Potato Fallacy in Percentage Math of Natural Processes - Are My Critics Guilty?

I was guilty myself, while starting to see a video on the Potato fallacy. Or, as Susanne Scherer calls it "hard core fallacy at the potato paradox" ...

Krasser DENKFEHLER beim Kartoffel Paradoxon! – Machst du ihn auch? 🤓
MathemaTrick, 1 Nov. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUV1zoJA9L8

The question:
A farmer got 100 kg of potatoes for a harvest. 99 % of these are water, before you dry them. After you dry them, 98 % are water. How much do the potatoes weigh now?

The wrong answer:
There is one % less of water, but each of the 99 % of water weighed 1 kg, therefore the new weight is 99 kg.

The right process:
Potatoes consist of water and the rest, let's call it dry substance. Only the water is affected by the drying out. A total is never 99 %, but a 100 %.
This means, the dry substance, which was 1 kg, was 1%.
The dry substance, which is still 1 kg, is now 2%. Not of the original weight, but of the new weight.
The potatoes weigh 50 kg after the drying.

I get inadequate feedback from people not agreeing with me. This means, I sometimes have to guess what is going through their heads. And the following, with my own correction, is an educated guess of why they keep reading and disagreeing and waiting "for me to see the light" ...

The atmosphere can be seen as one, big, sample of organic compounds involving carbon 14. In 5730 years, the carbon 14 content should halve. If it doesn't, it is because 50 "percent modern carbon" are added, net, in 5730 years. Let's use the phrase "percent modern carbon" as referring to percentages of "today's atmosphere" (corrected for pre-industrial values). If something halves or doubles, it will be in relation to what it was, but if I say pmC, this is like how 50 pmC are what you find in a sample supposed to be 5730 years old, or like how 70.7 pmC (square root of 50 % in pmC) is for a sample that is (and can be checked against Assyrian chronology to be) 2865 years old. Keep in mind, either way this is not absolute quantities, but proportions of the overall carbon content in the atmosphere or in samples. Counted in % of the modern proportion.

So, doubling the carbon content could also take 5730 years - from today's 100 pmC? Not really. From 50 pmC to 100 pmC? More like it. But never mind, the fallacy I have in mind would even have a doubling from 100 to 200 pmC take 5730 years, with the normal production of C14 in the atmosphere.

So, if the deluge atmosphere was one now dated (where preserved in samples from then) to 39 000 years, this means it had 1.625 pmC. How many times would you have to double this before arriving at 100 pmC?

1.625 pmC (1 doubling) 3.25 (2) 6.5 (3) 13 (4) 26 (5) 52 (6 doublings) 104 pmC, slightly in excess of 100 pmC.

You'd have to double this 6 times. Hence, the normal process would be 6 halflives.

6 * 5730 = 34 380 years.

Flood to Troy = 2957 BC - 1179 BC = 1778 years

34 380 / 1778 = 19.34 times faster.

But constantly going 19.34 times faster would totally be disruptive of everything, so ... I need to be wrong.

Wait a bit. Doubling the C14 content and adding 50 pmC points to it, that's two different types of operation, they coincide only between 50 and 100 pmC.

Where in my tables does this doubling fall?

Creation vs. Evolution : New Tables
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-tables.html

1185 B. Chr.
1 pmC/100, so dated as 1185 B. Chr.

1 pmC / 100, multiply both sides with 100, 1 * 100 = 100, pmC / 100 * 100 = pmC, so 100 pmC. The reason I counted New Tables in "pmC / 100" being that I am more familiar with decimal fractions than percentage counting.

1185 BC is approximate, should have been 1179 BC as per both carbon date and historic date of Troy VIIa.

2534 B. Chr.
0.494539 pmC/100, so dated as 8334 B. Chr.
2511 B. Chr.
0.507242 pmC/100, so dated as 8111 B. Chr.

So, 50 pmC is reached between 2534 and 2511 BC. 2522 BC is medium or 2523 BC.

2523 - 1179 = 1344 years.

I am basically cramming a process that could take 5730 years into 1344 years. I will not go into the fact that 5730 years would actually not raise 50 pmC to 100 pmC, but just to 75 pmC, while it keeps 100 pmC at 100 pmC*

5730 / 1344 = 4.26 times as fast. Not quite true, but roughly.

Now, the previous doubling only involves adding 25 pmC net. When was 25 pmC reached?

2756 B. Chr.
0.250709 pmC/100, so dated as 14 206 B. Chr.

2756 - 2522 = 234 years - for a process that should take 2400 years. Where a sample goes down from 100 to 75 pmC and the atmosphere replaces 25 pmC, so stays at 100, is 2400 years** ...

2400 / 234 = 10.26 times as fast.

Previous to that, we need to go from 12.5 to 25 pmC. When did we have 12.5 pmC according to me?

2867 B. Chr.
0.119246 pmC/100, so dated as 20 467 B. Chr.
2845 B. Chr.
0.145681 pmC/100, so dated as 18 745 B. Chr.

Between 2867 and 2845 BC, medium of which is 2856 BC

2856 - 2756 = 100 years.

100 - 12.5 = 87.5, and the time to get a sample down to 87.5 pmC is tha of getting the atmosphere replacing 12.5 pmC. 1100 years.

1100 / 100 = 11 times as fast.

Previous doubling to that would be 6.25 to 12.5 pmC.

2912 B. Chr.
0.066161 pmC/100, so dated as 25 362 B. Chr.

2912 - 2856 = 56 years

100 - 6.25 = 93.75 pmC, which a sample starting with 100 pmC has after 530 years.

530 / 56 = 9.46 times faster.

6.25 / 2 = 3.125 pmC.

2935 B. Chr.
0.039541 pmC/100, so dated as 29 635 B. Chr.

3.95 is actually a bit too high to count with, so we use two doublings, getting down to

2957 B. Chr. 0.012788 pmC/100, so dated as 38 957 B. Chr.

3.125 / 2 = 1.5625


1.5625 + 3.125 = 4.6875 pmC
100 - 4.6875 = 95.3125 pmC, 400 years.

2957 - 2912 = 45

400 / 45 = 8.889 times faster.

Problem solved. Each doubling previous to 50 pmC backwards involved less and less pmC points net added and therefore involve less and less normal time for the process, which is sped up. We never get as fast as 19.34 times the normal speed.

Yeah, but having a C14 production between 8.889 and 11 times as fast from 2957 to 2523 BC would hardly have been healthy?

Precisely. Lifespans after the Flood were 500 years only after having lived 100 years before the Flood, and they were dwindling. This faster C14 production was a result of more radiation from the cosmos primarily meant to implement God's decision in Genesis 6:3 And God said: My spirit shall not remain in man for ever, because he is flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. Two concomitant results were the ice age and pushing up C14 levels to what has been since the Fall of Troy a fairly stable 100 pmC.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Sts Zachary and Elisabeth
parents of St. John the Baptist
5.XI.2022

Sancti Zachariae, Sacerdotis et Prophetae, qui pater exstitit beati Joannis Baptistae, Praecursoris Domini.

Item sanctae Elisabeth, ejusdem sanctissimi Praecursoris matris.

* 100 pmC * 50 % = 50 pmC + 50 pmC = 100 pmC BUT 50 pmC * 50 % = 25 pmC + 50 pmC = 75 pmC.
** I am using this:
Carbon 14 Dating Calculator
presented by Earth Science Australia through the kind permission of the author Mark Gregory
http://earthsci.org/space/space/geotime/C14/Carbon%2014%20Dating%20Calculator.html