How is evolution or the big bang falsifiable in a practical sense..
Theoretically, it is not really that hard to imagine something that would disprove those. The big bang can easily be disproved by demonstrating that the universe is not expanding. This would however be almost impossible to show in reality, but only because you would also have to show that the enormous amount of evidence which shows the exact opposite is wrong, not because big bang is somehow inherently unfalsifiable.
How fast is the Earth moving through space? Not toward or away from Betelguese as in red and blue shifts of that particular star but just how fast are we moving through space in general. Can we look at one part of the sky and see everything red shifted and another part of the sky and see blue shifted and extrapolate the total speed from that (obviously we would need a series of measurements)? Do we know how fast the galaxy is moving, or even the speed that the sun moves around the center of the galaxy? For instance if I'm driving a car east at 60 mph, can we take all those factors, add them together and determine the total speed of me and my car.
One of the fundamental principles of relativity is the fact the speed is relative, which makes it meaningless to speak of something have a speed without also saying what that speed is relative to. The only thing that matters here is our speed relative to Betelgeuse.
Does that combined speed cause a time dialation effect (even a tiny one) on Earth? I know time and mass becomes distorted as you approach the speed of light, but I've never heard how steep that gradient is or if there is a lower limit. Would a hypothetical stationary cup of water cooled to absolute zero experience time differently then a similar cup boiling at 100 degrees (obviously the difference would be very tiny, but would it be there or is there a cut off)?
As a rule of thumb, relativistic effects (time dilation, etc.) can pretty safely be ignored at less than 10% of the speed of light. Here's a graph illustrating how time dilation increases with speed, if you're interested: http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/tdgraphformula.gif
If the universe is expanding in the sense that there is more space between all particles (this was how it was explained to me: that with each passing moment the distance between all particles increases as the fabric of space-time slowly expands) wouldn't the speed of light be slowly increasing (or decreasing) as well. Would a lightyear 600 years ago be the same as it is now?
The gravitational forces within a galaxy are more than strong enough to counteract the effects of the expansion of the universe, so the distance between Earth and Betelgeuse is completely unaffected by it.
Long answer: Dark matter wasn't invented just because someone saw some anomalous behavior that didn't agree with theory, and said to themselves: "Oh, there has to be something mysterious at work here, we'll call it dark matter.". There are several reasons for believing in dark matter, for example that when measuring gravity we notice gravity coming from directions where we can't see any matter. However, the source of this gravity behaves a lot like matter would. For example we can observe these "invisible gravity sources" being thrown around when two galaxies collide. Because these "invisible gravity sources" acts a lot like matter, except for the fact that we can't see it, it's called dark matter.
If you're not yet convinced, take a look at this recent blogpost by a professional astrophysicist: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/11/the_simplest_argument_for_dark.php
In this post, he basically explains how we can derive the existence of dark matter from: A) Assuming that the theory of general relativity is valid, B) assuming that the big bang theory is valid, and C) our observations of the cosmic microwave background.
That is history prior to Christianity. No where in the New Testament will you violence being condoned for the followers of Christianity to participate in.
After a quick search on the internet I found plenty of counter-examples to that claim. One example: "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." (Matthew 15:4). How is telling people to kill disobedient children not condoning violence? Perhaps you should try listening to you own advice:
you should at least research the facts before you make claims
What if you're just walking home one night and you notice a house with a window open and something valuable inside, so you decide to climb in the window and grab a few things? Not that I agree with the law, but there is a difference between what I described and carefully planning the burglary in advance.
The results, which he shared exclusively with TIME , represent the largest study of financial incentives in the classroom — and one of the more rigorous studies ever on anything in education policy.
I was under the impression that research like this gets published in peer-reviewed journals, not in newspapers. Saying the study is rigorous and what the results are won't do you any good unless it's actually possible for others to verify those things.
the fact that the Big Bang does not explain the state of existence at T(Big Bang) - 1. It does not explain creation
Neither does evolution, relativity, quantum electrodynamics, or any other scientific theory. Do you suggest we shouldn't trust them either?
Big Bang is not meant to explain creation, it simply explains that the universe was at one point very small and very hot, and explains how it developed from there. It does a very good job of explaining our universe based on the model that it was once very small and hot. It is in fact the basis for much of modern astronomy. If you're not convinced, try taking a look at some of the evidence.
Big Bang is a ridiculously strong theory, it's really hard for anyone to not "accept" it unless they do so based on ignorance.
If a guy tries to abide by a law he got busted for by looking at cartoon child porn instead of real child porn, my first reaction is to support him. Am I crazy?
Yes, but don't worry, the thought police is coming to help you.
