On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:10:28 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> The experiences may be common but the inferred rules may differ.

"Inferred rules" signifies inference and cognition and reasoning, which you denied was involved. Also, the crackpot is not basing his inferences and reasoning on his experiences... at least not correctly, which brings us back to the fact that his problem isn't that he's not reasoning, it's that he is simply reasoning incorrectly. And once you abandon the "common" part of your thesis, there's really nothing left. You are agreeing that each crackpot theorizes and reasons in his own unique way, based on whatever, and arrives at self-contradictory nonsense.

> ...for the domain of experience where these judgments provide practical
> and safe living, these differences don’t matter.

But they *do* matter. Ed tried and tried to find a magic radar gun that would read the "absolute" speed inside a truck by pointing it at the inside wall of the truck, and he could never find one... and more importantly, he could never rationalize what the absolute speed would be... e.g., including the earth's orbital speed or not, so then he began to fabricate a theory about speed being dependent on applied force, and then... well, it's all nonsense, but the point is, there is cognition taking place, these are not instantaneous impressions, and he is specifically trying to apply logic and reason, but none of this is consistent with his actual experiences.

You might say "well, in the mind of a lunatic, his crazy theories may be consistent with his experience", but that doesn't help your thesis, because it concedes that there is no rational connection between his experience and his lunatic theorizing. The problem is not the limited scope of experience on which he is drawing, the problem is that he is irrational and illogical.. His reasoning is faulty, and the resulting theories are logically inconsistent. Remember, Ed doesn't just deny the facts of Lorentz invariance involving high speed objects, he denies Galilean relativity too, and you can't argue that ordinary everyday Newtonian mechanics is outside the scope of ordinary experience. The same applies to almost all crackpots: Their disagreement with science is limited to relativistic conditions. If you converse with them, you eventually discover they have wacky beliefs about ordinary everyday facts, and even simple algebra and arithmetic, some literally contending the equivalent of 1 = 0.

> Naturally, everyone feels that what they believe comes from logical thinking.
> They do not suspect that they are being irrational.

Right, so when someone presents an illogical line of reasoning and conclusions, just explain what is illogical about it. The roadblock is never that some facts are outside the scope of normal experience. The roadblock is always just faulty, logically fallacious reasoning. Of course, there are some crackpots who refuse to engage their minds with anything other than a single specific fact, such as clocks in low earth orbit, and claim that they will "be a relativist" if the DSAC (for example) works as predicted (and as it does). Those people are just intellectually bankrupt, and this highlights another essential feature of the crackpot: blatant intellectual dishonesty. You can't blame dishonesty on reliance on limited scope of observations.

> There are LOTS of things even in basic physics that do not jibe with intuition.

Little riddles and puzzles that can be devised, involving various misdirection, are not relevant. Remember, the car had a net upward force applied to it. The fact that you overlooked this proves nothing relative to this discussion (nor does it negate the use of horizontal demonstrations of dynamics).

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. And they are dishonest with themselves. Lack of intellectual integrity is their biggest and most intractable problem (along with lack of aptitude).
Telling a crackpot 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.

On Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 20:02:57 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:
> On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:10:28 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> > The experiences may be common but the inferred rules may differ.
>
> "Inferred rules" signifies inference and cognition and reasoning, which you denied was involved. Also, the crackpot is not basing his inferences and reasoning on his experiences... at least not correctly, which brings us back to the fact that his problem isn't that he's not reasoning, it's that he is simply reasoning incorrectly. And once you abandon the "common" part of your thesis, there's really nothing left. You are agreeing that each crackpot theorizes and reasons in his own unique way, based on whatever, and arrives at self-contradictory nonsense.

Sure, anyone of you, apart of common for you idiocies told you by your idiot
guru - is also announcing some idiocies specific for himself, almost always
self-contradictory.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:10:28 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> The experiences may be common but the inferred rules may differ.
>
> "Inferred rules" signifies inference and cognition and reasoning, which
> you denied was involved.

Don’t be silly. ANY generalization of a rule from a specific experience for
application to other similar circumstances involves some cognitive
reasoning.

Intuition: a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive
feeling rather than conscious reasoning; the ability to understand
something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.

Common sense: the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we
all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.

Note the “basic… practical knowledge and judgement … we ALL need”

This points to the commonality and pervasiveness among people that these
two exhibit, which is NOT true for even first year classical mechanics
concepts like the distinction between a parabolic path and a quarter circle
path for a horizontally launched projectile, or the 3rd law as applied to
mosquitoes and windshields, or what happens when you blow hard on the top
of an unsupported playing card.

You’re trying to drive these things to be either inclusive of ALL reasoning
and logical conclusions, including special relativity, or involving no
cognition and reasoning at all. It’s a false dichotomy and a pointless
case.

The fact remains that there are things that most people WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
on their own by sitting in a chair and thinking about things, without the
benefit of guided instruction either by someone more expert in the subject
or by reading lots of instructional books. That is precisely the line that
makes a lot of physics inaccessible to those who are not at all educated in
the subject, and that should not be a surprise to anyone. This does not
mean that those people do not think at all, or that they think badly. It
means that there is a sound reason that some subjects require dedicated
study that has NOTHING TO DO with reasoning power. This you seem intent on
denying.

Why on earth are there textbooks and multiple rounds through the same
subject material in college curricula, if it were all eminently obvious to
those who are capable of thinking things through clearly? Why isn’t the
population of physicists seeded with a significant population of solid
contributors who never took a physics course in their life and just
happened to be good thinkers?

The crackpot is a LAZY individual, often terrified of textbooks and physics
instruction (probably out of an aversion of failure or sensing they don’t
have enough time left to do it), who simply WANTS to be able to do physics
by sitting in a chair and thinking about it without doing any of the real
work — guided work — that is needed to be competent. The Ed Lakes and Ken
Setos and the Maciej Wozniaks of the world might start to read a little on
the subject, but then they STOP as soon as it becomes challenging to
understand. They are LAZY and TERRIFIED, but they put on a great show that
they are gifted and don’t need to do any of that. It’s obvious from the
symptoms what their disease is.

> Also, the crackpot is not basing his inferences and reasoning on his
> experiences... at least not correctly, which brings us back to the fact
> that his problem isn't that he's not reasoning, it's that he is simply
> reasoning incorrectly. And once you abandon the "common" part of your
> thesis, there's really nothing left. You are agreeing that each crackpot
> theorizes and reasons in his own unique way, based on whatever, and
> arrives at self-contradictory nonsense.
>
>> ...for the domain of experience where these judgments provide practical
>> and safe living, these differences don’t matter.
>
> But they *do* matter. Ed tried and tried to find a magic radar gun that
> would read the "absolute" speed inside a truck by pointing it at the
> inside wall of the truck, and he could never find one... and more
> importantly, he could never rationalize what the absolute speed would
> be... e.g., including the earth's orbital speed or not, so then he began
> to fabricate a theory about speed being dependent on applied force, and
> then... well, it's all nonsense, but the point is, there is cognition
> taking place, these are not instantaneous impressions, and he is
> specifically trying to apply logic and reason, but none of this is
> consistent with his actual experiences.
>
> You might say "well, in the mind of a lunatic, his crazy theories may be
> consistent with his experience", but that doesn't help your thesis,
> because it concedes that there is no rational connection between his
> experience and his lunatic theorizing. The problem is not the limited
> scope of experience on which he is drawing, the problem is that he is
> irrational and illogical. His reasoning is faulty, and the resulting
> theories are logically inconsistent. Remember, Ed doesn't just deny the
> facts of Lorentz invariance involving high speed objects, he denies
> Galilean relativity too, and you can't argue that ordinary everyday
> Newtonian mechanics is outside the scope of ordinary experience. The
> same applies to almost all crackpots: Their disagreement with science is
> limited to relativistic conditions. If you converse with them, you
> eventually discover they have wacky beliefs about ordinary everyday
> facts, and even simple algebra and arithmetic, some literally contending
> the equivalent of 1 = 0.
>
>> Naturally, everyone feels that what they believe comes from logical thinking.
>> They do not suspect that they are being irrational.
>
> Right, so when someone presents an illogical line of reasoning and
> conclusions, just explain what is illogical about it.

Doesn’t work. Doesn’t help. Because they don’t buy that what you’re doing
is logic and what they’re doing is not logic. They do not understand what
the process of logic IS and so they cannot recognize how their process
fails that test. Their measure of whether their thinking is logical is
whether it is consistent with the shallow rules they’ve already generated
from everyday experience, and if it is consistent then it IS logical, no
matter how much you say it is ILLOGICAL.

To a common sense thinker, the measure of a force is how much of a dent it
makes, because that rule WORKS in most practical applications and is
sufficient for a reasonable and safe life. So that “makes sense” because it
is a rule that works in experience. Now the 3rd law comes a long with the
example of the mosquito and the car windshield and the claim is that the
two forces involved, one on the other, are the same, then this is (to this
person) patently ILLOGICAL because it flies in the face of equal forces
should produce equal damage, which is clearly not the case here. The rule
of course can be shown to be wrong in the larger scheme of things,
following real logic, but the common sense thinker WILL NOT drop that rule,
simply because it has worked as a survival strategy so well. And the
response will be “the two forces being equal is NOT logical, because it
makes no sense” and that’s because it violates the practical rule. It is
extremely hard to displace an intuitive and common sense rule like that.

And in fact, the only people I know of that are able to successfully
displace practical rules generalized from everyday experience are —- people
who care enough about the subject to learn about it from experts and from
books. Students are willing mentally to be surprised and educated to ideas
that are different than what they think is true. They are willing to
suspend their disbelief while the idea plays out, gets developed, gets
compared to new information.

And guess who is incapable of displacing their common sense ideas? People
who do not care enough about the subject to learn about it from experts and
books. People who say, “I’ve learned enough already to figure this out on
my own.” People who proudly call themselves “analysts” who figure things
out on their own, without being under the watchful eye of an instructor,
without the frustration of encountering book material they cannot follow.

