Experimental Physics is BS?

[Travis Retriever]

[yt]55oEWP_Mq-U[/yt]

He uses information from this guy:
http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/
http://www.youtube.com/bgaede

The main premise seems to be that because the only way to know physical properties that are measured is be able to visualize them as a shape.  Or something like that...Check out the video, it explains this "idea" better than me.
Therefore all of the following are irrational explanations:  irrational objects/explanations: 4D space-time, warped space, higher dimensions, 0D particles, 1D strings, infinitely dense singularities, singularity, black holes, event horizon, wormholes, space expanding, space expanding into nothing, virtual particles, wave-particle duality, wave-packet
and thus are all to be rejected as "religious" superstition.

Or something.
Check out the video and the websites for more details.

Also posted is the discussion between me and JBC on this:  http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=55oEWP_Mq-U

*sighs*
"This is why non-botanists don't write about botany and why non-chemists don't write about chemistry."--Thomas Woods, Jr.

[Travis Retriever]

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This guy (not JBC in this one, but this Bill Gaede dude he talked of) claiming to debunk the double slit experiment and the "religion" of quantum mechanics.

A comment he makes: "In Science, we are never sure, manza. We never know. All we do is explain. It is in traditional religion and in the contemporary religion of Math Phyz where people know and are sure of everything.
As far as Science is concerned, what YOU decide is 'proof' or 'true' to YOU after the presentation is your personal business. Mother Nature doesn't care about our opinions or beliefs. She runs her shop in a given way irrespective of how we think she does it."

[Travis Retriever]

PS:  Should this have gone into the general discussion forum?

[MrBogosity]

I think so, yeah. It should get more discussion there at any rate. Moving.

[Travis Retriever]

OK.
Thanks.

Well, thoughts on the points made by JBC in the first video and by Bill Gaede in the other video?
I also posted the websites JBC got the information from in my first post.

[Travis Retriever]

Another gem from this Bill Gaede person: "10. It doesn't matter whether we are 7 B or 10B. And it doesn't matter if 'energy' is free and we have all the technology of Star Trek fame. And it doesn't matter whether the finest economists and politicians manage the global economy.
.
There is NOTHING we can do about the economy. There is NO other category beyond Services, not one that YOU can even imagine. We have already made Agriculture as efficient as possible. Now we are giving the final touches to Manufacturing and Services."

[Travis Retriever]

What I have seen of this guy; he seems to strike me as a holier than thou conspiracy theorist like Jarrah White, moreso than someone with anything worth taking seriously.

[MrBogosity]

Reminds me of:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented...Inventions reached their limit long ago and I see no hope for further development." —Julius Sextus Frontinus, Roman Acqueduct Commissioner (c. 40-103 AD)

[Gumba Masta]

Well, he was a visionary.

[Travis Retriever]

Reminds me of:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented...Inventions reached their limit long ago and I see no hope for further development." —Julius Sextus Frontinus, Roman Acqueduct Commissioner (c. 40-103 AD)

Why does it remind you of that?

[MrBogosity]

How does he know there is no more than that? How does he know that we can't get any more efficient?

[Travis Retriever]

Fair enough.
Probably the thing that annoyed me the most out of all of this was the point made by JBC that:

"I am rejecting pure empiricism."--So...basically unless he literally doesn't trust his own 5 senses on a day to day basis, he's full of shit and/or hasn't thought that through.

"I think a lot of the points being made are self evident."--begging the question.

"i don't believe in the magnetic "field" b/c those words refer only to a mathematical equation which can tell you, hypothetically, what measurements you would get if you placed a magnetometer at all those locations. of course, i do not deny that SOMETHING is there pushing on those iron filings.
gaede has an interesting alternative, but i don't fully agree with it.
what i am rejecting is pure empiricism, so yes i have major problems with those guys."

As DonExodus2 once quoted a person: "Sure science is made of more holes than certainly [?]; but so is a net; but you can't say that the net doesn't exist, or doesn't have use--just ask the fish!"

and in the video: "A problem throughout physics is reification.  Where you take a concept, or a relationship and convert it or morph it into an object.  So an example of this might be I might say that an object is two feet.  That's reification because I've taken a concept--two feet--and morphed it into an object.  There is nothing inherint about an object which can be two feet.  An object is only two feet in relation to the unit of measurement--the foot, the arbitrary standard.  So two feet is actually a relationship that is understood.  It can't be a definition for an object."

