dimreepr

Do you prefer a Josef Rudolf Mengele type approach to regulation of the medical profession?????

Of cource not but how does this argue my point? I didn't say the system shouldn't be in place just that idea's will be lost. (edit) The point being that ethics has it's place and shouldn't be used where it can only hinder.

Firstly please don't make the mistake that our prehistoric ancestors were less intelligent than ourselves we just have more education than they did.

I think Gods evolution went something like this:

The tribe's leader has a problem to solve, how to control the tribe? He knows the problems that uncontrolled people can do. Hunt one animal too much and it disappears for example. He has a light bulb moment and thinks I know I'll scare them into not doing that. He invents the spirit world and assigns different spirits for different everyday things that need careful handling and so reduce the excess' we humans can go to. A moral compass if you will but we humans are scallywags and will insist on inventing new things and as a consequence the list of spirit's increase. This means they become less and less credible to the young of the tribe. The tribe is getting bigger and bigger and the young always ask bloody stupid questions that, by accident, reveal a fundamental truth. The current tribe leader (a clever bugger) decides that too many spirit guardians, is just too confusing, especially as the number of new inventions begin to increase. He decides the simplest way to achieve this is one spirit guardian and so God becomes that guardian.

Straw man argument. If it works for the medical profession then there is no reason to think that it couldn't work for science in general.

Not really how do you know it works for the medical profesion? How many ideas has the system prevented?

Clearly you can't. But, for example, you can certainly reasonably deduce that a scientist working for the military developing more powerful explosive devices is quite likely to cause wider harm to humanity than a scientist simply reasearching aromatic compounds.

Any censorship on ideas will, given enough time, lead to an idea being dismissed that would have lead to a, for instance, cancer cure. Even in your example it is just possible that the research in this area would give a researcher an idea that branches off and becomes benefitial to humanity.

A charismatic cult leader

Maybe but it did work for a while.

This will help the forum understand the Logical Universe Theory better. . .

 

 

Definitions on which this theory is based

 

There is no such thing as Empty Space. . .

 

Matter. . . Substance that displaces Space Time. . . (composed of U1 Particles with Energy and Gravity)

 

Cold Matter. . . Substance that displaces Space Time. . . (no U1 Particles, no Energy, no Gravity)

 

Energy. . . The movement of Matter. . .

 

Gravity. . . The attraction of Matter with Energy. . .

 

Resonance. . . A balance of Gravity, Energy and Matter. . .

 

U1 Particles. . . The smallest Spheres of Matter. . .

 

Black Holes. . . Spheres of ultimate, concentrated Matter, with Energy. . .

 

I hate to ask but as so often repeated in this thread, numbers please...

As I have previously said the focus should be on development of specific technologies rather than on pure research. E.G. A restraining hand on the shoulder of scientists who seek to develop ways to produce industrial quantities of DDT rather than on scientists detailing the chemcial properties of DDT. Or on scientists seeking to develop a death ray rather than on scientists who are simply developing lasers in general. Or on scientists who seek to increase food production further rather than developing better contrceptives.

 

That's the way it generally works for medical research. Research on the causes of cancer and diabetes etc is generally unrestricted apart from animal ethics and budgetry contraints. But develkopment a testing of new drugs or surgical techniques is subject to strict oversight.

 

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Scientists with tunnel vision concerning increasing food yields, preventing third world deaths and finding new ways to kill insects are a signficant part of our current global problems - they are not and will never be part of the solution.

 

They will acheive little more than bringing humanity to the brink of the inevitable crash of human civilisation (detailed in my post titled "Limits to growth" from Scientific American in "Earth Sciences") a little faster.

How can you tell which idea will lead to a cancer cure and which will lead to the death ray?

Not really, because the answers that religion provides me are answers that science will never be able to have, due to the nature of the questions. Either I take the answers from some form of religion or I believe that the questions are meaningless and without substance. I tend towards the former.

 

 

 

I don't mind being asked. The existence of a God, such as a God like the Judeo-Christian one that transcends all of reality, is unfalsifiable. That's what I mean by that.

 

Is the Bible falsifiable? Certainly. And this is why I know there are translation errors (statistical probability), bias errors (Council of Nicaea, King James, etc), incompleteness (unmentioned deuterocanonical texts, the Apocrypha), and the question of the authors of the various texts in the anthology (many, if not all, of the texts in the New Testament were written AFTER the named Authors had passed. The OT is rife with author credibility). All of these things lead me to believe the Bible is the work of flawed men. It is not the complete word of God. But it is the closest thing we have, in my opinion.

