EquisDeXD

Religion, especially at a church gives a very positive social feedback (usually), you spend time with other people, you act nice to people, people act nice to you, and without some god to say "you go to hell if you do...", it seems harder for non religious people to have a reason to do something like that, not that you always need to be nice, but I think it's an explanation.

After looking at all the posts and after weighing all the evidence at points at once, I still stand by that it's not impossible, but it seems improbable to the point where I might as well be defending that aliens did it, so I'll drop the case.

When we make a measurement of a physical phenomena, we can only do so by taking advantage of an attribute inherent in the phenomena itself. For instance, we use a rod to measure length. The rod has markings that allow us to measure lengths that are within its boundaries. We use a voltmeter to measure electrical potential differences between two points. The voltmeter uses attributes inherent in electricity and magnetism to make its measurements. This leads us to measurements of time as provided by a clock. All clocks use oscillations of known intervals to measure time. This can be demonstrated in the fact that a sun-dial uses the oscillations as provided by the rotation cycle of the Earth, grandfather clocks use pendulums, and light clocks bounce light between two reflective surfaces. There are many more mechanisms that clocks use to measure time, such as oscillations as provided by crystals, but the point is that they are all based on mechanisms that oscillate. Oscillation in itself is motion and, more specifically, it is motion that repeats with a specified frequency. It is because time can only be measured with motion that motion must be inherent in time. The same statements are true for motion through any other spatial dimension. We can use oscillation to measure our speed along the x axis the same way a speedometer uses the oscillations of the vehicle's wheels to measure the speed of the vehicle. But, if the vehicle always had a constant velocity along the x axis, then we could also measure physical processes in the vehicle in relation to the vehicle's x position. However, we have the freedom to change our speed and direction along the x axis, making this pseudo-temporal dimension unordered. The physical nature of time seems to be one where motion is the only attribute inherent in the phenomena and it is restricted to moving forward along the temporal dimension.

I'm a little thrown by your use of the word "oscillation" and the word" speed". Units of time arbitrary progress one at a time to the next number according to whatever unit we use, time doesn't oscillate any more then the dimension of "width" oscillates. Which brings me to my next point, which is that not all oscillation is the intuitive physical motion you'd expect. We have no physical knowledge of a photon before we measure it, it's oscillation is only modeled in terms of it's probability or the uncertainty of it's field, a photon by the dimensional analysis of it's mathematics does not have physical components which oscillate with any sort of velocity like rippling a piece of paper, and neither does time. Things can oscillate, but the oscillation doesn't have to take place with physical dimensions, other properties of particles can oscillate as well, properties that are not as physical.

If time is motion no different than motion in other spatial dimensions, then how can we expect to time travel to a past that only exists as a memory or to a future that will exist as a memory? We would have moved away from this point in time and would have not made it to a point in the future. If time travel was possible, then I would have to currently exist at all points in time from birth to death. This is because if I could time travel, then it would not be possible for me to take the mass-energy of the entire universe with me and arrange it the way it was back then or will be in the future. Plus, this behaviour is not true for any other spatial dimension. I may have existed at location zero on the x axis, but I am no longer at that position. I have moved on and when I go to visit location zero on the x axis, I find that it is not that same as before. There is always something different such as new cars in the parking lot. Furthermore, If all things exist currently at all points in time, then wouldn't the past and future attract gravitationally? Time may not flow linearly but surely we only exist at a given point in time and not simultaneously at all points. From this view I suggest that time travel to a memory of the past or to a memory that will exist in the future is impossible. However, traveling to a point in time that is parallel to ours may reveal a new view of our universe. These temporally displaced universes would move through time at the same rate as we do, except they are ahead or behind us along the temporal dimension. We could fast forward or rewind time in all instances and show that each universe would have its own unique history, etc... But I have not taken GR into account, so I am looking for people to disprove this view or support it and perhaps we all can learn something to the nature of time.

Contituting time as motion doesn't make sense, relative physical motion is modeled as a change in position over time, so you'd have a change in the position of time over time, when time doesn't have any spacial position to begin with. Also, with quantum statistics takes care of all this "memory" and determinism business. Essentially, no observed result that occurs can be though of being based on previous results, which means you can't mathematically have the future be determined in any way, and it more or less supports that there's no memory of the past since the direct results of the locations of particles were not based on those previous results. Instead, you have the probability of particles, and the probability clouds of those particles can change or transform different spacial coordinates, but where you actually see something end up is still randomness.

