Cude replied with the following 'reasonable sounding' rebuttal, but it is faulty at a fundamental level. It is not a valid comparison... I think he was just accusing someone else of that same thing.
> I guess it depends what you mean by brute force physics. To me, when I > push a child on a swing, I'm using brute force physics. And I know > intuitively that if I push at the natural frequency of the pendulum, > the amplitude of the oscillation is much higher. That's resonance. If > I push at a random frequency, energy will be dissipated, and the child > will cry. Resonance allows the efficient storing of energy, so it can > be built up after multiple cycles. The faulty reasoning here is soooo simple that I can't believe Cude isn't aware of it. which means he is either a pathological skeptic, being consciously aware of only the elements of a debate which support his beliefs (theory), or, he is consciously using faulty, but reasonable sounding rebuttals, to maintain other people's skepticism, or, just trying to appear to win a debate. Here is how his 'rebuttal' is so blatantly faulty: Pushing a person on a swing does indeed involve force (not brute force), and if timed right, as Cude agrees, involves resonance. That is obvious. What also should be obvious to Cude, and is why his rebuttal is laughable, or worse yet, deceptive, is that in order to achieve the SAME amplitude of the swing when the 'push' is given in resonance with the swing's oscillations, as opposed to when it is not resonant, the latter would have to push EXTREMELY hard in order to get the person to swing to the same height, and then, that amplitude would likely be destructively reduced by the next, wrongly timed, hard push; so one might get occasional large amplitudes in a non-resonant system, but never continuous large amplitudes as in a resonant system. The simple fact is, that given the SAME amount of 'push' at regular intervals, a resonant system will achieve what appears to be extreme amplitudes whereas the non-resonant push of the SAME amount of force, can NEVER achieve any lasting, significant amplitude. This is physics 101, and why Cude couldn't see that is most revealing. -Mark
