Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2019 March 12

= March 12 =

hmoledia
What is hmolpedia? Who invented it, and is it good? I see a lot of hits on it but no wikipedia page. Is it like conservativepedia bu t scientific?173.10.22.133 (talk) 05:42, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The purpose of Hmolpedia will be to apply the Gates model of hmolscience introduced in the 2012 book Debates of the Hmolpedians by Belgian psychologist and scientific philosopher David Bossens. Bossens claims it is possible to predict human reactions in the same way we currently predict test tube sized chemical reactions, by measuring free energy, namely chemical determinism defined by the first and second Laws of thermodynamics. DroneB (talk) 09:13, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * It seems hmol stands for human mole, and "in science, a human mole is one molar unit of humans or human molecules." Holy moly!--Shantavira|feed me 09:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The general idea seems like it is very sorely needed, especially in regard to the politics of illegal immigration where, at least in the U.S., there is absolutely no awareness of any distinction between kinetics and thermodynamics. (For example, they think they should reduce the total number of immigrants by building a wall rather than addressing employment) Wnt (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Sounds like an attempt to realise the fictional concept of Psychohistory, a means to predict future historical developments, as imagined by SF author Isaac Asimov. (There is a somewhat different real world discipline of Psychohistory that instead analyses past historical factors in the light of psychology.)
 * That Psychohistory ((fictional) article has an 'Outside fiction' section briefly describing similar real world theories; if there are insufficient independent reliable sources to confirm the notability of Hmolscience as a standalone article, it might nevertheless merit mention in that section. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.123.27.125 (talk) 17:29, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Power sabotage in Venezuela
The Venezuelan government alleged that the country's recent devastating power outage was due to cyber attack. Its critics claim that a cyber attack is impossible because the power grid is analog, but the source of the outage is from hydroelectric generators at the dam, so this seems like an explanation directed at idiots (i.e. 99+% of the media). Forbes says it is possible but doesn't even try to analyze the facts. Anyway, I was wondering if people can come up with any technical-level explanations of previous alleged sabotages. Just looking around online I see there was a claim of a deliberate cut of cables in Lake Maracaibo (where foreign "pirates" have intimidated workers out of maintaining oil production since 2015 ) and the demolition of five electric towers in Zulia. Reportedly Luis Motta Dominguez published details of saboteurs electrocuted while trying to demolish towers. Which raises the question of where. How do you search engineering literature for detailed post mortems on sabotage incidents? Is there such a thing? I mean, I'd love to have a section or even an article on the allegations, but I need better than fifth-hand whispers. Wnt (talk) 13:49, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Simple Sabotage (1944) is a primary resource. Nimur (talk) 15:21, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I found news in general, including newspapers with highest reputation, straight out unreliable, often even sounding "completely in line" with governmental and ideological propaganda. Of course the claiming Victims are often playing a similar game of "leaving out" or "boosting" facts.


 * The only simple ways for everyone are to go check the reputation or use your simple logic.


 * Like ask if the united states ever used such "Art" of warfare be for or even frequent. Or ask how reliable big Hydroelectricity Power stations usually are (very. id roughly estimate 30-50 years MTBF!) and so how likely the one in Venezuela really is sabotaged (very, id say). --Kharon (talk) 23:48, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Base rate fallacy: even if the Venezuela dam breakage is more likely than other similar dam failures to have been due to sabotage, it does not make it more likely than not, since very few (probably <1%) dam failures are due to sabotage. No comment on the rest of the post. Tigraan Click here to contact me 13:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)


