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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by c0i9z on Today at 12:10:24 AM »

Does that chart and explanation come from a physicist? It doesn't appear so. It appears to come from you, an unqualified individual on the internet trying to reinterpret the explanations and statements from qualified individuals.

I made that chart based on the numbers in the post that I quoted, which is, in fact, your post. Is there anything in particular in it you disagree with? The 40 ppm? The 450 ppm? The definition of ppm I used? Because, from what I can tell, all I did was show what 450 ppm looks like in a format that's easy to understand. I don't think that this required any particular interpretation on my part. At least, nothing past understanding how fractions work.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by AllAroundTheWorld on May 08, 2021, 09:29:29 PM »

I don't want SteelyBob's points or analogies. I want the points and analogies of qualified individuals.

You don’t though, do you?
Because all those qualified individuals are saying that gravity is a thing which means that the earth is a globe. You are dishonestly selective about the points you will accept from qualified individuals. I have made this point several times and you have ignored it which is telling.

Yes, you have some quote from people who say measuring gravity is hard. And they explain why it’s hard. But they also say that despite that they can measure it with impressive accuracy. That is not SteelyBob's point, it’s the point made by the “qualified individuals”. SteelyBob simply put it in graphical form to make it easier to visualise and understand.

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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Cyberpunk 2077 - Official Discussion Thread

« Last post by honk on May 08, 2021, 08:59:12 PM »

After taking a few months off, I finally returned to the game and have now beaten it. I unironically agree with most of what Dunkey said in his review. Even setting all the bugs and glitches aside - and the bugs and glitches are easily the game's biggest problem - this is still an enormously flawed game, far more so than I would have expected from the developers of TW3. The combat is mindless busy work, as putting just a few levels into your primary skill makes it easy to curb-stomp almost anything the game can throw at you, unless you have the bad luck to step on a mine or stand next to a gas tank someone shoots at. The driving is awful. Riding the motorcycles isn't too bad, but literally every car in the game handles like dogshit and feels very bad to drive. Traversing Night City is a chore sometimes, too. It's full of these super tall fences that you can't jump over and fenced-off roads that you can't drive onto and just annoying little obstructions in general that force you to take long roundabout routes to get to wherever you're going. Something that happened quite a bit was that I'd warp to a spot that on the map looked to be right next to my objective, but when I spawned there, it turned out that the warp point was on top of a tall building that I couldn't jump off of, or the objective was surrounded by a huge wall with the only entrance being a good distance away from me. The badlands don't have as many obstructions as the city proper, but they compensate for that by making the already-shitty vehicles handle even more poorly when off-roading, so you'll constantly be bouncing and rolling and spinning out as you try to drive to your objective. I'm not saying I just be able to teleport to wherever I want to be at all times and have the game served up on a silver platter to me, but it's just a pain in the ass to constantly have to be spending several minutes running to your objective because the game forces you to go so far out of your way.

And here's something that really baffles me. When you've completed most of the main story and reach the point of no return, then, and only then, do you unlock the questlines for Rogue and Kerry. Rogue only has a couple of quests, but Kerry has seven. And all of these are punctuated by waiting periods of several in-game hours, and in some cases whole days. (Granted, there's an option to skip time, but there's no way that repeatedly skipping 24 hours of in-game time was the intended playstyle.) Bear in mind, at this point in the main quest, V has realized that his time is very limited, and the story is about to reach the climax. I have to ask, why? That's not rhetorical. I seriously want to know why this game holds off on introducing you to a very lengthy optional questline until you've literally reached the point of no return in the main story. It's such weird, confusing placement.

There is a bright side to the game, and it comes in the form of its story and setting. For all my complaints about the world's lack of responsiveness and difficulty in smoothly traversing it, Night City is beautiful, atmospheric, and reflects a level of detail far above and beyond what most devs are willing to put into their games. It's things like the intricate designs of the vehicles, the weapons, the bars, the diners, and the different parts of the city, like the sleek and luxurious high-rises, the working-class neighborhoods full of dingy little shacks, and the seedy red-light district. Interaction is minimal and the AI obviously leaves a lot to be desired, but at least in terms of atmosphere and visual design, Night City is easily the most impressive city I've seen in an open-world video game. The story is also great, as I think pretty much everyone has already agreed. V is not the foul-mouthed edgelord the trailers portrayed them as, and I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that there's a ton of potential for character development for players who are so inclined. Character development that's actually acknowledged by the game's narrative and dialogue, I mean, not stuff that only exists in your head like "after a profound religious experience, my hunter dedicated his life to the service of Talos and began training as a knight." The supporting cast is similarly strong. They're not one-dimensional quest dispensers, but characters who feel like real people with their own personalities, needs, and goals. And the romantic relationships you can begin with certain characters are genuinely very nice. Panam is best girl.

In closing, Cybermeme reminds me a lot of Bethesda games. It's flawed to such a degree that I'd hesitate to call it an unambiguously good game, but I loved playing through it, and I'm sure I'll do it again some time in the future, although future playthroughs will definitely be a lot less completionist than this one was. I really wish the game had cut down on the number of assaults/reported crimes and given us more interesting sidequests instead.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by SteelyBob on May 08, 2021, 07:38:39 PM »

You said, for example:

That gravity effect is be being dominated over ten fold by effects which are not gravity.

Where is your citation for that?

As an aside, have we now established that all opinion without expert citation can be treated as garbage? Can we put your post like this one: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=17742.msg234227#msg234227 in the same category, or are we allowed to offer opinions of our own and not rely on appeals to authority?

