Talk:Medea hypothesis

Merged

Merged with Peter Ward, possible demerge when the Medea hypothesis' notability is better attested. --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Journal of Cosmology

I'm pretty sure that ideas like this one shouldn't be referenced to an on-line vanity press like the Journal of Cosmology which, in spite of its claims to "peer review" is full of patent nonsense, essentially, and has been roundly criticized as essentially pandering. See our own article on the subject: Journal of Cosmology. 128.59.169.48 (talk) 18:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

The reference is informative, whatever criticisms there are about the journal in general. And it is available on-line, free, unlike many of the other ref links.-- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 05:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:55, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

---

Medea Hypothesis → Medea hypothesis –

WP does not normally upcase rules, laws, theories, hypotheses, etc.

Per WP:MOSCAPS ("Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization") and WP:TITLE, this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased. Lowercase will match the formatting of related article titles. Tony (talk) 01:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose -- This is a proper name. Decapitalisation will give the wrong implication. Peterkingiron (talk) 14:12, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Peterkingiron. Also, brainless decapitalisation lowers WP's quality. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 14:20, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
  • MC Price, would you mind not insulting the nominator? You're perfectly at liberty to add an opinion, but not a negative personalised one.

    Peterking, could you please explain what the wrong implication might be? Tony (talk) 23:59, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

    • Tony, please AGF. And note proper nouns should be, and often are, capitalised. It's just good English. This is not a hypothesis about Medea, hence the Medea Hypothesis, not a Medea hypothesis. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 04:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Tony, he calls you brainless in good faith, apparently. And he has a good point here: proper nouns should be capitalized. And your downcasing reason "this is a generic, common term, not a propriety or commercial term, so the article title should be downcased" is tiresome. It doesn't cite sources, even though MOS:CAPS admonishes us, right in the lead, to use sources to decide what's a proper noun. So get with the program. That said, I looked at books, so ... – Dicklyon (talk) 04:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support – book sources seem unambiguous. Lowercase in the majority of the top book hits means it is not consistently capitalized in sources, and hence not a proper noun. Also note that the originator of the hypothetical principle, Peter Ward, uses lowercase in Medea hypothesis and Medea principle in his book. His TED profile also has it in lowercase. – Dicklyon (talk) 04:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Since the Medea Hypothesis is a unique item, not a class, it is a proper noun. That many of the sources don't understand grammar does not change the nature of the noun.-- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 05:06, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
    • The reason we rely on sources is that not all editors have the same preconceptions about what makes the best grammar. Dicklyon (talk) 05:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Michael, proper name and proper noun are being bandied about here. Do you have proper definitions, beyond class vs unique, which I don't think holds up to close inspection—at least by itself. Tony (talk) 05:23, 6 January 2012 (UTC) I'd also like to point out to you and Dick that whatever the sources say, WP:TITLE advises that between-article consistency is desirable. Feel like a mass changeover? Tony (talk) 05:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
        • Indeed, I failed to comment on that part of your rationale; it's weak, but certainly in the right direction. In almost all cases, sources support lowercase for these things (the Peter Principle being a possible exception, much to my annoyance). Dicklyon (talk) 05:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment – since the article lead is written about the term, not the hypothesis, I took the liberty of more directly citing and linking the source where it was coined as stated, and corrected the capitalization per that source. Surely this means the article title should be changed to agree, too, no? Dicklyon (talk) 05:38, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
  • The article, including lead, should describe the hypothesis more. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 05:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• Support. Of course! The sources predominantly use lower case; the primary source (cited in the article) consistently uses lower case; WP:MOSCAPS calls for lower case. [Imitative pejorative language warning (see posts above):] Only brainless capitalisers, who brainlessly give status as a "proper noun" as a brainless reason for capitalising, when they can't even say what a "proper noun" is apart from something that ought to be capitalised, think that this should be capitalised. Seriously folks, get literate about these things. And read Wikipedia's guidelines before commenting offensively and bigotedly. Look at these hundreds of examples of established practice on Wikipedia. Sheesh, as they say.

