Dna Power Plants

[A-wal]

Okay, enough with the fun emoticons.

 

Just found out from doing a bit of reading that solar neutrino oscillation is not the same as the neutrino oscillation mentioned earlier, the one that won the nobel prize.

 

I honestly don't understand what the OP is on about. Linked together a ton of positions about sexuality and the universe in the last thread. He's probably utilizing forums to express ideas he has as a blog diary and coping mechanism, so he's basically doing what I do less sneakily.

Oh it's him! I don't feel so bad about hijacking his thread now.
 

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it, :phones:

Buffy

That's the most naive statement I've come across on this site!

First:
That's a religious argument, and it could be applied to anything. God is true whether or not you believe in Him. See?

Second:
Science changes. Exchemist has just pointed out that the standard model got it wrong if the nuclear fusion model of stars got it right. That's what the standard model chart I posted was intended to show but I read it wrong. I circled mass at the top and charge of the neutrinos thinking that was mass. The point is still valid.

Third:
You're talking about an institution that actively suppresses evidence that contradicts established models (see the Arp/Wegener/Birkeland links) and interprets data dishonestly to present the impression that established models have been validated. The best example of this is the W-map. The margin for error was greater the observed data!

In science possession is ninety-nine hundredths of the law. You can easily see this with the absolute joke that is big bang cosmology. It's built on foundations (W-map and red-shift) that have been falsified multiple times but the model is still presented as scientific. I have no doubt that the current era will be looked back on as the dark age of science, for the double meaning.

 

It's important to note within the context of the preceding argument though that the issue is now in where the lost mass goes when the neutrinos oscillate *after* they've left the sun, so still no issue to point to in the fundamental elements of stellar fusion, just where the mass goes...and that dark energy we don't understand has to come from somewhere...let's see energy...mass.... hmmm....

If neutrino oscillation were responsible for dark energy then it would push galaxies apart. Galaxies need the invention of dark matter just to hold them together! Dark matter is supposedly a property of the medium of space. More space = larger expansion. Dark energy isn't actually a real thing. It's just an ill defined fudge to save a broken model that was never supported by anything real in the first place.

 

I am intrigued now to know what it is that animates this poster. A political stance, perhaps? A negative personal experience of some kind? At any rate it does not seem to be interest in the natural world and how it works, but instead something to do with social and psychological influences on intellectual pursuits - cultural relativism, possibly.   

If I wasn't interested in how the natural world works why would I learn things like relativity, quantum physics, evolution (although that's not really learned, just needs that aha moment where it becomes obvious), cosmology, etc? What animates me is frustration because I'm very interested in how nature works but the people who study it professionally are more dogmatic than rational. I realise that science is a competitive environment, which obviously doesn't help the situation but it goes much further than that. Most scientists refuse to acknowledge evidence supporting what they don't want to be true and evidence refuting what they do.

Part of the problem is how it's taught. Information is presented as undeniable fact and anyone who disagrees is automatically wrong. No alternatives are given because mainstream science hates alternative viewpoints. This attitude can be seen on sites like this one, although not to the same degree as the others. Anyone who questions the standard view is labelled as crackpot. Some are but simply for questioning what they're being told. When I first became interested in science in my mid-twenties (through learning about cosmology) I was a materialist and a determinist. I thought free will and consciousness were illusions, now I don't. It's frustrating seeing people who think of themselves as rational rejecting anything spiritual on the grounds that it contradicts their worldview.

There's extremely strong (over five sigma, the Higs boson was considered proven with three sigma) evidence for precognition, the sense of being watched, remote viewing and a variety of other so called 'psi' phenomena. I'm not talking about anecdotal evidence, this is actual rigorous scientific experiments in heavily controlled conditions that gives repeatable results that literally have odds quadrillions to one of happening by chance that have been independently replicated, even by sceptics. They're very small effects much statistically undeniable given the amount of experiments. There are no rational grounds for rejecting the findings. The dogmatic mind is then force into accusations of data fudging which could be equally applied to all areas of science, thereby proving that they're rejecting the data on purely opinionated grounds.