Blah.  His video was the only one I watched.  Honestly, I didn't have the stomach for Bill's videos.

As for his points, there are a few problems...
1.  What he says applies to ALL science; period.  Should we reject science because of that?

2.  Yes; science; all of it is a model; it is not, nor was never meant to provide you with absolute knowledge.
Period.

3.  Science, like a free market, is by definition, emergent and therefore indeterminate.  Just because we "get a few things that are 'irrational'' is NOT justification for scrapping all science of the past 100-200 years.  Also, note the arbitrary definition he gives irrational as "not being able to visualize it."  Which begs the question; why does that qualify as irrational?  Especially when we have technology using these principles (quantum mechanics, General and Special Relativity) every single day (e.g. lasers, iPods, even GPS; and I'm sure there is a ton more).
Just like a free market, you might not always get the 100% best perfect solution to a problem, and/or you may get a few things here and there you don't like.
That's just the way things go.
Would he say use the justification that some computer code found in the (relatively) free market of open source software might blow ass; is that justification to just say, "fuck you computers; we don't need your tricks!  And all of you programmers can suck on d****!!" (If you got that reference, you get a cookie).
Speaking of programming, (at least from my experiences programming in Java) that reification is even MORE rampant in Object Oriented Programming and Computer Science, yet I don't hear a peep out of either of them on it.

4.  JBC also stated that after I posted, "why are there no magnetic monopoles", "yeah, try getting an answer to that perfectly rational question."  So one of the reasons he seems to reject Empiricism (read: observation) is because it doesn't answer every question.  But that's completely unrealistic.  That's like saying, "well, because a free market isn't perfect, just like I want it to be, therefore, the state wins."  How ludicrous!  Even IF the point of experimental physics was to answer every single "rational" (however he defined it in that context) question about the universe, as you yourself said, who's to say we won't get more concrete and efficient as time goes on?

5.  Possibly one of the biggest issues is the overwhelming intellectual arrogance of his position.
It basically boils down to; "well, we humans with our limited abilities cannot picture it perfectly [Seriously; I showed him a video that demonstrates how to imagine in 10 dimensions and his response was, 'nope, can still only picture the higher dimensions in terms of the 3 lower dimensions'], therefore it MUST be false/irrational/[insert another random word with negative connotation here]."  Which is basically just poisoning the well, and attacking the ideas /providing your own without first giving a refutation of them.
But as you (Shane) noted in the Law of Attraction video: "What is science but an blinding refutation of the entire law [of Attraction]?  Have we not seen that reality does not conform to the delusional?  From the lightbulb, to the theory of relativity, these things came about not because people visualized them.  But because they worked hard to understand how the universe works.  A way completely independent of our hopes, thoughts, fears and desires."  And that includes of our ability to picture things as well.

It also doesn't help with people commenting with crap like, "Hans Hoppe has a nice article on this wherein he tries to delve into the aprioristic foundations of geometry and by extension physics in his Economics & Ethics of Private Property. I think Steve Wolfram also goes for an aprioristic grounding of physics."

I already quoted Thomas Woods Jr. showing what I think of this.  I will paraphrase it now...
"This is why non-physicists don't or at least shouldn't write about physics, and why creationists shouldn't write about biology."--Me, inspired from Tom Woods.

*Sighs*  In short, just as Thunderf00t needs to STFU or get educated on Economics and Politics, JBC needs to please GTFO or learn what he is talking about on physics.
Because he clearly hasn't thought this stuff through.

[Travis Retriever]

Me:  "@junior00bacon00chee
Also, I'm not sure what you're getting at.
It sounds like you're saying, 'because there can't be 100% certainty in physics, I reject all experimental physics.'
Sounds very postmodernist.

Jcolinsol: "@Surhotchaperchlorome
The only way that you can see reality as consistent is to excise information from your model. As far as I can see, reality is inherently contradictory."

What does that even mean?

[Travis Retriever]

A video touching on some of this: [yt]2tcOi9a3-B0[/yt]

I don't know much about Isaac Asimov, but he seems a very smart guy.