Greg H.

So isn't this an act of faith then? After all, you are only believing the universe is 13.7 billion years old because someone in authority, whom you trust, has told you that it is. How is this different from a creationist believing that the Earth is six thousand years old because their priest or religious scholar tells them it is? You are both just taking the word of someone you trust.

The difference is the difference between accepting the word of someone who knows what they're talking about, and someone who does not. It's like taking medical advice from an 8 year old. Sure you can, but it's not really a good idea.

I think that's not as big of a deal as you portray. If you don't have a thicker skin than that you probably don't have the temperament to be a mod, and besides, that cop/mod wouldn't do the tasing. It would be another one, who is not involved in the fracas, if at all possible.

 

However, complaining about rudeness and then making a statement like that? Priceless.

You make a good point. Personally, I don't have the impartiality necessary to do either of those two jobs (moderate or police).

That was mere polite discussion about moderation. Don't get your panties in a knot over it.

As a friendly word of advice, telling a moderator not to get his panties in a knot when you're questioning the way in which they do their jobs - not a good idea.

That's a bit like punching a cop and daring him to tase you.

I am going to chime in with my own two cents.

Honestly, I don't give a crap if the moderators are flesh gobbling aliens from the planet Xeezelbrox 9 here to steal our souls and turn our bodies into cat food. An Internet forum is not a democracy of the members, it is an oligarchy run by the staff and admins. If anyone has a problem with a particular moderator or moderation of a particular thread, bring it up in the appropriate manner. The rest of us really don't want to read another bitch fest about it. If anyone dislikes the way the forum is run, feel free to unsub and move on to greener pastures elsewhere.

Thank you.

Can we now all get back to our regularly scheduled debating, already in progress?

In short, yes. Different calculators have different levels of precision.

FWIW, my TI-92 gives the same answer as the google calc.

Hi, thanks for replying.

 

 

 

Why can't the next frontier be breaking our addition to the next frontier? And...

 

Do we really have a choice?

Individually, we always have choice. As a species, I am not so sure. As for breaking our "addiction" to learning new things, it's hardwired into who we are. As a species, humans are as successful as we are because we continue to dig into the mysteries around us. I mean you think about it, if that were not the case, the Earth would "still be flat", the sun would "still orbit the Earth", and people would live to the ripe old age of 35.

How much knowledge is too much? Do we reach a point when the wise thing to say is, "We don't really need to know that, let's leave it alone."

I don't think that's part of human nature, to be honest. We're explorers at heart (maybe I'm romanticizing a bit here) and we're always looking for the next frontier. I don't know if that's something we can just ignore.

"The base for logic for almost 2000 years has been the logic of aristotle,"

Not entirely, it hasn't.

He got too many things wrong.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-bio/#H8

I'll admit Aristotle made some mistakes in his life, but then so did a lot of other people such as Einstein. That doesn't change the contributions Aristotle's propositions and his syllogisms made to modern logical thought, or that they served as an antidote to the sophistry so popular in his day.

We are not comparing apples and oranges as you state, we are trying to compare who influenced or impacted human history the most.

 

For example Jesus had a much more impact on human history than say Richard Feynman who was a great scientist.

I argue that the discoverer of fire and the inventor of managed agriculture (farming) had far more impact on human history than Jesus or his compatriots.

Actually we can still define a discrete A, even in the face of the idea that everything changes. The discrete line is that which changes separately from that things around it. If I remove the table from dining room, I can instantly see that it is a separate and discrete object from the chairs, because they are still there. If table = chairs, then they should all be in the same place. If I cut one in half, the others should suffer a similar fate - since they do not, I can rightly conclude that the one is separate from the others. Even at the atomic level, in order to say that these items form a single unit A they would need to undergo the same atomic changes at the same time.

The alive - not alive argument you presented makes no sense to me. On the one hand you are speaking of viruses, which are a kind of edge case to begin with, since they really can't even reproduce without other life to support it. For another thing, you talk about when is a human being considered to be a human being, which isn't the same argument. If you mean when is a human being considered alive, then the cells would be alive from the moment of conception - whether is counts as a person in the legal sense is a completely different matter.

Defining the idea of i is less concrete than it might seem, because it is inward facing, rather than outward. At the very least, I believe the concept of I can be said to include your consciousness and your physical body. After all, does not one think and the other do? And while there may be some debate of what happens to the consciousness after death, I think we can agree that the physical form, at least, ceases to function correctly once the consciousness has left it.

