AKA brain man

[lanzalaco]

Good to see this here... guess you could say i am responsible for starting the ratskep thread, and then ended up getting too interested in a field thats not even relevant to me, then going off at the deep end...trying to do a crash course in geology then barred for going on a one man mission on hackentwat... As if he was even worth bothering with... well there is more to it than that, the ratskep forum is abusing terms of defining various levels of science from pseudo, fringe, proto to finalized science... that took 100 years by experts to refine. Anyway i had it out with the owner, and well i wont say what happened, its between me and him. I mentioned his name on my neuroscience site, but then see it started to appear under a search for his name as number one result, which seemed a bit heavy handed, as the guy doesnt really seem to take a lot of interest in his forum, looks like a hobby that became a burden, so i deleted his name from my criticism of his site.

If you look at the banned members list i am the only one banned for threatening the forum. Although they fail to mention it was starting an independent site for dealing with misclassifying theories that was the specific threat i made there. The particular mod who is hellbent on shoving everything as pseudo not encoded in a university text is Darkchilde.

Anyway thats not relevant issue here. It will be hard to make a forum like this attract traffic without a lot of hard work. Forums work well, when there is mutual social capital and high motivation. i.e. on ratskep theres a cocktail of motivations feeding into each other which provides a lot of energy. Controversy does appear to produce a lot of product...300 pages i am pretty amazed..

Maybe if a forum served as repository for discussing papers on mechanisms.... An online community could maybe produce a paper by collaborating on it as a wiki on a forum... there is something called scholarpedia where neuroscientists collaborate to produce in depth summaries, and spinoffs from that where they actually build cutting edge computational simulations using online repository. You can do something similar on a BB board, by creating summary stickies from where threads are at.

[Florian]

Hi Lanzalaco,

Welcome to the forum. The primary aim of this forum is to become a repository of discussions about the expanding earth theory and exert a strong control on the scientific quality of these discussions. Currently, these discussions are dispersed all over the internet, and in my opinions, the mods don't do a good job at controlling them. Yes, Rational Skepticism is one example.

Eventually, scientists involved in the development of the theory could join to bring their expertise on specific questions. But I don't expect that this forum will become a tool for cooperative work.

[lanzalaco]

good idea. Collate copies of all the threads you contributed to, and dump them in here, in case one of the forums loses threads.

You probably find when its all in one place you have produced enough for a book in itself.

[Dinox]

Good to see this here... guess you could say i am responsible for starting the ratskep thread, and then ended up getting too interested in a field thats not even relevant to me, then going off at the deep end...trying to do a crash course in geology then barred for going on a one man mission on hackentwat... As if he was even worth bothering with... well there is more to it than that, the ratskep forum is abusing terms of defining various levels of science from pseudo, fringe, proto to finalized science... that took 100 years by experts to refine. Anyway i had it out with the owner, and well i wont say what happened, its between me and him. I mentioned his name on my neuroscience site, but then see it started to appear under a search for his name as number one result, which seemed a bit heavy handed, as the guy doesnt really seem to take a lot of interest in his forum, looks like a hobby that became a burden, so i deleted his name from my criticism of his site. ...

I’m glad to see you here aka brain man. It was your initial question on ratsket that attracted me to that site. To me it is a simple question about an observation. Can all the ancient continents and ocean floors be reconstructed on a smaller diameter Earth. It seems a simple enough question – either they can or can’t. The answer must surely be yes they can, so it intrigued me that so many people voted no it can’t. Even if you don’t believe in an Expanding Earth you still need to recognise and explain this simple observation, but the discussion never got to that stage. It seemed to be permanently stuck at the level of ‘they don’t, they can’t, I refuse to believe it!’ Even remarks that you can repeat the experiment yourself to reconstruct your own models seemed unable to move the discussion on. What do you make of the dismissal of such a simple observation?

[lanzalaco]

Good to see this here... guess you could say i am responsible for starting the ratskep thread, and then ended up getting too interested in a field thats not even relevant to me, then going off at the deep end...trying to do a crash course in geology then barred for going on a one man mission on hackentwat... As if he was even worth bothering with... well there is more to it than that, the ratskep forum is abusing terms of defining various levels of science from pseudo, fringe, proto to finalized science... that took 100 years by experts to refine. Anyway i had it out with the owner, and well i wont say what happened, its between me and him. I mentioned his name on my neuroscience site, but then see it started to appear under a search for his name as number one result, which seemed a bit heavy handed, as the guy doesnt really seem to take a lot of interest in his forum, looks like a hobby that became a burden, so i deleted his name from my criticism of his site. ...

I’m glad to see you here aka brain man. It was your initial question on ratsket that attracted me to that site. To me it is a simple question about an observation. Can all the ancient continents and ocean floors be reconstructed on a smaller diameter Earth. It seems a simple enough question – either they can or can’t. The answer must surely be yes they can, so it intrigued me that so many people voted no it can’t. Even if you don’t believe in an Expanding Earth you still need to recognise and explain this simple observation, but the discussion never got to that stage. It seemed to be permanently stuck at the level of ‘they don’t, they can’t, I refuse to believe it!’ Even remarks that you can repeat the experiment yourself to reconstruct your own models seemed unable to move the discussion on. What do you make of the dismissal of such a simple observation?

there seemed to be several factors feeding in to each other. But i dont think i will be saying anything new here.

1. Every change you adjust to from even simple things like upgrading to the next version of an operating system requires a benefit to overcome the hassle of the upgrade process. So a major perspective of a complex system like our planet, and then the ramifications for astrophysics requires you hand back a major benefit. What does EE offer in a group context like that ?

2. i.e. The general politics of ratskep is they developed methodologies (passing round PM's of logical fallacies) to deal with religious argumentation, that are defensive like a cultural immune system. These are similar to prosecution lawyer strategy. All that started of on Richard Dawkins forum before he ejected them, so the hardcore ended up forming that forum, and that is their purpose. Note now they defeated their enemy the skepticism community is fragmenting internally as they require something to break apart, and all they have left is each other ...for now.

3. Due to point 2 above, they are a tight knit fundamentalist right wing in group, bound to a conversion covenant that is public shared capital (they may have different private ideas). paradoxically similar to the fundamentalist Christians they go after. Studies of the behavior of right wing groups in neuropsychology finds that the more convincing the information the greater the effort goes into public shared denial. What they really think when free of the group can often be different.

Not that there isnt problems with EE of course, but as we have seen scientifically the mechanism is not vital or central to the question i posed. I see theropod this week, stumbling about over the issue that there is no mechanism for polar reversal yet he accepts it. Interestingly if you read maxlows book there is no geomagnetic reversal on an EE, just polar wander. All the reversals dissapear. Again an amazing co-incidence...... if he got that right that is.

I am not a social psychologist though, my main field is neuroscience, but at the time I started that thread i was doing a research stint in neuropsychology and had to design conference posters which illustrated neuromorphology, without raising hackles. i.e how to present analytical and visual data together is not simple sometimes, as which do you present first. So I was looking for an insight into reactions to visual information. Then being into natural physics, got engrossed in the geology in maxlows book. well its our planet, so the question draws you in. The fundamentalist mindsets have so many barriers over other matters, they wont even allow such questions, even when the information should be considered interesting.

[Florian]

Not that there isnt problems with EE of course, but as we have seen scientifically the mechanism is not vital or central to the question i posed. I see theropod this week, stumbling about over the issue that there is no mechanism for polar reversal yet he accepts it. Interestingly if you read maxlows book there is no geomagnetic reversal on an EE, just polar wander. All the reversals dissapear. Again an amazing co-incidence...... if he got that right that is.

Actually, it is the opposite. There is no polar wander on EE, just geomagnetic reversal.

Moderation message: I suggest you to post your comments about "Rational Skepticism" in the appropriate thread opened by Light Storm.

[Light Storm]

Good to see you again Lanzalaco;

I can honestly say I've missed your comments on the other thread!

[lanzalaco]

Good to see you again Lanzalaco;

I can honestly say I've missed your comments on the other thread!

surprised... didnt think i provided much if anything of geological value. If anything i used that thread initially for reasons stated, then as a counter balance, as i started getting hit with standard geology while doing a university general science refresher.

I will say this, that when a university starts hitting you with a hard multi-discipline subject like geology they hit you with a lot of stuff from so many angles, the student almost feels brainwashed. I was being asked questions like provide evidence to support plate tectonics (do a better job, get better grades). It was very hard to provide evidence while part of you emotionally not trying to believe it. I eventually reached a compromise. Write up all the evidence for PT as asked for then a short "hold on a minute" paragraph after stating brief summary of evidence for EE.

Uni really hardlines you .. if I had not got into EE stuff, I think i might have been a PT advocate now.