Unlucky? (to have someone put your ATM idea through the wringer)

[R.A.F.]

Originally Posted by Nereid

I had one of those "are we even on the same planet?!?" reactions on reading this mugs.

You see, you seem to have interpreted AL's post in a very different way than I did...

I had the same reaction...and now that we've heard from AL, it appears that reaction was warranted.

I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm not.

[01101001]

Originally Posted by R.A.F.

I'd like to say I'm surprised, but I'm not.

I'm so befuddled by some members, that I'm inclined to withdraw from BAUT Forum, wash my hands, and issue a dramatic farewell, and promise to never come back until tomorrow. Or after dinner.

Or maybe just after a trip to the loo. Gotta wash my hands.

Did this effort get me into the exclusive Good-bye topic? Can I? Can I?

Edit: I'm back. Forgive me?

[Bob Angstrom]

Forrest Noble and a number of others, including myself, have made the claim that the rule about answering questions is used in the BAUT ATM forum to stifle debate when other methods, either good bad or otherwise, have failed. Ask a lot of questions- question the answers- and then question the answers to questions about answers in a chain reaction until a critical mass is achieved and the presenter caves under an impossible load of questions. If the rule about answering questions has no limit to the number of questions that one must answer, this rule gives any person asking questions a “nuclear” option to shut down any debate of their choosing. This is not a level playing field and is not scientific debate.

Originally Posted by mugaliens

Logical Fallacies fall into one of two major categories: Formal and Informal. The Straw Man fallacy is a type of Red Herring, in which the arguer attempts to refute his opponent's position, but instead of attacking that position direction, he instead attacks a "straw man" position not held by his opponent. The goal is to "win." Casual observers will see it as a win without realizing the "straw man" is not a component's position. In fact, the unsavvy opponenet will usually agree with the arguer's claims against the straw man position. This is usually followed by "So then you agree with X!" claim by the arguer, which is as irrelevant to the chase as the proverbial red herring dragged across the path to throw hound dogs off the scent.

Can you give us an example of a Straw Man fallacy...don't bother I think I found one.

Originally Posted by Nereid

In the recently closed ATM Rules Discussion thread, here in this section, I asked the following question*:

Given the BAUT ATM section's mission, if you really, truly believed you had developed a really good ATM idea, would you consider yourself unlucky 'to come up against' a BAUT member - 'a proponent of the mainstream position' - who 'argues strongly, forcefully, factually, scientifically and any other -ally you care to think of, but is also ruthless and relentless'?

OK, 'ruthless' only in a restricted sense - taking no prisoners when it comes to scientific integrity.

To give credit: the semi-quoted text is from a post by BAUT member PipeDream; the post in which it occurs is quoted in my post (itself referenced above).

I have the impression that many proponents of ATM ideas would, indeed, consider themselves unlucky to be in such a situation ... but I do not understand why.

What do you think?

* edited someone, to account for the lack of context here

[mugaliens]

Originally Posted by HenrikOlsen

I keep seeing people saying they're leaving, but for some reason they keep coming back. Why does that happen?

I dunno. Gluttons for abuse and demeaning treatment from various users on the forum?

Or perhaps we're simply willing to ignore such behavior, for now. That ignore function is coming in handy for those who do not seem to get the message that such behavior is inappropriate!

[Bob Angstrom]

Originally Posted by Tensor

Actually, those were rather good, for a general refutation of POAMS and rather what POAMS deserved. And I notice you say nothing about Viv's attacks. Those, because he was ATM, are OK by you, right?

I did discuss Viv's attack including his remark about about the pet monkey and I made no attempt to sugar coat it but the post was deleted by mod. I'll try again. Just look for a very long post.

Originally Posted by Tensor

Actually, Fortis was asking several different questions, and got bogged down in term misuse. The problem, as with a lot of ATM ideas, was that Viv was defining a term differently than in mainstream use. But used the term in the mainstream sense in the equations. And yet, there have been complaints, from ATMers about Nereid wanting to clarify what exactly the definitions of terms are.

This is a common problem in communication but most of Nereid's questions about semantics involved every-day usage rather than differences in ATM/MS jargon. And what was that one question she asked? How do you define partly hypothetical, moderately hypothetical, and completely hypothetical... something like that.

Originally Posted by Tensor

The umballa group in that thread was Viv and his group. While POAMS may have been philosophy, it sure isn't science.

The Umballa Group came to be Viv's pet name for his long necked gaggle of hecklers as can be seen in post #441.

"On this, my first encounter with an Internet forum I am now very much the wiser, for which I heartily thank the moderator far having me. Fortunately, some of the discussions were excellent, and if there had been more like that, and if the Umbala Group had wound their necks in, we might have got somewhere."- Viv Pope

POAMS is heavy on philosophy but science-wise it is quite similar to science heavy theories that do not consider photons to be bullet like particles that travel from here to there by moving through the space between. Two examples are the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber theory and John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation.

[Paul Beardsley]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

Forrest Noble and a number of others, including myself, have made the claim that the rule about answering questions is used in the BAUT ATM forum to stifle debate when other methods, either good bad or otherwise, have failed. Ask a lot of questions- question the answers- and then question the answers to questions about answers in a chain reaction until a critical mass is achieved and the presenter caves under an impossible load of questions.

You'd have to provide an example, because it's my belief that this doesn't happen.

What does happen is that the ATMer ignores questions and goes on to make further or repeated unsupported assertions. The thread then gets filled with posters (rightly) demanding, "When are you going to answer my question?" Eventually a mod comes on and tells the ATMer to answer the outstanding questions - which the ATMer usually fails to do, and so the thread gets locked, the ATMer gets suspended, and then acts like a martyr.