I think that free inquiry should be encouraged rather than discouraged but any scientist who supports these findings will probably lose their whole career and that's not an exaggeration. In anonymous surveys the amount of scientists who believe in the possibility of these kinds of phenomena was identical to the general public, around 65%. Here we have a subject that's hugely fascinating that most people believe is possible, at least to some degree, and yet it's off limits to scientists who want to stay scientists.

I'll give real life example of what I'm talking about. Richard bloody Dawkins, and I've actually met him. Very polite and pleasant but surrounding by an aura of smugness stronger than I've ever seen. In a conversation with Rupert Sheldrake about his morphic fields theory (I don't subscribe to that theory, haven't even looked into it) Dawkins said it wasn't real science, Sheldrake said "Have you even looked at the evidence?" Dawkins said "I don't need to look at the evidence." I don't need to look at the evidence! He had decided it was wrong purely on the basis that he doesn't like what it shows. Enemy of science. This dude represents everything that's wrong with science!

Edited April 30, 2017 by A-wal

[exchemist]

Okay, enough with the fun emoticons.

 

Just found out from doing a bit of reading that solar neutrino oscillation is not the same as the neutrino oscillation mentioned earlier, the one that won the nobel prize.

 

 

That's interesting - I was certainly not aware of it. Can you direct us to a source where we can read about this distinction? 

 

(As you will have gathered, I no longer trust your motives and do not take what you say at face value, so I'd like to read it for myself.) 

Edited April 30, 2017 by exchemist

[A-wal]

I think I made my motives clear in my last post. I like science and care about the truth.

 

I couldn't find where I saw it before but this is apparently what's needed to fully explain the solar neutrino problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikheyev%E2%80%93Smirnov%E2%80%93Wolfenstein_effect

[Cottonshirt]

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it, :phones:

Buffy

 

what, you mean like inflation, which is only "true" precisely because we believe in it.

 

bearing in mind that I am not a physicist, have no qualifications and pretend no expertise in this area, consider me no more than "the man in the street" and, essentially, an idiot, but, my understanding is that there is precisely zero direct evidence that inflation actually happened. it answers a lot of intractable problems about the universe and it predicts the findings of the CMB survey (the Universe is flat(ish), homogenous and isotropic), but there is no direct evidence that it actually happened. it is, essentially, an assumption that cosmology has adopted because it is convenient to do so and it sweeps a lot of dust under the carpet.

 

one problem with it, again, stressing that I acknowledge I am an idiot, is that there is no logical reason for inflation to stop all over the universe at the same time. there could be regions of the universe still expanding at inflationary velocities even today. this would mean that the arrow of time is not a straight line everywhere, but locally curved.

 

one of the more fascinating things I learned from maths is that if the radius of a circle is infinite, the circumference is a straight line. why can't the "arrow" of time be straight in that sense?

 

and, to be clear, I don't have a problem with the making of assumptions, per se, what animates me is when those assumptions are embraced as "facts" by the same folks who want to be the gateholders of "truth." show me a scientist who can demonstrate that she objectively exists, then we can talk about "facts."

 

 

"Skeptics about exotic physics might not be hugely impressed by a theoretical argument to explain the absence of particles that are themselves only hypothetical. Preventive medicine can readily seem 100 percent effective against a disease that doesn't exist!"

 

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal

[exchemist]

what, you mean like inflation, which is only "true" precisely because we believe in it.

 

bearing in mind that I am not a physicist, have no qualifications and pretend no expertise in this area, consider me no more than "the man in the street" and, essentially, an idiot, but, my understanding is that there is precisely zero direct evidence that inflation actually happened. it answers a lot of intractable problems about the universe and it predicts the findings of the CMB survey (the Universe is flat(ish), homogenous and isotropic), but there is no direct evidence that it actually happened. it is, essentially, an assumption that cosmology has adopted because it is convenient to do so and it sweeps a lot of dust under the carpet.

 

one problem with it, again, stressing that I acknowledge I am an idiot, is that there is no logical reason for inflation to stop all over the universe at the same time. there could be regions of the universe still expanding at inflationary velocities even today. this would mean that the arrow of time is not a straight line everywhere, but locally curved.

 

one of the more fascinating things I learned from maths is that if the radius of a circle is infinite, the circumference is a straight line. why can't the "arrow" of time be straight in that sense?

 

and, to be clear, I don't have a problem with the making of assumptions, per se, what animates me is when those assumptions are embraced as "facts" by the same folks who want to be the gateholders of "truth." show me a scientist who can demonstrate that she objectively exists, then we can talk about "facts."

 

 

"Skeptics about exotic physics might not be hugely impressed by a theoretical argument to explain the absence of particles that are themselves only hypothetical. Preventive medicine can readily seem 100 percent effective against a disease that doesn't exist!"

 

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal

 

I'd agree that "truth" is a concept that most scientists avoid, for exactly the sorts of philosophical reasons you allude to. All we have are models, none of which can claim to "truth" because science always has to be open to the need to change the model in the light of new evidence. 

 

But your statement that there is no "direct" evidence for cosmic inflation, and by extension your assumption that a valid distinction can be made between "direct" evidence and any other sort, is rather suggestive of the sort of false distinctions I have encountered with creationists (no "direct" evidence for evolution, etc). I do not think one can make such a distinction. There is, or is not, evidence, and such evidence can be strong or weak, but trying to classify it into "direct" and "indirect" seems to me fraught with difficulty.

 

Just about all the evidence we have for anything in science is indirect. For example, we may see a line on a graph, which purports to to show the infra-red absorption of an organic molecule in a solution inside a spectrometer. Interpreting that line relies on a mass of assumptions, to do with the existence of molecules, none of which has ever been seen "directly", on the physics of radiation and its interaction with diffraction gratings, on the quantum-mechanical properties of the molecules, which rely on a load of obscure maths and data on such things as the bond lengths, angles and strengths of these invisible molecules, on the detector and its electronics that leads to the line on the graph. Yet infra red spectra are one of the everyday tools of the analytical chemist. Do we need to treat them with intense suspicion?

 

It seems to me that one of the things that non-scientists often fail to grasp is how interconnected different fields of science often are and how they thus corroborate one another, giving more confidence to each part. There is plenty of evidence of cosmic inflation, some of it from astronomy and some from radiation physics or particle physics, but of course it is indirect. But so is my infra-red trace above.   

Edited May 2, 2017 by exchemist

[exchemist]

I think I made my motives clear in my last post. I like science and care about the truth.

 

I couldn't find where I saw it before but this is apparently what's needed to fully explain the solar neutrino problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikheyev%E2%80%93Smirnov%E2%80%93Wolfenstein_effect

......But accuse us scientists  - in general - of lack of integrity* and acting out of psychological weakness **. I see. Very reasonable and balanced. I could call you an a***hole, too. 

 

Thanks, though for the link to the MSW effect, something I had not come across. The way I read this, it is not a different process from the one that Nobel Prize was awarded for. It is, though, a refinement to that process, by which the oscillation in high energy neutrinos (only) is reduced when the source of them is dense matter.   

 

 

 

*A-Wal: "Yes it's just a pity that it's run by scientists instead of people with moral and intellectual integrity who actually care about it."

 

** A-Wal: "It's just that most of them never say anything about areas outside their own field for fear of being wrong. Scientists hate to be wrong, intellectual insecurity presumably."

Edited May 2, 2017 by exchemist

[Cottonshirt]

such evidence can be strong or weak, but trying to classify it into "direct" and "indirect" seems to me fraught with difficulty.

 

agreed.

 

the distinction I was trying to make is that inflation is proposed as a solution to some specific problems. that it appears to solve those problems is not evidence that it is true. do you have any other evidence that the universe went through a period of inflation?