I can see that you think of time as a coordinate that, when it changes, other matter changes in response to it, which is true in a way, but there's still properties of time that make it different than other dimensions and make it so distinguishable that we give it it's own name, so that it doesn't change exactly like other dimensions. So when you mention that "all things exist currently in all points in time", or base assertions on it, I just think of the quantum statistics. With all this in mind, I think you need to revise the theory and distinguish between boundaries of physical dimensions and non-physical ones.

Evolution favours survival. So, (specifically referring only to humans) why must we die?

Because after processes of the the ends of Chromosomes shortening, the aging process happens, and over time the body functions less and less at it's optimal capacity. However, this only becomes a problem at ages 30-40+ in most cases, and humans reproduce before that, so the genes that cause the aging process survive.

What is the point of (Nature, God, whatever) creating the most advanced, most complex organism in the universe and then killing it?

Nature isn't some mystical force, the other animals aren't any more aware of a point to anything than you are, nature is just the culmination of our physical world.

I can understand deaths through random events, predators microscopic and macroscopic, but I fail to see the point of ageing, an unnecessary and cruel process that deliberately leads to death.

Nature is not a conscious thing, therefore it cannot have the capacity to care about anything or have an opinion about anything.

Visible light, I presume, is a photon product. And since photons have no mass or charge, how are they affected by gravity? Black holes don't allow photons to escape, and light is "curved" when passing a large body toward Earth from a distant star, etc. So how can a mass-less unit be affected by gravitational pull?

Light still has relative mass, and energy distorts the fabric of space as well. A photon has energy, energy is effected by curvature, and energy is a part of determining the photon's frequency and magnitude.

Or for reasons that don't seem right to you.

Well I wouldn't suggest it unless to me they didn't seem right from my perspective.

As I look around at the responses to your posts, the reasons become clearer.

The responses to my posts on one or maybe two topics I suspect, I doubt you'd make the same assertion if you actually analyzed the total posts in all topics I've posted on.

The fact that you can ask this shows how inconsistent you are with our purpose.

But if making a sock puppet is against the rules, and you have evidence for it, but I potentially have evidence against it, what's suppose to happen?

Our universe might be horn shaped if you think of it in four spatial dimensions...

Horn shape? I've only heard of a torus in 4d. How does a horn shape come about?

I am sorry but I don't seem to be able to understand what points you are trying to make.

Maybe I wasn't understanding the point you were trying to make. Were you saying that scattering from gas would cause certain objects to not be visible, and thus we wouldn't measure as much mass because the light didn't reach us? Because there's also different frequencies of light which filter through different materials gas. Infra-red light for example passes through most of the interstellar dust directly to the telescope, which is why scientists use it to peer into the center of the galaxy and look at Saggitarius A. With different combinations of light filters, they can determine the amount of stars using infra-red rays, and determine the amount of stellar gas using optical and ultra-violet rays, but despite that we still don't have an explanation for the apparent mass and lack of visible matter, there has to be matter that exists which is not made out of the same stuff as stars or gas, like singularities and neutronium at least, and/or dark matter.

I think there's two sides to this argument: At the current population, would it be more unethical to let many people starve to death if we didn't farm animals? But at the same time if people hadn't been doing it in the first place, society would have already been based on getting a food supply from not mass-producing meat, and the population wouldn't be as high as there would not be as many resources for the population to expand it's use to.

Might be worthy of note that though he is not a moderator, John Cuthber is in fact a staff member (denoted by the two stars inside the blue bar).

 

By the way, "starmanning" is that thing you do in Mario games where you become invincible for a few seconds .

Well, I didn't see a mod-warning, it's it's probably because no staff with the ability to put a warning has a strong enough case for it, and if he however doesn't have that ability, then he didn't fit under the definition of who I thought a staff member was. I thought staff members and people who had experience in a particular area were separate, but I guess there's the term "moderator".

There's just too much rubbish to respond to all of it.

Here are the edited lo lights

"So why are you trying to say that just because one explosion makes a perfect circle at a predicable angle that all explosions do that?"

I didn't say that.

Straw manning is banned by the site rules and you have been warned before.

Saying I'm starmanning is strawmanning, no staff member asserted I was doing such, your basing your claims that it can't be an explosion in the ground on the basis that there all explosions have to generate some deep circular hole, like ones you see in completely flat terrain.

