Entertaining Crackpottery

[ChildInAZoo]

You just conceded that there is no actual evidence to support this hypothesis.

As pointed out before, you do not know what evidence is. I suggest you learn how to do physics.

[lpetrich]

But there's a certain irony in hearing somebody scoff about some unsupported belief and then start wittering on about Novikov self-consistency principle and parallel worlds.

Some of what you dismiss as "unsupported beliefs" are much more likely than others. Let's consider something physically possible yet difficult to test. Like the hypothesis that some Galactic-disk star on the opposite side of our Galaxy's center has planets. Farsight, would you presume that those planets do not exist? Or even that those stars do not exist?

Or closer to home, do you think that I live in an empty house because you have not observed any of my house's contents?

There is no evidence for WIMPs, and we've been looking for them since 1987. People have claimed that they have evidence, but others in the field say they're fooling themselves, and everybody else. See http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/691 for an article on this.

The claimed detection is a borderline one, so I'm not surprised that they are having that argument. Furthermore, a non-detection at these experiments' sensitivity does not completely rule out WIMP's.

Farsight, if you had been living 100 - 150 years ago, would you have dismissed the existence of atoms in similar fashion?

No. Not at all. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism#Atomic_renaissance and note the dates.

Farsight, look at your track record. Look at how you evaluate WIMP's and imagine how you would have evaluated atoms in past centuries. Given your track record, you would have dismissed them as preposterous speculation.

and quantum mysticism like the Copenhagen Interpretation

I haven't bothered much with interpretations of quantum mechanics. That sort of thing makes my head ache, and I prefer the mathematics.

You should bother.

Farsight, I have no trouble with using mathematics, so I can get away with avoiding issues like that. Such interpretations often strike me as an attempt to explain quantum mechanics in nonmathematical terms in terms of familiar intuitions.

And yes, you've made it perfectly clear that you prefer the mathematics to the scientific evidence.

Mathematics is a part of the evidence. Farsight, your approach to physics is even worse than some throwback to Aristotelianism. It's like you agree with Hanns Hoerbiger that calculation can only lead you astray. At least Aristotle didn't dismiss mathematics as irrelevant.

The existence of intrinsic spin is well-established. So well-established that to deny its existence is crackpottery. There are oodles of evidence for intrinsic spin.

LOL. People who suffer from a conviction never think they do. Now go and read up on Einstein-de Haas, and when you've finished, you can dismiss that as crackpottery too.

100% consistent with intrinsic spin. It shows that spin is interchangeable with orbital angular momentum, and there are oodles of evidence of that. Farsight, you have yet to prove that it doesn't show such interchangeability.

There are oodles of evidence for intrinsic spin. Photons have spin 1, on account of the space-time structure of the electromagnetic field. That structure is what makes polarization. Electrons? The Stern-Gerlach effect, which is inconsistent with classical spin. Also, atomic and molecular structure cannot work properly unless electrons have two spin states and follow Fermi-Dirac statistics. Likewise for nuclear structure with protons and neutrons. Electrons, protons, and neutrons thus have spin 1/2.

There are other tests, like production of:
Bose–Einstein condensate - Wikipedia
Fermionic condensate

Farsight, why don't you give us a list of mainstream physics theories that you dismiss as crackpottery?

Because it isn't a black-and-white situation. For example, quantum mechanics is solid as a rock, but the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is garbage. The Standard Model is pretty good, but the Higgs sector is "frightfully ad hoc".

Quantum mechanics and the Standard Model are formulated with mathematics that you dismiss as irrelevant. The same is true of relativity, electrodynamics, and even Newtonianism.

As to the Higgs sector, I will concede that it looks rather arbitrary. But the Large Hadron Collider may change that.

But then we're into a spectrum that ranges from outright crackpottery through to wild speculation down to decades-old unverified hypotheses, and it's not easy to know where to draw the line. I'd say if the evidence is there, fine, you can examine it with a skeptical eye. Otherwise be very skeptical indeed. In particular you should be extremely skeptical of people who try to persuade you not to examine the evidence, especially those who create silly threads to distract from sincere discussion of physics.

Farsight, I don't know what you are talking about.

Yes you do. I put up threads like Time Explained, complete with references and scientific evidence. You can't deal with it, and you post up silly quack trash that distracts attention away from it.

Farsight, all your so-called "evidence" is well accounted for in mainstream physics.

It also must be said that I find pseudoscience and crackpottery rather entertaining. But it must be said that it's hard to compete with the likes of Gillette physics and the Welteislehre and Koreshan Universology.

