the asinine cretin

Yup.

S- Satisfactory

U - Unsatisfactory

M - Marginal

N - Not known

Sulfuric Acid 0-50%

(21 deg. C): S

(60 deg. C): S

Sulfuric Acid 70%

(21 deg. C): S

(60 deg. C): M

Sulfuric Acid 80%

(21 deg. C): S

(60 deg. C): U

Sulfuric Acid 96%

(21 deg. C): M

(60 deg. C): U

Sulfuric Acid 98%

(21 deg. C): M

(60 deg. C): U

Sulfuric Acid, Fuming

(21 deg. C): U

(60 deg. C): U

Source: HDPE Chemical Resistance Chart

P.S. Further (and perhaps tangentially), I imagine traditional Western sensibilities would ground free will, rights, justice, and related abstractions, in a supernatural worldview. The Judeo-Christian God is the source and ultimate explanation of these things, which are contingent upon our having immortal souls, which "animals" lack. I wonder what kind of information cultural anthropology might yield in this regard? To what extent, and in what respects, is free will an issue outside of Western civilization? I know that Hindu and Buddhist religious thought differs markedly with Western conceptions. What about the dominant worldviews of various societies and civilizations in history? Ancient Egyptian, ancient Greek, Imperial Chinese, contemporary Japanese, Khoisan, Dani, Aztec, et cetera, ad nauseum. It isn't difficult to imagine societies that function perfectly well without this concept. Might free will be then quite superfluous? Perhaps it can be argued that it is in some ways harmful to a society? If it really is merely a self-aggrandizing misunderstanding of the nature of reality I can see how it might be harmful. If many people, rather than being rehabilitated, or otherwise helped in some way, are instead stigmatized or needlessly "punished" because of a misunderstanding of human nature as being wholly self-possessed...

Again, just trying to instigate a conversation.

I deal with spammers, so I normally don't check a link that has been run through a shortener.

NP. +1

Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape.

Beginning on page 104, "The Illusion of Free Will."

Video version (1 of 3).

I don't think that a theory of free will -- in the sense of an inscrutable metaphysical locus of personhood that endows a faculty which somehow transcends ordinary causality -- is necessary for the validity of the concepts such as self-determination, virtue, culpability, and the like. I have not read Harris' book beyond this small selection and my remarks here are very willy nilly; I'm only trying to start a conversation.

Sure, perhaps free will, as a metaphysical concept, is an "of the gaps" pseudo-explanation; I don't have a problem with that. I don't think it follows that because psychical causality can be probed empirically, and described in reductionist terms, therefore the concept is existentially and/or socially invalid. It seems to me a meaningful and valuable social construct, even if ultimately illusory from a perennial metaphysical point of view. I am inclined to agree with Harris about the dubiousness of "retribution" and I find containment and rehabilitation to be "more evolved sensibilities" (if I may allude to Trek), but of course he's not advocating the erasure of the concept of responsibility. An attenuation of it based on neuroscience perhaps. So, how far might this be taken? I think that a society might rightly create a "free will" concept and standard based on a pragmatism of sorts. It doesn't have to be "real" in some mythical or supernatural sense. It is "real" much as inalienable rights might be considered real, or distributive justice, or many other abstract concepts that are apparently evolved for social reasons. Can we have a truly efficacious and existentially significant concept of free will that is compatible with the kind of determinism that Harris believes to be the plain scientific fact of the matter?

I realize that free will and consciousness are huge topics in philosophy, with plenty of baggage and rabbit trails, but it would be nice if philosophical responses here engaged what Harris is actually saying (I'm sure there are many here who are more familiar with his ideas than I am). I've not researched these topics so forgive my naivete and ignorance. I tentatively assume that Harris is accurate when he describes experiments that reveal the wholly illusory nature of our experience of free will.

P.S. Again, just trying to start a conversation. I'm more interested in what others have to say in response to Harris than in quibbling over any of my thoughts above, so go easy.

Regards.

!

Moderator Note

No. We will not tolerate copyright violations. Link removed.

lol. Obviously you didn't even click the link. It was to an asinine youtube video and was intended as sarcasm. I appreciate the zero tolerance of copyright subversion. Thanks anyway. hehe.

Wrong.

 

Infinity is quite well-defined in mathematics. In fact there are lots of infinities. Google "cardinal numbers" and "ordinal numbers".

 

 

Still wrong.

 

Mathematics is subject only to the assumed axioms and logic. It is completely unconstrained by the laws of the universe, though many interesting problems are suggested by physics.

 

 

You continue to be wrong. It is unknown whether the volume of the universe is finite or infinite. In any case there are no boundaries. Read up on general relativity. Try Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler

 

 

gibberish. What is not just plain wrong (except for the speed of light being c) is nonsensical.

 

 

Infinity is not unexplained. Neither is it unreachable, in situations where that makes sense, say on the Riemann sphere Try reading Naive Set Theory by Halmos and Lecture Notes on Elementary Topology and Geometry by Singer and Thorpe.

 

 

Still more gibberish. Read a book on cosmology. Cosmology by Steven Weinberg would be a good start.

