🚀 go-pugleaf

In <snodgras.714777577@crash> snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass)
writes:

>      If you look into the 'overwhelming' support for relativity,
> you'll find that once you subtract out the self-reference, the
> assumptions, the handwaving, and the enthusiastic proponents, you're
> left with -- nix. But if you really want to believe, with all your
> heart, just tap your ruby slippers. "There's no theory like
> relativity."

I don't understand why you are picking on relativity in particular. By
your criteria, all support for *any* theory is suspect, since the
evidence depends on theory and assumptions for its interpretation.

However, you are wrong that support for relativity is
self-referential. Relativity makes predictions for the results of
experiments whose interpretation can be done within non-relativistic
physics. The support for relativity is not circular in the sense that
you seem to be implying.

> In fact, evidence for relativity is all in the realm of the obscure,
> or if it's not, it is evidence capable of another interpretation.
> For instance, decay of cosmic ray muons is cited as evidence for time
> dilation, because they last longer travelling down through the
> atmosphere at relativistic speeds than they do when observed in labs
> at slow speeds. Now, in an otherwise normal way of looking at it, one
> might tend to attribute the difference between the decay rates to the
> numerous environmental or source factors related to these different
> muons. But because it has been explained away by invocation of the
> mystical 'time dilation', no one is even investigating such
> alternative causes. ("But that would contradict relativity," is often
> heard as an argument against some hypothesis, which should give some
> idea of how ingrained such notions are.)

I don't know what you are driving at here. When you say that the
behavior of cosmic rays is "explained away" by invoking relativity,
you act as if there were something suspicious about that. On the
contrary, the fact that relativity explains much of the observed
behavior of particles is the reason that we say that there is
overwhelming support for relativity. A scientific theory is said to
have support to the extent that it explains observations better than
rival theories.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY