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Miles Mathis

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DerekN

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I haven't seen the work of Miles Mathis mentioned on this forum yet, so here I want to bring him to the attention of those who haven't heard of him, and to ask those who have what they think of his work.

Miles Mathis writes papers about math and physics. He is intelligent, knowledgeable, arrogant, sometimes funny. I think you can say his work is objective: he doesn't indulge in mathematical fantasies. And he has a lot of good criticisms of modern, mainstream science and math.

Here are some papers I like and that are relatively easy to understand:

Calculus Simplified

The Extinction of Pi

String Theory: The Ineligant Universe

Superposition

Relativity Demistified

Richard Feynman and the Glorification of Heuristics

But there is a lot more stuff, most of which I don't really understand:

http://milesmathis.com/updates.html

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This guy is a crackpot, and I would advise not wasting your time reading his nonsense, especially if you are interested in really learning about math and physics.

I wasted 20 minutes reading his paper on how acceleration is really just squared velocity and scanning through the equally ridiculous "pi is 4" paper.

One Amazon reviewer of his book put it nicely:

This is a vanity-published collection of theories by a self-styled "scientist" who, at the beginning of his bio blurb, anoints himself "the new Leonardo." Such a pathological absence of humility should be taken as a warning.

Miles Mathis is a curious case. On the one hand, he makes a few lucid points about the current state of physics, and asks some interesting questions that typically go unanswered. He may actually have a decent idea or two. But like your everyday crank, who toils away as isolated as the Unabomber, having never met a real scientist, Mathis peppers his writing with bitter screeds mocking not only prominent physicists but also the journalists who report on them -- typically attacking their wording and analogies more than their actual ideas. This does not reflect well on his attempts to be taken seriously.

Much worse, he often lapses into "theories" that border on the idiotic, as if he stopped paying attention to science class in the 6th grade. One is reminded of creationists who deride evolution (e.g., why don't we see life evolving in a jar of peanut butter), or even more so, parodies of creationists. Consider the following passage about atmospheric pressure: "Go look at your bathroom scale. The atmosphere should be pressing down on that scale right now. Why doesn't it register a number?" Great point, new Leonardo. Or, in a discussion about heat: "It has never been understood [it hasn't?] how a gas maintains its energy, despite a collosal [sic] number of collisions." Conservation of energy perhaps? Because any energy lost would be in the form of heat, which causes molecules to move faster? Or, finally, on why electrons have "spin": "The cause of the spin is a collision between quanta ... Off-center hits will cause spin, by simple poolball mechanics." Off-center hits? Seriously? And these random collisions cause the quantized intrinsic spin that's measured with consistent values in real lab experiments? Mathis is perhaps the last person on earth to think that particles literally spin -- but to him they must, because an electron couldn't possibly display a property that isn't seen in a pool ball made of trillions of particles, experiments be damned. He might as well tell us how quarks actually have real "color," or explain why, if you tasted a spoonful of them, they would have "flavor."

Mathis never cites peer-reviewed researchers in support of his theories. He only cites his own previous ideas, which are based not on experiment and collaboration but ultimately on his trademark "common sense" suppositions, which are seemingly written to appeal to child-like minds. ("Is it even true that there are more ways for your hair to be curly than straight? If so, then why do more people have straight hair than have curly hair?") More disagreeably, he dresses up his theories with remarkably adolescent rants about mainstream explanations being just too darn complicated-like. He attempts mathematical proofs, but his reformulation of calculus is similarly based on his misleading musings. ("A point on a graph has two dimensions. But of course a physical point does not have two dimensions ... A point is generally understood to have no dimensions.") And as Mathis repeatedly reminds us, if the premises are faulty, the conclusions are bound to be faulty as well. Not great news for his revelation that the value of pi is actually 4!

But hey, two stars for comedic value and for putting some new ideas out there, kooky as they might be.

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This guy is a crackpot, and I would advise not wasting your time reading his nonsense, especially if you are interested in really learning about math and physics.

I wasted 20 minutes reading his paper on how acceleration is really just squared velocity and scanning through the equally ridiculous "pi is 4" paper.

