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Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
Typhoon wrote:That the physical universe operates according QM at the fundamental level has now been established by experiments.

The local reality objections of Einstein and others are now D.O.A.

Whether people are comfortable, or not, with this empirical reality is frankly irrelevant.
The problem for many people it that QM is different from their everyday macroscopic experience.

Anyways, to understand QM, one should as a minimum understand the double-slit experiment.
A very sensible explanation, yet also very religious sounding. Perhaps reality is determined primarily by one's faith. :?

Which mountain are you climbing or descending...... right now? ;)
Not sure how it is "very religious sounding".

I'm not aware of any religion based on statistically significant empirical evidence acquired under reproducible conditions.

Rather all religions that I can think of are based on metaphysicals claim that require belief, or in my case, a suspension of disbelief.
A set of historical irreproducible results.

....

It's a problem as old as civilization. Euclid is said to have replied to King Ptolemy's request for an easier way of learning mathematics that
there is no Royal Road to geometry.
My previous comments were made somewhat tongue in cheek, ;) but this is exactly what I was eluding to. To those who have made the effort and expended the discipline, Calculus, Differential Equations, or QM is understandable, and useful as tools to obtain further understanding of the world.

The "scientific expert" can make the same claim to the less experienced/less practiced outsider as the "religious expert." "Duplicate my hours of study (or prayer) in my field of expertise, and you will agree with my perspective."

To expect the concert pianist, and the figure skater, who both have 20,000 hours of practice in their respective fields, to agree is naïve.

Now to the outsider/less studied, what to think when QM experts or the religious experts disagree?

Climate science for example. Different lines of reasoning, seem very similar to different types of faith. Disagree, get excommunicated, and hopefully, there is another church down the road that will accept your thinking.

The answer of course is that "science is never settled" but simply the best available method with our current level of understanding/information/practice/tools. As you have noted, "experts" have a lousy track record in predicting the future. QM at work? (tongue in cheek)

Funding, politics, and the desire for fame muddy the water. The recent article someone posted that the "popular views change when the rock stars of current accepted opinion die" was an excellent example.
Last edited by Simple Minded on Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Parodite
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Parodite »

Typhoon wrote:That the physical universe operates according QM at the fundamental level has now been established by experiments.

The local reality objections of Einstein and others are now D.O.A.

Whether people are comfortable, or not, with this empirical reality is frankly irrelevant.
The problem for many people it that QM is different from their everyday macroscopic experience.
The objections never concerned empirical reality and the predictive successes. There was disagreement about what the empirical reality and the qm equations were able to say about what happens at the quantum level independent of (just before) and during measurement.

The latter being of specific relevance in the double slit experiment; the question if local effects such as the interaction between detector (itself a quantum system) and photon could not account for the change from a resulting wave-like interference pattern to the double band particle-like result.

Maybe it is not that easy to rule out such local effects? It is technically very difficult, it seems to me, to design a detecting device that interacts with little enough disturbing effects to make sure, beyond reasonable doubt, that the detector cannot be considered to act as a local cause for the weird effect. In 2012, David Wineland and Serge Haroch received the Nobel prize in Physics for Measuring and Manipulating Individual Quantum systems. To manipulate a single photon as in "Box 2. Measuring one photon in a cavity without destroying it" maybe gives an answer?

I have seen double-slit experiment set-ups where behind one or both of the slits a polarizer was placed to function as a detector (before the wave or particle hits the photosensitive screen at the end). Could not this interaction between the photon wave and polarizer change the wave and make it behave particle-like.. with the double bands as the result? A shot in the dark..but this article, Double-Slit Experiment with Polarized Light ends with: "We see that due to the presence of the polarizing films the interference terms (fringes) disappear."
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Parodite »

Simple Minded wrote:The answer of course is that "science is never settled" but simply the best available method with our current level of understanding/information/practice/tools.
"My own conclusion (not universally shared) is that today there is no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not have serious flaws, and that we ought to take seriously the possibility of finding some more satisfactory other theory, to which quantum mechanics is merely a good approximation."
- Steven Weinberg
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Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Parodite wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:The answer of course is that "science is never settled" but simply the best available method with our current level of understanding/information/practice/tools.
"My own conclusion (not universally shared) is that today there is no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not have serious flaws, and that we ought to take seriously the possibility of finding some more satisfactory other theory, to which quantum mechanics is merely a good approximation."
- Steven Weinberg
Weinberg's statement seems sensible. Imagine how many topics could be substituted for QM in the above sentence. Which is nothing more than saying "Today, I or we know only what we know. Tomorrow we may know more, or no longer believe what we believe today."

I think there are some theories out there that the human brain is consistently being re-wired based on knowledge and experience.

Fred, Bill, Joe, and Sam have each spent 20,000 hours studying music, religion, physics, and paranormal activity. Why would you expect them to experience reality similarly?
Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
I am hoping that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle will shed some light (photons or waves, I'm not picky :P ) on why some of my friends consider them selves selfless, while I consider them to be selfish......
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by noddy »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

noddy wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... two-vginas
Amazing. One for everyday; one for special occasions.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:
noddy wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... two-vginas
Amazing. One for everyday; one for special occasions.

One for myself, and one for others.

When asked if you are a virgin, she hesitates.....

these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....

She only recently found out about it. Imagine how her hubby feels.....

You guys might not believe this, but I have two heads! :P
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by noddy »

Simple Minded wrote:
these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....
thats what talking to yourself is for.
ultracrepidarian
Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

noddy wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....
thats what talking to yourself is for.
also splains the fondness for girly pics.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Parodite »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:
noddy wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... two-vginas
Amazing. One for everyday; one for special occasions.
Not far off from a double slut experiment.
Deep down I'm very superficial
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Parodite »

Simple Minded wrote:Weinberg's statement seems sensible. Imagine how many topics could be substituted for QM in the above sentence. Which is nothing more than saying "Today, I or we know only what we know. Tomorrow we may know more, or no longer believe what we believe today."

I think there are some theories out there that the human brain is consistently being re-wired based on knowledge and experience.

Fred, Bill, Joe, and Sam have each spent 20,000 hours studying music, religion, physics, and paranormal activity. Why would you expect them to experience reality similarly?
I don't think it is that hopeless. Just one example where Fred Bill Joe and Sam are being fooled by pop-sci folk who tell them what happens in the double slit experiment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXQjRBLwsQ

At 4:30 there is this detector, an eye on a stick, that observes "the marble" which then causes it to change from producing the wave interference pattern to the two-band particle-like result behind the slits on the screen. It is presented as magic.. an observing eye that without interacting with the observed wave causes it to change producing the particle-like results. As if "it knows it is being watched and changed its mind".

The suggestion in this video that the detector (eye) is not interacting with the observed wave is false of course: in reality the quantum system of the detector interacts with the "observed" quantum wave of the photon.. which is what is causing the change of pattern on the screen in the back.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Typhoon »

Parodite wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:The answer of course is that "science is never settled" but simply the best available method with our current level of understanding/information/practice/tools.
"My own conclusion (not universally shared) is that today there is no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not have serious flaws, and that we ought to take seriously the possibility of finding some more satisfactory other theory, to which quantum mechanics is merely a good approximation."
- Steven Weinberg
Opinions are like hemorrhoids, sooner or later every asshole has one.

There is a long list of renowned physicists who are troubled by QM to varying degrees.

However, none of them has proposed that "more satisfactory other theory".

On the other hand, all experiments point to QM.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Typhoon »

Simple Minded wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:
noddy wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... two-vginas
Amazing. One for everyday; one for special occasions.
. . .

these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....

. . .
Please don't worry on my account in this regard. I have plenty of people, friends and/or colleagues,
with whom I can and do discuss physics and other fields of science and engineering.

NH's puns are a[n inter]national treasure.

On the other hand, I do enjoying explaining and discussing various topic in physics as long as the other party is prepared to learn . . .
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Typhoon »

Simple Minded wrote:
noddy wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....
thats what talking to yourself is for.
also splains the fondness for girly pics.
In most countries, scientists in the physical sciences are often notorious hound dogs.

[The Steve Buscemi character, called Rockhound, in Armageddon is an amusing fictional example.]

It is only in the US that the Big Bang Theory stereotype of the nerd has some validity.

Many renowned physicists had/have unconventional personal lives.

Einstein had numerous multiple affairs including a simultaneous mother + daughter pair who fought over him.

Landau was notorious as a lady's man.

Feynman was a known lady's man.

Schrodinger had two wives, believed in free love, and is said to have come up with his famous equation between bouts of wild sex with a colleague's wife at a mountain cottage retreat.

C. N. Yang's second wife is some 60 years his junior.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Typhoon »

Simple Minded wrote:
Typhoon wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
Typhoon wrote:That the physical universe operates according QM at the fundamental level has now been established by experiments.

The local reality objections of Einstein and others are now D.O.A.

Whether people are comfortable, or not, with this empirical reality is frankly irrelevant.
The problem for many people it that QM is different from their everyday macroscopic experience.

Anyways, to understand QM, one should as a minimum understand the double-slit experiment.
A very sensible explanation, yet also very religious sounding. Perhaps reality is determined primarily by one's faith. :?

Which mountain are you climbing or descending...... right now? ;)
Not sure how it is "very religious sounding".

I'm not aware of any religion based on statistically significant empirical evidence acquired under reproducible conditions.

Rather all religions that I can think of are based on metaphysicals claim that require belief, or in my case, a suspension of disbelief.
A set of historical irreproducible results.

....

It's a problem as old as civilization. Euclid is said to have replied to King Ptolemy's request for an easier way of learning mathematics that
there is no Royal Road to geometry.
My previous comments were made somewhat tongue in cheek, ;)
So I gathered.
Simple Minded wrote: but this is exactly what I was eluding to. To those who have made the effort and expended the discipline, Calculus, Differential Equations, or QM is understandable, and useful as tools to obtain further understanding of the world.

The "scientific expert" can make the same claim to the less experienced/less practiced outsider as the "religious expert." "Duplicate my hours of study (or prayer) in my field of expertise, and you will agree with my perspective."
Agreed.
Simple Minded wrote:To expect the concert pianist, and the figure skater, who both have 20,000 hours of practice in their respective fields, to agree is naïve.

Now to the outsider/less studied, what to think when QM experts or the religious experts disagree?

Climate science for example. Different lines of reasoning, seem very similar to different types of faith. Disagree, get excommunicated, and hopefully, there is another church down the road that will accept your thinking.
One major difference between QM and "climate science" is that the former is based on lab experiments with the degrees of freedom highly constrained whereas the latter is based entirely on observational data with many known and unknown degrees of freedom. In other words, many labs can perform and/or reproduce the same QM experiments whereas there is only one earth and that one earth is a dynamic driven nonlinear system far from thermodynamic equilibrium. I.e., a system with many known unknowns and probably even more unknown unknowns.
Simple Minded wrote:The answer of course is that "science is never settled" but simply the best available method with our current level of understanding/information/practice/tools. As you have noted, "experts" have a lousy track record in predicting the future. QM at work? (tongue in cheek)

Funding, politics, and the desire for fame muddy the water. The recent article someone posted that the "popular views change when the rock stars of current accepted opinion die" was an excellent example.
Agreed.

It is interesting that three very different fields currently have "rock star" problems.

The first is HEP theory, high energy elementary particle physics theory, wherein a group of people who have devoted their professional careers to string theory, a hypothesis with no testable predictions after 30 years of intense effort, go around promoting string theory as an established scientific theory to the lay public*.

