Why is there so much crackpot physics?

W.D.Clinger said:
Are you citing Quine the blogger, who posted (something like) that online in September 2013?

Or are you citing Willard Van Orman Quine, who died in December 2000 after a distinguished career in which he often wrote things like this:




We are well aware of your belief that it shouldn't matter who wrote such things, but knowing who wrote it would make it easier for us to track down the passage in question and see for ourselves whether you are giving us an accurate summary of it.
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Kasser from the TTC lectures:

"Atoms, says Quine, have the same kind of status as the Greek Gods once did...So Zeus was an explanation of lightening!"
 
In other words Burnt Synapse, you don't know what you think, you can't explain it in any meaningful way.

Arrivederci!

Any time you want to actually discuss something rather than wave words around I will gladly discuss it with you.
 
Dancing David said:
Arrivederci!

Any time you want to actually discuss something rather than wave words around I will gladly discuss it with you.
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Of course, "waving words around" is sufficiently vague to apply to any sentence. It probably is most effective as used here: asserting there is nothing to understand if understanding might incur costs.

If I publicly ridiculed a position with sufficient offense and sensed things weren't going well for me, I'd probably conclude something similar to word "waving/salad" and move away from the discussion.

A difference is that I don't have the luxury of ignoring value that SME's like you and Ben possess, while SME's probably function better in their roles thinking management only hinders them.
 
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I'm beginning to see a pattern here

This exchange, which dragged out over three full months, has been typical of BurntSynapse's conduct:

  1. On 22 November 2013, BurntSynapse tried to use Quine's theory of underdetermination to support BurntSynapse's own claim that it's "very difficult to formally demonstrate one theory (Zeus) is better or worse at explaining falling than a theory of gravity."
  2. Later that day, I said BurntSynapse's claim was "hilariously wrong" and "a grotesque distortion of what Quine was saying".
  3. Within that same post, I quoted Burton Dreben, a colleague of Quine's and a recognized authority on Quine's philosophy. Dreben refuted a popular misinterpretation of Quine that has Quine saying Zeus is as good as science as explanation for empirical phenomena.
  4. For several months, BurntSynapse said Dreben's refutation had nothing to do with anything BurntSynapse had claimed.
  5. Meanwhile, BurntSynapse continued to insist that Quine's philosophy somehow supported BurntSynapse's position, whatever that position may be. On several occasions, he even hinted that Quine himself had made the claim I had characterized as "a grotesque distortion of what Quine was saying."
  6. Today, 21 February 2014, BurntSynapse admitted he had misquoted Quine by making it a quotation about gravity instead of lightning, but insisted "the underdetermination point he argued and is a point in every introductory course in HPS seems well established." BurntSynapse also suggested I had been trying "to avoid dealing with the merit of the claim in favor of a red herring."
  7. I then pointed out that, absent proper citation, I haven't been able to find any example of Quine saying Zeus provides an explanation of lightning that deserves comparison to a scientific theory of gravity.
  8. I also quoted Quine's own words, from "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", in which Quine explicitly denies any belief in Homer's gods and says accepting those gods over scientific explanations would be "a scientific error".
  9. BurntSynapse responded by quoting Professor Jeffrey Kasser's philosophy-for-poets paraphrase in which Kasser (not Quine) says "Zeus was an explanation of lightning."
  10. From BurntSynapse's full quotation of Kasser, it's clear that Kasser was making exactly the same mistake that Burton Dreben warned against in the passage I quoted on 22 November 2013.
    ETA: On rereading, that's not so clear. I think it's possible Kasser is merely repeating Quine's point that Zeus can be regarded as an explanation for lightning, without repeating Quine's view that the Zeus explanation is easily shown to be inferior to scientific explanations (because scientific explanations have more predictive power, and those predictions have held up under empirical tests). If that's all Kasser was saying, then BurntSynapse's claimed difficulty of demonstrating the inferiority of the Zeus explanation is entirely BurntSynapse's error, not Kasser's.​
That's been BurntSynapse's pattern throughout this thread. He drops names "to create a sense of superiority" and to imply "a connection to people of high status". When pressed for substance, he appeals to the authority of those famous names by saying they agree with him. When pressed for specifics, he resists. If he can be shamed into hinting at specifics, he offers his own paraphrases of what he wants us to think has been said by the famous authorities.

