...running for office. Start small: maybe school board or city council. It's something you could do without letting go of the career you already have. I don't know where you live, but where I come from, most of the successful politicians started off with other careers and then did political work in the evenings. They didn't have to quit their day jobs until they were well-established in politics.
It might not be your kind of thing, but it would be pretty different from what you do now, it's low risk (financially), and you'd be working to make the world a better place. (Believe it or not, that IS the reason most politicians get started.)
It drives me nuts too. LEARN TO SPELL! Is it just my imagination, or is spelling on the Internet getting worse every year? I think people see each other's horrible spelling mistakes and get more confused. It's embarrassing for education systems; kids are supposed to be learning to distinguish between common homonyms in about the fourth grade.
I don't think it's philosophical, in that sense, at all. Any theory worth its salt should show how fundamental behaviours arise naturally from the way things are, like evolution arising naturally from imperfect genetic copying- i.e. mutation- and natural selection. If it doesn't, then while it might be useful, it's probably not an accurate model.
Take gravitation: there's a difference between knowing that objects accelerate toward the center of the Earth at 9.81 m/s^2 or that the force of attraction between two masses is proportional to the mass of an object and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects, and knowing that gravitation is caused by the curvature of spacetime. Matter and energy don't just agree, throughout the universe, to follow certain rules. Particles don't have minds, they just are what they are. They behave in certain ways because that behaviour arises naturally from what they are. So what they are is the same thing as why they behave the way they do, which certainly is what most physicists are after.
All this stuff about gravity and electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces, and now the whole dark energy thing... it's starting to remind me of those old models of the cosmos with the Earth in the center and all the other planets, moons and stars going around it on zillions of complicated little circles. Is this what the search for a "grand unified theory" is all about? Can anyone recommend any good books on the subject?
But isn't that the same as the four fundamental forces? We can't explain how those exist either... can we? I mean, we know a lot about how they behave and all that (or, more accurately, how they make matter behave), but as far as I know we don't know why they work... other than gravity, which is supposed to be warped spacetime, but is also supposed to be identifiable in the form of... gravitons? The fundamental forces just plain work, so we study them and accept them as a part of our reality. (Or is there something I'm missing?) Has it ever been proposed that dark energy (as the cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe) might simply be a fundamental force that acts on a very large scale, or am I way off the mark here?
I'm really confused by all this.
I wholeheartedly agree. Lots of foods are getting worse and worse as manufacturers continue to "improve" them. When consumers want food that's made from normal edible ingredients, we end up having to buy at it twice the price from an "organic" store. I feel like some kind of weird fringe hippie walking into those places. What makes it so hard for food manufacturers to sell actual food? Why is there so damn much corn syrup in everything? It's disgusting!
There are four known forces in the universe, the weak and strong nuclear forces are short-range, while the electrical and gravitational forces are long-range, which means they will produce interactions everywhere in the universe.
What about dark energy? As I understand, it's more contentious than electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But, isn't it widely enough accepted these days to merit inclusion in that list of the known forces of the universe? I'm really asking, here. I'm curious. Does anyone know if dark energy is generally agreed to be one of the fundamental forces of the universe these days?
Religion is more than silly. It's dangerous. Religious people burn "witches", wage holy wars, spread misinformation, naively give their hard-earned money to corrupt church officials, refuse medical treatment for themselves or their children (sometimes resulting in death), obstruct scientific progress that could benefit all of humankind, and blindly leave their fates (and/or the entire world's fate) in the hands of an imaginary being when they should be taking action.
Intelligent design has no credible evidence supporting it whatsoever, its logic is circular, and it's unfalsifiable. Evolution is as valid and well-supported a theory as gravity. I am astonished and horrified that people in the developed Western world- in the most militarily powerful country in the world, at that- would even briefly consider teaching intelligent design in high school science classrooms or removing evolution from high school science curriculum. Evolution is as close to a fact as any concept can get. Intelligent design is as far from a fact as any concept can get.
I don't think this is silly. It doesn't amuse me. I'm horrified and disgusted.
For goodness' sake, didn't you people read what I wrote? My spouse and close friends know what I think of religion. It's the OTHER people on my contact list that I would be worried about.
And, I don't lie about my non-faith. I just try not to insult people.
I'm relieved that I don't use Reader. If I did, I would probably have been sharing atheist and NSFW articles with my spouse and some close friends. I work in politics, and if that stuff had gotten out to other people on my contact lists, my career would have been over. I don't trust Google anymore.
