Science routinely re-evaluates theories. That's appropriate. And it doubts and tests purported "facts". Any organized system that doesn't do that is not worthy of being trusted. (Even governments do that to some extent.)
A possibility is that you had a very bad early experience with a bitter food. (Food poisoning?) You wouldn't necessarily remember it, which makes this hard to validate, but your attitude towards bitter foods could, essentially, be a phobia. It probably isn't worth treating even if this is true. (No idea how plausible this is, but it's just an explanation that occurred off the top of my head.)
To be fair, while dark chocolate may not help you to lose weight, it's not all that bad a thing to add to your diet. You just need to remember to count the calories in it as a part. (My preference is unsweetened cocoa powder, which may not really be chocolate, I've never been sure.)
And I rather like chicken mole (my recipie, as I have a requirement that neither the chicken nor the sauce have added salt).
The problem is the people who think that chocolate flavored bars of fat are a weight loss aid. (Check out the carbs of unsweetened cocoa power, though. It's quite low.)
Also, I believe that, as with coffee, chocolate contains useful phytochemicals. Just as do kale, chard, and other dark green leavy vegetables. (I'm not so sure about most beans, as nobody seems to have been pushing them. Probably, however, kidney beans have them, as they are generally found in darkly colored vegetable foods...like broccoli and brussel sprouts.)
The problem here is thinking of trust as a binary choice rather than as a probability (float). Everybody, when they stop to think about it, realize that trust isn't all or nothing, but somewhere intermediate. But people often take shortcuts, and one easy shortcut is deciding trust as binary.
So, no, you shouldn't blindly trust an authority, but neither should you blindly distrust them. Each case needs to be evaluated separately based on the evidence you have on hand, and then given a temporary weight...which is subject to being changed when more evidence arrives. Unfortunately, this is not a good model for convincing people that you are correct, because you don't have the emotionally driving certainty. But even though that certainty is a great tool for convincing people, it's quite dangerous. You should immediately doubt whenever you hear someone being certain. This is a matter of self-protection, it's not that they are always wrong, or always malicious, often they aren't. But their goals are quite likely to differ from yours. And certainty is driven not be evidence, but rather by emotions, which are almost always self-serving in either a narrow or in an extended sense. (OTOH, life isn't a zero sum game, so their being self-serving doesn't mean that they are necessarily detrimental to you, your purposes, or your goals.)
Yes, it would be much lower. But that "much lower" would still be expected to be well above escape velocity. I mean the difference between 0.999...c (say 290,000 km/s) and 12 km/s is HUGE. (And I rounded the speed of the particle down, and escape velocity up.) Even a 99.99% cancellation of velocities would still be well above escape velocity. It's true, though, a 99.999% cancellation would be below escape velocity. That kind of efficiency after a collision seems (to me) unlikely.
Are you sure? ISTM that it would initially prefer either electrons or protons, and when it had swallowed a couple of them it would repell any more. (Electrons are smaller, so it might prefer them, but they are also more uncertain as to their position, so it might prefer a proton.)
So say it swallowed an iron nucleus. This would give it a strong positive charge, so it would repell any additional nucleus. The question is could it also swallow electrons, or would they go into orbit around it?
*My* guess says that it would need to be sufficiently larger that gravitational effects would dominate over electromagnetic effects. OTOH, since 6 picometers is around 1000 times the size of an iron nucleus perhaps I'm overestimating the problem. That said, what's going to slow it down? This is an accelerator, so even if it created something with the mass of Mt. Everest, it wouldn't be at rest, and would, in fact, be moving far above escape velocity.
Given how bad many issued patents are, I feel that it's the presumption of validity that is the mistake. And that the baby being thrown out is a baby predator...which we would be vastly better off if it were killed.
There actually *is* a good case to be made for certain patents, but for such a small percentage that with the current system even eliminating all patents would be a net gain.
How could anyone possibly smear George Bush? (And which one?)
