... and jiggling! Kidding aside, I dunno that the link you imagine exists, or that the link that does exist is all that interesting. When a player cha...
Visualizing different laws of the nature is straightforward, as demonstragted by ^ cartoon physics. Visualizing different mathematics and logics is va...
Fuzzy concept, fuzzy logic. I take your point that the more fundamental the concept, the more uneasy it makes us to think that way. But that has every...
The human mind likes binary propositions. Nature does not. At the very least, "the property of 'being alive'" has fuzzy edges. And reconsidering it in...
Pure trial-and-error is less efficient than design, of course, but it can be more effective - because it has no qualms about exploring the entirety of...
That was rather the point. Does it make a difference? Why or why not? The answers to those new questions may provide insight into the original one. Wh...
This might be a worthwhile approach: Pick a definition, then replace the common element in that definition by something else, then look for a third ty...
In a thought experiment, you can have such a thing as a perfect speedometer, and use it to perfectly determine relative speeds, and use those to test ...
Can, yes, I reckon so. When one interprets the terms more broadly, they simply partition the whole, along the lines of "nature" standing for "all thin...
Re-reading the recent posts, I think any remaining confusion comes down to theory versus application, more than anything else. The concept of "precisi...
Agreed, but with reservations. We can "parametrise" the speed summation equation like this in general: v = gamma * (v1+v2) According to Newton, gamma ...
Okay, I think I see now what you're grappling with. The point is this one: A) Low-precision version of the experiment Data v1 ~ 111.110 km/s (speed of...
Unlikely, I'd say. What one learns in school about the Scientific Method is that when a new practical result turns out to contradict the old theoretic...
Do you mean that our mathematical methods and computing resources are insufficient to apply GR to certain classes of problems, or that the model itsel...
Yes. It gets a bit trickier when the inputs aren't of the order of magnitude of 1, which is to say, aren't between 1 and 10: C) If m = 20.1 and a = 30...
Quite. Unfortunately, it's less precise while also being more effort. So as a model, it's objectively worse, and there is no situation in which it wou...
The general proof again needs statistical methods, no doubt. For the specific case of a multiplication like F = ma, though, just think of the inputs a...
Depends on who you ask. In the context of modern physics, it's pretty much the heart of the matter. Newtonian mechanics isn't false, and Relativity is...
I'd normally not comment on this, outside of grading homework, but since precision is what this thread it about: Your last line is slightly problemati...
Just to clarify, the static-versus-dynamic contrast is what I am concerned with; "describe the situation" isn't. So saying that view A is more static ...
Well, let's take a step back, then. Would you agree that what I'll call a naive worldview - that of a child or a caveman, say, developed on the basis ...
Yes, I expect that statement was what triggered my meme connection, it just took a while to sink in - thanks again! The nice thing about memetics is t...
Hm. Either my understanding of Dawkins's formulation of memetics is very flawed, or yours is. Here's mine: The basis for the so-called "Central Dogma"...
Not sure I follow in turn. The pseudo-scientific ideas mentioned in the OP (like creationism) and the pre-scientific idea about rest being a more natu...
Hang on, I just made another connection. Namely, that it may be fruitful to re-consider the various approaches and views and models mentioned as memes...
Thanks! My basic contention is that scientific models have a tendency to be less static than their non-scientific counterparts, such as the pre-scient...
True, scientific models are biased toward qualities like quantifiability and reproducibility, in the sense that models without those qualities are bad...
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