As for the argument of human and not human, human is only a stepping stone on the road from what we used to be towards what we will become. In another hundred thousand years we might not even be able to breed with our descendants, and they will have ceased being human. That does not mean we cannot define what it means to be human - genetically and morphologically.

In summary, I am failing to get how any of this refutes Aristotle's foundations of logic, and more specifically his syllogisms, which are as useful in discourse and philosophy as they are in math and the sciences.

I think that could be defended, if you would turn it around and say: "show me a human who never gossips". I don't think you can... but before we engage in such a discussion, we might want to clearly establish what "Gossip" actually means. To me it involves the following:

 

Gossiping is a way to gather information about all the social interactions in your social group, and especially those social interactions where you are not involved yourself. These can still be of significance to you. Proof/confirmation is hard to come by in this situation, so second hand information will just have to do.

 

Also, if you take gossip one step further, where it starts to resemble manipulating, you can use it to strengthen your own social situation, or rather weaken someone else's to your own benefits.

I could support that as a working definition.

You missed a lot of other crap, a whole lot of other pure unadulterated crap, that deserves highlighting. There would have been very little plain text left had you highlighted all the crap.

I know, but I only grabbed the ones that really jumped out at me.

The cited ages, mechanisms, and effects are completely wrong, but yes, the Moon's surface is of two different ages. The crust on the far side of the Moon is indeed much thicker than that one the near side, and the lunar mare (which only exist on the near side) are younger than the rest of the surface of the Moon, about half a billion to a billion years younger than is the Moon itself.

 

Taking a truth and twisting it into something completely different is one of the best ways to lie.

I did not know that. That's interesting. And that's why I love this forum. I'm always learning something new.

Here is another point of view. The Geological Map of the World, compiled by the French, second edition 2000, may be purchased on line. It speaks volumes. Rocky planets close to the Sun were robbed of hydrogen during formation, ultimately lacking gravity to hold hydrogen and helium in their atmospheres. These molecules move at escape velocity on Earth. Pluto freezes it as do comets and outer moons. Therefore, the water on our neighbours is scanty, on Venus as fuming sulphuric, and on mars a little ground water. Life on earth began in fissures, hot springs and pools. Cyanobacteria were the first prokaryotes to exploit CO2 and create O2, a significant evolutionary step, around 4000MYA. By 3900MYA stromatolites began a long domination of the shallow seas up to the Cambrian 550MYA or just prior. As today, they lived in highly saline conditions only bacteria can tolerate, seas that took 3500MY to almost cover the earth, in a seascape dotted with volcanoes and similar tectonic features. Protons from the solar wind, some from intergalactic space as cosmic 'rays', were burned by the O2 and O3 combined with the particle energies. Auroras, not well understood, most likely are significant water producers. Minerals released from rocks and dissolved included lower salts of today's ore metals, largely as banded iron formations. Rains as far back as 3900MYA had accumulated the salts in one great worldwide Dead Sea.

 

The crust slowly thickened by miles, thoroughly water cooled. The lithosphere slag that floated on the stardust thermite contains only traces of the core metals, but while lighter elements rose, heavy radioactive elements sank, and have been concentrating, like fuel rods pushed into a reactor. The dissipation of generated heat being compromised, rifts appeared, like the Great Rift Valley in Africa, or the Jordan Valley in the present. The latter is a continuation of the Indian Ocean mid ocean ridge, which almost separated Africa and Asia. The resulting Precambrian chasms, miles deep and sealed below with basalt, drained salty water, and the world became fresh water lakes, marshes and streams. The Cambrian explosion began in the fresh waters, and grazers evolved to largely eliminate the hundreds of miles of stromatolites, that had oxygenated to atmosphere. Prokaryotes symbiotically entered the 1000 times larger evolving eukaryotes to become chloroplasts and mitochondria, efficiently exploiting the oxygen environment in fresh water. In a few paleontological ages the Carboniferous saw club mosses 40 meters high creating 30% atmospheric oxygen. These 'trees' fell in swamps and so did not rot, but became our coal resources. All the early life forms of the Palaeozoic were, and still are today, fresh water creatures. Climate was very wet and quite temperate, shown by a series of ice ages. (Consider the surviving Ginkgo which gave the butterfly its shape and lifestyle of poisonous foods. Early reptiles, presumed to require cooling, had sails to navigate a watery world).

