P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
Was that, by any chance, revealed as part of a claim to expertise?
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Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk
- Thread starter Vixen
- Start date
Was that, by any chance, revealed as part of a claim to expertise?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
This might help.
Triple Nine Society - Wikipedia
@Vixen claims to qualify for membership in this society, which is tantamount to claiming she has scored in the 99.9th percentile of some standard intelligence test. This corresponds closely to three standard deviations above mean tested intelligence (although the "above" may remain in question in her case). In contrast, she maintains her critics have only "mean sd" intelligence, and has at times characterized them as "low intellect."
Since she cannot seem to demonstrate at this forum even an ordinary level of intelligence in important areas, the claim is clearly false. It may end up to be technically true depending on what test she took and when. But since she exhibits almost complete illiteracy in scientific and quantitative reasoning, it simply is not possible for anyone having those deficiencies to lay a claim to overall stellar intelligence. Those modes of reasoning contribute too much to an overall intelligence assessment for an incapacity in them to allow "triple-niner" status. We therefore dismiss her claims to superior intelligence as any sort of useful premise to her arguments.
At times @Vixen has claimed that her allegedly superior intelligence nevertheless enables her to reason correctly through problems in which she cannot demonstrate required specialized knowledge. She claims she is better at the "abstract concepts" and doesn't need to bother with factual details. At other times she claims that her allegedly superior intelligence creates a difficulty in communicating with her "low intellect" critics because of the so-called Simonton Gap. She cites this as an excuse for why large numbers of people frequently can't figure out what she's trying to say.
It's more likely that her claim to superior intelligence contrasted with her demonstrated incompetence is simply meant to attract attention—even if it's negative. It's likely a put-on.
I'm reminded of "Keith" from season 2 of American Idol who steadfastly maintained that he was a superstar destined for fame despite his nasal, off-key vocals. Simon Cowell opined that he might be the worst singer in the entire world. Having coached singers for American Idol auditions and having learned from participants how the contestants are selected, I can say it would ordinarily have been out of the question for "Keith" to return in season 3. But his delusional confidence was too cringy to ignore, and the show is ultimately about viewership even if it must occasionally resort to cringe to get it.
Similarly @Vixen's confident delusion of superior understanding in the face of elementary error (whether genuine or not) attracts more attention and comment than reasonable disagreement. Therefore it expands her page count, which seems to be what she's most interested in here at the forum. It goes hand in hand with her inability to admit even simple errors graciously. If you can't be smart, be cringy and they'll still pay attention to you.
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Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
I'd prefer a good Donegal or Harris tweed, personally.
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
I think it's in more a "I don't think that driver should be on the road" sense.
Reformed Offlian
Illuminator
The Pray Codex proves that the moon landings were fake.
Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
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Yorkshire Worsted.
Smooth, durable and a snappy drape.
catsmate
No longer the 1
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- 36,841
Ah, a good Protestant tweed as a friend of mine puts it....
More of a Shroud reference....
JesseCuster
Master Poster
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- May 4, 2016
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I’m bored, I’m going to take a stab at these. The instrument Vixen is referring to is probably a sextant.
I’ve no idea, because like the vast majority of people, including you, I have no practical or useful knowledge in how to use a sextant to actually determine my position if I was adrift at sea. Go on Vixen, tell us that you know how to use a sextant and could actually accurately determine your position (to within 10 feet accuracy!) if you were adrift at sea in 1887.
How did I calculate GMT from my pocket watch BTW? Assuming that the watch is perfectly accurate for the purposes of the discussion, then “calculating” GMT is just a matter of knowing what time zone the time was set to, and adjusting for that. For example if we set off from Britain and my watch was set to GMT, then “calculating” GMT is just a matter of looking at the watch and reading the time.
Somewhere off the south coast of Ireland. Looks like it’s about 30 miles or so. What’s the point of this question, to see if I know how to read a map? I don’t have an atlas, so I just put the co-ordinates into Google Earth.
