21

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Read the FAQ and still: why?

« on: April 18, 2020, 02:36:06 PM »

I'm glad we're getting down into the nitty gritty questions that Flat Earthers don't like us to ask. It really makes them start to sweat.

'Don't like you to ask' doesn't mean 'sweating,' it means 'bored.' Do you really think you're being original?

Obviously no one can give you the nitty-gritty details of what's by definition concealed, so there are a number of possibilities. My personal conclusion is that even as recently as the 60s they did genuinely believe the world was round, that was the conclusion they'd reached, established, and when the time came for space travel the issue had been soaked too much in political rivalry and tension that when they struggled to make it work (using RE physics for calculations), they ultimately chose to fake the images in line with what it was they believed to be the case to score points. Russia came up with that idea first, the US scrambled for a bit before deciding to dedicate their efforts to faking in turn, and one-upping the Russians.
That was how it started, and there's not exactly a good point to come out and say 'oh, no, we made all that up,' particularly when the other side hasn't. At this point it's self-sustaining. There's one RE model because they took the one they believed in at the time and basically put it above question.

22

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 10, 2020, 09:58:21 AM »

Surely you can appreciate that for anyone coming to the thread, whether new reader or previous contributor, that it's far clearer to have the attributions on the quotes than not?

Not to the degree that would justify all the fuss that's being made over it. Attribution doesn't matter nearly so much as content. If they're reading the thread there are, what, one or two posts between each of mine? And quoted in order, clearly separated. It shouldn't be hard for anyone that's not just trying to find something to complain about to sort between. The subjects are distinct so there shouldn't be any confusion.

All we need to know is the height of the towers, and optionally the distance between. Don't need to know what the towers are made of. Don't need to know their properties, in terms of strength, malleability, etc.

All we need know is the height of each, and optionally the distance between.

No?

And, again, how space functions, how the means by which we're measuring that distance functions... Did you really think I'd forget about that? Same as I said before, pretending I didn't helps no one. No one's ever been talking about what the towers were made of, that's just a particularly blatant straw man from you to try and evade what I did bring up.

You are doing the same thing I pointed out. You are acting as though the only variables are the things that would be variables under the fixed model of RET. That is a completely useless standpoint to take when you are trying to make a claim that applies to other models. If we followed your logic science would be mired even more in tradition than it is because you'd never be able to look at anything new, you'd just stick with what's established.
Let's even keep this to RET. The speed at which you travelled from one tower to the other would affect the distance you travelled, if you reached relativistic speeds. How do you account for that from merely building the towers? And that's your own model still, we aren't talking whole other systems of physics, your argument is based on far, far too many assumptions about what does and doesn't matter. If space isn't uniform, has properties that depend on location, if light or whatever means you use to measure doesn't travel in as straight a line as you think... what will you do then?
Science functions by testing claims, not just assuming some things don't matter. You have a whole host more testing to allow for before you'd have any reliable way to gauge what's even beginning to happen between the towers, and you're refusing to do any of it. That's not science.

23

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bernie 2020

« on: April 10, 2020, 09:47:42 AM »

But yes, paying lip service to the rigged system makes you seem enlightened so may as well stop there.

I'm acknowledging that it exists and that wishing it doesn't isn't going to make it go away. Want to change things, yes, but also work with what you have.

They are equally bad. That is it. It is literally it.

As people, not as politicians. Their policies categorically are not the same. There's more overlap than there was between Trump and Bernie, but to say Trump and Biden would be equally bad as presidents is to have no understanding of what actually makes a president. They would have different people on their cabinets, they would choose different supreme court justices, they would have different VPs, they would have different likelihoods of changing their mind...

You call it a 'rigged system' how candidates need charisma and character to stand out from the crowd, but you seem to have no problem using it to sort between the options. Bernie rode the same train too, he'd have to to get as far as he did, sure he got screwed over by the DNC needing an establishment pick, but no one gets as close as he did without coming packaged with the usual political marketability. When there are inherent flaws in a political system you need to accept that they also affect the people you like. Otherwise you're not politically savvy, you're just making a cult.

24

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bernie 2020

« on: April 10, 2020, 02:24:43 AM »

But, okay, last post because this has gone kind of ridiculously off the rails.

I made a post about how Biden and Trump are not equally bad, and that I don't expect to like the person I elect into office. That was it. That was literally it.
I elaborated a bit when asked and went on a slight tangent about my concerns with how much people prioritize character over policy, or indeed treat it like it matters at all beyond 'will do the job.' I mentioned Trump and his supporters and if you want context, yes, I mentioned the people who insisted on writing in Bernie's name and such in 2016 as I thought they were common knowledge. At no point did I say they singlehandedly swayed the election, I didn't even imply it, not remotely, I used them as an easy example of the larger point I was making to avoid making everything about Trump (as far too much is). It was a handy example and no more, and I don't know how in context it could be read as any more.
That's all I wanted to say. You elevated that to an attack on me, a wholesale invention of what you've probably heard other people say but I never said, and a wild guess at what my politics are. The reason you might be struggling to find a political point to respond to is that there wasn't one, I wasn't talking about who was more electable, I was talking about a flaw in the electoral system and the electoral base that affects all sides.

You turned 'People are too concerned with personality in who they want as President,' into 'Biden is a surefire win! Every Bernie supporter is obsessive and insane and they're the reason Trump got elected and nobody else! No one likes Bernie for hs policies! Hillary was da best! Biden's great!'

"They become so obsessed with character and the person that they don't realize that they're meant to be voting for policy," was not directed solely at Bernie supporters. Context. It's an issue basically worldwide on basically all sides of basically every election. It's the one issue with democracy that there's yet to be any workable large-scale solution to, at least that I've seen. Not every post on a forum is a partisan broadcast.

25

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bernie 2020

« on: April 10, 2020, 02:05:56 AM »

You also seem to attribute this alleged group of support as the reason Trump won.

No, I really didn't. You invented that wholesale. I get it, you've probably had plenty of bad faith discussions on this, but you could at least wait more than a post before looking for the absolute worst reading of whatever I say. You seem to be working under the idea that I'm trying to make some grand claim about the fate of the election or whatever, and I'm really not, not every post is trying to solve the world's problems. I didn't talk about the people that voted for Bernie because of his policies and then turned around and voted democrat after because they weren't what I was talking about.

It was a factor, yes, I don't know how you could possibly have missed the people who said they'd write-in Bernie's name and such, and the surge in votes for third parties... All of that's established. Now the third party votes can partly be attributed to how Clinton's campaign went and a myriad of issues, so the degree to which the Bernie-obsessives affected the result is definitely up for debate, and it likely has been overplayed, but denying it happened is unjustifiable. Whether or not they swayed the election is impossible to say, it is after all always the worst parts of a movement that are the most vocal, so the vitriol and noise they kicked up wouldn't be proportional to their effect, but they certainly existed.

If you want 'beliefs that I am willing to share,' stick to what I actually said.
1. To claim that all, or even 99%, of any politician's supporters do so strictly for policy is to have an unreasonably optimistic view of the world.
2. The democratic system in the US is rigged to favor those that win a popularity contest more than a political contest, charisma and some degree of identity are required to have a hope to get anywhere. You can have policies that somehow everyone agrees with but if you drone them in a monotone you're going to lose to someone who becomes a meme.
3. Biden is an ass. Trump is worse. The US has a two-party system so realistically they are the only choices.
4. People that become attached to a person rather than policies make decisions based on personal attachment and not what the country needs. If someone beat your fave to the ticket, you're going to be biased against them, and if you're in a position where you take their victory personally, you're going to be less likely to vote for them.

26

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bernie 2020

« on: April 10, 2020, 01:28:41 AM »

Imagine thinking Biden has an actual chance to get elected...

I don't think he has much of a chance. Nothing I said commented on his chances. I just pointed out he's a better option than Trump and, realistically, the choice is between the two of them. Trump falls at the first hurdle, Biden falls at the third, every other candidate falls way, way worse at the third. A 1% chance is still better than a 0% chance.

Bernie's  support comes from his policies.

Partially, but you can't deny those policies have become conflated with him somewhat. Like you pointed out, he's an exception to a lot of the usual rules of politics, no super PACS etc, he stands out from the crowd... That's where a lot of his support has come from, particularly the more fervent corners. That's personality.
Otherwise you're attributing a lot of things to me that I never said. I didn't say the DNC didn't have plenty to blame itself for, I didn't say Bernie didn't have people that supported him for his policies, I didn't say Biden was likely to win or that he had outstanding policies. Biden's an ass. The DNC and American political system in general has a lot of fundamental issues that will never be addressed because those in power rode to victory on them.
It is just also the case that getting invested in who a politician is as an individual, as opposed to a vehicle for policies, is inevitably very dangerous ground to walk on. And some corner of Bernie supporters, not all, but a particular niche corner (there is always a niche corner in any group, and if you can't spot them then you're probably in them) are obsessive over Sanders as much as they are Sanders' policies.

27

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 10, 2020, 01:16:42 AM »

It seems that someone else has a different POV than yours. Do you want someone to simply agree with you?

My personal sense about this is a combination of the two. Conclusions can be drawn by existing data, but to further cement those conclusions, predictive experimentation/observation is crucial on and ongoing basis. It's why, for example, to this day folks still perform atomic clock tests to suss out a tenet of Special Relativity - Times change, more info is available, instruments/tools get better, smarter, more accurate. I'm not sure wherein lies the problem you're wrestling with.

Some things aren't a matter of opinion.
I agree with you, new experiments can and should be performed, I just think it's also possible to draw conclusions from existing data. He's saying it's categorically impossible despite being given multiple chances to back out. That's not a matter of PoV, that's just someone digging themselves deeper because they don't want to admit they agree with a point a FEer made.

Again and again, I have to repeat that words have meaning.  Look up 'scientific proof' and 'theory' and 'hypothesis' and you will find for the scientific method they are all very well defined.  'Theory' has a very different meaning for the layman than when used in scientific papers, as does proof.  You are throwing them around and mixing them up with other concepts.

Also, where does it say that science merely concerns itself with "the most likely outcome"?  Source please?

I am aware. You are not, the context in which you use those words become clear. You have already been called out on treating established science as gospel, as if it were proven mathematically and not justified scientifically. You're just, as ever, wholesale inventing things so you can act superior.
Are you claiming science isn't concerned with the most likely outcome? That seems pretty basic to me. Something is considered justified by evidence, on scientific grounds, if of all the possibilities it a) explains the results of tests performed, b) requires as few unverified inventions as possible. It'd be far, far weirder if science wanted you to accept the least likely possibility.

