So... is it time to kill off this [P and M] sub-forum yet?

@QW
It will only rate sites in the top 100,000 . TSF doesn't rank in that sector.
SF Rank in the US is 41,678, Physics forum is 10,451

The biggest difference between the two forums is that PF is used more by children at school.
Some of the discussions on here might mean that schools block it.
This site is used mainly by people at home, mainly by males, and mainly by people with some level of qualification.

 

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I like the fact that you can get the ranking data too. Really, SF is that much higher than The Sciencd Forum, which isn't even in the top 100,000? Interesting. Thanks. It will be interesting to notice if there is a change in rank over time. Do you know if they graph Rank over time for a given site, to show the trending change in views?

 

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No, the biggest difference is that PF doesn't allow crackpots to post.

 

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There is no conflict between GR and QM. Completely different domains of applicability. GR is a classical theory and QM is a quantum theory. Since GR doesn't have anything to say [make any theoretical predictions] about quantum phenomena, including any proposed quantum gravitational phenomena, science is trying to build a theoretical model which could describe quantum gravitational phenomena. The reason I want to point this out is it's common for cranks to use this 'supposed conflict' to claim there's something wrong with both GR and QM.

 

Tach,
In the real world people tend to offer a certain amount of courtesy by being polite to get a point or message across, doing so can be productive. You however haven't demonstrated being constructive, but being disruptive. While you might indeed have points you'd like to make and some of them might be true, how you've gone about putting those points forwards isn't the way.

For that reason I'm having to Ban you for 1 week to give you a chance to cool down (or simmer) and rethink your strategy when dealing with other people. If you continue like this on your return, be assured your current moniker's iteration will have a short stay.

In the meantime "Martial Law" might well be drawn on P & M to clean up the various amounts of fallout that's started spilling over elsewhere.

 

Fair enough. We know there are domains where GR don't apply, and domains where QM in its present form don't apply, and we know there are problems with the standard method of converting GR into a quantum field theory. Nonetheless, both theories have worked almost perfectly in the domains they're intended to describe, and there haven't been any serious conflicts with experiment to date, so it's by no means an invitation for cranks to throw them out the door.

 

You two might or might not exactly agree on the topic that I call the inconsistencies between QM and GR. Brucep, you're down playing the overlap, and wrong in regards to what current views are from the two perspectives. You indicate that they are not inconsistent, and that there is a clear separation between the quantum realm and a macro realm.

But my understanding of current views is that the quantum aspects of nature are said to expand well into, and in fact encompass the macro realm. From the QM perspective, particles have a quantum nature, and objects composed of particles have their own wave vibrations and patterns based on the composite wave nature of the particles making them up.

Therefore a group of particles making up an object would be subject to the quantum nature of particles and objects, while from the GR perspective, would simply be objects subject to the curvature of spacetime. It is an overworked example, but the Moon has a different nature in the quantum realm than it has in the GR realm, and actually is said to be wave vibrations, much more complex in terms of its contained energy than the Moon in GR, described as an object whose motion is subject to the geodesics of spacetime.

The energy in space according to quantum mechanics is huge relative to the energy in space according to general relativity; by multiples of well over 100 times, if I understand correctly. Also, if there is such a thing as quantum gravity, it would not draw the line of its effectiveness or "reach" at the line you say distinguishes the two disciplines.

I asked the moderators/administrator if I could start a thread in P&M on this subject several months ago, and they essentially said go for it and let the chips fall where they will. At the time, I wanted to start the "At Rest" thread, and that lasted three months. Now I'm ready to either start such a thread, or participate in one if either of you would do me the honor of starting and conducting such a thread on the topic of the distinction between the quantum realm and the macro realm, and the inconsistencies, if they exist, between QM and GR.

 

So you ban Tach and declare Martial law?

 

Hi CptBork, quantum_wave. I just read your particular side-discussion. You both have reasonable perspectives on the matter in question. Both of you admit that discussion should be allowed from accepted and from alternative approaches. The only real sticking point between you two seems to be about how to treat everyone fairly while the discussion point/thread etc is being 'assessed' for 'final disposition' as to classification (ie, left in 'mainstream science', eg, P&M section; or moved to Alternative Theories section) by the mods once the fair go has been allowed to run sufficiently long to allow proper assessment (ie, so that the conclusions/disagreements/arguments 'content' has been CLEARLY seen either as 'crank', or 'mainstream', or 'inseparable admixture of mainstream and crank overall'. If you get what I mean?).

The main difficulty as I see it, is that once the OP/thread discussion/ideas etc contents become so intermingled that it will fall into that 'inseparable admixture of mainstream and crank overall' category, and hence is difficult for the mods to make a CLEAR decision that would be scrupulously fair to both 'sides' (ie, because both 'sides' arguments, ideas, questions, interaction, engagement etc had merit, both in the sense of fair play and in the sense of genuine attempts at a meeting of minds with a view to better insights and understanding if not full agreement, at least disengaging amicably with mutual respectful manner such as 'agree to disagree'; 'unconvinced but not abusive'; etc), then perhaps there is indicated a need for further classification/category 'subsections' to accommodate those 'inseparable admixture of mainstream and crank overall' cases?



So, in the spirit of the physics mainstream concept of Quantum Superposition, and in the spirit of wanting to promote better health of science discussion sites like this by introducing the biology mainstream concept of Hybrid Vigor, may I, as a genuine and respectful registered fellow member, humbly suggest to you that we create a subsection under the P&M section; on the lines of:



P&M:

: Physics mainstream ideas/perspectives discussions

: Maths mainstream ideas/perspectives discussions

: Hybrid/Superposed (ie, inextricably, and necessarily intermingled, mainstream & alternative) ideas/perspectives which cannot be fairly moved to the purely Physics or purely Maths or purely Fringe etc without losing some of the constructive discussions/points etc which may have arisen, and developed into 'inevitably mixed' conversations.


This sort of approach would allow proper and more effective 'distinguishing' amongst the various kinds of crank/alternative/fair questions/challenges to orthodoxy, and so allow better fair go to those that are not obviously 'beyond the pale' (at least until some fair play and better initial process of more 'finely tuned' sub-classification (as suggested above) has been tried 'up front'.

Naturally, no matter what we do or don't do about categorizing something/someone, admin's and mods' work would be helped a lot if wherever the thread/OP ends up in, we should NOT allow ANYONE (from either 'side' or 'source' or claimed/actual qualification/position etc) to muddy and disrupt, and otherwise 'verbal' and 'poison' (ie, with baits, baggage, personal/professional prejudice, gratuitous insults and flurry of irrelevant links/claims of 'authority' etc) a thread's OP and associated issues/points made so that the discussion becomes so buried in 'troll shite' that all sense and fairness of the purpose of the OP and associated discussions is lost and a mod has to come in and clean up (wasting time and energy on problem which could be avoided if immediate, effective and evenhanded action is taken to enforce the rules of fair behavior/debate by anyone wishing to have the PRIVILEGE of posting in another person's thread/discussion. If such a privilege is not respected AS a privilege, and a troll comes into a thread/discussion with an obvious agenda/behavior indicating the troll does NOT wish to engage fairly, and just wishes to 'poison and frame' the Thread author/OP in order to try to get the thread closed and/or the author banned, then no amount of 'soul searching' or 'shuffling the deckchairs' will prevent the site from sinking into an ignominious oblivion brought about by failure to 'discriminate' fairly, deal fairly, and treat TROLLS (no matter who they think they are) as they deserve, and do so sooner rather than too late when irreparable damage to site reputation has been done by those trolls being allowed to harass and poison 'at will' and drive away genuine observers/members.

Over the years here and elsewhere, I have noted (and confirmed via on-line experiments) that there is a cadre of foulmouthed trolls who would ruin/sabotage a site which they feel is either 'in competition with' or 'not to be tolerated compared to' some other 'preferred site of their own' (in which they may have some ego attachment, personal connection, or even financial/power 'benefit' etc etc). Some of these trolls will denigrate the site they post in (such as this one) in order to either gain unfair power/ascendancy or to ruin it because they can't get what they want.

Anyhow, that's my suggestion and approach to what this site could be if 'done right' on all counts, and not just what is 'convenient' and or 'self-interested' from moment to moment depending on who the mod is at that moment. This and other sites could be great if they really want to be great. If they really want to be, then decisions have to be made in the best interests of both Science and Humanity in lockstep going forward. The trolls/spoilers, both online and in the world just outside your doors, cannot be allowed to flourish as they want and have done for far too long now. That way lay ignominy and failure. Let's learn and apply ALL the lessons learned by enlightenment to date: Principles of Science and Humanity are NON-negotiable; nor are they 'for sale' to the criminal mentalities or to be allowed to be held hostage and perverted by the psychopathic and sociopathic individuals who are 'wolves in sheep's clothing' and pretending to be 'defending the mainstream', maintaining objective rules/standards etc'.

Let's learn to recognize such by their actions, and not just take their word for it that they know best while the ship sinks beneath us all. Let's apply the hard lessons already learned by observation and experiments in the INTERNET WORLD as well as in the world we inhabit physically and socially 'out here'. Hard but necessary.

Good luck and best wishes for the future to us all, CptBork, Quantum_Wave, and everyone of amicable intent both in Science and in Humanity! Keep your Ethics and Courage and Intellect and Cool intact against the trolls' and crazies' onslaughts, mon braves!

 

That is a quality post, with thoughtful suggestions, and a strong flavor of optimism about how a thread started by me in P&M could survive

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. There is no meeting of the minds on how such a thread would or should fare in P&M, but the important part of it that I can control is how I approach it. Certainly, in P&M I don't expound on my so called model, and any mention of it by others would have to be ignored, letting the chips fall where they will in the eyes of any moderation that takes place. The content of such a thread that I contribute would consist of questions, and links to scientific pages or appropriate discussion on the topic to supplement the thread content.

As for your thoughtful suggestions on the structure of the sub forums, though the ideas appeal to me, this is an ad hoc thread that has not been sanctioned by the moderators or admin, and right now, there is no indication that they even are thinking of changes to the structure.

If so though, my suggestion would be to first impose conduct guidelines, and move toward fair and even enforcement of the guidelines. No name calling, no abusive comments, etc. And by fair and even enforcement, that means you would be given a warning, then points, then time off, whether you are an otherwise valued member or not.

If that kind of moderation was in place, then the particulars that you wisely recognized and discussed would widen the appeal of the main forums and perhaps significantly increase member participation.

Thank you for commenting and suggesting improvements.

 

We don't really need to read all that again. so snip.

There is already a On The Fringe area that is for you "alternative" types. I think that the problem you and QW have with that area, is that the quality of participants is not to your liking. Meaning that the really smart people don't hang out there and so the conversation is poor or even nonexistent. So you want to crash the party at P&M because that is where all the good stuff is. It is where all the cool people hang. All that will do is to lower the overall quality of conversation in P&M and Alternative Theories will be abandoned. Perhaps some in P&M will get disgusted and leave. Probably the best thing is to leave things the way they are, and encourage alternative fringe types to hang out in Alternative Theories and Pseudoscience. When I say encourage, I mean active moderation.

 

Yes. Have a look. It isn't something you have to pay to see.

 

PF gets a large proportion of its audience from schools, SF doesn't.
If you look at the graph at #114, you'll see a big boost in their numbers as children return to school in the southern USA.
This site has adult content, and general chat, and I'm thinking that may be why we don't get equivalent school exposure.
Plus, perhaps you have a point and they don't want motor daddy's theories turning up in course work.
(I don't mean he's a crackpot)

I've looked at PF, and it's dull in comparison with SF.
Worthy, but dull.
SF's rank in the top 50,000 in the USA is successful.
It's an achievement to get a site in the top 1 Million.
Change it dramatically, and you could kill it.

The problem is not what people post, it is where they are posting it.
Physics and Maths is a purely science area .
The site has other areas for fringe theories.
P and M is not moderated as toughly as it was, and fringe is taking its opportunity.
It's like your garden. Let one weed grow, and the next thing they are all over the place.

 

It's indeed true that GR is completely helpless at the quantum level, it has no means of describing the gravitational field created by a wave packet as far as I know. And of course the current understanding of quantum mechanics (i.e. Standard Model & variants) doesn't include a working description of gravity. If you try to combine them by pluggin the classical GR Hilbert action into a quantum field theory, you end up getting terms with operators of arbitrarily high mass dimension, requiring an infinite number of parameters in order to cancel all the infinities that pop up when performing scattering calculations. General Relativity in its existing form is what we call a non-renormalizable theory, meaning it would have to be modified in some way before we could stuff it into quantum field theory as we presently understand it.

Here's where it becomes problematic for laymen to attempt to make assertions about the frontiers of physics. The true story is far more complicated than what will be described in layman books and TV programs of any sort, which means much is going to be lost in the translation. Firstly, when someone says something is off by 100 orders of magnitude, they're saying it's off by roughly a factor of \(10^{100}\), not 100 times, so it's actually far worse than what you describe.

If you naively interpret the negative ground state vacuum energy of the Standard Model to be a literal energy that's present throughout space, it would have to exert a negative gravitational pressure and could thus potentially explain why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing. On the other hand, most attempts to do so have yielded estimates off by as much as 120 orders of magnitude from the observed values, which can be seen as a colossal failure. However there's no clear indication that we can freely interpret quantum vacuum energy in this way, nor anything to rule it out from being mathematically cancelled in gravitational considerations by adding a constant term to the Standard Model Lagrangian (or whatever theory replaces it).

At this point I really don't know much about quantum gravity other than the considerations leading up to it, although I hope to learn some of the details later down the road. There are a small number of people here who know intricate details about the theory and would probably be willing to answer questions, but if it's going to be a discussion tying into your personal views, I don't know if they'll be interested in hearing what you think about it since you wouldn't even understand the issues preceding it. As we've discussed in the past, your conception of "reasonable and responsible speculation" isn't widely shared amongst those in the field.

 

quantum_wave, you really don't know what you are talking about. Classical and QM physics ask different questions. I was just reading about this last night.

The term classical physics refers to physics before the advent of quantum mechanics. Classical physics includes Newton’s equations for the motion of particles, the Maxwell-Faraday theory of electromagnetic fields, and Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But it is more than just specific theories of specific phenomena; it is a set of principles and rules— an underlying logic— that governs all phenomena for which quantum uncertainty is not important. Those general rules are called classical mechanics.

Susskind, Leonard; Hrabovsky, George (2013-01-29). The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics (p. 1). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.
​

Where quantum uncertainty is important, you use QM. Where it is not you use classical physics. Watch this video to see how they are different.
The two subjects, QM and Classical physics ask different questions. Watch the video, though I doubt you will understand.

[video=youtube;wzoPHorPwis]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzoPHorPwis[/video]

 

Aye! Not quite to the level of Egypt yet though.

 

He's going to be really angry when he gets back.
There are people 10 times ruder than him on here.

 

Indeed he probably wont, however There is no need to stoop to name calling, ridicule and abuse. It shouldn't be tolerated, it isn't tolerated. while I do respect that Tach is clearly educated, he should realise that people portray Mathematicians, Physicists and Scientists based upon how people like interact. So if he comes across harsh, angry, bitter and abusive, then all Mathematicians, Physicists and Scientists could well be treated with wrongful disdain.

Don't make us start wearing the "I'm not with Tach" T-shirts.

As for the people 10 times worse? Do they claim(or potential appear) to be Mathematicians, Physicists or Scientists... I would doubt it would be the case, most of them are very concerned with how they appear professionally and such activities here could greatly undermine their positions elsewhere. (As been proven in the past with certain posters having the real world catchup :/)

I guess you can imply it's "unfair on Tach", but he clearly could be so much more if he just wasn't so aggressive with everyone.

 

I have, and I see there is a tool bar you can download. I do most of my surfing on my iPad, and they don't yet have an iPad tool bar, but I will try it on my PC. Thanks for the Alexa.com link.

I think you are right about the schools. You can't keep kids off the internet, so if you are a teacher you would probably guide them to safe/reputable sites.

True, and the problem right now is low member participation. If you look at what people are viewing, though P&M is up there, look at Free Thoughts and you see where the general interest is here. I don't think the administrator/owner is contemplating changes to the forum sub structure, but I agree, you don't want to interfere with the things that are working. But from a user stand point, when it comes to the Science section, especially P&M, if it isn't for the general majority which is the layman science enthusiast segment, then it would have to be changed. If they were to enforce a Physics Forums type P&M to eliminate the layman enthusiast segment, that is when you risk killing it. Those advocating such a change use the reasoning that the layman segment can haul their asses out to the fringe, and my perspective is, let the experts who want an elite sub forum to themselves, register and use Physics Forums for that content, and come here to offer a more professional perspective to the layman segment who is in the vast majority here.

There is a lot of truth to that in an unmoderated P&M forum, but I'm looking forward to effective moderation to enforce the standards of conduct, and to monitor the content going on in P&M as it unfolds, and not by premature anticipation that Motor Daddy's or my threads will automatically be poor P&M content. I can ask as good a question as the next guy, and I can research the net for answers as good as the next guy. The advantage of doing that in P&M is that there is scrutiny of the content by the science professionals and experts here, while there isn't the same scrutiny in the Fringe. That scrutiny is where the value is to people like me, and if one of my threads in P&M turns into Alternative Theories content, I am the first to ask to have the thread moved.

 

Re Tach.
He was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Could be worse.
It's not as bad as a drive-by shooting.

@QW re your comment:
"But from a user stand point, when it comes to the Science section, especially P&M, if it isn't for the general majority which is the layman science enthusiast segment, then it would have to be changed. If they were to enforce a Physics Forums type P&M to eliminate the layman enthusiast segment, that is when you risk killing it. Those advocating such a change use the reasoning that the layman segment can haul their asses out to the fringe, and my perspective is, let the experts who want an elite sub forum to themselves, register and use Physics Forums for that content, and come here to offer a more professional perspective to the layman segment who is in the vast majority here."

That would be dumbing down wouldn't it?
Plus. It won't happen, believe me.
We have some very good people on P and M.
If they left, it would be ruined.