from the einstein-dismisses-india-scientists dept.
BBC:
Some academics at the annual Indian Science Congress dismissed the findings of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Hindu mythology and religion-based theories have increasingly become part of the Indian Science Congress agenda.
But experts said remarks at this year's summit were especially ludicrous.
[...] The head of a southern Indian university cited an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands of years ago.
G Nageshwar Rao, vice chancellor of Andhra University, also said a demon king from the Hindu religious epic, Ramayana, had 24 types of aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern day Sri Lanka.
Another scientist from a university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu told conference attendees that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed "Narendra Modi Waves" [Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister of India].
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:51PM (48 children)
How scientific of them! Then again everything they said is way more reasonable than the fat earthers, climate deniers, and anti-vaxxers of the West. Smells more like politics to me.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:54PM (2 children)
Hey, it's "Americans" to you!
(Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:22AM
Hey, it's "Americans" to you!
hey, not all of us are *girthers*, if that's what you're implying.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Funny) by Alfred on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:35PM
No, Fat as in round. Round is a shape like a sphere, the shape I believe the earth to be. Therefore I am a Fat Earther.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:57PM (41 children)
Modi himself is essentially denying the existence of the 200M Indian Muslims. It's a good thing that ISRO is still doing their work despite all these crazies at the top.
The Chinese get to laugh at the whole "democracy" concept...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:37AM (40 children)
As opposed to the huge list of things they're not allowed to laugh at. Envy is very misplaced here.
Sure it's nice that a relatively competent government is running things in China. Would be nice if we all had one. But they don't have any mechanism for dealing with flakes. If a Chinese head of state supported such pseudo-science at the expense of real science, who'll stop him? It becomes a high level power struggle.
At least in the US, such leaders are very limited in the damage they can cause. If they want to publicly fund crazy science (which I might add happens fairly often without a lot of drama), for example, they need to get a sufficient amount of Congress on board and that usually means quid pro quo with funding for relatively non-crazy science in a bunch of other districts as a condition - not that public funding of scientific research is all that great, but at least it has safeguards of consensus in it that Chinese research would not have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:56AM (3 children)
The weird thing is some congresspeople seem to sponsor the bills for every single new commemorative coin. And that's like all they sponsor except when it is to do something like rename a post office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:25AM (2 children)
If you don't do anything, you can't do anything wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:36AM
This is how deadwood survive in the public service
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday January 10 2019, @06:14PM
Sometime doing nothing is wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:21AM (34 children)
> a relatively competent government is running things in China.
But they're Commies!
> Would be nice if we all had one.
Whoa, hold on there. We the people are the ultimate governors. Don't think of our representatives as leaders, because they aren't.
If we don't keep our representatives' toes to the fire, they will cheat like mad, collude with thieves to rob our treasury, and give away the store. Lately, we haven't been doing a good job of keeping them honest. Instead of using those much vaunted 2nd Amendment rights to stop the rampant corruption and theft, a whole lot of citizens are instead dazzled by all the wealth and actually bow down before the rich no matter how much of their wealth is ill-gotten. Even worse that some admire the dirty, criminal tricks they get away with, and actually aspire to emulate that.
The rich are not supermen. Many are spoiled brats. Some are pathologically greedy to the point that I'd say it's a medical condition in need of treatment with therapy and perhaps drugs. Most of all, they need a huge helping of humble pie. As children, they were spared the rod, and spoiled rotten. And they never grew up. It does no one any good to continue to indulge them now that their childish tantrums have such outsized consequences, easily resulting in innocent deaths and all kinds of harm.
I'll finish with a quote from Peter S. Beagle in his intro the Lord of the Rings: "We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers-- thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:16AM (31 children)
Why? Our society not screwed up enough?
It doesn't do any good to indulge anyone's childish tantrums that result in innocent deaths. The rich aren't the only problem. Those voters who can't vote for competent representatives are also doing that stuff.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:56AM (30 children)
>> Most of all, they need a huge helping of humble pie.
> Why? Our society not screwed up enough?
What do you mean? Humble pie is good for most everyone, the vain most of all, but you talk as if that would screw things up. "Remember, thou art mortal."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:05PM (29 children)
Indeed, you are correct on that last observation. One can be humbled by one's hubris or by someone else's hubris. The rich shouldn't pay for your hubris any more than you for theirs. You have yet to describe a problem that requires forced serving of "humble pie". The rich aren't supermen, nor are they responsible for most of the problems you perceive - even when those problems actually are problems.
