usenet weirdness

Less cool if it were noticed that your unintentional cross-posting well into thread was what involved a bunch pf people who post too often.

For years you used to be the most prolific poster on sci.electronics.design, if one of the lower-quality posters.

It isn't false on two dimensional plane. It took a long time before we had explored enough of the earth to realise that the earth's surface was curved enough to matter, and a lot longer before we could measure long enough distances accurately enough to see that the curvature did matter.

There were ancient Greeks who knew about spherical geometry. None of them had the name Euclid.

Einstein didn't "announce" anything. He just pointed out that treating time as an extra - and complex - dimension and gravity as a distortion of those dimensions was a useful way of looking at the universe.

Euclid's math was always about flat two-dimensional space. It was never "suspect", merely a convenient approximation in a lot of situations.

There weren't a lot of "obedient doggies" around when Einstein first published his general relativity work. Very few people could follow it, but those that did liked it. There are more people around now who can follow it, and they still seem to like it. People who can't follow it seem find it easier to object to it, than to learn enough to be able to follow it.

And a proper clock indicates what the user needs to know, corrected for known deviations.

Clock errors were classically due to mechanical defects in the clock - thermal expansion of the pendulum arm is the obvious one.

You have a lot to be sorry about. Incorrigible error is a sorry state.

I'm using the term "idiot" in the original Greek sense of somebody who hasn't had the kind of education that would have given them access to kind of knowledge they need. You need to go off and get it - if you have the capacity to absorb it. I got myself a Ph.D. once. Some of the graduate students I went through with were surprisingly slow - slower than some of the people who didn't make to through to graduation, so "capacity" is rather catch-all qualification.

What are you f****ng about? Ancient Greeks knew it well enough already.

Yes, he did.

He just pointed out that treating

A pity the idiot has no clue what "usefulness" is.

And have you never heard of 3-dimensional Euclid's geometry?

Well, that's what The S*it is doing with the brains of its unfortunate victims...

Of course. Calling the opponent "idiot" is much easier than answering his questions, isn't it?

And a "proper clock" is something your insane church is unable to enforce on sane people, sorry. Common sense has been warning the idiot.

So: when a clock in GPS ground base is indicating t = 2026-03-11 13:00:00.000000000000 - what is the indication of a satellite clock t'? I say t'= 2026-03-11 13:00:00.000000000000 with the precision of an acceptable error. What do you and your beloved S*it say?

Nope, we're correcting it the same way. An insane "improper!!!!!" taboo of some religious maniacs worshiping a mumbling inconsistently idiot is not going to stop us. Sorry.

Well, no you're not. A lie, of course, is exactly what is expected from a fanatic religious maniac.

But - I've told you you will soon explode with slanders and here goes the first. What do you know about my education?

...

I personally think, that Einstein was what I would call a 'disinformation agent'.

Most likely he wasn't even a jew and a Swiss from birth.

Why I think so:

I have studied his CV and found, that it would violate simple logic.

E.g. A.E. was left behind (alone?) in Munich, Bavaria, after his family moved to Pavia, Italy.

But which family would leave their first born alone in another country?

Then A.E. quit school, denounced his German citizenship and went to Italy, to join his family.

But he didn't go to school there. Why?

It wasn't lack of the ability to speak Italian, because his best friend Michele Besso was Italian.

Then there is the question, how he could denounce his German citizenship in the first place, if he was only 15 years old.

The office in Munich would simply had thrown him out and demanded, that his father had to show up.

Then A.E. went to Aarau, Switzerland to attend school.

But since when allowed the Swiss unattended teenagers and stateless aliens to become students in Switzerland?

Next A.E. went to the ETH in Zurich and studied teacher of physics.

Same question: how could he do that?

Then A.E. married and had a young family in Bern and worked in the patent office.

But why would Swiss authorities allow Germans to have a look at their state secrets?

Then in 1905 A.E got productive and published a host of world class papers, of which one was rewarded with a Nobel price.

That was done while he had his young family and a full day occupation (six day a week at 10 hours each) at the patent office.

That story sounds 'ficticous' to say the least.

TH

Am Mittwoch000011, 11.03.2026 um 10:54 schrieb Gerhard Hoffmann:

Well it's a pretty old joke and not particularly funny.

What you apparently want and actually demand, that is conformity with some sort of mainstream.

That is actually very useful in traffic, but is not a scientific requirement.

Science has just one thing in mind and that is truth, whether you like what is true or not.

There ain't no such thing as conformity in science, because it is entirely irrelevant, what the masses want or think.

You may think otherwise, but are wrong, because especially physics can't take care about what you want or regard as useful.

Also your profession is irrelevant and how you earn your bread.

Even less important is politics, believes or the mindset of your particular peer-group.

