The real crux of the claim is that the beach ball causes less imbalance in the fluid of the air which then causes the recoil effect. The reason for this, as far as I can tell, in scepti's conception and most everyone else's - is the weight/matter of the object.
No, Scepti specifically rejects the matter of the object and instead pretends it is just the air around it.
Most people accept that it is the matter of the object and the air is negligible unless it is a quite low density object.
Likewise, for the air, most people realise that the matter the object is made of doesn't matter, instead it is the shape and aerodynamics. The actual material only comes into it at the very surface where depending on the texture you can have the air stick to it or slide past it.
I don't think it is anyone's claim that weight is caused purely or even chiefly by atmospheric pressure.
That is pretty much Skepti's claim, that the object displaces air and that magically pushes back to push the object down. Except in the cases where it magically decides to push it up.
I don't know what you are getting at / mean. In your view, the lighter object displaces the same amount at rest and in motion, at any given instant
I'm getting at the MOTION, so not in any instant.
i.e. if it is in one location, and you move it to another, you need to move the air around it, and in Scepti's world (and for a hollow, air filled object in reality), the air inside it.
This means you displace more air by moving a hollow object, and the best you could get is the same amount of air displaced.
This means the denser/heavier object is not displacing more air and thus has no reason to have a greater resistance according to Scepi.
I don't think they are really waging war on inertia in the way you might imagine.
Yes, he is, to try to claim you need air to push against.
This is so he can pretend that rockets couldn't possibly work in a vacuum (even though he claims that vacuums don't exist) to pretend that all of science is wrong and Earth is flat.
1. The ball and the observer (at rest or in motion together) are one "system"/"inertial frame". In order for the ball to influence the motion of the observer, it MUST come from an external system. This is by definition in the newtonian laws themselves - arguably.
That is no by definition in the Newtonian laws. That is pure nonsense with basically no connection to those laws, promoted by those who want to dismiss what they don't like from modern science.
The fact that you can isolate it into a ball and observer shows that they are 2 systems/objects.
This means that you can have 1 apply a force to the other and move both.
Any "system" can typically be broken down into multiple smaller "systems".
You can isolate the ball and the observer as 2 systems. You can further divide the ball into its various parts, all the way down to the atoms and even smaller parts.
You can also go the other way and combine small systems into a larger one, such as combing it into a system containing everything on Earth, or even the entire universe.
If that nonsense was correct, nothing would ever be able to move as you would always be able to combine the object being accelerated and the object applying the force into a single system.
What you need something external for is to accelerate the centre of mass of the system.
If you don't have any external force, the centre of the mass needs to remain moving at a constant rate (which can be 0).
2. Connected to #1, in order for the "ejected mass"
And thus still just as broken, and in fact, even helps to show how broken it is.
The fact that you can eject mass, shows #1 is pure nonsense.
Ejecting that mass requires applying a force to accelerate it and thus will result in a force being applied back to whatever object did the acceleration.
I am not saying that the reasonings or rationales are flawless, but they exist and are somewhat defensible.
They are indefensible, at least if you require defensible to be rational and honest and not just ignore the evidence available on a daily basis that shows it is wrong.
And you have the problem of those same kind of people rejecting the existence of a vacuum and instead claiming that there will always be some air and that allows it to act as if it was just a normal atmosphere.
For many objects, that is true - they fall much the same in partial vacuum (the best we can do, and likely - can be achieved even in theory) and normal atmospheric conditions. However, just because we can't get rid of absolutely every last bit of air in a vacuum chamber, doesn't mean we can't learn a lot about that air's influence by altering the amount!
That is ignored by people like Skepti. They come up with all sorts of excuses for why changing the amount of air not affecting something not refuting the air being the cause.
Even ignoring the fact that things weigh more in a vacuum due to the lack of buoyant force as if it doesn't refute the idea that air causes weight.
I do not have a demonstration of recoil not existing in a vacuum, though there are some compelling arguments / reasonings from some in regards to chemical rockets along these lines.
Again, care to provide any? Because I am yet to hear of any compelling arguments or reasoning to show that. Instead I just see repeated assertions which cannot be defended in any way.
Vapor pressure is important for combustion
Which is an entirely separate argument to recoil.
I thought it would be trivial to find such a video demonstration, but alas. Do you know of one?
I provided one showing inertia in a vacuum.
They certainly could dismiss anything, but I don't think that is what scepti is doing.
Then you should go look at the other threads, where he dismisses photographic evidence as fake merely because it shows he is wrong.
He then uses whatever excuse he can to either ignore or dismiss logical arguments which show he is wrong.
scepti's position isn't really intelligible without this common posit).
No need to add in a "without" qualifier.