My view on hubris is that the disease is the cure. And if it doesn't result in said self-serving of humble pie, then it wasn't hubris in the first place. I have many better things to do with my life than take down people who are trying to make the world a better place - even if for the wrong reasons.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:21PM (14 children)
> You have yet to describe a problem that requires forced serving of "humble pie"
That's a "Let Me Google That For You" problem. Where to begin? How about "Too Big To Fail"? Whole lot more bankers, financiers, and CEOs should've been axed. And stood trial and gone to prison for all kinds of lying and market manipulation and straight up theft such as not paying their employees.
> The rich aren't ... responsible for most of the problems you perceive
Either they are mature adults with rather more power than the average bear, and responsible for corrupting our politics and rigging the game, or they're spoiled childish greedy brats whom we have failed to keep on a tight leash, failed to notice they shouldn't be allowed to drive a child's tricycle let alone a nation. If they're mostly the second sort, then you are in a way correct. They aren't responsible. They have learned enough to ape maturity and fool most people most of the time (and whose fault is that, ours or theirs?), know to dress in nice monkey suits, can (barely) hold together a facade of wholesome family life (might need some of that wealth to pay off the objects of all those extra-marital involvements), but they aren't mature adults and leave a trail of disappointment and disaster every time they step in and take charge, because, contrary to their dearest desires, they are not great thinkers nor pillars of morality, quite the opposite. The harm they do is small and confined when they stay in their mansions, or play CEO of a middling company. But when they get delusions of greatness and try their poisonous, unethical shtick on entire nations and actually manage to gain power despite their utter ineptness, incompetence, and meanness, not to mention their crimes, because some of us really did want to elevate them to such dizzying heights of responsibility, then life gets rougher for us all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:48PM (13 children)
"Too big to fail" had nothing to do with the hubris of the people involved and everything to do with how the US (and most of the rest of the developed world) choose to address the problem. As to the "lying and market manipulation and straight up theft such as not paying their employees" that was a relatively minor component of the crisis. The crisis still would have happened in their absence.
Neither is choice three. I think it should be obvious that just because one is rich doesn't mean any of the above is true. There are other ways to become and stay rich. It also ignores the complicity of the US voter who has been more concerned about getting their piece of the squeeze than in relatively honest government for decades (exhibit A: the people whining about the Social Security money "promised" them by the Federal government).
Amateur psychoanalysis is worthless here. Oh dear, there's a rich person somewhere out there with mental problems. Doesn't tell us what to do about the ones who don't have those problems. This sounds like one of those dehumanization shticks before someone goes out and does something stupid and cruel, like ethnic cleansing.
When you attack a group of people whose sole common characteristic is that they're successful financially, then you're attacking the employers and producers of society. It's a classic Ayn Rand villain move right up to the faux moralizing. Sure, you'll occasionally scoop up the sociopathic parasite, but that's not what most rich people are.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:16PM (7 children)
Tell me honestly, do you believe "too big to fail" actually meant that congress truly believed that letting them collapse, or breaking them up, would destroy the US economy, or that it would damage their campaign contribution and post-political employment options (and likely hurt they and their friends investment portfolios)
That's the fundamental problem - pretty much ALL politicians serve the interests of themselves and their campaign contributors rather than their constituents, as proven by their voting records. And why not? Those moneyed interests have outsized control of the pre-election process, such that they can pretty much pre-select the candidates who will be running in most prominent elections. Why is the top marginal tax rate a measly 40%, when the country was doing much better by pretty much every measure when it was 90% on income over $1M? Not because there's any rational argument to support it, but because the people with money bought a change in the laws to benefit themselves at the expense of the general populace.
Frankly, I don't think the underlying problem is rich people with mental problems (though they can do a LOT more damage than if they were poor), the problem is perfectly rational rich people who have radically outsized influence in the system, and no particular concern for how much the populace is hurt so long as they personally benefit.
You want a start to a fix? I'd say eliminate the corporate veil completely, and force the rich to take responsibility for their actions. Tesla gets hit with multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter for Autopilot malfunctions - Don't just fine them, sentence them to the typical 1-4 years of prison per count, to be served proportionally by the owners of the company. Say it's only 10 years, then Musk's ~20% of stock gets him 2 years behind bars. The wealthy investor who holds fifty thousand shares (~$17M) only gets 24 hours, but is still required to show up and spend his brief time behind bars, or face automatic contempt of court penalties. The investment corporation that owns Tesla stock gets its prison time proportionally distributed amongst its own stockholders, recursively, until the final human stockholders are found. Most retirement accounts hold so little stock that they'd only get their owners a few minutes or seconds behind bars - probably waive that entirely rather than incur the implementation overhead - or maybe just keep a record, and if/when your total share of all corporate punishments gets to something worth imposing, *then* you do your day in prison.
We should eliminate corporate bankruptcy as well - if liquidating the company can't pay its debts, then let the shareholders pay the balance.