 

High O2 levels meant high water production. Through the Permian, the growing earth vented through massive lava flows, giant volcanoes, and massive rifting, and several mass extinctions preceded the greatest of all time, so far, for planet Earth. Two vast rifts joined around what is now the far side of the Moon. The Earth went pear-shaped, and dragged the centre of mass of the system into space. 245MYA the Palaeozoic Era ended with the extinction of 95% of species, and 50% of groups, and coral reefs did not reappear for millions of years. While many theories have been advanced to explain this event, none have so far been free of anomalies.

 

Surviving individuals, from dark corners of the world, restarted evolution for the Mesozoic, with very different Triassic creations. The jigsaw of continents today surrounded a globe 55% of the present radius (with a hole in the Pacific). But the largest ocean's mid-ocean ridge borders the land which rose on that side, and sank on the other about 10500 years ago, apparently unstable because of the throwing off of the Moon. This was the last ice age, and to many cultures from the Hopi Indians to the Australian Aborigines, a flood.

 

The launching has preserved the angular momentum with distance, so that the mares (seas) on the near side are all we can see from Earth. These flooded with lava after larger meteor strikes, the crust here being only 245MY old. The 4600MY old far side is more like 20 miles thick, and even the largest meteor strike in the solar system, topologically discerned, did not mare. It is pockmarked with craters and well hidden. Theia may be a myth (contrary to Theia of 'The Sorry Tale'), and if so, we can expect 20 times more meteor strikes than presently calculated. Chevrons from prehistoric tsunamis support a far greater rate.

 

The release of pressure from the Earth saw further rifting halted until the world began to flood again into the Jurassic, rifting beginning all our present oceans, and giant semi aquatic sauropods dominating the earth. As the oceans grew wider, the drier Cretaceous began, and many giants became marine animals. Some of these may still exist in lochs and in the Southern Ocean, especially if a Supernova caused the KT extinction. A dead plesiosaur was very likely that netted off NZ in 1977. Again, mathematically, volume determines cooling rate inversely, decreases to the cube or radius. Heat dissipation at the surface increases to the square, as does cross section to the solar wind.

 

There is no rock on the ocean floor other than basal and sediment . All Prejurassic rock is on the continents or under limestone where land has been submerged by pole shift (eg: The Bahamas sporting submarine stalagmites and the Nullarbor edging a limestone sea cliff, The Great Australian Bite). Evidence revealed by The Geological Map of the World indicates an exponential growth rate of the planet since the Jurassic, as it was discovered that ocean basins could be magnetically dated. Earth Expansion was covered by Scientific American, and the theory presented as Tectonic Expansion is championed by Australian Dr. Maxlow, whose articles may be found in Nexus. Refinements of the theory beyond geology (mathematics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, physics, palaeontology, etc. but not very specialised, life is too short) are my own. A pneumonic for the Palaeozoic Era might be "Can Other Scenarios Demonstrate Consistent Proof?"

 

This is some of the most ridiculous nonsense I have read in a very long time. The Earth went pear-shaped? The moon's surface is two different ages? This is pure unadulterated crap, and I would suggest you marshal some actual evidence to support your claims aside from a vague reference to a single map.

Those kinds of thing belong in the forum where people post speculations, not in the physics forums.

Agreed.

If you believe someone is doggedly responding with an answer contrary to the convention then they deserve to be neg repped...it is important in the science part of these forums for the benefit of layman like myself. I confess to being somewhat confused now to the true status of W/P Duality in the physics community today.

Not necessarily. If they're responding contrary to the mainstream of physics, I expect the bar on their evidence to be that much higher, but I don't automatically dismiss their claims unless, as pmb said, they are simply blatantly wrong, or putting forth arguments that have been repeatedly addressed and found lacking.

George Ellis says at the very beginning that current theoretical physics states there is no flow to time. His paper simply makes an argument for the flow. My point to you was that mainstream really does believe there is no flow.

 

And I know many physicists take the arrow of time seriously, but I don't. Time isn't linear in the sense you can draw an arrow extending from somewhere. Time is really all about geometry.

I understand that as far as the equations are concerned, there really is no direction in time. They are equally valid whether time moves in a positive direction or a negative one. I don't have the math skills to use the equations, so I'll borrow an example from Greene again. He says that, based solely on the math of the equations, it is far more likely that a partially melted ice cube sprang into existence from a state of higher entropy (for instance a glass of water) than from a state of lower entropy (a completely frozen ice cube).

The question he goes on to ask is - why do we never see this happening, if there really is no flow to time? You have to admit, the idea of an arrow of time is a compelling one.