[Bob Angstrom]

Originally Posted by Nereid

I don't follow; would you mind elaborating please?

I just did and can continue to do so but I will be out of town for a few days so I will be quick.

Originally Posted by Nereid

Not to introduce semantics, but aren't you using this word ("ruthless"), here, in a way quite different than I carefully explained in the OP?

One can be ruthlessly constructive or ruthlessly destructive. You're talking about former and I am talking about the latter.

Originally Posted by Nereid

Leaving aside - for now - Tensor's highly pertinent (subsequent) post, to what extent would you say VivPope was "unlucky" to have had a mainstream opponent as described in the OP?

The Umballa Group (BAUT back biters) dominated the discussion and no one else had much of a chance to state their case on either side. Viv Pope himself was quite quite good at describing the good and bad of his experience.

Originally Posted by Nereid

Or perhaps I'm assuming too much ... do you consider there to have been at least one mainstream opponent - as described in the OP - in the POAMS thread?

Yes, but again the Umbala.

[Bob Angstrom]

Originally Posted by Paul Beardsley

You'd have to provide an example, because it's my belief that this doesn't happen.

What does happen is that the ATMer ignores questions and goes on to make further or repeated unsupported assertions. The thread then gets filled with posters (rightly) demanding, "When are you going to answer my question?" Eventually a mod comes on and tells the ATMer to answer the outstanding questions - which the ATMer usually fails to do, and so the thread gets locked, the ATMer gets suspended, and then acts like a martyr.

In discussions outside BAUT that don't have this rule, discussions tend to circle about unanswered questions and it becomes obvious that questions are being dodged. Eventually the poster has to either put up or shut up. Here the thread gets filled with posters childishly demanding "When are you going to answer my question?". This is annoying to read and makes the thread hard to follow. Personally, I rarely care to read most of the answers to the questions because they tend to be stabs in the dark from people who know little about the subject or take the time to understand the answers. I don't think many questioners even care about the answers. They are just tossing out questions to see if they can stump the presenter. If someone can't ask a question and suffer the pain of rejection, they need to get off the computer and get a life.

[Bob Angstrom]

Originally Posted by Paul Beardsley

You'd have to provide an example, because it's my belief that this doesn't happen.

Here is my example.

18-January-2007
POAMS: The New World Synthesis by Viv Pope et al.

Jan 19. Day One:
Nine questions in one post. All good questions and the questioner stated that he did not expect a quick or speedy answer for every question but they were not easy questions as you can see below.

How, if gravitation is not a general relativistic curved spacetime phenomenon, do you explain the deflection of light from a distant star as it grazes the sun? (Eddington, Crommelin, 1919). Similarly, how (if at all) do you account for gravitational lensing)?

Perhaps most importantly, how do you explain the following successful tests of Einstein's relativity postulate:

The 1959 recording of a radar echo from the planet Venus;

the 1960 Pound and Rebka measurments of the gravitational redshift;

the Hughes-Drever experiment (1959-60) using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques;

the US National Bureau of Standards confirmation of local Lorenz invariance;

the 1976 Vessot and Levine (Harvard, NASA) comparison of hydrogen maser clocks (one flown abord a Scout D rocket, the other ground-based) designed to test gravitational frequency shifts as a function of altitude in the earths gravity field?

Irwin Shapiro's 1959-60 confirmation of 'time delay;'

Mariners 6, 7 and 9 Mars orbiter and Viking Mars landers and orbiters (1976) transmitions (that produced remarkable improvements over the Venus echo experiments) that tested, again successfully, gravitational time delay;

the 1969 Lunar Ranging Program 'retroreflector' experimental tests of the strong equivalence principle;

Jan, 20 Day Two: Pope answered several of the questions in detail and they were followed by two good follow-up questions to Pope's answers..

“I still do not see, however, where you explain POAMS take on what is called gravitational redshift and time dilation (of the kinds tested in the experiments listed in my previous post). Could you please state clearly the mechanism that causes the two related effects.

You write that you do not deny the existence of gravity, yet on "empirical grounds" (which empirical grounds?) you deny that "these things" [gravity] exists in vacuo. Where, then, does gravity exist?”

Jan 21 Day Three: Eight more good but difficult questions.

1.I can accept an instantaneous quantum interaction between atoms, but we now seem to be introducing an element of distance (path length) to this interaction. By its very nature, the quantum event involves no distance (path length) or time. I accept that the irreducible quantum is a product of energy and time, but this is intrinsic to the quantum. To extrapolate the time (or frequency (1/t)) of a single quantum in terms of a wavelength related to a macroscopic geometrical path length seems difficult to take on board.

2. When you describe path lengths, I assume you mean any path drawn from a point source, through either slit and then anywhere on the screen. I take it we are not talking about straight line paths here? So for example a path could be drawn from the source to one slit, then change angle to hit (say) the centre of the screen. In this way there exists an infinite number of path lengths and their subsequent phase relationship with other paths.

Perhaps you could clarify these two points for me.

I am still having trouble visualizing this as light has a measurable "propagation" delay that can easily be shown in the laboratory. If the action is nonlocal then why the time delay? Further, if someone is standing behind the person with the flashlight then why doesn't the light just as easily nonlocally get picked up by our new observer? Why should light be directional if it does not propagate as some distinct entity? Also we observe light being "bent around" intervening bodies. Why does the intervening body have any effect on my perception if the "propagation" is nonlocal to begin with? It would seem to me that intervening bodies should be irrelevant.

