Hello from Chicago!

[Apollonian_Germ]

Hi everyone, I am a long-time listener of FDR (probably about 6 years now) and have always loved the show. Stefan Molyneux is a great leader of our times and it is amazing to be a part of a conversation that the future may look back on as being just as important as the peripatetic conversations between Aristotle and his students.

I have especially enjoyed the direction Stef has been going in with his anti-leftist arguments, especially regarding racial realism and other key issues.

I'd like to become an active part in this forum and hopefully meet some people and make some friendships.

My biggest interests are history, Art, religion (as a psychological phenomenon), Science, rationality (what exactly does it mean to be rational?), poetry, storytelling, music, and more.

If it is appropriate for a post like this, I'd like to include a list of links to my online presence:

A collection of my poetry - http://hellopoetry.com/michael-e-huttner/

My youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBcFYMX-DwvpIA9nhgOq1SQ

Science satire page, Mathemagics 101 - https://www.facebook.com/mathemagics101/?ref=br_rs

Thanks for the opportunity to be a part of this great community!

[Mister Mister]

hi there and welcome!  so are you an objectivist critic of modern science, a la Bill Gaede or David Harriman?  I have some interest/sympathy in this perspective, but I don't know that much.  I've also had some major resistance making these arguments in this community.  Can you tell us more?

[Apollonian_Germ]

Hi RoseCodex, yes and no. I am a critic of modern science like Bill Gaede, yes. He is actually a friend of mine. We both gave speeches at the 4th Rational Science conference in Mexico last February-- t'was great fun, he's really a lot nicer in person than he appears to be online haha.

But no, I don't call myself an "objectivist" although, perhaps what you mean by the word may align with how I style myself. I think of what I do as "rational science". It's not what many people may think, which is a complete rejection of empiricism as a discipline or modern science as an incredibly useful tool for creating technology and making predictions. I have no problem with those disciplines, in fact I am very thankful for the fruits of those disciplines.

However, I think of them as methods based on 'trial and error'. I do not mean that in any derogatory way, trial and error gets great results with the aforementioned activities, but trial and error does not necessarily result in a rational understanding of the phenomena. People are still stuck on 'forces','fields', 'waves' and 'space-time' and other abstractions that have been reified, or made physical, and used as mechanisms in physical explanations, and so they believe that the big questions, like how one planet can tug on another planet at a distance, or even how two magnets push or pull each other at a distance, or what an 'electromagnetic wave' is really waving on, are already answered.

My answer, as well as many other great thinkers who I've met and discussed this with for over a few years now, is that we can replace these unimaginable Quantum theories that are based on using abstractions as physical mechanisms, with rational explanations using objects that are able to be visualized. No matter how small a thing is, it has form and can be visualized. So we re-imagine the atom, and light, and everything in-between to see if the magic we experience in the atomic and subatomic world can't be explained with good old-fashioned physical objects. And that's my philosophy of science in a nutshell haha.

[Mister Mister]

Hi RoseCodex, yes and no. I am a critic of modern science like Bill Gaede, yes. He is actually a friend of mine. We both gave speeches at the 4th Rational Science conference in Mexico last February-- t'was great fun, he's really a lot nicer in person than he appears to be online haha.

 

But no, I don't call myself an "objectivist" although, perhaps what you mean by the word may align with how I style myself. I think of what I do as "rational science". It's not what many people may think, which is a complete rejection of empiricism as a discipline or modern science as an incredibly useful tool for creating technology and making predictions. I have no problem with those disciplines, in fact I am very thankful for the fruits of those disciplines.

 

However, I think of them as methods based on 'trial and error'. I do not mean that in any derogatory way, trial and error gets great results with the aforementioned activities, but trial and error does not necessarily result in a rational understanding of the phenomena. People are still stuck on 'forces','fields', 'waves' and 'space-time' and other abstractions that have been reified, or made physical, and used as mechanisms in physical explanations, and so they believe that the big questions, like how one planet can tug on another planet at a distance, or even how two magnets push or pull each other at a distance, or what an 'electromagnetic wave' is really waving on, are already answered.

 

My answer, as well as many other great thinkers who I've met and discussed this with for over a few years now, is that we can replace these unimaginable Quantum theories that are based on using abstractions as physical mechanisms, with rational explanations using objects that are able to be visualized. No matter how small a thing is, it has form and can be visualized. So we re-imagine the atom, and light, and everything in-between to see if the magic we experience in the atomic and subatomic world can't be explained with good old-fashioned physical objects. And that's my philosophy of science in a nutshell haha.

 

Hey thanks for the response.  Like I said, maybe we should make a new thread if we want to talk about this further, as this thread is in the "Introduce Yourself" section.  Your approach does sound similar to what I understand Bill Gaede's to be.  I agree that things like forces and fields and waves are simply concepts that don't really offer a rational empirical explanation as to the cause of physical phenomena.  I liken it to primitive peoples, who believe there is a Tornado God at the center of a cyclone.  Now let's say they developed a mathematics to roughly predict the behavior of these cyclones.

 

  What's even more concerning is the invention of unfalsifiable objects like virtual particles, black holes, dark matter, super-strings, and so on, which, unlike gravity or magnets, can't even be measured!!!  Or the Copenhagen interpretation and the invention of Quantum Logic which basically argues that matter has a contradictory identity, which of course goes against the fundamentals of Aristotelian Logic.

 

  I like your focus on "the big questions", and the humility to admit we still don't know the answer to these questions.  I wonder, however, if you haven't phrased the question entirely correctly.  We see an apparent attraction between one planet and the next, and assume the attractive force or power lies WITHIN the planet somehow, but personally I am compelled by the idea that the explanation lies in what is going on between them that we can't see.  Maybe you have heard of Walter Russell or Viktor Schauberger who put out theories similar to this, or perhaps you think it sounds like Aether theory which is supposedly debunked.  Anyway I'm just a novice at this stuff but I find it interesting.  I'd love for you to start a new post in the Science section.