Phi for All

Kartazion has been suspended for a month for messing around with the quote function. It's unethical to claim someone said something you've edited.

! Moderator Note Please avoid throwing links at people under the assumption they'll understand exactly how you're applying an argument from them. It's against the rules to require anyone to go offsite in order to participate in a conversation. Give some context or provide specific quotes from the article so the membership doesn't have to dig to find your meaning.

Another name for an escape clause is a 'loophole". That's probably how Ghideon fell out.

Mike12 has been banned for breaking rules on bad-faith arguments, soapboxing, incoherency, slurs against groups, and discussing the commission of felonies. Better role models will hopefully be available to him soon.

Welcome! Good to have you here. You officially have some social media now. I'm an inadvertent long-distance backpacker. I go backpacking, get lost, and have to call long-distance for someone to come pick me up. But when I lose my mind, I usually find it on a hiking trail. Make the time, my friend. See you around.

molbol2000 has been suspended until (at least) after the major elections, so as not to distract from the pursuit of being an informed, science-minded human.

There's a section in Forum Announcements called Banned/Suspended Users. All the banned ones are history. 😁

Everything is in motion. Imagine 100 people are in a big gymnasium with you (this is actually a two-dimensional representation, since you can't fly). You're walking around in a circle holding a throwing dart, and everybody else is also walking around in differing sized circles. It's complete chaos, but one of those people is also holding a dart board as they move (the asteroid). Can you imagine how you'd have to figure out when/how hard/what angle to throw the dart so it doesn't hit anyone or anything else but the dart board? What?! No, it works anywhere in the universe. It works somewhat differently when we're on the surface of the planet, but the concept of degrees of freedom holds true.

Dimensions measure degrees of freedom within our universe. As a coordinate system, dimensions don't care about scaling, they're just used to measure what we observe. I can measure a building to get coordinates for the three spatial dimensions, then I can add extra floors to make it taller, or add extra rooms to make it longer and wider. Since Earth is moving along with the asteroid I want to land on, I have to plot where the asteroid will be in the future when my rocket arrives there (the x, y, z, and t coordinates for my arrival). The ideal is to aim it just right (NASA calls this the "window", the path where the rocket won't run into anything else on the way), figure out exactly how much fuel I need to get there, and at the right moment I fire the thrusters. I can't drive there like an automobile does on the surface of a planet, using a steering wheel. My rocket launches in a completely straight line, affected by spacetime curvatures caused by energy and mass (gravity), and the asteroid moves into my path because that's how I calculated it, and we land safely.

Charles3781's explanatory skills are an illusion. He was talking about the 2-dimensionality of images on your computer screen which simulates 3-dimensional objects. It was a confusing reply to someone like you asking a legitimate question. We CAN perceive the third dimension, it's not an illusion. We can measure length, width, and height to determine the parameters of an object or phenomenon. How tall a building is, how thick a cut of meat is, how deep the water is, all these are visualizations of the third dimension.

I think you enjoy being in the dark more than spiders.

Length, width, and height are the three spatial dimensions we use in our coordinate system, or x, y, and z mathematically. You can visualize each by moving 90 degrees away from every point along the previous dimension (moving from a line to a plane, then from a plane to a cube). The third dimension is equally pictured as height, depth, and thickness, and lends a quality to objects we think of as solid. Time (t) is a temporal dimension in a continuum with the spatial dimensions (spacetime). I can give you specific x, y, z, and t coordinates so we can meet for lunch on the 45th floor of the Empire State Building, or plot where you need to aim your rocket to reach a specific asteroid, and when to launch it so you can hit it without other maneuvering.

! Moderator Note The way you've framed the OP, a reader is forced to watch that video, which is against our rules. Please summarize your question in context.

MSC has requested a temporary suspension to focus on other pursuits.

That's the way I always think of the USNO, a bunch of lucky physicists intuiting premises without awareness. Four leaf clovers, rabbits feet, and atomic clocks. We're lucky GPS works. ! Moderator Note Happy to help.

Yes, but the rest of us understand how being harsh while trying to persuade is a failed tactic.

My friend, your signal to noise ratio is WAAAAY off. I think you need to take a break for a while, and think about your behavior towards a volunteer staff of people looking to share science knowledge. Your behavior behind the scenes is equally appalling. Please, everyone is frazzled at the present, and nobody needs you adding to the stress load.

Let's be clear. You're posting like it's not allowed, but we're talking about sub-forum headings here. Why not post some threads about Logic, and if enough of the members think it needs to be it's own section, we'll do it. And then staff will move past conversations into the new section, and have to start policing the new Logic subsection, where people go to post about the stuff that makes sense to them. We're not saying we won't add a new header if the membership wants it, but know that it's not a decision you're going to make for us with your browbeating and petulance.

Mandlbaur has been banned for repeatedly bringing up non-mainstream topics they're unable to support, and are now being foul and hateful about it.

This statement is extremely hypocritical, uncivil, and reflects poorly on your reasoning skills, imo.

Beware Skitt's Law. An ellipsis is three dots, not two. Also, there should be commas before "at" and "not", and you should be using double quote marks, not single.

I didn't say faith was the benchmark. You use "degrees of certainty", and the folks I know who claim to be the most religious all believe in their god using faith. It's supposed to represent 100% certainty that the Christian god of the Bible exists, no matter what anyone or anything else says. In the US, a great many profess enough faith to say they're absolutely certain the god of the Bible exists. The details may vary, and some claims aren't as deeply held as others, but the idea of believing "with all your heart" that there is a god is common in the States. I would think that at least would hold true even for the CoE. When you add Jesus into the mix, you lose some folks in the US, but others are just as 100% certain that Jesus is watching them to see if they have enough faith in him to get into heaven. This doesn't seem wrong to you? Faith is usually defined as accepting a truth or proposition that has no evidence to support it. I acknowledge a difference between having faith in something (the old car will get me through another winter), and having religious faith in something you believe will ensure an eternal afterlife. Perhaps that's where we aren't agreeing?

But the faith-driven believer is 100% certain, and you'll never be more than 99.9%, so that's not a good benchmark. I think how you arrive at your certainty is the key here. Do you just have a gut-feeling about it that won't go away, or have you rigorously researched, observed, tested, discussed, and predicted enough about the subject that you've come to trust the explanation?

Believing anything based on faith alone is antithetical to a methodology that needs to trust only empirical evidence. That's always been a sticking point for me. The religious folks I know are joyously proud that they believe using just their faith. They claim it's strong and abiding, and the more blasphemers claim there is no God, the stronger their faith and certainty becomes. To me, if we aren't using our reasoning powers to explain things, then we're using our emotions to convince ourselves we're right. I think it's easier but less intelligent to let ourselves be led like that. Using our brains to move beyond our primitive reactions is always harder, but it's always our best long-term investment.

Actually, a tick can sense a LOT, mostly body heat and smell (I believe they're attracted to ammonia in sweat). They try to latch on to you with their front legs, then crawl towards skin. I suppose they might have different behavior when on a flat surface, but since they need to latch on to their dinner, it doesn't seem likely they're trying to flea. 😁