Omphalism

As a piece of pedantry I should note there are ways to ascertain if everything else has shrunk in this situation that don't involve a ruler. For example: Light still travels at 300,000km/s. If according to your 'ruler' light travels at 600,000 kms - you know it's because your ruler has shrunk. Acceleration due to gravity would appear to change too in your room.You need to change time as well as space to make your analogy work Even then - I think you might still be able to tell via fundamental physics. I disagree. When an omphalist says the world is 6,000 years old, we agree on what '6,000 years' means. It is not like the shrinking room at all. Omphalists are NOT saying "The earth is 6,000 years old, but it appears to be 4billion years old because we're using different conventions of time recording". They are saying "The earth is 6,000 years old. Not 4billion years old. It appears to be 4billion years old because it was created with the appearance of having been 4billion years (less 6000)"We all agree on what 6,000 means.
We all agree on what 4billion means.
We all agree on what a year is.
We all agree on what 'age of earth' means.
We all agree on what age the earth appears to be.This is not a difference of convention. We're in complete agreement on that. The only disagreement is on how much time has passed between the time when the earth was a reasonably solid sphere of heavy elements and now.

Where on earth are you getting that from? Last Thursdayists and I can agree on how much time has past since last Thursday. And we can agree that the world appears to be like 9 orders of magnitude older than that time period. So where is the disagreement?

No. And in September 2002 there were many people that didn't agree on what happened in September 2001. That doesn't mean they are using different word meanings when they say 'a year ago'.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Emperor's new clothes?If you can't explain your position without obfuscation and obscurantism, then your point is clearly worth as much as it sounds like.So come on, try me, I've tackled difficult philosophical positions before. It sounds like you haven't really got a solid footing about what you are talking about and are hiding behind the 'you don't understand because you are of position x' motif we see so very often around here. Man up, explain what you are talking about OR talk about the same thing we are: People that use the words 'year', 'age', 'earth' etc consistently and state that they believe with a high confidence that the earth is billions of years in age but aren't willing to say with equal confidence that it isn't 10,000 years old with the appearance of age.

I'm not going to get into a meta-debate about who said what, and so on. I am asking for you to explain how your explanation does no lead to the absurd conclusion it seems to do. If you want to simply say 'I've explained it as best as it can be, you either don't understand or refuse to accept it' then I will continue to believe that you are engaging in wankery.If you feel at all like supporting your position in a sort of debate like format, I'd be perfectly happy given that's what we're supposed to be doing here.So - can you support the assertion that Last Thursdayists don't agree with me about what the time period of 'a year' means?

Why don't you explain how that is relevant? You really do seem to be intentionally obfuscating your point.Do you think it is a serious point to raise that when a person makes the proposition "The world appears to be 4 billion years old" and another person agrees with this but says it is actually 10,000 years old that somewhere in the middle of all that they have decided to change what they were referring to when they said 'year'?

It is abuse to point out what it seems to me you are doing? If you aren't intentionally obfuscating your point, you now know that I think you are. Which would seem to me to be a prompt for clarity. I thought the question that immediately preceded it might have clued you in on that, "Why don't you explain how that is relevant?".Incidentally, I note you still haven't explained how it is relevant. It isn't necessarily about meaning, but you are trying to raise a point about meaning. When I ask a question about that, your answers have not been forthcoming. That certainly seems like obfuscation to me. Again - please explain why you you think it is a relevant question to ask. That doesn't seem relevant. Please explain how it is. I don't want clues as to what your point might be, clues that need to be extracted as if from some mystic guru. Why? I asked this before. What makes you think that the omphalist's conclusions are 'inapplicable' to what you mean by "10,000 years ago"?