Philosophical Vegan Forum

Teo, You seem like a nice guy although easily influenced by others. My guess is that you are not American since you probably would have been drawn in to religion a long time ago if you were.

No, I am in Croatia. Most of the people here, including my family, is religious. Though I guess I am simply biased towards being different. Apparently it's good when it comes to diet or religion, but not so good when it comes to the shape of the Earth.

teo123 wrote:Of course I was trolling. I pretended that I don't know about the diffuse reflection (see the diagram). I don't know how to make it more obvious. I even alluded to it with " so all the dust must be aligned on the flat ground".

I assume you're lying here to save face. Please do not do that.

Also, don't ever assume people will be able to tell you're trolling, given the positions you have advocated in the past.
See Poe's law.

teo123 wrote:But, yeah, if brimstoneSalad says that the levitating dust and lenses are explanations, I guess it is so.

Professional photographers can give you more insight into the lens effects. That's why you should accept these. Multiple third parties have confirmed the moon landings, and as said earlier on, there are even retroreflector arrays. The reasons to believe this is true are too many to list, and you could make an entire career around debunking all of the conspiracy claims.

The point is that you have neither the time nor the experience to evaluate these claims yourself. Confirmation from multiple third party experts who provide detailed explanations and the science behind them mean more than the assertions of conspiracy theorists who are proven liars and make numerous scientific errors.

When we don't have enough personal experience to evaluate something ourselves, we have to trust others, and that means we need to be able to make the judgement call to trust the right experts -- those of scientific consensus, who show their math, and who aren't asking us to believe in a grand conspiracy without any credible evidence.

teo123 wrote:Wouldn't the electrically charged levitating dust polarize the space suits and make them attract dust more and more? Probably not, but I still don't understand why.

Well, you got the science a little wrong, but about the stickiness: Yes, and this is a big problem. It's like how a sock sticks to you due to static. Dust was covering everything, the lenses, the face of the suits, it even jams up the cleaners designed to clean the dust.

This is an engineering challenge, which may mean using electric charges (the same charge) to repel the dust, or using electromagnetic scoopers to collect the dust. There are many potential solutions.

NASA spends a lot more time advertising grand accomplishments, rather than talking about all of the tiny problems they face along the way: not very many people would be interested in hearing how NASA has probably spent millions of dollars trying to figure out how to clean moon/mars dust.

Some of their engineering solutions end up being useful for consumer application and create new technology that's useful for everybody, while others don't.

teo123 wrote:As for the wide-angled lenses, the Wikipedia says that "For example, buildings appear to be falling backwards much more severely when the camera is pointed upward from ground level than they would if photographed with a normal lens at the same distance from the subject, because more of the subject building is visible in the wide-angle shot." Therefore, I was right and the true parallel shadows would appear to intersect above the horizon. I guess that bimstoneSalad was simply too angry to even think about it.

Why won't you just stop being dumb? I don't get it. How many times do I have to prove you wrong before you take your intuition and throw it out, instead of assuming you're right?

First, you still don't understand this: stop saying you were right.
You are misreading and misunderstanding the concept being presented there. Wikipedia doesn't have your back here. It doesn't necessarily change where the horizon converges (that depends on where it is in the frame and the camera angle and environment), it makes long lines bendy, which can cause people to draw mistaken conclusions about where they are pointed.

There should have been no point in thinking about it, or teaching you about it, because you don't even know what angle the ground is at, or what angle the things are at that are casting the shadows.
Only if all other information were filled in could you evaluate the effect of the lens and construct a 3d model to confirm the lighting in the scene.

Here's roughly what the distortion looks like:
http://www1.arielnet.com/main/images/fig1a.gif

Here's an example of how wide angle can mess with the parallel lines in an image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ls5618.jpg
(fixed)

Because you don't have continuous lines on the moon to show how the lines are curved (unlike that image), but only have short shadows, imagine the only "lines" you can see in that image are the red ones.
Now imagine drawing on the green lines to see where they intersect.
OMG, it's a conspiracy!

