Relativity of Science

I empathisize absolutely. But I think you’ve taken the wrong approach with your last couple of threads.

And so you should.

Back up the Einstein quotes with hard scientific evidence like the Shapiro delay, where the wikipedia article includes the chapter 22 quote. Or use this example: take two identical light clocks, keep them flat to avoid radial length contraction, and place one up in space and the other down near a planet, in a region of low gravitational potential. What happens? The second light clock runs slower. And it runs slower because the light goes slower. That’s it, that’s the scientific evidence, that’s what’s important. What you should be attacking is the denial of this evidence by people who claim to be defending relativity. Why don’t you take my post or edit it into your own words and then put it up on physicsforums? I’m banned from there as some kind of heretic, so I can’t.

I do what I can. It’s a battle of ideas, and we’ve all got to pull together.

Yes, it’s a problem, and it’s not easy to fix. But I think the best way to fight those inmates is to throw their own prophet back in their face followed by a bucketful of scientific evidence.

It isn’t hopeless. We’ve got the internet.

From greed and selfishness and vested interest. That’s how people are.

Let’s not get into what might be used as a “conspiracy theorist” criticism intended to discredit you.

Many do. But others will say and do anything to oppose it.

It’s a power and elitism thing rater than a matter of worship.

They appeal to authority to deflect attention from the evidence and the logic.

I talk in terms of belief and conviction rather than worship, but we’re barking up the same tree. Please understand that I’m trying to help. I’m giving you a surer aim, and the ammunition. Please use it. Attack the misinterpretation and the mythology that is touted as relativity, not relativity itself.

They, like most of my threads, are investigative and partial experimental. Unfortunately, they depend on particular forums. What works on one doesn’t on another.

How has that worked for you so far?

…oh… got banned… hmm… :mrgreen:

And emm… exactly to which posts were you referring?

It is supposed to be a battle of ideas, but in reality it is a battle of politics. Good solid likemindedness is required for teamwork. I could spend time requoting Einstein, but what is the end result of that in reality?

How is that going to ever lead people into actually thinking? The Jews have been doing that sort of thing for 3000 years. That’s like 150 generations. Endless quoting of others leads only to endless quoting of others… more sheep with which to contend tomorrow.

It takes more than that… and staying unbanned. :mrgreen:

Is there a difference? … really?

They appeal to authority because everyone else is. “What goes around, comes around.

Regardless of truth? The real truth happens to be that the speed of light is not really constant for all observers, but merely almost constant (regardless of gravity). Yes, their interpretations are wrong, but then the theory itself is actually not quite right either. It is based on the admitted (by Einstein and crew) assumption that the speed of light is a constant.

Einstein dutifully states that his work is assuming that what he has been told about the speed of light and Galilean relativity are accurate. Einstein didn’t really err. He stated and knew that it was all based on an assumption that he wasn’t really all that certain of himself, but if true, “then the following consequential facts must be also true…”. I don’t have anything but admiration for his work on the subject. It just so happens that the assumption isn’t really right. That isn’t his fault.

So even quoting Einstein is not really addressing the problem at all. It just serves to amplify the problem of not thinking for oneself and in this case, just helps to hide the actual error. People quoting scriptures do that same thing to their other religions as well.

Logical thinking is what is missing and that is due to political incentives.

I’d like to thank everyone for their comments in this discussion, I am finding it very interesting food for thought.

James, It still seems that you’re conflating science as an endeavor and science as a popular conception. I’m going to avoid, as much as possible, getting too deeply into specific examples, because I think those will tend to take us off topic; as I read it, this thread isn’t really about Special Relativity or Einstein, but about the broader issues surrounding science that have come up in threads that were.

I don’t think there can be any question that science as an endeavor is working, perhaps not perfectly, but to the extent that we are continuing to produce new information about the world, and that that information is confirmed over and over again by the vast practical implications of the developments. Computer technology keeps shrinking and speeding up, extra-solar space exploration is expanding rapidly, new medical technologies are saving more lives for less money than ever before. It’s hard to summarize all the complexity subsumed under “the pace of knowledge creation”, but we can certainly say that it is non-zero, and that it is due far more to science than to religion.

The problem is that the frontiers of science are more specialized than ever before. A timely example is the recent supposed proof of the P=NP problem, one of the more important and intractable problems in computer science (the proof was rejected as flawed). Though it was covered somewhat by non-technical media, it is difficult to explain what exactly the proof tried to show to someone without a solid foundation in set theory and complexity theory, let alone explaining how the proof worked or why a lay person should care. This is a more and more common occurrence in science: questions that are not merely hard to answer, they are very hard to even ask.