 

I reject many notions of the Bible as the work of primitive man. The OT is violent and bloodthirsty. Genesis is a fairy-tale. The entity that I believe in, Jesus, is a monumental figure in all three Abrahamic religions, and is accepted as a historical figure that existed. His divinity is what is in question. And I believe He was divine. Again, that is a personal opinion I have made after thinking over the situation for many a year.

I have to agree, Jesus was real, however insted of devine. I think he had a huge intellect and realised the only way to solve the problems of the day was to re-invent the excisting religion, around himself. In challenging the authorities, he new his death was inevitable and so wove this into the myth he new he was creating. A very great man.

I wrote this recently at another science forum. Thought it made sense to share it with you here:

 

In reality, economics IS a science. Hypotheses are formed and predictions are made, and we have real financial numbers and GDP and wages per person and debt ... etc... to see how those predictions fared when actually implemented. They're falsifiable.

 

The primary challenge I see with economics is that you're forced to deal with spherical cows. You must idealize certain actions since consumers (and humans, in general, really) do not engage the world as perfectly "rational actors" with access to all of the information needed to make the perfectly rational decisions.

 

When you approximate in this way, and approach the concepts with spherical cows instead of actual-shaped cows... Some errors will, of course, ensue... especially in an arena of billions of people making thousands of choices and decisions every hour (this, to me, is the central point... humans aren't always rational, so you cannot easily predict what decisions they will make, only look at trends and averaged responses).

 

 

In the 18th century, a fellow named Adam Smith published a book called Wealth of Nations that really turned economics on its head, and finally put some structure around these ideas in finance. Before this, all ideas essentially went back to ancient Greece and were a part of philosophy. Smith's work was frequently associated with Newton's work on gravitation. He called his approach a "Newtonian method" to economics, and asserted that (with availability of enough information) it might be possible to identify "natural laws of finance" comparable to Newton's laws of physics.

 

Interesting tidbit... Newton himself had expressed a similar view in his years. In Opticks, he said, "If natural philosophy in all its parts, by pursuing this method, shall at length be perfected, the bounds of moral philosophy will also be enlarged." Ultimately human minds, decisions, and actions are all parts of nature, and what Newton would call the study of moral philosophy. He was apparently interested in economics, too, and even wrote a paper on the subject himself.

 

Both men (Newton and Smith) thought that with enough information we could predict markets like we predict the orbits of planets or falling apples, as have countless others who devote their lives to this field.

 

I personally think they're absolutely correct, it's just that we don't have enough information regarding human decisions... Nor frankly do most humans have enough information about their own decisions that they themselves are making.

 

Then, John Maynard Keynes came along and added to the foundation set in place by Smith, and his ideas have withstood the test of time quite well. Some areas have proven inaccurate, but those few components have been rejected, discarded, replaced and supplemented, and neo-Keynesianism is our best current model, and the most accurate tool available for viewing today's markets when used correctly.

 

When people disagree with his work, it's disagreement based on ideology and personal political beliefs, not evidence or empiricism.

Isaac Asimov touched on this idea in his foundation series, psychohistory is an elaboration of this idea.

Most people put a "signature" at the bottom of their posts. I change mine quite frequently in response to various thoughts.

My first "signature" was a quote from the TV program "Bread" and was " The only good thing about getting old is that you don't have to give a bugger". Bearing in mind that I am quite old I thought it both apt and amusing. When I thought about it I decided it might be offensive to some of the members, so I changed it.

Another "signature" that I have used is a quote by US senator Daniel Moynihan "You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts". I chose this after a disagreement with a Staff Member as we clearly had different opinions concerning the word "opinion".

My latest "signature" is "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions". There is someone who knows who I am and how to read my posts. This signature is a form of explanation and also an apology. Perhaps I should add "There is no fool like an old fool"!

So - how much thought do you put into your signature and do you change it often?

Hadn't thought of having a signature, untill now. Watch this space...

People who are less competent are less able to assess their incompetence.

http://en.wikipedia....g–Kruger_effect

 

Of course, nobody is immune from fooling themselves.

