Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool.
Yep, that's the big bang theory alright, I'd know it in my sleep.
No they don't. They say that the existence of God is not the kind of question that science can answer. Science can't answer "is blue prettier than red?" either, but that doesn't mean it denies the existence of colors.
Maimonides postulated that you can't say anything definite about God; you can just negate what others say. "God is a material being" "No, he obviously isn't". "OK, God has no material qualities" "We'll, he can affect the material world, so I don't know about that...." (for quibblers, see also: the mind/personality is not a material item, but it can affect the material world) etc.That was a thousand years ago, but people still haven't tumbled to the truth of it.
Actual real life example: the toddler who watches a lot of DVDs (remember those?) and roughs them up to the point where they mostly have some short periods where they hang, before going forward; and finds that clapping her hands "makes the DVD unstick itself". That's 'will' in action. That kid knows that her will is driving the DVD to unstick, via clapping her hands, just as much as you believe your will drives you to read this post.
Of course, all the studies that show activity in the motor cortex before there is a corresponding activity in the frontal cortex, i.e. you start doing something before you decide to do it, and similar. All the subconscious and unconscious and so on activity that goes on; you can say there is an unconscious will, but that's starting to dilute the concept.
However, if you think about it, that does leave a place for.... not 'will' but 'won't'. The brain activates in the motor cortex first, then the frontal cortex, then the motor activity stops. The guy says "I decided not to do it". I'm not joking; deciding to overrule automatic/reflexive/unconscious type activity might be the entire sphere of our conscious control.
Will is one of those intervening variables Skinner warned against, because they are unobservable in themselves and add nothing to the model. "Humans have a 'will' and try to further it most all the time". What does this mean, as distinct from "Human behavior tends to be organized so as to maximize certain results and minimize others". How do we measure the will? By looking at behavior. How do we affect the will? By subjecting the owner of it to certain experiences. Is there any way to see the will directly? Well, I feel like I can see mine but that's not very scientific, but I can't detect anybody else's other than by their behavior, and I can't affect it other than by altering their experiences. So, what does the will gain me, rather than the behaviorist statement "Human behavior is strongly affected by their experience and involves positive emotion when the results correspond with the stated aim, and negative emotion when they don't" or similar. More specific "If you starve a person, it develops and strengthens in him a will to feed. We measure this will to feed by how much effort he will expend to gain the opportunity to feed, and see that it is greater when he is starved, thus the will is increased." vs. "If you starve a person, he will expend more effort to gain the opportunity to feed."
The will is the equivalent of those conceptual models of people which feature little metaphorical people who live in their heads and run the controls. Doesn't get you any further in explaining anything.
Time is a function of matter and energy, and changes thereof; as with other such concepts, it only exists as an explanation of observed phenomena that answer certain questions. As in, how many swings of a particular pendulum, or orbits of a particular planet around its star, or random disintegrations of a radioactive isotope occur between event A and event B? We generalize on that and call it time. But it's as meaningless without material stuff as the concept of velocity would be.
As Einstein (for instance) demonstrated, the concept of a universal time that extends throughout the universe independently is wrong, it's a local phenomenon, dependent on local parameters. As such, to think of it as some sort of universal metric that extends "prior" to the actual universe is meaningless.
Because God has no material form or component. It's trivially easy to prove that He can't, as every body who puts in the 20 minutes or less to figure out that demonstrates; it's the folks who confuse existence with material existence that get stuck there.
That brings up the interesting question, can something like a concept, or a Platonic ideal, or some such (Pythagoras' theorem, for instance) that exists in the theoretical universe exist before/after the universe? Of course, before/after has no meaning in the absence of matter, but let's say can it exist in the theoretical universe without the material universe? Or could you say "Pythagoras' theorem requires actual physical triangles for its existence"? that doesn't sound right either.
Ah, the obligatory/. cheap shot at religion, always good for a cheap +5 funny. You failed to complete the cliche though, there should have been a slam aimed at the GOP in there somewhere.
