Thunderbolts Forum

'12-07-26, 00:20 Gottlieb680	Re: Miles Mathis Interview You can ask that question of motive to yourself Lloyd, when you call people who point out errors in theories "haters" of Mathis. I don't hate Mathis, but I do find him arrogant, delusional and too often wrong to support all the preposterous claims he's made. He talks like an authority but when we analyze his ideas we find flabby, unsourced ramblings, bloated writing which obscures his getting to the point, and unfounded musings which on logical grounds are so poorly supported that they are no more worthy of being believed than any number of competing explanations. I can see how you wouldn't know this, Lloyd, but attempting to falsify theories is part of the scientific method. If we dispense with this, we have very little to go on but personal feeling, faith, and guesswork. If we approach ideas logically we should not care whether they turn out to be right or wrong, rather we work to test their validity using the best tools we have. Our brains are at the top of that list of tools. We adopt the scientific method to protect us from the effects of other people's bluster. It does not matter who delivers an idea, it only matters that the idea is a true one. I neither defend the status quo nor promote alternate science. I try to correct errors where they are shown to be errors and I accept new ideas as soon as they can be shown to be true ideas. If it comes down to it, I reject the false ideas of people I love and I accept the true ideas of people I do hate. I have no use for un-examined allegiance or un-examined resistance. Yet, on this forum I have been accused of "lies", of being a "Mathis hater" and much else because I dared point out in specific terms that Mathis is making errors. Whenever I see him doing stunts like posting aerial photos of jet aircraft to "demonstrate" angle of attack isn't necessary for lift on a wing, what am I supposed to do with the falseness of this totally unscientific presentation? Since this is a forum and you started the discussion of Mathis' ideas, Lloyd, it is logical to bring up my criticisms here. No hate is involved and I didn't think that stroking Mathis' ego and the egos of his fans was the price of admission.
'12-07-26, 01:28 bill miller	Re: Miles Mathis Interview It's so strange that Mathis' remaining fans talk about "haters," personal attacks, and our motives. It's as if they don't register what he says on his own web pages. Hating and personal attacks? This is a guy who suggested that Lee Smolin was on cocaine for his TED Talk, in a remarkably empty screed about how admired and well funded Smolin and the Perimeter Institute are: "He could have lectured while standing in a tub of hundred dollar bills. Once a modern audience sees that, they will cheer you for any series of words or belches." Yeah, that's not hating. Gottlieb680 hit the nail on the head by saying Mathis's work is "classic misdirection aimed at lulling the reader with unverified vitriolic criticism and titillating some people's desire to see experts belittled." Mathis found a niche with lay people who are interested in science, but don't much care for fancy experts—and don't have the time or interest in learning the fundamentals so that they can participate from an informed position. They just want to get straight to the theorizin', and Mathis feeds this desire with his relentless attacks on the likes of Smolin. It's like telling people that every last economist on the world stage is an incompetent idiot, and are all part of a vast conspiracy—but YOU! can understand and solve the problems of global economics, because you have a checking account and have made an ATM withdrawl and that's all you need to know. Wrong. If you're going to overthrow a complex mainstream discipline, you had better first learn the discipline you intend to overthrow. Mathis has not done this—if he did, he wouldn't need to run to Wikipedia to look up every concept and quote the silliest passages he can find—let alone have his fans. If Mathis wrote from an informed position, he wouldn't avoid any and all public scrutiny of his ideas (in science this is called peer review). He could take comments publicly or have his own forum, and participate in discussions under his own name. But he doesn't. This is what we mean when we say he is hiding. From an informed position, he could actually address critics directly and help them understand what they're supposedly missing. (I e-mailed him once and got the "I guess you're just too dumb to understand my brilliance" treatment.) Rather than fomenting understanding, he launches missile after bitter missile from his well-protected intellectual bunker. It's what a person needs to do when they lack knowledge of both sides of an issue. And that leaves folks like us to bring his followers back to reality on forums like this, Amazon's book reviews, etc. It's no wonder his second book isn't available on Amazon. He just can't take the heat.
'12-07-26, 02:11 Corpuscles	Re: Miles Mathis Interview Gottlieb680 wrote: Well, Corpuscles, it seems you're the one using ad hominems and the moderator had to edit it out. Great scientific rigor there Corpuscles. You seem to be the one who is in a twist. If logic doesn't work, then surely it does?. LOL! I suggest you review your own attacks on MM's character in this thread. BTW I hope you saw the mod deleted description? It is called sense of humour Look that definition up on the interwebs and see if you can find a better peer reviewed paper that ..agrees with your point of view! Gottlieb680 wrote: Mathis has plastered the internet with lead-ins to his "papers"so that you can't do a search without his titles coming up with claims for," the extinction of pi", "the calculus is corrupt"," physics is corrupt"," why( fill in the blank) is a cheat", "eleven big questions you should have for the standard model," and a few hundred others, so the idea of not reading at least one to see if his absurd claims are genuine is an unreasonable one. But when we do read one and see that there are hundreds more, and each one we read is as mistaken as the last, and we see that many people were talking about them as if Mathis' "papers" were verified science, we felt an obligation to register our explanations of why Mathis is in error. I know that is what I felt, but I think others would agree to a similar motivation.. So are you saying mainstream science ONLY has the right to post things on the internet? The administration of science is corrupt, and has been off track and not observing the pure principles of scientific method for nearly a century! eg Where is the scientific experimental validation of the uniform speed of light outside of our solar system? How can you demonstrate redshift from galaxies millions of light years away... where the experimental validation? Gottlieb680 wrote: Mathis is a colossal failure of intellect, imagination, scientific thinking, logic and work ethic. The more you analyze his writings the more you see that is not right. He dispenses with the scientific method but does not replace it with anything better, just more of his tortured, jumbled, disorganized musings.. You have already told us many times how much smarter you are! Where is your web site with your published papers? Surely you can't let that darstedly despicable MM"plaster the internet" when you have so many more profound contributions that you would like us to pull apart and ridicule in the name of "peer review" Gottlieb680 wrote: Mathis is now paying for years of abuse he's heaped upon the scientific community. And Mathis is wrong so often that one cannot have any confidence in his brash claims to have reformulated calculus, returned physics to its mechanical foundations and so on and so on. Such a pathological lack of humility is something that should be taken as a clear warning. He is hiding from seeking funds to experiment( because everyone else is a pawn of the government and the investors are corrupt). He is hiding from submitting for peer review (because peer review, he assures us, is corrupt and he doesn't know how to write a scientific paper). He is hiding from soliciting his readers for funds to experiment, saying he'd rather just continue writing more "papers"( because he really doesn't know how to write a actual experiment proposal and wouldn't know how to run an experiment anyway). He is hiding because of all these and more, but the biggest flop is pi=4. He won't retract it because that would be admitting he was wrong. He won't correct or revise or work all of it out on paper for a 3D ellipse because that process would uncover his errors even to himself (if he's not already too far gone).. Are you a school headmaster or a policeman? If not sounds like you missed your calling... you could go around punishing and imposing authority on all sorts of nasty dumb liars. I agree pi=4 is wrong... <moderator edit> to carefully read it an chose politely to disagree but admire the right to free creative thought Gottlieb680 wrote: Mathis is no different from any other purveyor of botched scientific theories on the internet. Readers should closely analyze his ideas with the intent to prove them wrong. That is part of what is demanded by scientific rigor. Mathis seems to only re-check his ideas with the intent to prove them correct, and runs afoul of the old cautions against confirmation bias. Mathis' theories, the ones I've analyzed, do not hold up as being correct. I have clearly laid out my explanations. If anything, suspicion should be directed at Mathis for writing such junk in the first place and posting it all over the scientific search spaces of the internet. Looking forward to you and your buddy looking seriously into many of the extremely well researched profound EU topics available on this forum, and hopefuly you won't make any botched efforts.... <moderator edit>Cheers Corp <moderator edit>
'12-07-26, 05:27 David	Re: Miles Mathis Interview As long as the Pi=4 theory is posted at his web site, then it is fair game; all I am doing is putting a spotlight on it. You Mathis supporters seem a bit thin-skinned; I would have thought you'd be delighted that I quote the new Leonardo verbatim. With that said, here is yet another quote from the ballet dancer turned physicist: "I would like to close by thanking all my readers who are defending our position all over the internet. You are doing a great job and don't seem to need me there. Keep it up. We are winning." Miles Mathis (The Revolution is Now) Priceless!
'12-07-26, 05:42 Gottlieb680	Re: Miles Mathis Interview Thanks, Corpuscles, for such an intemperate rant as your latest post. It's just the sort of thing Mathis does. 1>"So are you saying mainstream science ONLY has the right to post things on the internet?" 2>"You have already told us many times how much smarter you are! Where is your web site with your published papers? Surely you can't let that darstedly despicable MM"plaster the internet" when you have so many more profound contributions that you would like us to pull apart and ridicule in the name of "peer review" " 3>"Are you a school headmaster or a policeman? If not sounds like you missed your calling... you could go around punishing and imposing authority on all sorts of nasty dumb liars." 4>"I agree pi=4 is wrong... <moderator edit> to carefully read it an chose politely to disagree but admire the right to free creative thought." 5>"Looking forward to you and your buddy looking seriously into many of the extremely well researched profound EU topics available on this forum, and hopefuly you won't make any botched efforts.... <moderator edit>" 6> <moderator edit> Corpuscles My answers to your rants. #1... I only need to remind you that I've only asserted my right to point out errors... in anyone's science. #2... I am not a scientist and it would be presumptuous to have a website and post papers on science without the training or the experience. And I have never told anyone how smart I am. #3... I have only sought to be fairly heard in my explanations of Mathis' errors and I gave examples of his erratic and unreliable behavior which were posted by him on his own site. #4... I have disagreed in a specific manner with what I saw as Mathis' errors, omissions and sloppiness. Rights to creative thought are not the issue. It's the validity of specific points of theory which is the issue and the right to challenge them if they are wrong. #5... Unlike Mathis I would defend my own ideas myself and not leave it to others. I would not hide and avoid admitting errors. #6... <moderator edit> But thank you, Corpuscles, for providing such an blatant contrast to the reasoned discussion, what there has been of it, on this thread. I simply don't find your methods sound and your appeals to the right of free creative thought without challenge are little more than an excuse to let stand fairytales masquerading as science. No deal.
'12-07-26, 16:12 hertz	Re: Miles Mathis Interview David wrote: As long as the Pi=4 theory is posted at his web site, then it is fair game; all I am doing is putting a spotlight on it. You Mathis supporters seem a bit thin-skinned; I would have thought you'd be delighted that I quote the new Leonardo verbatim. With that said, here is yet another quote from the ballet dancer turned physicist: indeed the pi=4 papers are some of his most interesting (think there's 3 of them, or is it 4, lol) and it's a bit surprising that even here they're treated somewhat skeptically...in the extinction of pi (http://milesmathis.com/pi2.html) he immediately narrows his focus in the abstract by noting that: ..in kinematic situations, π is 4. For all those going ballistic over my title, I repeat and stress that this paper applies to kinematic situations, not to static situations. I am analyzing an orbit, which is caused by motion and includes the time variable. In that situation, π becomes 4. When measuring your waistline, you are not creating an orbit, and you can keep π for that. i've heard feynman himself note that if nature had to calculate pi, waves would never break, so i'm not sure why all the fuss...mathis goes on to show that circumference and diamater cannot be compared directly since one is an acceleration and the other a velocity, which again is correct, and goes on to unmask the assumption (used by everyone fron ancient greeks to newton to modern geeks) that pi somehow represents the "real" or xternal world (which it surely does not). mathis is many things, ballet dancer (not sure why that's a bad thing david), art historian, painter and science critic who also happens to be pretty fluent in maths...he knows his history and is arguably using that knowledge in ways that no "real" physicist ever has (or could), and as a result can confidently claim the emperor has no clothes...that's his right...we don't have to believe it or like it...that's our right, but it is this going back to the historic "root" of a problem which i usually find interesting, and in some ways make his claims more plausible. because he his multi-talented, he goes against the grain of a society which today values specialization over generalization, but he's always careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater as you can see below: Now, I have never claimed that the calculus is wrong, in toto. Newton was right about most things, and the calculus is a true and useful algorithm, used correctly. It works great on geometric curves, and it can be used to find π in a geometric circle. It solves one of the problems Newton wanted to solve. But as it is used now, it does not solve the problem of physical circles, because physical circles are not geometric circles if feynman were still alive, i think he'd agree
'12-07-26, 17:36 Aardwolf	Re: Miles Mathis Interview Gottlieb680 wrote: #5... Unlike Mathis I would defend my own ideas myself and not leave it to others. I would not hide and avoid admitting errors. If so, then why no response when I pointed out your error regarding GPS clocks on page 3? In case you missed it; Aardwolf wrote: Gottlieb680 wrote: The clock, most notably, did indeed run slower just as the theory predicted and the satellites which were launched later had clocks which incorporated a correction factor of something like 30 milliseconds per 24 hours. The clocks ran faster in orbit.
