Why does it seem like there is no moderation in Physics and Math?

Maybe the site needs a moderator more sensitive to the needs of new idea development, rather than someone who kills new ideas. All the current consensus theories in science, began as seedling brain storming projects. Relativity began as conceptual questions in Einstein's head, years before any formal publication. This is the stage many people enter the forums at. Often the new idea, or the ground state of all theory, is not given a fair chance. There is a fear of novelty, so it has to be killed as a seedling with piss and vinegar. It is up to the creator, to ignore blind ignorance, and push forward until he can dumbed it down enough for experts not to feel insecure. Once published, almost anyone in the field can follow. But before that, the helpful are very thin.

Some people only accept mature plants (theories), as gauged by their degree of social prestige. If the consensus accept it, this is the team they want to be on since the gang brings them strength. They don't know how to deal with seed ideas and seedling ideas that lack the subjectivity of social prestige. This is harder to do, since even an expert becomes like a student again ,when any new idea appears, not yet fully developed. There is risk and fear of being associated with the unknown. If you help and it falls, you have egg on your face.

In my own experience, when you come up with a new seed idea, one is not always sure if this is worth spending the time needed to develop all the way to publication. It helps to get feedback, early, to know where to go on, or whether to just let go. But if one only gets negativity, and no rational arguments for why not, you are left hanging.

New ideas will not be stopped with a ore efficient hatchet man moderator, who appeals to this who like to destroy. A better moderator approach, that works within the expected reality of new ideas always appearing, would try to direct new idea development, to help speed up the screening process. This requires the consensus critics be able to define their own position, as it applies to the new idea, but in a concise way the creator make use of.

These are discussion forums and not conformity forums.

 

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Indeed, since it is not really philosophy.

 

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It's a legitimate physics discussion replete with references to Minkowski and Maxwell and others and hard scientific evidence. You had no right to move it to "alternative theories". It is stigmatised there and you know it. I put it to you that you are trying to stifle physics discussions on this forum, even though your physics knowledge is not sufficient to make the call on whether a physics thread deserves to be moved. I also put it to you that you are doing this whilst giving free rein to abusive posters. And by the way, styfle is spelt stifle whilst unimpeeded is spelt unimpeded.

I shall reiterate my offer to moderate the physics and maths section of this forum.

 

After much arm-twisting, you acknowledged that it is an idea that you generated. The references to others don't make the idea theirs. It is your idea, not theirs, so it is alternative.

 

This forum is letting new ideas be developed. Too much, IMO. It has a forum specifically titled to house the development of new ideas! All that is happening here is that Farsight wants his idea accepted before it is accepted.

Well that's a slightly different issue. I'd say it isn't a fear of novelty, it is just incredulity. And why? Because never once in the history of science has a significant, valid new scientific theory been developed this way. And I don't just mean on the internet, I mean by uneducated laypeople in general.

Or are they learning forums?

 

I don't think it's a "new ideas" issue myself, wellwisher. I think it's more of "naysayer" issue, wherein ignorant people reject education. I tell people what Minkowski said or Einstein said or Maxwell said. But lpetrich accuses me of being a theologian, przyk blinkers himself, and repenner gives a mathsdump and tries to say Minkowski said something else.

 

And the moderator for Alternative Theories is active, so there should be no complaints about any lack of moderation.

 

Farsight, at best you present a unique interpretation of most of the references you cite. Not always a bad thing but certainly an alternate time perspective.

On the last point, I cannot see you as a moderator of any thread, let alone any sub forum. What you present as mainstream science is far too often distorted by your own preconceptions. While of interest to those who follow science, it is not in itself science.

And you most often PREACH, rather than discuss or even just present a new or different interpretation.

Under normal conditions even this thread would have been moved to some cite or forum feedback, sub forum.

 

I dispute that. It's me who gives the Einstein / Minkowski / Maxwell / etc quotes. It's me saying the guy said what he said.

With respect, your view is coloured by your own preconceptions. What I present is most definitely science, and it is backed up by robust references. But it is not in accord with your bad-science popscience popular-myth beliefs, and you reject it out of hand. To give you an example, you referred to rest/gravitational/inertial mass in this post. You are obviously unaware that a photon has a zero rest mass but a non-zero inertial mass which is the same as its non-zero active gravitational mass. Were I to start a thread telling you more on this, you would call for it to be moved to alternative theories. And Trippy would probably do it, because his physics is weak. Because he is not lear-ned enough to be a physics moderator. I am. And I am civil.

 

I don't think that he's being very abusive, even though he does do personal attacks now and then. I've seen online abusiveness that would make Farsight seem like Miss Manners.

 

That is a huge pile of bull shit and if you really believe that then you are delusional. When someone comes in with a new idea, the idea is assessed and the reason it is not feasible is communicated. 100% of the time up to now the new ideas presented have been wrong, usually based on a lack of knowledge by the presenter. If the person refuses to listen to the evidence and continues to assert the idea as correct - people get annoyed and this is where the abuse comes in. It is really frustrating when someone is clearly wrong and refuses to accept it, whinning about crap like the mainstream dogma, bla bla bla.

