Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 27, 2021 at 8:03:58 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> The word "intuition" is a hopelessly muddled red herring, as explained
>>> above. Your essential thesis is that special relativity violates common
>>> sense, which it does not, by either the colloquial dictionary definition
>>> or the original philosophical definition. Common sense is typically
>>> defined as good sense and sound reasoning (and whether this is applied to
>>> practical or impractical matters is irrelevant), and in the historical
>>> scientific context it referred to the elementary logic and the ability to
>>> perceive and reason, common to all sentient beings. And more
>>> importantly, it is these definitions that your interlocutors specifically
>>> stipulate, so if you mean something else you are just engaging in
>>> semantic games. The point is that special relativity does not violate
>>> common sense. You've admitted that you don't really mean common sense,
>>> you mean that someone could carelessly, without any conscious reasoning,
>>> make a snap judgment that special relativity is wrong. Well, duh. But
>>> that doesn't imply that special relativity violates common sense. It is
>>> not common sense to believe that uninformed snap judgments without
>>> conscious reasoning lead to reliable results.
>>>
>> As I’ve mentioned several times, you and I have different understanding of
>> these terms...
>
> Which terms? We've agreed to use the dictionary definition of
> 'intuition' meaning snap judgments with no conscious reasoning (this is
> the definition *you* cited). My claim is that this has no relevant to
> the discussion, because we are not talking about snap judgments with no
> conscious reasoning, we are talking about people obsessing for 30 years
> trying to consciously reason about the subject.

No, conscious reasoning is not what they’ve been doing for 30 years. They
have not moved from their initial assessment, which is in fact based on
intuition and their early understanding of how the world works in the
absence of any serious examination of either observational results or
conceptual development. And instead, they have just argued for 30 years
that their first-blush (snap) judgment is correct and various
rationalizations to try to get things to conform to that.

Conscious reasoning takes work, which is why coursework in physics takes
years, not weeks, not hours. Even CLASSICAL physics takes several passes,
introducing new conceptual frameworks and careful analysis of observations,
before students have good conceptual grounding. The crank wants to bypass
all that, to be the “armchair” physicist, figuring it all out just by
pondering it a while.

> So 'intuition' is a red herring. And for the term 'common sense' we are
> using both the dictionary colloquial definition (good sense and sound
> judgment...) and the original philosophical definition (ability to
> perceive and reason common to all sentient beings), and on this basis
> it's clear that special relativity does not violate common sense.
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

On Tuesday, July 27, 2021 at 8:48:56 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> The crank likes the words “logic” and “reasoning” but is using intuition and
> everyday experience.

Since they like the words "logic" and "sound reasoning", it would be best to use those words, and the concepts they represent, rather than trying to force the tacitly pejorative term "common sense" into the discussion, which only devolves into semantic disputes about whether "common sense" entails logic and sound reasoning. Everyone agrees that we need to base our conclusions on logic and sound reasoning, so just refer to those. The crackpot's problem is not that he eschews logic and reasoning, it's that his logic and reasoning are fallacious.

Please note that many cranks espouse a wide variety of extremely wacky notions, which they have developed and refined over many years, not things that would occur to ordinary people. Recall the familiar phrase: "I've just finished a new version of my paper on [fill in the blank], which is uploaded to the vixra site".

> The time they have spent is nonproductive, and as you noted they have not changed
> their view since day 1...

Some have been remarkably static, while others have repeatedly churned out new versions of their works. For those that evolve, it's possible to identify the invariant pole star of their beliefs, around which everything else rotates.

> Witness Seto saying (paraphrasing) “The speed of any object is frame independent,
> including light, because everything I know about from everyday life is that
> way.” That is not logic and reasoning. That is intuition and extrapolation
> from everyday experience.

Unfortunately the answer he usually gets is "light is different", and "you just have to accept that light speed is the same in every frame, because that's what experiments show". Well, that's a poor answer, first because relativistic composition of speeds doesn't just apply to light, and second because it fails to clarify that these compositions depend on how inertial coordinate systems are related to each other, and so on. It often takes only an exchange of 5 - 10 messages before the crackpot runs away... and yet they will engage for eternity with those who argue on the basis of "it doesn't make sense but that's what the experiments show, so live with it".

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> Witness Seto saying (paraphrasing) “The speed of any object is frame independent,
>> including light, because everything I know about from everyday life is that
>> way.” That is not logic and reasoning. That is intuition and extrapolation
>> from everyday experience.
>
> Unfortunately the answer he usually gets is "light is different", and
> "you just have to accept that light speed is the same in every frame,
> because that's what experiments show". Well, that's a poor answer, first
> because relativistic composition of speeds doesn't just apply to light,
> and second because it fails to clarify that these compositions depend on
> how inertial coordinate systems are related to each other, and so on. It
> often takes only an exchange of 5 - 10 messages before the crackpot runs
> away... and yet they will engage for eternity with those who argue on the
> basis of "it doesn't make sense but that's what the experiments show, so live with it".
>

I think this illustrates the problem admirably. Seto is unable to see
beyond the qualitative statement that “the speed of something is
*different* to different observers”. That is the rule extracted from
everyday experience. Anything that runs counter to this gut-level rule is
to be fended off, which is precisely NOT a rational or logical approach.
What you suggest is that he has to go back to basics to understand that it
is possible that there is a composition rule for velocities that actually
allows that things traveling less than c WILL have their speed be different
to different observers, but that things traveling at c will NOT have their
speed be different to different observers. To him, such a rule is
capricious and incomprehensible and self-serving, and also that it defies
his qualitative judgement that “the speed of something is different to
different observers”, which is the generalization he would like to hang
onto.

This is compounded by the fact that in order to see what the composition
rule really is for velocities, he’d have to learn how to follow algebraic
steps (which he cannot do), he’d have to know what the definition of speed
and velocity are (which he doesn’t), and he’d have to follow a long chain
of logical steps (which he cannot follow). And to ask him to become
competent on all these prerequisite skills is asking too much, and so he
simply denies all of it and says that he PREFERS his gut level assessment
that “the speed of something is different to different observers” because
that’s a rule that matches his personal experience.

This is what cranks do. They do not want to learn the precise meanings of
words as used in physics, they do not want to labor through the multiple
logical steps and remember all the conclusions made along the way, they do
not want to follow or be asked to work out for themselves the algebraic
derivation of useful formulas, especially if in the end they will arrive at
something substantially different than what their gut told them. They
suspect that somewhere in that long process they have been hornswoggled,
and they simply revert to the gut-level rule they started with. This is
partly the result of rejecting anything that conflicts with their adopted
gut-level rule, and partly the result of repeated failure in following the
logic and reasoning that leads to the correct result which in turn results
in frustrated rejection of real logic and reasoning. It’s not faulty logic
or reasoning. It’s the ABANDONMENT of logic and reasoning (as being too
hard) and reverting to the initial snap-judgment rule.

