Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[ctamblyn]

If you say so. So what? Your original claim was:

You were wrong.




Well, you imagine wrong. The B-field is identically zero in the rod's rest frame, and so it's a pure electrostatics problem. You can pretty easily write some software to numerically integrate the equations of motion if you want to study general trajectories (basically it's the same problem as motion in a 1/r potential in 2D), but by the geometry of the situation and Noether's theorem, the test particle's z-components of linear and angular momentum are conserved and so (since the force is attractive) there exist helical (not "doubly helical") paths. It's elementary classical mechanics.

Technical correction to the above: it's a 1/r force, not potential. Apologies for any confusion that may have caused.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Treating an electromagnetic field as a whole or as an electric field plus a magnetic field is equally valid.
Try learning about Maxwell's equations (oh look E and B fields!) or Mathematical descriptions of the electromagnetic field which starts off with E and B fields, shows how to rewrite the equations mathematically in terms of potentials and currents and then transforms to the ABS formulation (one equation where F is basically the electromagnetic field).

The difference between the two treatments is mathematical, not physical.

Therein lies Farsight's Achilles' heel, his undoing, his downfall. Physics by words, pictures, analogies and by preconception has very serious limitations, rendering it useless.

 

[BurntSynapse]

I have done my best to understand what you're saying. You are doing a poor job of explaining it.

Perhaps you judge this better than the Project Management Institute, some of the top experts in the world, and my thousands of former students.

Perhaps you should have been performing the grad school accreditation & maturity studies at universities around the world assessing pedagogy instead of me. Perhaps you would have done a better job explaining.

OTOH, this is not a classroom where my professional judgment matters. I'm not here to teach really, either. I'm here to gain good criticism - although much criticism about my presentation, like lack of clarity has been valuable.

No one here paid big bucks to listen to me lecture them, and that matters a lot, as does this presentation format: a text forum. I'm trying to put my best presentation work into The Starship Vlog.

The scenarios I'm positing are meant to be opportunities to clarify.

Your intent is not in question, nor is appealing to your good motives a defense. My criticism attacks your method: positing and attacking a position different and weaker than an opponent's strongest argument.

They're prompts, attempting to get you to reconsider your ideas ("Aha, when you put it into that example, might not work.") or to diagnose my misimpressions ("Aha, having read your scenario I see where you misunderstand process concepts.

This is difficult because your prompts seem to lack / avoid similar context, as well as exhibiting lack of familiarity with the tools being applied.

The context is one of failure to deliver an information system (a physics framework) which meets specific criteria for performance (consistency with available observations). To me, this seems to serve avoiding the rational consequence we'd tend to feel: an obligation to suggest an alternative approach which improves on an ineffective current practice.

No problem of ineffectiveness, no need for a process improvement. So we're free to shoot down any suggestion because its foundation is false. We wouldn't even need to understand the suggestion - which typically is a real time & effort savings.

So...the closest I can come to "diagnosis" would be to suggest the important difference between an individual advocating their own "information monopoles" to guide Einstein you equate with "my process replacement" is that process replacement is from the top experts in the relevant field, which "I" would no more have come up with that than GR. Information monopoles are your example of what anyone would consider the opposite end of reliability; It is not from experts, it is not clearly defined, it has no historical credibility and proven track record of success. I see these distinctions as significant, you do not seem to perceive them as existing at all.

"Einstein actually made it work" is true, but I would assert (without any objective evidence) the last century's track record for information systems project management is far better in several dimensions than Einstein best work, if much less glamorous.

Sorry, I was hoping you'd explain. Why is "non-integer dimensions" an important neglected point in need of risk-manager documentation, but "information monopoles" not?

I hope the above explains.

Can you walk me through it? Use the distinction to illustrate your method for identifying sources of risk.

Yes, and with slides: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t95xWsxqNvI

Can you invent a concrete scenario, just for illustration purposes, in which "the reformulation of fundamental physics" is not done with modern topological tools?

Yes. My concrete example is that things continue as they are.

Are you concerned that math-department topologists developed a bunch of tools, which physicists never learned about at all?

I'm not sure about "at all", but there exist for example, definite barriers between molecular engineers who find quaternions by far the best tools for their work with electrons and physicists who don't. In my interviews, the aversion is mutual. A couple of social & organizational reasons for this are discussed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wsUf1OUok at about 12 minutes. I don't know of any brane theories using quaternion, fractals, or frame accounts within cognitive science of science.

Having said that and to directly address your question: based on the history of information revolutions, I'm more concerned with the potential offered by these almost entirely separated communities collaborating, on projects with philosophers of scientific revolutions who can help point teams in new directions. (I know that sounds hand-wavy)

Are you concerned that Heaviside wrote down some 19th-century math, and Schwinger just looked at Heaviside's paper and said "OK, I'll keep using that" and didn't apply his 1950s math skills at all?

