20121226

Argument from Authority


In response to Rick's critique of the Krauss interview on his book, "A Universe From Nothing,” Rosemary Lyndall Wemm says:

The trouble with astrophysics summaries that has been dumbed down for non-expert consumption is that the average reader is too ignorant of the subject matter to understand the complexities. Whatever makes the author believe that musicians have what it takes?

The underlying problem is that the common meaning of "nothing" is not consistent with the scientific version of "nothing". This is further complicated by the fact that many scientists will assert that there is actually no such thing as "nothing". An infinitely small singularity could probably be defined as "infinitely small space/time/energy/potential particle". The average person is no closer to understanding this than they have of understanding the concept of double figure dimensions.
 

Rosemary:

Thanks for the comment and for your courage to use your real name. It is the nature of an absurd theory that it doesn’t take any special training to see that the “emperor wears no clothes.” Such theories, the BBT and relativity, with their explosions out of nothing and 4 dimensions make no sense at all to the person in the street. Promoters of such silly theories ask us commoners to have “faith,” in the same way we were asked in parochial school. I asked Rick to address the Krauss book and interview. I think he did a pretty good job of it even though he is not an astrophysicist by training. Unlike Krauss, however, he is well trained in “The Ten Assumptions of Science.” He knows that the opposite of the indeterministic assumption of creation (an obvious darling of the BBT) is the Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and the motion of matter can neither be created nor destroyed). You either believe in the First Law of Thermodynamics or you don’t, despite Hawking’s plea that even the laws of the universe were created when it exploded out of nothing, or a “singularity” as naïve mathematicians say. Rick prefers the Fifth Assumption of Science, as I do and is one of the best supporters of UD and Infinite Universe Theory.

As is evident in the Krauss interview, mainstream scientists, who tend to be aether deniers, are confused over the idea of nothing. They say they have discovered the origin of the universe from nothing, but they realize that their concept of nothing needs some adjustment. Being indeterminists crawling out from under the idealization of the nothing that cannot possibly exist in reality, they must see this nothing as something, either the result of “quantum fluctuations,” Higgs bosons, or “pure energy construed as matterless motion” (see the Fourth Assumption of Science). Rick and the rest of us in PSI are always amused when avowed atheists like Krauss become famous for attacking creation while holding to that assumption at the same time.

Rosemary, you say that “An infinitely small singularity could probably [my italics] be defined as "infinitely small space/time/energy/potential particle". The average person is no closer to understanding this than they have of understanding the concept of double figure dimensions. 

You are definitely right about that. An "infinitely small space/time/energy/potential particle" and “double figure dimensions” make no sense at all. Anyone who thinks they know either of those is definitely confused. Looks like indeterminism is being spoken here. Univironmental determinists consider space to be matter, time to be the motion of matter, energy to be a calculation, and potential particles to be nonsense. We common, nonauthoritarian folks have a zillion hours of experience with 3-dimensional objects. The high priests of regressive physics have zero hours of experience with their imagined extra-Euclidean “objects.” Rick and I know when we are being bamboozled. Even Steven Colbert, one of the smartest folks in television, has the guts to display a bit of skepticism over such chicanery.     

Rosemary, you certainly must have just a little bit of doubt about the “creation of the universe out of nothing.” We encourage you to read TSW and UCT to find out what the infinite universe is really about.

20121220

Indeterministic Hysteria and the End of the World


Oh, I almost forgot, the world is supposed to end tomorrow...

Anyway, I love making predictions, especially the ones having a 100% chance of success. Just as I will not grow feathers and fly out the window, Earth will continue on its merry way after the latest indeterministic hysteria slowly subsides on Friday. You would think folks eventually would become inured with such silly prognostications. I guess there is a lot of truth to the old adage that “There is a sucker born every minute.” We must learn determinism through experience. Thus the reservoir of indeterminism and its associated ignorance is endless. The answer, of course, is education. Mere repression of indeterminism is insufficient, as the Chinese are finding out:

Here is an “ark” built with the life savings of a Chinese fellow about as far from the ocean as you can get:



And here is a weather forecast also going around the Internet:



Here are some predictions on when the world will end:

Mayan Calendar Procrastination: Friday
Christians: Any day now
Scientists: About 4.5 billion years

Have a happy “Fry” day!


