Flat Earth

exchemist said:
Thanks. If it’s brief I may take a look. I’ve never bothered to read about the CTMU as I find most of these ontological speculations a bit pointless.

Though I did read Rovelli’s book on the relational interpretation of QM, which inevitably gets into that a bit.
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I couldn't wait for Pinball, so I went a hunting.
Professor Dave on Christopher Langan.
Now, why did I think of Wizard of Whatever when watching the video about Christopher Langan.


Ps. Someone's comment on Prof Dave's flat earth video page...
"I used to be a flat earther for three years. Then I turned four"
 
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foghorn said:
I couldn't wait for Pinball, so I went a hunting.
Professor Dave on Christopher Langan.
Now, why did I think of Wizard of Whatever when watching the video about Christopher Langan.


Ps. Someone's comment on Prof Dave's flat earth video page...
"I used to be a flat earther for three years. Then I turned four"
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Hmm, I’m not watching over an hour of this.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Try ten minutes.
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I found twenty minutes gave the gist of it. I'm familiar with his pseudoprofound claims, his virulent racism, his eugenicist views, and a few anecdotes passed on to me when I attended Reed College about four years after Langan had attended (and flunked out, after alienating enough people to render himself something of a campus pariah). One of my favorite Langan mindfarts: his claim that the Bush administration staged the 9/11 attacks in order to distract the public from learning about his CTMU theory. Anyone who has watched a Langan interview may understand why I would pay money to watch Nick Offerman play him in a biographical miniseries. (For those unfamiliar, Offerman is a comedian/actor who has a gift for playing Langan-like characters, most notably Ron Swanson in "Parks and Rec.")

Langan also reminds me a bit of the MyPillow guy if that means anything.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Exchemist, sir. I think you may like this guy's style. It is entertainment and it is debunking an absolute, overblown ass hat.
Try ten minutes.
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OK I tried 10mins, though I fast forwarded a bit. I've also looked up a few references on the web. It seems every piece on this guy opens with a mandatory gosh-wow reference to this alleged super high IQ. This sets the stage for what the video points out is an attempt to engage the viewer's trust - on the perverse basis that he does not have any qualifications! He's just an ordinary Joe. And that makes him instantly trustworthy, apparently.

This is so American. There is a definite strand of anti-intellectualism, a distrust of the educated classes, embedded in US culture. You can see that in the plot of countless films. "Heeh, never was no good at dat dere book larnin'", says the Wild West hero. This clearly explains the attraction of Langan for MAGA types: thick, ignorant, prejudiced and aching to put the boot into the educated, more successful people they resent so deeply. And Langan is clearly one of them: resentful, prejudiced and resorting to conspiracy theories to explain his lack of success in life. (This by the way is what Ibsen termed the "Life Lie": the lie one tells oneself to justify one's position in the scheme of things.)

I think though the prof may somewhat miss the point in claiming, rather heavy-handedly, that a theory of everything has to mean unification of the 4 fundamental interactions in physics, and can't mean anything else. That is true if we are talking physics, but I don't think we are in this case. This is apparently some kind of homespun philosophy, rather than science. It would be more interesting to have a decent philosopher debunk Langan.

But the fact that I can't find on the web a single review of the CTMU from any serious authority says it all. Nobody can be bothered. His ideas, whatever they are, just are not taken seriously. However the paradox is that this no doubt proves, to a certain type of (ill-educated, resentful) person that he must be right!

Which brings us full circle, back to flat-earther mentality.
 
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exchemist said:
I think though the prof may somewhat miss the point in claiming, rather heavy-handedly, that a theory of everything has to mean unification of the 4 fundamental interactions in physics, and can't mean anything else
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I don't think there is another meaning to that? They even made a film about it! 2014 about the life of Stephen Hawking. I thought "Hawking" was much better as that had more science in it.

Anyway. I think you can argue that, "What is the meaning of life?" has different angles to it but "A theory of everything" is physics.

Anyway I'm glad you tried Prof Dave out, he taught organic Chemistry at University and started out by putting his lectures on line before the debunking videos.
 
exchemist said:
But the fact that I can't find on the web a single review of the CTMU from any serious authority says it all.
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TheVat said:
his claim that the Bush administration staged the 9/11 attacks in order to distract the public from learning about his CTMU theory.
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Clearly the serious authorities were too distracted by 9/11!

Also, academic physics is controlled by the international Jewish cabal which maintains a stifling orthodoxy etc.

Getting back to Flerfers....I was talking to someone about online forums and time zones recently and it made me wonder how Flerfers account for them.
 
exchemist said:
This sets the stage for what the video points out is an attempt to engage the viewer's trust - on the perverse basis that he does not have any qualifications! He's just an ordinary Joe. And that makes him instantly trustworthy, apparently.

This is so American. There is a definite strand of anti-intellectualism, a distrust of the educated classes, embedded in US culture. You can see that in the plot of countless films. "Heeh, never was no good at dat dere book larnin'", says the Wild West hero. This clearly explains the attraction of Langan for MAGA types: thick, ignorant, prejudiced and aching to put the boot into the educated, more successful people they resent so deeply.
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Carl Sagan was spot-on.
 
billvon said:
Carl Sagan was spot-on.
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In fact we have a touch of it in Britain too, though not to such a great extent. You don't find this anti-intellectualism to the same degree in continental Europe. Perhaps its an Anglo-Saxon trait, amplified in the US by the tradition of the rough-and-ready frontier spirit.

(We even had a small example on this forum last summer, from a Brit, in that thread about the Arthurian legends. At one point the OP suggested he trusted that Alan Wilson charlatan on the basis that he did not have credentials as an academic historian but was a "genuine person", whatever that meant: https://www.sciforums.com/threads/king-arthur.166908/. (see post 19) )
 
exchemist said:
But the fact that I can't find on the web a single review of the CTMU from any serious authority says it all.
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I forced myself to watch Langan describe his bullshit. In short it is not a scientific theory it is pseudo philosophy, he uses the word "meta" a lot combined with scientific terms.
The IQ test was also very dubious, not accepted or verified by any recognised body like MENSA. He also took the test twice which was against the rules, failed it first time.
 
Pinball1970 said:
I don't think there is another meaning to that? They even made a film about it! 2014 about the life of Stephen Hawking. I thought "Hawking" was much better as that had more science in it.

Anyway. I think you can argue that, "What is the meaning of life?" has different angles to it but "A theory of everything" is physics.

Anyway I'm glad you tried Prof Dave out, he taught organic Chemistry at University and started out by putting his lectures on line before the debunking videos.
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Yeah but he makes the same mistake as so many of these YouPube types: he’s too fond of the sound of his own voice and wastes the viewer’s time by bloviating on and on instead of just making his point concisely and then shutting TF up.
 
On Facebook there's a poster named AlexBreaksTheGlobe who is a big Flat Earther. Yesterday he posted something showing an airplane flying from the North Pole to the equator, with the caption saying "if the Earth was a globe the airplane would have to turn left the whole way because globetards say the equator spins at 1000mph!"

Someone replied that since the atmosphere is spinning with the Earth, they could fly all the way pointing more or less South.

Alex replied "but then they'd still have to MOVE left the whole way to get up to 1000mph!"

I replied "CONGRATULATIONS! You have just accidentally discovered the Coriolis Force, which causes things traveling from the poles to the equator to appear to move opposite the equator's spin. This affects atmospheric and ocean currents and is a big part of weather. But be careful - if you start to understand science, other flat Earthers will attack and mock you!"

He deleted my post.
 
billvon said:
On Facebook there's a poster named AlexBreaksTheGlobe who is a big Flat Earther. Yesterday he posted something showing an airplane flying from the North Pole to the equator, with the caption saying "if the Earth was a globe the airplane would have to turn left the whole way because globetards say the equator spins at 1000mph!"

Someone replied that since the atmosphere is spinning with the Earth, they could fly all the way pointing more or less South.

Alex replied "but then they'd still have to MOVE left the whole way to get up to 1000mph!"

I replied "CONGRATULATIONS! You have just accidentally discovered the Coriolis Force, which causes things traveling from the poles to the equator to appear to move opposite the equator's spin. This affects atmospheric and ocean currents and is a big part of weather. But be careful - if you start to understand science, other flat Earthers will attack and mock you!"

He deleted my post.
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I'll check him out!
 
billvon said:
On Facebook there's a poster named AlexBreaksTheGlobe who is a big Flat Earther. Yesterday he posted something showing an airplane flying from the North Pole to the equator, with the caption saying "if the Earth was a globe the airplane would have to turn left the whole way because globetards say the equator spins at 1000mph!"

Someone replied that since the atmosphere is spinning with the Earth, they could fly all the way pointing more or less South.

Alex replied "but then they'd still have to MOVE left the whole way to get up to 1000mph!"

I replied "CONGRATULATIONS! You have just accidentally discovered the Coriolis Force, which causes things traveling from the poles to the equator to appear to move opposite the equator's spin. This affects atmospheric and ocean currents and is a big part of weather. But be careful - if you start to understand science, other flat Earthers will attack and mock you!"

He deleted my post.
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Of course, as in most of these types of arguments, they rely on ignoring the actual numbers involved. For example, if we assume our plane is flying at 500 mph, then it would take ~12 hrs to go from pole to equator. Thus you would need to accelerate to the left at a rate that would get it up to 1000 mph over that 12 hrs. This is going from 0 to 1467 ft/sec over 43200 sec, for an acceleration of 0.034 ft/sec^2 or ~1/942 of a g. Hardly "pinning you to the side of the craft" numbers. Once you factor in changing wind directions/speeds during your flight, this "correction" would get lost in the mix.
 
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