intellectual fads

[PGTips]

Why the fuck would I post it here for you to see, and all to steal?

If its as great as you claim, it'll be sufficently complex to sail straight over my head. Besides, if I walked into my Director of Studies office tomorrow with a brand new theory of physics he'd immediately ask "Where did you get it?" because he knows I'm not capable of that. That and if I did publish it, you'd be able to do me for plagerism.

Besides, I didn't ask for a full copy, just a brief explaination of it, ideas you've had and directions you've moved in. I've no wish to steal anyones ideas, I'm struggling at the moment to get me ass a 1st, never mind a PhD!

The entire equation is a representation of other values, mainly bodies of mass, and warping of EM fields within a coordinate system, please tell me something new. Like how many actual entries were made on the original....

Those field equations have nothing to do with EM fields, they are gravity fields. There, I just told you something new

ZORN That's great coming from you. I have yet to see you counter any arguments I have made in the past with any effort, or thought.

Because of exactly this problem, you claim something with no backing up at all. How could we counter a claim which is just "You're wrong, I'm right" ?

You are still as I thought of you five months ago, a fucking idiot.

I guess we have similar opinions to one another. The difference is, I claim to know nothing more than I do and accept my ability is perhaps not as good as I had once thought (several years ago). You claim to have outthought 10,000 people with PhD's and who work full time on these problems, yet offer no proof.

I am not asking for a vague description of your ideas to make myself feel better, I've long ago accepted that in the physics/maths world, my ability is not very high on the scale, and there are many people better at me in everything that I'm vaguely good at. This is not an ego thing about me, its about the people who are better than me. I find it incredibly egotistical of yourself to claim you have done more than them combined. Its possible you might have, but given comments Euler quoted, noone here thinks you have.

Besides, a "fucking idiot" I may be, but a fucking idiot who keeps noticing mistakes in your maths and physics

I already had my adjusted relativity on my journal, and that's all you will get from me. If you can even begin to figure out what goes after it, well....

Yes, I've just looked at those entries. You've still got the same problem Compact noticed in a previous E = .... thread of yours, units. The left hand side has units of energy, I'd like to know whas md^m have as units, but it certainly isn't energy!

Its critical flaws like that which a 16 year old physics student would notice which remove any vague glimmer of faith we had in your ideas. If I came up with an equation which said "5 Newtons = 34 metres" or "3 seconds = 2 Coulombs" noone would in their right mind take it seriously. That isn't a matter of physics, its a matter of obviousness!

To pull a quote of you from another thread :

^^Don't worry about it, intelligent people have problems comprehending statements of lesser beings, right.

I think thats vaguely hypocritical of the man claiming to have outsmarted, in his spare time, tens of thousands of physicists and mathematicians, all with PhDs and who work full time on these problems, don't you? If I'm coming off as "I think I'm really clever", you're coming off as "I'm think I'm so much cleverer than all the people who think they're really clever put together".

Otherwise I have nothing to prove, I already know I'm right.

All the maths in the universe won't help you if you can't get your units right.

now - i'm not for one second expressing support for david's mathematical position. principally because i cannot perform what my local education authority would consider 'basic' mathematical functions i was just bothered by some of the comments in this thread, which verged on the absolutism which some science-based people are prone to.

I understand what you mean Seuss, if original thinking from outside the "mainstream" science community was completely supressed or ignored, things like Relativity might never have come to light (or taken an extra 50 years!). However, Einstein was open with his thoughts and didn't claim "I have a new theory overthrowing Newton" until he had a paper ready for submission. Even then he didn't go around shouting from the roof tops his genius new idea till it was given evidence in 1919 (even then he didn't go around shouting it out, people did that for him).

David is claiming to have userped Einsteins ideas, yet obviously is a long way from a completely paper (judging by some of the thoughts in his Journal). Again, there is no problem with this, provided someone gives even the vagues of hints as to the direction they are moving in. Do they have a problem with the limitations of tensors (the stuff Relativity is written in)? Is it more he doesn't think light behaves in that way (experimental evidence would be needed that hints at that)? Do extra dimensions result in gravity behaving in a differnt way? David telling us any of those things would mean we'd know what vaguely what reason he is doing what he's doing, but still make it impossible to us to "steal" (even with a hint, to develop a theory would take years!). David offers none of these, citing a mixture of paranoia, a feeling we're being elitest/biggoted and (I imagine) a worry that we have a sufficent amount of physics/maths knowledge to be able to tear his "theory" apart. The fact we've spoted half a dozen errors in even his simple physics/maths posts is testiment to that I think.

