I would argue that people who are biased (confirmation bias, which is intellectual dishonesty) applies to not just one subject for such people, but many subjects. And Special Relativity would be a more contentions point than even LENR since the later is not going against over a century of science, it is not disallowed.
John On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 5:02 AM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 10:24 PM, John Berry <berry.joh...@gmail.com>wrote: > > If you want to believe it is settled science as many do, you are welcome >> to do so. >> But I question it because no one is able to answer some very important >> questions such as how a photon can be explained to be C unless we are >> closing in distance toward it and then the only answers I get seem to be >> based on faith, in Einstein and scientific impartiality. >> Which IMO you are not doing very well on. >> > > When faced with a corner case in a system as subtle as special relativity, > one has different options. If one has a sense of one's limits, one might > conclude that the corner case is out in a region that extends beyond one's > current understanding of the system. At this point, a competent person > will either devote the time to understand the system in sufficient detail > to get at the heart of the corner case, or one will delegate to other > competent people and adopt what they explain as a working assumption. I do > not intend right now to undertake a detailed study of special relativity, > so I am instead happy to delegate to other competent people. Here is where > trust becomes important -- only delegate to people you trust, or you will > be given bad information upon which to base your working assumptions. On a > scale of 1-5, I give the people at physics.stackexchange.com a 4 in terms > of the confidence I have in their ability to understand the corner cases in > special relativity that have been discussed up to now. By contrast, I give > anyone who appears to be struggling with the basics of logical reasoning, > such as starting from a well-known hypothesis, a 1 -- I would not trust > them to be able to effectively sort out the corner case. I am happy with > the people I have chosen to delegate out to on the matter of special > relativity. This is not faith-based reasoning. It's a step that any > person who has a sense of one's limits would do. > > The main reason I do not delegate out to the physics.stackexchange.compeople > on the matter of cold fusion is that I detect a bias in their > approach to the manner that has clouded their judgment and prevented them > from adequately looking at the experimental evidence for cold fusion. > Given the bias I perceive in their approach, I am practically forced to > look into the matter myself, which I am happy to try to do. > > Eric > >