It's in fact such a vague and meandering question I've not bothered answering it because I'm not even sure what the question is.

Then ask rather than very blatantly evading it. If you were honest about not understanding the question then you'd have said so before now and specified what wasn't clear, instead you pretended you weren't asked it time and time again, and then turned into a petulant toddler when responding inventing flaws that anyone who tried could see through.
A child could see through your tactics right now. Condescension, acting superior, provoking and then playing victim when I act provoked. It's disgusting.
We have been over all of this many, many times. Science has disproven the typical model of a dragon. Claiming science doesn't care about disproofs, yes, is true, but it is also true that some things are not in line with scientific understanding. Science has not 'disproven,' by your logic, an apple shooting straight up into the sky whenever I let go of it, but if that happened it would certainly contradict scientific understanding. Thus, assuming the current model is accurate (which is after all vital when discussing the world and not adding to a theory), we can assume a giant lizard is not going to be able to fly, something like that is not going to be able to breathe... facts I keep saying, are hardly ambiguous, and yet you have not acknowledged once because doing so has inevitably blown a hole in your points. It's almost like there's a pattern to your tactics.
And then we get truly absurd:

2.  "for that to mean something" and "would that error be relevant"
These again are meaningless statements. Mean something? Mean what, to who? Relevant? To what? Pretend we don't know whats going on in your head, and state all the facts, even if they are obvious to you.

You may think you're being smart but I assure you, you're not. Cheap tactics as ever, acting as if you have a point when you're just misrepresenting the blatantly obvious. Things have meaning. When one is in a discussion about science, then something can be relevant to that discussion. This isn't hard.
So:

1. The idea of a dragon is scientifically impossible.
2. There is logic and implication from past tests that leads to that conclusion.

Simple, basic, set-up. You can disagree but at this point it's palpably clear your disagreement would just be yet more whinging and evasion and more often than not a blatant lie.

3. Looking at these tests, we might find that a test was performed poorly, or failed to account for certain possibilities.
4. This would then show the claim in 1 does not follow.

Again, simple, basic, no meandering.
You're saying this is logically untenable for no reason except you made a stupid claim way back and are too deep in now to want to back down. You're saying you'd need to run a test to acknowledge the existence of a poorly done test. That's stupid.

"If I discovered, just by thinking and looking at old data that dragons could exist, would I need to find one to be accepted as scientific proof that they exist?" Yes. Yes you would. Otherwise, it's just a hypothesis. It's not a theory until it can be tested.  Doesn't matter if you're right. If you can't write a proof about it, it's not a valid scientific theory.

You do realize that isn't an answer, right? You even almost get the quetsion right, but you still can't respond with more than 'because I say so!'
Why? What's gained by the extra test?

Forget everything, let's simplify this even more, brute abstracts so you don't get any more of your god-awful tedious run-around.
Scientific theory A predicts B.
If a new test found not B, that would suffice to show that A could not hold.
If an old test that hadn't been considered at the time implied not B, that would not suffice and a new test would have to be run.

That is what you are saying. You are certifiable at this point.

28

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bernie 2020

« on: April 10, 2020, 12:56:33 AM »

There's not being the kind of person you necessarily want to go out drinking with, and there's being a fundamentally bad person, someone who should not be trusted with the power and responsibility of the presidency. Character matters, and the notion that it doesn't is part of how Trump managed to be elected.

There are three questions I ask of any political candidate.
1. Do I agree with what this person has stated they want to do?
2. Do I believe this person will actually set out to enact what they have claimed?
3. Do I believe this person has any chance of actually getting into a position to enact their policies?

A world where someone who's a rapist is sure to face jail time and consequences is a good one, but it's independent to this. I wish it wasn't, but it has to be.
The problem with 'character matters' is that you aren't voting for a person, you're voting for a party and you're voting for policies. Even the President doesn't act alone. The people they appoint are going to have a huge amount of influence, so the question is whether you can trust the people they are likely to appoint, which is more policy than personality. People voting for character is why we got Trump. There are some lifelong republicans who voted for the party no matter who was in charge of it, but there was so many more who rabidly supported Trump because of how he acted, because he didn't act like a typical politician, a cult of personality is what got him into power. Voting for character is also where you get the diehard Bernie fans who don't vote democrat or vote Trump out of spite for their person not making the ticket. They become so obsessed with character and the person that they don't realize that they're meant to be voting for policy. It happened in 2016 too.

29

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 09, 2020, 11:33:16 PM »

Why you rush to "...but just cheap point scoring by whatever means necessary..." is beyond me. There's no scoreboard. We're just suggesting something that most people are used to. Another suggestion, lighten up Francis.

Because in this context, and too often, it is just that. People who want to appear superior and so nitpick or spend a while talking about inane things, with how often basic questions were evaded and how often called-out lies were repeated, I'm not going to entertain a charitable reading of the situation when it comes to him. I'll 'lighten up' when he's not using the same tired old tactics I've seen hundreds of times before. It's just boring and I'm not going to pretend it's somehow interesting to deal with.

