6 hours ago, merjet said:

 

 

Here's your chance to improve or mutilate Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_rotation_paradox  Edit the page to explain why the phenomena happens.  I bet you can't do so correctly and without help. But you can show your stupidity to many people not on OL.

I don't see any phenomenon. It's just one active coin and one passive. One discrepancy leads to another.

Now that's just off the top of my head. I've not actually explained it except, maybe, philosophically.

--Brant

Science? I don't have to show you any science! I don't need no stinkin' science!

It is explained in the article. Find the word “illusion.” Merlin falls for the “illusion” then struggles to get back up, and thinks you might, too, that’s all.

6 hours ago, merjet said:

 

Ha ha ha  ha ha h

Mark brought a truly great one not too long ago. Post some comments, Merlin...

https://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/topic/16957-tether-a-spinning-ball/?tab=comments#comment-284574

29 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

I don't see any phenomenon. It's just one active coin and one passive. One discrepancy leads to another.

Now that's just off the top of my head. I've not actually explained it except, maybe, philosophically.

--Brant

Science? I don't have to show you any science! I don't need no stinkin' science!

You are supposed to be dazzled by the outcome that the moving coin has done a 360 while going, not all the way around, but merely halfway around, the static coin.

On 2/13/2020 at 6:34 AM, Jonathan said:

That's false. MSK answered your questions.

Jonathan,

When he asked, I said he probably wouldn't get it.

(This issue was why President Trump sometimes does things that look inconsistent on the surface--he mentioned two cases if I recall correctly.)

After I answered him, then made a few attempts at explaining it in simple terms, guess what?

He didn't get it.

And he laughed (and still laughs) at people who do get it.

He wanted a different outcome.

Sharing information does not seem to be at the root of interacting with him.

It may start that way, but it always goes south into a pissing contest.

Michael

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

btw - Fewer than 20 reads per post? Where did you get that stat? Educated guess? I don't know how to get views per post. I don't even get views per thread, although I might be able to find out where to turn that on in the backoffice. (For the record, your guess sounds good to me, maybe even a little high since this thread is in William's blog and, from a general impression I have garnered over time, blog threads on OL don't seem to get the same luv from the search engines that normal threads do.

Jon already answered how to get the views-per-post figure for this thread (for blog threads generally).

For threads on the main board, click on the forum heading. Views and number of posts are listed for each thread in a column to the right of the thread titles.

For instance, for the "McAfee" thread, click on "Stumping in the Backyard."  In the column to the right it says at this moment: 

21 replies, 194 views.

Ellen

I used to be this kickass dude...

Michael

17 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Anyway, it's easy to see number of points per poster over time, although I'm not sure what these points are (maybe likes).

The "Laugh" reaction counts as a point, since apparently it's meant by the web designers to indicate an approving, laughing-with laugh, not a derisive, laughing-at laugh.  By virtue of using the "Laugh" icon to indicate derision, Jon manages to make Brad look on the "Leaderboard" as if he has a high approval rating.

Ellen

31 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

By virtue of using the "Laugh" icon to indicate derision, Jon manages to make Brad look on the "Leaderboard" as if he has a high approval rating.

Ellen,

Ditto for William.

In fact, on the Leaderboard, you can choose by year, by week, all time, by day, etc. William is in the top 4 in all of them.

He should thank Jon for making him look good.

Thanks of thinking through the gamification stuff. I could have (and probably should have) thought this stuff through. I'm mostly bored by it, though. I've noticed, I'm not very participatory by nature. So the badges of participation and things like that don't interest me from the way they were designed. I prefer them for banter or other "up" emotions.

Even traffic only interests me (for now) from a particular viewpoint that is not normal. I try to keep it within a margin. I especially do not want a huge amount of traffic right now. Why? Simply because more bandwidth costs more money. Later, when I can move the forum to a different structure, hire coding technicians and so on, I will change this standard and open up with some tricks and tools I have learned over the years. Then the traffic should skyrocket.

Michael

He really should thank me. He owes me so much.

On 2/12/2020 at 6:48 AM, bradschrag said:

On 2/12/2020 at 6:40 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brad,

Actually, I'm going to do better than that, except it's going to be a pain in the ass for me.

All of your future posts will now have to be reviewed by me before they will be published. Nobody will be able to see them. Only me. I will make sure to delete anything else inappropriate before letting them through.

Call it potty training for now.

Michael

NOTE FROM MSK: Trolling text removed.