What do you understand by the angular momentum of a particle of mass m moving in a straight line? Is the angular momentum finite? (On the website, it appears to suggest that the angular momentum of that particle is infinite.)

What is your attribution?
I don't see what "orbital angular momentum" has to do with this general relativistic effect.


CM also wrote a short skit on the same day where three fictional characters read and discuss the OP poking fun at it as they go. The snippet below is ironic when you consider that the POAMS theory is similar to the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber theory.

CM: "I've asked you here today to help me in deconstructing something called 'POAMS', an acronym for 'Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis'."

BH: "Well, right there is the first strike against it; they've named it after themselves. That's the first sure sign of amateurism. Feynman never used his own name when talking about his diagrams, and Dirac never called his equation by his name and so on. On the other hand, we have Lyndon Ashmore writing about his so-called 'Ashmore's Paradox'. Did you ever see anything more amateurish than that? Besides Moshe Thezion's drawings, that is."

CM: "Yes, I consider that a sure sign of dilettantism, but I'm willing to cut them some slack because of the name of their web site, since ams.org is already taken. I still think they should have called their 'theory' New Angular Momentum Synthesis or something like it."

Later we read in the same skit:

“BH: "One thing I've noticed is that most of the amateur physics wannabes we run across are convinced that relativity is wrong and fall back to Newtonian mechanics. POAMS seems to be unique because it even rejects Newtonian mechanics and seems to fall back to some weird Aristotelian cosmos of circular motions."”

This statement is totally false. POAMS was working with curved Riemann space and Pope mentioned something about this being similar to Aristotelian circular motions. CM insisted throughout the thread that POAMS was trying to replace relativity and Newton with Aristotle and this became the central issue in his attack despite many denials and explanations from Pope. How can anyone be prepared for an attack like that. It was a total fiction and implausible.

Jan 22
One person following the thread noted how sarcastic things were becoming and made this prophetic comment,
“I'm not sure any response is going to get a fair hearing with this kind of mindset that makes such a massive judgement before hearing the reply.”

Viv Pope gave CM's skit a bad review. “You are right – complete Umbala there! (bullshine for the uninitiated). For instance, the criticism is purely prejudicial, the logic of it dismissed out of hand on the basis of purely idiosyncratic first impressions about the title – would you believe. The further impression that we are all ‘amateurs’ reveals a complete lack of knowledge the affidavits of POAMS. For instance, we are all professionals in our fields (albeit heretical progressives in our combined POAMS enterprise), and our work is fronted by two British universities. This has already been explained to someone else voicing these impressions. Don’t you guys ever READ the stuff before ‘shooting from the hip’ in that precipitous way!”

Jan 24 Someone asks the obligatory “where's the math question” even though the math is discussed in depth by Osborne in the POAMS website. There were no more questions or answers this day but quote below from Pope is representative of the tone.

"Yes, there is a problem. If, as you say, CM is so well-informed, well-educated, intelligent, and creative, then who wrote those hughly un-intelligent, illiterate, and destructive postings? My only answer to that conundrum is to assume that he has something like a pet monkey writing for him."

Jan 25
No more questions or answers but lots of smoke and heat.
.
Jan 26
Seven days into the thread and Pope answered 18 questions but he was responding with well thought out answers and good answers take time. Viv Pope, seeing how fast the questions were coming, had to issue this apology and explanation but it did him no good. “I’m sorry, folks but the number of responses to this new POAMS thread, thankful as I am for them, are so numerous that I now find it almost impossible to respond to them individually. The best I can do, from my reading of the various postings, is to present my summary impressions, now and again, as to where the drift is going. So If I don’t answer your question directly, please don’t be offended. If you have anything significant to say, either of a negative or positive kind, you should be able to spot my views on it sooner or later in these summary postings. Please remember that my sole aim in this discussion is simply to assess, on behalf of the POAMS group, what kind of reception there may be to our forthcoming publications among the science community in general. This assessment is especially for a new mathematical book by Anthony Osborne, together with myself as ‘consultant’. “

But the first week went better than any to follow where he got the full Forrest Noble treatment.
The questions kept snowballing as he had to answer more questions about his answers and rephrase answers that he had previously given even though they were as clear as they could be the first time so things ground to a difficult crawl. The worst of all was the way he had to contend with what he called a “shark feeding frenzy” made up of the BAUT regulars that hang out in the ATM wherever they smell blood.

I think you can see from the first week where this is headed.

[Kwalish Kid]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

Forrest Noble and a number of others, including myself, have made the claim that the rule about answering questions is used in the BAUT ATM forum to stifle debate when other methods, either good bad or otherwise, have failed.

Frankly, my perception is the opposite: question flooding takes place when you and forrest noble attempt to stifle debate by avoiding questions.

[R.A.F.]

Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid

Frankly, my perception is the opposite: question flooding takes place when you and forrest noble attempt to stifle debate by avoiding questions.

An ATMer should come to the board prepared to answer any and all questions. If they are familiar with the claim they are making, then they should have anticipated what questions would be asked, and be able to answer them easily no matter how many there are.

I think the question should be, "why do almost all ATMers come to the board so unprepared"?

[Nereid]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

Forrest Noble and a number of others, including myself, have made the claim that the rule about answering questions is used in the BAUT ATM forum to stifle debate when other methods, either good bad or otherwise, have failed. Ask a lot of questions- question the answers- and then question the answers to questions about answers in a chain reaction until a critical mass is achieved and the presenter caves under an impossible load of questions. If the rule about answering questions has no limit to the number of questions that one must answer, this rule gives any person asking questions a “nuclear” option to shut down any debate of their choosing.