The positions BurntSynapse attributes to those authorities eventually turn out to be some combination of (1) BurntSynapse's own invention, (2) distortions of the authorities' positions taken from crackpot web sites, and (3) BurntSynapse's mangled version of a popularized summary written by someone other than the authority himself (e.g. Kasser instead of Quine, Hofstadter instead of Gödel).
 
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BurntSynapse said:
I'd intended the analog to be "advances in cognitive science of scientific revolutions look promising" which seems of at least equal detail to "advances in variable speed motors look promising".
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Advances in the cognitive science of scientific revolution look promising for what activity? For the activity of revising the one-paragraph description of "transformative research" that's given to grant reviewers?

This subthread started with you announcing that it was important to (a) discover warp drives, (b) to somehow prompt physicists to reexamine spacetime dimensionality, and (c) to seek out research that involved "process concepts" on topics that previously included "object concepts", and perhaps (d) to embark on some mega-task of "documenting assumptions" held by physics researchers.

All of this has gone away. All we have left is BurntSynapse insisting over and over that (a) he's identified an expert of some sort and (b) he's picked a place for this expert in the org chart and (c) that's obviously good management and no more needs to be said about it. We shouldn't worry our inexpert, non-management-professional little heads about things like what sort of things might happen or what are the expert's actual relevant skills and beliefs and how does that differ from the status quo.

I think Dancing David has the right idea. I'll start stumbling towards the door.
 
BurntSynapse said:
Of course, "waving words around" is sufficiently vague to apply to any sentence. It probably is most effective as used here: asserting there is nothing to understand if understanding might incur costs.

If I publicly ridiculed a position with sufficient offense and sensed things weren't going well for me, I'd probably conclude something similar to word "waving/salad" and move away from the discussion.

A difference is that I don't have the luxury of ignoring value that SME's like you and Ben possess, while SME's probably function better in their roles thinking management only hinders them.
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I have no idea what an SME is or why you think I thought or said that, thou should take thine own advice.

I asked for an actual practical application of the ideas you have presented but won't explain, when asked you waffle and evade.

I am a nihilist pagan buddhist , married with two grown children, I have a psych degree, was an out reach social worker for 15 years, my father is a famous anthropologist and my mother a lit major. I work as the ET Help Desk at a largish school district.

I was involved in research in college and community surveys since then, I am not SME, I am however wary of people who seem unable to explain themselves very well.

But please do more mind reading as to my views of management, i have stated that you don't seem to know what makes for an actual paradigm shift or scientific revolution and when asked for specifics of how you thoughts could improve them, you have not produced any.
 
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W.D.Clinger said:
This exchange, which dragged out over three full months, has been typical of BurntSynapse's conduct:

  1. On 22 November 2013, BurntSynapse tried to use Quine's theory of underdetermination to support BurntSynapse's own claim that it's "very difficult to formally demonstrate one theory (Zeus) is better or worse at explaining falling than a theory of gravity."
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  1. If one were to claim the "Zeus theory" as mine, it would seem dishonest - it was Quine, according to Kasser.

    W.D.Clinger said:
    [*]Later that day, I said BurntSynapse's claim was "hilariously wrong" and "a grotesque distortion of what Quine was saying".
    [*]Within that same post, I quoted Burton Dreben, a colleague of Quine's and a recognized authority on Quine's philosophy. Dreben refuted a popular misinterpretation of Quine that has Quine saying Zeus is as good as science as explanation for empirical phenomena.
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    But you neglect to notice that I never said and never thought Quine believed this ludicrous position as anything other than an example of a problem inherent to the LP approach.

    Emotions seem to playing a decisive role in what seems a selective, defensive blindness. I never thought Quine said nor advocated that ridiculous Zeus notion as anything other than a problem to be solved. I don't know if Dreben ever found a living advocate of such a strange-sounding position, but that's no obstacle to presenting a case against such misinterpretation. I and everyone I've ever heard on this topic would agree with Dreben. I used the Zeus comment to illustrate the problem Quine's model of a web-of-belief solved with the same intent Quine and Dreben (and Kasser) seem to have.

