What is a Theory?

prophet responds to me:

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The past and future are relative to the distance in time allowed.

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Irrelevant. I never suggested otherwise. You have yet to provide any evidence that my response of what time it was was in any way inaccurate.

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If "now" is considered this century, this year, even this day, you are right.

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Huh? What does the metric have to do with anything? I certainly didn't provide one. I simply said that the time is "now." Are you telling me that I am not at "now" but am at some other point in time?Please, let us not play dumb and start talking about the moment you receive this message in relation to the moment I wrote it.

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(I've never really cared for woody.)

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Huh? Do you mean Bill Pullman? Woody Harrelson wasn't in Spaceballs.

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The "once it is established" is invalidated as it continues to change with time when the operative is "now" for that "now" becomes "then."

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Incorrect. "The 21st Century" will still parcel out the same period of time no matter how many thens become now and then become thens again. An artificial metric is still a metric which describes an actual thing.Hint: The universe is not dependent upon semantics. It really doesn't care about parts of speech.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

olivortex writes:

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I guess "accuracy" tends to mean precision, exactness, correctness, exactitude.

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To be pedantic: Not quite. There is a big difference between "accurate" and "precise."A "precise" measurement will have a lot of significant digits. An "accurate" measurement will have whatever significant digits it has being correct.Numbers can be accurate, but not very precise ("3" as the value of pi) and similarly, precise, but not very accurate ("2.71828182845904523536" as the value of pi).That's one of the ways that you can tell when someone is trying to snow you: Their numbers are extremely precise. They don't have "25%" but rather "24.739%" Really? You were able to measure it that precisely? Your apparatus is capable of providing that level of detail such that you can carry five significant figures?The goal, of course, is to get both accurate and precise data.Edited by Rrhain, : Better definition of "accurate"

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

bluescat48 responds to me:

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The number you gave is the value of e

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How nice to see somebody who knows that. Some people memorized pi. I memorized e. Pi is a button on my calculator, but e is not (I have since acquired a better calculator.) You can get it from using the "e^x" function, but not all calculators can do that so it was just easier to memorize the digits.Indeed, to one significant figure, an "accurate" measurement of both pi and e would be "3." But "3" isn't a very "precise" measurement of either. "3.00000" is extremely precise (because all those zeroes after the decimal point are significant), but it isn't very accurate with regard to pi or e.eⁱ + 1 = 0Because of that, all of reality follows.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.