md65536

I dunno! I really am an unwashed idiot. That's why I rarely (almost never really :modest:) tell other people what they do and don't understand of what I also don't understand, or imply that I'm the only one who can figure it all out. I don't even know what matter is (apart from a little about what it does).

Previously I was of the opinion that this wasn't a hopeless case, that most people are reasonable and can be reasoned with. It even seemed true, as in this thread there are posts along the lines of "perhaps there are things that I don't know about yet that I should learn..." But it's as if the brain fights it, says "No, too hard" and we quickly see a return to a preference of arguing over learning, and of making statements over asking questions, and justifying missing understanding with a belief that "all that stuff that I don't know enough about is wrong". And then insulting others with it. So I'm disappointed. I don't think our cynicism is good. I think that not all cases are hopeless. I want to believe! Who knows, perhaps there's still hope here. But yes, I think your earlier assessment is correct.

Hmm, where do you think mathematics comes from? Do you think it always existed or was developed independent of a physical reality? Most mathematics is based on physical things, and when new physical concepts are discovered often new mathematics are invented to describe it... just like new words are invented to describe new things. You wouldn't say that the universe evolved because of words, would you? Yet you write about the universe. Similarly, the math only describes the universe. Like consistency in writing, consistency in the math corresponds to consistency in reality, and like words the math can convey meaning. But why am I telling you this? I'm just an unwashed, unworthy idiot. Your highness. Check http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/62667-crackpottery/ for some helpful tips. Or try slogging through http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/61438-is-philosophy-relevant-to-science/ for a glimpse of the ghost of christmas future.

Yes, it's sad. Information doesn't make sense to some people, and they invent their own explanations. Then other people associate all the alternatives together (and others like Fox News encourage this), so that now anyone who questions what happened on 9/11 is grouped with any other "conspiracy nut". I've got into these 9/11 arguments before and I can't prove anything useful. The best that I think can be agreed on is: - There is not enough information to fully explain every detail of that day (as should be expected), and there are some puzzling questions that still remain. - There were choices made in the name of protecting the interests of people, over doing the most thorough investigation possible. (Eg. supposedly avoiding comforting the enemy at the expense of the comfort of the families of victims). So I don't think there's enough evidence to support the conspiracy theories, but I don't think there's enough evidence to disprove them all either. Scientifically, some open questions remain. I suppose it is a cold case.

A safe bet? How do you expect to collect on it? Wait forever? Or until the end of amateurs? Or do you expect an end to "sound fundamental discoveries"? It's an easy statement to make, because you can keep repeating it without anyone to prove you're wrong, right up until (if/when) it happens or you die first. It's not the first time in history that scientists had low expectations of what discoveries awaited and who would make them. I think it's a detrimental attitude, because it discourages people from trying. Anyone can be a scientist, anyone who does science, including kids experimenting at home or entering science fairs. Anyone can make a discovery. There's not "nothing new" left out there, and we don't know "most of everything big" yet. I agree that the chances of an amateur making a big discovery in any given time frame (say, the next year, or decade) may be small and getting smaller, but what is the probability that it will never happen ever in the entirety of the possible future? That must be close to zero. --- I also think it's telling that a thread on crackpottery with a description "You don't want to be that guy" ends up stuck on the topic of amateurs, as if they're the same thing. Every scientist starts off as an amateur, and if amateurs are treated with the same disdain and low expectations that the worst of the crackpots have earned for themselves, then why would anyone want to get interested in science? Addendum: Asking "how many years since an important amateur physics discovery" might be like asking "how many years since a maximum global warming temperature" in concluding that either has stopped. Nevertheless I didn't find any recent examples with a quick look, but I did find this: http://www.builtonfa...teur-physicist/ I think it (and the first comment within) is interesting and applicable, and useful for would-be (but shouldn't-be) crackpots.

