Thanks for all this.....it is appreciated...and yeah I always liked Galileo to some extent(somewhat due to things like "bucking the system" as he did with some of his ideas).
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I sometimes use the wrong words for what I mean...this happens to me sometimes when posting replies....sometimes the right words don't come so I use what seems the "most right/applicable" to what I mean.

I could likely do so, given time, but my mind is elsewhere atm(pandemic, etc)....sorry for that.

As for now: I don't have the time atm and likely couldn't give you proper answers(or word them right at least if I could give the proper answers), so I won't attempt such(at least for now).....it is a good topic to think about, though, so thanks for making me think for a bit with these posts.

yes i am trying to predict the peak hospital demand..
so the first derivative of this function should be a good approximation for case additions, which apparently peaks at x = x0..
what do you mean by first order is there an underlying differential equation?

Gallup polls don't poll the entire citizenry of the US, you know.

Galilei is a bad example for "lampooning consent". I was forced to abjure by the church, yes, but that doesn't mean anything - those weren't scientist. His theories were picked up by scholars all over Europe very quickly, because they made sense and were supported by the evidence the scholars saw in the sky every night.

A better example would may be quantum physics, where even Einstein at first told Heisenberg that "God doesn't play dice" because thought it too crazy.
But "intelligent design" in the religious sense means "a plan where some god knows the outcome (omniscient) so evolution is actually just an algorithm unfolding towards a predetermined goal, while Darwinism says mutations happen randomly and then natural selection (in an ever-changing environment no less) takes over so that the outcome after many generations is essentially unknowable.

Weren't you the one who claimed metaphysical questions can't be answered? And yes, they are meaningless from strictly scientific perspective. But I don't have problem with people (poorly) discussing philosophy, I have problem with people derailing thread so they can discuss it. If you two want to do it, open up a new thread or PM each other, I'll join the fun.

Thank you for your kind wishes concerning the earthquake.

I wouldn't call "capitalism" an ideology, it's simply an economic system. It simply is, so to speak. We can observe it, try to understand the mechanisms and functions - that's science. Like observing an anthill... For the most part of his work Marx did just that - observer, describe, predict, and that is why he's still taught even in the most "capitalist" economic schools.

Ideology is how it's viewed, fought or defended, what we think of how much capitalism we should allow and have. Capitalist ideologies are libertarian, neo-liberal, belief in the "invisible hand of the market", but also also the belief in a lasting "social market economy". The "socialist" or "communist" countries actually ended up as some form of state-capitalism, where the state is simply the biggest capitalist with a monopoly on all the essential things - good intentions by the founders or not.
People like Keynes are somewhat in-between, part scientist, part ideologist.

The problem is that economic schools have become extreme ideological and narrow-minded in their teachings over the last decades. And they tend to fight their convictions with religious fervor, even when it becomes obvious that they are wrong - instead of cooly analysing the situation and adapting or dismissing their theories.

I find the whole notion that ID is pseudo-science to be illogical to be dismissed so easily.

The parallel was just to illustrate a point, still; it may have started with an idea/thought/intelligence, but it evolved further. What we do with technology is intelligent design (not to be confused with creationism). While there's no evidence to support it, there's equally no evidence that it isn't true (you can't prove a negative). Kinda like the big bang in cosmology - hypothesizing/theorizing, but no definitive answer.

The parallel becomes more apparent when you know enough to judge what you looking at.

Again you seem to put two things together to fit your own narrative/bias; Creationism != Intelligent design.


Right, scientists never do this at all to fit their own narrative/bias?

The world isn't' black and white; scientist around the world have been caught hiding or faking stats/obs (and many of them do not believe in a "god").

Also, no matter how much or what evidence there is it's still up for discussion on how to interpret them, that's one of the foundations in the scientific method.

By all means, your mind is your own...

I can put drug addicts and gamers in the same closet, but it wouldn't be more true the more I believe it.

WOuldn't it be better in such cases(as long as what is being discussed is somewhat related to the topic or a close offshoot of the topic that eventually returs to the topic) to keep it to as few threads as possible so as not to fragment the dicussion too much and make too many threads?

As for PMs: Great if two people want to discuss such here, but if one wants to do 3+ people GOG sadly cannot do such.

It's certainly not the good word in english, I just mean that it's an approximation like this :

If the real cases were : 225, 280, 382, 538, 986, 1123 , 1201, 1245, 1280

then the equation could give you sthing like :
200 , 300 , 450, 600 , 1200, 1225, 1228...

but not something like :
200, 220, 300, 400, 600, 800, 1100 , 1300 ,1700

Well, they're not communist. Technically, they're The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, but in reality it's just a one-party dictatorship. Also, about 80% of the population is 30 and under because of the loss of lives during the war, from Agent Orange and the subsequent famine. It wasn't until '94 that the US lifted the trade embargo.

