Obama vs. Einstein
UPDATE (2/7/10): It has been called to the attention of Pajamas Media that Obama may not be a full co-author of the article in question, but merely an “analytic and research assistant,” and we are contacting the writer of the piece below to verify this. In the meantime, read the original article by Laurence Tribe here. More on the authorship question here. — Ed.
According to the Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior advisor, said that the president worked with “[Harvard professor] Laurence Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity.” I’ve read that paper, “The Curvature of Constitutional Space.” It’s complete nonsense. It shows no understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity, or of the relationship between relativity theory and Newton’s theory.
I — to use Obama’s favorite word — do understand relativity theory. I was trained in relativity theory by the best. I was the post-doc of the late Princeton professor John A. Wheeler, who was himself the post-doc of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr. Wheeler’s most famous student was Nobel Prize Winner Richard Feynman. I was also the post-doc of the late Oxford professor Dennis Sciama, who was a student of Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac. Sciama’s most famous student was Stephen Hawking.
The key thesis of the paper is contained in the opening sentences of its abstract: “Twentieth-century physics revolutionized our understanding of the physical world. Relativity theory replaced a view of the universe as made up of isolated objects acting upon one another at a distance with a model in which space itself was curved and changed by the presence and movement of objects. Quantum physics undermined the confidence of scientists in their ability to observe and understand a phenomenon without fundamentally altering it in the process.”
All of these sentences are completely wrong. In Newtonian theory, gravity is space-time curvature just as it is in general relativity. In fact, Einstein’s general relativity is just a special case of Newtonian gravity theory incorporating the ether. Quantum physics is also just a special case of Newtonian mechanics in its wave-particle formulation (called Hamilton-Jacobi theory) incorporating the very modest requirement that this formulation be mathematically consistent. Hamilton-Jacobi theory is deterministic, hence quantum mechanics is equally deterministic. There was absolutely nothing revolutionary about twentieth century physics. There has been no “paradigm shift” in physics. The magnificent intellectual edifice created by Isaac Newton stands unshaken.
The fact that Newtonian gravity is curvature just like Einsteinian gravity was established by the greatest geometer of the twentieth century, the French mathematician Elie Cartan, in the year 1922, before either Tribe or Obama were born. Cartan and Einstein corresponded about this mathematical fact, so Einstein — and I, and the rest of the world’s relativity experts — are aware of it, if not Obama and Tribe. A detailed mathematical proof that Newtonian gravity is curvature can be found in Gravitation, the co-authored by my teacher John A. Wheeler.
Hence we get affirmatively actioned pronouncements from our first affirmatively actioned president. Gee whiz.
Sorry Dr. Tipler, but you must be wrong, you are only a physicist , Obama is a god.
Professor Tipler, you may know Physics, but Obama is a Harvard lawyer, which means he knows EVERYTHING.
Good article. One thing that our man-child president probably does know is Alinsky’s rules for radicals. I bet he could recite it verbatim.
Back in college, I used to argue it out with knuckleheads in the Liberal Arts college (of which I was a part), who insisted on using Einstein to rationalize moral and ethical relativity.
Nice to know that Obama was one of them. I should have known. I have even less respect for him now.
The cult of Einstein’s personality regularly inspires people from all walks of life to claim to him, and declare that his theories — rarely, if ever understood — serve as “scientific proof” their own prejudices. It’s pure psychological projection.
I’m speechless. If I didn’t BING it I wouldn’t have believed it (can’t believe I didn’t know the professor wrote here). Thanks Mr. Tipler.
As laughable as it is (and it is beyond crack-pot), it is just another supporting piece of evidence: the Constitution is the progressive’s target. If they can’t amend it (they can’t yet) they are going to slowly (attempt to) effect it’s re-interpretation.
It truly is an enemy within. However you spin it they are enemy to the Constitution. Even they proclaim it so, openly, now. Our President professes it.
If any reporter had any balls they would ask Him if he loved the Constituion; and then to name 3 good things about it.
This depressing yet amusing story parallels the Sokal affair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)
with Obama and his scientifically illiterate boho pals playing the part of the postmodernists.
Just imagine how his coffeehouse intellectual pals loved his flannel about the law and relativity theory.
It turns my stomach that this charlatan is president.
I’m reminded of the quasi-deification of Stalin, Mao, and the Kim dynasty in N. Korea. El Supremo is not only the Maximum Leader, but the model and inspiration of doctors, engineers, scientists, and every other profession and walk of life above street sweeper. How long before some contestant for today’s version of the Stalin Prize examines the cosmological forces that decree an expanding universe, and compares them favorably with the appetites of our own ravening-to-expand governing class?
I seem to recall a quote that has been attributed to Einstein…”God does not shot dice with the universe”…or words to that effect…if Barokeydoke were half the Einsteinian that he pretends to be,he would not be shooting dice with America’s political,economic,and cultural future…unless the dice are loaded…the ‘Chicago way’,don’t you know….then all bets are off.
All of us who had began to fear that maybe this Obama fellow really did defy gravity can relax. Without the MSM’s hot air beneath his wings, he is just another proof that Newtonian physics rules.
Wait a second! I think I just heard a “thud.” Coming from Massachusetts.
Dr. Tipler: Nice backhand!
tc
What would Jesus say about this?
Professor Tribe has always looked for new and different ways of looking at constitutional questions, so that he can undermine principled interpretation that works with the text of the provision in the U.S. Constitution at issue, its original intent and the case law under the provision. Professor Tribe was trained in mathematics, and so a foray into science as a way of analyzing constitutional questions would be particularly inviting. And why not share the adventure with Mr. Cult of Personality Barack Obama? So Harvard.
The trouble is that the premises of the article were flawed. It does not offer anything legitimately new. Just like Obama socialist economics and Obama appeasement as foreign policy.
Dr. Tipler, thank you. But what happened? I expected Feynman to point this out to the masses as you have just done, but he didn’t and he died.
Anyway, you finally broke the seal. As a systems engineer graduated in Nuclear Physics and Mathematics in 1960, I’ve had no luck with the condescending know-it-all “social science’ liberals when they pontificate the Tribe/=:obama line. They just do a ridiculing ‘heh-heh’ while on-listeners purse lips patrionizingly at me.
They can not reject your credentialed touting of my line. Thank you.
But I still must ask: Where the hell were you guys the last 50 years?
So, can we assume that the Supreme Court Justices have enough common sense to understand that while we can control energy created by splitting atoms working in any medium with Obama’s skull has proven to be impossible.
Maybe it has something to do with the epic size of his ears as they relate to the speed of his tongue? Both combine to cause him to prance with his nostrils turned up instead of walking like a man with the rest of the human race.
Personally, I get a kick out of a guy who is so mathematically inept as to even think to utter the completely meaningless phrase of “profit and earnings ratios”, demonstrating that, not only doesn’t The Precedent understand that profits and earnings are the same thing, but also that he is clueless to the simple fact that division is never translated as “and” – something that your average 8th grader is well aware of – thinking to lecture anyone on ideas that require a mathematical sophistication far in excess of what The Precedent has demonstrated he has. It is truly amazing that someone as stupid as The Precedent has the gall to open his mouth on subjects and lecture us on topics that it’s clear lie far, far outside his abilities to comprehend, even in any minimal way.
The Tribe paper may be nonsense on stilts — it sounds likely — but I think Prof. Tipler does not have it quite right. There are continuities between Newtonian gravity and general relativity, just as there are between Newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics. But those continuities are only visible in retrospect. Neither GR nor QM was developed, or could be developed, by merely “generalizing” the previous theory.
Thus, nobody thought about Newtonian gravity the way Cartan showed us before Einstein discovered GR. And the Hamilton-Jacobi formulation was not obviously the deepest way to think about Newtonian mechanics, until Schrodinger came along with his wave equation. So I think Prof. Tipler has understated the real conceptual leaps involved in the new physics.
And in the spirit of establishing my own credentials to comment on the science, I too was a Ph.D. student of John A. Wheeler. Academically speaking, this is a mere “brotherly” disagreement!
To me the difference is range. Physics is universal, no matter how many politicians vote for or against it.
On the other hand, the law does not go where enforcement cannot reach.
Ah, the Phone Book! Gravitation, by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, a copy of which sits on one of my bookshelves. Someday, I hope to work my way through it (I spent most of my time in quantum mechanics.)
