't like Romney as a candidate at all - I generally support Obama - and yet I think that this is so mindlessly trivial an issue that it's really not worth discussing. Two reasons: 1) There's the large chance it was an off-the-cuff joke. We know that Mitt Romney is crap at telling jokes and sounding like he means it; that's how it sounds to me. 2) Assuming it isn't a joke, what policy issue does this illuminate? In what way does it affect anything of importance? Does anyone think that Romney, if he were to become President, would push for airplane rolling window legislation? The closest to a reason that I've seen for discussing this is because it demonstrates Romney's ignorance; I'm not even sure it does that. =Uncool-

1) Analogies like this are generally bad for understanding. 2) You seem to assume that science has a fixed "destination"; that's inaccurate. 3) There is no "wrong direction" for hypotheses; the place where things can go wrong is in when you incorrectly confirm a false hypothesis or incorrectly falsify a true hypothesis. =Uncool-

There is always arbitrariness in anything humans do. There will be arbitrariness in the decision of what to investigate, arbitrariness in the predictions directly, etc. All we can do is remove the arbitrariness from when we decide that predictions are falsified, fulfilled, etc. =Uncool-

You are being dishonest again, newts. Read his post again. His post is exactly about the experimental evidence; it is about the fact that as you have agreed, your statement is not based on experimental evidence but rather on your own opinion, and therefore that your add-on of "despite the experimental evidence to the contrary" is false. You have agreed that you have no experimental evidence to back up what you are saying. =Uncool-

I think he simply forgot, when quoting my post, to put my signature in quotes. =Uncool-

Just because he managed to do those things doesn't imply that he knew everything. You predict by noticing patterns. For example, Kepler predicted that planet's orbits will always be ellipses by seeing that the planets that he'd seen orbited in ellipses. And it turns out to be true - in general, planets orbit in ellipses. Newton predicted that gravity took the form F = G m_1 m_2/r^2 in general from Kepler's observations (plus some more), and Cavendish showed that those predictions were accurate on a small scale. Yes, observations come first, but the prediction step is crucial - and must come before experimentation. Please support this assertion. The point of making a prediction is that the prediction sets very tight bounds on which outcomes are considered to support the prediction; what you're describing is specifically what doesn't happen. You have based what you are saying on an assertion which is false. =Uncool-

No, that isn't what I said. What I said is that lack of prediction has the tendency to lead to conclusions based on incomplete information. For one thing, because he lived 350 years ago - long before most scientific philosophy had been discussed. Most of the relevant philosophy got its start in the 19th century if I remember correctly. The basic problem with a lack of predictions is that it can tend to lead to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: shoot at a wall, and then draw the target around the hole, and claim that you are a sharpshooter because you managed to hit the center of the target. The same thing can happen with theories - do the experiment, see the outcome, and then tailor your theory to that outcome, and claim that your theory is correct because it explains that outcome. If, instead, you predict rather than postdict, then it's like setting the target in place before shooting - if you still manage to hit the center of the target, then yes, you are most likely a sharpshooter. =Uncool-

Because it has the tendency to lead to conclusions based on incomplete information. For one of the huge examples, look up N-rays. Scientists at the time "simply observed" their existence without forming the necessary predictions. Had they made predictions on whether N-rays would be observed in different situations, they would have noticed no difference between whether the supposed causes of N-rays were there or not - and so they would have found out that N-rays are a trick of the mind. =Uncool-

And which right wing people have you asked? I can only think of two on this forum - John something and rigney. And I think that rigney is a troll. You know something? Ask me. One of the things that I try to do is make sure that I at least understand the other person's point of view, even if I don't agree with it. I think I know a decent justification for nearly every political view. Not a problem. =Uncool-

And that's what makes my point - I don't think that most right-wing people are like that, but posts like rigney's make people think that right-wing people are like that. =Uncool-

Because not only did he not remember, but he's constructed an entire narrative based off of the opposite of the truth. Because the amount of sheer amnesia required to construct that entire narrative - you'd have to forget two years of information on Afghanistan to think that Iraq even started to come first, let alone another half a year of information on Iraq to think that we invaded Afghanistan after we had finished with Saddam Hussein. Because so much was made out of the October 2001 invasion - perhaps less than Iraq, although I honestly don't think so - repeatedly over the years. Basically, I don't see it as possible to forget that much and still be able to function in the way rigney does. =Uncool-