Not in the least.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

"Einstein actually made it work" is true, but I would assert (without any objective evidence) the last century's track record for information systems project management is far better in several dimensions than Einstein best work, if much less glamorous.

In a series of reports from 1994 through 2009, the Standish Group estimated that one quarter of all software projects are cancelled before delivery, or were delivered but never used. Almost half of the software that was good enough to use was late, over budget, or failed to meet its requirements. Barely one quarter of the projects could be counted as fully successful.

I would have expected an expert on IT Project Management to know that.

Sorry, I was hoping you'd explain. Why is "non-integer dimensions" an important neglected point in need of risk-manager documentation, but "information monopoles" not?

I hope the above explains.

Your alleged explanation did not even mention "non-integer dimensions".

Fractal dimensions are a real topic in mathematics. (Indeed, my first journal article was co-authored by one of Mandelbrot's PhD students co-authors.) Unfortunately, fractal dimensions have become a strange attractor for the woo-inclined. Given BurntSynapse's unwillingness to offer specifics (or any other sign of familiarity with the topic), it's reasonable to assume that's what's going on here.

 

[BurntSynapse]

Really? Let's take a look:
I occupy myself by studying physics, reviewing new developments in physics and cosmology, while comparing and considering the opinions of the most expert people in the field.
At the same time, in relative ignorance, you have the audacity to lecture that faster than light travel can be achieved through better project management and publicly assert that Maxwell's equations have been misused because quaternions have some mystical quality that avoids the "risks" of vectors.

I do assert that if FTL is possible, PM should improve our chances of accomplishing it immeasurably, and if gimbal lock is mystical to you: OK.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I do assert that if FTL is possible, PM should improve our chances of accomplishing it immeasurably, and if gimbal lock is mystical to you: OK.

Quaternions avoid gimbal lock by using a fourth numerical parameter and representing 3-D rotations as equivalence classes of four-tuples. With the usual vector or matrix representations of rotations, gimbal lock can be avoided by changing the vector basis when approaching a neighborhood of the coordinate singularity. When calculations are done by computer, the equivalence classes of the quaternion representation are often more convenient than changes of basis.

There's nothing mystical about gimbal lock. What's mystical here is BurntSynapse's speculation that gimbal lock might have something to do with faster-than-light communication or travel.

 

[steenkh]

It seems to me that the PM of BurntSynapse works like the sort of "attractor" that some woos get rich selling books about: if you really want something, it will come to you!

 

[godless dave]

And again I refer you to Aptly-named Aharonov-Bohm effect has a classical analogue, long history. Classical physics describes waves. See this.

"It is interesting to note that the reasoning of Ehrenberg and Siday was based almost wholly on classical mechanics".

Bolding mine.

So no, it's a classical paper. Some refer to it as a semi-classical paper, but the word classical is still in there.

Yes, and the word "circle" is in "semi-circle". So a semi-circle is a circle, right?

 

[edd]

I do assert that if FTL is possible, PM should improve our chances of accomplishing it immeasurably, and if gimbal lock is mystical to you: OK.

You think the vector forms of Maxwell's Equations suffer from gimbal lock? I might have missed this if it came up before.

 

[ben m]

UOR

So...the closest I can come to "diagnosis" would be to suggest the important difference between an individual advocating their own "information monopoles" to guide Einstein you equate with "my process replacement" is that process replacement is from the top experts in the relevant field, which "I" would no more have come up with that than GR. Information monopoles are your example of what anyone would consider the opposite end of reliability; It is not from experts, it is not clearly defined, it has no historical credibility and proven track record of success. I see these distinctions as significant, you do not seem to perceive them as existing at all.

Well, I understand one fragment of that. You're admitting that experts' opinions matter. The difference between "information monopoles" and "fractional dimensions" is NOT to be judged by the non-physicist manager using some abstract tools. It's to be judged by "top experts". There has to be some physical credibility and "track record", it can't be a fragment of an idea.

So, some new problems. In actual historical paradigm shifts, was there ever an idea---other than the successful one---that was "clearly defined, had historic credibility, and a proven track record", and therefore subject to management? If you had walked up to James Clerk Maxwell (a top expert) and asked him to evaluate (a) information monopoles, (b) fractional dimensions, and (c) time as a process, he'd have declared all of them to be fragmentary.

Second, if the idea actually has a "track record", it generally means that people are already working on it, without input from the project manager. For the vast majority of "ideas with track records", if the PM says "try this!", the answer will be "we already are".

Finally ... seriously, you have "top experts" telling you that non-integer-dimensions has a "track record" in physics? Who are these experts? Laurent Nottale? Mohammed El-Naschie, perhaps? How can you tell a real expert from a fake expert? In the current world, an idea gets worked on if you can convince other physicists to work on it (attract collaborators), or to give it good reviews (peer-reviewed funding bodies). In your world, would you only have to convince the PM? What if the PM is gullible?

