Hey, you know what, I opened my front door this morning, and I was ready to jump aside as heaps of "dark matter(TM)" came pouring in because, you know, if this **** is really 95% of the universe, it should have.
But, guess what? There WASN'T any... Why do you suppose that was??
The Emperor's New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson
Once upon a time there lived a vain Emperor whose only worry in life was to dress in elegant clothes. He changed clothes almost every hour and loved to show them off to his people.
Word of the Emperor's refined habits spread over his kingdom and beyond. Two scoundrels who had heard of the Emperor's vanity decided to take advantage of it. They introduced themselves at the gates of the palace with a scheme in mind.
"We are two very good tailors and after many years of research we have invented an extraordinary method to weave a cloth so light and fine that it looks invisible. As a matter of fact it is invisible to anyone who is too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality."
The chief of the guards heard the scoundrel's strange story and sent for the court chamberlain. The chamberlain notified the prime minister, who ran to the Emperor and disclosed the incredible news. The Emperor's curiosity got the better of him and he decided to see the two scoundrels.
"Besides being invisible, your Highness, this cloth will be woven in colors and patterns created especially for you." The emperor gave the two men a bag of gold coins in exchange for their promise to begin working on the fabric immediately.
"Just tell us what you need to get started and we'll give it to you." The two scoundrels asked for a loom, silk, gold thread and then pretended to begin working. The Emperor thought he had spent his money quite well: in addition to getting a new extraordinary suit, he would discover which of his subjects were ignorant and incompetent. A few days later, he called the old and wise prime minister, who was considered by everyone as a man with common sense.
"Go and see how the work is proceeding," the Emperor told him, "and come back to let me know."
The prime minister was welcomed by the two scoundrels.
"We're almost finished, but we need a lot more gold thread. Here, Excellency! Admire the colors, feel the softness!" The old man bent over the loom and tried to see the fabric that was not there. He felt cold sweat on his forehead.
"I can't see anything," he thought. "If I see nothing, that means I'm stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!" If the prime minister admitted that he didn't see anything, he would be discharged from his office.
"What a marvelous fabric, he said then. "I'll certainly tell the Emperor." The two scoundrels rubbed their hands gleefully. They had almost made it. More thread was requested to finish the work.
Finally, the Emperor received the announcement that the two tailors had come to take all the measurements needed to sew his new suit.
"Come in," the Emperor ordered. Even as they bowed, the two scoundrels pretended to be holding large roll of fabric.
"Here it is your Highness, the result of our labour," the scoundrels said. "We have worked night and day but, at last, the most beautiful fabric in the world is ready for you. Look at the colors and feel how fine it is." Of course the Emperor did not see any colors and could not feel any cloth between his fingers. He panicked and felt like fainting. But luckily the throne was right behind him and he sat down. But when he realized that no one could know that he did not see the fabric, he felt better. Nobody could find out he was stupid and incompetent. And the Emperor didn't know that everybody else around him thought and did the very same thing.
The farce continued as the two scoundrels had foreseen it. Once they had taken the measurements, the two began cutting the air with scissors while sewing with their needles an invisible cloth.
"Your Highness, you'll have to take off your clothes to try on your new ones." The two scoundrels draped the new clothes on him and then held up a mirror. The Emperor was embarrassed but since none of his bystanders were, he felt relieved.
"Yes, this is a beautiful suit and it looks very good on me," the Emperor said trying to look comfortable. "You've done a fine job."
"Your Majesty," the prime minister said, "we have a request for you. The people have found out about this extraordinary fabric and they are anxious to see you in your new suit." The Emperor was doubtful showing himself naked to the people, but then he abandoned his fears. After all, no one would know about it except the ignorant and the incompetent.
"All right," he said. "I will grant the people this privilege." He summoned his carriage and the ceremonial parade was formed. A group of dignitaries walked at the very front of the procession and anxiously scrutinized the faces of the people in the street. All the people had gathered in the main square, pushing and shoving to get a better look. An applause welcomed the regal procession. Everyone wanted to know how stupid or incompetent his or her neighbor was but, as the Emperor passed, a strange murmur rose from the crowd.
Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: "Look at the Emperor's new clothes. They're beautiful!"
