52:40-5512 is where he loses credibility with me. I was listening hard for experiemental verification of the "field" model he proposes in the beginning, but he obviously has nothing.

He seems to think that despite the lack of a falsifiable theory/model of the world, he is a scientist. One could argue he is a scientist that is in the early stage of working out his hypothesis. But he seems stuck on statistical study, probably because he is not a physical scientist.

Youtube seems to be doing some major revamp. It has had that message bar across the top that says they are currently working on things - all week.

Two nights ago, I couldn't subscribe to any channels or get past the age verification for "videos not suitable for minors". I've lost track of how many videos have failed to load, even when viewing from their site directly. So, yes, I expect this may have been the cause.

I'd really like to know what major changes they are making - the direction things have been going lately though, I wonder if it is not in our favor but in the favor of the larger corporate trolls!

i have a feeling this is an SNL skit...
this gotta be submitted to http://snopes.com for verification.

^I'm gonna go ahead and assume that is the reincarnation of billo.

OT: It's time the internet got rid of those stupid age verification pop-ups. Any kid with more than a couple of brain cells can defeat them, and they are just a nuisance for the rest of us.

>> ^imstellar28:
Science today emphasizes "peer review" which consists of publishing articles in several journals and counting how many citations they receive

The emphasis is supposed to be on the repeatability of results by independent experimenters, not peer consensus in "scientific" journals.

Don't downplay peer review. While it may not be part of the scientific method, it is an important part of how scientists communicate their results.

I don't understand how publishing results and having them peer reviewed beforehand is a bad thing. I certainly don't think it's replacing independent verification of each other's work. It can only help facilitate it, right?

You've missed several vital points in this debate completely (or, if you ask me, you've purposefully thrown a red herring).

The separation of (any) church from the establishment of State has to be just that - political atheism (NON-theism, NO religion - seriously, is it that hard to grasp?), which is what the Constitution demands. Noncompliance is anti-constitutional; the current situation is anti-constitutional.

This particular debate isn't about the morality of the ways to bring up one's kids, which is where you were trying to steer it (not that education, a state program, doesn't deserve full attention in terms of thorough verification for its concordance with the Constitution, it's just that education ≠ kids). Taking religious service out of the classroom, which this debate is about, unfortunately does in no way negate parents' opportunities to brainwash their offspring. But that's not where you were going, is it?

I could ignore your musings, but I'll address them: anyone claiming "I've found God" is either lying or deluded - and that's mainstream Christianity talking. It maintains that god does not meddle in our everyday affairs apart from the occasional "miracle", therefore it logically follows that it's impossible to "find god". Not that Christianity makes many "leaps" of logic on a regular basis, though.

In conclusion: bringing one's children up to rely on logic and empirical questioning isn't indoctrination, it isn't child abuse and it isn't brainwashing. It's making sure they grow up to be intelligent, knowledgeable and successful, while on terms with the reality and the mundane world, which constitutionalization of education is all about.

>> ^harlequinn:
I wonder how many atheist parents would be happy to let their child tell them "I've found God" and accept it without trying to reeducate that child to their point of view (that god doesn't exist)?
Just as we know that educating a child in one's religious ways will shape their future to be religious, educating a child in one's atheist ways does the same thing (some like to call this brainwashing - either religious or atheist).
How many would call their own children stupid, dumb, illogical, blinded, indoctrinated, etc?
How many could simply "get over it" and just "deal with reality instead"?
This is an American debate and I can therefore point out that the American constitution allows for freedom of choice in religion (or to have none). Would it be constitutional to try and convert that choice one way or the other? Certainly American atheists are often vocally angry at religious people trying to convert them to a religion. Should the child in my hypothetical be just as angry if said parents were to try and convert them to atheism? Or should said atheists just leave the child alone to his/her choice?

The feds really bought and destroyed food during the depression? I'm looking for some verification that really happened and having troubles. Anyone got a reliable source?

It always confuses me, this talk about the myth of torture. Sure, if you're looking for a confession ,for instance, and it will not result in any action or verification it is useless. You're right, the person will eventually say anything to make it stop.

However, if you are looking for actionable intelligence (information you can subsequently go out and investigate with conventional means) then torture is effective, and it's one of the reasons why it's been used as long as humans have been around.

But on the comments boards there is all these people parroting "it's ineffective, it's ineffective". Torture is a very evil act, and is illegal, and demeaning. Hopefully killing will be just as frowned upon at some point. Using torture is a regression.

"sanctity of life" needs some deconstruction.

As already mentioned sanctity has problems in being theistic (therefor not amenable to verification), so I'm going to go with value, which exposes one of the fundamental flaws in the question at hand, since value is by it's vary nature subjective, the question needs to be phrased "value of life to you|me|john|The Pope|etc". We have no obvious need to agree, just as with anything value is not transitive, I don't need to base my valuation on yours, and vice versa, you may feel that a bucket of fried chicken is worth $10, while I, being vegan, value it at $0(or less).

