I'm not really sure how much of a good tactic it is to have one person engage Mills supporters on certain specifics of Mills' claims (or science which is reportedly relevant to Mills' claims) only to have several people attack those supporters for talking about things which are deemed to be irrelevant. Not only does that stifle all discussion*, but it gives fuel to the claims that there are no serious challenges to Mills' theory. The last thing that should happen in a conversation between a claimant and a sceptic is that the claimant can go away having confirmed to their satisfaction their perception that sceptics are blinkered/dishonest and just hand-wave away evidence without even looking at it. Yet that's more or less all I'm seeing of late.
I think it's better to engage honestly, or not at all. I don't think berating or belittling people just for trying to discuss the topic of the thread is going to do anything positive or constructive. Isn't picking apart claims like these exactly what this forum is for?
I agree.
On that note, I don't have the knowledge in maths or scientific knowledge to comment intelligently on optiongeek's claim re Mills' classical description of the electron magnetic moment, but I do know that it's the best argument I've seen made in this thread in a while.
optiongeek and
markie are impressed by that argument as well.
As will be explained in my next post, that argument fails.
Seriously, when was it that the kooks started posting mathematical formulae, inviting discussion of them, and the sceptics started posting repetitive rants characterised by different font sizes and colours?
When kooks post threads here claiming to have overturned Einstein, or whatever, one common thread is that they post in terms of thought experiments and refuse to do the maths associated with real physics. Here what I'm seeing is optiongeek posting the maths and everybody else responding with dismissive verbosity.
Not everyone.
Consider, for example,
the post in which I quoted 13 comical things markie had written within the previous week. Someone who hasn't been paying attention might think that was dismissive (although it would be hard to think it was verbose, since I quoted
markie without comment). In each of the quotations, however, there is a little arrow to the right of the
markie attribution that, when clicked, will take you to the full text of
markie's post. It will also place that post in the context of this thread. In most (but not all) cases, scrolling down will take you to a substantive post in which the absurdity of
markie's statement is explained.
In at least one of those cases, you yourself responded to
markie.
If there is anyone here who doesn't understand why one or more of those 13 quotations from
markie are comical, please ask and I will explain.
I completely agree, however, that the hooting and hollering makes it harder to see and to find the substantive posts.
For example, I think most of
Darat's posts within the past couple of days have been less than helpful. On the other hand, I can understand why
Darat and others who are unable to follow technical discussions might be impatient with substantive responses to technical claims. Many scientifically illiterate people would prefer to exclude technical discussion in order to focus on arguments they can understand, such as
- Why has Mills spent decades trying to figure out how to extract energy from heat?
- Why would anyone believe new claims made by someone who has repeatedly said the technology would be marketed by dates that have long since passed?
- If hydrinos exist, and Mills has published evidence of their existence along with the scientifically necessary details adequate to replicate his results, then why has there been no credible replication of his results?
Those are valid arguments. I am not seeking to exclude those arguments from this thread. I would appreciate it if
Darat and a few others would stop trying to exclude technical discussions from this thread.
I would also appreciate it if those who have nothing useful to say were to refrain from saying it, but I also appreciate that there is less of that in this subforum than in some of the other subfora here.
If the maths is wrong, I'd like to see how it's wrong - whether that be by being based on faulty premises and assumptions, whether it's performing mathematical equivocation and combining things that cannot be combined, whether it's applicable only if applied in a very specific way to a very specific set of circumstances*, or whatever else. If it's right but the underlying theory in wrong, I'd like to understand why it is that the maths is right, and why it is that this maths isn't used out in the real world.
Then you should like my next post.
Similarly, whether or not Mills is right about hydrinos (and I think there's plenty of evidence that he is wrong), has no bearing on whether or not he's right about any particular equation. And if an equation he has derived himself is both accurate and more parsimonious and elegant than the equations already in use, then why shouldn't people use it? And, if it is those things then, regardless of the source, isn't that kind of cool?
Yes, that would be cool. It is not the way to bet.
Personally, I suspect that it's wrong in some way that I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand, and I base that conclusion on the other things surrounding it - not least the way Mills has behaved suspiciously in the past, like changing the company name and attempting to erase from existence previous claims.
My next post does not prove the equation is wrong, but it does identify an absurd error in the alleged derivation of that equation, and I believe that error speaks to a technically interesting question: What mistakes did Mills have to make, whether accidentally or on purpose, to convince
markie and others that Mills has derived a quantum (non-continuous) theory from the continuous functions that appear within the equations of classical physics?
Huh? Mills isn't claiming that the understanding of classical EM physics was wrong. For instance he makes all kinds of references to Purcell and Jackson. Now in rare cases (iirc) he does take some issue with the textbooks, but it is more a quibble. It is Mills unique application of classical physics and its blend with the older QM that enables him to go beyond others before him.
It might be worth noting that Mills tends to cite freshman-level textbooks, such as Purcell, and articles aimed at teachers, such as the
American Journal of Physics, instead of more advanced references such as Jackson. As explained in my next post, Mills's "unique application of classical physics and its blend with the older QM that enables him to go beyond others before him" is founded, at least in part, upon Mills's failure to understand classical physics and quantum mechanics.
Whether those failures are witting or unwitting might be of some interest, but I don't think that question is of great importance.
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