I'm still not sure I'm getting your point. Is it that you believe that science only builds on top of what is already "known" and never challenges the existing laws, rules, theorems science has derived/applied to the physical world? Is that what this is all about?

Oh believe me, I would love it if we were talking about something like that, I could talk for a while about some of the flaws with the modern scientific establishment, and the nuances thereof, and it could make for an interesting discussion (at least with interesting people). But, no, unfortunately we are stuck on him claiming that a prediction and previously unperformed test is critical to justify every single claim, and that it isn't possible to draw a conclusion just from previously performed tests, whether those tests are being looked at together, whether there's an alternate way of thinking that makes more sense from them, or there was a flaw in their premises. Yeah, it's that basic, but he's insisting on kicking up a fuss rather than discussing anything interesting.
At best this discussion is tangential to how modern scientific institutions tend to have a bias in favor of traditional models, past approaches, lending weight to things simply because they came first, but all that side of the discussion and those flaws went ignored so he could go on and on about this, so here we are.

30

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bernie 2020

« on: April 09, 2020, 11:05:21 PM »

I don't know how seriously to take reddit, but I've already seen a number of angry Bernie supporters vow to never vote for Biden, and even a few say they'll vote for Trump in protest. It's insane.

Does it really matter which rapist they vote for? Probably better not to vote for any rapist.

Vote for the rapist that doesn't start WW3 to distract from a policy decision.

I've never understood this attitude people have of wanting to elect someone they like as a person. I don't care if I'd throttle them if I spent more than a minute in their company, I'm not voting for someone to go out for drinks with, I'm voting for someone to enact policies. Sure, it'd be nice if they didn't need jail time, but that's not the political system we live in.

31

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 09, 2020, 10:56:41 PM »

As a reader/spectator it would be really quite nice if you quoted properly where one can see who said what. Just putting spaces between doesn't help contextually. I'm not sure why you are resistant to doing so, it's just a quick copy and paste and would be really helpful trying to follow along and get where various individuals are coming from.

It's not how I write posts. If there's just one thing to quote then I can quote, if there's multiple people to reply to I open another window and copy/paste text over rather than messing around and going through a post line by line or faffing around continually changing what's on my clipboard for something that ought to be clear if you were reading through the thread. One thing I don't do is have the same conversation with two people, if the two of them started saying similar things I'd just reply to one to avoid repeating myself. Plus there's just the normal tendency I've seen, quoting the whole post can make a lot of people comment on each line they object to, which is inevitably most of it. Doing this ensures my posts have focus.
I'd also point out that if I made multiple posts, as was also suggested, I'd get hounded for inflating my post count by likely the same person, it's happened. I'm 'resistant' because I'm not interested in changing what's easiest for me for the benefit of someone who doesn't care about improving things for readers, but just cheap point scoring by whatever means necessary, there's nothing I could do they wouldn't complain about.

They are kind of two different things: Could something exist versus Does something exist. One could stop at the 'could' and just expound upon that notion showing that, yes, a dragon could exist. Another may take it a step further to try and find out if there are any dragons in existence. If you found one, well that would certainly confirm that one could exist. If you don't and find no evidence of one ever existing (fossil record perhaps) then your still at the 'could exist' stage.

Could exist is still a different claim to 'is physically impossible,' hence my point. All this is literally because they object to the concept of arriving at a new conclusion based upon past tests, whether by alternate thinking or locating flaws.

32

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

« on: April 09, 2020, 10:31:45 PM »

I'd argue that the final film in a trilogy should be more about theme and character than plot, let alone such a simplistic, archetypal go-here-and-do-the-thing plot.

There's a potentially solid theme of legacy to the movie if you go by plot points alone, it just got muddled by, I assume, all the rewrites. My guess is that the first draft lacked explanation and set-up for a lot of things, the second draft waffled and overexplained, the third draft cut out unnecessary explanation but then kept cutting so too much was left out, and then Disney stuck their head in to demand merch opportunities and certain plot points.
Theme-wise you have Rey defying a family legacy, reference to family and backstory for Poe that was similar, Rey choosing the Skywalker legacy, old heroes coming back to save the day, Kylo living up to his family, coupled with the climactic plot point of Jedi embodying past Jedi and Sith embodying past Sith (and, as a side note, I would put money on it that in some early draft with more Leia, they had that be the mechanism by which her death shunted Kylo over to her side of the Force), everything is about living up to those that came before you. With how often it comes up in the plot it has to be intentional, but god did they suck at making it clear.

33

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 09, 2020, 10:08:06 PM »

Why not? Because you say so?

Because of all the reasons I went into and you conveniently cut out from your message.
You cannot describe anything in the physical world to any degree of accuracy without accounting for, y'know, physics, physical sciences. I cannot believe you need me to keep repeating that.

Do you not understand how message boards work?

It really is pathetic how you need to rely on these meta distractions. I don't care about whatever pointless niceties you want, my posts are separated, writing multiple posts just to appease your ego is not something I'm interested in doing. It's easier to write posts like this and I separate all the users. The only reason you care is because you get to grandstand like this and claim victory based on dishonesty as opposed to actually engaging with a debate.

Why did you bother bringing up an example if you can't even ask me a simple, direct question about it?

