A discussion on TFES forum

[brimstoneSalad]

One person is able to build a whole airplane all by himself? Are you kidding me?

You're starting to irritate me. I already addressed this in my post. If you will not respond to the arguments as they are made, you will be banned.

Stop being an idiot.

"Durr one person is able to bake a cake all by himself? Are you kidding me?
Seriously, how do you make flour? How to you make sugar? How do you make a pan? How do you make an oven? How do you make the electrical grid to power the oven? How to you make a power plant?"

Stop being an asshole. AGAIN, I already covered this.

You build an airplane from PARTS.

Clearly you already know toilets and windows exist. You also know engines exist, assuming you believe cars function on them.
You also know that metal can be formed into different shapes, assuming you've ever used a fork: a propeller is formed by many of the same basic principles.

Will you doubt a house exists, because it is made from many parts?
As long as you are familiar with and do not doubt any of the parts, you should not doubt the whole which is made from them and functions on basic physics.

An airplane isn't simple at all. Anyone who claims it is simple is ignorant.

Fuck you then.
You know fuck all about basic physics and engineering. A basic airplane is incredibly simple.
You can build a very small one one with a couple chopsticks, some foam, paper, paperclips, and a rubber band. All of the same principles are there.

A prop plane is very basic too. Jets function on different physics, but still operate on the principle of accelerating air as the reaction mass (you probably can not build a jet, but you can buy one).
The 747s simply build upon those same principles.

If you already have a computer, it's not a stretch to understand that there may be bigger and more powerful computers than that you use.
Once you understand small planes, you can understand larger ones as an extension of that.

The fallacy of theism is expanding that assumption infinitely: infinites are not proportionally larger than finite numbers. Going from some knowledge and some power to a lot of knowledge and power is fine -- going to infinite knowledge and power from that is not necessarily possible (there are logical limits, see Gödel's incompleteness theorem, for example).

Ever watched this video? It kind of changes the way you look at the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE

Only if you're a complete moron.
The video touches on manufacturing infrastructure, but it's bullshit that somebody couldn't make a functional pencil.

Find some sticks and a rock. Break the rock and get a small piece, fix it at the end of one small stick to make a makeshift drill. Use a stick with a larger diameter, and drill into it with your drill, all the way through. Build a fire, and create charcoal. Whittle a large enough piece down enough to just barely fit into the hole you drilled in the larger stick. You now have a very primitive pencil. A very crappy primitive pencil.

Would it be the same as that pencil? No, of course not. Only those exact molds and ingredients can make that pencil. That's irrelevant: it doesn't make the pencil itself "complex". The process of making it was complex simply due to efficiency, but it isn't necessarily the case. Pencils can also be made very simply by one person, the process is just different, and the pencil would cost more.

See the history of pencils: they certainly didn't start out that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#History

And I wasn't claiming that airplanes don't exist, I was just claiming they aren't the simplest explanation for my ex-friend claiming to have been in one.

They are the simplest explanation of his experience. You need to learn about occam's razor, because clearly you have no idea what I even mean by that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

Occam's razor is based on the principle that the explanation that makes the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be correct.

A. Airplanes exist, and your friend has been on one.
B. Your friend is a liar and airplanes exist. Why did he lie?
C. Your friend is telling the truth as far as he knows, but is delusional and has not really been on a plane, and airplanes do exist.
D. Your friend is a liar and airplanes do not exist. Why did he lie? How is this massive conspiracy theory to make people believe in airplanes maintained? Why would anybody do this? Why don't airplanes exist? How is all science wrong?
E. Your friend is telling the truth as far as he knows, is delusional and has not been on a plane, and airplanes don't exist. etc.

A is the simplest explanation. It makes no extra assumptions about your friend being a liar and his motivations. It postulates no grand conspiracy to explain why everybody believes in airplanes and most people claim to have seen them. It requires no mental illness or delusion to explain.

The explanation is the simplest. A conspiracy theory of that scale is far more complicated than airplanes are, particularly since we know they are constructed from parts and existing technology (like making a cake).
If you additionally want to doubt the parts airplanes are made from and the technology that makes them, you have to add more layers to the conspiracy, and you have to add more assumptions to explain cars, computers, automatic doors, windows, toilets, etc. And you have to explain your alternate theory of physics entirely, and why all experiments are wrong and science is false.

[teo123]

I was also referring to the Occam's razor, I just have apparently greatly misunderstood it. The way I understood it, it would favor the explanation for someone claiming that he had just tasted a delicious cake, that he is lying or delusional, rather than an explanation involving a cake, because the explanation with a cake involves, well, a cake, which is itself extremely complicated. When you put it in this context, it really doesn't make any sense.
By the way, on TFES forum, some people claimed that the Occam's razor doesn't favor the hypothesis that the animals are conscious. I said that that weren't true for the same reason as the Occam's razor doesn't favor the hypothesis that human beings aren't conscious. Was that true?
Occam's razor is obviously very hard to correctly understand, despite many people (atheists, libertarians, Flat Earthers, many other conspiracy theorists…) using it in discussions.

[brimstoneSalad]

I was also referring to the Occam's razor, I just have apparently greatly misunderstood it.

Yes, most people do not understand it, and they impose their own subjective interpretations of "simple" on it.

The way I understood it, it would favor the explanation for someone claiming that he had just tasted a delicious cake, that he is lying or delusional, rather than an explanation involving a cake, because the explanation with a cake involves, well, a cake, which is itself extremely complicated. When you put it in this context, it really doesn't make any sense.

If you already assume cakes exist, then their supposed "complexity" is irrelevant.

A. Cakes Exist. Your friend ate one.
B. Cakes Exist. Your friend said he ate one. Your friend was lying. Why would he lie about this?
C. Cakes don't exist. There's a massive conspiracy to trick people into thinking they exist, along with many complex illusions creating the appearance of cakes. Why? Your friend said he ate one, and was lying. Why?

Many people miss the red assumptions.
When you examine the alternatives, it's important to take into account ALL assumptions in the world view that explains the situation.

By the way, on TFES forum, some people claimed that the Occam's razor doesn't favor the hypothesis that the animals are conscious. I said that that weren't true for the same reason as the Occam's razor doesn't favor the hypothesis that human beings aren't conscious. Was that true?

Your response was pretty good.

However, you need to understand what "consciousness" is, which has in the past not been well defined.
This may be starting to change:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic ... 35&p=20748
If we define consciousness as modeling the world around us, it starts to take on a coherent definition.

Sentience is a matter of true learning, which can also be proved, and itself necessitates interests.

These are not complex explanations for the behavior we observe: they are the simplest, otherwise we have to assume that they behave in intelligent ways by chance or luck, which is absurd and brings all causality into question if you're willing to accept that, or they are somehow controlled by another being magically with invisible puppet strings -- this introduces more assumptions, and also assumes that controlling being is conscious and sentient, which makes everything more complicated.

Occam's razor is obviously very hard to correctly understand, despite many people (atheists, libertarians, Flat Earthers, many other conspiracy theorists…) using it in discussions.

Next time you think you understand something and I don't (or that any professional scientist, engineer, statistician, etc. doesn't), assume you are wrong and do not in fact understand what you're talking about.
Such an assumption is going to be correct some 99% of the time, and will instantly make you a hundred times wiser.

[brimstoneSalad]

I split the last post here: http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2086

This thread is probably long enough, and these are questions on Occam's razor which other people may want to engage with too.

[teo123]

You know what? You convinced me. I don't believe in conspiracies any more. It took so long to find what I get wrong in my reasoning. Thank you!
So, can we finally continue discussing science?
As for my ex-friend, I made that all up. I don't even have any friends and have never had.

[brimstoneSalad]

So, can we finally continue discussing science?

Look at the inside of the rocket, and the motion of the particles. They bounce around everywhere, applying pressure to the inside of the rocket:

________
|
|_______

But only on three sides (in this 2d diagram).

The top and the bottom forces cancel out. The pressure on the left side forces the rocket to accelerate to the left, and the reaction mass exits on the right (instead of bouncing off the inside again) thus the left and right do not cancel.

As for my ex-friend, I made that all up. I don't even have any friends and have never had.

Please don't make things up like that.

[teo123]

So, why don't glasses of water behave like rockets then?

[brimstoneSalad]

So, why don't glasses of water behave like rockets then?

The water is under the same pressure as the atmosphere around it.

If you pressurize a container of water, it does act as a rocket:

Crude one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nlZQfFYfA
More professional one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r9gmLfpFTg

Of course, the "glass" has to be facing down (or sideways, you can't expect it to burrow into the ground), and you want a nozzle so the water doesn't come out all at once (which is an explosion, not a rocket).

Another way to add pressure is if the water was suddenly boiled so that it changed into gas, increasing the pressure inside the glass more than that outside (and there wasn't a table or something in the way)-- then it would also be propelled.

You can do it with liquid or gas, but if the pressure in the rocket is the same as the outside, it's useless. See:

>vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
>|<^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>|<
>|<vvvvvvvvvvvvvv
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The pressure inside and out is the same, so the pressure on every surface cancels out, top, bottom, and left, with the outside pressure.

[teo123]

But doesn't the Newton's first law say that it will not accelerate as long as the force acting on it isn't external? The force created by the inside pressure isn't an external force, right?

[brimstoneSalad]

But doesn't the Newton's first law say that it will not accelerate as long as the force acting on it isn't external? The force created by the inside pressure isn't an external force, right?

There is no net change: part of it goes one way, and part goes another way. If you subtract one from the other, it sums to zero. That's why you need reaction mass.

You can also accelerate by shooting off photons due to mass energy equivalence despite them having zero rest mass, but that's beyond the scope of Newtonian physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure