Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[BurntSynapse]

BurntSynapse, cite the project management textbook that describes this tool, I agree with Dancing David:

If you can provide where you think I've even hinted that such a project management textbook description exists, I will be happy to correct that misinterpretation.

 

[BurntSynapse]

BurntSynapse, can you cite the publications where Nicolaus Copernicus tried to overturn the known laws of astrology?
FYI: The motions of the planets is described by the known laws of astronomy.

I had to grab my copy of Robert Westman's "The Copernican Question" off the nightstand to help make sure I relayed it reasonably well. I take Westman to be a top expert, and this book to be a milestone likely to be the gold standard on the topic for some time.

RW claims Copernicus' goal was to protect astrology by "reform" of its basic mechanisms, which outraged opponents who regarded this not as reform, but more of an attack and rejection.

 

[Dancing David]

BurntSynapse, you have a lot of empty sophistry and rhetoric. You can note xplain nor defend your ideas.

I will recall you to this

Since I've provided examples and evidence to the contrary, (such as the lack of feedback from philosophy of science to monitor and control risk in theory development) along with the perspective and its assumptions which are required to reach that conclusion, you don't seem to be paying attention and I don't feel any need to repeat reasoning that has already been ignored.

I ask, what tool specifically are you thinking of. You made the claim, what tool, cognitive of technological should be considered that isn't?


Control risk, you mean from things like what?

Becquerel and the glass plate?

Andswer teh question.

What exactly and ind etail should be done differently.

I begin to suspect you do not have a clear idea of what you think..So i ask you again,
_What exactly and if detail should be done differently.

Say in the idea of the constant speed of light and the effects of relativity.

I think you have an idea, but you do not seem to be able to state it clearly, now you are waving more statements of other people, which you can't even seem to quote. You have hiden behind ideas you can't state, waved videos and books around.

It would be easier if you answered the direct question and skipped the empty posturing.

What specifically and in detail should be done differently regards the limits that relativity places on FTL?

You have yet to present a coherent explanation, so the rest of your statements are meaningless.

 

[Dancing David]

If you believe that the exact criteria on page 17 which top experts claim distinguish the "most important advances in the history of science" is "waving a book", then I would ask for an example you consider a valid tool to which such criticism could not be applied.

This is you unable to state your idea clearly.

What is your idea?

 

[ben m]

The premise here: that there is a single point to all study in the fields of history, philosophy, and cognitive science of scientific revolutions is an extraordinary claim. Do you mean to say this is the most important point for some issue?

I'm not telling historians what to do. If a historian wants to develop a method for predicting the occurrence of future revolutions, they're welcome to do so.

But that is not what Kuhn tried to do, and it's not what ABC (from my reading of reviews, I don't have the book) appear to be doing. You are extrapolating from these books and inventing your own "method" for predicting future revolutions.

Why would there need to be a suppressing cognitive process? Maybe she was distracted by cancer, hung over, or ogling her lab partner.

Are we talking about the same history-of-science book?

Surely you can't mean to claim there have been physicists working on applying the ABC criterion (from outside their field) to research portfolio management (outside their field) for longer than it's existed.

[/QUOTE]

You forget that you're trying to use ABC as a management principle. A management principle is useless until it results in someone walking into an expert's office and telling them what to do differently.

You've talked about, for example, how an ABC-inspired manager might walk up to a physicist and suggest that they think about lower-dimensional spacetime. I'm claiming that the physicist has probably already thought about lower-dimensional spacetimes, without the manager having told them so. You've talked about how you think ABC-inspired management would emphasize "holographic models". Well, somehow or other, hundreds of theorists were already working on holographic models. You've talked about the need to think about an "action rather than an object" for mass, and here's the $10-billion-dollar world investment in Higgs-like physics over the past three decades.

In other words, I think your "management" technique is equivalent to an IT manager standing in a forest, quoting Heidegger on the Quidditas of tree-ness, and telling the trees that maybe they should consider sunlight as a food source ("Yep," say the trees. "We stand here and photosynthesize every day.") and telling the squirrels that nuts can be stored for winter food ("Mmmphphmh", say the squirrels, mouths full of nuts).

 

[W.D.Clinger]

When arguing with physicists about physics by insisting the critical issues lie within your field of project management

Since I consider administration of physics to be a substantially different discipline than physics, I would strongly agree this would be a mistake.

Although I make plenty, I don't think I can claim that one.

I may have misinterpreted your response to dasmiller:

By my standards (and I don't think I'm alone), discussion of whether a 50-50 superposition or time dilation or other counterintuitive effects are 'real' is irrelevant to establishing the relative merits of various physics models.

We might plausibly predict your work does not involve physics, philosophy of science, or information systems project management, which is my field.

Although perhaps most of us do not perceive this connection, physicists like Einstein and Steven Weinberg, Bayesian philosophers like E.T. Jaynes, and much of the logical positivist community have regarded it as crucial.

Einstein's intuitions about quantum superposition and reality are now known to have been wrong, as has been explained to you. I'd be curious to know why you think Steven Weinberg and E T Jaynes agree with you here.

I have interpreted your repeated references to risk management to mean you regard risk as a critical issue that lies within your field of project management. Here's an example:

In that case, I've led you astray again. My personal preference is that researchers find out what space and time are in sufficient detail so we can identify potential loopholes to get from A to B, circumventing the intervening distance.

If FTL will be possible in the future, those who develop it will have information systems that differ from ours in ways we cannot know precisely, but about which I do believe we can infer a number of general attributes, and that project management best practices can help limit the risk of research efforts better than they have in the past.

What's more, much of your argument appears to be inconsistent with basic knowledge of the physics you've chosen to discuss. Many of those examples involve quantum mechanics; here's an example that involves relativity:

For us today: assuming the reality of that to which the term "spacetime dimensions" refers is this type of error, not in and of itself necessarily, but because the assumption is undocumented.

ben m spoke for many of us when he responded:

This is getting interesting. What makes you think that "spacetime dimensions" is undocumented? I crack open my copy of Misner Thorne and Wheeler (a popular GR textbook) and find a step-by-step discussion of ways of understanding spacetime dimensionality, including a preview of caveats and interpretive issues, on page 10. I find a long discussion of "pregeometry", quoting people like Wheeler and Sakharov, running from page 1203 to 1217, which does NOT assume that 4D spacetime is really an underlying reality; it's a discussion of whether spacetime is itself emergent from something less intuitive.

ben m's question, which I have highlighted above, was pertinent. You didn't have much of an answer for it:

Substituting the spacetime object concept in a brain for the act of making an assumption, for example, seems to prohibit rational, productive discussion.

I don't really want to keep repeating explanations that seem mainly to be used for making points and confirming preconceptions of crackpots.

Using imaginary conversations as evidence, with and assuming another has the burden to explain statements one would never make show just how far this bias can take some participants.

I wouldn't engage creationists in their misrepresentations about the claims of science, nor can I afford to engage others in similarly faulty statements about philosophy of science and project management, especially when aversion to understanding is evidenced.

I retire from this thread with personal and profession thanks for your effort in critiquing my reasoning. You have my gratitude, and are welcome to contact me in the future if you ever have an interest or reason to do so.

Also, thanks to other contributors.

Saying something silly about relativity, and then refusing to answer a direct question asking why you believe that silly thing, while comparing your questioners to creationists, is indeed the sort of thing that can lead others to think your argument is crackpot. As The Man said, your response was "Almost a crackpot trifecta."

You have never made a serious attempt to answer ben m's question, which suggests two things: (1) You had no basis for your silly statement. (2) You're unwilling to take responsibility for having said something you can't support.

 

[steenkh]

A tool that basically tells you to concentrate on avenues that seem to lead to the hoped-for result will certainly be effective in leading you to that result, but if the result is actually impossible, it will lead you down a number of dead ends. Is risk management not intended to help avoiding dead ends?

 

[The Man]

...and "Y is a crackpot trifecta" doesn't really help anyone.

Oh no, not the “creationists” comparison!!!!!

Accusations of “aversion to understanding is evidenced”

And of course “bias”.

Almost a crackpot trifecta.

The key word you seem to have deliberately excluded is “Almost” and the reason it is “Almost a crackpot trifecta” is because none of those horses actually win (,place or even show).

Commitment to equal responsibility for supporting the claim that a defect exists does seem lacking in much of the nay-saying, but understandable because this is often tedious work.

Oh, you mean like this “nay-saying”…

I wouldn't engage creationists in their misrepresentations about the claims of science, nor can I afford to engage others in similarly faulty statements about philosophy of science and project management, especially when aversion to understanding is evidenced.

...how can you expect to convince anyone you can help when you evidently can’t even seem to just help yourself?

One of the other things (other than what you capitalized in your user name is BS) that made me think you might just be having us on is that you seem to reference the parts but just can’t seem to put them together yourself. It seemed a little too coincidental that you should be so close and yet so far away without being intentional.

Let’s have a look…

We could devise a clear, falsifiable test:

Not a bad recommendation, even if what you were attempting to falsify (in that post) and your proposed test itself were questionable.

…and Popper's falsifiability was put forward as a solution to this problem of distinguishing between good and bad ideas when both are in this uncertain area. Of course, falsifiability was shown to have serious problems as well...such as when the lack of stellar parallax seemed to falsify heliocentrism.

..and here you refer to falsifiability again, so that concept does not seem new or unknown to you.

However in the same post you refer to...

Our vision of success might include a finding unicorns, whereas the existence of them at the time we seek them is a state of nature we cannot control.

The relationship between vision and state is a bit more complex than direct equivalence also. For successful accomplishment of our vision, It is a necessary condition for unicorns to exist during the time we are seeking them, but it is not a sufficient condition for successfully finding them. If they existed, we might still miss them for lots of reasons. This is a common justification for pseudo-scientific beliefs we would not want to consider good science, but lots of legitimate science happens in this area as well...

An example vision of “finding unicorns”.

As indicated before, I'm unaware of where this dependency is explicitly specified in this manner, but if we were planning, I would advocate it be restated to prevent the misinterpretation mentioned before: "If (FTL possible state of nature exists) then (successful accomplishment)", which would be invalid. We can only be certain that if (no FTL possible state of nature exists) then (no successful accomplishment)".

Here I thought you might be starting to put them together but that still doesn’t seem to be the case. Just as in the unicorn example not finding them doesn’t falsify a vision of finding unicorns. Similarly not finding FTL travel does not falsify a ‘vision of finding FTL travel’. So a ‘vision of finding FTL travel’ can be maintained even when “(no FTL possible state of nature exists)”. We simply can’t “be certain that” “(no FTL possible state of nature exists)”. That’s the appeal to the unknown that maintains the vision and makes it un-falsifiable just like the unicorn example.

I had hoped you would have put this together yourself and given that all the parts were there even suspected you might have done it intentionally to get someone else to assemble. Unfortunately neither seems to be the case.

Remember the parts mentioned before about treating the unknown as if it were known? What often makes the unknown so appealing is that it is unknown and barring omnipotence there will always be some unknowns. So in such appeals to the unknown it is specifically not a case of treating the unknown as if it were known.

A tool that basically tells you to concentrate on avenues that seem to lead to the hoped-for result will certainly be effective in leading you to that result, but if the result is actually impossible, it will lead you down a number of dead ends. Is risk management not intended to help avoiding dead ends?

Exactly steenkh. As long as one can appeal to some future unknown state there always seems to be somewhere to go even if you are headed down a dead end street. For someone promoting “better risk control” like BurntSynapse it seems a very self contradictory position to take as it appeals to the unknown future state of success while ignoring the equally unknown risks as well as known risks of holding to an un-falsifiable vision.

 

[ben m]

Here's a non-Kuhn-ized picture of modern physics theory, which perhaps clarifies why BurntS's approach sounds so wrong to me.

Imagine you've lost a whole ring-ful of keys in a campground at night. You don't know how many keys were on the ring, or where you might have dropped them, or even what they look like.

The mainstream physics approach is sort of multi-pronged.

You can only look for your keys if there's light, so you start looking near the known campfires. You go to a campfire and start scouring the ground around it. You're looking for obvious key-shaped bits of metal, but you'll also pick up (at least cursorily) anything unfamiliar---"is this a key or a twig? I can't tell yet"---and examine it until you can figure out whether it's a key of some sort.

