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swansont

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Everything posted by swansont

  1. It occurred to me this could be a diagnostic indicator (similar to how LED turn signals flash faster, the same way incandescent ones do, to tell you one has failed, but it’s not because of a drop in resistance, it’s part of a circuit test) https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/26183/what-does-that-mean-if-my-led-light-bulb-starts-blinking-when-i-turned-it-on ”I called Philips about this issue. They said that it indicates that the bulb is broken and needs to be replaced. Some LED bulbs have enough electronics in them that they are able to have diagnostic circuits and to report errors in this manner.”
  2. You claimed in the OP that “those patterns came first and are the basis of how we design things intelligently.” and the point is that we rarely just duplicate the designs we find in nature. “informed by” is a subtle shift in this argument; of course our designs are “informed by” nature, since at the very least we have to follow the laws of nature in whatever we do. But that’s refuting an intelligently designed strawman. The fact remains that we rarely blindly copy design from nature. We want the function of things we see, but there are almost always differences in the design since we can start with a clean slate rather than repeatedly modifying existing apparatus, as nature is constrained to do.
  3. I’m not familiar with these examples requiring the theory of evolution be discarded or modified. Why wouldn’t they be harder to come by? We’ve gathered the low-hanging fruit. The rest is harder to collect. When I say “reference” I mean a scientific paper, with title and page number, preferably with a link to it. Not a passing mention of a video or blog post. So, which reference is advancing this position? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If the idea runs counter to mainstream science, one must ask if there is the necessary evidence to support it. Only then can you consider that the idea has been ignored. “I saw bigfoot” can be dismissed if you don’t have the evidence we see for other new species that routinely get described in biology. So give us an example that has such support that has been treated this way..
  4. The shape of an airfoil is not dependent on the nature of humans. Yes, but the issue is whether the design is found in nature. You don’t find ergonomic spatulas in the wild, that are the basis for the design of what you find in the store.
  5. We were looking for a design that provides lift. That’s function, not form, which is what Genady was pointing out.
  6. You should be very aware that you haven’t cited any evidence. Five people or twenty believing in bigfoot doesn’t make it real. What acquired evidence? You’re long on claims but short on support. That only matters if the idea is correct. The first step one should take is to try and falsify an idea, and if it’s wrong, it doesn’t merit further scrutiny. You’re saying what you think will happen, but you don’t know this. What I’m asking is for examples where it did happen. You would have to show that e.g. causality is false. I also think you overestimate how much philosophy scientists consider when doing research. What does this mean?
  7. That only matters if the assertion was that nothing we imagine is based on our experience, but that wasn’t it. It was that some things aren’t.
  8. One possibility is that something is heating up. There could be an intermittent connection that works better once things expand upon heating. (I had some vanity lights that had wonky behavior because some wiring had come loose and made contact with the metal chassis, which gave a path to ground. The wires lengthened somewhat as they heated, changing the connection.)
  9. They have to share features if you look at things coarsely enough. Wings provide lift, and have to follow the laws of aerodynamics. That often constrains the form that provides the function. IOW, everything is made of atoms, so pointing to that commonality would be meaningless.
  10. Possible futures can be fueled by imagination, and not limited by what we’ve observed. Lasers were not something found in nature. The first nuclear reactor was not, even though we later found examples of that happening.
  11. <sigh> Your evidence? Is there any way to document and/or quantify this? I suspect that if you reviewed the appropriate literature you would see new ideas popping up, all over the place. What you won’t see is this happening on a large scale, but if current paradigms are correct, that’s exactly what you’d expect. But at a lower level, you would, in areas that were not accessible in years past. When I started grad school, laser cooling and trapping was a pretty new subfield of atomic physics, made possible by advances in laser technology. As more was learned it blossomed into a huge area of research, and branched out as people thought of new applications. So I reject the notion because I spent my career experiencing it. If current paradigms are not correct, you’d expect more and more examples where the science fails. If your premise is correct, nobody would be stepping up to come up with models to explain what’s going on. Finding examples of this should be easy - there should be a whole bunch of unexplained phenomena, with nobody studying those issues. Things that science is based on are assumed to be true, since you’re not going to reinvent the wheel every time you start a new project. Science isn’t seeking any objective truth. We seek models to predict how nature behaves. There’s a bunch of stuff in physics that we know aren’t real (i.e. we make them up) — they are useful tools for such predictions.
  12. Do we have wings that are shaped like a bird’s? Or submersibles shaped like a fish? They might be out there, but airplane wings are not like a bird’s and submarines are not shaped like a fish. That’s terminology, not design. I’ve never heard anyone describe it as swimming. Certainly not like a fish. And again, that’s terminology. Not like brains. You seem to be appealing to analogues, which (again) is terminology. It’s not duplication of design
  13. The situation on the left won’t work, since the water is going higher - you need to do work. It could work if there was sufficient flow, and you converted KE into PE. They mention this early on; it’s what happens in a ram pump. The situation on the right is a siphon, with a reservoir in the middle. Water ends up at a lower PE, so there’s no need for work to be done.
  14. I would hope that they, too, would urge you to look at the literature I expect that this has been studied, and you could find things out if you actually looked for answers. Yeah, that’s not it.
  15. ! Moderator Note That wasn’t the issue that was presented. The question asked is “can I find out when a drive was last connected or accessed?” It’s not unreasonable to request that you stick to the topic
  16. ! Moderator Note How about we have answers addressing the question, about buying a wig, and not trying to change the topic.
  17. If it’s not bias, what result would show bias, and why? I’m failing to see how belief in a supreme being could be associated with bias.
  18. swansont replied to StringJunky's topic in Politics
    I wonder if his sentence will prohibit associating with other felons. That would really cut down on options; so many of his former staff have been convicted.
  19. ! Moderator Note Not a speck of astronomy or cosmology here
  20. This is about philosophy and philosophers, not science and scientists.
  21. “When you middle-click on a Web link (or hold down Ctrl while clicking with the left mouse button), the page will be opened in a new tab.” https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-preferences-and-settings#:~:text=When you open a link,opened in a new tab. There’s apparently a setting, but that can be overridden by the web page
  22. I look forward to your demonstration of this. What if there are competing views, but one wins because of demonstrated flaws in the competitors, or that the adopted view just works better?
  23. The upsetting thing is that you are making claims without substantiating them. Such as “Why this prevalent homogeneity of views in science?” and “why has entire fields of scientific investigation been relinquished to the fringes of science?” Both questions assume an underlying premise that you have not shown to be true.

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