Planck limits

"Your example with a "motor" is totally unphysical. But that's OK, as long as you haven't studied that science. But you make there deliberate logical mistakes.."

I appreciate Dr. Flandern's answers, he has good points to make like made by other known scientists and I'm trying to debate with him the issues of Zeno's paradox. By starting an argument by attacking both the capability and the intentions of the other party is not a good thing to do and shows a lacking of both scientific character and ability for effective communication. Good scientists never start an argument like this and when they do, everything they say is often neglected and those people never get recognition in their field but remain in the shadows of their abrasive character.

Dr. Van Flandern:

If infinite divisibility is possible then construction of an encoder with infinite holes should be possible in theory and such an encoder would prohibit motion. Zeno's paradoxes have nothing to do with time but you introduce time to resolve them. One may take all the time needed, if infinite divisibility of space is allowed then motion is impossible. By taking limit dx/dt, a process of convergence is introduced but you failed to provide a physical mechanism for that process. You trying to resolve one paradox by introducing a mathematical chaos of infinitesimals and limits when there is an asnwer much much simpler: space is quantized.

But thank you for your answers. As you know a debate like this may never end. Good luck to you.

AB: As much as I appreciate the support for my position here, and the valuable science you bring to this Message Board, in this instance I am forced to agree with Enrico that you turned the discussion personal first. That does not excuse Enrico's personal insults back to you, and I certainly wish he had shown more restraint. But if we are going to end flame wars here, we need to stop these matters at their root.

I also wish that all participants would make allowance that English is not the first language of many here, and not always jump to the conclusion that an attack was intended.

That said, accusing someone of using "deliberate logical mistakes" is hard to read in any way except as a personal attack, and certainly has no relevance to the merit of the ideas presented. Note especially how this Message Board differs about such types of communication from certain others you participate in. (I have "Bad Astronomy" in mind, which is a personal attack right from the Board name. That board allows participants to attack one another freely, and IMO is a disgrace to science.)

Accordingly, I have removed AB's second round of attack message, escalating the intemperate rhetoric. Let's please have no more of that type of message.

To ALL: Please make an extra effort to direct all your comments toward the merit of ideas, and none of them to the character, competence, motives, ancestory, or other qualities of the person representing them. Characterizing ideas is the same as characterizing their presenter. Just stick to what is right and what is wrong with the ideas, and the rest will take care of itself.

Please follow my "Orange Juice Rule": Never say anything here to another participant that might make it awkward to meet that person and sit down with him/her over a glass of orange juice and have a friendly, in-person chat about the same issues. Many thanks. -|Tom|-

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[TVF] That said, accusing someone of using "deliberate logical mistakes" is hard to read in any way except as a personal attack, and certainly has no relevance to the merit of the ideas presented.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>Sorry, I can't agree with you here. It's a normal thing among philosophers to distort the physics so that it fits into the limits of their concepts and constructs. Such efforts on their part are always quite deliberate and quite often simply nihilistic towards the natural sciences, and the mistakes they make along that course are quite deliberate indeed.
It is my firm conviction that exactly such deliberate philisophers' mistakes are the root cause of dissent both in this thread and in the earlier related discussions on this board. Hence the argument can be won by the physicists only if the philosophers are forced to respect the physicality of the premises in those discussions, and all the tricks they use need be exposed and promptly dismantled.

Please feel free to remove this post if you consider it offensive or irrelevant.

Zeno used faulty premises to argue against motion. If Zeno were living in the 21st century, an illustration of his reasoning process would go like this : His car is parked in the garage. He gets into his car, starts the engine, sees that the garage door is down, shuts his engine off and sadly concludes driving is impossible because one can't get out of the garage.

To reach this absurd conclusion of course, he had to start from a couple false premises: 1. the garage door has to be open for you to drive through it, and 2. there's no way to open the garage door.

It sounds facetious but it's not too far off from the absurd reasoning process of his paradoxes.

What more proof of motion did Zeno expect than the fact that he was able to move his hand in space to write down his paradoxes?

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>[AB]: It's a normal thing among philosophers to distort the physics so that it fits into the limits of their concepts and constructs. Such efforts on their part are always quite deliberate and quite often simply nihilistic towards the natural sciences, and the mistakes they make along that course are quite deliberate indeed.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I do not agree with you on several levels. Philosophers may not be experts in physics, and may give priority to their own philosophical convictions over ones from physics they may not understand as well. This is a natural and understandable process we all engage in -- giving priority to what we are familiar with and therefore more confident of. I see nothing insidious about it.

Moreover, "deliberate" seems to imply "acting in bad faith". That is certainly not true. Among several possible explanations for such behavior, the human capacity for self-deception is virtially unlimited.

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>It is my firm conviction that exactly such deliberate philisophers' mistakes are the root cause of dissent both in this thread and in the earlier related discussions on this board. Hence the argument can be won by the physicists only if the philosophers are forced to respect the physicality of the premises in those discussions, and all the tricks they use need be exposed and promptly dismantled.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I don't recommend you apply for any jobs at the United Nations. <img src=icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle> All factions in disputes tend to impute dishonest, unethical, or sinister motives to their opponents. But no true meeting of minds is possible until each side is prepared to take its opponents and their needs/interests/ideas seriously.

The first step for anyone involved in a dispute is to try to understand the other side's position. In an intellectual dispute, one needs to understand why the other side believes what it does -- to understand the issue the way one's opponents understand it. Having that true understanding is the only way one can hope to make an honest comparison of the merits of the two opposed viewpoints.

Much more than that is needed, however, if the two sides are to have a meeting of minds. One must open up one's own position, including its weaknesses, to the other side. To have any hope of being taken seriously, one must be prepared to agree that one's own position is wrong if the facts uncovered merit that. Most people are not prepared to surrender their own positions under any circumstances, so they can never be persuasive to others with a committed position. To reach agreement, each side must take the position that "If I am shown to be in error, that only means that I will be smarter tomorrow than I was yesterday."

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Please feel free to remove this post if you consider it offensive or irrelevant.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

All that I insist upon is that you respect the people you debate with by not insulting them or ridiculing their ideas. Stick to the merits. Accusing them of acting in bad faith is an insult. It is a bad idea under all circumstances because, if you are mistaken, you have made an enemy needlessly (perhaps of a potential future ally); and if you are right, it still shuts down discussion of the merits and allow the other side a chance to win by changing the subject away from the merits, where they would lose.

One way to "win" in any discussion of intellectual ideas is to show that the merits of your position exceed the merits of the opposed position, as judged by neutral parties. Another way to "win" is to concede that the position of the other side has more merit than your own position. That is a win for you not only because it makes you smarter, but also because your opponents have compelling evidence that you deal in good faith and are fair-minded. This opens doors for you in any and all future discussions. Almost no one trusts arguing with someone who can never admit error or back away from a clearly losing position.

Please think it over. We all have much to learn from our debate opponents. If nothing else, we learn how well we truly understand the subject ourselves, and how well we can teach it or communicate it to neutral parties. -|Tom|-

P.S. If you do not think you can show the degree of respect I request here, perhaps your talents and experience would be more successful on another Message Board. I have been amazed to see in some USENET newsgroups that even highly insulting postures sometimes have beneficial effects -- something I previously thought impossible. But this Board plans to distinguish itself by allowing all non-attacking, non-derisive, scientific viewpoints to be presented in an environment free of attack and derision from others. We'll stick to that as long as it seems to our Board of Directors to be working for us. I hope you can agree to modify your style accordingly and stay. -|Tom|-

Tom,

It appears to me that you perceive my comments in an exclusively negative sense. Thus the positive meaning of those gets muted. So I'll reformulate once (and only once) more -

No single party in the dispute should be allowed control over premises. Single-sided tinkering with the premises should be uniformly considered as unfair tactic. Winning a dispute when the opponent controls the premises is next to impossible. And winning disputes is crucial to defending truths or even verities.
(BTW, that's why you can't win in disputes with the orthodox relativists - they simply privatize the premises and refuse to come to common grounds.)

Now on to particular case we have here -
Being caught tinkering with the premises one is accused of unfair tactics by that very fact. According to your own declarations, such accusation is a personal attack of itself. And it surely feels like that to the guilty party. So there's an option for the guilty party to claim being attacked personally, without addressing the matters in question, and that's exactly what we've seen in this thread. Thus your limitations against "personal attacks" get unfairly exploited; and that's only to be expected since fairness is not as widespread a virtue as one would like it to be.