The Ills of the Skeptical Movement

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In another post, recent contributor TomMueller stated that GPS satellites use relativistic synchronization to match up their clocks with earthbound clocks.  I explained to him that this was not so, even though its easy to believe, if you don’t think critically, that it is.

Tom followed my post to him with a litany of ad hominem, “Oh, you are a moron, you are a troll, creationist idiots,  I read about it on a credible site, I talked to a physics professor about it…” and on and on he went with his insults and denial.

Now to be fair to Tom, if you just read mainstreams sites, like Wikipedia, or Wired or Salon, or even many science websites, this is the information you will find-that GPS satellites use Einstein’s theory of relativity to sync their clocks to earth clocks.  Its written everywhere, surely it must be true.  But I know why its not true, because I actually thought about it. At first I just had a hunch about it, but again, if you just google it, most sites will tell you its true.  But it didn’t make sense to me, for so many reasons.  What clocks are the satellite clocks syncing with, a GPS’s receivers clock?  Huh?  How precise are they?  For that matter, how precise are any clocks.  Its nearly impossible to ever get ANY two clocks to match.

I also read about the so called Haefele-Keating atomic clocks, where relativistic changes in clocks due to speed was tested and confirmed aboard airplanes going around the earth. Again, everywhere you looked online, they say its true.  It was tested, it worked.  And its bullshit.  But how would one know, if all you did was read what is supposedly credible sources, written by academics and scholars and Wikipedia…

I wouldn’t even bother telling you how I learned it was not true.  I wouldn’t even bother citing sources, because all skeptics do is try to spew the same old defense, “Oh, that source is for cranks, try MY sources, they are the best parrots for information.” I learned by thinking, skeptics will never understand that.

 

And so here’s the thing, I didn’t learn that things are complete bullshit, by just going to the vast amount of sources online that claim they are true, instead I thought about.   But here’s what skeptics, as ironic as it sounds, tell you to do.  They tell you to just accept the common wisdom.  Accept that these science facts must be true, because someone famous says so.  Accept that evolution is true, accept that GMO foods are good for you, accept that Oswald acted alone, accept that alternative medicine is all fake, accept that bigPharm is looking out for your best interests, accept materialism, accept that every time you hear about a study which contradicts strict materialism it must be wrong, accept that every time someone challenges the scientific consensus, then they are by definition quacks, and basically just stop thinking for yourself.  The skeptical movement is founded on the exact opposite principle of be skeptical, instead it means to simply follow whatever the skeptic movement tells you must be right.

 

Its the same everywhere, on podcast like the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, or anything with Seth Shostak, or Michael Shermer, or Phil Plaitt, or Neil Degrasse Tyson or Bill Nye, or any of the whole community of people who identify themselves as skeptics, by virtue that they all believe exactly the same things.  This toxic thought has seeped into virtually every source of information you can find, be it television, news, blogs, everywhere.  They will claim they are deep thinkers, and this is how they found the answers, buts its a con game, they are anything but, they are sheep.  They never have an original thought, ever.  I think I even read Lawrence Krauss repeating this same crap line about relativity and GPS satellites-and he has a PhD in physics, for crying out loud.  But don’t ask him to think, he prefers to just parrot the party line, its so much easier.

So nowadays where do you find truth, it sure as hell ain’t easy, thanks to these brainwashed preachers of the scientific consensus.  Its what leads Allan to make ludicrous statements about what fitness means, its what leads parrots like Tom Mueller to say, “Oh, I read it about it, so how dare you say its not true! Moron!”

 

The skeptic movement is one of the biggest diseases to stifle learning that I can think of.  They cloud every news article, and every attempt at understanding with their atheist based need to preach their worldview.  Its just like Lynn Margulis said, they want to tell everyone what to think, by telling them to stop thinking.  I despise these types of thought Nazis.  They are the worst thing that has ever happened to academia.

