Thrown out of an FBO...

Matt,

They believe in their instruments.


Ok. Define belief and we can move on. If you define roundness as
flatness, then indeed the earth is flat.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Crash,

PROBABILITY, not POSSIBILITY.
Big difference.


I know. I mistyped. Still: Nothing happens if it has zero probability
of happening.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Matt,

Having a hobby isn't like
having beliefs. I don't think it is possible to have no beliefs and
more than it is possible to "stop thinking."


Well, you think wrongly.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

On 2006-11-16, Matt Whiting wrote:
To me the analogy is more akin to a computer CPU. As long as it has
power, it is processing. The process my be excuting NOP instructions,
but the point is that the CPU is ALWAYS executing as long as it has
power.

On a point of pedantry:
It doesn't have to be so. The Z80 processor, for example, executes NOP
instructions when it stops at a HALT instruction because this keeps the
built in DRAM refresh circuitry running. However, it is entirely
possible to design a processor that really does halt completely until it
receives an interrupt.

Even with a processor like the Z80 example, it is possible to stop it
executing (not even NOP operations) and leave it powered up - just take
away the clock signal, and it won't even execute NOPs nor will it
refresh DRAM (which is not a problem if you use SRAM, or your embedded
computer code is entirely in ROM).

I believe the same is true of the human brain. It is always
processing and always believing in something. So, I reject the idea
that it is possible to either believe in nothing or have no beliefs at all.

That's not terribly useful to this debate, though. It is entirely
possible to not believe in a god. I suppose you can call it a 'belief',
just as logic 0 is different to an input just left floating, but not
believing in deities is not a religion. Absence of a religion is not a
religion.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

That's another misconception about science. Scientific thories are
=always= beliefs, until DISPROVEN. Nothing can be "proven" in science.
Huh?

It's a common misconception that science "proves" things. This is not
so. Science is not about proving anything.

Science is a method by which we try to figure out how the world works.
It is an ongoing process, always subject to revision when experiment
disagrees with our ideas to date. But since our experience (and
experiments) are always incomplete, there will probably always be things
we have overlooked, odd effects we hadn't seen, consequences we haven't
come across. The more exepriments we do, and the more carefully we do
them, the better a view of the world we can get.

For a long time motion was a mystery. We knew (viscerally) how things
moved, at least well enough to capture prey, escape being eaten, and
play games. But we just accepted that heavy things fall. It was
obvious that heavier things fall faster (feather, stone, duh) but nobody
knew why. It's quite possible that nobody cared. But then somebody
thought about it, and after a proverbial bop on the head came up with an
idea that every action has a reaction, and that everything with mass
attracts everything else with mass, including the earth. He formulated
these ideas mathematically (so they could be measured and tested), and
then he went out and tested them.

This is called "falsifiability". If his ideas were incorrect, the
experiment should show him up. This is critial to a true scientific
theory. If it is not falsifiable, (that is, testable), then it is not a
scientific theory. A statement like "There is a God" is not a
scientific theory for that reason. It cannot be tested in a manner in
which failure is meaningful.

Anyway, after dropping things off of tall towers (I'm compressing
scintific history here), measuring the twist of wires attached to heavy
balls, and timing balls going down ramps, the findings did not
contradict his idea, but supported it. Thus, we become more confident
that Newtonian mechanics accurately represents reality.

One of the experiments (rolling balls down an incline), if done simply,
illustrates this. Calculate the forces on the ball, and figure out how
long it should take to accelerate down the ramp, based on the angle of
the ramp. You'll find the results actually =disagree= with theory.
They go slower at first. Hmmm... think think think... Well, the balls
are rolling; we didn't think of rotational energy the first time around.
Physics must be a bit more complicated than we though. Now we have to
come up with another theory, or modify the existing one. It makes sense
that it takes some of the energy to spin the ball, in addition to the
energy it takes to get it to move down the ramp. By using some
mathematical techniques we can come up with a good idea of how much that
probably should be.

Once we add that to the theory, everything works out. We've discovered
something new about the world.

Newtonian mechanics (as modified to include torque) has =not= been
"proven". It merely has acquired a lot of support. If it turns out
that it is incorrect, the new theory will still have to explain all the
stuff that Newtonian mechanics explained, and that's going to be hard.

But not impossible.

It turns out that NM is in fact -incorrect-. Experiments with light
waves showed that at high speeds, things are different. More
mathematics, and a new idea emerged... Einsteinian Relativity (ER).
It's bizzare, to be sure, but experiments attempting to knock it down
have failed to disprove it. Meanwhile, it explains everything that NM
does, plus addresses high speeds, and gives us new insights to the world
to boot. ER has gotten a lot of support, because it has =withstood=
many tests designed to burst its bubble.

It's not the last word. There never will be a last word. But as our
understanding of the world gets more sophisticated, our theories get
closer to reality.

None is ever =proven=.

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:38:49 GMT, Judah wrote in
:

Atheism is not absence of religion. It's a
dogmatic belief that there is no God. It is not all that much different in
the dogmatic belief that there is a God. Or the dogmatic belief that there
are numerous Gods. Or the dogmatic belief that there is a supernatural force
that governs all things. Or the dogmatic belief that there are 4 elements
that govern all things.

Until someone can unequivocably prove one way or the other, they are all just
religions seeking answers to pretty much the same questions...

So then, this common, virtually universal, human dogmatic belief
characteristic leads one to the question: What benefit does the
devotee derive as a result of his belief?

Has this instinctive, apparently irrational, tribalistic behavior some
survival benefit? Is a tribe member better able to prosper than the
solitary hermit? Is it time for rationality to prevail, or will those
logical souls lose the benefits of tribalism? Inquiring minds ...

Jose,

It was
obvious that heavier things fall faster (feather, stone, duh)


Actually, they don't.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

As demonstrated on one of the lunar landings when (I forget which) the
astronaut dropped a feather and a hammer and they fell together.

mike

"Thomas Borchert" wrote in message
...
Jose,

It was
obvious that heavier things fall faster (feather, stone, duh)


Actually, they don't.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

This conversation is no longer aviation related, so please take it to
another forum, perhaps alt.opinions.are.like.assholes

Mike,

As demonstrated on one of the lunar landings when (I forget which) the
astronaut dropped a feather and a hammer and they fell together.


Maybe, if one believes strongly enough in it, they WILL fall at different
speeds. Can you disprove that? ;-)

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)