Are you arguing that it's very difficult to bring down a building like that? Because the facts are: 1. The building did come down that day. 2. There was external damage to building and there was a fire that was left to burn. If you're trying to answer a question like "how much explosives or explosives expertise is required for these two things to happen", and if your answer is anything more than "Very little to none at all", then there is a problem here. Is it better to avoid questioning things in order to also avoid comforting "maniacs"? Is it better to falsely believe "only outsiders would do a thing like that"? The Kennedy assassination is off topic and possibly setting up a strawman. I'm not saying that OP's post can't be argued against, but I am saying that "It's a conspiracy theory" isn't a good argument on its own. And there are some who are satisfied in "the facts" only to the degree that the evidence warrants it, and there are some who call that "physics".

That's probably the most important aspect of advice for people to be taken seriously, whether crackpot or not. One problem (I don't know if in general or only with many on this site) is that anything new that doesn't fit with one's understanding of a subject tends to be seen as crackpottery. Whether you have a "theory" you've worked on for a lifetime, or are a child who forms certain beliefs while learning about things, if you're wrong you're wrong and that's all that some people are interested in. The difference between someone with an underdeveloped understanding or theory, and a "problem crackpot", is that the former will change and develop (their understanding, their methods, their presentation, etc). It might be a single defining feature of a "problem crackpot" that they don't correct flaws, and they resist change. So the best advice may be the encouragement of further development, and I guess that's usually given on this site, whether it's subject matter to brush up on, or evidence that is needed etc. That's not enough for only the most hopeless of crackpots. Perhaps they only advice for them is that they have to want to change/improve (eg. their theory or understanding) if they expect a change in how they're received. From the perspective of the potential crackpot, the most positive thing is to feel encouragement to improve "the right way", instead of focusing on defending against feeling shut down (because "Galileo was treated this way too!" etc). This is especially important for kids, who could grow up thinking that science is accessible and that they can learn and make a difference, vs. that science is some closed-off palace for the elite only, and you're either one of them or you have to fight your way in.

Most of the "advice for crackpots" is negative stuff. It's all "what not to do" and seems mostly to be "how to stop annoying those who deal with real science". Is there any advice for what crackpots can do right? Is there any room for "how to be a crackpot and still contribute something useful and meaningful"? I've been inspired to try to write something along those lines myself, but always lose interest -- possibly because it seems futile, as if there really is no hope for crackpots (other than to give in and accept "real" science) but I'm not sure if it's true or not. If one follows the advice of what to avoid, does one become a "lawful good" crackpot, or cease to be a crackpot?

Though the question's not directed at me, "CONSPIRACY" is my first major. I propose we stick to discussing the collapse of WTC7 in this thread.

We're given that one guard lies and the other tells the truth. In a case where you can't assume that, Marqq's post (bottom of http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/53927-which-door-should-you-take/page__view__findpost__p__623410) gives a question that is self-referential for the guard, and only depends on the one guard you're asking, so it doesn't matter how many other guards there are and whether those other guards lie. Sorry I misread your post. My original post below maybe better answers this: You don't know which guard tells the truth and which lies. The solution to the puzzle involves treating them generically, so that you get the same answer whether they're honest or lying. In the original puzzle, the guard that you ask will point to one of two doors. There are two possible answers (you could also make the guard's head explode but that won't give you useful information). If you also want to know whether the guard you ask is lying or not, there are 4 possibilities: Door 1 is good, guard is honest Door 1 is good, guard is lying Door 2 is good, guard is honest Door 2 is good, guard is lying The "pigeonhole principle" tells you that more than 1 of these 4 possibilities will correspond to a single possible answer (of 2 possible) given by the guard. The trick is to get "Door 1, honest" to overlap with "Door 1, lying" etc, so you know which door to take without knowing if the guard is honest or not. If you construct a question that tells you whether the guard is lying or not, it will be impossible to always* also know which door is good. There aren't enough possible answers (just 2, or 3 including head explosion) to specify all that information. * I suppose it should be possible to get the guard's answer to tell you something like "The guard is telling the truth AND pointing to the good door... or not" so that you can know both in only 1 of 4 cases. So you should be able to increase the number of "bits" of useful information you get from the guard while decreasing the probability of getting that useful information. But that doesn't solve the puzzle.

I defer to the experts if they're around. Otherwise... Light cones don't expand. A light cone is essentially "a fixed moment in time as observed by a given observer". As time passes, we see the universe basically via different light cones. Later light cones should allow the observation of light that's had more time to reach us, compared to light cones of events earlier in the lifetime of the universe. However, I don't think light cones tell you what you want to know here... See this previous related conversation: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/61382-what-we-see/page__view__findpost__p__640081 [linked to a relevant post]. I guess it hasn't been decided whether expansion is accelerating, in which case: yes, objects would vanish from our telescopes over time. As far as I know the evidence seems to indicate accelerated expansion, and vanishing objects is a predicted consequence, but I don't think it's been directly observed. With smooth expansion, objects would be receding at approaching the speed of light before they disappeared at any greater rates of recession. These objects would be so far away that they'd be dim and hard to see, and their light would be redshifted to wavelengths approaching infinity, which means no energy. So rather than seeing an object "pop out of existence" in a telescope, you'd essentially see it get redder and darker and farther until it fades away to nothing.

This is a bit over my head. I would think the answer is still no. I think that either you'd assume that the telescope remains fixed at 10 LY away, and the expansion measured there would be the same as the expansion measured here?... Or, the expansion of space also applies to the space between you and the telescope, so that any effects of expansion "removed" from what the telescope observes, would be added back into what the telescope transmits to you. Imagine two photons traveling toward you, close enough to each other that they follow an essentially identical geodesic, except that one happens to be relayed momentarily through the telescope. What could cause one of the photons to be observable, but the other not? If there's an answer I don't know it. Probably not related to what you're talking about: Expansion allows that what is now observable will become unobservable. So it's possible that the telescope can make observations of some remote object, and delay transmitting it to you, and then later you may be able to "see" from the telescope some currently unobservable objects. However, you should only be able to see what was previously observable to you. If the telescope delayed an image of an object by a billion years, it would show the object as it was a billion years ago, just as it was when it was directly observable by you a billion years ago. Those would be observations of a different Hubble volume than what you see now. There would certainly be some form of delay (if not gigayears, then perhaps nano seconds).

No, because any light that reaches the telescope and is then sent to Earth, could instead skip the telescope and reach Earth at least as fast as a signal from the telescope would reach us. A path on a geodesic from an object to the Earth should be no longer than a path from the object to the telescope plus one from the telescope to Earth. I don't know if inflation can change that...

To get to space: Rockets typically have an acceleration away from Earth that's much higher than gravity's is toward the Earth. To stay in space: The satellites are accelerated to a speed that's faster than the moon's speed relative to the Earth. It takes a lot of energy to get to orbit, and none to stay there. The Earth and moon each orbit around their barycenter, which I guess orbits the barycenter of the Earth/moon system + the sun. Orbiting is like being in freefall; there's little gravitational proper acceleration (it is "microgravity"). So, while you have a system like the Earth/moon orbiting something like the sun, part of the system (eg. the moon) isn't going to be pulled away to the sun, because the gravitational pull of the sun affects the Earth and the moon equally. Note: Not exactly equally... you do have gravitational gradients, which causes tides, which is an effect of gravitational masses pulling non-uniformly on a system. The above should be true for any moon around a planet. In the case of Earth's moon, the moon orbits Earth slow enough relative to the Earth/moon's orbit around the sun, that the moon effectively does orbit the sun. If you look at the path of the moon around the sun, as shown here: http://en.wikipedia....Moon_around_Sun, you'll see that it looks very circular, such that its orbit around the Earth is only a relatively slight deviation from an orbit around the sun.

Ah yes, the ontological problem of love. How oft have the the greatest philosophers and lyricists of our time pondered the question in song, "What is love?"

