Very true you cannot tell the difference.
That was not the question, though. The earth isn’t pushing back.
That was not the question, though. The earth isn’t pushing back.
When a rocket is accelerating and you are pressed against the back and being driven forward, is the rocket "pushing" you or "resisting" you? Either one is a fine way of describing it. The net result, though, is that you are squished into the back of the rocket in a way that's completely indistinguishable from gravity.
You may say "but the ground can never push me away from the ground." Sure, but the back of the rocket can't push you away from the back of the rocket either, and yet it is clearly pushing you through space. So long as the rocket keeps accelerating, you are being pushed forward, yet you won't feel it as a push, you'll feel it as an attraction to the back of the rocket.
Yes, it is. The force you feel as weight is the ground pushing on you.
By Newton's Third Law, the ground also feels a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction from you, which can, as you say, end up compressing the ground. But that isn't what you feel as weight.
You will start to sink at various rates. Not because water is “pushing less” than earth. It’s because water is not resisting.
Also, if I am 200 pounds and the earth is pushing up on me with 200 pounds of force, what is generating that force? And where does it go if a helicopter reels me in? The 200 pounds up “force” just vanishes?
Or never existed.
Um, "is not resisting" means "pushing less". The water does not exert as much force on you as solid ground would. That's why you sink. If the water was not pushing less, you wouldn't sink.
> if I am 200 pounds and the earth is pushing up on me with 200 pounds of force, what is generating that force?
Nothing has to "generate" the force. The force is a static force that is doing no work, so no energy is being consumed. It's just static electromagnetic repulsion between your atoms and the atoms in the ground.
> where does it go if a helicopter reels me in?
If you stop making contact with the ground, there is no longer any electromagnetic repulsion between your atoms and the atoms in the ground.
> The 200 pounds up “force” just vanishes?
The "up" force from the ground vanishes, yes. See above.
But of course there is another "up" force on you now from whatever is attaching you to the helicopter.