Phi for All

The rule "I before E, except after C" has been disproven by science.

He has to break his promise not to start any new wars so he can break his promise about releasing the Epstein files.

OK. Jacek/Bart/Bart2/Ravell/ad infinitum. But could you please stop loving on us so hard? Please stop joining the forum over and over again to insist on how horrible we are, it makes you look indecisive. Stay away if we're so bad. Win/win for all.

Was it for spending more time on insulting the people who are discussing science with you than you spent on the science itself? That's probably what you'll get banned for here. If your arguments are strong, why do you need all the toxicity? Can't you explain yourself without derision and condescension? This is a pattern for you. You join science discussion forums, break their rules, get banned, and then sign up again from a different account and start the whole shitshow all over again. Please focus on the science you're trying to persuade others to accept, lose the snark, and try to make your points without being a complete dick about it. It would go a LONG way towards helping everyone understand what you so desperately are trying to convey.

So you were just soapboxing about your stance, and don't want to listen to those who want to persuade you that there may be problems with it? Doesn't sound like discussion to me.

Offhand, I can't think of many illegal things I'd like to do if it was made legal for me just one time. Certainly nothing that would harm somebody else. Break a big plate glass window? Mildly interesting. Steal a bunch of money? Perhaps, if it was from one of those private equity firms that have been bleeding us over the last 40 years or so. I can't think of anything, not one thing that would make me want to give up living with others because it's illegal. I can't imagine what you want to do. Since public lands are available for this, I have to assume you're talking about wild camping on someone else's property. It's a bit ironic, seeing as how the best way to get permission to camp on a stranger's land is to engage them socially and be nice about it, the very thing you seem to want to avoid. I'm not sure I'll ever understand your stance fully. It would seem to be much more efficient and less work to lobby for more public lands, or make friends with a landowner, rather than to retreat from society altogether and eke out a minimum subsistence on your own.

I wish there was some way to find out what distasteful package of concessions you were referring to.

Concessions like "Don't pee in the streets", "drive in your own lane", and "put your litter in a trash can"? Which concessions in this "package" are distasteful to you? You're very jaded. "Remain with others" is how you view social interaction and cooperation? No offense, but I think you've decided against society and are now cherry-picking the worst aspects while ignoring the clear benefits civilisation gives us.

This seems to be a self-inflicted frustration. You haven't achieved an expected level of happiness in a society, so you assume nobody can. They want happiness and freedom but you think that's impossible if they live with others. It's affecting your whole outlook. You absolutely don't NEED money to either live in or leave a society, it just makes everything easier. What you NEED in a society is a skill others find valuable. The work you do is enough to feed, clothe, and house you if you can find those willing to trade. You can fix my car? I'll buy the parts, you can stay in my guest room for a week and I'll even feed you. Arrange something like this 51 more times this year and you don't need money. Again, I don't know where this focus on money comes from. To me, freedom to pursue happiness requires myself and others to follow reasonable rules when interacting with each other. It's not my ability to strike out on my own if I feel like it. It's not my ability to say anything in public I feel like saying. It's not my ability to own a weapon. If the government in the US took away all the weapons and made it illegal to own one, I would feel freer to interact more with my society. The right to bear arms isn't a freedom to me, but a lack of them would be.

This seems like a strawman argument. Did anyone actually claim that money makes them more free, or is this something you've seen before that frustrates you in a general way? In my thread, I tried to make it clear that I think the right rules actually lead to meaningful freedom in a society, not money. I think this is where you and I differ. You have a definition of freedom that doesn't make sense to me, so I think of it as false. You imagine freedom only comes if YOU are alone and free to do whatever pops into your head. Being alone seems secure to you, whereas I see it as an unnecessarily dangerous situation, especially when the topic of freedom only makes sense in a society. If you were the only person on Earth, you could do whatever you want. Is that a meaningful freedom to you? To me, freedom only really becomes an issue when people try to live together.

Moderator NoteThis is NOT discussing science. You seem to have a big chip on your shoulder, so I have to assume you've been here before, under a different name, with the same lack of rigor and sour disposition, and failed to meet the requirements for the assertions you made. If you don't understand the criticisms your ideas spawn, please ask questions rather than lashing out or retaliating in non-science discussion forum ways. Civility greatly helps when trying to persuade others.

Moderator NoteThis isn't the Astronomy forum. Whatever you did there, don't do it here. We discuss mainstream science in a civil tone. No more whiny threads, please. Make your arguments here in a rigorous, reasoned manner and you'll have no trouble.

Actom.growth has been banned as a duplicate account.

Like other sites, we're adapting to the sudden surge in AI generated content. We think it can be used as a LLM for those who can't always put their thoughts down as eloquently as they'd like. Many people, however, use it to draw conclusions, search for evidence, and site their sources, all of which we've proven the AI is incapable of doing honestly. Even this small interaction is much more valuable to me than anything you might do with AI. I have to admit that I'm heavily biased against AI in general. In the US, preemptive laws are in place that prohibit us from regulating AI companies. I've heard that AI in 2026 will use more water than all the bottled water companies in the US. And it just pisses me off in general since it's obvious the billionaire class hopes AI will eliminate the need to employ actual people. To me, AI is like a fascinating toy that kills people by making them useless.

