Faith, Materialism, Evidence and Layers

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

The very fact that we now know that the original hypothesis was an over-simplification, just verifies what I have been saying.
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Bang goes parsimony. Besides if reality did somehow have the myserious propensity to always operate according to the minimum number of entities and concepts then we would scarcely have reached the present position where a bewildering number of elementary particles are invoked to explain the world. There is nothing about reality which dictates that it should be simple.

I already said that he was misrepresenting the principle of parsimony. Parsimony does not claim that the simplest explanation is more likely to be correct. It simply states that there is no point in adopting a more complicated explanation than is necessary.

You and seemingly everyone else on here misunderstand Ockham's razor. It is not some sort of immutable law stateing that the most parsimious explanation necessarily is always correct.

Where did you ever get the idea that this is what I think Ockham's razor means?

It is a rule of thumb that if there are 2 or more theories which explain the facts then provisionally we should adopt the most parsimious theory until data suggests otherwise.

Actually, it is the observation that the only assumptions in a theory which can be supported by testing the claims of the theory, are those assumptions which are logically necessary to derive the testable claims. What you posted above is a consequence of this fact.

Ockham's razor is commonly misunderstood the way you said it is, but not by me, and not by scientists in general.

When the original hypothesis was shown to be false, and those results were reliably reproduced by independent researchers, the old hypothesis was discarded.
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This sounds very implausible to me. It certainly is not the way scientists normally behave!

On the contrary, this is exactly how scientists normally behave. This is how scientific progress is made!

As I have pointed out before it is very difficult to falsify theories because data can either be ignored, the observations can be called into question, or auxiliary hypotheses can be introduced (without changing the main thrust of the main hypothesis).

The first two would only be done if all of the people studying the phenomenon had some vested interest in not falsifying the theory. The fact is that most scientists would love nothing more that to falsify some currently accepted theory, since doing so would make them famous. The third is expressly forbidden by Ockham's razor. If it is possible to invent auxiliary hypotheses to save a theory from falsification, then the theory was not properly constructed in the first place.

Of course when a theory is falsified, it is likely that the new theory will have many things in common with the old one. This is only to be expected.

Psychologically scientists are loathe to abandon theories even when they have been "falsified". Nor, in and of itself, is this inevitably necessarily an irrational attitude to adopt.

Do you have any evidence to back up this claim?

This very fact demonstrates that your imagined scenario of dogmatic scientists allowing their preconceptions cloud their judgement of the experimental results, is not an accurate portrayal of what actually happened.
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I am highly skeptical of what you say here.

Good for you. You don't have to take my word for it. Do some research into the subject. Look at how scientists have discarded theories and replaced them with new ones over the years. Talk to actual scientists, and find out how interested they are in overturning some currently accepted theory.

The proof of what I said is freely available for anybody who wants to exert the minimal effort necessary to look for it.

Your above statement also misrepresents the scientific process itself. Scientists do not try to prove their theories. They try to disprove them.
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Now I've heard it all! Do they become disconsolate when they fail in this endeavour?? LMAO!

No, why would they? It would be very unscientific to develop an emotional attachment to a theory. Sure, it happens, but that is one of the reasons that independent verification is so important.

I can assure you that I have no emotional attachment to other people's theories. I would love to prove some widely accepted theory false. It would make my career. The same is true of most scientists.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Stimpy's explanation of parsimony agrees with the dictionary:

"especially : economy of explanation in conformity with Occam's razor"

Economy of explanation, not necessarily of operation.

Paul's Obvious Rule of Thumb: The persistence with which someone claims that science is a close-minded dogmatic process is directly proportional to the number of things that person believes but science doesn't accept.

~~ Paul

 

[BillyTK]

Stimpy's explanation of parsimony agrees with the dictionary:

"especially : economy of explanation in conformity with Occam's razor"

Economy of explanation, not necessarily of operation.

Paul's Obvious Rule of Thumb: The persistence with which someone claims that science is a close-minded dogmatic process is directly proportional to the number of things that person believes but science doesn't accept.

~~ Paul

PORT. I like it. Except to point out that science being close–minded and dogmatic process is demonstrably true, albeit only in instances when being such is not a bad thing, such as being a counter to things that people believe but science doesn't accept.

