It seems like you have a philosophical problem with measuring things and coming to any conclusion at all based on those measurements. That's not a problem for me. Perhaps this is why science doesn't speak to you, and you don't speak to science.

Science is a little messy. Measurements are a little messy. I don't have a problem with that. That's just the reality we have to deal with. If you struggle with that, perhaps that's why your idea of physics is centuries behind everyone else.

That requires the assumption of "constant" acceleration — Metaphysician Undercover

Says who? I didn't say that. This isn't careless from me, this is careless from you.

So far in my analysis, I've just looked at a couple slices in time and calculated the average velocity for that slice. We don't have to jump ahead, we have some average velocities. We can look at them, make some intuitive ideas about what they might mean and then look at more data and see if our intuitions continue to hold. That's a pretty natural progression. We don't have to jump to conclusions, we can instead jump to intuitions and then question our intuitions by looking at more data.

I don't assume it is.

It's inadequate as a representation of what is actually going on. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not a "representation of what's going on". It's a measurement of its position at two points in time, and a calculation of it's average velocity between those two points in time. Of course it's inadequate for a job it's not meant for, and a job it's not doing. You're inadequate for swimming deep underwater without equipment for hours at a time. Everything is inadequate for something, that goes without saying.

How do you think that a determination of an average speed is at all useful toward representing acceleration? — Metaphysician Undercover

If you determine an average speed around one second and an average speed around another second, you can ascertain how much it accelerated or decelerated between those seconds, which is what I did.

If at second one it was going X m/s, on average given the surrounding .2s, and at second two it was going Y m/s, on average given the surrounding .2s, then between 1s and 2s it must have accelerated or decelerated a certain amount. And we could even verify that by looking at some .2s intervals between 1s and 2s. We have the data from the high speed camera, we can just look you know. 1.1s - 1.3s, what was the average velocity? 1.3-1.5, 1.5-1.7, 1.7-1.9. We can just do the same process and look.

You're trying to go too fast. You can go slow. We have the data from a high speed camera, we can take our time analysing it. You don't need to have a "perfect representation of everything immediately", which is what you seem to want. Just take it slow.

I took it slow and just built up a couple facts. Those couple facts were, around the 1s mark it was going about 9.8m/s, around the 2s mark it was going about 19.6m/s, etc. I'm not building a perfect representation here, I'm just looking at some facts.

Fascinating. Though I don't feel hesitant to take what he says with the biggest grain of salt.

He has the idea that the elections were stolen. Now, he is searching lawyers to help him in court to go in that path or strategy. — javi2541997

And if it's true that he just invented that idea out of thin air, I hope he goes to prison for it. That's dictator behaviour.

I've only recently realised that you misunderstood the context of all of this.

This wasn't trump firing lawyers from his criminal trials. This was trump firing lawyers long before any charges were brought against him, during his campaign to overturn the election results.

I'm going to spell out a few more things for you here as well because there was a lot of things you might have misunderstood.

Nobody is saying it was wrong, criminal, or anything like that for him to fire these lawyers. He can hire and fire whatever lawyers he wants - THAT'S not what's so interesting about what he's saying in the Twitter clip.

What's interesting about what he's saying is it proves that the legal experts he surrounded himself with were all telling him he didn't have enough evidence to maintain that the election was stolen. So he fired them and hired lawyers who were telling him what he wanted to hear. Which means he can no longer honestly say "I believed the election was stolen based on reliable expert analysis", because all the experts around him were telling him it wasn't stolen. It means the root concept in his brain that the election was stolen originated from within him.

It was his idea to argue the election was stolen, against the grain of evidence and expert opinion.

Which blows a hole in his own current defense

that's not the lawyers I was talking about, who he fired lmao. You got the wrong end of the stick somewhere.

He was talking about lawyers he had on his team prior to Jan 6, not the lawyers he now relies on to defend him in court.

Sure. "constant speed" was a bad use of terms — Metaphysician Undercover

I really respect you for saying this, wonderful.

But "approximate", and "average" do not imply that the speed was anything other than constant. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's right, they don't imply that, that's part of why they work. They don't imply much at all. They're just simple truths given the data, no extra implication.

Now you insist that "constant} is not a proper representation of the object's speed during that time, but you have provided no representation of a non-constant motion. — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't say it's not constant either, you're still making logical leaps. Slow down.

