A new phenomena

Magical Realist,

I'm not quite sure how to continue with this. Let me try to summarise. You posted a video that either is a crude fake, or else shows a stunning "new phenomena". Given the choice between those two options, you write:

In other words, given the video alone - for you have nothing else to go on here - you claim that it is more likely that an unexplained wormhole appeared for an unknown reason and swallowed a car than that somebody used a computer to crudely edit a run-of-the-mill snippet of CCTV video for their own entertainment, profit or fame.

You have nothing to offer regarding corroborating evidence of your unlikely claim, and no theory about how such a thing could conceivably happen. The best you have to offer is this:

How do ruptures in spacetime occur? You don't know. Has any such rupture ever been confirmed by anybody? No. How do wormholes behave, according to the physicists who are expert on the topic? You have no idea. Could a wormhole as described by the experts conceivably swallow a car off a highway, leaving no other trace? You don't know.

In other words, you consider it more likely that a miracle occurred than that somebody scammed you.

I also asked you a simple question: try to estimate the chances of your own truck having been stolen by somebody (a mundane explanation) vs the chances that it vanished into thin air, was kidnapped by aliens, vanished by God or some other supernatural explanation. Your reply? This:

You have no idea. I guess your think it's as likely that your car spontaneously turned into a tortoise and crawled away by itself as it is that somebody came along, broke into it and stole it. Or at least, that's what you'd have us believe.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that your mind really is so open that you've lost all critical faculties, or else you never developed such faculties in the first place. Again, I wonder how you get along in everyday life. The only way I can imagine you could operate effectively is if you're somehow able to compartmentalise the woo from the common sense. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's all woo and everything is possible when you're on the internet, while in real life you would be actually be surprised and shocked if something fell upwards rather than downwards, or spontaneously turned into a turtle.

You have said that you find the universe to be an amazing place. That makes me wonder why you choose to waste so much of your time and effort on fantasy, instead of trying to learn about the amazing place that you say so fascinates you.

Also, for somebody who claims to have an inquiring mind, you seem spectacularly uninterested in researching any of the miraculous new phenomena you keep posting about. You're content to stop before you start the investigation, taking the first piece of evidence presented to you on anything - bigfoot, disappearing cars, the photo of a ghost - at face value, and never seeking to investigate even the basics.

Who posted the video? You don't know and you don't care to find out. Why did they post it? You don't know and you don't care to find out. Were the driver of the disappeared car and the car itself really never seen again? You don't know, and you don't care to find out. Did anybody else observe this miracle? You don't know and you don't care to find out. How could such a video be faked? Would it be easy or difficult? You don't know, and you don't care to find out. Does the person or persons involved in posting this video have a history of fraud? You don't know, and you don't care to find out.

And you repeat this same apparent lack of curiosity with every piece of woo you post to sciforums. "Look guys! Here's a photo somebody claims is of a ghost! Interesting!" But not interesting enough to spend any time investigating or questioning. No. Post it and move on to the next UFO video, or whatever. Always accept at face value. Never engage your brain.

And all this is strange because it looks to me like you have a brain that you could engage. You can muster an argument to have with me. You can apply your critical faculties to my posts. So why don't you apply them to the woo? Why is it immune from your investigation or criticism?

In my next post, I'll respond to some more of your specific replies to my previous posts.

 

Magical Realist:

I've already told you that it is so spectacularly improbable that we can be almost certain that such a singular event has never occurred in the lifetime of our universe. You would have us believe that it has happened at least twice. After all, you posted two videos at the top of the thread. And that's twice in the same year?

We know that they don't open up commonly, at least on Earth, or else we'd see cars and houses and people and trees and and stuff vanishing regularly, wouldn't we?

What do you think the rate of worm hole disappearances (of all objects on Earth) is? Any idea? No? I thought not. Or is it just enough to suit you when you need a magical explanation for an apparent disappearance?

First words of the article: "Physicists at the University of Cambridge have found a theoretical foundation for the existence of wormholes...". First, this is a theory, not a proof that wormholes exist. Second, I can't tell from the article whether this explanation is generally accepted by other physicists or whether it is speculative. Third: nothing in this proof supports the idea of wormholes randomly appearing, swallowing cars off roads and then disappearing again. Not even close.