New ideas are always welcome. However, saying "I'm right, you're wrong" without saying anything else is never welcome, because its not constructive, its just annoying. Until David gives us something other than "I'm right, you're wrong" I can't see how anyone can take him seriously.

 

[dr seuss]

However, Einstein was open with his thoughts and didn't claim "I have a new theory overthrowing Newton" until he had a paper ready for submission. Even then he didn't go around shouting from the roof tops his genius new idea till it was given evidence in 1919 (even then he didn't go around shouting it out, people did that for him).

totally - i think i was trying to make a more general comment rather than talking specifically about this particular theory

 

[compact]

This is a little out in left field, but since Einstein keeps getting name-dropped in this thread, I just want to clarify something that always bugs me. Einstein was no outsider or novice when he published his four famous papers. Yes, he was working in a patent office, but he already had a PhD in physics. The academic world was very different back then, and this wasn't really an unusual situation.
There are other, probably better, examples for the type of discussion in this thread. Srinivasa Ramanujan was a very famous number theorist who was almost entirely self taught, for example. Such examples are very few and far between, though.

 

[Euler]

As far as Math here, the only dick-sizing I participate in is mental rationalism. Look it up sometime. Otherwise I have nothing to prove, I already know I'm right.

Look, I've just had the pleasure of reading some of your journal entries. The winning entry so far, is undoubtedly:

E = md^(pi)

David, maybe it's time you let this one go. I'm pretty condifdent I've had things fall out of my ass with more talent in physics/mathematics. You're talking about stuff you clearly don't understand.

 

[zorn]

Good point, compact. That's always bugged me too, along with incorrect assertions that Einstein did badly in school or was terrible at mathematics.

David, since you mentioned bodies of mass in the Einstein field equations, ket me ask you a simple question -- where does one represent a massive body in the Einstein field equations? In particular, suppose we have just a single point mass m, at rest at a point x. (x is a vector.) How do we put that into the field equations?

This a very basic question, it takes barely half a line to answer. (In fact you don't really even need to know GR to answer it.) If you can't answer the simplest questions about GR, why should anyone believe that you have the slightest understanding of it?

 

[AmorRoark]

Originally posted by SgTaIrBoRnE
is it just me or are most feminist lesbians? all they do is rag on men and how we use women as objects. come on, i'm shure that there are many men in here that have loved the shit out of a woman, and never did shit wrong to them. and what did they do to you, fucked around on you. why, because they thought that you would stay with them as much as you proclaimed your love and devotion to them.

look at how many women are the ones filing for devorce these days. its not the men leaving the women behind, its the women realizing they can have anything they want using that little thing with hair on it, and saying fuck this dude.

i watched the E true hollywood story on jenna jameson the other night and there was a feminist on there talking about how wrong the adult film industry is. good ole jenna told her, "why should i feel bad because i have sex for a living? the women get payed more than the men, we get to choose who we work with, and we have a high quality of life".

the women who are used as "objects" love what they do. they get paid great money to do next to nothing and they become famous. isnt that what most women want. money , power, respect?

First of all, all feminists I know are straight. I don't think feminism in the academic sense, has anything to do with ones sexual identity.

Also, If you think feminists purpose is, is to "rag on men" , then either you don't know anything about feminism or the 'feminists' you've met are not true to the ideology.

Now, when it comes down to the whole 'pornography' dispute, in today's world, you can't assume that all feminists think that pornography is degrading. In actuality, a lot of neo-feminists are arguing for pornography by claiming that it's a mode of empowerment to women.

I, personally, don't agree that pornography is 'empowering' to women, because first of all, most actresses aren't in control of what they do. additionally, it's proven that pornography can psychologically change how men view women. Plus, the women in pornography rarely get health benefits or any other kind of benefits for that matter. Though I think it is potentinally harmful, I agree that trying to stop production of pornographic material is unconstitutional.

This is an example of why it's difficult to change things from a feminist standpoint. Though the government may pass laws for more equal treatment of gender.. it's difficult for these laws to change society's ideas of gender treatment.

Anyway, in regards to the topic, I don't think feminism is an intellectual fad. Freudianism is an example of an intellectual fad because his ideas have been disproven since. However, you can't disprove that women only have 1% of the world's wealth or that women are heavily underrepresented in our governments (worldwide only 9% of positions are held by women).

The main problem that I have with feminism is that it has not evolved enough. Feminists are still wearing blinders. They haven't taken into account that the most repressed women aren't Western white, and middle-class (themselves). The women that *really* need change are those of the lower classes as (bell hooks's arguement)

 

[zorn]

sorry, just found this thread again.



i'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist, so even if there were semi-prominent examples i would struggle to find them i cannot provide you with an example; i think my post was intended more as a foil to the 'your theory cannot possibly be right ever at all in any way' absolutism which has been the downfall of all sorts of great minds.

i'm sure that - once we remove the equipment requirement (ain't no-one got their own private particle accelerator, right?), it's still possible, if unlikely, for someone working outside the usual atmosphere to succeed. i'm not talking about some random factory worker happening upon a successor to string theory; obviously it would be someone who had formal training of some sort. but really - honestly - is it completely impossible for insight to be revealed (considering that 'mathematics' and 'physics' are very large fields) by someone who is essentially external?

einstein had some theories which even he discredited; and was joined by many physicists. he even called one of them - it escapes me now - the 'greatest failure' of his life; it turned out not to be a failure at all. if, during his lifetime, not only einstein but all those who echoed his doubts were so easily misled - then surely it's similarly possible for today's physicists and mathematicians to also make a collective misjudgement?

You're thinking of the cosmological constant, which he called his "greatest mistake." Shortly after Einstein published his general theory of relativity in 1916, he realized that it implied the universe was either expanding or contracting. At the time, however, it was generally believed that the universe was static. So in 1917 he modified his original equation to include an arbitrary constant, the "cosmological constant," allowing a static solution. Just a few years later Edwin Hubble made the astonishing discovery that the universe was expanding -- something which Einstein could have predicted had he stuck by his guns.

But it's not the case that physicists went on to ignore the cosmological constant -- interest in it lingered on for decades, though not until quite recently there was there observational evidence for it.

---

I don't think anyone is saying it's impossible for 'outsiders' to make any useful contribution to a field, but that physics is complicated stuff that very many extremely bright people have been working on for a long time. If you hear something about eg general relativity that seems foolish to you, you ought to investigate the possibility that you don't understand general relativity before concluding "physicists are all morons who never thought of this obvious thing showing their theory is wrong."

Much more serious people than David have a tendency to do this; it's incredibly obnoxious to hear people sneeringly dismiss an entire field when it's painfully apparent they simply don't understand what they're talking about and can't be bothered to exert the minimal effort it would take to figure this out. suess, I know I've seen you get really annoyed and smackdown posters who were doing this on history topics (eg the Holocaust).

 

[David]

^^^Funny, I've never displayed any knowledge at all here. Just a smug attitude, and disgruntled thoughts about the physics community in the US. If I have actually shown anything, please point me to it. Your accusations for what you think I know, and don't are far from accurate. Baseless generalizations, and clumping me as being fringe, if that. I experience this everyday. Should I let it bother me? You're still doing whatever you do, will it change my life? Will it change yours, if it turns out, that I'm right? We'll see I guess.

AN Simply out of respect towards what you represent, I will tell you that I have never done anything serious on this site, I never will.

I will be presenting my thoughts to the world one day, but not while I'm here in the states. I will when I feel comfortable about it. We think the same of each other, you because I don't participate in online chat of my thoughts. You I'll think of once, because I still feel you are limiting yourself by practicing Maths.

Look, I've just had the pleasure of reading some of your journal entries. The winning entry so far, is undoubtedly:

E = md^(pi)

David, maybe it's time you let this one go. I'm pretty condifdent I've had things fall out of my ass with more talent in physics/mathematics. You're talking about stuff you clearly don't understand.

Thanks for telling me something. You're still wrong.

Yes, pull it apart while it's in parts, and you'll get nothing. If you had it all, then it would make sense to you.

Then again, then you would have it, not me.