Would anybody be concerned if an unseen hand began to remove 'trolling text' ... or 'inappropriate' bits of commentary going forward? The invisible hand guide would be the Objectivist Living rules.

Personally, I think such an invisible hand would be wise to "mark" the inappropriate material rather than delete it. Perhaps a spoiler ...

21 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Personally, I think such an invisible hand would be wise to "mark" the inappropriate material rather than delete it. Perhaps a spoiler ...

William,

There are contexts and there are contexts.

Double-dog daring me on my own forum, like Brad did, comes with a cost. You (William) don't have to like me deleting his shit, but that's the way it is in that context. And if the person keeps up too much of that crap, like the crazy lady did sometime back, I ban them and block them from even reading the forum without using a proxy.

As to context, I personally like to drink lots water every day. But if I drink 2 gallons of it in a short time, I die. Does that mean drinking lots of water is bad for me? Or only in the context of within a short time?

See how that works?

Letting texts be is great for almost all contexts. But in a few contexts with hardheads wearing crashproof helmets, it's toxic. 

I often wonder why pro-establishment folks have difficulty understanding context when power is involved. They want to be the ones to tell everyone what to do and make exceptions for themselves--more often than not when they don't own the places they want to do that at.

My policy, which I have stated over and over for years, is that people on OL who are regulars, especially those who have been so for some time, which includes you, get lots of flexibility. Newcomers who show up and want to run this site and, with a chip on their shoulders, call the owner bad things, get very little.

Look what happened with this guy when I allowed him too much flexibility. He had no idea where he was at, even when warned. He must have thought OL was a safe space or something...

If Brad doesn't like the way he's being treated here, tough shit. I don't like the way he treated others and me on this forum. Let him bitch about me to his peeps. There are plenty of places on the Internet to do that. But here on OL, if he wants to be treated better, he needs to act better. And it starts by ditching the constant condescension. (Disagreement is fine.)

As to posts I don't let through, he better make a copy of them because I am not saving them. (There has only been one so far.)

I'm curious to see how this plays out over time.

People know I rarely keep restrictions permanent. Frankly, I don't want to use restrictions at all, but it's real hard to get some people to pay attention. They're just too damn hardheaded. So I have to find a way to get their attention. Taking away their power always gets their attention.

If Brad learns how this community works and starts posting accordingly, great. And like I said, disagreements are fine if that's what he wants to do. If he never posts again, also great. It's his choice, not mine. Either way is good for OL.

He will not change how this community works, though. That would be bad for OL. He doesn't rule anything here.

Michael

RE ATMOSPHERIC CO2:
SUMMARY FOR OL READERS

Even if we - unreasonably - suppose that humans are responsible for the entire post-industrial increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and even if we - unreasonably - suppose that the post-industrial increase in "global mean surface temperature" is entirely caused by increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, there isn't any good reason to worry about the burning of fossil fuels, since the temperature increase has been small (at most about .8 Celsius degrees [1.5 Fahrenheit degrees]), increasing the temperature by the same amount again would require doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration (which would need burning an awful lot of fossil fuels to accomplish), and meanwhile the increased atmospheric CO2 is beneficial to the plant life on which our lives ultimately depend.  In short, atmospheric CO2 alarm is misguided.

Now, the warming specifically of the Arctic might be cause for worry.  However, the details of CO2-as-driver theory don't do the job of explaining what's happening in the Arctic.  The anomaly distribution and warming patterns are discrepant with the theory - giving alarmists another headache (like "the hiatus") to scrabble to find ways to fit into their paradigm.

Ellen

Princess Ellen wrote: Now, the warming specifically of the Arctic might be cause for worry.

And the Antarctic just reached 65 degrees F just above the ice. What if Canadas’s grain belt extended hundreds of miles further north? Moderate warming is good. This is dedicated to our beloved neighbor, Canada. We are best friends. Peter

In the early mornin' rain
With a dollar in my hand
And an aching in my heart
And my -pockets full of sand
I'm a long ways from home
And I missed my loved one so
In the early mornin' rain
With no place to go

Out on runway number nine
Big 707 set to go
Well I'm out here on the grass
Where the pavement never grows
Where the liquor tasted good
And the women all were fast
There she goes my friend
She's rolling out at last

Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver wing on high
She's away and westward bound
For above the clouds she flies
Where the mornin' rain don't fall
And the sun always shines
She'll be flying over my home
In about three hours time

This ol' airport's got me down
It's no earthly good to me
'Cause I'm stuck here on the ground
Cold and drunk as I might be
Can't jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain
So I best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain
So I best be on my way
In the early mornin' rain. Songwriter: GORDON LIGHTFOOT

On 2/14/2020 at 12:23 PM, Jon Letendre said:

It is explained in the article. Find the word “illusion.” Merlin falls for the “illusion” then struggles to get back up, and thinks you might, too, that’s all.