What matters in science is truth alone.

TH

A human mind is the only* device capable of distinguishing between truth and false. Thus, if all human won't like it and say "false!" - there is no possibility of objecting. Surprising? Well, but that's the truth, whether you like it or not.

So you are calling yourself an idiot?

Euclid was always three dimensional, and he did talk about three dimensional geometry - his "Elements" lists the Platonic solids. Euclidean geometry - as taught - is points and lines a on a plane. The more complex stuff is there if you look for it, but how often do people talk about icosahedrons?

Human brains don't seem to be well adapted to coping with geometry of a four-dimensional space time which gets distorted by gravitational fields. Most of us can comprehend the effects and write computer programs that can let us see how the ideas play out.

Some unfortunate people aren't willing to go that far. You seem to be one of them.

Euclid certainly knew that the Earth was spherical. He must also have known that Euclidean geometry in three dimensions applies. The Greeks also knew about Babylonian astronomy. Not writing about it doesn't imply not knowing about it.

AFAIK Einstein did not adopt complex time. There is no need for it anyway, and it isn't really useful. You can discuss the Poincare group without.

It evolved out of practical sciences, such as surveying. And of course it also applied in three dimensions.

There were very few physicists around to begin with. (Seen it estimated at ~1000, of all kinds, in 1900) Those who mattered were capable of following it. (Lorentz, Ehrenfest, Sommerfeld, and young Pauli) In all, at least several dozen. Those 'only three people who understand' was just a joke.

There just is no alternative, and confirmations run into the decimals.

Their aim is to object to begin with...

Jan

Also at judging engineering. He was the best patent clerk they ever had, according to his boss. He was good at understanding inventions. (and later had some patents of his own)

That is a counter-indication even. Depends on where she was limited to verbal thinking.

The crackpots here completely miss the function of the scientific literature at the time. People really used publications to communicate. (rather than to stake out claims, or to run up scores) Printing saved them the trouble of letter writing.

He wrote for people who would understand...

Jan

Not really. It is usually based on Lord Kelvin, who said a lot of stupid things late in life. (but he was also trolling a bit)

However, Kelvin also noted that apart from the clear skies above there were two 'black clouds' on the horizon: the problem of black body radiation and the problem of the world-aether. (so right on the spot)

And most of it is not used to do theoretical physics.

People 'studying problems that strike them as interesting'? Where have you been those last decades?

The circumstances where you could become an Einstein, a Dirac, or a Feynman by doing that just no longer exist. PhD students these days go into a PhD factory where they work out a planned detail problem in a project of their advisor. The problem to be solved is described in advance, as a project, and it is practically certain that it can be solved in the time set. This is the way that science funding has been set up. (yes, I know, there are some exceptions) If they want to 'think for themselves' they will have to do it in their spare time.

It is not just absence of talent. It is active destruction of the possiblities to do good science,

Jan

Spreading the incompetence, eh?

Jan

Of course there will be a (very small) tide in the sun, and of course it will not be completely non-dissipative. That doesn't mean that it is in any way relevant.

Imagining is always easy.

Indeed. Those in fusion research know all to well.

That is a misunderstanding on your part. I am telling you that you are behaving like one.

It is not about what you are, it is about how you are behaving, (on this particular point)

Jan

But there's no easy way of proving something "scientific" is true. Popper wanted to reduced that to "not yet falsified"

That's where Popper was heading, but the reality is that consensus matters. The masses don't come into it - they don't know enough to have a useful opinion.

I'm not a member of any of social groups of about 150 people who dominate particular areas of physics, so in that sense you are absolutely right. None of them are going to waste their time posting here. Conforming - more or less - to their collective point of view does matter. Your research proposals won't get funded if you don't.

It didn't matter to Einstein that Ernst Mach hated his ideas. Max Planck and his cronies liked them.

Certainly true fro anybody posting here. If your profession puts you into the charmed circle that dominates a particular branch of science it can matter, but that would make you too busy to post here.

It's not your peers who matter, but rather the 150-odd people who all know one another and collectively dominate your particular academic environment, evaluate each other's papers and research grants and work out who will get into the charmed circle as the older members die off or retire. If they become your peers, you have made it.

But "truth" is frequently inaccessible.

Some human minds may have that capacity. Some clearly don't. You need to access a tolerably large number of minds - Robin Dunbar says about 150 - that you personally know, and know to be knowledgeable enough in the area to have an opinion that's worth knowing.

As far as I can see, science is currently organised into areas run by such groups, and uses conferences to make sure that the members of those groups stay personally acquainted.

And it's currently designed to express opinions that questioner will like. It hallucinates. The large language models on which it relies do include a lot of nonsense.

A couple of my acquaintances use it professionally, but very carefully.