The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

[lakedaemonian]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

I've been reading a bit lately on cognitive biases, and am increasingly convinced that's what happens in a large majority of conversations. Identity beats reason almost every time. But if we begin by assuming that rational discourse is incapable of ever changing minds, aren't we giving up a bit too easily?

Cognitive Bias is something I've spent a lot of time on this past year, focused almost exclusively on:

Confirmation Bias

Conformity Bias

Sunk Cost Fallacy

(devil's advocacy/pre-mortem)

There's heaps of others, but I've been approaching it from the perspective of teaching just the basics.

Kind of like teaching self-aid/combat life saver course.....NOT teaching brain surgery.

Human behaviour is a funny thing.

[astonas]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

i hear you, astonas, and i have benefitted greatly in the past from many of your posts. i think the problem is that your rational discourse will only be understood and appreciated by those who already agree with you.

on a national level we had the george w. bush administration assert that they created their own reality via the actions they took. the trump administration has its alternative facts, and trump himself appears to believe things said by fox network commentators over the reports of the agencies of the gov't he now leads.

people who can be swayed by rational analysis themselves constitute a subgroup of the population; they are almost certainly merely a minority.

I've been reading a bit lately on cognitive biases, and am increasingly convinced that's what happens in a large majority of conversations. Identity beats reason almost every time. But if we begin by assuming that rational discourse is incapable of ever changing minds, aren't we giving up a bit too easily?

Is it really too restrictive to ask of members of the site that they be capable of rational discourse? I've seen such rationality all over the political spectrum, backing ideas new and old. I've seen perfectly polite and rational disagreements here on any number of topics. I don't think we'd be narrowing our worldview to only those who agree with us to set that as our standard. Most posters here seem to manage it pretty well. And to be clear: I'm not criticizing ALL people who want to talk about new ideas or scientific subjects, it's really only Chris who seems to be persistently and stubbornly delusional, no one else seems to be having a major problem remaining rational. People may get mad, but that's different from being irrational.

Put another way: I see what we have here on iTulip as being a community with a higher concentration of rational people than the bulk of the population. So I suppose I think that it's more worthwhile and less restrictive to insist on rational discussion here than elsewhere.

Do you really think we've shrunken to the point where even asking for sanity would restrict the range of perspectives represented in our community to its detriment? I know we're much smaller now, and I haven't tracked membership over time, but are we already there?

your arguments MIGHT have some value for SOME of the "bystanders" who wander by this conversation, but this is unlikely.

Honestly, after my first conversation with him, the only reason I've ever bothered to engage Chris at all is for the benefit of bystanders, who have on occasion sent me notes of appreciation, both in-thread and privately, for doing so. Not everyone has the background to know, for example, that assuming that singularities don't exist would necessarily have consequences in the real world that would be immediately observable, and that the central assumption underlying all of Chris' work is therefore counterfactual. It's not that people aren't sharp, or don't think critically, it's just that not everyone has had the luxury to spend the time acquiring the knowledge needed to see through the word salad he generates. Since I happen to have studied in fields related to this, I do feel some level of obligation to share what I know, with those who otherwise might be left thinking there's a chance Chris is right.

It's just not nice, or right, to stand by and watch someone else get conned, when you know that's what's happening.

That may be a waste of my time, in the strict sense of not helping me directly, but if I value having a community here, it's not an unreasonable investment to see that it isn't being exploited or deceived. Any community can fall apart if members start to think that outright lies can run as freely here as anywhere else.

your arguments will certainly never affect chris, to whom your comments are apparently directed.

No, I don't really expect to change Chris' mind directly about the value of his musings. I'm mostly hoping that if the ratio of people willing to humor him drops enough, eventually he will give up, so he can at least make better use of his remaining time. I've on occasion considered asking for a show of hands, to see if anyone at all thinks his cosmological musings add value here, and if no one does so, ask FRED to ban him or the topic. The problem with that, though, is that I really don't think the use of formal power is likely to drive him to seek help. If anything, I suspect it will just increase his sense of martyrdom, and unnecessarily restrict even the more sensible conversations on science that we see here. My intent is to help both the community, AND Chris, if that is in any way possible.

