Well, yes and no. The gravitational forces acting on the larger mass may be larger, but so is the mass it has to move, by exactly the same amount. That means mass is actually irrelevant and gravity accelerates everything in a vacuum at exactly the same rate, even though it takes more 'force' to accelerate larger masses. On earth, it's 9.8m per sec per sec. no matter what the mass is.

My guess would be Inertia. Even in a vacuum objects have Inertia.

"Inertial mass is the mass of an object measured by its resistance to acceleration"

Deformable objects might deform slightly as they accelerate (feather).
However, their center of gravity is the same as a rigid object (bowling ball)

The partial vacuum explanation is the only thing I could come up with as well.

@eric3579 and @dag -
I thought about that...but the entire feather is under the same gravity, so being accelerated at the same rate. Without anything to disrupt that, like air, I was confused. If you wave the feather in a vacuum, it would make sense because the force would travel through the quill then out to each 'strand' (just like the flag 'waving' on the moon when they moved it)...but being dropped as it was, it didn't make sense to me. Perhaps it's not near a perfect vacuum, only close enough to do the experiment?

My alternate guess is moment of inertia...but I can't fully explain why.

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WOW, that vacuum slowed down the bowling ball to the speed of a feather. Pretty cool. That's why nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

Its definitely relativity.

They fall at the same speed? As each other? With respect to what? Why are they even falling at all?

In relativity you always have a frame of reference. If you take the speed of feathers with respect to that of the bowling ball in a vacuum, the difference is zero....they aren't moving at all within the frame of reference.

No need to complicate things by bringing the earth into the equation.

Its a round about way of using something so simple to explain how relativistic equations are handled in his works.

They have a great example of this in the Exploratorium in SF, but in a rotating/flipping clear plastic tube with a feather and a plastic army man and a button to turn on the vacuum.

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Nailed it dude!

The only angle I feel hasn't really come up so far is the idea that private enterprise and public governance could easily be regarded as two manifestations of the same "real" social dynamic: Establishment/challenger (or master/slave if you want to get fully Hegelian about it)

Like, why do we even develop governmental systems in the 1st place?

I have yet to conceive a better answer than: "to curb the destructive excesses of private wealth/power."

Why would we champion personal freedom? I would say: "to curb the destructive excesses of public wealth/power".

Or something to that effect at the very least. The idea of a society with either absolute personal, or absolute collective sovereignty seems hellish to me. And probably unworkable to boot!

There seems to me a tendency in the history of societies for these two types of power to dance either side of equilibrium as the real power struggle unfolds i.e. between reigning establishment and challenger power groups/paradigms.

Right now the establishment is both economic and governmental. The corruption is mutually supporting. Corporations buy and control governments, governments facilitate corporations ruling the market and continuing to be able to buy them.

The circle jerk @blankfist IMHO is between government and private dynasty and moreover I strongly believe that in a vacuum, one will always create the other.

Pure collectivism will naturally breed an individualist challenger and visa versa.

People are at their best I think when balancing self interest and altruism. Too much of either tends to hurt others around you and diminish ones capacity to grow and adapt. (being nice is no good if you lack the will and capacity to get shit done)

It seems natural that the ideal way of organising society would always balance collective state power, with private personal power.

Libertarianism (even the superior non anarchist version) defangs the state too much IMHO. Some collectivist projects such as education, scientific research and exploration I think tend to be better served by public direction. But more importantly I expect the state to referee the market, just as I expect public transparency to referee the state.

Total crowbar separation between the three: public officials cannot legally own or control private wealth and cannot live above standard of their poorest citizens. Private citizens cannot inherit wealth legally, only earn and create it. The state cannot legally hold any secret or perform any function of government outside public view unless it is to prepare sensitive legal proceedings (which must then be disclosed in full when actioned).

In the age of global communications this kind of transparency may for the first time be a workable solution (it's already near impossible to keep a lid on most political scandals and this is very early days). There is also the possibility of a steadily de-monetised market as crowdfunding and crowdsourcing production models start to become more advanced and practical than traditional market dynamics. e.g. kickstarter style collective investment in place of classical entrepreneurial investment.

The benefits and dangers of both capitalism and socialism here would be trending towards diffusion amongst the populace.

And then there's the whole Meritocracy vs Democracy thing, but that's really getting into another topic and I've probably already gone on too long now.

Much love

*promote the master!
welcome back @blankfist
ya'all need to start taking notes.

this guy was super entertaining,i thought he was gonna have an embolism at the halfway mark.

hiiiiilarious!!!

look,no matter which direction you approach this situation the REAL dynamic is simply:power vs powerlessness.

we also should establish which form of libertarianism we are speaking.cultofdusty criticizes the bastardized american version and this dude come from a more classic libertarian (sans the unbridled capitalism).so there should be no surprise they are at odds in their opinion.this man is defending a libertarianism that cultofdusty may not even be aware of at all.

libertarianism has little or nothing in common with the republican party.

so when this dude posits that the corporation is the fault of government,while not entirely accurate,it is also not entirely wrong.corporations in the distant past were temporary alliances of companies,with the blessing of the people (government) to achieve a specific job or project and once that project was complete,the corporation was dissolved.

it was a cadre of clever lawyers,representing powerful interests who convinced the supreme court that corporations were people and hence began the long road leading us to where we are now.

so it was partly the government that fascillitated the birth of the corporation.

i do take issue with this mans assessment of public education.his commentary is the height of ignorance.while i would agree that what we have now can hardly be called 'education".his blanket and broad statements in regards to public education TOTALLY ignores the incredible benefits that come from an educated public.he ignores the history of public education,as if this system has been unchanging for 100 years.

that is just flat out...stupid..or more likely just lazy,regurgitating the maniacal rants of his heroes without ever once giving that 100 years some critical study.

so let me point to the the late 50's and 60's here in the USA where our public education was bar-none the best in the world.what were the consequences of this stellar public education?
well,...civil rights marches,anti-war movement,womens rights movement and a whole generation that not only questioned authority and the entrenched power structures but openly DEFIED those structures.

this absolutely petrified the powered elite.
during the height of the anti-war movement nixon was forced to baricade the white house with school buses and was quoted as saying to kissinger " henry,they are coming for me".

again,the fundamental premise is,and has always been -power vs powerlessness.

so over the nest few decades public education was manipulated and transformed into a subtle indoctrination to teach young minds to tacitly submit to authority.

which this man addresses and i agree,i just disagree with his overly generalized non-historically accurate puke-vomit.

my final point,and its always the point where libertarians lose their shit on me like an offended westboro baptist acolyte (its actually two points) is this:
1.if we can blame the government for much of the problems in regards to concentrated power and the abuse that goes with that power,then we MUST also address the abusive (and corrosive) power of the corporation.many libertarians i discuss with seem to be under the impression that if we take away the symbiotic relationship between corporations and government that somehow..miraculously..the corporation will all of a sudden become the benign and productive member of society.

this is utter fiction.
this is magical thinking.
many corporations have a larger GDP than many nation states.this is about POWER and there is ZERO evidence any corporation will be willing to relinquish that power just because there is no government to influence,manipulate or corrupt.

which brings me to point number 2:
my libertarian friends.
you live in a thing called a society.
a community where other people also live.
so please stop with this rabid individualism as somehow being the pinnacle of human endeavour.im all for personal responsibility but nobody lives in a vacuum and nobody rides this train alone.the world does not revolve around YOU.

but i do understand,and agree,that the heart of the libertarian argument is more power to the people.i also understand their arguments against governments,which directly and oftimes indirectly disempowers people.

i get that.its a good argument..
BUT...for fucks sake please admit that the corporation in its current state has GOT TO FUCKING GO!

because if you dont then ultimately you are trading one tyrant for another and in my humble opinion,ill stick with the one i can at least vote on or protest.

there aint nothing democratic about a multi-national corporation.they are,by design,dictatorships.

so i will agree to wittle the government down and restrict its powers to defense (NOT war),law and fraud police,if you agree to dismantle and restructure the seven headed leviathan that is todays corporation.

deal?

I'm fairly conflicted.

The issue with having an assassination program with virtually no oversight, run by a government whose people are all too willing to ignore the collateral damage it brings to foreigners is pretty obvious. You could argue that terrorists target the US because of genuine grievances (past blowback particularly from intervention during the Cold War motivated largely by opposing a communist threat over any moral considerations). From there you could argue that if only the US avoided foreign intervention, in time it would no longer be a terrorist target and have no need for such morally questionable action as using drones with significant civilian casualty risk.

I'm sceptical of this argument. For one I think the espoused goals of many terrorist organisations are often a sham. They may start as violent reactionaries to some genuinely held grievance. But mature organisations initiate a conflict with the US because notoriety brings financial support and more fighters which in turn improves their ability to project power, which is their ultimate goal. So I don't see US disengagement as a solution because terrorist attacks and beheadings of its nationals will continue to politically galvanise the US into action. At that point having being disengaged beforehand (lacking intel, ability to target leadership with drones) is just a disadvantage.

I also don't see a government other than the US capable and willing to rally a group of nations and take a leading role against a group like ISIS. It's fair to say that the US invasion of Iraq was largely responsible for destabilising an authoritarian government under Saddam that would have prevented the emergence of a Sunni group like this. But then, imagine if Saddam was still in power in reaction to the Arab Spring and the result was a situation like Syria today. It is all too possible that a similar group would have emerged in a power vacuum not caused by US intervention.

My point is, I agree it is horrible to see civilians being killed by drones and having to live under the constant terror of attack but I don't see a better solution. In fact it seems that drones are probably the solution with the least risk of civilian casualty. There is a reason why the Yemeni/Pakistani government tacitly support them even while publicly disavowing them.

Of course I would like to see them used more judiciously but I am sceptical that this is feasibly possible. I do not doubt that the CIA/Pentagon who run the program are familiar with blowback and the risks of inciting attacks on the US through the killing of innocents in these strikes. It is possible incentives for 'results' may lead to their overuse at the expense of civilian lives and the long term cost. Maybe more openness would be best. Then again more openness would serve as a rallying cry for existing terrorist organisations.

It's always hilarious to me how the 'rich' convince themselves that they made their wealth in a vacuum once they've made the wealth, but on the way up they're right there with their hand out any time there's a possibility of getting 'something for nothing' (like tax breaks amounting to 0% tax, exemptions from regulations at taxpayer expense, use of public services they don't pay for, public education for their workforce, etc....).
In America at least, business all stand on the shoulders of both industry/innovation that came before them AND (crumbling, ignored) infrastructure paid for and 'maintained' by taxpayers (taxpayers that didn't use every possible method to avoid paying their share...and the obligation shirking industries' share as well). Zuckerberg and Gates are two fine examples of this, both their companies are built on an industry created by the government/taxpayers...computers...and also of people profiting exorbitantly from other people's work product while the actual 'creators' are salaried lower middle class at best that don't own their own creations.

For what it's worth I think Dawkin's statement 'no engineer would ever design that' is misguided as anyone who has hacked some software to meet a deadline will know or someone how has used duct tape to temporarily fix a leaky pipe so a building can open on time (but forget to fix it months later) will also know that compromises in design are the norm. there is never a perfect piece of engineering as we are human and don't live in a vacuum.

Spinning the iphone - it is possible to do, i've played with that effect with a tv remote as a kid, trying to flip it over once and catch it. That's when i found out about Dzhanibekov effect. I think that basically more mass lies along the plane in which it is spinning, and it either isn't balanced or isn't precisely stable as it's released, and so there is a net centrifugal force acting on the phone in the direction that it begins to rotate (if you don't do it right), gently at first but the further it goes into its spin the more it reinforces itself and it flips. (that's what i remember from childhood, but the wikipedia article itself is accurate so double check) I'd like to investigate this effect in space/vacuums though, it's still interesting.

The water one - this is just one scientific opinion and i imagine many exist, but i can't find any true source on this. My immediate reaction to his explanation about the uniform electric field is to consider the field projected by the cup - prior warning simplifications are rife. Approximate the electric field emitted by the negatively charged cup as being normal to the surface at any point on the surface. You bring that field towards the water, and if there is indeed a more positively charged side, then it would experience a force in an electric field. We can safely believe that the water molecules will fall facing in all directions (fluid dynamics ensuring a nice distribution of particles within the stream allowing us to believe that), and any that are not pointed exactly parallel to the electric field will experience some kind of force. However water can also have a meniscus, which might encourage the water to "stick together" a bit and head towards the negative source, but i'm not sure about that in a flowing/falling context.

The fundamental point here is that an electric field is introduced to the water which responds by moving towards the source of the field. He hasn't shown me anything to doubt the standard explanation, and i don't understand why he thinks that the molecule wouldn't experience a force if it is as described. Without using electric charge to explain it, and i'm quite certain it isn't magnetic (the only other associated phenomenon), he's basically saying it's magic?

@robbersdog49 got the cane and cereal ones, and the teabag one is of course just the fact that the burning teabag heats nearby air, hot air rises which causes cooler air to rush in from the side and below, which causes a bit of an upwards current of flowing air, and when the remnant of the teabag is light enough, it is lifted by that force. As it burns lower, there's less fuel (paper) and it's less hot, so the force drops, so it only happens when it's nearly ash and very light. The last piece almost doesn't make it.