No, it's a wide angled lens, morons.

It's very easy to incorrectly perceive short segments of lines in the context of a larger image with wide angle lens distortion as not being on a path of convergence.


I'm not trying to correct every single thing you're wrong about: that's pointless.
I'm trying to correct the fundamentally bad way you are thinking.

Give a man bread, feed him for a day, teach a man to sow, feed him for a lifetime.

Step 1: Assume you are wrong
Step 2: Learn more about it
Step 3: Check to see if your beliefs are in line with scientific consensus
Yes?
Good: Assume you are now less wrong. You may now move on to another topic.
No?
Go back to step 1.

Live your life by that method, and you will rarely ever be wrong.

teo123 wrote:And I still don't think people were right to constantly insult me for being a deluded FE-er instead of educating me.

Of course they were, because it's not their job to spend hours and days educating you on things you should have already know anyway.

Ridicule has value when somebody has made a concerted effort to be ignorant. It tells that person that this kind of behavior is not socially acceptable, and encourages the person to re-evaluate the commitment he or she has to said ignorance.
If somebody is committed to being ignorant, it is nearly impossible to just argue the person out of it.

Whether they were right or wrong to do so depends on whether they were factually right about their beliefs: In this case, they were. Ridiculing you was the best tool they had at their disposal.

teo123 wrote:Look, I won't accomplish anything by feeling guilty.
The problem is that I do feel guilty for what I was doing, but I really don't know how to resolve that guilt. Apologizing to everyone in real life is going to make me feel more guilty.

STEP 1: ASSUME YOU ARE WRONG.

Apologizing will be a blow to your ego, but it is one you can recover from which will help you grow and mature to become a better person, and it will help relieve your guilt.

teo123 wrote:Apparently it's good when it comes to diet or religion, but not so good when it comes to the shape of the Earth.

In either case, you should follow science and rational philosophy.
These both support a plant based diet, and do not support religion.

Because you don't have continuous lines on the moon to show how the lines are curved (unlike that image), but only have short shadows, imagine the only "lines" you can see in that image are the red ones.
Now imagine drawing on the green lines to see where they intersect.

I don't know now. If those lines are really curved, then it's for less than a pixel. And how do you know where is the actual horizon on that picture?

And how do you know whether what you say is a scientific consensus or not?

Apologizing will be a blow to your ego, but it is one you can recover from which will help you grow and mature to become a better person, and it will help relieve your guilt.

I meant, I am feeling guilty for what I did on TFES forum, that is, talking about veganism while behaving like a complete idiot. Seriously, I am the only one who claims to be vegan there, yet at the same time I am one of the few who have an entire thread against him. What do you think they think about veganism now? And I don't have anyone IRL to apologize to since I don't know any other vegan IRL.
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=66056.0#.Vvra3el31Ec
But, when I think about it, what I was doing on this forum was also wrong. I thought I was funny, but I can easily see how I actually wasn't. So, once again, my apologies for that.

teo123 wrote: I don't know now.

That's the first honest and appropriately humble thing you've said for a long time.

But then you follow it up with another arrogant false assertion:

teo123 wrote: If those lines are really curved, then it's for less than a pixel.

It's obvious they're curved by looking at the image.
Stop pretending you even know enough about this to make relevant claims or assertions. You don't understand this well enough to even say things like this.

1. It's not less than a pixel, even in the image you gave. So that's a lie. You didn't even measure it. You drew a fat red line over it to cover it up.
(fixed)
See how it's touching the cyan line, then bulges away, then comes back and touches it again?
The cyan line is actually straight.

Then you come in like a retarded bulldozer and do shit like this: (fixed)

And you assert it's not curved because you covered up the curve with a fat line, and shrank the image so small to hide it.