So what makes you, personally, accept the idea it's not a good explanation for what we experience (with the proviso, of course, that what we experience is not always the best measure of reality, as quantum mechanics so forcefully teaches us)?

Here's an excerpt out of an online book I am reading

 

From: http://www.motionmou...t/download.html

I'll check that out - thank you again.

We just don't believe this is the case any more. One reason comes from relativity, if it is flowing, what is it flowing relative to? I will find you a paper which would shed some light on this perhaps.

 

Here

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0240

So I read the paper. Fascinating stuff, and it shows me that we still have a lot to learn about the deeper roots of the universe.

However, one of the ideas presented in this paper is not that time does not flow, but that time does flow, and that flow, as well as the arrow of time, are fundamentally tied into the universe at a quantum level.

Quantum physics introduces process, unpredictability, and an arrow of time: the flow of time is built into its deep nature

The author goes on to state that:

[O]ne should note that even when micro processes that take place are themselves time reversible, the actual even that happens occurs in one direction time...What actually occurs rolls on in a uni-directional way, even when the physics is time reversible.

Brian Green at least echoes the sentiment of there being a defined direction in time's flow in his book The Fabric of the Cosmos:

The arrow of time -- the fact that things start like this and end like that but never start like that and end like this -- began its flight in the highly ordered, low-entropy state of the universe at its inception.

Professor Greene goes on to say in the end notes for that section:

For example, why does electromagnetic radiation travel in expanding outward waves but not contracting inward waves, even though both are perfectly good solutions to Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism? Well, because our universe has low-entropy, coherent, ordered sources for such outward waves -- stars and lightbulbs, to name two -- ... [derived] from the even more ordered environment at the universe's inception...

Now, I grant that both the book and the paper are at least four years old. What prompted such a drastic shift in the mindset of the physics community between then and now to bring us to the conclusion that the flow of time does not really happen?

I was told there would be cake.

We just don't believe this is the case any more. One reason comes from relativity, if it is flowing, what is it flowing relative to? I will find you a paper which would shed some light on this perhaps.

 

Here

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0240

Thank you - I'll let you know what I think after I have had time to read it and digest the information. I appreciate the information immensely.

What if all the unknown elements disappear during the combustion process?

Then there would be a weight discrepancy between the original sample and the constituent elements left over afterwards. Nature, unlike mankind, does not try to fool you, or obfuscate itself. It may be difficult to understand or to believe, and it may not make much sense once you do understand it, but it's not deliberately concealing itself from scientific inquiry.

It doesn't need a mechanism. These things transcend ordinary mechanical things. Wheels and cogs etc. are just the inventions of man. Primitive contraptions.

I don't think you understand the problem. If I made a "proper" pyramid, and put a new, sharp razor blade within it, I would fully expect it to remain sharp - because nothing is happening to change the state of the blade and dull it. I would expect the same thing if I had no pyramid. In fact, I observe the same thing when I open a box of razor blades from my closet, pull out a blade that has never been used, and discover - amazingly enough - that it's still sharp. So in reality, with or without the pyramid, the razor blade remains sharp. So remind me again what you were trying to prove?

That's probably because there was a problem with his pyramid. Might not have been properly charged with energy. Or it could have been faulty and the energy could have escaped. Did anyone think to call in a pyramidologist to diagnose the fault?

I think it's time this discussion got broken off and moved to speculations.

I suppose the humidity comes from the sweat left over from the slaves who built the pyramid.

Really - and in a desert how did that minuscule amount of humidity last for a few thousand years? Oh, wait - I forgot, the pyramid did it.

Fortean Times.

He said reputable scientific journal. Not the pseudo-science equivalent of the National Enquirer.

The problem with Newtonian Mechanics views on time, is that there is no such thing as a flux (aka passage) to time. Time does not flow, as was once believed in the Newtonian train of thought.

 

Genuinely curious - what makes you say that?

You're right. I should instead set the flowers at the grave of our pleasantly demeanored friends mother.

This is really starting to get out of hand.

Please provide evidence.

 

 

 

Evidence that a sharpened razor blade will stay sharp if you don't use it? That's normally referred to as "Taking a new one out of the box and putting it in the razor." Please feel free to conduct your own experiments to verify the findings.

For the record, I am on the Mythbusters website right now. I am so pushing this idea for an episode.

I see no difference between my comments and those of other participants...they are mocking all time !!!!!

 

Yes, I laugh, may not I?. I think you have a nonpartisan vision of all this.

Obviously you missed the part where I asked if you had a point. Thus far, I fail to see one.