Yikes! I'm familiar with a couple of those books (namely Gravitation and Cosmology) and they are, uh...grad level, one might say. Don't get me wrong, you're right to recommend them, I just find them to be highly intimidating recommendations. I've actually had Weinberg's Cosmology on my wish list for quite a while but I'm still wading through undergrad texts and Schaum's outlines on my limited free time.

Suitable for a more popular audience (from my own experience) I would recommend one or more of the following: Infinity, by Brian Clegg; Infinity and the Mind, by Rudy Rucker; maybe Godel, Escher, Bach, by Doug Hofstadter; Yearning for the Impossible, by John Stillwell... There are other texts of this sort that I'm aware of but have not read. Maybe I'm wrong, and if so I apologize, but my hunch is that the original poster is not at the graduate level in physics or mathematics.

P.S. I mean no disrespect, Dr. Rocket! As a lurker on this site I have to say you're probably my favorite regular poster.

Click here to download textbooks for free.

Awesome! I'm glad you liked it. I was pretty stoked to find that. Actually, if you dig space I recommend subscribing to that SETI channel; their talks are great.

It matters to me... You make me sad.

I have been trying to use the program Stellarium to find the answers but I am very confused on how to go about it.

Have you tried the Stellarium quick start guide and user's guide?

http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Quickstart_guide

http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Category:User's_Guide

Those are very urgent and existentially significant questions. I feel your pain.

1. The big bag theory does not involve a chemical explosion. 2. The general concept of abiogenesis (what I believe you're referring to in the "primordial soup theory" paragraph) does not assume preexisting cellular life but refers to the emergence of biology itself.

Your questions are understandable but I think you should first read about what those theories actually entail and why. I will spare you the wikipedia links as I don't want to be condescending.

ETA: Moon's reply is better than mine. I now regret posting at all. :-D Good luck to you anyway!

The great pacific gyre is estimated to contain 100 million tons of plastic but it is overwhelmingly particulates and isn't visible from satellites.

You might be interested in the following research.

Moore, C.J., & et al. (2001). A Comparison of Plastic and Plankton in the North Pacific Central Gyre. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 42(12), 1297-1300.

Full Article (PDF)

ETA: While this problem is often presented in an incorrect way and then written off as alarmist or mythical, it is a very serious problem with respect to marine life. More later if you're interested.

I got carried away but what follows has been trimmed down a lot. Here are some texts that were interesting and stimulating to me at some point. A fairly eclectic sampling I think.

D. von Hildebrand, Ethics

D. von Hildebrand, The Nature of Love

M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics

M. Heidegger, Being and Time

D. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature

D. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

A. Tarski, Introduction to Logic

D. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea

D. Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach

Kirk, Raven & Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

H. Wang, A Logical Journey

J. Searle, The Mystery of Consciousness

I like a good history of philosophy as well. I can vouch for these:

F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (9 volumes)

W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (5 volumes)

I was just reading this article. Interesting.

A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables: Wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world's energy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here's how.

I wonder how factual this video is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifF-MOuzM_s

:applause:

Few days have passed - and no anwer yet. It looks like people (both scientists and non-scientists) don't like to see themselves as piles of hadrons, although almost all human weight consists of nothing else but neutrons and protons.

How DARE you! I love being a pile of hadrons...

CERN held a live conference today about the results:

 

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1384486

 

Remember: skepticism dictates concluding "I don't know", not "it must not be true." Absent evidence, your skeptical conclusion must be "well, let's see what happens," not "it must be a hoax!" Claiming a hoax is just as unfounded as claiming it must be true.

That conference was incredibly helpful. Thanks.

Thanks for the Youtube about Kepler. I hope to watch that when I have time. Then maybe I can ask you an intelligent question and find out exactly what I'm missing. If anyone else knows what Ceti Alpha V means by his point #2 above please help. There is a misunderstanding here.

I'll try to explain, I think there is a misunderstanding too. I'm referring to this:

"You can extrapolate Kepler's findings by multiplying the numbers it detects by approx 200."

In my understanding there are many more factors to take into account and it is too preliminary to make such a general extrapolation at all. Further, the wiki article isn't saying, "For an Earth-like planet at 1 AU transiting a Sol-like star the probability is 0.465%," therefore, it is appropriate use this figure to make a general extrapolation about all stars and possible planets.

You get excited states!

 

Because hadrons are bound states of quarks they have various different energy configurations. Thus we have a who spectra of particles that we can observe that have almost identical properties apart from mass.

 

If the electron has some similar sub structure you would expect something similar. The muon and tau do not appear to be simple excited states of the electron. These "higher mass electrons" are also fundamental rather than composites.

You might start by looking at the most recent IPCC report.

Dinosaurs weren't killed by just 1 thing, it was a combination of things. 1 thing was the impact, another was the climate change, and another was the lack of food. There's probably even other things ocean level changes.

Who or what were you responding to? Just sharing?

The word is hadron. I was having some fun with the typo.

yeah, no kidding. so was I obviously.

Shouldn't that be "whose"?

you tell me. I'm not hip to that kind of physics.

analogous to the hardon ... excited electrons ... no experiment has produced any evidence for such an internal structure.

I was with you until about here. which hardon? does this have something to do with the large hardon collider?