Ex-Stargate Head Ed May Unyielding Re Materialism, Slams Dean Radin |341|

PS: the more one looks into this, the more one sees that so-called science has mainly become an intolerant religion.

A case in point: What happened to Halton Arp, the physicist who discovered that Red Shift didn't mean an expanding universe, i.e. that the main support for a "Big Bang" was debunked... Find out here:

The excommunication of Halton Arp was a punishment similar to what happened to people who doubted the creation story under the Catholic Church...
 
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I agree about some of modern analysis. Still physicists deserve all due credit for the design of experiments (DOE) and diligent taking of measurements!

I agree. That's why I keep emphasizing that the obfuscators are the theoretical physicists.

The mathematical physicists, like Einstein can be confused about what their math may yield as narratives - but can still be just as much explorers of reality.

What if someone said that the cosmos is made up of lots of triangles, and mathematical "proofs" were given to support this. Is this "exploring reality" or is it just an incorrect opinion... Belief in such opinions stifled real science for centuries too (that particular opinion about triangles being building blocks of matter was found in Platonism).
Similarly, if someone says nothing can go faster than the speed of light, is that exploring reality or is it putting an unhelpful filter on your perception of the cosmos. As Thornhill argues, Einstein has sent physics into a sort of dark age.

 
A crucial point: This isn't just to pick on Einstein either, and the way he's portrayed as a god of science by the MSM and mainstream academia.
No, this is a disturbing pattern going way back into ancient times. I think this is because most people are weak-minded, so they need fixed "truths" that they can base their lives on.

This can take the form of explicit religious dogmas or it can be "scientists"/philosophers who cloud their dogmas with a veneer of rationality.

But scratching under the surface, one finds the same pattern: The dogmas are assumptions, propped up by something abstract, rather than actual experiments.

We see this in Plato, and we see it in the way Aristotle was interpreted. We see it today in the so-called "Constants"; in the way Dawkins body actually shook with rage when he was confronted by a real skeptic; and in the way another so-called "scientist" literally called for the BURNING of Rupert Sheldrake's books!...

These are really pissed off people.

And going full-circle, it's in the reaction to Alex Tsakiris' polite prodding of Ed May, and afterwards --out of the blue-- Ed May lashes out in a classic skeptiko moment...

"You are starting to piss me off!"
 
A crucial point: This isn't just to pick on Einstein either, and the way he's portrayed as a god of science by the MSM and mainstream academia.
No, this is a disturbing pattern going way back into ancient times. I think this is because most people are weak-minded, so they need fixed "truths" that they can base their lives on.

This can take the form of explicit religious dogmas or it can be "scientists"/philosophers who cloud their dogmas with a veneer of rationality.

But scratching under the surface, one finds the same pattern: The dogmas are assumptions, propped up by something abstract, rather than actual experiments.

We see this in Plato, and we see it in the way Aristotle was interpreted. We see it today in the so-called "Constants"; in the way Dawkins body actually shook with rage when he was confronted by a real skeptic; and in the way another so-called "scientist" literally called for the BURNING of Rupert Sheldrake's books!...

These are really pissed off people.

And going full-circle, it's in the reaction to Alex Tsakiris' polite prodding of Ed May, and afterwards --out of the blue-- Ed May lashes out in a classic skeptiko moment...

"You are starting to piss me off!"
I rather agree with that, but I'd put it slightly differently:

In science someone comes up with a hypothesis, and for a while there is open discussion about the pros and cons of the new idea. However, there comes a point when some piece of evidence is said to clinch the matter and the hypothesis is then treated as fact. After that point, textbooks are written assuming the new 'fact', Nobel Prizes are awarded, etc., and it takes enormous effort and evidence to force a re-think - those who try have metaphorical mud thrown at them by an enraged crowd.

While that process makes sense from the point of view of the sociology of science, it can lead to some pretty myopic thinking. An excellent example of this can be seen in the whole 'climate change' debate. The whole idea that extra CO2 was causing dangerous warming was accepted at a time (the end of the last century) when temperatures were rising slightly (still only about a tenth of a degree per decade). Since then the temperature curve has gone essentially flat except for El Nino blips, even though CO2 levels are still increasing. If this question were still considered open, I think scientists would be far more cautious, but it isn't, the concept has passed into the textbooks and Nobel Prizes have been awarded, and it seems damned hard to get rid of the meme!

I do have caution about subjects like Relativity (SR and GR), not because it doesn't explain a lot of facts - for example, there are unstable particles formed in the outer atmosphere in cosmic ray collisions, and these should have decayed before they reach the surface of the earth, but because of Relativistic time dilation they make it down here. However, I can't help wondering if the full picture might be somewhat different from how it is seen now. The very formalism of GR involves the concept of warping of space-time, and that in turn warps the way people think about the subject!

