Phi for All

13 minutes ago, John John said:

Yes, that is why I need someone like you to help me, guide me, and hold my hand.

23 minutes ago, John John said:

I know I'm doing well, I'm curious to see what the red line is. Anyway, be patient and we will see what happens.

You're doing horribly. You're intellectually dishonest and you have no inclination towards learning anything of substance. You seem entrenched in your confirmation bias, and can't reason your way through the scientific replies you're getting. You somehow think this is a competition rather than an opportunity to educate yourself.

We're used to people coming to a science discussion forum to learn. It's not as common to have people join and then insist that their opinions and wild ass guesswork are equivalent to the knowledge accumulated by scientists over the centuries. You act as though education was a punishment your were able to avoid, rather than a goal you missed. 

I'm sure you're a lovely person IRL, but here you come off as willfully ignorant, which is shameful and wastes everyone's time. People here have studied intensively, and love sharing the knowledge they've gained, so your posts are often insulting in their lack of understanding and civility. 

You're more curious about what our "red line" is than about science, and that means anything you say from here on out will be in bad faith. Let's just part ways now. There are plenty of wild ass guesswork forums out  there for you. This site requires more rigor than you're willing to give, but I guess that's our fault? Goodbye.

Just now, John John said:

So you haven't heard of released energy, only stored energy I take it.

Siphon me off a gallon of energy from that storage device, please. Put it in a jug.

Next, give me the equations that treat energy as an independent entity. The maths we have that treat energy as a property of things works really well.

It's not really known how the Moon got to be such an obnoxious little sister. She just showed up one day with a bunch of circular arguments, orbiting near the point of arrogance, and when called out for it, spent the next several eons acting like the victim. She never really seemed to want anything other than to push against the orbit, which is crazy since this is safe space for her if she'd just mellow out and pay attention instead of trying to make waves here on Earth.

58 minutes ago, John John said:

We do know that the universe consists of matter and energy, and we don't know if anything else exists outside of matter and energy.

This leaves only one possibility,

You may think that, but it's wrong. Energy doesn't exist on its own. Energy is a property of a thing, not a thing itself. Unless you can hand me a couple of pounds of energy?

So, maybe there's more than one possibility? Bad foundation, bad structure.

3 minutes ago, John John said:

But you just stick to one side of mainstream science and have no time for the other side that is explored by science as well.

So you are not open for discussion only your side.

There's no "sides" to the knowledge we've accumulated via the scientific method, a process designed to weed out the guesswork and wishful thinking and cognitive biases. Either a theory holds up under every applicable test or it doesn't. The ones that hold up are mainstream knowledge. The rest isn't on a different side, it's just wrong, and demonstrably so.

1 minute ago, John John said:

If you believe the universe is expanding like a balloon that is fine, and if I believe it isn't expanding like a balloon that's fine as well.

I have the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model to support what I believe. It's amazing and it works extremely well where it's applicable. What evidence do you have?

3 minutes ago, John John said:

The model shows the balloon expansion and I get it, but you need to prove it correct just as much as I need to prove it otherwise.

Sorry, proof is for philosophy and mathematics. Science prefers theory, which people have been trying to teach you about, but your fingers seem firmly planted in your ears. 

4 minutes ago, John John said:

The other point is I never said the Balloon expansion was impossible or wrong so where do we go from there?

We were only throwing around possibilities Why must I prove something I never even proposed as a certainty in my mind?

You should forget the balloon analogy, it confuses you.

Instead, can you imagine a universe with nothing outside of it, but it's getting bigger really fast, not exploding, but expanding everywhere all at once, the matter becoming less dense, and cooling as it does so. Since this universe is all there is, the space inside it expands as the matter swirls inside the space inside this universe. Does this help?

With the maths from this model, we can send a rocket off planet and land on an asteroid millions of miles away. That's like throwing a dart at a dartboard that's flying around the room with a bunch of other spinning dart boards and hitting the bullseye. Can your idea make predictions like that, be that accurate in real life? Then why are you bothering with it? Why aren't you taking some classes online at Khan Academy or something?

10 minutes ago, John John said:

Some people make no effort and expect me to go over everything again rather than just make one point.

The things you've been asserting since you got here are NOT mainstream science, which means YOU are the one who needs to make the special effort to explain them.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence to support them. Why does your guesswork get special treatment when you ignore the years of study most of our members have put into learning science?

53 minutes ago, John John said:

I don't see why you would say that, to imply I am incredulous is to say I have no right to have my opinion or belief but you do.

What?! No, you used the phrase "I can't see how..." That implies that you're skeptical, that you don't believe the universe doesn't have a center, that you're incredulous about it. An argument from incredulity is fallacious, since you aren't offering any reasoning behind why you don't believe.

And this isn't about opinion. This is in a hard science section, where we want to see evidence. If you want to support an idea that isn't mainstream, also requiring evidence, please start a new thread in Speculations.

45 minutes ago, John John said:

As I stated before all things are vibrating particles, so all things are one and the same at the smallest level.

This isn't something you can "state". Even string theory explains rather than asserts, and it does so with lots of good maths.

46 minutes ago, John John said:

We are in the universe and all things are a part of us as we are a part of them.

Is this a "we're all made of stardust" argument? Again, very specious. In point of fact, almost all of the universe is NOT a part of us. How many grams of you are there in the galaxy HD1, for instance?

48 minutes ago, John John said:

It is like water in a bucket each part of the water is the water, We are a part of the universe so we are the universe, and the universe is us and all things.

No. The universe is the bucket and nothing exists outside of it that we can observe. The water might be water in one part of the bucket, but elsewhere it might have given up its O to other molecules to form different compounds. Just because we're "part" of the universe doesn't mean we're the whole universe. You're straying heavily from mainstream science, and I don't think this line of reasoning will help you learn anything meaningful.