Seto wants more than anything in the world for the right answer to be easy
and obvious (to him), because he cannot do anything more than that. This is
why he touts his “book” because that’s what he COULD do, something he feels
is right at gut level with some pretty words and diagrams that he painted
onto it one afternoon. He hasn’t spent more work on it than that. More
time, yes. More work, no.

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

On Tuesday, July 20, 2021 at 7:21:23 AM UTC-7, seto...@gmail.com wrote:
> Einstein’s inertial frame (inertial coordinate system) has the following special properties):
> :1. The laws of physics are the same in any inertial frame (any inertial coordinate system set up in any location).
> 2. The speed of light from any source (moving or not moving) in any inertial frame is isotropic c in any inertial coordinate system set up in any location.
> stationary aether.
> The aether frame (ether coordinate system) has the following properties:
> 1. The laws of physics are the same in any aether frame coordinate system set up in any location in the stationary aether.
> 2. The speed of light from any source (moving or not moving) in any aether ;location is isotropic c.
>
> Since the aether frame is older than the SR inertial frame, it appears that the SR inertial frame is just a renamed of the aether frame. So sorry.

The standard of motion is that it is not steady.
Light being the exception.
Can anyone show a steady moving frame?

Mitchell Raemsch

On July 26, Arthur Adler wrote:
> Not true, he gave very commonplace explanations that are quite intuitive to everyone, e.g.,
> how things behave inside a uniformly gliding ship. The principle of relativity is quite intuitive and
> visceral, and always was. It's even wired into the nervous systems of animals.
.... and basketballers ...

You have to be careful here. The principle of relativity is wired in, viscerally.
But not at all, intellectually.

I have a little quiz to survey my friends and lawyer, re basic science, math,
and economics. The results are disheartening, to say the least.

For instance: why is it, a bicyclist outperforms a runner, whether a
sprint or long distance? No one yet has answered satisfactorily.
Something as simple as that!

And you believe they get relativity?

> Even Newton explained that the common man perceives motion in purely relative terms.

"These crazy physicists claim that the car is stationary, and the highway is moving 60 mph!"
- Ed Lake

> First, Aristotle's views on physics are far from being an exemplar of common sense or intuition...
> Aristotle was never expressing the intuitions of the common man.

um, my (non-scientific) lifetime of observing homo sapiens very strongly indicates
they are indeed Arisotleish -

--
Rich

On July 26, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> the professor asked the simple qualitative
> question about how to describe the path of an projectile in the air with
> physics, say chucking a melon horizontally off the roof of a five-story
> building. Less than 1/5 of the class suggested the downward-opening
> parabolic path.

Another from my quiz: You're doing 60 mph on the highway. Hold an empty
can out the window. Release. Where does it land? (relative to the street, not the car)
o Forward of the point it was ejected
o Straight down, at the point ejected
o Behind the point ejected

4 out of 5 say it lands behind. (no one says straight down)
"It's OBVIOUS! Have you lost your grip?"

Try it yourself -

--
Rich

On Tuesday, July 27, 2021 at 10:06:56 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Seto is unable to see beyond the qualitative statement that “the speed of
> something is *different* to different observers”. That is the rule extracted
> from everyday experience.

Well, it's perfectly true that if the speed of some entity is u in terms of inertia-based coordinates S, and if we define another coordinate system S' by applying a Galilean transformation with parameter v to S, then the speed of the entity in terms of S' is u+v. There's nothing wrong or false about this, and it does indeed follow logically from the premises. But S' is not an inertia-based coordinate system, and the reason it is not, and the way of determining an inertia-based coordinate system at rest with S', is easily described. It's all perfectly logical, and none of it violates common sense. The typical crackpot, even one who has been plying his crackpotism for many decades, has never heard this properly explained, and it comes as a shock to him.

> This is what cranks do... It’s not faulty logic or reasoning. It’s the ABANDONMENT
> of logic and reasoning (as being too hard) and reverting to the initial snap-judgment rule.

Again, what you call the snap-judgment is typically just tacitly applying Galilean transformations, and they don't accept that you "need" to use Lorentz transformations instead, just because Einstein said so, and almost no one can tell them *why*, so it seems capricious and arbitrary and circular. That's why they are so shocked when, after so many decades of people blowing smoke at them and bluffing by pro-relativity enthusiasts who don't really understand the subject any better than they do, someone actually explains things to them correctly and non-circularly, i.e., explains the dynamical basis for Lorentz invariance arising from the inertia of energy. Then they fall silent and run away (seeking out their old well-matched and equally uncomprehending adversaries, with whom they will go on happily engaging to infinity).

Naturally we exempt the individuals who are so far gone as to be essentially unresponsive, e.g., Valev, Plutonium, etc.

RichD <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On July 26, Arthur Adler wrote:
>> Not true, he gave very commonplace explanations that are quite intuitive
>> to everyone, e.g.,
>> how things behave inside a uniformly gliding ship. The principle of
>> relativity is quite intuitive and
>> visceral, and always was. It's even wired into the nervous systems of animals.
>
> ... and basketballers ...
>
> You have to be careful here. The principle of relativity is wired in, viscerally.
> But not at all, intellectually.
>
> I have a little quiz to survey my friends and lawyer, re basic science, math,
> and economics. The results are disheartening, to say the least.
>
> For instance: why is it, a bicyclist outperforms a runner, whether a
> sprint or long distance? No one yet has answered satisfactorily.
> Something as simple as that!
>
> And you believe they get relativity?
>
>> Even Newton explained that the common man perceives motion in purely relative terms.
>
> "These crazy physicists claim that the car is stationary, and the highway
> is moving 60 mph!"
> - Ed Lake

Exactly! Ed is another example of this, where his *intuition* tells him
that the road is not moving and the car is moving — there is that
qualitative, gut-level instinct that things anchored to the Earth’s surface
are not moving. And there is some rationalization to try to justify that:
“But it’s the motor in the car that DOES something to the car, and there is
nothing that initiates motion in the road, so this is enough to show which
one is really moving.”

I recall posing the question to Ed about a passenger in a jet liner taking
off due west from Oslo and noting that the sun was stationary in the sky
for the duration of the flight. I asked him if it were the plane that was
moving, or whether it was the Earth’s surface that was rotating under the
plane. And here he got confused, because he KNOWS the Earth rotates and so
of course the Earth’s surface has to move, but on the other hand, it was
the plane’s engines that got the plane moving so that the plane was the
thing that was moving. When I asked him about the possibility that the
plane on the ground was moving before take-off, and that the action of the
engines was in fact to REMOVE the motion of the plane while the Earth’s
surface continued to move. His response was telling. He replied that of
course, physicists can play all sorts of mind games to complicate matters,
but that people with common sense know that it’s the plane that moves, not
the Earth. This was the reflex snap-back to the gut-level instinct, the
return to the general rule from everyday experience, and the deliberate
REJECTION of logic. He called this REJECTION of reasoning a return to
common sense. This is how I know that what people like Ed call “common
sense” has little to do with logic or reasoning and has everything to do
with intuition derived from everyday experience.

