Strange

After a few posts, Luke Barber has been banned as a spammer.

Looks like some of our spammers are using bots to generate the text. This example amused me

I think that should have been "What forum section do you most often find your posts being wrongly moved to?"

conjurer suspend for a week for persistently posting above his level of understanding

Different populations, different survey methods, different questions among other things. For example, the Pew research was of American scientists. The Nobel Prize research included scientists and non-scientists from multiple countries. That alone makes any comparison meaningless.

Not exactly an ubiased source there

And, to confirm that the numbers from that long ago are consistent with a supposed correlation between intelligence and religiosity you would need to have data on the number of people in the general population claiming to be atheist. And do we even know that the clamed correlation existed in that period? For all we know, it could be a modern phenomenon. There doesn't seem to be enough data here to know: - If the correlation exists - How great the correlation is - How "religiosity" is defined and measured - How "atheism" is defined and measured - How "intelligence" is defined and measured - In which countries, cultures and time periods the correlation exists - How many people are atheist in different intelligence ranges in each country at each time period Therefore there is no way of knowing if the claimed 10% is expected, surprisingly high, unexpectedly low or even non-existent. Also important to note that religiosity and atheism are not opposites or even incompatible. How many of the Buddhists are also atheist (not believing in a god)? How many of those categorised as "Jewish" are just culturally Jewish but not at all religious (and the same could be said of other religious labels, to some extent). And so on and so on

What proportion of the general population (in the countries that those Nobel Prize winners come from) identify as atheists? Because if it significantly less than 10%, then that could be consistent with the claimed correlation. Another potential confounding factor is the fact that most of those studies (according to your last link) were done in the USA. Would the same hold in, for example, India where attitudes to religion or spirituality may be quite different. Also, is the relationship linear? For example, is the correlation between IQs around 100 and religiosity, the same as it is for IQs around 150? And is there a correlation between IQ and Nobel Prize winners? (It seems obvious that there should be but ...)

peaceworld has been banned as a sockpuppet of Ser. And now 5D-Math. (It's pretty amazing we are able to spot these sometimes.) And the, cleverly named, extradimension.

what-about-bob now also banned as yet another sock puppet.

Why do you find this unbelievable, when you have grown up with this perfectly normal experience? It is like saying "It's unbelievable that I can breath the air around me" or "It's unbelievable that I can hear the range of sounds that my ears are specifically made to receive" or "It's unbelievable that water is wet" or any number of perfectly ordinary things.

Also, the total force on the ground will be exactly equal to the weight. And the force of the ground on the person will also be equal to that. So Newton is redeemed once again.

But they didn’t know it was an explosion, then.

There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings in your post. Not sure how you define "recent" but the idea that stars explode dates back to about 1860, and was based on observational evidence (e.g. spectroscopy). It is a cycle in the sense that black holes are (mainly) created by supernova explosions. But that's t. It is pretty much a one way street. During their lifetime, stars are neither implosion nor explosion. They steadily "burn" hydrogen by fusion to create helium and, eventually, some heavier elements. That is a fairly stable process, until the star starts to run out of hydrogen. Then the energy from fusion is no longer enough to stop gravitational collapse. At that point, the star can implode and form a neutron star or a black hole, depending on the mass of the star. This is also an explosion, as a large part of the mass is blown away by the energy released. Black holes do not release energy or explode, unless they are really, really tiny. And, as far as we know, no such small black holes exist. That is not what a black hole is. Most appear to be formed from the death of stars. The really supermassive ones may have been created by direct collapse of large clouds of gas, but we don't really know yet. While it is is true that light will fall into a black hole and not escape, that is not from "every star they can see". Black holes are relatively small so the amount of light that falls into them will be minute, as a proportion of the light emitted by stars. Most of the growth of black holes comes from matter that falls in. Typically from stars or clouds of gas that get too close. A black hole can grow much larger than the star that formed it. Especially if it merges with another black hole, for example. There is, as far as we know, no limit to how large a black hole can get. So the answer to "what will happen" is ... nothing. It will just carry on absorbing any matter or light that gets too close. I am not aware that Einstein ever said anything about a wormhole to Narnia. Can you provide a reference? No. It does not come up against any sort of critical mass. Nor does it explode to create a solar system (if that is what you are suggesting). And to you. ! Moderator Note As you are not asking questions but making assertions (with no real evidence) I have to move this to Speculations. Please read the special rules associated with this part of the forum.