Popularizers of science attempting to bridge the gap between these highly specialized fields and the rest of the population have a very difficult problem, and few have been very successful. Hawking does real science, for example predicting Hawking radiation from quantum theory, and he also writes popular summaries of scientific understanding, such as A Brief History of Time. The latter are not peer-reviewed (or rather, not officially so), because they are not intended to prove anything. They are intended to take arcane concepts used in theoretical physics and make them accessible to people who are not familiar with theoretical physics.

Thus, it becomes a problem of losing precision in translation. The harm this causes does not require any sinister intent to be predicted and understood. Even without anything being “done to disrupt intelligence” (my emphasis), intelligence is disrupted when well-meaning scientists translate precise mathematical facts (or what have you) into easily-understandable-but-significantly-less-precise, non-technical language. The result is very similar to poetry, which tries to capture highly complex ideas in simple terms, and like all poetry it is vulnerable to interpretation.

So, we have two competing explanation (again, assuming I’m reading your position correctly):
-On the one hand, we have well-meaning popularizers who inadvertently mislead, and a naive populace that takes their interpretation of those facts as gospel, leading to misguided reverence and bull-headed acceptance of the science as they understand it.
-On the other hand, we have sinister or selfish individuals within the scientific (and possibly political, media, etc.) community intentionally misleading the same naive populace, with the same result.

I think there are good reasons to prefer the former scenario. It accounts for continuing progress in understanding and controlling our world while also recognizing that science is misleading some of the population, but it does so without wading into the “conspiracy theorist” criticism that Farsight cautions against. And that criticism is good to avoid not only because it can be used to dismiss your argument. Because of the size and diversity of interests represented in the scientific community, even among popularizers and evangelists of science, it would require an extremely great amount of evidence to prove intentional misrepresentation. Given an explanation that accounts for observations without appeal to anything resembling a conspiracy (which I think I am providing), we should prefer it because the burden of proof will be significantly reduced.

Farsight, I’m curious what your experiences were on physicsforums (both as a science buff and as a forum admin:). If you’re comfortable sharing, what were the circumstances of your banning there? From what I’ve seen of you here, you are respectful and well spoken, and have interesting things to say on the subjects that concern you. It would speak very poorly of a supposedly scientific community to forcibly remove someone simply for deigning to disagree.

Let’s use this as a rough rubric to examine the physics of James S Saint as presented in his other threads. Items that fit him will be bolded.

The Crackpot Index

John Baez

A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics:

A -5 point starting credit.

1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.

Several people have tried to provide clear examples as to why he is espousing ideas that are widely agreed upon to be false, but he has rejected their corrections as an appeal to religious authority without backing that statement up.

2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.

This is an internet forum, so we’ll allow a certain amount of conjecture and, in the spirit of charity, disregard this point.

3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.

Given his Orwellian editing of his OPs, we can safely conclude that his position contains elements that are not logically consistent. In the spirit of charity, we’ll only count this one once.

5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction.

This has been done several times by several different posters, but, again, we’ll only count it once.

5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.

5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with defective keyboards).

5 points for each mention of “Einstien”, “Hawkins” or “Feynmann”.

I kinda think this criteria is bullshit at the amateur level, so we’ll discount it.

10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

He’s done that.

10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence of sanity.

10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.)

10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don’t know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen.

10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any flaws in your theory.

10 points for each new term you invent and use without properly defining it.

10 points for each statement along the lines of “I’m not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations”.

He is actually very good at math, so this one doesn’t apply.

10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is “only a theory”, as if this were somehow a point against it.

10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn’t explain “why” they occur, or fails to provide a “mechanism”.

10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

Oh yes!

10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a “paradigm shift”.

20 points for emailing me and complaining about the crackpot index. (E.g., saying that it “suppresses original thinkers” or saying that I misspelled “Einstein” in item 8.)

20 points for suggesting that you deserve a Nobel prize.

20 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Newton or claim that classical mechanics is fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

20 points for every use of science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.

20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined) ridicule accorded to your past theories.

20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the “The Evans Field Equation” when your name happens to be Evans.)

20 points for talking about how great your theory is, but never actually explaining it.

20 points for each use of the phrase “hidebound reactionary”.

[i]20 points for each use of the phrase “self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy”.[/i]

I’m on the fence as to whether or not this one counts, since this thread is clearly an example of that type of thinking while not actually using that phrase. We’ll let it slide.