By the way, Maciej Wozniak does EXACTLY the same thing, rejecting the
notion that from the rest frame of a pedestrian, it’s the pedestrian that
is at rest and the trees are moving, and rejecting the idea that from the
perspective of the speeding driver, it’s the policeman that is
“overspeeding”. Thus the whole concept of reference frames is elusive to Ed
and to Maciej, and they are incapable of following the logic that involves
them.

>
>> First, Aristotle's views on physics are far from being an exemplar of
>> common sense or intuition...
>> Aristotle was never expressing the intuitions of the common man.
>
> um, my (non-scientific) lifetime of observing homo sapiens very strongly indicates
> they are indeed Arisotleish -
>
> --
> Rich
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

RichD <r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On July 26, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> the professor asked the simple qualitative
>> question about how to describe the path of an projectile in the air with
>> physics, say chucking a melon horizontally off the roof of a five-story
>> building. Less than 1/5 of the class suggested the downward-opening
>> parabolic path.
>
> Another from my quiz: You're doing 60 mph on the highway. Hold an empty
> can out the window. Release. Where does it land? (relative to the street, not the car)
> o Forward of the point it was ejected
> o Straight down, at the point ejected
> o Behind the point ejected
>
> 4 out of 5 say it lands behind. (no one says straight down)
> "It's OBVIOUS! Have you lost your grip?"

As it would be if you were doing 0 mph on the highway and dropped an empty
can out the window into a 60 mph wind.

Then the right thing to do is to bring back the example of dropping a penny
on a speeding airplane and asking them what is the difference between the
can in the wind case and the penny on the plane case.

>
> Try it yourself -
>
> --
> Rich
>
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 27, 2021 at 10:06:56 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Seto is unable to see beyond the qualitative statement that “the speed of
>> something is *different* to different observers”. That is the rule extracted
>> from everyday experience.
>
> Well, it's perfectly true that if the speed of some entity is u in terms
> of inertia-based coordinates S, and if we define another coordinate
> system S' by applying a Galilean transformation with parameter v to S,
> then the speed of the entity in terms of S' is u+v. There's nothing
> wrong or false about this, and it does indeed follow logically from the
> premises. But S' is not an inertia-based coordinate system, and the
> reason it is not, and the way of determining an inertia-based coordinate
> system at rest with S', is easily described. It's all perfectly logical,
> and none of it violates common sense. The typical crackpot, even one who
> has been plying his crackpotism for many decades, has never heard this
> properly explained, and it comes as a shock to him.
>
>> This is what cranks do... It’s not faulty logic or reasoning. It’s the ABANDONMENT
>> of logic and reasoning (as being too hard) and reverting to the initial
>> snap-judgment rule.
>
> Again, what you call the snap-judgment is typically just tacitly applying
> Galilean transformations, and they don't accept that you "need" to use
> Lorentz transformations instead, just because Einstein said so, and
> almost no one can tell them *why*, so it seems capricious and arbitrary
> and circular. That's why they are so shocked when, after so many decades
> of people blowing smoke at them and bluffing by pro-relativity
> enthusiasts who don't really understand the subject any better than they
> do, someone actually explains things to them correctly and
> non-circularly, i.e., explains the dynamical basis for Lorentz invariance
> arising from the inertia of energy. Then they fall silent and run away
> (seeking out their old well-matched and equally uncomprehending
> adversaries, with whom they will go on happily engaging to infinity).

I don’t think it involves just tacitly applying Galilean transforms, as
opposed to Lorentz transforms.
Nor do I think it involves tacitly accepting w=u+v versus accepting w =
(u+v)/(1+uv/c^2). Because they don’t get that far. People like Ken don’t
have the mental horsepower or the mathematical skill to even see the
algebraic difference between those equations other than different symbols
assembled in different arrangements. They cannot do the exercise of seeing
the difference in w if v is taken to be c, because they CAN’T DO THE MATH.

I think they just have this very qualitative rule in their head that comes
from everyday experience that “the speed of anything will be different for
different observers”. Period. And anything that flies in the face of that
is deemed hokum and tactics to confuse the Everyman.

You overestimate the abilities of Ed Lake and Ken Seto and Maciej Wozniak
and the like.

>
> Naturally we exempt the individuals who are so far gone as to be
> essentially unresponsive, e.g., Valev, Plutonium, etc.
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 5:15:34 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> I don’t think it involves just tacitly applying Galilean transforms, as
> opposed to Lorentz transforms.

The individuals typically don't express it that way, but I'm translating their inarticulate notions into formal terms for clarity. Remember, their beliefs are perfectly correct from a purely kinematic standpoint, and the pro-relativity crackpots (PRC) here argue with them on purely kinematic (or "geometric") basis, which is misguided based on a lack of understanding of the subject. The ARC (anti-relativity crackpot) knows full well, by simple logic and reason, that speed compositions are additive for coordinate systems related by what most adults could express as x'=x-vt, t'=t, and the ARC also will typically concede that they are not additive for coordinate systems defined in such a way that they are not additive (duh), but they complain (rightly) that without further explanation this is arbitrary at best and circular at worst. The typical PRC has no good answer, so he just tries to bluff, and accuse the ARC of simply relying on pre-conceived notions and snap judgments and not being guided by experimental results... but the experimental results are not helpful in the absence of a genuine understanding of the dynamical basis of the theory and its terms.

> > "These crazy physicists claim that the car is stationary, and the highway
> > is moving 60 mph!" - Ed Lake
>
> Exactly! Ed is another example of this, where his *intuition* tells him that the
> road is not moving and the car is moving...

Again, everyone has a fairly acute visceral grasp of practical mechanics, including the relativity of motion. We wouldn't be able to function in the physical world if we didn't. But when people with no physics aptitude attempt to formulate their understanding of kinematics and dynamics in abstract terms, they typically fail miserably (see Ed Lake). Even Aristotle has been roundly criticized for formulating abstract theories that are plainly contradicted by the most commonplace experience. That's why in the scholarly literature a distinction has been drawn between the "practical" knowledge of the ancient world and the "abstract" knowledge. Ordinary people in 350 BC were not stupid, and we now know they had a lot of the basic knowledge of mechanics that people like Galileo studied centuries later, but the Aristotle's of the ancient world developed their own wacky abstract "sophisticated" ideas and wrote them down, so that's what we remember. If you were flying with Ed in an airplane, and tossed him a bag of salted peanuts, he could catch it. His mechanical instincts are not faulty, his faculties for abstract reasoning are faulty.

> ...they CAN’T DO THE MATH.