 

[thursday]

I've never displayed any knowledge at all here. Just a smug attitude, and disgruntled thoughts about the physics community in the US. If I have actually shown anything, please point me to it.

i think that's the problem. if you're being so smug and critical of the physics community in the US then you need to display some knowledge or atleast demonstrate some authority on the subject. if not, then people are right in criticizing your actions and not taking you seriously.

imagine if i just came on the board and said, pi is exactly 3, and all the leading mathematicians of the past and present have been wrong, but i don't give any arguments in support of this and i don't show any proof of my authority on the subject. how would you react to my shocking and rather dubious claim?

you even said yourself that your professor reviewed your work and said it was rubbish. if he is your instructor then maybe you should take his opinion more seriously, otherwise just teach your own class. i mean, you sound like you're probably an undergrad student, and maybe you're a precocious learner, but you may not have the foundations yet to accurately revise accepted theories which much of modern physics is based on.

honestly, how old are you, and what's your level of education? what school do you go to? providing your credentials is the least you could do to gain some kind of credibility if you want people to take you seriously.

 

[dr seuss]

I don't think anyone is saying it's impossible for 'outsiders' to make any useful contribution to a field, but that physics is complicated stuff that very many extremely bright people have been working on for a long time.

cool; it just seemed that way. remember, we're also talking about mathematics as well, or at least we were. i think if you read my posts i was just trying to argue that it's not beyond the realms of possibility for someone to achieve something outside the usual academic realm.

on a smaller scale, it is still happening - even today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1428429,00.html

If you hear something about eg general relativity that seems foolish to you, you ought to investigate the possibility that you don't understand general relativity before concluding "physicists are all morons who never thought of this obvious thing showing their theory is wrong."

of course. i would have thought that would have been anyone's starting point.

Much more serious people than David have a tendency to do this; it's incredibly obnoxious to hear people sneeringly dismiss an entire field when it's painfully apparent they simply don't understand what they're talking about and can't be bothered to exert the minimal effort it would take to figure this out. suess, I know I've seen you get really annoyed and smackdown posters who were doing this on history topics (eg the Holocaust).

yeah, definitely (re: 'smackdown'). here's where we encounter one of the interesting interdisciplinary interchanges (look! three 'inter's in a row!!!).

physics is an important discipline in a way that history simply cannot be; and history is important in a way that physics simply cannot be. or rather, physics ended world war II but history can stop it happening again

 

[Euler]

I've never displayed any knowledge at all here.

Can't argue with that.

I will be presenting my thoughts to the world one day, but not while I'm here in the states. I will when I feel comfortable about it.

And of course, not before you've finished your homework!

You I'll think of once, because I still feel you are limiting yourself by practicing Maths.

Not that the above sentence is comprehendible, but could you let us into what kind of Mathematics knowledge you have? Or, would you be able to answer the question posed by Zorn:

David, since you mentioned bodies of mass in the Einstein field equations, ket me ask you a simple question -- where does one represent a massive body in the Einstein field equations? In particular, suppose we have just a single point mass m, at rest at a point x. (x is a vector.) How do we put that into the field equations?

I mean, surely you'll agree; it'd be pretty tricky to overthrow a theory you don't have the slightest comprehension of.

I personally have the following problems with your claim.

1) You don't seem to know any Mathemtics/Physics
2) Your intelligence comes across as slightly below par

Below is a very well known eqn used in GR. Anyone who has even a basic knowledge of GR will recognise it. It is also a trivial exercise (and I do mean trivial) to get the second expression I have posted, from the first. Could you tell me how?

Equation 1

Equation 2

If you could just reassure us that you have a basic understanding of these things, we'd be more inclined to take you seriously

 

[Euler]

on a smaller scale, it is still happening - even today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1428429,00.html

He was running a massively distributed computer program (called Prime95) that uses you machine to crunch an algorithm. People use this software all over the world to stress-test their PCs. Because the algorithm computed the next Mersenne Prime on his computer, gives no credit to him - only the program. You just run the program in the background, and the results are automatically uploaded.

 

[Cex]

on a smaller scale, it is still happening - even today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1428429,00.html

I had to laugh at this article, because it seems as though even the author doesn't understand what's going on. As Euler pointed out, someone with absolutely no mathematical knowledge could have done this since all it required was running a computer program for 50 days straight.

"It took experts five days to work out that Dr Nowak's new number was indeed bigger than the previous biggest prime."

