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swansont

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Everything posted by swansont

  1. An op-ed from a conservative columnist has to be taken with a fairly large grain of salt. It’s not exactly credible evidence. The US dept of Labor, for example, gives a different answer https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WB/equalpay/WB_issuebrief-undstg-wage-gap-v1.pdf “Using more detailed and expansive data than was previously available, the analysis shows that about a third of the gap between full-time, year-round working men and women’s wages can be explained by worker characteristics, such as age, education, industry, occupation, or work hours. However, roughly 70% cannot be attributed to measurable differences between workers. At least some of this unexplained portion of the wage gap is the result of discrimination, which is difficult to fully capture in a statistical mode”
  2. Science is rife with experiments that saw unexpected things. Alpha particles bouncing back off of atoms. Quantized deflection of atoms in a magnetic field. Even seeing different masses fall at the same rate was unexpected. And this doesn’t include just observations that had no explanation at the time. How is that bias?
  3. Quantum computers exist in the lab and there are allegedly commercial products available (D-Wave started selling one more than a decade ago, though I attended a talk from Bill Phillips, a Nobel prize-winner, who was dubious of their claims)
  4. swansont replied to qserf's topic in Speculations
    Design? I see no design or technical details.
  5. IOW people who don’t know what they’re talking about say this. Not much of a basis for discussion. There is a biological imperative - a species will die out if there’s no procreation - but that’s not a “purpose” If it was the purpose, then there would be no need for women live past menopause, or for impotent people to live at all.
  6. Is that the conventional wisdom? I don’t think your premise is true. There may be a few who believe this, but I don’t think it has widespread acceptance
  7. It’s only subjective for precision beyond what the method/instrument can provide, and personal interpretation is used.
  8. When we close threads it’s because the OP has failed to follow the rules in some way(s), and we try to be clear as to the reasons. This does not preclude anyone else from opening a thread on a similar topic that does not violate the rules (e.g. closed for lack of rigor or posting just a video? Go ahead and make a rigorous post in a new thread. Dangerous activity? No, since that would still violate the rules)
  9. ! Moderator Note Not even close to the amount of detail needed. Plus, posting videos without supporting material violates rule 2.7
  10. Just the fact that planes can shoot bullets without much problem should tell you that this isn’t an issue.
  11. How is that subjective? I mean, if I rub diamond and quartz together does the scratch appear on one if I look at it, but on the other if someone else does?
  12. How is this subjective? One surface of a diamond being slightly harder than another is still an objective observation.
  13. You’ve never addressed studiot’s point about Moh’s scale of hardness. In what way is that subjective?
  14. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to make measurements. What can be objectively quantified. That does not follow. At best you can say some elements of science are not “pure” A lack of objectivity in one area does not invalidate areas where the objectivity exists. You need to find the way to make objective measurements, whether it’s direct or indirect.
  15. Please show a calculation showing when this becomes a problem.
  16. swansont replied to MSC's topic in Politics
    Two major difference since 2016 are the Dobbs decision (and Trump’s role and endorsement of it), and Trump being legally found to be a rapist.
  17. One of the arguments that seems to glossed over is, if they bothered, how would they get there? We know that humans in their existence migrated several tens of thousands of kilometers in several tens of thousands of years. That is, around 1 km a year. But there is danger in using that as a simple extrapolation, because you can’t migrate 1 km a year over an ocean. It’s why I find the argument that going thousands of light years in a certain amount of time is almost trivial to be unpersuasive; it lacks the necessary details of how you’d do that. It’s just a hand-wave of “they’d figure it out” (it’s like that great Sidney Harris cartoon - “I think you should be more explicit here in step 2”) You need evidence of them before you can use them to buttress an argument.
  18. Depends on what constitutes direct. Does that mean naked-eye observation? Nobody has ever seen an electron. Or atoms or molecules. Even if not, most measurements of quantum physics are indirect. You can measure the wavelength of light with a diffraction grating, but the direct measurement is the deflection of the light. Similar for atom spacing in crystallography using x-rays or electrons.
  19. As MigL implies, the clarification needed is “bulletproof against what?” and then one needs to know how thick of a material you’d need. You could calculate the mass of the plane from its size, and see if you could generate enough lift. But toucana’s post strongly suggests “no” for anything but small-arms fire
  20. But that’s not the topic under discussion here, remember? The qualia depends on the individual, making it subjective, but you could measure reactions from a large number of people and quantify the reaction; e.g. a color known to suppress aggressiveness, and this has been measured. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker–Miller_pink Qualia, not quality “the internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena.”
  21. You can’t “erase” a radio broadcast; there’s nothing that can catch up to the signal once it’s sent. But really, it’s not necessary, since the 1/r^2 attenuation will effectively do it for you. That signal that’s 1 watt a kilometer away from the tower drops to 10^-13 watts a light year away (and that ignores the issue of your radio tower probably being a dipole emitter, meant to maximize horizontal signals, and being smaller as it becomes vertical)
  22. I didn’t say anything about physicalism, but if you contend that something “beyond” it is not beyond science, how do you measure such things? If they can’t be measured, you are requiring a change to science, which means you are being dismissive of it. What evidence? You still haven’t presented any. Views are not evidence. They are conclusions or opinions. That doesn’t make them correct. The evidence is e.g. that JA and ethylene signals respond to the attacks by pathogenic fungi. That’s something that is measured. It seems to me that this is an objective observation, and this discussion is supposed to be about objectivity. Plants having intelligence is an hypothesis, is labeled as such in the paper, and you admit that an hypothesis is distinct from the evidence supporting it. That there are ~70 definitions of intelligence suggests that this is not an objective issue. It sounds more like equivocation - using a word with more than one definition and using it interchangeably in situations where different definitions would apply
  23. Then what’s the point of bringing it up? “Science strives to be objective” isn’t exactly a controversial position. “Does true objectivity exist in science?” is a leading question that (along with your arguments) suggests that any lack of objectivity is a flaw in science. i.e. that it’s not truly objective, and that you’re free to dismiss it unless it is. Yes, as science aims to be objective. But you extended that when you speak of Where did you hear that falling short of being objective is a flaw of science, as opposed to the people practicing science? Perhaps you should consider if, it’s beyond the objective realm, maybe it’s not science. Also not influenced by feelings or opinions. Do you understand what constitutes scientific evidence? (opinion is not evidence) How is this not the ad populum fallacy? (that if several people believe something, it must be true, aka the bandwagon fallacy) Scientific evidence is empirical rather than anecdotal. Details depend on branch of science, but it’s usually something that can be quantified and subject to statistical analysis, from experiment or controlled observation. I’d have to know what you thought was evidence before I could say what disqualifies it.
  24. By raising this issue, you are indeed requesting it. ”science” is a very vague reference. Where, specifically, does this impression come from? Seriously? If the world were purely objective, cro-magnon man would have understood quantum mechanics? What is your definition of objective? You aren’t being careful enough. At the very least you are repeating the error of extrapolating a tiny sliver of science to science as a whole, and you fail to present any evidence. Your vague dissatisfaction isn’t evidence. You can take this script and say you think there are ghosts, or that bigfoot exists, or aliens walk among us. If you have no evidence, don’t bring it up. It’s required.

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