Noetica^Tea? 06:57, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

• • I didn't say what a proper noun is because it is already defined at proper noun, and I took Tony's question as a typical time-wasting ploy. Don't assume because you get no answer that there is no answer out there. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 08:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Michael, it would probably be unhelpful of me to refer you to WP:CIVIL, so I won't. instead, perhaps I could appeal to your sense of discourse practicality: wikis rely on harmony and good relations between editors. Accusing me of mounting "a typical time-wasting ploy" and of something or other that is "brainless" is not going to establish or maintain this. I admire your scientific and editorial skills; I don't expect reciprocal respect for any skills I might have, but merely a gentler, even neutral approach by you. It would be more productive, and I think people would listen to you more intently. Tony (talk) 10:51, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Tony, you might also like to reflect on whether asking for a definition of proper nouns/names was productive in any way? (Does anyone actually question whether we are dealing with such here? Not as far as I see.) Also note that my original comment about brainless capitalisation was a generic comment about WP - you (and others) might like to reflect on why you have been so quick to personalise everything. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 11:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
        • Fortunately, the Proper noun article is based on sources, and the first cited source for the simple-minded definition is mostly accessible on Amazon. It spends a lot of pages on the difficulty of deciding what's a proper noun (unfortunately, the most relevant page on "things" is not visible to me there). It does have a simple test about putting "the" in front, by which this phrase fails. In any case, Tony's right, it's not so easy to find applicable rules. That's why we rely on sources to help us. Dicklyon (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
• Support. If anyone should know whether it's "a proper noun" or no is the person who coined it. It's conclusive enough for me. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 14:54, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
• Strongest possible support How say Wikipedia actually pay a modicum of attention to the Ph.D. who coined the term? This is so drop-dead simple. Michael C. Price’s argument (brainless decapitalisation lowers WP's quality) does not cite germane evidence, is not persuasive, and would rightfully carry zero weight in discerning a proper and true consensus; nose-count alone means little. “Brainless”??? Come-on, Michael; can’t you mount an argument that does not imply severe hydroencephalopathy in those with whom you disagree? Let’s see if simple, inescapable logic about “reliable sources” and core principles of Wikipedia’s policies can overcome knee-jerk reactions that amount to nothing more than “lower‑case advocates are pooooopy.” As the first sentence of the article says, The Medea hypothesis is a term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward. The article then cites Dr. Ward’s own book, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?, ISBN 0691130752. His book consistently spells it “Medea hypothesis”. Like Big Bang theory, the second word (hypothesis, in this case) is lowercase. This is all quite obvious. Greg L (talk) 17:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

  
  P.S. Everyone has my permission to refer to my above post as “the Greg L argument”. Michael however, may call it “the Greg L Argument”—that makes me feel better for some reason. Greg L (talk) 17:41, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Methane catastrophe

Is there an article on that? The closest I could find would be Clathrate gun hypothesis, but I'm not sure that makes sense for the one listed here. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 11:06, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

clarify first sentence?

The first sentence of this article simultaneously suggests that the Medea hypothesis is about multicellular life committing suicide and microbial life destroying multicellular life. This appears to be a contradiction, but I realize there may be subtleties to Ward's idea that explain it. I hope someone with a deeper understanding of this subject can clarify. --Allen (talk) 15:35, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

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Intention governing the universe

While the Gaia hypothesis is designed to infer idealist intention in the universe, it's an assumption that Medea, although voluntarily named using similar historical roots, does not appear to support from my reading of Ward (and also generally avoided by science). I copy-edited the text to avoid the suggestion. —PaleoNeonate – 15:01, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Wording suggests Peter Ward knows about the future

The wording in the last paragraph sounds like Peter Ward knows about an extinction event that is going to happen in the future:

[Peter Ward] postulates ... that the final mass extinction of complex life, roughly about 500–900 million years in the future, can also be considered a Medean event.

There are two separate ideas in this sentence. One, that there will be a "final mass extinction of complex life in 500-900 million years", and second, that Peter Ward considers it to be a Medean event. If that first idea is supposed to also be Peter Ward's own idea, then it isn't worded right. The wording seems to take the idea that complex life will end in a few hundred million years for granted. If it's Peter Ward's opinion, then maybe it should read as "[Peter Ward] postulates ... that there will be a final mass extinction of complex life, roughly about 500–900 million years in the future, and that it can also be considered a Medean event." If someone else is claiming that life will end soon, then the wording should be adjusted to give credit to whomever actually made the claim.

I've never heard about this prediction of complex life ending in 500-900 million years. This idea is extraordinary on its own and deserves an extraordinary piece of evidence or at least a citation. --Lucky Potatoe (talk) 08:06, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

I found on Future of Earth#Climate_impact the following:

Within the next 600 million years from the present, the concentration of carbon dioxide will fall below the critical threshold needed to sustain C3 photosynthesis: about 50 parts per million. At this point, trees and forests in their current forms will no longer be able to survive.

So it would seem that this idea of complex life ending in 600-900 million years is not Peter Ward's. I would argue that this idea is not common knowledge and requires citation of some kind anyways. I did notice that the section on the other page links back to this page. Including a link on this page to the other page might be considered circular logic. I don't know the appropriate way to handle this. --Lucky Potatoe (talk) 08:32, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Proposed (minor) change

From

‘’atmosphere (which in turn will have already be due to the increasing heat from the Sun gradually speeding up the weathering process that removes them from the atmosphere), and ultimately accelerating’’

to

….. which in turn will have already be(en), due to the increasing heat from the Sun, gradually speeding up the weathering process that removes them from the atmosphere

for more clarity. Thanks. 105.112.16.217 (talk) 14:35, 17 November 2022 (UTC)