But all you have is "it was going about 9.8m/s" during that time period:. This indicates one speed during that entire time period, and we agree that "constant speed" is an inadequate representation. Do you not also agree with me, that "going about 9.8m/s" is a completely inadequate representation of what is actually going on in that time period? — Metaphysician Undercover

Inadequate compared to what? Google "how to calculate average speed". The first result gives me "It is calculated by dividing the total distance something travels by the total amount of time it spends traveling." In fact many Google results give me that. That's what I was trying to calculate. I don't see why it's inadequate, it achieved the exact goal that I wanted it for. I now have the average speed for the .2 seconds timeframe around the 1 second mark, the 2 seconds mark, etc. That's what I wanted, that's what I got. It's perfectly adequate for achieving the goal I was hoping to achieve.

So the real question is, are you ready to accept the flaws which I have pointed out. — Metaphysician Undercover

You haven't pointed out any logical flaws. You've made careless logical leaps that I've pointed out, and you haven't accepted the logical flaws in what you said .

Do you accept that leaping to "constant speed" was a careless logical flaw?

Well, look what you have shown me. Between .9s and and 1.1s the object was moving at a constant speed. Then it accelerated between 1.1s and 1.9s. Then between 1.9s and 2.2s it moved at a constant speed again. — Metaphysician Undercover

I won't accept your criticism that I said it's an average speed while you're out here making completely absurd conclusions like it's a constant speed. Let's get that out of the way first.

criminal lawyers, or *criminal* lawyers.

I think Michael's got it right. Sometimes doing their job involves less boot licking and more objective reality

follow up your strategic defence plan — javi2541997

But that's what's so damning about his quote - it shows that the whole "stolen election" argument was his *plan*, rather than something he believed because he was shown reliable evidence.

He fired the lawyers because they were telling the emperor he had no clothes.

https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1703398762746384533?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1703398762746384533%7Ctwgr%5E98658a32178ff87bf39611c5465f75530ad1e476%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Fdonald-trump-defense-doomed_n_65081c16e4b0fa756c766c4f

Trump hired many lawyers. They told him the election wasn't rigged. He fired those lawyers, because he didn't respect them. Instead, he respected the lawyers he could find who were taking him the election WAS rigged.

He fired the lawyers because they weren't telling him what he had already decided must be true.

Damning.

That approximation becomes a significant problem under specific circumstances. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it really doesn't. If you know the location of something at 1s, and the location of the same thing at 2s, you made the logical leap of assuming that means it had a constant speed over that duration, rather than the much more carefully thought out concept that you have the AVERAGE speed over that duration. You're making careless logical leaps and then acting as if you've disproven physics.

It doesn't matter what problem you think there is with the example, if the measurements are real measurements that real people really obtained. These are, in fact, the sort of realistic measurements one could make to verify how the speed of a falling ball changes over time.

I'd only be interested in examining the implications with you on the condition that you accept the measurements as real raw data.

If you think it's impossible for that to be valid raw data, then feel free to show me what the raw data of a ball falling really looks like.

Hmm, disappointing reaction to my curiosity. You say it's known of by science, it's a pretty natural evolution of the conversation for me to ask "in what way is this known of by science?" I don't know how that could be interpreted as disrespectful or whatever.

I will tentatively assume that there's no material you can point me to to demonstrate how this energy is known of by science, but I will remain open to that material in the future.

Sounds fascinating. Please go into detail as to what exactly you mean by "known of by science". Are there physics equations which make predictions about how energy of this sort interacts with the material world? Or if not that, in what way is this energy known of by science?

Yes, these energies are known of by science. — Bret Bernhoft

Would you care to get more specific? Which energies do you believe are known by science but materialists all reject?

I don't see how this is relevant. I am not rejecting any visible evidence — Metaphysician Undercover

You sure are, and you seem proud of it. That's your right, of course. Science doesn't speak to you, and you don't speak to it. I would say it's unfortunate that you would just remove all scientific knowledge from being a viable part of your own knowledge, but you seem happy enough with the decision.

Note --- Speaking of "collapse of wave function", how would you take a picture of Schrödinger's Cat when it's both dead and alive? — Gnomon

You wouldn't. By the time you can take a picture of something, the quantum superposition has already decohered.

It's good to see you've accepted the arbitrariness of the yin yang symbol in the context of this experiment.

