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Groups > sci.physics.relativity > #675552
| From | The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | sci.physics.relativity |
| Subject | Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics |
| Date | 2026-11-02 16:04 -0800 |
| Organization | The Starmaker Organization |
| Message-ID | <6AE92528.ACB@ix.netcom.com> (permalink) |
| References | <HIswiRfeKlrn1qyOL7P_mg-cMpk@jntp> |
Python wrote:
>
> After following discussions about relativity here for quite a while, I
> think the sociology has become at least as interesting as the physics.
>
> Consider several of our resident opponents of relativity. They certainly
> do not defend the same alternative theory. In fact, their alternatives
> are often mutually incompatible.
>
> Yet the argumentative methods show remarkable similarities.
>
> This is not a psychiatric diagnosis, nor am I interested in whether
> somebody is "crazy". I am interested in how a belief system is protected
> when confronted with quantitative physics.
>
> A few recurring patterns seem particularly striking.
>
> 1. THE ALTERNATIVE THEORY RARELY RISKS A NUMBER
>
> Relativity says things such as:
>
> under conditions X, observable Y should differ by Z.
>
> Then somebody measures Y.
>
> An alternative theory which is genuinely competing with relativity
> should say:
>
> my theory predicts Z'.
>
> Then we compare Z and Z' with experiment.
>
> But remarkably often the discussion instead becomes:
>
> "that clock is wrong"
> "that isn't really acceleration"
> "that isn't really time"
> "that coordinate is abstract"
> "that experiment was corrected"
> "those physicists assumed relativity"
>
> Everything is discussed except Z'.
>
> 2. THE MEASURING INSTRUMENT BECOMES "WRONG" WHEN IT MEASURES THE
> UNWANTED EFFECT
>
> The recent clock discussion is almost a caricature of this.
>
> Atomic clocks at different gravitational potentials or on different
> worldlines exhibit predictable rate differences.
>
> Relativity predicts them quantitatively.
>
> Engineering systems such as GPS take them into account.
>
> The response is then essentially:
>
> If the clock needs compensation, it wasn't a good clock.
>
> Notice what has happened.
>
> Instead of asking:
>
> What rate does my theory predict?
>
> the criterion for a "good clock" is chosen so that a clock displaying
> the unwanted physical effect ceases to count as a good clock.
>
> A pendulum makes the problem particularly obvious.
>
> Its period is approximately:
>
> T = 2 pi sqrt(L/g).
>
> Move a perfectly functional pendulum clock somewhere with a different
> g and its rate changes.
>
> Nothing necessarily malfunctioned.
>
> Calling the pendulum "bad" does not make the dependence on g disappear.
>
> It merely changes the vocabulary.
>
> 3. ENGINEERING CORRECTION IS CONFUSED WITH EXPERIMENTAL REFUTATION
>
> This produces one of my favourite arguments:
>
> "The GPS clocks are corrected, therefore the relativistic
> prediction was wrong."
>
> But compensation means almost the opposite.
>
> Suppose physics predicts an offset X.
>
> Engineers deliberately apply -X.
>
> They subsequently observe approximately zero residual.
>
> One cannot use the final zero as evidence that X never existed.
>
> Otherwise noise-cancelling headphones would prove that there had never
> been any noise.
>
> 4. DEFINITIONS QUIETLY MOVE DURING THE DISCUSSION
>
> "Proper time" becomes "correct time".
>
> Then "correct" becomes "perfect".
>
> Then "perfectly good clock" mysteriously becomes "perfect clock".
>
> Elsewhere "acceleration" changes meaning depending on whether an
> accelerometer gives the desired answer.
>
> The linguistic argument then replaces the physical one.
>
> But physics is indifferent to the adjective.
>
> Call the device a clock, an oscillator, Fred, or a banana.
>
> If relativity predicts that Fred's frequency changes by X under
> specified conditions, the interesting questions are:
>
> Does Fred change by X?
>
> and:
>
> What does the competing theory predict for Fred?
>
> Renaming Fred does not constitute an alternative prediction.