Interesting read thank you

I suspect it does quite a lot of damage.

Unfortunately, here in the UK the government is planning to make it worse by removing one of the mechanisms by which such errors are found and acted upon.

 

For example Mr Cameron says "You've got to look at the quantity of rules – and we're cutting them back; you've got to look at the way they're enforced – and we are making sure that is more reasonable; we're taking self-employed people out of whole classes of health and safety regulation.

"But the key about health and safety is not just the rules, the laws and regulations – it's also the culture of fear many businesses have about health and safety."

from

http://www.telegraph...ty-monster.html

 

This is after the the guy who wrote the report

http://www.dwp.gov.u...tedt-report.pdf

that the same government commissioned said that "My overall conclusion is that there is no evidence for radically altering current health and safety legislation. This overwhelming view was expressed by a wide range of stakeholders including groups that represent employers. Furthermore there is evidence that work-related ill health and injury is itself a considerable burden on business (as well as a cost to society more generally) and that the regulatory regime offers vital protection to employees and the public."

 

I suspect that politicians are the last people to notice their own lack of ability.

I'm from England so I feel your pain...

I joined this forum because I thought I had a brilliant idea that should be shared with the science community. Sadly I was wrong but it did get me thinking, if I am unable to recognise my own incompetence, can anyone?If, for instance, a doctor miss' a diagnoses through lack of knowledge and is later correctly diagnosed. Would the doctor recognise his/her incompetence and seek the knowledge he/she lacks or would he/she simply shrug and say with a sheepish grin "oops missed that one" and carry on with the day. From what I have observed of human nature I would say the latter is most likely. In industry whistleblowing or flagging up incompetence is more likely to be met with hostility, than rewarded for the potential savings this act could make.

How much damage is this phenomena secretly doing to our society?

Where are the facts that prove this. Speculation if you ask me. I thought the term GLOBAL WARMING was dropped and replaced by the term CLIMATE CHANGE since they couldn't prove that it wasn't a natural warming period. The largest green house gases, from what I hear, is water vapor. What do you plan to do about that.

 

I say, take it as it comes. Whether it's man made or not, the cycle is already in motion. All we can really do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

 

Sorry for the off topic commentary.

 

 

I thought the second order was motion not necessarily acceleration. Or the state of going from static to acceleration. And the observer from the inside should still see a round ball. The outside world would turn elliptical to that observer. Is this a correct assumption or did I miss something?

Does it really matter whether the phenomena is man made or naturaly generated it does have a consequence for us so shouldn't we prepare for the worst?

Actually, I do not believe in the" evolution theory"; since the anatomy of our eye is the same as the one of a human lived 10000 years ago. So "evolution" has nothing to do with this topic.

Ok so why would the creator over design the eye?

No, you would have a hard time arguing that any Islamic nation was not religious. Also, if that were true then you would still have to explain why Islamic scientific discovery in that time was dominated by Islamic clergy.

I didn't argue Islam is not religious just that it's scientific community was at least equal to that of Christianity.

Throughout history psychologists have made some controversial claims. Until the early 20th century is was generally agreed that masturbation was harmful, resulting in male circumcision (still practised today) and even clitoridectomy. Black people were 'proven' to be mentally inferior to whites, justifying segregation and their mistreatment. Homosexuals were considered mentally ill and subjected to hormone therapy. How can we be certain that today's 'experts' are not simply justifying societies prejudices?

 

Despite great variation in age of consent laws (ranging from 18 in USA to 14 in Germany) most experts consider consensual sex to be inherently harmful to persons under the age of consent, even teenagers a few years below these arbitrary age based laws are considered 'victims' when they have consensual sex with adults. What evidence leads psychologists to conclude that sex is harmful to pubescent and prepubescent minors? What studies support the criminalisation of consensual sex with persons under the age of consent?

 

In the same way that African children labelled 'witches' start to believe they are genuinely evil, children labelled 'victims' start to believe they have been harmed i.e. a 14 year old having sex in the USA may see themselves as a 'victim' after the arrest of their adult partner and subsequent therapy sessions, while Germans of the same age might not (as 14 is legal). Clearly therapists can influence how minors view their sexual experiences.

