Neil DeGrasse Tyson headed down same loony road as Carl Sagan?

On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 3:43:10 PM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 12:24:17 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, didn:t you know
that?

Of COURSE I know that. I use it all the time in discussions on the
relativity board.

General Relativity has been experimentally verified in a repeatable fashion by
trustworthy, acclaimed, and accredited scientists.

Special Relativity has not only been repeatedtly verified by experiment, but is
now used in engineering when building cyclotrons and the like.

So its claims are backed up by adequate evidence.

It's true that the claims of relativity seemed astounding at first, and Einstein
met considerable skepticism initially. But being skeptical about relativity
today is seriously misguided.

On the other hand, one set of measurements by one person, not particularly well-
recognized by the scientific community, is not enough to establish a claim that
contradicts the very basis of the scientific world view!

And you yourself noted that after he was no longer able to experiment in
hospitals, he continued his work with dogs, and that work contradicted his
earlier results - no loss in weight was found on the death of a living creature.

It's easier to attribute that to dogs being smaller than people, and thus easier
to weigh accurately, than to even begin to consider the idea that, well, perhaps
the souls of the beasts that perish have no mass, but whatever makes human lives
more valuable has mass... apart from our larger brains, which being physical
objects, are allowed to have mass.

John Savard

On Thursday, October 18, 2018 at 6:54:42 AM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:

People experience lots of things in this world that cannot be explained.
Denial of their existence limits one's viewpoint and is not logical.

That is true. After all, one can look at the French Academy's denial of the
existence of meteorites.

But people make mistakes, tell lies, and have hallucinations too.

Until something is explained, it isn't much use.

Thus, while it would be wrong to absolutely deny any possibility that something
that isn't explained might turn out to be real, it is entirely reasonable to
just ignore isolated and anecdotal evidence of things that are unexplained until
some reasonable way to investigate the cases and come up with an explanation, as
well as verifying the reality of the apparent phenomenon, is available.

The things we understand and can control are integrated into our picture of the
world; the odd things that no one has been able to make sense of are pushed to
one side, because they would only complicate the picture without enriching it.

Also, given that there is evidence of stress-induced hallucinations, despite the
numerous reports of ghosts, there's little reason to look further for an
explanation when we have one that is sensible.

John Savard

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 5:46:23 AM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 1:37:58 AM UTC-6, Martin Brown wrote:

The snag is that he is about as credible a scientific witness as the
drunken Hillbillys that claim to have been abducted by aliens.

What evidence do you have to support such an outrageous assertion? This
sounds to me like wishful thinking and character assassination.

How about the utter absence of any mention of his findings from medical
textbooks? That would seem to indicate that his researches are not perceived as
credible by the scientific community.

Of course, most people with abductee claims aren't from the Ozarks or the
Appalachians, nor are they habitual drunkards, and I admit the hyperbolic
language is a distraction.

John Savard

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 10:24:44 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 3:43:10 PM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:

On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 12:24:17 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, didn:t you know
that?

Of COURSE I know that. I use it all the time in discussions on the
relativity board.

General Relativity has been experimentally verified in a repeatable fashion
by trustworthy, acclaimed, and accredited scientists.

Special Relativity has not only been repeatedtly verified by experiment,
but is now used in engineering when building cyclotrons and the like.

So its claims are backed up by adequate evidence.

It's true that the claims of relativity seemed astounding at first, and
Einstein met considerable skepticism initially. But being skeptical about
relativity today is seriously misguided.

Indeed, and the relativity board has a LOT of these misguided folk who
undoubtedly have serious mental problems.

On the other hand, one set of measurements by one person, not particularly
well-recognized by the scientific community, is not enough to establish a
claim that contradicts the very basis of the scientific world view!

What basis would that be? That what cannot be measured scientifically and
repeatedly does not exist? That God does not exist and only atheists may
apply?

And you yourself noted that after he was no longer able to experiment in
hospitals, he continued his work with dogs, and that work contradicted
his earlier results - no loss in weight was found on the death of a living
creature.

So YOU can't even draw a valid conclusion. The CORRECT conclusion is that
dog spirits weigh less than 1/8 ounce.

It's easier to attribute that to dogs being smaller than people, and thus
easier to weigh accurately, than to even begin to consider the idea that,
well, perhaps the souls of the beasts that perish have no mass, but
whatever makes human lives more valuable has mass... apart from our larger
brains, which being physical objects, are allowed to have mass.

See? :-)

People experience lots of things in this world that cannot be explained.
Denial of their existence limits one's viewpoint and is not logical.

That is true. After all, one can look at the French Academy's denial of the
existence of meteorites.