2. It's irrelevant how many "pixels" it is, since that's not meaningful. The higher resolution the image, the more pixels it will vary by, and the number of pixels tells us nothing about the apparent vector of a short line segment taken from an arbitrary point along the curve.

Yes, if you shrink an image to one pixel by one pixel in size, then even a circle is curved by less than a pixel. Great job.

Your image was a terribly constructed act of deception:
(fixed)

I've noted just a couple of the issues with how you're drawing these red lines. Of course, you probably won't even understand what I've noted as problems because you have no idea what's going on.
And even though you drew the lines incorrectly, you still couldn't find the vanishing point.

So stop pretending you understand this well enough to make claims. Instead of stating things, just ask questions.

What matters is the apparent vector of small line segments along that curve with the presumption that they are straight as I demonstrated with my original image.

teo123 wrote:And how do you know where is the actual horizon on that picture?

It doesn't matter, that picture is inside. The horizon has nothing to do with it.
I guess you're asking about the vanishing point for these parallel lines? If you want to find the actual vanishing point, as I explained, you can't draw straight lines on it. Because the picture is distorted all of the parallel lines curve into the vanishing point. To find it, you have to draw curved lines, then they'll all intersect. But, you have to curve them with the correct mathematical formula; if your curve is wrong, they won't intersect.

Idiotic conspiracy theorists are drawing straight lines on these distorted images based in short segments of shadow and acting like they have proof that there are multiple light sources because the shadows don't converge on a straight path. See my prior image, where I drew the short red lines on it. That's what they have (limited information provided by the short red line segments), and the apparent angles of those lines don't converge.
Of course the lines don't converge when you're drawing straight lines on a distorted image.

If we started from those short red lines and drew distortion corrected curved lines on it, they would converge just fine.

I don't have the tools to do that easily on my computer, and I don't really want to download specialized software just to show you that there's a vanishing point (which should be obvious) if you draw distortion corrected lines.

teo123 wrote:And how do you know whether what you say is a scientific consensus or not?

You look at mainstream government and non-government authorities.
For example, the ADA is an important authority on nutrition, and they say properly planned vegan diets are fine for all stages of life and athletes, and may provide health benefits.
Government and civilian space agencies, and astronomers associations are important authorities on space.

A collection or consensus of a group of hundreds of scientists is more reliable than a single scientist, since the probability of hundreds of people lying or being in on a conspiracy is very very low (approaching zero).
If you look into the history of conspiracy theories (real ones), you'll find that they're usually carried out by a very small number of people, and as the number increases they fall apart.
Operation Snow White was probably the most impressive actual conspiracy ever hatched, and the only reason it was able to keep so many people in the loop is because they were all brain washed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White
And yet the whole thing exploded when one person saw something suspicious.

The best examples of successful secret keeping is government, but even then you have Snowdens everywhere, and nobody can deny the authenticity of the leaks.
Compare the government and media response to Snowden to the government response to the lunar landing conspiracy nuts.
When you study actual conspiracies, the bullshit conspiracy theories people come up with look like the childish works of fiction they are.

Religion functions completely differently from science, and so is not reliable for those reasons (there are many churches, and unlike scientific organizations, they all disagree with each other about almost everything meaningful about their unique beliefs).

Sometimes there is no consensus, and you have a significant number of experts disagreeing about a particular issue. For example, there's no real consensus in economics (there are on some issues, but the best way to improve an economy is still a matter of considerable debate), there's even less so in psychology. This is because the social sciences are "soft sciences" and don't come to particularly strong conclusions, and have poor experimental methodology.

These are areas where it's much more reasonable to disagree, but much less reasonable to be certain about the positions you're advocating.

E.g. you could be an economic liberal, or a conservative. Both are potentially valid positions, each with their strengths and weaknesses. Being as certain about economic policy as the shape of the Earth would be foolish, though, since there is less of a consensus on that topic.

If 99.999% of scientists agree that the Earth is round, then you should be at least 99.999% sure about that.
If 60% of economists agree that we should have a certain economic policy, then you should be something like 60% sure of that (which is, not very sure at all).

This is why I try to stay out of politics. I like to deal with things I can be certain about, and politics is more rhetoric and faith than science.

teo123 wrote: I meant, I am feeling guilty for what I did on TFES forum, that is, talking about veganism while behaving like a complete idiot.

So, apologize to the people you argued with while acting like an idiot. Apparently AstronomyMaster.

teo123 wrote: Seriously, I am the only one who claims to be vegan there, yet at the same time I am one of the few who have an entire thread against him. What do you think they think about veganism now? And I don't have anyone IRL to apologize to since I don't know any other vegan IRL.
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/foru ... vra3el31Ec

That's one post against you, not a thread. The rest of the thread isn't about you at all.

I wasn't trying to deceive you. To an untrained eye like mine those lines really look straight. We've even learned about it in our art class, I just failed to make the connection. That's why entasis was used: straight surfaces appear slightly curved, and slightly convex surfaces appear straight. Plus, of course, the expectation affects the perception.
Well, I was probably just visualizing things wrongly.

I assumed that, since those lines are parallel with the optical axis (?), they couldn't appear curved when you look at them through the lens, since the lens actually refracts them to be a straight line. But when you take into account that those lines aren't actually refracted by the lens, since they don't even come to the lens, that assumption doesn't appear reasonable any more.
I haven't bothered to do the actual math, because, well, how many lines there are in the diagram is how many linear equations I would have to deal with. And if I tried to deal with the actual wide-angle lenses depicted on Wikipedia, I would have to deal with even more. I probably wouldn't be able to do that.
But, seriously, Wikipedia doesn't even try to explain where do those distortions actually come from. Could you please try to explain that in details (with some diagrams) if you know that?
And see, that's why I find it hard to believe in space travel. If you try to engineer a space station or a rocket, how many times would you make such unjustified assumptions by visualizing things incorrectly? How could you notice that mistake before it is too late? Do you think that scientists are somehow immune to such mistakes? I am not claiming that I know there is a conspiracy or that you are a part of it. After all, you are the smartest person I've met, too smart to be involved in a conspiracy. I want to know how do you deal with such thoughts.
Also, I don't understand what you mean by math being the difference between science and bullshit. Don't you think that biorhythm, for example, is bullshit?
As for that with TFES forum, I think you didn't understand me: I posted most of those idiotic things AstronomyMaster complained about on the thread about veganism. I don't know how many people have been turned away from veganism by that.

teo123 wrote:To an untrained eye like mine those lines really look straight.

Which is why you shouldn't make assertions like that. You can't trust your eyes. And you can't trust your memory, or reasoning.

If your opinion differs from scientific consensus (hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of people with the necessary experience and equipment to examine these things properly), then you should assume the scientific consensus is right, and you are just visualizing things incorrectly, or perceiving them incorrectly.

If all of the scientists said we fly dragons to the moon, then you should tentatively believe them (like being 99% sure they are right), because you don't have the knowledge or experience to correctly evaluate that claim for yourself (and probably never will).

teo123 wrote:I haven't bothered to do the actual math, because, well, how many lines there are in the diagram is how many linear equations I would have to deal with. And if I tried to deal with the actual wide-angle lenses depicted on Wikipedia, I would have to deal with even more. I probably wouldn't be able to do that.

And that is the problem. You didn't do the math, so don't make the claim. If you can't do the math, then just trust what others tell you (those who can), and leave it at that.
You don't need to be 100% sure (you shouldn't be 100%), but you should accept it with 99% certainty.

teo123 wrote: But, seriously, Wikipedia doesn't even try to explain where do those distortions actually come from. Could you please try to explain that in details (with some diagrams) if you know that?