492 thoughts on “The Ills of the Skeptical Movement”

  2. dazz: The ones who show an interest in advancing the field instead of destroying it.
    The ones proposing ideas instead of those who just keep trying to shoot down others while unable and unwilling to provide alternative explanations.

    We welcome your forthcoming contributions to ID.

  3. Mung: We welcome your forthcoming contributions to ID.

    OK, let me see… mouse traps are taken… origami cranes too…. Paley has watches covered… Is anyone working on male ass yet?

  4. Holy Apeshit Batman!

    I turn my back for just a minute and what the hell????

    Hilarious

    OK OK OK … let me get this straight:

    Am I to understand that my 5 second google-whack managed to generate a hit written by NOT A EXPERT?!?!?!

  5. colewd:
    walto,

    How do you determine who the experts are?

    You have very strong political views.What experts are you appealing to in order to form those views?

    BTW:I do admire your position on intellectual humanity and know from personal experience it can be hard to live up to.

    In scientific fields, if there’s a consensus, I go with that. Why wouldn’t I? If there’s no consensus, I wait. My views don’t actually matter, and even I don’t give them much weight.

    Political views are different animals. There’s so little hard evidence there, that personal preference rules the day. I object to lying for example, also to bullying, bragging and stupidity. So it’s not terribly surprising that I detest Trump. But is he nevertheless in some sense ‘right’? Would implementation of all his policies actually increase the aggregate well-being in the U.S.? I doubt it, but my views are no better than anybody else’s. I believe in democracy for that reason.

  6. Rumraket: I think I even read Lawrence Krauss repeating this same crap line about relativity and GPS satellites-and he has a PhD in physics, for crying out loud.

    Yes I remember seeing that too.

    I also saw a panel discussion where an actual aerospace engineer who works for a company that makes GPS satellites repated the claim. I guess he was lying, or just wrong.

    Yea, I guess he is either lying or just wrong as well. Which one do you think it is, because they don’t.

    This is a funny world we live in, people make up shit all the time.

    How accurate do you think the clock is in your handheld gps device, you fool?

  7. walto: In scientific fields, if there’s a consensus, I go with that.

    How the how do you know when there is a scientific consensus, when someone tells you? Do you do your own poll?

    In evolution, when did you conduct the poll? What question did you ask? Who did you ask, molecular biologists, evolutionary biologist, micro-biologists, zoologists, engineers, physicians? How many people does it take to make a consensus? How many detractors does it take to break a consensus?

    I suspect you never even consider this. I suspect you just read Pandas Thumb, and when they say there is a consensus, well, there must be.

  8. stcordova: Relativistic adjustment of clocks on GPS satellites?

    Very very slight correction for orbital velocity, more correction for gravity.

    The gravitational correction is discussed in the Pound-Rebka experiment:

    That experiment was conducted in 1959, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with GPS clocks.

    No, that’s not what the clocks do. The satellites triangulate based on other satellites. God, there is so much shit out there, and a whole pack of fools just swallowing it up whole.

  9. I’m definitely not a part of the skeptics movement. I’d never belong to a movement that would accept me as a member.

  10. petrushka: All the most shit-for-brains cranks have something to say about GPS and relativity.

    walto: That’s interesting. Why do they take an interest in that stuff?

    I’ll be interested to see if anyone else has had a similar intuition, but I have found a vocal opposition to Relativity to typically be a sign of underlying anti-semetism.

    In various online discussions, I have discerned (albeit rather anecdotally) something of a correlation between doubt of Relativity, dislike of General Eisenhower, and denial of the fact or extent of the Holocaust.

  11. phoodoo: No, that’s not what the clocks do. The satellites triangulate based on other satellites.

    Exactly how do the satellites ‘triangulate’ based on other satellites?

  12. Neil Rickert: Relativistic adjustment of clocks on GPS satellites? When you think about it, you realize that it doesn’t make sense. If that were done, you would still need to synchronize the satellite clocks with a ground standard clock. So why not just rely on that synchronization and skip the relativistic adjustments.