But people make mistakes, tell lies, and have hallucinations too.

Until something is explained, it isn't much use.

Thus, while it would be wrong to absolutely deny any possibility that
something that isn't explained might turn out to be real, it is entirely
reasonable to just ignore isolated and anecdotal evidence of things that
are unexplained until some reasonable way to investigate the cases and
come up with an explanation, as well as verifying the reality of the
apparent phenomenon, is available.

I agree. So explain why Paul and Martin are so vociferously in denial of
the data, even to the point where they are willing to smear the messenger.

The snag is that he is about as credible a scientific witness as the
drunken Hillbillys that claim to have been abducted by aliens.

What evidence do you have to support such an outrageous assertion?
This sounds to me like wishful thinking and character assassination.

How about the utter absence of any mention of his findings from medical
textbooks? That would seem to indicate that his researches are not
perceived as credible by the scientific community.

Appeal to authority is not a valid argument.

Of course, most people with abductee claims aren't from the Ozarks or the
Appalachians, nor are they habitual drunkards, and I admit the hyperbolic
language is a distraction.

John Savard

It's straw-man baloney and quite dishonest to equate them to MacDougall.

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 7:00:44 PM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 10:24:44 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

How about the utter absence of any mention of his findings from medical
textbooks? That would seem to indicate that his researches are not
perceived as credible by the scientific community.

Appeal to authority is not a valid argument.

Appeal to authority is not proof. And if the only thing the authority has going
for it is that it was made an authority by accident of birth or some such thing,
then indeed it's not much of an argument.

But those who become authorities due to a track record of valid work... have a
word that carries some weight.

John Savard

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 7:00:44 PM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 10:24:44 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

On the other hand, one set of measurements by one person, not particularly
well-recognized by the scientific community, is not enough to establish a
claim that contradicts the very basis of the scientific world view!

What basis would that be? That what cannot be measured scientifically and
repeatedly does not exist? That God does not exist and only atheists may
apply?

That it would be unseemly, and inconsistent with the dignity of scientific
assemblies, to become embroiled in religious controversy?

At the time when science was getting started as the sort of thing we recognize
today, this sort of thing was a serious concern; the map of Europe was still
being sorted out as to which countries would be Protestant and which countries
would be Catholic. And shortly after, there was even the French Revolution,
which was at least anti-clerical if not atheistic.

And at the least, it had not occured to Catholic theologians that either the
soul or the spirit would have measurable physical weight, or in that less
secular age, someone might have tried to do the measurement.

John Savard

On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 7:00:44 PM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:
On Thursday, October 25, 2018 at 10:24:44 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

And you yourself noted that after he was no longer able to experiment in
hospitals, he continued his work with dogs, and that work contradicted
his earlier results - no loss in weight was found on the death of a living
creature.

So YOU can't even draw a valid conclusion. The CORRECT conclusion is that
dog spirits weigh less than 1/8 ounce.

And here I assumed that since dogs are smaller than people, he might have used a
scale with finer gradations.

John Savard

On Thu, 25 Oct 2018 18:00:41 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
On the other hand, one set of measurements by one person, not
particularly
well-recognized by the scientific community, is not enough to
establish a
claim that contradicts the very basis of the scientific world
view!

What basis would that be? That what cannot be measured
scientifically and
repeatedly does not exist? That God does not exist and only
atheists may
apply?

The basis would be a repetition of these measurements by others a
number of times. Compare with Einstein's relativity, it has been
checked and re-checked a very large number of times, by others than
Einstein, and so far it has never been proved wrong. It works.

And you yourself noted that after he was no longer able to
experiment in
hospitals, he continued his work with dogs, and that work
contradicted
his earlier results - no loss in weight was found on the death of
a living
creature.

So YOU can't even draw a valid conclusion. The CORRECT conclusion
is that
dog spirits weigh less than 1/8 ounce.

Nah, the correct conclusion would be that nothing heavier than 1/8
ounce (if 1/8 ounce was the measurement accuracy at that experiment)
leaves the body of the dog at death. Therefore you jump your
conclusions when you claim the spirit of that dog weighs less than
1/8 ounce. The hypothesis that nothing at all leaves the body of the
dog at death is also in agreement with the data, since "nothing at
all" also weighs less than 1/8 ounce. Btw many Christians would
consider this as proof that "dogs don't have spirits". The belief
that only humans have spirits is very common among Christians.

I agree. So explain why Paul and Martin are so vociferously in
denial of
the data, even to the point where they are willing to smear the
messenger.