 

[Suggestologist]

PORT. I like it. Except to point out that science being close–minded and dogmatic process is demonstrably true, albeit only in instances when being such is not a bad thing, such as being a counter to things that people believe but science doesn't accept.

Among those things that science doesn't accept, how many have already proven to be things that science accepted and how many more of these things are there?

 

[Suggestologist]

Stimpy's explanation of parsimony agrees with the dictionary:

"especially : economy of explanation in conformity with Occam's razor"

Economy of explanation, not necessarily of operation.

Paul's Obvious Rule of Thumb: The persistence with which someone claims that science is a close-minded dogmatic process is directly proportional to the number of things that person believes but science doesn't accept.

~~ Paul

Most of the time, an economy of explanation requires an economy of (theory of) operation. Simple theories are usually less correct than those which utilize more entities and processes. Of course, how one counts entities is a matter of subjective selection.

 

[Suggestologist]

Suggestologist,
Well then, you should either learn at least enough about the incident to determine this, or simply not claim to know whether it happened or not.

Hmmmm, and how would you suggest I carry out a calculation as ridiculously indeterminate as the one you suggest?

I never said that you can reasonably accept the findings of the scientific community when you are, yourself, completely ignorant about what they are doing. I just said that you do not have to understand in detail the specifics of their work.

I disagree. If you don't understand it in detail, you may as well believe everything you read that you only slighly understand.

Actually, that is a misrepresentation of the principle of parsimony.

It's a misrepresentation how? In order to develop new hypotheses you necessarily have to break the "principle" or "rule" in question. Parsimony is part of what keeps things in a state of mode-locking.

The very fact that we now know that the original hypothesis was an over-simplification, just verifies what I have been saying. When the original hypothesis was shown to be false, and those results were reliably reproduced by independent researchers, the old hypothesis was discarded. This very fact demonstrates that your imagined scenario of dogmatic scientists allowing their preconceptions cloud their judgement of the experimental results, is not an accurate portrayal of what actually happened.

Your above statement also misrepresents the scientific process itself. Scientists do not try to prove their theories. They try to disprove them. Any scientists who were specifically looking for data to back up their hypothesis, rather than actively trying to falsify it, were not doing science, but rather pseudo-science.

Yeah, there's a lot of research money for those who can disprove their own hypotheses, mm hm.

Absolute belief in anything is just plain stupid. The degree to which you believe something should reflect the amount of evidence in support of it. There is substantial evidence in support of the moon landing. I therefore am very confident that it occurred.

I would wager that your belief in the moon landing has much more to do with accepting what everyone else accepts in order to appear part of the society, not abnormal, worthy of it's attention, love, etc. Much like people's beliefs in Gods.

As has been often said: People use logic to back up what they first felt emotionally.

If you totally believe even the things you have experienced, then you are being naive.

Is that because there is always the possibility that we're within a matrix within a matrix within a matrix within ...; Or a holodeck(tm) within a holodeck(tm) with in a ... ?

And how or why a particular experiment works or not has little bearing on whether scientific results which have been extensively tested by many independent researchers, can be accepted as reliable. All that is relevant is that you understand how and why that scientific process works.

I think that you a demonstrably wrong. The facts simply don't support your claim.

The fact that science has shown itself, time and time again, to be self-correcting.

Aha, so now you claim to be a psychic who can predict the future? No matter what has happened in the past, no matter how many times it happened, can you guarantee a future result. Are you sure that it isn't the case (see: I'm trying to prove the negative rather than the positive here ) that you simply know of more cases where science seems to you to have self-corrected, and know fewer times where science has remained stuck at points where it was in error? The "availability heuristic", you know.

The fact that there is a very strong incentive within the scientific community to show that currently accepted theories are false, which completely destroys you "mode-locking" hypothesis. I think you are pretty much missing any understanding of how and why the scientific process actually works. As such, it comes as no surprise that you think it needs to be taken on faith.

If there is an incentive to disprove, then there must also be an incentive to keep one's disprovements from themselves being disproven -- thus showing your studies to have been a waste of everyone's time -- is there not?

The more times a study is replicated, the harder it is for one that disproves it to get published, or seriously read if published; because there becomes a mountain of evidence against any disclaimant -- and the currency of science seems to be quantity of evidence; and too few times - quality of evidence. Replicating a study can get your name in lights (though not as bright) much quicker than developing a theory of your own which you can show to have failed to disprove.

