Ever feel like you're insignificant? Well...don't look at this...

Cracked even remotely used as a source is a joke...
Wikipedia on the other hand while not 100% accurate is still a very good source of information, has sources, and is generally maintained by fanatics of a particular field so is generally a pretty good source of information for quick reference.

I actually think there needs to be a new rule for sources with wiki, which is basically you list wiki if you used the wiki article as the primary source of your understanding, even if you read the other sources... and use the sources that it links to if you are pulling from there rather than wiki.

I hate that wiki is looked down upon so much scholarly because it's such a better reference than several other sources which are perfectly acceptable sources... like an Encyclopedia that often doesn't cite sources.

Possibility number three is that you just aren't smart enough to understand how its possible to change the laws of mathematics.

Its really a test of faith. If you don't believe the alien, there's no point in looking. If you do, you'll have to look far: the aliens themselves have the sort of computing power to allow them to look so much farther in the digits of pi that you'd be spending generations looking, possibly without finding anything.

Incidentally, at the end of the story Ellie's search in pi turns up an oddity: trillions of digits into pi when expressed in base eleven there's a string of nothing but ones and zeros. Written out in a square grid, the 1s form the picture of a perfect circle. Essentially the signature of the artist: the understanding is that it confirms the idea that there are messages encoded in pi, and the search isn't for nothing.


We assume the axioms of mathematics are the only logical ones that can exist, but Godel proved that there are an infinite number of possible sets of base axioms for mathematics, and not all of them are guaranteed to generate the same conclusions. We assume most of the rest are nonsensical because they conflict with our common sense, but our common sense is informed by only a tiny subset of the functioning of the current universe.

You assume its impossible to encode a message in pi in the same way someone can assume its impossible for parallel lines to meet. It defies the definition of "parallel" but then we live in a universe where the notion of parallel behaves a certain way within the limits of our senses. Suppose we lived in a hyperbolic universe where its impossible to construct parallel lines, even on small scales, that obey our current understanding of parallel. Then we'd probably invent one of the non-Euclidean geometries in which parallel lines do meet, and we'd consider it nonsensical to consider geometries in which that is not true.

If nothing else, a hypothetical creator of the universe could have worked in reverse: they could have created a universe that happens to be specifically Euclidean, and one in which the value of PI has specific meaning, because the constant PI in Euclidean geometry just happened to encode the message they desired. If it didn't, but some other value did, they could have redesigned the universe to promote the invention of a different kind of mathematical system which happened to include that specific value as an important constant.

For any given message, there is a transcendental value that encodes it somewhere. A sufficiently intelligent being could find it and then ensure it becomes an important constant in the mathematical system that intelligent beings are bound to construct, within a universe that promotes that specific system. That is certainly not impossible.

Pi is not an axiom. A Circle and various other geometric shapes are and will always be the shapes they are and have the same proofs and such that they have.

The only way that what you are talking about could even remotely happen is a distortion in space that caused things to look a certain way... funny thing that nature is, that couldn't ever really happen though, because evolution would compensate for it

i suppose it is possible that space could bend after/before a certain point for sentients so they always live in a funky looking thing that made it impossible for parallel lines to exist via some sorta of localized curved space thing, but even then the best you could do is calculate the weirdness that would be occurring and compensate for it resulting in a secondary calculation on top of geometric figures...

But as far as what you're talking about...that is incredibly laughable with Ellie. A message written in a different base that appears only after trillions of digits and only when the person arranges it in a certain way... That sounds more like a weird pattern that can occur naturally that someone is applying their own meaning to it. You do know that there are patterns that exist in Pi right? They're there but they don't repeated endlessly. That's what that base 11 message sounds like to me.

You're not paying attention...

It's proven. In our mathematics. That other mathematics can exist where our mathematics don't work.

Our mathematics is axiomatic. It depends on certain axioms being true but not inherently provable; and the rest is built upon those axioms. But other universes have the possibility of existing with different axioms.

And if you could create universes... you can chose which axioms it would have.