(bold added)

This thread is beginning to resemble the recent one, now locked.

Perhaps I missed it, but did you comment - substantively - on the four criteria I gave for determining whether a question (to the presenter of an ATM idea) is valid or not?

Here they are again; note that they are ordered:

* is the question direct?

* does the question address the ATM idea what has been presented?

* does the question address the ATM idea as presented?

* is the question pertinent to the ATM idea presented, as presented?

To what extent do you think there is - or would be - a problem with valid questions only?

This is not a level playing field and is not scientific debate. [...]

Indeed.

BAUT's ATM section was never intended to be a level playing field, and despite many suggestions that it should become one, the mods (and owners) have repeatedly stated their intention to keep it that way.

As to "scientific debate": in such discourse, participants have unspoken mutual understandings that rarely, if ever, exist in ATM section threads. Some such are^:

* use of language (some BAUTians have, IMHO, misunderstood this, and call it "semantics"; I intend to start a new thread soon, to further discuss this)

* references (unless what you present is your own work, you should always be prepared to provide sufficient references, if asked)

* source material (similar to references; if asked, sources should always be papers, conference presentations, standard textbooks; press releases are most definitely out)

* use of math (or at least numbers; in oral discourse this may be indirect).

Would you, BobA, like the ATM section to become more like scientific debate?

^ this is in no way intended to be a comprehensive list!

[Nereid]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

[...]

Can you give us an example of a Straw Man fallacy...don't bother I think I found one.

Huh?

Who is "the arguer"? Who is "his opponent"? What is "his position"?

Without these three elements, you cannot - by definition - have a strawman argument, can you?

The OP of this thread contains a question; there is no arguer, and no opponent ...

[NEOWatcher]

Originally Posted by Nereid

BAUT's ATM section was never intended to be a level playing field, and despite many suggestions that it should become one, the mods (and owners) have repeatedly stated their intention to keep it that way.

I don't even understand how the playing field can be leveled.

By it's very nature we are talking about overriding something that has been established with a wealth of development, experimentation, and validation.

In other words, the game has been mostly played, and the score is virtually a shut out, and you are coming into the last minutes of the game to try and reverse that.

If we were speaking about presentations of two new competing theories, then, absolutely, there should be a level playing field.

[Nereid]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

[...]

This is a common problem in communication but most of Nereid's questions about semantics involved every-day usage rather than differences in ATM/MS jargon. And what was that one question she asked? How do you define partly hypothetical, moderately hypothetical, and completely hypothetical... something like that.

[...]

(bold added)

I have over 10,000 posts to my name, a great many - perhaps a majority - in the ATM section*.

Most of my ATM posts - possibly a large majority - contain questions.

Aside from the first few weeks (months?)^, I think most of such questions were valid.

Would you care, BobA, to outline a protocol for making an objective, verifiable estimate of the proportion of my questions (in posts in the ATM section, excluding 'mod-hat' and 'early days' ones), "about semantics" which "involved every-day usage rather than differences in ATM/MS jargon"?

To give one recent counter-example (to yours): in a recent thread, I asked many questions about what the proponent of an ATM idea meant by "current" (when we finally got the answer - after much effort - we all learned that the thread was meaningless ... "current" was defined in so radical a way that nothing from Maxwell's equations - to give just one example - made sense).

* posts made wearing my, then, mod hat excluded
^ in the total - UT plus BABB, as well as BAUT - history

[Paul Beardsley]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

Here the thread gets filled with posters childishly demanding "When are you going to answer my question?".

I was going to ask, "What's childish about demanding that?" But I will not. Instead, I will state that there is nothing childish about demanding that.

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

I don't think many questioners even care about the answers. They are just tossing out questions to see if they can stump the presenter.

Heaven forfend that anyone should want to know if the "theorist" actually knows anything about the mainstream theory they are seeking to overturn.

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

If someone can't ask a question and suffer the pain of rejection, they need to get off the computer and get a life.

"Pain of rejection"? Oh for heaven's sake.

[slang]

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

If someone can't ask a question and suffer the pain of rejection, they need to get off the computer and get a life.

Like: "This is my ATM idea, what do you think?"

[Nereid]

Originally Posted by DrRocket

I think you can find that sort of thing in any number of science-oriented forums. I have seen such discussions, in the past in the Science forum and at SDS.

What distinguishes BAUT are a few unique characteristics:
1) The discussion of ATM ideas is rigorously limited to a single forum dedicated to those topics. (A VERY good thing).
2) BAUT has unusually high number of participants with the capability to challenge ATM ideas with authority.
3) Not only does BAUT have the members noted in #2, but there are several who are willing to devote a significant amount of time and effort to debunking outlandish ATM ideass.
4) ATM proponents at BAUT are required to respond to questions, and that forces objective discussion to a degree not found in other forums, where ATM proponents typically duck all substantative questions and hurl epithets at the mainstream. This is another very good part of the BAUT policy.

Item #1 has preserved the integrity of the mainstream forums on BAUT while providing a place for the discussion of ATM ideas. Other forums have been derailed (and in my opinion wrecked) by uncontrolled promotion of ATM ideas, which typically have no real basis.

TY

Thanks.

In my experience, it's not uncommon for a science-oriented internet discussion forum* to at least move all ATM-type threads to a single area (what's it called in SDC, "the unexplained"?), if not outlaw them entirely.

