Prove it. Laws protect copyrights, laws protect intellectual property, laws benefit corporations by giving them unfair advantage. Its laws FOR the wealthy causing it just as much as lack of regulation on them. Im not suggesting Libertarianism is going to work for us, but I am saying its worth looking at aspects of, since our entire political structure and philosophy is not working out so hot right now for most people.
No, our system is not working and making jabs as college sophomores is ridiculous since it truly isn't working out so hot for them thanks to people like you who have been in government and have done nothing for them (and for the record, I am employed full time and working on a PhD full time so I am not young nor just sitting around bitching). Unprecedented levels of debt both per household and in governments internationally and domestic, 24 percent unemployment among the youth, record unemployment since the great depression, 90 percent of all wealth in 10 percent of the worlds hands. If participating in the system really does work, prove it. It hasn't worked for a long time ever since the wealth got so concentrated in so few hands that the only people getting into office are the ones that benefit the wealthy. Money rules American government, not anything else. There have been numerous sociological studies on this, and they point to the fact that we have nothing else governing our motives such as religion or threats of war. Im not saying its better with those options, but you can't say "its working" for everyone in a blanket generalization since it isn't for many people.
Being as how there are not any Libertarian societies, and the last one that was close was during the colonization of America and after the Revolution and even then there was slavery and all manner of other issues, I do not see enough evidence to support your claim. In fact, I would be willing to bet a Libertarian society has not existed on a large scale ever. Calling something a "pipe-dream" doesn't refute it as a political philosophy, evidence does. Our society is working like absolute dog shit. People's rights are being suppressed (gay marriage, etc.), corporations own 90 percent of IP, the top 10 percent most wealthy own 90 percent of the wealth (1920's levels), everyone is in deep debt including governments, and the unemployment rate is sky high (even worse for the young generation at 24 percent). I don't see this society as working out AT ALL. Its essentially neo-feudalism.
I have no idea where to begin. Polygamy has worked before, particularly in societies where men like to kill eachother off en masse such during the time of Abraham. It doesn't work so hot in societies where men outnumber women obviously, but then you could institute polyandry and it would work if the society grew to accept it. In fact, liberal sexual relationships and polygamy/polyandry exists particularly among hunter-gathers or isolated jungle tribes and the shift occurred when humans became predominately farming communities. Welfare itself can be argued to be parasitic, since you are taking care of people that have limited use to society. There can never be 100 percent employment, so you must always take care of some subset of people that either refuse to work or have skills no-one wants. Communism will not work on large scale as has been proven by hippies and communist nations, so you must accept some hybrid of free market and welfare state. Is it right to remove welfare? I don't think so, but you need to see both sides of the coin rather than just make unsubstantiated claims. If you are talking about Ayn Rand objectivism as a philosophy, there is no reason it would not work on small scale, since this is pretty much what some of the aforementioned tribes of hunter-gatherer people did. If you are referring to laissez faire capitalism on massive scale, then yes, its pretty much proven to result in monopolies and oligopolies since too much self interest and wealth in a few hands will always breed unfair advantage which will be exploited.
Hmm. So you are saying that our current system is working? With a huge disparity in wealth never seen since 1920, a unprecedented level of international and domestic debt, and corporations holding 90 percent of all intellectual property, I really don't see the current system as working either or learning from past mistakes at all.
That's why we need more companies like Google. Companies that are willing to take patent trolls and other bad companies to court as long as it suits their business interests.. Google is one of many companies that fights against patents, copyright and other evil things for the good of their company..
Well, it used to be better in the US from about 1940-1980. Now, IP law, business sectors, and wealth is being concentrated into the hands of a few while laws protecting their assets increase. Its a new sort of feudalism that will ultimately cycle back through failure after a few million people die either in revolution, starvation from economic collapse, or in warfare between nations.
Historically, when human beings shifted from hunter-gatherers to farming communities and cities there began a social structure that allowed wealth, power and warfare. Before that it was all minor squabbles between tribes, but even so it was extremely limited in comparison to farming societies battling eachother. The population density of hunter-gatherers was low enough, and resources plentiful enough they did not have to fight as often if at all. As a side note, hunter-gatherers did not accumulate as much wealth because they had to be on the move. This allowed for them to all more-or-less be equals short of ranks such as "holy man" or "chieften". Case in point, Native Americans did not have war with eachother until white settlers started pushing them further and further west.