The specific message was a long series of ones and zeros expressed in base eleven which contained a total number of digits equal to the product of two large roughly equal primes. Rendering that message in a grid generated a circle encoded in the digits. The odds of such a message given reasonable estimates for how large those primes are implied to be would be astronomical.

It echoes the original story where Ellie encounters a radio signal which at first appears to contain just a small signal, and then hidden in the signal was a digital signal which contained a video of a television broadcast from Earth echoed back, and then within the phase of the signal was another signal which contained a set of bits that contained a number of bits equal to the product of two primes, which when arranged in a plane generated the machine blueprint.

The whole point was devising something that a scientist would consider something beyond the ability for science to explain, something that even when you factor in Clarke's law, still seems beyond science and technology. Encoding a message in PI qualifies. Its definitely beyond anything we can remotely extrapolate from our understanding of science and mathematics, but that's the point. Whether its actually impossible for an intelligence far beyond ours is an unanswerable question by definition for us.

Why would you attempt to convince anyone of this fact by transmitting a random set of bits which have no intrinsic meaning?

.

Looking at the actual wikipedia article...

This affirms the cracked version more than your explanation. As for the age, it was stated that the total work on the project was 60 years, and ending at 80 years old the math seems correct. The confusion that stems from the article can be understood under a different interpretation: Harrison was making clocks by the age of 20, and since clocks were essentially the whole of the marine chronometer, it can be said that the totality of the work on the project spans 60 years if you consider the premises for laying the groundwork for a theory as part of the theory. As to whether the columnist was lying, incorrect, or misunderstood is left to the whims of the reader to impose their own idea onto it.

The "clock" being the obvious correct answer wasn't true for the board. There was competing theories in tracking the motion of the moon in the sky. Regardless of initial funding, the board wrongfully denied Harrison the full prize that he should've won and the reward for solving the longitude problem. When the predictive power of any device is attributed to luck over and over again, then this is a blatant disregard of that device. There is clearly a difference between caution and agenda, and the board crossed it.

There is also this idea that scientists are somehow disconnected from society. This couldn't be further from the truth. There is no experiment or phenomena that, when observed, is not contingent upon the observer to analyze and describe it. There is never any case where science is independent of scientists, so all the factors that come with humanity in general (culture, agenda, intelligence, wars, politics, beliefs, paradigms, psyche, quantity, trade, technology, biological needs, social interaction, dissonance, etc.) are infrastructure to the institution of science whether it be the past, the present, or the future.



There was a lot of evidence to conclude continental drift. In fact, it takes an experimenter very little effort to see that India is moving six centimeters per year. Some of the evidence later that helped to solidify continental drift in geological circles were the paleomagnetic ribbons on the ocean floor. Regardless, the information I had listed prior was dismissed because matching fossils is pseudoscience somehow, and because there wasn't an adequate explanation as to why the continents were moving. Denying observed phenomena because the phenomena doesn't have an adequate explanation is a glorious flaw in reasoning. It would be like denying the double-slit interference pattern of light because I don't like the idea of wave-function collapse.


DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher in 1869 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Miescher).
Phoebus Levene's tetranucleotide hypothesis in 1910 stagnated the of research by declaring that DNA could not hold information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_Levene). It wasn't until Erwin Chargaff set the record straight 40 years later. Until then, DNA was thought to not be complex enough to hold information (highlighted for emphasis).



From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall:

So it did happen, btw. The reason why this is an example of science holding things back is because the cause of an illness needs to be identified before a correct treatment can be prescribed or a cure can be made. The time that H. Pylori is being denied as the cause of ulcers is the time that H. Pylori isn't being studied and treated in ulcer patients. Thankfully Barry Marshall was a tad bit crazy, or it could've taken a generation to get to solving the problem.



The whole point of those few sentences was talking about how science doesn't come up with the right answer, and the perpetual correctness of science as a whole is a perceptual illusion. Not sure how you came under the idea that I was saying the exact opposite of that.

