@maxdancona,
maxdancona wrote:
One of the interesting things about science is that it is "nullifiable". We talk a lot in science about the "Null Hypothesis". In layman's terms, it is saying "If A happens (i.e. a measurement is taken or a calculation happens) then my theory is incorrect".
That may work fine for some theories, but I've explained to you before how Newton's laws of motion wouldn't stand up to this test because there is no actual empirical situation where objects in motion aren't subject to external force in some way or other. You can roll a very hard ball down a short and very smooth surface and approximate frictionless conditions, but in reality there is always some friction in every scenario. For Newton's law to work, there would have to be some situation where there is no friction whatsoever, and that only exists insofar as you theoretically frame motion as taking place in a perfect vacuum EXCEPT that there are external forces and action-reaction interactions causing friction.
If you theoretically frame motion as taking place in an ideal vacuum in this way, Newton's is a brilliant theoretical framework for interpretation and analysis of motion, but it is not disprovable. There is no 'null hypothesis,' because it is just a way of understanding and modeling motion; one that works very well when applied, but not something that can be subject to validity testing.
In this sense, Newton's laws are very similar to what Popper disliked about Marxist class analysis, which is that it is a tautological explanation that works for anything you can observe. Popper said that Marxists would read the news about a bank robbery and analyze it in terms of class conflict and there was no way to prove or disprove it, but that is the same for Newtonian physics looking at any situation of motion, analyzing it as an object moving through a vacuum due to its momentum, and only encountering friction as an interaction within the vacuum. Creating a 'null-hypothesis' that there's no vacuum would be like creating a null-hypothesis for Marxist analysis where there are no conflicting classes to use as a lens for analyzing news stories. You can't prove/disprove a theoretical frame/lens. It's just a tool for analysis/interpretation; one that works well for explaining and predicting, so well that it becomes tautological.
Quote:This is a pretty good attitude to take outside of science. It is good to define what evidence would prove your beliefs to be wrong, and to admit (or maybe even appreciate) when this happens. That is what learning is. When someone shows me reputable study that challenges one of my beliefs, I will certainly question it and test to see if there are problems in the study. But if the study is well-designed and contradicts my views, I will change my views. And many times I have done just that.
You can say all this and still not acknowledge that everything I've said about physics is valid. Yet all you did was argue that inertia isn't a form of propulsion, instead of acknowledging how inertia keeps objects in motion and/or at rest, as per Newton's laws.
Quote:In higher levels of Physics, you are taught that you must prove everything. In exams we not only have to calculate a vector field, or predict a diffraction angle. The exam paper will ask us to "prove" it.
One of the frustrating things with arguing science with people that don't know what they are talking about is the lack of the ability to talk in these terms. I can show Lava that 'ma' does not equal 'mv' (as he claims), and I can prove it. But, he will be able to accept it. It isn't his language.
All you are doing is using a code to talk about mass, acceleration, and velocity. Whenever I talk about these same things using plain English instead of equations, you accuse me of making up new physics, which is bunk. Expressing something in an unfamiliar way doesn't make it wrong. You are wrong for saying that it does.
Really all you are doing is showing that you don't really understand these things you claim to understand in math. You may be able to recite the math and do calculations and algebra, but you don't really understand them at the synthetic level if you can't understand things I've said about inertia functioning like a form of propulsion.
Inertia is the reason a train or even a vehicle with tires continues moving forward when no work is being done by a motor. The vehicle with tires slows down faster due to greater rolling resistance caused by friction between tires and road, but in both cases the friction is being overcome due to the momentum of the vehicle. You should understand this if you understand the equations you've posted, but the fact you debate me and say I'm talking about my own version of physics just proves you don't understand the physics yourself.
Because you are desperate to save face, you will go on denying your lack of understanding by ridiculing me and just posting lots more about how much math you've done.