The more absurd issue is "life". Before the last millennium humanity seemed to have a pretty solid grasp of what constituted life and none life, people from all over the world could agree on general categories to some extent, their mythology around this was different, but we understood that a lion is not like a rock in some meaningful way.

The problem is that the way we tended to make this distinction , as "life force" is demonstrably wrong, life is not magic, it's chemistry. The knowledge of this fact is extremely new in the course of human history, and we have certainly not integrated this fact into our general cultural context or language, and so part of the problem is that our language, our tool for making and analyzing distinctions, is fundamentally flawed in this regard, and so should be expected to be wrong.

"life" is not a thing or an attribute, it is an arbitrary categorization which we use in an attempt to save our old, cherished, incorrect notion from being discarded.The category life basically comes down to something along the lines of:

"that which we value more than a rock"

Of course this could be "life" in the standard bible-belt sense of "Christian life", or more magnanimously "human life", but neither of these get us a clearer picture. How much "living stuff" which is "human" does it take to get human life? Skin cells, a kidney, a decapitated body on life support, a brain on life support, a group of cell which have the "potential" to become a living breathing adult human? How many "humans" are in a zygote? What if it splits into twins/sextuplets?

And in the end the question is what "should" be the value, so if we put it all back together we get:

What should be the value, to all entities, of an non-clearly defined category of objects of which all the entities seem to be members?

You can tweak the clarifications on that question to make ANY conclusion follow, but their is NO BASIS on which to tweak the clarifications to begin with.

All answers are bound to be meaningless and unsatisfying, because the question is meaningless and unsatisfying.

Societies decide in subtle and organic ways what is valuable and what is unacceptable, and it's a good thing™. I much prefer our current society to euro-diaspora society 100, or even 50 years ago.

Hi EDD-

At a glance, your video is too close to identical to not be considered a dupe because it seems to only have about 10 extra seconds at the beginning but is otherwise exactly the same.

The post isn't showing up in ST because is is currently discarded.

Hope that clears it up a bit.

In reply to this comment by EDD:
Hey there! Could you please have a look at my http://www.videosift.com/video/Chemical-Party, specifically the comments? It can also include some dupe verification, if you feel like it, but the main thing is - how do I get it working again? And also, why doesn't it show up on the Sift Talk page?

Hey there! Could you please have a look at my http://www.videosift.com/video/Chemical-Party, specifically the comments? It can also include some dupe verification, if you feel like it, but the main thing is - how do I get it working again? And also, why doesn't it show up on the Sift Talk page?

>> ^EDD:
^Dear GeeSussFreek,
you call yourself a scientist. That is fine. However, I will warn you right away that many on this website would question your devotion to scientific method based on your username alone - tell me, is it a coincidence that it's pronounced exactly like "Jesus-Freak"? I'm asking this (rather rhetorical) question because religious fanatics claiming to be scientists are often proponents of Intelligent Design, which is (I'll be frank here) a load of steaming bull excrement. I hope you are not one of this fold, because I've had my share of "dialogue" with these folks, and it has never, ever resembled anything like a reasoned, structured discourse.
With my worries laid before you, my response is this:
there are many fields of science and from your short stay on the Sift you would apparently style yourself as a jack-of-all-trades (economics, military, political science, theoretical and quantum physics, chemistry, just to name a few of which you've shared your opinion). Yet, it would also appear that you may be master of nothing.
A scientist (especially one talking about science and scientific method) would not ever, under any circumstances, attempt to draw their own definitions of FACT. Or any concept previously and universally known, for that matter. Me, I was taught what general as well as specific definitions of 'fact' are in secondary school. It would appear your "science diploma studies" have taught you nothing of this. Scientific fact feeds directly back from scientific method, which includes fancy notions such as peer review, one which has unfortunately so far eluded the scope of ID proponents. In science, fact may at times not be the absolute truth, it's what's agreed upon by the informed public. Our knowledge in most advanced fields of study can never be perfect and complete, but the ones most often making this claim are religious folks, saying that scripture "has all the answers".
Now, mass. My oh my.
Mass, assuming we're talking about gravitational mass, not inertial-7th-grade-physics-mass here, is the interaction of gravitational fields. In other words, yes, gravity. The same concept you differentiated, indicating exactly how much you understand of this and that I have no need to go into supergravity, supersymmetry and duality and start actually looking things up. Thanks for that. Oh, and by the way - mass is not created. Neither is matter, for that matter.
Continuing on-
regarding your nonplussed ideas about quantum theories, I have to disappoint you a little bit - it's still discernible, natural science; it hasn't obliterated all previous theories in physics; in fact, I dare you name three it has. Yes, the math involved is a 'bit' harder, the conjectures deeper and at times wilder, but scientific method is still applied.
You also said: "The fact is, that science doesn't deal with facts and has no method of proving things true, only methods of proving them false."
First of all, I LOVE your use of "fact" in this sentence, just love it. Anyway, hypocrisy aside, all we need, is a YES/NO or a TRUE/FALSE experiment. Their initial assumption will either be true, and they will PROVE something to be true, or it will be wrong, and they will prove that it is wrong. Works both ways, just like logic's supposed to, in your brain.
In conclusion, I return to my initial lines:
"You call yourself a scientist. That is most definitely not fine."