Kimo Sapi has managed to figure out my co-ordinates to a tenth of a second of latitude and longitude. That’s to within about 10ft precision, yet you also say the error margin is “a few nautical miles”. Which is it? Is he able to calculate our co-ordinates to within feet, or to within a few miles?
The obvious correct answer is to simply ask Kimo Sapi which way to head. He knows how to use a sextant and figure out where we are, so he clearly knows how to navigate using celestial bodies. It looks like the nearest land is either Cork or Kerry, directly north, I’m sure he can figure out where north is.Vixen said:
Can I remind you Vixen that you’re meant to be explaining to me, in baby steps, i.e. starting off from basic premises and explaining each step to me like I’m a student that doesn’t know any of this, the logistics of transmitting TV footage from the moon to the earth, in 1969, via a “non-geopositioned” satellite?
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Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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Vixen, I honestly don't know which is funnier, your statement that a coordinate has been fixed to within an accuracy of about three meters north/south and east/west "give or take few nautical miles", which is like saying someone "arrived at 13:27:06, give or take a few hours", or that you felt the need to add a footnote pointing out that there was no GPS, smartphone, radio or satellite technology available in 1887.
ETA: and saying that this level of navigational precision was achieved with a sextant and a 19th Century pocket watch is like saying that the to-the-second time accuracy I mentioned was achieved with a sundial.
Of course, all this flapping about and playing at Socratic dialogue is really just to avoid admitting that radio communications between the earth and moon were a relatively simple matter, especially the aiming of the antennae, despite your assumption that because you didn't understand how to do it it must be impossible, or at least prohibitively difficult to implement.
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Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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- 23,301
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Quite a number of helpful people have already weighed in on @Vixen's irrelevant exercise and provide the answers that @JesseCuster is supposed to answer.
Since she italicized "positioned" twice, it's clear she's trying to posture this as the answer to why she keeps referring to "geopositioned." Terrestrial navigation is the correct usage of "geopositioning"—the exercise is to locate yourself on Earth's surface. But we don't use that word for spacecraft. She's trying to give Jesse a (irrelevant) correct usage so it seems like she hasn't misused a word to mean something having to do with space. Nothing in space is "geopositioned."
But then you were told that a moment later, Kimo used only the sextant and your timepiece to determine longitude. That's possible only during the daytime when the sun can be sighted, and only at noon when the sun has reached its zenith. Since she didn't describe the problem to you correctly, it's disingenuous to expect you to name the instrument she thinks is the magic solution.
You can determine both latitude and longitude from sun sightings using the sextant and a timepiece, but not the way she described it. You can determine both latitude and longitude from star and planet sightings using a sextant and a timepiece, but not the way she described it. In both of those cases you also need the reference materials that @Andy_Ross gave examples of. Kimo Sapi's feat is postured as requiring only two simple tools, but that's not correct. Navigators of the time also required printed references.
Her method only works if it is known that the pocket watch was set to GMT, and only when the sun sighting is taken at sea at exactly solar zenith = exactly local noon.
A word of caution, though. Time zones break this. Your navigation reference clock ("chronometer") has to be set so that it indicates noon at local (solar) noon in some known place with a precisely determined longitude. Local noon occurs at different times within a time zone. It varies continuously as Earth rotates. The entire United Kingdom is in the GMT time zone, but local apparent noon occurs at various times across the kingdom east to west. Luckily GMT is fixed to the time actually measured celestially at Greenwich.
Ditto Paris, where there was also a key meridian. French sailors would set their chronometers to local noon at the Paris Observatory, where (as in Greenwich) there is a literal line on the floor marking where to stand when you take your altitude sighting with your sextant. But all of France is in the UTC+1:00 time zone (summer hours ignored for now). Noon in London is 1:00 pm in Paris, but that's a feature of the time zone. If you set your chronometer in Paris and then read its time at local noon at Greenwich (where the Royal Navy is busy setting its chronometers to noon), your Paris-calibrated chronometer will read 12:09:21. That extra 9 minutes and 21 seconds is how long it took the Earth to rotate from when the sun was directly overhead in Paris to when it was directly overhead in Greenwich.