Can you find any peer-reviewed scientific paper or reliable scientific source which supports your claim that wormholes can appear at random and suck in loose objects, depositing them somewhere else in space? Thought not.

Interesting that you've jumped from videos posted on this internet, whose origin and authenticity you have made no effort to confirm, to "these are two confirmed vanishings of cars off the road".

These videos aren't confirmation of anything, Magical Realist.

Oh, and I went back and watched the second one. It too could be a fake, but at first glance it looks to me like the "disappearing car" simply accelerated away from the car behind it (the one with the camera). Nothing remarkable about that.

Including yourself. Lazy and complacent.

 

(continued)

miracle (n.): A wonderful event occurring in the physical world attributed to supernatural powers; an awesome and exceptional example of something.

Do you think a car vanishing into thin air is an exceptional event? An awesome one? I think it would be both, if it were real. And since there's no plausible physical explanation that I know of, it seems we're left only with supernatural explanations - magic. I didn't mention God.

Let's just call it magic then. Ok? No need for divine intervention, necessarily.

Look, I already explained: you've got the onus of proof around the wrong way.

You are proposing that an extraordinary event has occurred. With it, you are suggesting an extraordinary explanation. In contrast, I am suggesting that an everyday event occurred (a video was faked), which requires no incredible leap into the unknown to accept.

The onus is on you to provide the extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims. It is not up to me to "prove me wrong". If you think objects can vanish into thin air, convince me. Where's the convincing evidence? Don't give me more fuzzy videos of dubious origin.

Yes, it is, rather.

The devil is always in the detail. Objects that rotate tend to keep rotating, if left to their own devices. That is why the Earth keeps rotating. But in the time of the dinosaurs the Earth had a 10 hour day, and now it has a 24 hour day. So, obviously it hasn't been left to its own devices. There's been a gradual lengthening of the day. Why? Because of the Moon. The physical principle is this: angular momentum is conserved unless an external torque acts on the rotating system. In this case, the Moon provides a small torque on the Earth, so that it doesn't quite rotate at a constant rate. Bear in mind that the dinosaurs lived more then 100 million years ago. You do the math. Work out how the average rate of change (seconds per century, say) that the Earth's rotation rate has been changing. It's a small effect, but one that becomes significant over very long times.

All this shows is that when you drill down into science apparently simple statements sometimes have to be modified to include small perturbations. When you ask me why the Earth keeps rotating, my first-order response is that there's nothing to stop it rotating. That's approximately true. The second-order response to a demand for more detail is that I start to explain why the first-order response is a little too simplified. And there's still more detail I haven't told you about the Earth's rotation. We could easily have a lengthy discussion about that, but it's off topic for this thread.

Actually, there's a whole bunch of fundamental laws that are obeyed perfectly (as far as we can tell).

You're right about the aliens and Bigfoot. Both are theoretical possibilities, but there's no actual evidence for their existence. We've already discussed the magical disappearance of cars at length, so I won't repeat.

Anti-matter is observed in nature, confirmed in experiment, both predicted and described by solid scientific theory. It is indisputably natural. "Dark matter" is the name given to sum up a particular set of observations about our universe. We currently don't have a best-candidate theory of dark matter. Is it natural? Yes, insofar as it has observable effects in the natural world. It's not magic. We expect that science will find out more about it and eventually explain it.

The big bang and black holes both relate to observations of nature. The very concepts wouldn't exist in any concrete sense without science.

What you seem to want to do, desperately, is to equate the unknown with the supernatural. Scientists, on the other hand, simply acknowledge that things are unknown and they doggedly work towards knowing. Their aim is to explain. Your aim is to exclaim "Look! A mystery! Ok. That's done. Next!"

Yes. But you're getting way ahead of yourself. Step one is to establish that cars can vanish. Step two is working out how they can vanish. You missed step one and jumped straight into groundless speculation about step two.

One way is to put something in orbit around it at a known distance and measure the orbital period. In the case of the Earth, we have this convenient thing called the Moon, which handily gives us all the necessary data. [These days we can also do the job with artificial satellites.]

Faked photos and videos aren't very new as far as I am concerned. They've been around almost since photography was invented.

