Max

Thank you, Ellen.

What intimidation? Do you find it intimidating when someone points out an error in your argument? Apparently you've no answer, as you every time come up with new arguments, ignoring the previous one. Now who is misrepresenting an argument? You never claimed it didn't have a beard? Well, neither did I say that you did, I said that you claimed "that it didn't have a real beard". Is that so strange after you wrote: "A beard that runs past the side of his eyes, up the side of his head, on up to the top and top-front of his head?" and "That's a beard? A UFO alien beard maybe?" Yes, I could have expected that, I suppose. The only artifact there is, is the low resolution and the overexposure. There isn't any evidence of a deliberate, human-made alteration in that picture, you're imagining things that aren't there, and therefore the comparison with UFO's that some people see as evidence for traveling aliens, is justified. Sure, doc. You don't have to tell me potential scenarios for altering a picture, I've a lot of experience in that direction, more than you, I'm sure. However, the point is that you don't have any evidence that such scenarios have been used here. Any argument you brought up, I've refuted, and you blanked out all those refutations. This thread is about such evil conspirators, who for political purposes pretend that a dead woman is still alive. We're not talking here about altering images for fun or for artistic purposes. That artifact exists only in you imagination. I think no one else sees it. Look at the second picture that I showed, where the same statue can be seen, only much sharper. Also an artifact? I can also alter pictures, and I'm sure that you also can put a figure in a photo by using a clone tool. But that is totally irrelevant, the question is: has this picture been tampered with? You haven't given any valid evidence for that. Yeah, that is what you really crave to do, isn't it? Well, you do have an enormous fantasy, I must grant you that. Alas, I can't remember having been conned ever. At least not big-time, because then I surely would remember it. You'll have to read some more self-help books to improve you thought-reading skills. I'm not interested in what value my comments have to others. I just have to to correct invalid arguments, whether they are about Aristotle's paradox of tampering with pictures, that's all. Ha ha, in psychology that's called projection. I think your vanity has been wounded, as you've several times been shown to be wrong in your pompous statements about that picture being tampered with. Time to exit for you.

"Knowing" the story in my head is the essence of psychologizing. The discussion is about conspiracy theories, in this case the theory that the photo that we've been discussing was faked, to bring that old woman in it, who is supposed to be dead. The funny thing is that I hadn't realized that you had put those circles on the picture, to alert us on a supposedly missing shadow, as evidence of tampering. My impression was that you'd copied that photo with circles and all from some conspiracy site. Apart from my reaction, Mark and Anthony also dismissed that "shadow" argument. You then brought up new arguments: 1. The walking people seemed to be "out of focus", in contrast to the standing and sitting people. I pointed out (and Anthony also implied) that that fuzziness was nothing but the motion blur of moving people. 2. Then your next argument for tampering was that the fuzziness should only be on the backside of the walking person, and not on the front. I showed you why this notion is incorrect. 3. Your next argument was about the statue, the "white holes" between statue and shadow. I pointed out that this is a common effect of (often automatic) sharpening of the image. Further you asked where the mouth was. I replied that it was covered by a beard. 4. Then you tried to ridicule the picture of the statue, that it didn't have a real beard. I replied that I didn't see anything wrong in that part of the photo, other than that the statue was overexposed and therefore details were washed out. Anyway, I found a different photo of that scene, this time with considerably better resolution. The statue is obviously the same as on the other photo, only with more detail. You can discern mouth, ear, beard and hair, and these correspond clearly with what the fuzzier image shows. Due to overexposure it is still washed out, but I think nobody will think this has (also?) been tampered with. If I'm prejudiced, then my prejudice is rationality, common sense and respect for reality (omg, now I sound like a real Objectivist). You never disputed any of my refutations of your evidence of tampering, but only came up with again another argument. What is your subtext, or don't you have one? Is the idea that these images are perhaps not tampered with really anathema? Because you once were sure that it had been tampered with?

I just wrote that my interpretation seemed to me to be more likely than the tampering explanation. I think that is a quite reasonable statement, not a "barking dogma". Neither did I use terms like "you dumbass" or anyting similar. You're reading things in my words that aren't there. In German there is an apt word for that: "hineininterpretieren". I see it very well. That you see it differently I can't help, I just try to explain what I see. Sarcasm? No more than your: "That's a beard? A UFO alien beard maybe?" I answer in kind. Or is it Quod licet Iovi...? Ah, are we going to psychologize? On the basis of perceived insults? When other people see something differently, that must be due to their prejudice? I'm not interested in controlling anyone. I just tell it when I see a flawed argument. Is that a dogma? In this case it just meant "that may all be true, but it is beside the point". In my opinion that can be a valid argument. Or am I now barking again?

Curious, I just see a beard, an ear and hair on top. No, it's not very clear, but that is due to the fact that the image of the white statue is rather bleached out by overexposure, and it isn't very sharp anyway. That seems to me to be a more likely explanation of what you see, than the notion that some evil conspirator has painted an extra beard on the statue or has removed some embarrassing details of the statue.

That part on the top of his head we usually call "hair". I don't see anything unusual in that statue. Google statue + beard to see many other examples, often with even much more beard and/or hair. Oh, but I've unmasked photo forgeries in the past, and some of them were very cleverly done, so I'm not entirely green in that respect. Further I have some experience with steganography, a bit different kind of tampering, but very instructive. That's all fine, but the point is, that the arguments that I've heard that this photo would be a fake are not valid. Those perceived anomalies can be adequately explained by standard photographic effects. So far I haven't seen any compelling evidence for tampering. I get the impression that some people for some reason desperately want this photo to be a fake, and you see there an example of confirmation bias: every aspect of the photo that they can't explain immediately is grabbed as evidence for tampering with the photo, instead of checking if perhaps another explanation might be sufficient. It reminds me of those UFO-people, who, when they see something in the sky that they can't identify, immediately jump to the conclusion that it must be space ship from Sirius, or perhaps from somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, instead of accepting that it might have a more mundane explanation, like birds, aircraft, strange clouds, mirages, balloons, Venus, etc. Such a normal explanation is probably too dull for them. Aliens are much more exciting!

Sure. That is the typical effect of sharpening of the image. That can be done automatically in the camera, or afterwards with the computer. You see that effect also around the dark hair and the dark suits against a light background. I can no longer upload any images, otherwise I could show you some other examples. And what is covering his mouth? A beard, I think. It's unclear how much of the mouth would be really visible in that statue, but the fact that it has a beard, is all white and not very sharp in the picture is a simple explanation that you can't see the mouth. Further: what would be the sense of tampering with that statue? I suppose it's there for everyone to see, and it's not very useful for hiding something. Cui bono?

Yes, really! Why would that be? The fuzziness is caused by the fact that during the exposure, on the photo the part in front of the man is partly the light background (first part of the exposure) and partly the dark suit of the man (latter part of the exposure), so you get a grey gradient there. In the back part you get the same, only is here the first part dark and the latter part light (background). So both sides are fuzzy. Only if you have independent evidence for that supposition. If not, use Occam's razor: motion blur is a simple and effective explanation, no conspiracy or complex tampering needed. Why put those walking people in the picture anyway? Doesn't make sense to me! For the record, I have no idea who all these people are, and I don't care either. But I can recognize a bad argument...

I don't agree. As far as I can judge there is no "missing shadow". There is just not enough information in the picture to predict where exactly shadows should be seen. As Mark said, a shadow can sometimes be hidden by a torso. That the people walking in the background are somewhat fuzzy, can easily be explained by motion unsharpness. You need a fairly short shutter time (or a flash) to "freeze" people walking sideways. This is in fact something you'd expect. I see no difference in pixelation in foreground or background. What you see is the motion blur of the walking people. I can't prove that this photo has not been altered, but neither do I see that it has been altered (apart from normal adaptation of brightness, contrast, sharpness etc.).

You may think what you want, but there is no way to communicate with a speed faster than the speed of light. And as our own galaxy is already larger than 100000 light years...

Brad, There have been a lot of apocalyptic stories in the media about rising sea levels that would threaten to flood whole countries or at least a large part of them. But then I read in a recent (October 2018) report by the IPCC (not really an organization known for covering up climate problems): ( https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf ) So, with a 2°C global warming, the expectation is some 50 cm, at least < 1m, sea level rise in 80 years, which is a period of several generations. I can’t see that as very threatening. What’s your opinion on this - am I missing something?

I see, quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.

Just a few comments about Newberry’s article – a complete analysis would be far too long. The objectivist ideal is of course that they should be bent backwards, like these: http://cordair.com/artists/jensen/works/ascending/index.html http://romanticrealism.com/dellorco/images/imagination_th.jpg http://romanticrealism.com/denys/images/icarus.jpg Compare with the ugly bent forwards man in Vermeer’s painting: https://tinyurl.com/yd8q8ksq He also has a dangerous weapon in his hand, not a pretty picture! I thought it wasn't unusual that in winter trees don’t have leaves. Perhaps they’re just conifers, that remain green in winter? I can’t judge from this very tiny image. Anyway, this symbolism is just your interpretation, it doesn’t have any general validity. When I see a road, I don’t think it must lead either to happiness on earth or to a murky despair. Sometimes a road is just a road. False dichotomy, just as meaningless as the benevolent vs. malevolent universe. One could say that some men are to be valued as good and some men are to be despised as evil (and many are something in between), but “man” as such isn’t anymore good or evil than “nature”, or “the universe”, that would be a primitive religious viewpoint. Ah, those evil landscape painters. Often they don’t paint any humans in their landscapes, and when they put them in the picture, they’re almost always quite small. Time for a metaphysical judgment! Even worse are still life painters, they never paint humans, unless it’s a skull that is quite dead. What does that say about their psychoepistomology?!

Frank Rearden? Family of Hank?

Let's ask the horse itself, IPCC Special Report, October 2018: https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf Model-based projections of global mean sea level rise (relative to 1986–2005) suggest an indicative range of 0.26 to 0.77 m by 2100 for 1.5°C of global warming, 0.1 m (0. 04–0.16 m) less than for a global warming of 2°C (medium confidence). Doesn‘t sound so alarming to me, particularly because it comes from the IPCC.

I saw just for a second or so the Windows hourglass, and then everything was the same as before, filename etc. No message or other symbols appeared. But since today it suddenly works! As far as I know, I didn't change anything since the last time it wouldn't work, so it's a great mystery. The only thing I can think of is that one of those attempts to remedy the problem I mentioned in my previous post, did in fact have the desired effect, but only after restarting the computer, although there was no message to that effect. But I'm glad that I now can explore the program on my big screen. It looks great!

As I already wrote, the program runs fine on my laptop (Windows 10 home). I copied that file to my PC (Windows 10 Pro), but there it just doesn't do anything, not even saying "Unknown Publisher". I tried changing protection settings, run as Administrator, compatibility mode, all to no avail.

I've no such things that could be used, but Amazon is your friend: I ordered a set of laces, flat and 160 cm long and a set of 10 cm styropor balls.

I copied the file from my laptop to my PC, but there it still doesn't do anything...

Nothing happened, at least I didn't see anything happen, I downloaded it again, but with the samer result. This was on my PC with Windows 10 pro. I just tried it on my laptop with Windows home, and now it worked! Strange. I'll try it later again on the other computer and compare the files.

This is a fascinating subject, quite counterintuitive. I downloaded the program, but that doesn't do anything on my computer (at least I hope it doesn't do some hidden damage...). I'd like to play with such a system, but I don't have flat shoelaces or something similar that can be used to observe the twists clearly. Parhaps I should order aome of them on Amazon... I'd like some hands on experience. Rotating twice to get the original configuration back, that seems to be tied(!) to the SU(2) group and its difference from the SO(3) group. I should lookup those things again... Let me guess: if 1,2,3 works, so do 2,3,1 and 3,1,2, or just the other three?

That is of course the fallacy. The interval [0,2] contains infinitely many points, and infinity is not a natural number, therefore the notion of density doesn't work, as the density is also infinite, and 2 * ∞ = ∞. Cantor, cardinality, continuum and all that. It isn't surprising that people like Aristotle and Galileo didn't understand such things well. Therefore those helpless attempts to consider circles "jumping" or "waiting" to make up for differences in traveled distance in Aristotle's paradox.

I know, this was in fact just a first attempt, with the idea that I later could improve on it, I had also doubts about some of my assumptions, but as the result was fairly close to what one might expect (perhaps I was lucky?) and enough to falsify Merlin's argument, I decided to write it up. I used the frame that you posted earlier.

As I wrote, it was an approximation, not an exact calculation. I neglected the vertical shrink factor, as the relevant vertical distance differences are much smaller than the horizontal differences. I used the width of the wheel, because the height could not accurately be measured, When I try to make an estimate for the height, I get 489, i.e. 1% less than the widthI measured. I could of course make more estimates by drawing lines with various angles through the center of the wheel, but as this "rough calculation" as I called it gave already a result that is quite close to the value expected when the wheel rolls without slipping, this was for me enough to falsify Mernlin's claim that the video didn't show a non-slipping wheel. But of course you may improve the results by using more exact calculations.

I’ve tried to use a simple approximation for testing the video picture. First I tried to measure distances on the screen, but then I realized it would be easier and more accurate to copy the image to a graphics program and use the pixel coordinates in that program. First I calculated a “shrink factor” f by measuring the height of the wooden blocks: 123 left, 94 right (pixel coordinates in my copy of the image): f = 94/123 = 0.764 The white dots at the left give the start position and the corresponding dots at the right the end position. To measure the distance the wheel travels, I drew “vertical” lines through the dots at the left and at the right, and a line through the center of the wheel “parallel” to the lines of the system (that is, using the same shrink factor for perspective). Then I measured the distance between the intersections of this line with those “vertical” lines = 1819 – 470 = 1349. This is the “shortened” distance, DS. Next I measured the diameter of the wheel, right – left = 969 – 475 = 494. Calculating the “real” distance of the wheel, rolling without slipping during one revolution: π * DR = 1552. (DR – DS) / DS = 0.15. That is where Merlin’s “20%” comes from. He probably measured the distance at the bottom, which is extra shortened by the “up-down” perspective, increasing the deviation further. To calculate the “shortened” distance from the “real” distance we should integrate the variable shrink factor over the line from start to finish. But in the linear approximation this boils down to the average value (1 + f) / 2 = 0.882. Then we get 0.882 * 1552 = 1369. Compare with the direct measurement 1349 gives a difference of 20, a deviation of 1.4%. Not bad for such a rough calculation, I’d say.