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Post by Progenitor A on Sept 25, 2010 21:20:49 GMT 1
One hour to 'explain' how travelling at the speed of light allows travel into the future!
Is this man with his 'understanding the mind of God' and 'God is not necessary to explain the universe' for real?
Or is he simply a publicity stunt?
Hawkers are not wanted here, hawking their b*llo*ks!
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Post by olmy on Sept 26, 2010 8:48:55 GMT 1
Has that little bit of sneering blather made you feel better....?
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Post by Progenitor A on Sept 26, 2010 9:36:17 GMT 1
Did anyone else actually see the programme? An absolute disgrace , a comic-cuts version of science with one of our most distinguished physicists prostituting himself What with this and the recent totally unnecessary waffle about 'God not being necessary', this man Hawking is showing himself to be a cheapsakte mercenary bozo
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Post by abacus9900 on Sept 26, 2010 11:24:44 GMT 1
I think the problem is he has now become a 'celeb' and as such has become caught up in the media circus surrounding this kind of status.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Sept 27, 2010 15:58:54 GMT 1
Not really, and not that much of a celeb. Why should it be prostituting himself when he does a popular science programme? After all, we have several choices:
1) It's far too hard for the rest of you, please keep giving us grant money, but don't expect us to explain what we do.
2) Give us the grant money, but let some arts graduates and non-professionals have a go at explaining to you what little they gleaned as to what we do..............
3) Okay, okay, we'll let some of us have a go at explaining it to you -- probably someone that has a track record of pop sci books. But we all know what will probably happen: a) The ones that do will get accused of pandering to celebrity culture b) You probably won't understand much more than when we started, and then you'll blame us.........................
Of course, what is the motivation behind the last one? Seems to me that some people have a problem with admitting that someone else is doing stuff that they have no hope of understanding, and rather than just admit that, they instead start off with the series of silly threads we have seen on here as regards Hawking and cosmology in general.
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Post by abacus9900 on Sept 27, 2010 16:11:35 GMT 1
Speaker, instead of continually putting people down on here why not actually try to be a bit more patient in your explanations and not immediately jump on people for either misunderstanding you or not getting your meaning due to vague wording on your part? The possession of knowledge is no guarantee of being able to teach it well. God help your students if you treat them this way.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Sept 28, 2010 12:29:36 GMT 1
And why don't you put some effort into understanding, rather than just repeating what has already been explained to you, and what you have already been told is just plain wrong...
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Post by yellowcat on Oct 15, 2010 22:26:46 GMT 1
Speaker, instead of continually putting people down on here why not actually try to be a bit more patient in your explanations and not immediately jump on people for either misunderstanding you or not getting your meaning due to vague wording on your part? The possession of knowledge is no guarantee of being able to teach it well. God help your students if you treat them this way. Some people are obviously the T word that for some reason we are not allowed to mention here and have no interest in actually learning anything . Such people should be firmly put down. It is amazing that Speaker has the restraint to be as polite as she is when replying to some animals.
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Post by abacus9900 on Oct 16, 2010 9:00:55 GMT 1
Some people don't want to learn but some people do and it isn't much help if they are humiliated because they have not been treated with the respect they deserve. A good teacher, within reason, will always seek to change their approach in order to clarify some idea, although we know there are troublemakers who just want to wind people up, and the best policy with these is to simply ignore them. You seem prepared to allow Speaker carte-blanche to attack anyone she chooses whether deserved or not, which I find troubling. I can only assume you have a similar intolerant approach to life as she does.
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Post by abacus9900 on Oct 16, 2010 9:12:30 GMT 1
Trouble is, you do not make a very good job of explaining things, do you. You use too much jargon for a start and make little attempt to present complex ideas in ways that the average person can relate to. Has it occurred to you that most people just require a level of understanding appropriate to their needs, not yours? I somehow doubt it. It's difficult not to get the impression that the primary reason you post on this MB is to put people down for the sheer hell of it.
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Post by Mr Red on Oct 18, 2010 10:53:12 GMT 1
The problem with infinity is no-one can comprehend it.
as you approach the asymptote that is the speed of light you need exponentially more energy, we don't have enough even for electrons to reach it, and experiments galore have shown that time slows down at the same time (no pun intended - really!).
so what happens when you have expended an infinity of energy - well how do YOU know what happens. HAwking is speculating, but he does have a lot more track record on the subject and a load of sycophants ready to agree with him. And not a few qualified to gainsay him, and they do.
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Post by abacus9900 on Oct 18, 2010 12:03:40 GMT 1
To be honest, I think Hawking sometimes makes provocative statements to get noticed. There are things that we are simply not in a position to know nor may ever know, so Hawking sometimes plays on this just to cause mischief.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Oct 18, 2010 16:09:11 GMT 1
I don't think Stephen Hawking has to go about trying to be provocative to get noticed, given that he is already one of the few physicists that the average person might have heard of.
I think a lot of what is going on here is just a few people who are just not willing to admit that there are people who understand significantly more than they do, more than they ever will, no matter how hard they study, and that not everything is in principle understandable by a person of average intellgence given a good enough teacher.
In short, the fundamentally undemocratic nature of science, in that not everyones opinion is of equal worth as regards the scientific validity of an idea, and some people opinions are totally worthless. Some people just don't like being told that they don't understand enough for their opinion to be of any worth. Some would then rather blame the teacher (not that I'm paid to explain stuff on here, unlike teaching students), rather than admit their own inability. There is no shame in admitting your limitations, I have many............
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Post by abacus9900 on Oct 18, 2010 16:27:45 GMT 1
I can hardly believe what I am reading here. STA, do you realize what an elitist and arrogant thing that is to suggest? I don't think any sensible person thinks they are anywhere near Stephen Hawking's intellectual capacity but that doesn't mean they are not capable of grasping the basic concepts involved in cosmology if they are given a reasonable chance of understanding them by being given clear information. I'm sure most interested people are capable of asking intelligent questions about some of the ideas of Stephen and other cosmologists without having to go into the difficult maths and go away happy in the knowledge that at least they have a working understanding of basic cosmology. All you seem to want to do is shield yourself from opposing ideas by disqualifying anyone who is not a professional cosmologist. That is so patronizing it's quite staggering.
Furthermore, I am seriously beginning to wonder how well you do know your subject when you do not seem capable of communicating ideas to laymen like myself and others here without recourse to continual jargon that in many cases means little to most of us. Brain Cox would have no trouble in getting over the key ideas in physics and cosmology so why can't you?
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Post by speakertoanimals on Oct 18, 2010 18:02:49 GMT 1
So you hope, but actually, given the fairly abstract concepts that are needed to understand cosmology, an intelligent layperson is never going to understand that much, that's just the nature of the subject.
For starters, we have curved space and time, which no one can visualize, where our intuition is no use (or just plain misleading). When you add to that quantum theory, where again out intuition is wrong and misleading, then a sensible person just has to admit that they will never have anything more than the most kiddie-level and wrong in many important aspects understanding of it.
A working understanding? Dream on. Just not possible without the correct language (maths).
Yeah, yeah, same ole nonsense. You MAY think you understand cosmology after watching Cox, but in truth, all you probably get is the same fundamentally incorrect analogies. If you think that is understanding, then it just means that you have not grasped how bad the analogies you have grasped actually are. You may have a warm fuzzy feeling and feeling that you have understood, but that is mostly false. Unless you can appreciate how little you have understood, you will never progress beyond those same false analogies.
Some people may like to con themselves into believing they have a 'working understanding' of some area of science, just because they have watched a few pop-sci programs, but that is just plain wrong. Others may wish to con themselves into thinking that they could understand a lot more of a given subject (maths, quantum physics, cosmology) if they only had the time, but that is another false belief.
The facts are that only a small proportion of the population have the academic ability to do a degree in maths or physics. Even taking physics graduates, even fewer of those have the ability to gain a decent 'working understanding' of cosmology. Most will know a bit more jargon than the average layman, or have a better understanding of the experimental evidence, or have a bit more idea of some of the relevant physics (like special relativity), but most will still be stuck with the same mistaken analogies that the layman is stuck with, although hopefully with a better understanding that they are just analogies, and with some idea of where they are wrong.
Complaining it is elitist? That's science for you, the days have long gone when an intelligent amateur could grasp the basics of any subject.
You're easily staggered then! Lets face it, most people have problems going beyond simple arithmetic. Most people might get integration as area under a graph, but never get beyond that. Most people never get beyond the inflating balloon analogy, and grasp the idea of intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic curvature of a space. Let alone imaginary time and instantons.
When it comes to quantum theory, most people don't get much beyond the very start, and think that an electron being two places at once is daft. Given that, what chance do they have of getting anywhere near the wavefunction of the entire universe that is where quantum cosmology starts.
As we all know, it is the least able students who are usually the worst at assessing their own level of competence, and have no conception of how much a gap there is between their own level of understanding, and even a basic understanding of the subject. And after all, how many times do we hear such students complaining -- it's the teachers fault, they are all crap..........................
Odd how this approbation seems to be limited to scientists. Most people would not find it a humiliation to admit that they could never be a concert pianist, or a brain surgeon, no matter how hard they tried. Yet when you tell them that they there is a enormous gulf between their understanding of physics or maths, and the level required to even start appreciating what professional scientists and mathematicians are talking about, they get all huffy.
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