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[Madman198237]

I took an entire class on orbital mechanics, and that equation is how I learned to understand orbital energies, hence it's what I reference. also, Kepler's third law (equal areas in equal times) is, while like everything related to the concept of energy, not necessarily the easiest way to reference it.

Let's review the discussion, shall we: I was NOT in fact arguing that mass could change orbits in reasonable ways...I was arguing that ENERGY is a valid measure of an orbit, which you disagreed with and then argued that if that was true then you could change mass to change orbits, hence my reply in the affirmative concerning that. Specific energy is the form of the equation I'm most familiar with and also proves MY point that energy is a valid and useful measure of an orbit.

[Max™]

Now let's derail this and discuss changing distribution of mass via geometrical displacements to produce noticeable thrust without use of reaction mass _{in a sufficiently curved region of spacetime.}

[TD1]

Why would produce be in space time? Look, just order your veggies online like everyone else.

[Max™]

Because something can't be without it being somewhere and if it is it can't not be is because something isn't nothing!

[wierd]

Because something can't be without it being somewhere and if it is it can't not be is because something isn't nothing!

Clearly you have no conception about digital goods...

In all seriousness though;  Any confinement of energy into a finite volume will result in that volume suddenly having actual mass equivalent to that energy. (EG, a perfectly reflective cube made of massless material, that has had some photons beamed inside such that they bounce around endlessly inside, will have actual mass equal to the energy of the photons inside. Yes. Even when the box, and the photons are massless.)

This means that trying to make a very curved spacetime to contain something you put inside as an attempt to trick the universe into hiding that object's mass will not work.  See also-- Black hole. This is literally infinitely curved spacetime. Objects put inside STILL add to the effective gravitational mass of the hole.

[Max™]

I find them adding to the area which is equivalent to the information that could be stored within a far more interesting take.

[Eric Blank]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-a-newfound-kingdom-means-for-the-tree-of-life-20181211/

hemimastigote, a whole new branch of life.

That is one crazy looking little thing and i love it but that article also linked me to this one and frankly i cant get it out of my mind either; https://www.quantamagazine.org/worlds-simplest-animal-reveals-hidden-diversity-20180912/

These things are actually really interesting too. Its like a slime mold sandwhich; the top layer of cells is like protection from its environment, the bottom layer absorbs food and moves it around, and in the middle is it sounds like a mess of nuclei with dividing walls and fibrous structures but no internal cell membranes, making it kinda like a slime mold.

[Reelya]

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/canada/people-with-extreme-anti-science-views-know-the-least-but-think-they-know-the-most-study/wcm/8c1fded3-b1ab-46ba-ab40-201c9df46672

People with extreme anti-science views know the least, but think they know the most: study

Recently, researchers asked more than 2,000 American and European adults their thoughts about genetically modified foods.

They also asked them how much they thought they understood about GM foods, and a series of 15 true-false questions to test how much they actually knew about genetics and science in general.

The researchers were interested in studying a perverse human phenomenon: People tend to be lousy judges of how much they know.

Across four studies conducted in three countries — the U.S., France and Germany — the researchers found that extreme opponents of genetically modified foods “display a lack of insight into how much they know.” They know the least, but think they know the most.

“The less people know,” the authors conclude, “the more opposed they are to the scientific consensus.”

There are some critics who say the Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't exist, but stuff like this would seem to confirm that it does. However, it might manifest more strongly when you have a highly emotionally charged topic like this one.

[Kagus]

"We asked a group of people 15 true/false questions about GMOs. From these data, we have concluded that bitches don't know shit 'bout nuthin'."

Seems like a teensy leap of logic, but I haven't read the body yet so I'm probably missing something.

[Reelya]

The number of questions isn't the point. It's that you pick questions which aren't a matter of opinion.

They're not measuring the absolute amount of right answers. Nor did anyone say that everyone in the study "didn't know shit". None of that makes any sense. Read the excerpt more carefully.

What happened was this:

- they got a bunch of people in 4 countries
- some turned out to be GM skeptics, others not
- they got each person to self-assess on their level of knowledge
- GM skeptics consistently self-assesed themselves as better than normal people
- they then got everyone to fill in a general-knowledge quizz
- the "super smart" GM skeptics actually scored a lot worse than the normal people

Nobody is saying "we made a test for GM skeptics and they weren't good at it, therefore GM skeptics are dummies". The point is, not all the participants were GM skeptics, so we can say that some things are true of GM skeptics relative to the general population.

The results were: how did GM skeptics fare on general science knowledge compared to the average (a lot worse it turns out) and how did GM skeptics rate themselves compared to the average (they rated themselves as highly superior). It's this discrepancy between self-assessment (relative to the group) and actual ability (relative to the group) that is the stated result. Whether the test was too hard or too easy is therefore already calibrated out, since we're only talking about relative rankings.

[Loud Whispers]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

[ChairmanPoo]

That's what you use to detect replicants, right?

[Reelya]

That's what you use to detect replicants, right?

In the case of replicants, you ask them complex probability questions and if they get them right, they are replicants.

[Egan_BW]

That seems like a bit of a tautology. You've got people who say they don't trust science, then you compare their understanding of the world to the scientific understanding of the world and hey, they don't match. These people think that they're right and scientists are wrong, so if they hear that the answers that they gave on a quiz in a scientific study were "wrong", they would see that as a good sign. Because, as we already know, they think that the scientists are wrong about the stuff on the quiz.

[Kagus]

"People with extreme anti-science views know the least, but think they know the most"

It doesn't say anti-GMO views, it says anti-science. If they're testing them on GMO knowledge, and then extrapolating from that that they don't know science in general, then that's a leap in logic.

And it also just says "know the least", which is probably related to keeping the headline short and snappy; but is also open-ended and could apply to everything, including the topics they were actually tested on (rather than being specifically directed at the topics they were tested on, which is the only thing the tests can prove).

Technically the number of questions does matter, because the smaller the number of sample questions, the higher the chance that they might end up falling into a "gap" in an otherwise-educated person's knowledge, or similarly fits very neatly into the small subset of knowledge an otherwise-uneducated person might possess (and this can be more pronounced when those fifteen questions are divided up into multiple fields, as the article seems to imply). But we'll ignore that because it's not really relevant.

The article also briefly touches upon two other fields of knowledge that were apparently approached in the study, and how the trend fell apart in the third one (climate change), but doesn't really say much about the testing numbers for that, or how the quiz was changed, or really anything other than "it also worked for this one, but not for this one".

And then the whole thing is rounded off with a nice misspelling of "miscalibration".


So, really, I'm not pissy with the scientists conducting the study, I'm being pissy with whoever wrote that article.


In other news, genes associated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in strange places where they really shouldn't be.