"But the oxygen is merely what inhibits critical density. If critical density of the isotope was achieved, there is a chance for the reaction to occur."

No, there's neutron absorption to take into account too. Oxygen isn't bad on that score but the other isotopes of uranium and it's decay products are.

That's already a given, if the oxygen wasn't a problem the critical density would already exist and there' be no point discussing it.

You say the incoming meteor has to be massive enough not to completely disintegrate, but light enough that it can completely disintegrate.

That's absurd but in any event, it's nothing like as serious a constraint as the fact that the uranium needs to be 15Kg.

Well if you support the fireball theory, then you need to accept that a meteor can have just the right mass.

"I don't know if it didn't leave any hole, "

So it didn't happen at ground level.

How do you get "it definitively happened at location x" when I said "I don't know"?

That kills the idea of tectonics and it also leads to the question of what might have triggered some insanely improbably 15Kg lump of uranium to cross the cosmos and get part way through our atmosphere then blow up before it hit the ground.

You can have 15kg of 235, but it doesn't have to all be in one chunk, the critical density can theoretically be formed after compression which allows the super-critical mass to travel for quite a bit, and there not being a hole like typical meteors or nuclear devices in flat terrains in no way kills the idea.

"I'm not the one who's going around saying things like "there's a lot you don't know..."" A straight statement of fact. Would you like to argue that it is false?

If you can base from my knowledge from what your perspective is a lack of info specifically on nuclear physics, I should logically be able to say there's a lot you don't know because it doesn't seem like you have much knowledge of computer science or graphic design and so I could say there's a lot you don't know by the same exact standards. Either everyone knows a bit because there's always something that someone else knows that you don't, or no one knows a lot because there's practically infinite information, and no one could ever attain that amount of knowledge.

What is this.. the 13th thread in recent months about people complaining about the rep system? Funny how its usually people making threads in spec forum who complain the most.

I created one or at most two spec topics, and commented on many more.

How many people actually care about a users rep when reading a post? I hardly even notice this feature when reading threads.

If it's lasted this long, then that means people care about it, though I don't think for the right reasons.

I still don't understand exactly what it measures, if peopel can agree that it doesn't measure accuracy, what is it doing here? and why hasn't someone banned me yet to see if I can unban myself like I said I had the capability to do?

Just as well that nobody said you did need 100% then isn't it (or was that another attempt at a strawman)?

"Any impurities in the fissionable material will act as a neutron damper". "Any impurities" implies you need 100% 235.

How do you propose to get that?

The critical mass can exist well before the event, 235 has a half life of over 703 million years, but the critical density necessary to sustain the reaction could in theory be formed by chance through compression if enough 235 isotopes were in close enough proximity to each other for the reaction to sustain. Perhaps there's more ways, but I theorized such compression could happen in a meteor or through tectonic movement.

Completely incorrect.

 

Any impurities in the fissionable material will act as a neutron damper, and a fission reaction will never be able to sustain itself.

 

Given that we've been building atomic bombs for over 65 years, this is not a matter of conjecture.

I've thought about that, the neutrons would end up hitting extra oxygen molecules from air pockets or that they would hit non-235 isotopes, but that's when there isn't the critical density, you don't need 100% pure 235 for a reaction to occur, and I was actually researching this myself before I mentioned compression, you don't need 100% 235.

I try to NOT give negative reputation on anyone's OP. That's just my personal policy, though. I don't think there are any bad subjects to bring up, although it's possible I may have marked down someone who was opening a thread with some copypaste creationist garbage that's been refuted a few hundred thousand times.

Try banning me right now, and let's see if you can do it. It's a pretty good deal for you, because if I fail you won't have to hear from me again, and if I do it, I don't gloat.

Also, evidence for the topic right here

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69026-theory-if-everything/page__pid__702434#entry702434

Someone got marked down for some misunderstanding probably due to pop science shows exploring string theory and saying scientists are trying to unit the 4 fundamental forces of nature which is an understandable, and then someone makes a joke and get's upped.

""High degree of purity" so we've established pure doesn't mean 100% 235."

No, but for isolated systems that is impossible. What are you saying provides the coupling?

Tectonic compression isn't part of the ore deposite. You have crystals that form, like diamonds in a volcanic eruption, or from when gas cools, and in those situations, there's higher disorder to lower disorder. Are those isolated systems?

Plants grow- in doing so they take very disordered CO2 and make very ordered cellulose, but they take a lot of energy from the sun to do it.

