Are Scientists or Pseudoscientists Claiming They Found a Black Hole?

[_Robert_Participant]

I heard through unidentifiable sources that The Fronkey Foundation was sponsored by Johnny Walker Black Label to perpetuate the belief that that particular spirit could in fact elevate one’s eloquence to be on par with that of the late Mr. Hitchens. I can tell you from much experimentation it is simply not true.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

In fact the opposite is true. The FF members actively sponsor JWBL on an almost nightly basis. It is their favorite thing. I often drop in to get an argument started. “So guys do you agree that existence is not a predicate?” or “Why don’t we ever find fronkey fossils?” and leave them to it. I only drink once a year, a single Johnnie Walker Black  on April 13th.  The rest of the year I indulge in something greener and never dream of immortality.

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

I find April 18th important, for that date I don’t drink JWBL, don’t look for fronkey fossils, don’t debunk Reg’s or Davis’ posts, and do accept my late drinking buddy Albert’s SR and GR.

 

 

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by  tom sarbeck. Reason: To add “late”

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

A toast to GR so.

When Einstein was sailing across the Atlantic to the USA, he spent 3 days in conversation with Chaim Weizmann who later became the first President of Israel. Weizmann later went on to say that it was a rather one sided conversation as he just spoke about his new Theory but that at the end of the voyage he was convinced that Albert did indeed understand it!

Weizmann probably would have enjoyed a wee dram of JWBL during that time but he would have been drinking alone as I understand Einstein was teetotal?

[PopeBeanieModerator]

tom sarbeck wrote:

I find April 18th important, for that date I don’t drink JWBL

Thank you for saying that, for I wouldn’t have figured out JWBL was a drink, and not Jehovah’s Witness something something. 🙂 (Even in my 60’s I haven’t yet attended any conversations in someone’s study. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a smoking jacket.)

So @toms, I did follow your link, and then wrote up some trash that not only would have been unhelpful to our conversation, but would have exposed my ignorance regarding the currently reasonable EU explanations for why all craters are round. I mistakenly thought EU tried to explain all craters as having electrical causes. All total it was about an hour and a half effort.

So what I realized was that, even if I’m not convinced by the EU claim that they actually predicted what M87 would look like, I can still learn something if I delve deeper into the deeply thought-out EU theory. I’m just not sure when I’ll have time for that long walk in those woods!

And just a few minutes ago I serendipitously re-discovered one of my favorite Big Bang stories. (I found this a couple of years ago for my younger daughter, who I think still has this same kind of reaction to the bang.)

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

Reg & Davis, it’s now April 19 and yesterday is much less important.

And PB, how warm was that Pillsbury cookie batter?

 

[DavisModerator]

yesterday is much less important.

Pity. I used to respect what you had to say and found your commentary, even stuff I disagreed with, useful. But you’ve jumped into the deep end of whatever this is called, and seem to take pleasure in ducking and dodging. I hope you aren’t up to the same trollish antics on other websites.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@tom – Can you at least point out what post of mine needs debunking. I don’t want or expect any quarter given to anything I post. There are plenty of people here to debunk it and I can handle that without needing a safe space 🙂

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I personally appreciate @toms tenacity and sincerity, but/and not attributions of nefarious purpose. I over-use the word charlatan, when I should reserve its use for pushers of woo who are blatantly pushing it for personal profit. Most anti-vaxers, for example, aren’t in that category, but are truly ignorant of the facts at large, and/or are overly-susceptible to conspiracy-type explanations. I can’t help but feel it possible that most errant conspiracy beliefs are a kind of pathology in modern culture that had origins in tribal survival needs, partly because exaggerated paranoia of threatening conspiracies was an effective way to head off truly life-threatening tribal conspiracies, or at the very least, dueling conspiracy theories and dueling tribes were a new form of competition between tribes that played out as winners vs losers in an existential Darwinist paradigm.

I’m obviously speculating there, but looking at modern culture, it is clear to me that demonization of other people’s motives has become a serious, cultural pathology, gratuitously amplified in modernity by new technical abilities to instantly bubble our beliefs and share discourse mostly with others who share the same beliefs. This is how Trump got elected, with real conspiracists having money and power behind him, able to herd ignorant but desperate populists together into mathematically calculated voting blocks with enough majority power to win elections.