What are you on about? I asked you the question.
Oh, I get it, you do creative quoting to cut out the fact I was pointing out the flaw with your dishonest reformulation of the question, misrepresenting it to look like I was objection to the analogy in general, and then completely ignoring the questions you were asked. More meta tactics, more lies, more 'look at me, the big smart REer defeating the big bad FEer.' Same song as ever.

I am going to repeat myself just to make sure I'm being clear.  I am discussing the scientific method. Scientific proofs.  Not what is 'common sense' or what is popular or what looks obvious or your opinion. Proof. That's a word with meaning, please pay attention.

You pay attention. You act like that hasn't been addressed.
1. 'Scientific proof' is a misnomer, that is again a side-effect of your religious view of the scientific method. Science does not concern itself with proof, merely the most likely outcome.
2. No one asked you to write a paper on how dragons don't exist.
3. The box is immaterial to the discussion, you are blindly fixating on it to the exclusion of every other thing I have said, such as the fact the typical description of a dragon is impossible and that you can reach that conclusion without opening the box. You are ignoring that completely to bang on about one aspect of an analogy that doesn't matter no matter how many times this gets pointed out to you. My whole point has been that you don't need to open the box because nothing can be that large and flight-capable, breathe fire as described...
4. Stop fucking ignoring this straight question that I have repeated a ridiculous number of times by now:

And finally, suppose I am wrong about the dragon. It then follows that my knowledge must be wrong and there must be some way for a dragon to exist, with all the bizarre traits ascribed to it, that all the supposed proof I knew about how a heavy dragon wouldn't be able to fly, about how it couldn't breathe fire, all that was wrong.
Suppose instead of the boxes, I was just toying around with numbers and possibilities and I found out that the proof was wrong and that a dragon was hypothetically possible, all just looking at things I knew already. Would I need to go out and find a dragon for that to mean something, or would that error be relevant even without any new test?

34

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 07, 2020, 04:40:45 PM »

So, while I'm pretty certain dragons don't exist and we'll never see one... A dragon is much less physically impossible than a flat Earth. And after all, the platypus was first believed to be a hoax: weird animals do really exist.

Leaving aside the cheap point-scoring, that demonstrates my point perfectly. You need very clear workarounds for the end result. Rather than emitting fire, a flammable gas. Rather than flying, floating like a balloon; pterosaurs were significantly smaller than the typical dragon cliche, and further existed in a totally different atmosphere theorized to make it easier for them to exist. When those are what's resorted to, my claim is very clearly justified.

"Are you still beating your wife?" That's a straight-forward yes or no answer that demonstrates why they are so often setups you can't answer.

I've answered how I would prove if there is a baby dragon, I've answered how you can't prove there isn't. That's both sides of the question. Can you explain, simply what you are asking with your baby dragon example? I'll answer a direct question about it. Why don't we start over and try again.

You claim to have a baby dragon in a box. How would you like me to respond to this? What question would you like me to answer?

And with that set up you can still point out the flaws in the question rather than ignore outright.
'Both sides of the question' is meaningless, science is not symmetrical, it does not care equally about proving a claim vs disproving a claim, and even if it did the methods for each are totally different, talking about 'both sides' just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of any kind of scientific logic.
The dragon-in-a-box demonstrated how one might draw conclusions without running further tests, based purely on known facts. Your response has been to misrepresent, evade, lie, before ultimately clinging to the fact that in the analogy presented the test is trivial and may as well be performed, while ignoring every detail of relevance. If I were to tweak the analogy so that I'm saying the box is on the moon you can no longer do that, but it's still perfectly falsifiable is I specify where the box is, it's still perfectly testable, but no scientist in the world is going to give you the funding to see if the claim is accurate because they've already drawn a conclusion.
And as you keep ignoring, the corollary:

And finally, suppose I am wrong about the dragon. It then follows that my knowledge must be wrong and there must be some way for a dragon to exist, with all the bizarre traits ascribed to it, that all the supposed proof I knew about how a heavy dragon wouldn't be able to fly, about how it couldn't breathe fire, all that was wrong.
Suppose instead of the boxes, I was just toying around with numbers and possibilities and I found out that the proof was wrong and that a dragon was hypothetically possible, all just looking at things I knew already. Would I need to go out and find a dragon for that to mean something, or would that error be relevant even without any new test?

ie, the trivial fact that a child could tell you, but you were arguing against for no reason except that it exposed the tradition-centric model of mainstream science, it is possible to draw new conclusions based on pre-existing knowledge and tests without needing to perform any new ones. You can still perform new tests, but you can also still draw new conclusions from old knowledge.
And that's leaving aside the other issues I pointed out with the mainstream approach that also went ignored.

From what i can gather, according to the 'uncertainty principle' the pair of virtual particles can only exist for a time less than h/E  before annihilation. And upon separation, energy will be conserved only when the negative particle falls into the blackhole.

This is the issue with a lot of science when we get to this area. You can tell me what must happen for the model to make logical sense, I don't contest that, but the problem is saying why it happens. I'm aware of how virtual particles work, they have a net energy of zero and so violate no laws, but the antiparticle flying outwards and annihilating something outside the black hole would also conserve energy as the mass of the black hole would increase by the equal amount of the mass lost. It would be as though the black hole drew in some portion of that mass (as indeed it likely would be if the mass was close), just as Hawking radiation appears to the outside would to be emitted particles.