30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.)

30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.

30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial civilization (without good evidence).

30 points for allusions to a delay in your work while you spent time in an asylum, or references to the psychiatrist who tried to talk you out of your theory.

40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.

[i]40 points for claiming that the “scientific establishment” is engaged in a “conspiracy” to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.[/i]

Again, I’m not sure whether this one counts or not. This thread does seem to advance that hypothesis . . .

40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.

40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)

50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.

Not looking too good.

I’d have to check the dates, so don’t quote me, but I started with a userid of “Popular” back in 2004, made a few posts about something I’d found concerning “Energy misdefined in physics”, and was immediately banned as a crackpot. Then in 2006 I reregistered as “Farsight”, both our teenage children dropped all their science subjects, and I felt remiss and started to give homework help. The naive questions like What is energy? seemed to be a problem, and the responses from more qualified contributors didn’t seem satisfactory. I started to converse about such “basic concepts”, and it didn’t go down too well, particularly with Doc Al. I made a particular comment saying something like “the speed of light is how fast things happen”, and was suspended for a fortnight. There had previously been some jocular talk from Zapperz about “couldn’t stay away”, and in my own naivity I foolishly registered under different userids both at home and work - more than one because I suffered a cookie wipeout at home and had a new PC imposed on me at work - and then got a permanent ban. I went back on a year or so later as “Voltage” to ask some black hole questions, but was rumbled after a month or so and curtailed. About a year ago I registered afresh as JohnDuffield only to ask if I could come back on - I didn’t make any other posts and made it clear I wouldn’t until given the OK. However the answer was no, it was a life sentence, and the logon message reads: You have been banned for the following reason: You’ve had enough chances with enough usernames. If you think your infractions were “minor” then you still don’t get it. Date the ban will be lifted: Never.

Can I add that my views on free speech in science were not shaped by this. Instead they were shaped by other experiences, and by communications with others, including professional physicists… one of whom confided that he’d been reliably informed: don’t rock the boat or you’ll never make full professor. The overall theme seems to be go against the mainstream and you’ve got problems, so you’d better hang fire until you’re emeritus. I’d venture to say that the recent Climategate affair was not a wholly untypical example of “competitive” behaviour by a vested-interest collaboration seeking to impose consensus. I’d say attitudes are hardening against this, see google, and that the situation is now dangerous, as signalled by this recent article.

Now see Carleas, there it goes and by one of your own moderators no less, the “appeal to pejorative judgment to enhance disrepute”, a form of “name calling”.

And who specifically is it being used to defend? Not Science in general as one is intended to accept, but specifically the famed QM, the Quantum Magi. These are the very people we have to thank for such pseudo-science (“crack-pot” theories) as “M-theory”, “string theory”, “superstring theory”, “4th dimension”, “11 dimensional space”, “Bubble universes”, “Time Travel Theory”, “Wormholes to alternate spaces and universes”, and dozens more. EVERY ONE of which has ZERO empirical evidence (the supposed foundation of Science) and also can be logically disproven.

Yet these theories coming from a specific cult are considered a part of Science and force fed to children in public schools and media. Oh, but not “God”, that theory is just silly. At least the God theory cannot be logically DISproven, ALL of the Quantum Magi theories can be disproven, although one might need to brush up on a little Rational Metaphysics.

Get onto any Science forum and these things are allowed to be discussed as though they had any real foundation at all. And try to argue against them and you are a “crackpot”.

Xunzian, thank you for proving my point.

That is exactly my experience. A documentary was made about that very thing showing the condemning evidence. I spoke directly to a person pointed out in the film as one of the “conspirators”. While talking to him, not realizing this publication manager was in fact the person in the film, he proved his own guilt of pre-judging and selecting people based on whether they ever spoke out of line. “We have to defend Science against the crackpots and religious people” - his very words. Yet provable “crackpots” are the ones getting the most publicity.

Interesting development here with me being in the middle-literally.

Given that there is a preponderance of examples of people who have espoused controversial theories and then gone on to achieve tenure, I’m inclined to think that the people complaining about the biases within the system are doing so because they couldn’t cut the mustard. Rather than admit their own failures, they’ve created boogie-men who oppressed them and keep their truth down.

If you can demonstrate it, the community will come around to it. Look at Woese. It took him quite some time to demonstrate that the dominant paradigm was wrong. But, after he provided sufficient evidence his view was accepted and became orthodox. That is one example of many.