Yes. My concrete example is that things continue as they are.

You're missing the point. I assert that physicists are already using the best available mathematical tools. I assert that an actual PM review would fail to identify any fundamental-physics efforts for which physicists are using inappropriately-outdated math tools. Do you have anything to counter this assertion?

I assert that your statement is equivalent to "Boy, I hope that the auto industry is using the latest technology in crash-test dummies" or "I hope Google and Facebook are aware that modern chip architectures use less power than they did 10 years ago". The auto industry *is* the crash-test-dummy-technology industry. Google knows it needs low-power chipsets, and chip-designers know they want to sell chips to Google, so they keep in close contact for this exact reason.

In other words, your description of "entirely separate" communities is simply wrong. Math and physics are not separate communities at all. Our math department chair is a physicist, and our physics chair is a biophysicist. What makes you think otherwise? Where are you getting your information?

 

[tsig]

Bolding mine.



Yes, and the word "circle" is in "semi-circle". So a semi-circle is a circle, right?

A semi circle is a big rig taking a tight curve. Them bog werds don't scare me none.

 

[ben m]

You think the vector forms of Maxwell's Equations suffer from gimbal lock? I might have missed this if it came up before.

From Wikipedia:

A rotation in 3D space can be represented numerically with matrices in several ways. One of these representations is ...

The cause of gimbal lock is representing an orientation as 3 axial rotations with Euler angles. A potential solution therefore is to represent the orientation in some other way.

This could be as a Rotation matrix, a quaternion, or a similar orientation representation that treats the orientation as a value rather than 3 separate and related values.

This is why you haven't heard of it, edd. I learned Euler angles in undergraduate classical mechanics and for the most part never used them again. Virtually every concrete vector-rotation problem I've encountered since then has used rotation matrices. Every actual physics equation I can think of is expressed in rotation matrices. Heck, there was a problem I had to solve in graduate school, related to spacecraft orientation. The problem was easier to formulate in Euler angles (and hours of staring at, and rotating, my right hand) but when I had to enter it into my code I did so as a rotation matrix. Rotation matrices do not suffer from gimbal lock.

BurntS, you were misinformed about this "risk". You read about a problem but only daydreamed about how this problem might affect physicists. Did you bother asking any actual physicists about their use of Euler angles?

Is it a coincidence that the particular issue you're misinformed about---the difference between quaternions and vectors---happens to be an issue that's popular among crackpot free-energy-conspiracy/Tesla-fanatic/Einstein-Was-Wrong crackpots? I asked in my previous post "what happens if the PM is gullible"; I repeat the question.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

This is why you haven't heard of it, edd. I learned Euler angles in undergraduate classical mechanics and for the most part never used them again. Virtually every concrete vector-rotation problem I've encountered since then has used rotation matrices. Every actual physics equation I can think of is expressed in rotation matrices. Heck, there was a problem I had to solve in graduate school, related to spacecraft orientation. The problem was easier to formulate in Euler angles (and hours of staring at, and rotating, my right hand) but when I had to enter it into my code I did so as a rotation matrix. Rotation matrices do not suffer from gimbal lock.

I'll expand on this just a bit because my previous message may have left a contrary impression. Euler angles have a coordinate singularity; avoiding that coordinate singularity may require Euler angles to be expressed with respect to at least two vector bases; if you try to use just one vector basis (as in mechanical devices that use three gimbals), you can get gimbal lock. As ben m wrote, rotation matrices don't suffer from gimbal lock.

BurntS, you were misinformed about this "risk". You read about a problem but only daydreamed about how this problem might affect physicists. Did you bother asking any actual physicists about their use of Euler angles?

In particular, Heaviside's vector version of Maxwell's equations doesn't use Euler angles.

 

[Perpetual Student]

I do assert that if FTL is possible, PM should improve our chances of accomplishing it immeasurably, and if gimbal lock is mystical to you: OK.

Well, you threw me off with that one! I had never heard of gimbal lock. So, because I do have some training in mathematics (MS), I was able to look up the Wikipedia article and some other references to learn that it is a well understood phenomenon. A quick review was all I needed to understand the problem.

As you can see for yourself from the comments above (you may also wish to review the Wikipedia article), it's not an issue effecting our understanding -- or an impediment to further research -- regarding either Maxwell's equations of FTL travel. The comments above were made by some extremely knowledgeable people, whose training is far above mine (always a good source for learning).

You see, there is a lesson to be learned here. Because I have an adequate background in mathematics I was able to quickly clear the air for myself. However, because you do not have enough training in this area, you fell prey to some crackpot stuff about the "risks" of gimbal lock. Perhaps you should apply some project management techniques to your own thinking process.