Well done, Professor Tipler. It’s just too sad that we have to deal with such embarrassments on roughly a daily schedule, but I’m afraid that this will be the case for the next three years. Hopefully, we’ll see the Republicans gain 100 seats in the House and a similar result in the Senate in November. And perhaps even see the end of affirmative action, which has done so much harm to the minority community.
Ruh ro, it looks like nobel prize winner I-Obama is making a run for the physics prize too. He has often benefited from being graded on the curve, and you know, he has co-written a paper. And it’s *brilliant*. /sarcasm off
Albert Einstein
In the wonderful world he dreamed of and the technology that Einstein helped create,
He never dreamed that we would develop an Atomic bomb and a teleprompter so idiots could destroy us.
You are a racist bigot.
I think Obama was referring to the “Theory of Relativity” as the relativity to himself.
plus I would venture to say he only put his name to the paper that he probably did not even read. ..like his work in the senate.
One of the most important mistakes people make is “viewing themselves as the center of the universe,” both in terms of space and time. Mr. Obama gives himself away by seeing his time and space as more important than any other.
What is the truth! We are each at the center of the universe – not on its periphery, not unimportant, not insignificant. Each contributes in unknowable ways to the outcome of the history of our rare planet – from fetus to old hag. Even those who have died can sometimes continue their contribution to the world through books and research, good works, and parenting a family.
The hubris of trying to affect the lives of a whole country is what should make each of us cautious about the value of any specific suggestion emanating from our President. Frankly, I am petrified of him, since he decides who will live and who will die, who will work and who will not work. What President Obama needs in Einstein’s personal modesty.
The relative distance between Obama’s mouth and his backside, and his ability to critically think is halved every second. His own perceived greatness is also directly proportional to the national debt plus interest cubed, and equates to the high probability that each and everyone of us will be waiting in lengthy breadlines the longer he remains in his current position – that’s all we really need to know.
However terminal velocity will be reached sometime in Nov of this year when his massive ego will be met head on with powerful force known as ‘We the people’. From that very significant moment Obama’s own imaginary universe in which he is God, king, ruler and galactic overlord will implode at a speed faster than light, creating a pinhead sized wormhole. Remarkably Obama’s brain density will remain constant throughout this event, defying all we know about the limits of his narcissism and his malevolence in relation to the space-time continuum. A combined nobel in both physics and criminal psycology is waiting to be had…
Holy guacamole — I’m glad you weren’t my physics teacher! You conflated the Newton–Cartan Theory with Newton’s original laws, which came about nearly 200 years earlier. Cartan was a contemporary of Einstein, and he was actually involved with a modification of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory called the Cartan-Einstein Theory.
More importantly, this is no more than (yet again) petty, political-based, nitpicking BS — Obama was obviously speaking metaphorically — and correctly — in referencing the certainty of earlier Newtonian-type classical mechanics to the uncertainty inherent in modern physical theories like quantum mechanics.
Just because this is a right wing blog site doesn’t mean everyone popping by is a science illiterate.
Dr. Tipler, you have obviously missed the Obama pronouncement that we are returning science to its rightful place . . . clothed in obscurity to better serve politically motivated science (AGW).
Quantum physics is deterministic? This is not universally agreed upon by physicists, Mr. Tipler. You really should have pointed that out. Haven’t we had enough of scientists ignoring other points of view? It’s called dishonesty.
Constitutional relativism holds great appeal to secular humanists. What better way to extract the divine from our code? Science cannot solve this dilemma. She will not discover the G-d particle and her foolish, failed attempts divert energy from noble causes.
Obama is just proof of the Peter Principle in action.
Barack Obama and Laurence Tribe are seeking any justification to delegitimize the American Constitution as an outdated relic in a post-Einstein world. The insights of the Founding Fathers supposedly cannot compete in our enlightened postmodern era. Americans must instead rely on Ivy League elites to lead them out of the wilderness and into a glorious utopian age.
Tribe and Obama are also both associated with Harvard University— a vastly overrated academic institution. The poorly read and intellectually shallow Obama is not capable of handling serious works regarding economic and defense issues. Why would he therefore even attempt to involve himself in the hard sciences? The Harvard elites have damaged the careers of those like Frank Tipler who teaches at the far less prestigious Tulane University. Americans must wake up to reality and start making fun of the second rate graduates of the Ivy League schools. The majority of voters were conned into believing that Obama actually eared his Harvard credentials. We cannot allow this to ever occur again.
Thanks for the laugh; The title is very funny. Now I’ll have to read the article body. Should be more great guffaws there, too.
Apparently, Ahmanuttjob, and other world leaders are not aware that Obama is so well versed on physics. If they knew, it would scare their pants off!
Haaaahaaaahaaaahaaaaa.
Yes, but Frank you must remember that we need to change, in fact…our only hope…is change.
The Industrial Revolution brought about a number of bad things for the planet. We must reverse the course of those changes and spend billions, if not trillions of dollars to do so. The matter is “settled science”, and anybody who dares to resist should be ignored, or dealt with.
This was learned in Chicago, partly in California…and, of course, at Harvard.
If certain politicians are forced to go down…by insisting on “staying the course” instead of working to reverse the past hundred years, then that’s the sacrifice they have to make. It may seem narcissistic and smack of a Lone Wolf mindset, but when you are smarter than everyone else, it’s hard to stay patient with them…you have to speak more slowly and so often, just to get them to understand.
Oh wait, I’m sorry…Frank…I thought this thread was about the Unabomber.
My bad.
Never mind.
As a lawyer, I’m so used to seeing other lawyers butcher science that it hardly phases me anymore.
I wish I could agree with you DR. Tipler, but you are woefully behind the curve. Your classical representations on relativity fail to incorporate the transmogrification of reality in Null Space. Null space being an area located betwixt a Liberals ears.
While the precise mechanics occurring in Null Space and their interaction with reality is poorly understood, consider that a vast pool of empiric data exist by which we can draw certain conclusions.
Let us use a mental exercise to illustrate. Imagine a train is running at great speed down a track. Now imagine you are doing your best to run beside it. That you cannot keep up is a given known reality. Now lets place a Liberal upon the train. As the Liberal looks out and observes the man struggling , but failing, to keep abreast of the train he feels a basic injustice in this situation. Now is where Null Space affects reality.
The liberal passes a law stating that all things must move at the same velocity. Now in reality it is the train which must be slowed. But to the Liberal on the train, now he can look out and see the man running equally beside the train and he smiles. Because of him, a man now runs as fast as a train.
Reality is indeed relative in Null Space.
The danger of course is that Liberals are drawn to power like moths to a flame and that the destructive force Null Space on reality is directly proportional to the liberals hold on power risen to (X), where (X) is the total number of liberals. Unlike the moths, however, it is reality and civilization which gets burned.
Another great belly laugh; Obama believes there are “legal implications” in the theory of Relativity!
Does he think he can sue the Einstein Foundation? Will he enact legislation with his all too brilliant Cabinet and Congress, to revise and declare parts or all of this theory null and void? He and Rahm might “create” a gravity crisis! “It is worse than we thought”!
The next great quirk of physics will be when a medical examiner opens Barracks cranial cavity and discovers a black hole larger than any other in the universe. (Actually, I know this is a false simile, because black holes devour everything, and Barrack has demonstrated he cannot retain any knowledge.)
I can’t pass up the idea that Barrack is becoming a practical joke on America as President of the United States.
Once again we see the ‘Don’t confuse me with the facts, I’ve already made up my mind’ progressive agenda. Great article. Thx!
Thank you Dr. Tipler for presenting an argument and a response that those of us who are, in fact, genuinely ignorant of physics (and freely admit it) can somewhat follow, thus giving us another bit of insight into the tortured worldview (that would be a worldview of lies and fabrications) of obama.
Professor, thank you for the article.
The mention of Élie Cartan rushed back memories of classroom discussion.. and frustration!
What can you say about this recent disregard of facts?
The man’s life is fiction. From his autobiography, supposed soaring intellect and ‘healthy’ lifestyle.
The one aspect overlooked by ideologues through history is their disregard for accepting most people are analytical, curious creatures.
The façade of this man, as well as the many before and those following him and their false accomplishments/ revelations is glaringly evident.
I have to add that we’re lucky Einstein didn’t go to Harvard.
Harvard’s legacy – The greatest affirmative action institution in recorded (or not) history.
12. skeeziks:
A short post today skeezikz? Perhaps are you feeling faint? Did the SSI check not arrive? Did the electricity get cut off and you were unable to charge your rascal? It must be tough having to waddle down to the welfare office!
Professor, I haven’t laughed this hard since I read “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, by Alan Sokal. This paper by Tribe and Obama sounds like just another couple of flyweight intellectuals trying to claim the imprimature of science for their tendentious ideas about how society should be ordered through yet another radical misreading of Thomas Kuhn. Problem is, they know next to nothing about mathematics, physics, or the history of science. Like almosy every other soft-science/humanities egghead on every campus around the world whose office is not located in the hard and natural sciences building, they thought they heard somewhere that Einstein invalidated the Newtonian world, so if the great truths of science are contingent, so was everything else, and they have been plotting out inferences (and spurious doctoral papers) ever since. Tribe and Obama should be embarassed by their infantile (and wildly erroneous) little contribution to legal fiction, but instead they have one of their claquers touting how smart they are for it. Thanks for the devestating takedown, now if you can go and clean out the Augean stables that the humanities departments have become before they distort another dubious idea and declare general relativity invalid.
Always scary when fake intellectuals wander into ares of which they know nothing. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. BTW, I have very fond memories of studying quantum mechanics and classical mechanics at the same time and marveling at how similar they were.
Cheers,
DD
When he stood before the American people and Congress and in his state of the union speech said:
There is “overwhelming evidence” of Climate Change and Global Warming,
everybody laughed,
even Nancy and Biden.
I guess the joke is worst than we thought.
I love these articles because it does bring out a few trolls and when they see their shadows we know there might be a few days of warm weather.
I am now burning large global warming books to stay warm.
I think there should be a new variable function for this post-Information Age we now live in: “-K(x)” for Anti-Knowledge. If you represent Knowledge with “K(x)” then anything the opposite of that is -K(x) and would counteract it. Things containing lots of “-K(x)” would include Fox News, Sunday morning talk shows, right wing blog sites, talk radio and such. So if you turn on, say, Fox News, with initially a K(x=a) worth of knowledge in a topic that will be touched upon by Fox in its broadcast, you will receive -K(x=b)of anti-knowledge, thereby leaving you with K(x=a-b) of knowledge at the end of the broadcast.
This would very much help explain things like the Tea Party Movement, Fox News’s popularity, the election of Scott Brown, and why absolutely worthless dumbos like Alabama’s Senator Richard Shelby keep getting reelected.
Mr Obama and Mr Tribe, Please publish your dissertation on the joining of Classical Physics, Quantum Mechanics and Politics as a unified whole. Please don’t leave out the Tensor calculus and Schrodinger’s equation. As there is nothing your god like abilities cannot solve, we await with breathless anticipation your results. Perhaps another noble prize in Physics to go along with your peace prize is in the works. There will, of course be a peer review but this will not be a problem as we have found that consensus on your brilliance has already been achieved.
In other words, Obama misunderstands the constitution because he misunderstands the theory of relativity on which he bases his constitutional interpretations? A correct understanding of relativity would result in correct constitutional interpretation? (Is Frank J Tipler really Frank J.?)
The mistake is a categorical one: the incongruity of Law and Physics. It is not a matter of an incorrect application of a rule of physics to constitutional law as there is no correct application of any physical law to constitutional law. No apple, however well selected, does not compare more favorably to an orange; unless by “compare” you mean “contrast.” The best butter cannot fix a watch, even temporarily.
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is not an astronomic error or truth.
Frank J.’s mistake is the same as Obama’s: suggesting that something (anything) in physical law could be simply translated into constitutional law. (It seems a sort of figurative illiteracy).
By underfunding NASA and taking us out of the space race, Obama shows us what he thinks of science.
I’m no physicist, but does the observed phenomenon of the boomerang effect of Obama’s policies prove or disprove that the political universe is curved ?
BC-
This is a free country and we should be allowed to have our dummies also.
You have Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Charles Schumer.
You liberals always want to corner the market on everything.
Back later,
I have go dig through this climate change 28 inches of Snow to find more gas for my generator so I can watch the Super Bowl.
I hope Al Gores power goes off just as the game starts.
Thank you for the VERY funny column, Professor.
I am truly scared by a totalitarian who “thinks” he knows everything and in fact “knows” only the monstrous pseudo-concepts excogitated by the marxist ideology.
And it is not ONE totalitarian, it’s a whole administration of fanatics.
And it is a whole party that accepts them and props them up.
Very scary.
And it is of course to be expected that these totalitarians try everything they can against the Constitution…that was written to protect the American People from those who want to transform the government in the… master.
But using PHYSICS ? that’s so…….STALIN !
Godspeed America !
Godspeed Freedom !
#12: What would Jesus say about this? Obama and Tribe?
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are”. NIV
48 BC: Since this thread is concerning science, and scientists strive to be precise and unambiguous, please define your terms precisely. Specifically, define: “absolutely worthless dumbos”.
In fairness to Obama, he didn’t actually co-author the article with Tribe; it was written by a couple of oriental grad students and neither Tribe nor Obama knew enough about the subject to object. Both knew, however, that at Harvard, no one was going to find error in anything by a clean cut black who was articulate and had no trace of a Negro dialect. It was a lot like all the other papers that Obama plagiarized, papers that are hidden from us today.
# 12 skeez
Mira, skeezy! Why don’t you shut the f*#$ up, pendejo?
14. pelaut:
………… But I still must ask: Where the hell were you guys the last 50 years?
Feb 7, 2010 – 5:11 am
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There is an old cliche about “if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” The same is true in politics. If no one (in the dead tree/legacy media) will “report” it, then it just never happened. Those people you ask about have been here all along, but they have been shouting in the forest. Now the internet and talk radio gives their voices a hearing. It’s a whole new way of getting news that not even the Communist Chinese (or Harry Reid) can stop.
According to the Washington Post, David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior advisor, said that the president worked with “[Harvard professor] Laurence Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
Yeah, and in college I thought of a reason why relativity is wrong. So I’m smarter than everybody. Smarter than Obama, smarter even than Einstein. Smarter than everybody!
ANOTHER “NOBEL” QUEST FOR OBAMA?
Alexrod’s comment about Obama and Larry Tribe leads me to wonder whether the Obamacons are trying to position Obama for a second Noble Prize, this one in the field of physics.
Obama’s theoretical work in physics was “brilliant” and “very impressive,” said Tribe back in 2007:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/1/19/obama-left-mark-on-hls-days
Now, David Alexrod says the Obama-Tribe article on the curvature of constitutional space shows Obama’s “incisive mind.”
(Others think it shows Obama’s “a space cadet”:
http://www.nysun.com/national/obamas-view-of-the-constitution-hinted-in-article/51131
More here:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2007/03/016871.php
And here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=975139
And here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1271310.)
Given that Obama’s such a Renaissance Man, possibly the idea is for Obama to win a Nobel in each field before the end of his second term (maybe the folks who administer the Nobel Prizes will need to create new Nobels to accommodate the full range of Obama’s unique abilities and accomplishments).
At the very minimum Obama’s fans must be counting on three Nobels, which I think would be a record, and which would seem to be within reach assuming Obama’s past work in physics is found to merit a Nobel. Given the pathbreaking work Obama’s recently done in the realm of economics (in particular, he seems on pace to create the first 100-digit national debt, or “Googol debt”), surely Obama will soon qualify for the Nobel in economics. After all, he qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize after just a couple of weeks in office!
Lawyers are the cave men of the intellectual world. Any idea is simply a rock or a club to use against one’s opponent. The factual accuracy of that idea is not particularly relevant. Any scientific issue involving indeterminancy or imperfection eventually shows up in some “progressive” lawyer’s argument as a way of masking the weakness of the argument with the authority of science. (Kuhn anyone?)
If Obama was swearing on the Constitution to become the president, and if it is true that he desires so much to alter it by such twists of moral relativity (trying to argue that he has “Einstein on his side” which is nonsense) then, ladies and gentlemen, we have the clearest proof so far that THIS president VIOLATES the Constitution and thus is IMPEACHEABLE and subject to REMOVAL from his office!
The only question is who will have the guts to state it openly in the Congress and the Senate and proceed accordingly?
I must say that nonsense such as this is to be expected of people like Obama and Tribe who attended Harvard Law School — or, should I say, “Harvard Clown School”?
http://harvardclownschool.blogspot.com/2008/05/harvard-clown-school.html
I dug out that paper when I first read Axelrod’s remark. It reads like the Sokal hoax paper. Complete utter rubbish. Nice to know the country is in the best of hands.