>
> 5. OPERATIONAL QUESTIONS ARE REPLACED BY METAPHYSICAL ONES
>
> This occurs constantly with simultaneity.
>
> Physics asks:
>
> How are the clocks synchronized?
> What signals are exchanged?
> What readings are recorded?
> What observable result follows?
>
> The discussion suddenly becomes:
>
> But which event REALLY happens now?
>
> That may be an interesting philosophical question.
>
> But unless the proposed "real now" changes an observable result, it
> doesn't distinguish two physical theories.
>
> A competing physical theory eventually has to tell us what Alice and
> Bob actually read on their instruments.
>
> 6. SUCCESSFUL PREDICTIONS BECOME EVIDENCE OF THE CONSPIRACY
>
> This is perhaps the most sociologically interesting stage.
>
> When prediction and experiment agree, the agreement itself becomes
> suspicious:
>
> the experimenters assumed relativity;
> the engineers were taught relativity;
> the clocks were corrected using relativity;
> physics is a religion;
> everybody has been brainwashed.
>
> This makes the position extraordinarily resistant to evidence.
>
> Disagreement with relativity supports the alternative.
>
> Agreement with relativity also supports the alternative, because the
> agreement demonstrates how deeply relativity has contaminated the
> experiment.
>
> At that point we no longer have an empirical theory.
>
> We have an immune system.
>
> 7. DIFFERENT CRANK THEORIES SHARE THE SAME IMMUNE SYSTEM
>
> This may explain something initially puzzling.
>
> Ralph/Wilson, Maciej, Richard and others do not actually agree about
> what replaces relativity.
>
> One may appeal to absolute acceleration, another to "correct clocks",
> another to universal anisochrony, another to some preferred notion of
> time.
>
> Their physics can be mutually contradictory.
>
> Yet they can coexist quite happily in the same anti-relativity
> ecosystem because agreement about the replacement theory is secondary.
>
> The common element is methodological:
>
> Einstein must be wrong.
>
> The machinery required to preserve that conclusion can then be invented
> locally as each experimental difficulty appears.
>
> 8. THE SIMPLE TEST
>
> There is a very easy way out of all this.
>
> For any proposed alternative to relativity, ask four questions:
>
> 1. What experiment are we considering?
>
> 2. What exactly is measured?
>
> 3. What numerical result does relativity predict?
>
> 4. What different numerical result does your theory predict?
>
> Question 4 is the interesting one.
>
> If after 200 posts we have learned that Einstein was an idiot, clocks
> are junk, physicists are priests, coordinates are imaginary, engineers
> are brainwashed and universities teach religion -- but we still do not
> have the alternative number -- then we have learned quite a lot.
>
> Just not about physics.
>
> There is probably a genuine sociological subject here.
>
> The fascinating feature of crank physics is not simply that people can
> believe incorrect things. Everybody does that.
>
> It is the construction of a system in which being shown wrong becomes
> progressively more difficult because every possible counterexample is
> reclassified after the fact.
>
> The clock agrees with relativity?
>
> Bad clock.
>
> The engineers compensate exactly the predicted effect?
>
> Contaminated experiment.
>
> Several independent technologies reproduce the effect?
>
> Brainwashing.
>
> Ask for the alternative quantitative prediction?
>
> Change the subject to what "proper" really means.
>
> This is why arguing about the hundredth interpretation of "good clock"
> is ultimately less interesting than asking one brutally simple
> question:
>
> Fine.
>
> What number does YOUR theory predict?
>
> That question has the useful property of being completely insensitive
> to insults, religions, gurus, perfectly good clocks, proper clocks,
> improper clocks, and hippopotamuses.
>
> Numbers are annoyingly difficult to insult into changing.
This is a smug, self-congratulatory sermon dressed up as sociology, the
intellectual equivalent of a high-school debate club congratulating
itself for dunking on imaginary flat-earthers while never once risking a
single falsifiable claim of its own.
Pure selection bias masquerading as pattern recognition. You
cherry-pick a handful of "resident opponents" whose positions you
already find unserious, then declare that their argumentative habits
reveal a universal "immune system." That is not analysis; it is
confirmation bias with footnotes. The same method would "prove" that
every critic of any established theory is a crank.