[colubridae]

I'm sure some can, Loren.

You did it again. You called him/her loren. Do you two know each other? Just interested?

Do you two come here to argue because you want to flaunt yourselves. If you know each other why don't you phone or e-mail each other?

Not that I think you should stop. You are both entertaining (and it's not my forum anyway). I'm just bemused?

[lpetrich]

I'm sure some can, Loren.

You did it again. You called him/her loren. Do you two know each other? Just interested?

I don't know him at all. I'd also like to find out why he calls me that.

That aside, Hoerbiger's theories remind me of psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovsky's. He had proposed that Jupiter ejected a giant comet which sideswiped the Earth a few times, causing numerous catastrophes that are remembered in numerous myths and legends. This comet then displaced Mars from its orbit, and it sideswiped the Earth a few times, causing even more catastrophes. Mars eventually settled down to a "normal" orbit and that comet settled down in another such orbit, becoming the planet Venus.

Venus's first sideswipe produced the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the sinking of Atlantis. Its second sideswipe made the Earth stop rotating long enough for Joshua to win one of his battles.

It was published by Macmillan in 1950, and some scientists were outraged enough to boycott that company, which had a textbook department. So IV shifted his book over to Doubleday, which did not have a textbook department. Twenty years later, he and his followers made a big fuss about how his theories had been vindicated by spacecraft discoveries, and the AAAS had a conference on his theories. Carl Sagan himself wrote a very detailed critique of them, and in his researches, he consulted a professor of Semitic literatures. They thought that IV got it all wrong in their fields of expertise, but they were impressed by what he said in the other one's fields of expertise.

[colubridae]

I'm sure some can, Loren.

You did it again. You called him/her loren. Do you two know each other? Just interested?

I don't know him at all. I'd also like to find out why he calls me that.

That aside, Hoerbiger's theories remind me of psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovsky's. He had proposed that Jupiter ejected a giant comet which sideswiped the Earth a few times, causing numerous catastrophes that are remembered in numerous myths and legends. This comet then displaced Mars from its orbit, and it sideswiped the Earth a few times, causing even more catastrophes. Mars eventually settled down to a "normal" orbit and that comet settled down in another such orbit, becoming the planet Venus.

Venus's first sideswipe produced the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the sinking of Atlantis. Its second sideswipe made the Earth stop rotating long enough for Joshua to win one of his battles.

It was published by Macmillan in 1950, and some scientists were outraged enough to boycott that company, which had a textbook department. So IV shifted his book over to Doubleday, which did not have a textbook department. Twenty years later, he and his followers made a big fuss about how his theories had been vindicated by spacecraft discoveries, and the AAAS had a conference on his theories. Carl Sagan himself wrote a very detailed critique of them, and in his researches, he consulted a professor of Semitic literatures. They thought that IV got it all wrong in their fields of expertise, but they were impressed by what he said in the other one's fields of expertise.

religion. It's not for real!

[Twiglet]

and quantum mysticism like the Copenhagen Interpretation

I haven't bothered much with interpretations of quantum mechanics. That sort of thing makes my head ache, and I prefer the mathematics.

You should bother.

Farsight, I have no trouble with using mathematics, so I can get away with avoiding issues like that. Such interpretations often strike me as an attempt to explain quantum mechanics in nonmathematical terms in terms of familiar intuitions.

I have no problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. As lpetrich points out, it's unecessary to subscribe to any interpretation of QM to do the maths and generate predictions, which is all that's required of any scientific theory, however it's worth looking at the interpretations to get a feel for what is happening.

To dismiss the Copenhagen interpretation is to opt, by definition, for some less paletable alternative, IMO.

Consider what the alternatives actually are:

1) The "many worlds" theory: Every time an event happens (and boy, a lot of events happen - every single nuclear transition that takes place, anywhere, ever - constitutes and event) - the universe "splits" into two realities. One in which the event happens, the other in which it doesn't. Economical on assumptions, but in total violation of the conservation of energy, as it's creating an almost infinite number of universes per second.

2) The attempts to reconcile QM to some kind of hidden "inner" classical system which isn't random. A real hobbyhorse for some people who just can't accept the universe could be a random place.

3) Other arguments about what causes wavefunction collapse, ranging from conscious observers to spontaneous localisation.

Wiki gives a more detailed summary and a nice table comparing what each interpretation assumes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta ... ions_of_QM

I think it's fair to say that many if not most physicists fall into line with lpetrich in being fairly unconcerned with the interpretations - as they don't affect how the maths works or what the theory predicts. The copenhagen interpretation has gained traction because it's easier to live with than most of the alternatives, but it's more a case of personal preference than deep attachment for most.

