This is a follow up to Earth is the Center of the Universe? OP with the link to the full documentary entitled The Principle. It is really worth to watch it in its entirety just to get the sense of how cosmologist, like Lawrence Krauss, and many other scientists deliberately resist the data (verified by 3 different probes) that Axis of Evil are pointing to the special location of the Earth in the Universe…
I also found it interesting in the movie that there is a lot of resistance to publish any papers that would contradict Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, as mentioned in the documentary (I personally suspect that GTOR could be wrong or at least some aspects of it).
For those who would like to watch the the highlights, I especially recommend watching the part at 35 min mark and on…
The idea that the Earth occupies no special or favored position in the cosmos has launched the last two scientific revolutions – the Copernican Revolution and Relativity – and, as Lawrence Krauss has said, we could be on the verge of a third, with “Copernicus coming back to haunt us”.– IMDB summary
The funniest part of the movie is when Michio Kaku relates:
“…today we don’t burn cosmologist alive…”– referring to the public execution of Giordano Bruno, who refused to comply with view of the universe held by the Catholic Church in 16th century…
But, what kind of treatment do scientist deserve today who refuse to comply with scientific data verified over and over again and continue to deceive the public because they built their careers on their faith rather than evidence?
How about public humiliation, such as turning man’s home into public privy, just like in the ancient times?
I have to admit that this documentary is not easy to “read”. I had a hard time myself initially. But, we all can learn, I think. Even Lawrence Krausse, who has changed his mind since the movie was released , admitted that our human experiences are about learning (which can mean about changing our minds). He didn’t say that but it doesn’t mean he is evil. He is just not convinced or he doesn’t want to be. Who am I to judge?
Most of the scientists in the movie claim it misrepresents their views.
The same treatment as people who, due to faith rather than evidence , falsely accuse scientists of deceiving the public.
Just seems fair.
I agree that some views may have been represented… This doesn’t change the data that has been ignored by the same scientists who have not adjusted their views accordingly. Who is to blame? Who should represent the public who trusts the science often blindly?
I would agree to have their homes should also be turned into public privy…
Intentionally misrepresented.
Of course it does. It makes one suspect that the data itself has been misrepresented. False premises lead to false conclusions.
Dishonest filmmakers are not the top of my list.
Sounds unhygienic.
Thank you for linking to this movie J-Mac.
Towards the end of the film Lawrence Krauss states that there are two things that we’ve learned from cosmology, one is that we are insignificant and two is that the future is miserable. Of course his only justification for this belief is by maintaining faith in the modern view of our place in the universe and the existence of a multiverse. He believes that the findings highlighted in this film are probably not right.
Is this a case of ignoring the evidence in order to hold up a position of faith?
Does anyone know if there has been any evidence conflicting with, or explaining this background radiation anomaly in non geocentric terms, since the film was released?
And I imagine you have quite a lot of knowledge regarding a refusal to change position based on new data?
How does the geocentric view explain the existence of anomaly?
J-mac:
“I also found it interesting in the movie that there is a lot of resistance to publish any papers that would contradict Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, as mentioned in the documentary (I personally suspect that GTOR could be wrong or at least some aspects of it).”
1. What evidence do you have that scientific journals resist publishing papers contradicting Einstein’s theory of general relativity? You do realize that pretty much the whole field of quantum mechanics lies in contradiction to Einstein, or has that fact slipped your mind?
2. On what basis do you personally suspect that the GTOR could be wrong? For example, could you explain which of the operators, coefficients or variables in Einstein’s equations are in error?
3. If only some aspects of GTOR are wrong, could you please be specific about which aspects, and for what reasons? How is it possible for some part of a set of equations to be wrong, without the entire set also being wrong?
It doesn’t. It is an observation in need of an explanation.Whether the anomaly is the result of genuine properties of the background radiation or it is due to the way the readings are being recorded, I’m happy to go along with the truth either way.
There is so much readiness here to assume that work published in reputable journals and textbooks is wrong, simply because it doesn’t accord with some appealing woo. You’d think that peer review, and the requirement of repeatable experiments in accordance with best practices would be GOOD things, but for some posters here, those features are strikes against.
Thus, I’m wondering whether people here feel the same way about the world history texts used in my kids’ high school. According to those, there was a Holocaust during WWII in which about six million Jews were killed. I note, however, that according to some reports roughly 30% of Americans deny that assertion. So I’m curious if the science text-book denouncers here are also in that bunch. Are historical claims (such as those asserting the existence of the Holocaust) to be considered prima facie wrong, just in case (i) They don’t accord with what you’d like to be true; and (ii) They turn up in widely utilized text books?
ETA: I’m happy to add (iii) They are inconsistent with claims made in authoritative voices on videos that can be found on youtube.