Newton rules! I’m so relieved. Never could stand Al with his frizzy hair and ain’t I the cat’s meow ‘tude.
When I was a graduate student I picked up a copy of Heisenberg’s “Philosophy and Physics. He quotes some gobbledygook written by V. I. Lenin on how the ideas of modern physics, i.e., relativity and quantum mechanics confirm rather then refute dialectical materialism. In his exposition Lenin rattles off a bunch of physics terms to show how smart he is. We can distill Heisenberg’s response down to this: Lenin is an idiot who writes b**l s**t. Obama and Tribe are vying for the modern Lenin prize in idiocy.
BC is such an amazing character. He too writes BS with the confidence of an idiot. Question for BC: Stipulating to your right of free speech, why to do you bother commenting on subjects that you clearly know nothing about. I know you think that you are oh so clever and are humiliating us with the brilliance of your talking points but we just laugh at you. You are an epsilon minus semi-moron. Are you well enough read to get the reference?
Not only does Obama refuse to read physics textbooks before lecturing us on physics, he also refuses to read Supreme Court decisions before lecturing the Supreme Court on Supreme Court decisions.
Attempting to find a parallel in physics is Obama’s largest (and weirdest) stretch yet in attempting to justify his foundational belief that the document he swore to uphold is simply an out-dated, old white man’s concoction, not nearly as spiffy as his own and fellow progressives’ “enlightened” ideas* on the human condition.
(*i.e., they make the rules for the rest of us, rules they themselves are not constrained to follow)
Remember that Congress — and much of the rest of the world inside the Beltway — is filled with experts on pork, boondoggles and relative-ity. In this world, scientific integrity takes second place to politics.
BC: Just because this is a right wing blog site doesn’t mean everyone popping by is a science illiterate.
No, but we’ve certainly seeing at least one. Or maybe just illiterate, since you’re accusing Dr Tipler of neglecting the connection he specifically cites in the fifth paragraph..
61. tim maguire:
Have you ever heard of Albert Zweistein? Reputed to have been twice as smart as Einstein!
Who cares? Obama was a law student not a physics student. It was some failed attempt at cleverness and nothing more
Relativity can explain how God created the earth in six days while we see it as six billion years. It does not affect moral decisions.
I’m not even a physicist and I can understand that much.
As for Obama being graded on a curve, it’s actually an entirely different rating system demanded by the EEOC.
Years ago I watched a TV docudrama about the Manhattan Project. In it, government officials go to the University of Chicago to question Enrico Fermi about which countries were likely developing “da bomb.” Fermi started out by saying that an understanding of Einstein was essential and that, at the time, there were maybe 13 men in the world who understood Einstein. Now, I imagine that group’s numbers are significantly higher today, but I sincerely doubt Barack Obama and Laurence Tribe can be counted among them. In fact, I can’t even imagine the amount of hubris it would require for them to actually believe they are. Frankly, it is to laugh. Out loud.
Evidently, Axelrod thinks name-dropping Obama and Einstein in the same paragraph will convince the rubes that our President is something other than an ill-educated mountebank.
Personally, I’d like a little time dilation effect between now and November 2012.
I’m reminded of Krugman’s paper on the effects of time dilation on the economics of interstellar trade:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf
The main difference being that Krugman, who back in those days was still somewhat sane, only wrote the paper as a joke. Tribe and Obama appear not to have realized that the joke was on them.
Dear Prof Tipler, we know each other from way back and I will write you privately, but thank you for republishing this piece of yours here.
There’s one point I would like to make though. Obama is not quite an author on this completely nonsensical piece of legal inquiry. He is credited on the first page as having contributed research for L Tribe’s article.
I would say that Tribe should have contacted a physicist rather than a law student to do his look-up work.
Anyway, though Obama contributed to the misconceptions likely, he didn’t write them.
Even if quantum mechanics is deterministic, individual events are completely unpredictable. Any determinism is evident only after the fact.
Obama, the One, ought stick to his profession, except that he doesn’t seem able to even get an understanding of Court decisions right.
My first thought when reading this essay was that it must be parody; I taught Philosophy and ethics at a college level, and relativity in letters, aka contextual or situational ethics, has absolutely nothing to do with Albert Einstein’s relativity theories other than the shared homophony of the word.
After observing firsthand the odd amalgam of paradigm relativity and Special Field Relativity among nineteen year olds I concluded that it was a defense mechanism. That this callow silliness is somehow being played out in Presidential politics is unnerving. This is way way beyond the “corpseman” gaffe as an indicator of a lack of education.
#77, the Krugman paper is terrific! Thanks so much.
72. triplesec, good one! Did you just think of that? I can only hope I get a chance to use it one day.
Thanks for the clarification, Doc. As a graduate engineer and surgeon I assumed that Obama’s and Tribe’s paper on relativity and law was a tongue in cheek spoof.
Guess I was wrong!!
It is breathtaking that anybody would believe the tripe. . . .
Self appointed God Obama says he’s not wrong!!! he’snothe’snothe’snot!!!!! stompstompstomp the tiny foot!!!!
and it’s after the fact….with Obama, perhpas we have found an individual where the events are completely…predictable..
By contributing, and allowing it to go forth..do you not condone?
Thanks Mr. Tipler.
Newton found the truth and the truth he found has endured the test of time and the assault of fools and the wicked.
Newton found the truth because he was a seeker of the truth, Newton was not trying to prove an ideology, he just wanted to understand the truth; reality as proven by scientific analysis, the accumulated knowledge of his day being inadequate to silence his hunger.
Obama does not seek the truth but rather argues for his ideology and is in fact, if a statistical analysis was done, a liar and is blind to the truth.
Newton was a biblical scholar, commentator and student of prophecy, a fact not recognized by most,(his libraries are online) a true seeker of the truth and therefore a scientist, what is a scientist but a seeker of the truth and if being a reasonable person why not seek the counsel of the greatest scientist of all, the creator of all things.
Obama is a scholar of Marxist philosophies, proven lies in fact and demonstration yet he still clings to them because he is poor, blind and naked and does not know it, in other words he is not a scientist, not a seeker of the truth. The evidence is in his works, words and deeds. Whose council does Obama seek?
The truth defends Newton and Einstein and condemns Obama and Tribe as irrelevant and their science false.
The basic truth of the Founding Fathers is also immutable and shall withstand the assaults of the likes of Obama and Tribe as long as we citizens care to live our lives seeking the truth and speaking the truth.
Thank you Mr. Tipler for exposing yet another lie from the Liar in in Chief.
71. Charlie Martin:
too funny. I don’t encourage engaging trolls but yours was appropriate.
I am not close to a trained physicist but I understand relativity theory. But it was not Einstein’s best. This is “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
The simple thing is Obama is a creature of affirmative action. He is, no more, no less. He got breaks because he was black. This is not unusual in the circles he traveled. Leftist propaganda and Ivy League colleges. He chalks up the breaks as achievements. It is a psychosis.
Check out mychances.net. It asks for your grades, SATs, extra-curriculars and race. The average black kid (not all) in the top universities could not get into state colleges on merit. That is a fact.
Even though I’ve know BHO was a complete fraud since he entered the Dem primaries, I eventually resigned to thinking it was best to let him eke out his four years, resisting his marxist agenda with whatever pressure could be applied, rather than face the unthinkable prospects of a Sheriff/President Joe.
But almost daily I learn something new – in many cases, like this one, stuff that was known to many years ago – that makes me realize it would actually be a GOOD thing for America right now if BHO stepped down and let Biden take over as President.
Because Einstein theory has the word “relativity” in it, then all deconstructionsts and relativists of any type (including moral) found that they can invoke a higher authority over their twisting and elucubrating operations -
Wrong. Leaving aside the fact that a relativist by definition cannot have a source of authority (wouldn’t that imply that there is such a thing like a stable, referrential system in which the chaos they propose operates?), Einstein theory concerns strictly physics, and cannot be overlapped as a validating pattern for the moral world –
… moral relativistic pattern, which dba Obama and Tribe appear to declare as governing over the human intercourse -
Different narratives, fluid reality, polymorphous sexuality, indeterminacy, moral relativism, open-mindedness, etc. etc.
It looks like Barry took his science classes at Berkeley USD -
What charlatanie!
Hehehe – two plagiarists anyway -
Crap, crap, crap – surprised though that this idiocy hasn’t got yet some fawning media coverage -
——————–
PS: I wonder, can someone produce a link or a title for that deconstructionist prank ran by NYT a few years ago as a mighty scientific deconstructionist essay?