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...running for office. Start small: maybe school board or city council. It's something you could do without letting go of the career you already have. I don't know where you live, but where I come from, most of the successful politicians started off with other careers and then did political work in the evenings. They didn't have to quit their day jobs until they were well-established in politics. It might not be your kind of thing, but it would be pretty different from what you do now, it's low risk (financially), and you'd be working to make the world a better place. (Believe it or not, that IS the reason most politicians get started.)
It drives me nuts too. LEARN TO SPELL! Is it just my imagination, or is spelling on the Internet getting worse every year? I think people see each other's horrible spelling mistakes and get more confused. It's embarrassing for education systems; kids are supposed to be learning to distinguish between common homonyms in about the fourth grade.
I don't think it's philosophical, in that sense, at all. Any theory worth its salt should show how fundamental behaviours arise naturally from the way things are, like evolution arising naturally from imperfect genetic copying- i.e. mutation- and natural selection. If it doesn't, then while it might be useful, it's probably not an accurate model. Take gravitation: there's a difference between knowing that objects accelerate toward the center of the Earth at 9.81 m/s^2 or that the force of attraction between two masses is proportional to the mass of an object and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects, and knowing that gravitation is caused by the curvature of spacetime. Matter and energy don't just agree, throughout the universe, to follow certain rules. Particles don't have minds, they just are what they are. They behave in certain ways because that behaviour arises naturally from what they are. So what they are is the same thing as why they behave the way they do, which certainly is what most physicists are after.
Wow, this is really interesting stuff. Thank you so much!
All this stuff about gravity and electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces, and now the whole dark energy thing... it's starting to remind me of those old models of the cosmos with the Earth in the center and all the other planets, moons and stars going around it on zillions of complicated little circles. Is this what the search for a "grand unified theory" is all about? Can anyone recommend any good books on the subject?
But isn't that the same as the four fundamental forces? We can't explain how those exist either... can we? I mean, we know a lot about how they behave and all that (or, more accurately, how they make matter behave), but as far as I know we don't know why they work... other than gravity, which is supposed to be warped spacetime, but is also supposed to be identifiable in the form of... gravitons? The fundamental forces just plain work, so we study them and accept them as a part of our reality. (Or is there something I'm missing?) Has it ever been proposed that dark energy (as the cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe) might simply be a fundamental force that acts on a very large scale, or am I way off the mark here? I'm really confused by all this.
I wholeheartedly agree. Lots of foods are getting worse and worse as manufacturers continue to "improve" them. When consumers want food that's made from normal edible ingredients, we end up having to buy at it twice the price from an "organic" store. I feel like some kind of weird fringe hippie walking into those places. What makes it so hard for food manufacturers to sell actual food? Why is there so damn much corn syrup in everything? It's disgusting!
What about dark energy? As I understand, it's more contentious than electromagnetism, gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But, isn't it widely enough accepted these days to merit inclusion in that list of the known forces of the universe? I'm really asking, here. I'm curious. Does anyone know if dark energy is generally agreed to be one of the fundamental forces of the universe these days?Religion is more than silly. It's dangerous. Religious people burn "witches", wage holy wars, spread misinformation, naively give their hard-earned money to corrupt church officials, refuse medical treatment for themselves or their children (sometimes resulting in death), obstruct scientific progress that could benefit all of humankind, and blindly leave their fates (and/or the entire world's fate) in the hands of an imaginary being when they should be taking action. Intelligent design has no credible evidence supporting it whatsoever, its logic is circular, and it's unfalsifiable. Evolution is as valid and well-supported a theory as gravity. I am astonished and horrified that people in the developed Western world- in the most militarily powerful country in the world, at that- would even briefly consider teaching intelligent design in high school science classrooms or removing evolution from high school science curriculum. Evolution is as close to a fact as any concept can get. Intelligent design is as far from a fact as any concept can get. I don't think this is silly. It doesn't amuse me. I'm horrified and disgusted.
For goodness' sake, didn't you people read what I wrote? My spouse and close friends know what I think of religion. It's the OTHER people on my contact list that I would be worried about. And, I don't lie about my non-faith. I just try not to insult people.
I'm relieved that I don't use Reader. If I did, I would probably have been sharing atheist and NSFW articles with my spouse and some close friends. I work in politics, and if that stuff had gotten out to other people on my contact lists, my career would have been over. I don't trust Google anymore.