I’m puzzled that you’re surprised at the rampant anti-intellectualism here. That’s what happens to knowledge in the age of the Internet: the equalization of ignorance and expertise, and the concomitant leveling-out of the distinction between ideology and science.
walto,
When I come across an argument presented by video, I see that as already a problem with the argument. If the person has to resort to video instead of a clear written argument, then he probably doesn’t have a clear written argument.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0190469412/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527609459&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=tom+nichols+death+of+expertise
When he was still an undergraduate, Tom was an intern at a legislative committee where I was the director of research. He got famous (and not only for being a Jeopardy champion).
I encountered the producer of this video, a Mr. Rick DeLano, in an online discussion recently. He’s a sort of conspiracy nut, and no lie is too bold for him to tell. He threatened to “embarrass” me by having his friend William Dembski personally refute a blog post I wrote a while back (I’m still waiting to hear from Bill).
I seriously doubt that Mr. DeLano has any real understanding of his own claims.
I am awaiting J-Mac’s reaction to the questions of timothya.
If nothing shows up, I suggest his rights to post on this site are restricted to comments.
Rick DeLano’s website, http://www.theprinciplemovie.com contains a vast amount of information and links relating to this controversy.
Here he makes the choice quite clear:
What evidence do we have that the data he reports on are contaminated in some way? Does anyone have any counter arguments that actually deal with the subject? I genuinely want to know.
CharlieM,
What vast amount of information? At that link I found a trailer (which is awful) and some blurbs about how great the movie is. And, of course, information about how to buy it.
Did you notice the icons on the right of the home page?
Just looking at the website design you can tell the guy is a crank
What about data? Do you have anything to say about that?
Here’s a piece of data: The fact that you support him is evidence that he’s a crank
I don’t support or oppose him, but I am willing to listen to the evidence. How about you?
Here Delano answers the claims that Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Max Tegmark and Kate Mulgrew, were duped into taking part in the film.
Do any of those people themselves claim they were duped?
Good question.
So were they, or did they claim to be misrepresented?
Here are a few of their remarks from the film:
Lawrence Krauss:
In the 42nd minute:
(the film makes clear that cosmologists consider this ‘nothing’ to be some unobserved form of something.)
In the 43rd minute:
Michio Kaku in the 46th minute 46 minute states that dark energy is the greatest mystery in all of creation.
He also states that there is a crisis in cosmology. This is due to the very small (quantum theory) and the very large (relativity) have not been unified.
In the 48th minute he states that:
For him anything that was off by a factor of more than ten would mean that there is something very wrong with the theory.
Do the above statements and views misrepresent their authors? Can you give specific examples from the film where you think their views have been misrepresented, or from other places where they give accounts of how they were duped?
Did Max Tegmark actually find an anomaly in the supposedly isotropic CMB and that it is a real observation as he states beginning in the 55th minute? Does Krauss really belive it when he says that “there have been some anomalies” in the view that the CMB is isotropic?
Who here disagrees with Kaku’s words that cosmology is in crisis?
Quotes that give cranks a hard on:
“Scientists were baffled to discover…”
“It remains a mystery how…”
“A discovery that might overturn…”
“Tin foil hat sale, now with 10% more protective force fields!”
CharlieM,
Haha. You don’t support the moviemaker.
It’s weird, right? It’s enough for somebody to say something contrarian on the internet in an authoritative voice with bad synth music behind it for the hardy band of cranks to support it. That’s why I asked about the Holocaust.
Nobody answered me, though. Hmmm.
It’s a great point for sure. They dismiss serious, peer reviewed research for coming from the “establishment”, but all their sources reference (read misrepresent / quote.mine) those very same researchers. At that point it’s all a matter of cherry picking which crank “theories” one wants to buy and which to ignore, free thinking mavericks, such as they are
I don’t support the idea that the earth is static and everything else moves around it.
So I’d like to see some counterarguments. Do you have any?
If the universe and it’s structure originated in the first moment of Big Bang (that is assumed to be a random process) some 13.8 billions years ago, how could sheer dumb luck, devoid of foresight, have known what the geometry of the solar system’s would be almost 10 billion years in advance?
Here is a good depiction of the alignment of CMB’s, dubbed Axis of Evil, and our solar system:
It couldn’t have–and didn’t–know anything. Like you, except, incredibly, even more so.
I don’t think it is sufficiently precise to declaim that the earth is the centre of the universe without knowing that the geometric centre of the earth is of more importance than the barycentre, or vice versa.
Counter-arguments to what? Some Christian theologian opining about the critical importance of a fudgy depiction of the distribution of background radiation? What the hell is supposed to follow from this ‘axis of evil’ story in the first place? The Ark and Flood? You want counter-arguments to somebody saying that this is a critical moment for cosmology?