Stop letting the people who own and operate the bulk of the economy hide from the consequences of their actions. Eliminate all value to corporate shell games. Let's get business back to having some semblance of responsibility for their actions beyond building shareholder value.
Of course, that won't fix things completely - modern corporations (which bear little resemblance to the limited term, single-task institutions that originally carried than name in the U.S.) were created in response to those same wealthy individuals, who wielded outsized influence even without those shields. But at least it's a step in the right direction.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @01:56AM (6 children)
The latter more likely. But that's not how they rationalized it.
Please recall those tax loopholes that went with the high tax rate (for example, in 1960 the 0.01% was paying roughly 45% [wsj.com] on income despite having that 90% tax bracket). We have actual cases where really stupid governments pushed marginal taxes truly over 90%(here [wikipedia.org] and here [wikipedia.org] - notice in both cases the protests are by parties who favored high taxes until they had to give up hard earned wealth to greedy governments).
And I find it telling how you whine piteously about the mean legislatures serving the wealthy and then propose to give more money to those wealthy via taxes. Who has the overseas tax shelters? Who gets the lion's share of tax revenue?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:45AM (5 children)
You think anybody in the 0.01% is actually paying the current 37% tax rate on actual income either? Closing tax loopholes is good - but there's still plenty of ways to doge taxes with a good enough accountant.
Perhaps you can explain how I'm advocating giving the wealthy more money through higher taxes on *the wealthy*? Yes, they will undoubtedly get most of it back into their own pockets, but they'll also be paying for a larger share of society's infrastructure costs. Costs of which they are the greatest ultimate beneficiaries, since the smooth functioning of that society is what generates all their wealth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 11 2019, @04:26AM (4 children)
Well, close the loopholes then. It's not rocket science. I don't see the point of advocating for 90% tax rates when you're not willing to fix what would break that ridiculous tax rate in the first place.
My view is that we'd have a vastly better system, just keeping the current tax brackets and eliminating (and keeping eliminated!) all tax breaks and loopholes. That also means far less demand for said "good enough accountant". Meanwhile a 90% rate that isn't actually paid by the wealthy is a big waste of time.
The first observation is that most of that money goes to the wealthy in the first place either directly paid by government, or through laundering by poorer people first. Then all they have to do is avoid paying taxes on that profit and there are plenty of ways to do that.
Sure they are. They also already pay more even at the reduced tax rates than anyone else for those benefits.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 11 2019, @04:18PM (3 children)
You do realize that the strong private property laws that allow them to build and maintain their fortunes are one of the major features of the smooth functioning of society, right? Ther's nothing sacred about those - just another social construct. Natural law is that you can only keep what you can personally defend.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 14 2019, @05:03AM (2 children)
A 90% tax rate means you don't have those strong private property laws. The thieves are in charge.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 14 2019, @03:50PM (1 child)
Only if you pay the tax - and as I've already mentioned, the whole point of such a tax is encourage businessmen to spend money on their business, rather than pocketing excess profits.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 15 2019, @01:26AM
Indeed.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:32PM (4 children)
> whose sole common characteristic is that they're successful financially
Read this: https://planetsave.com/2013/12/23/a-rigged-game-of-monopoly-reveals-how-feeling-wealthy-changes-our-behavior-ted-video/ [planetsave.com] . It's about experiments in which the game of Monopoly was rigged to give one of the players, chosen at random, an unfair advantage. In short, most became pretty obnoxious about it. Some even rationalized their success as the consequence of their superiority.
> then you're attacking the employers and producers of society.
Again, they're not supermen. They aren't uniquely qualified, there are many others who could produce if only they had the resources and power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:50AM (3 children)
The game of Monopoly is not real life. It is deliberately designed to be cutthroat. For example:
What's going on is a typical cut-throat game tactic. Play cooperative at first, so you aren't dogpiled by everyone else. Then when you're so far ahead that dogpiling won't work, win the game. That is always going to be pretty cut-throat in the end because nobody wants their game of Monopoly to last all night while stringing along the losers. The research is nonsense and says nothing about actual wealthy people who never stop needing cooperation and real life which is not a zero-sum game like Monopoly.
Because strategy stops working when one side has an advantage? And notice how aggressively they move those playing pieces and eat those pretzels!
Point is that there's a great system for finding and funding a large population of people who have demonstrated success in their area. Sure, there might be others, even many others, who could do the same, but are somehow slighted by the system. But those others have already failed a big test of fitness by not having mustered resources and power in the first place. How are you going to figure out who're the hidden producers in a supposedly better way without throwing too many resources on people who aren't?
Plus, your little Monopoly article just indicates to me that if we ever did find a better way to allocate resources than the already generous present, you would dish out that humble pie anyway. It's almost like you just hate successful people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:49AM (2 children)
>But those others have already failed a big test of fitness by not having mustered resources and power in the first place.
You would have a point, if not for the fact that the most overwhelmingly common source of those resources and power is not your own talents or efforts, but an inheritance from your parents.
That's not a test of fitness, it's a blood dynasty.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 11 2019, @04:37AM (1 child)
Suppose your assertion is true. You still have the matter that just because someone gets money from a relative doesn't mean that they keep the money.
And it's something that could be solved in a few generations by the older generation giving resources to the next generation. Then everyone has that common source of resources and power. Don't hold your breath for the majority of people who just aren't interested in that to start doing it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 11 2019, @03:39PM
>You still have the matter that just because someone gets money from a relative doesn't mean that they keep the money.
Right, they might be spectacularly incompetent and lose it all. Or spectacularly generous and give it all to good causes. It happens. Just like you occasionally get a Bill Gates that climbs from the working class into the wealthy elite.
But that's not the way to bet. If you're wealthy, it's a really good bet that your parents were wealthy. Same thing with poverty. And that means that all the clever minds born at the lower end of the social spectrum will tend to stagnate, while the mediocre ones at the top will tend to bungle on.
And no - I don't think it's an easily solved problem - but it *is* a major problem when capitalism is combined with inheritance - both in terms of social justice, and economic efficiency. The wealth in the hands of those mediocre minds would be leveraged much more effectively by some of the clever minds that will never see it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:51AM (13 children)
How do you manage to talk fluently with your tongue all over the elites' boots? Is it because you're talking out your ass?
Hallow, you are not a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire. You are not part of the elite. You will never be part of the elite. Brownnosing the elite will avail you nothing; you do not even figure into their worldview, and were you to starve and die on the street, none of them would know, nor would they care if they did know.
You need to wake up to reality: you have much, much more in common with everyone you despise than with the rich.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:17AM (12 children)
I quite agree. So what? When are we going to hear something relevant to the thread?
I don't think much of the sort of person who doesn't want to try for something (like wealth), complains when they don't get it without said trying, and squanders it when they do get it through a windfall.
Sorry, I think we have a huge list of more important things to worry about than the alleged psychology of rich people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:11PM (11 children)
This response doesn't surprise me at all. Disappoints me, yes, but doesn't surprise me. "[T]he psychology of rich people," and fuck your "alleged," is responsible for tremendous ills in this world.
And why is this? Because money becomes an addiction for them. No matter how much they have, it's never enough. And the more they get, the more distant from ordinary people and ordinary peoples' experiences they become. Money, power, and privilege exert a well-known, easily-observable "gravitational" or positive-feedback effect, in that the more of them you have the easier it is to game the system and attract even more. Combine all of these, and you have a self-sustaining, self-accelerating recipe for disaster.
How many working poor people do you know? I guarangoddamntee you they work harder than most middle-class people, for obviously far lower wages, in much worse conditions. If hard work were THE prerequisite to wealth and success, single mothers would be millionaires. You willfully refuse to see how the world works, and while I could speculate as to why, I don't give a damn any longer: I'll happily file it away under "Hallow's a shitty human being and has zero will to improve himself."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday January 11 2019, @04:55AM (10 children)
Back at you on that. But what can we do when you continue to fail to learn? The rebuttals remain true and effective today just as they did back then. Meanwhile the shrill mocking of "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" means not only do you not have a clue, you haven't even bothered to try to get a clue.
Presently, I work at a company that employs thousands of them. I work with them every day.
Until, of course, the amounts get so unwieldy that you can't figure out how to invest it at the higher returns on investment that you could with smaller amounts of wealth. For example, Amazon grew in market capitalization from roughly $14 billion at the beginning of 2005 to over $700 billion presently. This theory of wealth gravitation would then assert that they're going to grow by at least a factor of 50 from the present till oh, 2033 with similar ease. No idea how Amazon would be earning the 1 or 2 trillion USD needed to make that valuation possible, but you'll no doubt figure a way.