 

Obviously young people need to be protected from exploitation and harm. Small children are not physically capable of having penetrative sex with adults, however not all sex acts involve penetration. In many cases sex is criminalised despite the consent of partners, use of contraception and lack of physical/mental harm. Can anyone provide me with relevant information explaining why consensual sex with minors is harmful and why? Are there only moral reasons justifying the criminalization of sex with pubescent and prepubescent minors, or does tangible evidence of harm exist?

I have experience in this area having a very young girl make very very obvious sexual advances, just short of acually asking me to have sex. She is very atractive and I was very flattered but how could I? It did however get me thinking. Why should this have been wrong? As previously stated sex doesn't have to mean penetration. She clearly wanted to explore her sexuality. so why would it have been so wrong for me to allow her to do so?

Actually, I do not believe in the" evolution theory"; since the anatomy of our eye is the same as the one of a human lived 10000 years ago. So "evolution" has nothing to do with this topic.

Your belief is quite irreleveant here, but even if your statement, that the eye hasn't changed for this period of time only establishes the fact that need is necasary for evolution to work.

 

I am here to point out that if you believe that Christianity was a great hindrance on science, especially in the age of Galileo, then you really need to explain why Christian nations dominated the scientific fields in that time while more secular nations fell behind.

 

 

 

Islam has a reasonable claim to that status, at least enough so to invalidate this statement.

Yes, I agree with your second sentence.

 

I disagree with your last sentence. I, and many other theists, do not care if a good idea challenges this magical hierarchy that you speak of. A good idea is a good idea, regardless of its origin or ramification on those who believe they are fit to lead.

Surely this depends on the moral attitude of the leader, I believe, from your reply that you have a good moral compass. Given that this is my opinion of what a good moral is. If the leader in question has a corrupt moral outlook then, I believe, he/she would use any method he/she could find to suppress any ideas that could challenge their leadership.

Certainly,

 

 

 

Every atom in the universe does not occupy a different energy level, that is not the Pauli Exclusion Principle. The Pauli Exclusion Principle says that no two fermions can occupy the same state simultaneously. Here the word "state" is in the quantum mechanical sense of the word, meaning the quantities that describe the condition of the fermion at a moment in time.

 

It is perfectly acceptable that two fermions (electrons are the best known non-composite example) can have identical energies, however they will differ in some other way with respect to their states. For example, two electron could have identical energy and be in different locations, or could have different spins.

 

Changing the energy of one atom or electron will not in fact change the energy level of every other atom in the universe. If this were so, spectroscopy in general would be impossible.

 

Sorry, I may have have come across a bit discouraging. I'm just trying to be direct and tone is hard to convey in text so...don't let me discourage you from pursuing your ideas. Just make sure you have sufficient background knowledge before attempting to create a hypothesis.

 

Some of the mathematics behind the Pauli Exclusion Principle is a bit hairy but there is some low hanging fruit out there that I believe is easily accessible for anyone. I encourage you to go and find a book that suits your level of desired depth and level of mathematical prowess.

Thanks you've been very helpful. Could you reccomend a suitable book that is around the 3rd/4th years degree level please.

What do you mean "the public was not outraged"? It hit mainstream news all over the world (at least in the Netherlands, it was frontpage on most news websites). Millions of people commented on it (almost all negative about the police).

 

The last thing "the public" should have done was to be even more outraged than that. They were quite outspoken, but remained calm and peaceful.

 

The next thing "the American public" should do, is use their democratic rights to get some changes. But looking at the way the elections in the USA are developing, I think that "the public" thinks that is one bridge too far. The large majority of "the public" will probably vote for the two ruling parties. If they do, I think we can blame "the public" for being stupid and screwing itself. If the US was not a democracy, we could blame a dictator. But it is a democracy, so the public have nobody to blame but themselves.

 

And obviously also that policeman for being an idiot.

Your completly correct. Unfortunately democracies greatest asset is also its greatest enemy.

Then your idea is dead at the start. Go read a book on elementary quantum theory.

Thank you for destroying this hypothesis, I'm afraid I really don't have the time or means to read books easily. Could you please summarise the reason, just to finally rid me of this question.

Thank you in advance.

What, how do you get this idea from the simply notion that basically particles with mass can't occupy the same space simultaneously? That effect can even be observed in the macroscopic realm.

The fact, that every atom in the universe occupies a different energy level and that changing the eneregy level in one atom will change the energy level for every atom in the universe. This connectivety is what informs the idea.