"What a marvellous train!"
"And the colors! The colors of that beautiful fabric! I have never seen anything like it in my life!" They all tried to conceal their disappointment at not being able to see the clothes, and since nobody was willing to admit his own stupidity and incompetence, they all behaved as the two scoundrels had predicted.
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
"The Emperor is naked," he said.
"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!" He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage, while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
What I find entertaining about rl and gunga in particular, they seem to actually believe the tripe they are posting.
gungasnake wrote:Much of theoretical physics has turned into a realm of bullshit over the last few decades
And you know this because of some web sites you read? Or because of the advanced degree in physics you earned from MIT (like the other guys you're accusing of not knowing what they're talking about).
gungasnake wrote:Then you have "big bangs" and expanding universes because astronomers don't understand redshift phenomena
Yeh, what do astronomers know about Cosmology, all those guys do is study all the time. They should be out in the woods, bow hunting, or reading amateur web sites. Those morons.
In the interest of fairness and completeness, I wish to take this opportunity to correct a few ommissions from an earlier post, perhaps lending an air of oversimplification to what is a clearly prescribed process. The updates are below in
Bold Red
[url=http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2448857#2448857]timber[/url] wrote:Science:
Observe phenomonon & record data>Verify observation & data>Draw reasonable conclusion(s) therefrom>Formulate hypothesis (conforming to and consistent with known laws, principles, and accepted theories) explanatory of conclusion(s) pertaining to observed data>Test hypothesis via rigorous experiment designed to disprove, or to expose flaws in, stated hypothesis and/or its predicate conclusion(s)>Revise & refine hypothesis in light of testing results>Submit finalized hypothesis to peer review>Futher revise and refine hypothesis per recommendations of reviewing body>Publish theory>Continue to evaluate theory in light of ongoing discovery>Refine and/or revise theory accordingly as appropriate.
Junk Science:
Begin with a conclusion consistent with personal preconception and preference>Mischaracterize existing confirmed data and/or invent data to provide appearance of corroboration of conclusion>Self-publish a book detailing your discoveries>Get freinds and supporters with anything resembling credentials - no matter whether pertinent or even valid - to offer ringing endorsements of your book>Put up a web page setting forth the claim that your discoveries have trumped the scientific and academic communities (and be sure to point out, with great detail and righteous indignation, that the only thing keeping your amazing discoveries from becoming widely understood and legitimately accepted is a nefarious cabal of self-interested "so-called scientists" desperately committed to preserving their own funding and protecting their pet projects - that part is very important)>Provide easy, one-click purchase link enabling folks to learn more through buying your book>Do not rinse>Repeat as often as possible
I apologize for any inconvenience my earlier ommissions might have brought to those seeking to bring their astounding discoveries to the attention of a world held hostage by those evil, self-interested mainstream legitimate scientists and academics nefariously committed to keeping the public unaware of how things really work.
Like I say, you can always tell when you've gotten to blowhards....
Yeah, anybody can publish his own book these days or put his own movie up on youtube. What you DON'T get that way is the kinds of people endorsing the homemade book or movie which you see in the case of this book I am talking about:
timberlandko wrote:Gotta love irony.
Yeah but it get's old. I mean its hialrious at first, hanging heretics that claim the world is round etc, but after a millenia or two it's just not as good anymore. It's kinda pathetic. I mean the sequel is never going to be as good as the original, I mena that is, the originals special effects were cutting edge at the time, but now watching people claim the same stuff in this age is just pathetic.
If you need a emotional eqivilant, watch that one scene in Indiana jones where all the Nazis melt. Or rewatch Steven King's: It. It's neet when you're a kid, but laughable as an educated adult.
Happy Lollerdays!
Huff and puff all you want, gunga - you're up against brick, not straw. Among other things, Scott contends that all matter interacts with electromagnetic fields; neutrinos, for instance, which are matter, have no charge and interact with other matter only though the Weak Force. Similarly off-track, Scott contends gravitational systems of 3 or more bodies are unstable. The existence of planetary rings, planet-moon systems, star-planet systems, multi-star systems, stars and star systems within galaxies, and galactic clusters having stable orbits observed and confirmed to be consistent, predictable, and wholly-in-accord-with-known-cosmologic-principles (Newtonian Conservation of Momentum and Conservation of Energy among others), stable micro and macro (at cosmologic scale) orbits literally and demonstrably many Billions of years old, unambiguosly establishes that contention's absurdity. Additionally, Scott's inherent claim of primacy for the Electromagnetic Force quite simply and clearly is incorrect by the computationaly predicted and experimentally directly observed (all the way from euclidean geometry into the realm of quantum physics), firmly established attributes of the 4 Fundamental Forces.