To bring this back on topic, I think their youth is why they've had no loss of life to Covid-19.

Intelligent design is actually a sub-form of creationism. It's sometimes even called "creative design". The main argument is that some features of some species are too complex - and this complexity is irreducible - to have been formed by natural selection - and thus they must have been designed and created by some god.

I heard a story about a guy who drank fish tank cleaner and ended up dying. Please don't drink cleaning agents.

I fear that we don't speak of the same ID.

For me ID believer main mantra is : "God (or a superentity that has all the means and attribute of God) decided how and when plants, animals evolve. And there is nothing like natural selection as described by Darwin." ID don't say "may have started with an intelligent being"' but "have started with an intelligent being and it still his conducted by the intelligent being"
You see the difference ? For me, again, there is no link between Intelligent Design (tm) (c) and what humans do. Of course you can prove a negative ! That's precisely the a point in science that believers don't want to hear !

Example 1 : there are no prime that is even

Proof it's false : 2 is a prime and it's even.

Example 2 : You can't prove that a planet is the symetric of earth by the sun (don't know how to word it in english, here a "picture"

Earth 1 --- 150 millions km --- Sun --- 150 millions km Earth 2

A non scientific, believing he can't be proven false, would argue : if you try to see by telescope your line of view will be interrupted by the sun. A scientific will then say : I don't need a telescope, look how Mars and venus move : if there were Earth 2, their movements would be different.

non scientific will then say: but you can't prove that there is no mars 2/venus 2 / planet X that will just compensate.
and so on for every scientific argument you will pass to them.

Occam Rasor...

Hey, even for the case of 2 is a prime, a believer in "no prime is even" would finish to say : prove that 2 is a number so you've proven nothing. You will then try to give him the work of Bourbaki, he will of course understand nothing and then say : "that proves nothing"

For your "coronavirus may be human creation", I think it's the same : whatever microbiologist would say (if it was human made there will be signs of it, AND you can easily see how natural and known methods can make the exact same result", conspiracy theory are just like ID : you never can prove them wrong they always change what they say or disregard science arguments. Not at all the same :
big bandtheories ARE a scientific theories, you can take consequences of each of them and see if they predict well what you can observe.
Each big bang theory that is not in adequation with observations are disregarded.

It's quite sure general relativity will be one day proven false, but by that I mean that a BETTER theory will make more accurate predictions. But meanwhile : Newton theory is sufficent for everyday calculus, GR is sufficent for nearly everything else, and we know where are the problems and limits of those theories. ID is so near of it... and so far from science... One example : Einstein and cosmological constant. And what did he said when proven wrong ? "That was my biggest mistake". Yes, human can make bad decisions. But really you don't see the difference between a scientific making a bad decision, lying (for money, prestige) and so leaving the field of science, and the whole purpose and meaning of intelligent design ? And that's exactly what IDers don't want to use : scientific method, collecting evidences and confront them with their "theory".
IDers have only one goal "proving" that god exist and twisting observations until it give them what they want.

I recall you the 2 main "arguments" of IDers : irreductibe complexity and specified complexity. Those argument were so many time proven to be stupid and false...
If I have to make a comparison it will be like someone arguing that relativity is false because the only equations they understand are 1st and 2nd degree equations, so as it's impossible for them to solve differential equations it means that nature cannot "do" that. yes that the "scientific" level of most of ID believers.

More : and, really, the way you speak make me more and more believe that you are an IDer, ID is based on a fallacy (called false dichotomy) :
"I [want] to see (even create) an evidence against evolution, hence ID is true".

And about discussing evidence in science : don't you think there are limit to that ? How long one has to "prove" that earth is not flat ?
After all, you can "interpret" satellite views to say that we just see a disk, that lasers lie...

The fact that there are many interpretations of the most complex theories in science (quantic mecanics, expansion of space...) doesn't mean that everything in science is still "free" for debate (unless you have a MAJOR hint that something is really wrong, and I give a clue to people that want to try : the bases of sciences are VERY VERY solid).


Hey, there are still people trying to prove (and, worse, believing they have proven) that you can square the circle. In the case of ID and creationism it's more heroin addict and alcoolist (or alcool/heroin whichever order you prefer)

You're correct with respect to *theory*, but in practice I have to stand by my assertion because it is essentially an honor system, which is the last thing you want to have when corruption is prevalent. Were we to get corruption under control, capitalism might have some utility, but at present it is a system that rewards vice and discourages virtue, which is the opposite of what is needed to prevent systemic collapse. COVID-19 may be the last chance we get to learn this lesson, so we would do well not to squander the opportunity it presents, I think.