 

 

Do we need to treat them with intense suspicion?  

 

despite the fact that I cannot demonstrate the objective existence of my bedroom floor, I do, nevertheless, get out of bed in the morning by putting my feet on the thing I see. pragmatism dictates that I do so and so far I have not plummeted into a void. for the same reason, I do not hesitate for half an hour while contemplating the existence of my lunch. I just eat it and get on with my life. so, no, your analytical chemist does not necessarily need to treat all of her results with suspicion merely because they are based on prior assumptions.

 

there are times, however, and conversations, in which it is almost obligatory to acknowledge that my belief that the coherence of my senses equates to an objective reality is merely an assumption. when, for example, people like Richard Dawkins point their finger at religious folks and laugh that god does not exist. it beggars belief that so far no one has turned that same ridiculous finger on Dawkins and asked him to demonstrate that he exists. if his own existence is nothing more than a matter of belief, why is anyone else's belief system up for ridicule by a person who is insufficiently intellectually rigorous to admit that he even has a belief system?

 

similarly, since "truth" can exist only inside an axiomatic system, belief in the truth of science implies belief in the axioms of science. whatever those axioms might be, they are just, "things we have agreed are true." when Buffy claims that science is true "whether you believe it or not," she is not merely ignoring, completely, that this is nothing more than her own belief system, she also wants to Dawkins anyone sceptical enough to defer. I see that as being, essentially, intellectually dishonest.

 

and, for the record, I am not a creationist. I'm not a fan of boxes, but if you want to pigeonhole me then agnostic is probably the closest fit.

 

[exchemist]

agreed.

 

the distinction I was trying to make is that inflation is proposed as a solution to some specific problems. that it appears to solve those problems is not evidence that it is true. do you have any other evidence that the universe went through a period of inflation?

 

 

 

despite the fact that I cannot demonstrate the objective existence of my bedroom floor, I do, nevertheless, get out of bed in the morning by putting my feet on the thing I see. pragmatism dictates that I do so and so far I have not plummeted into a void. for the same reason, I do not hesitate for half an hour while contemplating the existence of my lunch. I just eat it and get on with my life. so, no, your analytical chemist does not necessarily need to treat all of her results with suspicion merely because they are based on prior assumptions.

 

there are times, however, and conversations, in which it is almost obligatory to acknowledge that my belief that the coherence of my senses equates to an objective reality is merely an assumption. when, for example, people like Richard Dawkins point their finger at religious folks and laugh that god does not exist. it beggars belief that so far no one has turned that same ridiculous finger on Dawkins and asked him to demonstrate that he exists. if his own existence is nothing more than a matter of belief, why is anyone else's belief system up for ridicule by a person who is insufficiently intellectually rigorous to admit that he even has a belief system?

 

similarly, since "truth" can exist only inside an axiomatic system, belief in the truth of science implies belief in the axioms of science. whatever those axioms might be, they are just, "things we have agreed are true." when Buffy claims that science is true "whether you believe it or not," she is not merely ignoring, completely, that this is nothing more than her own belief system, she also wants to Dawkins anyone sceptical enough to defer. I see that as being, essentially, intellectually dishonest.

 

and, for the record, I am not a creationist. I'm not a fan of boxes, but if you want to pigeonhole me then agnostic is probably the closest fit.

 

I didn't really think you were a creationist! Though we do get them from time to time :)

 

I like very much indeed your statement that truth can only exist inside axiomatic systems. I had never read this before and find it extremely insightful. 

 

I think you and I may be on the same page regarding Dawkins and religion: he spends his time ridiculing a superficial caricature of it, mostly. Though the Archbishop of Canterbury got him to agree (I think in their debate in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford) that strictly speaking, he , Dawkins was really an agnostic rather than an atheist! So maybe he is getting more reasonable at last.

 

Regarding cosmic inflation, I'd always thought the red shift was evidence that it still continues. But I'm not a cosmologist, so I may be wrong or out of date on this. 