Quote:Excerpt from:
Distinguishing Science and PseudoscienceOne might wonder if there are not examples of "crossovers" in the other direction; that is people who have been thought by scientists to be doing pseudoscience, who eventually were accepted as doing valid science, and whose ideas were ultimately accepted by scientists. From what we have just outlined, one would expect this to happen extremely rarely, if ever. In fact,
neither I nor any informed colleague I have ever asked about this, knows of any single case in which this has happened during the hundreds of years the full scientific method has been known to and used by scientists[/i]In fact, a short definition of pseudoscience is "a method for excusing, defending, and preserving errors."
Pseudoscience often strikes educated, rational people as too nonsensical and preposterous to be dangerous and as a source of amusement rather than fear. Unfortunately, this is not a wise attitude. Pseudoscience can be extremely dangerous.
- Penetrating political systems, it justifies atrocities in the name of racial purity
- Penetrating the educational system, it can drive out science and sensibility;
- In the field of health, it dooms thousands to unnecessary death or suffering
- Penetrating religion, it generates fanaticism, intolerance, and holy war
- Penetrating the communications media, it can make it difficult for voters to obtain factual information on important public issues.
Now, for something you can really get your teeth into, gunga - once you've caught you breath - try
THIS
"Pseudoscience", at least according to Popper who pretty much invented the term, means something which is demonstrably not testable in the sense of being unfalsifiable that is, in the sense that no conceivable test would serve to falsify it.
Therefore it strikes me as more than a little bit funny to see somebody who professes to believe in both evolutionism and "dark matter", two obvious and flagrant pseudosciences, pontificating about "pseudoscience".
"Dark Matter" is the magic powder which supposedly is 95% of the universe despite nobody ever having seen any of it and so adherents ask us to believe that evidence of it is now being observed in some sort of a cosmic event on the far edge of the universe is entirely like the story of the emperor and his new suit of clothing. The reason blowhards should avoid walking around naked is so that people will not see/find out what little ****s they have.
Evolutionism is basically about lifestyles and not science and that's been obvious for the last 70 years. The American people by and large reject it despite all the brainwashing, lawsuits, and persecution in academia.
My question to evo-losers is this: What part of the lifestyle do you figure you're going to get to take with you??
gungasnake wrote:Therefore it strikes me as more than a little bit funny to see somebody who professes to believe in both evolutionism and "dark matter", two obvious and flagrant pseudosciences, pontificating about "pseudoscience".
That's because evolution and dark matter are NOT flagrant pseudosciences. They are state of the art, mainstream theories which fit the evidence.
The only thing flagrant around here is your irrational disregard for the obvious and your desperate search for ANYTHING which isn't mainstream. Are you just bored with realit or something?
gunga, none can deny the level of your discourse is consistent with the merit of your proposition; the 2 complement one another symbiotically.
gungasnake wrote:Evolutionism is basically about lifestyles and not science and that's been obvious for the last 70 years. The American people by and large reject it despite all the brainwashing, lawsuits, and persecution in academia.
Where is there any evidence that the Theory of Evolution is being rejected by the American people. I relaize that the influence of the Hypothesis of Christianity is gaining some traction recently with Intelligent Design, but from what I understand there is only one school in bass-ackwards Mississippi that is actually challenging evolution and succeeding.
The Hypothesis of Christianity is scary indeed.
In the cae of "dark matter", if something is 95% of the universe, nobody will ever need to go to the far side of the universe to find it; it should be all over the place.
In the case of evolution, nobody is pushing Darwinian gradualism anymore since the entie fossil record serves to refute it, and the defacto new version of the theory, Steve Gould's "Punctuated Equilibria" or "punk-eek", involves a claim that the theory is proven by a lack of evidence, i.e. that the lack of intermediate fossils is what the theory predicts and therefore supports/proves the theory.
