Hi Bruce,
Thanks for posting that.
Here's my view in a nutshell, then some personal blather follows which maybe nobody will read but it's there.
1) Relativity: CAN be used improperly. Honest competent critics will help groom Relativity.
Dr. Dick may have something to contribute about this.
2) Relativist Culture: CAN be used improperly.
Relativity IS related to higher logic about conduct of life...but there's a lot of literature that needs to be created to work it out on the drawing board for cultural assimilation.
The Absolutist Norm is fairly far off the mark on some things...ie. they often endorse the 10 Commandments:
"Don't steal or kill" ...but then act as if it's okay to fight wars to keep oil prices lower, or cheat in the political process because the other side is just...you know...the other side!
3) Relativity and Mechanisms of Evolution:
Two Monumentally Important, Useful, Value-Neutral
and Permanent Concepts. Their deniers use them ALL THE TIME! However, they both are misunderstood fairly often and there is more work to do on properly applying them OUTSIDE the most
"instrument and credential-laden" atmospheres.
The gist of the article IS about cranks.
Does this have something to say about Dr. Stafford's work ? Yes...and No.
Paul said Dick's rhetoric may have prejudiced a few academics. Well, I hope you'd agree he can just cross out the damned rhetoric anyway, since those are not the paper's main points, right?
Crossing out rhetoric is not all that hard.
By the way, in that paper, this seemed feeble:
"Information is transmitted down to the receivers from each satellite, which enables receivers to make a relativistic correction which accounts for these effects."
I think what that meant is they could simply record the time received on the ground. It seemed an incomplete comment on the topic it had broached.
If Dr. Dick is just down on "Al" for being a flawed human being or Jew or whatever, I agree that is a waste of my time. But I do look for more valid grooming of all the assumptions that make current conventional thinking such a tenuous basis for living, including basic ideas in Evolution and Relativity. There won't be that many new things to me, but maybe now and then, one. And HOW things are being explained can use a lot of our critical scrutiny.
Can you..would you...recommend any articles which show how Relativity and Evolution are WELL explained as guides to conduct of society? Because I think they have a lot to say, and because a few great scientists have tried to explain their importance, it is of great interest.
I wanted to look harder at Dr. Dick's paper and
Dr. Paul challenged me on a few things too...
but my life consists of worrying from week to week about obtaining small amounts of money and not being screwed over too badly by the frog-in-a-pot-of-heating-water culture I live in.
This disputed and mathematically esoteric stuff gives me one more way to be a
volunteer.
Ah, but why should I help straighten out this mess for free when paid folks and pensioners haven't resolved it in Dr. Dick's and Dr. Paul's favor?
Will it help save the world? Because that is a fairly high priority again.
Oops.
Now I don't even make Paul's list of folks who could "qualify" to understand Dick's paper.
Well, cross that one off. Maybe.
Sincerely,
Mike |