 

[Perpetual Student]

A semi circle is a big rig taking a tight curve. Them bog werds don't scare me none.

 

[lpetrich]

Saying "an electron has an electric monopole” does arise from thinking that E and B are separate fields.

Do I have to work out the mathematics of multipole expansions for you?

Why don't you work out the math some time? You may use these simplifications: the Newtonian limit and electrostatic-only interaction.

Because it doesn't help anybody to understand this. There's oodles of mathematics out there, but Clinger still thinks you create a magnetic field just by moving.

Why do you think that math doesn't help anyone understand anything? Why is your idea of "understanding" supposed to be relevant to making predictions?

Also, if you move relative to the source of an electrostatic field, you will observe that field as partially a magnetic field. However, that is still consistent with an electrically-charged elementary particle being an electric monopole. For some source, one does a multipole expansion in its rest frame, to avoid such relativity-of-motion issues.

Work out how particles with the same sign of electric charge behave near each other. You may use the simplifications I'd mentioned earlier.

We've done experiments to find out how those particles behave. We know how they behave.

Do I have to go into the details of what I'd asked you to work out?

('t Hooft-Polyakov magnetic monopoles...)

Seen one recently? Seeing as ‘t Hooft’s paper dates from 39 years ago, and that kind of monopole still hasn’t been seen, best not talk about “that kind of monopole” just yet.

Have you demonstrated that we ought to be seeing them?

The electromagnetic field is real. It’s essentially frame-dragged space Loren. Only unlike the frame-dragging of gravitomagnetism, it is vicious.

It isn't. I can point to the mathematical content of the Standard Model, while all you've ever come up with is mined quotes and the like. "Hermeneutical scholasticism", arguing like a theologian, research by literary interpretation.

What makes charge topological? Work out the mathematics, because topology is a well-established field of mathematics.
Work out the mathematics for us. Mathematics like what Newton and Maxwell and Einstein and Minkowski and Feynman had used.
Work out the mathematics for us. Book-thumping isn't going to prove anything to us.

Hard scientific evidence doesn’t prove anything to you, Loren.

Like what? EVERY bit of evidence that you've cited in support of your theories, Farsight, can be explained MUCH better by mainstream theories like the Standard Model.

And other people have tried to give people like you the mathematics, but guess what? They can’t get it into a journal like Foundations of Physics. Edited by ‘t Hooft. But what’s there instead? Why, it’s a paper by Max Tegmark. You know, the multiverse man. About the universe being literally made of mathematics. Tell me again about why there’s so much crackpot physics, Loren.

What makes it so silly?

 

[catsmate]

In a series of reports from 1994 through 2009, the Standish Group estimated that one quarter of all software projects are cancelled before delivery, or were delivered but never used. Almost half of the software that was good enough to use was late, over budget, or failed to meet its requirements. Barely one quarter of the projects could be counted as fully successful.

I would have expected an expert on IT Project Management to know that.

I am inexorably reminded of this.

 

[ben m]

I would assert (without any objective evidence) the last century's track record for information systems project management is far better in several dimensions than Einstein best work, if much less glamorous.

Of course now I'm curious. I can't even think of a basis for comparison between "information systems project management" and "Einstein's best work". To my ear it sounds like trying to compare NATO to a yogurt smoothie. It's like saying the infield fly rule is better than James Joyce's Ulysses.

 

[tsig]

Of course now I'm curious. I can't even think of a basis for comparison between "information systems project management" and "Einstein's best work". To my ear it sounds like trying to compare NATO to a yogurt smoothie. It's like saying the infield fly rule is better than James Joyce's Ulysses.

But just think how far along we'd be if some godlike project manager had gotten Einstein and colleagues together and guided their thinking and focused their efforts, we'd be skipping among the stars each of us with a planet of our own and unlimited life to enjoy it all.

 

[lpetrich]

Eric Weinstein watch: still no news about him.

(ctamblyn to Farsight: with "Relativity+", calculate the "Lamb shift" between the 2P_1/2 and 2S_1/2 energy levels of hydrogen)

No it isn't. My mission is to hold your nose to the grindstone and force you to examine the hard scientific evidence that's right there in front of you.

Except that quantitative tests have been an IMPORTANT part of particle physics for some decades now, and also in many other fields of science for many decades.

Farsight, as to that supposed "hard scientific evidence", every bit that you've presented is successfully explained by theories contrary to yours. EVERY bit. Notably by the Standard Model, quantum field theory and all. Yes, by what you've sometimes dismissed as "quantum mysticism".

I have an idea. Try to convince some major university to let you give a talk on your theories to its theoretical-physics department. Try to convince them that you have a greater theory than Eric Weinstein's theory.