> The roadblock is never that some facts are outside the scope of normal
> experience. The roadblock is always just faulty, logically fallacious
> reasoning. Of course, there are some crackpots who refuse to engage
> their minds with anything other than a single specific fact, such as
> clocks in low earth orbit, and claim that they will "be a relativist" if
> the DSAC (for example) works as predicted (and as it does). Those people
> are just intellectually bankrupt, and this highlights another essential
> feature of the crackpot: blatant intellectual dishonesty. You can't
> blame dishonesty on reliance on limited scope of observations.
>
>> There are LOTS of things even in basic physics that do not jibe with intuition.
>
> Little riddles and puzzles that can be devised, involving various
> misdirection, are not relevant. Remember, the car had a net upward force
> applied to it. The fact that you overlooked this proves nothing relative
> to this discussion (nor does it negate the use of horizontal demonstrations of dynamics).
>
> 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. And they are dishonest with themselves. Lack of
> intellectual integrity is their biggest and most intractable problem
> (along with lack of aptitude).
> Telling a crackpot 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.
>

Odd Bodkin <bodkinodd@gmail.com> wrote:
> Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:10:28 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> The experiences may be common but the inferred rules may differ.
>>
>> "Inferred rules" signifies inference and cognition and reasoning, which
>> you denied was involved.
>
> Don’t be silly. ANY generalization of a rule from a specific experience for
> application to other similar circumstances involves some cognitive
> reasoning.
>
> Intuition: a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive
> feeling rather than conscious reasoning; the ability to understand
> something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
>
> Common sense: the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we
> all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.
>
> Note the “basic… practical knowledge and judgement … we ALL need”
>
> This points to the commonality and pervasiveness among people that these
> two exhibit, which is NOT true for even first year classical mechanics
> concepts like the distinction between a parabolic path and a quarter circle
> path for a horizontally launched projectile, or the 3rd law as applied to
> mosquitoes and windshields, or what happens when you blow hard on the top
> of an unsupported playing card.
>
> You’re trying to drive these things to be either inclusive of ALL reasoning
> and logical conclusions, including special relativity, or involving no
> cognition and reasoning at all. It’s a false dichotomy and a pointless
> case.
>
> The fact remains that there are things that most people WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
> on their own by sitting in a chair and thinking about things, without the
> benefit of guided instruction either by someone more expert in the subject
> or by reading lots of instructional books. That is precisely the line that
> makes a lot of physics inaccessible to those who are not at all educated in
> the subject, and that should not be a surprise to anyone. This does not
> mean that those people do not think at all, or that they think badly. It
> means that there is a sound reason that some subjects require dedicated
> study that has NOTHING TO DO with reasoning power. This you seem intent on
> denying.
>
> Why on earth are there textbooks and multiple rounds through the same
> subject material in college curricula, if it were all eminently obvious to
> those who are capable of thinking things through clearly? Why isn’t the
> population of physicists seeded with a significant population of solid
> contributors who never took a physics course in their life and just
> happened to be good thinkers?
>
> The crackpot is a LAZY individual, often terrified of textbooks and physics
> instruction (probably out of an aversion of failure or sensing they don’t
> have enough time left to do it), who simply WANTS to be able to do physics
> by sitting in a chair and thinking about it without doing any of the real
> work — guided work — that is needed to be competent. The Ed Lakes and Ken
> Setos and the Maciej Wozniaks of the world might start to read a little on
> the subject, but then they STOP as soon as it becomes challenging to
> understand. They are LAZY and TERRIFIED, but they put on a great show that
> they are gifted and don’t need to do any of that. It’s obvious from the
> symptoms what their disease is.
>
>> Also, the crackpot is not basing his inferences and reasoning on his
>> experiences... at least not correctly, which brings us back to the fact
>> that his problem isn't that he's not reasoning, it's that he is simply
>> reasoning incorrectly. And once you abandon the "common" part of your
>> thesis, there's really nothing left. You are agreeing that each crackpot
>> theorizes and reasons in his own unique way, based on whatever, and
>> arrives at self-contradictory nonsense.
>>
>>> ...for the domain of experience where these judgments provide practical
>>> and safe living, these differences don’t matter.
>>
>> But they *do* matter. Ed tried and tried to find a magic radar gun that
>> would read the "absolute" speed inside a truck by pointing it at the
>> inside wall of the truck, and he could never find one... and more
>> importantly, he could never rationalize what the absolute speed would
>> be... e.g., including the earth's orbital speed or not, so then he began
>> to fabricate a theory about speed being dependent on applied force, and
>> then... well, it's all nonsense, but the point is, there is cognition
>> taking place, these are not instantaneous impressions, and he is
>> specifically trying to apply logic and reason, but none of this is
>> consistent with his actual experiences.
>>
>> You might say "well, in the mind of a lunatic, his crazy theories may be
>> consistent with his experience", but that doesn't help your thesis,
>> because it concedes that there is no rational connection between his
>> experience and his lunatic theorizing. The problem is not the limited
>> scope of experience on which he is drawing, the problem is that he is
>> irrational and illogical. His reasoning is faulty, and the resulting
>> theories are logically inconsistent. Remember, Ed doesn't just deny the
>> facts of Lorentz invariance involving high speed objects, he denies
>> Galilean relativity too, and you can't argue that ordinary everyday
>> Newtonian mechanics is outside the scope of ordinary experience. The
>> same applies to almost all crackpots: Their disagreement with science is
>> limited to relativistic conditions. If you converse with them, you
>> eventually discover they have wacky beliefs about ordinary everyday
>> facts, and even simple algebra and arithmetic, some literally contending
>> the equivalent of 1 = 0.
>>
>>> Naturally, everyone feels that what they believe comes from logical thinking.
>>> They do not suspect that they are being irrational.
>>
>> Right, so when someone presents an illogical line of reasoning and
>> conclusions, just explain what is illogical about it.
>
> Doesn’t work. Doesn’t help. Because they don’t buy that what you’re doing
> is logic and what they’re doing is not logic. They do not understand what
> the process of logic IS and so they cannot recognize how their process
> fails that test. Their measure of whether their thinking is logical is
> whether it is consistent with the shallow rules they’ve already generated
> from everyday experience, and if it is consistent then it IS logical, no
> matter how much you say it is ILLOGICAL.
>
> To a common sense thinker, the measure of a force is how much of a dent it
> makes, because that rule WORKS in most practical applications and is
> sufficient for a reasonable and safe life. So that “makes sense” because it
> is a rule that works in experience. Now the 3rd law comes a long with the
> example of the mosquito and the car windshield and the claim is that the
> two forces involved, one on the other, are the same, then this is (to this
> person) patently ILLOGICAL because it flies in the face of equal forces
> should produce equal damage, which is clearly not the case here. The rule
> of course can be shown to be wrong in the larger scheme of things,
> following real logic, but the common sense thinker WILL NOT drop that rule,
> simply because it has worked as a survival strategy so well. And the
> response will be “the two forces being equal is NOT logical, because it
> makes no sense” and that’s because it violates the practical rule. It is
> extremely hard to displace an intuitive and common sense rule like that.
>
> And in fact, the only people I know of that are able to successfully
> displace practical rules generalized from everyday experience are —- people
> who care enough about the subject to learn about it from experts and from
> books. Students are willing mentally to be surprised and educated to ideas
> that are different than what they think is true. They are willing to
> suspend their disbelief while the idea plays out, gets developed, gets
> compared to new information.
>
> And guess who is incapable of displacing their common sense ideas? People
> who do not care enough about the subject to learn about it from experts and
> books. People who say, “I’ve learned enough already to figure this out on
> my own.” People who proudly call themselves “analysts” who figure things
> out on their own, without being under the watchful eye of an instructor,
> without the frustration of encountering book material they cannot follow.
>
>> The roadblock is never that some facts are outside the scope of normal
>> experience. The roadblock is always just faulty, logically fallacious
>> reasoning. Of course, there are some crackpots who refuse to engage
>> their minds with anything other than a single specific fact, such as
>> clocks in low earth orbit, and claim that they will "be a relativist" if
>> the DSAC (for example) works as predicted (and as it does). Those people
>> are just intellectually bankrupt, and this highlights another essential
>> feature of the crackpot: blatant intellectual dishonesty. You can't
>> blame dishonesty on reliance on limited scope of observations.
>>
>>> There are LOTS of things even in basic physics that do not jibe with intuition.
>>
>> Little riddles and puzzles that can be devised, involving various
>> misdirection, are not relevant. Remember, the car had a net upward force
>> applied to it. The fact that you overlooked this proves nothing relative
>> to this discussion (nor does it negate the use of horizontal demonstrations of dynamics).
>>
>> 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. And they are dishonest with themselves. Lack of
>> intellectual integrity is their biggest and most intractable problem
>> (along with lack of aptitude).
>> Telling a crackpot 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.
>>
>
>
>

On Thursday, 29 July 2021 at 21:43:38 UTC+2, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Arthur Adler <aadl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:10:28 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> The experiences may be common but the inferred rules may differ.
> >
> > "Inferred rules" signifies inference and cognition and reasoning, which
> > you denied was involved.
> Don’t be silly. ANY generalization of a rule from a specific experience for
> application to other similar circumstances involves some cognitive
> reasoning.
>
> Intuition: a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive
> feeling rather than conscious reasoning; the ability to understand
> something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
>
> Common sense: the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we
> all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.
>
> Note the “basic… practical knowledge and judgement … we ALL need”
>
> This points to the commonality and pervasiveness among people that these
> two exhibit, which is NOT true for even first year classical mechanics
> concepts like the distinction between a parabolic path and a quarter circle
> path for a horizontally launched projectile, or the 3rd law as applied to
> mosquitoes and windshields, or what happens when you blow hard on the top
> of an unsupported playing card.
>
> You’re trying to drive these things to be either inclusive of ALL reasoning
> and logical conclusions, including special relativity, or involving no
> cognition and reasoning at all. It’s a false dichotomy and a pointless
> case.
>
> The fact remains that there are things that most people WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
> on their own by sitting in a chair and thinking about things, without the
> benefit of guided instruction either by someone more expert in the subject
> or by reading lots of instructional books.

