Strange

FIFY

[jokey comment deleted, because it would just be an excuse for SB not to refute the argument]

You have said this before but never provided any support. It isn't true of the people who make and use models. This is one of the problems with your argument, you state things that are obvious and that everyone knows as if they were some great new insight that only you understand. Nonsense. Your using a computer and a worldwide network that are only possible because we are not completely ignorant. I had no idea that you were (mis)using the word in that way. It is a ludicrous thing to do. Especially by someone who bangs on about the meanings of words being important. Once again, if you insist on using non-standard definitions for words, people will misunderstand you. (Even if you define that when you say toast you mean banana.) I suppose we could substitute every word in the thread title for a different one so it would make sense. Er, yes. That is exactly what I said. It is not relevant whether we can prove it is infinite (did you miss the "if" at the beginning of the sentence). But if we can't prove that, then we probably can't prove it is finite, either. And, while irrelevant, Cartesian geometry has not been used to describe the universe for nearly 100 years. Time to catch up! This is plainly not true by the definition of infinity: a value larger than any real number. But perhaps what you are trying to say is the cardinality of the reals dwarfs the cardinality of the integers? But I doubt it because that would require mathematics. He is from "the other thread". Oddly, he disagrees with almost everything you say but here he sympathises with a fellow "underdog". So you agree that the thread title is incorrect. I suppose that is small step.

OK, I can see those are two extreme points of view but I don't see what Darwin has to do with it (I assumed you were talking about evolution, or something).

Distance and time are equivalent measures of the seperation of events (in space-time). If you think distance is "substantial" (a pretty unconventional use of the word) then so is time.

There's a fence?

Distance has no substance or interaction, but can be altered simply by moving.

From http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21522: The blog post is worth reading for some funny comments regarding ambiguity.

Very helpful. What is a star^5?

What is it about climate change deniers and this Gore character? I gather he is some sort of ex-politician, so why does he get all the attention instead of looking at the science?

Did you miss the fact that that is a straw man argument?

Another example, related to one of your first examples, is the existence of Neptune. This was purely hypothetical (i.e. a model) as an explanation for the perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. There could have been alternative models to explain the data. Now, with hindsight, we know that Neptune exists and is the cause of the observations. (I am assuming that we can agree that Neptune does exist. And we are not going to get into a debate about how we can really ever know anything, the unfalsifiability of solipsism, the nature of knowledge, etc.)

Good question. There are many ways that a neutrino can interact with an atom. In some interactions (neutral current) it will just impart some momentum to the atom. I don't know if this could provide enough energy to break a chemical bond. (I doubt it but ...) Other interactions can stimulate changes to the atom as a form of beta decay. This can release a positron, which will interact with an electron and release a gamma ray. This could cause some damage to cells. However, the effect is insignificant compared to the radiation from other sources all around us. For example, about 5,000 atoms of potassium decay in your body every second (http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/faqradbods.html). So the neutrino flux is not something you need to worry about. Bananas and brazil nuts are much more dangerous.

As far as I can tell, no one other than you has said that. I think that is a classic example of a strawman argument. Edit: cross-posted! You will be pleased to know that I also find it as preposterous now as I did when you first came up with it.

This is a subjective judgement and therefore not science. It is also not very helpful because when there are competing theories that cannot be distinguished on the evidence then, not surprisingly, different scientists will favour different theories on the basis of taste, religion or personal preference. How does that help determine which is more likely to be true? Do you go on the basis of popularity? Is testing for truth then just a beauty contest?

It is orders of magnitude simpler to decipher assembly code (even though it is almost impossible, in the general case) but I can't see that you are doing anything other than making the problem more difficult, rather than impossible. By looking at the state of every transistor, you can identify the logic gates, latches, etc. From that you can work out the datapaths and control logic, from that you can work out the instructions executed and the data operated on, from that you can piece together the assembly listing.

Even after agreeing to more general statements such as "people make mistakes", "not everything can be described mathematically", or "you can't calculate to infinite precision" he still seems to come to the conclusion that therefore "math is NEVER applicable to the real world". Which is just irrational.

That is because most science forums are focussed on science. You could try the "Space, Time and the Universe" forum set up and run by a number of people who left another science forum (with even stricter rules than this one) who got fed up with the restrictions on the discussion and speculation. http://www.spacetimeandtheuniverse.com/forum.php One of the most popular threads there right now seems to be on a math fallacy; a subject that would be closed down on many forums after the first post. You should be able to see for yourself that it is not a subttitle. Then I think you are reading things into it that are not there. So why are you posting here?

As you have no control over any of those things, just why are you here?

In what way does it imply that? The very fact that it is called "Speculation" implies to me that it is for people with imagination and new ideas. Can you quote some part of the description that implies what you suggest? Moderators will sometimes move a post if it is in an inappropriate place; for example, if you post about geology in the physics section. I don't see why moving a speculative idea to the section labelled "Speculation" should be considered disrespectful. Perhaps you could explain why you think it is. Do you have any evidence to support that view? (See what I did there.) In other words, you are wrong. Your opinion is completely unjustified. Of course. There have been many threads discussing scientific research that questions the big bang. I think I might have even started one myself (but that might have been elsewhere, on a similarly "strict" forum.) I have no idea what you are trying to say. All I said was, the fact that you own copyright in work you post here does not stop the owners of the site deleting it. You cannot insist that they publish your work. Copyright gives you ownership of the work; it does not give you the right to insist it is published. The owners of the site can choose what to allow and what to delete. It is entirely their choice. No, that is not what evidence means. I haven't said anything about you or your ideas. Because, as you say, I know nothing about you are your ideas. So I can't understand how I am "diminishing" you. I also haven't said that any specific idea is wrong, so I don't understand what you expect me to explain. You have not explained why sincerity matters more than evidence. However, sincereley someone believes the big bang model is wrong, the evidence is against them.

If you have access to the states of the machine, surely you can work out what program it is running. Either it is running an emulator or it is running something else (Life, accounting program, web browser, whatever). Maybe I am missing something, but I fail to see the problem. (Well, the problem is that it would be nearly impossible in practice, but ...) Imagine someone gave you an assembly code listing of a program and asked you what it was. It would be extremely difficult but you could, in principle, work out what it did. That is the same problem. Except that first, you would have to piece together the assembly program by tracing the instructions executed.

I suppose that if you are making up things like that, then the answers can be whatever you want. So the answers to Q1 and Q2 are yes and/or no.

But your original questions implied you had access to the internal states of the "outer" (host) machine, in which case one could tell it was running an emulation of another machine. If I have misunderstood, and you only have access to the states of the inner (emulated) machine then it is, of course, impossible to tell.

True. You would have to try and separate out the threads of different things being run. It would not be easy! But it is, in principle, always possible to find out what code a processor is executing.

We do exactly this all the time when designing new processors. And when you run a virtual machine, such as VirtualBox. The main way you can tell that it is an emulated processor is because it is slow! If you can see the sequence of states that the host computer is executing then you could, in principle, reverse engineer the code it is running and work out that it is running an emulator. (One clue might be that it is executing many more instructions than are in the program you give it to run.)