I have been stressing the whole "generation" thing for awhile now. It is a reoccurring trend that the truth doesn't convict, and that new schools of thought are adopted only after previous ones die off, so because of that many great advancements in society take over 30 years. BTW, any explicit statement can be either correct or incorrect, since there is no alternative. If a statement is not correct, then it is incorrect. If a particular theory is based upon a series of statements, and one of those statements is incorrect, then that theory is incorrect. Modifying a hypothesis is a new hypothesis that is similar to the previous one, and is done so because the previous hypothesis was (get this) incorrect.

A confusion you seem to be having is that a statement can be half correct. If you have a series of statements bundled together, then this isn't one big amorphous super-statement. Each component is evaluated upon itself, and those components are either true or not true. Newton was correct when he developed mathematical functions to plot the motion of celestial bodies. He was incorrect that it was "spooky action at a distance".




I take offense because I AM a biblical creationist. If you refuse to listen because of that, then I thank you for summarily proving throughout these posts that you are fallacious via the genetic fallacy (ad hominem, in particular) and circular reasoning (biblical creationists are wrong because they're biblical creationsists), myopic, offensive, discriminatory, hostile, intellectually dishonest both to yourself and others, dismissive, existentially tunnel-visioned, un-empathetic, and self-unaware. I think this is probably going to be the last time I correct you on wikipedia articles you are quoting since honestly you lack the ability to listen first, understand second, and give a damn third. 1650s and Han Solo? Seriously, did you even bother to read the articles?

The logic chain you listed is a perfectly reasonable form of thinking called affirming the antecedent:

If A, then B.
A
Therefore B.

Or "People who eat pizza covered in tar are crazy".
"You eat pizza covered in tar".
"Therefore, you are crazy".

See how once the premise is set the conclusion follows naturally? Yep, perfect example of formal logic. The issue you are taking up is that you chose a deliberately silly premise to argue in order to say the chain of reasoning is incorrect. This is just more of the genetic fallacy: you're calling what you disagree with silly names.




Anyway, I find this conversation on numbers interesting. I worked with a grad student who specialized in theoretical algebra, and he told me that the proof for 1+1=2 was 40 pages long about group theory, set theory, and various other axioms would allow us to do simple addition. I'm not a theoretical algebrist (what do you call them?), but I did learn something interesting about our number system.

There is something called the modulo, which is the amount of digits that make up our number system. Our most popular system is 10 base, with 0-9 constituting the separate digits. Once we go past nine, we expand to a new placeholder. Another common system we use is the 12-base system for time keeping and clocks, and its subset that is 5 x 12 system that expands into the primary 12 system. Now, I bring this up because different modulos can create very strange mathematical results. For example, in a 0-7 system, 7 x 7 is equal to 61; a normally prime number. I believe in a modulo 2 system, you can get things like 1+1=0.

Our base number system is extremely arbitrary: It is based on the number of fingers we have on both of our hands! If we had a different number of limbs, or a different number of fingers, or we invented our number system through some other method, then we can get some very strange results for universal numbers like e and pi while still performing the same functions. Now, the reason why I'm bringing this all up is because it provides that, in theory, if an alien race that engineered humans could determine a couple of key factors such as the number of limbs and our "digits" on them, then they would have a method of controlling our eventual number system, and thus could mathematically hide a message into some constants in the universe. This will be hard as hell to do, but if these aliens came up with a way to genetically engineer a planet from the ground up, then you couldn't put it past them to pick a modulo system that couldn't hide something.

It doesn't have to be pi. Going through physics I've come across so many constant proportions I can't even remember them all.

This was also a matter of technology and politics, but not Science. Its more correct that this was a battle of competing approaches and not competing theories, combined with the fact that astronomers have traditionally been highly parochial in the past.


A lot of controversy could have been excused up to about the 1940s. But after that point, its pretty clear to me that this was another example of Plankian advance: the old geologists had to die first. Incredibly, when I was in high school an older text book on geology claimed continental drift was a controversial and unproven scientific conjecture - in 1983 (the text dated from 1979). At that point, its clear some scientists were acting like they had a bet against continental drift.

Incidentally, I used to collect old text books with odds statements in them. I have one from 1967 - just two years before the Apollo moon landing and years after the first manned space flight - that claimed rockets moved forward because their exhaust pushed them forward, and when the rocket reached the same speed as the exhaust moving backward the rocket would no longer accelerate forward because the exhaust would leave the back of the rocket standing still.