I’m just saying we’re facing new, technologized forces that people with truly self-serving and self-confirming motives can use to nurture or exaggerate our tribalization instincts. And fighting off those truly nefarious powers can succeed only by mitigating one’s own tribalist reactions, behaviors, and mitigate our gratuitously selective sharing within its bubble, and instead, communicate more respectfully with people who don’t even realize when they’ve been expertly herded into their bubble.

Does that sound crazy?

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

Reg, months ago I replied to a post by you in which you defined the word “debunk” to require only your opinion. The Oxford English Dictionary (and its Yankee “cousin” the Oxford New American Dictionary) defines the word very differently.

IMO, you have not debunked the EU.

 

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

PB, not crazy, but wordy and not describing the hardball politics I have played.

In Wikipedia, search on Don Bolles (the reporter, not the musician) and you will see some of that hardball.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@tom – please show me where I suggested that “debunk” required only my opinion and I will hold my hands up. I doubt if I would consider my subjective opinion as a valid reason to negate an hypothesis. I did not debunk EU, I just supplied arguments based upon what I know of Physics which appeared to undermine many of its arguments. You never replied to my points.

[tom sarbeckParticipant]

Reg, TA’s computer may have those posts but I won’t request a search. They might disclose that rather than replying to the arguments you supplied, I pointed to evidence for the EU.

P

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

OK Tom but I remember almost everything I posted over the last 9 years and every debate and discussion I was engaged in. I have no recollection of using the word “debunk” in the context you stated. I have access to the old TA site and cannot find it. However it was mostly only on AZ that I pointed out where I found what you posted from “Thunderbolts” to be contrary to GR, which yesterday you said you agreed with.

I also recall, sometime last summer where you suggested my post on new ideas about wave theory and “spooky action at a distance” required proof. I had used the words “new ideas” and not “a new Scientific Theory but you called them “science fiction”. You later suggested to the One True Pope (Praise Beanie His name) that you only engaged in “hardball” questions, dismissing ours as “softball” and furnished nothing other than another suggested link.

I am open to hearing about EU if you can explain it but just telling us to watch videos and dismissing our replies is too similar to a Creationist posting of the “hit and run” variety.  As I say to them (YEC’s), if they can furnish credible evidence that they can back up with considered argument, then I will give their ideas more credibility and dig further myself. I often give visiting theists a similar offer in that I will accept whatever god they are talking about if they can objectively support their arguments. I will do the same for EU theory if you can show how it is better than our “mainstream” understanding of the Standard Model and current theories in Physics.

You are sounding very conspiratorial in your approach, especially towards the recent “black hole photo” by suggesting “they” only published it for the funding it would bring. Many of them are paid a pittance for their research work compared to what they could earn by taking a post in regular industry. All hypothesis are open to question. Their strength is in how those questions are dealt with by those defending them. That is what gives them merit. Insisting they are wrong without saying why they are wrong does not work.

The words of one writer of science fiction, Yevgeny Zamyatin, are words I suspect you will concur with: “Heretics are the only remedy against the entropy of human thought”. I am all for thinking outside the conventional box and open to unorthodox ideas. I enjoy dangerous ideas. The heretics of today often become the heroes of tomorrow. That is how we evolve. But their ideas must be open to the same level of scrutiny that any mainstream currently accepted theories have undergone. Einstein’s have lasted over 100 years and proven to be worthy of existing in our toolbox of scientific discovery. But just as his were improvements on Newton’s theories, I am sure his will be improved upon by someone standing on his shoulders.

We are all open to new ideas here. That is one of the main points of this site. Feel free to explain EU but not by just bombing us with videos and links to Thunderbolts. Explain it to us and offer some reasonable arguments for it. Insisting current scientific endeavors are wrong and those involved in it only do it for the money or funding does not help your case. Heretics argue from the battlefield not from the side-lines.

As a side note, I do not “believe” the BB was the “start of everything” (my words). I am currently giving greater consideration to the multiverse model and have generally moved beyond the “there was nothing and then there was something” concept. There are some interesting ideas on the subject and what makes it interesting is that both mainstream and “the heretics” are thinking about it but from different perspectives.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

@ PopeBeanie, here is an article on conspiracy theory worth a read.

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