Back at you on that. I've long ago learned to disregard the moral noise from your quarter since you remain ignorant of consequence.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday January 11 2019, @06:12AM (5 children)
Khallow, seriously, she is only trying to help you restore some modicum of humanity, and renounce your ideological arguing in bad faith! We are all here to help you, khallow. I have known several individuals who were severely infected with libertarian fantasies and free-market wishy syndrome, who recovered. The same is possible for you. You only need listen to reason, question your base assumptions, and realize that you are living in fantasy world of your own creation! None of you economics is real, khallow! Not even on a psychological level. It is pure construction, Austrian school mental monetary masturbation. Stop it, or you will go blind. If you have not already.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 11 2019, @01:14PM (4 children)
As an aside, that is how you make ideas real. You construct them. Dependency on human minds (or perhaps other minds which aren't necessarily as complicated as a human one - see pollination or carcass feeding behavior for examples of non-human animal behavior that uses some basic principles of economics) doesn't make ideas unreal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday January 11 2019, @10:19PM (3 children)
My gawd, khallow! Are you seriously saying that Buzzards, such as our own dear Mightly one, used their mind, and the principles of economics, to choose to specialize in carrion-feeding? Amazing. Almost a good as the "backhoe rental" theory of capitalism. At least you did not suggest that the "other mind" was a divine creator intelligence, whose invisible hand controls the universe.
So know we know that carrion-feeding is a lifestyle choice, not something that beings are born that way. Next we can expect conservative clinics that "Pray away the Carcass!", and people saying "Hate the disgusting diet, but love the cute Buzzard". Personal buzzard responsibility, and all that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 14 2019, @05:04AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday January 14 2019, @06:45AM (1 child)
My dear and fluffy khallow, it is you that prevents rational discourse! Let's for examples's sake. consider the difference between the cost of production, and the price of widgets. Do you not realize that in a normally competitive economy, the fixed cost would be the same for all enterprises, so the only way they could provide a margin of "profit" would be by not paying their workers the full value of their labor? Or do we just hold their kids in captivity, until they agree to our wage demands? You are an intellectual scab, khallow. I would love to have an adult talk with you, but that would have to be predicated upon you actually becoming an adult, and not a Vienna Circle Austrian Economics White Supremacist Ideological syncophant. Suck it up, khallow, or the rest of SoylentNews will continue our embargo of your bullshit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 14 2019, @01:18PM
I await this rational discourse. It sounds quite interesting. But the above is not an example of it.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 11 2019, @05:42PM (3 children)
Hallow, there is a limit to how much the gravity effect works, but it only happens when so much money has been hoovered up that it depletes the economy around it. You're doing the equivalent of objecting to the idea of black holes by saying that they stop growing once they've eaten all the nearby stars around them.
Look, I get it: you're evil. All religions and most secular traditions speak of people like you. I know you can't be changed until you want to, and you're comfortable and well-off enough not to want to yet. Well, that's fine; I do this, again, for everyone watching you, to make sure your selfish, blind horseshit doesn't seem to go unopposed and to break it down for people who might otherwise be ensnared by it. Get it now? This is not for your benefit; it's for the protection of anyone unfortunate enough to stumble into the swamp of moral nullity that is The Hallowsphere.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 14 2019, @05:07AM (2 children)
It has diminishing returns long before that point.
Look, you don't get it. You keep reverting to these stupid morality plays rather than thinking. It's been going on as long as you've been here.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 15 2019, @05:43AM (1 child)
You keep on proving my point: evil cannot comprehend good. Again, I understand, and I accept this. If placing humans above profits, if not objectifying people and not deifying things is a "stupid morality play," then I happily accept your accusations, and stand guilty as charged. I can't convince you, or people like you, to place people above objects, and frankly I am becoming weary of trying. Again these posts are not for you, but for anyone unfortunate enough to come into your orbit.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 15 2019, @02:34PM
Since you're the one with the comprehension problem, what does that say about you? You keep playing these games, but you're not listening to yourself. I think it's actually more or less good advice. Too bad the person saying it isn't following it.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:01PM
support for O(100) % inheritance tax
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:10PM
Right. They were supposed to, you know, represent us, but instead, they rule us. What we actually have is a wealth-based oligarchy [wikipedia.org].
--
Knowledge is strength. Unless the opposition has more money.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:49PM
There is no difference between US and China as far as large scale decision making is concerned. Both objectively have to acquire support from significant part of population or face a revolution. And how exactly those countries use science to see the word is determined by particular people making the decisions. Political systems by themselves don't do anything because they're merely a product of those decision makers, not driver of their work.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:25AM
Yeah man. Evolution is just a theory!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:36AM
Dammit, those Indians are copying us again! The west should have the monopoly on pseudoscience, not some copycats elsewhere. I think I'll take some homeopathic medicine and engage in a little NLP to deal with my distress. That's real pseudoscience as it should be done, not some stuff recycled from the Ramayana.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:41AM
On a more serious note, it is pure politics:
Lots of countries have resorted to this. Look at Nazi Germany, usually held up as an example of a super science-focused establishment, and yet they propped it up with nonsense from the Ahnenerbe, including gems like researching the racial connection between Germans and Japanese based on attempts to find similarities between Nordic runes and Japanese Kana.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:52PM (1 child)
Indian academics need to move with the times and concentrate on a gender specific wage gap, systemic racism and "gender fluidity" in a sexually dimorphic species.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:38AM
The genders [wikia.com]! We're up to 1010⁴ genders!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:54PM (37 children)
Einsteins theories apparently (maybe it is some auxiliary assumption about the distribution of matter, etc in the simplifications) predict the wrong result. There was an attempt to save this with "dark matter", but despite billions of dollars and nearly a hundred years of effort no evidence for that has ever been found except that GR predicts the wrong result.
And from TFA I don't see any mention that his theories were "dismissed" rather than considered "not fully accurate". Anyway the author of this piece didn't include any info about what these people were actually saying so its pretty much a waste of time to consider.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:02AM
Also, Newton was fully aware of "repulsive" models of gravity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sage%27s_theory_of_gravitation [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Fatio_de_Duillier [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Demena on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:25AM (3 children)
I do not think galactic rotation is affected much by Einstein’s theories and they say nothing about ‘dark matter’ - which probably does not exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:30AM (1 child)
Probably isn't sensitive to heat [earthsky.org] either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:53AM
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/sty3404/5265085 [oup.com]
Already predicted by MOND decades ago (at least qualitatively):
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/373555/mass-discrepancy-acceleration-relation-in-%CE%9Bcdm-paradigm [stackexchange.com]
The rule is: More Mass -> Higher Acceleration -> Less "Dark Matter"
Whether it works out quantitatively is up to the MOND people to figure out, there is very little freedom for MOND so it pretty much either works, or it doesn't (or there is some error in estimating the distance to the galaxies, etc). Perhaps ask Tracy McGaugh to take a look: https://tritonstation.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:05AM
Well, I guess that settles it, then.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @01:41AM (30 children)
Actually, dark matter has been found, just not in the quantities needed. We have neutrinos, MACHOs, and photons from the Big Bang, for example, but there's not sufficient mass-energy there to explain the current gravitational anomalies in most galaxies. We also have galaxies which do seem to fit the dark matter-free models. That seems to indicate that whatever effect is covered by the label, "dark matter", it is not always present in a galaxy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:04AM
No, they estimated the galaxy to be 20 Mpc away, that lead to the wrong results:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1806.10141.pdf [arxiv.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:19AM (27 children)
"Actually, dark matter has been found"
Citation needed.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:56AM (26 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:11AM (20 children)
photons [wikipedia.org] (1) aren't dark, and (2) aren't matter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:44AM (19 children)
They are, if they aren't pointed at you.
Hence the use of the phrase mass-energy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:54AM (13 children)
Mass isnt synonymous with matter, matter has volume too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter [wikipedia.org]
Basically matter is ponderable, you can weigh it on a scale.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:11AM (12 children)
You won't find mass that doesn't have volume due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (there's a lower bound on the product of the uncertainties of momentum and position, the latter being a generator of a volume) and black hole limits (which can't have a surface area less than a factor times the mass of the black hole).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:24AM (11 children)
So if you shine some light into a bathtub you can displace the water since the photons have volume? Can we measure the mass of the photon this way?
I dont think so since you can have as many photons as you want in the same place:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:27AM (10 children)
Well, the temperature of the water would increase and that would increase the volume of the water. But volume of photons is a red herring. It's not required in order for them to have energy and curve space-time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:45AM (9 children)
Heating the water increases the volume the water takes up where the photon hits, this is the opposite of what would happen if you hit it with matter (the water would move away from that spot).
Im just saying photons arent matter and have no volume, not arguing about the mass. Its in the intro to that wikipedia matter page.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:10PM (8 children)
You are inaccurate. The water does indeed move away from the spot as energy is imparted to it from the photon. What is different is that water can fully absorb the energy of the photon.
Wave/particle duality is as much a thing for photons too. The whole issue is a red herring. Dark matter is just a label like dark energy. What generates the observed effect described by the label need not be matter any more than the latter need be energy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:59PM (7 children)
No, in the usual context dark matter means some sort of exotic matter at this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda-CDM_model [wikipedia.org]
And you have chosen to have your own definition of "matter" different from everyone else, whatever, but stop pushing it like it is standard
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:01PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:37PM (5 children)
khallow is using 'matter' where he should be using 'mass', but other than that minor difference in terminology, he is pretty much entirely correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:13PM (4 children)
Yes, I know. That is the topic of discussion. Here is what I said above:
Khallow dont agree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:53AM
That amounts to less than nothing, since khallow is not a scientist, or astrophysicist, or meretrician or opthamologist. Khallow is just, khallow, a teenager who has read Ayn Rand, and can't get her out of his pants. So sad, too bad. Poor khallow. Sometimes, suicide is the only honorable way out. That, or accepting that as an non-communalist, you still have to accept Medicare and Social Security, because the Commies prevented you from having a pony at your twelve birthday, so something like that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @06:17AM (2 children)
And I don't agree because the distinction is meaningless. Everything with mass has volume (and hence, checks off all the boxes for "matter")? Nor when we actually look at cosmological scales does the actual volume of would-be matter become relevant. For example, global clusters, large clumps of stars, which sometimes have billions of stars in them, can orbit for long periods of time without a collision occurring (for example, we have yet to observe such a collision in the globular clusters that we can see with the human eye, which is several centuries worth of observation over several dozen huge clusters). The volume of the matter in the global clusters from the stars is a minuscule portion of the volume of the globular cluster.