Re:We have ideas, we just can't exploit them
on
The Post-Idea World
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· Score: 1
Not true. All the good ideas can't be patented because a patent troll will invent some bullshit excuse as to why something that obviously DOES NOT violate their patent DOES. Then theirs the media industry that just steals all the copyrights from their artists. There is no reason to waste your time doing anything if its just going to get stolen from you or tie you up in a legal battle until you are financially ruined. Its modern feudalism.
Another problem is that every idea gets snatched up by corporations and IP law. Even the Music industry is trying to say they own all the recordings they ever recorded of an Artist because Artists are contracted to make the music for the company. This is instead of the Artists owning their own music. You can't even make a tech startup these days without getting patent-trolled. The real problem is not the lack of ideas, its the lack of ambition to try and implement them for fear of getting smacked down by bloated legal departments abusing patent, copyright and trademark law. These corporations don't just make to stop doing what you are doing, they make it either impossible to compete, or they ruin you financially for the rest of your life. Its a fucking joke and I hate America for being this way.
It should be lower prices for the end user. If you produce more higher priced chips, the manufacturing cost goes down and the supply goes up. If the demand remains the same, the prices should drop for the consumer. What Intel is doing is artificial market segmentation so they can squeeze you for more profit.
If you don't like that business model, that's OK, because there's a free market so you can switch to any commodity processor manufacturer... oh snap...
The only other option is AMD or VIA. You would have to be an idiot to use VIA since they make shitty hardware. Thats not a really free market dude.
Not really the same at all. DLC is new, additional content. This software for Intel CPUs does not increase the functionality by adding something new, it unlocks pre-existing functionality. So what Intel is doing is selling you a fully functional CPU, then disabling some cores, or reducing its speed artificially. Then they charge you extra to unlock extra cores or speed that the CPU was already capable of doing.
No, you aren't right. If manufacturing costs are cheaper to produce a bunch of 300 dollar CPU's than to produce 200 dollar CPU's and 300 dollar CPU's, the cost should drop for the consumer if you just produce 300 dollar CPU's and Intel's profits should also go up since they don't have to spend additional capital on producing 200 dollar CPU's. What they essentially are doing is producing a bunch of 300 dollar CPU's, disabling features with software, and selling them for 200 dollars. Then, you can unlock the 300 dollar CPU by paying the extra 100 bucks. What really should be happening, is that the 300 dollar CPU should now cost 250 dollars since its cheaper to make and there are more of them. Its artificial market segmentation, and its based on squeezing more cash out of consumers so that the shareholders are happier. Its anti-consumer based in greed, and this sort of shit is why America's economy is in the shitter. Too much money flowing into too few hands while the rest gets bled out to overseas manufacturing.
Both are the same chip. I.e. there is literally no difference between them at all from the silicon itself all the way down to the arrangement of the transistors. The only thing that is different is how much of the chip's capabilities they allow you to use and its price.
Someone needs to take economics 101. Market prices are set by supply and demand. If a bunch of 400 dollar processors come out of the shoot instead of 200 dolalr processors the supply of them goes up. Since there is similar demand for them across the market, the price should go down for the consumer. This is artificial market manipulation and is a load of monopolistic greedy bullshit. Its one of the reasons our economy is doing so bad, greed. Furthermore, this is nothing like what you said in the first place. Intel is manufacturing perfectly functional 400 dollar processors and selling them for 200, charging you 200 to "unlock" them up to a 400 dollar processor. Its not the same as before when a 400 dollar processor might come out of assembly and not be capable of performing at the level of a 400 dollar processor, so they down-clock it or disable a couple cores and sell it for 200 to recoup losses. Thats what AMD did with their X3 processors and even some of the X2's. Intel used to do it too. I suspect since manufacturing has advanced they now don't produce many duds, and so they are now trying to squeeze the consumer for more cash by artificially segmenting the market. If in manufacturing you produce products more efficiently and more of them, it should already increase their profits on each processor across the board and as such you should be getting a 400 dollar processor for maybe 300.
Uhh, no. Its a way of squeezing more money out of consumers. If yields of superior quality products increase it should bring the price down. That is how Free Market Capitalism is supposed to work. Increased supply, similar demand, price goes down. What Intel is doing is a greedy maneuver to artificially increase prices and I hope to god it will hurt them in the end. Its this sort of uncompetitive monopolistic greedy bullshit that is ruining the US economy. I haven't bought Intel for the last decade or so, and I certainly am not going to now.