Maybe because that has nothing to do with free will. Oddly, you'll never see anyone who believes there is free will lie down in front of a train to prove their point, either.

I am very (I mean very) sceptical of Hameroff's ideas. They seem to be largely based on "consciousness is mysterious. quantum theory is mysterious. therefore they must be related" However, the idea of "backwards time referral of conscious experience" (haven't seen it described exactly like that before) is definitely real. One of the most well-known examples is the "stopped clock" illusion. When you first look at a clock that has a hand that moves every second (rather than sweeping smoothly) then it will often appear that the hand does not move for a couple of seconds. This is because when your eyes move (which they do very frequently) your brain fills in the gaps to avoid blurs or blank periods in your vision. But it doesn't just keep a "freeze frame" of the last thing you looked at (that would be too easy) it takes the first thing you see when the eyes stop moving and fills in your past experience with that. As a result, you get the period for which your eyes were moving towards the clock filled in with an image of the static clock. The brain has to do this sort of thing all the time; creating the illusion that what we are experiencing now is actually happening now. Whereas it actually happened in the past. Worse than that, the various sensations we experience "now" may have all arrived at the brain at different times and the brain has to make you think they all happened at the same time. For example, you pick up a cold drink: your brain gets the visual stimulus of touching the glass a few hundred milliseconds before it gets the sensation of "cold" from your fingers. But as far as you are concerned, the two happen at the same time. And that they are happening "now" rather than half a second ago. While the first sentence is apparently true. He second sentence is a complete non sequitur, as far as I can see. Just because we are not consciously aware of things that happen or that our brain does at the instant they happen, doesn't imply that free will does not exist. Even if my brain (i.e. me) does not let me know what is happening in real-time (because that would be a disconnected jumble of sensations which would be impossible to deal with) that doesn't mean that it is not my decision. My "unconscious" mind is still me, just as much as my "conscious" mind. Hmmm.... I wonder (warning: evidence-free speculation ahead) if a failure in the integration of different sensory inputs might be a factor in autism? It could explain the sensitivity to environments with lots of source of sensory stimulation...

I think you mean "If I have to tell you, I don't"

toolbox banned for being another tedious sock puppet. And now pittsburghj0e.

Limka has been banned as a spammer. If anyone thinks their thread “Struggling with Special Relativity” is worth keeping let us know and we can restore it. (The question was apparently copied from Reddit.)

The “fabric” metaphor often leads people astray in this regard. (And welcome back!)

This reminds me of a type of joke that was popular in the USSR as a way of commenting on state propaganda and the dishonesty of politicians: "I gave $1000 to a poor kid with cancer. Okay. I didn't give $1000. I gave $500. And it wasn't a poor kid, it was my nephew. And he doesn't have cancer, it was his birthday. But it's the same thing in principle." (I posted this earlier in the thread, but didn't want it to taken as a comment on anything going on in the thread, which I have not read, so I have moved it here.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan_jokes

But yours was deliberate. Mine was acausal.

I was going to say something similar. (But wasn't sure it was really necessary.) But I am amazed that a record by a black singer (in the 1950s) should be the first million seller. There're were other factors related to technology and culture that may have played a part. But I would have guessed Elvis, if pressed.

Today I learned that Harry Belafonte's 1956 album Calypso was the first album in the US to sell more than a million copies. Sadly, this is because Irving Burgie, who wrote most of the songs, died today.

I assume some (or all) of this is copied from the document. If so, it would be a good idea if you could make it clear which parts you have copied, perhaps using the Quote function. ! Moderator Note I don't think this belongs in Speculations - there is no science here. I'm not sure there is anything to discuss, but I will move it to The Lounge in case anyone does want to comment on it.