Captain Bligh—actually suffering the conditions of @Vixen's test—only attempted a precision of 1 minute of arc using his sextant and the tables in his navigation book. In terms of accuracy, he was farther off than a minute or two of arc. While the sextants of the day had vernier adjustments that could give you a precision of less than half a minute of arc, taking precise measurements from a moving boat is quite difficult. It's much easier on the deck of a reasonably more stable ship.
In practice, which direction you go depends heavily on what makes your lifeboat go. Lifeboats in the 1880s were not motorized. You'll either need to step the mast and use a sail, or take turns rowing. If sailing, the directions indicated by the available points of sail will hold sway. And a knowledge of local currents helps too. It does no good to row the "shortest" direction if you can only manage 1 kt against a 3-kt current.
Since she italicized "positioned" twice, it's clear she's trying to posture this as the answer to why she keeps referring to "geopositioned." Terrestrial navigation is the correct usage of "geopositioning"—the exercise is to locate yourself on Earth's surface. But we don't use that word for spacecraft. She's trying to give Jesse a (irrelevant) correct usage so it seems like she hasn't misused a word to mean something having to do with space. Nothing in space is "geopositioned."
That's correct, but the question you were asked was incomplete. @Vixen told you that Kimo Sapi used only the sextant to fix the boat's latitude. That's possible only at night, and only in the Northern Hemisphere, where measuring the altitude of the North Star (Polaris) gives you your latitude directly by subtracting the measured altitude from 90º. You can do that using only the sextant.
But then you were told that a moment later, Kimo used only the sextant and your timepiece to determine longitude. That's possible only during the daytime when the sun can be sighted, and only at noon when the sun has reached its zenith. Since she didn't describe the problem to you correctly, it's disingenuous to expect you to name the instrument she thinks is the magic solution.
You can determine both latitude and longitude from sun sightings using the sextant and a timepiece, but not the way she described it. You can determine both latitude and longitude from star and planet sightings using a sextant and a timepiece, but not the way she described it. In both of those cases you also need the reference materials that @Andy_Ross gave examples of. Kimo Sapi's feat is postured as requiring only two simple tools, but that's not correct. Navigators of the time also required printed references.
The key that she doesn't know what she's talking about is when she purports that Kimo Sapi reckoning their position knowing only "the current time at G.M.T." That sentence itself borders on gibberish, as you note:
Her method only works if it is known that the pocket watch was set to GMT, and only when the sun sighting is taken at sea at exactly solar zenith = exactly local noon.
A word of caution, though. Time zones break this. Your navigation reference clock ("chronometer") has to be set so that it indicates noon at local (solar) noon in some known place with a precisely determined longitude. Local noon occurs at different times within a time zone. It varies continuously as Earth rotates. The entire United Kingdom is in the GMT time zone, but local apparent noon occurs at various times across the kingdom east to west. Luckily GMT is fixed to the time actually measured celestially at Greenwich.
Ditto Paris, where there was also a key meridian. French sailors would set their chronometers to local noon at the Paris Observatory, where (as in Greenwich) there is a literal line on the floor marking where to stand when you take your altitude sighting with your sextant. But all of France is in the UTC+1:00 time zone (summer hours ignored for now). Noon in London is 1:00 pm in Paris, but that's a feature of the time zone. If you set your chronometer in Paris and then read its time at local noon at Greenwich (where the Royal Navy is busy setting its chronometers to noon), your Paris-calibrated chronometer will read 12:09:21. That extra 9 minutes and 21 seconds is how long it took the Earth to rotate from when the sun was directly overhead in Paris to when it was directly overhead in Greenwich.
The point is to shift the dialogue so that you're on the hook to answer questions, not her.
No, it's not possible with the equipment that Kimo Sapi has in @Vixen's exercise.