Sure, many individuals are incapable of reasoning on the level of even the simplest symbolic expressions, which requires things to be expressed verbally, which leads to high complex verbal constructions that they can't understand either. It would be mildly interesting to know, for example, at what point in his life Ed acquired his hatred of the evil mathematicians, and when he began to refer to everyone who disagrees with him (cab drivers, barbers, gym owners) as MATHEMATICIANS. But these are psychological questions, not physics questions.

> They just have this very qualitative rule in their head that comes
> from everyday experience that “the speed of anything will be different for
> different observers”.

Sure, but the problems with that statement are, first, that it conflates "for observers" with "in terms of a given coordinate system", and second , that it fails to specify what system(s) of coordinates are being referred to. The qualitative rule you've stated can be perfectly correct within the ambiguity group of the statement. So the correct response is not "No, you are wrong", the correct response is "Speeds are not defined "for observers", they are defined in terms of specified systems of coordinates." From there you can go on to explain the subject. Of course, with some individuals (like Ed), they will run away as soon as you mention coordinate systems, but that's the central failure. It isn't the basing of things on everyday experience, it is the failure of higher cognitive functions to be able to engage with concepts like coordinate systems. The everyday experiential foundations of normal people are sufficient to understand special relativity, so that isn't the problem. The problem of people like Ed is their inability to carry out abstract thought reliably, and their tendency to fabricate wacky high-level fantasies.

On Wednesday, 28 July 2021 at 18:05:10 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:

> Sure, but the problems with that statement are, first, that it conflates "for observers" with "in terms of a given coordinate system",

And here you have a little problem. Your Shit needs to keep using
words "observer" "observed", "observation" and so on as frequently
as possible - to keep idiot believers like you or Bod believing.
These words are building your trust.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 5:15:34 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I don’t think it involves just tacitly applying Galilean transforms, as
>> opposed to Lorentz transforms.
>
> The individuals typically don't express it that way, but I'm translating
> their inarticulate notions into formal terms for clarity. Remember,
> their beliefs are perfectly correct from a purely kinematic standpoint,
> and the pro-relativity crackpots (PRC) here argue with them on purely
> kinematic (or "geometric") basis, which is misguided based on a lack of
> understanding of the subject. The ARC (anti-relativity crackpot) knows
> full well, by simple logic and reason, that speed compositions are
> additive for coordinate systems related by what most adults could express
> as x'=x-vt, t'=t, and the ARC also will typically concede that they are
> not additive for coordinate systems defined in such a way that they are
> not additive (duh), but they complain (rightly) that without further
> explanation this is arbitrary at best and circular at worst. The typical
> PRC has no good answer, so he just tries to bluff, and accuse the ARC of
> simply relying on pre-conceived notions and snap judgments and not being
> guided by experimental results... but the experimental results are not
> helpful in the absence of a genuine understanding of the dynamical basis
> of the theory and its terms.
>
>>> "These crazy physicists claim that the car is stationary, and the highway
>>> is moving 60 mph!" - Ed Lake
>>
>> Exactly! Ed is another example of this, where his *intuition* tells him that the
>> road is not moving and the car is moving...
>
> Again, everyone has a fairly acute visceral grasp of practical mechanics,
> including the relativity of motion. We wouldn't be able to function in
> the physical world if we didn't. But when people with no physics
> aptitude attempt to formulate their understanding of kinematics and
> dynamics in abstract terms, they typically fail miserably (see Ed Lake).
> Even Aristotle has been roundly criticized for formulating abstract
> theories that are plainly contradicted by the most commonplace
> experience. That's why in the scholarly literature a distinction has
> been drawn between the "practical" knowledge of the ancient world and the
> "abstract" knowledge. Ordinary people in 350 BC were not stupid, and we
> now know they had a lot of the basic knowledge of mechanics that people
> like Galileo studied centuries later, but the Aristotle's of the ancient
> world developed their own wacky abstract "sophisticated" ideas and wrote
> them down, so that's what we remember. If you were flying with Ed in an
> airplane, and tossed him a bag of salted peanuts, he could catch it. His
> mechanical instincts are not faulty, his faculties for abstract reasoning are faulty.

Bingo. Ed Lake exhibits common sense, where I’m invoking the Cambridge
Dictionary’s definition of “the basic level of practical knowledge and
judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way”.
That is completely distinct from the logic and reasoning that allows the
construction of abstract models that are idealized treatments of real
systems. Where people like Ed Lake and Ken Seto and Maciej Wozniak suffer
is their complaint that common sense should be ENOUGH to do physics or to
obtain real physical insight. Or more specifically, the *judgment* part of
common sense is what produces general rules (usually qualitative and often
simply binary) that end up being in conflict with the conclusions of real
logic and reasoning, and it’s at this point where they ABANDON logic and
reasoning and revert to common sense judgments that happen to work most of
the time though they are at root level wrong.

>
>> ...they CAN’T DO THE MATH.
>
> Sure, many individuals are incapable of reasoning on the level of even
> the simplest symbolic expressions, which requires things to be expressed
> verbally, which leads to high complex verbal constructions that they
> can't understand either. It would be mildly interesting to know, for
> example, at what point in his life Ed acquired his hatred of the evil
> mathematicians, and when he began to refer to everyone who disagrees with
> him (cab drivers, barbers, gym owners) as MATHEMATICIANS. But these are
> psychological questions, not physics questions.
>

But this personality trait (and history) is what forms the crank, and it’s
the absence of self-awareness about it that solidifies the crankiness. Ed
Lake says he just doesn’t care for mathematics, and when anyone says that
it’s important to have that skill to do physics at all well, he a) refuses
to accept that as a constraint, simply because he doesn’t want one of his
own limitations to impede his fascinations (that’s an ego thing), b) does
his best to demean the thing he lacks, by saying that mathematics has
nothing to do with reality, that mathematicians are famous for supporting
as many lies as truths, and that anybody who uses mathematics with physics
should be regarded as a dirty mathematician rather than a real physicist.
It is just the same as someone wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope
and pretending to do medicine; when it’s pointed out that this person does
not have any medical license or in fact medical education, the defense is
that licensing and education are elitist schemes to keep out the Everyman
and protect the livelihoods of those who went to that trouble.

>> They just have this very qualitative rule in their head that comes
>> from everyday experience that “the speed of anything will be different for
>> different observers”.
>
> Sure, but the problems with that statement are, first, that it conflates
> "for observers" with "in terms of a given coordinate system", and second
> , that it fails to specify what system(s) of coordinates are being
> referred to. The qualitative rule you've stated can be perfectly correct
> within the ambiguity group of the statement.

But nevertheless, this is the level of the rule. The precision of the
statement you are attempting to elicit is BEYOND the capabilities of those
who believe in the rule. That is the careful development of the abstract
idea using reasoning and logic, not to mention VERY PRECISE jargon, and
which Seto and Wozniak and Lake and others simply refuse to participate in.
They think it is an affront to expect that.