My main objection is that nobody else have successfully repeated this
measurement. Repetitions of a measurement is particularly important
when possible conclusions are controversial.

Non native speakers of English are certainly at a disadvantage and perhaps some Americans are too mesmerised by euro-trash to know what they are following.

"Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the equation of time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal and used for a measure of time; astronomers correct this inequality for their more accurate deducing of the celestial motions...The necessity of which equation, for determining the times of a phænomenon, is evinced as well from the experiments of the pendulum clock, as by eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter." Principia

There is no such things as absolute/relative time but there is timekeeping and the noon reference which correlates the variations in the natural noon cycle due to two surface rotations acting in combination with the human devised average 24 hour day. This is where similar terms like 'average' and 'constant' constitute the Lat/Long system and characteristics of one surface rotation in isolation,not as an observation but by inference.

The 4th dimensional novelty of the 19th century science fiction novel 'The Time Machine was forced into culture via Sir Isaac's attempt to push the 'fixed stars' of RA/Dec into his experimental science agenda.

"That the fixed stars being at rest, the periodic times of the five primary planets, and (whether of the sun about the earth, or) of the earth about the sun, are in the sesquiplicate proportion of their mean distances from the sun.... for the periodic times are the same, and the dimensions of the orbits are the same, whether the sun revolves about the earth, or the earth about the sun." Newton

Who cares if theorists spend another 100 years chasing rainbows, some people have already started to use imaging and animation tools to construct narratives that were lost to empirical bluffing and voodoo.

On Wed, 24 Oct 2018 10:20:47 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:
On Tuesday, October 23, 2018 at 11:55:33 PM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter
wrote:

On Tue, 23 Oct 2018 14:43:08 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

Why? If a soul has mass, why not computer software?

Really? What you are asking is akin to the question, "If a
dove is
white, why not coal?

Nah, it's rather like" If a dove has mass, why not coal?"

Not at all. We KNOW that both doves and coal have mass, but we
don't
know whether information has mass.

Since information is a non-material property we can feel confident
that information is massless. Consider an unordered heap of small
balls. Now rearrange them in some ordered way so that they e.g. form
some letters with a message you wish to display. Would that change
the total mass of these small balls?

And let's ask this question again: would erasing all software on a
computer change the mass of the computer?


Did you ever read Tracy Kidder's classic book "The soul of a
new
machine"?

Yes, I did. Do you know the meaning of "soul"?

Do you? You seem to confuse it with spirit...

Many people confuse it with spirit, so do dictionaries.

And you are one of them?


That's an interesting question but isn't applicable to the
discussion
of whether or not a spirit has physical mass. Your
unsupported
assumption that it doesn't has no supporting evidence
whatever.
OTOH, MacDougall's experimental evidence supports the
contrary.

Were they reliably replicated several times by others?

That's the ONLY problem with his data,

That "only problem" is then a quite serious problem..

Not as serious as you would pretend to make it.

Do you think Einstein's theory of relativity would have such a high
reputation if nobody had succeeded in verifying it experimentally?


but there's an excellent reason for that which I have explained
to this
group previously. If you have a faulty memory I'll be happy to
regurgitate it for you.

So there are excellent reasons to not trust that data...

Disingenuous and dishonest assertion.

Why do you think it is "dishonest" to correctly point out that nobody
else has verified these measurements?


The "21 grams" argument is fallacious, as anyone who
actually
LOOKED at and ANALYZED MacDougall's evidence would know.
MacDougall reported FOUR measurements of 3/4, 1/2, 1/2 and
3/8
ounce. The sensitivity of his equipment was 1/16 to 1/8
ounce,
which refutes the fallacious assertion that it wasn't good
enough.

FYI: 3/4 of an ounce is quite close to 21 grams. So why is 21
grams
fallacious but 3/4 of an ounce ok?

Good grief! The 21 gram bandied about IS 3/4 ounce. The
fallaciousness
is that (1) the 3/4 ounce was converted to 21 grams by
dishonest people

Would honest people have obtained a different value?
READ THE REST OF THE PARAGRAPH, disingenuous disparager
to make it look more scientific (two significant figures
instead of one)
and (2) they picked the biggest value from the set instead of
the
average value. Don't tell me that you couldn't figure that out
for
yourself.

So you'd prefer a value of 10 to 15 grams instead? Not a big
deal,
the error bars ought to be quite large anyway... let's say 10-20
grams instead, ok?

The average value of the four measurements is 0.53 ounce. I prefer
accuracy
to guesses.

You are nit picking. The major question here is not whether it is
0.53 or 0.52 ounces, but whether it is zero or larger than zero.
That's what needs verification. By other independent measurements.

