EU haters: Denial and ignorance as primary debate tactics.

[phyllotaxis]

I thought that "science" was different from "religion", but evidently, not so much.

Science: Articulated Theory of Why Everything Is and What It Means
Religion: Articulated Theory of Why Everything Is and What It Means



Not surprising to see zealots on either side.

Both are factional, territorial, HUMAN endeavors.

Kindest regards- and a great thread you've started here Michael

[PersianPaladin]

It's not the haters that bother me so much, it's more the fact that we're getting largely ignored. The haters are really just a small group on the internet.

I have managed to publish one article in a newspaper about the EU, and I know as a journalist how buried this information is.

[Michael Mozina]

It's not the haters that bother me so much, it's more the fact that we're getting largely ignored. The haters are really just a small group on the internet.

I have managed to publish one article in a newspaper about the EU, and I know as a journalist how buried this information is.

Those are both very good points. It's probably much better that we (I) focus our (my) attention and time on ways to reach and communicate with the larger public, and larger scientific community rather than to worry about or fixate on the haters of the world. Like you said, EU haters are actually a very small group, and in my experience, they aren't very educated on this topic to begin with, nor do they make any effort to educate themselves. They aren't much a threat and they aren't likely to change their ways anytime soon. It's obviously better to spend my time communicating with those who are actually interested in discussing physics rather than wasting time dwelling on irrational, denial based hater behavior. Reaching the media in particular is a very noble and worthwhile goal IMO. You're definitely right about that.

[Corona]

Thought I would contribute to the thread with a comment I made on reddit for the following article:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... lack-hole/

This is the response I got, judge for yourself: (it`s always the same person who replies)

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me
I love these articles! Filled with theories of deductive reasoning with a great possibility of not being able to falsify it (http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1217/) and a hint of superciliousness. Fantastic!

downvotes here I come!
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reddit user
I'll give you the downvote, You link an unrelated article, offer no alternative hypothesis, and leak narcissistic sarcasm.

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me
good Sir, I have tried to do this before, but people aren`t willing to listen or educate themselves. Here you go: http://www.plasmacosmology.net/ and before you dismiss it, read up on it (also http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf)

at least I could confirm my theory of getting downvotes- something that would be nice to see with the theories coming from the current astrophysical community.

good day!

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reddit user
Straw men, lack of coherency, lack of data, where are the whitepapers? the lack of experiments and measurements immediately raise my skepticism beyond the threshold of what I would consider scientifically rigorous. The pdf you sent me reads like a freshman undergrad who spent a lot of time on wikipedia.

Educate me! build from a base, not from words, but from simple simple observations. prove ONE part of what is claimed before getting so large. It is not any single experiment or hypothesis that gives credence to a theory, it is the overwhelming body of tests and experiments! Show me the calculations that predict a departure from current knowledge, and how to measure these things myself. Show me a repeatable experiment that I can recreate, including all steps.

Don't hide behind "I'm gunna get downvoted", it weakens your argument (although it is your most testable hypothesis thus far), and does not portray the level of confidence that you wish to impose on your reader. Get out of your armchair and show me something I haven't seen before, and let me recreate it, and we'll start talking about the scientific community and method.

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me
thank you for actually wanting to discuss this with me. I have had many comments that made me believe that this online community is very narrow minded.

At first I want to point out that it would be nice if people would actually open their minds to possibilities other than what the current paradigm (in astronomy) seems to allow.

You make a very important point about the role of empirical observations. But have you read the article that I have referred to (ESO) which states that observations from our solar neighborhood have failed to account for any so called dark matter? This is only one of recent (and less recent) articles which falsifies the foundation of the “gravity only” paradigm. Unfortunately these “inconvenient incidents” do not get much attention (did you ever see an article like this on the front page?)

Like you said it doesnt take just one observation, but many to falsify a theory. If you would have read the pdf about electric comets (which was written for people who dont necessarily have a PhD) then you would have been given many more observations which do just that.

more reference:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/news/newsitem/?itemno=10230

http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/ ... -08-01.PDF

http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2546

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18839

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/03 ... snt-there/

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=8qx7sc1r

I challenge you to study more about this and not seriously have foundamental doubts about the current view

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reddit user

" Like you said it doesnt take just one observation, but many to falsify a theory."

