Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

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David
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by David » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:53 am

D_Archer wrote:
I think the article Shermer wrote is enough to dismiss him completely, there are no lessons here, nothing of 'worth' is actually brought up, no data, no experiment, no sciene, no deeper understanding of nature, i read and listen to people that bring 'content'.
I completely agree. Anyone asking for peer reviewed documents should be summarily “dismissed”; I mean honestly, the unmitigated gall! And the same goes for anyone asking to see the mathematics – hey, that’s old school; none of it can be trusted or believed.

I only read and listen to people that hand wave and pontificate; you know, real “content”. So tell Shermer to take his peer reviewed rear-end back to the fantasyland of Newton and Einstein – who needs those jokers? Mathis and Velikovsky is where it’s happening, dude!

</sarcasm>

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GaryN
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by GaryN » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:12 pm

peer reviewed peer reviewed peer reviewed peer reviewed.....

"There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in." - Will Rogers

As far as I can tell, Michael Shermer has no education in anything scientific.
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

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Zyxzevn
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by Zyxzevn » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:59 pm

GaryN wrote: As far as I can tell, Michael Shermer has no education in anything scientific.
From wikipedia:
He was very religious first and later became an atheist.
After earning his M.A. in experimental psychology,
Shermer failed to get into a Ph.D. program anywhere in the country...
..he lost interest in psychology, he switched to history of science..
In 1992 Shermer founded the Skeptics Society..

Such a person is not interested nor educated in astronomy/cosmology at all.

I find that this is usually the case with these kind of people. Whatever education they followed,
they are not really scientists. But they tell other people that their science is false.
They are claiming to know more about something than people that are actually studying it.

The people that are deep in (practical) science themselves do not claim that we know everything.
They may have a formula for most things, but know that they have to investigate a phenomenon
before they can reach a conclusion. They often have interesting tales about strange things
that they do not have an explanation for.

People like Shermer are there to uphold the illusion that science knows everything, so
they keep attacking everything that might show some holes in this illusion.
This behavior divides the scientists that are all genuine interested in the phenomena.
And make it impossible to investigate and test alternative models for the phenomena.
This is pure anti-progress and anti-science.

I personally see these people as mentally ill.
And Shermer clearly shows the behavior of someone who is angry
about the religious environment in which he grew up.

The fundamental religious environment creates traumas, that are later compensated by
adapting belief systems that counter this religious environment.
These kinds of traumas are normal for people who later become "skeptics". Their trauma
prevents them from changing their belief system, because their beliefs "protect" them
against their traumas. They can not see the broader picture. Nor can they introduce or even
work with ideas outside their belief-system.

Next time when he comes, see him as a traumatized person.
Do not talk to him about difficult things, he can not understand them.
Say that you understand his hurt feelings.
You can even give him hugs all the time.
He will quickly leave.
More ** from zyxzevn at: Paradigm change and C@

psi
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by psi » Sun Oct 11, 2015 5:51 pm


I think the article Shermer wrote is enough to dismiss him completely, there are no lessons here, nothing of 'worth' is actually brought up, no data, no experiment, no sciene, no deeper understanding of nature, i read and listen to people that bring 'content'.
This is not the only subject on which Shermer's superficial skepticism has led him astray: http://shake-speares-bible.com/2011/10/ ... principle/

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Metryq
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by Metryq » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:22 pm

Zyxzevn wrote:People like Shermer are there to uphold the illusion that science knows everything, so
they keep attacking everything that might show some holes in this illusion.
Professional debunkers. I find that many people hate "not knowing" and so cling to anything that gives the appearance of certainty. Capital "S" Science is one of those dogmas that give people comfort, so It can't be wrong.

There is more to EU than electromagnetic forces as a mechanism. EU denies Big Bang and the "comfort" of a beginning and an end; infinity is scary. EU is also like that ancient curse, "May you live in a time of change" for EU describes mechanisms for rapid change and posits events within human memory where the world changed frighteningly fast. Even old Sol cannot be guaranteed to live a serene lifespan of another 5 billion-or-so years, each day like the one before.