Here!! Here!! Well Done!! Keep up the good work. Keep challenging the Prevaricator of the United States.
Re #12/skeeziks: “What would Jesus say about this?”
Back to your cesspoole, skeezis – thatr would be his line -
You’re obviously confused, perfesser. Obama learned all this while lowering the sea level and bringing the NoKos to heel.
So do the right thing, will ya: Sit down and shut up. And stop politicizing science. Remember what Bambi said in his inaugural: He is returning science to its rightful place.
Who the hell are you? Racist Bush-lover.
“BC: Just because this is a right wing blog site doesn’t mean everyone popping by is a science illiterate.”
I think you should be careful about using the term conflation. I do not think it means what you think it means. When Dr Tipler specifically addresses Cartan on page one of the post, there is nothing whatsoever that suggest he is conflating the Newton–Cartan Theory with Newton’s original laws.
I see that in the comments that appeared after my reading what was then showing someone already pointed BC to the text that shows his mistake on conflation.
Frank, you may be a great mathematician, but you’re not much of a lawyer. Here it is in a nutshell: spinning objects can distort space-time, legal or not? Answer up and don’t give us any of that physics mumble-jumble. Obama is standing by with his copy of the Cambridge municipal code, so don’t try bluffing your way through the quiz. Also Frank, if you are a real Tipler, what is the most effective Tippling technique?
oh pray tell…why would i care what jesus would say about this? You guys make stuff as you go along. is this for levity>?
Now if someone could only explain Keynesian economics to Obama, he might be able to do something useful. (Stop laughing, dammit!)
We should feel grateful towards tribal science for its seminal contribution to the long-awaited unification of the theory of constitutional elasticity and the fascinating field of moral relativity. Liberty is not a well-known solution to Dirac’s equation, but it has a clear-cut character: It either belongs to you or it belongs to big brother, so it is better approached from the perspective of quantum physics, from which we know that you cannot produce a fissile isotope of Governmentium by throwing any proportion of high-velocity pions and morons at it.
This is because Governmentium is produced by nuclear fusion between Greedium and Lazyum, the first found in its highly concentrated native form in Washington, D.C., and the second widely distributed all over the territory. The reaction is very exoballotic, which explains the longevity of its product. It will take a good deal of high-velocity Paulreverium momentum to dramatically lower the atomic number of Governmentium, which is just way too heavy.
BC wrote, “More importantly, this is no more than (yet again) petty, political-based, nitpicking BS — Obama was obviously speaking metaphorically — and correctly — ”
You call other commenters “scientifically illiterate”. More importantly, it appears you’re just plain illiterate. If you could read the article and the links, you’d know that isn’t the issue.
The issue is what Axelrod said about Obama, which is, “This is someone who in law school worked with [Harvard professor] Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
That’s nonsense. It does no such thing. The paper does use (as you say) relativity as a metaphor. As for the value of that, I’m sure that scientists who are less “political-based” than you will agree with my opinion given in my response to Phil Byler below.
The paper (Google for a pdf) says in a footnote only this about Obama’s contribution: “I am grateful to [others] and Barack Obama for their analytic and research assistance…” As to what that constituted, only Tribe and Obama can tell us for sure. Assuming they’d tell the truth, that is.
Phil Byler wrote,”Professor Tribe was trained in mathematics”
I’m surprised to hear this. In that case, he has no excuse for doing this except to make his paper sound more profound than it really is.
Great article. THANKS for taking the time to write it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the liberal left are unwilling or unable to rationally evaluate its validity….
We have Darwin Awards for creatively removing oneself from the gene pool.
Will we one day have Heisenberg Awards for something similar, perhaps causing oneself to be hit by a train because one could not identify both the schedule of the train and the location of the tracks? Will we one day have Einstein Awards for accelerating oneself to lightspeed, ending interaction with our known universe?
@26. BC: – Obama was obviously speaking metaphorically …
BC, once again you’ve demonstrated your abject ignorance regarding, well, pretty much everything.
First we’ll start with your empty polemic above, which you obviously copied and pasted from an OFA memo. Rather than offering meaningless assertions by parroting empty references to obscure physics theory, perhaps you’d care to enlighten us all on your specific issues with Professor Tipler’s original paper. You can show the entire world – from right here – that your superior intellect and grasp of physics surpasses his. Go ahead. Outline his rhetorical and mathematical errors with a clear explanation we rednecks can understand — with cites and references to page / paragraph, of course. You up for that?
No, I didn’t think so. And even if you could do that, you’ve cooked your own goose when you claim that “Obama was speaking…”.
This will come as some surprise, I’m sure, but Obama was not one of the authors of the paper in question. As Dr. Tipler points out in his 2008 evisceration of Tribe’s nonsense – and which you’d know if you’d ever actually read it – if “Obama was speaking”, then it was via plagiarized passages that Tribe copied directly from his assistants’ work. To wit [emph. added]:
- Just because this is a right wing blog site doesn’t mean everyone popping by is a science illiterate.
Absolutely true. And don’t forget it. But also remember that no one is ever going to prove it by using your remarkably bone-headed commentary as an example.
.
Regarding the wholly unnecessary disclaimer in the UPDATE, added above, Prof. Tipler – in his 2008 critique of Tribe’s diatribe – makes it very clear that Obama was NOT an author of the paper in question. He also spells out quite clearly WHY he considers BHO one of the sources of its content. Since Axelrod has claimed Obama’s authorship of Tribe’s paper on BHO’s behalf, it would appear that Prof. Tipler’s surmise was spot on!
Thanks for an important (and entertaining) article, Dr. Tipler.
The word you meant, re: Obama was “role,” not roll.
BC:
Out of curiosity, what are your intellectual credentials? Have you done post-doc work under an acknowledged leader in theoretical physics, such as Archie Wheeler?
Or did you buy you credentials from Pace?
I wanna hear you on supersymmetry…if you can. I need a good laugh as I grind through the problem set.
Ben Schumacher @ 17
“The Tribe paper may be nonsense on stilts — it sounds likely — but I think Prof. Tipler does not have it quite right. There are continuities between Newtonian gravity and general relativity, just as there are between Newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics. But those continuities are only visible in retrospect. Neither GR nor QM was developed, or could be developed, by merely “generalizing” the previous theory.”
Well, my degrees are merely chemistry and law, so I would appreciate an explanation as to why continuities that become visible in retrospect have less value than other continuities, most especially when anybody who had bothered to do the research would know the rest of the story.
Maybe those hard-won retrospective continuities represent something valuable, like elegance and a beautiful economy in the theory. And maybe failure by Prof. Tribe et al. to do the easy research to find the rest of the story provides us with an insight into the level of intellectual achievement of the people who would tell us what is good for us.
Lawyers are accustomed to finding subsequent publications on a topic that modify the original teachings. Legal research that fails to take into account both what went before (precedent) and commentary or modifications that came after (subsequent history) is incomplete. That quality of work opens one up to devastating rebuttal. That quality of work can lead to injustice, particularly when the underlying position actually had merit, but the failure to present it properly led to a loss.
Now, according to Dr. Tipler, “The fact that relativity theory is a special case of Newtonian theory incorporating the ether was asserted by Albert Einstein himself in a lecture which he delivered at the University of Leyden on May 5, 1920, and he kindly provides a link for us. So, the continuities had already been found decades before Obama was born, and the Tribe paper (Tribe said the work came from BO–links in the comments at 62 above http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/1/19/obama-left-mark-on-hls-days) reflects a profound failure to bother with the facts.
94. goy:
that comment was masterful
regards
We’ve had progressives butcher science before. See Eugenics and Abortion. Like usual, they rewrote the history to make themselves the good guys and the good guys that bad guys (i.e., social Darwinists… who argued we should just leave everyone alone rather than weed some peoples out).
Willis:
Yes, it’s been shown that a spinning object CAN distort space-time…especially if the object is a black hole and the location is “just outside” the event horizon. The effect is large under those conditions, but should be measurable also in the area of neutron stars.
If by “Tippling Technique” you refer to drinking, especially alcoholic beverages, I would suggest “Gan Bei!”.
Zai Jian, Willis Xiao Ren
63. TomP:
“Lawyers are the cave men of the intellectual world. Any idea is simply a rock or a club to use against one’s opponent. The factual accuracy of that idea is not particularly relevant. Any scientific issue involving indeterminancy or imperfection eventually shows up in some “progressive” lawyer’s argument as a way of masking the weakness of the argument with the authority of science.”