    You quoted Quine's solution to the problem as proof I'd misunderstood, probably because you haven't read or listened to the history. Your version also skips over the web-of-belief model you also argued against, but which provides the context for his solution - which I endorse. I also endorse the Bayesian solution to the problems resulting froms Quine's solution...up to a point. These solutions also have problems.

    The simplest explanation (which Quine argued we should favor) for these objections is not that I'm a creative argumentation genius with many devious plots and a plethora of techniques to deceive and mislead others from discovering my ignorance. No, the simplest explanation is that no matter what, my claims must be wrong - even when you admit they make no sense to you.

    "To you" was a rare admission on your part, because typically you say with absolute certainty that "they make no sense", as if they are non-sensical to anyone, which is not the case.

    Thus, your assertions at this point seem more based on your determination to show how misguided every single opinion I advocate is without merit, ignoring that 99% are completely unoriginal, and uncontroversial in their source disciplines.

    W.D.Clinger said:
    [*]For several months, BurntSynapse said Dreben's refutation had nothing to do with anything BurntSynapse had claimed.
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    This will seem true to anyone who doesn't distinguish between use, context, statement, or content of an argument, proof, or theory. When I point out the objection doesn't appear to address my opinions, it is understood as "nothing to do with anything I have claimed" - a biased alteration obvious to neutral observers.

    W.D.Clinger said:
    [*]Meanwhile, BurntSynapse continued to insist that Quine's philosophy somehow supported BurntSynapse's position, whatever that position may be.
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    Clearly, very strong emotions are involved. An opinion cannot simultaneously unknown and clearly wrong.

    W.D.Clinger said:
    On several occasions, he even hinted that Quine himself had made the claim I had characterized as "a grotesque distortion of what Quine was saying.
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    No, Quine put forward a problem with the logical positivist approach you advocated. The problem was that by that LP approach, it was difficult to distinguish competing explanations, like Zeus vs. Atoms. He was illustrating the problems of LP's goal of absolutely certain (positive), totally documented and deductive (logical) science.

    You then quoted his solution to the problem as evidence he had not presented the problem, claiming "grotesque distortion" of an opinion even you admit you don't understand.

    Put in an outsider's position, it would be extremely hard to take such objections as reasonable.

    W.D.Clinger said:
    [*]Today, 21 February 2014, BurntSynapse admitted he had misquoted Quine by making it a quotation about gravity instead of lightning,
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    Lightening, gravity or observation X is there to illustrate the merits of Quine's point, which is about assessing theories. Quine exposed (more than Popper) that the LP analytical regime lacks abilities that we normally think important for determining whether theory Z(zeus) or theory A(atoms) is better.

    If I buy you the TTC course, will you listen to it?
 
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BurntSynapse said:
If I buy you the TTC course, will you listen to it?
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Perhaps you fail to appreciate that Clinger is a CS professor at a well-regarded university, and generally qualified to teach such a course and, consequently, to evaluate how well people like you are understanding the material.

(I am not actually following this Quine discussion in any detail and will not try to comment on its content, I was just amused by "I watched these TTC lecture videos" as a source of authority.)
 
I'm beginning to see a pattern here, part 2

BurntSynapse said:
W.D.Clinger said:
This exchange, which dragged out over three full months, has been typical of BurntSynapse's conduct:

  1. On 22 November 2013, BurntSynapse tried to use Quine's theory of underdetermination to support BurntSynapse's own claim that it's "very difficult to formally demonstrate one theory (Zeus) is better or worse at explaining falling than a theory of gravity."
Click to expand...