Sometimes you'd use a better clock as reference. In case there isn't a better clock available, something's age might be the best clock available. Sometimes you'd use direct measurements. How do we measure the age of the universe? If time is the phase of an oscillation, it can also be the phase of a lifetime, for something that ages steadily and reliably. Not all things age consistently or with easily measured phases. I'm nit-picking. I'd agree that time is the phase of an oscillation -- except when it's not. As I trace farther back in the conversation I see you've already covered all this. Oscillation is not the essence of time (ie. its definition), just a requirement of a useful clock.

It is not just the experience of seeing a flattened Earth, but all experiences of all behaviors involving the Earth, such as whether or not you smash into it. The position of relativity might be used to claim that the Earth is where it is measured to be, shaped as it is measured to be, and behaves as it is measured to be. Your claim would require that the Earth really is in a shape and position where it is not measured to be, and that objects can pass through this "hidden, true Earth" as if it is not there (because they behave with the Earth as it is measured to be), and in fact there's nothing empirical that says that the "hidden, true Earth" is there except the knowledge of it in your mind. Idealism. Do you really believe that spaceships can pass through an Earth with an intrinsic shape, just because it appears differently shaped? This is not idealism, because nowhere is it stated, implied, or logically derived that measurements require a human mind in order to be made.

Sorry for the digression from the main conversation: Isn't "age" a measure of time, which does not necessarily involve an oscillator? Eg. The age of a person, or a burning candle, or the universe. Isn't age often used as a continuously running clock, as long as whatever is aging will outlast anything that needs to be timed? The most extreme example would be using the age of the universe to measure time. Carbon dating might be considered a measurement of time based on a continuously running decay, etc.

Area is a two dimensional measure involving lengths.Do you call it an area when a length in one dimension is multiplied by a length in the same dimension? For example: [taken from http://www.school-fo...work_energy.htm] The definition of work is that it equals force times the distance traveled while that force is being applied or W = Fd where (for example) F = ma, and a is the acceleration or change in velocity in meters per second-squared (m/s²). So the acceleration involves a measure of length along one dimension, and work involves length along that same dimension, and W ends up with a squared length. These equations work in one spatial dimension. What would the "area" be?

I don't think this is idealism. What is your definition of idealism? owl, I believe that your "radical honesty" means that you are speaking the truth as you know it, but that the feeling of always speaking the truth interferes with your ability to judge when an opinion or a belief might be wrong. The position of feeling right combined with being unapologetic about it may feel righteous but it comes off as arrogant and condescending. You're also missing the feeling of enlightenment that comes with understanding that you might be wrong, and being forced to reevaluate what you know. I take an opposing view to yours, where any investigation of philosophy of science and "how we know what we know" leads me to the conclusion that we don't really know a lot of what I'd assumed we knew, so it's surprising that your philosophical investigations strengthen your confidence in similar knowledge (such as knowing which properties are intrinsic). This is true. So the argument should be that only some specific philosophies or perhaps branches of philosophy are irrelevant to science. However, I think the example that you keep using (shape of Earth or ticking of clocks) is also an example of philosophy as irrelevant to science. Your examples involve explaining how things "really are" regardless of whether that corresponds to accepted science which is based on observations of reality. So of course it is irrelevant. It is an interesting question of whether knowledge which cannot be experimentally verified is relevant to science, but you're using examples of "knowledge" that doesn't even correspond to how the universe is observed to behave. Whether something is relevant if it has no bearing on how things behave is one thing, but something that is demonstrably behaviorally incorrect is certainly irrelevant to science. In other words, no you can't prove or disprove a scientific theory using philosophical rationalism (ie. that every possible object of knowledge can be deduced from coherent premises without observation), when what is deduced contradicts empirical reality.