Actually, I said that it takes more than one observation to lend credence to a theory, you misread what I said. You twisted my words. The difference is that when I hear something new, I assume it is wrong, I am skeptical. You should learn more about null hypotheses.

Give me the papers that are meant for PhDs.

The articles you sent me are so rife with logical fallacies that it is hard to continue reading. Appeals to authority are the biggest deviant here, just because you studied with someone who is in scientific literature does not mean your ideas are grounded. In most of these papers, I can tell you the exact moment when it turns from scientific fact to speculation.

Close behind are straw men, which build up a known scientific theory incorrectly, then break it down. Yet again, every time I see one of these, it limits my ability to take the rest of the article seriously, since a misunderstanding of the currently recognized hypotheses means that these authors have not considered the true meaning.

Eventually even I wear down with untrust of the author, and discount the entire paper.

"I challenge you to study more about this and not seriously have foundamental doubts about the current view"

If I accepted all the premises as correct, I may see your point, but the setup to all this is suspect. I don't believe that the premises are accurate, therefore I do not need to accept the conclusions. I don't think you're in bad company thinking that dark matter doesn't exist, that's the alternative hypothesis, and if found, it would make a branch of astronomy correct. if the dark matter is not found(can't prove that something doesn't exist) then eventually we will need to come up with different alternatives.

I've discussed these things before with other similar people, biggest pattern? Nobody is willing to go in-depth about a specific issue, I try to dig, and everything stops, or switches to a different topic.

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me
sorry to have taken you out of context.. don`t take it as a personal assault, it was late and I was tired.

But again, I have to stress the fact that there have been more than one observations to give credence to the EU theory. If you can not see that for yourself and discount everything because you think that the advocates are straw men, then so be it. I am not trying to convince anyone- nor would it be possible to do so. Everyone has to find out the truth for themselves.

In the links I sent you there is a paper that should have satisfied you. And what is your response to the other articles? You said I should show you something that you haven't seen before. But it seems to me that you have not even looked at them, otherwise you would see that even mainstream outlets show that there is serious doubt.

What I would love to see is that people would actually put down their pitch forks and listen to “the other side”. That is all that is needed. It is obvious that the EU theory does not have all the answers and may well be wrong in some points. But there are some serious problems with the current paradigm.

What about the findings of Halton Arp about redshifts and Quasars? http://www.haltonarp.com/articles http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Br ... /0/all/0/1

What about the obvious discrepancies in the understanding of comets? (Again, how can you dispute that the current theory for “dirty snowballs” is just simply not holding water?) Where is the water anyway? Why are there x-rays coming off of them? Why the sudden outbursts?...

And what about all the “anomalies” of the sun? Sunspots and the solar wind? Magnetic reconnection? The misleading statement of “hot gas” when it is actually plasma and is not a superconductor? The list goes on and on…

I am not an advocate of the EU theory (yes, really), but I do see that some of the current models have been falsified over and over again and are explained by ad hoc hypotheses which can not sufficiently describe reality as observed.


he has not since replied...

[Solar]

I don’t usually bother with these kinds of debates either because of the rather large scale contradiction they reveal. For example, there are quite a lot of “mainstream” circuital analyses of solar and terrestrial models incorporating plasma and electrodynamics in the existing literature. I’m not sure whether the problem is simply laziness or some sort of ‘short-sightedness’ stemming from the ‘compartmentalization’ of the sciences. For example; and in ‘Their’ own words:

- Equivalent Electric Circuit Models of Coronal Magnetic Loops and Related Oscillatory Phenomena on the Sun

- Towards the Circuit Theory of Solar Flares

- Current Paths in the Corona and Energy Release in Solar Flares

- A circuit model for filament eruptions and two-ribbon flares

- Other Circuital Scholarly Articles

If I, your average Joe, can metaphorically do this all day using Google (one of a number of Search Engines let alone aXriv and the like); what’s preventing the “haters” from doing likewise?? What they claim to be looking for is already there and some of it is undoubtedly older than the individuals falsely positing that no such information exists.