I will admit its not totally unfeasible. I have to if I am to be intellectually honest. However, to me it seems like a taller order to prove there are these particles than to just assume the model doesn't fit every situation since its not complete and does not adjust itself to every situation. Their could be an infinite amount of other explanations for the phenomena rather than just inventing some particle. As a matter of fact, Godel proved that no finite set of axioms can capture all of mathematical truth. This is sort of controversial when applied to the Universe and physics, because axioms are based on assumptions about things rather than proved (but the existence of gravity and other things relies on axioms), and the knowable Universe could possibly have a finite set of axioms that explain all of its phenomena. However, I think the lesson in the theory of Godel is that you cannot ever possibly know everything. You can just keep making a larger and larger set of axioms to encompass the truth. It happened with Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and (All the dudes that came up with Quantum theory like Boltzman, Planck, Rutherford, Schrodinger etc.). Each step gives us more information about the Universe, but it will never be complete.
At least they have the capacity to understand when they are wrong. Go to a fundamentalist church group some time and tell me you really think they are more capable of understanding when they are wrong.
Uhh, well. Scientists never actually claim to "know" the truth about anything completely, they just claim to know "an approximation of the truth" which is a theory or axiom that has been tested and shown to work in every case its been tested in so far. People still continue to test it and find it works. GPS satellites would not work if Relativity was not mostly correct. Don't get confused with the word "approximation of truth", it doesn't mean its not correct to a degree. There is no absolute right and absolute wrong.
The principal of science is that you seek truth through observable, repeatable experiments. We know gravity exists on Earth because every time we throw a rock in the air it falls back to the ground. If one day, it did not fall back to the ground, or it fell to the ground 50 percent of the time and the other 50 percent of the time it flew off into space; we would probably not believe gravity existed and instead either have worked on or be working on other explanations. For example, Relativity has passed just about every test its been put through except for things on quantum scale or on super-massive scale. Does this mean it is wrong? No. It means that it is right in certain situations, but not in others. If you know anything about mathematics, which is totally based in rigorously proved logic that is basically irrefutable once its axioms and assumptions are cemented, you will realize that sometimes its possible to be correct within a certain degree or domain but incorrect beyond it.
Its a bit different to claim many of the things religions claim. For example, claiming a flood wiped out all humans on Earth except for Noah, his sons, and all of their spouses along with two of each animal is ludicrous. The fossil record shows absolutely no evidence of this and a global flood poses other physical questions that have completely unfeasible explanations, and its been proven so if you actually read about scientific topics such as genetics, biology, anthropology, paleontology, and physics/geophysics/meteorology (particularly atmospheric pressure). They don't specifically say that the flood didn't happen, nor do they attack it. They just show certain timelines for fossils, or certain geological strata or certain physical relationships (in the form of equations) that make something like a global flood seem ridiculous. Maybe it happened on a smaller scale, but your will find its absurd to think it happened over the whole earth.
You see, religions claim to "know" things and require absolutely no proof at all other than faith; which is belief without evidence. They won't admit when they are wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their belief. That's not to say scientists don't believe things too and sometimes be stubborn about changing them, its just that religions don't believe things based on logic and evidence whatsoever. Even scientists are humans, and make errors sometimes. However, their training helps them remove illogical or absurd things from their minds rather than hold on to them when overwhelming evidence is put in their face. I don't think that religious fanatics are incapable of being as smart as scientists, I just think many of them are brainwashed or undereducated.
Does all of this mean God doesn't exist? No. Its just that there is no evidence of them existing, nor is there necessarily a reason they must exist. I for one am not sure. I admit it is possible, but I have not seen evidence to support it nor do I see a theory that holds up when tested that shows there must be one. Some people choose to believe there is no God, some people believe there probably is, and some people simply don't know. Whatever you believe is what you believe, but please don't assume that scientists are out to get you, or make you change, or disprove god. By definition the existence of God couldn't be proved anyway, since even if we "found God", how do you know its not just a super-advanced alien being? Even if their is an afterlife you won't truly know if God exists because for all yo
Not exactly. The article states that physicists assume a positive charge for gravity throughout the universe. Hajdukovic, the guy that wrote the paper (I think), suggests that a negative charge exists, just like with electromagnetism. He suggests that matter produces positive gravity, and antimatter produces negative gravity. Here is an excerpt from http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-dark-illusion-quantum-vacuum.html that explains it better than I.:
If matter and antimatter are gravitationally repulsive, then it would mean that the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs that exist for a limited time in the quantum vacuum are “gravitational dipoles.” That is, each pair forms a system in which the virtual particle has a positive gravitational charge, while the virtual antiparticle has a negative gravitational charge. In this scenario, the quantum vacuum contains many virtual gravitational dipoles, taking the form of a dipolar fluid.
“We can consider our universe as a union of two mutually interacting entities,” Hajdukovic said. “The first entity is our ‘normal’ matter (hence we do not assume the existence of dark matter and dark energy), immersed in the second entity, the quantum vacuum, considered as a sea of different kinds of virtual dipoles, including gravitational dipoles.”
He goes on to explain that the virtual gravitational dipoles in the quantum vacuum can be gravitationally polarized by the baryonic matter in nearby massive stars and galaxies. When the virtual dipoles align, they produce an additional gravitational field that can combine with the gravitational field produced by stars and galaxies. As such, the gravitationally polarized quantum vacuum could produce the same “speeding up” effect on the rotational curves of galaxies as either hypothetical dark matter or a modified law of gravity.
Basically what this means to me, is that the effect is on a super-massive scale and not easily manipulated by us without the technology to literally change things on super-massive scale.
Not exactly. At least we can predict certain behaviors using Relativity that enable satellites to work properly as well as a whole slew of other physical behaviors that enable our modern technology to work. If we didn't adjust GPS satellites using relativity they would not work at all. I would wager similar usefulness did not come out of the theory of aether but I am willing to admit I am wrong if you can present evidence to the contrary.
Agreed. I have always had a hard time stomaching the theory that dark matter and dark energy exist. It seems far too much like aether, i.e. something made up to fill a gap in knowledge without much evidence backing it up. "Look, my equations don't work out in every situation. EUREKA! If I just make some shit up like say, invisible matter that doesn't interact with other matter except through gravity, I can make my equations work!". I think its probably that the equations are based on more special cases. Think of the difference between Newtonian and Relativistic models. One works on planetary scale, the other on the level of star systems and near galactic scale, but now we find out our current model doesn't work in every situation such as quantum scale (yes, they've know that for awhile), or on super macro-scale. It must be that the model needs additional generalization rather than inventing magic stuff.
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Prove it. Laws protect copyrights, laws protect intellectual property, laws benefit corporations by giving them unfair advantage. Its laws FOR the wealthy causing it just as much as lack of regulation on them. Im not suggesting Libertarianism is going to work for us, but I am saying its worth looking at aspects of, since our entire political structure and philosophy is not working out so hot right now for most people.
No, our system is not working and making jabs as college sophomores is ridiculous since it truly isn't working out so hot for them thanks to people like you who have been in government and have done nothing for them (and for the record, I am employed full time and working on a PhD full time so I am not young nor just sitting around bitching). Unprecedented levels of debt both per household and in governments internationally and domestic, 24 percent unemployment among the youth, record unemployment since the great depression, 90 percent of all wealth in 10 percent of the worlds hands. If participating in the system really does work, prove it. It hasn't worked for a long time ever since the wealth got so concentrated in so few hands that the only people getting into office are the ones that benefit the wealthy. Money rules American government, not anything else. There have been numerous sociological studies on this, and they point to the fact that we have nothing else governing our motives such as religion or threats of war. Im not saying its better with those options, but you can't say "its working" for everyone in a blanket generalization since it isn't for many people.
Being as how there are not any Libertarian societies, and the last one that was close was during the colonization of America and after the Revolution and even then there was slavery and all manner of other issues, I do not see enough evidence to support your claim. In fact, I would be willing to bet a Libertarian society has not existed on a large scale ever. Calling something a "pipe-dream" doesn't refute it as a political philosophy, evidence does. Our society is working like absolute dog shit. People's rights are being suppressed (gay marriage, etc.), corporations own 90 percent of IP, the top 10 percent most wealthy own 90 percent of the wealth (1920's levels), everyone is in deep debt including governments, and the unemployment rate is sky high (even worse for the young generation at 24 percent). I don't see this society as working out AT ALL. Its essentially neo-feudalism.
Reminds of that asshole Zuckerberg. The twat.