Edited May 2, 2017 by exchemist

[Super Polymath]

truth can only exist inside axiomatic systems.

[Buffy]

To clear something up for new folks, I have a habit of including quotes in my posts, rarely are they my own words, and they're marked with :phones:, also known as "Buffy's Asterisk". I always recommend you look them up, as it may be useful information. Or not. 

 

In the last several posts a complaint or two has been registered about "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." That's actually a quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and killer of Pluto. Now the real context for his statement is in relation to scientific skepticism as voiced by those who in general disbelieve science because it disagrees with their--usually religious--worldview.

 

You can take that or leave it as you will.

 

What I and many others here have had much practice in dealing with, is the relatively more obscure problem of others who profess to be scientific and supportive of the scientific method basically using the identical tactic of calling any scientific theory at odds with their own "merely an unsupported belief," and worse that all of the scientific community is unwilling to entertain any alternatives to the conventional wisdom and actually goes out of it's way to stifle all dissent.

 

At best these dissents propose an alternative that while unusual or new is not at all inconsistent with what is known, but at worst, these arguments end up devolving into "my claim is no more unsupported than what the Cabal of Evil Scientists merely believes and you should accept it without criticism (or at least very little)."

 

There's also commonly a belief that either no one has ever been in this situation before and it requires an exception, or they're just the latest in a long line of persecuted innovators from Galileo to Halton Arp. 

 

Honestly, it would be cool to be as smart as Galileo, but those of us who have studied the History of Science can tell you lots about the wide range of responses through history to scientific discovery and the mostly monotonically improving openness to new ideas *that make a whit of sense*.

 

Have folks been persecuted for their ideas? Sure! Torquemada loved to literally torture people for some of the stuff posted here on Hypography!

 

Honestly, that doesn't happen much any more. Well maybe verbal, but there are no Iron Maidens or Thumbscrews here, nor at any institution of higher learning anymore.

 

As I've said many times here, if you find yourself resorting to comparing yourself to famous "persecuted scientists" a lot of folks will instantly start thinking you've done so because you yourself know that you don't have the data to back up your theory.

 

A reminder that science has no problem saying "huh, I dunno." There's lots of stuff yet to be discovered. If there's stuff that seems "settled and immovable" well that's because there's decades or more and hundreds of people who've put in time to back up that theory and it's withstood a lot of debate. Doesn't mean it can't be dismantled, just that doing so will require upending a LOT of science, and honestly, that usually can't be done in a post or two on a science forum. 

 

If some of us seem testy, you might first want to peruse our older discussion topics related to whatever you're interested in. You may find that there have been many others before you with the same theories who came here to "prove us all wrong."

 

 

Well, it got so that every piss-ant prairie punk who thought he could shoot a gun would ride into town to try out the Waco Kid. I must have killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille, :phones:

Buffy
 

[Super Polymath]

To clear something up for new folks, I have a habit of including quotes in my posts, rarely are they my own words, and they're marked with :phones:, 

 

I discerned that instantly. I quoted one or two, regardless. 

[Super Polymath]

 

 

What I and many others here have had much practice in dealing with, is the relatively more obscure problem of others who profess to be scientific and supportive of the scientific method basically using the identical tactic of calling any scientific theory at odds with their own "merely an unsupported belief," and worse that all of the scientific community is unwilling to entertain any alternatives to the conventional wisdom and actually goes out of it's way to stifle all dissent.

 

The best thing about facts accumulated via the method, imho, is that's it's - by definition - potentially always falsifiable. Which discredits any potential cabal of evil scientists from gaining any power over information. As we've witnessed in government & religion.

 

Which is why, politically, I lean towards this, & religiously I'm an agno-athiest.

