joigus

Just to add to the geologist/geophysics POV, that's been suggested, explained/given references for by other members: Cross checks make for a very robust understanding. Formation of Pangaea is related to the biggest extinction event on record besides snow-ball Earth: The Permian extinction. Intuitively, it's not hard to understand that the formation of a supercontinent the size of Pangaea would have resulted in, at least: 1) Most of the inland extension being desert (little or no rain) 2) High-intensity long-term vulcanism (the so-called Siberian traps) 3) Water circulation in the oceans reduced to a very-little-local-variation, very-slow pattern Very, very dramatic change in global climate for sure. That could and would have done it. This becomes the more compelling as you realise how much present and recent-past biodiversity depends on water circulation patterns in the oceans. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/permian/ https://phys.org/news/2013-11-biggest-mass-extinction-pangea.html https://www.science20.com/news_articles/pangaea_formation_linked_permian_mass_extinction-123693

Anyone in mind? Though I think we need much more than that to deal with Qanon. Ideological/mythological detox is the hardest.

I would have chosen "understanding," "empathy" => "sympathy," etc. Looking at the world with the other person's glasses, if only for a moment of consideration. I totally agree that "love" is a good stand-for in the thinking. My problem with "love" is that it's been such an overused word, and it's just too easy a substitute for many different human emotions. Most people are really full of it, but try and do the experiment of telling them to be more concrete, to really put their actions where their mouth is: help, empathy, forgiveness, understanding, etc. Those are so much harder to master, because they require you to go from the abstract to the concrete. Remember Oliver Cromwell? "Love the sheep, love the Sun, blah, blah" In the meantime he was sending soldiers and police to keep people's thoughts and actions under control. "Love" is a very suspect word for me. Absolutely, and back on topic. I'm sure the Spanish Inquisition was full of the word love too!

I had to. I must deal with both delinquents and academics. Humour has helped me with both. For Qanon believers, I don't know what kind of humour would do the trick.

Mathologer (maths)

None of those is very usual in my neighbourhood. Where I grew up, I would've been beaten to within an inch of my life just for saying "I don't care for your schadenfreude." "Don't be so epicaricacious" wouldn't have fared much better, TBH. The problem with humour that tries to be too "gentle", "inclusive", "non-discriminatory", politically correct, etc.; is that it's not very funny; nor is it very convincing, IMO. Maybe that's why humour is an art, perhaps. I do believe in its power to convince, though, if done right.

The last thing you want is for them to be able to concentrate. Distraction camps would be better.

I found this beauty on the web today: https://www.freshdaily.ca/travel/2020/01/pingualuit-crater-quebec-canada/ ------------------------------------------------- Some facts from http://craterexplorer.ca/pingualuit-impact-crater/: Pingualuit Crater Lake, Québec. Pingualuit ᐱᖑᐊᓗᐃᑦ is an Inuit word meaning pimple. Ironically, Pingualuit Crater Lake is said to have the purest freshwater on earth. The crater surrounding the lake was formed by a meteorite over 1.4 million years ago in the Pleistocene Epoch. The meteorite evaporated on impact in an explosion which melted thousands of tons of stone and wiped away all life for hundreds of kilometres around the crater. Local Inuit people consider this unusually calm place to be a site of extreme power, where one comes to revitalize oneself. In order to protect this unique impact crater, Pingualuit National Park was established in 2004. Photo Credit: NASA -------------------------------------------------- List of lakes that formed as a consequence of meteorite impacts: https://time.com/4371446/these-tranquil-lakes-are-actually-ancient-impact-craters/#:~:text=Clearwater%20Lakes%20(Lac%20%C3%A0%20l,Eau%20Claire)%2C%20Quebec%2C%20Canada&text=About%20290%20million%20years%20ago,in%20Quebec's%20largest%20national%20park. If anybody has been there or has anything more to say, I'd be very interested to read about it.

I was a little confused when he started talking about fighting height with height. It became clear when I started listening to it from an Antipodean point of view. 🤣 "Love" is perhaps not the word I would have chosen for the brilliant point he makes, but I understand. As to Trump and his only-too-obvious scratching anybody's back as long as they scratch his... The only possible antidote I see is education. Not his, it's too late for that. As to his ilk, it's too late too: Once people are in their forties+ they're just too set in their ways. I hope it's not too late for the upcoming generations. Good standards of education that only the most ignorant of course will fear as indoctrination, ignoring the extent to which they have been indoctrinated by others. Education in critical thinking is critical.

Point taken, but I'm not so sure about that. Being thwarted seems to defeat the purpose with "true believers." But even true believers are bound to be sensitive to the possibility of becoming a laughing stock, as long as they're not made the object of cheap laughs. I think humour, in some of its many forms --perhaps not necessarily sarcasm--, as long as it's refined and intelligent, and has a seed of reasoned criticism in it, and not bordering sheer insult or epicaricacy*; can be quite useful. Give you an example. I've heard many arguments against belief in the Christian god, but IMHO nothing as powerful as that memorable bit by George Carlin: "Organised religion has actually convinced people that there is a man living in the sky; who watches everything you do every minute of every day; who has a list of ten specific things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he's got a special place for you to burn and suffer in anguish till the end of time... ...But he loves you. He loves you and he needs money. He's all-knowing, all-powerful,... But somehow he can't handle money!" ----------------- *Epicaricacy: Rejoicing at or deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others.

Yeah, it's a tough one. Perhaps sarcasm can be more efficient than either indifference or disagreement... Disagreement seems to reinforce the wildly speculative mind.

I'm no expert, but I'd say confinement and other restrictive measures are playing a part in boosting the paranoia.

Many, or even infinitely many, possibilities is not the same as "anything can happen". Physics has room for unpredictability and very stringent constraints at the same time. Nothing that we know can, ie., violate local conservation principles. Quantum laws do satisfy local conservation of probability, for example. Which translates in the fact that nothing macroscopic, nothing with global charge or mass, etc., can just "materialize" at a point, unless a flux of probability has been driven there, by a process which must, in turn, be physical, and satisfy the same constrictions. Nothing we know violates Lorentz invariance either. Quantum mechanics tells you, rather, that Lorentz invariance has to be taken with a grain of salt, and precisely how little salt that must be (HUP). Same for conservation laws. There are no violations of these principles, there is a very strict room for ambiguity in their application. The famous h bar constant is involved in how much "violation" is acceptable. Murray Gell-Mann summarized it very well with his phrase "anything that can happen will happen". But for something to happen, it must be possible to happen.

Which actually goes to prove that you mustn't take anything literally.

And we don't know anything about many more things than those we know something about. And then there are things we don't know if we don't know. And things we don't know if we could know. And maybe things we think we know, but we don't. Makes you wonder.

Well, the identity is not considered to be an interesting symmetry transformation, because everything is symmetric under it. It does play a role in the theories that involve symmetry (mostly in group theory as far as I know). Example: Consider three numbers, i, j, k. And a function alpha: \[\alpha\left(i,j,k\right)=ij+jk+ki\] And the transformation, \[\pi\left(i\right)=j\] \[\pi\left(j\right)=k\] \[\pi\left(k\right)=i\] Then we say alpha is symmetric under pi.

Long live coffee|

I care not how you define me. Nor would I waste a second's thought in defining you. Nothing you can say about me can move me one way or the other. Although I suspect you will appeal to insult rather easily. I do care about ideas, theories, consistency, rebuttals, compelling arguments, experimental checks, different levels of cross checks, certainty, hidden assumptions... If this site is dead, what are you doing trying to find a place among the dead? There are plenty of places out there where you can find people far more unconcerned about assumptions and logical consistency, and totally obsessed about defining each other and themselves rather than examining their mutual assumptions. You would feel far more at ease.

Now you have You're careening off topic towards discussing your favourite toys at alarming speed.

Please, do give up on me. And stop hijacking other people's posts with your pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. Nothing you've said so far has been substantiated.

Absolutely science-spectacular. Thank you. +1 Thank you, Studiot. +1 Somewhere I had an answer written for you, but I must have lost it. A bookish answer, as always.

Thanks a lot. +1 I will adjoin the wikipedia link here, for completeness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prismatic_Spring And a brief explanation of the most outstanding feature: