swansont

We shouldn't ponder things that might be bad? How else do you prevent them from happening? Isn't pondering bad things that you might prevent them good for the species? Having knowledge and using knowledge are two different things. Which brings us back to the poll. I would divide things between useful and not-useful. Good and bad are somewhat arbitrary distinctions. Eise mentioned fission. I'll make it simpler: the knife. Is it good or bad? People use it as a weapon, but surgeons use it to save lives. A lot of people use them to prepare food. I don't think you'll ever get a clear answer because good vs bad is too simplistic a distinction and driven by context, IMO. "Unchecked by philosophical concerns" doesn't cut it, I think. You can't know the results of an experiment when you are delving into new territory, and can't know how people will use the resulting scientific knowledge. All we know is "here be dragons" probably applies.

IDoNotCare has been suspended for multiple rules violations, including abusive posts and soapboxing

Holding people as the ultimate good sounds like bad philosophy.

There are sci-fi short stories based on this. Niven wrote one called All the Myriad Ways, but I was thinking of another - the synopsis doesn’t jibe with my recollection of the story I was thinking about.

In the US one can be licensed to carry a firearm and there are a number of places that have “open carry” laws, so from a legal standpoint, I don’t think you can say that carrying a weapon can be construed to imply intent to do harm. (not that the police follow this; see e.g. Philando Castile)

Gallup itself is telling us that these results may not be reliable. They tested just over 1000 people all across the country. Fine, that gives you the 4% margin of error, it's (largely) statistical. But that doesn't guarantee it's free from bias. They polled people spread out in different time zones, meaning that any given city, town or village may have only gotten one call, and many got none. There are ~300 medium-size cities (pop>100,000) and a few with a million or more. There are almost 15,000 smaller cities and towns. They only polled a small fraction of places. What you're hoping for is that these people they reached are representative of the country. Are they? At any given location, there are only one or two respondents to the poll - this may very well not be representative. Let me ask this: if you call in the evening, who is more likely to be at home: the person scared to go out, or the person not scared to go out? That's not going to bias land-line results? If the calls were random, who is more likely to get a call, a person in a small town, or a person in a big city? Is the safety factor the same? Central Park in NYC is famous for being unsafe after dark How many people live within 1 mile of the park? Half a million? Does that skew the results at all?

At what value of "violent crimes per 10,000 population" do you consider it safe? I notice that nowhere do they cite crime statistics. Also that a higher percentage of people in the last two decades feel safer than they did in the 70s and 80s (also, as to the survey methods...I have questions)

You cited violent crime statistics without showing any correlation to feeling safe, so that does not answer the question. You also didn't address my question of what value it becomes safe.

It's a legitimate question. How about answering it? Some fraction of these crimes happen in the home, and have nothing to do with being able to safely walk down the street. What is the threshold value of crime rate for being safe to walk down the street?

But if we had better social services, wouldn't the prevalence of such people be reduced? Obviating the need for some of the police?

I’ve seen that attitude elsewhere, and have no reason to think it’s smaller in a profession where it can be exercised as part of the job. I think what’s more damaging is the enabling attitude that gives us the thin blue line. That behavior I have seen, when I was in the military. Covering for a comrade’s bad behaviors instead of doing your duty. So when someone behaves badly, the system fails to expose the culprit, and people fail as well. Can you clarify who are the out of control, hostile ones in this? Aggressive policing is one of the systemic problems.

We’re not talking about a process. We’re talking about the possible configurations that make up one state. Statistical mechanics, not classical thermodynamics. Do you understand why he says “of course” here? To separate this from the previous sentence, where he talks about spontaneous change. Because they aren’t the same thing.

There’s no compression. You keep trying to recast this in terms of some other (probably familiar) problem, which is why you don’t end up at the answer in the book. (which is what my earlier explanation was trying to highlight - no compression needed for the one-ball case.) But I was responding to your claim that work is required for the gas CoM to change, and that’s not the case (the container has mass), which is something one is expected to learn in first-semester physics. Your objection has no basis in physics. But that’s not all he said. He invoked it if you were preparing that state, as opposed to a spontaneous fluctuation. He made a clear (IMO) distinction.

You need to go back and study first-semester physics. No work is necessary.

I'm not convinced you can effectively do the former, but I agree with the latter. As I said above, accountability is one of the main parts of the reform that is needed.

I disagree with this. There are too many people who want power over others, and don't wield it responsibility. The police are a magnet for such people. Your experience is likely with people who joined that culture willingly. Getting martial arts training foisted upon you does not mean you have joined that culture. Just like training in other aspects of society — workplace training on e.g. sexual harassment and sexual assault hasn't won everyone over to a culture that respects women, for similar reasons. (feel free to substitute other culture subsets for that) This is one reason the focus has been on attempts at fixing systemic problems and holding people accountable. You might not prevent one instance of excessive force by an individual, but if you don't tolerate such behavior, you might be able to prevent the next 20 instances the individual might have perpetrated, because they will no longer be on the police force.

That wasn't the premise. The premise was that there are people on the police force predisposed to use violence/excessive force. On what do you base this?

You added a partition, where there was none. You added a piston earlier, and talked about changing variables that were fixed, and doing work. You’ve done little but change the conditions.

No, you don’t get to change the conditions of the example. It’s an ideal system. You keep ignoring that. Even if it isn’t, fine. If we’re at STP and have one mole of gas, so the volume of the container is 22.4L. The ideal gas has a mass of, say, 10 grams. The container is just under 30 cm a side and has a mass of, say, a kg. You have your momentum transfer, so the container can shift a small amount if needed. How are those violated? Action/reaction arises from force. Arrival, departure, etc. are not force. Nothing external. It’s all internal. That’s not how gases behave. It’s not a 1-for-1 matchup. You could have 10 moving right with 1 unit of momentum and 1 moving left with 10 units, and momentum is zero. So you agree you don’t need the atoms to have their momentum cancel Why are small fluctuations OK, but larger ones require work?

There is no change in P, V or T ? This was never part of what I had been discussing. I wasn’t aware you were waiting for me to address it. With one ball it’s not a problem, though. So the number of particles is equal in each octant? What if there are an odd number of particles? You said 42 before I brought this argument up. I hope causality isn’t under attack here, too. 42 isn’t divisible by 8. Let’s make it 48 - 6 particles per octant. Why can’t that number change? Why can’t there be 7 in one octant, and 5 in another? What prevents that? It’s not momentum. They travel at different speeds, and there’s a finite transit time.

Yes. I didn’t introduce “single observer bias” “agenda” is offensive? You’re the one who stated a plan, not included in the OP. But there is no compression, and no heat flow. The entropy hasn’t fallen. AFAIK they’re wrong about that. Will you now, finally, address the outstanding questions: What is the mechanism that prevents more balls being on one side of the box*? At what value of N does the mechanism manifest itself? *This is a big issue, because if we have symmetry, I can draw this line along any axis. If it can’t happen, then doesn’t the number in each octant have to be constant? If it’s not, then some half has more than the other

It seems the answer is “no” Apparently it’s a slogan and not an obligation.

These are two separate issues. One does not follow from the other (emphasis added) The courts have ruled that this is not the case in the US https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-you-federal-court-affirms-yet-again They can back off and let you be attacked, and they are not being derelict in their duty. According to the law/courts. If someone is predisposed to using violence, giving them more tools to do violence won’t result in more violence? Interesting take.

You had specifically focused on the CoM of the gas. You went out of your way to point this out. An observer traveling with the ball isn't really a viable approach, knowing full well we are going to move on to multiple balls, because we’ve already done this. Plus the view prior to this was an observer in the lab frame. You seem reticent to answer the question, which is quite obviously “no, the CoM of a single ball is not fixed” Indeed. One wonders what the point of introducing it was. Yes, of course, all if this posturing suggested an agenda. This “next stage” will be in a new topic, right? Can we get back to the discussion at hand? Belief is not a physics argument. It is obviously possible when N is small. What mechanism makes it impossible when N is large?

Explain the CoM problem for one ball in my example. Is the CoM fixed?