Your idiot guru was a fine example.

> The crackpot is a LAZY individual, often terrified of textbooks and physics
> instruction (probably out of an aversion of failure or sensing they don’t
> have enough time left to do it), who simply WANTS to be able to do physics
> by sitting in a chair and thinking about it without doing any of the real
> work — guided work — that is needed to be competent. The Ed Lakes and Ken
> Setos and the Maciej Wozniaks of the world might start to read a little on
> the subject

Bod, I'm reading mumble of yours and your fellow idiots for 30 years,
and reading it doesn't make it less idiotic.

> Doesn’t work. Doesn’t help. Because they don’t buy that what you’re doing
> is logic and what they’re doing is not logic. They do not understand what
> the process of logic IS and so they cannot recognize how their process
> fails that test. Their measure of whether their thinking is logical is
> whether it is consistent with the shallow rules they’ve already generated
> from everyday experience, and if it is consistent then it IS logical, no
> matter how much you say it is ILLOGICAL.

While, on the other hand, your measure of whether their thinking is logical is
whether it is consistent with the Shit of your idiot guru, and if it is consistent
then it IS logical, no matter how much it is ILLOGICAL.

On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 12:43:38 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> There are things that most people WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
> on their own by sitting in a chair and thinking about things...

The subject here is your habitual assertion that the failure of crackpots to understand special relativity is not due to any faulty reasoning or lack of aptitude for the subject, not due to abysmal reading comprehension that leads to grossly misinterpreting snippets from books on the subject, not due to any lack of intellectual integrity, and not due to the vanity and ego of proud men who can't stand to be taught, no, not due to any of those reasons. It is (you claim) due to their reliance on what you define as common sense and intuition, by which you apparently mean the application of perfectly sound reasoning and judgment to a basis of "common knowledge" that is not broad enough to reveal relativistic effects. Since the crackpot doesn't observe relativistic effects for slow-moving objects, this explains (you say) why he rejects the possibility that extremely fast moving objects (far faster than any he has ever seen) might exhibit different behavior.

But that is not common sense. It is not common sense to believe that just because a bird can fly, it must be possible for a pig to fly (even though you may never have seen a pig). You might say, well, since birds can fly, your intuition tells you that pigs must be able to fly. If that's what your intuition tells you, you have poor intuition. It is not common sense, it is erroneous reasoning, i.e., it is making an illogical and unwarranted inference. If you read a book that shows a picture of a pig and explains why pigs can't fly, it is not common sense for you to deny it on the basis of the fact that birds can fly.

If you read a book on relativity, it is not common sense for you to reject it based on facts that are entirely consistent with it. If you think there is something in your common knowledge that contradicts special relativity, then you are not reasoning correctly. You're not being misled by common sense, you're being misled by faulty reasoning.

> > Right, so when someone presents an illogical line of reasoning and
> > conclusions, just explain what is illogical about it.
>
> Doesn’t work. Doesn’t help. Because they don’t buy that what you’re doing
> is logic and what they’re doing is not logic.

That has not been my experience. Also, in fairness, many of the PRCs are not doing logic either, any more than the ARCs, so when they accuse each other of not knowing what they are talking about, they are both right.

> To a common sense thinker...

I can't help thinking that the "common sense thinking" is your boogieman, just as the "mathematical thinker" is Ed Lake's boogieman. In both cases it just strikes me as an irrational prejudice. You've developed a whole foundation of your thought on the basis of the dreaded "common sense thinking". It really doesn't make sense. Mathematical thinking and common sense thinking are closely allied, and neither of them is bad. They both basically just mean good sense and sound judgment.

> And guess who is incapable of displacing their common sense ideas?

No one should displace their common sense ideas. Look, here's an example: Some people delight in telling newbies that addition doesn't work in special relativity, and 1+1=1! Well, that is criminally bad. It's as if people are trying to undermine the student's faith in fundamental reasoning and logic and common sense. The correct statement is that addition works just fine in special relativity, and 1+1=2, just as always, but we need to distinguish between the addition of velocities and the composition of velocities. This does not violate or displace common sense at all.

> Do you think it is reasonable to say that ANYONE with an average amount of
> powers of logic and reasoning, and the acquaintance of everyday experiences
> shared by most people, should be able to land on special relativity... just using
> those assets?

Yes, as a matter of fact, but that's not particularly relevant to this discussion. The typical crackpot has looked at many popular books as well as Einstein's 1905 paper, and was probably told about special relativity by his high school teacher (50 years ago), so he isn't approaching the subject with zero knowledge of relevant facts. For many crackpots those books and articles and lectures (not their everyday experiences) are actually the source of their misconceptions.

For example, Ed Lake reads Feynman saying "We now know for sure that light is particles, not waves", and so Ed begins to construct his fantasy land with that (misunderstood) ingredient. He didn't get that from personal experience, he got it from (mis-reading) Feynman. Likewise he read some place that we quote all speeds as fractions of the speed of light, and he thinks this is the meaning of "speed relative to the speed of light". In fact, his source actually uses that phrase... but of course not with the meaning the Ed thinks. The point is that he doesn't pick up these notions from everyday experience, he gets them from misreading things, and weaving a web of misunderstanding. Again, common sense is not the culprit. The typical crackpot's ideas are singularly lacking in common sense.

On Friday, 30 July 2021 at 00:51:00 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:

> No one should displace their common sense ideas. Look, here's an example: Some people delight in telling newbies that addition doesn't work in special relativity, and 1+1=1! Well, that is criminally bad. It's as if people are trying to undermine the student's faith in fundamental reasoning and logic and common sense.

And that's exactly what your religion needs. Your idiot guru had
very good reasons to announce common sense "collection
of prejudices"; fundamental reasoning and common sense
immediately says your Shit is just a piece of shit, not even
consistent.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 12:43:38 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> There are things that most people WILL NOT UNDERSTAND
>> on their own by sitting in a chair and thinking about things...
>
> The subject here is your habitual assertion that the failure of crackpots
> to understand special relativity is not due to any faulty reasoning or
> lack of aptitude for the subject, not due to abysmal reading
> comprehension that leads to grossly misinterpreting snippets from books
> on the subject, not due to any lack of intellectual integrity, and not
> due to the vanity and ego of proud men who can't stand to be taught, no,
> not due to any of those reasons. It is (you claim) due to their reliance
> on what you define as common sense and intuition, by which you apparently
> mean the application of perfectly sound reasoning and judgment to a basis
> of "common knowledge" that is not broad enough to reveal relativistic effects.

I’ll not respond to this, since you are clearly not paying attention to
what I actually say, and so there is no point to repeat it. Instead, we’ll
just go right to….

>
>> Do you think it is reasonable to say that ANYONE with an average amount of
>> powers of logic and reasoning, and the acquaintance of everyday experiences
>> shared by most people, should be able to land on special relativity... just using
>> those assets?
>
> Yes, as a matter of fact, but that's not particularly relevant to this discussion.

So explain, then, why it is the transparently obvious fact that people do
NOT commonly land on special relativity with all of its ramifications on
their own.

Explain why, if acquaintance with everyday experiences and basic powers of
logic and reasoning is prevalent among people, courses and instructional
books on the subject are required at all? Why is it that people don’t say,
“Well, yes, of course, all that is already obvious”?

> The typical crackpot has looked at many popular books as well as
> Einstein's 1905 paper, and was probably told about special relativity by
> his high school teacher (50 years ago), so he isn't approaching the
> subject with zero knowledge of relevant facts. For many crackpots those
> books and articles and lectures (not their everyday experiences) are
> actually the source of their misconceptions.
>

So is it your contention that average people would understand relativity
natively, just relying on their common experience and basic logic and
reasoning, except that they’ve all been poisoned by reading popularizations
about relativity, which blocks them from just understanding it?

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

On Friday, 30 July 2021 at 14:26:54 UTC+2, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:

> Explain why, if acquaintance with everyday experiences and basic powers of
> logic and reasoning is prevalent among people, courses and instructional
> books on the subject are required at all? Why is it that people don’t say,
> “Well, yes, of course, all that is already obvious”?

Because that's only some inconsistent mumble of an insane
crank?

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 5:26:54 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> > The subject here is your habitual assertion that the failure of crackpots
> > to understand special relativity is not due to any faulty reasoning or
> > lack of aptitude for the subject, not due to abysmal reading
> > comprehension that leads to grossly misinterpreting snippets from books
> > on the subject, not due to any lack of intellectual integrity, and not
> > due to the vanity and ego of proud men who can't stand to be taught, no,
> > not due to any of those reasons. It is (you claim) due to their reliance
> > on what you define as common sense and intuition, by which you apparently
> > mean the application of perfectly sound reasoning and judgment to a basis
> > of "common knowledge" that is not broad enough to reveal relativistic effects.
>
> I’ll not respond to this, since you are clearly not paying attention to
> what I actually say, and so there is no point to repeat it.

I've explained to you what I think you are saying, and tried to put it in the most clear terms. If you think I have mischaracterized your position, then go ahead and point out how you think I have mischaracterized your position. Then we can make progress. Let's take it one small step at a time, first summarizing what I think is the cause of the crackpot's failures (which I think you deny), and then summarizing what (I think) *you* claim to be the cause:

(1) I think the failure of crackpots to understand special relativity is due to any faulty reasoning, lack of aptitude for the subject, abysmal reading comprehension, lack of intellectual integrity, and the vanity and ego of proud men who can't stand to be taught. If you agree that these actually are the reasons for their failure, then we are in agreement.