    I’m curious if you are disagreeing with the overall idea of Relativistic effects being detectable in satellite trilateration, or are you just disagreeing with the strong statement that there is a sort of ‘plug-in’ algorithm that specifically runs one of Eintstein’s equations?

    If you are disagreeing with the strong statement only, then I’m on-board with you. It would probably be more realistic to say something like “effects of time dilation which are observed in GPS satellites are consistent with the predictions of Special and General Relativity”.

  14. RoyLT: I’ll be interested to see if anyone else has had a similar intuition, but I have found a vocal opposition to Relativity to typically be a sign of underlying anti-semetism.

    In various online discussions, I have discerned (albeit rather anecdotally) something of a correlation between doubt of Relativity, dislike of General Eisenhower, and denial of the fact or extent of the Holocaust.

    Eisenhower??

  15. phoodoo: How the how do you know when there is a scientific consensus, when someone tells you? Do you do your own poll?

    In evolution, when did you conduct the poll?What question did you ask?Who did you ask, molecular biologists, evolutionary biologist, micro-biologists, zoologists, engineers, physicians?How many people does it take to make a consensus?How many detractors does it take to break a consensus?

    I suspect you never even consider this.I suspect you just read Pandas Thumb, and when they say there is a consensus, well, there must be.

    I dunno. I think it’s generally safe to accept what’s accepted in recent editions of college or high school textbooks used in public schools in states that didn’t vote for Trump. But I admit that I’m not a professional skeptic and conspiracy theorist, like you are.

  16. RoyLT: I’m curious if you are disagreeing with the overall idea of Relativistic effects being detectable in satellite trilateration, or are you just disagreeing with the strong statement that there is a sort of ‘plug-in’ algorithm that specifically runs one of Eintstein’s equations?

    The latter. Just use a cheap off-the-shelf clock, and synchronize with ground stations. That’s what makes most sense for satellite builders.

  19. RoyLT: It would probably be more realistic to say something like “effects of time dilation which are observed in GPS satellites are consistent with the predictions of Special and General Relativity”.

    The effects of time dilation are not observed in GPS satellites.

    I have, however, discerned something of a correlation between people who identify as skeptics, an infinity for chocolatey breakfast cereals, low alcohol tolerance, and weird sexual aberrations usually expressed at comic conventions.

  20. walto: I dunno. I think it’s generally safe to accept what’s accepted in recent editions of college or high school textbooks used in public schools in states that didn’t vote for Trump. But I admit that I’m not a professional skeptic and conspiracy theorist,like you are.

    I wonder if one can learn about Christopher Columbus this way. Did you know he discovered America?

  21. phoodoo: The effects of time dilation are not observed in GPS satellites.

    Yes, they are and they are corrected for.

    GPS and Relativity

    More sophisticated techniques, like Differential GPS (DGPS) and Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) methods, deliver centimeter-level positions with a few minutes of measurement. Such methods allow use of GPS and related satellite navigation system data to be used for high-precision surveying, autonomous driving, and other applications requiring greater real-time position accuracy than can be achieved with standard GPS receivers.

    To achieve this level of precision, the clock ticks from the GPS satellites must be known to an accuracy of 20-30 nanoseconds. However, because the satellites are constantly moving relative to observers on the Earth, effects predicted by the Special and General theories of Relativity must be taken into account to achieve the desired 20-30 nanosecond accuracy.

    Because an observer on the ground sees the satellites in motion relative to them, Special Relativity predicts that we should see their clocks ticking more slowly (see the Special Relativity lecture). Special Relativity predicts that the on-board atomic clocks on the satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect of their relative motion [2].

    Further, the satellites are in orbits high above the Earth, where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth’s mass is less than it is at the Earth’s surface. A prediction of General Relativity is that clocks closer to a massive object will seem to tick more slowly than those located further away (see the Black Holes lecture). As such, when viewed from the surface of the Earth, the clocks on the satellites appear to be ticking faster than identical clocks on the ground. A calculation using General Relativity predicts that the clocks in each GPS satellite should get ahead of ground-based clocks by 45 microseconds per day.

    The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be utterly worthless for navigation in a very short time.

    The engineers who designed the GPS system included these relativistic effects when they designed and deployed the system. For example, to counteract the General Relativistic effect once on orbit, the onboard clocks were designed to “tick” at a slower frequency than ground reference clocks, so that once they were in their proper orbit stations their clocks would appear to tick at about the correct rate as compared to the reference atomic clocks at the GPS ground stations. Further, each GPS receiver has built into it a microcomputer that, in addition to performing the calculation of position using 3D trilateration, will also compute any additional special relativistic timing calculations required [3], using data provided by the satellites

  25. Neil Rickert: That’s a lot of breakfast cereal.

    (I think you meant “affinity”).

    Unless you’re one of those God-hating Evilutionists spending an eternity in H E double hockey sticks. Then it’s an infinity.

  26. Neil Rickert,

    Yea, I know the difference, grandma. If you have so much time to spell check, perhaps you could also do your moderator job at the same time, you know, like with the post right above you…

  27. phoodoo: I wonder if one can learn about Christopher Columbus this way.Did you know he discovered America?

    Wouldn’t it be difficult to discover America if he never set foot in America?

  28. Acartia: Wouldn’t it be difficult to discover America if he never set foot in America?

    Gee, is that right?

    You do realize that I was writing that in response to Walto saying to trust high school textbooks?

    Maybe, JUST MAYBE, I was suggesting that textbooks aren’t such a great source of truth. Have you considered that is what my post meant?

  29. So Walto says trust textbooks, Adapa quotes a paper supposedly from Ohio State University claiming GPS satellites do take relativity into account, and Arcatia talks about how Columbus never did set foot in America, even though we have an entire holiday named after him because he discovered America and every American child knows it.

    So how does this happen? How do textbooks get written with so much crap in them, how does a paper get written at Ohio State that says things that are so untrue, and people just say, Ok, if you say so.. If this is the way academia is, how do you know anything to be true? Bullshit, on top of more bullshit on top of even more bullshit. And the skeptic says, Don’t think, accept the consensus. Listen to Bill Nye, Listen to Degrasse Tyson, listen to Lawrence Krauss, they wouldn’t lie, would they? They are famous!

    What a farce.

  31. Of course if its all wrong and you know better, apply your knowledge and change the world rather than suckle at the teat of big conspiracy.

  32. Phoodoo, seriously, what purpose could be served by lying about GPS?

    What evidence do you have that they’re lying?

    Could you be wrong and how do we find that out?

  33. I just recently saw a youtube doc on relativity and was told that GPS had to be adjusted etc etc. Now someone says this is not true.
    I don’t know. if not it would be a accomplishment to prove it to the powers or information!!
    Very easily things are wrong as origin subjects prove that.

    pPeople are saying here about SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS.
    Well in origin stuff it must be subject specicific FIRST.
    evolutionists, some, do wave the general scientific community to demand consent for evolution.
    Yet common sense must demand it would only be biologists and really only ‘origin” biologists that would matter. Otherwise the credibility of scientists would not be in being masters of their subject but merely in BEING a scientist.

    In origin subjects, or anything, the problem is that what is studied is invisable.
    Even physics is not invisible however invisible.
    Past and gone processes and results can’t be studied and so Scientific consensus on these is not demanding of credibility.
    Its very complicated to figure things out and prove them AFTERALL.
    So scientific consensus on origin stuff is just hypothesis aplenty.
    Anyways all sciences must prove their conclusions and not be taken on faith in their authority.
    even in physics, surely more simple byb reason of limited options, they correct things every now and then.
    Don’t admit it and so use phrases like PARADIGM SHIFT.
    Probably more shifting to come.

  34. Neil Rickert: Indeed.But I think that was Groucho, not Karl.

    Does it matter which sibling it was? But most importantly, did I just pass for a Poe… twice in a row? Damn

  35. phoodoo: we have an entire holiday named after him because he discovered America and every American child knows it.

    America, the continent. Obviously.

  36. phoodoo: … and Arcatia talks about how Columbus never did set foot in America, even though we have an entire holiday named after him because he discovered America and every American child knows it.

    Anyone notice the fantastic irony here that phoodoo is scolding some imaginary skeptic that told him:

    “But here’s what skeptics, as ironic as it sounds, tell you to do. They tell you to just accept the common wisdom.”

    And here phoodoo is, ultra-ironically (given how he’s speaking of irony), telling us to just accept the common wisdom. After all “every American child knows it”.

    You can’t make irony like this up.

  37. …there are clocks down here at the surface that regularly exchange signals with clocks on satellites. That, for example, is the basic mechanism behind the Global Positioning System (GPS) that helps modern cars give driving directions in real time. Your personal GPS receiver gets signals from a number of satellites orbiting the Earth, and determines its position by comparing the time between the different signals. That calculation would quickly go astray if the gravitational time dilation due to general relativity were not taken into account; the GPS satellites experience about 38 more microseconds per day in orbit than they would on the ground. Rather than teaching your receiver equations from general relativity, the solution actually adopted is to tune the satellite clocks so that they run a little bit more slowly than they should if they were to keep correct time down here on the surface.

    [From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll]

    Does phoodoo disagree with the above?

  38. Regarding the Columbus point and him discovering america, that always struck me as a pointless semantical argument. The people who say he didn’t, say so because Columbus didn’t technically discover the continental US

    He discovered mane of the islands in the Gulf, and parts of the central and south-american continent. Does that count as discovering america? Depends on what you think america is. If you think you have to discover the actual territory that is today the continental US, then he didn’t.

  39. The vikings arrived in north America long before Columbus set a foot in the Caribbean islands…

  40. dazz,
    Yeah, but they didn’t tell anyone (except the Basques). I heard the Basques were fishing for cod off the coast of North America prior to Columbus, also keeping quiet to keep the cod for themselves.
    Here, for example

  41. dazz:
    The vikings arrived in north America long before Columbus set a foot in the Caribbean islands…

    Good point. But then the argument is more about who was first to discover the americas, rather than whether columbus also discovered it.

    The whole thing is silly of course, because the people who first migrated to, settled and then became native americans, were the first people to discover america. 🙂

  43. phoodoo: I have, however, discerned something of a correlation between people who identify as skeptics, an infinity for chocolatey breakfast cereals, low alcohol tolerance, and weird sexual aberrations usually expressed at comic conventions.

    Don’t forget the whipped cream! They love whipped cream.

  44. Alan Fox:
    dazz,
    Yeah, but they didn’t tell anyone (except the Basques). I heard the Basques were fishing for cod off the coast of North America prior to Columbus, also keeping quiet to keeping quiet to keep the cod for themselves.
    Here, for example

    I didn’t know that! fascinating, I happen to be of Basque ancestry. thanks Alan

  45. Rumraket: The whole thing is silly of course, because the people who first migrated to, settled and then became native americans, were the first people to discover america.

    To quote the inimitable Terry Pratchett:

    It was mostly unexplored, too. At least by proper explorers. Just living there doesn’t count

  46. BTW, I am a bit surprised to see phoodoo approvingly citing Lynn Margulis. Is she considered a trustworthy source? If so, I will bookmark this page in case we have a discussion on endosymbiosis theory again.

  48. Corneel: BTW, I am a bit surprised to see phoodoo approvingly citing Lynn Margulis. Is she considered a trustworthy source?

    A source of what, of her opinion which I heartily agree with? Yes, I trust opinions I agree with, that I do indeed agree with it.

  49. Rumraket: It’s from Sean Carroll, so of course he does.

    Its from Sean Carroll, so of course you believe it. After all you are a skeptic.

    I bet you also love Comic-con.

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