The people who have most against the Copenhagen interpretation (i.e. those who rail on and on about how horrible it is) are generally the ones looking to impose some classical ordered underlying reality onto QM because they can't stand the idea the universe might be random. Most commonly, they understand very little about QM on any level. Scientists proposing alternative interpretations are usually pretty open to the idea that any one of them could be proven true, or that some deeper explanation like string theory or M theory might trundle along and replace everything some day.

[lpetrich]

That's more-or-less it. I tend to favor the decoherence hypothesis, that the great complexity of macroscopic systems causes wavefunction decoherence and collapse. I think of it as a close relative of the Copenhagen interpretation, with clarification of what is meant by "measurement".

That aside, I confess I'm annoyed by the "mystic physics" interpretations of QM. They interpret the Copenhagen and similar interpretations as meaning that consciousness has super powers like psychokinesis.


As Carl Sagan had noted, where IV is right in Worlds in Collision, he is not original, where IV is original, he is not right, and several of IV's claims are neither right nor original. IV wasn't the first to propose comet sideswiping remembered in mythologies -- William Whiston beat him there in 1696, proposing that a comet had caused Noah's Flood. Catastrophist geology used to be popular, with the later catastrophists proposing several catastrophes over geological time. IV himself recognized that, and his Earth in Upheaval was his attempt to revive early 19th-cy. geology. Then along came Charles Lyell and his fuzzing of different sorts of uniformitarianism. Some processes are indeed more-or-less uniform, like sedimentation and continental drift, but catastrophism has had a minor comeback over the last half-century. It came back as a result of recognition of specific evidence of catastrophes, not grandiose philosophical debates.

In particular, the discovery of "shock metamorphism" provided convincing evidence of impacts of small-asteroid-sized objects. One of the most recent of big ones is Burckle Crater - Wikipedia in the Indian Ocean:
Recent Cosmic Impacts on Earth - Do Global Myths Reflect an Ancient Disaster?
Geomythology and the Burckle Crater
Archeologist Bruce Masse and others have proposed that this impact produced big floods on the coastlines that the people there remembered as flood legends. This would include the Sumerian original of Noah's Flood.

As to what a Velikvsky-Hoerbiger-scale catastrophe would be like, consider the Giant impact hypothesis - Wikipedia for the Moon. Some Mars-sized object collided with the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, and some of the fragments splattered off and ended up in orbit. They then formed the Moon.

[lpetrich]

Back to the main subject, Bertrand Russell's An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish is a classic.

But if conformity has its dangers, so has nonconformity.

Some "advanced thinkers" are of the opinion that any one who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is. There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths.

And on a lighter note,

I like also the men who study the Great Pyramid, with a view to deciphering its mystical lore. Many great books have been written on this subject, some of which have been presented to me by their authors. It is a singular fact that the Great Pyramid always predicts the history of the world accurately up to the date of publication of the book in question, but after that date it becomes less reliable. Generally the author expects, very soon, wars in Egypt, followed by Armageddon and the coming of Antichrist, but by this time so many people have been recognized as Antichrist that the reader is reluctantly driven to skepticism.

[Mr P]

Moon landing deniers, my favorite brand of nut.

I particularly like how the conspiracy becomes more and more contrived to the point where they become the only ones outside.

[Farsight]

I have no problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of QM...

Noted.

As lpetrich points out, it's unnecessary to subscribe to any interpretation of QM to do the maths and generate predictions, which is all that's required of any scientific theory,

It is necessary. We don't do physics just to do the maths and generate predictions. We do it to understand the universe.

..however it's worth looking at the interpretations to get a feel for what is happening. To dismiss the Copenhagen interpretation is to opt, by definition, for some less palatable alternative, IMO.

No it isn't. You simply say that this interpretation is unsatisfactory, and search for a better one.

Consider what the alternatives actually are:

1) The "many worlds" theory: Every time an event happens (and boy, a lot of events happen - every single nuclear transition that takes place, anywhere, ever - constitutes and event) - the universe "splits" into two realities. One in which the event happens, the other in which it doesn't. Economical on assumptions, but in total violation of the conservation of energy, as it's creating an almost infinite number of universes per second.

Crackpottery.

2) The attempts to reconcile QM to some kind of hidden "inner" classical system which isn't random. A real hobbyhorse for some people who just can't accept the universe could be a random place.

