Anyway, my point was my popularity is reflected by being a nice person.
You are a sour, twisted little man who enjoys taking liberty out of those who may be a little less intellectually stimulated than yourself.
Weren't you just saying how online interactions don't represent you? Yet you feel you can say such things about me? Nice hypocrisy.
You get it all wrong anyway. I have no problems with people who know less than me, be they 15 or be they 60, provided they are honest about it. I'm honest about what I do or don't know and to what level I know it. If someone else is likewise then even if they know no physics I won't have a problem with them. It's when people misrepresent themselves I have an issue, it's intellectual dishonesty. I keep explaining this (do a search for 'intellectual dishonesty' and you'll get loads of my posts explaining this) but it seems to be something some people struggle to grasp.
Let's take Magneto as an example. He can't do basic vector calculus yet he's written a textbook on it, a textbook he has to self publish. He has no published research or even an advanced degree, yet he believed he was in the running to get the head of department position at somewhere like CalTech. He named his self published work 'Super Principia Mathematica', after Newton's magnus opus 'Principia Mathematica', and then posted (or paid someone else to post) biased reviewed of it all over the place.
That is the height of intellectual dishonesty. You're not that far gone, probably because you don't have the funds to self publish material, but you're getting there. You don't know the material you're writing a book on and when presented with your errors you ignore it or you get hostile. If you instead dealt with it by saying "Looks like I over estimated my understanding, I should spend some time learning this stuff. I'll make sure to ask someone when I come up against something I don't understand" and then you actually did that then you'd experience a much friendlier atmosphere here.
Really, is that too much to ask? All the PhDs I work with have attitudes like that. Probably 3~10 times a week (depending what we're all working on) I'll ask someone a question I preface with "This is probably a really stupid question but....". I'm not holding you or anyone else to a standard I wouldn't expect others to hold me to. I'm not talking about research level stuff here, I'm talking about plain simple honesty.
You revel in your ability to ''shit'' on peoples faces as I said before, simply because you think that is your job.
No, I think it's my 'job' to highlight misunderstandings and errors, explain why they are such and then to try to help the relevant poster understand things properly. For those who accept such help graciously there's no problem. For those who believe themselves above taking advice or undoubtedly infallible (Farsight thinks he knows more electromagnetism than Dirac did and Sylwester calls his work the 'everlasting theory' for example) then things go down hill because they keep making the same sorts of mistakes and don't want to listen.
In your case I've given you plenty of advice on how to go about learning things properly or explained why certain things might be outside your reach at present but you don't want to listen.
You sit their and criticize people for wasting their time, yet in the whole reflection it seems you do quite a fair bit of time wasting as well, spending it on cranks.
You, once again, fail to understand.
There are some hacks here who honestly think they've rewritten physics or that they should get themselves into the physics community. In your case you've given the impression on multiple occasions you plan to go into the physics academic community in some manner, ie at least a degree, at some point. Be it publishing their pet theories in a journal or getting a formal physics education there are certain hoops which must be jumped through. If someone is really serious then surely they wish to get the ball rolling yet in the years I've been here none of the hacks have really advanced their positions. For example, posting updates to their 'work' again and again on a forum isn't going to advance their position towards getting their work to the attention of the research community so one has to question how serious they really are. In your case you have been doing what you're doing for at least the entire time I've known you (4+ years?) and, as I've said, no amount of pop science reading going to help you do the details involved in a formal physics education. In the time you and I have 'known' one another you've gotten no closer to even a basic working understanding of physics. In 4 years you could
properly cover the 1st year syllabus of a university physics degree in your spare time, yet you struggle to do stuff I'd expect A Level students who've gotten onto a decent physics degree course to know inside out. So you have squandered that time if you really do plan to do anything proper when it comes to physics. These essay threads of yours don't help in that regard either. If you really plan to go into physics than your time spent doing physics in some way is supposed to be advancing you along that road. You appear not to have moved along it at all.