But that's more of an indictment of textbook writers often being idiots.

Considering i paraphrased the wiki article to say that the cracked article is closer to what it said when the cracked article focused on the very last little part and exaggerated it it is really quite amazing that you believe that.

Considering I pointed out he actually got funded by the board and got more than the prize and that the clock wasn't tested properly...the board was in the right, not the wrong, but that's not to say Harrison wasn't in the right as well, but rather both were right and it just ended up sucking.

As far as the worked on the watch for 60 years... it specifically states that the watch that was made AFTER the testing took 60 years to make in the cracked article. Harrison started in 1737 and petitioned and won the money 1773... the second watched took 3 years to make and started being made in 1769ish while the previous watch was made in the 1750s and previous to that for those 13+ years he was making clocks that ultimately didn't work... so the entire process took 36 years and the bit that cracked is exaggerating took maybe 16.


You do realize that Plate tectonics was not accepted based on what the bible says right? The earth moving and such means it's not a firmament thus if the earth moves the bible is wrong and that's not right so Plate tectonics is wrong. That was the main argument and to this day it still is for a number of nutters...


Yes. Crick and his partner didn't just go looking for things they didn't think existed. Like all science it is build upon previous work and it was a combination of a few theories made the break through... It's kinda like how Evolution has been around for a very long time, but it wasn't until Darwin pointed out how it works that the picture came together. Same thing happened in a number of fields over the last 100 or so years and will likely continue to do so more at an increasingly rapid pace over the next hundred years.

What you are reading as Science turning a blind eye to things is Science pointing out the flaws in the propositions that makes Scientists come up with the answers to how those flaws are not flaws or come up with a corrected version.



I wasn't doubting it happening. I was pointing out that it's not a good way to prove that the bacteria is the cause in some cases. What likely really happened is that it got someone's attention that thought it was interesting that he intentionally caused something to occur who then went and did the real science and showed that the bacteria did in fact cause it. Basically saying "Dude's a nutjob but maybe he's onto something."


[quote]
I take offense because I AM a biblical creationist. If you refuse to listen because of that, then I thank you for summarily proving throughout these posts that you are fallacious via the genetic fallacy (ad hominem, in particular) and circular reasoning (biblical creationists are wrong because they're biblical creationsists), myopic, offensive, discriminatory, hostile, intellectually dishonest both to yourself and others, dismissive, existentially tunnel-visioned, un-empathetic, and self-unaware.
[quote]

I'm trying to think of a way to say this... When someone believes something so utterly wrong and backwards it brings into question everything else they think and believe and say because it cannot be trusted, especially when they hold two contradicting views. I would suggest READING the bible and thinking about what it is that it says that you believe.

Look up a user channel on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/paulchartley

He has a video series on reading Genesis. Dismantling Kent Hovind's Doctoral Thesis and explains how nutty something like Noah's ark really is. He is pretty funny so if nothing else you'll get a chuckle, especially for the horribly dull begat sections.

It's not a matter of I think you're crazy because you're a creationist. It's a matter of creationists are crazy because they believe stuff that is completely contradictory to reality and for you personally... it's contradictory to other beliefs you have. This is pretty obvious, so when you say something it is questionable as you aren't able or see where you are contradicting yourself.

See how you filled in the "covered in tar" part in the second premise? That's your problem. I specifically said "You eat pizza" without the "covered in tar" part because that is what you are doing... pretty much.

And i gotta point out that as you get mad and insulted at me calling creationists insane let me just state that I don't think you really are a creationist as most people really are not. They have been told they are and compartmentalize their brains as well as don't read what they say they believe. It is pretty clear to me from your posts you are pretty far from being a creationist at least in the way that is the mind blowingly insane version that is associated with that label. So I would suggest reading the Bible, thinking about it, and then realize you don't believe the stuff that it says because snakes don't talk, carnivores exist, evolution exists, people don't like to 900, Earth isn't as big as Neptune, That's not how genetics work, Egypt exists, Nazareth did not exist, Donkey's don't talk, and I could keep going but I think that's more than enough.

