Gibbzmann

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Thanks for the message

I would have guessed you were a scientist without even reading your userpage by the questions you ask! I understand your frustration and share it as we are used to reading about errors on data and the limits of certainty. Historians however are a different breed and can weave certainty where people like us only see HUGE error bars! As for Conservapedia nicking the article - that is naughty without giving wikipedia credit. What is most worrying is that they approve of so much of it that it is virtually unchanged. Basically there are NO documents from the time of Jesus at all. Earlier stuff is hinted at and there is no way that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses - look at the differences between them (and the errors - when was the census?). From about 2nd Century CE you have an attempt to ground Jesus in history and pretty much everything dates from about then. The absolute earliest anything was written down was at least 30 to 40 years after Jesus was supposed to have died - a good generation or two in those days. The Pauline letters are a bit odd as they make no reference to details of Jesus that would give a dating to his life and anyway Paul never met Jesus, all his writings are from visions. If you are interested there is loads more but I won't bore you! Take a look at the articles and get used arguments that go along the lines of "well loads of scholars say so therefore it must be true" and you find out they are all from bible colleges. I look forward to working with you - again welcome to wikipedia! Sophia 21:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

To be precise

Thanks for your message. I appreciate you don't know the history of the article and so the bugbear which is "correlation-isn't-causation"; my aim was to help you understand my reaction to your post. I'm well aware it's fundamental to science, and even know the standard funny stories explaining why (number of catholic priests and the price of gin in the USA, and one about hurricanes, if I recall).

The problem with your changes to the Tobacco smoking article were nothing to do with those, though - they were that I can't find the data in the report you've cited to support the claims you're trying to back up. This, too, is fundamental to science, and pretty critical to scientific analysis... Nmg20 13:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Laelaps

I absolutely agree with your opinion regarding the questionable use of an undergraduate student's blog as an 'expert' source for the Darwinius entry. I have not had much luck in getting the questionable source removed, so instead, I'm just trying to make the credentials of the blogger made explicit. However, Dave Souza is not amenable to this compromise. Might you lend your opinion in the talk page? Thanks.130.13.170.197 (talk) 02:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, thanks for your efforts at Darwinius, and for lending a rational mind to the discussion. Your arguments were very compelling; were it not for the obvious ownership issue going on at Darwinius, they would have made quite a bit of headway. I'm also impressed that you were able to maintain your cool despite said ownership --- something I myself was not able to do.130.13.179.166 (talk) 18:57, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

A book and a question

So I noticed you are existentialist. You should read/edit the wiki page I just created for The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. -Tesseract2 (talk) 04:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't know I'm really one, I put it there kind of lightly. I'm also a humanist. --Gibbzmann (talk) 16:02, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

So I read on the Nonlocality page that both entanglement and the absence of local hidden variables have been empirically demonstrated. De Broglie-Bohm allows for each of these, but as the Nonlocality page add: "A more general nonlocality beyond quantum entanglement —retaining compatibility with relativity— is an active field of theoretical investigation and has yet to be observed." My question is: in the meantime, what views provide more complete explanations? I have heard of the Copenhagen interpretation (which is supposedly much less popular these days). I have also hear of the Many-Worlds Interpretation, although it is so incongruent to the way I understand my universe that I prefer to wait for Bohm (multiple universes breaking off at each quantum event???). -Tesseract2 (talk) 14:34, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