Sounds very much like the philosophical underpinnings of progressivism, Pragmatism.
The attraction to science is as you describe mostly fake… and also probably based on that mistranslation of scientific from scientific Marxism…
Even in the social sciences, the work is usually corrupted by bias before it can get anywhere.
I only took a semester or two of physics and I’ve read a couple interesting books here and there on the subject. So, keep that in mind as you read the rest of this comment. Personally, I think moral relativism is the biggest threat currently facing humanity. And, I can see how some people can leap from the Theory of Relativity (in Physics) to moral relativism. Not because such a leap is actually justified, but simply because both theories are based on the same word. Unless they are more inclined to do more analytic work it’s more an application of “soft thinking.” The very nature of space/time and reality is relativized, so why not ethics? It sort of follows, if you are lazy. Back in college, I had a friend and we’d always argue about truth. He was a hard-core relativist. And I was a hard-core absolutist. Nowadays, I think we were both wrong. Some truths are relative. But some truths are absolute. Anyway, science is supposed to be “morally-neutral.”
Quantum physics is deterministic? This is not universally agreed upon by physicists, Mr. Tipler. You really should have pointed that out. Haven’t we had enough of scientists ignoring other points of view? It’s called dishonesty.
Dr. Tipler is referring to the fact that the Hamilton-Jacobi equation leads to the Schrödinger equation, and the Hamilton-Jacobi equation is deterministic. On top of that, the only mathematically consistent and experimentally supported interpretation of QM, namely the Many-Histories Interpretation, is likewise deterministic. The apparent non-determinism in QM only reflects human ignorance of reality, even if that ignorance arises perforce due to our inability to perceive the other universes in the multiverse. However, even that veil is, to a tiny extent, being pierced by the efforts of such people as David Deutsch in his work on quantum computing.
The currently experimentally supported view really is that there is an out there out there, that it is deterministic, and that there are aspects of it that we can’t know, but that quantum computing can shed light on.
“Obama vs. Einstein”?
Ben Schumacher writes:
“But those continuities are only visible in retrospect. Neither GR nor QM was developed, or could be developed, by merely “generalizing” the previous theory.”
The process is not the product. The product is what counts. So, the question is whether the final formulation of Newtonian mechanics and the final formulation of quantum mechanics are such that one can be taken to be a special case of the other. If you are going to talk about the process of creating theory, rather than the final formulation created, then you have surrendered to the Frankfurt School and society is not only curved but also polymorphously perverse.
75 sukietawdry writes:
“Fermi started out by saying that an understanding of Einstein was essential and that, at the time, there were maybe 13 men in the world who understood Einstein.”
This is a very interesting point. But “understood Einstein” is too vague. What you need is “can solve Einstein’s equations on the fly.” To bring that up to date, we need “regularly solves Einstein’s equations on the fly without using computers.” I would wager that he number is about 13.
36 Fantom,
I salute you. You must be a riot in a good bar.
Valerie (#106): Interesting questions. I’ll respond in brief.
“Classical” mechanics had many forms that were only loosely related and seemed to have quite different basic concepts. A short list would include Newton’s laws of motion, the Lagrangian formulation, Hamilton’s equations, and the Hamilton-Jacobi function. Some of these emphasize the idea of force, others the idea of energy. Certain kinds of interactions (e.g., friction) are easier to understand in some forms than in others.
With the “glasses” of quantum mechanics, we can see in retrospect that energy is more fundamental than force, that friction and other such things are complicated “statistical” phenomena of trillions of atoms, and so on. We understand classical mechanics better than any classical physicist could. Armed with this very selective vision of the past, the new physics seems to be a straightforward development of the old. But this is false as intellectual history, and Prof. Tipler’s argument — that there have been no “paradigm shifts” in physics and that Newton’s intellectual edifice “stands unshaken” — is very much about intellectual history. (One imagines Prof. Tipler trying to explain to Newton’s ghost that the physics we do today is really just what Newton himself created, tweaked a little here and there. One also imagines Newton’s baffled reaction.)
Einstein was a truly humble fellow and no doubt emphasized connections to his predecessors in his 1920 Leyden lecture. But Einstein himself knew (and pointed out in his 1947 book with Infeld) that Newton’s mechanics did not even include the concept of a field. That was contributed by Faraday and Maxwell in the 19th Century and was an indispensible step (maybe the biggest one) on the road to relativity. Einstein did understand that general relativity was more than just “Newton-plus”, and said so.
A final note: I’m critiquing Prof. Tipler’s argument at the same time I agree with his valuation of the Tribe paper. It sounds like a mess!
Theo Goodwin (#114): I disagree. Prof. Tipler’s argument is not that we can understand classical physics as a special case (h=0) of quantum physics, or that we can obtain Newtonian gravity as a limiting case of general relativity. That is sometimes called the “Correspondence Principle”, and it’s both correct and vitally important, but that is not what he is talking about.
Instead, Prof. Tipler is saying that quantum physics is a special case of classical physics, that general relativity is a special case of Newtonian gravity. He says that since Newton our theories of physics have not undergone any revolutionary changes. This is precisely a claim about the history of ideas, and you do not have to surrender to the Frankfurt School to evaluate his argument on historical grounds. Prof. Tipler’s views do not stand up on those grounds. They give wildly disproportionate weight to some clever mathematical connections and more or less ignore the gigantic conceptual leaps between the old physics and the new.
This leads him, in my opinion, to misread the actual history. For instance, Query 17 in Newton’s Opticks is about perceptual illusions — the colors you see when you press on your eyeballs, or the appearance of a continual trail of light when you wave a hot coal around. (See Query 16!) Newton is mistakenly trying to explain these as physical phenomena of light rather than effects of our visual system. This is not really an early proposal of wave-particle duality, as Prof. Tipler implies.
I’m a physicist rather than an historian, but all of this reminds me of those people who argue that the Civil War was “really” all about tariffs, and that the slavery issue was only a bit of propaganda used by the Northern commercial interests to rally popular support. If someone defended a particular trade policy by making such an historical argument, I’d think the argument was broken even if I supported the policy. (And no, I do not intend to equate Prof. Tipler, whom I have long admired, with a supporter of slavery. Jeesh.)
The main stream state run media and Barracks hired historians, are busy applying fisiks to the space-time continuum so that it complies with the relativity of Barracks perceived realities before they release any of his grades, transcripts, or treatises.
Should be a real hoot.
This reminds me of the 1994 paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” in which Alan Sokal explored “the cultural and political implications of” quantum gravity. By randomly using humanities studies’ cliche’s he managed to get it published in a mainstream Humanities journal. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
It makes me wonder if this too isn’t a hoax along the same lines.
Tipler has-been not provocative merely odd for decades (e.g.: “constructing a kind of cosmic Tower of Babel” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14519634.400-i-am-the-alpha-and-the-omega-point.html?page=2)).
Anyway he’s very wrong here. There were numerous paradigm shifts in physics, especially revolutionary in the early part of the 20th century, and there is indeed indeterminacy due to quantum effects. This is not to say that Tribe’s paper is meaningfully connected with relativity.
However it is interesting that salon discussions of Einstein’s groping for the correct dynamic curvature equations influenced literature and even art, perhaps most obviously in Cubism.
To tdiinva: Well since I have yet to comment on anything I didn’t know something about, that kind of negates your main contention. And I’ll see your “epsilon minus semi-moron” and raise you a one time graduate student minus a neocortex. You and Good Old Charlie both seem to be a couple of polynomials short of a complex thought.
@122. BC: – … I have yet to comment on anything I didn’t know something about …
You already demonstrated that you didn’t know anything about this issue when you claimed “Obama was speaking”. Obama was neither an author nor a co-author of Tribe’s paper (see above).
In point of fact, if one looks at this objectively – and especially in the context of BHO’s undocumented, affirmative action joyride through the hallowed halls of marxist academia – it’s not at all clear that his name wasn’t simply tacked on to the end of Tribe’s list of “assistants” as an afterthought: a favor to the young, marxist “rising star”. I’m sure one of BHO’s shills will correct me, but as far as I’ve seen that reference may very well be the only evidence (heh… such as it is) that BHO ever did any scholarly work at all, ever, anywhere.
@at BC, Holy Guacamole, indeed, it comforts me that you noticed it too.
I am glad I did not have any physics teacher to speak of. He had heart problems and his assistant, that replaced him, claimed the relativistic twins were “only a paradox”, that they actually remained at the same age.