 

I've experienced the thought-feedback, plenty, but until I hook others up to an fMRI machine and tested it on them, there's no point in coming to the conclusion that there's a simulator of The Matrix (like the Architect) or a civ. that uses tachyonic anti-telephones - idk if merely being superior or loosely fitting the label of omniscience-presence-potence makes one THE God. As House would say, "God must be unimaginably cruel". As Doctor Manhattan would say, "I'm nothing like Him."

Edited May 3, 2017 by Super Polymath

[exchemist]

To clear something up for new folks, I have a habit of including quotes in my posts, rarely are they my own words, and they're marked with :phones:, also known as "Buffy's Asterisk". I always recommend you look them up, as it may be useful information. Or not. 

 

In the last several posts a complaint or two has been registered about "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." That's actually a quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and killer of Pluto. Now the real context for his statement is in relation to scientific skepticism as voiced by those who in general disbelieve science because it disagrees with their--usually religious--worldview.

 

You can take that or leave it as you will.

 

What I and many others here have had much practice in dealing with, is the relatively more obscure problem of others who profess to be scientific and supportive of the scientific method basically using the identical tactic of calling any scientific theory at odds with their own "merely an unsupported belief," and worse that all of the scientific community is unwilling to entertain any alternatives to the conventional wisdom and actually goes out of it's way to stifle all dissent.

 

At best these dissents propose an alternative that while unusual or new is not at all inconsistent with what is known, but at worst, these arguments end up devolving into "my claim is no more unsupported than what the Cabal of Evil Scientists merely believes and you should accept it without criticism (or at least very little)."

 

There's also commonly a belief that either no one has ever been in this situation before and it requires an exception, or they're just the latest in a long line of persecuted innovators from Galileo to Halton Arp. 

 

Honestly, it would be cool to be as smart as Galileo, but those of us who have studied the History of Science can tell you lots about the wide range of responses through history to scientific discovery and the mostly monotonically improving openness to new ideas *that make a whit of sense*.

 

Have folks been persecuted for their ideas? Sure! Torquemada loved to literally torture people for some of the stuff posted here on Hypography!

 

Honestly, that doesn't happen much any more. Well maybe verbal, but there are no Iron Maidens or Thumbscrews here, nor at any institution of higher learning anymore.

 

As I've said many times here, if you find yourself resorting to comparing yourself to famous "persecuted scientists" a lot of folks will instantly start thinking you've done so because you yourself know that you don't have the data to back up your theory.

 

A reminder that science has no problem saying "huh, I dunno." There's lots of stuff yet to be discovered. If there's stuff that seems "settled and immovable" well that's because there's decades or more and hundreds of people who've put in time to back up that theory and it's withstood a lot of debate. Doesn't mean it can't be dismantled, just that doing so will require upending a LOT of science, and honestly, that usually can't be done in a post or two on a science forum. 

 

If some of us seem testy, you might first want to peruse our older discussion topics related to whatever you're interested in. You may find that there have been many others before you with the same theories who came here to "prove us all wrong."

 

 

Well, it got so that every piss-ant prairie punk who thought he could shoot a gun would ride into town to try out the Waco Kid. I must have killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille, :phones:

Buffy

 

Agree with nearly all you say. However I think deGrasse Tyson portrays science wrongly by asserting it is "true". Truth statements are nearly always avoided in science, in my experience. People tend to speak far more cautiously, e.g. such and such "is consistent with" something. Asserting "truth" implies a proof of it is possible, which as we know is not something science can ever do for its models.

 

DeGrasse Tyson is on record as saying philosophy is useless. That makes me think he is, in some respects at least, a blinkered idiot. 

[Buffy]

Agree with nearly all you say. However I think deGrasse Tyson portrays science wrongly by asserting it is "true". Truth statements are nearly always avoided in science, in my experience. People tend to speak far more cautiously, e.g. such and such "is consistent with" something. Asserting "truth" implies a proof of it is possible, which as we know is not something science can ever do for its models. 

 

Neil is a "popularizer" although no one should doubt his credentials (one of the Cosmos episodes has his "how I became an astronomer" story, which is fun). As such he drops into vernacular when it suits the purpose, although I agree that because of debates like the one here, avoiding the "T-word" where appropriate is probably a good idea.

