Something Strange Seems To Be Causing Distant Galaxies To Synchronize (futurism.com) 191
pgmrdlm quotes Futurism:
Massive Structures
Galaxies millions of light years away seem to be connected by an unseen network of massive intergalactic structures, which force them to synchronize in ways that can't be explained by existing astrophysics, Vice reports. The discoveries could force us to rethink our fundamental understanding of the universe.
"The observed coherence must have some relationship with large-scale structures, because it is impossible that the galaxies separated by six megaparsecs [roughly 20 million light years] directly interact with each other," Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute astronomer Hyeop Lee told the site.
There have been many instances of astronomers observing galaxies that seem to be connected and moving in sync with each other. A study by Lee, published in The Astrophysical Journal in October, found that hundreds of galaxies are rotating in exactly the same way, despite being millions of light years apart. And a separate study, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2014, found supermassive black holes aligning with each other, despite being billions of light years apart.
Galaxies millions of light years away seem to be connected by an unseen network of massive intergalactic structures, which force them to synchronize in ways that can't be explained by existing astrophysics, Vice reports. The discoveries could force us to rethink our fundamental understanding of the universe.
"The observed coherence must have some relationship with large-scale structures, because it is impossible that the galaxies separated by six megaparsecs [roughly 20 million light years] directly interact with each other," Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute astronomer Hyeop Lee told the site.
There have been many instances of astronomers observing galaxies that seem to be connected and moving in sync with each other. A study by Lee, published in The Astrophysical Journal in October, found that hundreds of galaxies are rotating in exactly the same way, despite being millions of light years apart. And a separate study, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2014, found supermassive black holes aligning with each other, despite being billions of light years apart.
Sounds familiar (Score:2)
Maybe somebody is messin' with the Universal GPS. [slashdot.org]
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Billions of years.... dont be silly. The universe is only 6000 years old and the earth is flat.
The earth truly is flat because there is no such thing as a sphere in space time. Space time is infinitely warped and only seems to be going around a curve. Therefore a truly flat surface is infinitely curved and cannot return to any starting point in time. Time is an infinite ever expanding spiral which gives the universe form but can also shrink infinitely at the same time thus there is no such thing as the size of the universe or the smallest size of a universe.
It is all very confusing until you smoke en
Maybe... (Score:2)
Obvious to some (Score:3)
I have never smoked dope but I have it on good authority from those that have that our entire observable universe is contained inside a sub-atomic structure in a larger universe that affects us in ways we cannot perceive.
Anyone here got anything better?
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Yeah, the original Men In Black was a pretty good movie.
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Dude, it's turtles.
All
the
way
down.
Copy and Paste (Score:2)
Someone just got lazy and copy and pasted some copies of the same galaxies in the background image rather than creating them all individually.
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At least that's a step up from a Sharpie.
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Wouldn't it be funny if that was the solution to the "impossible amount of processing power" for the hypothesis that we live in a simulated universe?
lazy creator (Score:5, Funny)
You mean God is North-Korean?? (Score:2)
You can't fool us with dem fake galaxies, Kim Jong-God!
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If there's enough data... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If there's enough data... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently it is a bit more than that. I'm more favoring the theory that all these galaxies somehow influence each other. They were close enough at the time of the expansion of the Universe. It could also be the same result as the pendulum synchronicity experiment but at scale of the galaxy (after a while all pendulums that are connected through the same semi-rigid medium are going to be synchronized)
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They may have influenced each other initially, but since then they have moved apart enormously, and as only gravity operates at those length scales, and Newton's law of Gravitation is non-linear (force goes like 1/separation) chaos should have set in, and they should by now be completely desynchronized. If they are still synchronized, it is not a consequence of gravity.
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It could also be the same result as the pendulum synchronicity experiment but at scale of the galaxy (after a while all pendulums that are connected through the same semi-rigid medium are going to be synchronized)
That's Huygens coupling. It's a neat effect that will cause two clocks to tick together if they are mounted on the same wall, and it is caused by the sound waves of the ticks travelling through the wall. The actual forces are tiny, but it needs very little to advance the escapement of one clock by half a tick in 10 minutes. it is almost certainly not what is happening here but it is a good analogy: weird things like this do happen.