20121219

Systems Philosophy Strikes Again!

Remember that, as the universal mechanism of evolution, univironmental determinism (UD) assumes that whatever happens to an xyz portion of the universe is determined by the infinite matter in motion within and without. Thus, whenever we analyze anything, we are prone to two types of errors of overemphasis: microcosmic and macrocosmic. As the current scientific world view of the mainstream, systems philosophy consistently errors on the microcosmic side. The motto seems to be: consider the thing you are studying (the microcosm) and ignore or slight everything else (the macrocosm). Readers know that the archetype of systems philosophy is the Big Bang Theory (BBT). But there are many other disciplines in which systems philosophy does its damage.


One popular discussion among evolutionists involves a renewal of the bogus nature-nurture debate. By adding genetics to natural selection, neo-Darwinists rectified Darwin’s macrocosmic error. Evolution in biology is the result of interactions between the organism (with all its genes) and its environment. Now comes two folks (Shapiro and Newman) who think that evolution is driven mostly by genetic variations, with natural selection having little to do with it:

Jerry Coyne has ripped their analysis pretty well, calling Shapiro and Newman out as antiselectionists: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/another-antiselectionist-stuart-newman-surfaces-at-puffho/

Unfortunately, Coyne has his own problems, which stem from the limitations of neo-Darwinism. For instance, he is a consistent opponent of “group selection”:  http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/?s=group+selection&searchsubmit=Find+%C2%BB
The jist of that argument is that, if you don’t physically reproduce yourself, you are nothing in the eyes of evolution. Aunts and uncles have nothing whatsoever to do with the success of the clan. Us aunts and uncles, however, know that to be pure BS. In UD, the microcosm of interest can be whatever we want it to be. The proper analysis is always the univironment: the interaction between the microcosm and the macrocosm.

As I argued in "The Scientific Worldview," neo-Darwinism is too limited for its claim to be the mechanism of evolution. At best, it is only a special case of UD, with its tendency toward myopia quite evident in the “group selection” debate. Then too, mainstream neo-Darwinists invariably are supporters of the BBT. They see creationist attacks on the BBT as being anti-evolution and anti-science, which I suppose they are. They can’t imagine that the BBT could itself be anti-science. To handle the contradiction posed by their brothers in cosmogony, neo-Darwinists continue to pose the debate as one between evolution and creation. It goes much farther than that. It is really between the deterministic assumption of conservation and the indeterministic assumption of creation. As accomodationists, the mainstream defends The Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and the motion of matter can be neither created nor destroyed)—whenever it suits them. Neo-Darwinists typically miss the irony in both defending and attacking the assumption of creation at the same time.

  



20121212

Higgs Boson Nominated Time’s “Person of the Year” [Egads!]


Thanks to Jerry Coyne for the heads-up on this one. Being in lock step with regressive physics, the popular press gets more ridiculous by the minute:

  
Just in case you really want to vote against this bit of democratic BS, here is the link:


Maybe the author, Jeffrey Kluger, should review my paper on “The Physical Meaning of E=mc2”. It’s not that complicated, and he might actually learn something. You will remember that energy is defined as a calculation. Energy neither exists, nor occurs. There is no such thing as “inchoate energy”—only inchoate ideas about what energy is. The first and second sentences of Jeffrey’s paragraph amount to a gross violation of the Fourth Assumption of Science, inseparability (Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion). Of course, he might be excused, what with all the talk by regressive physicists about “dark energy” and “dark matter” as though they were indeed separate “things.” The most that a logical person could do would be to entertain the idea that “dark energy” is a calculation involving the motion of “dark matter.”

Sometimes, the Higgs is said to be the “god particle” or the most fundamental particle. Even here we see the admission that the Higgs is no such thing, if it indeed decays into four muons. I guess it is really not “The Particle at the End of the Universe” as claimed by cosmogonist Sean Carroll. Even Steven Colbert seems dubious about Carroll’s mainstream claim that empty space is filled with “energy.” Oh well, I guess that the idea that the Higgs forms a kind of “molasses” in empty space to give particles mass is more than a non sequitur. It gives aether deniers a chance to save face. It also works with the silly idea that particles creating waves in the macrocosm provide support for wave-particle duality, as I showed here.