And how do you exclude the possibility of systematic errors
in the
measurements?

Such possibilities have been discussed in the literature.

And the conclusion was?

All objections refuted.

Just like that? No further details?

In particular, how was the absence of other independent and
confirming measurements refuted?


Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, didn:t
you know
that?

Of COURSE I know that. I use it all the time in discussions on
the
relativity board.

Why not also use it when discussing the mass of the soul?

I present the data as a brake on assertions that a spirit has no
mass. There
is absolutely NO evidence that it has ne mass but there IS
experimental
evidence that it does. Do you believe that NO evidence trumps SOME
evidence?

How do you know that spirits even exist? It's pointless to argue
about whether a non-existing entity has mass or not. And if spirits
exist, weighs 0.53 ounces and has the same volume as its host body,
why do spirits go to heaven instead of falling to Earth? Or stay
afloat some tens of miles up in the atmosphere where the density of
the spirit equals the density of the surrounding air...

You know, mass is a physical property. Only matter has mass. So when
you claim that a spirit has mass, then you also claim that spirits
are made of matter. Don't you realize that?

I would ask you: why you believe it is okay to reject
experimental data
that has a 99.9% confidence level? If you REALLY want to refute
MacDougall's results then YOU do your own analysis of his data.

You shouldn't blindly trust an exaggerated confidence level.

I did the analysis myself.

Then your mind is flawed, since you believe unconfirmed measurements
can have such a high confidence level. Do you believe you are
infallible? Like the Pope believes he is?


First, it has probably been boosted by wishful thinking by these
experimenters.
"Experimenters"? There was only MacDougall's name on the paper he
wrote.
"Probably" wishful thinking? Do you have experimental data to
support
that assertion? Nope, you don't. YOU are the one engaging in
wishfull
thinking.

If there is only one single experimenter the risk of systematic
errors increase dramatically. Why did he fail to form a team for this
experiment? Was he some anti-social eccentric? And who funded the
experiment?


And, second, the confidence level only says something about
random errors
and nothing about systematic errors. The systematic errors can
only be
found by several other independent measurements by others,

That is pure baloney. Experimenters investigate possible
systematic errors
in their own equipment all the time.

Experimenter-S do that, yes. But in this case there were no
experimenters, only one single experimenter. You pointed that out
yourself. To claim that one single experimenter in his solitude
flawlessly spots and removes all systematic errors, that is naive
indeed.

Unless, of course, the sole experimenter was the Pope, whom we know
is infallible... evil grin


and as you earlier reluctantly admitted this has not been done.
The "reluctance" is in your brain, not mine.

You are right actually. I am reluctant to accept the results from
unconfirmed experiments.


Moving volumes of air are easily noticed. Have you ever heard
about a
phenomenon called wind? Even weak gusts of wind are
noticeable. And a
volume of a human body suddenly appearing over a body,
pushing air
away, ought to be easily noticed by people nearby.

An interesting question.

.. and then you elaborate about the Bible as literature. I agree,
the
Bible shall be read like literature, like e.g. Hamlet by
Shakespeare.
You wouldn't consider Hamlet to be literally true, would you? You
shouldn't do that with the Bible either.
In your opinion, not mine. But then, we are BOTH prejudiced about
that,
so your assertions are irrelevant.
We flippantly use the word "soul" interchangeably with "spirit"
but it
is clear that, theologically, "soul" means the spirit and the
body
combined.

If the soul = the spirit and body combined Weigh 10-20 grams, and
if
the body weighs some 70 kilograms, then the spirit itself must
have
negative mass of about -70 kilograms. And the mass of a living
person
must be around,10-20 grams and upon death a person gains mass by
a
factor of several thousand times to about 70 kilograms. And the
spirit will, due to its negative mass, fall to the Earth since a
positive mass (Earth) and a negative mass (spirit) repel one
another
(Newton's law of gravitation) , however a negative mass will be
**attracted** by a repulsive force (Newton's second law).

What the HECK are you babbling about? Bodies LOSE mass upon death
according to MacDougall's work, not gain it.

Are you saying that a soul in a live human body is weightless but
suddenly gains some weight at the moment of death?


Surely all this sounds absurd, but it is just consequences of
your
claims... you definitely have to think them over...

No, it is pure baloney perpetrated by a dishonest or confused
atheist.
The absurdity is YOUR invention.

True, but I just formed the conclusions of your own claims:

Soul = body + spirit
The soul weighs some 3/8 ounces

Combine this with the fact that an adult human body weighs some 70-80
kg and the necessary conclusion is that the spirit has negative mass.