What is probably happening is the the original flows of matter are not uni
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Fishing line (Score:2)
Connected or the universe is very orderly? (Score:2)
empty... space. (Score:2)
The universe is almost entirely composed of empty space. It's reasonably confusing that you can stand on the world without sinking through it. You are mostly empty space. So is the planet.
You might think of it all as a sparse matrix. There seems to be much less there than you might expect. The universe may be much, much smaller than it sort've looks like.
With that consideration, it's not entirely surprising that things might be connected at very long distances, because the distances don't necessarily exactl
EVERYTHING is "empty" though. (Score:2)
It's all just forces. Elementary particles have no size. They are just wavefunctions. All dimensions you ever read about, are just distances with a particular field strength above a certain treshold that is useful for humans. Usually one where opposing forces are in balance.
It's just a matter of definition.
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Pleaes forgive me, but.... Waveforms have a size.
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because the distances don't necessarily exactly exist.
That's where you lost me.
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I think he's of the belief that information is fundamental, and spacetime is an emergent property of the interaction of fields. Quantum entanglement already displays non-locality, so it may be possible to put "distance" between things in more ways than just time and/or space, and also things can be "close" across large spacetime distances.
We need to find out what it is (Score:3)
and use it to fix IOs Reminders app.
Simulation (Score:2)
Makes sense if this is all a simulation.
20 Million Lightyears (Score:2)
Don't forget that they were once much closer too! (Score:2)
So it's a lot more.
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It'll probably be more pulses since, the Universe used to be (a lot) smaller and thus the oscillations would've traversed much faster than it does now.
Must be a day ending Y (Score:4, Funny)
If I had a dime for every time cosmologists proclaim every thing we know about the state of the universe needs to be completely re evaluated while simultaneously preaching with absolute certainty on the origin and end of the same, I would be rich as Rockefeller.
You're only ready popsci press. (Score:3)
The scientists themselves don't do such things. They would quickely be ridiculed by the entire community and nobody would take them seriously anymore.
It't the press that in on the fraudulent disinformation, err I mean advertisement dollar needle, that *needs* clickbait headlines that proclaim things more extreme than all the other clickbait headlines.
Somebody could make a site with level-headed reporting. But you certainly would never even look at it "Because booring".
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> They would quickely be ridiculed by the entire community
They do it _all the time_. It's one of the allures of the various "dark matter" and "dark energy" theories, the ability to create a model of distant and difficult to verify data with little likelihood of verification within the next few years of project funding. I've a great deal of respect for astronomers and some cosmologists, but there is a great deal of outrageous theory out there.
The negative mass "in-between" galaxies (Score:2)
It is the Janus model, it can explain this. If you have negative mass in between the "visible" galaxies, "invisible" galaxies in negative mass do "synchronize" by their repulsion the positive mass (that we live in and can see). Jean-Pierre Petit work on this theory for many years now.
"It's impossible!" - A scientist's famous last wor (Score:2)
Gravity does not care if you are far away. It only takes longer as it is weaker. It doesn't magically stop interacting at some distance. Also, having been closer in the past makes it easier too.
Any proper scientist would say "We know of no way in which it wold be possible, Some more research is required, as evidence disagrees." and *never* just flat-out "It's impossible." anyway.
So I'm sceptical of this, and the press almost certainly distorted something here.
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Well, I've known several scientists who might well say "that's impossible" when faced by something they thought was contradicted by theories they trusted. But their tone would indicate excitement...dubiosity, true, but excitement. And they'd probably want to recheck the results several times.
That said, this would be in person, not as an official announcement. So I think you're right about the journalistic distortion. Unfortunately, that seems everywhere these days. And headline writers are more interes
Why. (Score:2)
Impossible...? (Score:2)
Impossible...?
That word may not mean what you think it means.
Obvious answer (Score:2)
Reflection? Lensing? (Score:3)
Reflection or lensing would explain this - rather than independent structures moving at the same time, we might be seeing the same thing from different angles.
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Or "ether".
Re: Synchro(nicity) (Score:4, Informative)
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The problem with god is that it's incredibly boring. The depth and complexity of the real world is far more interesting than any god story ever created.
If people want to experience the numinous they really should study math or science instead of old books written by people who unfortunately lived long before we had even the slightest idea about how incredible the world actually is.