Science should move more slowly, and value those who don't agree with the consensus, rather than treating them as outcasts.

I'd like to see a science that was much more cautious - recognising that there is a danger of simply building sand castles in the air.

When it comes to consciousness and ψ, I think science should be super cautious - because its current explanations are obviously very shallow. There was a time when chemists seeking new drugs went out on field trips to sample the plants that native people use to heal themselves. Now I think scientists should actively search for ψ phenomena, shaman-induced phenomena etc. Obviously it would be necessary to filter out any false material, but after that they would have a treasure trove of evidence to help them understand consciousness better.

David
 
I certainly sympathise, but the twins in the twin paradox are not equivalent, whatever inertial frame you use to observe them. This is because the one that jets off in the rocket, and eventually returns to the earth has undergone a lot of acceleration, which his brother hasn't.

Right, the specific case (the usual textbook version of the 'twin paradox' - but not actually the paradoxical version) with one traveller and one stay-at-home, where both agree that only the traveller was accelerated, is that second kind of time dilation I mentioned: 'non-observer-dependent round-trip dilation of an objectively accelerated vs less-unaccelerated observer'.

A clearer version of the twins paradox - the one where there's an actual paradox - is: what happens if both twins take identical but opposite journeys away from the Earth?

By the 'spacetime interpretation' of relativity, the answer is, on its surface, simple and non-paradoxical, and it's what you'll find in the textbooks: neither twin in this case ages slower than the other, they both return to Earth at the same moment and are the same age. But they do both age slower than the Earth because they were more accelerated (relative to a shared inertial reference frame common to both twins and the Earth), therefore they took shorter journeys in spacetime.

So far so good. But on both the inbound and the outbound journeys, when they're not speeding up or slowing down, each twin is moving at a high velocity relative to the other. According to the simple observer-dependent SR time dilation for straight-line unaccelerated relative motion, each twin should be seriously time dilated at this point. However SR is reciprocal, so it allows each twin to consider the other twin aging faster than itself at all points other than the actual acceleration (and also during the acceleration). So at the end of the journey, why don't all those time dilations add up? Presumably we can't just use a simple addition formula, but the exact transformation must be quite complicated, and must shove a huge amount of time-change into that short period of acceleration.

So a naive application of Special Relativity gives us three answers for time dilation: 1. Twin A thinks it ages slower than twin B, because it measures B moving relatively to itself. 2. Twin B thinks it ages faster than A, because it measures A moving relatively to itself. 3. Neither twin actually ages faster than the other, because they both took 'equivalent paths in spacetime', ie, they were accelerated relatively to a shared inertial frame (the Earth). 4. From Earth's perspective, using the naive SR calculation, both twins also age faster than it, but this is purely because of their observed high relative velocities - it's only an accident of the maths that Earth can consider itself 'less accelerated' than the twins, because it doesn't know how much 'actual' or 'felt' acceleration the twins are really undergoing.

(In fact, in any real Twin situation, Earth must also be getting some acceleration / taking a shorter path in spacetime because of gravity (both the Sun's or its own). But if we have to feel an acceleration to do relativity correctly, ie to know if we're in an accelerated or inertial frame, how do we calculate gravitational time dilation accurately when we can't feel its acceleration?)

It seems that 1 and 2 must be illusions (or at least observations of emitted light or radio pulses) and only 3 and 4 are 'real'. But 1 and 2 AND 4 come straight from the basic SR equation - the Lorentz transform. It seems very odd that a theory gives you two wrong or illusory answers in the simplest case (straight-line relative motion), only gives you the correct answer after you look at a much more complex case (closed-loop curved motion, where you take into account not just the observed relative motions and the relative accelerations, but the felt acceleration of each observer, and keep track of the whole flight history. Shouldn't a consistent theory build the complex case out of the simple cases, not the other way around? If you take just one observation while you're in straight-line flight, and you don't know whether you previously accelerated or not, can you calculate your time dilation accurately?

Relativity is theoretically based on relative motion. But it seems when you actually use it in practice (for closed-loop paths) you can't just use relative motion but have to bring in the idea of 'felt' or 'absolute' acceleration.

It also seems odd that a theory of space and time would require space and time to shift based on velocity, which is a ratio of space and time. Isn't that something of a circular definition? Presumably we can escape from the circular definition by saying each observer is changing (their idea of) another observer's space and time, not their own, but... that's when my head starts to hurt. In our everyday world, we assume as a matter of course that space and time exist for all observers; that if A measures a distance X to B, then B will measure distance X to A; and each will measure their relative velocity based on (measured) X. But if you're changing the units of measured space and time based on a function of those units themselves, none of this becomes obvious or trivial.

