BenTheMan

Maybe not. What is r? Is it the Schwarzchild radius? Or the distance of the observer from the horizon. You'll need something like [math]1-r_s/R \sim 1[/math], I think. R is the observer, and r_s is the Schwarzchild radius.

Hello Pot? This is the Kettle. Or, if you're not familiar with this one, Those who live in houses of glass should not throw stones.

I'll email John Baez and see if he responds. I would love it. Please explain my insanity

Lots of people tried to explain mass, Farsight. But those people quickly realized that there were problems which couldn't be solved, especially at the quantum level. You should say---I can explain mass inasmuch as I understand it. If anyone is interested, I wrote a long and semi-technical post at another forum about why the higgs mechanism (or something extremely similar) is necessary, here. The punchline is that there is a necessary property of fundamental physics called gauge invariance, which tells us (basically) that the equations we use can't depend on the form in which we write them. Anyway, it is not clear to me how Farsight would plan on writing a mass term in a Lagrangian, which is how mass enters the quantum theory. If you read the linked post above, hopefully you will understand why this is true---if not, then feel free to start another thread about higgses, and I can (probably, hopefully) answer most of your questions.

Can you make your point in less than 40 pages?

I disagree that this is personal. Well, it is personal inasmuch as Farsight takes it personally. If you speak with scientists about science, you should be prepared to be told your wrong, or that your ideas are nonsense. If you habitually refuse to answer scientific questions which punch holes in your theory, you are not doing science at all. Do you defend Intelligent Design proponents, too? It's always easy to make up your mind when you ignore half of the information. All that the people reading here have to do is go over to the other thread (same forum, linked to in OP) and read down a few posts to see that Farsight is out of his mind. I started this thread to quantify exactly how out of his mind Farsight actually is.

This is the kicker. If observer is not very very far away, the the conclusion fails.

Norman--- I don't want to spoil the punchline, so I'll let Severian explain why he asked the question he did. I will say that, if Farsight can't explain what happens to WW around 1 TeV, his theory is effectively killed, he has bigger problems. It's not that Farsight doesn't explain everything, he doesn't explain ANYthing. He CAN'T answer simple questions, he WON'T answer detailed questions, and it seems that the only REASONable prediction he's made is the absence of a higgs boson. This may already disprove his theories, because one of the higgses MAY have been seen at FermiLab. (Note: Most people don't agree with this.)

Norm---there is a definite art to hand-waving. It only works if everyone can understand the waving. If not, then you have to pull out a pencil.

Ooh. That's a good one.

Actually, I am willing to bet that even if there IS evidence of a higgs found, Farsight will label it a red herring and refuse to acknowledge it. Or restructure his theory so that it fits in (the same thing he accused me of trying to do with string theory). It should be noted that the higgs decays most prominantly to top quarks, which can annihilate to give photons.

Xerxes--- It's the same problem that scientists have with things like Intelligent Design. First you think ``It's so stupid, how can anyone actually believe that?'' Then, the next thing you know, school boards are trying to vote on cirricula based on it. The problem is that scientists don't feel obligated to respond to unscientific claims. It is, in a sense, beneath us. Many times, the gaps in logic are so glaringly obvious that we don't even take time to point them out---i.e. the person violates well-known experiments, well-known principles, or just common sense. The ``fringe scientists'' then claim that, because scientists refuse to answer their claims, their claims must be correct because there IS no reply. This then sets the stage for the fringe scientists to claim that they are being ``repressed'' or ``excluded from the academic club''---they portray themselves as underdogs. But the simple reason is, their ideas are so WRONG that they don't even deserve to be called academic. And we all know that the public LOVES an underdog. If you don't believe me, go back and reread the Baez crackpot checkpoints... Most of the higher point ones all center around this central point. This is (in a sense) what Lee Smolin did in his book. I am not suggesting that Loop Quantum Gravity is a fringe science, I think that there is a lot of interesting research going on there. But when I read in fora (like this one) posts be people who don't even know what string theory is, it is quite upsetting. There are a large class of people who shit from their mouths about things they don't know. (You can, for example, read anything I've ever posted about GR ) Farsight, elas, someguy and fatty are all examples of this, insomuch as I can tell. Is it bullying when we all come to the same conclusion about Farsight being wrong? The point is that the discussion is more or less civil, but Farsight takes being told that he was wrong WAY to personally. He has had many chances to defend his claims, most of which he ignored or danced around. Anything that disproves his idea is labelled ``red herring'' and soundly ignored. Important points are called ``nitpicking''. He fails to understand science IN THE LEAST, and he refuses to take the time to learn the math. He has taken a manifestly unscientific approach to the criticism, and instead of pointing out defficiancies in the standard model (of which there are many), or in our arguments, he has recast everything as ``irrelevant'' or ``nitpicking''. This tells me that he either doesn't know what he's talking about, that he does know what he's talking about and it's wrong, or that he just doesn't care to ever have his ideas seriously critiqued. As for this thread, perhaps it is a waste of bandwith, and I've been accused of worse. But no more a waste of bandwith than ``RELATIVITY +''.

Yeah---that and ``Kafkaesque''

Index = 373. Index += 50. Index = 423.

Farsight--- Just a guess, but I'm sure Severian knows very well what the vertex correction to QED looks like. Again, just a guess

It says I have to spread it around.

Damn. All the people I want to give reputation to I can't.

Isn't this string theory?

Severian---LOL. This is a red herring and you are nitpicking and not actually adressing the issue. You are to be reprimanded for your Kafkaesque ad hominem attack. Further, using your own mathematical axioms to attack Farsight's position is invalid, your point is stupid, and should be ignored outright.

Farsight has refused to answer my questions. Perhaps he is brushing up on chirality. To elas--- We don't need a new theory. If there is a question here to be answered, it is ``why is the Lorentz symmetry SO(3,1)?'', which is the same as ``why do we have four dimensions, with one time directions?''. String theory is the closest thing that answers that question (it predicts 10 dimensions). fatty--- Who's being sad? We're pointing out why he is wrong. It is up to Farsight to take criticisms of his ideas personally. And finally, to Farsight, who is aparently no longer talking to me. What about neutrinos? Don't they live in a separate bucket? Farsight---you continue to call anything that you can't explain a red herring. This is REAL PHYSICS, REAL EXPERIMENTS, which people can do, which people publish the results of, and which are described in excruciating detail by the standard model. All that I am asking for is that you either say ``I can explain that fully, here.'' or ``I haven't thought about it, but I think it should happen like this''. It is extremely difficult to talk with you about your ideas, because you have this idea that we're all here to crucify you. We only want to crucify your ideas---the fact that you take it so personally is going to give you a heart attack. Ask me how Sakurai (author of a graduate QM textbook) died if you don't already know. Further, you make such vague and hollow predictions like , and . First of all, world lines are graphs that we draw. So if you want evidence, I can draw one for you and show it to you. You have to have a world line because it's how you write down the action, which tells you how to do quantum field theory. Have you ever actually READ a Boltzman Brain paper? Do you understand the timescales that we're talking about? I hear Don Page talking about numbers like 10^30 years. Can you propose an experiment to disprove the existence of Boltzman Brains?

Don't worry...

Woohoo. I almost posted this in ``speculations''.

Not ``Einstein'', ``Einstien''. At least he never misspells his name

Perhaps we should keep track of his statements: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28212

Perhaps this will get me reprimanded, and maybe the post will even be moved, but it's worth a shot. John Baez is a famous mathematician (and I THINK relative to hippy folk singer Joan Baez, but don't quote me). He has come up with a ``Crackpot Index'' whereby one can quantify the level of crackpottery that is present in an individual's claim. In another thread, one of our beloved SFN members Farsight is vigorously defending a claim that matter is made of photons, and that time is not the fourth dimension. I figured that we should apply this index to Farsight, and see where it takes us... Also, Farsight's responses to actual science stop midway through the third page, where he begins complaining about something or another. Anyway, here goes. I'll do the first three pages, and if anyone is interested, we can keep a running tally of Farsight's crackpot index. This could be fun Index = -5. Ok' date=' let's count Index +=1. Index +=1. Index += 4. Yep. Index = 1 Index += 1. What about neutrinos. Index += 1. Index += 1. Index += 3 Index += 2 Index = 9. Index += 2. Index +=2. Index = 13. This is a bigger job than I thought. I will skip to the bigger points. Skip these---I feel bad for recounting the ones that I already counted anyway. Hmmm. Farsight avoids most of these. This is in his RELATIVITY+ work, but I'm too lazy to dig through it. Index += 30. Index = 93. None here, but... He uses the work Kafkaesque in this thread like he just learned it. Index += 40. Index = 133. Farsight has never done this, but I could imagine him rattling off something similar to the first one or the last one. Finally, Yep, you got it. Index += 50. Index = 183. So Farsight is at 183, a VERY respectable score. Maybe others can point out places that I have missed.