No, it probably took them about five seconds to work out that his number was bigger than the previous biggest prime. What took them five days was checking that his number was prime - which would involve using a supercomputer to subject it to a stringent primality test. Still, the idea of a group of research mathematicians sitting around trying to figure out which of two numbers is bigger is quite a funny one.

"...a project to discover the holy grail of prime number research - a 10m-digit prime number."

Funny, I always thought that the holy grail of prime number research would be a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. A 10,000,000 digit prime would be a landmark, true, but it's something that we will do just by sitting around and waiting for a computer program to finish running. It's not mathematically hard to find prime numbers, it just takes a long time.

 

[dr seuss]

nb: hence the winky smiley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:D

 

[PGTips]

^^^Funny, I've never displayed any knowledge at all here.

There in lies the problem. You complain, criticise and argue with nothing to back you up. People get cheesed at SoHiAllTheTime and TurboMonk in "God Threads" because they keep referring to the Bible as evidence of God's existance, but at least they are referring to something. You refer to a mythical paper you've almost completed (its been almost for about 10 months now I think).

The other problem is that if you're so amazing at physics why do you keep making elementary mistakes. Consider the point Euler brings up, E = md^pi. You say

Thanks for telling me something. You're still wrong.

Please, please, please tell me how Energy has units which have irrational powers of mass and volume? How can energy have on one side units of...Energy, and the other side kilograms(kilograms/m³)^pi ?

There are 2 fundamental problems with that equation, the units don't match, and you've a non-integer power of units, which is impossible. Doesn't matter how far you've hidden that into your "theory", or you claim Euler is only looking at one part, you have a contradiction IMMEDIATELY. There isn't a doubt in anyone's mind that a theory based on that would be put in the bin by anyone of you submit it to. Not biggotry or elitism, because its fundamentally flawed. For god sake, 16 year olds know if they don't have matching units they've done something wrong!

I will be presenting my thoughts to the world one day, but not while I'm here in the states.

How about submitting it to an international journal then?

You I'll think of once, because I still feel you are limiting yourself by practicing Maths.

I'm doing what is essentially Physics but with a lot of mathematical elaboration. My courses this term as General Relativity, Cosmology, Statistical Physics, Applications of Quantum Mechanics and Asymptotic Methods. Last term I also covered Electrodynamics, Principles of Quantum Mechanics and Classical Dynamics (and 2 methods courses). Physicsy enough for you? My course is called Pure and Applied Mathematics, but I dropped all Pure topics, and all the modules I now take are pretty much methods or named after physics courses.

I will tell you that I have never done anything serious on this site, I never will.

So what were those posts in your journal? What were those questions on E = ...., what were those comments on Pi and irrational/trancendental numbers? Just you joking around? Just posting crap for the fun of it?

That implies either you've been posting crap you knew was wrong to get a reaction (otherwise known as "Trolling") or you were posting seriously but found you couldn't bluff your way past Zorn, Compact, VelocideX, myself and others?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1428429,00.html

As others have said, all he did was run a screensaver. I used to run SETI on my machine which searched for patterns in radiosignals. Loads of such programs exist. Once does analysis on possible cancer drugs, that doesn't mean the person who's PC finds a good drug discovered the cure for cancer, he was just letting someone else borrow his CPU cycles, he had no part in the discovery.

 

[Cex]

nb: hence the winky smiley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:D

o i c

 

[David]

AN
So what were those posts in your journal? What were those questions on E = ...., what were those comments on Pi and irrational/transcendental numbers? Just you joking around? Just posting crap for the fun of it?

That implies either you've been posting crap you knew was wrong to get a reaction (otherwise known as "Trolling") or you were posting seriously but found you couldn't bluff your way past Zorn, Compact, VelocideX, myself and others?

It was preliminary rubbish, I like the attention, seriously though, I had to start in the beginning with what I was thinking when I first started. I'm aware it was wrong, and far from being close to what I was thinking. In totality it made sense though, but not like that. The equation was not linear, it worked off of variable constants.

I was started with where I thought everything went wrong, which is at the beginning of relativity.

 

[Euler]

You're a tool. Care to address any of the questions we've posted?

 

[David]

Why should I? I do not have to prove anything you. I don't know you, and gradient equations simply do not thrill me.

Your an inflamed asshole, but what does that matter?

 

[Euler]

Why should I? I do not have to prove anything you.

Wouldn't it be worth doing though - at least it might get us off your back?

Or, of course, if you can't do them....