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

Absoloodle! what ever you want to claim ... go for it...

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Agreed. So why are you so upset about being put in such company?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

That seems to be either a lie or a gross misunderstanding. Nowehere in that article is a claim that, "the masses of particles arise from their internal motions".

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

hee heee, you really need to follow the link provided. Russ...

before you dis out the compliments... [chuckle]

 

Oh well, enough for one night... got work to do...nice chatting...

 

Um....OK....that sounds like sarcastic disagreement. I think you may have lost track of who you were talking to. Might want to go back and reread the last page of the thread...

 

I did. Do you not think Einstein knew and was comfortable with the fact that his theory was new/alternative? What strikes me is Farsight's complete lack of self-awareness and self-confidence. He's backed himself into a corner and created these contradictions because of it.

 

Because the author of that paper was a guy called Albert Einstein.

LOL! Russ! You have just demonstrated that you don't participate in the physics discussions. And that instead, you seek to stifle them.

And it's too late to back-peddle now. You've been caught out.

 

Farsight, you are the one who backed yourself into a corner: you said Einstein's theory (circa 1905) should be considered "alternate", while rejecting the categorization for your own. You are the one saying Einstein should be put in a place where you are unwilling to go. You are the one saying to call a theory "alternative" is to stifle discussion of it. You are the one who said you would no longer discuss your idea because of where the discussion was located. You are therefore the one trying to stifle discussion! That's fear you are displaying. Fear of being unable to prove your new ideas. Fear of discussion. Fear of criticism.

Do you think Einstein was afraid of admitting his idea was new?

 

No I didn't back myself into a corner. It was a trap, and you fell right into it. You would throw Einstein unread into the trashcan. Like everything else.

Now you're scrabbling. And accusing me of trying to stifle discussion.

All: can it get any more bizarre?

 

You caught yourself in your own trap. Answer please:

1. Do you think Einstein was afraid of the fact that his ideas were new?
2. Was it not you who said you would no longer discuss your theory because of the forum where it is currently housed?
3. Are you aware that this forum has a "trashcan" forum for disposing of trash threads, called the "cesspool" and your thread isn't in it?

You're coming unglued, Farsight. I can see the signs - bluster, name calling, etc. As I've told several others right before they got banned, you might want to take a step back and regroup before you get yourself banned.

 

If you win I'll give you 0+0+0 billion US dollars, which in my latest theory equals something from nothing and therefore the entire universe. Or if that many Thomas Jeffersons in your pocket doesn't tempt you, perhaps you'll find a nice, shiny new \(\sqrt{-1}\) more appetizing.

 

Once we get into the realm of needing to make objective, quantitative statements then yes. If, that is, the "theory" in question actually predicts anything different than the mainstream. On that note:

I chose presentism because it is purely a philosophical (ontological) statement about whether past and future events "really" exist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(philosophy_of_time)

In terms of observables, it is no different from eternalism (the usual way of thinking about relativity), though less "natural-feeling" IMO.

 

And yet again here we have the ad-hominem abuse that has been going unmoderated. In a thread called Why does it seem like there is no moderation in Physics and Math? Where moderators are in attendance.

 

Special Relativity would certainly qualify as a very well worked out model which, as it eventually turned out, agrees with experiment very well. And yes, in 1905 it would properly have been considered an "alternative theory" to the mainstream view of space and time.

I'd just like to note that the claim I invented for the sake of example - "the masses of particles arise from their internal motions" - was not a description of special relativity.

 

Mass is another one for another day, btr. As regards special relativity, if you read Graham Farmelo's The Strangest Man, there's a little snippet on page 53:

"At that time, Cunningham and Eddington were streets ahead of the majority of their Cambridge colleagues, who dismissed Einstein's work, ignored it, or denied its significance".

That wasn't 1905 or 1915. That was 1923. Also see page 6 of Clifford M Will's The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment. He he says special relativity wasn't accepted by mainstream physicists until the late 1920s. It was of course Max Planck who said science advances one funeral at a time.

NB: I take it you're aware that Einstein adopted a presentism view in 1949? See this. Note though that the blurb says "time does not exist" and is somewhat misleading. It ought to be "time does not exist as we ordinarily understand it". Think "time exists like heat exists".

 

Exactly. If everyone was agreed on what they want the Physics and Math forum to be (or any other forum for that matter), deciding what kind of moderation the forum needs would simply be a matter of turning the crank.

If Physics and Math is supposed to be about real (the alternative crowd might prefer 'orthodox') physics and math, and if the vast majority of Sciforums participants lack education in those subjects (even at the undergraduate level), then it's hard to imagine how the forum could seriously address anything beyond high-school physics and math and maybe the introductory university sequence.

The people who post here aren't typically university graduate students and researchers. My belief is that it makes more sense to try to understand the fundamentals of these kind of highly-technical and often counter-intuitive subjects well, than to leap into discussing advanced topics that nobody really understands.

If people do try to discuss the advanced topics, the discussion would necessarily have to be at the popular-introduction level. Disagreements about more arcane matters would probably have to be adjudicated by appeals to authorities in many cases.

Again, is anyone in a position to be a teacher? (Yes, I'm sure that many will say they are, but are they really?) The Physics and Math forum could be a good place for student-level participants to brainstorm together on a peer level though.

That's what the 'Alternative Theories' forum should be for.

As for me, I don't see how Sciforums' participants can deconstruct mainsteam physics when they don't even understand it at the undergraduate level. But I don't really want to silence anybody either.

I would favor the moderators moving any thread that turns into a back-and-forth about how conventional physics is or isn't wrong, or about somebody's own private brainstorm revelation, to 'Alternative Theories' instead of closing it.

That's the fundamental problem that Sciforums faces by its very nature. It even goes beyond that to the whole question of how science presents itself to and is received by the rest of the world.

How are people who are uneducated in physics and math (or molecular biology or whatever) supposed to understand and intelligently discuss highly esoteric and arcane material that specialists need the better part of ten years of full-time university education to get up to speed on?

There would seem to have to be some minimal level of knowledge necessary before people can intelligently discuss technical subjects. The more advanced and cutting-edge the issue, the more educational background is going to be presupposed.

If you are suggesting that participants be required to post their cv's before they are allowed to post in Physics and Math, I don't favor that. Ideally, the quality of the posts people make should speak for itself.

It is a problem though.

I'm not really sure what the Physics and Math forum (or Sciforums itself for that matter) should be trying to be.

 

It was an observation about your choice to engage in ad-hominem, noting all the angry name calling you've been making. And a friendly recommendation that you stop.

A choice you continue to make by dodging my follow-up questions. You can't climb out of your trap by pretending you never fell into it.

 

I'll just add that if I was Physics and Math moderator (scary thought! I'm not qualified for one thing) and this thread was in that forum, I'd probably move it to Alternative Theories, because of all the battling about who is and isn't a crank. I believe very strongly that this kind of stuff shouldn't be what defines the Physics and Math forum.

 

Sorry, that was me: I responded to the part at the end where he said it wasn't alternative.