What are you proposing as the mechanism for isotopic enrichment?

A proposed mechanism is the compress from kinetic energy outside the ore deposit, or in the case of the meteor, from out space.

I already said it was the last time I'd explain the fact that you can't get an earthquake above ground, and if it's not above ground you get a crater.

You can get a changed landscape, but you don't automatically get some nice circular hole that seems to exactly fit some kind of semi-sphere when the shockwave wouldn't necessarily be transferred to create such a formation.

That's what proves that it isn't tectonic activity (along with the impossibility of isotope separation and the fact that it's too slow...)

If the ore compresses enough, the isotope doesn't need to be "filtered", the 235 isotopes are in close enough proximity for a neutron to happen to strike a 235 isotope which is close enough to other isotopes that are close enough to others for the reaction to continue.

And, finally...

"It what manner am I going against documented facts? "

You said

"You suggested it after I had already laid down the basis for how it worked."

Well, I didn't suggest it and it was not suggested after you had said anything about it.

So, what you said is different from what is documented here on this site.

Did you not realise that?

The site documented it? The site got footage showing it was a fireball? The site sent a team of scientists to analyze the area? The scientist conducted experiments with meteors and compression showing it was impossible? What is documented on the site about it being impossible?

About the only thing you have got right is that Ophiolite makes sense. And as far as I can see, he disagrees with your ideas.

He may think they are impossible, but his evidence only shows the event is improbable.

Do you understand that not all crates can be described as "a distinguish-ably perfect semi-sphere. "

And the ones that can't still have distinguishable characteristics of a crater, such as some kind of basin, and there would be lines running down from the lip to the center from the shock wave spreading outward and the rock resisting the shock wave and buckling after a certain point to create those little "streams". There's craters that look like lakes now, but they look like lakes because of hundreds of thousands of years, not because of 14,000.

You can say it's improbable all you want, and I'll agree with you, but not that it's impossible without some kind of concrete evidence that shows physics needs to be violated.

Thanks, that's why you sound familiar. You're questionposter, and Steevey (who you created to give yourself more rep points the last time you argued against the rep system).

I have no previous account on this site, and if I created multiple accounts I would change the ip address every time, so you wouldn't be able to match them up with any existing account. I can prove this to you if you want, I can make another account with a different ip address and pm you, assuming you'd let me break the rules to do it.

If the system is so bad, why do you use so many underhanded methods to make yourself look better? If this site is so horrible, why do you keep creating more users every time you get yourself banned?

There's point #1, and not only that but if I got banned I should theoretically be able to unban myself using a slightly different method, so I don't think would ever have that problem unless the account itself got deleted.

How about this: Any staff member, ban me right now, I'll see if my theory on unbanning will work. If it does, I have some evidence for my case, if not I don't care and I'll stop bothering you, I have 4 other places that I debate random things in-between assignments.

1

to get an atomic explosion you need to get the right uranium isotope to a high degree of purity.

"High degree of purity" so we've established pure doesn't mean 100% 235.

That's a low entropy state and will not arise spontaneously. If you think the concept of entropy is on your side then you have not understood it.

But your not even understanding that that's what the problem with your point is, the point is that density isn't entropy and doesn't have anything to do with it in this situation, just because heat likes to spread out doesn't mean it's impossible for matter to go from higher disorder to lower disorder.

What, you want me to tell you again?

OK, but this is the last time.

You say there's no crater.

In order not to leave a crater, the explosion needs to take place at altitude.

Yep, in order to leave a "crater", there was no crater, but that doesn't mean an event couldn't have happened becvause A, there's rough terrain, so essentially anything that doesn't look like a nearly perfect semi-sphere that a meteor would leave wouldn't necessarily be distinguishable from the landscape. There is no reason to expect a naturally occurring nuclear blast would create a distinguishable hole, unless it was on very flat land.

You keep saying it's possibly due to tectonic action.

Practically speaking that means you need an earthquake thousands of feet above the ground.

No, it means tectonic movement can compress the ore, it doesn't mean an Earthquake can occur in the air, I don't see how it does, it doesn't in any way imply that an earthquake can happen in mid-air.

I didn't really suggest it.

That's weird, because you sure like to bring it up.

Ophiolite suggested it here

http://www.sciencefo...ty-in-the-past/

post number 4 October 10th.

Why are you trying to make assertions like that which go against the documented facts?

It what manner am I going against documented facts?