These are difficult questions. They can also be misleading to a non-expert. That "traditional" quantum mechanics formalisms are still at odds with relativity is a subtle statement. I mean, QM actually predicted very precisely the Bell-type experiments, but the relativistic formulations of QM wouldn't lead to a different prediction. Both theories (QM and special relativity) are fine, as long as non-local effects lead to no information travelling faster than light. Yet, philosophically so to say, there's an apparent inconsistency. Can anything travel faster than light? Moving on. From my point of view, what is preferable is what lets us advance the most and faster in that moment. This is a weakness of the pilot-wave theory. Dirac had a nice formulation for a wave equation taking into account some very important special relativity effects, in the 1930's. In a way, as long as you use the Hilert-space formalism, I see no difference as to what interpretion one wants to affirm he is using, in the sense that the equations don't change, and therfore any advancement cannot be attributed to the interpretation. In a sense, Dirac could be said to have in mind the Copenhagen or (in his own mind) many worlds (so to speak; of course MW came after): it wouldn't have made any difference, the quations are the same. But my understanding of the deBroglie-Bohm theory is that it attempts to go beyond. But it is behind. So to say, if phyicists had tried to follow only Bohm since the start, maybe today we would have been left behind where we are. Maybe it's just more difficult. I'm very happy that there are people trying, of course. Less happy that some people, non-expert, choose it just because it fits with their expectations. --Gibbzmann (talk) 16:02, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I do not wish to make you sad, you understand. And I to am quite glad that humanity is investigating the various possibilities. I will grant that MW may be reasonable, and I will soon take the proper time to read it. When I do read it, given that I will not directly contribute to the field, I will not be choosing based on your criteria of what is "preferable" but rather what is likely be true. Would you say, then, that there is significant reason to today believe that De-Broglie Bohm is not true? I also grant that, for now, my belief in De-Broglie Bohm reduces to the fact that Copenhagen (the only other I've read so far) seems nonsensical.

Actually, I was also going to ask you whether Gravity could be considered action at a distance but then I just looked it up. According to Einstein, it seems it's not really.

By the way, checked out The Life You Can Save yet?

-Tesseract2 (talk) 19:18, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

We might have a divergence for what concerns what we claim as to be "true" in matters that are related to Science. Is action at a distance not true in the sense you sugest? Is absolute time, or ether, not true in the sense you suggest? This approach, to me, leads all possibilities to be open and even equally plausible, leaving one to decide what is true via a question of personal taste. Indeed, space-time deformations due to mass, as well as reeference-frame-dependent times are true only in the sense that they are "preferable". I think that first you need have a theory that explains the facts, and only next can you make intelectual sense of it. I could come up with a worderful theory that makes amazing sense, a theory of everything, logical, rational, appealing, intelligent. With one minor drawback: It makes al wrong predictions. Would you say it's likely true?

Not only the Copenhagen, ALL the successful interpretations or formulations of quantum mechanics are somewhere non-sensical (to me). This is a hole in either the theory or in our mind. The Bohm formulation, to me, is an equally insufficient response to this drama. For one, it seems to be more limited, for now at least; next (to me) it's equally little sensical in postulating that what happens here and now has an immediate effect that propagates instantly in any part of the existing universe, however remote it might be. Is it then a coincidence that it struggles precisely with special relativity?

Personally, I'm mildly pending toward the presupposition that we are missing something, and this is why all formulations are to some extent non-sensical. But when you turn to experiments such as double-slit, or Stern-Gerlagh, Bell tests, or many others, you can even forget about all the formulations and interpretations and just realize that it's hard to make sense of them, and that it's very hard to imagine an underlying reality of the kind classic determinism had in mind. In fact (I'm not even any special supporter of MWI either), I'd suggest that you forget about all formulations and interpretations for now, and for some (very long) time just try to understand the experiments and what they imply. Figure well in your mind what happens to the measurements, during them, imagine the underlying reality. --Gibbzmann (talk) 11:17, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Article probation

Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, Sarah Palin, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Talk:Sarah Palin/Article probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is any problem with your edits. Thank you. -- Kelly ^hi! 21:46, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Fine. Indeed your last comment is right, I think I wasn't disruptive in any way. I must say that, IMHO, either all or none of the articles should be on probation, if the rules about biographies of living persons are not enough. I understand that the article being on probation, one should be more cautious in editing. But say the article about YOU is in probation, while the article about ME is not. Clearly, my public image as a notorious person will be more exposed on WP, yours will be more protected. Anyway, the rules are rules. --Gibbzmann (talk) 22:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I applaud your dedication in carrying on with what to me seems to be a futile debate. If you need a cup of tea just let me know. Ericoides (talk) 19:02, 9 January 2011 (UTC)