Really? Geometry doesn't apply to 3D objects that I can handle or touch?

No. Geometry is strictly theoretical, it deals with abstracts in an idealized environment. If you're talking about 3-D objects you can handle and touch, you might want to look more at physics. There's overlap, sure, but reducing a real world situation to a strictly geometrical one isn't going to guarantee you an accurate model of anything.

Like what?

Already mentioned when you posed the hypothetical.

35

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 06, 2020, 07:17:06 PM »

You are claiming to have a baby dragon in a box and demanding I PROVE that it doesn't exist.

And you wonder why I call you a liar. Where the hell have I done that?!
You aren't even being subtle any more. I've not expected you to prove a damn thing. I've asked straightforward yes or no questions, none of which making any claim about proof, you've avoided half of them and lied about the rest, and you're still doing it.

I also find it especially childish that after I asked you to quote everyone correctly, you both refused and went and additionally removed the attributes from the quote tag from your reply. That took extra work just for that bit of passive aggressiveness. Very petty, immature and disappointing.

Oh grow up. It depends how I write the posts, sometimes I quote, sometimes I open a blank reply in another window and paste the bits I'm responding to over there, which means it comes without the attribution. It doesn't matter. Anyone reading the thread can follow the conversation, and I'm assuming you have more than a ten second memory to know what we're talking about. I'm not wasting time on your vanity.
But of course we end up here. We always do. I don't know why I bother trying to talk to you people. You have one tactic and one tactic alone, you know most of the world agrees with you, you know most readers will agree with you, so you have no hesitation whatsoever in lying outright, misrepresenting, ignoring half the subject of discussion (I notice you again completely evaded an explicit question, even after having your evasion brought to your attention), provoking, and then playing the victim over either being called out on your behavior or on stupid trivialities like this, to the point of wholesale inventing a conspiracy where I painstakingly go back through my posts to remove attribution. And you do that just because, well, you're a REer, most readers are going to believe your side of events even when you're being this stupid. Poor REer, the FEer must be the one evading, must be the one getting annoyed over nothing, because it's not like the big champion of truth and justice or whatever could be utterly incapable of engaging in remotely honest discussion or answering a simple point blank question without lying their ass off.

From my understanding, the virtual particle/anti-particle pairs that are created, one has negative energy and the other positive energy, but both the particle or anti-particle can become negative. Since negative energy particles are forbidden in the universe then its always the negative particle that falls into the black hole, leaving the positive particle to escape to infinity. In the process, the blackhole gains energy = (-1) and outside the event horizon gains energy = (1). Thus energy is conserved and the blackhole's mass/energy decreases.

Saying negative energy particles is forbidden in the universe seems a mischaractization: after all, with phenomenon such as the Casimir effect, virtual particles do exist in reality, meaning the negative particles must exist, even if normally for an infinitessimal amount of time. What acts to keep the negative particles out so selectively?

36

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 06, 2020, 04:10:25 PM »

You are refusing to consider any possibility beyond RET and you think that they are wrong just because they're different. That's not scientific. That's the opposite of science, and that's half of why the modern scientific community is fundamentally flawed, they all think like you.

It's simple geometry of rectangles (two pairs of parallel sides, all perpendicular to each other) and pythagorean theory of right-angle triangles (square of hypotenuse = sum of squares of other sides). Nothing to do with RET. These would apply regardless of whether Earth flat or not flat.

You've given no good reason for these to be non-applicable to the example I cited.

It's only geometry when you aren't talking about real-world situations.
Even then, it's geometry under certain assumptions. Euclidean space is the obvious one, by definition you need that to be the case for the pythagorean theorem to hold, but as soon as you stop talking about abstract geometry and start talking about practical reality which is never so smooth or clear-cut, you have to account for other options. Learn the difference between geometry and reality. The things you are appealing to are not true universally, they are only true in specific situations, you are just insisting that we are in one of those situations without any kind of evidence.
You're the one claiming they are applicable. You don't get to switch tacks just because your argument failed. Like I said, you are assuming your worldview must be accurate in order to justify your argument, but RET is not the default. If it is true, then that should be justifiable. You are actively avoiding justifying it.

37

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 06, 2020, 12:30:56 PM »

You keep accusing me of lying and that is getting both tiring and insulting. You said new tests are not ALWAYS needed and I say they are ALWAYS required. Quit claiming otherwise. I'm not saying you said to NEVER use tests, but please consider the words ALWAYS and SOMETIMES to see where we differ.

I assure you it is far more tiring and insulkting to see you so blatantly  using the tactics I have seen time and time again. You ignored 90% of my post to focus exclusively on the parts you could straw man, ignored questions you were asked explicitly, and misrepresented the ones you did answer. Like here, you act like you made this distinction, but you didn't, you simplify to just 'tests,' implicitly all tests, at every single opportunity, and fail to justify why new ones are ever required. You just repeat ad nauseam and ignore any reasoning or explanation I provide.
For example:

So just to make things extra clear, how can you prove there is a baby dragon in the box without performing a new test, opening the box? Simple question.