That is entirely like Cotten Mather claiming that the fact of witches and witchcraft were proven by the fact that nobody had ever seen one ("If you could SEE or HEAR one, she wouldn't BE a witch...").
In what was is that falsifiable or anything other than precisely what Popper had in mind with the term "pseudoscience"?
Quote: In the case of evolution, nobody is pushing Darwinian gradualism anymore since the entie fossil record serves to refute it, and the defacto new version of the theory, Steve Gould's "Punctuated Equilibria" or "punk-eek", involves a claim that the theory is proven by a lack of evidence, i.e. that the lack of intermediate fossils is what the theory predicts and therefore supports/proves the theory.
OOPS, Im glad I can quickly send out my resume so I can get ahead of the big wave of people no longer "pushing Darwin" anymore. As for the fossil record, perhaps if you were to enroll in some geology class at some Community College youd learn what IS out there.
as far as the punctuated equilibrium Story that you press (always without any basis of ewvidence, I wonder why?) Its a load of normal gunga -oil. tha is, "If you say something often enough , loud enough, and with enough disrespect to its authors, someone MAY believe that yiou actually know something about which you speak.
Quote:In what was is that falsifiable or anything other than precisely what Popper had in mind with the term "pseudoscience"?
If you really read Popper critically, he actually speaks quite reverentially of the ability to falsify the tenets of evolution (ie the major components of natural selection and the science behind evolution, thus the entire wall of conclusions that make up the theory). SOmehow the CReationists, being reminded that their entire thesis is without any evidence other than hopes ,wishes, and Bibliobabble, try to draw evolution into their own fairy ring.
farmerman wrote:SOmehow the CReationists, being reminded that their entire thesis is without any evidence other than hopes ,wishes, and Bibliobabble, try to draw evolution into their own fairy ring.
The HYPOTHESIS of Christianity.
farmerman wrote:real life wrote:farmerman wrote:rlQuote:.....dating methods ....... which might falsify the findings are ignored.
No methods are ignored because its not in the interest of science to spit incorrect data about.
We've discussed the soft tissue found in the dinosaur bones, haven't we?
What were the C14 readings on those bones?
Noone in their right mind is gonna do C14 on a specimen that has comfortable dates
That's what I'm talking about.
real life wrote:farmerman wrote:Noone has dated the "soft tissue" as far as I know because the Hell Creek formation and dinos therein have been dated to death. In most cases the U/U, U/Zr ,K40/A methods have been used as well as a Pb concordia technique. Noone in their right mind is gonna do C14 on a specimen that has comfortable dates and geomag remnant dates that place it at the 65 to 70 my old arena. As we know, C14's functional limit is about 50K years but its actual limit of quantitation is often much less (like 60% of its functional limit)
That's what I'm talking about.
What
are you talking about?
(note: I included FM's WHOLE quote above, instead of just the little snip that you pulled out of the middle)
Given that the 'soft tissue' was embedded in material which was already dated by MULTIPLE methods which place it WAY over 50k years (the functional limit of C14). Why exactly do you think they should do C14 tests on it? If you found a stone disk in the tomb of an ancient egyptian king, would you try it in a DVD player just to make sure it wasn't part of his ancient DVD collection?
ros, you're surprised rl appears to have no clue pertaining to a matter he brings to discussion? That's surprising.
If you read my post, I said 'dating methods which might falsify the findings are ignored.'
That's what I'm talking about.
I didn't need to quote farmerman's entire statement referencing dating methods that AREN'T ignored, because I was discussing one that IS ignored.
Dates produced by other methods may be 'comfortable' and you may be satisfied with them.
But it seems obvious that a sure way to either falsify or cast in concrete these dinosaur dates as being 'millions of years' is to try a method that is used for a range other than 'millions of years'.
The methods that famerman mentioned are well known to give dates that don't agree with each other. Why should they be sacred and beyond question?
Routinely give dinosaur bones a C14 test, then we'll have something to talk about. Why not?
If you're so eager to show these bones are unquestionably 'millions of years' old, I'd think you would jump at the chance to show it.
Case in point. Thanks, rl.
