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pmb

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Everything posted by pmb

  1. This would be a good place to mention straw arguments since we get them a lot and giving them a name and recognizing them will help us identify them more readily. This too is a term that appears in discussion forums. This text defines a straw arguemnt as follows I'm sure we've all seen these in our travels.
  2. He never argued a point. What he did was to explain something that had nothing to do with my comment. One has to be cautious not to confuse an explaination with an arguement. All he did was to explain that the purpose of his post was fulfilled. Only the later part said that I was "out to get him." If he actually provided an argument it would have been an attempt to prove that a photon with non-zero rest mass could move at the speed c when in fact de Broglies photon (which he was talking about) had a nonzero rest mass and moved at speeds less than c. The opponent never made an attempt to prove that the photon with rest mass moved at speed c. If he did then things would be different. Let us once again recall the text but this time tear it apart and analyze it piece by piece. Read the text again Now let's break it into pieces. The first part states This sentance states that a personal attack is a fallacy which happens when one attacks the person rather than the argument. The opponent, instead of arguing that v = c (1) explained why his posts served its purpose and (2) attacked me by essencially saying "you're out to get me". #1 was an empty attempt to do anything since (a) I agree that it served its purpose and (2) didn't touch on the points on the comments he was responding to. There was absolutely no attempt to prove that v = c for photons with rest mass. #2 was an attack on my character, thus making that statement a personal attack/ad hominem. The second part states This sentance explains that the personal attack fallacy is a synonym for ad hominem. This is why its quite clear to me and others that it's an ad hominem. I just found a ".edu" web site on Logic. It describes an ad hominem too. http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/person.html The underlines are mine. This too explains that the terms personal attack and ad hominem are synonyms.
  3. From what I read in your link freethought doesn't apply to the list of criteria for critical thinking. Critical thinking is about taking a given case and presenting a cogent argument to support its premises. That doesn't apply to freethought. That seems to be an entirely different subject.
  4. A flat universe is infinite in size. It was infinite in size when it was created. Think of a rod which is infinitely long and has tick marks on it to mark of space and there's an infinite number of tick marks. Let the distance between the tick marks increase with the distance between galaxies. Think of it like this - the distance between the tick marks before the big bang was zero meaning that the size of the universe was zero. Now let the Big Bang happen -> even the most smallest but finite distance between the tick marks being created would lead to an infinite universe. Yes. It all sounds bizzare. Nobody said cosmology was going to be easy to understand. The fact is that nobody knows how it can be this way. We just have a good handle on how to describe it.
  5. I gotcha. I bet that's why that straw argument about insults kept comming up. I.e. I think people thought I was confusing insults with ad hominems, when I never was. I guess they're so used to seeing it that it may have been a knee jerk reaction to the topic. It was very strange since I never mentioned insults in this thread and I have no recollection about talking about insults in any other threads. People are always claiming that what they write isn't an insult so I never accuse anyone of making one, even when its overly obvious. Thanks iNow!
  6. I can't think of a counter example. Its quite reasonable to assign a vector to every point in space, even if the vector is the null vector. The 2-d space is a subspace of 3-d. All you do is evaluate the field over the surface in question. Each point on the surface is still in 3-d. But its kinf of unnatural to restrict an electric field to a 2-d surface. I can't even think of an example except for things like a gaussian surface. But that surface is embeded in 3-d space.
  7. That post says nothing about insults. I don't talk about insults in forums. That I provided? Here is what I provided. The text states Short version: A personal attack is historically known as ad hominem. How do they misuse it? Can you give me a couple of examples?
  8. I disagree with that quote. Did you take a look at that website? ==> The author seems a bit freeky! <=== ad hominem The text I have, which I take as authoritative on this issue, defines ad hominem as a synonym for personal attack. As the text states Short version personal attack is historically known as ad hominem. It should be noted that "personal attack" isn't just someone attacking a persons character. It has to be an attack on the person instead of their argument.
  9. It's a field To be more precise its a vector field. In physics a vector field is a vector function of the position vector. That means that for every point in space represented by the position vector R = (x, y, z) you can associate a vector. A scalar field is a scalar function of the position function, i.e. at every point in space you can associate a number. The electric field is a vector field. In relativity the electromagnetic field is a second rank tensor field which is a tensor function of the 4-position X = (ct, x, y, z) A field is described above. A dimension is a number which serves to determine uniquely the configuation of a system. E.g the position vector R = (x, y, z) is three dimensional, i.e. it has three dimensions. Each dimension helps to determine a location in space. Each of the components, x, y, z are each a dimension. The 4-position X = (ct, x, y, z) is 4 dimensional, i.e. it has four dimensions. Each dimension serves to determine a point in spacetime. I don't know QED so you'll have to get the answer on that from someone else.
  10. Sorry qft123. I intended that to show the nature of the wave-particel duality. In principle the double slit experiment doesn't work just for photons. Theoretically you can defract electrons through a double slit too. It's just way too impractical. However, in 1928 Davisson and Germer did a similar experiment whereby electrons were scattered from the surface of nick crystals and a diffraction pattern was formed. The wonderous thing about this is that they discovered this phenomena by an accident. Cool, huh?
  11. There is a book about this out there. In the Beginning ... Biblical Creation and Science Nathan Aviezer, KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
  12. I've never spoke of insults on this topic so I don't know where you got that from. Anyway, this thread has served its purpose fo me and confirmed that it was an ad hominem. Thank all of you for your opinion. Especially Aethelwulf.
  13. Thank you all for your inout. I appreciate it.
  14. It's not the source which determines what it behaves like, its the circumstanes. Young's Double Slit Experiment is nice way to explain the wave paticle duality. A beam of photons hits a screen where there are two parallel slits, closely spaced together. An array of photon detectors is placed behind the screen. On the array there forms an interference pattern. That's the wave aspect of photons. If the intensity of the beam is decreased so that only one photon hits the screen at the time then the array will detect only one click at a time indicating that only one photon has hit the screen. If we record where the photons land and let the experiement run for a long time then the interference pattern will appear. That's what the wave-particle duality means. No. Yes. If L is the wavelength associated with a particle and p its momentum then L = h/p. That can't be answered. Whether a electron is a partical or a wave depends on how you measure it.
  15. Are you sure about that? It says "inability to distinguish expertise from mere authority." That means that when I'm given an exepert opinion and an opinon from "mere authority" I should be able to distinguish between the two. I guess I'm wondering what "mere authority" is? Speaking as an authority outside their field is no authority at all. I think that's a given.
  16. Thank you for your response. Yea. I know that its referring to argument from authority. I believe that's obvious. And I undestand that not all arguments based on authorities are fallacious. Argument from authority is a valid technique in reasoning. That wasn't the question. I wanted an example of the inability to distinguish expertise from mere authority.
  17. Oops! Sorry about that. My mistake. Yes. That's true. That was directed to whoever is reading this thread, not you.
  18. Hi folks. I'm reading the book Practical Logic: An Antidote to Uncritical Thinking - 5th Ed. by Douglas J. Soccio & Vincent E. Barry, Harcourt Brace Collegte Publishers, (1998). I think we could all benefit from studying logic and learning of to construct and present cogent arguements. That's the purpose of this thread, i.e. to discuss critical thinking and its application to scientific dicussions. If not that then I'm hoping to hear about how you folks choose to reason about/present an argument. I'm only up to page 47 so far but I love this book. It teaches you how to more efficiently reason out an argument and to more easily to spot logical fallacies, like ad hominems and strawman arguemets. It talks about certain aspects of arguments such as cogency and its qualities such as reasonableness, relevancy and sufficiency. It also talks about critical thinking which it defines as follows If gives a partial list of characteristics of critical thinking 1. application of the criteria of reasonableness, relevancy, and sufficiency to all important claims 2. distinguishing what is important from what is not according regularly reevaluated principles 3. careful attention to the meaning of terms 4. balanced use of relevant expertise 5. unwillingness to accept any claim that is inconsistent with out own carefully anylyzed experience. 6. careful assessment of motives (or own and others) 7. respect for conflicting views when they are reasonably defended. 8. refusla to take legitimate criticism of arguements pesonally. 9. asking interrelated and relevant questions. 10. a willingness to be moved by reason 11. being open to the possibility of error. 12. willingness to suspend judgement until sufficient evidence is found 13. objectivity Uncritial thinking is characterized by the following 1. unwillingness to coinsider the possibility of being wrong 2. confusing arguments with those who advocate them 3. taking criticism of arguements personally 4. indifference to evidence 5. drawing hasty conclusions based on limited personal experience 6. contempt for those holding conflicting views 7. fear of contempt for others culture. 8. impatience with questions 9. inappropriate dogmatic assertions of absolute certainty 10. hostility to reaonsable demands for evidence 11. inability to distinguish expertise from mere authority. This last one confuses me. What is an example of "inability to distinguish expertise from mere authority."? Thanks.
  19. pmb

    suicide

    Yes. I've tried several rounds of physical therapy, a TEMS unit, two surgeries and pain killers. Pain killers was the last resort and they are helping.
  20. The term paradox as it is used here is defined as http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paradox There are two sources of aging at play here. This is a compound problem since there is time dilation due to speed and time dilation due to gravity. Both contribute to the aging of the bug, In any casd, yes, his age would be different. If the planets were identical in both diameter and mass and each twin was lying on the surface then they'd age at the same rate. The twin on planet a's wristwatch would be running slower compared to twin b but twin b is also in a potential well too and rn faster than if it wasn't on a planet So the effect is that they cancel out leaving no aging. You can also look at this from a symmetry situation. They have to age at the same rate because one is not special over the other.
  21. I disagree of course. He attacked me plain and simple rather than either dropping the subject or reasoning it out. That's an ad hominem plain and simple. Nit picking? Ummm .. so what? Telling someone that a particle with rest mass can't go the speed of light and that's why E = mc^2 = mv^2 is wrong isn't doing something wrong in my opion. I was merely makikng a tiny correction. It was never meant to be more than me pointing out a teeny tiny error. He magnified it into something much much more than it should have been. Yeah. He's well known for that. He even told me that he chooses to be "harsh" (in his words). Its a discussion forum. We discuss physics over there. That includes correcing something that is wrong when we see it. There was nothing "bogged down" in that. I believe that you're exagerating now. Here's what happened. He asked about operators. At a point he wrote This is wrong so I told him it was wrong. He made a small error in notion so I pointed that out to him. He tried to divide a scalar by a vector and suggested he made a mistake. Later on in the thread I figured out how he made that error with mc^2=mv^2 so I pointed it out to him. That's when he got all whiny. There's really nothing more to it than that. He posted an equation which looked bizzare to me. I corrected it. There's nothing more to it than that. I'l provide the link to the thread to anyone else who wants to read it. I really didn't want to discuss the subject of that thread. I was only curious about the ad hominem. The moderator there was so adamant that it wasn't an ad hominem that I decided to keep an open mind and get an unbiased opinion on the subject. Hence the purpose of this thread.
  22. I'm glad you mentioned this. I checked my own and it seems that I'm out of the red and into the green. I guess I do like it.
  23. That language is forbidden by the forum rules. Please edit it out. Thanks. I don't know how you formed that opinion. I've been reading his posts when I have a chance and they seem fine to me. And I talk to him in PM and he seems like a very pleasant person. I can't imagine how you formed that opinion.
  24. Right. What actually happens is that the gravitational field that is present in the rest from of the object becomes stronger as the body is moving. Can you explain that in a different way. I'm totally lost.
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