First, we need to know :

1. Electromagnetic radiation:

The energy of photons, having properties of both particles and waves. The major wavelength bands are, from short to long: cosmic, ultraviolet, visible or "light," infrared, and radio.

2. Quantum:

The amount of radiant energy in the different orbits of an electron around the nucleus of an atom.

3. Quantum mechanics:

The theory that has been developed from Max Planck's quantum principle to describe the physics of the very small. The quantum principle basically states that energy only comes in certain indivisible amounts designated as quanta. Any physical interaction in which energy is exchanged can only exchange integral numbers of quanta.

Now, The visible light that we see, the x rays that dentists use, and the radio waves that carry music to our radios are all forms of electromagnetic radiation. Other forms include the microwaves which we use to cook food and gamma rays which are produced when radioactive elements disintegrate. Although they seem quite different, all types of electromagnetic radiation behave in similar ways. If you think about it, the shadows of our teeth that are produced by x rays and captured on special film are really not that different from our visible shadows cast by the sun. If x rays and light are essentially the same, why is one visible to our eyes and the other invisible?

We know that visible light comes in many different colors, like those we see in a rainbow. The colors can be understood by thinking of light as a vibration moving through space. Any vibration, or oscillation, repeats itself with a certain rhythm, or frequency. For light, every shade of every color corresponds to a different frequency, and the vibration of blue light, for example, has a higher frequency than that of red light.

It turns out that our eyes can only detect electromagnetic radiation for a relatively narrow range of frequencies, and so only those vibrations are "visible."

However, other forms of electromagnetic radiation are all around us with frequencies our eyes cannot detect.

If our eyes could detect very high frequencies, we could see the x rays which can pass through many solid objects just like visible light passes through tinted glass.

Originally, vibrations of light were thought to be somehow similar to water waves. The energy carried by that kind of vibration is related to the height of the wave, so a brighter source of light would seem to simply produce bigger waves. This idea provided a very effective way of understanding electromagnetic radiation until about 100 years ago. At that time several phenomena were found which could only be explained if light was considered to be made up of extremely small pieces or "wave packets," which still had some of the properties of waves. One of the most important phenomena was the photoelectric effect. It was discovered that when visible light shined on certain metals, electrons were ejected from the material. Those free electrons were called photoelectrons. It was also found that it took a certain minimum amount of energy to release electrons from the metal. The original vibration concept suggested that any color(frequency) of light would do this if a bright enough source (lamp) was used. This was because eventually the waves of light would become large enough to carry enough energy to free some electrons. However, this is not what happened! Instead it was found that, for example, even dim blue light could produce photoelectrons while the brightest red light could not. The original vibration theory of light could not explain this so another idea was needed.

In 1905 Albert Einstein suggested that this effect meant that the vibrations of light came in small pieces or "wave packets." He also explained that each packet contained a predetermined amount (or quantum) of energy which was equal to a constant multiplied by the frequency of the light. This meant that a bright source of a particular color of light just produced more packets than a dim source of the same color did.

If the energy, and therefore the frequency, of a packet was large enough, an electron could be freed from the metal. More packets of that frequency would release more electrons. On the other hand when the energy of a packet was too small, it did not matter how many packets struck the metal, no electrons would be freed.

This new idea explained all the newly discovered phenomena and also agreed with effects that had been known for hundreds of years. Einstein's wave packets became known as photons, which are somehow like indivisible pieces (like small particles) and also like vibrations. The discovery of this split personality was one of the factors that led to the theory of quantum mechanics.

Light from a lamp consists of photons. Why does the light we see appear to be reaching us continuously instead of in lumps?

Well, this is actually easy to understand by performing an experiment with sand. First, we need to fill a plastic bucket with sand and hold it over a bathroom scale. Next, we make a small hole in the bottom of the bucket so that sand will slowly drain out and fall on the scale. As more and more sand collects on the scale, we will see that the weight increases in an apparently continuous manner. However, we know that sand is made up of particles and so the weight on the scale must really be increasing by jumps (whenever a new grain of sand lands on the scale). The trick is that the size of the grains is so small that the individual increments by which the weight changes are too small for us to detect. The same thing happens with light, only in a more exaggerated way. If we look into a lamp (not recommended) there are billions photons reaching our eyes in every second, with each photon carrying only a small amount of energy.

Why would evolution over design the eye, evolution responds only to need.