I think you've stated my case for me very well, flannel. "Approximate" with respect to a representation means near, or close to what is actually the case. This does not imply truth, but the contrary, it implies a lack, or deficiency of truth. So the fact of the matter is that we just do not have an accurate, precise, or truthful representation of what acceleration actually is. And that is exactly the deficiency which I've been claiming. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you choose to reject all evidence you could see, then you will of course always have that deficiency. You seem very committed to that deficiency. Other people, luckily for the rest of us, seem more committed to finding stuff out.

I define energy how physicists define energy. I probably define materialism as mostly whatever this document says: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#:~:text=As%20the%20name%20suggests%2C%20materialists,Principles%20of%20Human%20Knowledge%2C%20par.

There are obviously forms of energy that strict materialists don't embrace. — Bret Bernhoft

Are those forms of energy something physicists know about and study?

So the published Yin Yang image seems to be a Red Herring*1. What does it reveal about entanglement? In what sense is the published image a "visualization of the wave function"? Can you enlighten me? — Gnomon

Do not assume that just because you managed to misinterpret the meaning of it, that it was MEANT to be misinterpreted. You said yourself that you're not qualified to interpret the paper.

I'm not qualified either, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would guess they were trying to use a shape - ANY shape, they just happened to choose yin Yang - to demonstrate some kind of stability of the measuring device or stability of a signal or something like that. "The input image remains legible in the output, so that means xyz".

I see. I suspected it was some situation like that, interesting that he just lays it out so explicitly.

you're still over thinking everything. Or you're just immune to science.

Well, look what you have shown me. Between .9s and and 1.1s the object was moving at a constant speed. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's an assumption YOU made, not me. I said APPROXIMATE speed. I didn't say constant. I don't know why you would assume it's constant, the data doesn't say that.

If you insist on overthinking it, you should be very careful in your overthinking.

It appears to me that wonderer has made a very good case that the yin Yang symbol appeared in the output of the experiment because the yin Yang symbol was used as an input to the experiment. I think you've been just a little bit unfair, gnomon. Take a step back and consider the possibility that you misinterpreted what was going on.

The best way to discover the problem with being a materialist — Athena

Considering how drastically you've misunderstood materialism up to this point in the conversation, I think it would be more appropriate for you to show more curiosity about what materialism is, rather than claiming to know why materialism is a problem. If you don't know what a particular belief is, you don't generally stand a good chance of being able to prove why it's a problem.

I'm sure there are many fantastic arguments in the world against materialism, but I suspect they mostly come from people who know what materialists think.

You do know we are talking about how we use this planet, right? — Athena

I know that was one thing one person brought up in the conversation once. I didn't realize that was the central focus. Is it?

I don't know, but do you want to discuss sacred math? — Athena

Not particularly.

I thought I explained this . The current state of "mathematics", the axioms and rules which are the current conventions, make it impossible that this could be done to my satisfaction. So I cannot imagine this scenario. You are asking me to imagine something which I am saying is impossible for me to imagine. For me to imagine this being done to my satisfaction would be to imagine it being done with something other than "mathematics". — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems like you're still overthinking it. You're focusing so much on abstract mathematics and not enough on concrete measurements. Galileo didn't discover acceleration due to gravity via abstract mathematics, he measured it. If you can't imagine measurements, then let me do the imagining for you. I don't believe it's particular challenging.

I've set up an apparatus to measure the distance a cube is falling over time - it's just a really tall building (let's say 100m), with a bunch of measurements marked up its height, and a high speed camera to track how far it has travelled at every moment. Such a setup is actually pretty sufficient to get a good idea of this problem.

So, we start out by asking, how fast was it falling approximately at 1s? We look at our high speed footage and we measure is position at 0.9s and 1.1s. We find the positions are 3.97 and 5.93 respectively (measured in meters from the starting point). So we find out that in that 0.2s time frame, it travelled about 1.96m, which means it was going about 9.8m/s.

Then we ask, how fast was it going at 2s? So we do the same thing as before, we find it's position at 1.9s (17.7m) and 2.1s (21.62m). We calculate how fast it was going approximately over those 0.2s and it turns out it was going 19.6m/s.

We do the same thing for 3s, measuring it's position at 2.9s and 3.1s to be 41.24m and 47.12m, giving it a velocity of 29.4m/s.

We do the same thing for 4s, measuring position at 3.9s and 4.1s to be 74.58 and 82.42m respectively, giving it a velocity of 39.2m/s.

So we get all our results together, and quickly notice that every time a second passes, the cube seems to be traveling 9.8m/s faster than it was traveling the previous second.