* I'm making a somewhat artificial distinction between a fully-fledged discussion forum and a comments section - of a blog say - with or without nesting and threading. Also, this is based on only astronomy (etc) related ones.

[Nereid]

Originally Posted by slang

(Please note: this is not aimed at any particular ATM presenter personally, it is an exaggerated fictional description to explore the question in the OP.)

Suppose, as non-scientist, you have worked/hobbied alone for many years on your idea/theory/alternate/Einstein++... to plug up all the holes, tie up all loose ends, fit all the new discoveries in, all that in such a way that you are completely satisfied that all verbal explanations are there, that it's entirely logical. Well, worked from all the pop-sci available. What next? Ask yourself questions! Make sure you have an answer for every question you can think of. Keep news clippings of the important stuff. You know your idea must be true, everything fits. (How could they have missed it so long?). Every friend you explained it to agreed that it is reasonable.

I suppose it's a bit disconcerting to find out that when you present your idea, people ask quite different questions. That short quotes from popsci articles don't cut it. That you were supposed to have tested with actual numbers. That there is not one devil in the details, but entire dungeon dimensions of them. That someone had your idea 100 years ago. That you misunderstood the implications of some discovery. That Law X or Theory Y does not mean what you think it means. Math... In short, you suddenly encounter the massive body of experiment and evidence that is science. Well, a small part of it. What choice but to dismiss it, to see personal attacks everywhere, to steer answers to those that fit the questions you asked yourself? To acknowledge is admitting failure.

Now, the above will probably not fit any ATM posters, it's quite an extreme fictional exercise. But take out several factors, turn down the scope of the idea a little, change popsci to abstracts, etc. etc., and the match becomes bigger. Of course there are other ends of the spectrum: cran with an idea, limited in scope, educated on the topic, understanding the reasoning behind questions, calmly discussing, acknowledging problems, only disappointed at the lack of participation. And at the other end: the earth grows from a seed like a tree because of the rings. And inbetween: those who have the grace to say "I didn't know that. Let me think about it".

To borrow Tensor's words, what he said ^^

cran's experience points to something rather interesting: the apparent absence of comparable fora on areas of science other than astronomy (space science, cosmology, etc).

Also, the further away from the centre of BAUT's scope, the fuzzier ATM threads become (and the less likely an ATM proponent is to find themselves up against a BAUT member such as PipeDream describes*). The one area I think the weakness detracts significantly from the attraction of BAUT is in the history and philosophy of science. There's a lot of very good work on this - and not just by the names which trip so lightly off our tongues, Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Latakos - but very few BAUTians seem to be familiar with it (myself included).

* Physics is a sort of exception; astrophysics makes use of most areas in physics, so ATM ideas on relativity (to take an example) will be tackled pretty robustly. However, if an ATM idea concerning high temperature superconductors were to be presented ...

[Gillianren]

Originally Posted by Paul Beardsley

I was going to ask, "What's childish about demanding that?" But I will not. Instead, I will state that there is nothing childish about demanding that.

Exactly the point I was going to make. In fact, I find the opposite position childish--"they kept expecting me to answer their questions in a place where you're supposed to answer questions!" Please. If you discover that you can't answer all the questions, haven't you just discovered that you need to do more research before you're taken seriously elsewhere? If you get even one question, one good question, to which you don't have a good answer, isn't that your problem? And isn't it a good thing to find out? Surely not being able to answer that good question indicates a place where you haven't done enough work.

That's even taking into consideration the flawed premise that people are asking questions to prevent any reasonable discussion from taking place. Doubtless any of us who have spent any time in ATM, a thing I haven't even bothered with in some time, can give examples of very reasonable questioning that may seem silly and semantical but just showed how terribly little the person knew on the subject. I'm sure the questions probably seemed insulting to those presenters, but the pure, unadulterated, stubborn ignorance of science paraded onward.

[R.A.F.]

Originally Posted by Nereid

...it's not uncommon for a science-oriented internet discussion forum* to at least move all ATM-type threads to a single area...if not outlaw them entirely.

That last part is particularly important. There is no "right" to promote ATM ideas on this board, it is a privilege that the owners of this board allow.

[Jeff Root]

DrRocket,

I agree with Gillian. Whether the BAUT administration thinks of it this way
or not, I think ATM should be a place where I can find out whether my
really good idea has flaws that I hadn't thought of, consequences I hadn't
thought of, supporting evidence I didn't know about. While it was not in
the actual ATM thread, I learned of one possible way to test my own ATM
hypothesis in discussion on sci.astro a few years ago, and another possible
test here on BAUT just a couple of months ago. So now I have four ways
that my hypothesis might be tested. I have also learned more and more
about other people having the same ideas that I came up with.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[R.A.F.]

Originally Posted by Jeff Root

Whether the BAUT administration thinks of it this way
or not...

Are you saying that you were unaware that they don't think that way?

[Jeff Root]

I was saying what I said.

I also said it under the impression that there was only one page of posts.
When I saw that there was only one page (30 posts), I was surprised,
because I kept seeing this thread listed on the BAUT main page as the
most recently posted-to in the sub-forum. After I posted I was surprised
again to see that there were actually four pages. Ooop.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

[forrest noble]

Unlucky? (to have someone put your ATM idea through the wringer)
In the recently closed ATM Rules Discussion thread, here in this section, I asked the following question*:

Given the BAUT ATM section's mission, if you really, truly believed you had developed a really good ATM idea, would you consider yourself unlucky 'to come up against' a BAUT member - 'a proponent of the mainstream position' - who 'argues strongly, forcefully, factually, scientifically and any other -ally you care to think of, but is also ruthless and relentless'?

