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Damned / Rejected Science (Miscellaneous)

almond13 said:
There are two ways of dealing with an upstart like me.

You're not an upstart at all as far as I can tell. You seem to be following a very conventional alternative science line.
 
almond13 said:
It's only one hundred years away from the date I gave and a sudden interest in Venus. I can't for the life of me see how you can use this to debunk me? I'd be interested in your comments on this.

Firstly, the line before that which you seem to have ignored puts mentions of Venus in 3000 BCE. Secondly, 2100 BCE was when the triple seals started to become more common. Want to guess how many centuries before that they started?

almond13 said:
The planet Venus was born in the first half of the second millennium. In the third millennium only four planets could have been seen,

Yep, we've just blown that one to smithereens...would you like to try a revised timeline, as even 2100 BCE throws out the biblical theory horribly, and the 3000 BCE reference torpedoes the lot.
 
I'm afraid almond won't be replying, wembley. I have now banned him for reasons demonstrated above.

edited to remove an unwarranted insult.
 
The resulting discussion has been merged with the general queries thread on Website Issues, starting here.
 
The cats he drowned came back from the dead

By yet another of those weird coincidences which seem to underlie the surface of reality, I was browsing in the Strange Food & Drink Thread this afternoon and was reminded of Dancing Squid, stated there to be an example of living food.

This Huffington Post article assures us that the squid or cuttlefish is recently-deceased but that the tissues are reacting to the Sodium in the Soy Sauce.

It makes me wonder if any signs of life seen by the dubious Doctor Littlefield may have been a reaction to the salt in his powder. His claims, however, go way beyond a bit of posthumous dancing.

The video link on the article is dead but there is a good one here! :)
 
Looking back to post #32.

I don't see Ada Lovelace amongst the great and good.

Surprising as she wrote the worlds first computer program and has a programing language named after her.

But maybe it is understandable as she stood on Charles Babbage's toes by wishing to be included in the credits for the work they did together.

And so it always was.

You want another ?

Joscelin Bell.

INT21
 
Looking back to post #32.

I don't see Ada Lovelace amongst the great and good.

Surprising as she wrote the worlds first computer program and has a programing language named after her.

But maybe it is understandable as she stood on Charles Babbage's toes by wishing to be included in the credits for the work they did together.

And so it always was.
Didn't Babbage cut her loose after she also proposed to help him with his business dealings, which he was completely crap at?
 
More or less. He didn't want to share. So in the end he shot himself in the foot.
Without his male patronage in an all male science world Ada never really recovered.

INT21
 
..Do you mean Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS FRSE FRAS?

Yes and no.

The person who discovered pulsars was Jocelyn Bell a the time.

The recognition came much later, after she had been deprived of her rightful recognition.

The 'No-Bell' prize affair.

INT21
 
Looking back to post #32.

I don't see Ada Lovelace amongst the great and good.

Surprising as she wrote the worlds first computer program and has a programing language named after her.

But maybe it is understandable as she stood on Charles Babbage's toes by wishing to be included in the credits for the work they did together.

And so it always was.

You want another ?

Joscelin Bell.

INT21

At least she's getting a plaque.

Tribute to 'remarkable' Ada Lovelace unveiled

Here is the blue plaque in Kirkby Mallory to honour the achievements of Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer.

8eac65a3-1fcb-4d6c-8bdf-820a2477acec.jpg


BBC
Lovelace, who lived at Kirkby Hall, in Leicestershire, is considered to be the first computer programmer following her work with Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine.

The plaque is on the Coach House in the hamlet as the hall no longer exists and this is the nearest intact building.

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-england-derbyshire-41560886?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=59dcaa40e4b0cf0501cabf73&Tribute to 'remarkable' Ada Lovelace unveiled&&ns_fee=0#post_59dcaa40e4b0cf0501cabf73
 

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..as only yesterday I was posting about how Endeavour Morse's mother was a quaker too!..

So was mine.

INT21
 
Can anyone recommend some good books/articles on the morphogenic field? Besides Sheldrake's works.
 
Can anyone recommend some good books/articles on the morphogenic field? Besides Sheldrake's works.

Just a tip ... In searching for documents / materials on the subject be sure to check under all 3 variants of the key term:

- morphogenetic
- morphogenic
- morphic

All three have been widely used, depending on timeframe, author, and topical domain being addressed.
 
The wonderful drama about the unintelligible proof of a famous conjecture:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9871

As far as I know, the current situation of understanding of the proof has not changed significantly since last year, with this seminar in Nottingham the only event bringing people together for talks on the subject. A small number of those close to Mochizuki claim to understand the proof, but they have had little success in explaining their understanding to others. The usual mechanisms by which understanding of new ideas in mathematics gets transmitted to others seem to have failed completely in this case.

www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8663

Others are even less optimistic. “The constructions are generally clear, and many of the arguments could be followed to some extent, but the overarching strategy remains totally elusive for me,” says mathematician Vesselin Dimitrov of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. “Add to this the heavy, unprecedentedly indigestible notation: these papers are unlike anything that has ever appeared in the mathematical literature.”