Completely switching the question. To show it exists, yes, opening the box would be the most practical test, but that wasn't the claim I was asking about. There is a reason, as you well know, it was phrased the other way around; dragons not existing is not personal belief, as I have said in two posts now, the common conception of a dragon is physically impossible. That is a scientific claim and one justified by past tests, to say nothing of the basic physics of fitting something that big into a shoebox. A massive hulking lizard is going to need more than just wings if it's to fly, breathing fire in the fashion described is just nonsense, these are statements of scientific fact, and hold unless our understanding on physics is fundamentally flawed. So, yes, it would be entirely reasonable to draw the opposite conclusion without opening the box, I'm not going to believe dragons exist just because someone tells me, and when your entire argument is based solely upon the fact that in this particular analogy the test is trivial, you know you don't have a leg to stand on. There's a reason you're avoiding every single point I make.
And further, like I pointed out before:

And finally, suppose I am wrong about the dragon. It then follows that my knowledge must be wrong and there must be some way for a dragon to exist, with all the bizarre traits ascribed to it, that all the supposed proof I knew about how a heavy dragon wouldn't be able to fly, about how it couldn't breathe fire, all that was wrong.
Suppose instead of the boxes, I was just toying around with numbers and possibilities and I found out that the proof was wrong and that a dragon was hypothetically possible, all just looking at things I knew already. Would I need to go out and find a dragon for that to mean something, or would that error be relevant even without any new test?

( Also, please quit responding to multiple people in the same post without correctly attributing the authors.  I have nothing to do with your flat sea and towers discussion, and this is not the first time you have done this. Thank you. )

I leave spaces to clearly separate the two discussions. There's only two going on, it's not exactly hard to keep track. Stop with this pathetic grandstanding, I am trying to have a discussion, if all you're interested in is these meta-tactics I've seen dozens of times before, you can piss off.

This is truly ridiculous.

You're refusing to discuss a simple geometry in open space, on the basis of "What if the normal rules of geometry and light didn't apply?"

If I'd shown you a chemical equation, your response would likely be "What if the normal rules of geometry and light didn't apply"
If I'd shown you a quadratic equation, your response would likely be "What if the normal rules of maths didn't apply"
If I'd suggested that 9+2 = 11, you'd likely say "What if we weren't using base 10 arithmetic"

Honestly, can't you see this is just goalpost-shifting on your part. Someone points out that the ball has gone in the goal, you say "What if the goalposts aren't really where you think they are?"

See? You cannot think outside your normal. You view it as proven 100%, which is scientific rubbish, science does not function like that. You are assuming no mistake was made.
If I said that about math, you'd be able to show the proof of any claim you made, that's how math works. That's how science should work. But instead you fly off the handle and declare the basic concept of questioning 'ridiculous.'
I'm not shifting the goalposts. I'm answering your question the exact same way I told you I'd be answering when you started this diversion. You are refusing to consider any possibility beyond RET and you think that they are wrong just because they're different. That's not scientific. That's the opposite of science, and that's half of why the modern scientific community is fundamentally flawed, they all think like you.

38

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 05, 2020, 09:53:09 PM »

Tumeni asks - Do you agree that the flat plane of the sea, the two towers of the same height, and the sightline from top of one to the other form a perfect rectangle, with the sightline parallel to the surface of the sea?

Y/N

Not inherently. You're assuming an awful lot there about the properties of space and light. Like I said, you're just bringing the RET model into FET and complaining that they aren't the same.

It's got nothing to do with RET. Base presumption is that the surface of the water is flat, and that the two towers are perpendicular to it.

Regardless of distance between, how can the geometry of the situation allow the sightline between the tops to be anything other than a straight line, parallel to the base level?

What properties do you think I'm making assumptions about?

I told you. Space and light. It has everything to do with RET, you're just refusing to see it, you are working under the assumption that the way you see the world is the only way. If, for example, space is not a uniform field, than two straight lines that are parallel at one point may not be parallel at every point, the distance between them would increase or reduce without them moving to be further or closer, thus no rectangle. Light would deal more with the measurement of the situation you've set up, and that would concern itself more with how parallel the sightlines seem, but that's as crucial a step as any.
Instead of repeating 'it has nothing to do with RET' and ignoring every time it is pointed out to you how it is, I'd suggest you stop assumimng I have to be wrong just because I'm a FEer. That makes discussion on this site utterly tedious. Your hypothetical situation is completely reliant on the model on the world and physics that you've been taught, once you step outside those bounds you have evidence of nothing.

39

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 05, 2020, 05:22:09 PM »

You can't skip any of those.  Especially testing, it's the core of what science is.

How often are you going to lie about this?
Use tests. Not every test is a new one. It's that simple. Everything I've said is in line with the scientific method, I am saying to use tests, you are just ignoring it every single time because apparently you just can't bear the fact a FEer is talking sense.
You can test the validity of a claim with reference to tests. I notice you ignored basically all of my explanation to continue peddling this straw man, notably when I pointed out the reason people disbelieve in dragons is because the description is physically impossible and not just 'they haven't been seen,' not to mention every other question beyond this one you misrepresented.
When you feel like actually being even the slightest bit honest, I'll be here.

You are arguing for a narrow view of silence that favors tradition and religious belief in what has already been established. You have ignored it every single time that is pointed out to you, you don't even acknowledge it, focusing instead on lying about what I am saying (and lying explicitly, no matter how many times it's pointed out to you) and ignoring everything beyond that one very blatant lie.