Ophiolite brings up a good point, what he's saying matches up with the fireball theory, and if that's what he was referring to, then I apologize to him, though I'm still not clear on his mention of the impact crater. There's no impact crater, no basin, the Indus valley isn't a very flat place, so if there was a naturally occurring explosion, we shouldn't expect it's shockwaves and thermal energy to be directed in a a perfect circle that would create a distinguish-ably perfect semi-sphere. As far as the radiation goes, what he's saying makes sense too.

That's an easy one to answer. If the 10 words point out why your 2 paragraph post is simply wrong then they do clearly contribute more to the site.

Incidentally, that's also part of the reason behind the reputation system.

It gives newcomers some chance to judge the quality of a post, based on others' past experience of the poster.

There could be instances as the one you described, but if you read my whole post, you'd see that there's also instances where someone could do something as completely useless as only make a joke, and get marked up. I know how to change my ip address to create different accounts so that staff members couldn't tell it was the same person, having use to design websites myself and studying server and client sided programming I think I can pull it off, if I thought the marking system ore reputation had a any value for anything, my reputation wouldn't be in the negatives, and if I did abuse it yours definitely wouldn't be so high, which brings up another point that someone could potentially abuse it.

Also, "It gives newcomers some chance to judge the quality of a post, based on others' past experience of the poster."

If they are newcommers, how can they judge past experiences?

"I'm pretty sure I never said that, " Not in so many words, but your claim of a natural atom bomb requires that to have happened (and quickly too).

And how exactly does what I said mean that uranium needs to that? Your a chemistry expert, you should know what entropy is, and since you probably do, that means you just aren't paying attention to my posts well enough if you suggested that I said such a thing.

Yes, there's the tectonic compression which you somehow believe happened at an altitude of several thousand feet.

Show me the proof that I said that. I read every post and I can't seem to find it.

" I still suggested it could have been a normal meteor in a way no one else even bothered to research, i.e. the fireball. "

Actually someone else suggested that and you sought to deny it- remember that stuff about craters?

You suggested it after I had already laid down the basis for how it worked.

"Yep, I said there was no hole, and the only problem with that your saying is there's absolutely no reason to expect one in an uncontrolled nuclear event "

So, what you are saying is that there's a nuclear explosion, severe enough to melt the surface of a fairly large area but that it doesn't leave a crater.

Well, it doesn't leave a very recognizable one unless it happened maybe in a completely flat area.

Most people will recognise that as absurdly unlikely.

There is a way to do it. If you have the explosion take place at altitude.

Most people probably read more slowly so they can accurately analyze.

"Not all explosions happen the same."

Nobody said they did.

So why are you trying to say that just because one explosion makes a perfect circle at a predicable angle that all explosions do that?

The oxygen in the ore (which is what I actually wrote) has nothing to do with the oxygen in the local air.

There are different types of uranium ore, but they all have other things in them which would stop the material exploding, in particular, they all contain oxygen.

http://en.wikipedia....ranium_minerals

though there's nothing special about oxygen - anything would do.

But the oxygen is merely what inhibits critical density. If critical density of the isotope was achieved, there is a chance for the reaction to occur.

"I don't think that just because it's entertaining that it means it's false."

No, but the fact that it's plainly wrong means it's false.

You can't say they're wrong even about the aliens, you can only say that aliens are improbable, you seem to not like the word "improbable".

"There's only evidence that it's improbable, not that it's impossible."

in your other thread someone made the point that surviving a 25000 foot fall is improbable, but swimming across molten lava is impossible.

You need to understand that the idea you are talking about falls firmly into the latter category.

"It doesn't need to be pure, we're not building a nuclear device"

Yes it does, because, yes we are.

No,we're definitively not, a nuclear device has several processes to make it which I don't know if they can even occur in nature.

You might want to look at that again.

I looked at it again. What of it?

But anyway, the constraint for uranium is much, much stronger. The mass needs to be 15Kg.

Yeah, I keep saying I know it's improbable.

It didn't leave any hole of any shape. that's the problem. It only makes sense if it went bang a long way up and you have yet to explain how your earthquake did that.

I don't know if it didn't leave any hole, it's a rough terrain, but it didn't leave an apparent impact crater because there's no lowered level of landscape in a circular fashion that has a basin.

"Public opinion doesn't matter"

Not about science, but it does about trolling.

I'm not the one who's going around saying things like "there's a lot you don't know...", that's all you.