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True. "Believers" basically just pick and choose what they'd like to believe. But if you actually believe that, for example, the bible, is true, then you're pretty limited. Existence on the order of thousands of years, all of which have been dominated by humans. Boring.
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No, the only thing "limited" here is your willingness to honestly consider the subject matter, and do the most cursory examination of different viewpoints regarding it.
For example, Origen of Alexandria expressed quite cogently his argument against literal six-day creation in the second century AD. Certainly there would have been others before him. Young Earth Creationism's popularity is a recent phenomenon, and however much you might enjoy having that available as a Straw Man, it is only that, and a demon
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You do raise an important point. Before I read the bible I thought that, when pillaging a city, the raping was nice to have, but optional, and the child killing was generally a waste of time. I didn't realize that both were personally commanded by God himself. The child killing especially, is to be done *very* thoroughly. The mistakes we make in our ignorance. May God forgive me.
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Re: Synchro(nicity) (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that isn't why. Religious believers have founded nearly every branch of the sciences because nearly every branch of the sciences was founded long ago, during a time when nearly everyone was a believer.
There just weren't enough non-believers around to do much founding, you see. And in many places/times it was actually quite dangerous to "out" one's self as a non-believer.
Lastly, the sciences were founded before their benefits were realized. Such benefits include the widespread realization that old religious beliefs have very little foundation in fact, and therefore very little warrant for belief. Science has been a journey of discovery which has taken place over time, liberating many people from superstition. The original founders could not reap this benefit precisely because they were the original founders, and as such they were still believers for their entire lives.
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Even then, a lot of historical figures may not have been quite as religious as they might seem. Heresy was a big deal.
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Religion trolling, LOL
Go troll somewhere else, we're full up here.
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Ah, but in the cosmic milieu, does your examination bear fruit? If so, does that fruit contain sufficient juice to sate your intellectual spirit force?
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Now you're starting to understand the symbol system, it seems.
Too bad you'll immediately abandon it.
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Is anything ever truly abandoned? If once you have been touched by his noodley appendage, do you not forever remain touched?
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As an aside, your whole argument can be completely refuted by, well, -scrolling down-.
Bizarre logical reversals like claiming because they were at the forefront of the sciences at the time, means they were ignorant of science, aside, in the 19'th century and beyond are listed who were clearly leaders in known science. Applying your claim to Freeman Dyson, Werner Heisenberg, Charles Babbage, Wilhelm Rontgen, etc., etc., shows your claims absurdity on its face.
But, on the upside, you have a lot of mod agreem
Re: Synchro(nicity) (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not so sure people hundreds of years ago when science was in its infancy were all true real believers.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus said this, "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?" And there are a lot of things philosophers of the ancient times struggled with, including the notion of God itself which makes me believe that even if churches established science and paid for it, it was done by the men with critical thinking who very much doubted the religions they were surrounded with.
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Or, "during a time when it was dangerous to be a non-believer in public".
Re: Synchro(nicity) (Score:5, Insightful)
You argue in bad faith. Your question is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. You are too smart to be unaware of the difference, so you must be using sophistry to entrap.
Furthermore, it is a question about history, not a question about the natural world. The scientific method is used to build models of reality, not to prove specific historical facts, so it is an obvious mismatch.
You are deliberately using clever semantics to confuse, not to enlighten.
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No, I am using "semantics" to reassert valid philosophy, such as the basic branches:
Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics.
-Most- of the content of these domains are not open to resolution by scientific method. Yet, they exist.
I am stating these facts to confuse. Knowing the facts and history of all of Western thought is certainly more enlightening than your attempt to induce self-inflicted brain damage in your audience, by convincing them to limit their mental scope in a way that
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Mine is.
You equivalently think that "there's hundreds of political parties, so none of them are right, don't vote" is solid logic, apparently. It isn't.
"Beyond placebo" is not much of an argument when "placebo" is demonstrated very, often astonishingly, effective, and we have no idea how "placebo" works. You're just substituting one word for another to invalidly try to reverse the implications, base on how the word "sounds".
Yes, he does care, he does grant personal wishes, and does deal out reward/punishm
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Mine is.
You equivalently think that "there's hundreds of political parties, so none of them are right, don't vote" is solid logic, apparently. It isn't.
Umm hmm, you alone know the secrets of the universe and are part of the very select few "right" people while the vast swarms of equally nonsense beliefs are false. Got it. Political parties are based on opinion people can have different opinions based on what they value as core principles which are by definition somewhat arbitrary. The real existence we all live in is not opinion based whatsoever, you are insanely ignorant of even basic facts in your bad faith
"Beyond placebo" is not much of an argument when "placebo" is demonstrated very, often astonishingly, effective, and we have no idea how "placebo" works. You're just substituting one word for another to invalidly try to reverse the implications, base on how the word "sounds".
We know exactly how placebo works in that it
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We know exactly how placebo works in that it follows the laws of physics and is ultimately liked to brain and body chemistry following deterministic rules from axiomatic theorms even if we don't understand all the complexity today.
No, actually we don't, not in the least,. You are just preferring to assert that, even to the degree that claiming it is deterministic, which is false per QM physics. As for whether the scope of effect is limited to physical mechanism, neither "we" nor you have any idea. You just like that answer better, and violate science by claiming t know what you explicitly don't know. "We don't understand all the complexity today"--what a cop-out. Show -any example- of you knowing the causal chains specifically
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You said:
"Was Mozart a better composer than Salieri? Demonstrate your answer, yes or no, by reference solely to science."
And you now claim that by doing so you are "using 'semantics' to reassert valid philosophy,"
However, stating that question utterly fails to assert the validity of any of the philosophical domains you listed. You are literally saying one thing and doing another.
Let me make this crystal clear:
"Who is the better composer" is a matter of opinion. An opinion is neither true nor false. Wheth
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> -Most- of the content of these domains are not open to resolution by scientific method.
I do suspect that you are _deeply_ confused. Logic, for example, is deeply influenced by the scientific method of hypothesis, counter examples, and verification through the ability to predict results. Politics is _very_ affected by scientific method, which asks "what works" and "what must we know to predict results". Epistemology, the thory of knowledge, has been _profoundly_ affected by the scientific and mathematic
Re: Synchro(nicity) (Score:5, Interesting)
Logic in the formal form certainly came before scientific method as a formal method. It's difficult to enumerate all the fallacies in the rest of your claim. For example, citing logic as a formal source without which truth cannot be deduced or derived is a mix of an appeal to authority of formal logic itself, and of post hoc ergo propter hoc. (Since modern science cites formal logic it could not exist without it.)
Unfortunately, quite informal logic serves very well for most scientific reasoning, and does not require the formalization or deep study of it. Much as some mathematicians feel polluted when their beautiful intellectual creations are used for crass engineering, or when some physicists have felt insulted when asked for the practical application of sophisticated subatomic subtleties to the practical world, the desire to feel that one's achievements are somehow _above_ those of the "mere" physical arts is tempting.
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Possibly, but the quesiton itself cannot be objectively answered, because it depends entirely on the definition of the word 'better'. This word has not so far been defined in the context of this question, and any definition is going to be subjective.
One could certainly objectively answer the question for a given definition of 'better', but people acting in good faith could reasonably disagree about the definition of 'better', hence no way to objectively answer the question.
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And what is this 'god' you speak of? Seriously, god is so utterly undefined as to be pointless to discuss. And how can you believe in something if you have no idea what it is?
We could just as easily be in a simulation that is being run by more advanced beings than ourselves. Or we could be in a simulation created by an artificial reality that is more intelligent than the beings that created it.
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>We could just as easily be in a simulation
That would need a whole simulator. That's a bigger assumption than the handful of equations that model physics as we know it.
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It's not an assumption, it's a possibility. And you say whole simulator as if simulating our universe isn't feasible but whether or not such a simulation is feasible is unknown to us as we would not no about the universe in which our simulation is being run, it could have many more dimensions for instance. For all we know beings running a simulation of our universe could also be running an infinite number of simulations of universes.
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Racists are found in virtually every branch of the sciences, and that doesn't mean they are right, or that racism has any scientific basis or merit.
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You confuse "empirical" with "replicable on demand".
A 100-level course on Epistemology would fix that.
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You confuse the empirical with dogmatism.
Seriously, since you bring up epistemology, read Sextus Empiricus or David Hume.
You are literally providing an explanation of what lies beneath, or behind, or whatever, the phenomena. Like it or not, that is precisely what empiricism is not.
Empiricism sticks to the phenomena, and refuses to affirm anything beyond those.