Why are these sorts of measurements, and this sort of experiment, unimaginable to you? Are they still unimaginable to you now?

metaphysician, please recall that this all started with us imaging a scenario where these measurements were done to your satisfaction. Now, whether you think they're actually capable of being done to your satisfaction is entirely different question from your ability to imagine a scenario where they were done to your satisfaction.

If it's inconceivable to you that these measurements could be done, by you or anyone else, to a satisfactory degree, then I would propose that you are immune to science.

I'm also genuinely quite amazed at the conspiratorial nature of your approach to acceleration due to gravity. Do you really not think there's sufficient evidence for it? Are the physicists of the last hundreds of years incompetent or just lying? How did we manage to make it to the moon, or send rovers to Mars, if we don't even grasp the very basics of gravity? I can't tell how sincere you are about all this.

why is that the scenario you invented, rather than a scenario where I show you the numbers and how I got them?

No, that's the point, I would not agree to this. I would want to see the measuring technique, the justification for this claim, that "it was going at about 9.8m/s downward after 1 second", etc.. What I said, is that some others might accept this, as a matter of faith in some principles they hold, but I am not inclined to accept things on faith. — Metaphysician Undercover

What's all this talk about faith? You think people came up with the 9.8 number on faith?

The existence of dark energy is still in question and a materialist would have a hard time accepting an unknown energy but we can see, balance is essential, and it seems quite obvious to me, if the only energy that mattered was gravity then the whole universe would be sucked back together. — Athena

Why would a materialist have a hard time accepting an unknown energy? I'm quite certain that every materialist I know is completely comfortable with the idea that we haven't discovered all that's true about the universe.

I fear you've built up this very narrow idea of what materialists think, that isn't actually what materialists think.

Regardless, this is irrelevant to the point I was making. I said "truth" implies understanding. But for someone to say "I agree that this is true", and for it to actually be true, are two different things. So "I agree that X is true" does not imply understanding in the way that truth itself implies understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it's incredibly feasible to agree to the truth of something without fully understanding it.

Someone may not understand motion, because intuitively they keep coming back to zenos paradox. But even if they don't understand it, they can agree that, for example, This car moved relative to me (or I moved relative to the car), or other such statements.

The same is true for the example given before about acceleration. You may not understand or even philosophically agree with certain aspects of acceleration mathematically, but without that understanding you can still acknowledge observations that say, "after dropping the bowling ball, it was going at about 9.8m/s downward after 1 second , and it was going about 19.6m/s downward after 2 seconds , and it was going about 29.4m/s downward after 3 seconds".

You don't need to understand acceleration to agree with some basic observable facts about how bowling balls fall.

Yes of course, such objects accelerate. They must, in order to get from zero velocity to having some velocity. The problem is that we as human beings, do not have a very accurate understanding of acceleration. Our mathematical representation of it is very problematic. Read the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analyst

Notice that the article says that Berkeley's criticism of Newton was resolved with the concept of "limits". But this really doesn't solve the problem of acceleration because it places zero as a boundary, limit, which is never obtained. So the principle utilized is that there is no point in time when the object changes from being at rest to being in motion, because an infinite amount of time would pass before the boundary is crossed. So the crossing of that boundary, between rest and motion is never actually obtained by the mathematical representation. — Metaphysician Undercover

All of that is very intriguing but also entirely beside the point.

as a full blown nasty no good useless lying liberal, let me just say:

If Hunter committed a crime in this (which he almost certainly did), charge him! I don't want special treatment for dem politicians or their family.

(It would be wonderful if magats had the same attitude about their politicians)

there are programming languages where ** means exponentiation. It's not as common as ^ but it's not unheard of either.

My mobile keyboard has exponent numbers. 2² = 4

They made a bad choice in using the taichi because gullible new-agers could so easily jump to the incorrect conclusion without understanding the substance of the experiment. — T Clark

Quantum physics seems ripe for certain kinds of thinkers to abuse. It takes a lot of effort to undo that abuse .

You're overthinking it a little bit. Regardless of philosophical issues, we can in fact experimentally verify, to some reasonable degree of precision, that bowling balls and pool balls both accelerate toward the ground when dropped. If you have philosophical problems with the concept of acceleration, you should separate that from your ability to look at that evidence and see what does, in fact, happen

I would have suggested ap as well but I do think ap has a notable left slant. It's not extreme, and it's harder to notice for us on the left, but it is there.

I think it's reasonably closer to unbiased than most other news sources though.