Possible Time-Traveler?

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To what purpose, if not to make actual 'Greek Fire'? A new formula for 'Molotov Cocktails'? Even now, the feds should be knocking at your door...

Non-Sequitur and equivocation.

Retrograde time travel is an idea that has not been proven. Cyanide poisoning in humans is a fact that has been proven - remember Jonestown?

Ideas and facts are not equivalent.

Have you ever studied any chemistry?

In high school, college, and some post-graduate work ... not that I need it much with my engineering degree, but it does come in handy when specifying alloys, chemicals, and materials for research and development projects.

Looks like you've somehow surpassed me: I've only studied two years college level on my own and without a degree or any other super-expensive piece of paper.

What would lead you to think that an emulsification of naphtha, egg yolks, and baking soda would be a "A new formula for 'Molotov Cocktails'?" ?

As a partial proof of concept, I made this:



It is an emulsification of olive oil, egg yolk, and NaCl. The salt took a while to settle because of the viscosity, but if it had been a finer powder it would have either taken longer or would have been held in the mixture.

Well, not necessarily, unless you explain better, you stated that you would not accept time travel until you experience it yourself, that would suggest, if we take that literal, that you wouldn't accept it from anyone, not even from mainstream science, if you don't experience the event and see it for yourself, being yourself the time traveller.

Not sure if you believe man walked on the moon, after all, the evidence we have are from other sources rather than ourselves having had witnessed the events in person, with our own eyes, in order to actually convince us, it might be a hoax after all, having said that, everything we have tought of, regarding science, and empirical science, requires a bit of faith and imagination, to accept them.

How can you know the earth is actually round? we never have directly seen the earth in its truly shape with our naked eye, proving that for ourselves, most of us never have been in space and watched the earth from there, we just have seen photographs and reports from other sources other than our own selves and we have been thought in school about that, it might be a hoax as well, after all.

Either way, I know it is good to be skeptical with things, I know that the string theory has not been proven, as an example, and it is an idea, however, I take in mind that some theories that are accepted today because of existence of evidence, started with being just ideas, of course, I don't rule out the possibility of this being false, after all, that is what science is about, all valid scientific theories are falsifiable, any of them can turn out to be false. And some hypothesis become valid theories, others don't.

We really can't say for certain, but we could explore the possibility, after all, this thread is about making a hypothetical scenario, I would assume that no one here is claiming time travel to be factual.


Again, you said you would only accept it if you experienced yourself, Cydanide poisoning in humans has been proven, but not by you, so how can you be so sure?

Last edited by greenblue on 15 Aug 2008, 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks GreenBlue. It is annoying how some people just memorize names of fallacies and throw them in the air.

I don't know your education experience, but you do see that I'm not building a weapon using baking soda?

Heck, even if I were to make the mixture with the potassium nitrate and the sulfur in the emulsification, then it still wouldn't be illegal. Murder is illegal. Destruction of property is illegal. Having a flammable substance is illegal? Morons if it is true.

Which is all fine and good except for the fact that, this isn't conjecture; CTCs are an immediate consequence of General Relativity, and in fact refutations of their existence are purely hypothetical and conjectural at this point, lacking even a theoretical foundation. Quantum Gravity or some such nonexistent possibility of a theory is usually invoked for the idea that this sort of stuff is actually impossible, and no immediate contradiction can be derived from the existence of CTCs because they don't necessarily lead to inconsistent universes. The only way to refute their existence is to say that GR is just wrong, despite the fact that the preponderance of evidence in favor of theories that deal with this sort of thing goes to GR.

You can certainly take the stance that "I won't believe it till I see it", but this frankly sounds like a defensive posture. If empirically well supported theories make predictions, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these predictions are correct even if we can't verify them. There have been ample situations where we can falsify GR, and it has performed wonderfully. One may not necessarily believe it when the particular prediction can't be tested, as of course it may be wrong. but I hardly see why there ought to be a proscription for belief in this situation at all. Until such time as GR is falsified, its predictions remain the best model of certain natural phenomenon we can appeal to and hence the best standard for belief.

It's not like this is String Theory or something; the predictions are just one consequence of an otherwise well supported theory.

It's not what I would think; it's what the feds might think. Do you really want to risk a legal inquiry by posting your research into flammable materials on a public website?

