Non-Scientists and Science

[egslim]

Couldn't that be due to observational bias? Would you recognise a scientist talking nonsense about a non-scientific area as often as you recognise non-scientists talking nonsense about scientific areas?

You could try an experiment: Have a scientist judge a non-scientific paper and a non-scientist a scientific one.
I'm a physics student and a couple of days ago I was with a economics studying friend who was working on a report. We talked about it and I made some suggestions for improvements and discussion, which he wrote down for further examination. I don't think he would have been able to do the same vice versa.

 

[Correa Neto]

Among the issues touched by other posters, I would like to add one- Language barrier.

Sciences use very specific terminologies, usually not known to the general public. For the non-academic public, it may be very difficult to differentiate between say, Star Trek technobabble and cosmological jargon. So, how can one, without knowing the meaning of the technical terms, truly understand what´s being exposed?

Actually you can stay within the academic community and still see how this can be a problem. Immagine a biologist reading a paper on quantum physics and vice-versa, for example.

Ita true that some technical terms are nowdays know to a broader public, thanks to documentaries, for example. However, in many cases their meanings are completely distorted -check any woo page claiming QM & psi links, links between Atlantis and the Ice Age or asteroid impacts, UFO propulsion, etc.). And this creates another problem, the false impression that one really knows what that term is about.

Of course, if people were educated on the scientific method and critical thinking, the problem would be smaller. Scientific methodology and critical thinking IMHO should be present in high schools.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

This language barrier exacerbates the well-known tendency to think as follows:

science ... complex language ... woo-woo claim ... complex language ... woo-woo claim must be scientific

~~ Paul

 

[Bronze Dog]

That seemed to be more of an issue with people who don't know much about computers.

My roommate was getting better scores in CS, and seemed to know more than I did. And yet, he was talking about my N64 being affected.

And, as someone pointed out earlier: I knew Y2K shouldn't have been taken lightly, but when someone who should know better seems to think that every transistor on Earth features a calendar, it's hard to give them credit for anything.

 

[stamenflicker]

There IS no logic in concluding that because We can from somewhere that that means the creator had to come from somewheres. Just to point that out.

Actually, this is exactly the case. The logical argument is:

"Everything that begins to exist, has a cause."

That is much different than stating, "Everything that exists has a cause," which is a different starting assumption that is equally as valid.

Simply put, if it exists but did not begin to exist, there is no logical breakdown in taking this tack. The universe clearly began to exist, there is evidence to support that. That god did not begin to exist is an assumption, and all debate begins with assumptions.

Flick

 

[stamenflicker]

This language barrier exacerbates the well-known tendency to think as follows:

science ... complex language ... woo-woo claim ... complex language ... woo-woo claim must be scientific

~~ Paul

To which the philosophical linguist will instantly want to talk about Nominalism, which is a real philosophical conundrum. The language barrier carries a degree of reality extending beyond merely one's familiarity with terms.

Flick

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Actually, this is exactly the case. The logical argument is:

"Everything that begins to exist, has a cause."

That is much different than stating, "Everything that exists has a cause," which is a different starting assumption that is equally as valid.

Simply put, if it exists but did not begin to exist, there is no logical breakdown in taking this tack. The universe clearly began to exist, there is evidence to support that. That god did not begin to exist is an assumption, and all debate begins with assumptions.

Flick

You need to take a walk with a physicist down the paths of imaginary time to find that the universe may not have begun to exist.

 

[Bronze Dog]

To no one in particular... and not the poster by that name, either:

Scenarios that don't need a "first cause":

1) Infinite chain of causes. Possibly compacting as you get closer to T=0... if T ever equals zero.
2) Cycling causes: A causes B cause C causes A.
3) Acausality: The first event (if that term has any meaning) could have occurred for no reason at all. This is probably one of the more annoying scenarios, as it's a negative claim that could very well be true. And no, that first event doesn't have to be "god". It could be just the first, unintelligent, purposeless link in the causality chain.

 

[stamenflicker]

1) Infinite chain of causes. Possibly compacting as you get closer to T=0... if T ever equals zero.
2) Cycling causes: A causes B cause C causes A.
3) Acausality: The first event (if that term has any meaning) could have occurred for no reason at all. This is probably one of the more annoying scenarios, as it's a negative claim that could very well be true. And no, that first event doesn't have to be "god". It could be just the first, unintelligent, purposeless link in the causality chain.

BD,

Just genuinely curious about your post. Do we have literal "things" that exist as a result of these, outside of the theoretical?

Flick

 

[stamenflicker]

You need to take a walk with a physicist down the paths of imaginary time to find that the universe may not have begun to exist.

Can you suggest one who is on this walk? I'd be happy to read up sometime soon. Most of the ones I encounter are walking on "Evidence" street. Seriously, I do like reading that kind of stuff so if you have a starting point...

Flick

 

[Bronze Dog]

Don't know. They're just scenarios that come to mind. I have, however, heard that virtual particles, where a particle and its antiparticle spontaneously appear in a vacuum (and usually annihilate each other very quickly) thus far appear to be acausal

 

[Melendwyr]

Roulette wheels and coin flips appear to be acausal - until you gain sufficiently powerful computational and imaging resources, that make it possible to predict how they'll turn out quite effectively.

 

[Bronze Dog]

Roulette wheels and coin flips appear to be acausal - until you gain sufficiently powerful computational and imaging resources, that make it possible to predict how they'll turn out quite effectively.

True. Virtual particles may very well have a cause we're currently unaware of. It'd certainly be more convenient if they did, since that would be a positive claim, rather than a negative. If they are acausal, we'll never know for certain.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Actually, this is exactly the case. The logical argument is:

"Everything that begins to exist, has a cause."

That is one assumption, but there are those that start with the other assumption.

The universe clearly began to exist, there is evidence to support that.

That is hardly clear, and the evidence is not conclusive. In fact, current scientific consensus, as I understand it, is that the universe did not begin to exist.

 

[Mojo]

The universe clearly began to exist, there is evidence to support that. That god did not begin to exist is an assumption, and all debate begins with assumptions.

That god exists at all is an assumption for which there doesn't seem to be any evidence.

 

[stamenflicker]

That god exists at all is an assumption for which there doesn't seem to be any evidence.

Dang-it!

Flick

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Can you suggest one who is on this walk? I'd be happy to read up sometime soon. Most of the ones I encounter are walking on "Evidence" street. Seriously, I do like reading that kind of stuff so if you have a starting point...

Flick

I was alluding to Hawking's book "A Brief Hirtory of Time". Enjoy, if you've not already read it.

 

[luchog]

3) Acausality: The first event (if that term has any meaning) could have occurred for no reason at all. This is probably one of the more annoying scenarios, as it's a negative claim that could very well be true. And no, that first event doesn't have to be "god". It could be just the first, unintelligent, purposeless link in the causality chain.

Unfortunately, acausality is also the foundation for a whole lot of woo-woo crap. Causeless effects would effectively change what we understand of physics, and the barrier between science and metaphysics.

 

[Bronze Dog]

Unfortunately, acausality is also the foundation for a whole lot of woo-woo crap. Causeless effects would effectively change what we understand of physics, and the barrier between science and metaphysics.

Also true. Acausality may be falsifiable, but it's a negative, and can't be verified, so we might end up spinning our intellectual wheels in the mud if we run into a genuine acausal event. Hopefully, we won't bump into anything like that.

 

[epepke]

True. Virtual particles may very well have a cause we're currently unaware of. It'd certainly be more convenient if they did, since that would be a positive claim, rather than a negative. If they are acausal, we'll never know for certain.

The reason for thinking that they're acausal, at least with the ordinary view of causality as something going forward in time, is that if they weren't, then it should be possible to send a signal faster than light, which according to Special Relativity is impossible.

Note that one way of looking at virtual particles is to imagine a particle moving forward in time and then going back in time a little bit and then going forward. Then the particle-antipartical creation could be called "causal," but it would be caused by something from the future. Many people do this, and it makes them happy. Of course, it goes against how people think of causality, as something going forward in time.

I think it's kind of pointless to focus on a specific idea, such as "causality," in the hopes that if you could get all of them, you'd somehow eventually prove that the universe is nice and simple in a classical sense. Quantum behavior is such that you always have to give up some desirable intuitive idea, and there is just no way to avoid this. You have some flexibility in picking which intuitive ideas you pick, but you can't keep all of them, and the only way to pretend that you can is to be selectively ignorant.