Who is your favorite Physicist?

@fresco,

Ok so your beef with Lay is that he does not subscribe to a 'mainstream' opinion... And who decides what the mainstream is? The pope?

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@fresco,

Preach it, Solipsist!

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@layman,

And my nose is ALWAYS, repeat: ALWAYS in the middle of my face, you know? By definition of what 'face' and 'nose' mean.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Ok so your beef with Lay is that he does not subscribe to a 'mainstream' opinion... And who decides what the mainstream is? The pope?

You got it, Ollie. Pope Fresky.

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@Olivier5,

Proving yet again that you can't comprehend what you read, eh, Ollie?

Olivier5 wrote:

And my nose is ALWAYS, repeat: ALWAYS in the middle of my face, you know? By definition of what 'face' and 'nose' mean.

Like I done said:

layman wrote:

Hint: "Always" means "always." Did you notice that the statement there does not refer to the beer can on the guy's desk, but rather to any object not in his frame of reference? This isn't anything like a "nose on your face" proposition.

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@layman,

As I've already said, in SR every observer is the ether. Anything and everything in the whole damn universe that is moving with respect to HIM (which his nose aint) is "moving." He, and he alone, is "stationary."

SR claims to have abandoned the concept of an ether that is "at rest." Fraid not. It simply created an infinite number of them.

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@Olivier5,

Sorry....I'm not going to play point scoring games with you. Consensus is based on majority acceptance which can of course change. The mechanisms for such change are socially and technically comp!ex. See Kuhn for reasons for this. No change will originate from dissenters unless they can provide a more elegant paradigm which not only accounts for counter examples, but also yields new data which otherwise would not have been observed.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

He, and he alone, is "stationary."

To have been more accurate, I should have said that he is always in the universal rest frame. Other things (even distantly remote ones) can inhabit (and share with him) that universal rest frame. But there's only one universal rest frame, to wit: The one he's in.

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@layman,

It is a nose-in-the-face proposition. Or another way to say the same thing would be: on my ruler, the mark for 0 cm always stays in the same place, it's not moving to where the marks for 1 cm or 2 cm lie, for instance. Not even by one tiny milimeter ever. Fancy that!

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@fresco,

Elegance is a matter of taste. Dior has its version of it and Prada another.

What is 'data' in your system?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

It is a nose-in-the-face proposition.

Wrong. Completely wrong. If you ever learn to think, you might eventually realize how wrong you are.

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@Olivier5,

One measure of elegance is reduction in the number of explanatory concepts as per Einstein's rejection of aether for example (NB Factor Analysis is an established procedure in the social sciences designed to yield minimum explanatory variables).
Data are observations made in the light of a guiding hypothesis. They have no status in their 'own right'. Both 'data' and 'facts' are dependent on observer needs and expectancies.

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@Olivier5,

Your sophistic and fallacious "reasoning" here sounds a lot like what Zeno used to promote Parmenides' ridiculous claim that nothing ever moves, Ollie.

His "proof" that an arrow "never moves" was that the point of the arrowhead was always the same distance from the notch in the shaft used to launch the arrow.

"Proof," right there, sho nuff, eh?

The question isn't, and never was, "does an arrow move with respect to itself." The question is "does it move with respect to the bow, the guy's head it lands in, etc."

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@layman,

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This thread has been a perfect example of ppl speaking past each other all time. I can't actually believe Layman does not understand relative frames of reference when he is driving his car. So in that sense it seems clear enough to me he wants to speak of something else but hasn't yet articulate his argument clear enough.
On the other hand Max as usual has been lecturing from authority more then trying to understand whatever the hell Lay is trying to convey.
Adding to the kafkian Confucionistic tone of the thread Fresco the King of subjective seems to have found an objective definition of elegance vs. Olivier relativistic approach...what a nightmare to digest the whole thread!

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@fresco,

So the absence of global warming is more elegant than its presence.

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@layman,

If you ever learn to think, you might eventually manage to understand what I am saying.

A frame of reference is like three virtual infinite rulers, each call an 'axis'. The zero is where the axises meet. So a frame of reference is like a set of rulers. If you chose a frame centred on you, you're by definition placing yourself at the zero mark of those rulers. And you're measuring movement relative to your position at the center of the frame.

So, to say that the observer is at rest in an observer-centric frame, is EXACTLY like saying that the zero mark on a ruler is at rest on that ruler. I.e. the zero mark does not move up and down the ruler....

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@Olivier5,

Your question is transparently a point scoring gambit far removed the paradigms of physics, but I will attempt to answer it anyway.
Global warming per se is not the issue. It is the degree of human contribution which is being contested. As stated above, paradigm shifts involve complex social and technical factors. The dispute in this case involves geopolitics and vested interests weighing against those of statistical climatology. 'Elegance' takes a back seat in this instance.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

I am flattered to be crowned 'King of the Subjective' even though I reject the simplistic subjective-objective dichotomy!
I must have said dozens of time that 'observer' and 'observed' are co-extensive, and that all reported 'observation' involves 'verbalization' by means of socially acquired shared human language.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

If you ever learn to think, you might eventually manage to understand what I am saying.

A frame of reference is like three virtual infinite rulers, each call an 'axis'. The zero is where the axises meet. So a frame of reference is like a set of rulers. If you chose a frame centred on you, you're by definition placing yourself at the zero mark of those rulers. And you're measuring movement relative to your position at the center of the frame.

So, to say that the observer is at rest in an observer-centric frame, is EXACTLY like saying that the zero mark on a ruler is at rest on that ruler. I.e. the zero mark does not move up and down the ruler....

Hahahahaha.

Are you denying the meaning of the explanation from the Dartmouth website, Ollie. Your capacity for bullshitting yourself seems to be unlimited.

1 Reply

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