acl123 I beg to differ on your last comment - "(and are therefore much less effective). Therefore they are not the same."

I'm not arguing purpose, but effectiveness. All weapons are effective at killing some one the end result is the same. I think the word you are looking for here is convenient, that is why gunpowder and projectile weapons caught on. Yes projectile weapons are more convenient.

My argument against your statement ends here, the rest below is my opinion.

A hammer is arguably just as effective as a gun at killing some one. One because a person is less likely to think you are meaning to kill them. After all it is just a tool, and a weapon. They are one in the same, and the duality is novel.

A ball point pen is just as effective at maiming as a hammer is. Demonstrated in the video below.

At any one moment there are an abundance of weapons, and tools at your disposal and a knowledgeable person does not discern between the two.

On a side note:
The entomology of guns, evolved from spears and sling shots. These killing tools have been around for quite some time. This has nothing to do with whether they are dangerous or not. I think its interesting how long humans have been killing each other.

People will kill each other accidentally or intentionally. That is the way it is, for now. The day that it isn't will be a great day indeed. A day that I look forward to.

I think he was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir. The Jungian thing, sir.

Duality.

I do not care who fucks who, or who marries who. Its not me they are fucking, and its not me they attempting to marry.

I do not even care much for the institutions of marriage. Its mundane when you think that all we do is:

Try to make ends meet,
You're a
Slave To money
Then you die.
- Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve

Go enjoy your life, however I understand that you may enjoy your life more by looking down on others.

Mundane vanities, money and status, violence and sex, purity and duality - The human Condition.

If you aren’t for the troops you are against them, that's a fascist stance.

If I want to be against the troops on one subject I will be, if I want to be for them on another I will be. That is the rights afforded to us in the constitution, however these soldiers have defended that right in WWII, and have not since then in a major war.

Even with Vietnam, Korea, the first Gulf war, there were some good reasons to go, but with all of the modern wars... those reasons die out fast. Because war is incoherently wrong, and so ingrained is us as a people.

Every time I go to the theater I see National Guard, showing a Dale jr, kid rock, and a Nat Guard (not a typical guardsmen but some hand picked Thoroughbred)on the wall.

They play the kid rock song that angers:

"So Don’t Tell Me Who's Wrong And Right When Liberty Starts Slipping Away
And If You Aint Gonna Fight Get Out Of The Away
Cuz Freedom Is So Free When You Breathe Red White And Blue I'm Given All Of Myself Cuz Thats What I Do"

http://www.metrolyrics.com/warrior-lyrics-kid-rock.html

I’ve got no problem with that, but when they show it with footage of some middle eastern country I have to take it as pushing an inherently wrong view of where liberty is.

Its like the commercials that have our soldiers in desert camo marching with their heads turned with cool shades on like stereotypical Nazi celebration march, with the stars and stripes in the background. I have come to dislike this view of our country very much.

I would like them to show the true side of war, so that the people who don't know the duality of these things can see what a GSW really looks like.

Other countries have a right to liberty, but its not our Liberty that we are fighting for in Iraq. Our liberty is fought for inside the beltway, and in courts all over the country, and even in the territories of the united states (Puerto Rico).

I'm with Sarzy. I feel fortunate that in the last few years I have been able to convince my brain more and more to avoid the nagging/disbelief I used to suffer through in every such movie for retards.

(E.g., In Ghost Rider why the FUCK do they keep saying he's breaking a world record by jumping 300 yards "from goal post to goal post" when he was also jumping through the end zones???!!! Did those extra yards not count toward the world record???)

I went into Eagle Eye fully expecting endless stupidity and a ridiculous story with Michael Bay explosions to wow the kiddies. While most of it was pretty out there, I was able to enjoy the movie for what it was, a couple hours of simple entertainment, while ignoring what it was not, an intelligently complex tale of ingenious technology and intricately developed characters with a subplot about the duality of man's craving for and fear of technology.

I wouldn't recommend Eagle Eye to anyone with a well developed sense of reality or scrutiny, but I wouldn't call it the worst movie I've ever seen. Hollywood could definitely stand to improve its sewage, but it's hard to expect much better when all the people with the money are only interested in what will "earn" them more of it.

Spawning racist hate on Obama, in order to see harm done to him. Thinking that the people will rally behind McCain if something bad does happen, is stupid.

To allow this sort of stupidity and hate at your rallies is foolhardy, and it is not practicing what you preach, and it is backwards especially since they are rallying behind the christian right. Hating is not christian, and wishing for hate is a sin.

That is the duality of Religion, because religious people use what is good about it to their advantage and forget about what is bad about it.

To argue whether life begins at conception is ridiculous. Of course it does. The word itself is the definition of fertilization and implantation of an embryo.

The question rather is does it have it's own right to live? Or does the woman have the right to her child's life while her body gestates it.

When does a child have human rights? There is a duality in this country on this. A woman can have an abortion in her 3rd trimester, yet a person can be charged with 2 counts of murder for killing a pregnant woman.

>> ^NordlichReiter:
Politicians are all slime balls, which slime do you like better.

I can remember when i thought i could vote for the least evil of all the parties (European citizen). Nowadays, every single one of them disqualifies itself in one or more core areas, so i'm basically left with the rather simple choice of incompetence and maliciousness or maliciousness and incompetence.

The duality of politics: accidentally or intentionally, the ass-pounding still causes a rectal inflammation.