In Euclidean space with the axioms that seem to most naturally arise therefrom, yes. Pi is not itself an axiom, but it does arise from our axioms and definitions. But even we don't actually live in Euclidean space (although it's a very close approximation under most circumstances). Even the simple ratio of circumference-to-diameter is not equal to pi in, say, the Ehrenfest paradox, which is a real thing in real physics, and it's difficult to say what might happen in other types of (to us) more exotic space.

This is counterintuitive when you're first learning about different bases, but it's not really a strange result. 7x7 is 61 in octal (base 8), but 61 in octal isn't the same as 61 in decimal (base 10, what we normally use). If I arrange a 7x7 square of objects, every observer will agree that number of objects is a perfect square, no matter what base they count in. Whether they write down that quantity as 49 (decimal), 61 (octal), 31 (hexadecimal), 110001 (binary), or some other base won't matter. Similarly, if I arrange two 5x6 groups, and then one more object by itself, everyone will agree that's a prime number of objects, regardless of base, but they again might write it down differently.

Related to the pi issue, even in this universe some people don't think pi is a particularly fundamental value.

Edit: And by "everyone will agree" here I mean after resolving the possibility of simple errors and disagreements in definitions.

Pretty much. I don't think he realizes that our discussion is over. Online I have met so many people like Durakken that I know that it is useless trying to reason with them. I learned this the slow way, however, after arguing with someone on a daily basis for over a month. Deliberate misinterpretations, intellectual dishonesty, reassuming the premise, accusing the other of outright lying, it is all the hallmarks of someone who can't listen, and likewise doesn't know when to stop. Anything I say will not be taken into consideration; their modus operandi is to immediately search for an argument in their favor, and then put it up regardless if it actually deals with the point at hand.

The argument with the previous person ended when they were banned. My experience on these forums is that the mods are very light and highly absent on these issues, so to save myself the trouble of talking to a wall it is best to only cast pearls before those who have shown the capability to listen and learn. The inability to accept that I'm a biblical creationist (the whole 6000-8000 year old earth) is evidence of severe myopia, and thus unreasonable.



However I digress.


Yes, I know that different bases are strange only when first new to them. The point is that a different base system can come up with different number results, including results that appear impossible when compared to our ten base system. I picked 7 x 7 particularly because it produced a number that was prime in our 10 base system.

I did not say that I cannot accept that you are a Young Earth Creationist. On the contrary I said the things you are saying are not aligning with such a belief. Which means you are not that or you have a vastly skewed version of things. Which isn't all that surprising given how that crowd has been trying to use science to justify their crazy since forever... which is funny because why do that when you believe in literal magic...

But whatever. If you don't wish to actually engage in discussion or thought so be it. I has cats to play with!

This is what happens when you take "Flatland" and extrude it to 4 dimensions. From what I understood from his book "Hyperspace", Kaku agrees with this.

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.

Not always. Sometimes they are written by groups of people and edited by a panel. However, even when they are written by individual specialists, it often happens that a) their knowledge is actually flawed, but this only shows up when they are forced to attempt to write a textbook covering the entirety of their field rather than just the specific part they tend to work in, and b) sometimes their understanding is correct, but in the process of simplifying it for textbooks they start saying the wrong things.

The rocket one above is probably an example of B. The text book correctly laid out the formulas for rocket-propelled motion, and anyone sticking strictly to the formulas would always get the right answer. Then right there at the end the textbook writer's brain probably said "we need to say one more thing" and at that point a serious malfunction occurred.

The canonical example of A are textbooks on statistics. I don't know what they look like now, having no desire to audit statistics textbooks for all eternity, but back in my day they were prone to making the occasional serious error, not in calculation but in when it was reasonable to apply certain statistical formulas or methods. Which often happened when a statistical something was intended for some large problem for which the statistical method made sense, and the textbook writer reduced the scope of the problem to a simpler one that made the calculations simpler, but then invalidated the method.

Then a whole bunch of people graduate college thinking those methods actually work for real in those exact situations, and start doing improper things.