But you're the expert in psychiatric matters, not me. What IS the proper way to handle someone who is harming a society and themselves because of their delusions? How does one encourage/force a deluded patient to confront reality, if not by speaking with them, or at least in their presence? I suppose I've by default settled on a model vaguely like an intervention, but does that actually work in practice? What you said next leads me to believe it might not:

belief systems are axiomatic wholes. they are "self-sealing" in that any comment or critique can be incorporated without threatening the underlying system of beliefs. for example, if you try to dissuade someone who believes in a conspiracy directed against him, the closer you come to your goal the more threatening you are. your arguments in this scenario are then reclassified as "tricks" aimed at getting the believer to drop his guard. there can be no convincing.

I'll readily defer to your expertise if my approach can't help. But I still don't know what a better approach is. Voting to demonstrate that no one has yet been convinced by their words? Cutting them off? Turning off their account? I've tried ignoring Chris for extended periods in the past, but all that seems to do is bring him back again later with an even more grandiose delusion. It certainly hasn't caused him to get the psychiatric help he needs. And in the meantime, he's wasted 14 years of his life. It's hard for me not to think of that as self-harm. If I were unknowingly doing that, I would certainly want my community to stop me from continuing.

as an aside: i have long had the idea that enlightenment is a minimal axiomatic set. i suppose such a system would leave most of the world as godel-type unprovable statements.

Heh, an astute observation, and I've admired your "close shave with Occam's razor" here before. But while I may be therefore favorably inclined to your suggestion that much is unprovable, that isn't going to dissuade me from the position that in practice, even if not in theory, society and individuals are better off seeking proof, even where it remains elusive.

I suspect you'll agree with me that even if a completely provable set of knowledge remains attainable at best asymptotically, and at worst not at all, we as a species have simply benefitted too much from the advancement of science to throw away its core mechanism.

[jk]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

dspencer, i certainly hope you do NOT banish yourself from any part of the site. i suppose there are different definitions of trolls winning. i suggest a different definition: don't let trolls consume your time and energy. i don't want to sound sanctimonious, and i know i felt overly engaged emotionally in the "trump to win?" discussion.

frankly, i miss the days tulip had more discussion of what was happening in the world in general and the economy in particular.

[DSpencer]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

i just dropped in on this thread, since it seems to be persisting. i only read a few recent posts, not the earlier ones, but they appear to reflect the accelerated loss of comity that occurred during the course of the u.s. presidential election.

why bother with this kind of thing? i've virtually never read chris' posts- i tried a few very early on and they were too unfocussed and without appreciable content for me to bother, so i've just skipped them for many years. if others feel similarly, where is the reward in baiting him?

if some people here think, as they appear to, that he lives in a self-created world of gauzy self-comfort and pseudo-importance, where's the harm? is attacking him really where you want to put your energies?

is your goal to shame him? make him go away? i regret that some contributors whom i valued had this happen to them. raz, for example. raz said much i disagreed with, but i respected his intelligence and knowledge, and miss his contributions. chris is not in the same category for me, but perhaps there are others here who appreciate his posts.

even if not, the culture developing here of driving people out is a common one on the internet, or so i gather from my readings. what are we becoming? what kind of community do you want this to be? or is it too late?

I agree generally that people shouldn't be shamed or forced out just because they have differing views. That said I think there situations where it is appropriate. I can recall two situations where I thought someone didn't belong on itulip, not that I have any power to make that happen. One was BK spreading his Tesla conspiracy BS in an apparent attempt to help his short position. I still contend he was actually committing securities fraud.

The other is Chris Coles. In both cases their goal was to further their own interests rather than a genuine desire to contribute to conversation. In both cases their views were indefensible by any rational person and relied on conspiracies to seem believable. I think letting Chris promote his junk science book damages the credibility of the website.

Maybe I should have just said nothing, but someone asked a reasonable question and I answered it and things went downhill from there. Maybe ignoring his nonsense is the best course of action, but I have to say that seems like letting the trolls win. I certainly have things I could be doing instead. I'll let it go and if even a handful of people think I'm the one out of line they can say so here and I'll banish myself from the site (with the exception of investor forums).

[jk]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

i hear you, astonas, and i have benefitted greatly in the past from many of your posts. i think the problem is that your rational discourse will only be understood and appreciated by those who already agree with you.

on a national level we had the george w. bush administration assert that they created their own reality via the actions they took. the trump administration has its alternative facts, and trump himself appears to believe things said by fox network commentators over the reports of the agencies of the gov't he now leads.

people who can be swayed by rational analysis themselves constitute a subgroup of the population; they are almost certainly merely a minority. your arguments MIGHT have some value for SOME of the "bystanders" who wander by this conversation, but this is unlikely. your arguments will certainly never affect chris, to whom your comments are apparently directed.

belief systems are axiomatic wholes. they are "self-sealing" in that any comment or critique can be incorporated without threatening the underlying system of beliefs. for example, if you try to dissuade someone who believes in a conspiracy directed against him, the closer you come to your goal the more threatening you are. your arguments in this scenario are then reclassified as "tricks" aimed at getting the believer to drop his guard. there can be no convincing.

as an aside: i have long had the idea that enlightenment is a minimal axiomatic set. i suppose such a system would leave most of the world as godel-type unprovable statements.

[astonas]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

i just dropped in on this thread, since it seems to be persisting. i only read a few recent posts, not the earlier ones, but they appear to reflect the accelerated loss of comity that occurred during the course of the u.s. presidential election.

why bother with this kind of thing? i've virtually never read chris' posts- i tried a few very early on and they were too unfocussed and without appreciable content for me to bother, so i've just skipped them for many years. if others feel similarly, where is the reward in baiting him?

if some people here think, as they appear to, that he lives in a self-created world of gauzy self-comfort and pseudo-importance, where's the harm? is attacking him really where you want to put your energies?

I'm speaking only for myself here, but to me it was the US election that demonstrated the harm that can come from allowing the standard of evidence to fall to the point where fantasy is considered as acceptable as reality. Many laughed Trump off, and many more people ignored him, assuming that not enough voters could ever really fooled by the transparent lies. Those people, myself included, were in hindsight quite wrong to do so. Where's the harm in allowing untruth to pass itself off as truth? It's everywhere. Evidence-based progress is fundamental to the existence of civil society, and it is entirely possible for that foundation to be destroyed, even using the tools of civil society that depend on it. That's what can happen when we focus on maintaining the appearance of civility, while ignoring the underlying destructive messages that evidence doesn't matter.

Chris is making statements that, if taken seriously, would be extremely destructive, but he is doing so using polite language. It's not wrong to call that out, and treat him with the contempt that his underlying standards would more obviously demand, were they not masked in superficial courtesy.

is your goal to shame him? make him go away? i regret that some contributors whom i valued had this happen to them. raz, for example. raz said much i disagreed with, but i respected his intelligence and knowledge, and miss his contributions. chris is not in the same category for me, but perhaps there are others here who appreciate his posts.

Again, I can't speak for others, but my main goal is to take away the reward Chris derives from spreading his lies, so that he hits whatever threshold is required for him to seek professional help for his mental illness. I have come to suspect that can only happen after it is made clear that he is not welcome on this site. Until that happens, he will continue to believe that in posting here, he is speaking not only to his direct interlocutors, but to the whole of the planet, and all of posterity. As long as he can sustain that fantasy, he has no incentive to get the help he needs. The only way to help him is by taking it away.

And of course, while he continues to post, he continues to degrade the honesty that by custom and history may be assumed of one another on this forum. If someone lies repeatedly and transparently, they mock the same standard of conversation they try to use as a shield in their defense.

As far as raz goes, I was sorry to see him go, too. However, there are others that I am not at all unhappy have left. Mt.Mark was a self-described white supremacist, who abused the courtesies of this forum to spread his vile and insidious hatreds. When I laid into him, I specifically took care to exempt raz and those whose arguments might have been interpreted as being similar to his from my criticisms, and pointed out the differences in their reasoning and approach. I do suspect that raz nonetheless took offense, and felt less welcome after I had laid bare Mt.Mark's motives. I'm sorry that he did, but I have re-read my posts surrounding that chain of events many times, and I do not regret anything I wrote. The targeting was very narrowly constructed, and deliberately so.

Even white supremacists have a right to speak, but there is no obligation of any community to give them a sympathetic platform. That is a privilege that can and should be conditional on not producing real-world harm with one's writing. If others feel unwelcome when white-supremacists are called out using very specific and narrowly-targeted language, that might say more about their subconscious or undeclared motivation than it does about the community.

even if not, the culture developing here of driving people out is a common one on the internet, or so i gather from my readings. what are we becoming? what kind of community do you want this to be? or is it too late?

It think you're on to something when you ask if it is too late. I think it is. And I'll go further: I don't think the trend on this site is in any way a cause, but merely an inevitable symptom, of a broader cultural decline, and not just in civility.

