Debunk Help

[JimmyAgent007]

So I was on a forum for some online RP games, and accidentally tripped a conspiracy nut. Since it has in part to do with FTL travel and this is the only forum i visit that deals with this kinda stuff Im curious what you might have to say to help debunk his arguments since they seem a bit out of wack and i might get dragged farther into this.

"to be clear, warp drives and invisibility do exist. The military and powers that be would have you believe that they are just concepts or prototypes, but ask yourself when the last time the gov was honest about secret projects.

The current warp drive is capable of many times the speed of light because it does not travel through space in the same way anything else does. The warp drive creates a peak and trough in the fabric of space time, space contracts at the head of the ship and expands at the back. The bubble created can move as fast as you can power it as the mass of the ship is never actually in motion, thereby not breaking the lightspeed barrier.(which is also contested now that we know certain radio waves can be amplified and pushed faster than light on small scales) The current limit to this tech is only a reliable power source.

Current invisibility tech varies depending on application. there are planes with flexible video panels and micro cams that project the above onto the bottom of the craft and vise versa. that tech is now over 5 years old, as is the personal invisibility suit. Crazy right? there is a suit developed(that can be scaled to fit anything, tanks, apcs, planes, carriers) that bends light around the wearer by using electromagnetic waves/frequencies. all you see is a faint glimmer as the object moves. like heat from asphalt.

We have medical tech that can rebuild organs and limbs from your own tissue by using skin cells returned to the embryonic stem cell state. 3d printed organs and tissue. Smart robotic replacement limbs stronger and lighter than the original. Controlling computer/flight systems with only the mind. And the efforts in nanotechnology are advancing every day.

It is our responsibility to know what the gov is up to and refuse to believe that we still live in the dark ages. To do this now, you have to pay very close attention and read between lines of gov released info. i pray for the day when we have transparent advancement and these technologies and new tech info is shared with the general public, but that day is long from now.

We live in the era of man's greatest advancements to date, and almost all of them are held tight as secrets of the military and gov. "

[Sillychris]

I'd start by attacking his outright false claims.

When he's talking about radio waves moving faster than the speed of light, he is probably thinking of the group velocity. You can make a wave packet appear to move faster than the speed of the individual waves it is made out of. The separate photons, however, strictly move at c.

As far as invisibility, yeah, it does exist. We have a working proof of concept that hides from microwave light and it's simply an engineering problem to generalize the method.

Otherwise, he's making some pretty fantastic claims. You ask him for proof, he says it's a big coverup and so there's no proof then you ask him how he is so sure if there's no proof. Don't try to argue with an idiot.

[Dkmdlb]

You could try asking for evidence, but be warned: you won't get any. Also, if this person found evidence and reason to be persuasive, he wouldn't be holding the positions he holds. At best you are going to be debunking him for the benefit of others reading the thread, not for either your own benefit or his.

[Tex_NL]

If this guy is so sure about all the details ask him to provide solid proof. Or what's the benefit of keeping those things a secret. Why aren't we seeing those so called advances in every day life?

I promise you he can't answer ANY question properly and/or show any believable proof. Most likely he'll try to call YOU out to disproof his claims. The more of his claims you disproof by simple logic the wilder his claims will become up to a point where he no longer has a way out. At that point he'll start cursing and yelling and will try to put the blame on you.

Best advice? Don't feed the troll!

Don't try to argue with an idiot.

So very true. Don't argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

[JimmyAgent007]

i just explained that the amarican gov couldnt keep the atomic bomb a secret and that today it would be even harder. that the truth was somewhere between what the public knows and what he thinks, and that for the purposes of the game he wanted to run that id be fine with it. i agree with you guys, i try not to feed the trolls.

[sojourner]

Conspiracy threads aren't allowed on this forum. This is just an end run attempt around that rule.

[Red Iron Crown]

You're not going to be able to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

You're also not going to be able to prove a negative such as "warp drive and invisibility suits don't exist". There will always exist at least a small possibility that such things are possible and an even smaller possibility that they already exist.

Conspiracy theorists never accept any evidence that contradicts their position, not matter how strongly supported; nor will they scrutinize any evidence supporting their claim, no matter how dubious it is. It's confirmation bias at its finest.

TL;DR: Don't bother, unless you like arguing for its own sake.

[NASAFanboy]

Don't argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down and beat you with experience.

While I do believe that government technology is more advanced than they actually show (One of my rules is that if it's public, it's at least three years outdated by whatever is coming down the line) really don't think they have secret warp drives and invisibility devices.

[Dkmdlb]

You're not going to be able to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

You're also not going to be able to prove a negative such as "warp drive and invisibility suits don't exist".

To clarify, it is possible to prove some negatives (such as - prove to me there is no goat in your dishwasher), but in general it's more difficult and requires comprehensive observations, whereas proving a positive generally requires less comprehensive observation.

[Red Iron Crown]

To clarify, it is possible to prove some negatives (such as - prove to me there is no goat in your dishwasher), but in general it's more difficult and requires comprehensive observations, whereas proving a positive generally requires less comprehensive observation.

I cannot prove there is no goat in my dishwasher. What if there's a goat wearing an invisibility cloak?

[Dunbaratu]

To clarify, it is possible to prove some negatives (such as - prove to me there is no goat in your dishwasher), but in general it's more difficult and requires comprehensive observations, whereas proving a positive generally requires less comprehensive observation.

While it's true that there exist SOME negative claims that can be proven, its important not to lose sight of the fact that there exist a lot more that cannot. To make a negative claim provable you have to narrow down the 'search space' a LOT (in your example it's the phrase "in your dishwasher" that makes it possible), or make the search space so uniform and consistent that it's possible to 'search' the space by logical induction from a small subset of it (i.e. like in math where if you prove that for any integer N, a thing is true about its neighbor N+1, you've indirectly proven that to be true of N+2, N+3, and all other integers). But most negative claims aren't going to have that sort of narrowing down of the search space or uniformity of the type of search space that makes those proof methods possible. The claims of these blatant frauds are designed to make the method of disproof by exhausting the search space impossible because the search space is too large and non-uniform.

It's not "prove there's no flying saucer in your backyard". It's "prove there's no flying saucer somewhere."

[JimmyAgent007]

Conspiracy threads aren't allowed on this forum. This is just an end run attempt around that rule.

I wasnt trying to get around any rule, I was just wondering if anyone knew the actual status on the 'scientific' theories of these things.

Its been a while since i looked up this stuff and was curious for myself.

[Stargate525]

Yeah, I'll give a point-by-point a shot here.

The current warp drive is capable of many times the speed of light because it does not travel through space in the same way anything else does. The warp drive creates a peak and trough in the fabric of space time, space contracts at the head of the ship and expands at the back. The bubble created can move as fast as you can power it as the mass of the ship is never actually in motion, thereby not breaking the lightspeed barrier.(which is also contested now that we know certain radio waves can be amplified and pushed faster than light on small scales) The current limit to this tech is only a reliable power source.

He's just described an Alcubierre Drive. This requires both a negative-mass particle and massive amounts of energy. The math on it is free and publicly available. Ask him where the gov got the particles, where they're hiding the accelerator to MAKE these particles, and how they are managing to produce and contain the requisite amounts of energy (mass equivalent of about a ton, I believe it's down to) to make it work.

Current invisibility tech varies depending on application. there are planes with flexible video panels and micro cams that project the above onto the bottom of the craft and vise versa. that tech is now over 5 years old, as is the personal invisibility suit. Crazy right? there is a suit developed(that can be scaled to fit anything, tanks, apcs, planes, carriers) that bends light around the wearer by using electromagnetic waves/frequencies. all you see is a faint glimmer as the object moves. like heat from asphalt.

The video/camera trick doesn't fool infrared or radar, which is the things aircraft really need to hide from, and even visibly it breaks down on viewing angles. At best, you'd turn the object into a shimmering... thing. Visible, but hard to discern.

Regarding the field thing... Last I heard of it, it was on a microscopic level, and required a stonehenge-like array around the object, which WASN'T hidden. Even then it only hid a narrow band. What possible military or covert application does an invisibility cloak have that doesn't hide you from easily-obtained IR gear, or even a person with a slightly higher-than-normal visible spectrum?

We have medical tech that can rebuild organs and limbs from your own tissue by using skin cells returned to the embryonic stem cell state. 3d printed organs and tissue.

AFAIK this is actually something true, and is currently in the testing phase. The issue on it is cost. for organs. Limbs are a LOT more complex than this, and require multiple cell types and development you can't get in situ.

Smart robotic replacement limbs stronger and lighter than the original. Controlling computer/flight systems with only the mind. And the efforts in nanotechnology are advancing every day.

Stronger, sure. Lighter, sure. Smart? HELL no. We're working on it, but again, it's still in prototype. Just because we haven't heard about it recently doesn't mean it's a coverup. Typically you only hear about the 'hey I've got this idea!' and the 'hey we're selling this thing!' stages of development. In the interim, the R&D usually vanishes.

It is our responsibility to know what the gov is up to and refuse to believe that we still live in the dark ages. To do this now, you have to pay very close attention and read between lines of gov released info. i pray for the day when we have transparent advancement and these technologies and new tech info is shared with the general public, but that day is long from now.

We're talking about the government that can't decide whether or not to pay itself, missed an entire japanese fleet moving towards the biggest naval base we had, and failed to be concerned about foreign nationals with known ties to terrorist groups coming into our country, learning how to fly a plane, but specifically not bothering with learning how to take off or land.

He's putting a lot of faith in the government to be competent. Either the federal government, at every level, is pulling the biggest con game in history, or there are no conspiracies and the government is relatively inept.

Ask him if these are true, why wouldn't Edward Snowden have leaked details on this stuff?

[jwenting]

There is no reasoning with conspiracy theorists. By definition they consider anything that doesn't prove their being right to be evidence of the conspiracy having either corrupted you (which proves it exists) or including you (which obviously proves it exists).

There is a very rare one that can be convinced by logic, but that's only very specific cases like the ones claiming that FEMA has set up secret camps where people who "expose the Truth" are incarcerated.

Some of those are smart enough to realise when confronted with the fact that they're themselves still at large that either those camps don't exist or the authorities rounding up people aren't as all powerful as the conspiracy theory claims them to be.

Other than that, I've pretty much stopped trying to reason with conspiracy theorists and now just mock them instead.

[Camacha]

We have medical tech that can rebuild organs and limbs from your own tissue by using skin cells returned to the embryonic stem cell state. 3d printed organs and tissue

There is some truth here, but this research is only in a very early state. Very simple organs, like the hollow bladder, can experimentally be built and grown. Anything more complex than that is a long way off, mostly due to the incredible complexity of all kinds of systems inside of non-hollow organs or limbs (tiny blood vessels, nerves et cetera).

Yet I would strongly urge you not to waste your time and energy debunking this kind of non-information. It is a lot easier to come up with it than to disprove it, making it easy to exhaust any person trying fast. It is the classical pidgeon playing chess: it will just strut around like it has won and defecate on the board.

Edited March 22, 2014 by Camacha

[78stonewobble]

Right now I can't be bothered to get into that whole argument, but I'd just like to remind you that some people are ill...

All these kinds of ill:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_codes

So even if you make a rational argument...

Edited March 22, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[magnemoe]

Don't argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down and beat you with experience.

While I do believe that government technology is more advanced than they actually show (One of my rules is that if it's public, it's at least three years outdated by whatever is coming down the line) really don't think they have secret warp drives and invisibility devices.

This depend on technology, intelligence and military tech is better in the areas only they are interested in. Stealth technology has few civilian uses and you want to keep at least the details secret to avoid the enemy to figure out countermeasures, intelligence stuff even more so and its easier as fewer know about it, the resolution of recon satellites is far better than the civilian ones who don't need 5-10 cm resolution anyway.

Dual use stuff is the same for everyone, NSA uses the same server setups as every other data center. Here the military is behind, mostly because cutting edge stuff tend to be buggy and require lots of maintenance so you don't want it on the battlefield. The military usually want decent quantities of stuff too, else its little use to develop it.

As for invisibility suits, something like this work to some degree in a lab, not on a battlefield, its however an hot topic finished version will probably use something like electronic paper to change color as it don't require power. Note we talk about adaptive camouflage here like an chameleon it just take color and texture from the environment. An ghillie suit would be more effective but has other downsides.

Warp drive is nonsense, first it has no military use so no reason to keep secret, it however has serious science and even future commercial uses.

Secondly it require an totally different space infrastructure to be useful.

[falofonos]

The evidence of such marvels is likely youtube videos with X-files theme tune as the soundtrack. Lots of text over black background asking stupid questions and making groundless or just plain insane assertions.

I would suggest not trying to debunk at all. If these technologies are being used by the military / government, that's great. Not sure why it matters to a troll on a RP forum and how such secret technologies would have any bearing on their lives at all.

[falofonos]

The evidence of such marvels is likely youtube videos with X-files theme tune as the soundtrack. Lots of text over black background asking stupid questions and making groundless or just plain insane assertions.

I would suggest not trying to debunk at all. If these technologies are being used by the military / government, that's great. Not sure why it matters to a troll on a RP forum and how such secret technologies would have any bearing on their lives at all.

as 78stonewobble said, some people are just not very well.

[SSR Kermit]

AFAIK this is actually something true, and is currently in the testing phase. The issue on it is cost. for organs. Limbs are a LOT more complex than this, and require multiple cell types and development you can't get in situ.

That's not entirely correct. Regenerative medicine is a real thing, and all it takes are a few skin cells that are coaxed into stem-cells. They can then become anything, including an entire arm that would grow directly out of the stump. The problem is that they have a tendency to continue to grow-- they become cancer cells. The cells also have screwed up internal clocks-- they "don't know" what generation they are so they "don't know" when they are supposed to die. The implications of that are unknown (yet).

One researcher used the experimental procedure on himself; he had lost a fingertip and managed to grow it back without incident. He will of course be at greater risk of developing cancer (and metastases) the rest of his life, but it shows that it works in principle (if you're very lucky; many lab animals were not). The risks of directly manipulating running genetic code (ie, control genes) are profound. We're talking "end of the species" kind of risks. It's not going to be around any time soon on a large scale, but other retroviral engineering is already a fact.

It's like something out of science fiction, but I know this is real from a first source (a bioinformatics researcher working with retro-viral promotors, which are what special types of viruses use to inject their code into cells).

EDIT: The news reports said it was a "patient", but from what I've heard this was a case of an individual researcher doing something absolutely crazy, but rather traditional in medicine (using one self as a test subject) that ended up not killing him....

Edited March 22, 2014 by SSR Kermit
google check on the news feature a while back

[Red Iron Crown]

One researcher used the experimental procedure on himself; he had lost a fingertip and managed to grow it back without incident.

Fascinating, would you happen to have a link where I can read more about this?

[Stargate525]

That's not entirely correct. Regenerative medicine is a real thing, and all it takes are a few skin cells that are coaxed into stem-cells. They can then become anything, including an entire arm that would grow directly out of the stump. The problem is that they have a tendency to continue to grow-- they become cancer cells. The cells also have screwed up internal clocks-- they "don't know" what generation they are so they "don't know" when they are supposed to die. The implications of that are unknown (yet).

One researcher used the experimental procedure on himself; he had lost a fingertip and managed to grow it back without incident. He will of course be at greater risk of developing cancer (and metastases) the rest of his life, but it shows that it works in principle (if you're very lucky; many lab animals were not). The risks of directly manipulating running genetic code (ie, control genes) are profound. We're talking "end of the species" kind of risks. It's not going to be around any time soon on a large scale, but other retroviral engineering is already a fact.

It's like something out of science fiction, but I know this is real from a first source (a bioinformatics researcher working with retro-viral promotors, which are what special types of viruses use to inject their code into cells).

EDIT: The news reports said it was a "patient", but from what I've heard this was a case of an individual researcher doing something absolutely crazy, but rather traditional in medicine (using one self as a test subject) that ended up not killing him....

Oh, then they're farther along than I realized I vaguely recall reading an article about some scientist that had managed to grew human ears out of a rat's back, or something...

But as far as the 'don't know what generation they are' thing... I imagine that it's just new, healthy, YOUNG cells. Body of a 40-year old, but that new arm is functionally 20. If that's the case... Sheesh, the only thing that could take you out in a hundred years is massive trauma or brain degeneration. Everything else... I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds to be like the ability to get a factory-new replacement part for anything on the body?

[ScallopPotato]

That's not entirely correct. Regenerative medicine is a real thing, and all it takes are a few skin cells that are coaxed into stem-cells. They can then become anything, including an entire arm that would grow directly out of the stump. The problem is that they have a tendency to continue to grow-- they become cancer cells. The cells also have screwed up internal clocks-- they "don't know" what generation they are so they "don't know" when they are supposed to die. The implications of that are unknown (yet).

One researcher used the experimental procedure on himself; he had lost a fingertip and managed to grow it back without incident. He will of course be at greater risk of developing cancer (and metastases) the rest of his life, but it shows that it works in principle (if you're very lucky; many lab animals were not). The risks of directly manipulating running genetic code (ie, control genes) are profound. We're talking "end of the species" kind of risks. It's not going to be around any time soon on a large scale, but other retroviral engineering is already a fact.

It's like something out of science fiction, but I know this is real from a first source (a bioinformatics researcher working with retro-viral promotors, which are what special types of viruses use to inject their code into cells).

EDIT: The news reports said it was a "patient", but from what I've heard this was a case of an individual researcher doing something absolutely crazy, but rather traditional in medicine (using one self as a test subject) that ended up not killing him....

"end of species kinds of risks" sounds something a conspiracy theorist would talk about a lot. How the media hypes it up and downplays the risks, how the FDA is turning a blind eye because the makers company bought it out, etc.

"Mummy? Are you my mummy?"

[SSR Kermit]

Fascinating, would you happen to have a link where I can read more about this?

It's all over google, wikipedia and more. Regenerative medicine is the keyword.

Oh, then they're farther along than I realized I vaguely recall reading an article about some scientist that had managed to grew human ears out of a rat's back, or something...

But as far as the 'don't know what generation they are' thing... I imagine that it's just new, healthy, YOUNG cells. Body of a 40-year old, but that new arm is functionally 20. If that's the case... Sheesh, the only thing that could take you out in a hundred years is massive trauma or brain degeneration. Everything else... I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds to be like the ability to get a factory-new replacement part for anything on the body?

"end of species kinds of risks" sounds something a conspiracy theorist would talk about a lot. How the media hypes it up and downplays the risks, how the FDA is turning a blind eye because the makers company bought it out, etc.

"Mummy? Are you my mummy?"

Well, I read a rather distressing article on the subject (I have it on paper, I'll try to find it and post a citation link, maybe it's online), and indeed Extremely Prolonged Youth is the implied consequence. That's because you have to "cure cancer" in order to make it work, and also be able to modify what's known as "programmed cell death". That could even mean reversing the aging process.

The researchers had reservations against what "youth" meant-- we are talking something quite different from physical age. All your cells replace on a regular basis, so the difference lies in how many times the cells have divided. This has profound genetic meaning, but the arm won't grow out a baby arm and then mature; it would be (mostly) as it was. The clock no longer matches the physical age. The stem cells are responding to the cells in the stump, and then in a chain reaction as it grows (I have had this explained to me, so I'm a bit fuzzy on that one). In programming terms, they where instanced with the same parameters as the stump-cell, but there's a null-pointer in it's internal time variable.

However, here is where the "end of the species" part comes in. Feed forward in genetic systems can be beneficial on a small scale but over many generations it usually leads to stagnation (there are technical reasons; the noise-to-signal ratio of useful genes increases. Plants are a notable exception, they can have truly enormous DNA). Sterility is common in biological systems, and so-called "over-fitting" in artificial evolution; they have lost the ability to evolve further, "stuck in their local minima". Sterility is a shot to the temple in evolutionary terms. That's it. Done. So unless those who wanted to live forever willingly sterilized themselves, there would be a problem.

However, I take a different stand point; mostly from a spiritual point of view. I think our DNA has protected itself from that kind of mutation early on in evolution. During the fractal phase of life, that evolutionary path should have been tested. It didn't work, or life in general would not die of age. While regenerative medicine will change surgery and internal medicine as we know it, I believe we will find any attempt to change the fundamentals of our evolution to fail-- it's not a compatible modification. We have to die, or we can't live to begin with-- not as human beings at least. Maybe as some kind of sapient crystalline sponge </nerdy reference drop>?

And as for "conspiracies"; where's the conspiracy? There are some pretty obvious conspiracies out there, so I'm rather disconcerted at how many people waste time on aliens. I mean, when individuals in governments make backroom deals with banks to rip off the people, that's pretty much the definition of conspiracy. There's been an awful lot of that the last hundred years. Yet. Aliens. Lizards. Orbital Mind Control Rays.

PS. Don't get me wrong, I love tinfoils, but they don't much like me....

Edited March 22, 2014 by SSR Kermit
clarification

[Camacha]

That's not entirely correct. Regenerative medicine is a real thing, and all it takes are a few skin cells that are coaxed into stem-cells. They can then become anything, including an entire arm that would grow directly out of the stump. The problem is that they have a tendency to continue to grow-- they become cancer cells. The cells also have screwed up internal clocks-- they "don't know" what generation they are so they "don't know" when they are supposed to die. The implications of that are unknown (yet).

To be honest, if you would get that far it would be major news and probably worthy of a Nobel prize.

It's all over google, wikipedia and more. Regenerative medicine is the keyword.

Whoah, sorry, I am not letting you get away with handwavy references. For these major kind of statements you need at least one truly reputable source (like a medical journal of any quality) and preferably more.

Without it this is just a typical internet story.