Friends and Foes

14 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been observed...

Bob,

In other words, the certainty of this law depends on human observation.

Correct?

And were humans around at the start of the cosmos?

Michael

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

In other words, the certainty of this law depends on human observation.

Correct?

And were humans around at the start of the cosmos?

Michael

As do all scientific laws.  Any scientific law, hypothesis or theory  is one empirical falsification away  from being modified or discarded.  That includes the second law of thermodynamics.  However as physical laws go the second law of thermodynamics is a close to "a sure thing"  as any physical law yet propounded.  Put it another way.  If the second law of thermodynamics  is falsified,  most of physics  will come down with it.  It was found out recently that certain neutrinos had small but non-zero mass.  The standard model had to be modified slightly to accommodate this finding, but the Standard Model remained intact.  If the second law is ever falsified then the Standard Model will come crashing down, although the General Theory of Relativity will remain intact.  That is how central thermodynamics and the second law is to non-gravitational physics. 

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Put it another way.  If the second law of thermodynamics  is falsified,  most of physics  will come down with it.

Bob,

I look at it from a different angle.

When someone--states--as fact--that the cosmos sprang into existence with entropy ensuring its own destruction, I look to the beginning of the cosmos and wonder how anyone can know. From the knowledge we have at the present, we can say no human was there to observe.

And we have yet to tap into nonhuman intelligence, if such exists. And, even if that should ever happen, maybe we will only get some cosmic fake news about what went on in the beginning.

 

Michael

On 9/14/2018 at 4:33 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

Basic law of thermodynamics.  Entropy increases. When entropy becomes maximum  temperature everywhere is the same. No more work can occur.  The so-called heat-death of the Universe.  No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been observed so if the second law is really true  then the cosmos will reach a stage where nothing else happens. Heat death. It does not matter how the cosmos got started. The entropy is increasing.

 

There might be things which are not observable. We don't know.

You can't get your brain around the totality of existence with a "law." That's hubris. Scientists are modest---or should be. Conclusions should not outrun observations except to suggest avenues of inquiry.

---Brant

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

I look at it from a different angle.

When someone--states--as fact--that the cosmos sprang into existence with entropy ensuring its own destruction, I look to the beginning of the cosmos and wonder how anyone can know. From the knowledge we have at the present, we can say no human was there to observe.

And we have yet to tap into nonhuman intelligence, if such exists. And, even if that should ever happen, maybe we will only get some cosmic fake news about what went on in the beginning.

 

Michael

You may look to the beginning of things but you won't see them.  You can only guess what there possibly were.  There is just so far we can look back in time.

 

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

There might be things which are not observable. We don't know.

You can't get your brain around the totality of existence with a "law." That's hubris. Scientists are modest---or should be. Conclusions should not outrun observations except to suggest avenues of inquiry.

---Brant

That is almost certainly true.  We now have good evidence that space itself is is expanding and at an accelerating rate.  Which means there are portions of the physical cosmos where the space is expanding at greater than the speed of light.  This does not contradict relativity,  which postulates that no local motion IN spacetime of a wave or object  can be such that the local motion is at greater than light speed.  Spacetime can expand (or at least is not forbidden by theory) at greater than light speed. Which means there may be portions of the physical cosmos which we can never see which means we can never know them.

7 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

You may look to the beginning of things but you won't see them.  You can only guess what there possibly were.  There is just so far we can look back in time.

Bob,

That's exactly my point. So shouldn't one be careful in making absolute statements of fact about the cosmos ending by entropy?

I believe a qualification is in order.

"If we use the entropy law, which until now has not been breached, and only that, the cosmos will end one day by entropy. And even then, this is according to the present level of knowledge, which is subject to change."

Michael

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

That's exactly my point. So shouldn't one be careful in making absolute statements of fact about the cosmos ending by entropy?

I believe a qualification is in order.

"If we use the entropy law, which until now has not been breached, and only that, the cosmos will end one day by entropy. And even then, this is according to the present level of knowledge, which is subject to change."

Michael

No scientific statement is absolute.  Scientific conclusions are held provisionally as probable but nevertheless subject to empirical falsification.  There statement "No scientific statement is absolute" is not a scientific statement.  It is a metastatement,  a statement -about- science.

9 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

It is a metastatement,  a statement -about- science.

Bob,

So metastatements are absolute?

   

(No need to reply seriously. I'm just busting your balls.  )

Michael

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

So metastatements are absolute?

   

(No need to reply seriously. I'm just busting your balls.  )

Michael

It is not an absolute scientific statement.  I don't think there are any such.  The best physical science can mange are assertions so backed up by experiment that it would be unreasonable to doubt them in the absence of evidence that they might not be true.  No reasonable person doubts the second law of thermodynamics at this time, but if evidence were found against it, we would have to reconstruct the physics of energy.  The conservation of energy is similar in that fashion. No one doubts it, but it could, in principle,  be empirically falsified.  No scientific theory or hypothesis is beyond possible falsification.  The is why physical science succeeds where philosophy fails.

 

 

15 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

It is not an absolute scientific statement.  I don't think there are any such.  The best physical science can mange are assertions so backed up by experiment that it would be unreasonable to doubt them in the absence of evidence that they might not be true.  No reasonable person doubts the second law of thermodynamics at this time, but if evidence were found against it, we would have to reconstruct the physics of energy.  The conservation of energy is similar in that fashion. No one doubts it, but it could, in principle,  be empirically falsified.  No scientific theory or hypothesis is beyond possible falsification.  The is why physical science succeeds where philosophy fails.

 

 

But absolutism belongs to philosophy. Philosophy came first and it is philosophy that science always repairs to for the certainty of inquiry that is possible, hence the philosopy  of science and it's method.

--Brant

Al Gore's claim about Hurricane Florence doused by scientists

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/16/al-gores-hurricane-florence-claim-debunked-scienti/

Quote

 

...Meanwhile, Mr. Gore’s defenders, including some scientists, have praised his work for bringing climate change to the forefront and dismissed the fact-checks as nitpicks.

CleanTechnica’s Michael Barnard called the criticisms “straw men that have been erected since 2006 by skeptics” in a Friday post headlined, “Hurricane Florence is Part of What Al Gore Got Right in An Inconvenient Truth.”

 

Yeah, when critics point out that these assholes' predictions don't work out in reality, or that they're playing the trick of abandoning falsifiability by predicting several contradictory outcomes and then claiming success when predicting correctly but also incorrectly, the critics are just dealing in "nitpicks" and "straw men." Ha.

The issue is so important that the attention that Gore has brought to the cause outweighs the falsehood of his ridiculous claims. Man-made climate change theory is more important than truth. It's settled science that it's more important than scientific truth!

J

Why some think higher temps result in more hurricanes is beyond me. A conclusion without adequate data--or any data. One storm is not data, it's a datum. There were fewer storms a hundred years ago--and of less intensity? If the enviros abandon global warming for cooling I'm sure they'll blame the next such datum on cooling.

Liberal (left wing) moral hubris has ruled this country at least since the New Deal. It's now being challenged to the core in a real life and practical way and they are going absolutely nutzo. They can't have their way with their whithered ideas which they have lost the ability to articulate, so what they are doing now is all they can do and it's embracing violence and will do so on steroids if they can't retake the House of Representatives in November.

They are way, way out-gunned. Welcome to the really real world.

--Brant

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Why some think higher temps result in more hurricanes is beyond me.

Hurricanes are scary. The condition of people being scared is more likely to result in their accepting the idea of more government to stop what's scary. People who want to control over other people via climate change legislation will never predict any benefits to tiny changes in global temperature. We are doomed if we don't give up our freedoms.

8 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

But absolutism belongs to philosophy. Philosophy came first and it is philosophy that science always repairs to for the certainty of inquiry that is possible, hence the philosopy  of science and it's method.

--Brant

And philosophy will be absolutely unable to produce anything useful.  Philosophy, by and large,  is a failure at being useful.  There are some minor exceptions in  the field of epistemology.  But in ethics,  aesthetics, psychology  it is useless. Metaphysics is beyond useless.  It is a vacuum that sucks thoughts out of the heads of otherwise intelligent people.