I guess Xcel Energy didn't give NIST much notice about this Public Safety Power Shutoff either. I'm surprised they couldn't keep them powered. The power shutoff is supposed to prevent wildfires due to high winds/downed lines between the cities, but NIST is in Boulder proper.

I hated it when we lost our public utility, Public Service of Colorado, and sold to a private investor named Xcel Energy back in 2000. Rates went up immediately, service stayed the same for a while, so it just seemed like handing over more money just so a corporation could profit. After 25 years, it's now come out that they've been lax on maintaining their grid system. Four years ago, a major fire was caused by downed power lines and high winds, and Xcel got the crap sued out of them. The state demanded they come up with a solution, and the best they could do was to shut off consumer power whenever the winds get too high. They're calling it a Public Safety Power Shutoff. Yup. I was without power from 9:45am on Wednesday until 2:30pm Thursday, with only a one day notice. It's possible they may not be getting accurate weather info since the current administration isn't funding NOAA fully, but they also decided to do another PSPS Friday morning at 5:45am. This time, power will be off until Saturday at 6pm. I had to book hotel rooms for my family. Xcel isn't obligated to repay me for a freezer full of meat, because they argue it's covered by homeowner's insurance. My homeowner's insurance only covers accidental power outages, not planned ones. It's crystal clear to me Xcel wants to protect stockholders, not customers. Sorry, long rant, very frustrated, but I'm hearing other stories around the US about going back to municipal utilities. How is power handled where you live? US or outside the US, I'd like to know why something so important is owned by private investors.

Even on reality shows like Alone, the contestants enjoy challenging themselves and braving the wild by themselves for only so long. They all end up malnourished and craving human contact, and they start out with about 10 pieces of kit to help out. Humans were never made to be alone. The more people who live together, the more rules we need to survive, but one person alone will still have rules to follow. Even by myself, I'd impose them. Don't pee in the river, or at least upstream from where I camp. Don't make a bunch of noise so I don't scare game away. Never camp right next to the river in case of flooding. In fact, I'd argue that being alone actually means less freedom to do what you want. A person alone may be able to do many things they couldn't do with a bunch of people around, but they also CAN'T do many things they could do if there was a bunch of people around. Even simple things, like guarding your food from nighttime predators, become a nightmare without help from others.

Can you continue discussing this with AI by yourself? I'm more interested in what people who study science have to say about these things. We know the AI is more interested in pleasing you than it is using actual science. Even if it was short I wouldn't be interested. "Quite long" is probably a "framework" for obfuscation.

Imagine having your name in those files so much that an FBI team working for 11 months straight can't scrub your name out of it.

Moderator NoteThe AI makes things up to satisfy your requests, so we don't allow it to be used as a substitute for a good argument, Sam. That's the "tainted" part for us. Your idea, your beliefs, these need supportive evidence. Try another thread if you like, and perhaps show some science that supports your ideas. If you haven't used AI to build your foundation, and truly used it just as a language module, you should have this at your fingertips.

Moderator NoteDuplicate threads merged. Also, decide which of these accounts you want to keep. We don't allow sockpuppets.

It was definitely this part: You actually said this is what you meant, so I'm not sure why you don't recognize the words.

You earned that money somehow. You earned the compassion that led others to value you enough to give you food and shelter. I don't see how that could ever be considered weak. Perhaps you should learn gratitude rather than fleeing society. I'm sorry, but this seems like you want to throw away some of the most valuable human traits, like compassion, tool use, cooperation, and communication. Why on Earth do you think being solitary, with no claws or fangs, is the epitome of strength? Never, at any time, was this the hallmark of human behavior. We've NEVER been singular hunters. We lived and hunted in packs, we developed skills that took advantage of our strength in numbers. Again, I'm sorry, but it sounds like you don't much like people and want to live away from them. I'm sorry the people in your life are making you feel weak with their money and help.

I don't understand how you're weaker due to living in a society and following its rules. Isn't having money for essential needs better than having to hunt your meat, forage your grain, grind your flour, all while defending yourself alone from predation? Have you watched any of the survival shows? Then you're missing my whole point. Freedom is not the glorious state we're led to believe. The rules, good rules, can actually make us happier and more able to pursue happiness than any illusion of being free to do whatever comes into your head.

This is the false part. Trying to be free of human rules is ridiculous unless you want to live alone. It's the rules that make it possible for us to grow out of a naked, animalistic, solitary existence. The rules let us live together, work together, play together, with as little friction and as much freedom to pursue what makes you happy as possible, within those rules. And I would argue that the best kinds of freedom are the ones we can agree among ourselves are valuable. Until about 10 years ago, the vast majority of people accepted that vaccinating ourselves was a boon to all of us. Millions died of COVID unnecessarily because some questioned it. Even today, measles is on the rise because some people think the government is stepping on their freedom.