Science!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @cartman82 said:

    Mostly a bullshit article. This guy has a very superficial understanding of scientific process. Basically, his thinking process:

    Your summary seems like a bullshit summary. Or we read different articles.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @boomzilla said:

    Your summary seems like a bullshit summary.

    No. @cartman82 is mostly correct. Mr Gobry seems fundamentally confused as to what science really is all about, but it doesn't stop him from ranting about other people's confusion (or what he perceives as such).

    Let's start with the Big Mistake: science is about learning "capital-T Truths" - or the closest we can get to that ideal. The purpose of science is to understand the universe. The "engineering" bit is an afterthought - which is why it's done by engineers, not scientists. A great amount - perhaps - the majority of scientific understanding will never find practical application, but that's ok, 'coz that's not why we do science.

    Second, experimentation is important, but it's science only if done in a theoretical framework. Inventors tinker and perform trial-and-error "experiments". A scientist first formulates a hypothesis about how the world works and then tries to design an experiment to prove him wrong. Scientific theories aren't established by experiments that prove them true, but by the fact that every experiment so far has failed to prove them false.

    Fortunately, Mr Gobry is not a scientist, or I'd be really worried. However, he does sound like he's got an agenda and nothing kills science more surely than politics.


  • BINNED

    You have misread the article. The key thing you missed is that when a native English speaker intentionally capitalizes common nouns, he does so to point out that the meaning used isn't what would normally be expected. So "Truth" in the article is not the same thing as truth, and the implication is that it's the opposite.

    FWIW, I agree with you that politics kills science. The bigger problem, though, is that it kills science in such a way that science doesn't look dead, even (or especially) to the scientists. Which is a convoluted way of saying "what makes you think there's no politics in science now?"


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @antiquarian said:

    when a native English speaker intentionally capitalizes common nouns, he
    does so to point out that the meaning used isn't what would normally be

    Yes, I know. And?

    @antiquarian said:

    So "Truth" in the article is not the same thing as truth, and the implication is that it's the opposite.

    Why should some nutjob's nutty rhethorical figures be of interest to us?


  • BINNED

    @GOG said:

    Yes, I know. And?

    Nothing to see here. Please move along.

    @GOG said:

    Why should some nutjob's nutty rhethorical figures be of interest to us?

    If you're the type of person who dismisses everyone you disagree with as a nutjob, the article obviously won't have any value for you. On the other hand, if you're calling him a nutjob because he disagrees with the consensus, the article still won't have any value for you, but instead of sounding closed-minded, you will have confirmed your identity as a proud citizen of the mainstream consensus.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @antiquarian said:

    If you're the type of person who dismisses everyone you disagree with as a nutjob, the article obviously won't have any value for you.

    But just because we disagree with him doesn't automatically imply that he's not a nutjob. Some people are nutjobs, and some of what they say we may disagree with. In this case, whether he is a nutjob, a shill, or whatever other kind of derogatory term we might choose, he says stuff that we disagree with on the basis that it isn't true.

    He would appear to be someone who goes in for Axe Grinding. Makes for reasonable copy I suppose, but isn't actually valuable intellectual content. (Many scientists also go in for that particular peccadillo from time to time. Nobody's perfect.)


  • BINNED

    @dkf said:

    But just because we disagree with him doesn't automatically imply that he's not a nutjob. Some people are nutjobs, and some of what they say we may disagree with. In this case, whether he is a nutjob, a shill, or whatever other kind of derogatory term we might choose, he says stuff that we disagree with on the basis that it isn't true.

    Well, that would have been addressed by the part of my post that you didn't quote:

    @antiquarian said:

    On the other hand, if you're calling him a nutjob because he disagrees with the consensus, the article still won't have any value for you, but instead of sounding closed-minded, you will have confirmed your identity as a proud citizen of the mainstream consensus.

    So again, nothing to see here. Please move along.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @GOG said:

    Second, experimentation is important, but it's science only if done in a theoretical framework. A scientist first formulates a hypothesis about how the world works and then tries to design an experiment to prove him wrong. Scientific theories aren't established by experiments that prove them true, but by the fact that every experiment so far has failed to prove them false.

    You're not contradicting him as much as you seem to think you are:

    What we now know as the "scientific revolution" was a repudiation of Aristotle: science, not as knowledge of the ultimate causes of things but as the production of reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation.

    @GOG said:

    However, he does sound like he's got an agenda and nothing kills science more surely than politics.

    Yes, but his agenda (as exposed in this article) is for reinforcing the critical thinking and skepticism that's good for science. What agenda did you detect in here? What did he say that was "bad for science?"

    I really like the bit towards the end, and I've added some emphasis for the bit that I think modern Scientism misses:

    Modern science is one of the most important inventions of human civilization. But the reason it took us so long to invent it and the reason we still haven't quite understood what it is 500 years later is it is very hard to be scientific. Not because science is "expensive" but because it requires a fundamental epistemic humility, and humility is the hardest thing to wring out of the bombastic animals we are.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said:

    He would appear to be someone who goes in for Axe Grinding. Makes for reasonable copy I suppose, but isn't actually valuable intellectual content.

    Could you elaborate? I presume we're talking about his statements about either NDT or Jenny McCarthy, or maybe Big Education?

    I hate to quote that guy, but your response as presented is pretty much NUH UHH!


  • BINNED

    @boomzilla said:

    Yes, but his agenda (as exposed in this article) is for reinforcing the critical thinking and skepticism that's good for science.

    And this is important because the consensus has been wrong before, and thinking we've got everything right this time will prevent us from really getting everything right.



  • @antiquarian said:

    And this is important because the consensus has been wrong before, and thinking we've got everything right this time will prevent us from really getting everything right.

    +�

    I hear "Science says this" or "Science says that" thrown around so much as "proof" that something is 100% verifiable and accurate and true. How many scientific theories have been proven wrong over the ages? Why is modern man so arrogant to think he's the first one to know for sure when so many of his predecessors have been wrong about so much?

    Science is a process, and it's undertaken by fallible humans. Assuming something is true simply because "Science" sounds like a cult to me.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @boomzilla said:

    his agenda

    While it is a fact that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads, all else equal, to higher atmospheric temperatures, the idea that we can predict the impact of global warming — and anti-global warming policies! — 100 years from now is sheer lunacy.

    Or, paraphrased:

    I don't want to get rid of my car, so no empirical truths are knowable and science is incapable of making predictions!


  • BINNED

    Do we have a Straw Man badge?



  • @antiquarian said:

    Do we have a Straw Man badge?

    We should have one, it would suit this place.

    @PJH, what do you reckon? Put it with the pedantry badges perhaps?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Or, paraphrased:

    Wow. We can barely predict the weekend's weather. There are tons of things we don't know about the climate system (and all of our attempts to predict it underline that). But noticing all of that is the exact opposite of the entire article?

    Whose agenda were we talking about, again?


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    504 ate my reply count: 5

    Anyway, I was being intentionally straw-manny and hyperbolic for effect, but I do feel he errs too heavily on the side of "nothing can be known" in his attempt to refute "everything is known". Going on about how there are no "real truths" and how religion is necessary to achieve such truths smells of mysticism and conflating spirituality with observable reality, and the sentence I quoted would make a great sound-bite for a climate change denier insisting that all science is meaningless and therefore we should consume all resources with abandon because God created the world for mankind to use up.

    That's not to say that the article has no value. It has many good points and intrigues the philosophical side of me. But it's not perfect.


    Filed under: Fun fact: You can tell it's not saving because you can't find the edit post button to correct a typo.


  • BINNED

    @Yamikuronue said:

    I was being intentionally straw-manny and hyperbolic for effect,

    You're using this word "was". I do not think it means what you think it means.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Anyway, I was being intentionally straw-manny and hyperbolic for effect

    @Yamikuronue said:

    climate change denier

    ...and so it goes.

    @Yamikuronue said:

    Going on about how there are no "real truths" and how religion is necessary to achieve such truths smells of mysticism and conflating spirituality with observable reality,

    That's the opposite of what TFA was saying with respect to observable reality.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    I appear to be missing something from my reading then. Meh. Bored with this article now.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Here's the bit I was looking at:

    What distinguishes modern science from other forms of knowledge such as philosophy is that it explicitly forsakes abstract reasoning about the ultimate causes of things and instead tests empirical theories through controlled investigation. Science is not the pursuit of capital-T Truth. It's a form of engineering — of trial by error. Scientific knowledge is not "true" knowledge, since it is knowledge about only specific empirical propositions — which is always, at least in theory, subject to further disproof by further experiment.

    He seems to put mysticism and spirituality into the "capital-T Truth" category.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    But you don't see how that line of thinking leads to devaluing the information science can give us in favor of spiritual "truths"?

    I guess what gets me is the assertion that "true" knowledge is spiritual/mystic/"Why" knowledge rather than scientific "how" or "what" knowledge. It makes it sound like empirical knowledge is therefore a lesser form of knowledge. It's probably just a word choice issue but I see the same arguments coming from people whose conclusion is to disregard all of science and return to Aristotle, so the sudden assertion that it's impossible to make projections about climate change sounds like the beginning of an argument that ends with "and that's why we should all drive Hummers".


  • ♿ (Parody)

    They're both valuable, but for different things. Using one in place of the other is wrong, whichever way you go. TFA was addressing one direction and you're concerned with the other direction, which I agree with, and I don't really see any evidence that the author would disagree with you.

    Perhaps some shibboleths (such as rejection of mainstream climate predictions) are influencing some reactions to TFA. Lord knows that sort of thing has bitten me more than once.


  • BINNED

    @Yamikuronue said:

    But you don't see how that line of thinking leads to devaluing the information science can give us in favor of spiritual "truths"?

    I was about to ask you to explain, but after looking at your edits it's clear we don't have the same view of what the author was trying to say.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    yeah. In the first post that got eaten I pointed out that there's no acknowledgement that every sliding scale has TWO extreme (and usually overly simplistic and wrong) endpoints and that this seems to drift too far toward the other for my liking.



  • @Yamikuronue said:

    I guess what gets me is the assertion that "true" knowledge is spiritual/mystic/"Why" knowledge rather than scientific "how" or "what" knowledge. It makes it sound like empirical knowledge is therefore a lesser form of knowledge. It's probably just a word choice issue but I see the same arguments coming from people whose conclusion is to disregard all of science and return to Aristotle, so the sudden assertion that it's impossible to make projections about climate change sounds like the beginning of an argument that ends with "and that's why we should all drive Hummers".

    I'd say that the "how"/"what" knowledge is more valuable than spiritual/mystic/"why" knowledge; we can use the former to build systems and solve real-world problems, while the latter is good for satisfying the spiritual demands of the human brain, but little else.

    Or in short, the next generations of engineers will be cleaning up the mess that that previous generations had made, armed with a (hopefully) better understanding of how the world works. I have my doubts though, due to what the political extremists have done to neuter public education. As to the religious types? Well...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tarunik said:

    I'd say that the "how"/"what" knowledge is more valuable than spiritual/mystic/"why" knowledge; we can use the former to build systems and solve real-world problems, while the latter is good for satisfying the spiritual demands of the human brain, but little else.

    The “why” of things is more useful longer term, as it can make it much easier to determine the future direction of “what” and “how”.



  • @antiquarian said:

    Do we have a Straw Man badge?

    @PJH, let's create a badge for people that use the term "straw man" as a serious argument. Man, I hate those people.


  • BINNED

    Saying "straw man" is a lot less typing than "hey, why not try arguing against what was written as opposed to what your shoulder aliens are telling you was said?"



  • You're treating typing as a straw man!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    🎵 If it only had a brain! 🎵


  • :belt_onion:

    There is a science and a math topic going on at the same time.
    I demand a merger. Math will fix your science and everyone will be happy.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dkf said:

    The “why” of things is more useful longer term, as it can make it much easier to determine the future direction of “what” and “how”.

    That's a different sort of "why" than I think @tarunik was talking about. But I think the spiritual sort of thing, which a more secular person might simply refer to as morality or values is very important. Again, these are different sorts of truth and they affect our lives and our decision making in different ways.

    An example occurred to me, that should nicely troll at least someone here. During the 2008 election, Obama was being interviewed by one of the big news guys (can't recall whom) and the subject of capital gains taxes came up. Obama said he wanted to raise them. The interviewer asked why he would want to do that, since everyone knew (from recent past experience...really, there has been pretty wide agreement even by economists on this) that raising them to the levels proposed would be likely to reduce revenue. Obama pushed on, saying that it was a matter of fairness, and the loss of revenue was worth it.


  • :belt_onion:

    @chubertdev said:

    let's create a badge for people that use the term "straw man" as a serious argument. Man, I hate those people.

    On the internet, people claiming an argument is a strawman are as common as people that think every use of the word irony is wrong.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Arantor said:

    @PJH, what do you reckon? Put it with the pedantry badges perhaps?

    Hmm. Where would it stop though?


  • :belt_onion:

    That list is totally incomplete. Where is the Argument by @blakeyrat type of argument? It's basically a combination of all of these:

    Argument By Gibberish (Bafflement)
    Argument From False Authority
    Argument By Generalization
    Argument By Vehemence
    Argument From Personal Astonishment


  • BINNED

    We're not inventive enough with our trolling to need more than a few of those. For now, 2 should be enough:

    • one for people who make straw man arguments
    • the other for people who falsely accuse others of making straw man arguments

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    That's a different sort of "why" than I think @tarunik was talking about. But I think the spiritual sort of thing, which a more secular person might simply refer to as morality or values is very important. Again, these are different sorts of truth and they affect our lives and our decision making in different ways.

    Maybe, but the “why” in that sense still guides the future “what” and “how”. Understanding the reason lets you shortcut going back to the original person for clarification in many cases, because you can pick what they would have chosen if they'd known. It can also tell you when you must go back and talk to them even if it is for an entirely predictable decision; it is occasionally important to keep people in the loop even when there's no practical reason to do so (often because otherwise they make a stink about not leaving their primate scent markings all over the decision, and a good “why” will warn you to expect that attitude).

    People are usually pretty consistent about their “why”s. Once you learn them, you know how they're going to react in almost all situations.



  • Yes, yes, that should be enough.

    I could add slippery slope and perhaps appeal to authority, but that's about it.



  • Cargo cult science?



  • Congratulations, I think this entire thread is putting me to sleep (not the bored kind, the unconscious kind) - something I've been desperately trying to find for the past week. ;-)


  • BINNED

    +¦



  • Why is it that when I push the ¦ key I get |?


  • BINNED

    actually my key says |, none of my pipes are SIGPIPEs…


  • ♿ (Parody)

    An interesting take on Sabermetrics (baseball) as social science:

    This is interesting in the first place because it's a domain where we can easily collect a lot of very accurate data. But then what do you do with it? The piece focuses on a particular player whose value was inflated by a more accurate accounting of his worth at the plate but failing to see that he was shit on the base paths or in the field. Nevertheless, the guy made $107,000,000 over the last nine years.

    In the end, Dunn’s career represents the maturation of statistical analysis in baseball.

    ...

    In other words, the supergeniuses of advanced baseball statistics have progressed all the way to the point where their computers can now tell them what the much-derided old scouts could have observed just by watching: Adam Dunn wasn’t a very good major league baseball player.

    The more I've studied statistics, the less faith I have in fancy tests. If the visualized data isn't compelling, you're probably just fooling yourself with fancy arithmetic.



  • Blue LED wins the Nobel Prize for physics

    yes, it was the diode itself that won



  • Blue LEDs are evil. A single one of them can light up my entire 600 ft2 apartment at night, even from the other room, and between my main PC, VMware server, and even my cell phone charger, I have several of them.

    But that's what black electrical tape is for.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @mott555 said:

    Blue LEDs are evil. A single one of them can light up my entire 600 ft<sup>2</sup> apartment at night, even from the other room, and between my main PC, VMware server, and even my cell phone charger, I have several of them.

    Don't forget the wifi router.
    @mott555 said:
    But that's what black electrical tape is for.

    QFT, though an old tourist map works pretty good too.



  • @mott555 said:

    But that's what black electrical tape is for.

    Actually, I wish it'd be easier to hard-mod them to be dimmer by swapping out the dropping resistor...


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tarunik said:

    Actually, I wish it'd be easier to hard-mod them to be dimmer by swapping out the dropping resistor...

    An opaque cover is better. Really. Your eyes are very sensitive to blue light1 and it affects circadian rhythms in ways that green and red don't. Even a small amount of blue light can disrupt your sleep…

    1 It ought to be noted that sensitivity is different to the ability to distinguish detail, i.e., the resolution.



  • @dkf said:

    An opaque cover is better. Really. Your eyes are very sensitive to blue light1 and it affects circadian rhythms in ways that green and red don't. Even a small amount of blue light can disrupt your sleep…

    Ouch. So...I wonder if I should swap all the blue LEDs for some other color while I'm in there...(thankfully, the only ones I really have to worry about are those on my laptop)


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