 

This has been all over the place already, but not yet OL. Hope this doesn't derail the conversation ...

Shoulda been in the Weather Wars thread, but what the hell. The speed of that flame astounds me.

Edited September 18, 2018 by william.scherk

11 hours ago, william.scherk said:

This has been all over the place already, but not yet OL. Hope this doesn't derail the conversation ...

There's a "conversation"?

11 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Shoulda been in the Weather Wars thread, but what the hell. The speed of that flame astounds me.

Yeah, "Firenado" is a better much name than "Weather Wars."

J

So, I've been looking online, and, sure enough, people are citing fire whirls as proof of man-made climate change.

Dude, it's like the scientists totally predicted it, bro! They said, like back in the 70s or something, that extreme stuff and scary shit would happen. Well firenadoes are like totally extreme and scary shit, hoss! It's proof! They therefore nailed the prediction! That's settled science!

So, we have to surrender our freedoms right now to stop the fire whirls, otherwise they will be everywhere. And worse. Other scary shit that we haven't specifically identified, and didn't know existed throughout history, will happen which we'll then say that we predicted without naming it.

J

 

OLers who know who Raymond Pierrehumbert is might enjoy this video from the American Geophysical Union, which speaks to predictions ... from the "Tyndall Lectures."  Those who fall in a skeptical camp will find plenty to sharpen their questions and challenges.

 

Bonus points to anyone who can describe one of the discoveries of Tyndall ... perhaps in terms of the Tyndall Effect or the Tyndall Gases Effect. 

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

OLers who know who Raymond Pierrehumbert is might enjoy this video from the American Geophysical Union, which speaks to predictions ... from the "Tyndall Lectures."  Those who fall in a skeptical camp will find plenty to sharpen their questions and challenges.

 

Bonus points to anyone who can describe one of the discoveries of Tyndall ... perhaps in terms of the Tyndall Effect or the Tyndall Gases Effect. 

Yeah, um, the above confirms what my position has been for a long time.

They failed to predict important things. Vital things. They can't explain them. They believe that one or two potential explanations might allow them to hopefully salvage their theory (I think at last count, the total of proposed dog ate my homework potential rescue proposals was around 34 to 37 -- and there was no "consensus" on which of those the true real certified so trust us scientists found the most plausible).

But we don't have time to wait to find out! Trust us, we're the scientists! To end the lecture, let's go with a scare story where our successful predictions and explanations should be.

So, to summarize, we admit that we think that we kind of don't know, but we're still certain that you're going to have to give up your freedom, cuz we believe that we really do know despite the fact that we don't.

 

22 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

And philosophy will be absolutely unable to produce anything useful.  Philosophy, by and large,  is a failure at being useful.  There are some minor exceptions in  the field of epistemology.  But in ethics,  aesthetics, psychology  it is useless. Metaphysics is beyond useless.  It is a vacuum that sucks thoughts out of the heads of otherwise intelligent people.

 

Philosophy produced the scientific method thank you.

--Brant

thank you Issac Newton

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Philosophy produced the scientific method thank you.

--Brant

thank you Issac Newton

Brant,

Bob has discovered time travel.

 

Michael

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Philosophy produced the scientific method thank you.

--Brant

thank you Issac Newton

Newton and Galileo dumped Aristotle's nonsense as did Kepler.   Science did not progress until Aristotle was purged.

 

More Pierrehumbert, with a brief   explanation of the Greenhouse-CO² effect (the Tyndall Gases Effect):

 

Climate deniers caused the fire. We need to punish them. Dishing out punishment is virtuous.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jerry-brown-climate-change-deniers-definitely-contributing-to-the-new-abnormal-of-wildfires/

The deniers thought their wrong thoughts, and those thoughts caused thought waves which created sparks, and the thoughts dried out brush and wood, and made the temperatures super hot. It's settled science. If you disagree, then you are a science denier and will be punished accordingly.

J