 

On the other hand, eschewing "truth" completely is also a bad idea, because as we've also seen in this debate, "there is no truth" becomes the refuge of scoundrels. 

 

I don't see why there should be a problem saying "gravity exists" or "the earth is a Sphere" or "the Sun is the central mass of the solar system" or "bacteria can cause disease" are all "true." They all succumb to the "direct observation" requirement noted above, 

 

I think where people get off track though is where it isn't quite "direct observation" but rather "actual measurements but remote methods for which an alternative explanation would require corollaries that cannot possibly be true." That category is where amateurs really run afoul of the extensive research that renders some "non-intuitive theories" pretty much accepted as "truth" and justifiably so.

 

 

DeGrasse Tyson is on record as saying philosophy is useless. That makes me think he is, in some respects at least, a blinkered idiot. 

 

Well he did destroy Pluto, so you'll get no argument from me on that conclusion. He's otherwise brilliant though, and a real nice guy.

 

 

The truth is rarely pure and never simple, :phones:

Buffy

[exchemist]

Neil is a "popularizer" although no one should doubt his credentials (one of the Cosmos episodes has his "how I became an astronomer" story, which is fun). As such he drops into vernacular when it suits the purpose, although I agree that because of debates like the one here, avoiding the "T-word" where appropriate is probably a good idea.

 

On the other hand, eschewing "truth" completely is also a bad idea, because as we've also seen in this debate, "there is no truth" becomes the refuge of scoundrels. 

 

I don't see why there should be a problem saying "gravity exists" or "the earth is a Sphere" or "the Sun is the central mass of the solar system" or "bacteria can cause disease" are all "true." They all succumb to the "direct observation" requirement noted above, 

 

I think where people get off track though is where it isn't quite "direct observation" but rather "actual measurements but remote methods for which an alternative explanation would require corollaries that cannot possibly be true." That category is where amateurs really run afoul of the extensive research that renders some "non-intuitive theories" pretty much accepted as "truth" and justifiably so.

 

 

 

Well he did destroy Pluto, so you'll get no argument from me on that conclusion. He's otherwise brilliant though, and a real nice guy.

 

 

The truth is rarely pure and never simple, :phones:

Buffy

Yes I think that is fair. "There is no truth" is also false in science, in my view, as it seems to me that what we are modelling is a true physical reality.

 

Observations, too, can be said to be facts and thus objectively true: it is the theories - the models - of which this cannot be said. They may get close but we can never be sure they are accurate.  

 

But these sentiments are philosophy. It is almost inconceivable to me that a good scientist would dismiss consideration of such ideas as worthless.

Edited May 15, 2017 by exchemist

[A-wal]

On the other hand, eschewing "truth" completely is also a bad idea, because as we've also seen in this debate, "there is no truth" becomes the refuge of scoundrels.

Scoundrel? :) Because I don't accept your BS as truth? Your misguided and unwavering faith in dogma dressed as science is a reflection of a weakness, not strength dear.

 

Well he did destroy Pluto, so you'll get no argument from me on that conclusion. He's otherwise brilliant though, and a real nice guy.

Mike Brown destroyed Pluto.

[Buffy]

Scoundrel? :) Because I don't accept your BS as truth? Your misguided and unwavering faith in dogma dressed as science is a reflection of a weakness, not strength dear.

 

You a scoundrel? Oh no, I don't believe you have the talent for that designation.

 

As for dogma, it sounds like anything you don't agree with is "dogma." 

 

That's not terribly original, dear.

 

 

Mike Brown destroyed Pluto.

 

Mike Brown provided the gun, but no one knew who he was until Neil pulled the PR trigger. In the eyes of the law they'd both be exposed to murder charges.

 

 

Gosh, Pluto, I wonder how far it is to Pomo... Pomona! Hey, we're here! :phones:

Buffy