As for my time the physics and maths I discuss here is purely recreational, it has absolutely no bearing on my career's advancement. The level of my discussions here hasn't advanced in any significant way while I've been a member here because the average level of discussion on this forum is below research level. However, the fact I've gotten papers published, a PhD and a research job in that time shows I've been spending plenty of time pushing my understanding of physics and maths.
What you post here shows the edges of your understanding haven't moved, so if you are trying to work towards a job pertaining to physics what on Earth are you doing with yourself? I doubt you'll say but I would be interested to know what you're doing with your life at the moment. What job you have, if you're employed. What are your plans for the next 10 years? If it involves physics how do you plan to go about accomplishing it?
And a friend to me is worth any knowledge that AN carries about with him like the holy bible.
Except we're not talking about popularity here, we're talking about whether or not you're misrepresenting your knowledge. You've basically said you'd rather be misleading and popular than honest. Whether that gives you a more fulfilling life is not relevant here, what is relevant is whether such behaviour is appropriate for this forum.
I would say I have conducted myself reasonably well!
What about the threats to cause problems for the forum, particularly Prom and myself in Physics and Maths, when you were banned? Is that conducting yourself 'reasonably well'? Is it a sign of a mature person to make such threats?
But I am afraid, i cannot be held to blame for AN's actions. He is constantly uncivil. Especially towards me.
As this post illustrates, I'll regularly give lengthy posts explaining myself. In your essay threads I'll go into lengthy detail about your multitude of problems, explaining your errors. Often your replies will be short and with a few choice words in them. You certainly swear a lot more than I do on these forums.
Like I said, if you were intellectually honest we'd not have this problem. You don't like being told you're mistaken about something. You don't like to be told that perhaps you're not in a position to grasp something yet. You don't like being told you need to do the boring groundwork before getting onto the 'cool' stuff. All of those comments about you are not insults, they are pieces of advice based on personal experience and I'm not the only one whose given you such advice. I tend to be the one to list your errors and it gets tiresome after a while so I comment about your dishonest and in some cases delusion. It
is a delusion to think that reading pop science books puts you in a position to easily walk a 1st year of a physics degree. That is a
fact. It might very well be a fact you don't want to hear because it applies to a point of view you've stated but facts are facts. Anyone who has done a physics degree will corroborate it and I speak as someone whose been on both sides of the fence, student and teacher (though I was a student in maths, but that included classical mechanics in my 1st year).
There's no shame in accepting corrections from people. It's how education works. But do you think it would be acceptable for a university student to say "I think it's totally unacceptable you failed me on that test, I
am right!" after having many mistakes in their exam paper? Hardly. Eventually such a student would be considered disruptive, dishonest and would have to be told that, before eventually being expelled if the behaviour continued.
How a person deals with being told they're mistaken about something says a lot about them. One of the common traits between all the people I might be considered 'uncivil' towards is that they don't deal well with being told they're mistaken about something. Repeatedly reiterating those mistakes and denying they exist is dishonest and some might consider rude. After a while the civility of initial "You're mistaken about that because...." gives way to "How many times are you going to tell the same lie?".
''Imagination is more important than knowledge.''
That was Einstein who said that.
But imagination without knowledge is inapplicable, just as knowledge without imagination cannot grow.
That quote is often rolled out by hacks looking to give excuses for their complete lack of knowledge. What makes a good scientist is having
both.
The place I work for recently went through a round of recruiting and we saw dozens of people with PhDs in maths or physics and yet very few of them had much imagination or interest outside the scope of their present research. However, the job requirement still required an advanced degree because without the knowledge base no amount of imagination could do the job.
(BELLS)
I also don't know how you can claim that I only came back for the ''arguements'' - My activities here at this place cover a wide range of topics were in none of them I give out or recieve any derogatory comments.
Perhaps posts like
this were in Bells's mind? You'd just been unbanned and despite knowing you were to keep in line the first thing you did was attempt an insult at me by implying I view myself as some kind of Einstein. Deliberate attempt to antagonise. And likely to try to get attention.
