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.
@phoodoo
I found this: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_did_the_experiment_of_Hafele_and_Keating_exactly_prove.
There a pdf is linked that purports to show raw data.
I don’t see how the raw data can compete with phoodoo’s raw thoughts.
No, that’s not the raw data skeptic. That’s the data AFTER they adjusted the actual values, using what they described as a reasonable adjustment given the uncertainties of the results.
So you don’t know jack shit about it, but some guy who posted online said its right, so…that’s what’s called a skeptic.
In case you missed it, I was mocking J-Mac (and phoodoo)
Wouldn’t want anyone to mistake my joke for a homophobic slur
Because its not the raw data, but you wouldn’t know that, because you accept scientific consensuses, without being able to say how you know who made it a consensus.
Rumraket,
You know Rumraket, you are the biggest example on this site of a self-professed google know it all. You know how to type a few words into google, and think that qualifies you to know anything. Its fucking pathetic.
You already said you believe in that experiment, and then you go and look for information, and then post it, proving that you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. You have never seen the raw data, you knew nothing about the experiment, but what you knew was it was mentioned in Wikipedia, so you believe it must be true.
If you knew nothing about the experiment, wouldn’t it have been better for you to just admit you don’t, but then say you believe it anyway because you are a skeptic sheep. At least that would be honest.
Instead of being both dishonest AND wrong.
Perhaps you should read further? I write in the very next sentence that I take it that can’t be it. Stop being so nervously desperate to reply and read the whole post please. It’s obvious you’re scared out of your mind and feel an intense need to reply quickly, but try to contain it.
Aww have I made you salty again?
walto,
You are apparently the one who will believe anyone who holds the same general worldview as you tells you. Those results WERE NOT the raw data.
Now Rumraket posts entirely different results, are you agreeing with those ones or the first ones he posted?
Whose the sycophant walto?
Wipe the egg off your face.
phoodoo,
Your post fails at many levels.
1. Even if you were right about whether relativity is used for GPS (I don’t know if you’re right), the acceptance of the idea is not based on pure authority. There’s a rationale about it. It’s not mere say so by the “authorities” of “the skeptical community.”
2. If the rationale is wrong, there’s a need for a good explanation as to why it’s wrong. It’s not enough that you say so.
3. Tom didn’t explode in expletives. It’s natural that if there’s a rationale for something you’re been thinking as right for a while, it requires a very good rationale to reject it.
4. All you did was say Tom that the GPS-relativity thing was false. That’s all you did. You offered no explanations, no rationale, nothing.
5. Since you hold to many pretty unscientific views, it’s natural for Tom to reject your claim as one more example of your general attitudes against things scientific (at least as displayed when talking about evolution, origin of life, etc.).
6. Tom reacted to your mere claim the most natural way.
7. To his reaction, all you had were insults, not explanations.
8. So, that Tom insulted you back is only natural. What did you expect?
9. Since Tom has a rationale for trusting the relativity-GPS idea, your claim that this is mere belief-in-the-authorities, is bullshit.
10. All of that damages your credibility even more.
11. That somebody might be wrong about some things, doesn’t mean that you can generalize and claim that the whole of skepticism is based on accepting the word of some authority.
12. Insult is not a synonym of ad hominem. Ad hominem is when someone attacks the person instead of the argument. You never offered an argument to Tom. You just insulted him, his intelligence, his knowledge. So, his insulting you back is not ad hominem.
13. You harvest what you sow.
So where do I self-profess to being a “google know it all”?
Are you lying again? 🙂
Why don’t you answer any questions? Don’t be scared we don’t bite.
Which ones should we believe phoodoo, and why? Are you going to answer? Don’t be scared buddy.
Rumraket,
No no let me correct that for you. Skeptic views are not science views.
Skeptic views are skeptic views, they write them on little pamphlets to hand out to all you church members, so you can mind-numbingly repeat back these mantras, just like you and Tom do. They are the same in every skeptic church.
Evolution=good
Alternative medicine=bad
GMO food=good
Monsanto=good
Rupert Sheldrake=bad
David Suzuki=bad
Bill Nye=good
There, no need to know anything about science. Just read the pamphlet.
It doesn’t fucking matter, because you made up your mind before you had the faintest idea what you are talking about, fool.
And Walto went along with you! And why did he go along with you, when you were completely wrong?
Because he believes in consensus but he doesn’t know why. The same as you.
You proved my entire OP’s point through your theater of the absurd.
Is this just going to be about how butt mad you are today, and the need to vent like a small child you feel?
