Now do you see the value of “consensus reality”?!
Just did. Subjectively.
Yeah, your posts in this thread are complete nonsense. We know much more than the ancients, and are much more right than they were in pretty much every category.
There are one set of facts in the universe. People have differing degrees of understanding of those facts. But the Sun orbiting the Earth isn’t correct in any meaningful way. The point of orbit is inside the sun.
In areas like politics, there is usually no such thing as “the truth”. It is mostly differing opinions based on differing values, and (very often) a selective interpretation of the facts. And no, one side is not more prone to this than the other.
Osama bin Laden was killed. Is that a good thing? No, every time you kill a terrorist you just recruit more to his side. Right?
Or else it is good, because we killed the guy who killed thousands of our citizens. Right?
Which of these is “the truth”?
Regards,
Shodan
You just blew my mind, dude.
I’d say most people aren’t against killing terrorists. They are against bombings that target terrorists and kill civilians. So you don’t appear to have a strong grasp on the left’s position here.
In any case, obviously some things are opinions. But there are factual things in politics too. It’s factual that the vast majority of climate scientists agree that there is Climate Change. The opinions come into play when we decide what to do about it. For instance the right’s opinion is that they should pretend the problem doesn’t exist.
It’s factual that cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue unless the taxes were very, very high. It’s the right’s opinion that they are going to pretend that they are currently that high.
So there are competing opinions, that’s what politics is about. But they are supposed to have one set of facts to work on.
Where the point of orbit is, is a handy taxonomic tool for people that like to put things in categories, but it has zero significance to physics.
And there you just proved my point. In that sentence, you moved beyond actual reality into the realm of opinion. You discarded the element of fact you consider “meaningless,” even though it’s precisely as true as the every other part of it.
In other words, you have a view of reality which accepts certain things and discards others uin order to function with limited brainpower. Which is precisely what I spoke of. Thank you for demonstrating so clearly.
I’ve sort of just asked the same question, with a bit more math, in this thread. The gist of it is, given any amount of data, it’s possible to disagree rationally, depending on your prior justified beliefs; in particular, if you consider something a priori impossible, then you can’t be convinced of its truth.
So yes, it is possible to be too biased to figure out the truth. But on the other hand, barring degenerate cases like believing things impossible, it’s guaranteed that a rational treatment of the data you receive will lead you ever closer to truth.
The part that most people have understanding “facts” is that scientific statements (that is, things that are independently observable) have error margins and probabilities. Where we have greater understanding, the margin is smaller and the probability is more likely. But there is always uncertainty, even in our best-tested theories.
There is not one set of facts in the universe. Science is not so tidy that experiments never produce contradictory results. When the best scientific “facts” are inconclusive, we simply don’t know what the correct answer is.
The other problem with “facts” is ambiguous language. “The earth orbits the sun” needs paragraphs of explanation to make it meaningful. The earth and the sun are not static objects. What’s the boundary of the sun? Of the earth? Where you draw the boundaries changes the center of mass of the system, which changes the paths of the sun and earth. And of course, in reality, the sun and the earth are not an isolated system. Neither orbit the other, because their motions depend on the other bodies in the solar system.
A “fact” must be tailored to an intended purpose. “The sun goes around the earth” is good enough to describe why the sun rises in the east, traverses the sky, and sets in the west every single day. “The earth goes around the sun” is good enough for a big picture description of the solar system. If you want to send a robot to another planet, you’re going to need a better description.
I appreciate the attempt you’re making here. But someone who says, “The Earth orbits the Sun.” is correct. The fact is that the Sun is in the middle of our orbit. Someone from a primitive time saying, “The Sun orbits the Earth.” is incorrect. Because his view of celestial mechanics is flawed.
The fact that the orbit point is between the two bodies is irrelevant. The first person is correct because his view of the cosmos is in line with reality. The second person is wrong because his view of the cosmos is in line with myth.
Someone who says that the point is actually between the two is also right. But it doesn’t make the first wrong and the second right.
No. It is entirely without basis in fact. In some imaginary universe where all we have is a sun and the earth and no frame of reference, it would be a fact. Your argument wouldn’t make sense then, because the ancients knew there were other heavenly bodies too, but your “fact” would be true.
However, this is not an imaginary universe, and there are a zillion other objects which allow us to determine which bodies are fixed relative to others and which are not. We know that the Sun’s motion is not affected by earth’s gravity.
I was once lured into thinking that germ theory must be wrong because every other theory about how diseases worked was wrong.
Well, you can of course draw up a model in which the Earth is stationary, and everything else moves around it, which will be equivalent in its predictions with the model in which everything revolves around the sun; it’ll be somewhat more complicated mathematically, but ultimately, it’s just a coordinate transformation.
I think part of the problem is massive funding behind obscuring the truth. Last I looked, the thread on saturated.unsaturated fats hadn’t been resolved. There is some agreement that partial hydrogenation creates trans fats which are bad. So are saturated fats bad? Is it in the intrest of the meat business, dairy, and coconut oil producers to produce data showing saturated fats aren’t harmful? It goes on and on. Look at how much the glass industry has spent promoting recycling. Yes, glass recycles. What else can you do with it besides store it in landfills? How much energy is used recycling glass?
An easy way to make money is to write a book full of sensational charges. If they fit enough people’s world view, the money will roll in. Look at all the books on the Kennedy assassination.
The truth hardly stands a chance against economics and politics, not even at SD.
You don’t understand physics, then. There are no fixed objects relative to others. None. Not one in the entire universe.
I love how people keep proving me right. 
Sure, and if you got in a spaceship and flew above our solar system and looked down, you would find out that the model is needlessly complex.
Saying that the perturbations our planet causes the Sun means that the primitives who thought the Sun went around the Earth were correct is such utter bullshit, it serves no purpose. They weren’t right because they imagined the system wrong. If you can squint and say, “well maybe, they were sorta, kinda, in a way, if you think about it, a little, teensy-bit right” that’s hardly useful.
The bolded bit, to a sufficiently high degree of certainty.
Actually, if you were to get into a spaceship and venture out, you might find that a much more useful model, because space is extremely complex. Or so simple it’s hard to understand. Either way. An earth-centric model has a lot of advantages for some kinds of travel priojections.
Likewise, you keep showing how I’m correct by the very words you use. “Models” only simulate reality in a convenient way, and that’s what yourself acknowledge using. But they are not the facts. We hope to improve our understanding over time, but we never use the actual facts.
One hopes. I actually beleived he’d died some time ago, as he was known not to be in good health and his “videos” became extremely vague and at times seemed to feature a double - in fact I’m not convinced some of them are genuine even now.
No. There is no model consisting of the Sun going around the Earth that’s correct. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I’d venture to guess that they use no Heliocentric models in their work. Look, as I say, I see that you’re fixating on the perturbations and saying, “See, the ancients were just as right as us!” But that’s simply nonsense. The orbital perturbations in no way have the Sun moving around the Earth. They cause the Sun to wiggle an imperceptible amount. In no way do the perturbations cause the Sun to actually track in the space around the planet.
You’re so wrong you don’t understand what you’re saying.
As I say, there are one set of facts in the universe. The more we learn the closer we get to those facts. There are some things we’ll never know, like where a particular electron is. But we already understand orbital mechanics very well, and to say that the Heliocentric view is as correct as what we have today is simply drivel. It’s a worthless statement.
Of course I meant Earth-Centered, not Heliocentric… This is what I get for posting too quickly.
See, I can admit when I’m wrong. Now it’s your turn SB.