I don't believe in paying lip service to pedantic semantics when it's irrelevant to the topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:42AM (1 child)
Everything with mass has volume. Photons have volume. Therefore, photons have mass.
Corollary: interstellar space has volume. Therefore, interstellar space has mass. No need for dark matter.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:48AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:05AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:19AM (3 children)
"The end result is that photons are very dark relative to baryonic matter."
Doesn't make them 'dark matter'.
"The end result is black people are very dark compared to white people."
Doesn't make them hockey pucks.
Citation still needed.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:12PM (2 children)
Actually it does. Dark matter is a label for an effect. Things like those photons contribute to the effect.
For what?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)
Dark matter has NOT been found: dark matter is a kludge 'discovered' JUST JUST JUST to make GR still work.
Some matter has been found. Is it 'dark matter'? No. Dark matter is a magic kludge. GR does not work without it and we can't allow that so we wave our hands and we come up with 'dark matter'.
There is no dark matter. The scientific method has pushed it aside. Dark matter is not real.
*Citation is STILL needed for
"Actually, dark matter has been found"
because no where can i find that it has.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:51AM
I already gave three examples to the contrary. It is "dark matter", but it's not enough dark matter.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:56PM (4 children)
Because you're claiming Dark Matter has been discovered, while simultaneously admitting that there's not nearly enough of it to explain anything. AKA it hasn't been discovered.
The problem is "Dark Matter" isn't just code for "matter we haven't yet discovered", it's code for "matter that must exist to make the theory work". We know pretty exactly how much must exist for the theory to work, and while we have been looking hard, and have found some matter we hadn't previously accounted for, everything we've actually found combined is orders of magnitude too small to fill the "Dark Matter" hole - therefore it is NOT Dark Matter, it's just a slight increase in our estimates of the amount of normal matter in the universe. ~85% of the necessary mass of the universe is still unaccounted for.
There is still some potential for undiscovered MACHOs, but the range of sizes they could exist at without having been detected yet has become extremely narrow, and they're looking increasingly implausible as a DM candidate. Most of the other candidates have similarly shrunk their potential detection space to a tiny fraction of what it was once believed to be. And that's a big problem for plausability - for example, countless MACHOs across a wide range of sizes was plausible - but that they'd all end up being within the narrow range of sizes that we wouldn't have detected yet? How do you explain that the overwhelming majority of matter of the universe ended up clumping into undiscovered objects of roughly the same size, while all the mass we *can* see is distributed in size across many orders of magnitude?
And that's before we even start considering the necessity of Dark Energy as well.
Now, by all means we should keep looking, but after a half-century of fruitless searching we should also start seriously considering the possibility that while Relativity was a huge improvement in accuracy over Newtonian gravitation, it's still a fundamentally flawed and incomplete theory.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:21AM (3 children)
Except of course, it has been discovered contrary to your second assertion. Not nearly enough != doesn't exist.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:59AM (2 children)
That's not how it works. There's a huge amount of missing matter - that's Dark Matter. Increasing the estimates of the amount of normal matter so that the amount of Dark Matter needed is slightly reduced isn't "finding Dark Matter" - that would mean that the imbalance has been solved. All you've done is revise the estimates of its size.
If you handed me a million dollars for a moment, and I lost it, and then said "Hey, look, I've found your missing millions, there's $1.35 in change in the couch!", you would reasonably assume that I'm either an idiot, or a thief that thinks that you're an idiot. The million is still missing, the $1.35 is basically unrelated, and no reasonable person would think that the mystery had been even slightly solved.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:00AM (1 child)
It's reality. The only uncertainty is whether the gap can be made up.
Neutrinos and photons never will be normal matter. And MACHOs are a consequence of high mass and low surface area, which gives its usually baryonic matter (though black holes are a more exotic possibility) an unusually low visibility.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:21AM
> The only uncertainty is whether the gap can be made up.