BTW: As with a lot of mainstream woo-woo press, this one claims once again that Einstein was right. Jeffrey says that the Higgs Boson “finally fully confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity.” Egads again! The Higgs has nothing whatsoever to do with GRT. At best, it might support the indeterministic interpretation of SRT, with its imagined conversion of pure energy into matter. Also note that the redundant “finally” and “fully” are darlings of classical mechanics and its assumption of finity. Even the mainstream now realizes that theories are never confirmed. At best, they can only be supported [because of causality (All effects have an infinite number of material causes)]. 



20121205

Letter to an Aspiring Progressive Physicist


Glenn,

as you linked from worldnpa.org and am very interested in some of your assumptions.  I have a paper just put into Progress in Physics and some of my conclusions are the same as yours.  The url is http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2013/PP-32-04.PDF In a nutshell where I will be going from here is showing that while Guv can represent the wave, (Omega guv-Luv) is from the viewpoint of the medium (and should be more mathematically rigorous).  Any comments or advice are most welcome.

Regards,
Jeff Baugher

Jeff:

Glad to see that you are into progressive physics and that you found our site. We do seem to be using some of the same assumptions. I think that you will enjoy reading "The Scientific Worldview" (Chapter 3 is most of "The Ten Assumptions of Science") to see where things are going in the non-silly part of the world. Next, you will want to read "Universal Cycle Theory,” which covers much of the stuff you are concerned with in your paper. The free downloads on our website ( www.scientificphilosophy.com ) also should give a hint about where we are coming from. The E=mc2 paper and the "Einstein's most important philosophical error" paper should be of special interest.

Sorry to bust your balloon, but in your paper, you mention three predictions that supposedly established the validity of Einstein’s Field Equation: 1) magnitudes of gravitational lensing, 2) gravitational redshift, and 3) account for Mercury’s precessing orbit.

Although generally ignored by the mainstream, these observations said to support Einstein have alternative explanations more in tune with "The Ten Assumptions of Science”:

Gravitational lensing was put to rest by Dowdye (2010, 2011), who showed that the Eddington observations that made Einstein famous were due to refraction produced by the Sun’s corona. Thus, at 2R from the center of the Sun, Einstein predicted that light bending would be 1/4 (i.e., 1/R2) as much as it was just above the surface of the Sun. Modern instruments show that there is none. Thus light is unaffected by gravitation and there is no curved empty space-time as was predicted by Einstein.

We explained the gravitational redshift in "Universal Cycle Theory" (Puetz and Borchardt, 2011; Borchardt and Puetz, 2012) as the result of increases in light velocity produced by increases in aether density as a function of distance from massive objects.

The explanation of “Mercury’s precessing orbit” was done nicely by Rydin (2011) without calling upon relativity.

I hope you get a chance to read the suggested works. With the correct beginning assumptions, we can put physics back on track. With your great mathematical ability, I am sure that you will continue to be on the cutting edge.

       
Refs:

Borchardt, Glenn, and Puetz, S.J., 2012, Neomechanical gravitation theory ( http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_6529.pdf ), in Volk, Greg, Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 19th Conference of the NPA, 25-28 July: Albuquerque, NM, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, v. 9, p. 53-58.

Dowdye, E.H., Jr., 2010, Findings convincingly show no direct interaction between gravitation and electromagnetism in empty vacuum space ( http://www.extinctionshift.com/SignificantFindings.htm ), in Volk, G., Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 17th Conference of the NPA, 23-26 June, 2010: Long Beach, CA, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, v. 7, p. 131-136.

Dowdye, E.H., Jr., 2011, Gravitational Lensing in Empty Vacuum Space Does NOT Take Place ( http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5973.pdf ), in Volk, G., Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 18th Conference of the NPA, 6-9 July, 2011: College Park, MD, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, v. 8, p. 176-182.

Puetz, S.J., and Borchardt, Glenn, 2011, Universal cycle theory: Neomechanics of the hierarchically infinite universe: Denver, Outskirts Press ( www.universalcycletheory.com ), 626 p.

Rydin, R.A., 2011, The Theory of Mercury's Anomalous Precession ( http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_6066.pdf ), in Volk, G., Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 18th Conference of the NPA, 6-9 July, 2011: College Park, MD, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, v. 8, p. 501-506.