Even when it's an objective statement of fact, it's still dangerous that that fact needs to be expressed. I'm not trying to equivocate - I'm trying to point out the end result of that line of reasoning. You're quite understandably getting tired of a lot of people not talking reasonably; the problem is that when people get tired, they stop doing whatever is making them tired. The problem isn't that what you're doing is unreasonable; the problem is that what you're doing is entirely reasonable. That's why rigney's posts are dangerous - they're making an entirely unreasonable position reasonable. =Uncool- It's more than that. The blatant revision of history necessary to make that long post is so over the top that I cannot believe that he is anything but a troll. =Uncool-

Honestly? Posts like yours are what I find the most scary. Posts saying that "the other" cannot be reached, cannot be argued with, cannot be reasoned with. No. That is wrong. That is exactly what is wrong with American politics these days. People are fundamentally reasonable. They may have truly ridiculous beliefs, but they have reasons for holding most of those beliefs, and often are willing to discuss them. While there may be a whole lot of shows and people that claim otherwise, people will respond to reason. Posts like yours are what make posts like rigney's so dangerous. Even though I'm sure he is a troll, he still has managed to convince you, among other people, that even attempting to discuss with "the other" is not worth your time. And once you accept that view, you become just like what rigney is parodying - and that is not acceptable. =Uncool-

Rigney is clearly either a troll or too unable to remember history to be able to competently comment on it. No other way anyone could say the following: =Uncool-

I call Poe on this. No way anyone who remembers any history could say this. =Uncool-

What was the specific deception, jackson? Do you not see the "if" in Obama's statements? A major portion of the site is dedicated to the politifact rating of Obama. However, Ryan is clearly worse. By percentages, Ryan dominates Obama in terms of falsehoods. That means that Ryan has more "pants on fire" statements, more "pants on fire" or "false" statements, more "pants on fire" or "false" or "mostly false" statements, more "pants on fire" or "false" or "mostly false" or "half true" statements, and more "pants on fire" or "false" or "mostly false" or "half true" or "mostly true" statements. By any measure of percentages, Obama has been more truthful than Ryan. That is one of several glaring problems I see with your reference. Name one distortion. =Uncool- If you understand your inadequacies, then why do you keep displaying them, apparently without even making the attempt to correct them? For example, you see others apparently attacking you, and so you are trying to strike back without making sure that you are making sense. Being an intellectual has little to do with seeing your own shortcomings. I know several of my shortcomings, and I listen to others about my shortcomings. What people are asking you to do is to actually attempt to know what backs up your opinion. Know what the facts that you cite actually are. Know what the reasoning you are attempting to build is. I think that's quite reasonable. And yet you continue to fail to do so. =Uncool-

The first question I'd ask is: Where are you in physics? Learning basic mechanics? Second is: Where are you in math? =Uncool-

The problem is, the answer to your questions definitely isn't yes, but it isn't even no. Your questions simply do not make sense. =Uncool-

Err. It can be isometrically embedded in 6-dimensional space directly. Try the subspace: [latex]\left (cos \theta_1, sin \theta_1, cos \theta_2, sin \theta_2, cos \theta_3, sin \theta_3 \right)[/LATEX] where [latex]\theta_i[/latex] is allowed to vary over all real numbers (or equivalently, over [latex][0, 2\pi)[/LATEX]). =Uncool-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Newton#Fatal_shooting_of_John_Frey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#Controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nazi_Party#Koehl_succession_and_ideological_divisions Now, I think that both should have the right to free speech, as long as it isn't speech that incites crimes. But something that is almost as important is making sure that people are informed before making such speeches. Please, in the future, do check before making factual statements. =Uncool-

Good, because the above is false. It does not take energy to move; it takes energy to accelerate. =Uncool-

So far, people seem to have forgotten to take into account the changing radius. While the apparent mass of the object attracting you is 1/8th that when you are on the surface, its apparent center is also half as far as it would be if you were on the surface, which quadruples the effect of gravity. Therefore, you would weight half what you do on the surface. The force decreases linearly. =Uncool-