Captain Bligh—actually suffering the conditions of @Vixen's test—only attempted a precision of 1 minute of arc using his sextant and the tables in his navigation book. In terms of accuracy, he was farther off than a minute or two of arc. While the sextants of the day had vernier adjustments that could give you a precision of less than half a minute of arc, taking precise measurements from a moving boat is quite difficult. It's much easier on the deck of a reasonably more stable ship.
Obviously because @Vixen doesn't understand the very basic concept of precision in measurement. This is why she can't understand why we don't believe "Dr. David Groves, PhD."
You can use a sextant as a pelorus by operating it horizontally. A pelorus is a device that tells you the angle between your boat's heading and the direction to some visible object—its "relative bearing." If you wanted to steer a course other than due north, you could reckon it at night using Polaris and keeping its relative bearing constant at some desired value. During the day your sextant would be doing double duty taking sun sights to reckon your true azimuth from the sun's azimuth at a particular time of day. But this again requires tables that you don't have, or formulas you likely don't recall.
In practice, which direction you go depends heavily on what makes your lifeboat go. Lifeboats in the 1880s were not motorized. You'll either need to step the mast and use a sail, or take turns rowing. If sailing, the directions indicated by the available points of sail will hold sway. And a knowledge of local currents helps too. It does no good to row the "shortest" direction if you can only manage 1 kt against a 3-kt current.
And I reiterate that the purpose of your exercise is for her to elucidate her reasoning in baby steps. She very much wants to pretend she's the genius teacher leading us poor benighted skeptics to an appreciation of her triple-niner navigational skills. She's on the hook to show us she knows what she's talking about. So far she doesn't seem to be moving in the desired direction.
Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
It would appear that Vixen has left the building once again. Based on history, I expect her back Saturday, unless she reads this.
JesseCuster
Master Poster
- Joined
- May 4, 2016
- Messages
- 2,413
If that’s what she’s implying by highlighting the word positioned and why she’s rambling on about figuring out your co-ordinates with a sextant and a pocket watch in 1887, to try and backtrack what she meant by “geopositioning”, then she should be reminded that she’s already committed to a “geopositioned satellite” meaning one whose orbit matches the speed of the relevant planet. She clearly thought it meant a geostationary orbit or something along those lines.
EHocking
Penultimate Amazing
I was browsing through some old movies and came across a colourised copy of “Tobor The Great”.
The opening sequences reminded me of this thread.
I wonder if our resident genius will understand the fundamental (firmamental?) errors?
(the former being where the understanding of the latter seems to come from).
.
The opening sequences reminded me of this thread.
I wonder if our resident genius will understand the fundamental (firmamental?) errors?
(the former being where the understanding of the latter seems to come from).
.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
My guess is that she Googled for "geopositioning," ran across a description of celestial navigation (i.e., based stuff in the sky), and decided it would make a nice bluff. But as usual, when trying to restate it in her own words she botched it. Every time she tries to play teacher she shoots herself in the foot.
I think so too.
It's not necessarily wrong to introduce the concept of a geostationary orbit by starting with angular displacement rates. And that's also the basis of finding longitude by the chronometric method. But that's all they have in common. If you want to talk about geostationary orbits, you don't talk about irrelevant stuff like navigation that merely shares the same basic geometry unless you're trying to distract from the real questions. If you're trying to explain geostationary orbits, you invoke Kepler at this point: the period and radius of an orbit are intimately associated. Allen and Weaver know this. @Vixen apparently does not.
Still has nothing to do with sending TV pictures to Earth.
Helen
Implicitly explicit
I keep reading Kemo Sabe instead of Kimo Säpi. Makes things very confusing.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Is "N 51° 07.6' 23.2"" supposed to mean "N 51° 07' 59.2""?
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
Only Vixen knows what it means. Only Vixen ever knows what she means - except when not even she knows, of course, which is what usually turns out to be the case.
That's his brother. People confuse them all the time.
Here_to_learn
Illuminator
It means that the tool Kimo Säpi had in the bag was a bottle of Finnish Vodka.