On 2/14/2020 at 12:34 PM, Jon Letendre said:

You are supposed to be dazzled by the outcome that the moving coin has done a 360 while going, not all the way around, but merely halfway around, the static coin.

20 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

Now, the warming specifically of the Arctic might be cause for worry.  However, the details of CO2-as-driver theory don't do the job of explaining what's happening in the Arctic.  The anomaly distribution and warming patterns are discrepant with the theory - giving alarmists another headache (like "the hiatus") to scrabble to find ways to fit into their paradigm.

23 hours ago, merjet said:

On 2/16/2020 at 6:14 AM, Ellen Stuttle said:

Now, the warming specifically of the Arctic might be cause for worry.  However, the details of CO2-as-driver theory don't do the job of explaining what's happening in the Arctic.  The anomaly distribution and warming patterns are discrepant with the theory - giving alarmists another headache (like "the hiatus") to scrabble to find ways to fit into their paradigm.

 

https://merjet46.blogspot.com/2019/04/60-minutes-show-on-climate-change.html

!Does Billy still not understand the difference between the words "hypothesize" and "predict"?

Anyway, it appears that Billy didn't notice or comprehend the final few words in Ellen's comment. The part about scrambling.

See, we're back to the importance of the questions that I've asked. Details. Ahead of results being observed.

"Arrehenius didn’t get every detail right, but his argument has proven to be pretty sound."

Pretty sound. Which details didn't he get right? What were the specific conditions of falsifiability?

Did he also make contrary predictions? Ones which have been falsified?

And when did the settled science consensus scientists embrace the idea? Where are their predictions? Details of their criteria?

I'm asking here about actual predictions, not cherry picked speculations...not, "it might cause more storms but with lesser intensity, or it might cause fewer storms with greater intensity, or neither, or..."

10 hours ago, Jonathan said:

..."it might cause more storms but with lesser intensity, or it might cause fewer storms with greater intensity, or neither, or...'

... but whichever it is, and however much trouble the details cause for our theory, humans are doing it and it's b-a-a-a-d.

Ellen

PS:  Oh, and "off by a country mile" counts as "pretty close" if we want it to.

I have been reading Loserthink by Scott Adams. He deals with the very topic under discussion here and spells out the scam I have always sensed and tried to describe as best I could. Scott did a much better job.

The gist is that in deciding on whether manmade CO2 causes climate change, we not only get information second hand--after all, very few people make the measurements themselves, therefore most people rely on and pass on what someone says, not what they themselves experienced--we only get to see successes, not failures. And that is very similar to a popular "narrowing down" stock scam. This leads to the blind certainty of the gloom-and-doomers.

Here are Scott's words from the book (where he also describes the scam).

Quote

In theory, a nonscientist should be able to follow the climate debate to its conclusion and judge whether the scientists or the skeptics have the best argument. But in reality, all one can do is chase the arguments back and forth until one of the players says something scientific that you don’t understand. Then, if you are like most normal adults, you default to believing whichever side you already thought was right. The topic of climate science is effectively impenetrable for nonscientists.

Consider the skeptical argument about the alleged “seventeen-year pause” in warming from 1996 to 2014 that NASA satellites measured. Skeptics say the pause disproves human-driven climate change because CO2 was rising sharply in that time while temperatures were not. Climate scientists counter that criticism by saying you can’t draw any conclusions from looking at a “cherry-picked” period less than thirty years in duration because short-term natural variations can mask the CO2-caused warming that is happening on average over the long term. But climate scientists also tell us that our most recent thirty years are showing warming that is highly meaningful. How can both things be true? Thirty years of temperature data either tells you something useful or it doesn’t. I assume the real problem here is my personal ignorance, and not necessarily a problem with climate science. I assume climate scientists have a good response to the alleged temperature pause, but I wouldn’t understand it if I heard it. My point is that a concerned citizen is largely helpless in trying to understand how settled the science of climate change really is. But that doesn’t stop us from having firm opinions on the topic. Ask Seth MacFarlane.

If you have no experience in the field of science, you might think the climate models created by scientists are “science” because scientists make them. But prediction models are not science. They are an intelligent combination of scientific thinking, math, human judgment, and incomplete data. That’s why there are lots of different climate models, all a bit different.

