List of books that are acceptable as evidence

[Endercreeper01]

Some pop science is accurate, but most of it is not. It is way oversimplified in order for the public to understand the text, and almost all of the pop science I read has no math (except for E=mc²).

Edited February 22, 2014 by Endercreeper01

[studiot]

 

and almost all of pop science has no math

 

Have you ever read any of Martin Gardner's work, or that by my other reference?

 

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=martin+gardner

Edited February 22, 2014 by studiot

[Schneibster]

Actually, I find the best pop sci has great analogies for understanding the consequences of the math, and the expectations it imposes on theory.

 

I think anyone posting on an internet forum is either a researcher trying to pass stuff along, a non-researcher with formal experience in another field trying to understand and pass that understanding to querents in payment for the stuff from the researchers, or a poser.

[Endercreeper01]

 

Have you ever read any of Martin Gardner's work, or that by my other reference?

I meant almost all of the pop science that I see. Usually, I don't see much math in popsci.

[Schneibster]

May I ask if anyone thinks Gravitation is a popular science book?

 

Everyone is aware this is a textbook in the curriculum of relativity, and one of the few really indispensible ones, right?

 

I cannot believe I am defending this textbook. This is an extremely surreal experience.

 

Usually I'm the nutzo guy who's breaking the paradigm and being all rebellious and stuff. It's really weird transitioning to the old guard. Really weird.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Schneibster

[studiot]

 

Usually I'm the nutzo guy who's breaking the paradigm and being all rebellious and stuff. It's really weird transitioning to the old guard. Really weird.

 

 

Perhaps that's the difference between proving (or disproving) something and explaining something.

 

If you set out to prove or disprove a statement then you need to present the necessary flow of logical argument in full, without appeal to ouside authority, however august.

 

If you set out to explain something to someone (and I have seen you do this well several times at SF) then it is legitimate to say

 

"this is the (standard) text on the subject, read section XXX"

 

Incidentally there are many, many texts on relativity.

 

Macomb, Dodson & Poston, The Manchester Physics series and even Griffiths spring to mind, although none are 'popsci'.

Edited February 22, 2014 by studiot

[Bignose]

Everyone is aware this is a textbook in the curriculum of relativity, and one of the few really indispensible ones, right?

No one is saying it isn't, but you've made statements like this:

 

I seriously doubt much of anything in Gravitation is superceded..

and you can't honestly tell me that a book from 1973 with parts of the book on the subject of The Universe (part VI) or Experimental Tests of General Relativity (part IX) have the most current ideas in it. The ideas that best fit the universe have changed over the last 40 years based on newer evidence that we keep discovering. As a simple example, how old we thought the universe was is not the same as how old we think it is today. And we've tested relativity a great deal more in the last 40 years. I mean, if there wasn't information that superceded the book, why would papers like this http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/ even be published? If there wasn't more info, people would just say 'go to the book.'

 

This is the point people are trying to make. I feel like you're trying to set up a false dichotomy, that the book is either denounced, or it is wholly correct. When obviously, it is neither. It was an important text, and it still is an important text, but it isn't perfect. And just because it has mistakes in it and just because some of its information is out of date doesn't make it wholly wrong and denounceable either.

 

Each piece of info in the book has to stand on its own. Some of the book still represents our best knowledge, and some of it doesn't. Science marches on.

[studiot]

 

I meant almost all of the pop science that I see. Usually, I don't see much math in popsci.

 

 

Judging from your excellent rendition of "Integration the Movie" here, perhaps you should read some popmath eg

 

Penrose Tiles to Trapdoor Ciphers by the aforementioned Martin Gardner.

or

Another Fine Math You've got me Into by Ian Stewart

 

Beware, however, there is a danger you might enjoy it.

Edited February 22, 2014 by studiot

[Schneibster]

No one is saying it isn't, but you've made statements like this:

 

 

and you can't honestly tell me that a book from 1973 with parts of the book on the subject of The Universe (part VI) or Experimental Tests of General Relativity (part IX) have the most current ideas in it. The ideas that best fit the universe have changed over the last 40 years based on newer evidence that we keep discovering. As a simple example, how old we thought the universe was is not the same as how old we think it is today. And we've tested relativity a great deal more in the last 40 years. I mean, if there wasn't information that superceded the book, why would papers like this http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2006-3/ even be published? If there wasn't more info, people would just say 'go to the book.'