(2) I think *you* deny (1), and instead you are saying that the failure of crackpots to understand special relativity is their reliance on what you define as common sense and intuition, by which you apparently mean (correct me if I'm wrong) the application of perfectly sound reasoning and judgment to a basis of "common knowledge" (aka everyday experience) that is not broad enough to reveal relativistic effects. If this is wrong, i.e., if you agree that this is *not* what misleads crackpots, then we are in agreement.

> Instead, we’ll just go right to….

That's quite dumb, because you've bypassed the entire substantive content, and gone straight to the silly diversion that I specifically pointed out was irrelevant, namely, the completely separate question of:

> >> Do you think it is reasonable to say that ANYONE with an average amount of
> >> powers of logic and reasoning, and the acquaintance of everyday experiences
> >> shared by most people, should be able to land on special relativity... just using
> >> those assets?

I explained that this is an irrelevant excursion, because crackpots are not approaching the subject with no knowledge of relativistic effects. The typical crackpot is introduced to the subject by looking at many popular books as well as Einstein's 1905 paper, and was probably told about special relativity by his high school teacher (50 years ago), so he isn't approaching the subject with zero knowledge of relevant facts. Since this is an irrelevant diversion, I didn't give a full and clear treatment of the answer, which due to the verbally ambiguous formulation of your sentence (e.g., "anyone" or "everyone"? and what is "average amount of powers"?) would have been pointlessly laborious. But, since this diversionary question seems to be of interest to you, I will say more clearly what I think is the answer:

It is within the realm of human capacity to deduce special relativity from very primitive awareness of external phenomena, basically just the intuitive and visceral level of awareness of dynamics that underlies Newtonian mechanics (which could, but for historical accident, have been formulated in ancient times). By quite trivial and primitive reasoning there is only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics.

But, again, this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is claiming that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special relativity on their own.

> Explain why, if acquaintance with everyday experiences and basic powers of
> logic and reasoning is prevalent among people...

People posses whatever powers of logic and reasoning they possess. Some people are smarter than others. Again, I do not claim that every human, or even the majority of humans, have the level of intellect to discover special relativity on their own. Yes, some humans do, but we're not talking about those humans, we're talking about anti-relativity crackpots. No one is saying that crackpots would be capable of discovering special relativity for themselves. What we observe is something quite different, namely, they are exposed to some explanations of special relativity, of varying quality (unfortunately many expositions of special relativity are truly terrible), and they decide that it is wrong. The question at issue is what prevents them from understanding it? I explained what I think is the causes of their failure (erroneous reasoning, vanity, etc.), and I've explained why I don't think the reason is reliance on common sense (because special relativity is perfectly consistent with common sense, and indeed the humans who can discover it themselves do so by common sense and sound reasoning).

> So is it your contention that average people would understand relativity
> natively, just relying on their common experience and basic logic and
> reasoning...

No, see above. The subject here is not about who would be competent to independently discover special relativity. The subject here is whether common sense interferes with the average person's ability to understand special relativity when it is explained to them. I say it does not, and in fact common sense is essential to understanding.

> except that they’ve all been poisoned by reading popularizations
> about relativity, which blocks them from just understanding it?

Here I would say yes, to some extent. There are so many extremely poor expositions of special relativity in circulation, and many high school teachers I'm sure give very poor explanations, trying to bewilder the students by telling them 1+1=1, and so on. I do think this is a contributor to sending some individuals down the path of crackpottery. Some crackpots make a speciality of collecting mutually contradictory statements from expositions, and they totally lack the ability to distinguish between good and bad expositions. Of course, if you ask 10 people to write a description of an elephant, you will get 10 different descriptions, and it takes a certain level of intellect to extract from those a coherent impression, and to be able to have independent judgment about which descriptions are better than others, and the sophistication to realize that the fact that they are different doesn't imply that any of them are wrong (although some may be). This is another area in which crackpots struggle, as part of their low reading comprehension.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>> Do you think it is reasonable to say that ANYONE with an average amount of
>>>> powers of logic and reasoning, and the acquaintance of everyday experiences
>>>> shared by most people, should be able to land on special relativity... just using
>>>> those assets?
>
> I explained that this is an irrelevant excursion, because crackpots are
> not approaching the subject with no knowledge of relativistic effects.
> The typical crackpot is introduced to the subject by looking at many
> popular books as well as Einstein's 1905 paper, and was probably told
> about special relativity by his high school teacher (50 years ago), so he
> isn't approaching the subject with zero knowledge of relevant facts.
> Since this is an irrelevant diversion, I didn't give a full and clear
> treatment of the answer, which due to the verbally ambiguous formulation
> of your sentence (e.g., "anyone" or "everyone"? and what is "average
> amount of powers"?) would have been pointlessly laborious. But, since
> this diversionary question seems to be of interest to you, I will say
> more clearly what I think is the answer:
>
> It is within the realm of human capacity to deduce special relativity
> from very primitive awareness of external phenomena, basically just the
> intuitive and visceral level of awareness of dynamics that underlies
> Newtonian mechanics (which could, but for historical accident, have been
> formulated in ancient times).

Alright, so let’s take note that you believe that the only thing that is
necessary to deduce special relativity is a “very primitive awareness of
external phenomena” and…

> By quite trivial and primitive reasoning

And “quite trivial and primitive reasoning”.

> there is only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically
> possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems
> (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively
> different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to
> many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics.

What fraction of the population do you think have done this, given that
just about everyone has access to “very primitive awareness of external
phenomena” and “quite trivial and primitive reasoning”?

>
> But, again, this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is
> claiming that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special
> relativity on their own.

But shouldn’t they be? In fact, shouldn’t just about everyone be, given the
low bar you think is required? I think it’s very relevant.

>
>> Explain why, if acquaintance with everyday experiences and basic powers of
>> logic and reasoning is prevalent among people...
>
> People posses whatever powers of logic and reasoning they possess. Some
> people are smarter than others.

Well, but you see you’ve not said it requires special awareness of external
phenomena or an elevated reasoning capability. You’ve said all it requires
is primitive and simplistic levels of both. So perhaps you are saying that
the majority of humans lack “very primitive awareness of external
phenomena” and “quite trivial and primitive reasoning” capabilities.

Note, please, that I am steering the conversation AWAY from crackpots —
much as you’d prefer to stick on that topic — and I’m now exploring the
question why you think it is, given how straightforward special relativity
is in your eyes, that most people do not already understand it completely
and in fact natively? Why did it have to wait until the 20th century to be
reasoned out (using these primitive capabilities) and not sorted out in the
15th century or the 7th or the 1st?

> Again, I do not claim that every human, or even the majority of humans,
> have the level of intellect to discover special relativity on their own.
> Yes, some humans do, but we're not talking about those humans, we're
> talking about anti-relativity crackpots. No one is saying that crackpots
> would be capable of discovering special relativity for themselves. What
> we observe is something quite different, namely, they are exposed to some
> explanations of special relativity, of varying quality (unfortunately
> many expositions of special relativity are truly terrible), and they
> decide that it is wrong. The question at issue is what prevents them
> from understanding it? I explained what I think is the causes of their
> failure (erroneous reasoning, vanity, etc.), and I've explained why I
> don't think the reason is reliance on common sense (because special
> relativity is perfectly consistent with common sense, and indeed the
> humans who can discover it themselves do so by common sense and sound reasoning).

And how many do?

And if the answer is small, do tell please why it is small.

Again, I am no longer talking about crackpots. I am talking about the
majority of people.

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

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 8:12:27 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
[you shamelessly snipped the entire relevant part of the discussion]

So, to summarize the outcome of the original discussion (that you're now running away from), we've established that the crackpot rejections of special relativity are based, not on adherence to common sense, but on illogical and faulty reasoning, poor reading comprehension, intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy, vanity, poor quality expositions, and so on.

Now you are starting a new topic, pertaining to how special relativity may be discovered.

> You believe that the only thing that is necessary to deduce special relativity
> is a “very primitive awareness of external phenomena” and “quite trivial and
> primitive reasoning”.

Right. There's only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics.

> What fraction of the population do you think have done this...

Very small... which is entirely irrelevant. There are infinitely many things that people can think about, and people only have the time and interest to think about a limited number of things. The most general logically coherent relationship between inertial coordinate systems (in which the descriptions of dynamics take their most symmetrical form that we typically use) is not something that very many people would even think of thinking about. If you had asked Carl Gauss in 1800 what is the most general relationship between inertial coordinate systems it would have taken him less than 10 seconds to write down the Lorentz transformation, and he would have seen the answer in his mind almost instantly.

> > But, again, this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is
> > claiming that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special
> > relativity on their own.
>
> But shouldn’t they be? In fact, shouldn’t just about everyone be, given the
> low bar you think is required? I think it’s very relevant.

No, it is not relevant at all. The topic was not "What would it take to independently discover special relativity?", the topic was "Do people fail to understand explanations of special relativity because it conflicts with common sense?" Those are two very different questions.

> You’ve said all it requires is primitive and simplistic levels of both.

I did not (and do not) say the reasoning is "simplistic". It is simple, but not "simplistic".

> So perhaps you are saying that the majority of humans lack “very primitive awareness
> of external phenomena” and “quite trivial and primitive reasoning” capabilities.

You've gone completely bonkers. Why doesn't everyone invent the bow and arrow? Why doesn't everyone invent the sewing machine? Why didn't we all invent Facebook? Again, there are infinitely many things for people to think about, and the number of things we can actually think about is finite, so the percentage of all possible things that we actually think about is essentially 0%. We think about things that fall in our path. And, again, this is all irrelevant to the original topic. Intellectual curiosity and even creativity are essential for invention and discovery, but the topic of discussion was not why not everyone independently discovers special relativity, it's why when special relativity is carefully explained to them, some portion of them violently reject it and become virulent anti-relativity crackpots. You said it was because they have too much common sense, and I explained why the crackpot's failure has nothing to do with an excess of common sense. Their beliefs are nonsense.

> I am steering the conversation AWAY from crackpots — much as you’d prefer to stick on
> that topic...