55 minutes ago, John John said:

The universe contains itself as one unit.

So how does this help you understand what science has determined is happening in the observable universe? To me, saying the universe is a "unit" implies there could be more than one. It's fairly critical to modern cosmology that we treat the universe as all there is, not like a balloon that's expanding into some other space.

11 minutes ago, John John said:

The atoms that make up a thought are the same as all the atoms in the universe, We are the thinking atoms that reside in and among all matter.

Oh, wow. Here I was, using all those atoms thinking you were here to learn. Best of luck to you.

10 hours ago, John John said:

and we contain the universe.

Can you explain how this helps describe what we observe? It just seems specious and doesn't make understanding the science any easier. The universe is all there is, so nothing inside of it could "contain" it.

1 hour ago, JohnDBarrow said:

My mother once told me so about the universe. Mother knows best.  Can you please show me the limit line of the universe? 

Can you show me where time began? If it did indeed begin, then what was the cosmic trigger that set it off in the first place? 

Some initial cause to beget time had to have preexisted time if that was the case. Scientists often overlook first principles. 

So no, you don't understand what "literally" and "infinite" mean, especially when used together. None of what you just said addresses my comment, like you didn't really read it.

2 hours ago, JohnDBarrow said:

Please explain why there is still life, motion and consciousness after the literal passing of an infinite amount of elapsed time.

An  infinite amount of elapsed time has NOT literally passed, yet you double down on such by bolding it. Do you understand what "literally" and "infinite" mean, especially when used together?

11 hours ago, iNow said:

The site used to prevent them in a former software version, but may no longer have that option to disable in the current version. I seem to recall members voted to keep them, however, as a quick easy way to highlight problematic folks regularly posting in bad faith. 

Unfortunately, we keep running into the problem of new members not understanding how we like discussions to be civil. We see the negative point as shushing someone being too loud at the library, but too often they respond by yelling "Don't shush me!", which gets them more negative points, which leads them to start a thread about how petty it is to insist that people be quiet at the library.

2 hours ago, nec209 said:

This explains how Christians took over the Republican Party and why they are the way they are.

Before I start, it’s important to note that...

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Is there ever going to be a time when you'll pay out your money?

Isn't it morally wrong to promise something you have no intention of honoring? 

John John has been suspended for a few days to give them time to remove a rather large chip from their shoulder.

And now John John is gone gone, and my faith in second chances has diminished significantly. 

1 hour ago, John John said:

That's worthless information and has nothing in common with my post.

1 hour ago, John John said:

I hope you don't mind me asking but do you think you can change your thumbnail it is making me feel sick.

Actually, treating a discussion like a one-way street is called soapboxing or preaching, and it's against our rules. If you feel someone is soapboxing (ignoring replies in favor of continuing to assert their stance, for instance), please use the Report function. Continued use of preaching and fallacious arguments can result in being banned. 

We're all just here to discuss science topics in a civil manner. We attack ideas, and sometimes that can look like we're attacking the people that have them, but that's against our rules. We don't attack people, but we do call out bad behavior and we definitely jump all over ideas that aren't physical or have some basic flaw. It's not personal.

12 hours ago, Tgro87 said:

You're right, I did copy and paste the link. But wouldn't it be truly bullshit if I had just written a bunch of words that sounded profound, but didn't actually engage with the original text? That would be the real act of intellectual dishonesty, wouldn't it? I'm all for respectful discourse, but sometimes you just gotta cut to the chase.

No, what you did was bullshit enough. And the real intellectual dishonesty is pretending you've hurt anyone's feelings, rather than admitting you pretty much jumped up on the round table of this discussion and crapped on it rather than attempt to persuade us towards your position.

Sometimes "cutting to the chase" just makes you look like a right asshole. I think that's exactly what happened here. I'm not even sure what you're objecting to, it's like you really didn't read the thread. Obviously you have a different opinion about ChatGPT, so how about you start with that instead of all the drama?

2 hours ago, nec209 said:

Has the church ever spoken out about rich people? Have millionaires or a billionaires ever at any point been sin?

Hey, are we done with this conversation? You're repeating yourself. 

It would be hypocritical of me to call Christians out on that, seeing as I don't believe any of it.

Telling zealots that they're interpreting scripture incorrectly, has that ever worked? In my experience, no. 

Once he's in jail, we're going to spend a few more years powering-washing racist stains off our country, we're going to call out this bigotry for what it is, and these maggots are going to fade back under the rocks where they belong. And hopefully their kids will be able to move forward and not be the embarrassments to democracy their parents were.

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

It’s really about what to prioritize since there are only a limited number of hours in the day. As may be obvious already, much of their time is already allocated to covering up child rape and protecting those who engage in it. 

On another note, the church is one of the wealthiest organizations on the planet so remaining silent is an issue of self-interest. 

The church owns 177M acres of land across the globe, dwarfed only by the British Royal Family at 6.6B acres. King Charles owns 1/6 of the surface of the Earth.

21 minutes ago, nec209 said:

The think is I don’t see the catholic church speaking out about millionaires or a billionaires.

None of these organizations are about to start bitching about wealthy people. Are you somehow expecting modern Christian leadership to actually practice the teachings of Jesus? I'm not sure if the Church has ever been much interested in attracting worshipers through example.

51 minutes ago, nec209 said:

It does not say if having money or wealth is sinful.  

"Having money" isn't the same as being a millionaire or a billionaire, is it? There are plenty of stories in the Bible about fair business transactions. Being "rich" is mentioned as bad, and being a moneylender was also bad. I don't think just having some money was thought to be evil.