Do you agree that the flat plane of the sea, the two towers of the same height, and the sightline from top of one to the other form a perfect rectangle, with the sightline parallel to the surface of the sea?

Y/N

Not inherently. You're assuming an awful lot there about the properties of space and light. Like I said, you're just bringing the RET model into FET and complaining that they aren't the same.

40

Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Black Holes and Paper Cuts

« on: April 02, 2020, 07:53:33 PM »

So you would agree that the surfaces of the seas and oceans can be regarded as following this foundational straight line?

Yes, on large scales.

And you keep putting words in MY mouth.  Right there you are saying I am claiming that the status quo is above reproach. Where did I ever say that? I'm saying the exact opposite. The status quo is that dragons don't exist, yet I still say open the box. Because again, science isn't about what you think is right or what you want to be right, it's about observations. So if you open the box and a baby dragon says hi, science will throw out the other "dragons don't exist theory" and adopt a new one.

And there we go, conflating half a dozen points into one mishmash to avoid a clear answer. I'll break that down in a sec, but first:
I called you a liar because you persist in the claim that I am saying to not test. I have said several times over explicitly that that is not what I am saying, that it is fine to run tests, and I've encouraged it. There's no ambiguity ther,e no misinterpretation, I've said that it's a good thing to run new tests. And yet every post you're acting as though I'm objecting to the concept of tests. What else would you call that if not a lie? I am not going to dance around and let you get away with that, the number of cheap tricks people use on this forum is beyond a joke and I've no interest in allowing it. You even do it in your last post. I am not 'anti-test,' I've been talking about the results of tests and how they are crucial in every single post. You are lying again even right after you are being caught out. This isn't ambiguous.

But the breakdown. Okay.
You know everything you do now. You have a life experience, countless observations and tests that you already know. Then I come up to you with a shoebox. I tell you that inside is either a dragon or a phone.
You are saying that those two claims have equal merit. I am saying that, because I have lived in a world with no sign of dragons, in a world where the typical description of a dragon would seem to defy the laws of physics when it comes to heavy flying lizards that breathe fire, I am saying that because of all the tests that have already been done, I think that the phone is a considerably more likely possibility. I am saying that I don't need to open the box to draw a conclusion.
I am not saying to not open the box, I am saying that I would form an opinion before looking inside because enough tests have already been done that I am reasonably confident I do not live in a world with dragons. I am saying that I do not view the possibility of a dragon and the possibility of a phone to be of equal value, and that I do not need to look into the box to reach that conclusion, and that reaching that conclusion is entirely logical because it is based on past 'tests' and observations. Do you agree or disagree?

Next, okay, we open the box. No one's saying you can't, just that it's possible to reach an informed conclusion without doing so.
Suppose by some miracle there is a dragon. I'm saying that's fine, it's something to account for in future experiences, and I'm saying this in no way invalidates the logic that led me to the opposite conclusion before opening the box because, and here's the key, that isn't how science works. Science is the process, not the conclusion. You can do everything right and still come to a wrong answer, that just means your premises were flawed, not the method.
Because that's clearly something you seem to have an issue with. You have been implicitly combining 'come to a scientific conclusion' and 'proof,' but science isn't about certainty, the moment you start talking about certainty you've crossed from science to religion. Several times over you rely on the premise that 'the existing scientific model is accurate,' you rely on that by claiming further tests must be run to draw any conclusion. But that's not how it works, and nor should it be, there's always the possibility of some error. We could get onto simulation theory, for example, allowing every test to have given manipulated and inaccurate results, like you say it can't be proven that's not happening. But how often is that allowed for when running tests, does every scientific paper add the note 'there's always the possibility some guiding hand made the results inaccurate or misleading,' or do they make the rational decision, as I did with the dragon, to not unnecessarily assume the existence of an entity when there is no need to?
Now if some day something like that does get proven, so be it, they can calculate in terms of it, but it is fundamental to science to limit the assumptions to just what is presented, minimizing as many as possible, because otherwise science falls apart on a fundamental level. It becomes impossible to determine anything.
I said I would be 'reasonably confident' before opening the box, and that's key because that is the goal of science. There is not one test you can run where there isn't some wild idea that could mean it points to something completely different, science is never going to stamp those possibilities out. It just discounts all the options that, until some later point, lack evidence for their assumptions.

And finally, suppose I am wrong about the dragon. It then follows that my knowledge must be wrong and there must be some way for a dragon to exist, with all the bizarre traits ascribed to it, that all the supposed proof I knew about how a heavy dragon wouldn't be able to fly, about how it coudln't breathe fire, all that was wrong.
Suppose instead of the boxes, I was just toying around with numbers and possibilities and I found out that the proof was wrong and that a dragon was hypothetically possible, all just looking at things I knew already. Would I need to go out and find a dragon for that to mean something, or would that error be relevant even without any new test?

In conclusion:
1. It is possible to draw conclusions from existing knowledge.
2. Running tests is still a good thing. I'm going to keep repeating that until you stop lying about it.
3. Running tests that have not previously been performed is still a good thing and can lead to new discoveries. It is however not the sole way of finding new discoveries.
4. No part of science is or should be above question, errors may always arise (and most likely arise in the interaction of separate conclusions as they were never meant to fit together).
5. Assuming something for the purpose of making a model work is something that should be done as little as possible.

Which of these do you object to?