The final argument that is raised by people like this is “physics belongs
to us who pay taxes”, with the fairly ridiculous expectation that physics
should be made accessible to those who do NOT know the jargon, do NOT know
how to follow either mathematics or elaborate logical arguments, and want
it all explained in a way that is completely compatible with their simple,
practical experience. Ed Lake has said this explicitly, that if he comes
into a group about physics because he’s interested in it, then it is the
OBLIGATION of others on the group to speak at his level, and without
referencing anything that requires a skill he doesn’t have.

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to reply in a guffawing tone.

> So the correct response is not "No, you are wrong", the correct response
> is "Speeds are not defined "for observers", they are defined in terms of
> specified systems of coordinates." From there you can go on to explain
> the subject. Of course, with some individuals (like Ed), they will run
> away as soon as you mention coordinate systems, but that's the central
> failure. It isn't the basing of things on everyday experience, it is the
> failure of higher cognitive functions to be able to engage with concepts
> like coordinate systems. The everyday experiential foundations of normal
> people are sufficient to understand special relativity, so that isn't the
> problem. The problem of people like Ed is their inability to carry out
> abstract thought reliably, and their tendency to fabricate wacky high-level fantasies.
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

On Wednesday, 28 July 2021 at 19:17:38 UTC+2, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Arthur Adler <aadl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 5:15:34 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> I don’t think it involves just tacitly applying Galilean transforms, as
> >> opposed to Lorentz transforms.
> >
> > The individuals typically don't express it that way, but I'm translating
> > their inarticulate notions into formal terms for clarity. Remember,
> > their beliefs are perfectly correct from a purely kinematic standpoint,
> > and the pro-relativity crackpots (PRC) here argue with them on purely
> > kinematic (or "geometric") basis, which is misguided based on a lack of
> > understanding of the subject. The ARC (anti-relativity crackpot) knows
> > full well, by simple logic and reason, that speed compositions are
> > additive for coordinate systems related by what most adults could express
> > as x'=x-vt, t'=t, and the ARC also will typically concede that they are
> > not additive for coordinate systems defined in such a way that they are
> > not additive (duh), but they complain (rightly) that without further
> > explanation this is arbitrary at best and circular at worst. The typical
> > PRC has no good answer, so he just tries to bluff, and accuse the ARC of
> > simply relying on pre-conceived notions and snap judgments and not being
> > guided by experimental results... but the experimental results are not
> > helpful in the absence of a genuine understanding of the dynamical basis
> > of the theory and its terms.
> >
> >>> "These crazy physicists claim that the car is stationary, and the highway
> >>> is moving 60 mph!" - Ed Lake
> >>
> >> Exactly! Ed is another example of this, where his *intuition* tells him that the
> >> road is not moving and the car is moving...
> >
> > Again, everyone has a fairly acute visceral grasp of practical mechanics,
> > including the relativity of motion. We wouldn't be able to function in
> > the physical world if we didn't. But when people with no physics
> > aptitude attempt to formulate their understanding of kinematics and
> > dynamics in abstract terms, they typically fail miserably (see Ed Lake)..
> > Even Aristotle has been roundly criticized for formulating abstract
> > theories that are plainly contradicted by the most commonplace
> > experience. That's why in the scholarly literature a distinction has
> > been drawn between the "practical" knowledge of the ancient world and the
> > "abstract" knowledge. Ordinary people in 350 BC were not stupid, and we
> > now know they had a lot of the basic knowledge of mechanics that people
> > like Galileo studied centuries later, but the Aristotle's of the ancient
> > world developed their own wacky abstract "sophisticated" ideas and wrote
> > them down, so that's what we remember. If you were flying with Ed in an
> > airplane, and tossed him a bag of salted peanuts, he could catch it. His
> > mechanical instincts are not faulty, his faculties for abstract reasoning are faulty.
> Bingo. Ed Lake exhibits common sense, where I’m invoking the Cambridge
> Dictionary’s definition of “the basic level of practical knowledge and
> judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way”.
> That is completely distinct from the logic and reasoning that allows the
> construction of abstract models that are idealized treatments of real
> systems.

Sure, an idiot woodworker just knows!

> Where people like Ed Lake and Ken Seto and Maciej Wozniak suffer
> is their complaint that common sense should be ENOUGH to do physics

Odd poor idiot, I've never said common sense should be enough
to do your mystical idiocies.

> But this personality trait (and history) is what forms the crank, and it’s
> the absence of self-awareness about it that solidifies the crankiness. Ed
> Lake says he just doesn’t care for mathematics

Odd, poor idiot, when the oldest part of mathematics
objected the madness of your idiot guru he simply
announced it false. And you say about caring for
mathematics?

> The final argument that is raised by people like this is “physics belongs
> to us who pay taxes”, with the fairly ridiculous expectation that physics
> should be made accessible to those who do NOT know the jargon, do NOT know
> how to follow either mathematics

Odd, poor idiot, when the oldest part of mathematics
objected the madness of your idiot guru he simply
announced it false. And you say about following the
mathematics?

On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 10:17:38 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Bingo. Ed Lake exhibits common sense...

He exhibits it in his daily life, catching a bag of pretzels in an airplane or tossing a towel into a hamper, but his ideas about physics are completely contrary to common sense. That's the problem. He need to learn to base his ideas about physics on his common sense. His common sense informs him of relativity and reciprocity of motion (for example), but his high-level attempts to theorize about physics ignore and deny his common sense.

> Where people ... suffer is their complaint that common sense should be ENOUGH
> to do physics or to obtain real physical insight. Or more specifically, the *judgment*
> part of common sense is what produces general rules...

Well, no one disputes that information is required, but information is fairly readily available. For example, as Einstein observed, a falling man doesn't feel his own weight. Some observations might require careful examination, maybe even helped with a magnifying glass or some other instruments. But in addition to common information, all that's needed is good sense and sound judgment, i.e., common sense. Unfortunately, this common sense is what people lack.

> > Sure, but the problems with that statement are, first, that it conflates
> > "for observers" with "in terms of a given coordinate system", and second
> > , that it fails to specify what system(s) of coordinates are being
> > referred to. The qualitative rule you've stated can be perfectly correct
> > within the ambiguity group of the statement.
>
> But nevertheless, this is the level of the rule. The precision of the
> statement you are attempting to elicit is BEYOND the capabilities of those
> who believe in the rule.

That may be so, but that is not a criticism of common sense, that is a criticism of mental limitations. Good sense and sound judgment do not entail stupidity or an inability to think with precision.

> Ed Lake has said this explicitly, that if he comes into a group about physics
> because he’s interested in it, then it is the OBLIGATION of others on the group
> to speak at his level, and without referencing anything that requires a skill he
> doesn’t have.

Right, but when someone actually does that, he very quickly (5-6 exchanges) realizes that his claims are indefensible and runs away. His fantasized world of magical radar guns that can read the "absolute speed" of a truck from inside the truck have nothing to do with common sense. It's easy to ask him a set of simple questions that explicitly reveal the logical inconsistency of this claims, and when he recognizes this, he just runs away. Again, his behavior and misconceptions have nothing to do with common sense. Don't confuse common sense with stupidity or naivete'.

On Wednesday, 28 July 2021 at 22:27:47 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:

> It's easy to ask him a set of simple questions that explicitly reveal the logical inconsistency of this claims, and when he recognizes this, he just runs away.

Some like you, run fast. Other stay and bark about shitting pants Polish drunkards.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 10:17:38 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Bingo. Ed Lake exhibits common sense...
>
> He exhibits it in his daily life, catching a bag of pretzels in an
> airplane or tossing a towel into a hamper, but his ideas about physics
> are completely contrary to common sense. That's the problem. He need to
> learn to base his ideas about physics on his common sense. His common
> sense informs him of relativity and reciprocity of motion (for example),
> but his high-level attempts to theorize about physics ignore and deny his common sense.

I’m not so confident about the fidelity of his common sense. You say SURELY
his common sense informs him of the reciprocity of motion, but what he SAYS
is that it’s idiotic that physicist could say the car is stationary and the
highway moving when it is obviously the other way around. I have no sense
of him having any common sense about reciprocity of motion at all.

What is true is that Ed and you and I have a common set of circumstances in
our experience. We’ve all experienced similar things. This does not mean
that the mental interpretation of the experiences is the same among all of
us. Ed believes that the passing of the telephone poles by the car is not
the result of reciprocal or relative motion, but is the result of the poles
staying still and the car moving. You can raise your eyebrows and ask, but
how can that BE, but it is still true this is how he sees it. This is why
he balks at the very first sentence in any book that mentions that in the
rest frame of the car, the poles are moving — to Ed, this is sheer
nonsense, perhaps the thinking of a mathematician rather than a physicist.

>
>> Where people ... suffer is their complaint that common sense should be ENOUGH
>> to do physics or to obtain real physical insight. Or more specifically, the *judgment*
>> part of common sense is what produces general rules...
>
> Well, no one disputes that information is required, but information is
> fairly readily available. For example, as Einstein observed, a falling
> man doesn't feel his own weight.

This is another great example where the common experience of descending in
an elevator yields two completely different common sense interpretations.
The sensory experience of feeling lighter on the start of the descent is
unmistakeable. But there is a world of difference between two common sense
interpretations of that sensation: a) I do not feel my entire weight when
the elevator starts down, and b) my weight is reduced when the elevator
starts down. These are both “close enough” for practical application and
functioning well on a day to day basis; i.e. both serviceable common sense
notions. And you know you’ve heard people say, “You know how you’re lighter
for a bit when the elevator heads down?” It is NOT a universal apprehension
(not even close) that people say, “You know how you don’t feel your whole
weight when the elevator heads down?”

And then where this gets into trouble is the extrapolation of that as a
general rule applicable to other similar circumstances, which is what
common sense is FOR as a survival strategy, after all. This is how people
say, “The astronauts on the space station are weightless” or “There is no
gravity on the space station”. This is why they’ll say, “I jumped on the
bathroom scale, and I weighed 350 lbs for a second!”

It takes work and a fair number of logical steps for a person to realize
that what they feel in the elevator is not their weight but the reduced
pressure on their feet, and it involves a significant buy-in to basic
physics concepts: that when you are standing on the ground there has to be
a balance of forces acting on you (Newton’s first law and maybe free-body
diagrams), that when you start a motion and speed is changing you are
accelerating (kinematic), that when you are accelerating there has to be a
net force acting on you (Newton’s second law), that what is changing is not
your weight (which depends only on the amount of stuff in you and how close
you are to the Earth) but the force upwards on your feet. That is not
common sense, because it is not knowledge that is commonly understood and
used by nearly everybody. What is common sense is the rule that you’re
going to have a sensation of the earth letting go every time you accelerate
downward, and that is sufficient for practical application. In this sense,
“I don’t feel my whole weight when the elevator starts down” and “I weigh
less when the elevator starts down” are both legitimate and useful rules
FOR PRACTICAL USE. It’s just that one of them is plain wrong in terms of
the physics.

> Some observations might require careful examination, maybe even helped
> with a magnifying glass or some other instruments. But in addition to
> common information, all that's needed is good sense and sound judgment,
> i.e., common sense. Unfortunately, this common sense is what people lack.
>
>>> Sure, but the problems with that statement are, first, that it conflates
>>> "for observers" with "in terms of a given coordinate system", and second
>>> , that it fails to specify what system(s) of coordinates are being
>>> referred to. The qualitative rule you've stated can be perfectly correct
>>> within the ambiguity group of the statement.
>>
>> But nevertheless, this is the level of the rule. The precision of the
>> statement you are attempting to elicit is BEYOND the capabilities of those
>> who believe in the rule.
>
> That may be so, but that is not a criticism of common sense, that is a
> criticism of mental limitations. Good sense and sound judgment do not
> entail stupidity or an inability to think with precision.

I didn’t say they did. The inability to think with precision will still
allow common sense in the form of practical judgments that allow people to
live in a reasonable and safe way (see dictionary), but this common sense
is not sufficient for thinking logically.

>
>> Ed Lake has said this explicitly, that if he comes into a group about physics
>> because he’s interested in it, then it is the OBLIGATION of others on the group
>> to speak at his level, and without referencing anything that requires a skill he
>> doesn’t have.
>
> Right, but when someone actually does that, he very quickly (5-6
> exchanges) realizes that his claims are indefensible and runs away.

I don’t think that’s a victory in any sense. All that’s happened is the
REINFORCEMENT of their perception that physicists try to run ordinary
people through mental obstacle courses and confuse them, with the result
that people like Ed say, “Well, this person is just behaving like a
mathematician. I have no further use for that, and I’ll just go back to
relying on my intuitions.” In other words, the correspondent does NOT feel
trapped in their own petard and have doubts that their position is
untenable. They just decide that mathematics and elaborate logical
arguments and long explanations are useless, when the original intuition
still stands.

That’s why it makes NO SENSE to try to convince these people with reasoning
that their position is a rotten one. It’s in fact counterproductive.

The only thing that seems to ever penetrate is pointing out that no one —
no one — without at least an understanding of the basics as obtained
through instruction has EVER made a significant insight into physics, and
to pretend otherwise is just prancing around in a lab coat and a
stethoscope pretending to be a doctor.

> His fantasized world of magical radar guns that can read the "absolute
> speed" of a truck from inside the truck have nothing to do with common
> sense. It's easy to ask him a set of simple questions that explicitly
> reveal the logical inconsistency of this claims, and when he recognizes
> this, he just runs away. Again, his behavior and misconceptions have
> nothing to do with common sense. Don't confuse common sense with stupidity or naivete'.
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

best logician, Maciej Wozniak wrote:
> On Wednesday, 28 July 2021 at 22:27:47 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:
>
>> It's easy to ask him a set of simple questions that explicitly reveal the logical inconsistency of this claims, and when he recognizes this, he just runs away.
>
> Some like you, run fast. Other stay and bark about shitting pants Polish drunkards.