 

[Silicon]

More dancing, suggestologist?

How many scientific papers have you gotten published? Where is this cabal of editors of scientific journals that keep YOUR theory out?

Evidence? Let's take a random Science Journal, like Nature. What's the ratio of new findings replacing old?

I think that'd show the evidence right there.

Do a survey that shows that science isn't interested in revising, improving or disproving old theories.

Go do the work to find out. Prove to us that science is mode-locking. Work for it. Get off your postulating butt and actually prove something to us.



Or HEY, here's a fantastically simple idea. Prove something is true that is currently ignored or believed to be false by all previously published science articles. Since science is mode-locking, it should be painfully simple to find some phenomena that has been locked out.

Prove THAT! Depending on what it is, you might be in line for a million bucks AND the nobel prize!

Plus, we can all throw out the scientific method, and use the Suggestologist Method, which states.....

What WOULD the suggestologist method state? Use as complicated a reasoning as possible... Never have faith in anything you can't put your hand to.... Dance around the argument, arguing semantics at every turn, then switch analogies..

Yeah, that'll cure polio, and get us to the moon!

 

[Yahweh]

Stimpy:
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Your above statement also misrepresents the scientific process itself. Scientists do not try to prove their theories. They try to disprove them.
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Ian:
Now I've heard it all! Do they become disconsolate when they fail in this endeavour?? LMAO!

You present yourself as a bit naive. Scientific hypotheses are supposed to be falsifyable.

If you believe science is all about finding more and more and more evidence to support a theory, then you are wrong.

To state "we can never know because there might not be some forces in nature we havent discovered yet" is an unfalsifyable hypothesis. To state "Humans have the ability to flap their arms and gain the ability to fly" is a falsifyable hypothesis.

There was a time when people believed maggots spontaneously arose from rotting meat. Quite an interesting but perfectly valid (and falsifyable) hypothesis. They had no idea that the maggots were simply fly larvae. They based their assumption on the fact they had to find any means they could to "fill in the gaps" of science, that is obviously a very flawed method. Many attempts were made by many scientists (Pasteur, that other guy, and the other other guy, and possibly another guy) to prove this hypothesis inaccurate.

Hell, if it makes you feel better, my of my friends at work teaches Physics. Today, he showed me a transparency that said "Scientists want to prove their hypotheses wrong". Then I said "I know that, what'd the kids think". Apparently the kids were dumbfounded. Sure, its anecdotal "evidence", but I just thought it was interesting.

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Suggestologist

The more times a study is replicated, the harder it is for one that disproves it to get published, or seriously read if published; because there becomes a mountain of evidence against any disclaimant

To be fair, there surely is some truth to this. But then again, that would also significantly increase the potential glory for one who could defeat it.

and the currency of science seems to be quantity of evidence; and too few times - quality of evidence.

Mind if I rephrase that slightly for you?: "...and the currency of science seems to me to be..."

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Suggestologist,

Well then, you should either learn at least enough about the incident to determine this, or simply not claim to know whether it happened or not.
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Hmmmm, and how would you suggest I carry out a calculation as ridiculously indeterminate as the one you suggest?

You don't need exact numbers to know that the number is very large. I don't need to know exactly how far Moscow is from Berlin to know that I can't drive there in a half-hour.

I never said that you can reasonably accept the findings of the scientific community when you are, yourself, completely ignorant about what they are doing. I just said that you do not have to understand in detail the specifics of their work.
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I disagree. If you don't understand it in detail, you may as well believe everything you read that you only slighly understand.

This is demonstrably false. Whether or not you believe their claims does not depend on whether you understand every detail of the research that led to those claims, but instead on whether those claims have been independently verified under a wide range of conditions.

Actually, that is a misrepresentation of the principle of parsimony.
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It's a misrepresentation how? In order to develop new hypotheses you necessarily have to break the "principle" or "rule" in question. Parsimony is part of what keeps things in a state of mode-locking.

Parsimony means making the explanation no more complicated than it needs to be. It does not mean clinging dogmatically to an explanation which has been demonstrated to be overly simplistic.

Your above statement also misrepresents the scientific process itself. Scientists do not try to prove their theories. They try to disprove them. Any scientists who were specifically looking for data to back up their hypothesis, rather than actively trying to falsify it, were not doing science, but rather pseudo-science.
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Yeah, there's a lot of research money for those who can disprove their own hypotheses, mm hm.

Your ignorance is showing. Funding is based on results. And the only way to get results in science is by doing science according to the scientific method. You can try to cheat, and do pseudo-science, but the process is designed so that such fraud is usually quickly caught, and this ends up destroying the career of the fraud.

Absolute belief in anything is just plain stupid. The degree to which you believe something should reflect the amount of evidence in support of it. There is substantial evidence in support of the moon landing. I therefore am very confident that it occurred.
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I would wager that your belief in the moon landing has much more to do with accepting what everyone else accepts in order to appear part of the society, not abnormal, worthy of it's attention, love, etc. Much like people's beliefs in Gods.

You would lose that wager. By the way, I don't believe in God either.

As has been often said: People use logic to back up what they first felt emotionally.

Some people do that. The scientific process is specifically designed to control for this tendency. Once again, the problem here is that you simply do not understand how or why the scientific process works.

If you totally believe even the things you have experienced, then you are being naive.
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Is that because there is always the possibility that we're within a matrix within a matrix within a matrix within ...; Or a holodeck(tm) within a holodeck(tm) with in a ... ?

No, it is because personal experience is demonstrably unreliable.

I think that you a demonstrably wrong. The facts simply don't support your claim.

The fact that science has shown itself, time and time again, to be self-correcting.
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Aha, so now you claim to be a psychic who can predict the future? No matter what has happened in the past, no matter how many times it happened, can you guarantee a future result.

Who said anything about guarantees? I already said that absolute confidence in anything is unjustified.

Are you sure that it isn't the case (see: I'm trying to prove the negative rather than the positive here ) that you simply know of more cases where science seems to you to have self-corrected, and know fewer times where science has remained stuck at points where it was in error? The "availability heuristic", you know.

I am sure of nothing. I am very confident that the above scenario is not the case. That confidence is based, once again, on the fact that I understand how and why the scientific process works, and that historically even the most cherished preconceptions of science were dismissed when the evidence required doing so.

The fact that there is a very strong incentive within the scientific community to show that currently accepted theories are false, which completely destroys you "mode-locking" hypothesis. I think you are pretty much missing any understanding of how and why the scientific process actually works. As such, it comes as no surprise that you think it needs to be taken on faith.
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If there is an incentive to disprove, then there must also be an incentive to keep one's disprovements from themselves being disproven -- thus showing your studies to have been a waste of everyone's time -- is there not?

What?

Are you completely retarded, or just playing devil's advocate to a ridiculous level? Two words: Independent verification. This aspect of science addresses all of these nonsensical issues you are bringing up.

The more times a study is replicated, the harder it is for one that disproves it to get published, or seriously read if published; because there becomes a mountain of evidence against any disclaimant -- and the currency of science seems to be quantity of evidence; and too few times - quality of evidence. Replicating a study can get your name in lights (though not as bright) much quicker than developing a theory of your own which you can show to have failed to disprove.

The above clearly indicates that you know nothing about the process you are describing. That simply isn't how it works.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Suggestologist]

Suggestologist,
You don't need exact numbers to know that the number is very large. I don't need to know exactly how far Moscow is from Berlin to know that I can't drive there in a half-hour.

I suppose I should just use my imagination then -- to speculate wildly on the matter, since according to you, personal experience is a complete waste of time.

This is demonstrably false. Whether or not you believe their claims does not depend on whether you understand every detail of the research that led to those claims, but instead on whether those claims have been independently verified under a wide range of conditions.

Parsimony means making the explanation no more complicated than it needs to be. It does not mean clinging dogmatically to an explanation which has been demonstrated to be overly simplistic.

You can't prove anything false, if you cling to parsimonious explanations, never entertaining the notion that there is more to somthing than the rule of thumb allows. Parsimony gets in the way of developing new hypotheses and keeps science mode-locking.

Your ignorance is showing. Funding is based on results. And the only way to get results in science is by doing science according to the scientific method. You can try to cheat, and do pseudo-science, but the process is designed so that such fraud is usually quickly caught, and this ends up destroying the career of the fraud.

Funding IS based on results -- positive results.

You would lose that wager. By the way, I don't believe in God either.

Oh, I would certainly win. I can tell by your argumentation that I would.

Some people do that. The scientific process is specifically designed to control for this tendency. Once again, the problem here is that you simply do not understand how or why the scientific process works.

No, it is because personal experience is demonstrably unreliable.

Ah yes, here is the core of the problem. Those who study their science and get all the right credentials are given the authority to speak and write about "truths" of which they have no personal experience. This includes such things as asserting that the personal experience of some people is less the "truth" than those "truths" they have studied yet have no actual personal experience of. Makes a lot of sense.

Who said anything about guarantees? I already said that absolute confidence in anything is unjustified.

I am sure of nothing. I am very confident that the above scenario is not the case. That confidence is based, once again, on the fact that I understand how and why the scientific process works, and that historically even the most cherished preconceptions of science were dismissed when the evidence required doing so.

The science you "understand" has, for the most part, been objectified and separated from it's historical contexts.

What?

Are you completely retarded, or just playing devil's advocate to a ridiculous level? Two words: Independent verification. This aspect of science addresses all of these nonsensical issues you are bringing up.

And we have evidence that such independent verification actually happens, how?

The above clearly indicates that you know nothing about the process you are describing. That simply isn't how it works.


Dr. Stupid

Please tell me how you think it works. You have repeatedly asserted a knowledge that I don't know how or why science "works"; without any evidence, I might add. Oh that's right, you have some personal experience with me in this thread -- but personal experience is irrelevant -- where's your science?

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Suggestologist,

You don't need exact numbers to know that the number is very large. I don't need to know exactly how far Moscow is from Berlin to know that I can't drive there in a half-hour.
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I suppose I should just use my imagination then -- to speculate wildly on the matter, since according to you, personal experience is a complete waste of time.

Wow, a non-sequitur and a blatant misrepresentation, all within one sentence. I'm impressed.

Parsimony means making the explanation no more complicated than it needs to be. It does not mean clinging dogmatically to an explanation which has been demonstrated to be overly simplistic.
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You can't prove anything false, if you cling to parsimonious explanations, never entertaining the notion that there is more to somthing than the rule of thumb allows. Parsimony gets in the way of developing new hypotheses and keeps science mode-locking.

Wrong. You can demonstrate that a falsifiable theory is false. Once you have done so, the theory is replaced by a new one. That is how science works. If your claim was true, science would never make any progress at all.

Your ignorance is showing. Funding is based on results. And the only way to get results in science is by doing science according to the scientific method. You can try to cheat, and do pseudo-science, but the process is designed so that such fraud is usually quickly caught, and this ends up destroying the career of the fraud.
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Funding IS based on results -- positive results.

Positive verifiable results. If your positive results cannot be independently reproduced, then your positive results aren't worth a puddle of warm spit, and you stop getting funded.

You would lose that wager. By the way, I don't believe in God either.
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Oh, I would certainly win. I can tell by your argumentation that I would.

Your presumption is typical of the willfully ignorant.

No, it is because personal experience is demonstrably unreliable.
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Ah yes, here is the core of the problem. Those who study their science and get all the right credentials are given the authority to speak and write about "truths" of which they have no personal experience. This includes such things as asserting that the personal experience of some people is less the "truth" than those "truths" they have studied yet have no actual personal experience of. Makes a lot of sense.

Your ignorance is blazingly obvious. There are no authorities in science, at least not in the meaning you have presented. It doesn't make any difference who you are. If your results cannot be independently verified, they aren't worth crap.

I am sure of nothing. I am very confident that the above scenario is not the case. That confidence is based, once again, on the fact that I understand how and why the scientific process works, and that historically even the most cherished preconceptions of science were dismissed when the evidence required doing so.
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The science you "understand" has, for the most part, been objectified and separated from it's historical contexts.

The science I understand is demonstrably reliable. End of story.

What?

Are you completely retarded, or just playing devil's advocate to a ridiculous level? Two words: Independent verification. This aspect of science addresses all of these nonsensical issues you are bringing up.
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And we have evidence that such independent verification actually happens, how?

How about the fact that independent groups claim to have reproduced the study, and publish their methodologies in such a way that if they were lying, anybody who attempts to reproduce their results would find out?

Like I said, the alternative is a worldwide conspiracy involving the entire scientific community.

Anyway, I for one know that no such conspiracy exists, because I would have to be a part of it. I guess if your critical thinking skills are so inadequate that you cannot see the ridiculousness of the conspiracy hypothesis, then you will just have to take my word for it.

Or don't. I don't care whether you choose to believe nonsense or not. It is my job to do science, and make those results available to the public. It is not my job to convince ignorant people that science is valid.

The above clearly indicates that you know nothing about the process you are describing. That simply isn't how it works.

Dr. Stupid
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Please tell me how you think it works.

Read a book. It is painfully obvious that you are not interested in a serious discussion here, and I am not going to waste my time humoring you anymore.

You have repeatedly asserted a knowledge that I don't know how or why science "works"; without any evidence, I might add.

Your own idiotic claims are all the evidence I need. Anybody who actually does understand science will have no trouble identifying that you do not.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Interesting Ian]

You present yourself as a bit naive. Scientific hypotheses are supposed to be falsifyable.

Oh yes?? Tell me. Since when was this decided?? Methinks that a scientist has read some of Popper and got a bit carried away! You talk as much sh!t as Stimp. You really imagine a theory is abandoned simply because some observation doesn't fit into the theory? What a load of sh!t.

If you believe science is all about finding more and more and more evidence to support a theory, then you are wrong.

No it is not all about that. And no I do not intend to go into how science progresses at this juncture. Poppers falsifiability doesn't actually portray the progress of science though.

 

[Suggestologist]

Suggestologist,
Wrong. You can demonstrate that a falsifiable theory is false. Once you have done so, the theory is replaced by a new one. That is how science works. If your claim was true, science would never make any progress at all.

I can demonstrate that some theories are false. But that would be some of the dreaded "unreliable" personal experience.

Positive verifiable results. If your positive results cannot be independently reproduced, then your positive results aren't worth a puddle of warm spit, and you stop getting funded.

You can always get funding from a special interest group.

You get locked into your either-or thinking too easily.

Your presumption is typical of the willfully ignorant.

I'm sure you have studies that characterize the attributes of the willfully ignorant to back that up?

Your ignorance is blazingly obvious. There are no authorities in science, at least not in the meaning you have presented. It doesn't make any difference who you are. If your results cannot be independently verified, they aren't worth crap.

There are no authorities in science? Who's being willfully ignorant? Scientists talk about that which they have no personal experience, and other people believe (as in have "faith") in what they say. This is a well-established social rule. Happens every day.

The science I understand is demonstrably reliable. End of story.

You haven't demonstrated that to me.

How about the fact that independent groups claim to have reproduced the study, and publish their methodologies in such a way that if they were lying, anybody who attempts to reproduce their results would find out?

As I have written earlier, reproducing a methodology is irrelevant to proving that the methodology proves what the experimenter thinks it proves. For that to be the case, the person who designs the methodology must have sufficient and in-depth personal experience of the subject matter. Randi and parapsychological experiments should come to mind.

Like I said, the alternative is a worldwide conspiracy involving the entire scientific community.

There are many alternatives. The worldwide conspiracy of which you are a part, that attempts to make anyone who disagrees with the "science" it has agreed upon -- look silly, is quite active; as your activity on this thread helps to Prove.

Do you understand the psychological referent of: "To blind someone with science"?

[QUTOE]
Anyway, I for one know that no such conspiracy exists, because I would have to be a part of it. I guess if your critical thinking skills are so inadequate that you cannot see the ridiculousness of the conspiracy hypothesis, then you will just have to take my word for it.
[/QUOTE]

There is no necessity to know that you are in a conspiracy, in order to be in one. That leads to Foucault and Bentham's Panopticon, and other related philosophy that I'm sure you wouldn't be interested in. The "normalizing gaze" and such.

Or don't. I don't care whether you choose to believe nonsense or not. It is my job to do science, and make those results available to the public. It is not my job to convince ignorant people that science is valid.

You've never proven that evaluation of my beliefs.

Read a book. It is painfully obvious that you are not interested in a serious discussion here, and I am not going to waste my time humoring you anymore.

I wasn't aware that you'd written a book on the subject, or I wouldn't have asked. But this is typical of the appeals to authority I've alluded to.

Your own idiotic claims are all the evidence I need. Anybody who actually does understand science will have no trouble identifying that you do not.

Dr. Stupid

None of them have sent me a questionairre, so I doubt they or you could substantiate such an evaluation scientifically.

 

[Suggestologist]

More dancing, suggestologist?
Evidence? Let's take a random Science Journal, like Nature. What's the ratio of new findings replacing old?

I think that'd show the evidence right there.

Many of the papers I read show incremental experimentation that do little more than reaffirm what we already knew. I see few papers that suggest a radical shift is needed. And the few that I have seen, seem to just fade away.

Do a survey that shows that science isn't interested in revising, improving or disproving old theories.

Science isn't a person who can have interests, or who can act to improve and disprove. That is what scientists are supposed to engage in. Motives among scientists are unlikely to be in synchrony about which theories should stay and which should go. A survey isn't likely to reveal any intentionally hidden motives, or even motives that the particular scientist might deem not socially acceptable within the scientific community.

Go do the work to find out. Prove to us that science is mode-locking. Work for it. Get off your postulating butt and actually prove something to us.

Science has had one stream of history. How would I replicate any methodology that proved what you suggest I should prove?

Or HEY, here's a fantastically simple idea. Prove something is true that is currently ignored or believed to be false by all previously published science articles. Since science is mode-locking, it should be painfully simple to find some phenomena that has been locked out.

Prove THAT! Depending on what it is, you might be in line for a million bucks AND the nobel prize!

Mode-locking doesn't mean that there aren't studies or papers that already show a different result from what is "accepted" by the scientific community. Hypnosis is a prime example, where the studies are all there, yet scientists are still loathe to take a good look because they have been socialized (within the scientific community, and before their initiation into it) to treat hypnosis as "just a trick".

Plus, we can all throw out the scientific method, and use the Suggestologist Method, which states.....

What WOULD the suggestologist method state? Use as complicated a reasoning as possible... Never have faith in anything you can't put your hand to.... Dance around the argument, arguing semantics at every turn, then switch analogies..

Yeah, that'll cure polio, and get us to the moon!

My "method" is that of personal experience. If I can't test it myself, it's not as believable as if I could test it myself. That's all. Once I test it myself, I am more open to accepting papers related to the idea in question.

Do I believe people landed on the moon, sure; but probably not as much as many of the people here seem to. I wasn't even there to watch it live, I can't bounce a laser off of whatever mirrors were supposed to have been left there, so how can I conscientiously claim to definately KNOW that it happened?

People who call themselves scientists can tell me; but how do I know that they aren't just mistaken?

What I have been confronted by in this forum has been the acceptance of any study published, simply because it has been published. And the idea that studies trump personal experience. How is this skepticism? I must ask the question.

"I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything." -- Thomas Huxley

 

[Yahweh]

Oh yes?? Tell me. Since when was this decided??

It was not "decided". It is part of the process of science, its a process called "thinking from all sides of the circle". If I give you the hypothesis "a ball thrown at 5 meters per second will leave the earth and fly into space", then I will not continue to mount more and more evidence as to how that ball will escape the pull of the earth. I will try to prove how that hypothesis is wrong.

If I perform tests and yet I am unable to prove my hypothesis wrong, then obviously the data I have gathered most likely supports my hypothesis. Science is not a one-lane highway, Ian.

Methinks that a scientist has read some of Popper and got a bit carried away!

Methinks you use a lot of foul language.

You talk as much sh!t as Stimp.

Hey, I admire Stimpy, hes a smart guy with more knowledge in Physics than I could ever wish to attain, he knows his way around Philosophy very well (so much he is comparable to Philosopher Yahweh himself), he has a good sense of humor. I like to know that I am comparable to him. Cool!

You really imagine a theory is abandoned simply because some observation doesn't fit into the theory? What a load of sh!t.

I dont understand what you meant... oh well, if I dont understand a particular rant then I'm sure it wasnt something worth reading anyway.

No it is not all about that. And no I do not intend to go into how science progresses at this juncture. Poppers falsifiability doesn't actually portray the progress of science though.

Hmmm, call me crazy but I would bet a supporting falsifyable hypotheses makes for a bit more progress than explaining science in terms of ambigious unfalsifyable theories and hypotheses.

 

[Silicon]

Do I believe people landed on the moon, sure; but probably not as much as many of the people here seem to. I wasn't even there to watch it live, I can't bounce a laser off of whatever mirrors were supposed to have been left there, so how can I conscientiously claim to definately KNOW that it happened?

People who call themselves scientists can tell me; but how do I know that they aren't just mistaken?

[/B]

Well then, what's the point of living as a society? If no endeavor is actually real, no information is trustworthy unless you yourself can bang on it with your own hands?

That's the wierd suggestologist uber-skepticism then.

What's the solution? Nobody report on any finding ever, because nothings worthy of any trust?



How do you function!?! Do you wonder if your car will explode when you get in, because how do you know that the designer wasn't mistaken in his understanding of internal combustion?

How do you know that the electrician who wired your house didn't run wires too close to your plumbing and you'll get electrocuted in the tub?!!

In a philosophy course, my teacher proposed the following follies:

To believe a falsehood,
To disbelieve a truth


I see that you have added a third:

For fear of believing a falsehood, you disbelieve all truths that do not present themselves as directly observable to a layperson.

Any truths not directly observable without any understanding of a field, shall be discarded. Any observations by experts in that field should also be discarded. Any research into that field shall be deemed useless, as any scientific field of inquiry has been already mode-locked.


How can I prove man went to the moon, without going there myself? Hell, even if I DID go to the moon, how do I know that I wasn't drugged and hypnotized to THINK I went to the moon?!!?
How do I know I EXIST??!?!?!?
AAAAAAHHHHHHH

COGITO ERGO SUM!!!

Ahhhhh.... whew....

Okay, assuming I exist, how could I prove man went to the moon.

Well for one, I COULD ASK THE GUYS THAT DID!
Assuming they don't lie.

For two, I could look at the photographs and the footage.

I work in the field of visual effects. Work with Oscar winners. And many of those shots STILL can't be done in miniature. Trust me, I worked on Armageddon. We had 100000 times the computer horsepower that the entire world had in 1969, and their shots STILL kick our ass. I won't bore you with lens theory, and working with miniatures, except to say, if those moon orbiting shots were miniatures, they'd need a film camera the size of an olive, a soundstage the size of new-jersey, a camera boom the size of the empire state building and a light 100 times as powerful as the sun itself.

They'd also have to have invented motion-control about 10 years before Star Wars. They'd have to have perfected the travelling matte and the optical printer (things that to this day haven't been perfected, we've discarded them and gone to computer).


Oh, and I know the people who were the best visual effects artists in the world in the 1960's. Doug Trumbull was the main guy. And even he couldn't do a travelling matte shot that didn't print-through.

No way in hell is that stuff fake.

Oh, but I'm an expert, and I might be mistaken.....

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

I am finished here. I have stated my position. I have addressed all of the issues that Suggestologist is rehashing and throwing back up over and over again. I am not going to just keep repeating myself just for his amusement.

If anybody has any reasonable questions or criticisms of my original reply to the topic of this thread, let me know.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Interesting Ian]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian


Oh yes?? Tell me. Since when was this decided??
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


It was not "decided".

Right, that all I need to know. Let's not hear any more sh!t about falsifiability being the crucial ingredient for scientific progress then. Science is more complex than that. Read some other philosophers of science apart fron Popper. Hey you have read Popper haven't you?

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,[b/]

Oh yes?? Tell me. Since when was this decided??
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was not "decided".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Right, that all I need to know. Let's not hear any more sh!t about falsifiability being the crucial ingredient for scientific progress then. Science is more complex than that. Read some other philosophers of science apart fron Popper. Hey you have read Popper haven't you?

I have. And unlike you, I actually understood it. The scientific process is more complicated than just the principle of falsifiability, but that does not change the fact that it is a crucial part of the scientific method.

And as Yahweh said, it was not "decided". That suggest some group of scientists getting together and declaring that, henceforth, falsifiability is a requirement of scientific theories.

It was determined. Specifically, it can be logically shown that only way an experiment can support a hypothesis, is if that hypothesis makes falsifiable claims, which the experiment could have potentially shown to be false.


Dr. Stupid