The other thing you do is to try to expand the campfires. We know, right from the beginning, that there are dark areas we're not exploring yet. We also know that there's no point exploring them without more light. So while part of your research is scouring the fire-lit campsites for keys (actual laws of physics), part of it is looking for new firewood and fire-rings (new theoretical tools).

Experimentalists can help. Experiments can launch flaming arrows into the dark. If you're lucky, your arrow lands in a woodpile and starts a new fire, giving theorists a new place to search. Experiments can also retrieve facts about the keyring and the locks---"one of the missing keys is a brass, double-sided Yale; none of the keys are painted pink"---giving more focus to the searchers. If you find something you think is a key, an experimentalist can sometimes stick it in a lock and see if it opens.

So, some common "trouble-with-physics" complaints, mapped to my analogy.

• There's the big, original QM campfire and the big, original GR campfire. There used to be a dimly-lit area halfway between them, which Einstein spent his last decades searching. Both of the fires have gotten bigger since then, so this particular area is now well-lit and clearly devoid of lost keys.
  
• String theory. String theorists lit a big new campfire, which turns out to illuminate a burned-out key factory. There are keys and key-like objects everywhere. But we don't know what part of the factory we're sifting through. Is it a scrap pile, made up of non-keys? A discard pile, containing billions of real keys whose locks don't exist any more? A mixture of the two, with our real lost key on top somewhere? We don't know. The search is slow and frequently unproductive, though we're getting better at it---Maldacena, for example, discovered that each brass key is a copy of a steel key. There's also a strong smell of pine resin, leading people to suspect that there are fresh firewood-stacks in this area.
  
• Lee Smolin is annoyed that so many people are searching the key factory. He's got a small campfire of his own and wants more people to search the ground there. Peter Woit isn't actually searching for keys; he's sitting at Smolin's fire roasting marshmallows, and wants some company.
  
• Crackpots are wandering around the oldest campfires picking up bottlecaps and detritus. "This is a key!", says the crackpot, holding up a discarded tissue. "No it's not," say the searchers, "put it down." Another crackpot wanders over and picks up the same tissue. "This is a contact lens!" he says. "First, no it's not; second, we're looking for keys; third, that is also not a key." says the physicist. "That's what they told Galileo," says the crackpot.
  
• The more speculative sort of physicists---think Max Tegmark, Freeman Dyson, Frank Wilczek---like to look at the map of light and dark regions and speculate about the dark areas. "Most of the lit ground is sandy," they might say, "but mightn't there by an asphalt road running through it? Might there be a camp office with a vending machine? If so it's probably along the road. Sometimes people lose keys while rooting for quarters in their pockets."
  
• The LHC is a whole battalion of archers with flaming arrows, standing on the shore of a lake at the edge of the campground. They're shooting arrows as far as they can hoping to light a fire on the far shore---or any sort of dock, isthmus, islet, peninsula, or even a buoy near such a shore. But so far all these arrows have landed in the water. The shore may be just out of reach, or it might be a thousand miles away. There's no way to tell but to keep shooting harder and harder.
• BurntS is standing near the main, central bonfire. It's an area which has been searched heavily; indeed it's an area where all key-searchers train before heading to outlying campfires. "There really might be a key here," he says, pointing at the 2'x2' patch of sand underfoot. "I have drawn a map of the area around this bonfire, and a rational left-right sweep pattern that lets us search the whole area, and my sweep includes this patch right here." The searchers check his map. "We've covered that whole area many times over, including an excavation to a depth of three feet," they say. "But you didn't do it in a sweep pattern," says BurntS. "It's the same ground no matter how you cover it," say the searchers. "It'd be a shame if there's a key RIGHT HERE and we missed it because you didn't search my way," says BurntS. "Hey look! While you were staring at the ground, Nima Arkani-Hamed seems to have set fire to Feynman's entire site," say the searchers, scurrying off.
  

 

[Brainache]

...
The LHC is a whole battalion of archers with flaming arrows, standing on the shore of a lake at the edge of the campground. They're shooting arrows as far as they can hoping to light a fire on the far shore---or any sort of dock, isthmus, islet, peninsula, or even a buoy near such a shore. But so far all these arrows have landed in the water. The shore may be just out of reach, or it might be a thousand miles away. There's no way to tell but to keep shooting harder and harder.