There's no justice in it! /sarc

Mjolnir
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by Mjolnir » Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:44 am

David wrote: </sarcasm>
"He has to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective"

- Benjamin Disraeli (of Sir Charles Wood)

Michael Mozina
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by Michael Mozina » Mon Oct 12, 2015 12:29 pm

BecomingTesla wrote:I actually find all of his points remarkably important, and fairly unbiased. They're criticisms that anyone here should take legitimately. I've said it before and I'll say it again: significantly less time needs to be spent on attacking the standard model - which has ~100 years of published papers, mathematical models, and a successful invention - and more time needs to be spent just getting our shit together. Wanting to become the dominant model in astrophysics before we've (a) gathered all the previously papers on EU material and published them in a consistent framework and (b) began publishing our own collection of papers/running our own experiments, is simply unrealistic and honestly unscientific.

If we can't give a open and willing-to-listen skeptic a volume of published scientific work that is quantifiable and experimentally verifiable to describe the framework we're building, then no, we're not on the boat yet.
Hmmm. I agree with your point that we need to focus on working on our own models, but I'd have to disagree with your assessment about Shermer's article being "fairly unbiased". I'd say it was anything but unbiased.
I was invited to speak on the difference between science and pseudoscience. The most common theme I gleaned from the conference is that one should be skeptical of all things mainstream: cosmology, physics, history, psychology and even government (I was told that World Trade Center Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition on 9/11 and that “chemtrails”—the contrails in the sky trailing jets—are evidence of a government climate-engineering experiment).
I fail to see his need to compare empirical physics to 9/11 and chemtrails and stuff that has *absolutely nothing* to do with Birkeland, or Alfven, or Bruce, etc. I'd hardly call that fair or unbiased.
The acid test of a scientific claim, I explained, is prediction and falsification. My friends at the nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for example, tell me they use both Newtonian mechanics and Einstein's relativity theory in computing highly accurate spacecraft trajectories to the planets.
This is another blatant misrepresentation of EU/PC theory. Nowhere does EU/PC theory require that either GR theory (without the supernatural constructs) or Newton's theories need to be abandoned. The mainstream themselves however relegates gravity to a mere 'bit player' that's constantly being pushed aside, and overpowered by "dark energy'.

The mainstream has been trying to ride the coattails of a "blunder'" theory, not GR theory with respect to Lambda-CDM. I see no reason to believe that their theory is actually even made legitimate by it's *misuse* of a blunder variation of GR theory. Whether or not GR theory or Newton's theories are true, they in no way add legitimacy to Lambda-CDM in the first place, nor is EU/PC theory in any way affected by their legitimacy. The whole claim was utter garbage. Shermer should be ashamed of himself for that whole line of nonsense.

About the only thing that he claimed that might be considered to be virtually universal within the EU/PC community was this statement:
The big bang never happened. Dark energy and dark matter are unsubstantiated conjectures.
Lerner did however provide *peer reviewed* material to show that the mainstream model fails the surface brightness tests at larger redshifts, and the 'dark' arts are in fact based upon unsubstantiated claims about galaxy mass estimates that were utterly worthless in 2006, and claims about photons being somehow effected by a mythical, magical form of energy for which they cannot even name single source!

http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3/v ... =3&t=15850

Shermer, along with his mainstream buddies have the worst case of confirmation bias in the entire history of physics. This particular comment was an absolute riot:
The acid test of a scientific claim, I explained, is prediction and falsification.
If the "acid test" is prediction and falsification, then dark matter has failed the acid test at LHC, LUX, PandaX, Xenon100 and electron roundness "tests". SUSY theory is about the most falsified prediction in the entire history of physics at this point. Not a single hint of a single "sparticle" has reared it's ugly head at LHC. What is the point of having an 'acid test" when you simply throw out any results that you don't wish to hear or deal with?

Lambda-CDM is the biggest piece of pseudo-scientific crap in the entire history of physics. If Shermer is so interested in dispelling pseudoscience, he aught to be focused on Lambda-dark-magic theory. It's 95+ percent pseudoscience.

David
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by David » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:09 pm

“To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.”