Well, Maciej, let's call you then "one of the best logicians the
humanity ever had" LOL!

On Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 00:21:45 UTC+2, Python wrote:
> best logician, Maciej Wozniak wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 28 July 2021 at 22:27:47 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:
> >
> >> It's easy to ask him a set of simple questions that explicitly reveal the logical inconsistency of this claims, and when he recognizes this, he just runs away.
> >
> > Some like you, run fast. Other stay and bark about shitting pants Polish drunkards.
> Well, Maciej, let's call you then "one of the best logicians the
> humanity ever had" LOL!

And have you already learnt how sqrt function is defined for R?

On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 2:58:37 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> I’m not so confident about the fidelity of his common sense. You say SURELY
> his common sense informs him of the reciprocity of motion, but what he SAYS
> is that it’s idiotic that physicist could say the car is stationary and the
> highway moving when it is obviously the other way around. I have no sense
> of him having any common sense about reciprocity of motion at all.

Again, you have to distinguish between the visceral (and even instinctive) common sense that enables him to play basketball or catch a bag of pretzels in an airplane, versus his armchair attempts to theorize about physics. The problem of the crackpots is that they ignore their own common sense when they attempt to engage in high level conceptual theorizing. It's easy to show Ed that his high-level beliefs contradict common sense, and when you do this, he promptly runs away.

> This is another great example where the common experience of descending in
> an elevator yields two completely different common sense interpretations.

The point is not the under-determination of interpretations, the point is the observational facts, combined with logic and reason. It's easy to show crackpots that their high-level theories are illogical and self-contradictory, based on simple common sense... and then they run away. In contrast, they will happily engage endlessly with people who argue that they need to abandon common sense.

> The inability to think with precision will still
> allow common sense in the form of practical judgments that allow people to
> live in a reasonable and safe way (see dictionary), but this common sense
> is not sufficient for thinking logically.

No one claims that we should think illogically. Indeed, good sense and sound judgment fairly well entail thinking logically, and the classical definition of the ability to perceive and reason common to all people does as well. Indeed, people like Ed invariably pride themselves on thinking logically ("I'm an analyst"), and they include that under the umbrella of common sense.

> People like Ed say, “Well, this person is just behaving like a mathematician. I have
> no further use for that, and I’ll just go back to relying on my intuitions.”

No, they do not say they rely on their intuitions, let alone snap judgments, they contend that they are "the world's greatest logicians", and when they are shown by simple irrefutable logical steps that their beliefs are self-contradictory, they very promptly run away. It can be in a thread that has been running with other people for weeks or months, but all it takes to shut it down is a few posts. This happens over and over. There really is a huge difference between how crackpots respond to being told they need to abandon common sense, and how they respond to being shown that their beliefs are logically self-contradictory and violate common sense. They will argue endlessly against the former, but when confronted with they latter, they quickly go poof. There are also cases when the crackpot actually acknowledges the facts, for example the recent Seppala thread, ending with his terse "Okay, I got it". Also, even Ed has at length acknowledged the falsity of some of his long-standing claims, albeit at a glacial pace, and this was not due to him conceding that common sense is wrong, but rather to him recognizing that his claims violated common sense.

On Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 11:06:40 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:

> Again, you have to distinguish between the visceral (and even instinctive) common sense that enables him to play basketball or catch a bag of pretzels in an airplane, versus his armchair attempts to theorize about physics. The problem of the crackpots is that they ignore their own common sense when they attempt to engage in high level conceptual theorizing.

Sure; one of them has got mad to the point of announcing that it's
just a collection of prejudices acquired before 18 (or something
like that).

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 2:58:37 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I’m not so confident about the fidelity of his common sense. You say SURELY
>> his common sense informs him of the reciprocity of motion, but what he SAYS
>> is that it’s idiotic that physicist could say the car is stationary and the
>> highway moving when it is obviously the other way around. I have no sense
>> of him having any common sense about reciprocity of motion at all.
>
> Again, you have to distinguish between the visceral (and even
> instinctive) common sense that enables him to play basketball or catch a
> bag of pretzels in an airplane, versus his armchair attempts to theorize
> about physics. The problem of the crackpots is that they ignore their
> own common sense when they attempt to engage in high level conceptual
> theorizing. It's easy to show Ed that his high-level beliefs contradict
> common sense, and when you do this, he promptly runs away.
>
>> This is another great example where the common experience of descending in
>> an elevator yields two completely different common sense interpretations.
>
> The point is not the under-determination of interpretations, the point is
> the observational facts, combined with logic and reason. It's easy to
> show crackpots that their high-level theories are illogical and
> self-contradictory, based on simple common sense... and then they run
> away. In contrast, they will happily engage endlessly with people who
> argue that they need to abandon common sense.
>
>> The inability to think with precision will still
>> allow common sense in the form of practical judgments that allow people to
>> live in a reasonable and safe way (see dictionary), but this common sense
>> is not sufficient for thinking logically.
>
> No one claims that we should think illogically. Indeed, good sense and
> sound judgment fairly well entail thinking logically, and the classical
> definition of the ability to perceive and reason common to all people
> does as well. Indeed, people like Ed invariably pride themselves on
> thinking logically ("I'm an analyst"), and they include that under the
> umbrella of common sense.
>
>> People like Ed say, “Well, this person is just behaving like a mathematician. I have
>> no further use for that, and I’ll just go back to relying on my intuitions.”
>
> No, they do not say they rely on their intuitions, let alone snap
> judgments, they contend that they are "the world's greatest logicians",
> and when they are shown by simple irrefutable logical steps that their
> beliefs are self-contradictory, they very promptly run away. It can be
> in a thread that has been running with other people for weeks or months,
> but all it takes to shut it down is a few posts. This happens over and
> over. There really is a huge difference between how crackpots respond to
> being told they need to abandon common sense, and how they respond to
> being shown that their beliefs are logically self-contradictory and
> violate common sense. They will argue endlessly against the former, but
> when confronted with they latter, they quickly go poof. There are also
> cases when the crackpot actually acknowledges the facts, for example the
> recent Seppala thread, ending with his terse "Okay, I got it". Also,
> even Ed has at length acknowledged the falsity of some of his
> long-standing claims, albeit at a glacial pace, and this was not due to
> him conceding that common sense is wrong, but rather to him recognizing
> that his claims violated common sense.
>

All of this is to say that when these cranks talk about “thinking
logically”, they are in fact NOT thinking logically, but are confusing the
intuitive, gut-level rule-making that almost everyone does (with different
rules inferred from the same experiences, often) with logic. The way they
will respond to carefully defined terms and logical arguments is to say,
“But that makes no sense!” This is the relapse moment where logic fails,
and there is a false attribution of logic to the intuition.