Good point here goes:
Isn't the Republican/Tea Party Congress the home of all the ANTI matter in the universe?
Yes. But that's why true wisdom/knowledge/whatever is the ability to estimate the amount and quality of your knowledge in any given field. Dunning Kruger and all that.
From my experience, engineering types overestimate their overall knowledge the most, followed by medical types, followed by science types, followed by artsy types. Don't know where business types fit in.
I've actually looked over most of that information and it isn't really auditable. Most of the raw data isn't actually raw for one thing. I've compared specific land site temperature data with their sources and they don't match perfectly. Which means the data has been filtered and modified to some extent. I have no information on how that was done and can't reproduce the filtration system.
Second, the methodology itself isn't fully stated to the extent that I can't take data, input into a system, and get the same output they're showing.
So... Thank you for your citation but I don't know if you've actually tried to click on any of those links or use them or verify any of them. What you have there is a giant list that looks impressive but I don't think its very useful in this discussion.
Understand, I'm not saying they're wrong because of that. Its just that the list isn't useful.
Someone sent me this link in this discussion and I just want as many eyes on it as possible.
Please give me your scientific opinion. Not your political one. Saying "I don't know this guy" or "this person has low social status in the scientific community" is a political evaluation. Its also ad hominem. Lets avoid classic logical fallacies. Do you have a scientific reason for dismissing the argument?
I find the argument to be interesting. I don't know if its valid. It guess that its probably not... but its very elegant nonetheless.
Are you saying that a hugely complex chunk of software which is not designed for high school students' iphones, but is operated by folks with advanced degrees who have been fooling around with them 24/7 for a couple of dectoades is a bit much for you to pick up on your own in a few hours? Surprised I am. Of course, the argument is that the climate is too complex for simple models; now it's that the models are too complex. But anyway, weren't you arguing a couple of posts ago that the code is kept private to conceal that it doesn't work, now all of a sudden you're not only not surprised to find it public, but you've enough experience with it to find it difficult and not well documented, from your POV.
Not sure how many of these are reachable behind the WSJ paywall. But I find it interesting how the WSJ publishes climate change minimizing articles in there "opinion" section and promotes them heavily on their site. At the same time also has excellent well written articles not as easy to find on the climate change in there hard news section.
Absolutely. Because of you think about it, captains of industry, the WSJ target readership, can't do their jobs on the basis of fantasy. And, they're not the type to form opinions by reading anybody's editorials anyway, so there's no confusIon for them. Whereas the guys who happily parrot the WSJ editorials here are not usually professionally confronted with reinsurance costs for meteorological disasters, or whatever the actual news item covers.
We haven't managed yet to put the relatively tiny amount of nice solid high level radioactive waste into a safe underground storage, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here regarding our ability to stash away 300 billion tonnes per year of carbon in the form of CO2 anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you an AI posting on Slashdot?
I'm not entirely sure anymore.
Easy. have you ever injured, or through inaction allowed to be injured, a human being? No? uhoh, you're one third there already......
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state, Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait... The Earth began to cool. Yep, that's the big bang theory alright, I'd know it in my sleep.
No they don't. They say that the existence of God is not the kind of question that science can answer. Science can't answer "is blue prettier than red?" either, but that doesn't mean it denies the existence of colors.
Maimonides postulated that you can't say anything definite about God; you can just negate what others say. "God is a material being" "No, he obviously isn't". "OK, God has no material qualities" "We'll, he can affect the material world, so I don't know about that...." (for quibblers, see also: the mind/personality is not a material item, but it can affect the material world) etc.That was a thousand years ago, but people still haven't tumbled to the truth of it.