I have no idea where to begin. Polygamy has worked before, particularly in societies where men like to kill eachother off en masse such during the time of Abraham. It doesn't work so hot in societies where men outnumber women obviously, but then you could institute polyandry and it would work if the society grew to accept it. In fact, liberal sexual relationships and polygamy/polyandry exists particularly among hunter-gathers or isolated jungle tribes and the shift occurred when humans became predominately farming communities. Welfare itself can be argued to be parasitic, since you are taking care of people that have limited use to society. There can never be 100 percent employment, so you must always take care of some subset of people that either refuse to work or have skills no-one wants. Communism will not work on large scale as has been proven by hippies and communist nations, so you must accept some hybrid of free market and welfare state. Is it right to remove welfare? I don't think so, but you need to see both sides of the coin rather than just make unsubstantiated claims. If you are talking about Ayn Rand objectivism as a philosophy, there is no reason it would not work on small scale, since this is pretty much what some of the aforementioned tribes of hunter-gatherer people did. If you are referring to laissez faire capitalism on massive scale, then yes, its pretty much proven to result in monopolies and oligopolies since too much self interest and wealth in a few hands will always breed unfair advantage which will be exploited.
Hmm. So you are saying that our current system is working? With a huge disparity in wealth never seen since 1920, a unprecedented level of international and domestic debt, and corporations holding 90 percent of all intellectual property, I really don't see the current system as working either or learning from past mistakes at all.
That's why we need more companies like Google. Companies that are willing to take patent trolls and other bad companies to court as long as it suits their business interests.. Google is one of many companies that fights against patents, copyright and other evil things for the good of their company..
There. Fixed that for you.
Well, it used to be better in the US from about 1940-1980. Now, IP law, business sectors, and wealth is being concentrated into the hands of a few while laws protecting their assets increase. Its a new sort of feudalism that will ultimately cycle back through failure after a few million people die either in revolution, starvation from economic collapse, or in warfare between nations.
Historically, when human beings shifted from hunter-gatherers to farming communities and cities there began a social structure that allowed wealth, power and warfare. Before that it was all minor squabbles between tribes, but even so it was extremely limited in comparison to farming societies battling eachother. The population density of hunter-gatherers was low enough, and resources plentiful enough they did not have to fight as often if at all. As a side note, hunter-gatherers did not accumulate as much wealth because they had to be on the move. This allowed for them to all more-or-less be equals short of ranks such as "holy man" or "chieften". Case in point, Native Americans did not have war with eachother until white settlers started pushing them further and further west.
Not true. All the good ideas can't be patented because a patent troll will invent some bullshit excuse as to why something that obviously DOES NOT violate their patent DOES. Then theirs the media industry that just steals all the copyrights from their artists. There is no reason to waste your time doing anything if its just going to get stolen from you or tie you up in a legal battle until you are financially ruined. Its modern feudalism.
Another problem is that every idea gets snatched up by corporations and IP law. Even the Music industry is trying to say they own all the recordings they ever recorded of an Artist because Artists are contracted to make the music for the company. This is instead of the Artists owning their own music. You can't even make a tech startup these days without getting patent-trolled. The real problem is not the lack of ideas, its the lack of ambition to try and implement them for fear of getting smacked down by bloated legal departments abusing patent, copyright and trademark law. These corporations don't just make to stop doing what you are doing, they make it either impossible to compete, or they ruin you financially for the rest of your life. Its a fucking joke and I hate America for being this way.
It should be lower prices for the end user. If you produce more higher priced chips, the manufacturing cost goes down and the supply goes up. If the demand remains the same, the prices should drop for the consumer. What Intel is doing is artificial market segmentation so they can squeeze you for more profit.
If you don't like that business model, that's OK, because there's a free market so you can switch to any commodity processor manufacturer... oh snap...
The only other option is AMD or VIA. You would have to be an idiot to use VIA since they make shitty hardware. Thats not a really free market dude.
Not really the same at all. DLC is new, additional content. This software for Intel CPUs does not increase the functionality by adding something new, it unlocks pre-existing functionality. So what Intel is doing is selling you a fully functional CPU, then disabling some cores, or reducing its speed artificially. Then they charge you extra to unlock extra cores or speed that the CPU was already capable of doing.