The single signifying hallmark of scientific thinking is the elaboration of
logic that allows intuitive statements to be disrupted and dropped,
replaced with new concepts that become new intuitions. This is the kind of
thing where people would NO LONGER say things like “It’s stupid to say the
train is stationary and the earth is moving in any frame of reference,”
because their intuitions have shifted. It’s when they are no longer
mystified by the idea of sustained motion requiring no expenditure of
energy and a continual application of an unbalanced force.

People like Ed Lake and Ken Seto and Maciej Wozniak and John Sefton have a
very difficult time with that disruption of intuition and cannot do the
flip or the deference to observational data that breaks their intuitive
rules, or logically developed models that respects all known data but
breaks their intuitive rules. That willingness to drop the false intuition
is what good science promotes and these cranks do not support.

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

On Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 16:31:09 UTC+2, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:

> All of this is to say that when these cranks talk about “thinking
> logically”, they are in fact NOT thinking logically,

Of course; they just mumble inconsistently how magnificient
The Shit of their insane guru is.

On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 7:31:09 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> When these cranks talk about “thinking logically”, they are in fact NOT thinking
> logically, but are confusing the intuitive, gut-level rule-making ... with logic.

Again, the nebulous concept of "intuition" here is just a muddled red herring, and since no two crackpots agree with each other, their ideas obviously do not arise from any common "naive intuition", they are individualist and highly idiosyncratic. The only way your thesis could avoid being empty would be if there was some generic and common notions that crackpots all espouse, but that is simply not the case, they are each unique and disagree vociferously with each other. So it is clearly wrong to claim (as you do) that crackpots are just relying too much on common sense or intuition, unless you are going to claim that every crackpot has his own wildly unique "common sense", which makes it a blatant misnomer.

> The single signifying hallmark of scientific thinking is the elaboration of
> logic that allows intuitive statements to be disrupted and dropped,

Again you are trying to reason with the nebulous concept of intuition, but in the scientific context of theory development you are completely wrong. The greatest scientific advances have been made by scientists with outstanding scientific intuitions, finding their way "through the dark" by means that are difficult to even fathom rationally. See Koestler's "The Sleepwalkers", for example. You must not denigrate intuition, and you must not denigrate common sense -- which is really just the elementary ability to perceive and reason. If you believe someone's statements are illogical, then point out how they are illogical.

> People like Ed Lake and Ken Seto and Maciej Wozniak and John Sefton have a
> very difficult time with that disruption of intuition...

The problem with crackpots is not that they pay attention to intuition, it's that they have very poor intuition. And their problem is not that they pay too much attention to common sense, it's that they deny and reject common sense. Ed knows on a visceral and instinctive level about the relativity and reciprocity of motion (he couldn't function in the world if he didn't), but his higher faculties of intellect deny this when he sits in his arm chair theorizing, and he fantasizes kooky ideas that simply make no sense at all. None. Telling him that his ideas make sense but they happen to be wrong is the absolute worst thing to say. Crackpot ideas do not make sense, even based on all the information and rules of reasoning that the crackpot himself accepts. When this is shown to them, they very promptly run away.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 7:31:09 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> When these cranks talk about “thinking logically”, they are in fact NOT thinking
>> logically, but are confusing the intuitive, gut-level rule-making ... with logic.
>
> Again, the nebulous concept of "intuition" here is just a muddled red
> herring, and since no two crackpots agree with each other, their ideas
> obviously do not arise from any common "naive intuition", they are
> individualist and highly idiosyncratic.

Who said anything about “common intuition”? As I said explicitly, the
experiences may be common but the inferred rules may differ. In this way,
different people will have different accounts for what’s going on and
disagree with each other in principle, but for the domain of experience
where these judgments provide practical and safe living, these differences
don’t matter.

What is also true, though, is that “common sense” CLEARLY does not mean the
logical thinking that provides a COMMON understanding of even why you feel
lighter when the elevator starts to descend. That is an understanding that
comes from guided instruction and does not come naturally, and that’s why
there are physics classes other than just people sitting down and figuring
it out on their own.

Naturally, everyone feels that what they believe comes from logical
thinking. They do not suspect that they are being irrational. And because
they trust that their own brains are working correctly, then everyone else
should arrive at the same conclusions. This is foolish, of course, but it’s
an entrenched bias.

There are LOTS of things even in basic physics that do not jibe with
intuition. For example, Newton’s third law, by which in the collision
between a car windshield and a mosquito, the force the mosquito exerts on
the car is the same as the force the windshield exerts on the bug. This can
be MADE to make sense to a novice the idea, where they will accept it and
adjust their intuition accordingly, but for most students, this is ab
initio completely non-intuitive.

> The only way your thesis could avoid being empty would be if there was
> some generic and common notions that crackpots all espouse, but that is
> simply not the case, they are each unique and disagree vociferously with
> each other. So it is clearly wrong to claim (as you do) that crackpots
> are just relying too much on common sense or intuition, unless you are
> going to claim that every crackpot has his own wildly unique "common
> sense", which makes it a blatant misnomer.
>
>> The single signifying hallmark of scientific thinking is the elaboration of
>> logic that allows intuitive statements to be disrupted and dropped,
>
> Again you are trying to reason with the nebulous concept of intuition,
> but in the scientific context of theory development you are completely
> wrong. The greatest scientific advances have been made by scientists
> with outstanding scientific intuitions, finding their way "through the
> dark" by means that are difficult to even fathom rationally. See
> Koestler's "The Sleepwalkers", for example. You must not denigrate
> intuition, and you must not denigrate common sense -- which is really
> just the elementary ability to perceive and reason. If you believe
> someone's statements are illogical, then point out how they are illogical.

There is a difference between native intuition and acquired intuition, as
there is a profound difference between lay intuition and the honed
intuition of someone educated in a subject area. This is where thousands of
hours of intentional slogging through new logical frameworks causes an
ADJUSTMENT of intuition. That’s why I say intuition is malleable. Once a
new conceptual framework is in place, then the intuitive grasp also slides
to conform to it.

>
>> People like Ed Lake and Ken Seto and Maciej Wozniak and John Sefton have a
>> very difficult time with that disruption of intuition...
>
> The problem with crackpots is not that they pay attention to intuition,
> it's that they have very poor intuition. And their problem is not that
> they pay too much attention to common sense, it's that they deny and
> reject common sense. Ed knows on a visceral and instinctive level about
> the relativity and reciprocity of motion (he couldn't function in the
> world if he didn't), but his higher faculties of intellect deny this when
> he sits in his arm chair theorizing, and he fantasizes kooky ideas that
> simply make no sense at all. None. Telling him that his ideas make
> sense but they happen to be wrong is the absolute worst thing to say.
> Crackpot ideas do not make sense, even based on all the information and
> rules of reasoning that the crackpot himself accepts. When this is shown
> to them, they very promptly run away.
>

--
Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables