$30k challenge to Interpreter’s “Team Bayes”

[Dr Moore]

If anyone was wondering whether Kyler Rasmussen is taking his "estimating the evidence" endeavor seriously, as in following a valid scientific process, well for your entertainment here is a video showing what real scientists will do to win a $10,000 bet over disagreement on process and conclusions.

By the way, it isn’t about the money. The money only highlights shared commitment to find true answers.

Kyler conceded the $10k prize I offered without lifting a finger, and I think that says everything that needs to be said on the matter. He may be having fun, but he's wasting everyone's time pretending at a scientific approach or treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc ... Veritasium

[Gadianton]

That was an interesting video on its own terms It's amazing that a simple classical problem gets so controversial among experts.

Considering the referees would be BYU TBMs, it doesn't show a lot of faith in his own efforts. It seems to be a vanity press opportunity and nothing more, with this little corner of the blog sectioned off just for him, some sketches, and belaboring his points with lots of flair as if it's the final word to be written. It reminds me a lot of the Ghost Committee publications where they publish these volumes as fancy hardbacks as if they're classics and there's been zero discussions about the ideas beyond two people.

Note that the witnesses scored an 8 magnitude; where DNA evidence is a tremor, the witness testimonies is a top 30 quake. DCP will be happy with that.

[Dr Moore]

Considering the referees would be BYU TBMs, it doesn't show a lot of faith in his own efforts.

You’re being generous.

[drumdude]

You can aim at finding the truth, or you can aim at defending the church.

It's clear which one Kyler is aiming for. $30,000 just to have Kyler show his work to a BYU statistics professor, refused. Says everything you need to know.

[Philo Sofee]

Poor Kyler.... proving the power of Mormon brainwashing against actually trying to legitimately figure out what is actual. He has the means, he lacks the honesty to be realistic. Now that is a fruit of Mormonism. I leave it to readers to figure out which kind of fruit. I'm seriously disappointed, but honestly not surprised.
Mormons will stop at nothing to try and prove Mormonism. It's a train wreck.

[Rivendale]

If anyone was wondering whether Kyler Rasmussen is taking his "estimating the evidence" endeavor seriously, as in following a valid scientific process, well for your entertainment here is a video showing what real scientists will do to win a $10,000 bet over disagreement on process and conclusions.

By the way, it isn’t about the money. The money only highlights shared commitment to find true answers.

Kyler conceded the $10k prize I offered without lifting a finger, and I think that says everything that needs to be said on the matter. He may be having fun, but he's wasting everyone's time pretending at a scientific approach or treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc ... Veritasium

Thank you for this video. As an ex physics teacher that was amazing and does indeed put the perspective of an apologist in clear view. They do not want to know true things, they want to continue to support what they want.


Members of this feed might want to read the this. https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comme ... _the_book/

[drumdude]

Another couple essays are out, not much discussion on them here. I can understand why..

Kyler won't address the fundamental issue common to the entire project, and he'll just keep adding as many essays as necessary to reach that magic 20-30-40 orders of magnitude to sway any possible doubter. Throw in a couple essays which take a few steps back, so you don't appear too biased, and presto - Mormonism proved with cold hard logic and facts!

Even Peterson doesn't have much to say about the essays on his blog, he simply announces them as they're machine-gunned out.

[Philo Sofee]

Another couple essays are out, not much discussion on them here. I can understand why..

Kyler won't address the fundamental issue common to the entire project, and he'll just keep adding as many essays as necessary to reach that magic 20-30-40 orders of magnitude to sway any possible doubter. Throw in a couple essays which take a few steps back, so you don't appear too biased, and presto - Mormonism proved with cold hard logic and facts!

Even Peterson doesn't have much to say about the essays on his blog, he simply announces them as they're machine-gunned out.

Grist for the mill for the chapel Mormons like Peterson houses on his blog at least...

[Physics Guy]

Sailing faster than the wind is weird, but part of the weirdness is in saying it that way. It makes you think of a square-rigged sailboat somehow out-sailing the wind, and that indeed will not work. Think of a windmill hooked to wheels on a track with gears, though, and it's obvious that you can use wind power to move straight into the wind, if you want. And indeed these bizarre faster-than-the-wind wind-powered vehicles are mounting rotors, not sails.

In fact they aren't just windmills, and what they are doing is not as obvious as that. They are not just absurd; in fact they actually work; how they work is quite tricky.

As with most physics puzzles, there are different ways you can think about this one. Here a big consideration is whether to think about everything in the reference frame of the ground, where the vehicle is moving, or from the reference frame of the vehicle, where the ground is running under the wheels like a conveyer belt. Most other physics conundrums have different perspectives in some way like that.

From each perspective there will usually be some parts of the solution that seem obvious while other parts are hard to notice. Also, which aspects of the situation are crucial and which are insignificant details is not obvious until you understand everything fully. So it's tempting to adopt one perspective and decide that the things that seem obvious from that perspective are crucial while the things that are obscure must be unimportant.

When people who have adopted different perspectives on the problem argue, they tend to thump the table about the points that seem clear from their perspective, and respond to the other person's points by just reiterating their own. This can make a physics argument look a lot like a religious argument. But there are two big differences.

Firstly, of course, in the physics case one can do the experiment. These DDFTW vehicles really do work in practice, so the problem is to understand how they work, not to dispute about whether they do. Once everyone accepts that they do work, however, exactly how they work can still be a dispute—and it's not just an academic dispute, because it may have implications for how to improve these vehicles or apply their principles in other ways.

So even after the first difference of experiment between physics and religion, the second difference remains important as well. In physics all the simple arguments from any perspective are just simplifications of a fully detailed theory that remains the same in all perspectives. So arguments from any perspective can be translated into the other perspective, with objectively perfect translation accuracy, if one is willing to go into enough detail. Sitting around the table with beer, nobody may have enough time or sobriety to do this convincingly; the pens and napkins will come out but the napkins will be too small and the diagrams will be crooked.

If people stand in front of a whiteboard the next day going at it hammer and tongs for as long as it takes, though, the truth will come out. After an hour or two or more, the disputants will have descended into such fine detail that they will have invented their own private language just for this specific discussion. If a third party arrives it will take them several minutes just to explain to the newcomer what they are saying. But at some point one of the disputants will say, "Oh. You were right." Or perhaps both will realise that neither was right.

At any physics conference you will find lots of little gatherings around whiteboards going through that kind of exercise. It's why we have conferences. The big auditorium lectures aren't nearly as important.

In theoretical physics it is always possible to zoom in to more detail, because if you really must, you can try to talk about what every single electron in every atom is doing. If you could do that successfully, you would necessarily resolve every problem. So zooming in to more detail is a reliable tool for resolving controversies. It can be time-consuming and hard. It strains brains, even brilliant ones.

My brain has not been brilliant enough so far to fully understand these DDFTW vehicles. From one perspective I can see pretty clearly how they can work, but from that perspective I can't see why they won't work to "sail" in dead calm. From another perspective I can see clearly why they can never sail in dead calm, but this second perspective is no help to me in seeing how they can work when there is some wind. So I can kind of cover all the bases, but only with different perspectives, and that is not good enough. I won't consider that I understand this problem properly until I can explain all of its features succinctly from a single perspective—and do that from any perspective.

I reckon I'm only going to be able to resolve the paradox that fully by going to a more detailed level, and that will take a few hours, for sure. I often burn up hours on tasks that looked at first as if they would be done in minutes, but these days it's hard to find time for anything that I know in advance will take hours, if it's not something I have to do.

Maybe when I retire.

[drumdude]

Sailing faster than the wind is weird, but part of the weirdness is in saying it that way. It makes you think of a square-rigged sailboat somehow out-sailing the wind, and that indeed will not work. Think of a windmill hooked to wheels on a track with gears, though, and it's obvious that you can use wind power to move straight into the wind, if you want. And indeed these bizarre faster-than-the-wind wind-powered vehicles are mounting rotors, not sails.

In fact they aren't just windmills, and what they are doing is not as obvious as that. They are not just absurd; in fact they actually work; how they work is quite tricky.

As with most physics puzzles, there are different ways you can think about this one. Here a big consideration is whether to think about everything in the reference frame of the ground, where the vehicle is moving, or from the reference frame of the vehicle, where the ground is running under the wheels like a conveyer belt. Most other physics conundrums have different perspectives in some way like that.

From each perspective there will usually be some parts of the solution that seem obvious while other parts are hard to notice. Also, which aspects of the situation are crucial and which are insignificant details is not obvious until you understand everything fully. So it's tempting to adopt one perspective and decide that the things that seem obvious from that perspective are crucial while the things that are obscure must be unimportant.

When people who have adopted different perspectives on the problem argue, they tend to thump the table about the points that seem clear from their perspective, and respond to the other person's points by just reiterating their own. This can make a physics argument look a lot like a religious argument. But there are two big differences.

Firstly, of course, in the physics case one can do the experiment. These DDFTW vehicles really do work in practice, so the problem is to understand how they work, not to dispute about whether they do. Once everyone accepts that they do work, however, exactly how they work can still be a dispute—and it's not just an academic dispute, because it may have implications for how to improve these vehicles or apply their principles in other ways.

So even after the first difference of experiment between physics and religion, the second difference remains important as well. In physics all the simple arguments from any perspective are just simplifications of a fully detailed theory that remains the same in all perspectives. So arguments from any perspective can be translated into the other perspective, with objectively perfect translation accuracy, if one is willing to go into enough detail. Sitting around the table with beer, nobody may have enough time or sobriety to do this convincingly; the pens and napkins will come out but the napkins will be too small and the diagrams will be crooked.

If people stand in front of a whiteboard the next day going at it hammer and tongs for as long as it takes, though, the truth will come out. After an hour or two or more, the disputants will have descended into such fine detail that they will have invented their own private language just for this specific discussion. If a third party arrives it will take them several minutes just to explain to the newcomer what they are saying. But at some point one of the disputants will say, "Oh. You were right." Or perhaps both will realise that neither was right.

At any physics conference you will find lots of little gatherings around whiteboards going through that kind of exercise. It's why we have conferences. The big auditorium lectures aren't nearly as important.

In theoretical physics it is always possible to zoom in to more detail, because if you really must, you can try to talk about what every single electron in every atom is doing. If you could do that successfully, you would necessarily resolve every problem. So zooming in to more detail is a reliable tool for resolving controversies. It can be time-consuming and hard. It strains brains, even brilliant ones.

My brain has not been brilliant enough so far to fully understand these DDFTW vehicles. From one perspective I can see pretty clearly how they can work, but from that perspective I can't see why they won't work to "sail" in dead calm. From another perspective I can see clearly why they can never sail in dead calm, but this second perspective is no help to me in seeing how they can work when there is some wind. So I can kind of cover all the bases, but only with different perspectives, and that is not good enough. I won't consider that I understand this problem properly until I can explain all of its features succinctly from a single perspective—and do that from any perspective.

I reckon I'm only going to be able to resolve the paradox that fully by going to a more detailed level, and that will take a few hours, for sure. I often burn up hours on tasks that looked at first as if they would be done in minutes, but these days it's hard to find time for anything that I know in advance will take hours, if it's not something I have to do.

Maybe when I retire.

For me, I get an intuitive understanding of how it works by watching this video, starting at 13:30

https://youtu.be/yCsgoLc_fzI

It is essentially force multiplication just like you see with pulleys, gears, and levers.