I completely agree that the election debates here were deplorable. That's why I simply went away during much of them. But you, jk, chose instead to engage, and join in the struggle. I've learned that my response was wrong, and yours was right. I wish I had done more.

I have also come to disagree with the notion that the best response is to counter the broader trend by insisting on maintaining local civility at all costs.

That's because I think I've learned something about just how great that cost can be.

What the past election showed me is that it is a mistake to assume that enough people will be able to identify and disregard lies, if those lies are not challenged as they appear, by whoever happens to be in a position to mount those challenges.

• It is a mistake to assume that spreading delusions is "harmless".
• It is a mistake to assume that civil discussion is more valuable than discussion grounded in reality.
• It is a mistake to assume that inclusive discussion is more valuable than sane discussion.

That's what I've learned lately, and what I'm acting on in this thread. I might well be wrong, and if anyone wants to disagree with me on any of those three points, I'm happy to discuss them in a civil manner. I will happily change my mind, and behavior, if a good argument or solid evidence is provided. At this point, however, I have not been given sufficient grounds to reconsider what I've written.

You've helped me change my mind about things before, jk. You could well do so again. If you're interested, we could start by exploring where you disagree with my three recent lessons.

[jk]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

i just dropped in on this thread, since it seems to be persisting. i only read a few recent posts, not the earlier ones, but they appear to reflect the accelerated loss of comity that occurred during the course of the u.s. presidential election.

why bother with this kind of thing? i've virtually never read chris' posts- i tried a few very early on and they were too unfocussed and without appreciable content for me to bother, so i've just skipped them for many years. if others feel similarly, where is the reward in baiting him?

if some people here think, as they appear to, that he lives in a self-created world of gauzy self-comfort and pseudo-importance, where's the harm? is attacking him really where you want to put your energies?

is your goal to shame him? make him go away? i regret that some contributors whom i valued had this happen to them. raz, for example. raz said much i disagreed with, but i respected his intelligence and knowledge, and miss his contributions. chris is not in the same category for me, but perhaps there are others here who appreciate his posts.

even if not, the culture developing here of driving people out is a common one on the internet, or so i gather from my readings. what are we becoming? what kind of community do you want this to be? or is it too late?

[DSpencer]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

And yes, I must have made an impression, one of the delegates that evening was a prominent Lawyer from Austria who sent me a nice Christmas Card wishing me a successful 2017.

Chris,

You mean to tell me that you've been sandbagging me the whole time? You baited me into the trap by making me think there was no credible support for your book or ideas. You even went so far as to create a decoy autobiography totally devoid of any real accomplishments. And now here on page 5 of this thread, you reveal your ace in the hole. A Christmas card from a prominent lawyer from Austria?! How could I not have seen this coming? Surely, this lawyer knows of the great physics tradition in Austria, the land that gave the world such physicists as Ludwig Boltzmann, Victor Hess, Ernst Mach, Wolfgang Pauli, and Erwin Schrödinger. Now we learn that you have a Christmas card from this lawyer from Austria and not just any lawyer, a prominent one! You've made mincemeat of me. Well played, sir, well played.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

I assumed it was a joke anyway, but maybe he really did read them. I would be surprised if anyone has actually read Chris' book in full, let alone someone who understands real physics. I am guessing Feynman would have rather torn his eyes out than be subjected to 500+ pages and 216 illustrations of physics gibberish that also claimed to refute his entire career as a physicist.

Ironically, Feynman coined the perfect term to describe Chris' book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

Words, phrases and pictures designed to look like scientific theory, but with no understanding of what they really mean and no hope of getting a useful result.

Funnily enough, I am reminded that I gave a CD disc of what was an up to date copy of the book a couple of years ago to Professor Michael Mainelli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mainelli

Last year, right out of the blue, he personally invited me to a major BREXIT meeting in the City of London. He is an Alderman of the City of London. The invite came as I was seeking copyright permissions. And yes, I must have made an impression, one of the delegates that evening was a prominent Lawyer from Austria who sent me a nice Christmas Card wishing me a successful 2017.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

That's strange considering you didn't ask a question. You took advantage of a public forum to deliver a two minute screed about how businesses need money to pay for things.

By the by, how much money is entrusted to the Capital Spillway Trust?