Have we had this before? (I don't mean Perlman's proof, I mean Mochizuki.)
 
https://click.convertkit-mail4.com/...lcmxpZmUuY28vZXJpYy13ZWluc3RlaW5zLWVycm9yLw==

Eric Weinstein's Error
Eric Weinstein has released his highly self-aggrandized anticipated research paper on geometric unity.
I read the paper. I gave it a solid hour or two. I did read the whole thing.
The paper is not really a research paper, it's a collection of briefly formalized mathematical intuitions combined with some comments about how these intuitions could possibly be turned into a significant finding, plus a number of paranoid intuitions about why and how this significant finding is thwarted by various political forces.
I'm not sure we've seen this kind of megalomania since Nietzsche. To be clear, I would say that's a compliment, given that Nietzsche was the absolute chad of late-19th century Europe. What happens to this kind of intellectual temperament in the 21st century is, of course, a different question.
I was mostly interested in this paper as an example of what a sophisticated outsider intellectual could do, after having gained a large social-media audience. For a couple years now, I've been listening to Eric's story about his suppressed theory, which, he has claimed, overturns all of modern economic theory, transcends Satoshi Nakamoto's conception of the blockchain, and more.
 
https://click.convertkit-mail4.com/...lcmxpZmUuY28vZXJpYy13ZWluc3RlaW5zLWVycm9yLw==

Eric Weinstein's Error
Eric Weinstein has released his highly self-aggrandized anticipated research paper on geometric unity.
I read the paper. I gave it a solid hour or two. I did read the whole thing.
The paper is not really a research paper, it's a collection of briefly formalized mathematical intuitions combined with some comments about how these intuitions could possibly be turned into a significant finding, plus a number of paranoid intuitions about why and how this significant finding is thwarted by various political forces.
I'm not sure we've seen this kind of megalomania since Nietzsche. To be clear, I would say that's a compliment, given that Nietzsche was the absolute chad of late-19th century Europe. What happens to this kind of intellectual temperament in the 21st century is, of course, a different question.
I was mostly interested in this paper as an example of what a sophisticated outsider intellectual could do, after having gained a large social-media audience. For a couple years now, I've been listening to Eric's story about his suppressed theory, which, he has claimed, overturns all of modern economic theory, transcends Satoshi Nakamoto's conception of the blockchain, and more.

I don't know if the date makes any difference, but it might be worth noting the report title is "Geometric_Unity-Draft-April-1st-2021.pdf"

However, another reference here, by Marcus du Sautoy, writing in the Guardian, seems fairly optimistic:
Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems
 
A rejected virtual reality idea from the 90's for home shopping. I suppose factors like transaction payment not being secure enough back then, stores being re fitted and stock often moving around in actual real reality caused this idea to be scrapped as well as most house holds not being able to afford to buy the headsets both then and now.

 
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One wonders if such experiments would be successful nowadays.
And how could you accurately replicate a 200 year old experiment, with regard to things like the exact composition of the glassware used, whatever was used to sterilise beforehand, the sealant used to creeate a closed environment, the method of generating electricity...
 
Also, "Acurus genus". Nothing comes up of that exact name when searching for the insects that were - apparently - spontaneously generated. The tale as related here keeps coming up on "alternative science" discussion forums and under the heading "Abiogenesis" (which appears to be a magnet for people of an alternatively scientific inclination) - but nothing more.

Although going deeper, there is such a thing as the Acarus family of insects - the ubiqutous mites found in grains, flour, sugar and foodstuffs. I know from several of my myiad temp jobs - a brief stint assisting in the quality control dept at a biscuit manufacturer, and one in a flour mill's test labs - that even today there is absolutely no way of excluding food mites from flour and sugar. Therefore food law recognises this and manufacturers are told not to exceed a certain number of "parts per billion of insect fragments or eggs" in the finished product. These things are hardy and persistent and get everywhere. So absolutely inevitable, dependng on what Crosse was using in his experients (what sealant did he use to close his test environment and was it animal or plant derived?). And also inevitable that anyone replicating the experiment would also get food mites?
 
OK, you’re telling me that the government rejects such things without consulting scientific advisors.
There's a telling slant on this in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister. (written by people wth direct experience of how Government works)

In the episode, the two men who have to make a decision on whether a particular industrial process is harmful to the environment are both woefully incapable of making an informed decision as while both might have got first class degrees, Sir Humphrey Appleby (civil servant) did his in Classics. Jim Hacker (Prime Minister) did his in Economics. Neither has any sort of scientific training and the last time either saw the inside of a lab might have been at school, age sixteen. If at all. Appleby is reduced to trying to analyse the Latin-seeming names of the chemicals involved as if he was parsing a poem by Juvenal, while Hacker's priority causes him to obsess on how many jobs the new chemical plant might bring to a marginal Government constituency and if we don't get the plant, the bloody French will.

Eventually they bring in a Principal Scientific Advisor, who is treated with patronising contempt by Appleby and who fails to give the answer Hacker wants to hear. The PSO is reminded of his lowly place in the Civil Service heirarchy and warned that he could spend the rest of his career sampling dirty water at sewage outfalls in somewhere God-forsaken like County Durham, a long way from London. (Appleby's chosen equivalent to exile to a Gulag in Siberia - this crops up a lot. South Wales is a potent threat to errant juniors).

When he gets private face-time with the PM - something Appleby and Bernard Wooley are conspiring to prevent - the PSO explains that the reason why people on his grade only get so far in the Civil Service and no higher is that even if they did their science degrees at Oxbridge, they are still considered to be specialists, one-trick ponies, who are of little use in a Civil Service that values generalists - people with no specific knowledge of anything very much.

Indications are that the Civil Service still thinks like this and mistrusts/marginalises its scientific advisors. (No examples: mindful of the thing about discussing potentially tricky current affairs)
 
@uair01, may I ask your permission to nominate you for the FMB's WTF award? For possibly the weirdest posting ever - and you know you have a lot of competition here. I'm thinking of an annual event, with different categories, like the Nobel or ig-Nobel prizes. Oh please say yes!
Yes I would be honoured. But I myself would probably nominate the "dumb cops who parked a car with a suspect on the rails" or "Somerton Man identified".
 
Yes I would be honoured. But I myself would probably nominate the "dumb cops who parked a car with a suspect on the rails" or "Somerton Man identified".
Thanks. Yes, there are so many excellent posts....
 
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