This fundamental point is why I’ll never understand the reasoning behind those kinds of supposed ‘debates’. It is a fact that what is claimed not to exist, EU oriented ‘quantified models’; does exist. It is already an integrated part of the fabric of the literature. In the time some “hater” spends typing even one post trying to dispel, or discredit EU/PC they could’ve researched their contention with a number of returns in 0.19 secs. We had this debate with Nereid who said in agreement that:

… there is an "established literature that substantiates, backs up, or supports positing the dynamics of plasma and electricity as significant contributors to cosmic dynamics"; specifically, with regard to the Sun, the solar wind and interplanetary medium, (and interactions with the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, aurorae, etc) that literature is vast - the published papers number in the tens of thousands. – Source

However, in apparently misunderstanding the EU’s approach of countering the abundant machinations of ‘gravity only’ cosmology (“black holes”, physics defying stars that supposedly rotate at hellacious speeds and the like), she posited that “…published EU theory is very, very clear that a great deal of this established literature is wrong, flawed, etc.” Which is obviously an incorrect conclusion to make as pointed out in that thread.

So, in some respects, there seems to be an actual ‘disconnect’ somewhere with regard to what the EU/PC is trying to put forth. Yet, I still do not understand why those who are honestly wanting to examine and contrast the EU’s rather painfully obvious focus towards deductions garnered from the experimental findings of Plasma Physics don’t utilize what is readily available to them in the existing literature. Such information has been available, literally, for decades - and if they are in the field; they have even greater access to the bountiful literature ensconced behind pay walls.

Thus exist the amazing contradiction.

[Sparky]

-leak narcissistic sarcasm.

.. .. ..

One hell of a psychological analysis !!! If I may be so bold as to narcissistically leak...

[Michael Mozina]

I don’t usually bother with these kinds of debates either because of the rather large scale contradiction they reveal. For example, there are quite a lot of “mainstream” circuital analyses of solar and terrestrial models incorporating plasma and electrodynamics in the existing literature. I’m not sure whether the problem is simply laziness or some sort of ‘short-sightedness’ stemming from the ‘compartmentalization’ of the sciences. For example; and in ‘Their’ own words:

- Equivalent Electric Circuit Models of Coronal Magnetic Loops and Related Oscillatory Phenomena on the Sun

- Towards the Circuit Theory of Solar Flares

- Current Paths in the Corona and Energy Release in Solar Flares

- A circuit model for filament eruptions and two-ribbon flares

- Other Circuital Scholarly Articles

If I, your average Joe, can metaphorically do this all day using Google (one of a number of Search Engines let alone aXriv and the like); what’s preventing the “haters” from doing likewise?? What they claim to be looking for is already there and some of it is undoubtedly older than the individuals falsely positing that no such information exists.

The problem is really one of pure denial and blind bigotry toward opposing ideas. The mainstream is stuck between a rock and hard place IMO. The moment they even open the door a crack for empirical physics, the floodgate of physics will fly open and their dark religion will bite the dust. It's really sad how tightly they cling to denial as their primary means of self defense. Like you said, there's no shortage of quantified literature about solar flares from the circuit orientation, and those electrical discharges in the solar atmosphere were discussed and described by Dungey back in the 50's when he coined the term "reconnection".

The other really despicable behavior employed by the mainstream is pure personal attack, followed closely by virtual execution. BAUT is *THE SINGLE* most draconian website in cyberspace. Astronomers are a bloodthirsty lot. They literally hold witch hunts in their ATM forum with the express intent of virtual execution of any and all dissenting posters. JREF (the other major astronomy hangout) is one relentless personal attack after another. I see now that Farsight is the newest victim of the onslaught.

Cuddles the executioner is at it again.....

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... ostcount=8

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=236546

Most religious oriented websites sponsor and engage in more "honest" intellectual and scientific debate than your average mainstream astronomy website hangout. EU haters are a like a pack of violent, ignorant, ravenous wolves. Worse yet, their own ignorance is self imposed and they have no desire to learn anything.

[GaryN]

BAUT is *THE SINGLE* most draconian website in cyberspace.

I was just having a look at one of my closed threads there, and I noticed that they had trimmed some of my posts to remove links to sites that I think presented evidence scientifically supporting some of my views. I'm not sure how much they trimmed, but still have my text editor files, so could check them out to see what they found most threatening. I think they did this because the thread was still garnering a fair amount of attention even though it was shut down, and I can only assume they didn't want people looking at evidence that may threaten their religion.
I don't think there is any doubt that the major science web sites and forums are under the control of the big media corporations whos ties to the establishment are very strong. They are the gate keepers of the Standard Model, but I do believe their armour can be at least chinked by the independent sites. It'll be a long slog though, and I think it may be better, as Buckminster Fuller said, to not try and challenge or change the existing model, but to concentrate on developing new models which would eventually obsolete theirs.