Actual real life example: the toddler who watches a lot of DVDs (remember those?) and roughs them up to the point where they mostly have some short periods where they hang, before going forward; and finds that clapping her hands "makes the DVD unstick itself". That's 'will' in action. That kid knows that her will is driving the DVD to unstick, via clapping her hands, just as much as you believe your will drives you to read this post. Of course, all the studies that show activity in the motor cortex before there is a corresponding activity in the frontal cortex, i.e. you start doing something before you decide to do it, and similar. All the subconscious and unconscious and so on activity that goes on; you can say there is an unconscious will, but that's starting to dilute the concept. However, if you think about it, that does leave a place for.... not 'will' but 'won't'. The brain activates in the motor cortex first, then the frontal cortex, then the motor activity stops. The guy says "I decided not to do it". I'm not joking; deciding to overrule automatic/reflexive/unconscious type activity might be the entire sphere of our conscious control.
Will is one of those intervening variables Skinner warned against, because they are unobservable in themselves and add nothing to the model. "Humans have a 'will' and try to further it most all the time". What does this mean, as distinct from "Human behavior tends to be organized so as to maximize certain results and minimize others". How do we measure the will? By looking at behavior. How do we affect the will? By subjecting the owner of it to certain experiences. Is there any way to see the will directly? Well, I feel like I can see mine but that's not very scientific, but I can't detect anybody else's other than by their behavior, and I can't affect it other than by altering their experiences. So, what does the will gain me, rather than the behaviorist statement "Human behavior is strongly affected by their experience and involves positive emotion when the results correspond with the stated aim, and negative emotion when they don't" or similar. More specific "If you starve a person, it develops and strengthens in him a will to feed. We measure this will to feed by how much effort he will expend to gain the opportunity to feed, and see that it is greater when he is starved, thus the will is increased." vs. "If you starve a person, he will expend more effort to gain the opportunity to feed." The will is the equivalent of those conceptual models of people which feature little metaphorical people who live in their heads and run the controls. Doesn't get you any further in explaining anything.
Time is a function of matter and energy, and changes thereof; as with other such concepts, it only exists as an explanation of observed phenomena that answer certain questions. As in, how many swings of a particular pendulum, or orbits of a particular planet around its star, or random disintegrations of a radioactive isotope occur between event A and event B? We generalize on that and call it time. But it's as meaningless without material stuff as the concept of velocity would be. As Einstein (for instance) demonstrated, the concept of a universal time that extends throughout the universe independently is wrong, it's a local phenomenon, dependent on local parameters. As such, to think of it as some sort of universal metric that extends "prior" to the actual universe is meaningless.
It's contingent causes all the way down.
Is God on Facebook, and will He/She friend me?
You of course have faith that the universe exists, existed previous to this instant, and will continue to exist for at least a bit in the future.
Because God has no material form or component. It's trivially easy to prove that He can't, as every body who puts in the 20 minutes or less to figure out that demonstrates; it's the folks who confuse existence with material existence that get stuck there. That brings up the interesting question, can something like a concept, or a Platonic ideal, or some such (Pythagoras' theorem, for instance) that exists in the theoretical universe exist before/after the universe? Of course, before/after has no meaning in the absence of matter, but let's say can it exist in the theoretical universe without the material universe? Or could you say "Pythagoras' theorem requires actual physical triangles for its existence"? that doesn't sound right either.
Yeth, they are mentally thick.
You realize how many people believe there is a dark side of the moon? Even ones who haven't heard the song?
And don't forget the tomatter. In antipasto, of course they use anti-tomatters. Wow, I"m getting a lot of mileage out of the one bad joke.
Once I was in an Italian restaurant, and accidentally mixed the pasta with the antipasto. Lucky to have survived.
Ah, the obligatory /. cheap shot at religion, always good for a cheap +5 funny. You failed to complete the cliche though, there should have been a slam aimed at the GOP in there somewhere.
Good point here goes: Isn't the Republican/Tea Party Congress the home of all the ANTI matter in the universe?
Use the Kobayashi Maru solution.