A new idea in physics arising here is about as likely as me coming up with a cure for cancer, actually the odds are exactly the same.

 

That last bit is a lie, since Farsight has failed to answer any question asking for details and has finally admitted in his thread that he cannot provide them.

 

True, after many bannings (particularly at the old BAUT forums where he was particularly nasty), he has been better.

 

I consider his intellectual dishonesty abusive. A 'sociable' crank tends to piss me off just as much any other crank. It's the flaunting of the intellectual dishonesty that annoys me the most. One aspect of intellectual dishonesty is the refusal to learn anything about the subject they're spewing nonsense about. Many of 'my' nasty comments spring from the frustration of having the intellectual dishonesty thrown in my face over and over and over again. The bottom line becomes 'why am I involved in this nonsense'?. I don't seem to be able to answer that query. Then it becomes 'what's wrong with me'? LOL.

 

None of whom are around to correct any misinterpretation of their intent.

Farsight, I have never suggested I would make a good moderator.., of any sub forum, let alone Math and Physics. It has been over 40 years now since I used the kind of math involved. I can work through the stuff if I need to but it is hard work, not a second language. And over the last 5 to 7 years I have begun to explore some other than mainstream interpretations or applications of the science that has been going on while I was out doing other things, which as you pointed out, does in fact bias my personal perspective. No question there. The difference is I know when I am exploring my own interpretation, where it appears you don't know there is any valid interpretation other than your own.

As far as the mass discussion is concerned it has been done in the past.., in the Math and Physics forum.., and both I and I am pretty sure you, posted on the issue. It seems of late you have begun to confuse the momentum that pretty much everyone will agree photons carry, with mass...

The issues of the relationship between inertial, gravitational and rest mass.., and the claimed active gravitational mass of a photon.., which seems a way around the relativistic mass vs. momentum debate, have been discussed, and likely will be again at some future time.

As far as Trippy is concerned, the only possible mistake I see, is that he did not move this thread also!

 

Minkowski's topic was the math of relativistic electromagnetism. The section Farsight absconded with concerned an analogy between \(\vec{E}\oplus\vec{B}\) and "a force-screw in mechanics" ("einer Kraftschraube der Mechanik") that Minkowski did not elucidate for those without a physics education. Farsight didn't seem to realize that both "force-screw" and "mechanics" referred to mathematical disciplines within physics (see Wikipedia (de): Kraftschraube and Wikipedia (de): Mechanik), minimum knowledge before seeking to explain an analogy in a 100-year-old mathematical physics lecture. Instead, Farsight first seemed to say that Minkowski was saying something analogous between electromagnetism and devices built on the simple machine of a screw.

Also Farsight goes on to misexplain the nature of electromagnetic fields in a way that ignores the uniform magnetic field of the solenoid or the electric field induced when the magnetic field varies over time.

But it hardly seems like a fair pejorative to label my [post=3189404]instructional post[/post] as a "mathsdump" when Farsight dumps an entire electromagnetics textbook as a linked-to reference:

Indeed, it is Jackson's text, not Minkowski's text that introduces \(F_{\mu\nu}\) (in antique form) on page 379 as equation 11.108 as a six-dimensional anti-symmetric rank-2 tensor. Is it too much to expect Farsight to understand his own references?
Farsight goes on to criticize the aesthetics of physics diagrams without any sense that there is interest in describing the behavior of any phenomena.

So it really does seem off-base for Farsight to complain about a demonstration that the phenomena predicted by \(F_{\mu\nu}\) is exactly the same phenomena predicted by \(\vec{E}\oplus\vec{B}\) and \(F^{\mu} = q \eta^{\mu\nu} F_{\nu\xi} V^{\xi} = q F_{\nu}^{\mu} V^{\nu}\) is just a restating of \(\frac{dE}{dt} = q \, \vec{E} \, \cdot \, \vec{v}\) (Jackson's first paragraph of section 6.8 on page 189) and \(\vec{f} = q \, \left( \vec{E} \, + \, \vec{v} \, \times \, \vec{B} \right)\) (Jackson's equation 6.87 on page 191). This shows that \(F_{\mu\nu}\) doesn't have any more information, any more physics than the use of both \(\vec{E}\) and \(\vec{B}\) which was my primary thesis. Minkowski's main thesis was that special relativity unifies space and time into space-time, likewise unifies both electric and magnetic phenomena into electromagnetism with a change in the standard of rest being responsible for a reshuffling of what is considered space and what is considered time; likewise what is considered electric and what is considers magnetic.

The Internet is populated almost entirely by 14-year-old mean girls. Nothing is to be gained by competing with them.

 

It's a 'math dump' to somebody who has no respect for the language of science. There should be a limit to this type of nonsense. Calling rpenner's detailed posts 'a dump' pisses me off.

 

It's not Trippy's domain of responsibility. The only thing they've done wrong is not firing Farsight for non performance.

 

It was not meant as a criticism. It was just further comment that this thread belongs somewhere besides Math and Physics.