I have no special fondness for that topic, but it is the topic we were discussing, and you didn't give any evidence of closure, you just segway-ed to a different topic.

> Given how straightforward special relativity is in your eyes, why do most people not
> already understand it completely ...

Your premise is false: Most people, when special relativity is pointed out to them, are able to understand it, at least on some level, depending on the quality of exposition and their own powers of sound reasoning and level of interest. Most people do not become anti-relativity crackpots. If your question is why most people don't discover special relativity independently, well, that's a fairly stupid question. We think about what falls in our path. If you never have need of a bow and arrow, you probably won't invent the bow and arrow. In fact, even if a bow and arrow would be useful for you, you might still not invent it. This doesn't imply that the bow and arrow violates common sense, nor that common sense would prevent you from understanding the bow and arrow if it was explained to you. Intellectual curiosity and creativity are keys to discovery, and most people are not terribly creative. We understand what we need to understand, and in daily life there is no need to understand special relativity. This does not imply that common sense would prevent you from understanding special relativity if it is explained to you.

> Why did it have to wait until the 20th century to be reasoned out...

Prior to that time the occasion did not arise, i.e., of the infinitely many things we could think about, we didn't have need to think about that, and there would be little economic value to it, compared with the other things that we *did* think about, and no easy way to test it, etc. This is not mysterious. The bow and arrow was not invented before it was needed. Common sense does not hinder people from understanding the bow and arrow, even if they didn't independently invent it.

> > I've explained why I don't think the reason is reliance on common sense (because special
> > relativity is perfectly consistent with common sense, and indeed the humans who can
> > discover it themselves do so by common sense and sound reasoning).
>
> And how many do?

Again, that's completely irrelevant. You are asking now about intellectual curiosity and creativity, along with circumstantial conditions, none of which support your claim that crackpots fail to understand special relativity because they have too much common sense.
> And if the answer is small, do tell please why it is small.

Strong intellectual curiosity and creativity is fairly rare. This has nothing to do with your claim that crackpots deny special relativity because they have too much common sense. To the contrary, the ideas of crackpots are nonsense.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 8:12:27 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> [you shamelessly snipped the entire relevant part of the discussion]
>
> So, to summarize the outcome of the original discussion (that you're now
> running away from), we've established that the crackpot rejections of
> special relativity are based, not on adherence to common sense, but on
> illogical and faulty reasoning, poor reading comprehension, intellectual
> dishonesty and hypocrisy, vanity, poor quality expositions, and so on.

No, that is not what we’ve established. When last we left off, I made it
plain that you were ignoring what I was actually saying, and so further
discussion about crackpots was not deemed by me to be productive. This is
not running away. It is acting out of response to your behavior.

If it is important to you to feel you have won something in that particular
exchange, then by all means feed that emotional need. I gather that
watching people “running away” rather than convincing them of something is
gratifying to you. Take that hobby up with the crackpots.

>
> Now you are starting a new topic, pertaining to how special relativity may be discovered.
>
>> You believe that the only thing that is necessary to deduce special relativity
>> is a “very primitive awareness of external phenomena” and “quite trivial and
>> primitive reasoning”.
>
> Right. There's only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically
> possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems
> (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively
> different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to
> many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics.
>
>> What fraction of the population do you think have done this...
>
> Very small... which is entirely irrelevant.
> There are infinitely many things that people can think about, and people
> only have the time and interest to think about a limited number of things.

So you are saying that the fact that average people don’t understand
relativity natively is just an artifact of candy-store selection
opportunity. I see. So you are saying that virtually ANYONE who just sat
down for a few minutes, suddenly seized by an interesting thought about
inertial motion, would surely land on the answer quickly and easily, but it
just so happened that no one in the history of the human race asked that
question until the start of the 20th century. And so it went undiscovered
by accident.

> The most general logically coherent relationship between inertial
> coordinate systems (in which the descriptions of dynamics take their most
> symmetrical form that we typically use) is not something that very many
> people would even think of thinking about. If you had asked Carl Gauss
> in 1800 what is the most general relationship between inertial coordinate
> systems it would have taken him less than 10 seconds to write down the
> Lorentz transformation, and he would have seen the answer in his mind almost instantly.

Well, it’s remarkable that you would speak on behalf of a dead man. But we
aren’t talking about exceptional mathematicians like Carl Gauss. We’re
talking about average people interested in science, not even trained
physicists but just people interested in science.

>
>>> But, again, this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is
>>> claiming that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special
>>> relativity on their own.
>>
>> But shouldn’t they be? In fact, shouldn’t just about everyone be, given the
>> low bar you think is required? I think it’s very relevant.
>
> No, it is not relevant at all. The topic was not "What would it take to
> independently discover special relativity?", the topic was "Do people
> fail to understand explanations of special relativity because it
> conflicts with common sense?" Those are two very different questions.

I’m asking the question now why it is that we do not see hordes of people
who have stumbled on special relativity by themselves. If this is a topic
you’re unwilling to move toward, then by all means bail.

>
>> You’ve said all it requires is primitive and simplistic levels of both.
>
> I did not (and do not) say the reasoning is "simplistic". It is simple,
> but not "simplistic".
>
>> So perhaps you are saying that the majority of humans lack “very primitive awareness
>> of external phenomena” and “quite trivial and primitive reasoning” capabilities.
>
> You've gone completely bonkers. Why doesn't everyone invent the bow and arrow?

Well, as you may recall, the bow and arrow was invented about 18,000 years
ago, and this was a practical INVENTION, not a discovery about what you
claim is a simple fact of nature exhibited everywhere. The bow and arrow
did not exist at all until someone thought to produce it, and relativity
exhibited itself in nature long before that. Relativity isn’t an invention,
remember.

And so, the power of reasoning being available to all those people prior to
18,000 years ago and certainly for the entire 18,000 years after that, one
might be surprised why the bow and arrow appeared so early when the
realization of special relativity did not. Pure accidental miss, you say?

> Why doesn't everyone invent the sewing machine? Why didn't we all invent
> Facebook? Again, there are infinitely many things for people to think
> about, and the number of things we can actually think about is finite, so
> the percentage of all possible things that we actually think about is
> essentially 0%. We think about things that fall in our path. And,
> again, this is all irrelevant to the original topic. Intellectual
> curiosity and even creativity are essential for invention and discovery,
> but the topic of discussion was not why not everyone independently
> discovers special relativity, it's why when special relativity is
> carefully explained to them, some portion of them violently reject it and
> become virulent anti-relativity crackpots. You said it was because they
> have too much common sense, and I explained why the crackpot's failure
> has nothing to do with an excess of common sense. Their beliefs are nonsense.
>
>> I am steering the conversation AWAY from crackpots — much as you’d prefer to stick on
>> that topic...
>
> I have no special fondness for that topic, but it is the topic we were
> discussing, and you didn't give any evidence of closure, you just
> segway-ed to a different topic.
>
>> Given how straightforward special relativity is in your eyes, why do most people not
>> already understand it completely ...
>
> Your premise is false: Most people, when special relativity is pointed
> out to them, are able to understand it, at least on some level, depending
> on the quality of exposition and their own powers of sound reasoning and
> level of interest.

Well, wait a minute, this is something new. A while back you said that all
that was needed was the primitive acquaintance of everyday phenomena and
some normal quota of intelligence. Now you say that a critical ingredient
may be EXPLAINING it to them. This seems important.

What exactly are the key concepts that you think need to be explained to
someone to a suitable demonstration of understanding before these “most
people” will be able to understand it, especially since it is unlikely
they’ll stumble on it themselves even if they express an interest in it?

Would the words “symmetry of form of dynamical descriptions” and “inertial
reference frames” be enough for the average Joe to say, “Ah, yes, I have it
now.”

> Most people do not become anti-relativity crackpots. If your question is
> why most people don't discover special relativity independently, well,
> that's a fairly stupid question. We think about what falls in our path.
> If you never have need of a bow and arrow, you probably won't invent the
> bow and arrow. In fact, even if a bow and arrow would be useful for you,
> you might still not invent it. This doesn't imply that the bow and arrow
> violates common sense, nor that common sense would prevent you from
> understanding the bow and arrow if it was explained to you. Intellectual
> curiosity and creativity are keys to discovery, and most people are not
> terribly creative. We understand what we need to understand, and in
> daily life there is no need to understand special relativity. This does
> not imply that common sense would prevent you from understanding special
> relativity if it is explained to you.
>
>> Why did it have to wait until the 20th century to be reasoned out...
>
> Prior to that time the occasion did not arise, i.e., of the infinitely
> many things we could think about, we didn't have need to think about
> that, and there would be little economic value to it, compared with the
> other things that we *did* think about, and no easy way to test it, etc.

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 11:28:21 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
To summarize the outcome of the original discussion (that you're now running away from), we've established that the crackpot rejections of special relativity are based, not on adherence to common sense, but on illogical and faulty reasoning, poor reading comprehension, intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy, vanity, poor quality expositions, and so on.

Now you're starting a new topic, pertaining to how special relativity may be discovered.

> So you are saying that the fact that average people don’t understand
> relativity natively...

Now you're resorting to despicable word games, with "natively". Look, most people who have relativity explained to them do understand it (to whatever degree they are interested in understanding it), so your statement is false. You are trying to surreptitiously put independent discovery in place of understand when explained. Sheesh.

> You are saying that virtually ANYONE who just sat down for a few minutes,
> suddenly seized by an interesting thought about inertial motion, would surely
> land on the answer quickly and easily...

That's untrue. What I have said is that there is a difference between understanding an explanation of special relativity versus independently discovering special relativity, and that anyone of normal intellect can understand a decent explanation of special relativity, but to independently discover special relativity requires the level of intellectual curiosity and creativity, and suitably propitious circumstances, that is a prerequisite for such a discovery. Example: Most people can understand the Pythagorean theorem when it is explained to them, but most people do not independently discover it themselves. Those are two different things. This is not mysterious (to most people, although it appears to be mysterious to you).

> We’re talking about average people interested in science, not even trained
> physicists but just people interested in science.

Again, any person of normal intellect can understand a decent explanation of special relativity. Your belief that this implies that every ordinary person would independently discover special relativity for themselves is simply an absurd mental malfunction. You are not thinking logically.

> one might be surprised why the bow and arrow appeared so early when the
> realization of special relativity did not.

No sane person would be surprised by that, nor would any sane person think that anyone would be surprised by that.

> Well, wait a minute, this is something new...

No, there is nothing new. Again, there is a difference between discovering something and understanding an explanation of something. The conditions and requirements for a discovery are vastly different than the requirements for understanding an explanation. Why is this distinction so difficult for you to grasp?

Most people don't become anti-relativity crackpots. If your question is why most people don't discover special relativity independently, well, we think about what falls in our path. If you never have need of a bow and arrow, you probably won't invent the bow and arrow. In fact, even if a bow and arrow would be useful for you, you might still not invent it. This doesn't imply that the bow and arrow violates common sense, nor that common sense would prevent you from understanding the bow and arrow if it was explained to you. Intellectual curiosity and creativity are keys to discovery, and most people are not terribly creative. We understand what we need to understand, and in daily life there is no need to understand special relativity. This does not imply that common sense would prevent you from understanding special relativity if it is explained to you.

> Why is it that, now that they’re interested in it, they can’t just take
> their primitive acquaintance of everyday phenomena and the modicum of
> rationality that most everyone is blessed with, and just figure it out on
> their own in an hour or so, saying “Ah yes, of course. It has to be that
> way. That wasn’t hard at all.”

You're still missing the difference between understanding something when it is explained to you, versus independently discovering it or "figuring it out" for yourself. I will happily stipulate that it takes someone smarter than you to independently figure out and/or discover special relativity for themselves. In fact, if you say so, I'm prepared to believe that you are in the group of people who can't even understand it when it's explained to you. But I think you are in the minority. Any sane person of average or above intellect can understand a decent explanation of special relativity. This does not mean that all or even most of those people could or would discover it for themselves. Same for the Pythagorean theorem.

> > Strong intellectual curiosity and creativity is fairly rare.
>
> Ah, so this is yet another important precursor. So it seems that to understand
> relativity, an average Joe needs...

You have gone completely insane. Once again (please try to concentrate), there is a difference between (1) understanding an explanation of special relativity, and (2) independently discovering special relativity. The rare qualities of intellectual curiosity and creativity are essential for (2) but not for (1). Is this distinction really impossible for you to grasp?

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 11:28:21 AM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> To summarize the outcome of the original discussion (that you're now
> running away from), we've established that the crackpot rejections of
> special relativity are based, not on adherence to common sense, but on
> illogical and faulty reasoning, poor reading comprehension, intellectual
> dishonesty and hypocrisy, vanity, poor quality expositions, and so on.
>
> Now you're starting a new topic, pertaining to how special relativity may be discovered.
>
>> So you are saying that the fact that average people don’t understand
>> relativity natively...
>
> Now you're resorting to despicable word games, with "natively". Look,
> most people who have relativity explained to them do understand it (to
> whatever degree they are interested in understanding it), so your
> statement is false. You are trying to surreptitiously put independent
> discovery in place of understand when explained. Sheesh.

No Sheesh about it. It was YOU who stated that the ONLY things that are
needed for people to understand relativity is a rather primitive
acquaintance with everyday phenomena and modicum of reason and logic. And I
asked you EXPLICITLY if it was your contention that the average person
having ONLY these two things could figure out special relativity ON THEIR
OWN, and you said, “Yes, as a matter of fact.” That IS discovery. (You
perhaps now understand why I was astonished you would say such a thing.)

There was NOTHING in that about having someone else familiar with
relativity explaining it to that person as an additional ingredient.

But now you’ve changed your tune and added not only the well-crafted
instruction and the opportunity of having an interest in it, for a learner;
with an additional dollop of a rare degree of intellectual curiosity and
creativity in the case of the person figuring it out alone.

Let’s also note in passing that intellectual curiosity may play a key role
in seizing the opportunity of interest and also availing oneself of
well-crafted instruction. So if an average Joe lacks this admittedly rare
property of strong intellectual curiosity, then one reason they might never
understand relativity is that they do not avail themselves of well-crafted
instruction, no?

>
>> You are saying that virtually ANYONE who just sat down for a few minutes,
>> suddenly seized by an interesting thought about inertial motion, would surely
>> land on the answer quickly and easily...
>
> That's untrue. What I have said is that there is a difference between
> understanding an explanation of special relativity versus independently
> discovering special relativity, and that anyone of normal intellect can
> understand a decent explanation of special relativity, but to
> independently discover special relativity requires the level of
> intellectual curiosity and creativity, and suitably propitious circumstances,

Suitably propitious circumstances?? What on earth could THAT mean?

> that is a prerequisite for such a discovery. Example: Most people can
> understand the Pythagorean theorem when it is explained to them, but most
> people do not independently discover it themselves. Those are two
> different things. This is not mysterious (to most people, although it
> appears to be mysterious to you).

Well, it’s not mysterious to me at all. I understand that completely. What
mystified me was your claim that ALL THAT WAS NEEDED to understand
relativity was primitive acquaintance with everyday phenomena and a modicum
of reason and logic at the level that you would call common sense. There
was NOTHING mentioned in that very short list about good instruction for
those learning, or about rare qualities of intellectual curiosity and
creativity and “suitably propitious circumstances” (whatever that means)
for those discovering.

But now that you’ve back-filled the short list with something that looks
more reasonable, we can proceed.

So let’s take the case of the learner, not the discoverer, since that seems
to be more commonly accessible.

What exactly do you think constitutes a “decent explanation” of special
relativity? Again, I am NO LONGER talking about crackpots. If you can’t
move your mind off that, this might be due to a shortage of intellectual
curiosity or creativity or a modicum of reason or logic.

Is there a decent book you would recommend that would constitute a “decent
explanation” of special relativity?

Or do you think that a Usenet post mentioning the “maximal symmetry of the
description of dynamics” in “inertial reference frames” should be
sufficient for an explanation? Do you at all wonder if the average Joe
might not know what you mean by “maximal symmetry” or “description of
dynamics” or “inertial” or “reference frame”? What prerequisite learning
would someone need to have under their belt to prepare themselves for an
explanation involving language like that? Again, we’re talking about an
average Joe with a high interest in relativity but no background in
physics.

>
>> We’re talking about average people interested in science, not even trained
>> physicists but just people interested in science.
>
> Again, any person of normal intellect can understand a decent explanation
> of special relativity. Your belief that this implies that every ordinary
> person would independently discover special relativity for themselves is
> simply an absurd mental malfunction. You are not thinking logically.
>
>> one might be surprised why the bow and arrow appeared so early when the
>> realization of special relativity did not.
>
> No sane person would be surprised by that, nor would any sane person
> think that anyone would be surprised by that.
>
>> Well, wait a minute, this is something new...
>
> No, there is nothing new. Again, there is a difference between
> discovering something and understanding an explanation of something. The
> conditions and requirements for a discovery are vastly different than the
> requirements for understanding an explanation. Why is this distinction
> so difficult for you to grasp?
>
> Most people don't become anti-relativity crackpots. If your question is
> why most people don't discover special relativity independently, well, we
> think about what falls in our path. If you never have need of a bow and
> arrow, you probably won't invent the bow and arrow. In fact, even if a
> bow and arrow would be useful for you, you might still not invent it.
> This doesn't imply that the bow and arrow violates common sense, nor that
> common sense would prevent you from understanding the bow and arrow if it
> was explained to you. Intellectual curiosity and creativity are keys to
> discovery, and most people are not terribly creative. We understand what
> we need to understand, and in daily life there is no need to understand
> special relativity. This does not imply that common sense would prevent
> you from understanding special relativity if it is explained to you.
>
>> Why is it that, now that they’re interested in it, they can’t just take
>> their primitive acquaintance of everyday phenomena and the modicum of
>> rationality that most everyone is blessed with, and just figure it out on
>> their own in an hour or so, saying “Ah yes, of course. It has to be that
>> way. That wasn’t hard at all.”
>
> You're still missing the difference between understanding something when
> it is explained to you, versus independently discovering it or "figuring
> it out" for yourself. I will happily stipulate that it takes someone
> smarter than you to independently figure out and/or discover special
> relativity for themselves. In fact, if you say so, I'm prepared to
> believe that you are in the group of people who can't even understand it
> when it's explained to you. But I think you are in the minority. Any
> sane person of average or above intellect can understand a decent
> explanation of special relativity.

I’m delighted that you obviously have in mind what precisely constitutes a
decent explanation of special relativity. Proceed by reference or
illustration.

> This does not mean that all or even most of those people could or would
> discover it for themselves. Same for the Pythagorean theorem.
>
>>> Strong intellectual curiosity and creativity is fairly rare.
>>
>> Ah, so this is yet another important precursor. So it seems that to understand
>> relativity, an average Joe needs...
>
> You have gone completely insane. Once again (please try to concentrate),
> there is a difference between (1) understanding an explanation of special
> relativity, and (2) independently discovering special relativity. The
> rare qualities of intellectual curiosity and creativity are essential for
> (2) but not for (1). Is this distinction really impossible for you to grasp?
>

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 1:27:46 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> It was YOU who stated that the ONLY things that are needed for people
> to understand relativity is a rather primitive acquaintance with everyday
> phenomena and modicum of reason and logic.

Right, and then you began weirdly trying to conflate "understand" (when it's explained to you) with "discover".

> I asked you EXPLICITLY if it was your contention that the average person
> having ONLY these two things could figure out special relativity ON THEIR
> OWN, and you said, “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

The wording of your question asked if "anyone" could, which is ambiguous with "everyone" (and "average powers" is mush), and the question was irrelevant to the discussion (you hadn't yet conceded that your original thesis of "common sense bad" was baloney and you were shifting to a new subject). My meaning on the subject of discovery was already clarified in the follow-up message (remember?):

"It is within the realm of human capacity to deduce special relativity from very primitive awareness of external phenomena, basically just the intuitive and visceral level of awareness of dynamics that underlies Newtonian mechanics (which could, but for historical accident, have been formulated in ancient times). By quite trivial and primitive reasoning there is only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics. But, again, this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is claiming that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special relativity on their own."

> But now you’ve changed your tune and added not only the well-crafted
> instruction and the opportunity of having an interest in it, for a learner;
> with an additional dollop of a rare degree of intellectual curiosity and
> creativity in the case of the person figuring it out alone.

There's no change in tune, there was first the demolition of your original thesis ("common sense bad"), and then when you confessed that you were abandoning that, came the careful explanation of your fresh misconceptions about discovery versus understanding.

> One reason they might never understand relativity is that they do not avail themselves
> of well-crafted instruction, no?

Yes, certainly, and the difficulty is compounded because crackpots tend to have an uncanny ability to gravitate toward the worst possible sources of information. Those are the ones that seem the best to them.

> > What I have said is that there is a difference between understanding an explanation
> > of special relativity versus independently discovering special relativity, and that anyone
> > of normal intellect can understand a decent explanation of special relativity, but to
> > independently discover special relativity requires the level of intellectual curiosity and
> > creativity, and suitably propitious circumstances,
>
> Suitably propitious circumstances?? What on earth could THAT mean?

You really don't understand what that means? Someone who lives in the desert is unlikely to invent a jet-ski. This doesn't mean people who live near water are smarter or more inventive, it just means they live in circumstances that are more propitious for inventing jet-skis. Also, a slave in a Roman galley is unlikely to be discovering the Pythagorean theorem or abstract theories of physics. Circumstances are obviously relevant. I'm having a hard time believing you are as dense as you pretend to be.

> What mystified me was your claim that ALL THAT WAS NEEDED to understand
> relativity was primitive acquaintance with everyday phenomena and a modicum
> of reason and logic at the level that you would call common sense.

That is still my claim. You understand this, right? You keep confusing yourself by conflating understanding with discovery. The original issue was what prevents people from understanding special relativity when it is explained to them. This is very different from the process of independent discovery.

> There was NOTHING mentioned in that very short list about good instruction...

You're lying again. I carefully referred to "decent explanation". Obviously no one can understand something if the explanation is sufficiently bad. Your argumentation is just ridiculous.

> or about rare qualities of intellectual curiosity and creativity and “suitably propitious
> circumstances” (whatever that means) for those discovering.

Again, those are for discovery, not for understanding a decent explanation. You can't possibly really be as dumb as you are pretending to be.

> What exactly do you think constitutes a “decent explanation” of special relativity?

Wait, just up above you claimed I had not specified a good quality explanation, and now you acknowledge that I did. What is wrong with you?

> Do you think that a Usenet post mentioning the “maximal symmetry of the
> description of dynamics” in “inertial reference frames” should be sufficient for
> an explanation?

No, that would be dreadful. Those phrases are highly ambiguous, and completely inadequate and misguided (e.g., "frames"). As noted above, one characteristic of crackpots is that they never seem able to locate good quality sources. They can ferret out the most obscure crank literature from some civil engineer in Finland in 1932, but for some reason they can never lay their hands on much more readily available high quality material. It's quite strange.

On Saturday, 31 July 2021 at 00:40:34 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:

> "It is within the realm of human capacity to deduce special relativity from very primitive awareness of external phenomena, basically just the intuitive and visceral level of awareness of dynamics that underlies Newtonian mechanics (which could, but for historical accident, have been formulated in ancient times). By quite trivial and primitive reasoning there is only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics. But, again, this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is claiming that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special relativity on their own."

It's within the realm of human capacity to deduce any bullshit
from anything.
After deducing you can brainwash others, if they are going to
listen to you.
Very simple.

On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:31:09 AM UTC-4, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Arthur Adler <aadl...@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.

That’s why people like Odd who is indoctrinated in Einstein’s SR have a very difficult time in accepting that the speed of everything (including light) is observer dependent. Instead they accepted that the measuring tools to measure the speed of light is flexible by asserting that the length of a meter is 1/288,782,458 light-second. This guarantees that the speed of light is constant c no matter who is measuring its speed. Not very scientific and very sad.
> --
> Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 1:27:46 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> It was YOU who stated that the ONLY things that are needed for people
>> to understand relativity is a rather primitive acquaintance with everyday
>> phenomena and modicum of reason and logic.
>
> Right, and then you began weirdly trying to conflate "understand" (when
> it's explained to you) with "discover".
>
>> I asked you EXPLICITLY if it was your contention that the average person
>> having ONLY these two things could figure out special relativity ON THEIR
>> OWN, and you said, “Yes, as a matter of fact.”
>
> The wording of your question asked if "anyone" could, which is ambiguous
> with "everyone" (and "average powers" is mush), and the question was
> irrelevant to the discussion (you hadn't yet conceded that your original
> thesis of "common sense bad" was baloney and you were shifting to a new
> subject). My meaning on the subject of discovery was already clarified
> in the follow-up message (remember?):
>
> "It is within the realm of human capacity to deduce special relativity
> from very primitive awareness of external phenomena, basically just the
> intuitive and visceral level of awareness of dynamics that underlies
> Newtonian mechanics (which could, but for historical accident, have been
> formulated in ancient times). By quite trivial and primitive reasoning
> there is only a single constant degree of freedom in the logically
> possible relationship between what are called inertial coordinate systems
> (of which we are intuitive aware), with just three qualitatively
> different possibilities, and this can and has independently occurred to
> many people who have no sophisticated knowledge of physics. But, again,
> this is irrelevant to the subject at hand, because no one is claiming
> that crackpots are intelligent enough to have discovered special relativity on their own."
>
>> But now you’ve changed your tune and added not only the well-crafted
>> instruction and the opportunity of having an interest in it, for a learner;
>> with an additional dollop of a rare degree of intellectual curiosity and
>> creativity in the case of the person figuring it out alone.
>
> There's no change in tune, there was first the demolition of your
> original thesis ("common sense bad"), and then when you confessed that
> you were abandoning that, came the careful explanation of your fresh
> misconceptions about discovery versus understanding.
>
>> One reason they might never understand relativity is that they do not avail themselves
>> of well-crafted instruction, no?
>
> Yes, certainly, and the difficulty is compounded because crackpots tend
> to have an uncanny ability to gravitate toward the worst possible sources
> of information. Those are the ones that seem the best to them.
>
>>> What I have said is that there is a difference between understanding an explanation
>>> of special relativity versus independently discovering special
>>> relativity, and that anyone
>>> of normal intellect can understand a
>>> decent explanation of special relativity, but to
>>> independently discover special relativity requires the level of
>>> intellectual curiosity and
>>> creativity, and suitably propitious circumstances,
>>
>> Suitably propitious circumstances?? What on earth could THAT mean?
>
> You really don't understand what that means? Someone who lives in the
> desert is unlikely to invent a jet-ski. This doesn't mean people who live
> near water are smarter or more inventive, it just means they live in
> circumstances that are more propitious for inventing jet-skis. Also, a
> slave in a Roman galley is unlikely to be discovering the Pythagorean
> theorem or abstract theories of physics. Circumstances are obviously
> relevant. I'm having a hard time believing you are as dense as you pretend to be.
>
>> What mystified me was your claim that ALL THAT WAS NEEDED to understand
>> relativity was primitive acquaintance with everyday phenomena and a modicum
>> of reason and logic at the level that you would call common sense.
>
> That is still my claim. You understand this, right? You keep confusing
> yourself by conflating understanding with discovery. The original issue
> was what prevents people from understanding special relativity when it is
> explained to them. This is very different from the process of independent discovery.
>
>> There was NOTHING mentioned in that very short list about good instruction...
>
> You're lying again. I carefully referred to "decent explanation".
> Obviously no one can understand something if the explanation is
> sufficiently bad. Your argumentation is just ridiculous.
>
>> or about rare qualities of intellectual curiosity and creativity and “suitably propitious
>> circumstances” (whatever that means) for those discovering.
>
> Again, those are for discovery, not for understanding a decent
> explanation. You can't possibly really be as dumb as you are pretending to be.
>
>> What exactly do you think constitutes a “decent explanation” of special relativity?
>
> Wait, just up above you claimed I had not specified a good quality
> explanation, and now you acknowledge that I did. What is wrong with you?
>
>> Do you think that a Usenet post mentioning the “maximal symmetry of the
>> description of dynamics” in “inertial reference frames” should be sufficient for
>> an explanation?
>
> No, that would be dreadful. Those phrases are highly ambiguous, and
> completely inadequate and misguided (e.g., "frames"). As noted above,
> one characteristic of crackpots is that they never seem able to locate
> good quality sources. They can ferret out the most obscure crank
> literature from some civil engineer in Finland in 1932, but for some
> reason they can never lay their hands on much more readily available high
> quality material. It's quite strange.
>

While there is much that is so tempting to call you on here, let’s move on
and see where we are. Please note that only one of us is talking about
cranks now, and it’s you.

So you now agree that for an average Joe to learn relativity, that is going
to require several things: a careful observational awareness of everyday
phenomena, a modicum of ability with reason and logic, and a decent
explanation of or good instruction in relativity by someone who knows
something about it already.

And you also agree that for an average Joe to discovery relativity, that is
going to require several things: a careful observational awareness of
everyday phenomena, a modicum of ability with reason and logic, and a rare
degree of strong intellectual curiosity and creativity, and the
happenstance of some propitious circumstances — the last two in combination
being sufficiently rare and restrictive that the average Joe is exceedingly
unlike to have them. Alright, so the average Joe is not going to discover
relativity — that’s no surprise.

So then let’s talk about the average Joe learner. You mentioned a decent
explanation and I asked you to elaborate by reference or illustration, but
you have yet to do that. You did give some examples of things you said
would be bad examples, but no references or illustration of a good example
of decent explanation. If there are none you can think of, then I guess we
can pretty well rule out the average Joe learning relativity as well. If
there are some you can think of, then by all means provide that reference
or illustration.

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

Ken Seto <setoken47@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 10:31:09 AM UTC-4, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Arthur Adler <aadl...@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.
>
> That’s why people like Odd who is indoctrinated in Einstein’s SR have a
> very difficult time in accepting that the speed of everything (including
> light) is observer dependent. Instead they accepted that the measuring
> tools to measure the speed of light is flexible by asserting that the
> length of a meter is 1/288,782,458 light-second.

Well, no, there’s a chronological problem here. Light speed’s independence
of observer (which you say is impossible) was established many decades ago
in experimental observation, though you have no idea what those references
are because you forget them within an hour or so of them being mentioned to
you. This was LONG BEFORE the definition of the meter in terms of
light-seconds.

So it is obviously impossible that the definition of the meter in terms of
the light-second (in 1983) was used in experiments in the 1920s, 1930s,
1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that showed light speed’s independence of
observer.

> This guarantees that the speed of light is constant c no matter who is
> measuring its speed. Not very scientific and very sad.
>> --
>> Odd Bodkin -- maker of fine toys, tools, tables
>

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

On Saturday, 31 July 2021 at 22:08:01 UTC+2, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:

> So you now agree that for an average Joe to learn relativity, that is going
> to require several things: a careful observational awareness of everyday
> phenomena, a modicum of ability with reason and logic, and a decent
> explanation of or good instruction in relativity by someone who knows
> something about it already.

Sure, sure: careful observation, logical and reasonable thinking
and some brainwashing by one of your idiot gurus; that we're
FORCED!!! FORCED to THE BEST WAY!!!! And so on.

On Saturday, 31 July 2021 at 22:12:49 UTC+2, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:

> Well, no, there’s a chronological problem here. Light speed’s independence
> of observer (which you say is impossible) was established many decades ago
> in experimental observation,

Only such idiots as you, Bod, believe such an impudent lie; even
your idiot guru, BTW, wasn't able to insist on that idiocy for a long time and
his GR shit had to withdraw from it.

though you have no idea what those references
> are because you forget them within an hour or so of them being mentioned to
> you. This was LONG BEFORE the definition of the meter in terms of
> light-seconds.
>
> So it is obviously impossible that the definition of the meter in terms of
> the light-second (in 1983) was used in experiments in the 1920s, 1930s,

And that makes your very impudent lie a very impudent lie.

On Saturday, July 31, 2021 at 1:08:01 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
> Let’s move on and see where we are.

You're resorting to the crackpot tactic of running away from the entire substantive content of each post, and bottom-posting a fresh set of idiocies with each new message.

> Please note that only one of us is talking about cranks now...

And the other *is* a crank. Look, your original claim in this discussion was that cranks reject special relativity because it violates common sense, and the only way for someone (including you) to understand special relativity is to relinquish their common sense, which you pride yourself in having done. You did indeed stop trying to defend your misguided claim a while ago, but soon enough you will resume making your debunked claim, so there's no point in pretending you've understood your error.

> So you now agree...

That's an incorrect preface. My explanations have been consistent, debunking each of your fallacious claims in turn. (Remember, your diversionary question asked about "anyone", not "everyone".) See the above detailed explanations that you ignored.

> For an average Joe to learn relativity, that is going to require several things:
> a careful observational awareness of everyday phenomena, a modicum of
> ability with reason and logic, and a decent explanation...

Well, if you replace your obviously muddled attempt to paraphrase what I said with what I actually said, then yes, that's what I've been telling you all along. So the correct opening clause that you should have prefaced this with is not "you now agree" but rather "I now agree", and then you should just have referred to what I said, rather than trying (unsuccessfully) to paraphrase. At least you've finally acknowledged that you've made some progress. You're welcome. But something tells me it won't last.

And of course, you've failed to mention the most relevant point, namely, the thing that is *not* on the list of pre-requisites, but that you insisted (up until now) was the most salient requirement: A willingness to relinquish common sense. That's what the whole discussion is about: You claimed special relativity violates common sense, and I explained that it does not. I further pointed out that anyone who says (as you did) that special relativity violates common sense doesn't really understand it. I'm glad you are no longer claiming that special relativity requires us to relinquish common sense.

> And you also agree...

Let me guess, you're going to repeat what I've been telling you all along, and what you've been denying. If so, then again the correct prefatory phrase for you to write is "And I also now agree..." Let's see if this is the case...

> For an average Joe to discovery relativity...

Uh oh, you've gone off the rails. You were never told, by me or anyone else who understands things, that an "average Joe" could independently discover relativity. In fact, if you had ever read any of my messages, you would recall that I specifically stipulated that *you* (for example) are clearly not capable of such an independent discovery.

> ...a modicum of ability with reason and logic

Nope, not just a modicum. You are still confusing the prerequisites to "understand when explained" with those for "independent discovery".

> and a rare degree of strong intellectual curiosity and creativity...

Huh? So you're saying an "average Joe" has a "rare degree of intellectual curiosity and creativity"? You do realize that that's self-contradictory (average and rare) right? What is wrong with your brain?

> Alright, so the average Joe is not going to discover relativity...

Duh. Again, this is what I've told you several times, and what is also painfully obvious. Sheesh.

> You mentioned a decent explanation...

Right. It's obviously not possible to understand something based on a sufficiently bogus explanation of it. You stipulated above that the pre-requisites for understanding a decent explanation of special relativity do not include a willingness to relinquish common sense, which means you've now seen the light and recanted your long-held position. That's great. You've made real progress.

On Sunday, 1 August 2021 at 04:41:56 UTC+2, Arthur Adler wrote:

> And the other *is* a crank. Look, your original claim in this discussion was that cranks reject special relativity because it violates common sense, and the only way for someone (including you) to understand special relativity is to relinquish their common sense, which you pride yourself in having done.

Poor idiot Bod is completely right this time. Your Shit replaces
thinking with listeninig to the explainations of gurus; as expected
from insane religion.

Arthur Adler <aadler904@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, July 31, 2021 at 1:08:01 PM UTC-7, bodk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Let’s move on and see where we are.
>
> You're resorting to the crackpot tactic of running away from the entire
> substantive content of each post, and bottom-posting a fresh set of
> idiocies with each new message.
>
>> Please note that only one of us is talking about cranks now...
>
> And the other *is* a crank. Look, your original claim in this discussion
> was that cranks reject special relativity because it violates common
> sense, and the only way for someone (including you) to understand special
> relativity is to relinquish their common sense, which you pride yourself
> in having done. You did indeed stop trying to defend your misguided
> claim a while ago, but soon enough you will resume making your debunked
> claim, so there's no point in pretending you've understood your error.
>
>> So you now agree...
>
> That's an incorrect preface. My explanations have been consistent,
> debunking each of your fallacious claims in turn. (Remember, your
> diversionary question asked about "anyone", not "everyone".) See the
> above detailed explanations that you ignored.
>
>> For an average Joe to learn relativity, that is going to require several things:
>> a careful observational awareness of everyday phenomena, a modicum of
>> ability with reason and logic, and a decent explanation...
>
> Well, if you replace your obviously muddled attempt to paraphrase what I
> said with what I actually said, then yes, that's what I've been telling
> you all along. So the correct opening clause that you should have
> prefaced this with is not "you now agree" but rather "I now agree", and
> then you should just have referred to what I said, rather than trying
> (unsuccessfully) to paraphrase. At least you've finally acknowledged
> that you've made some progress. You're welcome. But something tells me it won't last.
>
> And of course, you've failed to mention the most relevant point, namely,
> the thing that is *not* on the list of pre-requisites, but that you
> insisted (up until now) was the most salient requirement: A willingness
> to relinquish common sense. That's what the whole discussion is about:
> You claimed special relativity violates common sense, and I explained
> that it does not. I further pointed out that anyone who says (as you
> did) that special relativity violates common sense doesn't really
> understand it. I'm glad you are no longer claiming that special
> relativity requires us to relinquish common sense.
>
>> And you also agree...
>
> Let me guess, you're going to repeat what I've been telling you all
> along, and what you've been denying. If so, then again the correct
> prefatory phrase for you to write is "And I also now agree..." Let's
> see if this is the case...
>
>> For an average Joe to discovery relativity...
>
> Uh oh, you've gone off the rails. You were never told, by me or anyone
> else who understands things, that an "average Joe" could independently
> discover relativity. In fact, if you had ever read any of my messages,
> you would recall that I specifically stipulated that *you* (for example)
> are clearly not capable of such an independent discovery.
>
>> ...a modicum of ability with reason and logic
>
> Nope, not just a modicum. You are still confusing the prerequisites to
> "understand when explained" with those for "independent discovery".
>
>> and a rare degree of strong intellectual curiosity and creativity...
>
> Huh? So you're saying an "average Joe" has a "rare degree of
> intellectual curiosity and creativity"? You do realize that that's
> self-contradictory (average and rare) right? What is wrong with your brain?
>
>> Alright, so the average Joe is not going to discover relativity...
>
> Duh. Again, this is what I've told you several times, and what is also
> painfully obvious. Sheesh.
>
>> You mentioned a decent explanation...
>
> Right. It's obviously not possible to understand something based on a
> sufficiently bogus explanation of it. You stipulated above that the
> pre-requisites for understanding a decent explanation of special
> relativity do not include a willingness to relinquish common sense, which
> means you've now seen the light and recanted your long-held position.
> That's great. You've made real progress.
>

Well, I see that you chose to snip and dodge my direct questions to you
completely and instead opted to spend a ton of words trying to pin little
gold stars on yourself for argument-winning.

Very well, if you’re not interested in anything else but doing what it
takes to make people “run away” from conversations with you, then I suppose
a conversation is going to be futile.

I take it that you live alone.

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