You never actually test the claimed patterns against competent,
quantitative alternatives. There exist people who reject or modify
aspects of relativity and still produce numbers (certain modified
gravity models, certain preferred-frame proposals that make explicit
predictions for clock rates, Shapiro delay, etc.).
You simply pretend they do not exist so your caricature remains tidy.
The entire piece is an extended ad-hominem that pretends to be
methodological. Calling the opposition an "immune system," "crank
physics," and "brainwashing" is not a diagnosis of their reasoning; it
is a preemptive dismissal that lets you avoid ever having to answer the
same four questions you demand of them.
Your "simple test" is correct in principle and then immediately
abandoned in practice. You spend thousands of words psychoanalyzing
vocabulary shifts and never once apply the test to a concrete
alternative prediction that has actually been published. The post is
therefore self-refuting: it demands quantitative confrontation while
offering none.
You treat the success of engineering systems (GPS) as a philosophical
trump card rather than an empirical one. GPS works under the operational
assumptions of relativity; that is evidence. It is not evidence that
every alternative must be pathologically resistant. You collapse the
distinction because the collapse flatters your narrative.
You assume, without argument, that the only possible reason someone
disputes the standard interpretation of clock rates, simultaneity, or
acceleration is that they are protecting a prior belief that "Einstein
must be wrong." You never entertain the possibility that some of them
simply find the conceptual foundations incoherent and are trying
(however clumsily) to reconstruct them. You also assume that the
sociology of the opposition is more interesting than the physics, which
is a convenient way of never having to do the physics.
Your own incentives are obvious: in the forum ecosystem you describe,
status is awarded for sophisticated mockery of the out-group. Producing
this taxonomy costs nothing and earns applause from the in-group. Actual
engagement with a non-straw alternative costs time, risk of looking less
clever, and the possibility of discovering that the story is messier
than "they have an immune system." The same tribal dynamics you diagnose
in others are operating on you; you simply enjoy the mirror less.
This "analysis" does not scale beyond the specific message-board
combatants you have already decided are unserious. The moment you move
to published literature, conference talks, or even serious amateur
calculations that do output numbers, the neat eight-point taxonomy
collapses. At that point you are left with the ordinary, boring work of
comparing predictions to data—the very work your post spends its energy
avoiding.
The entire framing that treats disagreement as a sociological pathology
rather than a demand for better arguments. Delete the "immune system"
rhetoric, the conspiracy-of-brainwashing trope, and the self-flattering
claim that you are studying the sociology while the others are stuck in
the physics. What remains is a short, useful checklist: demand the
alternative number. That checklist did not require this essay.
The four-question test at the end is the only non-combustible piece. It
is elementary scientific hygiene. Everything else is theatrical
scaffolding built around it.
You have written a long, self-satisfied autopsy of other people’s bad
reasoning while carefully ensuring your own never has to face a single
number.
The Swarmmaker has spoken
--
The Starmaker -- To question the unquestionable, ask the unaskable,
to think the unthinkable, mention the unmentionable, say the unsayable,
and challenge the unchallengeable.
Back to sci.physics.relativity | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread
A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 15:07 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 16:52 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 16:11 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 17:20 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 16:32 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 17:34 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 16:37 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 17:54 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 17:00 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 18:13 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 17:15 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 18:21 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 17:22 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 18:34 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 17:48 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 10:03 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 10:16 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 10:28 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 19:13 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 18:16 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 19:27 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 18:28 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 19:34 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 18:37 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 19:44 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 18:46 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 10:58 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Maciej Woźniak <mlwozniak@wp.pl> - 2026-11-02 20:06 +0100
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Python <python@cccp.invalid> - 2026-11-02 21:41 +0000
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 09:09 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 09:16 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 09:37 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics The Starmaker <starmaker@ix.netcom.com> - 2026-11-02 16:04 -0800
Re: A small sociological experiment: relativity cranks and unfalsifiable physics Ross Finlayson <ross.a.finlayson@gmail.com> - 2026-11-02 16:38 -0800
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