'12-07-26, 19:55 bill miller	Re: Miles Mathis Interview "science critic who also happens to be pretty fluent in maths..." I can't believe the stuff I'm seeing here. Whoever wrote this is easily impressed. Maybe you can explain why, out of hundreds of "papers," NONE of the following make a single appearance (and please correct me if I'm wrong): 1. A partial derivative problem—critical in situations with more than one variable, i.e., the real world. 2. An integral problem—absolutely necessary for calculating areas, curve lengths, etc. (Amazing how Mathis doesn't even touch integration. Maybe because it proves that calculus actually works?) 3. A differential equation—as any engineer knows, many real-world mechanical situations with interacting systems are described by them, and they are ubiquitous in physics—but NOWHERE on Mathis' site. Bizarre. These are just three basic elements that students encounter in a first-year college maths class, if not sooner. Would a Mathis follower please explain this? His skill set seems to stop about two months into high school calculus, and yet it is claimed he is "fluent" in the maths necessary for physics, from quantum mechanics to cosmology. Can't tell you how ludicrous that is. It's as if Mathis challenged himself to create a fantasy physics that requires only the algebra that he bothered to learn decades ago, filling in the gaps magician-style with hand-waving, ranting, and Wikipedia quote-mining. Oh wait! That's actually what happened. PS. I'm seeing a lot of good points in this thread going completely ignored. For anyone who would dismiss simple questions without so much as acknowledging them...merely because they challenge your hero's base-level competence...you should be ashamed to call yourself a thinker.
'12-07-26, 20:47 Lloyd	Re: Miles Mathis Interview BM says: PS. I'm seeing a lot of good points in this thread going completely ignored, and the above will probably go that way as well. For anyone who would dismiss these simple questions even without so much as acknowledging them...merely because they challenge your hero's base-level competence...you should be ashamed to call yourself a thinker. * Such frequent efforts by you antagonists to insult us Mathis listeners are what inspire me to avoid reading much of your messages. I gloss over yours and just read the supporters, because I'm not a masochist, or a self-hater.
'12-07-26, 21:26 bill miller	Re: Miles Mathis Interview >I gloss over yours and just read the supporters Spoken like a true believer! Please remember to feed the web kitty. >because I'm not a masochist, or a self-hater Because taking another look and re-assessing one's beliefs, and thereby possibly realizing that you've been duped by a clever demagogue, constitutes masochism and self-hatred. That is a sad place to be intellectually.
'12-07-26, 21:43 hertz	Re: Miles Mathis Interview hey bill, Maybe you can explain why, out of hundreds of "papers," NONE of the following make a single appearance (and please correct me if I'm wrong): 1. A partial derivative problem—critical in situations with more than one variable, i.e., the real world. 2. An integral problem—absolutely necessary for calculating areas, curve lengths, etc. (Amazing how Mathis doesn't even touch integration. Maybe because it proves that calculus actually works?) 3. A differential equation—as any engineer knows, many real-world mechanical situations with interacting systems are described by them, and they are ubiquitous in physics—but NOWHERE on Mathis' site. Bizarre. my first impression upon reading this was, "you gotta be kiddin' me" right, and thought it would be fairly easy to provide some examples, but then realized they're scattered all over the place, so decided to provide in a nutshell the philosphy of miles mathis as i read it (in bold): Unified Fields in Disguisehttp://milesmathis.com/uft2.html ...neither Einstein nor string theory has presented a simple unified field equation. As time has passed this has seemed more and more difficult to achieve, and more and more difficult math has been brought in to attack the problem. But it turns out the answer was always out of reach because the question was wrong. he can do what he does so simply and elegantly because he goes back to the source (in many cases newton), unpeels the conflated ideas, and asks the right questions, for example, of orbital and tangenital velocity (http://milesmathis.com/angle.html)...no tensors or hamiltonians required...and then shows how one after another of the "great ones" simply carried on these mistakes (because they were "settled" and could be taken for granted...always dangerous)...i can see how this would be very disconcerting to practicing engineers and scientists who have devoted their lives to projects requiring "difficult math" and why it may seem like a slap in the face to have to listen to some punk ballet dancer tell you that everything you know is wrong (which he's not btw), and it begs the question that if everything we know is wrong, how come so much stuff works so well...to which mathis notes (from the pi paper): Shouldn't all engineering be impossible with errors of this magnitude? Shouldn't all of our machines immediately break and crash? Not necessarily. Because we make the same mistakes in all our equations, the equations are correct relative to each other. i'm not sure how much of his stuff you've really read, but i'd encourage you to check out a few more of his papers with a bit more open mind (not so open your brains fall out, but temporarily suspend your disbelief if possible), because no, i'm really not easily impressed...it takes something out of the ordinary to get my attention, and something extraordinary to hold it
'12-07-26, 22:13 bill miller	Re: Miles Mathis Interview Hertz, I appreciate your willingness to engage, and I do not wish to insult anyone, but I do get frustrated with the "Your questions make me uncomfortable, so I'm not going to think about them, la-la-la" brand of non-discussion. I haven't read all or even most of Mathis' articles, but I am curious at how he would approach integrals or differential equations, if you have a link for those. I didn't see any in the article you linked. I did though see this: Mass is not a fundamental characteristic, like density or volume is. To know a mass, you have to know both a density and a volume. Most people would say you have to know mass and volume to know a density (which has units of mass/volume). Then again, in another essay he writes, Mass is tied not to the radius or the velocity of the radius, it is tied to the acceleration of the radius. Huh? What? Yet mass depends upon the "fundamental characteristics" density and volume. I am so confused. If density is fundamental, there should be a unit of density, and it should be directly measurable—yet there is no device that measures density. I guess that would be a rigidi-meter, since he says structural rigidity is dependent upon density....come on! Mathis' statement "the equations are correct relative to each other" (nice out!) is inconsistent with many of his claims—that the explanation of the tides is wrong, the explanation of rainbows is wrong, that green does not exist as a pure color, etc., etc. Simplifying the maths should just...simplify the maths. It shouldn't require a charge field and totally new explanations for lift, why hot air rises, and so on. Don't you think there is a problem here? You know, the first time I came across Mathis and his articles, I got excited. I thought he had found some really interesting things. But it didn't take long to start spotting the inconsistencies throughout, like the above. I'm just glad I'm not someone whose willingness to believe a person scales with my desire to believe.
'12-07-26, 23:47 Corpuscles	Re: Miles Mathis Interview bill miller wrote: I haven't read all or even most of Mathis' articles, but I am curious at how he would approach integrals or differential equations, if you have a link for those. I didn't see any in the article you linked.. bill miller wrote: IYou know, the first time I came across Mathis and his articles, I got excited. I thought he had found some really interesting things. But it didn't take long to start spotting the inconsistencies throughout, like the above. I'm just glad I'm not someone whose willingness to believe a person scales with my desire to believe. Bill At least you have refrained from going overboard on the character attacks of MM. Please keep that up. You have identified your own main problem, that being "I haven't read all or even most of Mathis' articles". It is impossible to follow MM's train of thought in individual articles unless you grasp his overall hypothesis. (I don't happen to agree with it exactly but derive inspiration and pleasure in reading his stuff and sometimes reading it with a background application of a close to, but different hypothesis in mind.) It is difficult to read with an overall understanding because they are disjointed articles. Some of his closest supporters (some used to be prolific posters on TB) urged him a few years ago to write a book but unfortunately it was pretty much merely a paper print of the web articles which only mildly helped get his veiw of the big picture. SO READ THEM (most) then you won't be so concerned at how silly some things ...seem. Warning: he does not clutter with the math workings. I would prefer if he did a 2nd version including workings but am delighted he makes it entertainingly readable and therefore more acceptable to a wider audience than the math heads. Q When a satelite orbits earth, does it subscibe a circle? 2pi r ?
'12-07-27, 02:45 David	Re: Miles Mathis Interview hertz wrote: indeed the pi=4 papers are some of his most interesting (think there's 3 of them, or is it 4, lol) and it's a bit surprising that even here they're treated somewhat skeptically... "Somewhat skeptically"? Now that is genuinely funny; better still, hillarious! Have you not followed the conversation? In case you missed it, earlier in this thread the Pi=4 theory was given a sound thrashing; it has been battered, beaten, and knocked to the ground unconscious; it's doubtful it will ever rise again, even amongst the most ardent of Mathis supporters. I thought the whole issue of Pi=4 had been settled, and that it was now universally agreed that the theory had been nothing more than mere claptrap. So I guess that makes you the sole holdout. If you want to revisit the issue, I'm game; but you will have to do more than just copy and paste from his web site; parroting Mathis chapter and verse is not an argument, it's a dodge. Likewise, claiming that someone must read his entire 3000 plus pages to make any sense of it, is also a dodge. So here it is again, the list of errors in the Pi=4 theory. By the way, this is not every error, only the most glaring and blatantly obvious ones. 1) Pi is not a unitless constant, its an acceleration. 2) Pi has two values: 3.14 and 4 (static and kinematic, respectively). 3) The radius is a velocity. 4) The circumference is not a length, it has units of (m^2/s^3). 5) Newton monitored the wrong angle in Lemma 6 of the Principia. 6) A circle is composed of only straight lines, no curves; a stair step. 7) Time is "embedded in the curve" and adds to its length. 8) The "short version proof" does not contain any motion or a time variable. 9) The tangent is never taken to a limit, as claimed. 10) The chord is converted into its x and y components, which are then summed together creating a new, longer length. 11) The tangent is substituted into the proof illegally. 12) NASA is hiding information relating to pi (Conspiracy theory!). Since you are the one who first mentioned kinematics, perhaps you should start by explaining why the "short version proof" does not contain a time variable or any motion whatsoever — Number 8 in the list above? Good luck!
'12-07-27, 15:39 hertz	Re: Miles Mathis Interview well now you've done it bill...you've tumbled onto the nub of it...the quintessence if you will, of what makes this site different from mainstream sites with the following: "It shouldn't require a charge field" i imagine you'll call it hand waving that this mysterious stuff we call "mass" should be a combination of volume and density (but what else is it), because years of hard work and study have convinced "reasonable" people that in fact density can only be determined if the mass is already known...if you can't see the tautology in that, it's not your fault, but if, as noted earlier, you can suspend your highly attuned BS meter for just a moment, you'll see that by ascribing both density and volume to mass (regardless of how that "density" is measured") you have a very convenient way of, not separating, but rather re-discovering the complementary nature of gravity and EM, and have a very real chance of breaking free from the gravity-only chains that currently bind you...oh, and to david...i'm not the last holdout...waves don't believe pi is an irrational number either (no matter how often i tell them, "no, your curve is determined by 3.14ever" they continue to break over my deck and tear stuff up...go figure)