It also seems that you have to bring in a concept of 'shifting of the planes of simultaneity' when you accelerate; such that you change your beliefs about the time and distance of all other objects. But presumably those distant objects didn't actually change their position in 'space and time' based on your local movements; so that the 'space and time' which you believe changed due to your acceleration must actually really only exist in your mind.

So there seem to be two separate, unrelated yet freely interchanged concepts of space and time in relativity: 'real' or 'physical' space/time, modelled by the GR tensor, agreed on by all observers when they return after round-trips, and 'imaginary' or 'observed' space and time which is really just numbers calculated from light signals, modelled by the SR Lorentz Transform, which only exists in an observers mind, and on which observers disagree. But both concepts seem to use the same sets of coordinates and the same equations.

Also, the entire idea of the distance and time of a distant event being a function of a velocity comparison with a potentially infinite number of distant observers seems to become more odd the more I think about it: because relativity is, above all, a local theory, not wanting to bring in a concept of instant-action-at-a-distance. Yet 'the relative velocity of two distant objects' is not in the least a local concept. Two distant objects have no means of directly measuring their relative velocity! Wouldn't a truly local theory be one that had an aether, so that the velocity state of all particles would simply be their velocity relative to the local aether? Einstein wanted to remove any idea of an aether because it was in principle unmeasurable, but taking it away just seems to lead to endless spiralling complexities. At some point, shouldn't simplicity of computation justify allowing one not-directly-measurable quantity?

It all feels as if someone tried to remove the concept of 'zero' from arithmetic, on the grounds that it stood for nothing and could not be measured and therefore should not be part of the system, and then tried to make it consistent.

No doubt an actual relativity expert would be beating their head here to say that I have everything completely wrong and am just confusing everybody, and I probably do and am. But this is the kind of confusion I get when I try to think seriously about what SR implies. And Dingle's questions went along a very similar line (and got a similar response from the experts; baffled incomprehension on both sides).

Regards, Nate
 
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I like this extract from "The Life of Jonathan Martin" written by himself, and published in 1829. It's a lovely example of how we might try to explain something in the world, until a better explanation pushes it aside...
j_martin.jpg
 
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So far so good. But on both the inbound and the outbound journeys, when they're not speeding up or slowing down, each twin is moving at a high velocity relative to the other. According to the simple observer-dependent SR time dilation for straight-line unaccelerated relative motion, each twin should be seriously time dilated at this point. However SR is reciprocal, so it allows each twin to consider the other twin aging faster than itself at all points other than the actual acceleration (and also during the acceleration). So at the end of the journey, why don't all those time dilations add up? Presumably we can't just use a simple addition formula, but the exact transformation must be quite complicated, and must shove a huge amount of time-change into that short period of acceleration.
I feel as uneasy about scenarios like this as you do - there is the feeling that we are just looking at the problem the wrong way - and this is just SR!

Let's leave the accelerations of the earth out of the picture - just assume they are negligibly small compared to the rocket accelerations.

However, let's suppose each twin sends out clock pulses to the other and these are detected perfectly.

While they are separating, both will observe the other's clock pulses and say the other is ageing more slowly. Effectively more and more clock pulses are stored in the gap between them, which is growing all the time. Then, as they start to decelerate and reverse, each of them will detect a lot of clock pulses from each other and as they move back together, they will receive more clock pulses from each other. By the time they get home, they will each have received the same number of clock pulses as the other - and so have aged the same amount!

I am pretty sure the algebra is consistent, but I am less sure the whole thing makes much sense. Assuming all accelerations are uniform, we would need to integrate the time dilation formula with v as a function of t, to get the total time that the moving twin would experience - does anyone want to help out?

SR started with the idea that the speed of light is the same for all observers - as demonstrated by the Michelson-Morley experiment, but that assumed that the aether was not dragged by the earth. I'd like to see the MM experiment repeated in deep space before I would really believe in SR.

David
 
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Very interesting discussion. I'm not sure the need for certainty represents weak-mindedness as such (dependIng on how one defines it I suppose). It seems a natural human characteristic to me - uncertainty implies risk perhaps. That allied with a certain degree of laziness, lack of familiarity with critical thinking processes and too many distractions may add to it. To develop an informed view on many of the subjects discussed on here requires intellectual capacity and hard work.

Talking about death and survival also means confronting our own mortality.
 
I'm not sure the need for certainty represents weak-mindedness as such (dependIng on how one defines it I suppose). It seems a natural human characteristic to me - uncertainty implies risk perhaps.
I think we all want to know we are safe and that means different things to different people and it biases what might otherwise be good evidence.
 
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An excellent example of this can be seen in the whole 'climate change' debate.

Added to that is the conspiracy angle: The globalists jump around about a "global problem", so they can bring about their "global solution" -- i.e. global tax and eventually world government.

I think that's why they've been pushing the ancient aliens subject so much in recent years too. Global problem calls for global solution.

there are unstable particles formed in the outer atmosphere in cosmic ray collisions, and these should have decayed before they reach the surface of the earth, but because of Relativistic time dilation they make it down here.

That sounds like an assumption: "these should have decayed before they reach the surface of the earth", followed by theory: "because of Relativistic time dilation they make it down here"...

Science should move more slowly, and value those who don't agree with the consensus, rather than treating them as outcasts.

Indeed, agreement is not the aim of science.
 
This isn't about consensus. If someone changes their mind from one day to the next it doesn't necessarily make them weak-minded. They may be following the data. The weak-minded people are those who cling to opinions regardless of the data.
Your post said that most people are weak minded. How utterly arrogant! Sometimes we stick to a belief because we feel the evidence justifies it.
 
Added to that is the conspiracy angle: The globalists jump around about a "global problem", so they can bring about their "global solution" -- i.e. global tax and eventually world government.
Oh there is politics in there as well, but I think the scientists involved are primarily responsible!
That sounds like an assumption: "these should have decayed before they reach the surface of the earth", followed by theory: "because of Relativistic time dilation they make it down here"...
Well I think the raw phenomenon is real:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation_of_moving_particles

However, I keep an open mind as to what this means. I mean I suppose in principle this could be taken as a sign that all inertial frames are not equivalent, and that fast moving stuff is affected by its speed of travel!

David
 
I don't get it. How do you explain Remote Viewing, which I guess he's seen work and verified, with a theory that doesn't involve the possibility of consciousness functioning without the brain? Brain wave telemetry? Mental radio? Geez. Talk about not recognizing evidence if it jumps up and bites you someplace.
 
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I don't get it. How do you explain Remote Viewing, which I guess he's seen work and verified, with a theory that doesn't involve the possibility of consciousness functioning without the brain? Brain wave telemetry? Mental radio? Geez. Talk about not recognizing evidence if it jumps up and bites you someplace.

Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is so thorough that one almost doesn't know where to begin. Also how Ed May lashed out at Alex for asking polite questions... seems to have hit a burning hot nerve.
 
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Very interesting discussion. I'm not sure the need for certainty represents weak-mindedness as such (dependIng on how one defines it I suppose). It seems a natural human characteristic to me - uncertainty implies risk perhaps. That allied with a certain degree of laziness, lack of familiarity with critical thinking processes and too many distractions may add to it. To develop an informed view on many of the subjects discussed on here requires intellectual capacity and hard work.

Talking about death and survival also means confronting our own mortality.

Hi Obiwan,

Excellent points you raised, and I think you're right that the description of weak-mindedness could be more nuanced. As we see around us, there are many people who ignore inconvenient evidence, who even lash out at the messenger. And as you say, there can be various reasons for this, such as risk-avoidance, laziness, ignorance, distractions, etc., and even those who work for a contrary agenda (such as many climate "scientists")...

So when we take into account these factors, it seems to me that at the core, for most people, they ignore inconvenient evidence in a sheep-like conformity. They are sheeple. So instead of looking at the data, they instead look to authority figures and how their peers react.

That's a sad state of affairs I feel, but I suppose in most situations this has evolutionary value. Playing along to get along. Less energy spent on finding truth; instead just focusing on acquiring mates & resources.

That's a rather bestial description, sounding more like sheep than people, but there's a lot of truth there. And it's nothing really original either. As you may know, this observation has been made in different cultures and throughout history. It's even the basis of modern social engineering. And it's no coincidence that a billion plus people can remain Christian and be explicitly referred to as a flock of sheep (even "pastor" means shepherd in Latin)...
 
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I don't get it. How do you explain Remote Viewing, which I guess he's seen work and verified, with a theory that doesn't involve the possibility of consciousness functioning without the brain? Brain wave telemetry? Mental radio? Geez. Talk about not recognizing evidence if it jumps up and bites you someplace.

Although I agree his ideas seem somewhat muddled, I think it's perfectly possible to explain remote viewing whilst keeping brain structures as a vital part of any proposed mechanism (although not necessarily the only part of the process).
 
I don't get it. How do you explain Remote Viewing, which I guess he's seen work and verified, with a theory that doesn't involve the possibility of consciousness functioning without the brain? Brain wave telemetry? Mental radio? Geez. Talk about not recognizing evidence if it jumps up and bites you someplace.

That's what I am saying, its possible remote viewing can have some physical mechanism, but not entirely?
Like I stated before isn't the claim we are 99.9 percent empty space? It takes "energy" to hold "us" together?
http://www.sciencealert.com/99-9999999-of-your-body-is-empty-space
 
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