OK, 'ruthless' only in a restricted sense - taking no prisoners when it comes to scientific integrity.

To give credit: the semi-quoted text is from a post by BAUT member PipeDream; the post in which it occurs is quoted in my post (itself referenced above).

I have the impression that many proponents of ATM ideas would, indeed, consider themselves unlucky to be in such a situation ... but I do not understand why.

What do you think?

As to "what do I think:" If the following people participated I would consider myself very lucky. These are all people who have participated for awhile in the ATM forum. What they all have in common is the basis for their arguments which are primarily observation and logic. There is no attitude behind their statements; generally they are polite.

(all in alphabetical order)

Asserted Proponents of the mainstream:

Dr. Who
Fortis
Northern Boy
Tensor
Tusenfem
WayneFrancis


Well versed commentators who can add valuable comments to either side of an argument:

abcdefg
Aastrotech
Bob Angstrom
Mugaliens
Neverfly
RusselT

I feel privileged to have any or all of these posters on any ATM thread that I propose or take part in and many other individuals not mentioned.

I have never posted or proposed one of my own ATM threads, but have agreed to defend 3 of them. If I ever defend another ATM thread these will be the rules. Anyone naturally can participate providing they follow BAUT rules and also these addendum rules that I hope someday will be a part of the BAUT rules. If so I may make a real proposal rather than a frivolous one like the last.

(concerning question flooding) A questioner can ask as many questions as they like but the OP would be required to answer only 3 questions per day per questioning participant. (concerning thread flooding) No single or pair of opponent(s) or commentator would be allowing to dominate the thread concerning the volume of their total postings besides the OP who must answer questions.

Zero Tolerance. all rude comments would result in a one day suspension. Any personal attack such as "you're lying", "stretching the truth," or derogatory accusations of any kind toward the OP or anyone else, would result in a automatic suspension until the close of the thread as soon as a moderator sees them after being reported. No exceptions. Everyone must be polite on every posting or they will be warned and/ or receive an infraction (not even snarky comments allowed)

If an answer is not thought to be adequate or understandable, the questioner must then answer this question: Why do you think my reply has not already answered your question? If this question is not answered then the questioner cannot list such question(s) as unanswered if an answer has already been given. When asking the same question over again it must be reworded. After the third attempt by the OP to answer the same question, the final answer would be followed by this statement: "I've tried to explain this to you. If you cannot still understand my answers then "I don't know" how to explain it to you any better. "I don't know" is an acceptable answer according to the rules. The question must then be then dropped and unlisted. All can discuss the misunderstanding involved and give fault to the OP or the questioner without personal insult, concerning the question or answer.

For each questioner, if there are any unanswered questions over 3 in quantity, they must be listed separately from their original posting according to the requested priority that answers would be preferred, and preferably embolden. No additional questions can be asked by this questioner until all his/ her outstanding questions have been answered or the "I don't know" phrase is given as discussed above. Unanswered questions that were not listed as unanswered cannot be complained about but they can be asked again and if not answered, then listed as such.

For those where the OP concerns their field of expertise, I believe there is rarely a time when questions seem difficult. To the contrary, for me I love explaining all answers to questions and new concepts to people who are interested. This is because I am a retired teacher. Answering all questions is usually not difficult as long as there aren't to many of them at one time. For those who are not experts in the field then sometimes the simplest of answers may seem to make no sense. This is the big advantage of having participating commentators who can explain these simple concepts and answers, one or more explaining it to the questioner until he/ she finally gets it. They can also explain why they think an answer seems inadequate.

Commentators or questioners would be allowed to explain questions or ask answers of each other, even though none would be obliged to answer. The OP could give clarification concerning his opinion concerning an explanation if he thinks it's needed. Moderate meta-discussions would be allowed providing they followed the main line of discussion.

OK, That's what I think based upon a lot of frustrating experiences where unlimited questions were permitted, where 10 to 25 questions by each questioner per day was common and even defended as being logically acceptable.

[slang]

Originally Posted by forrest noble

As to "what do I think:"

I think it was meant to be: what do you think about the question in the OP, not what do you think about BAUT members in general.

Originally Posted by forrest noble

If I ever defend another ATM thread these will be the rules.

Your rules. It should be interesting to see how long they can hold, within the framework of existing forum rules.

Originally Posted by forrest noble

(concerning question flooding) A questioner can ask as many questions as they like but the OP would be required to answer only 3 questions per day per questioning participant.

Ah, so you can cherry pick the easy ones.

Originally Posted by forrest noble

(concerning thread flooding) No single or pair of opponent(s) or commentator would be allowing to dominate the thread concerning the volume of their total postings besides the OP who must answer questions.

(Allowed?) I wonder how to enforce that one. Force other people to participate? Stop the thread until a fourth person posts?

Originally Posted by forrest noble

OK, That's what I think based upon a lot of frustrating experiences where unlimited questions were permitted, where 10 to 25 questions by each questioner per day was common and even defended as being logically acceptable.

Each? Ah well, I like exaggerating too.