-- Benjamin Disraeli (of Sir Mjolnir)

Mjolnir
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by Mjolnir » Mon Oct 12, 2015 1:33 pm

David wrote:“To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.”

-- Benjamin Disraeli (of Sir Mjolnir)
Now that is funny! And I would even agree.

antosarai
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by antosarai » Mon Oct 12, 2015 4:58 pm

At the begining of the "When Radical Ideas..." panel around 5:00 min in the video, Mr. David Talbot states the idea is to perform the 'acid test' of convincing "a good person who has no advanced prejudices in one direction or another" of EU ideas. And these selected good persons are people, he states at ~5:22: ""I have real respect for Michael Shermer and Gary Schwartz".

Obviously, from Mr. Shermer's words on the panel and his article in Scientific American he wasn't at all convinced.
The test — "Who have you convinced?" — blatantly failed.

But apparently it wasn't EU ideas being tested — for the consequence of the failed test was not any change in such ideas, not even a dispassionate rebuttal of the "dismissive review", but an acid, generalized attack, a total lack of respect for Michael Shermer, transmuted into a very BAD person.

:?:

querious
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by querious » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:03 pm

From The EU2015 SPEAKER’S LIST...

"Steve Crothers is a preeminent mathematician, counted among the most competent critics of modern cosmology (including both the General Theory of Relativity and popular theory of the Big Bang)."

"Wallace Thornhill, the Chief Science Advisor to The Thunderbolts Project, will make two presentations at the conference."

If Crothers is such a "competent critic of modern cosmology", why didn't he start long ago with some extremely low-hanging fruit by pointing out the absurdity of Wal's dipole gravity?

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nick c
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by nick c » Mon Oct 12, 2015 8:20 pm

querious,
Please keep your posts on topic. The above post has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.

querious
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by querious » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:00 pm

nick c wrote:querious,
Please keep your posts on topic. The above post has nothing to do with the subject of this thread.
Feel free to move my post over to the thread Thornhill's Latest Gravity Presentation

David
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by David » Mon Oct 12, 2015 9:59 pm

With all due respect, Stephen Crothers was one of the few individuals that Shermer specifically singled out for honorable mention:
Michael Shermer wrote:
A self-taught mathematician named Stephen Crothers riffled through dozens of PowerPoint slides chockablock full of equations related to Einstein's general theory of relativity, which he characterized as “numerology.” Einstein's errors, Crothers proclaimed, led to the mistaken belief in black holes and the big bang. I understood none of what he was saying, but I am confident he's wrong by the fact that for a century thousands of physicists have challenged Einstein, and still he stands as Time's Person of the Century. It's not impossible that they are all wrong and that this part-time amateur scientist sleuth is right, but it is about as likely as the number of digits after the decimal place in Einstein's equations accurately describing the relativistic effects on those GPS satellite orbits.
On a side note, perhaps we can encourage someone to start a “Why Stephen Crothers is wrong!” thread; reminiscent of fallen idol Miles Mathis.

And who knows, our good friend noblackhole might even show up and participate – but then he’s been unusually silent lately; one can only wonder why?

Mjolnir
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Re: Michael Shermer’s article on his EU2015 experience

Unread post by Mjolnir » Tue Oct 13, 2015 1:56 am

David wrote:With all due respect, Stephen Crothers was one of the few individuals that Shermer specifically singled out for honorable mention:
Honorable mention? Surely you are being ironic. Shermer is sarcastic, although not nearly as brilliantly so as Stephen Crothers in his reply - until he started draging up some unrelated internet gossip.

Nobody should have expected anything else from Shermer, and whoever is writing comments on behalf of Thunderbolts on the youtube video says they didn't. Then the reactions from Crothers and Scott seems a bit overblown. It doesn't reflect well upon EU proponents if they first invite him, and then jump into the trenches at the first sight of critisism.
David wrote: On a side note, perhaps we can encourage someone to start a “Why Stephen Crothers is wrong!” thread
Yes, please do, someone. Good idea. Like Shermer, I don't understand any of it. It seems to me he claims Einstein is dividing by zero or something.

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