[Lloyd]

* Are you saying that the TB forum moderators removed your links? If so, I wonder why they would do that. It sounds irrational.

[GaryN]

I don't know how you read that into my post Lloyd, I was talking about BAUT. I don't think any of my posts on TB have ever been played with. Ignored maybe, but I'm used to that wherever I go!

[Michael Mozina]

BAUT is *THE SINGLE* most draconian website in cyberspace.

I was just having a look at one of my closed threads there, and I noticed that they had trimmed some of my posts to remove links to sites that I think presented evidence scientifically supporting some of my views. I'm not sure how much they trimmed, but still have my text editor files, so could check them out to see what they found most threatening. I think they did this because the thread was still garnering a fair amount of attention even though it was shut down, and I can only assume they didn't want people looking at evidence that may threaten their religion.
I don't think there is any doubt that the major science web sites and forums are under the control of the big media corporations whos ties to the establishment are very strong. They are the gate keepers of the Standard Model, but I do believe their armour can be at least chinked by the independent sites. It'll be a long slog though, and I think it may be better, as Buckminster Fuller said, to not try and challenge or change the existing model, but to concentrate on developing new models which would eventually obsolete theirs.

I've honestly never run across a more draconian rule system anywhere in cyberspace. BAUT literally glorifies the process of the witch hunt and the process of individual virtual execution. They literally put people on trial in their "Against The Mainstream" section and then lock down the threads! I've honestly never seen anything even remotely like it in cyberspace. At least they chose an appropriate name for the forum. It's bad astronomy alright, really bad.

[Lloyd]

Gary, I overlooked the quotation which started with the word BAUT. I often overlook quotations.

[jjohnson]

To stay above the fray (besides NEVER posting on the BAUT forum), remember that Thomas Kuhn noted back in 1962 (The Structure of Scientific Resolutions) that in an established science, there are the people who try to run things, and there are the everyday wowrkers who are, in his terminology, "puzzle solvers". There are good reasons for this.

Puzzle solvers are employed to look deeply into narrow fields, using the Standard Model of the time, and are not encouraged to try to find solutions out of the box. This is to ensure that as much useful mileage as possible is gotten from one model before those with fresh ways of gauging how things work come along and things change. Puzzle solvers are very adroit and conversant with the tools and ideas in vogue, and a lot of 't's and 'i's get crossed and dotted along the way. This shores up the model, and it helps extend it into useful technology these days, which pays a lot of the bills.

Khun also noted that it can take a generation for a revisionist paradigm to take hold, so I am not looking to see the EU ideas incorporated in what's left of my lifetime. I'm okay with that. Plasma physics and even cosmology is currently a bona fide branch of science, even if it focuses too much on power generation and wastes too much time talking about magnetic reconnections and ignoring the cosmic implications of its being an electrically controlled Universe. It Plasma physics)is the basic scientific foundation of the EU ideas that they never bother with, but the EU extends far beyond that, into biology, weather, planetary geology, mythology and legends, how stars and galaxies work, and threads them together in a cross-disciplinary matrix of energy relationships.

It will take a long time to get enough fed-up people to abandon their standard model's failures and to try to re-examine their problems through different eyes. I am convinced that that time is approaching, but for now, EU is just not a quantifiable theory according to "their" rules of how science is done. In many respects, we have to ignore or abandon the non-applicable parts, and re-draw the map according to our own lights. Our rules. Our interpretations. Our ideas. Our arguments.

To connect the dots, you have to know where the dots are.

The Standard Model and we disagree on where the dots are, in many regards, so tension is a reasonable consequence. Best we simply work on, and make the ideas as interesting and approachable as possible to as wide an audience as we can get to listen and watch our interpretation of things. The EU isn't perfected or complete. Nor is science. Let's not muck around arguing with people whose minds are made up in the negative, and who make up all sorts of reasons for not finding the EU ideas plausible or as having potential. It's like trying to put lipstick on a pig. It makes them mad, and it just wastes our time.