The difference is the ease of making copies. Real books are difficult to copy, so if a library buys X books, they only have X books to lend. Digital books are very different: if you buy one, you automatically get the ability to make as many copies as you want. Is there a good reason to artificially enforce limits when the technological reason we had them in the first place no longer applies?
This is nothing like 1984. 1984 was about censorship and oppression, this is just paranoia. It probably happened due to a combination of the fear of terrorism and people's fear of technology they can't understand. Not they I don't think this both sad and slightly scary, but there are other things that can be wrong with society than trying to imitate 1984
an atheist is generally considered "one who believes that there is no deity" (from my dictionary and from what I can tell most dictionaries seem to agree with that definition)
Atheism is often used to mean "not believing in a god", and many who call themselves atheists use that definition. There are of course different degrees of atheism, some atheists believe that there is no god, some see the existence of a god as possible, but very unlikely, and some just don't believe in any particular god. You could argue that only the strongest form of atheism is "true atheism" and use other names for the others, but it is often useful to group all these together, and atheism is usually the word we use to describe that group.
Actually, text-based books would not directly compare to open source, because you need to know the language they are written in, and be literate in that language.
How is this different from open source? Open source does not mean "easily understood by anyone".
Maybe this is Nintendo's way of helping them. Instead of ignoring them, they shut them down and gave them a lot of attention they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
The point is that the big corporations could get their copyright as long as they want as long as they think the copyright is valuable enough. Right now we see Disney constantly getting copyright extended so they can keep Mickey Mouse from becoming public domain, but the only way to do that is to extend copyright on everything. With this new system they could decide the length of the copyright based on how important the work is to them. That means we can let them have 70 years of copyright on Mickey, but only 7 or 14 years copyright on most other things. Much better than today's system where we have to have ridiculously long copyrights on everything so Disney protect one important work.
Slashdot Mirror
How is evolution or the big bang falsifiable in a practical sense. .
Theoretically, it is not really that hard to imagine something that would disprove those. The big bang can easily be disproved by demonstrating that the universe is not expanding. This would however be almost impossible to show in reality, but only because you would also have to show that the enormous amount of evidence which shows the exact opposite is wrong, not because big bang is somehow inherently unfalsifiable.
Really? So ten lying witnesses are better than one truthful one?
No, lying witnesses don't give you information.
How fast is the Earth moving through space? Not toward or away from Betelguese as in red and blue shifts of that particular star but just how fast are we moving through space in general. Can we look at one part of the sky and see everything red shifted and another part of the sky and see blue shifted and extrapolate the total speed from that (obviously we would need a series of measurements)? Do we know how fast the galaxy is moving, or even the speed that the sun moves around the center of the galaxy? For instance if I'm driving a car east at 60 mph, can we take all those factors, add them together and determine the total speed of me and my car.
One of the fundamental principles of relativity is the fact the speed is relative, which makes it meaningless to speak of something have a speed without also saying what that speed is relative to. The only thing that matters here is our speed relative to Betelgeuse.
Does that combined speed cause a time dialation effect (even a tiny one) on Earth? I know time and mass becomes distorted as you approach the speed of light, but I've never heard how steep that gradient is or if there is a lower limit. Would a hypothetical stationary cup of water cooled to absolute zero experience time differently then a similar cup boiling at 100 degrees (obviously the difference would be very tiny, but would it be there or is there a cut off)?
As a rule of thumb, relativistic effects (time dilation, etc.) can pretty safely be ignored at less than 10% of the speed of light. Here's a graph illustrating how time dilation increases with speed, if you're interested: http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/tdgraphformula.gif
If the universe is expanding in the sense that there is more space between all particles (this was how it was explained to me: that with each passing moment the distance between all particles increases as the fabric of space-time slowly expands) wouldn't the speed of light be slowly increasing (or decreasing) as well. Would a lightyear 600 years ago be the same as it is now?
The gravitational forces within a galaxy are more than strong enough to counteract the effects of the expansion of the universe, so the distance between Earth and Betelgeuse is completely unaffected by it.
Long answer: Dark matter wasn't invented just because someone saw some anomalous behavior that didn't agree with theory, and said to themselves: "Oh, there has to be something mysterious at work here, we'll call it dark matter.". There are several reasons for believing in dark matter, for example that when measuring gravity we notice gravity coming from directions where we can't see any matter. However, the source of this gravity behaves a lot like matter would. For example we can observe these "invisible gravity sources" being thrown around when two galaxies collide. Because these "invisible gravity sources" acts a lot like matter, except for the fact that we can't see it, it's called dark matter.