The second is astrophysics theory, wherein a group of people who have devoted their professional careers to big bang theory, a hypothesis with known multiple problems, go around promoting multiverses as a solution and as an established scientific theory to the lay public.

The third is "climate science", wherein a small group of no-rate scientists have managed to raise a weak speculative hypothesis, mostly likely nothing more than an artifact of systematic biases in data analysis and of gross underestimation of statistical and systematic uncertainties, to the level of a global quasi-religious dogma with fanatical adherents among the lay public. It is here that one encounters scientists being regarded as an infallible priesthood.

As for QM, it has passed all precision experimental tests to date.
The rival local reality theories have not, and can thus be ruled out, and no one has proposed, despite nearly a century of criticisms, another viable alternative theory to QM. So until someone does, I'll stick with QM and leave the supposed philosophical questions and objections to others.

*Some of these proponents hubris is of an entirely new level in that they advocate rejecting the scientific method in that string theory need not make and pass testable experimental predictions.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Parodite wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:Weinberg's statement seems sensible. Imagine how many topics could be substituted for QM in the above sentence. Which is nothing more than saying "Today, I or we know only what we know. Tomorrow we may know more, or no longer believe what we believe today."

I think there are some theories out there that the human brain is consistently being re-wired based on knowledge and experience.

Fred, Bill, Joe, and Sam have each spent 20,000 hours studying music, religion, physics, and paranormal activity. Why would you expect them to experience reality similarly?
I don't think it is that hopeless. Just one example where Fred Bill Joe and Sam are being fooled by pop-sci folk who tell them what happens in the double slit experiment:
How you connected "hopeless" to any on my posts astounds me. The aspect of humanity that I find endlessly fascinating and entertaining, especially in cyberspace, is that no matter what one posts, the interpretation is entirely up to the reader/observer. It will be a truly dull world when human communication is perfected.

We're all psychics when it come to predicting the non published intent/perspective of others... and we all suck at it. Equality at last! :P

One expects the laymen, with knowledge a mile wide and in inch deep to misunderstand each other, IMSMO, it is good to know that "experts," with knowledge an inch wide and a mile deep do the same.

It would not surprise me if most discoveries, scientific and otherwise are due to miscommunication or error.
Last edited by Simple Minded on Sat Jan 02, 2016 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:
noddy wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... two-vginas
Amazing. One for everyday; one for special occasions.
. . .

these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....

. . .
Please don't worry on my account in this regard. I have plenty of people, friends and/or colleagues,
with whom I can and do discuss physics and other fields of science and engineering.
.
also tongue in cheek
Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote: Feynman was a known lady's man.

Schrodinger had two wives, believed in free love, and is said to have come up with his famous equation between bouts of wild sex with a colleague's wife at a mountain cottage retreat.
Schrodinger's obsession with pussy is well documented. The rest is news to me.

see, I am willing to learn. ;)
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Einstein had numerous multiple affairs including a simultaneous mother + daughter pair who fought over him.
Hence his famously explosive theory of relativity.
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Typhoon »

Simple Minded wrote:
Typhoon wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:
noddy wrote:
Nonc Hilaire wrote:I keep watching the 'Beautiful Women' and 'Sex' threads for evidence from Typhoon's double slit experiments, but I am starting to have my doubts regarding the existence of this phenomenon.
http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-me ... two-vginas
Amazing. One for everyday; one for special occasions.
. . .

these types of replies kinda make me feel sorry for Typhoon as a moderator. PhD's must get lonely for intelligent, adult conversation at times.....

. . .
Please don't worry on my account in this regard. I have plenty of people, friends and/or colleagues,
with whom I can and do discuss physics and other fields of science and engineering.
.
also tongue in cheek
To elaborate, given the turn in the discussion:

1/ The upper, facial, cheek; and

2/ My own

:wink:
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Parodite »

Simple Minded wrote:
Parodite wrote:
Simple Minded wrote: Fred, Bill, Joe, and Sam have each spent 20,000 hours studying music, religion, physics, and paranormal activity. Why would you expect them to experience reality similarly?
I don't think it is that hopeless. Just one example where Fred Bill Joe and Sam are being fooled by pop-sci folk who tell them what happens in the double slit experiment:
How you connected "hopeless" to any on my posts astounds me.
Sorry, I thought you were serious, I was wrong. ;) I mean, I give specifics pertaining to the thread title and you respond with something so general and unrelated to anything I wrote here I thought you meant to suggest that we might as well close this thread being a hopeless case to further explore. So I thought.. it isn't that hopeless. 8-) Glad to know that perhaps this was not your point.
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Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Parodite »

Typhoon wrote:As for QM, it has passed all precision experimental tests to date.
The rival local reality theories have not, and can thus be ruled out, and no one has proposed, despite nearly a century of criticisms, another viable alternative theory to QM. So until someone does, I'll stick with QM and leave the supposed philosophical questions and objections to others.
You misrepresent, and keep misrepresenting the controversy. No one tries to dispose of QM. Some physicists are not totally happy with qm because they feel it lacks ontological relevance. Or that it still not meshes well with macro physics and gravity. I'm just trying to figure out about the alleged quantum weirdness, what it is about and what not. A lot of smoke and mirrors there.
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Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Parodite wrote:
Sorry, I thought you were serious, I was wrong. ;) I mean, I give specifics pertaining to the thread title and you respond with something so general and unrelated to anything I wrote here I thought you meant to suggest that we might as well close this thread being a hopeless case to further explore. So I thought.. it isn't that hopeless. 8-) Glad to know that perhaps this was not your point.
No problem bro. The unanticipated response is what keeps us posters and them quantum mechanics interested in the subject matter. ;)

It would only be hopeless if I had to publish something that sounded knowledgeable on QM in the next few weeks in order to make the mortgage payment.

Luckily, I count on string cheese theory as a source of income..... ;)
Simple Minded

Re: Quantum weirdness

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:
Agreed.

It is interesting that three very different fields currently have "rock star" problems.

The first is HEP theory, high energy elementary particle physics theory, wherein a group of people who have devoted their professional careers to string theory, a hypothesis with no testable predictions after 30 years of intense effort, go around promoting string theory as an established scientific theory to the lay public*.

The second is astrophysics theory, wherein a group of people who have devoted their professional careers to big bang theory, a hypothesis with known multiple problems, go around promoting multiverses as a solution and as an established scientific theory to the lay public.

The third is "climate science", wherein a small group of no-rate scientists have managed to raise a weak speculative hypothesis, mostly likely nothing more than an artifact of systematic biases in data analysis and of gross underestimation of statistical and systematic uncertainties, to the level of a global quasi-religious dogma with fanatical adherents among the lay public. It is here that one encounters scientists being regarded as an infallible priesthood.
The first two sound very much like "religion" to the untrained ears attached to my untrained brain. Or perhaps, using the rock star analogy, entertainment is a better description. If I can get someone to enjoy and buy my published theories, it is identical to getting someone to enjoy and buy my songs. Income for me, entertainment for them. Whether the lyrics to my songs are fact or fiction are irrelevant to both my need for income, and their need for entertainment.

I think Michio Kaku may be one of the current rock stars. Whether he is full of it or not, I have no clue.

"Climate science" seems even worse than religion. More like Tulip bulb mania. Or doomer porn. An infinite number of data points are available, and those selected are not only correct, but represent all the rest accurately to 1/1000ths of a degree? Defies any form of reasonable belief.

How to explain the popularity? Those raised in first world countries have no concept of weather variability? Proposing that modern satellite measurements (modern faith) correspond accurately to tree ring data and ice cores? Ignoring data that does not fit the hypothesis.

To me it seems more like confessing First World Guilt buys one a seat at the Compassionate lunch table on one hand, a simple quest for money and power on the other hand.

Similarities to buying dispensations is staggering. Living on earth is original sin.... luckily, we have the cure.
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