[HenrikOlsen]

Originally Posted by forrest noble

There is no attitude behind their statements; generally they are polite.
Well versed commentators who can add valuable comments to either side of an argument:

abcdefg
<snip>
RusselT

I feel privileged to have any or all of these posters on any ATM thread that I propose or take part in and many other individuals not mentioned.

abcdefg's recent ATM thread saw him repeatedly using a single sentence from a chapter to assert something that was in complete contradiction to what the chapter as a whole was saying, apparently based on a willful misinterpretation of a word in that sentence. He repeatedly used that as the sole answer to a question after being informed about this error. You'd be badly off it you where relying on him to lend credence to an idea.
RussT, in his recent ATM thread, has admitted/been shown not to understand the very fundamental concept of relative velocity as used by mainstream physics and is currently being educated in it.

It your idea has anything to do with relativity, adding either of these to the mix will only serve to make things a hopelessly confused muddle.

[Paul Beardsley]

If we're allowed to comment on people on FN's list, may I remind readers of the abuse I received from aastrotech because I pointed out to him that one is not a prime number?

I note that ATMers tend to avoid mathematics...

[Kwalish Kid]

Originally Posted by forrest noble

Zero Tolerance. all rude comments would result in a one day suspension. Any personal attack such as "you're lying", "stretching the truth," or derogatory accusations of any kind toward the OP or anyone else, would result in a automatic suspension until the close of the thread as soon as a moderator sees them after being reported. No exceptions. Everyone must be polite on every posting or they will be warned and/ or receive an infraction (not even snarky comments allowed)

But what should we do when you do lie? Because there is absolutely no excuse for your use of the work of Verschuur and your false citation of a zero-point energy publication. In the first case, you wrote that Verschuur claimed that hydrogen was the origin of the background radiation. Verschuur has never made that claim. In the second case, you claimed to base your theory on a paper that you later admitted you had never read. Those are two lies that you used repeatedly, even after you were caught.

If you were to make those claims again, should we not point out to others that you were lying?

[Nereid]

Note that the "it" PB refers to is BobA's claims that "Forrest Noble and a number of others, including myself, have made the claim that the rule about answering questions is used in the BAUT ATM forum to stifle debate when other methods, either good bad or otherwise, have failed. Ask a lot of questions- question the answers- and then question the answers to questions about answers in a chain reaction until a critical mass is achieved and the presenter caves under an impossible load of questions."

Originally Posted by Bob Angstrom

Here is my example.

18-January-2007
POAMS: The New World Synthesis by Viv Pope et al.

Jan 19. Day One:
Nine questions in one post. All good questions and the questioner stated that he did not expect a quick or speedy answer for every question but they were not easy questions as you can see below.

How, if gravitation is not a general relativistic curved spacetime phenomenon, do you explain the deflection of light from a distant star as it grazes the sun? (Eddington, Crommelin, 1919). Similarly, how (if at all) do you account for gravitational lensing)?

Perhaps most importantly, how do you explain the following successful tests of Einstein's relativity postulate:

The 1959 recording of a radar echo from the planet Venus;

the 1960 Pound and Rebka measurments of the gravitational redshift;

the Hughes-Drever experiment (1959-60) using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques;

the US National Bureau of Standards confirmation of local Lorenz invariance;

the 1976 Vessot and Levine (Harvard, NASA) comparison of hydrogen maser clocks (one flown abord a Scout D rocket, the other ground-based) designed to test gravitational frequency shifts as a function of altitude in the earths gravity field?

Irwin Shapiro's 1959-60 confirmation of 'time delay;'

Mariners 6, 7 and 9 Mars orbiter and Viking Mars landers and orbiters (1976) transmitions (that produced remarkable improvements over the Venus echo experiments) that tested, again successfully, gravitational time delay;

the 1969 Lunar Ranging Program 'retroreflector' experimental tests of the strong equivalence principle;

Jan, 20 Day Two: Pope answered several of the questions in detail and they were followed by two good follow-up questions to Pope's answers..

“I still do not see, however, where you explain POAMS take on what is called gravitational redshift and time dilation (of the kinds tested in the experiments listed in my previous post). Could you please state clearly the mechanism that causes the two related effects.

You write that you do not deny the existence of gravity, yet on "empirical grounds" (which empirical grounds?) you deny that "these things" [gravity] exists in vacuo. Where, then, does gravity exist?”

Jan 21 Day Three: Eight more good but difficult questions.

1.I can accept an instantaneous quantum interaction between atoms, but we now seem to be introducing an element of distance (path length) to this interaction. By its very nature, the quantum event involves no distance (path length) or time. I accept that the irreducible quantum is a product of energy and time, but this is intrinsic to the quantum. To extrapolate the time (or frequency (1/t)) of a single quantum in terms of a wavelength related to a macroscopic geometrical path length seems difficult to take on board.

2. When you describe path lengths, I assume you mean any path drawn from a point source, through either slit and then anywhere on the screen. I take it we are not talking about straight line paths here? So for example a path could be drawn from the source to one slit, then change angle to hit (say) the centre of the screen. In this way there exists an infinite number of path lengths and their subsequent phase relationship with other paths.

Perhaps you could clarify these two points for me.

I am still having trouble visualizing this as light has a measurable "propagation" delay that can easily be shown in the laboratory. If the action is nonlocal then why the time delay? Further, if someone is standing behind the person with the flashlight then why doesn't the light just as easily nonlocally get picked up by our new observer? Why should light be directional if it does not propagate as some distinct entity? Also we observe light being "bent around" intervening bodies. Why does the intervening body have any effect on my perception if the "propagation" is nonlocal to begin with? It would seem to me that intervening bodies should be irrelevant.

What do you understand by the angular momentum of a particle of mass m moving in a straight line? Is the angular momentum finite? (On the website, it appears to suggest that the angular momentum of that particle is infinite.)