None, it is entirely funded from my own resources since the outset in 2004. In 2013, the OECD added me to their Long Term Investment (LTI) debating group. I have always paid my way, without asking anyone to fund my work.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

Please read this:

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/quack.html

You have displayed about 75% of these features in this thread alone. Your theory explains everything. Your theory disproves all competing theories. You're sure you're right. You don't need formal education. You don't need complex math. Your written explanation is all that is required. You don't need experimental proof. You don't need to understand current accepted theories. Others don't accept your ideas because they are arrogant. Other people haven't studied your theory enough to understand it. You're being persecuted. Science isn't open to radical new ideas.

You are quite simply a textbook quack.

Fascinating; you keep making comments that give the very real impression that your own ego is so deflated that, to bolster it, you have to demean another in terms that I was always led to believe come under the title of "Flaming".

There is experimental proof in the book. Again, I will return to another experiment that was previously set up inside a university, but before doing so, it will require necessary permissions and that will take time, so I cannot add that to this discussion. There is a wealth of evidence that back up my theories. Again, I have set out a considerable number of simple experiments in the book; leaving others the opportunity to find out for themselves.

You are perfectly entitled to make a fool of yourself here; as I am to defend myself.

[DSpencer]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

By the by, on the way out of the forum, I was approached by a young Chinese woman who told me that she felt it was the best question of all she had heard.

That's strange considering you didn't ask a question. You took advantage of a public forum to deliver a two minute screed about how businesses need money to pay for things.

By the by, how much money is entrusted to the Capital Spillway Trust?

[DSpencer]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

When the book was printed early 2003, for example, I sent off copies to every campus radio station in the US, plus to many science magazines and others. Not a single reply from anyone.

That those few paragraphs about the event horizon, "destroy everything" is beyond doubt. That everyone, at the highest levels of science, certainly within the US, had seen them from 2003 onwards is also beyond doubt. As indeed over the following years, have they seen drafts as I progressed with my own thoughts.

There has never been a big bang; it is impossible to create the singularity at the heart of that theory. All I can do is present my case. No one is forced to take advantage of the chance to read what I have produced. As a free citizen of a free nation, I have every right to write the book and offer it for sale via CreateSpace and Amazon. What you do with that decision is entirely up to each of you.

Please read this:

http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/~siegel/quack.html

You have displayed about 75% of these features in this thread alone. Your theory explains everything. Your theory disproves all competing theories. You're sure you're right. You don't need formal education. You don't need complex math. Your written explanation is all that is required. You don't need experimental proof. You don't need to understand current accepted theories. Others don't accept your ideas because they are arrogant. Other people haven't studied your theory enough to understand it. You're being persecuted. Science isn't open to radical new ideas.

You are quite simply a textbook quack.

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

As all of this really boils down to a kind of morbid curiosity for me, I have been most intrigued by this aspect. His autobiographies are the strangest collections of "accomplishments". He mentions things like conversations with people, comments he made on a news article, random beliefs he holds as if these were noteworthy achievements. In one of these I read he mentions being on the itulip shadow fed committee as if this were an important position he holds rather than an internet message board group.

It's arguably a huge waste of my time to have even opened this thread, but I find it fascinating from a psychological perspective. It even made me wonder, do patients in a psych ward get internet access? Could I actually be arguing with a person sitting in the mental hospital library next to someone who think they are Jesus Christ or Elvis? These are the real questions I need answered!

Would not want to disappoint you. Try this link to the OECD Forum 2016 http://webcastcdn.viewontv.com/clien...d957ff802.html and go to 01:19:00 and wait a few seconds and you will see me ask a question. By the by, on the way out of the forum, I was approached by a young Chinese woman who told me that she felt it was the best question of all she had heard.

I deliberately refrain from commenting further. let the rest decide whether your attitude is appropriate.

[DSpencer]

Re: The Universe is a Cloud of Surplus proton Energy

Do you honestly believe that Feynman's quip was about 500-page long letters? Looooooong letters that the sender demand Feynman pay for before being awarded the "privilege" of reading them? Do you really?

I assumed it was a joke anyway, but maybe he really did read them. I would be surprised if anyone has actually read Chris' book in full, let alone someone who understands real physics. I am guessing Feynman would have rather torn his eyes out than be subjected to 500+ pages and 216 illustrations of physics gibberish that also claimed to refute his entire career as a physicist.

Ironically, Feynman coined the perfect term to describe Chris' book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

Words, phrases and pictures designed to look like scientific theory, but with no understanding of what they really mean and no hope of getting a useful result.