Give Newton the honor that he deserves, but also give Einstein and Heisenberg the honors that they deserve.
It is said that Einstein was talking to his friend Besso during a walk, when it dawned to Einstein that the only way to solve the non-ether problem with electromechanics is that time itself had to be variable.
An enormous paradigm shift if you ask me, and I think for every physicist, and especially in that time, when Newton still reigned abolutely.
The same can be said for Plank’s discontinuity, and for Heisenberg claiming the latter came from an uncertainty inherent in any physical measurement at that scale. What goes on in the orbital of an hydrogen atom is still anybody’s guess, but it is certainly NOT Newtonian, or the electron would fall into the nucleus, an we would not have chemistry at all.
@ Matt, Feb 7, 2010 – 6:04 pm
You are right in being the absolutist. The relativistic gamma factor works relative AND absolute. I think Emma Noether (the NAME! “no-ether” ) saw it as a mathematical solution of functions that work both relative and absolute, for a two way trip.
But if you find two solutions in math, where one leads to the twin and barn-pole paradox, while the other does not, then one has to reject the relativist explanation, and go absolute.
The difference between the two solutions is at is most dramatic in this thought experiment : imagine space ship with twins on board moving at some large speed with respect to the mass distribution of the universe, then send out one of the twins so that he stays stationary with respect to the MD of the universe.
An absolutist claims that the stationary twin’s clock now runs FASTER that the one the moving mothership, while the relativist would claim, that the stationary twin should have a slower clock.
The experiment cannot be done yet, but you can predict the outcome today.
As for the “collectivist sciences” hitching a ride on the hard sciences, I can only loathe.
KR.
Actually Goy has a semi-point here: I foolishly assumed that given the title “Obama vs. Einstein,” and how Obama was being taken to task (the article originally went “A renowned physicist demolishes a paper by the president, co-authored with Laurence Tribe, on the “revolutionary” aspects and legal implications of 20th century physics.“) that Obama might actually have been involved somehow. My bad.
@125. BC: – … Goy has a semi-point here: I foolishly assumed that given the title …
PJM took responsibility for their erroneous tag line by (1) taking the article down temporarily while they did the research they should have done before posting it and then (2) issuing a corrective update (the article actually disappeared while I was trying to post #103 – note the addendum addressing the update).
You, on the other hand – held firmly by the bonds of your own moral adolescence to an utterly discredited ideology – refuse to be held accountable for your own laziness and demonstrated ignorance. You’re all too happy to try to excuse your own foolish assumption and subsequent false statement by deflecting to PJM’s editorial staff.
Funny how you made the effort to find a reference that still had PJM’s old tag line, when you couldn’t spend the thirty seconds required to research the facts. It must be frustrating to see how easily you could have avoided the embarrassment you’re now trying to deflect onto others.
BC, #26 is irrefutable proof of what is already common knowledge: you have no interest whatsoever in the facts, but only in cheerfully performing your role as an Obama sycophant: mindlessly regurgitating the propaganda you’ve been fed by your leftist taskmasters. What a sad existence that must be.
BC:
Sorry you’re disappointed in my undergraduate school – Caltech – and my graduate school – Harvard.
Maybe I should have attended in blackface and have gone the affirmative action route.
Then Ah coulds hav gotten respec…
To goy: Then why, oh fountain of brown smelly stuff, didn’t PJM pull the article for good if the entire core premise of it is BS? Here I type and if I scroll up to the top, what do I still see? “Obama vs. Einstein”
To Good Ole Charlie: Caltech and Harvard, eh? That’s an odd mix if true (not that I have reason to doubt random Internet dudes since, well, I’m one of them….), Caltech is geek west and while it has a social studies department, going there for that that would be like going to to MIT to party and develop social skills. Harvard sucks at tech stuff, but they do have some sort of law and technology journal thingy plus the Berkman Center, both of which are lame. Hmmm….I just checked and Caltech also has a no doubt also lame law and technology department….Colonel Mustard in the Bun with Wendy Weiner?
Goobers and Raisinets….
@128. BC: – … if the entire core premise of it is BS?
Wow. After all the embarrassment you’ve heaped on yourself, you’re still looking for MORE??
Here’s a novel thought: try reviewing Axelrod’s claim and reading Prof. Tipler’s paper. That might help with your confusion.
Who am I kidding. Your perpetual state of self-induced confusion is what allows you remain addicted to leftist ideology.
I look forward to more articles by Dr Tipler at Pajamas Media, such as his theory that that we will all be resurrected at the end of time by a giant computer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Point_(Tipler)
and that Jesus accomplished his miracles using neutrinos
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_strange_case_of_frank_jennings_tipler
To goy: You got spanked (yet again) and parsing out (yet again) some tiny bit of stuff out of context ain’t exactly helping you.
To mitchell porter: Good links, especially that second one. Yeah, “renowned physicist” indeed, gawd.
Why is this extra super duper dopey article still here? Seriously….
@131. BC: – You got spanked…
BC, as always, you remain firmly delusional to the very end.
Read #26 again, where your partisan blindness forced you to demonstrate your abject ignorance on this topic.
Read #125, where you tried, and failed, to blame your own actions, arising from your own ignorance, on others.
The ass you’re furiously spanking is your own. Just pull your head out of it and you’ll see what I mean.
Meanwhile, I look forward to reading your mathematical/rhetorical refutation of Tipler’s work. You have permission to work with moho… oops, I mean “mitchell porter” on that one. Be sure to double-space.
To goy: Again, seriously, why do you bother? The article is titled “Obama vs. Einstein” and originally it started off — before being retconned — with “A renowned physicist demolishes a paper by the president, co-authored with Laurence Tribe, on the ‘revolutionary’ aspects and legal implications of 20th century physics.” It then turns out that Obama had a peripheral connection at best to that 1989 Harvard piece, and that this Tipler guy is not exactly “a renowned physicist,” at least currently, and demonstrably by his odd conflation of theories to make nonsensical points.
The article is now circulating through the right wing nut-o-sphere as being yet something else, yet again, utterly imaginary to bash/mock Obama with, and apparently all you can think to do is dribble oatmeal and accuse me of being a dragon with the delusion of being a windmill.
As I said before, shoo.
@133. BC: …why do you bother?
What, you don’t think it’s just good, clean fun revealing your willful ignorance and utter disregard for the facts? How close-minded of you. Trust me, it’s no ‘bother’ watching you get laughed at.
- The article is titled “Obama vs. Einstein” …
Which, unless you have some information that counters Axelrod’s claim and the explanation in Prof. Tipler’s paper, is perfectly legitimate.
- … originally it started off …
And has since been corrected, with an update notice. What part of that do you not comprehend?
- … Obama had a peripheral connection at best to that 1989 Harvard piece, …
Not according to you and Axelrod. In fact, according to you, “Obama was speaking”!! What a rube. Either way, contributing to a paper as a research assistant – assuming that’s even true – is not just a “peripheral connection”. You’d know that if you’d ever actually been involved in scholarly research at ANY level.
- … this Tipler guy is not exactly “a renowned physicist,” …
Nor did he need to be: his evisceration of Tribe’s nonsense didn’t require anything more advanced than high school Mathematics. But either way, if Prof. Tipler’s reasoning is unsound, then it should be easy for you to supply us with your own original proof showing where he erred, shouldn’t it? I mean, you being such an intellectual Titan and all. You certainly don’t seem to have a problem bloviating about every other aspect of this issue. I suggest you put up or, preferably, just shut up.
- … demonstrably by his odd conflation of theories to make nonsensical points.
Yet, as usual – other than impotently labeling them “nonsensical” – you have provided no evidence whatsoever demonstrating that Prof. Tipler’s points were “nonsense”. See, the way this works you have two choices. You can use your usual name-calling, and anyone with half a brain or more will simply laugh at your adolescent behavior. Or you can offer more than baseless criticism and, for example, actually demonstrate how your labels apply. Invariably, you choose the former because the latter is beyond your capability. Whenever you try, you just dig yourself deeper – just like your fellow simpleton, “skeeziks“.
- The article is now circulating …
As well it should. When a political hack like Axelrod makes a statement like this, the facts should be broadcast to as large an audience as possible. Maybe it’ll even make it onto Beck’s program, at which point his enormous national audience will learn all about this.
- As I said before, shoo.
Oh, go blow it out your… oh, wait… you might give yourself a stroke. Nevermind.