It's no hobbyhorse, it's a desire to understand the universe.

3) Other arguments about what causes wavefunction collapse, ranging from conscious observers to spontaneous localisation.

Wiki gives a more detailed summary and a nice table comparing what each interpretation assumes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta ... ions_of_QM

I think it's fair to say that many if not most physicists fall into line with lpetrich in being fairly unconcerned with the interpretations - as they don't affect how the maths works or what the theory predicts. The copenhagen interpretation has gained traction because it's easier to live with than most of the alternatives, but it's more a case of personal preference than deep attachment for most.

It's fair to say that many do, but not most. Most seek to understand the underlying reality.

The people who have most against the Copenhagen interpretation (i.e. those who rail on and on about how horrible it is) are generally the ones looking to impose some classical ordered underlying reality onto QM because they can't stand the idea the universe might be random. Most commonly, they understand very little about QM on any level.

That's a sweeping statement and a poor defence of "surpasseth all human understanding".

Scientists proposing alternative interpretations are usually pretty open to the idea that any one of them could be proven true,

One would hope that all scientists are open to evidence and proof.

...or that some deeper explanation like string theory or M theory might trundle along and replace everything some day.

String theory? There's no supporting evidence. People have tired of entertaining it.

[Farsight]

Some of what you dismiss as "unsupported beliefs" are much more likely than others. Let's consider something physically possible yet difficult to test. Like the hypothesis that some Galactic-disk star on the opposite side of our Galaxy's center has planets. Farsight, would you presume that those planets do not exist? Or even that those stars do not exist?

No, not at all. We can see very distant stars, and we can detect planets. See http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti ... 10523.html.

Or closer to home, do you think that I live in an empty house because you have not observed any of my house's contents?

No. And why are you using such examples to try to defend hypotheses that have no supporting evidence whatsoever? Don't be ridiculous.

The claimed detection is a borderline one, so I'm not surprised that they are having that argument. Furthermore, a non-detection at these experiments' sensitivity does not completely rule out WIMPs.

It doesn't completely rule out fairies either. Look, if WIMPs were something fairly new, we can cut them some slack. But after nearly 30 years, time is running out for this imposed "consensus". Particularly since people are aware that Einstein talked about inhomogeneous space and the energy of a gravitational field causing gravity. And the "raisins in the cake" expanding universe that results in inhomogeneous space.

Farsight, look at your track record. Look at how you evaluate WIMP's and imagine how you would have evaluated atoms in past centuries. Given your track record, you would have dismissed them as preposterous speculation.

Geddoutofit. You're the one who dismisses scientific evidence, not me. I'd have been there with John Dalton, and you'd be dismissing them as crackpottery.

Mathematics is a part of the evidence. Farsight, your approach to physics is even worse than some throwback to Aristotelianism. It's like you agree with Hanns Hoerbiger that calculation can only lead you astray. At least Aristotle didn't dismiss mathematics as irrelevant.

What are you on about? Evidence is evidence. Mathematics isn't. I've never suggested that calculation can only lead you astray or that mathematics is irrelevant. I've repeatedly said it's a vital tool for physics. It allows you to make a prediction, but it isn't part of the evidence. Experimental and observational results are.

Now go and read up on Einstein-de Haas, and when you've finished, you can dismiss that as crackpottery too.

100% consistent with intrinsic spin. It shows that spin is interchangeable with orbital angular momentum, and there are oodles of evidence of that. Farsight, you have yet to prove that it doesn't show such interchangeability.

You're in denial, lpetrich. Pay attention:

"the Einstein–de Haas effect demonstrates that spin angular momentum is indeed of the same nature as the angular momentum of rotating bodies as conceived in classical mechanics."

This isn't just demonstrating interchangeability, this is demonstrating that spin angular momentum of the same nature as classical angular momentum. That means it isn't "intrinsic". it isn't something mysterious, It's a real spin.

There are oodles of evidence for intrinsic spin. Photons have spin 1, on account of the space-time structure of the electromagnetic field. That structure is what makes polarization. Electrons? The Stern-Gerlach effect, which is inconsistent with classical spin.

It is consistent with classical spin. I explained that here. But you didn't pay any attention to the evidence because you're too busy entertaining crackpottery.

Also, atomic and molecular structure cannot work properly unless electrons have two spin states and follow Fermi-Dirac statistics. Likewise for nuclear structure with protons and neutrons. Electrons, protons, and neutrons thus have spin 1/2.

And it isn't something mystical.

Quantum mechanics and the Standard Model are formulated with mathematics that you dismiss as irrelevant. The same is true of relativity, electrodynamics, and even Newtonianism.

I don't dismiss mathematics as irrelevant. You keep on repeating this myth and dismissing scientific evidence. You're delusional, lpetrich. But I do find you entertaining.

[ChildInAZoo]

No, not at all. We can see very distant stars, and we can detect planets. See http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti ... 10523.html.

All we detect are "anomalies". Why can we be sure that these are planets?

[Svartalf]

No, not at all. We can see very distant stars, and we can detect planets. See http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti ... 10523.html.

All we detect are "anomalies". Why can we be sure that these are planets?

because the gravitational "wobbles" of orbiting planetary bodies is the simplest explanation that best fits the animalous data, not to mention the star or two for which the assumed planets have been observed causing eclipses of the star as seen from here, on optical telescopes.

[Thinking Aloud]

I remember reading a "hollow Earth" book, and one of the major pieces of evidence was a global weather photo, showing cloud around the northern hemisphere. A neat circle of no cloud cover around the North Pole was shown as evidence that something was going on up there. Well that, or there was no radar coverage at the time to make a complete image.

[lpetrich]

As lpetrich points out, it's unnecessary to subscribe to any interpretation of QM to do the maths and generate predictions, which is all that's required of any scientific theory,

It is necessary. We don't do physics just to do the maths and generate predictions. We do it to understand the universe.

Unfortunately, Farsight, mathematics is part of that understanding. As Galileo noted nearly 400 years ago, the great book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.

1) The "many worlds" theory ...

Crackpottery.

Just because you find the idea absurd?

2) The attempts to reconcile QM to some kind of hidden "inner" classical system which isn't random. A real hobbyhorse for some people who just can't accept the universe could be a random place.

It's no hobbyhorse, it's a desire to understand the universe.

So you refuse to accept fundamental randomness in the Universe?

String theory? There's no supporting evidence. People have tired of entertaining it.

Says who?

Some of what you dismiss as "unsupported beliefs" are much more likely than others. Let's consider something physically possible yet difficult to test. Like the hypothesis that some Galactic-disk star on the opposite side of our Galaxy's center has planets. Farsight, would you presume that those planets do not exist? Or even that those stars do not exist?

No, not at all. We can see very distant stars, and we can detect planets.

The same could also be true of a wide variety of hypotheses that you dismiss outright. Like WIMP's, string theory, ...

Or closer to home, do you think that I live in an empty house because you have not observed any of my house's contents?

No. And why are you using such examples to try to defend hypotheses that have no supporting evidence whatsoever? Don't be ridiculous.

Farsight, you are evading the question. What DIRECT evidence do you have of any of my house's contents?

Look, if WIMPs were something fairly new, we can cut them some slack. But after nearly 30 years, time is running out for this imposed "consensus". Particularly since people are aware that Einstein talked about inhomogeneous space and the energy of a gravitational field causing gravity.

Farsight, your quote-mining and your Hoerbigerian attitude towards mathematics will get you nowhere. It's possible to estimate the gravitational self-energy of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and that self-energy mass is tiny compared to the masses of their constituents. About (v/c)2, which is about 10-6 for these systems. So "dark matter" cannot be gravitational self-energy.

Farsight, look at your track record. Look at how you evaluate WIMP's and imagine how you would have evaluated atoms in past centuries. Given your track record, you would have dismissed them as preposterous speculation.

Geddoutofit. You're the one who dismisses scientific evidence, not me. I'd have been there with John Dalton, and you'd be dismissing them as crackpottery.

Bullshit. John Dalton's evidence for atoms was much like the present evidence for WIMP's.

Mathematics is a part of the evidence. Farsight, your approach to physics is even worse than some throwback to Aristotelianism. It's like you agree with Hanns Hoerbiger that calculation can only lead you astray. At least Aristotle didn't dismiss mathematics as irrelevant.

What are you on about? Evidence is evidence. Mathematics isn't.

Evidence is often mathematical, despite what you seem to think.

(the Einstein-de-Haas effect...)
Farsight, so you're now quote-mining Wikipedia.

Electrons? The Stern-Gerlach effect, which is inconsistent with classical spin.

It is consistent with classical spin. I explained that here.

In the classical limit, there will be a smear of possible deflections, which we don't see.

I don't dismiss mathematics as irrelevant. You keep on repeating this myth and dismissing scientific evidence. You're delusional, lpetrich. But I do find you entertaining.

But you certainly act as if it irrelevant -- or an outright distraction.