So, because I am a Christian, I can not be science minded. Thats a weak assertion. Moreover, its a showing of the new bigot mind set against any of those who have a different mind set. It is the new thing. To expect me to tolerate and be tolerant of your ideas, but the same latitude is not relayed back. I wouldn't count someone out just cause they called themselves agnosticfreak, would you? But that isn't the point of this conversation.

Intelligent design is crap. I never even mentioned it here, but yet, you rolled me into an automatic assumption that I believe that...I don't, its a fundamentally bad idea of applying impartial physical interpretations of the world and using those to apply to a metaphysic's of the creators doing. This is bad, it is not even an theory, but thanks for the assumption.

And thanks for the unmerited attack on my interests, I won't return the favor.

In your third paragraph, you totally just reiterate what I always said that science has no claim to absolute truth, so I will take that as a consesion on your part, but then you automatically assume that I do agree that ID is a valid theory in which I believe, which you are wrong. So I will take your concession and your incorrect assumption and slide right by your personal attacks for the moment.

As for mass, I was trying to show that even the simple idea of where the mass of an atom, the most simple idea in particle physics; in a unknown. So in effect, the basis of our understanding of particle physics is incomplete and yet we call things on the higher level facts, and I object to the terminology, just as one might also object to a Christian saying that God being real is a fact...its just a misuse of the language. I also object to things being called laws, but it is more of language that we are talking about on these things. There is a connotative and denotative meaning obviously, but I still think the terms are misleading. So my battle was over terminology abuse in this case.

You talk about the scientific method again. I would like to bring attention to the scientific method 2 problems that very prominent people in science have had with similar instances of rules in empirical practice. First, was one of my heroes, Alan Turing. His problem was one in computer science (my field btw) where he was trying to prove or disprove the ability to make a program that could test if other programs terminate (ie not suffer from an infinite loop). The problem was, you could make such a program, but you would have to then turn that program back on itself to make sure that it also terminates. This presents a problem. Because we still don't know if the program terminates. So, the problem was that there was no way to verify the thing that was created to verify things. Thus, the proof showed that there is no way to create a program that can test of other programs terminate.

Likewise, there was formerly a school of thought that has now all but vanished called the Verification theory( I believe this was the term, correct me if you know better). The verification method heralded that unless something could be empirically verified, it is meaningless. However, the same thing that happed in Mr. Turrings proof destroyed this idea as well for when we tried to verify the Verification theory, there was no verification to be had. So, I use the same argument on the Scientific method as to show its level of truth is very low indeed. It is a Theory that can not be turned back to proof itself. It rests on arbitrary principles that seem good...and they are good for lots of things, but truth is not one of them. The Scientific theory can not show itself to be truth using the scientific method. In fact, quantum physics shows us more and more that the very act of observation changes the data. In other words, sciences attempts to claim things being the way they are might only be so because they looked, not because they are actually that way. Once again, the problem of phenomena and Noumea.

You then use a classic example of why I choose my battle of language with science. It is impossible to prove something truth with science. Things are truth in science until they are not...which is no truth at all. Can you name one idea from 200 years ago that that isn't radically different from today? In essence, those proven theories weren't proven at all, they can only be disproved. Science only deals with negative evidence, not positive. Things will always be revised in science, and more over, we never really know when they won't need to be revised again; and thus this is why science can never have a claim to have a TOE (theory of everything) because you don't ever know when you know everything...you don't know when every fact is accounted for, every essence of the whole is taken into account...it is an unknowable thing (from the standpoint of absolute knowledge).

*edited out cause Internet people can't be trusted with humility*. However, I don't think my claims are baseless, and I attempted to have a civil talk about them. If I came off as rude or condescending in my first reply, then I do apologies as this was not my intent. I have a real eagerness to talk about such topics openly and freely on the sift because we have some very intelligent people here and normally some pretty good discourse (we are many stars above the youtube crowd). I look forward to perhaps a more civil reply in the future Hopefully I have covered all your points here, I tried my best.

Edit: spelling

I'm with Bamdrew. Get some independent verification in there by UN personnel that aren't affiliated with any of the countries involved.

Wikipedia is however imbalanced totally, there is little credence given to people who actually possess knowledge over those who actually are academics. I have seen countless article plunged into ridiculous "Verification needed" jerk fests for what I can myself readily see are facts being presented.

Academics don't have the time that people who have no jobs do, yet their contributions are not given the same level of attention. The language of Wikipedia varies largely between totally technical and totally informal. I think the formula needs adjustment.

I looked at Knol and I don't like the presentation so far. It looks so bland and uninviting.