But back to the point at hand: i was quite surprised to hear a clear "expect no help from us" from the German government. Guess they'll disguise it as credits with great conditions again, worked like a charm in the past.

1. I never said Christians cannot/shouldn't be scientists and nor do I think so. I know several good scientists that are religious, and I respect them, even though they were indoctrinated as children and have since interpreted some of their experiences as proof of a deity. It is sad, and it all comes back to indoctrination, like I said previously. Now, supporters of ID, however, are a disgrace and they're undermining the whole concept of science. I think you'd agree that there is quite the correlation between religious fanatics and supporters of ID, wouldn't you? So it's no real surprise I assumed you might be one. I apologize for this assumption, and I'm happy you say you're not of the ID crowd.

2. I didn't attack your interests; just essentially said you should expand your knowledge in most fields - as should I and pretty much everyone. I just get annoyed when people talk about advanced sciences with great ignorance, misconstruing and making up facts on the spot, and that was what you did.

3. We are in agreement on science not making the claim of (ever) having the absolute truth; yet you seem to be one who believes this is possible via faith, that science has no truth to it at all and also, that making this claim is a good thing; this is where your logic and rationality fail. Anyone making the claim of absolute truth is wrong, and hence, it's a bad thing.

4. The mass of an atom isn't "the most simple thing in particle physics". It also isn't the smallest particle. Nor the one with least mass. It is also, in most common cases, a known, and I am at a loss how anyone could forgo this knowledge in their secondary education. Just because you lack basic knowledge in particle, no, basic, rudimentary physics, doesn't mean the scientific community does.

5. I won't argue semantics of 'fact' here. If you don't like the scientific definition, you can... well, do nothing about it. A discussion should be based on impartial principles, however, you attempt to impose your set of definitions and interpretations.

6. How is a METHOD true or false? Do you have any understanding of what a method is?

7. It appears your 'knowledge' of particle physics is drawn from http://www.videosift.com/video/Quantum-Physics-Double-Slit-Experiment-amazing-results. That's just sad, man. You should at least browse through Wikipedia before you engage in a discussion about these matters. We cannot as of yet see an electron or a photon - it has to be registered - interacted with, to determine which slit it goes through to carry this experiment out - hence the intrusion and the different results. The cool thing that baffles scientists is that it's the first time we've had a situation in which one cannot measure without interfering. That's it. That's the easy explanation. I don't think I should go into how the complementarity principle and wave-particle duality work.

8. In response to your request (you ignored mine) - here's 7 ideas from a 200 years ago that we hold true and still use today, quite in their original form, include:

Heliocentric theory.
Narrative history.
Electromagnetic induction.
Electrolysis.
Oxidation numbers.
Kinetic theory of gases.

and finally, a dessert - Evolution. It's occurrence has finally been proved in a lab experiment. Did you know that?

9. Please, don't just talk about it, do also look the Theory of Everything up. You actually think it's a theory that tries to describe everything - which is hilarious. I hate schooling other people and doing the internet's job, but you ought to know it is a theory that would explain the 4 known fundamental forces of our universe - gravity, electromagnetic force and strong and weak nuclear forces. That's it, doing that alone has proven to be difficult enough. There may be other forces required to explain any and all physical phenomena, which is what it's geared towards, but it won't in any way try to explain, for example, why kittens are cute or why you're arguing about that which you have little to none understanding of on the internet.

All in all, I apologize for my sometimes hostile tone; it's rather challenging for me to tolerate blatant ignorance. And you saying "It is impossible to prove something truth with science.", that's just plain wrong and illustrates just to what extent you misunderstand science and its methods.

Anyway, if you think it does not further true knowledge, then why the hell are you studying science, huh?

>> ^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

^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 close to 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 scientist performing 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 have come full circle and return to my initial lines:
"You call yourself a scientist. That is most definitely not fine."

>> ^MarineGunrock:
Cool video, but that music made me stop it halfway through. It sounded just awful - like the CD was skipping the whole fucking time.


That's breakcore for you. It's been gaining popularity since the early naughties. Personally, I'm ambivalent toward breakcore. I like a clear beat, but in moderation it's a nice thing to have.

In this video it's put to perfect use, though. Having the nature/technology duality visually is mirrored in the audio aspect with the classic/breakcore mix.

We know, in its context, his comment was made in regards to duality and probabilities. He was wrong. I wasn't using his quote in its historical sense, but rather as a shared view of remarkable symmetry in the universe.

With reference to well known the double slit experiment, where an interference patrern is observed, I quote from the video: "Scientists say that this is only possible if the particle exists in different universes". That's rubbish. This experiment demonstrates the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics; that matter behaves both as a wave and as particle; two aspects of a singular nature. I'm all for pop-science, but I can't tolerate junk science like this. It's harmful and it's condescending. I can't believe that this is anything other than intentionally misleading.

It's a shame how few documentaries do science justice. I'd recommend a good book: "Quantum Physics: A Beginner's Guide" by Alastair Rae if you can handle a little math, or "Deep Down Things, The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics" by Bruce Schumm, which I'm reading currently and which is nothing short of brilliant.

Oh, and here is a great tip! If you like watching science videos, check out Professor Muller's "Physics for Future Presidents" web-casts (also known as "A Descriptive Introduction to Physics). These are video taped lectures from caltech. The dude rocks, he explains everything very clearly and he's a lot of fun to boot:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978373