No, you aren't right. If manufacturing costs are cheaper to produce a bunch of 300 dollar CPU's than to produce 200 dollar CPU's and 300 dollar CPU's, the cost should drop for the consumer if you just produce 300 dollar CPU's and Intel's profits should also go up since they don't have to spend additional capital on producing 200 dollar CPU's. What they essentially are doing is producing a bunch of 300 dollar CPU's, disabling features with software, and selling them for 200 dollars. Then, you can unlock the 300 dollar CPU by paying the extra 100 bucks. What really should be happening, is that the 300 dollar CPU should now cost 250 dollars since its cheaper to make and there are more of them. Its artificial market segmentation, and its based on squeezing more cash out of consumers so that the shareholders are happier. Its anti-consumer based in greed, and this sort of shit is why America's economy is in the shitter. Too much money flowing into too few hands while the rest gets bled out to overseas manufacturing.
I understand the numbers, however the principal is still anti-consumer.
Both are the same chip. I.e. there is literally no difference between them at all from the silicon itself all the way down to the arrangement of the transistors. The only thing that is different is how much of the chip's capabilities they allow you to use and its price.
Someone needs to take economics 101. Market prices are set by supply and demand. If a bunch of 400 dollar processors come out of the shoot instead of 200 dolalr processors the supply of them goes up. Since there is similar demand for them across the market, the price should go down for the consumer. This is artificial market manipulation and is a load of monopolistic greedy bullshit. Its one of the reasons our economy is doing so bad, greed. Furthermore, this is nothing like what you said in the first place. Intel is manufacturing perfectly functional 400 dollar processors and selling them for 200, charging you 200 to "unlock" them up to a 400 dollar processor. Its not the same as before when a 400 dollar processor might come out of assembly and not be capable of performing at the level of a 400 dollar processor, so they down-clock it or disable a couple cores and sell it for 200 to recoup losses. Thats what AMD did with their X3 processors and even some of the X2's. Intel used to do it too. I suspect since manufacturing has advanced they now don't produce many duds, and so they are now trying to squeeze the consumer for more cash by artificially segmenting the market. If in manufacturing you produce products more efficiently and more of them, it should already increase their profits on each processor across the board and as such you should be getting a 400 dollar processor for maybe 300.
Uhh, no. Its a way of squeezing more money out of consumers. If yields of superior quality products increase it should bring the price down. That is how Free Market Capitalism is supposed to work. Increased supply, similar demand, price goes down. What Intel is doing is a greedy maneuver to artificially increase prices and I hope to god it will hurt them in the end. Its this sort of uncompetitive monopolistic greedy bullshit that is ruining the US economy. I haven't bought Intel for the last decade or so, and I certainly am not going to now.
I will admit its not totally unfeasible. I have to if I am to be intellectually honest. However, to me it seems like a taller order to prove there are these particles than to just assume the model doesn't fit every situation since its not complete and does not adjust itself to every situation. Their could be an infinite amount of other explanations for the phenomena rather than just inventing some particle. As a matter of fact, Godel proved that no finite set of axioms can capture all of mathematical truth. This is sort of controversial when applied to the Universe and physics, because axioms are based on assumptions about things rather than proved (but the existence of gravity and other things relies on axioms), and the knowable Universe could possibly have a finite set of axioms that explain all of its phenomena. However, I think the lesson in the theory of Godel is that you cannot ever possibly know everything. You can just keep making a larger and larger set of axioms to encompass the truth. It happened with Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and (All the dudes that came up with Quantum theory like Boltzman, Planck, Rutherford, Schrodinger etc.). Each step gives us more information about the Universe, but it will never be complete.
At least they have the capacity to understand when they are wrong. Go to a fundamentalist church group some time and tell me you really think they are more capable of understanding when they are wrong.
Uhh, well. Scientists never actually claim to "know" the truth about anything completely, they just claim to know "an approximation of the truth" which is a theory or axiom that has been tested and shown to work in every case its been tested in so far. People still continue to test it and find it works. GPS satellites would not work if Relativity was not mostly correct. Don't get confused with the word "approximation of truth", it doesn't mean its not correct to a degree. There is no absolute right and absolute wrong.
The principal of science is that you seek truth through observable, repeatable experiments. We know gravity exists on Earth because every time we throw a rock in the air it falls back to the ground. If one day, it did not fall back to the ground, or it fell to the ground 50 percent of the time and the other 50 percent of the time it flew off into space; we would probably not believe gravity existed and instead either have worked on or be working on other explanations. For example, Relativity has passed just about every test its been put through except for things on quantum scale or on super-massive scale. Does this mean it is wrong? No. It means that it is right in certain situations, but not in others. If you know anything about mathematics, which is totally based in rigorously proved logic that is basically irrefutable once its axioms and assumptions are cemented, you will realize that sometimes its possible to be correct within a certain degree or domain but incorrect beyond it.
Its a bit different to claim many of the things religions claim. For example, claiming a flood wiped out all humans on Earth except for Noah, his sons, and all of their spouses along with two of each animal is ludicrous. The fossil record shows absolutely no evidence of this and a global flood poses other physical questions that have completely unfeasible explanations, and its been proven so if you actually read about scientific topics such as genetics, biology, anthropology, paleontology, and physics/geophysics/meteorology (particularly atmospheric pressure). They don't specifically say that the flood didn't happen, nor do they attack it. They just show certain timelines for fossils, or certain geological strata or certain physical relationships (in the form of equations) that make something like a global flood seem ridiculous. Maybe it happened on a smaller scale, but your will find its absurd to think it happened over the whole earth.
You see, religions claim to "know" things and require absolutely no proof at all other than faith; which is belief without evidence. They won't admit when they are wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence against their belief. That's not to say scientists don't believe things too and sometimes be stubborn about changing them, its just that religions don't believe things based on logic and evidence whatsoever. Even scientists are humans, and make errors sometimes. However, their training helps them remove illogical or absurd things from their minds rather than hold on to them when overwhelming evidence is put in their face. I don't think that religious fanatics are incapable of being as smart as scientists, I just think many of them are brainwashed or undereducated.
Does all of this mean God doesn't exist? No. Its just that there is no evidence of them existing, nor is there necessarily a reason they must exist. I for one am not sure. I admit it is possible, but I have not seen evidence to support it nor do I see a theory that holds up when tested that shows there must be one. Some people choose to believe there is no God, some people believe there probably is, and some people simply don't know. Whatever you believe is what you believe, but please don't assume that scientists are out to get you, or make you change, or disprove god. By definition the existence of God couldn't be proved anyway, since even if we "found God", how do you know its not just a super-advanced alien being? Even if their is an afterlife you won't truly know if God exists because for all yo
If matter and antimatter are gravitationally repulsive, then it would mean that the virtual particle-antiparticle pairs that exist for a limited time in the quantum vacuum are “gravitational dipoles.” That is, each pair forms a system in which the virtual particle has a positive gravitational charge, while the virtual antiparticle has a negative gravitational charge. In this scenario, the quantum vacuum contains many virtual gravitational dipoles, taking the form of a dipolar fluid.
“We can consider our universe as a union of two mutually interacting entities,” Hajdukovic said. “The first entity is our ‘normal’ matter (hence we do not assume the existence of dark matter and dark energy), immersed in the second entity, the quantum vacuum, considered as a sea of different kinds of virtual dipoles, including gravitational dipoles.”
He goes on to explain that the virtual gravitational dipoles in the quantum vacuum can be gravitationally polarized by the baryonic matter in nearby massive stars and galaxies. When the virtual dipoles align, they produce an additional gravitational field that can combine with the gravitational field produced by stars and galaxies. As such, the gravitationally polarized quantum vacuum could produce the same “speeding up” effect on the rotational curves of galaxies as either hypothetical dark matter or a modified law of gravity.
Basically what this means to me, is that the effect is on a super-massive scale and not easily manipulated by us without the technology to literally change things on super-massive scale.
Not exactly. At least we can predict certain behaviors using Relativity that enable satellites to work properly as well as a whole slew of other physical behaviors that enable our modern technology to work. If we didn't adjust GPS satellites using relativity they would not work at all. I would wager similar usefulness did not come out of the theory of aether but I am willing to admit I am wrong if you can present evidence to the contrary.
Agreed. I have always had a hard time stomaching the theory that dark matter and dark energy exist. It seems far too much like aether, i.e. something made up to fill a gap in knowledge without much evidence backing it up. "Look, my equations don't work out in every situation. EUREKA! If I just make some shit up like say, invisible matter that doesn't interact with other matter except through gravity, I can make my equations work!". I think its probably that the equations are based on more special cases. Think of the difference between Newtonian and Relativistic models. One works on planetary scale, the other on the level of star systems and near galactic scale, but now we find out our current model doesn't work in every situation such as quantum scale (yes, they've know that for awhile), or on super macro-scale. It must be that the model needs additional generalization rather than inventing magic stuff.