Mind you, the Democrats have been autocratic manipulators, but still... I can't guess either what you are considering a smear, or which George Bush you think it was applied to.
Sorry, but you fall afoul of the problem of "What constitutes reasonable proof?" This is a serious problem, as if we are Bayesian reasoners, then what consititues reasonable proof is highly sensitive to our priors. It is also provable that for certain sets of priors there is *NO* evidence that could possibly switch one from one set of beliefs to the other.
You outline what you are currently considering a set of proofs, but that means that you think they would suffice to convince anyone. This is not true. And "Creationist" is not a single set of priors, but rather several such sets, so even if an argument would suffice to convince one particular "Creationist" it might well fail on others. Now flip this around. Would you really change your opinions if they produced what they considered was good evidence? I truly doubt that. You are just certain that they can't produce what *YOU* consider good evidence. But be aware that you, also, cannot produce what they consider as good evidence.
What we call "reality" isn't what we sense, it's what we believe about what we sense. And that's all the reality we can ever know. And this is mathematically provable if you assume that we are Bayesian reasoners. (It's probably true anyway, but you can't prove it without the assumption.)
Sargon was significant as the tale of Noah and the flood was an edited steal from Babylonian myth...and they (probably) got it from the Sumerians. (IIRC, Sargon was also found floating in a small boat by a princess, like Moses...but I suspect the Moses story came from Egypt rather than from Akkad.)
Higher energy photons are distinct from lower energy photons in having a shorter wavelength. They both travel at (about) the same speed. Presumably in a true vacum they would travel at exactly the same speed.
Thus blue light is more energetic than red light, and has a shorter wave length. You measure the energy of the photons by absorbing a certain number and measuring the change in velocity or temperature of the thing that absorbed them. (Usually this is done by some sort of photocell arrangement were the absorbtion translates into electron volts, and that's what you actually measure. I believe that this has been done down to the single photon level, but I'm not sure.)
Money is not equivalent to free speech, no matter how you twist things. I do not accept your arguments.
It is worth noting that one of the arguments which I read to be against the "free press" is the statement "The power of the press belongs to the man who owns one.". I don't fee this is sufficient grounds to be against freedom of the press, but it certainly highlights the limitations on its desirability. It's a way that only empowers the wealthy, as opposed to free speech which is available to the eloquent, whether rich or poor. And that highlights a limitation on the desirability of free speech. But the constitution made the best of things, but requiring *both* free speech and the free press. It would be reasonable to equate money with the free press, but not with free speech.
A large impact in a shallow ocean area might well in every human dying within a decade. Most immediately. It would also first steam clean the planet, and then set an ice age in motion.
Now I'll grant that this is unlikely in any century, less likely by far, in fact, than that we'll do the same thing to ourselves via war or some other means. (War seems the most likely, but it's not the only contender. An escape from a biological warfare lab is a possibility. I'm not counting natural evolution as "doing it to ourselves", but it's happened to other species. In fact it is currently happening to a large number of amphibian species, some of which have already gone extinct.)
But I do consider asteroid impacts worth worrying about. Not worth obsessing about, however, as they are a bit down the ladder when it comes to humanity exterminators.
I also question his method of assigning proper degree of concern. And the reliability of his assertions. E.g. he claims that only one person has ever been hit by a meteor, but there's no evidence that that's true. He should have said only one person is known to have been hit by a meteor. But how many people in remote areas of the planet could have been hit and the reason for death, or even the fact of death, not officially acknowledged? And clearly nobody could cite an instance before around 1700, as even the existence of meteors was denied. So you need to ask what is the probability of someone being hit by a meteor and the fact being officially recognized. This is a quite different question. He performs the same type of factual manipulation (less obviously) in a few other places.
That said, it's not a major concern while other concerns rate higher. But a species ending event is worthy of particular concern over and above the concern over the individual lives lost, as you also need to consider the future lost, and not just a few personal futures, but all human futures.
OTOH, using "roll your own crypto" is nortorious for individualized holes and weaknesses. It does tend to mean that the "one size fits all" means of breaking the code won't work, however. Or at least may well not work.
That said, if you have good enough communication to share custom crypto programs, you may be better off using a one-time pad....as that can't even theoretically be broken. But it does require a good source of random numbers (e.g. amplified triode vacum tube with no input so you're just amplifying noise). Such things are reasonably easy to build, but for some reason they aren't normal computer accessories. (Video cams watching a flickering flame are another good source.)
But custom crypto is hard to do correctly. AND it requires good communications to standardize the programs. So if you have the communication, a one time pad is better.
It's worse than that. The entire basis of the "infinite monkeys theorum" is that given enough random chances even highly improbable things occur. So he was not only wrong, he didn't even understand what he was describing. So why should he be believed where he can't be checked?
The assertion that the infinite monkeys theorum has been disproved seems incorrect. Searches for the named scientist in conjuction with monkey also fail.
IOW, I suspect the entire article is garbage. I will admit that this is based on the fact the the only easily checkable statement appears to be factually incorrect, but if it's wrong where you can check, what should you believe about the places where you can't check?
Sorry, but I don't even accept that as guaranteed. Too many things that people thought were "hard problems" turned out to be relatively easy. I'd bet the hard part of being an electricial is object recognition.
There's also absolutely no guarantee that anybody will be hiring those skills. Why should the rich bastards be the only ones who demand guarantees?
Were I advising someone in school, I'd look at the current economics of STEM professions, and the BS surrounding them, and advise the students to study foreign languages. Or *something* besides STEM. Otherwise in 20 years you'll have a huge debt and no way to ever pay it off.
Slashdot Mirror
Science routinely re-evaluates theories. That's appropriate. And it doubts and tests purported "facts". Any organized system that doesn't do that is not worthy of being trusted. (Even governments do that to some extent.)
A possibility is that you had a very bad early experience with a bitter food. (Food poisoning?) You wouldn't necessarily remember it, which makes this hard to validate, but your attitude towards bitter foods could, essentially, be a phobia. It probably isn't worth treating even if this is true. (No idea how plausible this is, but it's just an explanation that occurred off the top of my head.)
Well, sheep's stomachs are hard to come by.
To be fair, while dark chocolate may not help you to lose weight, it's not all that bad a thing to add to your diet. You just need to remember to count the calories in it as a part. (My preference is unsweetened cocoa powder, which may not really be chocolate, I've never been sure.)
And I rather like chicken mole (my recipie, as I have a requirement that neither the chicken nor the sauce have added salt).
The problem is the people who think that chocolate flavored bars of fat are a weight loss aid. (Check out the carbs of unsweetened cocoa power, though. It's quite low.)
Also, I believe that, as with coffee, chocolate contains useful phytochemicals. Just as do kale, chard, and other dark green leavy vegetables. (I'm not so sure about most beans, as nobody seems to have been pushing them. Probably, however, kidney beans have them, as they are generally found in darkly colored vegetable foods...like broccoli and brussel sprouts.)
The problem here is thinking of trust as a binary choice rather than as a probability (float). Everybody, when they stop to think about it, realize that trust isn't all or nothing, but somewhere intermediate. But people often take shortcuts, and one easy shortcut is deciding trust as binary.
So, no, you shouldn't blindly trust an authority, but neither should you blindly distrust them. Each case needs to be evaluated separately based on the evidence you have on hand, and then given a temporary weight...which is subject to being changed when more evidence arrives. Unfortunately, this is not a good model for convincing people that you are correct, because you don't have the emotionally driving certainty. But even though that certainty is a great tool for convincing people, it's quite dangerous. You should immediately doubt whenever you hear someone being certain. This is a matter of self-protection, it's not that they are always wrong, or always malicious, often they aren't. But their goals are quite likely to differ from yours. And certainty is driven not be evidence, but rather by emotions, which are almost always self-serving in either a narrow or in an extended sense. (OTOH, life isn't a zero sum game, so their being self-serving doesn't mean that they are necessarily detrimental to you, your purposes, or your goals.)