 

This is the point people are trying to make. I feel like you're trying to set up a false dichotomy, that the book is either denounced, or it is wholly correct. When obviously, it is neither. It was an important text, and it still is an important text, but it isn't perfect. And just because it has mistakes in it and just because some of its information is out of date doesn't make it wholly wrong and denounceable either.

 

Each piece of info in the book has to stand on its own. Some of the book still represents our best knowledge, and some of it doesn't. Science marches on.

 

See, I see this as a strawman.

 

Where did I claim the later, speculative parts of this book were all the rigidly correct word of Teh Dudez Who Know and I wouldn't tolerate any deviance?

 

This is silliness.

[Strange]

 

See, I see this as a strawman.

 

No more than your claim that you had to "defend" the book just because someone said it wasn't fully up to date.

[Schneibster]

Hey, I made a quote that actually supported what I said.

 

Maybe you forgot.

 

Argue as you like with Susskind's pedagogic technique, accusing him of being technically inaccurate in that quote, and especially, damning the whole thing based on it, is completely missing the point, and quite deliberately disingenuously so IMNVHO.

 

I didn't see anything strawman about it. What I saw was a bunch of people saying it wasn't technically accurate after I'd said so in post number four of this thread. Do you deny I said that? Do you deny I meant it? And if no to both, then how is it a strawman? Please explain. Do you mean everyone was making strawman arguments about what I said? Yes, that was true. Still is. Like you are right here.

 

Please don't do that.

I still can't believe someone claims Gravitation is a "popular science book." Let me get over that before I start on the whole "obsolete" or "outmoded" thing, which I will start by noting how many printings they've had to go back for because more people wanted it.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Schneibster

[Bignose]

See, I see this as a strawman.

 

Where did I claim the later, speculative parts of this book were all the rigidly correct word of Teh Dudez Who Know and I wouldn't tolerate any deviance?

 

This is silliness.

Ummm, you did write:

 

I seriously doubt much of anything in Gravitation is superceded..

Presumably 'anything' includes the 'later, speculative parts of this book', right?

 

The point being, again, that parts of the book are good, parts of it not as much anymore. I assume that you have no major objection to that, right?

[Schneibster]

No, I have no major objection.

 

Next time ask me what I think instead of telling me, please.

[Bignose]

Next time ask me what I think instead of telling me, please.

Next time actually write what you mean, rather than using inexact words, then, please.

[Schneibster]

 

 

A good way (though not mathematically precise) is to think of it as the chance, given everything else is just right, i.e. the angles of the electron and photon are just right, and they'll intersect at a given spacetime location with a known uncertainty, that an electron and a photon will actually interact. If they were little balls they'd interact every time, since they're subatomic quantum particles they only interact 1/137 of the time.

 

But as I say it's a notionally, but not numerically, accurate answer. So don't get too stuck on the analogy.

 

They look pretty exact to me. Do you have another interpretation?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That was not the point in question. Do we really need to start the same tedious argument over again?

 

This discussion is the product of classic Internet Argument Failure, where the argument is really just a series of squabbles over smaller and smaller details that relate less and less to the original point.

[Schneibster]

And BTW let's also keep in mind that none of the relativity is. The three significant experiments have been Planck, Gravity Probe B, and LIGO/VIRGO in that time.

That was not the point in question. Do we really need to start the same tedious argument over again?

 

This discussion is the product of classic Internet Argument Failure, where the argument is really just a series of squabbles over smaller and smaller details that relate less and less to the original point.

 

I think so too but I need to be getting across that I gave fair warning it was an analogy in plain language and was then abused because it's only an analogy. I'm becoming irritable about it. I don't understand why staff is permitting it.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think so too but I need to be getting across that I gave fair warning it was an analogy in plain language and was then abused because it's only an analogy. I'm becoming irritable about it. I don't understand why staff is permitting it.

Yes, and it was a poor analogy.

 

Can we call it good now? Susskind wrote a pretty good book which is still pretty good, though some bits have been superseded by newer experiments and works, and he made an analogy to explain the fine structure constant which we don't think holds up very well.