What is your attribution?
I don't see what "orbital angular momentum" has to do with this general relativistic effect.


CM also wrote a short skit on the same day where three fictional characters read and discuss the OP poking fun at it as they go. The snippet below is ironic when you consider that the POAMS theory is similar to the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber theory.

CM: "I've asked you here today to help me in deconstructing something called 'POAMS', an acronym for 'Pope-Osborne Angular Momentum Synthesis'."

BH: "Well, right there is the first strike against it; they've named it after themselves. That's the first sure sign of amateurism. Feynman never used his own name when talking about his diagrams, and Dirac never called his equation by his name and so on. On the other hand, we have Lyndon Ashmore writing about his so-called 'Ashmore's Paradox'. Did you ever see anything more amateurish than that? Besides Moshe Thezion's drawings, that is."

CM: "Yes, I consider that a sure sign of dilettantism, but I'm willing to cut them some slack because of the name of their web site, since ams.org is already taken. I still think they should have called their 'theory' New Angular Momentum Synthesis or something like it."

Later we read in the same skit:

“BH: "One thing I've noticed is that most of the amateur physics wannabes we run across are convinced that relativity is wrong and fall back to Newtonian mechanics. POAMS seems to be unique because it even rejects Newtonian mechanics and seems to fall back to some weird Aristotelian cosmos of circular motions."”

This statement is totally false. POAMS was working with curved Riemann space and Pope mentioned something about this being similar to Aristotelian circular motions. CM insisted throughout the thread that POAMS was trying to replace relativity and Newton with Aristotle and this became the central issue in his attack despite many denials and explanations from Pope. How can anyone be prepared for an attack like that. It was a total fiction and implausible.

Jan 22
One person following the thread noted how sarcastic things were becoming and made this prophetic comment,
“I'm not sure any response is going to get a fair hearing with this kind of mindset that makes such a massive judgement before hearing the reply.”

Viv Pope gave CM's skit a bad review. “You are right – complete Umbala there! (bullshine for the uninitiated). For instance, the criticism is purely prejudicial, the logic of it dismissed out of hand on the basis of purely idiosyncratic first impressions about the title – would you believe. The further impression that we are all ‘amateurs’ reveals a complete lack of knowledge the affidavits of POAMS. For instance, we are all professionals in our fields (albeit heretical progressives in our combined POAMS enterprise), and our work is fronted by two British universities. This has already been explained to someone else voicing these impressions. Don’t you guys ever READ the stuff before ‘shooting from the hip’ in that precipitous way!”

Jan 24 Someone asks the obligatory “where's the math question” even though the math is discussed in depth by Osborne in the POAMS website. There were no more questions or answers this day but quote below from Pope is representative of the tone.

"Yes, there is a problem. If, as you say, CM is so well-informed, well-educated, intelligent, and creative, then who wrote those hughly un-intelligent, illiterate, and destructive postings? My only answer to that conundrum is to assume that he has something like a pet monkey writing for him."

Jan 25
No more questions or answers but lots of smoke and heat.
.
Jan 26
Seven days into the thread and Pope answered 18 questions but he was responding with well thought out answers and good answers take time. Viv Pope, seeing how fast the questions were coming, had to issue this apology and explanation but it did him no good.

(bold added)

So far, this seems to be a description of a thread unfolding pretty much the way it should - lots of valid questions about a radically new idea (and, considering the vast amount of experimental and observational results potentially relevant to the idea, exactly what you'd expect).

Certainly VP (and BobA?) doesn't like CM's skits! But skits - good, bad, or indifferent - were not part of the BobA claim (which concerns only questions).

Now does BobA explain the "but it did him no good" comment? See below.

“I’m sorry, folks but the number of responses to this new POAMS thread, thankful as I am for them, are so numerous that I now find it almost impossible to respond to them individually. The best I can do, from my reading of the various postings, is to present my summary impressions, now and again, as to where the drift is going. So If I don’t answer your question directly, please don’t be offended. If you have anything significant to say, either of a negative or positive kind, you should be able to spot my views on it sooner or later in these summary postings. Please remember that my sole aim in this discussion is simply to assess, on behalf of the POAMS group, what kind of reception there may be to our forthcoming publications among the science community in general. This assessment is especially for a new mathematical book by Anthony Osborne, together with myself as ‘consultant’. “

(bold added)

One part of this is entirely admirable - acknowledgement that there are lots and lots of questions (by implication, many or most good, valid questions) that need to be answered, and that they should be answered.

Another is not (the part in bold). VP seems to be admitting - openly, honestly - that he does not intend to follow the BAUT ATM rule. And this is curious (and unusual): why start an ATM thread if you have no intention of following the rules?

But the first week went better than any to follow where he got the full Forrest Noble treatment.
The questions kept snowballing as he had to answer more questions about his answers and rephrase answers that he had previously given even though they were as clear as they could be the first time so things ground to a difficult crawl. The worst of all was the way he had to contend with what he called a “shark feeding frenzy” made up of the BAUT regulars that hang out in the ATM wherever they smell blood.

I think you can see from the first week where this is headed.

So, from this summary by BobA we learn that the first week went pretty much as it should have (in terms of questions), and that it contains essentially zero evidence for the strong claim ("the rule about answering questions is used in the BAUT ATM forum to stifle debate when other methods, either good bad or otherwise, have failed").

It may be that the later weeks do contain evidence to support this claim; however, all we have is BobA's personal assertion that they do.

Are you planning to continue your summary, BobA?