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No, empiricism does not deny direct inference from those phenomena. If it did, there would be no point to any type of knowledge pursuit.
Equivocating this to an argument on "Real Substance" or the like is simply disingenuous.
Yes, we can discuss an supposed Analytic/Synthetic dichotomy and go down all sorts of philosophy rabbit holes, but, if you experience it, you -know-. And for that to be the case, it is not necessary to convince you.
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No, empiricism does not deny direct inference from those phenomena. If it did, there would be no point to any type of knowledge pursuit.
When you say empiricism, I believe you mean the classically-defined term, which culminates in David Hume.
The whole problem of that empiricism is close to your claim. With empiricism, knowledge becomes vanishingly small, if not impossible.Since you asked me to read up on epistemology, you certainly know Hume denies causality.
I am not going to argue this, as classic books by classic empiricists have already made this claim. Again, read Sextus Empiricus. Read David Hume. Hell, read the fragments of Democritus
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Are you so sure that is confusion? Consider this definition of Empiricism [wikipedia.org]:
(emphasis mine)
As it turns out, testing observations against the natural world requires independent replicability. And
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Time for a dictionary battle?
Okay, here's mine:
"2. depending upon experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory, especially as in medicine."
Source [dictionary.com]
Or, we can go with the more fundamental "derived from sense data".
Or, we can read your own provided definition accurately:
"evidence, especially as discovered in experiments."
"Especially" here is not a definitive constraint.
Reality is, you cannot reproduce for experimentation 90% of what is accepted by science, so long as it's a conclus
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Now you commit the fallacy of equivocation. Specifically you offer a very specific and limited definition of empiricism that is clearly not its common and accepted meaning, and then turn around and justify your belief as being "empirical," relying on the respect that Empiricism, in its common and accepted meaning, has.
What you mean by empiricism...."without using scientific method or theory," and "derived from sense data [alone, without reproduction and testing]" is absolutely NOT what that word means in c
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Thank you for spending the time to do the analysis. I must admit that I was too irritated by the nonsensical abuse of logic to even begin. It is sometimes worth refuting fools so that other people seeing the discussion do not see the fool as their last impression of the subject, and casually spreading the foolishness.
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The guy is an extraordinary self-enlightened bullshit artist. He could go a LONG way in politics. What a shitstorm of disinformation, so studiously poised towards dimming both the topic and anyone that might argue with him. Gamer mentality: keep changing it up so that no argument seems to fail.... until they all do.
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Don't feed the morons, they can get food for themselves.
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Cut to the chase, an unexpected rotational correlation in galaxies across large regions has been detected, therefore the Christian Bible is literally true. Do I have that right?
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You're saying God is lazy, got tired after the first bit, and just hit copy and paste a bunch of times figuring nobody would notice?
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You're saying God is lazy, got tired after the first bit, and just hit copy and paste a bunch of times figuring nobody would notice?
No need. Just parameterize a model for galaxies and randomize the parameters. It's more likely someone used the dual-ec-drbg for the rotation parameter rather than the ctr-drbg.
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Sure, that's the sensible way to do it. But that takes work. The OPs point seems to be that god didn't want to bother with even that much effort. Or maybe he just screwed up and forgot to add "+ rand()" to a couple of the parameters.
God here. Talk about it! (Score:2)
I'm doing all this shit, and this is what I get! Just because I let a wee few children starve and be raped on my day off when I'm drunk. Ungrateful bastards!
What? Don't belive that I'm God?
What happened to faith??
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Re:Synchro(nicity) (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Oh yes, so *I'm* the problem... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the old Rock Method of Argument:
Dolt: Find me a rock.
Girl: Okay, here's one.
Dolt: Nope, that's not the correct rock.
Girl: (snicker) Ummm...how will I know what is the correct rock?
Dolt: I'll tell you whether it is the correct rock.
Girl: You starched your shorts again, didn't you?
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You'll have no indecision when you find the correct rock.
Of course, I'm not insisting. You can just let evolution eliminate you, and join the other rocks, if you prefer.
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Okay, absurd. Yes, ask, and as always everywhere, how you ask matters, and from that a further conversation may ensue, and to not find this obvious from every real-life parallel, is idiocy.
Which, I am now done with. Since, if I just wait, I win, I'm sure you will come to understand.
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Could you please elucidate on why his points are wrong rather than ad hominem?