Common Sense isn’t so Common…

I went to the D programming conference back in August this year, and I ran into several interesting people. One was a former researcher of supergravity; I told him “Honestly I think supergravity is bullshit” he smiled and said “Yes, it pretty much is…”. He had a fantastically dry sense of humor (e.g. when giving his presentation he said “When you are programming, you don’t want to write harmful code…” I thought, yeah something that would harm the hardware; the speaker continues “…Like launching missiles.”). Another was an interesting software programmer that recommended me to the site “Common Sense Science“. It’s basically a pseudoscience site.

I looked through the links and noted that a number of them are to Creationist websites, which immediately told me this was as pseudoscientific as Lubos Motl and the Easter Bunny combined.  Looking at, e.g., the “Contradictions” page here are some of the problems:

“It is only a mathematical model consisting of equations and does not usually specify physical structure for elementary particles.”

I don’t know how well hidden this is, but historically science has always been described by mathematical models!

It’s complaining about the language that the theory is formulated in. Well, there’s a problem with this argument that Wittgenstein points out long ago: what can be said in one language can be said in any language, or languages are isomorphic (for the mathematicians out there ;)).

Their criticism that quantum mechanics does not specify the structure of subatomic particles is somewhat justified…since quantum mechanics explicitly assumes that we are dealing with point particles! I myself have entertained the view personally that subatomic particles could possibly have an “atomic” structure to them. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, maybe we’ll never know!

But quantum theory works despite this “catastrophic contradiction” and even makes some of the best damn predictions in Human History! The Dirac Equation, Quantum Electrodynamics, the Hydrogen atom…need I continue?

“It frequently contradicts itself.”

It contradicts itself…because it contradicts itself.

Ah, well, it’s hard to argue against a tautology but this is a meaningless proposition. Old Wittgenstein should be rolling in his grave at a frequency that could generate power for all of Western Europe from this argument alone.

“It provides no mechanism for such fundamental processes as the exchange of energy.”

Actually, this is an interesting argument because I’ve dealt with dialecticians…philosophers obsessed with pseudoscience, holism, and “change”.

A thermodynamic process specifies the initial conditions of the process, then the final conditions when the process ends. Quantum theory does the same thing. So therefore, logically, thermodynamics is wrong! Despite being the one of most important things coming from the 19th Century (the other being the Stanley Steamer ;)).

The mechanism for exchanging energy, etc. is actually done through photons (Feynman diagrams anyone?). There is a sound explanation of what’s going on…and it dates back to the hydrogen atom quantization. Apparently these people never learned quantum theory, so “common sense” dictates they criticize it.

“Assumed properties of elementary particles.”

This argument is based on the previous argument, which is a considerably weak argument.

As I mentioned earlier, these people have links to Creationist websites…it turns out these people are Creationist philistines. For example, explaining life can only be done in the Judeo-Christian blah blah blah. After reading “can only be done with…Judeo-Christian” I stopped reading.

I refuse to part one pretty penny to purchase (yes, purchase) their technical papers since they appear to be crackpots already. (Nothing personal, dear Common Sense pseudo-Scientists, but I actually first derived the Lorentz factor by hand, geometrically from the two principles of Galilean relativity and the constancy of the speed of light back in high school…you mean to tell me that this is wrong because “there are contradictions” doesn’t jive with me.)

I’m not dead (yet)!

Alright, I know it’s been a while since I’ve last posted, so let me get everyone up to date. The school year has started and I’m taking a number of advanced math courses, which of course requires a lot of math proofs.

I’ve always approached math proofs as a sort of “construction” exercise…like masonry for the mind. The problem is that I’m of the Homer Simpson School of masonry.

Anyways, in my spare time I’ve been doing things like quantizing the Newton-Cartan theory (canonically), finding the canonical conjugate momentum to the Cartan tetrad using the Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian then working out the consequences of this (and comparing them to loop quantum gravity), and of course pursuing women.

Something rather interesting, which Dr. Woit has been angry about, is that materialism is kind of…being completely abandoned by String theorists. Indeed, Lubos Motl has boasted this! Call me “old fashioned” (or, if you are one of those rapscallion kids, “old school”), but isn’t materialism one of those foundations of Western science?! You know, along with causality and formal logic?

Coincidentally, I have been arguing a lot with philosophers (damn philosophers!) about what is “antiscience”. They would like to believe that criticizing a scientific hypothesis without providing a suitable alternative hypothesis is scientific…but this is comparable to saying, in the middle of a conversation with a friend, “You’re a <insert profanity here>!” Then refusing to speak with this friend any further. A philosopher brought up his crack pot idea that it is “society/culture/ethics” which really influence the behavior of particles and matter…and after an experiment of thinking very hard for him to physically disappeared, he remained. Thus I scientifically disproved his hypothesis, but he doesn’t believe me :-\

I don’t understand why Americans are so afraid of science. Which brings me to a funny anecdote. The other night I was dragged to the see “The Passion of the Christ”…against my will, as you would expect. I got kicked out for being too vocal. When the lights darkened and the movie was about to begin, I said loudly “I wonder if this will have a happy ending?” I owe this witticism to Groucho, of course. Then several scenes later, someone is riding a horse, and I ask again loudly “What? He isn’t riding a dinosaur? This isn’t very accurate according to the Bible.” Finally when Jesus was arrested, I asked “Wait, then when did he bury the dinosaur bones?” I guess not everyone there liked my views.