Yes. But that's why true wisdom/knowledge/whatever is the ability to estimate the amount and quality of your knowledge in any given field. Dunning Kruger and all that. From my experience, engineering types overestimate their overall knowledge the most, followed by medical types, followed by science types, followed by artsy types. Don't know where business types fit in.
Apathelligent
If you use aVR headset, you can replace the entire car as you dont have to physically go anywhere, and get infinite mpg.
Why do you object to a carpool lane?
What? Oh, in that case never mind.
I've actually looked over most of that information and it isn't really auditable. Most of the raw data isn't actually raw for one thing. I've compared specific land site temperature data with their sources and they don't match perfectly. Which means the data has been filtered and modified to some extent. I have no information on how that was done and can't reproduce the filtration system.
Second, the methodology itself isn't fully stated to the extent that I can't take data, input into a system, and get the same output they're showing.
So... Thank you for your citation but I don't know if you've actually tried to click on any of those links or use them or verify any of them. What you have there is a giant list that looks impressive but I don't think its very useful in this discussion.
Understand, I'm not saying they're wrong because of that. Its just that the list isn't useful.
On a side note, what do you think of this:
http://theendofthemystery.blog...
Someone sent me this link in this discussion and I just want as many eyes on it as possible.
Please give me your scientific opinion. Not your political one. Saying "I don't know this guy" or "this person has low social status in the scientific community" is a political evaluation. Its also ad hominem. Lets avoid classic logical fallacies. Do you have a scientific reason for dismissing the argument?
I find the argument to be interesting. I don't know if its valid. It guess that its probably not... but its very elegant nonetheless.
Are you saying that a hugely complex chunk of software which is not designed for high school students' iphones, but is operated by folks with advanced degrees who have been fooling around with them 24/7 for a couple of dectoades is a bit much for you to pick up on your own in a few hours? Surprised I am.
Of course, the argument is that the climate is too complex for simple models; now it's that the models are too complex.
But anyway, weren't you arguing a couple of posts ago that the code is kept private to conceal that it doesn't work, now all of a sudden you're not only not surprised to find it public, but you've enough experience with it to find it difficult and not well documented, from your POV.
"They make a point now of not sharing the details of the models with people. That would concern you if you had any intellectual curiosity."
Well, that is bullshit of incredible intensity. Just for curiosity, who exactly told you that? You presumably won't have any injection to sharing that data with us.
In return, I will share with you this thing called Google, with which I was able quite rapidly to find:
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/fms
http://mitgcm.org/public/sourc...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://www.nemo-ocean.eu/About...
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/re...
http://forge.ipsl.jussieu.fr/i...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://www.cesm.ucar.edu/model...
http://edgcm.columbia.edu/
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/f...
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/H...
There's more but I'm tired of cut and pasting. You would be able to find these also if you have any intellectual curiosity, but them you might have to doubt the sources of your info on how bad the climatology people are, and how they're hiding the code to conceal that out doesn't work, and that maybe the models do run and give outputs, ave before you know it the foundations of you whole world view are shaken.
Not sure how many of these are reachable behind the WSJ paywall. But I find it interesting how the WSJ publishes climate change minimizing articles in there "opinion" section and promotes them heavily on their site. At the same time also has excellent well written articles not as easy to find on the climate change in there hard news section.
Opinion piece attempting to poison the well before the report was released.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
Fact based real reporting article published today.
http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
Absolutely. Because of you think about it, captains of industry, the WSJ target readership, can't do their jobs on the basis of fantasy. And, they're not the type to form opinions by reading anybody's editorials anyway, so there's no confusIon for them. Whereas the guys who happily parrot the WSJ editorials here are not usually professionally confronted with reinsurance costs for meteorological disasters, or whatever the actual news item covers.
We haven't managed yet to put the relatively tiny amount of nice solid high level radioactive waste into a safe underground storage, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here regarding our ability to stash away 300 billion tonnes per year of carbon in the form of CO2 anytime soon.