If you're not yet convinced, take a look at this recent blogpost by a professional astrophysicist: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/11/the_simplest_argument_for_dark.php In this post, he basically explains how we can derive the existence of dark matter from: A) Assuming that the theory of general relativity is valid, B) assuming that the big bang theory is valid, and C) our observations of the cosmic microwave background.
at least two [...] over the last billion years
So a few asteroid impacts every billion years or so? There are probably many other things that are more dangerous than that.
In a perfect world the programmers could just quit and start their own trading firm.
If you had read the article you would know that they did precisely that.
That is history prior to Christianity. No where in the New Testament will you violence being condoned for the followers of Christianity to participate in.
After a quick search on the internet I found plenty of counter-examples to that claim. One example: "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." (Matthew 15:4). How is telling people to kill disobedient children not condoning violence? Perhaps you should try listening to you own advice:
you should at least research the facts before you make claims
What if you're just walking home one night and you notice a house with a window open and something valuable inside, so you decide to climb in the window and grab a few things? Not that I agree with the law, but there is a difference between what I described and carefully planning the burglary in advance.
For every animal you refuse to eat, I'm going to eat three.
I refuse to eat one million animals. I hope you have good appetite.
The results, which he shared exclusively with TIME , represent the largest study of financial incentives in the classroom — and one of the more rigorous studies ever on anything in education policy.
I was under the impression that research like this gets published in peer-reviewed journals, not in newspapers. Saying the study is rigorous and what the results are won't do you any good unless it's actually possible for others to verify those things.
the fact that the Big Bang does not explain the state of existence at T(Big Bang) - 1. It does not explain creation
Neither does evolution, relativity, quantum electrodynamics, or any other scientific theory. Do you suggest we shouldn't trust them either?
Big Bang is not meant to explain creation, it simply explains that the universe was at one point very small and very hot, and explains how it developed from there. It does a very good job of explaining our universe based on the model that it was once very small and hot. It is in fact the basis for much of modern astronomy. If you're not convinced, try taking a look at some of the evidence.
Big Bang is a ridiculously strong theory, it's really hard for anyone to not "accept" it unless they do so based on ignorance.
the average IQ of the average gamer dropped below room temperature
The average IQ of the average gamer has always been less than room temperature (assuming a room temperature of about 293 K).
If a guy tries to abide by a law he got busted for by looking at cartoon child porn instead of real child porn, my first reaction is to support him. Am I crazy?
Yes, but don't worry, the thought police is coming to help you.
And if you're Scandinavian, you might be thinking about yet another SAS.
Not as good as Dwarf Fortress.
The difference is the ease of making copies. Real books are difficult to copy, so if a library buys X books, they only have X books to lend. Digital books are very different: if you buy one, you automatically get the ability to make as many copies as you want. Is there a good reason to artificially enforce limits when the technological reason we had them in the first place no longer applies?
If one doesn't live in North Kora, there is no reason to care what Italians choose for themselves.
So the only people who should care about Italy is North Koreans? I don't think that would work out very well.
That's fucked up beyond 1984.
This is nothing like 1984. 1984 was about censorship and oppression, this is just paranoia. It probably happened due to a combination of the fear of terrorism and people's fear of technology they can't understand. Not they I don't think this both sad and slightly scary, but there are other things that can be wrong with society than trying to imitate 1984
The point is not that the program never stops running, but that it never stops learning.
an atheist is generally considered "one who believes that there is no deity" (from my dictionary and from what I can tell most dictionaries seem to agree with that definition)
Atheism is often used to mean "not believing in a god", and many who call themselves atheists use that definition. There are of course different degrees of atheism, some atheists believe that there is no god, some see the existence of a god as possible, but very unlikely, and some just don't believe in any particular god. You could argue that only the strongest form of atheism is "true atheism" and use other names for the others, but it is often useful to group all these together, and atheism is usually the word we use to describe that group.
Actually, text-based books would not directly compare to open source, because you need to know the language they are written in, and be literate in that language.
How is this different from open source? Open source does not mean "easily understood by anyone".
Maybe this is Nintendo's way of helping them. Instead of ignoring them, they shut them down and gave them a lot of attention they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
His statement is not a fallacy. It is an outright lie.
It is something known as a metaphor. Copyright makes many works unavailable to lots of people, just like burning works would.
The point is that the big corporations could get their copyright as long as they want as long as they think the copyright is valuable enough. Right now we see Disney constantly getting copyright extended so they can keep Mickey Mouse from becoming public domain, but the only way to do that is to extend copyright on everything. With this new system they could decide the length of the copyright based on how important the work is to them. That means we can let them have 70 years of copyright on Mickey, but only 7 or 14 years copyright on most other things. Much better than today's system where we have to have ridiculously long copyrights on everything so Disney protect one important work.
So you should say IMFO? Some people might misinterpret that as another common word that starts with F.