Jim

[phyllotaxis]

Jim, I believe you might be interested in a book called The Fourth Turning

It focuses on how generational shifts throughout history affect the direction and orientation of civilizations.
The content is directly applicable to your statements on it taking time for scientific revolutions, and I regard it as one of the most paradigm-defining books I've ever read.
It was published in 1997 but much of it reads like it was written yesterday. Much of the talking is on the obvious political/religious over- and undertones that mark the states of any given civilization, but the reasoning behind these events coming to be-- the experiences of the children growing up in and around the events and reactions of previous generations-- it goes on to tell quite an interesting story about how societies and individuals lean toward and away from given actions because of when they are coming of age and forming opinions.
The most interesting fact derived from this research is that there are four clear archetypes that repeat every four generations or so--
Timeless knowledge, and it clearly brings to mind the wisdom of your post. I recommend it to everyone.

I have placed Thomas Kuhn's book on my reading list as well-- I look forward to getting to it.

[601L1n9FR09]

It seems that the primary self defense mechanism of all "haters" is pure unadulterated denial. Is there a cure for the pathological behavior of pure denial? I thought that young earth creationists relied heavily upon pure denial during debate, but in my experience they have absolutely NOTHING on EU haters in terms of relying upon pure denial of scientific fact.

I am a Christian. I am not very good at it. I am a young earth creationist.
I am not in denial of facts. I am not in denial of my own bias. I am denying evolutionism. There is not one single fact that supports evolutionism. Evolutionism is not a fact, it not even close. It barely qualifies as a theory and is at best a belief. At worst, it is a religious belief.
What “facts” am I denying? I know you have been taught that there are mountains of scientific facts to support this belief, but just for grins how about actually listing a few of them? Richard Dawkins has Mount Improbable but so far that is about it. He calls me a denier, you know, lumping me in with the nazis and all but guess who had the same belief as Richard Dawkins. I don’t wanna mention any names but it starts with an “Adolph H” and ends with an “itler”. You can add a few more such as Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot. I can name a few observations that are far more consistent with creationism than evolutionism. The best evolutionism can do is a draw no better, no worse. Your indoctrination began before you were even in school, so:
Here are a few facts evolutionists have been conditioned to ignore or deny.

Abiogenesis has never been observed, consistent with creationism, totally not with evolutionism. Miller and Urey proved that even with intelligent direction life does not result from primordial soup. Since oxygen would destroy the marginal results they managed to achieve it was excluded from the experiment. Ever since we have been told all about the reducing atmosphere as if it was a cold hard fact. They are finally beginning to question that but this is the crap you call science.

The fossil record indicates rapid appearance (Cambrian explosion) and stasis. This is consistent with creationism and again totally inconsistent with evolutionism’s model.

Genetics, anyone? Humanity is devolving. All one needs to do is watch the Superbowl half time shows to confirm this. Our gene pool gets better as we go back in time, not forward.

Geology, it would seem deposition of sediments is not a gradual process at all and neither is erosion.

Linguistics?

The most crucial element evolutionism needs to work is time and it’s running out.
We have been brainwashed by everything from National Geographic and the BBC documentaries to Saturday morning cartoon shows stating as fact that such and such evolved millions or billions of years ago. Even the sacrosanct radiometric dating is based on fatally flawed presuppositions such as radioactive decay being a constant. That is some of the crappiest science ever. It was crappy even before the recent discovery that decay rates are not constant. It was never a fact. When T-rex remains turn up with soft tissue and blood the evolutionists fall all over themselves trying to come up with a mechanism that might preserve it for sixty five million years. Not one of them said “maybe this isn’t millions of years old after all.” Perhaps their minds are too highly trained.

With electricity having ten to the thirty-ninth power times more power to compress and as much heat as needed, there is no need for billions or even millions of years for stars to generate the elements. No waiting for all the hydrogen to fuse to helium and then the helium to fuse etc. As a young earth creationist I think I am standing on pretty firm ground.

You feel mainstream “science “ is ignoring and marginalizing not only what you think but facts you are trying to present. This frustrates you. I have been frustrated by the likes of you for precisely the same reasons and for the better part of forty years.

Now, I know the last thing you guys want is to get associated with a God Clod and further diminish your stature among the academia nuts, but I did not check either one of my brain cells at the door when I surrendered to Christ.
With the very notable exception of this particular forum, the secular community is way behind the thumpers in science pal. I for one, would greatly appreciate you not comparing me with those indoctrinated bozos. If they have seen less, it because they had their heads up the asses of giants. Those people that you are so anxious to impress and who’s minds you cannot change, are an insult to science.