I hope they don't shoot themselves in the back.

 

[Farsight]

I see somebody referred to me in unfavourable terms.

...That reminds me of another odd opinion. Farsight has claimed that a lot of mainstream speculations are nothing but crackpottery: supersymmetry, string theory, multiverses, ... This is because there is supposedly no evidence for any of these.

I have no problem with speculation, lpetrich. Some guy comes up with some hypothesis, we test the hypothesis, et cetera. That's science. But when the hypothesis has been around for fifty years and there's not a scrap of evidence, well, I'm sceptical. And mine is not some "odd opinion". Take a look at Woit's blog for the one ring to rule them all nonsense now being peddled under the string theory banner. It's tripe.

...we have Farsight's idea that an electron is a photon in a double loop -- in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence...

It's not my idea, and the evidence for it is overwhelming. You make an electron (and a positron) in pair production, you can diffract it, it's got a magnetic moment, 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", in atomic orbitals "electrons exist as standing waves", and you can annihilate the electron with the positron and you've got photons again. Check out Dirac's belt and note "in this sense a Mobius strip is reminiscent of spin-1/2 particles in quantum mechanics". Draw round the Mobius strip for the double loop. Then compare and contrast all that with the evidence for supersymmetry, string theory, and multiverses.

Now, what's all this "overwhelming contradictory evidence" you're referring to? Come on, let's have it.

 

[ben m]

But when the hypothesis has been around for fifty years and there's not a scrap of evidence

Too bad about the Higgs boson (no evidence 1964-2012), the neutrino (no evidence (1930-1956), neutrino mass (1930-1999ish), the black hole (1930s-1970s), the neutron star (1930s-1960s), etc.

"Evidence" requires the intersection of two things: (a) the hypothesis has to be true and (b) the technology for the experiments has to exist. We don't know if SUSY is true or not, but it's dumb to reject it for the reason you cite. Your reasoning is basically an unscientific guess about what the data from future colliders will look like.

It's not my idea, and the evidence for it is overwhelming. You make an electron (and a positron) in pair production, you can diffract it, it's got a magnetic moment, 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", in atomic orbitals "electrons exist as standing waves", and you can annihilate the electron with the positron and you've got photons again.

That is not "overwhelming evidence", that is "I drew a picture of it and really like how it looks". To people other than you, your hypothesis predicts that electrons should be integer spin, zero charge, zero magnetic moment, and should not interact with the weak bosons. Your hypothesis predicts that Maxwell's Equations are wrong and require a large nonlinear term, which contradicts observations. Your hypothesis is therefore falsified, which is the second-best thing that can happen to a hypothesis.

All of your "overwhelming evidence", and much more, is explained and predicted---with numbers, not just pictures and shouting---by the mainstream "the electron is NOT made of photons" hypothesis of QFT. QFT predicts the pair production, the annihilation, the diffraction, the Einstein-de Haas effect, the atomic orbitals ... and the 1/2-integer spin, the magnetic moment, hundreds of scattering cross sections, the running of the coupling with energy, etc. And these calculations (and the experimental tests) are published, easily verified using standard and widely-taught methods. That's what "overwhelming evidence" looks like, which is the first-best thing that can happen to a hypothesis.

 

[Perpetual Student]

This thread is providing more insight into crackpot types. Crackpot ideas come in a variety of forms. In this thread, for example, we have Farsight's idea that an electron is a photon in a double loop -- in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence.
...

...
Now, what's all this "overwhelming contradictory evidence" you're referring to? Come on, let's have it.

The answer ben m gave above is far better than any I could have provided. (I am not a physicist -- thank you ben.)
My response would have simply been that your unsupported notion that an electron is two photons wrapped like a bow tie contradicts QFT, which has been confirmed through countless experiments. You can review any one of many sources available to confirm that. You might want to audit the Susskind lectures covering particle physics after you have reviewed his lectures in QFT. Give it a try -- seriously. I might lead you away from all these crackpot notions you sadly wallow in.