"But your spreading the wrong information that it's impossible, not improbable, yet your posts aren't marked down."

Trust me, if I was spreading false information, not only would I get marked down but lots of people would leap in and correct me.

Swan actually is credited with physics and not even he could definitively say it's impossible, you wouldn't get marked down because no one actually knows if it's impossible or not so no one could correct you, which defeats the purpose of your arguing because your not proving it either way and no one can back you up because there's no evidence to support that it would actually break physics.

Have you noticed how it is your ideas that they seek to correct?

http://en.wikipedia....93Kruger_effect

Such as...when I'm debating that science isn't a complete fraud? When I"m debating that beliefs don't constitute science? When I'm debating that in modern physics that particles don't have classical trajectories? You mean those ideas where the OP believes science is wrong? Topics where I'm discussing matters and concepts that only the smartest people in the world could hope to fully understand? Yeah, I have noticed.

So you're saying what? Uranium 235 can crystallize out and become pure enough to fission?

I'm pretty sure I never said that, I implied that it's possible for there to by chance to be a higher mass or concentration of 235 because it's not determined that everything always goes from a state of order to chaos, sometimes it can go the other way around.

You are suggesting that several times in relatively recent history a uranium meteor, somehow made mostly of uranium 235, has struck the earth and exploded leaving a layer of nuclear glass... is that about right?

 

Are you thinking this through?

There's also tectonic compression, and I still suggested it could have been a normal meteor in a way no one else even bothered to research, i.e. the fireball. Atomic blasts definitely leave glass behind from the melted rock, so there's a justification for stating it's possible to have happened since it isn't proven it's impossible to happen.

Quantum number l, the angular momentum of the state, is an interpretation about the mathematical solution of Schrodinger equation of the hydrogen atom. As resonance equation, l is the parameter to describe the sub-vibration overlapped on main orbits, l=0 means there is no sub-vibration.

 

I disagree your comment about my new model of the hydrogen atom, because the atomic, molecular, and solid-state structure problems are about the interactions among moving charged particles, they should be solved by electromagnetics. My works just had done it, and I believe it is better than else.

If you can mathematically prove that your mechanics yield the same results at least 90% of the time as the other equations do, you'll still have to get in line behinf Heisenberg and Schrodinger and Dirac and Hamilton and Bhom and ect. There's already wave mechanics incorporated into a large part of quantum mechanics. The main difference between your theory is that your trying to introduce a "causation", even though there's no observed motion for trajectories between energy states.

By our statistical observations, we never measure the direct "velocity" of an individual electron in the nano-meter realm, it's physically impossible because we measure electrons at a point at an instantaneous moment in time, the only data we have for the physical manifestation of an electron is where it appears, and it never appears to move, it only appears as points according to it's probability.

Magnus effect.

The fabric of space can certainly bend twist, but there's no eddies, it's not a fluid, it's current description is of a network of quantized higher dimensional mani-folds.

The only complaints we ever get about the system are from people who've earned negative reputation.

 

 

 

In fact, you're starting to sound familiar.

I only have a few, but still neutral so I don't mind. In any case, your statement doesn't logically justify either that it shouldn't be on here because this is a science forum, if someone is a staff member it is already implied their posts are credible for their area, and your statement also doesn't logically justify that they aren't just emotional decisions. Someone could just make a funny comment, and it could still plus marks even though it in no way helps the OP and does it in no way pertain to the topic. If it was up to me, all of them would be 0. In short, the reputation system isn't a logical justification for the accuracy of it's holder. I make comments all the time that are accurate or can help the OP understand something better, no plus marks, and this doesn't happen with just me, but with most members, so I don't see what purpose they really have. They obviously don't measure how accurate someone is, they obviously don't distinguish between a staff member and non staff member because there's already something that does that, what are they doing here? What is a purely opinion based system doing being integrated into a science forum is something I don't understand. It also doesn't make sense with religious people either. I'm atheist, and I'm debating in all sorts of craziest ideas, but it still doesn't make sense to me when things religious people get marked down because of a misunderstanding or a belief. They obviously have a very strong belief in something, and some little debate isn't going to effect that much. I bet I could have a Ph. D in a subject and if I didn't tell the site, I wouldn't get as many plus marks, and if that did happen it would be strong evidence that the decisions are emotionally based, because actually that happens even with me, where I see a post and I want to mark it up because it seems to all fit well that a staff member said such a thing, though I never do, they don't really need any more.