There has been one in Farmington Hills but (so far) it has not turned into a regular thing.

Edit: No teenagers were there. I don't know what the median age was. (Probably in the 20s or 30s.)

I thought that just made theorists respond "So phlogiston must be lighter than air". But you're right, the article exaggerates the unfalsifiable, fails-to-constrain-expectations, fake-causality aspects of the theory and oversimplifies it a bit.

Yeah, I mean from history, it shows that even when people think they're right, they can still be wrong, so if I'm proved wrong, I'll admit it, there's no point holding onto an argument that's proven scientifically wrong. :3

Hmm, I've darted around here and there, I've read a few of the sequences, and I'm continuing to read those. I've read how to actually change your mind. I've attempted to read more difficult stuff involving Bayes theorum, but it pretty much temporarily short-circuited my brain. Hahh.

So.. is this pretty much a result of our human brains wanting to classify something? Like, if something doesn't necessarily fit into a box that we can neatly file away, our brains puzzle where to classify it, when actually it is its own classification... if that makes sense?

As a student, I can definitely see the benefit of not having knowledge just, as you said, handed to me on a silver platter. I'd actually much rather be challenged to attempt to figure out something for myself instead of simply being told about it. It honestly makes science rather dull, simply because I have a horrid teacher who doesn't even understand the material she teaches. Hopefully next year I'll have a competant teacher for physics.

Sorry for the late notice. Steven and I usually try to give about a week or so notice, but it didn't work out this time. We figured it's better to have one now even with late notice than to wait until the next time our schedules cleared. Also, we have a Google Group where you can sign up to get e-mail notifications rather than relying on catching it on the site. Hopefully you can make it to the next one!

I think I just thought of an insanely over-simplified analogy.

Say I'm not invited to my best friend's sleepover and I don't understand why. I call her, and the answer she gives me is: "It's complicated."

The situation might indeed be complicated, but the word complicated is just a fake explanation... :D Amiright, guys?

Yes, this is right. A better way of saying it might be: "Phlogiston", as ancient chemists understood it, meant "that which makes stuff burn". So saying "Phlogiston causes fire" is like saying "The stuff that makes things burn causes stuff to burn." If you look at the second statement, phlogiston obviously doesn't mean anything.

If you wanted to test the hypothesis "phlogiston causes stuff to burn" you really couldn't, because phlogiston isn't a proper explanation - there aren't any conditions that would disprove it. If you want to even consider the hypothesis in the first place it has to make better predictions than other hypotheses.

So.. How precisely would I go about doing this? I mean, let's say I really thought that phlogiston was the reason fire was hot and bright when it burns. Something that today, we know to be untrue. But if I really thought it was true, and I decided to test my hypothesis, how would I go about proving it false?

What I think the point is about, is that if I already believe that phlogiston was the reason fire is hot and bright, and I observe fire being both hot and bright, then I think this proves that phlogiston is the reason fire is hot and bright. When actually, that's pointless because I'd have to prove that phlogiston is indeed the reason fire is hot and bright, not the other way around. Am I right? Or did I just end up confusing myself even more, because I'm not entirely sure that what I said is correct and/or makes any sense. O_o

The first one. One group was asked about 2000 birds, a separate group was asked about 20000 birds, and another separate group was asked about 200000 birds.