Have you tried just counting to 10? Taking a deep breath? Taking a nice walk in fresh air? It’s clear something is really bugging you to an extreme phoodoo. Go walk it off so you can think again please. 🙂
There’s actually math in it, based on physics that shows you why this happens.
1. Are math and physics also a conspiracy?
2. Is ‘conspiracy’ Phoodoo-code for ‘I don.t understand’?
That just reads like an excuse to avoid a substantive answer because you know you can’t give one.
With a simple question your whole case has collapsed and now you’re just trying to avoid an actual substantive discussion.
When you’re done foaming at the mouth, I’m still waiting for an explanation of how “satellites triangulate based on other satellites”.
Apparently we are not to trust Google, so I’d like it explained in plain form from the mind of phoodoo.
Well, that doesn’t fly in my skeptical church!
Evolution neither good nor bad, just the best current explanation for the diversity of extant and extinct life that we see on Earth.
Alternative medicine, testable against results obtained and, when tested, performs no better than placebo.
GMO food; has yet to be demonstrated that it has benefits other than for the agribusiness producing GMO products.
Rupert Sheldrake, have his book, Morphic Resonance but it has so far resisted my attempts to read it.
David Suzuki, never heard of him.
Bill Nye, only know of him as “The Science Guy” from references to his notoriety with ID proponents.
ETA, missed out Monsanto. Don’t trust ’em and neither does the EU
As I needled Phoodoo before – its amazing society can do anything given all these falsehoods we built upon. Show us how to do better. He won’t, because he can’t, Just like Mindpowers Murray couldn’t do better than science. What are the odds thousands of experts are wrong vs. Phoodoo is a crank?
Golden rice?
And is there not an environmental benefit from no plow agriculture?
I am not your school teacher. If you want to find out about things, try reading and thinking for yourself.
I realize that method is not very favorable in the community of Rum, Richard and the like.
What have you read for yourself about how GPS actually works? Please post a list of titles and authors.
Of course not my illiterate friend. Skeptic might include scientific views, but that’s not all there is to it.
Don’t be irrational, I even gave you the benefit of the doubt about the GPS-relativity issue.
If all there was to any of it was pamphlets, we would not be able to defend any of our views. Yet, we are. You, instead, offer no more than poor reading comprehension, pretty imbecilic semantic deformations, imbecilic inferences based on semantic deformations, insults, and hasty generalizations, to name the few that I have observed in the little time since I joined TSZ.
Again, why so desperate to demonstrate that you cannot read for comprehension and that you’re prone to hasty generalizations when things are not to your liking? Evolution is the concept we use for something that happens in nature. Sometimes what happens because of it is good, sometimes not so good, sometimes pretty bad.
What’s “bad” is the irrational faith that people can put on “alternative medicine.” Some have let their kids die by trying to save them with herbs and “naturalistic” bullshit, rather than taking them to the hospital.
And you keep going. Your hasty generalizations only damage your credibility (if there’s any of it left). GMO stands for genetically modified organisms (you’re supposed to know, but you don’t seem to understand what that means). There’s nothing intrinsically wrong or intrinsically right about them. It all depends on what’s been done with those genetic modifications. What’s “bad” is the irrational rejection of GMOs by poor judgement and mere fear of things you don’t even care to understand.
I have no opinion about Monsanto. I don’t know them.
Never heard of this guy in my whole life.
What? I like David quite a bit.
Oh crap. You’re so full of shit. Bill Nye is but a person trying to get science to the public. That’s a good thing to try and do. I don’t like the way he does it (in the few things I’ve seen), but he’s trying.
Says the one person who would not be able to at least read a pamphlet.
I know that’s too many words for you, and that you will be very happy to demonstrate your inability to read for comprehension. So be it.
Re the Hafele-Keating experiment, it’s not impossible that the experimenters got the result they were looking for by inappropriately massaging the data but experiments have continued to verify relativistic effects. I’m still not sure whether phoodoo is claiming relativity is fake, or just that Hafele and Keating faked their results.
I have to say Alphonsus Kelly, the skeptic who spilled the beans on Hafele/Keating was a bit of a character!
I think we’ve all been through GradSchool, which means we did a lot of reading and were quizzed on the content.
Phoodoo, there’s a small portion of the population that are susceptible to conspiracy crap (infowars, etc). You are one of them.
I don’t know whether to be bewildered or impressed by the number of people who seemingly don’t have phoodoo on their ignore list. Perhaps both.
I’ve tried reading and think for myself, but I still cannot conceive of how “satellites triangulate based on other satellites”. Perhaps I’m too skeptical.
It’s your OP and you made the statement. Explain yourself.
FUCKING CLOCKS!
HOW DO THEY WORK?
This should be retitled to:
“The ill’s of phoodoo’s hasty generalizations and pretended victimhood”
I stand corrected! That at least does seem a worthwhile use of GMO techniques.
Quite possibly but does no-till have to rely on GMO to work?
Did you mean skepticism, as in the skeptic movement? Is English your second language as well?
Is “skeptic” a noun, an adjective?
What were you saying about being illiterate?
Dave Carlson,
Phoodoo is on my ignore list, but it’s entertaining to hear all the responses.
FWIW,
SJW PZ Myers left the Sketpic movement.
http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2013/05/pz-myers-quits-skeptic-movement-should.html
I think skepticism is a good quality to have, especially when considering medical treatments, investment, new technologies etc.
Phoodoo got scared away from discussing the Hafele-Keating experiment “raw data” because I asked how he knew the document that purports to show the raw data, in fact shows the raw data.
Once he read that question he realized he’d just assumed this when he first read it. Then the whole thing collapsed before him and now he’s just EXTRA angry and venting about this whole thing. This is the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.
Have you ever read the raw data, he asked. Apparently having blindly believed he’d read the raw data himself. In that moment he probably also realized WHY he had blindly believed it was the raw data: Because it was presented in a context where phoodoo could rationalize it as a piece of evidece that there’s a big scientific conspiracy at work.
That’s it, that’s ALL it takes to completely convince phoodoo of the truth of something. If you can package it in the form of a case that shows a conspiracy of scientists and skeptics against phoodoo’s worldview, then phoodoo will instantly believe it no questions asked.
He is a shining example of what he accuses skeptics of. He found it with google, and it says something he finds convenient for his view of the world, so now he believes it with the stauch conviction of a sycophant.
I meant “skeptic views” phoodoo. This should be evident from the context.
Your inability to check the context when you find an editorial mistake, and thus understand what was meant, is an very good example of what’s called being illiterate.
As I keep telling you. No need for those demonstrations. We already know of your inability to read for comprehension.
Alan Fox,
Here’s what I do know Alan. Nobody told me the Hafele-Keating experiment was wrong, I figured it out for myself. Which is not very easy frankly. I read about it, like most other people, and usually what you read is the same crap that’s on Wikipedia and the like. But my instincts told me something is wrong there, I didn’t just accept it, like a member of the church of skeptics would do. I thought about it a while instead, and I said no, something is wrong here. So I studied it, and tried to find out as much information about it as I could, which at the time was pretty hard to find, in part because Hafele-keating did their best to hide much of the results as best they could. And because skeptics keep repeating the same horseshit.
But eventually I found the data, I found out more information about what actually happened, and low and behold I was right, and all the so-called experts were wrong. And they are still wrong, the experiment was a failure, and its still pretty hard to actually find that out unless you really look.
And that got me thinking about GPS satellites, and what do you know, the same thing happened, again. Everywhere you read, it said you had to factor in relativity or the satellites would never work. But the first GPS satellite was launched in 1978, just a few years after the Hafele-Keating experiment. So if in the mid 70’s you could even get 4 clocks to agree on time, how could you get a satellite clock to agree perfectly with an earth clock? You couldn’t.
And low and behold, just like my hunch told me, you don’t actually need relativity to make GPS work, there are other ways. Again, I figured this out on my own first.
And here’s another funny twist to the story. I didn’t have an opinion about evolution one way or another growing up. I assumed it must be true, because pretty much everything you read at that time told you of course its true. But I thought about that as well. I started thinking about irreducible complexity before I ever knew there was such a term. I starting thinking about all this so called evidence. And every time I looked into it further, I found out the so-called evidence wasn’t evidence at all, it was some kid of world based lazy preaching by people who didn’t appear to have an objective bone in their body. The bullshit about Darwin’s finches and selective breeding and the blind-watchmaker. This wasn’t evidence this was the opposite of evidence. Dog breeding was supposed to be evidence of the power of evolution? Finches were evidence for evolution? If that’s what you are trying to sell, I realized you guys are a bunch of shysters. You told me there was evidence. That was a lie.
So when I researched it further I found out, hold on a second, biologists don’t all believe in Darwin evolution, why was everyone saying they did? Yea, some did, especially those whose careers depended on it, but there were plenty of well educated biologists who didn’t. I had never realized that before. Why was that so hard to find out? Why did some many places try to pretend that there was a consensus?
After getting to know plenty of biologists and people who work in genetics, I come to find out, almost no one believes in Darwinian evolution anymore. I doubt Dawkins even does anymore. Isn’t that strange. All these hype about what everyone supposedly knows turns out to be crap once again.
So if I can figure this out, all on my own, despite what you are forced to hear otherwise pretty much everyday in mainstream academia, then there is a serious problem with academia.
Nowadays I know where that problem originated. In the seeds of the skeptic-atheist movement, that’s where. They are the ones selling the snake oil. They are the ones using their guerilla skepticism to tell people what to think. And its only gotten worse over the years. The Shermers, the Shostaks, the Brian Dunnings, the Krauses, the Degrasse Tysons, the Novellas, the Nye’s, I wouldn’t trust these guys as far as I could throw them.
And anybody who actually is willing to identify themselves as part of such a thought movement, like Entropy, I know immediately, …more snakeoil salesmen are in town.
Yes, but it might be a good example for why you should listen more and talk less.
I love the asserting that you worked out something was wrong without actually showing the reasoning. Did you feel it was wrong, Phoodoo?
He didn’t work shit out of course. He read that document I found and then believed it instantly because it fits into a larger rationalization he has going about how scientific conclusions he don’t like are advanced as part of a giant secular conspiracy.
I assume that you meant “So if in the mid 70’s you could NOT even get 4 clocks to agree…”
Is English your second language?
So phoodoo found out what was wrong with everything by basically googling stuff and then mindlessly believing what he read. And believing the things he read because they fit his already established views of the world.
This irony is so thick you can slice bread from it.
Entropy,
So, what you meant to say, despite your poor writing skills was, “Skeptic views might include scientific views, but that’s not all there is to it”?
So you mean, some views might be based on science, but not necessarily, its more like faith based views. Or like groupthink. It certainly doesn’t have to be scientific! Its skeptic based.
phoodoo,
What I read this morning is the problem with clock synchronization is additionally caused by the inaccuracy of a quartz hand held. In order to compensate for this local stations that have known positions create error correction, and that correction is then sent to local GPS systems. Is this how you understand it?
Like, just deleting the raw data? They did the best they could, but failed to just throw it in the trash. Instead they did something much more nefarious, by making it hard to get on the internet.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAah
Seriously phoodoo, how did you determine that Hafele and Keating tried to hide it? You wouldn’t just sit there and make shit up would you? Noooooo not you, of course not.
Go back and read some of his early work!
This. Again.
colewd,
Yes, and there is even more to it than this. The satellites positions are constantly updated, using several different methods, and furthermore, there are other variances that affect the clocks, which need to be error corrected, which are more important than any small relativistic effects anyway.
But the deep point, which is so easily lost on the sheep is that this information is not obvious to find. Instead, you have to work really hard at it, to peel off the layer upon layer of repeated crap that the materialist atheists ACTIVELY spew out daily.
Where is one supposed to get their science news-from the BBC, from science magazines, from university papers, from science podcasts, from science forums, from Huffington Post, from Lawrence Krauss, from university talks, from Ted Talks…? Good luck. They are overrun with the skeptic preachers, to such an extent, that it is often quite nearly impossible to get to the truth. So once you start realizing that a lot of what you have been told is lies, why should you believe them next time. Why should someone believe in man-made climate change, when its the skeptics who are telling you its true? Why should one believe that GMO’s are safe when its the skeptics who are saying so? Why should one believe that pesticides aren’t harmful, when its the same usual pack of liars?
The only savior is that after a while, you start to learn the buzzwords of their church. You catch certain phrases, certain references to studies you know have been discredited, you hear certain names, and you go ding, ding, ding, skeptic alert-bullshit is coming forthwith!
Just to amplify the point somewhat, and particularly important as scholarly fields become more and more specialized, another check is that valid fields of study overlap one another in a complicated web of interactions. To choose a broad example, well-established conservation laws from physics apply to chemistry, so a finding in chemistry that is not consistent with physical conservation laws would be suspect. At the very least, it would result in a closer look at one or the other result. And when such results are consistent, it bolsters overall confidence in the complex of fields involved, which often use quite different methods of investigation.
This also helps distinguish valid fields of study from crank specialties, which are either isolated from other fields, of flatly contradicted by them.
Can I get a ruling – is this a back-peddle or a fighting retreat?