 * @User:Tigraan. The facts are the facts without bias (MTBF). Its a basic industry stat. The only conclusions are in brackets and named as my personal ones, already double clearly marked as POV, unlike your assumption on ground of some standard bias category that you try to frame my post into with unfitting Logic. Better start checking your own bias with that implied pure coincidental theory. --Kharon (talk) 23:23, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
 * This argument is all well and good, but without finding some specific technical details neither side will convince anyone but those already convinced. At least one of the articles I cited above showed the fallen electrical towers -- I certainly can't tell if something there was deliberately cut, but for all I know an expert might find it more believable than a signed confession.  We need data! Wnt (talk) 04:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I strongly suggest you read the link I gave to base rate fallacy, because I did not dispute your figure of MTBF, but the logic you used: "(Early) dam breakage is infrequent, hence the probability of sabotage being the cause of that one is high" is a logical error of reasoning. There might be a plausible estimation of the various probabilities at hand that support your conclusion, but you need those numbers and you have not provided them. Here's the Bayesian probability math for those who care:


 * Let us call DB the event "dam breaks", and S the event "sabotage occured". Assume for simplicity that every sabotage results in a dam breakage, i.e. P(DB|S)=1. What we want to know is the likelihood that sabotage occured, knowing that the dam broke, i.e. P(S|DB). The MTBF tells us P(DB) is low compared to coin flip odds, and geopolitical considerations tells us P(S) is high compared to usual estimates of that quantity; however, that alone does not tell us that P(S|DB) is high, because P(S|DB) = P(DB|S) * P(S) / P(DB) (Bayes' theorem).
 * P(S|DB) is therefore equal to the ratio of probability of sabotage to probability of early dam breakage (due to any cause). If early dam breakage is rare, let's say P(DB)=1%, but sabotage accounts for a very small fraction of those, e.g. P(S)=0.01%, then the probability that sabotage did occur is low (here, 1%). That probability is still much higher than the base rate (here 1% instead of 0.01%), but it still is low, because the base rate was very low to start with.
 * The numbers for P(DB) and P(S) are highly debatable. Going by historical statistics, obviously P(S) << P(DB), but one could argue that actually P(S) and P(DB) were fairly close (meaning, any breakage is likely due to sabotage) for that exact dam and that one only because of geopolitical reasons etc.


 * For those who do not care or are allergic to math, here's a purposely ridiculous example. If I assert that the Evangelos Florakis Naval Base explosion was due to Tom Bombadil dispensing divine retribution against warmongering humans, my hypothesis perfectly fits the fact, but such supernatural intervention is not very plausible to start with, which makes the whole explanation dubious. The disaster makes the existence of a creature-that-punishes-war more plausible than if it did not happen, but that existence was so implausible to start with that it remains low-odds (for instance, the fact that a very large number of naval bases have not been subjected to fire and brimstone is quite strong evidence against a persistent supernatural vendetta). Tigraan Click here to contact me 09:41, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Cancer pictogram at gas stations
Is there a reasonable rationale for slapping such cancer GHS hazard pictogram at gas stations and how widespread is this worldwide? Saw this one in Poland (lower top). Brandmeistertalk  21:42, 12 March 2019 (UTC)


 * According to the article you linked, the pictogram (which I had not seen anywhere before) means "health hazard" refers to any of several health hazards, not specifically cancer. I don't think anyone would claim that gasoline isn't toxic. --76.69.46.228 (talk) 05:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Related: Here's Why Everything Gives You Cancer In California. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:18, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Ape has monkey as pet
I want to start a section in Pet called "Pet ownership by apes". I wish to add Koko's All Ball etc.

Now, I saw an Attenborough documentary which showed some apes having monkeys as a pet. I cannot remember for the life of me which documentary and what the animals were. The pets were bigger, not too bright, and had long arms. The apes groomed their less-intelligent friends. Can anyone help? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:36, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

What kind of plastic is Febreze Air Effects spray cans made out of?
If you take the label off of a Febreze Air Effects aerosol can, you can see it is a clear plastic, and I think it is PET like a soda bottle, but is there any way to know if it is indeed PET? 172.58.11.5 (talk) 23:26, 12 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Check if there is a resin identification code on the bottom of the bottle. A "1" indicates PET. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * That's just it; there's no resin code. The label has a 7 on it, but the bottle itself has nothing. 172.58.11.48 (talk) 22:59, 13 March 2019 (UTC)