But even Woese’s “crackpot” theory would only score a 6 on the crackpot index. That is rather different from something reaching into the 30s and beyond . . .

Once again I find myself agreeing with Xun.

Let me just add that scientific theories are mental models that can help us predict and/or gain some insight into what we observe… they are not supposed to be absolute truthes nor perfect representations of reality, but rather the most useful and insightful ideas we can produce to explain the data that we have.

To argue that it’s wrong to think of them as absolute truthes seems a bit redundent, as no one seems to be claiming otherwise.
But to argue that because they are not absolute truthes, that we should therefor chuck them out the window or be extra receptive to utterly untested ideas, seems downright stupid to me.
If you happen to have a theory that does a better job of explaining OBSERVABLE phenomena, then that’s a hard thing to ignore, as ignoring it would be like shaving with a sharp rock instead of a razor.
However, unless you have a better “mind tool” or “theory”, we’d best stick to the ones we have… imperfect as they may be.
As a sharp rock beats bare handed ripping!

Farsight, I don’t know what physicsforums policies are about what merits banning, but if what you say is true they are draconian and probably stifle potentially fruitful discussions. My guess, though, is that they probably get a lot of genuinely disruptive posters insisting that some out-of-mainstream idea is going to revolutionize physics, and that as a result they are hyper-sensitive to removing those posters before they become a problem. The “crackpot index” that Xunzian regretfully employed is further evidence that whatever the frequency of suppression in physics, there is certainly no shortage of people who are just wrong. (I’d also like to clarify that, thankfully for everyone involved, Xunzian is only a temporary moderator while TheStumps is on leave. He is also a drunken old coot who’s comments shouldn’t be given too much weight. :wink: )

As for anecdotes about people being encouraged not to do anything radical, I have a few thoughts. First, they are anecdotes and, even those from Nobel Laureates (Farsight, I assume the second link was supposed to go to the article by Josephson?), while suggestive of a strain of thought within the physics community, are not necessarily evidence that it is a major strain, let alone the predominant strain.

James, none of the theories you propose are part of accepted science. They’re all proposed theories to account for various observed phenomena, and though they haven’t been disproven, most are as yet untested (mostly because a test has not been devised that is practical and that would distinguish between competing theories). The theories make assumptions, but that is not a problem in science when the assumption is acknowledge, is made about a legitimately undecided question, and is used to make predictions which could potentially be tested.

Nor are these theories being “force fed to children in public schools.” Superstring theory, if it mentioned at all, they are mentioned as a footnotes to get kids exciting about interesting questions currently facing science (which is certainly what these theories represent). Anecdotally, my own formal physics education, which began in public school and went up through college-level modern physics, never dealt with any of these theories, except the 4th dimension (when dealing with spacetime in special relativity). Especially considering the recent test-centric shift in public education, I would be shocked if any part of the curriculum in mandatory public education dealt with anything more involved than non-quantum electricity and magnetism.

One thing I think it’s important to keep in mind is that it’s very easy to come up with radically divergent proposed theories in any discipline of science, and that almost all of them will be wrong. Again, I think the attribution of malice and intentional suppression, even of significant closed-mindedness, doesn’t take into account the probable volume of actually inane theories. Even if, for example, the review process for posting on arXiv.org is extremely accurate, and the reviewers are reasonably open to challenges to some foundational tenet of a discipline, the flow of truly useless theories could quite easily be so large that some legitimate proposals would be lost in the deluge. Most of the time, when the scientific bureaucracy attempts to “defend [s]cience against the crackpots,” they will be right to do so, because most theories labeled ‘crackpot’ are truly not scientifically interesting in the least. (This point is to say nothing of theories presented here, rather it is meant generally of the entire landscape of conceivable ‘radical’ theories)

I could present much more extensive evidence to show without much doubt at all that Science is being used as a religion to the populus, but in most cases, such evidence involves extensive thought and education before the conclusion can be drawn. That means that those thoughts are a bit useless on a forum like this.

I considered going through a long explanation as to what it really takes to legitimately consider someone to be paranoid, delusional, or any signs of being an unthinking “crackpot”, but that takes too much explanation. Xunzian’s “test” can easily be exposed for the fraud it is with such prior education.

