Silkroad Online Forums

To Kazaxat:

ABOUT NON-SEQUITURS:
I have read the entire thread you mentioned, called ( To Smart People: Help ) and now understand that both your questions about 'displacement' and your statements about relativity in this thread about Math Help were non-sequiturs. This is something you seem to have a great proclivity for and I can see that it oftentimes works to your advantage. To use my own non-sequitur, I love my youngest son very much, but he can be very annoying (sometimes). He just turned 21 and has done 'this' all his life. I am now convinced that he used to do it on purpose (probably as an attention getting device). Do you? He struggles even today to stop his habit of purposeful over-irritation. Will you someday? I hope so. I doubt it can ever be done utterly; I can certainly not claim this even though I have struggled with it personally for almost 40 years.

OTHER LOGICAL FALLACIES:
What you likely did was draw a "Hasty Generalization" when you were speaking to Barotix.
You also committed a Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.
Another example of this second type of fallacy can be seen on the "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" website. So unless you were trying to say something like "Pirate Populations vs. FSM's and Global Warming" are the same as "Displacement vs. Relativity while Helping People with Their Homework", it might be best to keep those types of observations to yourself. Briefly stated, correlation does not prove connection.

SOME CONCLUSIONS (and one digression):
Barotix was trying to help in this thread (and elsewhere) and didn't need your interference. I'm sure you were (in your own way) also trying to help before you got side-tracked, and that wasn't seen as being helpful. The same could be said of my participation, so don't feel too bad, but I am for certain gonna take Judge's advice ( found > HERE < ) and not post in that thread (lol, unless I have a positive contribution). The only thing that bothers me in the 'smart people' thread you mentioned is when (given reverse engineering enuf data) I cf. the 2D graph and the 3D graph is that Chinese and European skill learning rates are not equal. But and of course that is my own non-sequitur. Irrelevant Conclusions (also called Ignoratio Elenchi) - and sometimes referred to as red herrings are all logical fallacies and they (as a whole) just don't matter. What non-sequiturs (from Latin, meaning 'it follows') and Irrelevants and Ad Hominem (Personal Attack) have in common is that they pretend to relate to the subject when they in fact they simply do not.

ALTERNATIVES:
You could have stopped for a second and thought about it before posting thus negating what I saw as a need for being a mediator in yet another argument. Consider for instance, that what the "smart people" were talking about when they mentioned displacement was the amount of AIR that was displaced when various bodies fell under differing rates of acceleration. There were two examples given in the "smart people" thread:

1. One was "free-fall" acceleration
2. The other was mechanically induced by a spring

You could have used your inductive reasoning process to conclude that Barotix was referring to distance and suffered only a moment's confusion (something we all are subject to) when he "went to check" and spared him the trouble of replying to your inquiry.

Regarding your shoving match with NuclearSilo seen here and there. I'd like you to think about the last time you saw a big dog with a little dog. In my opinion you guys are both smart and in all likelihood are both above average in intelligence, but Big Dogs don't fight with puppies, they'd kill 'em

YEAH? SO? (What about you, Gramps?):
In terms of "ALTERNATIVES" I didn't have to speak to you about this -or- relativity -or- to anyone about algebra for that matter, but consider the effort to be worthwhile and hope you see this as a compliment (to your innate intelligence).

Also of note might be that I've committed a logical fallacy (on purpose) here. Did you spot it? It's sometimes called a Bifurcation or "Black & White" fallacy. It happens when only two possible options are given and there are in fact more than two. When I asked, 'Did you?' [post what could be termed 'annoying' remarks] on purpose, it too was a logical fallacy because it didn't list all the options, like "my brother got on my comp and posted ". This same question also contained a Complex Question fallacy; that happens when the question contains false assumptions that endorse themselves like "Have you stopped beating your wife?" or "Will you ever stop peeing in the closet?". Hope you liked it, it wasn't meant as a personal attack. You get "C" to the second power from me, that is: ( cookies )² , for humor value. BTW, I'm not a doctor, but I watched an actor play one on TV. I have worked in the IT department of a billion dollar insurance company for more than 12 years as a Computer Analyst and have played WOW since beta, so even though I am still a newb on SRO, I know what it means if somebody says, "Grandpa crits with a wall o' text"! (it can also be called 'Key-J's secret') -but- the one that I (like you apparently) couldn't figure out for the longest time was 'STFU'; I thought it meant what it sounded like: "stuff you".

~Grapns

Velocity (v) is defined in terms of direction and speed.
Velocity is a vector or directed quantity. Meaning that the definition of (v) involves terms like magnitude (how much faster, or how much slower and for what period or periods of time and at what specific rates) and direction. Velocities change by speed increase or decrease (changes to magnitude) -and/or- by any change of direction.

Consider escape speeds (after discounting interference and displacement) needed to overcome earth's gravitational force and go past orbit speeds. Because they are scalar it's not proper to call them "velocities" and to do so is a misnomer. They are independent of direction not changed by coordinate system rotations (in Newtonian mechanics) or by Lorentz transformations (in relativity).

The basal principle of all uniform motion rightly applies if the trains were on large space ships while they were approaching the speed of light in a vacuum ("C") with differing velocities. Velocity is defined in terms of direction and speed but even if speed and acceleration were equal, as long as the two ships had different vectors 'relativity' and Einstein's "Law of Optics" would rightly apply.

Einstein states the Law of Inertia as follows:

"A body removed sufficiently far from other bodies continues in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line."
o Albert Einstein (1879–1955). Relativity: The Special and General Theory. 1920. (p. 13)


This law is important because the Newtonian Mechanics do not hold for a system where this law does not hold.
Since we can rightly assume that John and the train or trains in question were on earth, at the time of the test, your answer (X=4) is correct.

(when you're little and people keep mentioning this Einstein you go searching for answers, some of it you retain... some you don't)