It's too complex to explain optics here. There are text books on this subject, Wikipedia is just a summary.
If you're interested in these things, you can take a course in optics in university (and ask the professor if you have problems: an expert who is paid to explain this to you).

teo123 wrote:And see, that's why I find it hard to believe in space travel.

You just have to trust that other people know things you don't. Not 100% faith (that's absurd), but 99%, which is reasonable given the methods and track record of science.

teo123 wrote:If you try to engineer a space station or a rocket, how many times would you make such unjustified assumptions by visualizing things incorrectly? How could you notice that mistake before it is too late? Do you think that scientists are somehow immune to such mistakes?

It's called trial and error. A lot more rockets have crashed than you know about. The history of rocket science is a long one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rockets

We didn't just design this and then launch humans into space. Centuries of trial and error and learning. Development of complex mathematical models that eliminate human bias -- and then, finally, once all of the math was discovered, they did the math. Equations that would blow your mind. Double and triple and quadruple checked, checked by dozens of different people and corrected.

teo123 wrote:I want to know how do you deal with such thoughts.

I know how rockets work, and I know the history. It was a grueling process of discovery and error over centuries.

teo123 wrote:Also, I don't understand what you mean by math being the difference between science and bullshit. Don't you think that biorhythm, for example, is bullshit?

Great question!

Biorhythm and other pseudosciences based on mathematics do not use mathematics to evaluate the accuracy of their predictions through valid statistical analysis.
They could make clear predictions, but they're just wrong. When they use rationalizations and then change the math each time they're wrong, they construct an ad hoc hypothesis -- and that's pseudoscience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorhythm#Plausibility

There have been some three dozen studies supporting biorhythm theory, but all of them have suffered from methodological and statistical errors.[14] An examination of some 134 biorhythm studies found that the theory is not valid.[14]

Supporters continued defending the theory after Terence Hines's review of 134 studies, causing other scientists to consider the field as pseudoscience

It was a legitimate theory at first, until it was proved wrong through mathematical analysis. It became pseudoscience when its defenders continued championing it after it was debunked.

teo123 wrote:As for that with TFES forum, I think you didn't understand me: I posted most of those idiotic things AstronomyMaster complained about on the thread about veganism. I don't know how many people have been turned away from veganism by that.

Well, try apologizing to him for being an idiot. Maybe it could help.

I suggest you look into Street Epistemology. It may be good for you.

If you can't do the math, then just trust what others tell you (those who can), and leave it at that.

I percieved a contradiction between two proven facts, so I made a rationalization.But I don't know whether what I believe is a scientific consensus. That's why I ask an expert like you. You say you know very much about optics, trigonometry...

It's too complex to explain optics here. There are text books on this subject, Wikipedia is just a summary. If you're interested in these things, you can take a course in optics in university (and ask the professor if you have problems: an expert who is paid to explain this to you).

Why should I learn entire optics for that? The answer to my question is probably extremely simple and easy to understand. Aren't you now just being dishonest? Excuse me, but you criticised me when I dismissed the questions about the Flat Earth Theory with a dishonest rhetoric, right? How is what you are doing now different?

Also, I don't really understand what is scientific consensus. Most of the scientists aren't vegans, right?

And if I believe it is possible to create something as complex as space stations, what argument should I use against creationism?

teo123 wrote: I percieved a contradiction between two proven facts, so I made a rationalization.

No, you didn't. You don't know enough about the subject to think you see a contradiction. Your analysis and questions didn't even make any sense. You need to study this stuff a lot more to even gain the ability to ask a question about it.

teo123 wrote:Why should I learn entire optics for that?

Because you don't understand enough to ask a question about it.

teo123 wrote:The answer to my question is probably extremely simple and easy to understand.

This is you being ignorant again. I told you what you asked is too complicated to explain here, but rather than believing me, you accuse me of being dishonest again!

Here's a picture asshole:


http://www.techbriefs.com/images/storie ... -44404.png

Why couldn't you just search for images "Wide angle lens optics"?
You're making all kinds of false assumptions, and I shouldn't have to correct all of them.

You really expect me to explain that shit to you on an internet forum?
Advanced optics like this is up there with rocket science in terms of mathematical complexity.

I could maybe, maybe, explain a standard lens. How many fucking pages did it take to convince you the Earth wasn't flat? And that IS simple.

This is not simple. Stop assuming it is and that it can be easily explained.

teo123 wrote:Excuse me, but you criticised me when I dismissed the questions about the Flat Earth Theory with a dishonest rhetoric, right?

Yes, and this is not that. You can buy a wide angle lens and take it apart and see how complex it is. It is a real, physical thing. You can buy it and try it, and prove these distortions easily.

There's a huge difference between an ac hoc hypothesis (which is actually pretty easy to explain, although it's false), and a real physical feat of engineering that took hundreds of years to develop and you can buy and empirically prove it works like that.

If you want to know why and how it works, you need to take some classes in optics, or research it on your own. Unless you want to pay me by the hour to tutor you on it.

Fact: It works, and it creates those distortions when it does.
This is not subject to debate, you can easily observe this and demonstrate it with objective methods (like on a computer) if you just try it.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke.

You can either admit that the technology is too complex for you to understand (being honest), or you can claim it works by "magic" (if you want to be dumb).
But you can't deny that it works, and that those distortions are a result.

teo123 wrote:Also, I don't really understand what is scientific consensus. Most of the scientists aren't vegans, right?

Scientific consensus means matters of fact, not matters of behavior.
It's also scientific consensus that smoking is bad for you: and yet some scientists still smoke.
Even most average people know that, and most smokers know it. People don't always do what they should do, even if they know they shouldn't do it.

It is scientific consensus that a properly planned vegan diet is adequate for all stages of life and athletes, and may provide health benefits.
It's scientific consensus that processed meat is carcinogenic, and red meat is probably carcinogenic too.
It's scientific consensus that the Standard American Diet is not optimal for health, and that people should increase consumption of whole fruits and vegetables.
It's scientific consensus that saturated fat and cholesterol (the latter to a lesser extent) contribute to cardiovascular disease (as well as trans fat).
It's scientific consensus that animal agriculture is inefficient for production of human food compared to much plant agriculture (such as beans and grains)
It's scientific consensus that animal agriculture, particularly enteric fermentation, contributes substantially to global warming through methane and other mechanisms (around 15%, although estimates vary).
It's scientific consensus that global warming is real, and a serious issue which threatens human well being through multiple mechanisms (how big of a threat is a matter of debate)
It's scientific consensus that we're over fishing our oceans, and this threatens biodiversity and marine habitats


I could probably list pages of non-controversial scientific consensus related to veganism.

However, just knowing these facts (like knowing smoking is bad) doesn't mean a person will do the right thing and go vegan.

Also, remember that consensus exists within a particular field. Scientists who deal with health and nutrition are necessarily familiar with consensus on health only, while scientists who deal with environment may know no more about health and nutrition than the average person (and they have no input to the scientific consensus on health, because they have no qualifications in that field).

teo123 wrote:And if I believe it is possible to create something as complex as space stations, what argument should I use against creationism?

You shouldn't use any arguments against creationists right now. You still have to learn more.

When you learn more, you should argue that people should trust scientists, and not preachers, because scientists generally agree with each other on consensus, while there are hundreds of religions all disagreeing with each other, and that can't come to a consensus on anything meaningful. If you explain the difference between science and scriptural revelation, and show which method is more reliable, that's the best you can do.

Look into street epistemology, though: http://www.streetepistemology.com/
This is the kind of method you should be using. There's no reason you should need to debate facts with creationists.

Come on now! You don't have to use the unknown to explain the unknown. Magnifiers we all have at home also make the straight lines appear curved. Why?