 

The end. I'm not sure what there is to argue about.

[Schneibster]

Well I sure as heck won't argue with you about it; I don't share your opinion but I probably like different soy sauce on my sushi from you and I don't intend to argue about that either.

 

I've been telling people, gently, that I think it's a matter of taste and I see no point in arguing about pedagogic techniques, repeatedly. It doesn't seem to be getting through very well. Perhaps they'll listen if you tell them.

 

And just to be picky, since we're being picky, actually I thought his analogy was weak too and tried to improve on it some. So I'm really not disagreeing with you.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Schneibster

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Well, it is a bad analogy; Susskind talks about the probability that an electron will radiate light along its trajectory, but conflates that with the probability that it will emit one upon impacting the phosphor screen. Those are two different events, and as swansont points out, the phosphor screen always radiates. So placing the analogy inside a television didn't help at all.

 

The numerical problems pointed out by swansont could be excused as reading a metaphor too literally, but beyond that it's just weird.

 

But I'll excuse that. Explaining a tricky scientific concept is hard, and I usually go through a pile of candidate explanations before I hit one that works.

[Schneibster]

We completely agree. OTOH, the kernel idea of "one in 137" stuck with me, and I think it gives a good "feel" for how alpha works. And that's really the important part of the analogy for me.

 

And what might be important, I don't deny that later papers may overthrow reality as told in earlier textbooks; but in both cases, I also agree that real evidence must be the determining factor, not authority. I only cite authorities within their expertise and I think everyone else should stick to that too: if you haven't read it don't cite it.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Schneibster

[ajb]

I still can't believe someone claims Gravitation is a "popular science book."

 

Who actually claimed this is a popular science book?

 

Let me get over that before I start on the whole "obsolete" or "outmoded" thing, which I will start by noting how many printings they've had to go back for because more people wanted it.

 

Did anyone actually claim that this book is obsolete?

I seriously doubt much of anything in Gravitation is superceded.

The basics would not have changes, but our knowledge of cosmology has developed lots over tge past few decades.

 

Also, I can point to many many papers on general relativity that have been published since the book was, in any edition.

 

 

I would say a modern curriculum in relativity would be incompetently incomplete if it didn't include this textbook.

It is a huge book and as such maynot be the best for a short intoductory course. There are other shorter books that may act better in this respect.

 

I'd look pretty askance at any paper that claimed to refute something in Gravitation.

Search the literature, you maybe able to find some techincal result or somethning more speculative at the time of printing that is refuted in a paper. I really don't know of any examples of the top of my head.

 

I have to say I find the idea that relativity is "obsolete" or "superceded," well, quaint.

Has anyone actually claimed that here?

[Schneibster]

Did anyone actually claim that this book is obsolete?

 

The actual word was "outmoded." Do you need a link?

[pzkpfw]

From the University of California, another opinion: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Administrivia/rel_booklist.html

 

(Page) "Original by Chris Hillman (with contributions by Nathan Urban) September 1998."

 

In the section that begins "Now we are starting to get to the really good stuff!" ...

 

(My highlights):

 

 

 

This huge (44 chapter), sprawling book is IMHO one of the great scientific books of all time, but may not the best "first book" on GR for most students, in part because by offering so much it is liable to overwhelm a newcomer. However, I think every serious student must own this at least as a supplementary text and dip into it on a regular basis. MTW was the first "modern" GR textbook, and has inspired two generations of students. While in many respects it is now rather out of date, and in a few places is pretty darn confusing, this beautifully illustrated book features fascinating insights found nowhere else on almost every one of its 1200-odd pages.

 

It seems to me:
1. A person can think that a book is "great" while not thinking everything in that book is "perfect".
2. Pointing out that something in a book is imperfect (or even flat out wrong), is not the same as calling the author of that book a "liar" or "crank", nor is it "denouncing" that book.
3. A book can't be listed as "acceptable as evidence", if that is intended to mean "anything quoted from it must be considered fully accurate".

[ajb]

The actual word was "outmoded." Do you need a link?

Please do.

 

ydoaPs said "out-dated", and you said something "outmodled", or have I missed something?