Did you read the page in question or the entire quote I gave? The first sentence isn’t a big problem (although I think you aren’t parsing correctly what he’s trying to say). The second sentence I quoted was “It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.”
And yes, a small handful of his 33 “counterexamples” fall into genuine issues that we don’t understand and a handful (such as #33) are standard physics puzzles. Then you have things like #9 which claims that a problem with relativity is “The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54. ” (I suppose you could argue that this is a good thing since he’s trying to make his beliefs pay rent.) And some of them are just deeply confusing such as #14 which claims that the changing mass of the standard kilogram is somehow a problem for relativity. I don’t know what exactly he’s getting at there.
But, the overarching point I was trying to make is somewhat besides the point: The problem I was illustrating was the danger in turning claims that others are being ideological into fully general counterarguments. Given the labeling of relativity as being promoted by “liberals” and the apparent conflation with moral relativism, this seems to be a fine example.
Incidentally, note that Conservapedia’s main article on relativity points out actual examples where some on the left have actually tried to make very poor analogies between general relativity and their politics, but they don’t seem to appreciate that just because someone claims that “Theory A supports my political belief B” doesn’t mean the proper response is to attack Theory A. This article also includes the interesting line “Despite censorship of dissent about relativity, evidence contrary to the theory is discussed outside of liberal universities.” This is consistent with the project’s apparent general approach, as with much in American politics, to make absolutely everything part of the great mindkilling.
I can see that he attacks relativity, devotes a disproportionate amount of space to attacks, and relatively little to an explanation, though comparing it to his article on quantum mechanics it’s not that small—his article on QM is the equivalent of a Wikipedia stub. But it’s not obvious to me that the liberalism of some of its supporters is the actual reason for the problems he has with it.
But it’s not obvious to me that the liberalism of some of its supporters is the actual reason for the problems he has with it.
It is in general difficult to tell what the “actual” motivations are for an individual’s beliefs. Often they are complicated. Regarding math and physics there’s a general pattern that Andrew doesn’t like things that are counterintuitive. I suspect that the dislike of special and general relativity comes in part from that.
Did you read the page in question or the entire quote I gave? The first sentence isn’t a big problem (although I think you aren’t parsing correctly what he’s trying to say). The second sentence I quoted was “It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.”
And yes, a small handful of his 33 “counterexamples” fall into genuine issues that we don’t understand and a handful (such as #33) are standard physics puzzles. Then you have things like #9 which claims that a problem with relativity is “The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54. ” (I suppose you could argue that this is a good thing since he’s trying to make his beliefs pay rent.) And some of them are just deeply confusing such as #14 which claims that the changing mass of the standard kilogram is somehow a problem for relativity. I don’t know what exactly he’s getting at there.
But, the overarching point I was trying to make is somewhat besides the point: The problem I was illustrating was the danger in turning claims that others are being ideological into fully general counterarguments. Given the labeling of relativity as being promoted by “liberals” and the apparent conflation with moral relativism, this seems to be a fine example.
Incidentally, note that Conservapedia’s main article on relativity points out actual examples where some on the left have actually tried to make very poor analogies between general relativity and their politics, but they don’t seem to appreciate that just because someone claims that “Theory A supports my political belief B” doesn’t mean the proper response is to attack Theory A. This article also includes the interesting line “Despite censorship of dissent about relativity, evidence contrary to the theory is discussed outside of liberal universities.” This is consistent with the project’s apparent general approach, as with much in American politics, to make absolutely everything part of the great mindkilling.
I can see that he attacks relativity, devotes a disproportionate amount of space to attacks, and relatively little to an explanation, though comparing it to his article on quantum mechanics it’s not that small—his article on QM is the equivalent of a Wikipedia stub. But it’s not obvious to me that the liberalism of some of its supporters is the actual reason for the problems he has with it.
It is in general difficult to tell what the “actual” motivations are for an individual’s beliefs. Often they are complicated. Regarding math and physics there’s a general pattern that Andrew doesn’t like things that are counterintuitive. I suspect that the dislike of special and general relativity comes in part from that.