Rex Kerr
4 min readJan 19, 2023

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What you're doing is like the following.

Suppose we have a cube with one meter long sides. We all agree that the sides are one meter long.

I say: the Empire State Building will fit inside this cube.

You say: no, it's way too small. The Empire State building is hundreds of times longer than the distance between the corners of the cube. It's completely impossible!

I say: there is something missing in your knowledge of geometry, Fred. I can't believe you're missing that. It is the IN-OUT axis. It is very complex. This is how it fits.

You say: no, it doesn't matter what axis you choose, it's way way way too small unless you're allowed to turn the Empire State Building into some other form of matter, like neutronium.

I say: no, my model of the Empire State Building is the same as yours--it's made out of steel and concrete and glass and all the rest. But what you don't see is that in Model B, the Empire State Building fits in a one-meter cube.

You say: it can't because the cube is too small!

I say: we haven't even talked about the left-spiral and right-spiral axes! Your bias is so strong you cannot understand the structure. Structurally, the Empire State Building will fit inside this cube.

This is almost a perfect analogy to our conversation, except with people reversed.

You (seem to) agree that forces acting collectively cannot amplify each other (just combine normally), and all the weak forces acting at vast distances from the rest of the galaxy aren't ANYWHERE near strong enough to create a phenomenon like you said.

It's too weak. It's way way way too weak. That was the point of my calculation. I tried combining the collective forces in the strongest way possible and it was way way way too weak.

Now, if you start saying things like, "Yes, I know that star is 1000 light years away, but it's going to apply force to the black eye area as if it's 0.000001 light years away because that is how it cooperates with the collective", well, then I think you're just making stuff up without evidence, but at least maybe it's strong enough to work.

Or, if you start saying things like, "When we launch a satellite, we have to consider the Earth's pull on the satellite, but also the Moon's pull. And also the sun's pull. And also the pull of the Earth-Moon pair. And also the pull of the Earth-Sun pair, and the Moon-Sun pair, and the Earth-Moon-Sun triple. Only by considering all of these can we calculate the force on the satellite," then I would agree that in this model, you have to be very careful about how you treat the "collective" action of all the stars in the galaxy. However, again, I would think you're just making stuff up, because there is no evidence that you have to consider all these things independently. Everywhere else (except in the vicinity of black holes, where things get very weird because of all the mass that is so close), we can just consider the individual contribution of the three bodies to the gravitational field and be done with it.

But you keep insisting that Model B isn't radically rewriting all of physics. It basically agrees with Model A in most places.

If you want to understand this better, you must learn more mathematics and more physics. The problem is not that others don't have the structural understanding, it is that you cannot evaluate structures because you don't understand how to quantify things. I can rule out vast categories of structures because all of them are quantitatively ridiculous, like the idea that 100 Argentine ants can lift a person because we have to consider not just each individual ant but the collective of ants 1, 5, and 7, and of the even-numbered ants, and so on. It DOESN'T MATTER. 100 ants aren't enough, no matter what they do collectively!

This logic is structurally sound but quantitatively garbage: Structurally, the problem with a car crash is that forward meets backwards, causing a tension that can only be resolved through injury. So, to solve car crashes we can install a pocket fan on the dashboard that activates when there is a crash. This will provide a forwards flow of air that meets the backwards of the crash, leaving the passengers unharmed. Why can't automobile engineers understand my structural brilliance?! They are all caught in their dogma of crumple zones and airbags and cannot imagine the simple structure of forwards and backwards! Except that's not why automobile engineers aren't thinking about pocket fans. The why is because the pocket fan can't do anything ANYWHERE near strong enough to have an important effect on a car crash.

Your problem is that you don't account for quantities. You need to fix the problem, or you will stay permanently unable to distinguish structurally sound but quantitatively preposterous ideas from actual sound ideas.

You imagine the galaxy as huge and immensely powerful, and like a hurricane.

But the forces are actually incredibly weak. Incredibly weak forces acting for immense periods of time over unimaginably vast distances do end up having sizable cumulative impacts. But the apparent mass at the galactic center is not covering an unimaginably vast space, and it does not act over immense periods of time. So what works for holding the galaxy together does not work for explaining the extremely strong gravitational effects at the center.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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