Disinformation does harm. Direct harm: -many failed to get COVID vaccines and suffered as a result. -Increasing numbers of parents aren't getting thei...
Just a lump of mass? Suppose it has a mass of 500 grams. Is it the same as a 500 gram, lead fishing weight? All particles behave like waves under some...
By writing "matter(mass)" are you suggesting matter and mass are identical? They're not. Mass is a property that most things have, although photons ar...
This is confused. Energy and mass aren't existents (per se), they are properties of things that exist, and they can be converted to each other (that's...
I haven't seen a conceptual analysis that concludes it is discrete, but my impression is that it's typically assumed to be continuous. Is it your opin...
Step (the verb) = the act of setting ones foot onto the next step (the noun; a thing). The set of actions maps to the set of things. The stairway cons...
Many important metaphysical questions have implications for the physical world. Metaphysics tries to figure things out with conceptual analysis (which...
I wasn't claiming it disproved the existence of infinitely many stairs, but it proves that an infinite number of steps cannot be completely traversed ...
If the question can't be answered via measurement, or any other physical means, then it's unknowable. Quantum mechanics demonstrates that intuition is...
How is that not a solution? It can be framed as reductio ad absurdum: 1. Arriving at the bottom entails taking a final step 2. The defined infinite pr...
The speed of light (C) is a physical constant that corresponds to the light's velocity in a vacuum. The scenario in the video does not entail exceedin...
OK, so we risk introducing error if we treat spacetime as discrete, but if it IS discrete, we introduce no errors by treating it (mathematically) as c...
I can express my solution in everyday language. The scenario entails reaching the bottom of a staircase through a process consisting of stepping, from...
Suppose spacetime is continuous. We still can't distinguish spatial measurements that differ less than a planck length, nor time measurements less tha...
You're conflating folk wisdom with a theory developed through the methodologies of science. Folk wisdom is a product of inductive inference (seeing no...
More or less. Both demonstrate the fact that limits don't correspond to the completion of an infinite series of finite steps. I agree with Sime, and I...
Most of the species that were listed had brain sizes closer to chimpanzees than to humans. But OK, let's step back in the taxonomy. All are genus homo...
Maybe you don't realize what I was talking about. I was referring to faster than light travel and traveling through hyperspace. The former is physical...
You're conflating "unexplainable events" with fanciful possibilities. We could only possibly look for such planets within a relatively short distance ...
Hardly. None of them had a human level of intelligence. The most well-supported hypothesis is the Universal Common Ancestor, which implies life began ...
That life is improbable is supported by the fact that we're nowhere close to figuring out abiogenesis. This suggests it requires a narrow set of condi...
It's logically possible, just like it's logically possible we could work magic, or summon demons, if we just had the right incantation. There's really...
I was just proposing the possibility of someone (not me) coming up with a thought experiment. Nothing in particular in mind, but here's an example of ...
Faster than light travel and jumping through hyperspace are fantasy. And much SF makes the silly assumption life is ubiquitous, and that it would tend...
Yes, I mean a 1:1 relation between real numbers and something that exists. But also more than a trivial assertion (e.g. "there's infinitely many spati...
I brought that to his attention and he accepted it. The residual question is: does the continuum map into anything in the real world - in any meaningf...
It is seeing whole galaxies, not planets, much less detecting radio waves coming from them. I agree with everything you said. I tend to wonder about w...
A healthy democracy would be dominated by a well-informed, rational electorate. There would be no need to block an incompetent, irrational, demagogue ...
No, I haven't seen a general proof that the continuum can't map to reality. I've only seen arguments against specific mappings. Does it matter? In ter...
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I don't think you've actually proven real numbers are logically impossible. I haven't read through all the posts, so I don't ...
"Could have" = it's logically possible, not that there's any good reasons to believe it to be the case that life existed before the big bang. We know ...
Sounds like an implicit false dichotomy: blind luck vs intelligent design. The correct comparison would be: undirected natural selection vs intelligen...
Is that opinion just a wild guess, or do you believe you can rationally justify it? Here's my opinion. There are two broad possibilities: 1) Intellige...
IMO, the most plausible account of causality is law realism: where a and b are particulars: a causes b iff there is a law such that Type(a) necessaril...
So... you believe nature manifesrs intelligence? If so, please provide your justification for believing that. It's trivially true that "something cann...
Are you suggesting this proves real numbers are logically impossible, or are you arguing that there is no valid 1:1 mapping from the set of real numbe...
Very little can be "proven" in the way mathematical theorems are proven: through deduction based only on axioms that are intuitively true. So neither ...
None of the above. I embrace truthmaker theory: for any proposition that is "true", there is a state of affairs in the world (the truthmaker) that acc...
Bipartisan support for COVID relief, during the crisis, doesn't imply there would be bipartisan support to increase taxes on corporations and the rich...
Changing taxation requires legislation passed by both houses of Congress. In the Senate, it takes 60 votes to pass controversial bills because of the ...
That sounds very plausible. By extension, it seems to me that it's (in a sense) painful to be wrong, and it feels better to be right. This pushes us t...
Dispensa's work sounds consistent with Peter Tse, in his book. "The Neural Basis of Free Will". It seems reasonable to believe we truly make choices, ...
...until the pandemic shutdown. I think it's overly simplistic to either blame or give credit for the state of the economy. Business cycles are inevit...
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