But there is one thought that is fairly simple;

If you look at the Stopped Clock Paradox and examine it for logical presentation and evidence of supernatural, magical, or fantasy speculations, does it appear to be presented rationally? Actually I expected that to be what anyone would do as they merely took on the challenge of resolving it. But even without attempting a resolve, does it appear to be irrationally presented? It takes no real physics or higher math to understand it. It sets up a simple situation wherein relativity demands certain results. But if those results are true, then the clocks have to both stop and also not stop. Thus by using relativity, a logical paradox is presented.

For three pages, PhysBang, Calrid, and Xunzian spouted pejoratives concerning me, yet not one shred of thought actually went into the actual setup or following logic posted in the OP other than to say, "SR doesn’t work like that, you are “ignorant”, “insane”, “mentally ill”, “crackpot”… Creating ill repute was the obvious aim.

Now if it true that the OP actually was presented in a rational manner, whether a mistake was made or not, where is the excuse for such pejorative explicatives? And who are really the one(s) displaying what appears to be merely religious fanaticism (“crackpotedness”)?

But the issue isn’t one of personal guilt, rather one of common behavior within the populous. As pointed out by various posters, the populous is “the problem” in that they make things into religions. But they are the ones in charge of the show and spreading the religion of scientism, unless you believe that upper elite managers are keeping them all inline and out of decision making. But if that were the case, how is there so much turmoil on so very many issues regarding corporations, banks, politics, medicine, and just about everything mankind does? Aren’t those people "the populous?

Maybe members could have some engaging off-topic discussions in this thread, but the rational of James’ point can be disregarded by pointing out a single very basic flaw, which Carleas has already done–with admirable patience–several times, from several angles.

First:

Very simple.

“Science” can be defined (can be and is) in various ways, but every rational definition of science–every meaning that stresses that which distinguishes it from that which is not science– is based on (and is only actually understood in the context of the primary goal of) being able to know that (a given condition) A (reliably) results in B.

That is all science is. The only goal/ideal (inherent in its meaning) is acquiring the knowledge necessary to know what reliably (and necessarily) precedes and proceeds some phenomenon.

Man may do/use science with(/in light of) or for their own motivations and values, but if the process (their collecting data, doing experiments and interpreting their conclusions, making hypothesis, etc.) results in the reliable knowledge that A (in some condition) causes B, it is “Science”, plain and simple; one’s beliefs and values have an affect on what they choose to understand (and predict, manipulate and bring about) with science, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the science (which is judged solely on the value of reliably predicting the necessary causes and/or inevitable effects of some A).

This so clearly demonstrates that James isn’t going to take in any valid criticism of his point (in this thread, at least…).

Carleas points out that James is making the mistake of focusing his criticism on “Science”–saying “science does this” and “science does that”, when those criticisms don’t apply to science; his use(s) of the word (“Science”) don’t even make sense, given the coherent, communicable meaning of Science (based on a systematic knowledge leading to predictions of phenomenon).

James replies “That is exactly my point”, but it wasn’t. He alters his arguments slightly afterwards, differentiating an “ideal” of science as the “true” science, but it’s clear he only obtained a surface understanding of Carleas’ criticisms.

It’s ironic…James’ point results from his observations of scientists (and other “credible” sources of “science news”) making irrational or biased statements, “supporting” them with statements like “science tells us that…” and “based on scientific evidence”–this does happen, and it is a valid criticism (science doesn’t “say” anything except B reliably results from conditions A).

However, he suffers from the same problem he is trying to criticize–people say “Science shows… blah blah” when science doesn’t show that; it is their own metaphysical story they read from the data. Also “Scientific” is used synonymously with “rational” (not using faith), so that people can call metaphysical stories/myths (of ultimate purpose and absolute morality) “scientifically-supported” “reality”, which they believe because A) traditional uses of “faith”/“religion” place their focus on things that can’t be observed–deemed “real” regardless of culture and B) science only focuses on things that are.

Basically… the “secular” trend towards values is against (and was intended to be the solution to) the social/collective basing one’s actions according to a moral code “given” by a supernatural being (because these derive from texts written in ancient closed societies/cultures that don’t apply to a multicultural community–there can’t be any social stability/sense of security if people are operating according to radically different value systems).

So, at its base is first an assumption of what is “bad”–treating an unseen (and unfalsifiable) non physical concept as “real”, and operating (in a multicultural society) according to that, as well as the ignorance responsible to do so while thinking anyone who disagrees with them is wrong.
So then their “good” is “rationality”, but as an absolute this only has meaning by it not being the irrationality of focusing on a not physical reality. So “good” is knowing about phenomenon.