One Amazon reviewer of his book put it nicely:

I saw the same review, but it doesn't have any content. It reminds me of reviews of Atlas Shrugged, whether justified or not. If it's convemient, could you point out some of the actual fallacies you saw in the "pi is 4" paper? I read it and it seemed consistent.

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I saw the same review, but it doesn't have any content. It reminds me of reviews of Atlas Shrugged, whether justified or not. If it's convemient, could you point out some of the actual fallacies you saw in the "pi is 4" paper? I read it and it seemed consistent.

It's not convenient, but I'll try. It's difficult, because you have read through paragraphs of argument by intimidation, misused definitions, and general nonsense, just to find a small bit of math. Once you find an equation, you have to go back through the preceding paragraphs to figure what the hell he means when he says "the radius is a velocity" or "the circumference is a velocity squared".

Look at his process for finding arc length via a limit. Ask yourself if he makes sense. The correct procedure involves integrating infinitesimal chords, because both endpoints of each chord are on the arc. He decides that simple math taught in high school precalculus is wrong, and says you should you use a sort of stair-step approach. Notice that his method uses two line segments which intersect outside of the arc. His idea of curved motion is that you can only have motion in orthogonal directions, and you must add those up. This is so obviously false it's hard to discuss. So the circumference of a circle is the same as the perimeter of a square with the same width... Really?!?!

If he were right, GPS wouldn't work as amazingly as it does, and geosynchronous communications satellites wouldn't be geosynchronous.

If you want some detailed examples of his math errors, two guys have started a blog for just this purpose.

Edited by Jake
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Yeah, I read over the pi paper again. I thought he was just trying to convert pi to 4 by adding an extra acceleration term to eat up the extra distance. He never seems to make any point about it though, and the applications are vague. Also, he's comes across as a real douche, and then starts trying to say that this changes g to 7.9 and a bunch of other ungrounded bs.

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I wish he would do a single mechanics problem to see if he can attach a value to his ghost acceleration, which his whole field theory is based on. I like his way of thinking about quantum/astronomical problems, but you can take any set of data and correlate it to any theory if you don't ever do any math.

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. Notice that his method uses two line segments which intersect outside of the arc. His idea of curved motion is that you can only have motion in orthogonal directions, and you must add those up. This is so obviously false it's hard to discuss. So the circumference of a circle is the same as the perimeter of a square with the same width... Really?!?!

Hell, with that kind of logic I can "prove" that the diagonal across a square is the same length as two of the sides.

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Hell, with that kind of logic I can "prove" that the diagonal across a square is the same length as two of the sides.

It _is_ the vector addition of the two sides. What Mathis tries to do is pull all the length dimesnions up to the level of the velocity vectors (the process of drawing a circle), add them, and then disregard the loss of magnitude in the resultant as something the orbital acceleration eats to make the curve of the circle.

I can't put that into words any better than he can. Apples and oranges, and like I said, not one example or experiment. What draws people to him is the way he approaches problems mechanically, with no points or instants or dead cats.

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It _is_ the vector addition of the two sides. What Mathis tries to do is pull all the length dimesnions up to the level of the velocity vectors (the process of drawing a circle), add them, and then disregard the loss of magnitude in the resultant as something the orbital acceleration eats to make the curve of the circle.

I can't put that into words any better than he can. Apples and oranges, and like I said, not one example or experiment. What draws people to him is the way he approaches problems mechanically, with no points or instants or dead cats.

The language of Mathematics exists for a good reason. It allows one to use succinct symbols and syntax which have exact meanings in place of sentence upon sentence of clarifying natural language words. What's easier to deal with conceptually?

a2 + b2 = c2 (with an associated diagram)

. or

The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides (no formulae, but still has mathematical language)

. or

If you have a triangle with one angle equal to 90° (a right triangle), the length of the longest side (the hypotenuse) multiplied by itself is equal to the addition of the lengths of the other two sides multiplied by themselves and added together.

You can read the third statement with less of an education, but the first is easier to comprehend.

Mathis' writing is heavy in natural language, which has two effects:

- One can read his papers without an advanced math education (i.e. there are few-to-no esoteric terms), but understanding individual words doesn't necessarily entail an understanding of a sentence, paragraph, or paper.

- He can easily equivocate concepts and/or make errors that are harder to detect, because they are buried in long strings of words.

In the pi=4 paper, he says he's taking the limit of the tangent, rather than the limit of the chord. If he were to actually calculate the limit of the sum of the lengths of the tangent line segments, he would get the right answer (It just shrinks to the limit, where the chord grows to the limit). Instead he uses those 2-step intervals where travel is only allowed in 2 directions. There is zero physical evidence that angles are quantized, so there is no justification for this. Even if there were evidence for angles being quantized, they would have to be quantized orthogonally (i.e. 2 directions per dimension) or he's still wrong.

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It _is_ the vector addition of the two sides. What Mathis tries to do is pull all the length dimesnions up to the level of the velocity vectors (the process of drawing a circle), add them, and then disregard the loss of magnitude in the resultant as something the orbital acceleration eats to make the curve of the circle.

I can't put that into words any better than he can. Apples and oranges, and like I said, not one example or experiment. What draws people to him is the way he approaches problems mechanically, with no points or instants or dead cats.

No, I meant in the sense of adding scalars, not vectors. The alleged proof goes like this. Take a square and its diagonal. To approximate the diagonal, draw a stairstep through it, i.e. a stairstep that goes from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner. As the size of the steps diminishes, the stairstep approaches the straight diagonal line, yet always has a length equal to two of the sides.

It's equivalent to what this guy is doing with using orthogonals to prove that pi = 4.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm not so sure. He is not flat out claiming Pi is 4. This is from his site:

"Abstract: I show that in kinematic situations, π is 4. For all those going ballistic over my title, I repeat and stress that this paper applies to kinematic situations, not to static situations. I am analyzing an orbit, which is caused by motion and includes the time variable. In that situation, π becomes 4. When measuring your waistline, you are not creating an orbit, and you can keep π for that. So quit writing me nasty, uninformed letters."

I didn't bother reading that paper since the Abstract scared me away, but I read the abbreviated paper on Calculus the OP linked to and I found it somewhat edifying. I'm skeptical about most of his claims to be sure, but what I have read thus far has been easy to understand and compelling.

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The more I read, the more I like this guy. He remakes the point that if the 20th century did what it did to objects like the government, the art museum, the novel, etc. If thinkers in the 20th century and before had to attack logic and universities and schools in order to accomplish all that, why would one presume that math and science were any different? You probably know about the methods whereby children are taught to read and write in public schools. The whole attack on reason was pervasive - that was logical.

I started reading his stuff, and was excited at first because it seemed to me he promised incredible things. But he soon fell short of my expectations. Now I'm returning with a more open mind; I'm sure he doesn't know everything, but he makes a great deal of sense in what he says. I mean, what he says may not amount to as much as I had thought it would at first, nor will I agree or be able to verify everything immediately, but I know he knows a lot about this mathematics and physics and that I may benefit from reading him.

Also, two things. It seems to me his that the links that are supposed to take you from one chapter to the next don't really accomplish that and that one is better off not using any of his links period. And I saved the best for last: his politics. I'm still sort of scratching my head about his politics. My theory is that is sort of playing devil's advocate. But that is not physics or math.

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I want to talk about his idea that G in Newton's gravitational law is a scaling constant that gets you from one measured field to another. You're probably better off reading him directly, as I won't explain it correctly; I don't have a background in physics.

That you measure the volume of an object in space and multiply it by the object's density to figure out its "mass", but that since you are multiplying "fields" together, you need a number to relate them. So, the reason why G is such a small fraction is that we want to bring the volume down to the level of the photon. And that the photon can somehow explain weight. It is an attempt to explain why matter has "mass" through the photon. Supposedly, the same goes for Coulomb's law and why Coulomb's law is similar to Newton's. They were both unifying the gravitational field with the electromagnetic field?

What is the commonly held opinion on this?

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  • 5 years later...
On 9/7/2010 at 1:51 AM, DanLane said:

 

 

 

I saw the same review, but it doesn't have any content. It reminds me of reviews of Atlas Shrugged, whether justified or not. If it's convemient, could you point out some of the actual fallacies you saw in the "pi is 4" paper? I read it and it seemed consistent.

Actual fallacies?  I am flabbergasted that you would issue this challenge.  The actual fallacy is when he says pi = 4.  Pretty simple really.  As in most of his papers Mathis displays an astounding and aggressive ignorance of math even at the high school level; is there a word that means "ignorance" only more so?  That's what he displays.  In this case he uses taxicab math (yes, that's a real thing) to find his value of pi, which is 4, which is simply the upper bound when you use taxicab math to compute the value of pi.  In typical Mathis style, he completely ignores the lower bound.  Just so we're clear, he is completely wrong about almost everything, in all of his papers.

Edited by Gus Mueller
Just fleshing out my critique, which is magnificent.
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On 9/8/2010 at 2:41 AM, DanLane said:

 

It _is_ the vector addition of the two sides.  

Yeah, I'm gonna stop you right there, cowboy.  Vectors have direction.  The sides of a square do not have direction.  The diagonals of a square do not have direction.  You've just been been mathed!  Which is much better than being Mathised.  Math is the antidote for Mathis.

Quote

I can't put that into words any better than he can. Apples and oranges, and like I said, not one example or experiment. What draws people to him is the way he approaches problems mechanically, with no points or instants or dead cats. 

Which, in an apples and oranges sort of way, is why his papers' conclusions are consistently wrong.  People are drawn to Charles Manson, Deepak Chopra, and [insert name of politician you don't like here].

Edited by dream_weaver
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On 10/4/2010 at 8:20 AM, Brian9 said:

I'm not so sure. He is not flat out claiming Pi is 4.

{David Spad voice}Yeah, he kiiiiind of is {/David Spade voice]
 

Quote

 

This is from his site:

"Abstract: I show that in kinematic situations, π is 4. For all those going ballistic over my title, I repeat and stress that this paper applies to kinematic situations, not to static situations. I am analyzing an orbit, which is caused by motion and includes the time variable. In that situation, π becomes 4. When measuring your waistline, you are not creating an orbit, and you can keep π for that. So quit writing me nasty, uninformed letters."

 

Newsflash: in "kinematic situations" pi = 3.1415....

Quote

I didn't bother reading that paper since the Abstract scared me away, but I read the abbreviated paper on Calculus the OP linked to and I found it somewhat edifying. I'm skeptical about most of his claims to be sure, but what I have read thus far has been easy to understand and compelling.

 

If you found it edifying, and you understand it (quick, can you know something that is not true?  Answer!) and it is compelling to you that is ipso facto proof that you have some deficiencies, in your education or critical thinking, or both.  The good news is that's a fixable situation.
 

Edited by dream_weaver
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On 10/13/2010 at 7:09 PM, Brian9 said:

I want to talk about his idea that G in Newton's gravitational law is a scaling constant that gets you from one measured field to another. You're probably better off reading him directly, as I won't explain it correctly; I don't have a background in physics.  

Good, you then are on a precisely equal footing with Mathis, as physics is one of many things he doesn't have a background in; another is math.

Quote

That you measure the volume of an object in space and multiply it by the object's density to figure out its "mass", but that since you are multiplying "fields" together, you need a number to relate them. So, the reason why G is such a small fraction is that we want to bring the volume down to the level of the photon. And that the photon can somehow explain weight. It is an attempt to explain why matter has "mass" through the photon. Supposedly, the same goes for Coulomb's law and why Coulomb's law is similar to Newton's. They were both unifying the gravitational field with the electromagnetic field?

I'm really trying to find something correct in the above paragraph but not succeeding.

Quote

What is the commonly held opinion on this?

 Among people who have actually taken some calculus and/or physics the consensus is that Mathis is an incredible boob whose  high output of stuff that's completely wrong is a symptom of a (probably benign) mental disorder.

Edited by dream_weaver
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