I wrote Shakespeare’s plays. My wife and I wrote his sonnets. Sun Ra came from Neptune. The center of the universe is under my brother’s garage.
I want counter-arguments!
What? You say my wife and I are less than 100 years old and Shakespeare’s plays have been performed for much longer than that? Well, I have to admit–you’ve got me there. But what about my brother’s garage?
Okay… Tell us more… it sound interesting…
It’s all relative…Remember?
It is easer to say “I was duped” after the fact when you have said things you should have never said if you didn’t want to be duped…
If you want to be duped resistant think of yourself as a medical doctor whose patient posts your all diagnosis online that everyone can lookup and verify…(this is actually the future of medicine).
If you can’t accept that, you may not be able to live with your beliefs…
Who are you?
I assume you have not been reading any of my recent comments for at least a year…
What do you rally want do know?
My question should be:Do you really want to know the truth?
For what it is worth, I have been inhabiting this site since it was launched. That is as much as I am prepared to say about me.
Now then, you made specific claims in your post, and I asked specific questions. Do you care to provide answers, or should I proceed on the assumption that you don’t have any.
I am indeed interested in the truths of cosmology, that is why I pay attention to cosmologists, and discount bafflegabbery.
Since the alignment is off about 16 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic, and the confirmed presence of about 3,000 exoplanets in our neighborhood of this galaxy so far and the existence of around a conservative guess of 100 billion galaxies, the universe is likely to have millions of centers in the only criteria is an approximate plus or minus 16 degree alignment with the orbital plane.
Not much of a sensational movie premise.
newton,
Ours is the best, though. Jesus lived here. Also it was the adoptive home of Superman and Hulk Hogan.
timothya,
Well, if you HAD been reading his posts, you’d know that everything is fake news, inspired by a love of what is false and evil, unless it agrees with whatever nonsense may have caught his fancy that day. Because he is a stable genius.
Sound familiar?
Hey,
I didn’t know who you are or what you stand for…
Well, just like there is resistance by cosmologists to CMBs, dubbed Axis of Evil there is resistance to anything that could imply ID. There is a lot at stake for materialists to lose..
Einstein’s genius is worshipped among materialists, so anything published against his theories is naturally resisted. Einstein hated quantum mechanics because it seemed to contradict his theories. Today we know that his theories are more likely to be wrong, because quantum mechanics has not been proven to wrong and his theories of relativity are shaky because some facts of quantum mechanics contradict it, like entanglement, or the expansion of the universe, or the double slit experiments….
The alignment of what???
Give me one real reason why I shall not put you on ignore again… this is your last chance…
Hey CharlieM,
I think you are smart enough to figure out your questions yourself… unless you are interested in my opinion about it… for no particular reason…
J-mac, you definitely should put Newton and everybody else who disagrees with you on ignore. You’re entirely uninterested in any view that’s not consonant with your own, and have convinced yourself that anybody espousing such a contrary view is doing so because they are unwilling to hear the TRUTH.
So it’s clearly more efficient to ignore them completely.
Your hypothesis, your graphic , the alignment of CMB quadrupole and the Ecliptic. Why ,did you think they were precisely aligned?
Does “ line up with the solar system” ring a bell?
Your ignorance is your own fault.
What evidence do you have that cosmologists “resist” the findings of the CMB probes? Facts are facts, and the evidence is that the background radiation exists and that the dipole exists. The current cosmological theories incorporate its existence (are you unaware of these theories).
Given the number of star systems with planets that we have found so far, multiplied by the number of stars in this and nearby galaxies, the likelihood that at least two of them have an ecliptic aligned to the CMB anomaly is pretty much equal to one (in case you are unfamiliar with statistics, a likelihood close to one means “pretty much certain”). In other words, in your nonsensical terms, there are at least two religious centres of the universe. Good luck with the theological explanation for that.
Rubbish. There has been no resistance to publishing scientific articles that contradict the GTOR (for example, quantum mechanics, MOND). Both theories have been widely published in the peer-reviewed literature. The problem is the usual one of finding experimental results that contradict GTOR *on the scales where it applies*. Every cognitive entity (meaning any organism who can count its toes) knows that GTOR gives nonsense results where spacetime is curved at infinitely small scales. You do know what the Planck scale is, don’t you?
He didn’t “hate” quantum mechanics, he just thought its implications were wrong. It seems that Einstein was wrong about those implications. So what, scientists are often wrong about some things.
We know this, do we? On what basis do we know this? Because you say so?
Do you have any observational results to support your claim? You have now made the claim three times, so I assume you must have this evidence. Can you please provide it?