Do not confuse prediction with evidence. "If you search his house, I'm sure you'll find the murder weapon" is different from "Upon searching his house, we found the murder weapon." This first is theoretical conjecture, while the second explains the result of actual research.

By the same token, "If you build a rotating cylinder of ten billion solar masses, theory predicts that it will be a gateway into the past" is quite a bit different from "Upon travelling through the cylinder, we found ourselves translated to the exact time that the cylinder first became active." This first is theoretical conjecture, while the second explains the result of actual research.

Theoretical predicitons are not evidence.

It could not be any more clear; Non-Sequitur means that the two concepts - proven versus unproven - do not fit with each other. Equivocation means that you are trying to make them mean the same thing. Either something is or it is not. There is nothing between.


It would suggest that, however, it would mean so much more if I were to read of the success of a time-travel experiment in a vetted peer-review journal than it does to read a half-baked posting by a random pseudo-science freak or conspiracy theorist.


I've seen the lower half of the Apollo 11 LEM through a telescope, plus some of the larger pieces of junk that Armstrong & Co. left there. Their placement matches the video evidence sufficiently.


Another flat-Earther, eh? Well ... that explains a lot ...

- People travelling south see the southern constellations rise higher above the southern horizon. I observed this myself when the ship I was stationed on crossed the equator on a southerly bearing.
- The shadow of Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round. This is evident without any special equipment; one need only look and the evidence is rght there.

Some collegues and I also performed the Eratosthenes Experiment ourselves, albeit with a land-rover and a GPS. Eratosthenes (276 BCE - 194 BCE) estimated Earth's circumference around 240 BCE. He had heard that in Syene the Sun was directly overhead at the summer solstice whereas in Alexandria it still cast a shadow. Using the differing angles the shadows made as the basis of his trigonometric calculations he estimated a circumference of around 250,000 stades. The length of a 'stade' is not precisely known, but Eratosthenes' figure only has an error of around five to ten percent. Our results, using known scales of measurement, matched the 'official' value to within 0.001%.


In more simple terms; Skepticism is valid, while the validity of String Theory is still so much in doubt as to still be nerely an idea.


Good. You've established that much. My opinion of you and other WP members just improved.


I have read of cyanide toxicity experiments in a vetted peer-review journal ("Journal of the American Medical Association"), and have performed similar experiments on cultured human tissue as part of my college biology courses, for which I received the highest possible grade - but then, so did most of the rest of the class, as it's an easy enough experiment to perform.

Now, are you finished trying to discredit me? Are you ready to provide any evidence that retrograde time travel is not only possible, but is real as well? Or are you having too much fun playing fantasy games?

I believe it depends on which area this would be related and applied to, when it comes to cosmology or astronomy, in which the objects of study are very far away from being able to get any substancial, concrete and palpable evidence, most theories would be based on pure observational studies and some predictions would have been based on that, and some seem to give accurate results, of course, these theories seem to give more amount of uncertainty due to being limited by observation and mathematics, I would assume, right? So hypothesis and conjectures would make sense in this cases, which are made and based under mathematical models.

Of course when it comes to criminal justice, predictions and conjectures in that way would not do anything in this case and will have zero value, which in this area, it is perfectly reasonable to discard them. In this area only concrete solid evidence would be accepted.

Last edited by greenblue on 15 Aug 2008, 5:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Fnord:
That's true but it's besides the point. Theories are a body of predictions and evidence; the same evidence which says GR is right supports the rest of its claims because a theory's propositions do not exist in isolation from one another.

Obviously from an epistemic standpoint you don't know that this can happen, but you never know if any given theory's predictions are going to be correct which is why falsification is used nowadays rather than verification. We can't know when we're right, but we can damn well know when we're wrong, and thus far the theory that is GR hasn't let us down.

It depends on why you are doing it. Is it just to see what happens when you mix a few chemicals together? Is it just to have something to post in a public discussion? Are you trying to impress anyone with your ability to post photographs? Or are you really trying to replicate the original 'Greek Fire' formula?

Merriam-Webster says:

THEORY:
1: the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another.
2: abstract thought : speculation.
3: the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art.
4a: a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action.
4b: an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances.
5: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena.
6a: a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation
6b: an unproved assumption : conjecture.
6c: a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject.

Facts alone are not evidence, although evidence must be factual. The facts must support the theory, and not the other way around.

Ideas and facts are not equivalent.
Theoretical predictions are not evidence.
Facts are used to support theories.