Yes, it would be much lower. But that "much lower" would still be expected to be well above escape velocity. I mean the difference between 0.999...c (say 290,000 km/s) and 12 km/s is HUGE. (And I rounded the speed of the particle down, and escape velocity up.)
Even a 99.99% cancellation of velocities would still be well above escape velocity. It's true, though, a 99.999% cancellation would be below escape velocity. That kind of efficiency after a collision seems (to me) unlikely.
Are you sure? ISTM that it would initially prefer either electrons or protons, and when it had swallowed a couple of them it would repell any more. (Electrons are smaller, so it might prefer them, but they are also more uncertain as to their position, so it might prefer a proton.)
So say it swallowed an iron nucleus. This would give it a strong positive charge, so it would repell any additional nucleus. The question is could it also swallow electrons, or would they go into orbit around it?
*My* guess says that it would need to be sufficiently larger that gravitational effects would dominate over electromagnetic effects. OTOH, since 6 picometers is around 1000 times the size of an iron nucleus perhaps I'm overestimating the problem. That said, what's going to slow it down? This is an accelerator, so even if it created something with the mass of Mt. Everest, it wouldn't be at rest, and would, in fact, be moving far above escape velocity.
Given how bad many issued patents are, I feel that it's the presumption of validity that is the mistake. And that the baby being thrown out is a baby predator...which we would be vastly better off if it were killed.
There actually *is* a good case to be made for certain patents, but for such a small percentage that with the current system even eliminating all patents would be a net gain.
How could anyone possibly smear George Bush? (And which one?)
Mind you, the Democrats have been autocratic manipulators, but still... I can't guess either what you are considering a smear, or which George Bush you think it was applied to.
Sorry, but you fall afoul of the problem of "What constitutes reasonable proof?" This is a serious problem, as if we are Bayesian reasoners, then what consititues reasonable proof is highly sensitive to our priors. It is also provable that for certain sets of priors there is *NO* evidence that could possibly switch one from one set of beliefs to the other.
You outline what you are currently considering a set of proofs, but that means that you think they would suffice to convince anyone. This is not true. And "Creationist" is not a single set of priors, but rather several such sets, so even if an argument would suffice to convince one particular "Creationist" it might well fail on others. Now flip this around. Would you really change your opinions if they produced what they considered was good evidence? I truly doubt that. You are just certain that they can't produce what *YOU* consider good evidence. But be aware that you, also, cannot produce what they consider as good evidence.
What we call "reality" isn't what we sense, it's what we believe about what we sense. And that's all the reality we can ever know. And this is mathematically provable if you assume that we are Bayesian reasoners. (It's probably true anyway, but you can't prove it without the assumption.)
Sargon was significant as the tale of Noah and the flood was an edited steal from Babylonian myth...and they (probably) got it from the Sumerians. (IIRC, Sargon was also found floating in a small boat by a princess, like Moses...but I suspect the Moses story came from Egypt rather than from Akkad.)
It could be the name of a punk rock band. (Is that even around anymore?)
Population growth is much more sensitive to the fertility of the females than to that of the males.
Higher energy photons are distinct from lower energy photons in having a shorter wavelength. They both travel at (about) the same speed. Presumably in a true vacum they would travel at exactly the same speed.
Thus blue light is more energetic than red light, and has a shorter wave length. You measure the energy of the photons by absorbing a certain number and measuring the change in velocity or temperature of the thing that absorbed them. (Usually this is done by some sort of photocell arrangement were the absorbtion translates into electron volts, and that's what you actually measure. I believe that this has been done down to the single photon level, but I'm not sure.)
Correction:
This is how we know the Sun is^W made^W of^W contains some Helium. (And what proportion.)
We not only got rain, but hail. It worked out fine.
Why not use silicon dioxide? IIUC that's what they used to use, and it's a cheap industrial chemical. AND it's heavier than water.
Money is not equivalent to free speech, no matter how you twist things. I do not accept your arguments.
It is worth noting that one of the arguments which I read to be against the "free press" is the statement "The power of the press belongs to the man who owns one.". I don't fee this is sufficient grounds to be against freedom of the press, but it certainly highlights the limitations on its desirability. It's a way that only empowers the wealthy, as opposed to free speech which is available to the eloquent, whether rich or poor. And that highlights a limitation on the desirability of free speech. But the constitution made the best of things, but requiring *both* free speech and the free press. It would be reasonable to equate money with the free press, but not with free speech.
A large impact in a shallow ocean area might well in every human dying within a decade. Most immediately. It would also first steam clean the planet, and then set an ice age in motion.
Now I'll grant that this is unlikely in any century, less likely by far, in fact, than that we'll do the same thing to ourselves via war or some other means. (War seems the most likely, but it's not the only contender. An escape from a biological warfare lab is a possibility. I'm not counting natural evolution as "doing it to ourselves", but it's happened to other species. In fact it is currently happening to a large number of amphibian species, some of which have already gone extinct.)
But I do consider asteroid impacts worth worrying about. Not worth obsessing about, however, as they are a bit down the ladder when it comes to humanity exterminators.
I also question his method of assigning proper degree of concern. And the reliability of his assertions. E.g. he claims that only one person has ever been hit by a meteor, but there's no evidence that that's true. He should have said only one person is known to have been hit by a meteor. But how many people in remote areas of the planet could have been hit and the reason for death, or even the fact of death, not officially acknowledged? And clearly nobody could cite an instance before around 1700, as even the existence of meteors was denied. So you need to ask what is the probability of someone being hit by a meteor and the fact being officially recognized. This is a quite different question. He performs the same type of factual manipulation (less obviously) in a few other places.
That said, it's not a major concern while other concerns rate higher. But a species ending event is worthy of particular concern over and above the concern over the individual lives lost, as you also need to consider the future lost, and not just a few personal futures, but all human futures.
Who decided? Who decided that corporations were legal persons? It sure wasn't the voters.
OTOH, using "roll your own crypto" is nortorious for individualized holes and weaknesses. It does tend to mean that the "one size fits all" means of breaking the code won't work, however. Or at least may well not work.
That said, if you have good enough communication to share custom crypto programs, you may be better off using a one-time pad....as that can't even theoretically be broken. But it does require a good source of random numbers (e.g. amplified triode vacum tube with no input so you're just amplifying noise). Such things are reasonably easy to build, but for some reason they aren't normal computer accessories. (Video cams watching a flickering flame are another good source.)
But custom crypto is hard to do correctly. AND it requires good communications to standardize the programs. So if you have the communication, a one time pad is better.
It's worse than that. The entire basis of the "infinite monkeys theorum" is that given enough random chances even highly improbable things occur. So he was not only wrong, he didn't even understand what he was describing. So why should he be believed where he can't be checked?
The assertion that the infinite monkeys theorum has been disproved seems incorrect. Searches for the named scientist in conjuction with monkey also fail.
IOW, I suspect the entire article is garbage. I will admit that this is based on the fact the the only easily checkable statement appears to be factually incorrect, but if it's wrong where you can check, what should you believe about the places where you can't check?
Sorry, but I don't even accept that as guaranteed. Too many things that people thought were "hard problems" turned out to be relatively easy. I'd bet the hard part of being an electricial is object recognition.
There's also absolutely no guarantee that anybody will be hiring those skills. Why should the rich bastards be the only ones who demand guarantees?
Were I advising someone in school, I'd look at the current economics of STEM professions, and the BS surrounding them, and advise the students to study foreign languages. Or *something* besides STEM. Otherwise in 20 years you'll have a huge debt and no way to ever pay it off.