If you have not studied the methods of magicians and scam artists, you might not recognize that climate forecast models fit a common scam model. The scam works by sending thousands of emails with, let’s say, three different stock predictions to random people while claiming your proprietary algorithm says those stocks will rise. If any one of the three stocks goes up, entirely by chance, the group that got that particular stock recommendation will think the algorithm works. Then the scammer sends another batch of three different stock predictions to subsets of the group that got the lucky guesses from the first round.

By chance, a few people in the second group might receive stock recommendations that performed well for no predictable reason. Now they think the algorithm is two-for-two in success. By the third round of this scam, the few people who ended up with three amazing stock predictions, completely by chance, will send the scammers a large check to invest on their behalf. After all, what are the odds of three stock predictions in a row being so accurate? The scam works because the targets of the scam don’t see any of the predictions that were wrong, so they lack important context.

Similar to the stock scam, climate scientists discard climate models that don’t fit with observations. The public doesn’t hear about the models that are discarded. If you start with hundreds of different predictions, and you discard the ones that miss their initial predictions, you are nearly guaranteed to end up with some models that seem to predict the future, but only by chance.

Did you know that?

If all you know is how many times someone hit a target, it is loserthink to judge how accurate they are. You also need to know how many times they missed.

If you were already aware that climate models are not science, and that they fit the pattern of well-known scams (sometimes called marketing), and that it is fairly normal for the consensus of scientists to be dead wrong, you probably have a healthy skepticism about climate predictions of doom.

One thing I can say with complete certainty is that it is a bad idea to trust the majority of experts in any domain in which both complexity and large amounts of money are involved. You end up with this:

Well, yes, our predictions were completely wrong, but now we know why they were wrong. If you give us a million dollars to fix it, our predictions will be accurate from this point on. Don’t ask me what we fixed or how we did it because you wouldn’t understand. It’s complicated.

Whenever you have a lot of money in play, combined with the ability to hide misbehavior behind complexity, you should expect widespread fraud to happen. 

This is why I believe Brad and William run from answering Jonathan's questions. They are in the sweet spot of the scam targets and that, allied to the social proof and peer pressure of those they read and hang out with who agree with them, makes them certain. They don't need to answer simple questions about climate science and the scientific method and couldn't if they tried--unless they said we need to learn a lot more before we can be certain of any large-scale predictions. And that includes whether man-produced CO2 causes major climate change.

Granted, the climate change computer models always fail eventually, at least they have up to now, so that might make it seem like the stocks scam isn't relevant. But short term, scientists stake their reputations on these models and everyone on the manmade climate change side touts how correct they are. And they never say, "Oops," when their climate models blow up. So the public perception is that these models are successful. Sometimes they need to be "refined," but this is tweaking success, not fixing failure.

That's the perception. The reality is pure failure.

Michael

Adams's comments on the stock scam are right on. And notice how uninterested Billy and Brad are in our catching them performing the scam. I pointed out Brad's stupid attempt to run two separate hypotheses at the same time, and to treat them as one,  thus eliminating falsifiability. No comment from Brad or Billy about that. You'd think that people who love science as much as Brad and Billy claim to would be eager to address such criticisms, and knock them down immediately. But, no, our little activists think that ignoring the criticism will make it go away. Just keep running the scam.

6 hours ago, Jonathan said:

You'd think that people who love science as much as Brad and Billy claim to...

Neither one of them has displayed an understanding of what science is and how it's done.  When Brad first showed up, I thought that he was engaging in a semi-sophisticated snow job effort with his lengthy, non-pertinent responses to your questions.  Now I think that he thought he was answering you.  The method of the response is something he could have mimicked from more skilled examples.  It's a common type of ploy which maybe he's too ignorant to realize is a ploy.  He's subsequently shown himself to be completely at a loss how to converse with you if he can't get you to agree on a particular declaration of fact from which he seems to think (wrongly) the conclusion that humans are driving climate with CO2 emissions follows.  And his describing science as "a set of observations":  A person with even minimal understanding of science isn't going to say that even writing in careless haste.

And William... forget about it.  He's shown himself for years to be so defective at scientific reasoning (since back when he was engaged in some discussion with Dennis May), I think there isn't a chance of his learning what testing an hypothesis requires.

Ellen

I've released the restriction on Brad. 

Should he resume posting here, hopefully he will understand the point, which I was unable to communicate through words. Apparently he doesn't grok phrases like, "Knock it off," and I was unable to speak in a language he understood.

Should he not resume posting... OK.

Michael