rationalskepticism.org

tnjrp wrote:Unless you agree with Matti's (seeing as you are on first name basis) sometime expressed view he's a victim of purposeful sidelining in the academic circles instead of just (possibly unjustly but not with malign intent) being ignored, he has had ample time to come to the knowledge of the physics world outside of the Finnish academia. It's not like he came up with his theory yesterday, he has published almost all of his work originally in English, he visits physicists' blogs regularly etc. so somebody in the actual physics crowd should aware of him and paying attention even tho he's not tenured at a major university. Are they?

The point I was making is that somebody (other than Mr. Pitkänen himself + a few ardent fans who don't seem to be themselves physicists) should be interested in TGd by now even tho he isn't in the mainstream. It doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can tell.

Come on it does not work like that and you know it. In fact you said it "physics crowd". For him to be citied he would need to produce something precise and so entirely usable that his input would be indispensable to compensate for his freewheeling offbeat temperament. I have been reading Mattis PDFs from his book. He comes across as a scaled down Hofstadter. getting into anything and everything being pretty general but not focusing well. I picked out areas i know about such as neuro to judge him better.

for example here he reviews the respected Joe McFaddens work on EMF fields of the brain (chapter 7).

http://tgd.wippiespace.com/public_html/ ... prebio.pdf

Mattis solution to the problems of McFadden is magnetic flux to pass through cell membranes. this concurs with the work of 8 authors publishing regularly in respected journals in the past few years and a speedup occurring in this area. So in this one area i could understand Matti not only shows he can comprehend whats going on fully he predicts the state of the art well in advance.

Mattis work on consciousness is really just extending out the ideas of penrose and hameroff. Which are now in remission due to problems most of us know about. You dont call penrose and Hofstadter pseudoscience. Its free intellectual exploration. What about them discussing electromagnetic fields in microtubules in mitosis ? When this idea was first mentioned in the quantum biology crowd it was called ridiculous. I just read a pile of recent papers on cancer breakthroughs that are making the news. Papers from labs in Institutions. This new generation of researchers mention the importance of understanding the electromagnetic fields in mitosis through microtubules, as if it was old hat and there had never been a controversy.

That sequence about ridicule, violent opposition and acceptance as self evident is clearly at play in this case. time will tell if quantum effects are at play in DNA error correction.

You seem to have missed my mentioning that Mr. Pitkänen claims to have specific evidence, not all of it in the nature of his theory being able to explain the likes of the Shnoll effect, telepathy & the like where mainstream physics can't. He just doesn't seem to be very eager to provide it, instead relying on lenghty assertions when not going for "shut up and calculate".

I dont know about that. you would need to illustrate the interaction clearly. Maybe he couldnt get the result he wanted, maybe there was another problem. Lack of information here.

So can you explain better than Mr. Pitkänen himself in what way the Surfer Dude's approach converges with TGd? I do believe Pitkänen wrote something about it on his blog when Lisi was in the news but given TGd is rather intractable it's a bit of the case of needing to take him at his word. I could use a clarification and I'm sure other participants would be interested as well.

Interestingly Matti just posted this today.

http://matpitka.blogspot.com/2011/08/qu ... atics.html

He discusses the p-adic Lie group G, which can have a simplified representation of E8.



http://www.aimath.org/E8/representation.html

We have to disagree there then. I seem him purposefully stepping outside of the bounds of science to bolster his theory while, if TGd does have a core of merit (cannot be completely ruled out), he should very strongly concentrate on expanding on the basic physics aspect of it instead and should be able to do it better than saying that he believes M-theory to be "the worst waste of time in the history of science" or "they haven't found the Higgs boson yet, so there!"

I dont know. Maybe he has burned out or just realizes he cant finish his model and is retiring gracefully. In regards to those opinions, he has the same view in common with Lisi. A lot of people share this view of M-theory.

TGd is an intermittenlty popular subject on Finnish Skeptics board where it's used to bolster fringe claims. This is why I maintain enough interest in it to talk about it with people who actually have a physics or mathematics background. As to why I posted it here specifically, I've already explained it more than once so repeating it again won't do a world of good I suspect.

Ok i get it, clash of interests. Still using the word pseudoscience for that is out of context.

Can you cite, say, two or three examples where a move has been requested but "they" haven't complied? Not that I expect them to just do it at the drop of a hat every time, mind you.

Its a mod issue and i don't know if get a warning for discussing my PM's in open so will not mention these topics. But you can see the threads at the top of this section where i question the raionale. The mods will tell you i have been repeatedly trying to get several topics moved out of pseudoscience for over a year now. All emails have been ignored. Its not even open for discussion, which had me thinking there is some kind of disgust and enforcement politics kicking in.

i.e. Mods and other a few other voracious members see themselves as guardians, heroes even protecting the weak from impure information and so set themselves up as a cultural immune system where discussions are closed and to be fought against with dirty tricks if necessary. That in itself is denigrating and insulting to the members, and also the seeds for intellectual corruption. I cant prove it, but i suspect there has been leaking of private information from mods who have database access to some of members higher in the hierarchy. They are not only saying they know better than others, but have superior judgment and strength of character so require to set themselves up in these positions where they can do what they like, and don't ask questions or rock the boat.

Thats how it comes across. Yet engage them on the topic, thats got them acting like corrupt police and the depth is not there, the level of knowledge is substandard to Ok at best. Often they barely comprehend the works they denigrate which indicates the motives are more emotional-political in nature. Its really pretty amazing on one hand this is happening to science, but we shouldn't be surprised. The Internet has few of the structures, regulations, standards, ethics and procedure of our highly prized western institutions including science. All that took thousands of years, and a lot just got dropped. The transition has not been great in some ways. Good in others. One example. The journals moved to a profit system which prices information out of institutions. I have full access from two good universities and very often i cant read papers for this reason.

Every area of high endeavor can eventually be corrupted. We have seen this throughout history, its what humans do without lots of regulation. Why should science be any different ?