  1. If one were to claim the "Zeus theory" as mine, it would seem dishonest - it was Quine, according to Kasser.

    W.D.Clinger said:
    [*]Later that day, I said BurntSynapse's claim was "hilariously wrong" and "a grotesque distortion of what Quine was saying".
    [*]Within that same post, I quoted Burton Dreben, a colleague of Quine's and a recognized authority on Quine's philosophy. Dreben refuted a popular misinterpretation of Quine that has Quine saying Zeus is as good as science as explanation for empirical phenomena.
    Click to expand...
    But you neglect to notice that I never said and never thought Quine believed this ludicrous position as anything other than an example of a problem inherent to the LP approach.

    Emotions seem to playing a decisive role in what seems a selective, defensive blindness. I never thought Quine said nor advocated that ridiculous Zeus notion as anything other than a problem to be solved. I don't know if Dreben ever found a living advocate of such a strange-sounding position, but that's no obstacle to presenting a case against such misinterpretation. I and everyone I've ever heard on this topic would agree with Dreben. I used the Zeus comment to illustrate the problem Quine's model of a web-of-belief solved with the same intent Quine and Dreben (and Kasser) seem to have.
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  1. You could have said that last November. It's been three months. You've had plenty of opportunities to clarify your position.

    Refusing to explain yourself has been your pattern. Blaming others for your refusals has been part of that pattern.
 
ben m said:
Perhaps you fail to appreciate that Clinger is a CS professor at a well-regarded university, and generally qualified to teach such a course and, consequently, to evaluate how well people like you are understanding the material.
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I read his impressive CV some time ago. It gives ample reason to judge him a subject matter expert (SME) in his field. In cases where he has contributed unique advances, moving forward software capabilities, he is properly regarded as the world's top authority on those contributions, their current applications, limits, etc.

Absent controversy, 100% deference to Clinger's expert judgement in those domains seems completely proper.
 
Made a new thread about this item, but this is a good place to mention it also: a book advertised in the latest issue of Scientific American : http://basicresearchpress.com/learn-physics-now/ . Among other things it reminds us that the universe is filled with a gas cloud made up of the most basic particle of something-or-other called the Brutino.. Take with a big bag of salt.
 
fuelair said:
Made a new thread about this item, but this is a good place to mention it also: a book advertised in the latest issue of Scientific American : http://basicresearchpress.com/learn-physics-now/ . Among other things it reminds us that the universe is filled with a gas cloud made up of the most basic particle of something-or-other called the Brutino.. Take with a big bag of salt.
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Yes, I another wonderful manifestation of crackpot physics:
The brutino is the smallest thing in the world.

diameter = 10-34 m, mass=10-66 kg, velocity = 3×109 m/s

2. Brutinos make up a gas throughout the universe.
density =1018 kg/m3 (density of lead = 104 kg/m3)

3. Neutrinos are localized condensations of the brutinos.
1030 to 1040 brutinos in a neutrino, velocity = 3×108 m/s (the speed of light)

4. The proton is a neutrino taking a circular path.
radius =10-16 m, mass =1.6×10-27 kg, energy = m×c2

5. The electron is a neutrino taking a circular path.
radius = 10-19m, mass= 9×10-31 kg

6. Protons, as well as electrons, stir the background to make electrostatic fields.
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Marvelous!:D
 
fuelair said:
Made a new thread about this item, but this is a good place to mention it also: a book advertised in the latest issue of Scientific American : http://basicresearchpress.com/learn-physics-now/ . Among other things it reminds us that the universe is filled with a gas cloud made up of the most basic particle of something-or-other called the Brutino.. Take with a big bag of salt.
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Tsk. Sadly Scientific American is full of crackpot physics these days.
 
Farsight said:
Tsk. Sadly Scientific American is full of crackpot physics these days.
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The idea of multiverses may be excessively speculative, but I would not dismiss it as crackpottery.

There are some things I'd call crackpottery, however. Like the idea that one can do physics by sacred-book interpretation and disdain for mathematics.
 
Referring JREF posters to scientific papers which refer to hard scientific evidence is not sacred-book interpretation. And what's with the disdain for mathematics? I've said repeatedly that mathematics is a vital tool for physics, we can't do physics without it.

As for crackpottery, you should google Max Tegmark crackpot. Then you might like to take a look in the mirror, and have a think about the title of this thread.
 
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