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by Tom Bishop on May 08, 2021, 07:04:52 PM »

I'm merely citing the physicists directly for the point.

One astrophysicist says:

" Therefore, when trying to measure it, the other forces can cause systematic errors. It is akin to trying to measure the weight of a feather, outdoors, in a slight breeze, with an old pair of scales. "

Scientific American says:

" These values differ from one another by as much as 450 ppm of the constant, even though most of them have estimated uncertainties of only about 40 ppm. “Clearly, many of them or most of them are subject either to serious significant errors or grossly underestimated uncertainties,” Quinn says "

Another quote from that Scientific American article says:

" Although gravity seems like one of the most salient of nature’s forces in our daily lives, it’s actually by far the weakest, making attempts to calculate its strength an uphill battle. “Two one-kilogram masses that are one meter apart attract each other with a force equivalent to the weight of a few human cells,” says University of Washington physicist Jens Gundlach, who worked on a separate 2000 measurement of big G. “Measuring such small forces on kg-objects to 10-4 or 10-5 precision is just not easy. There are a many effects that could overwhelm gravitational effects, and all of these have to be properly understood and taken into account.” "

Another physicist cited by Scientific American says:

" But getting to the bottom of the issue is more a matter of principle to the scientists. “It’s not a thing one likes to leave unresolved,” he adds. “We should be able to measure gravity.” "

AIP Review of Scientific Instruments says:

 “ By many accounts, the Newtonian constant of gravitation G is the fundamental constant that is most difficult to measure accurately. Over the past three decades, more than a dozen precision measurements of this constant have been performed. However, the scatter of the data points is much larger than the uncertainties assigned to each individual measurement ”

A Forbes article by an astrophysicist says:

“ As you might expect, the values got better and better through time, with the uncertainties dropping from 0.1% to 0.04% all the way down to just 0.012% in the late 1990s, owing mostly to the work of Barry Taylor at NIST...

This is why it was such a shock, in 1998, when a very careful team got a result that differed by a spectacular 0.15% from the previous results, when the errors on those earlier results were claimed to be more than a factor of ten below that difference....Multiple teams, using different methods, were getting values for G that conflicted with each other at the 0.15% level, more than ten times the previously reported uncertainties. ”


These physicists are quoted directly for this, whereas you guys are posting paragraphs of your own reinterpretation to make your point. You are not a qualified source. You need to find and quote a qualified source to make your point.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by SteelyBob on May 08, 2021, 06:44:52 PM »

You are doing those things, so are you citing yourself as a better source than the astrophysicist? On what basis?

Yet another question you’ve completely ignored Tom. Is that because you don’t have an answer?

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by Tom Bishop on May 08, 2021, 06:06:02 PM »

SteelyBob is comparing the discrepancies in the value of G being measured compared with the value. It is neither a better or worse analogy, it’s making a completely different point.

I don't want SteelyBob's points or analogies. I want the points and analogies of qualified individuals. If you can't provide that then you guys have lost the argument.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by AllAroundTheWorld on May 08, 2021, 05:44:09 PM »

I directly cited the astophysicist who likened the situation to trying to measure the weight of a feather on a crude pair of scale outdoors in a slight breeze. That wasn't my analogy. Your response was to provide a "better" analogy and argue that the astophyscist was wrong.

Incorrect, as you are wont to say.
The astrophysicist was explaining why it’s difficult to measure G - basically, gravity is very weak compared to other forces.

SteelyBob is comparing the discrepancies in the value of G being measured compared with the value. It is neither a better or worse analogy, it’s making a completely different point. The first point is explaining how hard it is to measure, the second is how despite that the experiments are measuring it with impressive accuracy. The fact you don’t understand that these are different points speaks volumes.

If you are doing that you are pretty much citing yourself as a better source than the astrophysicist

Well, he isn’t doing that. And the astrophysicist is not casting any doubt on the existence of gravity or the shape of the earth. You are doing those things, so are you citing yourself as a better source than the astrophysicist? On what basis?

My position is that anonymous people on an internet message forum are not better sources  on these subjects than astrophysicists.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by Tom Bishop on May 08, 2021, 05:29:48 PM »

None of that is a citation from a physicist, sorry. All I see is an interpretation from an unqualified individual.

Eh?

I’m referring to the article you quoted, and a couple of papers by very well qualified scientists that you appear to be ignoring. Which part of what I said isn’t supported by a reliable source?

And if we’re going to go down this road - your choice, remember - what are your qualifications, precisely? What credibility lies behind your various experiments? Should we reject those for the reasons you’ve proposed here?

I directly cited the astophysicist who likened the situation to trying to measure the weight of a feather on a crude pair of scale outdoors in a slight breeze. That wasn't my analogy. Your response was to provide a 'better' analogy and argue that the astophyscist was wrong. If you are doing that you are pretty much citing yourself as a better source than the astrophyscist.

My position is that anonymous people on an internet message forum are not better sources for technical matters on this subject than astrophysicists.

You should be searching the internet for qualified opinions to cite. Instead of doing this you keep posting here insisting that you know better than astrophysicists and can correct their statements. 

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cavendish experiment

« Last post by AllAroundTheWorld on May 08, 2021, 03:35:38 PM »

Does that chart and explanation come from a physicist?

It’s based on data from the article you posted.

And why do you think that you, an unqualified individual on the internet, should be taken seriously when all the physicists you are quoting agree that gravity is a thing and that the earth is a globe?

If you can't prove to us that you are equally qualified then your statements on the shape of the earth are pretty much garbage.