The “purpose” of life, many of them then assume, is simply physical existence itself (because that is the good, the NOT imaginary/fantasy/not “real”), so a lot of them live by the value of vague concepts like “natural”, or that whatever makes one live longest, or have sex or be “alpha”.

The problem is their insisting that anything in the physical world, and scientific facts about it, proves a purpose to any of it, and demonstrates what is right and was is wrong. The “not physical/imaginary” being they fail to take into account is their own interpretation and conceptualization of things.

James could have made a point on how people often misuse the word “science”, and end up making the same errors of certainty science is used to prevent, but instead he made the same mistake of using it without a clear, coherent definition. Merely deeming “science” as irrational because a couple people used the word (improperly) that way.

madhatter, Carleas, and anyone else, look at the OP. Does it say even one word about Science?

It is a conversation comparison between an atheist and a Christian versus an absolutist and a relativity conformist.

It said nothing at all about what Science is or isn’t. It is a display of how the issues concerning Science and the issues concerning religion are parallel or “related”.

If you are going to complain about my views on Science in general despite me not really displaying them except by your presumptions, then I am going to have to complain that you stick to the actual topic.

Prove it. Show me an experiment that disagrees with realitivity, actually show me anything other than a priori logic word salad and that would be a start?

:smiley:

Evolution is more of a religion even than relativity, since there is almost 100% agreement with that. Hence all science is about religious convictions not evidence. Relativity is a religion, if I agree with you will you shut up with all this preposterous tosh?

Probably not, but ho hum. :-"

Actually, it was demonstrated several times in that thread that 1) you fundamentally did not understand the system you were trying to discredit and 2) given 1, the “contradiction” you identified did not apply. In keeping with a trend also seen in this thread, you then engaged in revising the original paradox without acknowledging it, going so far as to edit the original post fundamentally changing the paradox while claiming the entire time that is what you actually meant. On top of that, even with the disingenuous edit, you still did not understand the system you were objecting to as evidenced by numerous citations which you rejected as “appeals to authority”. It would seem as though the only “science” you recognize comes from your own brain. That is a rather limiting perspective and not one that engenders fruitful conversation.

I’m not sure how they are these days, but they seemed to make full use of the wackier posters and the tender-young-minds card as an excuse to stifle sincere discussion. The impression I got was that no questioning of consensus was tolerated, no challenge to the mainstream was permitted, and that the moderators didn’t so much ensure civil discourse as serve as thought-police. Perhaps we could test this out with an experiment? Here’s a thread concerning the speed of light. Try posting up the quoted section of this post along with what I said about Shapiro and light clocks here, and gauge their response. If your post is deleted and you find yourself banned, I’m probably right. If you receive a rational counter-argument with references and experimental evidence, I’m probably wrong.

Apologies, no, it was a link to a hostile piece in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins drawing a parallel between science and religion. Here it is: guardian.co.uk/commentisfree … of-science

That’s the given reason, but there have been some issues re blacklisting, see for example this physicsworld item, and this “archive freedom” case histories. By chance I emailed one of the names on the list in July asking him why he had no recent papers, and his reponse was “I have been trying hard but unsuccessfully to get a couple of important paper published”. This is a professional physicists, an academic, not just some kid with an ill-considered notion.

I agree with your sentiment, but feel you should be attacking things like time travel and parallel worlds and the other examples from your previous post, not relativity. Only this week New Scientist presented parallel worlds as fact. The latter is arguably a science media issue rather than a science establishment issue, but I’d say there is a grey area here.

This limited perspective on science is a very common occurrence with those who object rather strongly to science or specific sciences: they object to science that they have clearly not read.

Before Internet 2.0, such people were limited to writing letters to people who worked in the sciences, letters to conferences about the sciences, and then later emails to people who worked in the sciences. (I was late enough on the scene that I only received the latter two.) Now internet forums are the place to go.

The standard reply on these people is that they are being kept out of the scientific discourse because of some social institution. Though, in truth, the social institution that they could be involved with is their local library; the library would provide the material they need to actually answer their questions.

I’m not sure about PhysicsForums, but another good example of Farsight’s behaviour when people who actually know science are involved can be found at the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Forums. Farsight was also banned there.

Farsight’s thread:
bautforum.com/showthread.php … highlight=

Final offence:
bautforum.com/showthread.php … ost1642935

Suspensions:
bautforum.com/showthread.php … ost1628425
bautforum.com/showthread.php … ost1632224
bautforum.com/showthread.php … ost1643015

In general, many people too often the supposed presence and extent of some cabal of censors is used in the place of actually delivering analysis.