This is a discussion forum. With most of your posts there's actually nothing worth discussing. "Look! Somebody took a photo that they claim is an alien spacecraft! Wow!" What's to discuss. You didn't bother researching the photo. You just cut and pasted it from somewhere else. You didn't question it. You accepted it at face value. What you are, among other things, is a useful gullible tool that the fakers use to propagate their work.

 

(continued...)

I am under no illusions that we can rid the world of unscientific claims, believe me.

I'm also not asking you accept science as the true arbiter etc. All I'm really suggesting is that you try to apply just a little critical thought to the stuff you're interested in. Not that I think for a moment that you'll spend any effort doing that.

Yes, I am a skeptical consumer of what I see on TV and in other media. I do constantly ask myself questions like "Could this person be lying, or telling a half-truth?", "Who stands to benefit from this claim being true or believed?", "Is this source trustworthy?", "Could there be an ulterior motive at work here?", "What do other reliable sources have to say about this?"

If you don't ask these kinds of questions all the time in your daily life, you're doing yourself a disservice, because you will be sucked in by all manner of scammers - politicians, religious nuts, people out to scam your money, etc.

I have no major argument with any of that. There's a minor quibble in that science is not authority-based in the way that religion is. And yes, my scientific training does bolster my confidence in discussing such matters - quite justifiably so, I think. If you were an expert baker, then I'm sure you'd think yourself somewhat of an authority on bread, over and above most of the general public.

I doubt that I'm any more uncertain about being in charge of my future than the average person. In fact, I'd venture that I'm actually more comfortable than many in thinking that my future isn't under the control of some supernatural power, for example.

If you so admire that questioning process, why do you accept nonsense like the car video without question? It seems you're willing to say one thing and do the opposite.

What do you hope it is?

The evidence presented for alien spacecraft has failed to convince those who are in the best position to analyse it, whether they be scientists, the military, the government or whoever. The stuff I see put forward as evidence is usually of the lowest standard. It is dubious and unconvincing, especially given the extreme claims made for it.

I don't have time to get into that now, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll watch the first ten minutes (or any other 10 minutes you want me to watch). Then I'll comment on what I've seen. It might take me a couple of days to get to it.

What makes you sure?

Yes. There are some scientists - very few in the grand scheme of things - who believe in alien visitation. That doesn't mean it is happening.

Really? Do they have a web site? A peer-reviewed journal that they publish in? Where can I find out more?

 

But you think a wormhole suddenly appearing, swallowing a car, and then disappearing leaving no trace is not such a vast improbability? Quite commonplace, really. You would have us believe that such a thing has occurred at least twice in the past year, and you suggest that it actually happens a lot more than that.

Your estimation of probabilities leaves a lot to be desired.

 

Oh, and another thing...

Magical Realist

There was nothing rambling about my last series of posts to you (which would have been one post but for the 10000 character limit that is in place for some reason). Since you don't have an adequate response, you write a short dismissive post. But readers can read my posts and decide for themselves.

Why didn't you take the same approach to the skydiving elephants? You jumped quickly to denying that one. Why?

You apparently can't distinguish the natural from the supernatural. I merely tried to explain the difference to you.

No. I said you were lazy and complacent because you accept at face value so much of what is presented to you without thinking or checking out the basic facts.

At one point you were arguing that it was up to me to prove that a wormhole couldn't swallow a car. I'm glad we cleared that up by discussing the burden of proof. You introduced Hume, remember. In future, try to bear in mind Hume's useful advice about miracles.

What an interesting take on our discussion. I have not asked to accept anything on the basis of my scientific prowess. I have not set myself up as an authority. In fact, the main thing I have done is to urge you to think for yourself and not be so gullible.

Similarly, I made no claim about science being able to determine everything, let alone with exact certainty. Nor did I complain about your posting of the video, though I commented that you gave us nothing to discuss.

Also, there was no half-hearted committal. I said I'll take a look at part of your video and I will. That's in spite of the fact that I expect it to be a run-of-the-mill sensationalist and credulous treatment of the topic with no truly skeptical voices in it presenting the other view.

Indeed.

 

Magical Realist:

I took a look at the video you linked me to, above. I've started a new thread to discuss what I found. It's here:

http://sciforums.com/threads/the-phoenix-lights-aliens-hoax-or-mistaken-identity.143208/

Let's just say that what I watched of the video didn't convince me that the aliens are here.