 

[Kid Eager]

Too bad about the Higgs boson (no evidence 1964-2012), the neutrino (no evidence (1930-1956), neutrino mass (1930-1999ish), the black hole (1930s-1970s), the neutron star (1930s-1960s), etc.

"Evidence" requires the intersection of two things: (a) the hypothesis has to be true and (b) the technology for the experiments has to exist. We don't know if SUSY is true or not, but it's dumb to reject it for the reason you cite. Your reasoning is basically an unscientific guess about what the data from future colliders will look like.



That is not "overwhelming evidence", that is "I drew a picture of it and really like how it looks". To people other than you, your hypothesis predicts that electrons should be integer spin, zero charge, zero magnetic moment, and should not interact with the weak bosons. Your hypothesis predicts that Maxwell's Equations are wrong and require a large nonlinear term, which contradicts observations. Your hypothesis is therefore falsified, which is the second-best thing that can happen to a hypothesis.

All of your "overwhelming evidence", and much more, is explained and predicted---with numbers, not just pictures and shouting---by the mainstream "the electron is NOT made of photons" hypothesis of QFT. QFT predicts the pair production, the annihilation, the diffraction, the Einstein-de Haas effect, the atomic orbitals ... and the 1/2-integer spin, the magnetic moment, hundreds of scattering cross sections, the running of the coupling with energy, etc. And these calculations (and the experimental tests) are published, easily verified using standard and widely-taught methods. That's what "overwhelming evidence" looks like, which is the first-best thing that can happen to a hypothesis.

Now that's education! On the downside, I'm now going to have to look up a bunch of stuff to be able to understand the whole post...

 

[Reality Check]

RW claims Copernicus' goal was to protect astrology by "reform" of its basic mechanisms, which outraged opponents who regarded this not as reform, but more of an attack and rejection.

RW is wrong.
Astrology has no mechanisms. It does not depend on whatever causes the planets to be where they appear.
Astronomy is the branch of science that looks at measuring the positions of planets and creating mechanisms to predict the motion of planets.

Gingerich, Koyré ,Kuhn, Rosen and Rabin state that Nicolaus Copernicus never practiced or expressed any interest in astrology:

One of the subjects that Copernicus must have studied was astrology, since it was considered an important part of a medical education.[54] However, unlike most other prominent Renaissance astronomers, he appears never to have practiced or expressed any interest in astrology.[55]
...
Gingerich (2004, pp. 187–89, 201); Koyré (1973, p. 94); Kuhn (1957, p. 93); Rosen (2004, p. 123); Rabin (2005). Robbins (1964, p.x), however, includes Copernicus among a list of Renaissance astronomers who "either practiced astrology themselves or countenanced its practice".

Even astrologers do not claim that Nicolaus Copernicus tried to protect astrology !

 

[W.D.Clinger]

My response would have simply been that your unsupported notion that an electron is two photons wrapped like a bow tie contradicts QFT, which has been confirmed through countless experiments. You can review any one of many sources available to confirm that.

Speaking of QFT, the next-to-last paragraph of David McMahon's preface to Quantum Field Theory Demystified hints at an answer to this thread's titular question:

Unfortunately, learning quantum field theory entails some background in physics and math. The bottom line is, I assume you have it. The background I am expecting includes quantum mechanics, some basic special relativity, some exposure to electromagnetism and Maxwell's equations, calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations. If you lack this background do some studying in these subjects and then give this book a try.

 

[ben m]

Let me clarify that I'm not a huge fan of SUSY. Unlike Farsight, I do not hold that "We searched for SUSY and didn't find it, therefore it's not true, morons". We searched for SUSY using a 7-TeV proton-proton collider. We did not find it where we were looking, i.e. we did not find squarks or gluinos lighter than about 800 GeV. Therefore there are no squarks or gluinos lighter than 800 GeV.

We still do not know whether SUSY is true or false.

We do know that SUSY is either (a) false, or (b) true but inaccessible with the 2010-2012 LHC. Perhaps SUSY is (c) true, inaccessible to the 2010-2012 run, but accessible to the 2015-2020 LHC run. I would place a vaguely-Bayesian bet against (c) but it's just a bet.

Farsight he seems to be claiming knowledge of case (a), that SUSY is wrong. In other words, he's claiming knowledge of the particle spectrum between 800 GeV and the GUT scale. I'd like to know where he acquired this knowledge without an appropriate GUT-energy accelerator and detector. Oh wait, I know where he acquired it---he made it up. He probably drew a picture of it, too, and read some random articles in which an anti-SUSY truth has to be inferred by reading between the lines.

 

[abaddon]

Astrology? really? Thirty years ago I bought that malarkey, but tossed it in my late teens early twenties as the crap it was.

However, time has informed me. You can't teach facts to kids. My own kids? I find the best policy is to simply say "you believe that crap? Lets follow it and see what happens" works every time. None of the nuttery ever works out.

 

[Farsight]

Too bad about the Higgs boson (no evidence 1964-2012)

Too bad the evidence is just a bump on a graph, and that the Higgs mechanism is said to be responsible for 1% of the mass of matter, and that the Higgs boson gets its mass from the kinetic energy given to the protons because E=mc².

, the neutrino (no evidence (1930-1956), neutrino mass (1930-1999ish), the black hole (1930s-1970s), the neutron star (1930s-1960s), etc. "Evidence" requires the intersection of two things: (a) the hypothesis has to be true and (b) the technology for the experiments has to exist.

Sure it does. But the LHC hasn't provided a scrap of evidence for SUSY. Google on SUSY in trouble for that.

We don't know if SUSY is true or not, but it's dumb to reject it for the reason you cite. Your reasoning is basically an unscientific guess about what the data from future colliders will look like.

Garbage. My reasoning is based upon the electron model. Understand the electron, and you understand why the selectron is trash.

That is not "overwhelming evidence", that is "I drew a picture of it and really like how it looks". To people other than you, your hypothesis predicts that electrons should be integer spin, zero charge, zero magnetic moment, and should not interact with the weak bosons. Your hypothesis predicts that Maxwell's Equations are wrong and require a large nonlinear term, which contradicts observations. Your hypothesis is therefore falsified, which is the second-best thing that can happen to a hypothesis.

Tosh. And again, it isn't my hypothesis. Google on the toroidal electron. See that spin ½? Like in Dirac's belt?

All of your "overwhelming evidence", and much more, is explained and predicted---with numbers, not just pictures and shouting---by the mainstream "the electron is NOT made of photons" hypothesis of QFT. QFT predicts the pair production, the annihilation, the diffraction, the Einstein-de Haas effect, the atomic orbitals ... and the 1/2-integer spin, the magnetic moment, hundreds of scattering cross sections, the running of the coupling with energy, etc. And these calculations (and the experimental tests) are published, easily verified using standard and widely-taught methods. That's what "overwhelming evidence" looks like, which is the first-best thing that can happen to a hypothesis.

Gamma-gamma pair production, electron diffraction, magnetic moment, Einstein-de Haas, and annihilation to gamma photons is the overwhelming evidence. But don't think I'm saying QFT is wrong. I'm not saying that. What I am saying however is you don't understand it. So much so that you confuse theory for evidence, and then reject the evidence. Come on, what do you think the electron is made of? Cheese? I know, let's ask your hero Max Tegmark. Here we go, The Mathematical Universe. Tegmark thinks that "our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure". Why, the electron is made of mathematics! LOL, and you've got the cheek to call me a crackpot.

 

[Farsight]

The answer ben m gave above is far better than any I could have provided. (I am not a physicist -- thank you ben.)

Ben's answer was pathetic.

My response would have simply been that your unsupported notion that an electron is two photons wrapped like a bow tie contradicts QFT

Huh? Where did you get that from? You said above that "we have Farsight's idea that an electron is a photon in a double loop". How do you go from that to an electron is two photons wrapped like a bow tie?

which has been confirmed through countless experiments. You can review any one of many sources available to confirm that. You might want to audit the Susskind lectures covering particle physics after you have reviewed his lectures in QFT. Give it a try -- seriously. I might lead you away from all these crackpot notions you sadly wallow in.

Gamma-gamma pair production, electron diffraction, magnetic moment, Einstein-de Haas, and annihilation to gamma photons is not some crackpot notion. So come on, where's your overwhelming contradictory evidence?

You haven't got any, have you?