I had my reply open for hours while I came back to it here and there working on it and now I see that you ended up deleting the post I responded to so all of the stuff below that I was responding to is now gone. No need to respond if you were wanting to drop it, although I think you should still read my post, especially the last part with the article that I linked to.
As I have explained previously, these debates are a real catch 22 and will likely never go away entirely because a segment of the population simply isn’t capable of understanding the facts and proof. So instead they are going to rely on how things seem to them through their experience and things just often aren’t the way we sense them to be and so they will often be wrong and you have no way to prove it to them if they can't understand the proof. Just an absolute catch 22. All the “science guys” can do is to keep explaining, keep trying, and hope to make slow progress over time and that seems to be what is happening and has happened. The general pool public already doesn’t believe all the nonsense they believed just a few decades ago, and one day they won’t be believing all the nonsense they believe today.
On a related note, please read this article which addresses exactly what I have been talking about in some of my posts to you. It addresses how you can have a long held and very firm belief about something in pool but be dead wrong, which is why is pays to keep an open mind to learning, and why it never pays to believe the way things “seem” to be occurring to you over what can be scientifically proven. On lots of things you are in the same boat as the author was in, firm belief in things that are simply wrong and no way to know the difference (unless it comes from someone else a lot more intelligent and a lot more knowledgeable who does know because our experience often isn't enough and never would be enough to ever get it right by ourselves).
http://billiards.colostate.edu/bd_articles/ross_bd_april08.pdf
Did you not see where I already acknowledged this by saying most instead of all? It doesn’t surprise me that you would try to argue anyway. It still doesn’t change the fact that most with that level of ability are going to become something along those lines and when people have those types of science abilities they most often have those types of science related interests as well. MOST aren’t going to become a farmer or even a low level office manager for example if they truly have the ability to become a doctor or a physicist. I capitalized “most” for you this time so you wouldn’t miss it again by the way.
I definitely don’t know it all. I do know a lot but where we differ is that I can accurately differentiate between fact and theory. The other place where we differ is when I don’t know what I am talking about on science type things I either say “this is my guess based on nothing concrete…” or I just keep my mouth shut and say nothing at all. Another big difference between us is that I am always smart enough to know when I’m not smart enough.
Not for the purposes of knowing and understanding the reality of what is happening on a pool table they aren’t. And again, this does not necessarily mean that a person is dumb. They could just be lazy, closed minded, or the material could just be above the the level of most people in general which appears to be the case with some of the physics behind what is actually happening on a pool table.
The science behind what? The science behind this thread topic is already in this thread, and the science behind almost everything else in pool is already on this site and usually on Dr. Dave’s site also.
It depends on the context but most often it either means something can’t possibly be any other way, or the odds of it being any other way are so small that it would be silly not to fully believe it as opposed to something else that has almost no chance. Like for example the argument could be made that it is not 100% fact that you exist, but the chances are so astronomically small that you would be a fool not to believe that you are in fact alive and do actually exist.
Whichever ones have an interest in pool. I have no idea what percentage that would be, but it is relatively small. The better question is of those in the entire advanced scientific community, what percentage would disagree with Dr. Dave or Bob Jewett or Mike Page or Pat Johnson about any of the things they claim as facts about pool, or would disagree with their choice of theory as being the one that by far was the most likely based on the overwhelming evidence? The answer is zero percent would disagree because they also have the intellect and knowledge to be able to discern fact from fiction or theory as well as to be able to discern where the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence lies for the few things that are still theory and not yet conclusively proven fact.
As has already been explained on here, that “new info” from Russia doesn’t really conflict with what Dr. Dave or the other “science guys” claim. And Renfro/Chris is in the same boat as you are, often doesn’t know what he is talking about but will be more vocal than anyone about it and completely closed minded and unwilling to learn from those who do. And another mistake you are making is that you are assuming that just because he knows how to punch some holes out of leather and assemble or otherwise form them into a tip shape that it must mean he knows something about the science of what is happening with tips and tip/ball contacts. It doesn’t. They have almost nothing to do with each other.
To not have 100% faith in something until it is 100% proven is not only justified but prudent. It would make sense to only have 99% conviction in something that was only 99% likely. But that isn’t what you do at all. You very often have 0% belief in things that are 100% proven and fact, and 0% belief in the theories that are 99.9% certain and for which the evidence overwhelmingly supports it and instead choose to believe in some nonsense. The level of belief should be relatively commensurate with the level of likelihood, and yours isn’t even close and in fact is often as backwards as it could possibly be.
It is hard to say for certain, but I think probably a pretty good amount because I was lucky that things just came pretty easily for me and I was able to learn stuff at this level of physics for example without having to be taught by anyone or anything for the most part. But I can guarantee you that I have also learned tons from others and books and other places and was lucky in that I always knew what I could rely on because I could almost always understand the proof that showed when something was factual and true. I would be a fool not to have learned from sources outside myself. Anybody that does that and relies only on their own senses and experiences to form their beliefs and knowledge will be more ignorant and wrong a lot more of the time than if they had been open to learning from people who were much smarter and had much more knowledge of a topic than they did.
I have had a little bit of formal physics education but not enough to know jack crap compared to a physicist. I have no problem with the simple physics stuff like what is usually involved with most pool related things. I would definitely defer to someone with more physics knowledge on pretty much anything I wasn't 100% certain about, and there isn't anything I would be 100% certain about in physics than any physicist would ever disagree with. Being a physicist never interested me as a career.
I haven’t called you an idiot, and have been as ginger as possible in the topics of what people are capable of understanding. But the fact remains that not everyone has the intellect and knowledge to understand some of this physics stuff, and not understanding it is the only reason they could possibly disagree with it. Unfortunately there is no way of getting around having to mention this if one is needing to explain why someone is disagreeing with proven facts. That is the explanation.
I haven’t skirted any rules and that is quite the opposite of what I would pride myself on.
As I have explained previously, these debates are a real catch 22 and will likely never go away entirely because a segment of the population simply isn’t capable of understanding the facts and proof. So instead they are going to rely on how things seem to them through their experience and things just often aren’t the way we sense them to be and so they will often be wrong and you have no way to prove it to them if they can't understand the proof. Just an absolute catch 22. All the “science guys” can do is to keep explaining, keep trying, and hope to make slow progress over time and that seems to be what is happening and has happened. The general pool public already doesn’t believe all the nonsense they believed just a few decades ago, and one day they won’t be believing all the nonsense they believe today.
On a related note, please read this article which addresses exactly what I have been talking about in some of my posts to you. It addresses how you can have a long held and very firm belief about something in pool but be dead wrong, which is why is pays to keep an open mind to learning, and why it never pays to believe the way things “seem” to be occurring to you over what can be scientifically proven. On lots of things you are in the same boat as the author was in, firm belief in things that are simply wrong and no way to know the difference (unless it comes from someone else a lot more intelligent and a lot more knowledgeable who does know because our experience often isn't enough and never would be enough to ever get it right by ourselves).
http://billiards.colostate.edu/bd_articles/ross_bd_april08.pdf
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