Exactly. And until we have concrete evidence of the presence of something in sufficient quantities that it *can* fill the gap (or at least a large part of it) all we're doing is speculating and dithering with rounding errors, and Dark Matter remains undiscovered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:10AM
Photons turned out to be dark matter. That's surprising.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:13AM
Newton/Galileo formulated theories that worked well on the Earth's surface, just as Galileo was discovering how to really look with detail into the planets, in the 1600s.
Einstein formulated theories that work well far out into space, but perhaps not at full galactic scale - in 1905, while Hubble didn't make his profound statements about galaxies until 1929.
We've made a lot of progress in the quantum world what with atom splitting, helium fusing, quark smashing, etc. in the meantime - but it's not surprising that our more recent observations don't completely align with theories that were set forth before all those observations were made.
7 billion people, over 70,000 dedicated astrophysicists, one of them is bound to guess right eventually and come up with the next theory that holds with observations for a few years after they formulate it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:58PM (1 child)
Einstein liked to shit on a toilet. Indians prefer the street.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:06PM
This is actually very correct and on topic
(Score: 1) by Coligny on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:51AM
Well, quite normal from a country who got nukes before even hearing aboot indoor plumbing and treat sacred cows better than wamen...
If I wanted to be moderated by mor0nic groupthinking retards I would still be on Digg and Reddshit.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:56AM (4 children)
Oh, hell, I'll say it first. This is DIVERSITY!!
Diversity in science (or tech, or industry, or academics) is not about a person's size, color, language, race or religion. It's about how they perceive the world, and science, and tech, etc. So, maybe some of these people look crazy? So what? Let them go on with their crazy - and see what they do with it. The guy(s) who say that Einstein was on the right track, but ended up getting it wrong may well be the people who give us faster-than-light travel.
Who gives a damn if a researcher is nuts? Maybe he can't dress himself - who cares? If he makes some breakthrough, we can tolerate all of his craziness. Let him babble on the podium, as he explains exactly how he cured a dozen kinds of incurable cancer.
Need I be more explicit? Alright - all you good little boys and girls who have gone through school, then college, and learned exactly how to view the world just as the powers that be approve of, are only capable of thinking in those ages old channels - or ruts. The supposed idiot who is incapable of staying in those ruts may see things that you don't.
And, remember this. We have our own pseudosciences. Lie detectors, bite mark analysis, scientologists, psychoanalysis, and more.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:15AM
Actually, there's a certain limit, and it's not a forgiving one. Even Tesla ran up against it, and he was beyond brilliant. Random pseudoreligious ramblings (regardless of the pseudoreligion) are so unlikely to make the cut that you are more likely to win the lottery 50 times in a row while coming up with a unified einstein+quantum+gravity+bag-of-chips theory by accident than watch such an approach succeed.
Even if it begins to show success if you pretend some of the nuttier parts don't exist, you still run up against that craziness limit we talked about.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:08PM
"Differently Thinking"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:03PM (1 child)
I'm running into that rule where you can't tell if something is satire or not.
It's all well and good to question your assumptions, but magical thinking which is scientifically implausible is not good for anybody, it just corrupts the scientific process. It's already why you can't trust scientific research on acupuncture or Traditional Chinese Medicine out of certain countries, and if places let those things pollute their science then it is totally untrustworthy.
Examples:
Homeopathy is water, and giving its spiritualistic magic "All ideas are possible!" treatment just takes away from things which are realistically plausible getting researched.
Acupuncture is not real. It doesn't matter whether the person is trained in the traditional magical locations, where they stick the needles, or even whether the needles are actual needles.
The placebo effect for pain may not even be real, especially not to the extent it's perceived to be where you'll get better if you believe you will. It may actually be an artifact of how we select people for pain studies.
Diversity of reality is not good for humans. It's a way to send us into a new dark (or I don't know "gray") age. We need to keep this era of alternative facts as far away from anything related to science as possible.
I'm posting this anonymously because I really don't know how it will be received. Come on Soylent News, don't disappoint me.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:22AM
And on the other hand, there was value in the entrails readers of the past because that was someone that people would listen to. Sometimes all that is needed to fix problems is to listen - too bad it requires a lot of extraneous hocus pocus to get there for some people.
You don't need consensus to benefit from technology or knowledge advances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:33AM (1 child)
Modi, making India great again!
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:46PM
When you say Miga, I think Migas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migas [wikipedia.org]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:11PM
WELL
I am TOTALLY convinced.
A demon king. Of all things! Landing strips in modern day shitlanka! Who would have thought?
Do we tax this king?
Does he breathe fire from his ass?
Can he claim his trips back to Hell as a deductible?
Does he eat public servants?
So Many Questions!