It's an interesting idea. I don't see the analogy though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in pair production, the particle and the antiparticle exist at the same time. Suppose an electron is created by pair production, and sometime later is annihilated with a positron. If you consider the positron to be moving backward through time, it is "created" at that point of annihilation, and moves back through time while the electron is moving forward through time. Then the positron might be "destroyed" by an earlier pair production (not typically with the same electron). Again, correct me if I'm wrong... I don't really know. But I think the analogy is reasonable without the matter/antimatter idea at all. If the universe is like particles colliding and forming new particles that move forward through time, then from the perspective of the new particles, time might be considered "going backward" before the big bang of the collision. The process of smashing the particles into each other might be considered an entropy-lowering process, and the particles coming together and colliding is analogous to a time reversal of particles forming and moving apart after the collision. In the analogy, smashing particles together doesn't actually lower entropy because the larger system, including for example a particle collider, used a lot of energy to accelerate the particle and the overall system's entropy increases. But it might be possible to imagine an entropy-lowering, time-reversed system leading up to the big bang... Anyway I think the problem is that to use the analogy, you may have to think about "time before the big bang" and then it breaks down. There would probably be no evidence for or against this idea, so I'm not sure if it could be justified well enough.

Yes!!!! Well done owl! You've finally done it! I think we are finally all in agreement! I can agree totally with your post so far. (I don't want to ruin it by continuing reading.) Does anyone still disagree? For everyone's information, this form of idealism is not what other philosophers would typically refer to when using the word 'idealism'. I've been a fool, doubting that these discussions would ever be resolved. Well I think you've mostly got it, but it doesn't matter if it's a "homosapient head" that observes the world with its eyes etc, or a photon that measures the world by hitting it, or a particle that measures the world by moving through it, etc. That is... If you accept that reality is, by definition*, as it is measured to be, then the "real world referent" is whatever is being measured, and so the behavior of everything is consistent with measurements of reality as measured by anything that interacts in reality. Then you have a philosophical understanding of the universe that is compatible with how it behaves, and is thus compatible with science. It is not idealism, because measurements can be made independent of thought or understanding. * not the only possible definition mind you.

The inner structure of the building fell before the outside. It is only the outside of the building that fell at free-fall speed as if it was completely unsupported. There was no need to do a legitimate investigation, because the government-accepted answer was quite clear: Heat from an office fire knocked a "lynch pin" i-beam off its seat, and without that one support all the other supports were quickly and easily pulled off balance, just like a building made of plastic straws balanced on end and tied to each other with pieces of string might do.

If things have an intrinsic shape, do they also have an intrinsic speed? We can ignore actual speeds by measuring only from the "best" speed. Ideally, everything should be measured at rest, to reduce unknown variables. Is "at rest" the ideal speed for everything in owl-realism? It would certainly make measuring the speed of a car simplest and most accurate if it was done while the car is at rest. I'll give you that much, it would certainly simplify a lot of physics straight out of existence with this reasoning.

I still think those are wrong. They are owl-redefinitions of the words. You're saying that owl-idealism is "reality is as it is measured to be", and owl-realism is "reality conforms to an ideal that is true regardless of how it is measured". In owl-realism, the shape of the Earth is spherical, even if it isn't measured to be so, and is only "known" to be so -- it has an ideal shape within the mind. I think you have your definitions BACKWARDS. It is my most humble of opinions that anyone who accepts any of your definitions without questioning them has been made stupider for it. Perhaps if you prepend "owl-" as I am doing, as in "owl-time is event duration of physical processes", "owl-psychologist is someone with an interest in psychology" etc, it would prevent people from being confused. As I've always said, you're spreading misinformation and you continue to do it at the same garbage-spewing rate. I think that some others here don't bother to correct you on your philosophical mistakes, because they don't treat philosophy with enough respect to care whether it is presented correctly or not. But I care! Can't you see that I'm the only one giving you proper respect, you idiot? Have a merry Christmas and a happy holidays, everyone! Maybe in the new year we'll figure out the true nature of the unknowable aspects of reality!