Class Clown:
Back in college, I used to argue it out with knuckleheads in the Liberal Arts college (of which I was a part), who insisted on using Einstein to rationalize moral and ethical relativity.
I read the Einstein was aware of this and regretted that he named the theory Relativity.
‘demonstrably by his odd conflation of theories’
I have already pointed it out that there is no conflation of theories in the article. You claimed that Dr. Tipler conflated Newton’s original work with the application of more advanced geometrics to his theories a couple of centuries later. He did not. Perhaps you misread or misunderstood the relationship that Dr Tipler was pointing out, but it does not meet the definition of conflating theories. Whatever the reason, you are not applying the concept of conflation correctly here and should drop it as a valid criticism of the article or author.
To Just Passing Through: Do you even know what the word “conflate” means? Read just the first couple of paragraph from “a href=”http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~daw/D_Realism/Tribe.pdf”>Tribe’s essay, as well as the beginning of Part II, and then compare that to what Tipler claims and twists in his BS paper.
And why is this article still labeled “Obama vs. Einstein” when it is Tribe that wrote the *essay*? The footnote at the bottom of the first page of the essay thanks 5 people for their “analytic and research assistance” and that seems to be the only place where Obama gets even a mention. Is this the “the proof” that Obama “played some roll in crafting it? This is all nothing less than just more idiotic BS from right wing numbnuts (which includes physicists who want to try to play ball outside their “sport”) There is no conflating that at least.
And to goy: What part of “shoo” don’t you understand? The “sh” part or the “oo”?
@137. BC: – What part of “shoo” don’t you understand?
I understand the arrogance in your narcissistic, morally adolescent response perfectly. Your problem is that you have no authority here. You’ll figure that out eventually.
- …why is this article still labeled “Obama vs. Einstein”…
You claimed that “Obama was speaking” in the paper under discussion. Based on that, there’s no rational reason for you to have a problem with the title.
- This is all nothing less than just more idiotic BS…
Better email Axelrod then. He’s the guy who claimed that BHO “worked with Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
- … which includes physicists who want to try to play ball outside their “sport” …
Like Tribe and his “research assistant”. OH, WAIT!!
“To Just Passing Through: Do you even know what the word “conflate” means?”
Yes, I do. I know it’s uses and distinctions in general application to scientific theories very well and it’s technical application to signal processing intimately. You on the other hand, do not have a clue.
“Read just the first couple of paragraph from”
Weaseling BS. Let’s stay focused on what you said ABOUT THE ARTICLE that made you come off as a pretentious dolt instead of looking for some other strawman justification for your nonsense, shall we?
Your claim was that Dr Tipler ‘conflated Newton–Cartan Theory with Newton’s original laws, which came about nearly 200 years earlier.’
That is BS. Anyone with a modicum of related background who understood the 5th paragraph in the article, 6th now that there is a leading update, can see this. As a matter of fact, anyone with that background but able to read and understand plain English would have seen the disconnect. You either did not read the article, you did not understand the article, you do not understand the term conflation, or you just tossed out some pretentious terminology to attack the article reflexively. Any or all of the first 3 support what I think is your real reason for beclowning yourself. Your attempts to weasel out of your reflexive attack on the article in your debate with goy point to the 4th as the real reason. You should confine that sort of imbecilic nonsense to HuffPo, Kos, or DU where the audience will viscerally react positively to anyone posting a defense against any Obama critique or critic, no matter how ignorant the defense is.
Whatever. You should do yourself a favor and drop your conflation idiocy as a basis for critique of the article or author. It has no impact on his article and makes you appear the fool for thinking it does.
To Just Passing Through: Gawd….you don’t actually know what “conflate” really, do you? This posting is the last of my time I’m going to waste on loons like you and goy.
For starters, this is want I wrote originally:
Holy guacamole — I’m glad you weren’t my physics teacher! You conflated the Newton–Cartan Theory with Newton’s original laws, which came about nearly 200 years earlier. Cartan was a contemporary of Einstein, and he was actually involved with a modification of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory called the Cartan-Einstein Theory.
More importantly, this is no more than (yet again) petty, political-based, nitpicking BS — Obama was obviously speaking metaphorically — and correctly — in referencing the certainty of earlier Newtonian-type classical mechanics to the uncertainty inherent in modern physical theories like quantum mechanics.
Just because this is a right wing blog site doesn’t mean everyone popping by is a science illiterate.
Did I get anything wrong here? Let’s see:
1) Did Newton (as in Isaac and not Fig) came with his laws nearly two hundred years before there was any sort of “Cartan-Newton” theory. Yes.
2) Was Élie Joseph Cartan as contemporary of Einstein? Yes.
3) Was “Obama” speaking metaphorically in referencing the certainty of earlier Newtonian-type classical mechanics to the uncertainty inherent in modern physical theories like quantum mechanics? No — it was all Tribe. The original version of this PJM article was utter fantasy (although I should have dug up Tribe’s original essay). The current version is just more normal right wing BS.
4) Does pretty much every scientific historian differentiate between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics in terms of not just physics, but philosophy as well? Yes.
5) Was Tribe’s essay in keeping with these types of still ongoing philosophical musings on the difference in “reality” the viewpoint of classical mechanics and quantum. Yes.
6) Do Tipler’s statements like “In Newtonian theory, gravity is space-time curvature just as it is in general relativity. In fact, Einstein’s general relativity is just a special case of Newtonian gravity theory incorporating the ether. *conflate* classical mechanics as originally described by Newton with modern quantum and relativity theories that can derive Newton’s Laws? Yes and yes.
7) Do 1-6 indicate that Tipler is full of crap, and it he was just being a right wing nutcase using the usual Parse-o-matic method of taking things grossly out of context (and in this case sequence) for an idiotic and malicious smear attack? Yes.
So, as with goy, shoo.
I don’t know what your field of expertise is, but it is neither science nor engineering.
Did you get anything wrong in your 1-5 points? Irrelevent.
1: as mentioned explicitly by Dr Tipler in the article.
2: as mentioned explicitly by Dr Tipler in the article.
3: Irrelevant. Corrected in substance in the update, and it was not Tribe that claimed it was so. That was Axelrod. You have no point to make by saying this that is related to your critique of what Dr Tipler wrote in the article.
4: Yes. So does Dr Tipler in the article. Explicitly.
5: So? Your point? ‘In keeping with’? What does this add to your position? Are you saying that we should accept the lawyer Lawrence Tribe’s treatment of such musings as more authoritative than the physicist Dr Tipler’s? Are you a complete jacka$$?
6: So? Your position was that Dr Tipler conflated Newton and Cartan’s work. I say this again, he did not. He EXPLICITLY mentioned that Cartan’s work merely established the curvature in Newtonian theory using an approach and math not available to Newton. That my pretentious friend, is NOT CONFLATING the theories. You can go get all the outside links you want, but your claim was based on what Dr Tipler wrote in THIS article. You focused originally focused on what you thought in your ignorance and reading challenged was was a ‘gotcha’ moment. You blew it because you didn’t read it closely enough, nor understand the point being made. And you continue to beclown yourself trying to avoid acknowledging that simple fact.
You have an issue focusing. Because not only do none of your points support the moonbat nonsense in #7, they do not begin tho support the accusation of conflating theories. Because, and this is the focus problem, the article does not make the claim you think it does in #6. You haven’t even begun to support that claim. Google all the information you wish. It doesn’t mean that you actually understand what you find, or what it’s relevance is, just that you can google.
You should have backed off attacking the article on the basis of science/conflation based on the specious observation that Newton’s Laws were written 200 years before Cartan was born and admitted that you misread it. That was almost immediately pointed out by someone else when he derided you for not picking up that Dr Tipler explicitly mentioned that Cartan’s work was centuries later. That was even before I did. I probably wouldn’t have even jumped into the discussion if that comment had appeared before I posted mine.
Your basis for attacking the article has nothing to do with content, but your asinine belief that you must be smarter than anyone you see as ‘right wing’ and your reflexive tendency to defend anything you see as a negative for Obama. This quote tells the whole story. ‘Just because this is a right wing blog site doesn’t mean everyone popping by is a science illiterate.’ I doubt you capable of seeing just how inanely arrogant and sublimely stupid that statement reveals about you. You beclowned yourself in most of the comments you posted in this thread. Not just in response to me, but most of them. Telling the people laughing at your attempts to spin your initial lame attempt at critiquing the article from the moonbat position to ‘shoo’ just adds to it.
Way cool Professor! I also like the comments – thank you guys.