Why Science Matters


syrakusos

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The best scientists are those who most consistently integrate the scientific method into their lives. But that also describes the best people in any profession. The best people are those who are most consistently rational and empirical.

Michael,

Actually, you can apply this standard to religious people. There are lots of really good people who are religious. Why not use your eyes? You might see a few.

My beef is with the implied demonization in your approach based on a double-standard.

If you want to compare the best scientists against the best religious people and call one set evil, I'm OK with the logic behind that (albeit I would not agree with the evaluation). If you want to compare this or that version of the scientific method against this or that religious doctrine, I'm OK with the logic. Since I've been looking hard into the nature of storytelling through the lens of neuroscience and psychology, we will probably differ on our respective evaluations. But I would not have any beef with your comparison on a logical structural level.

Now, when you compare an idealized science against cherry-picked atrocities committed by religious people or things written into old documents, and say this proves science is the One True Path to happiness on earth because of all of science's virtues, sorry. That logic is flawed. The evaluation, too, but there is a logical fallacy at root, which is the part that bothers me. You are comparing two different things.

When I showed the kid asking to criminalize thought, I was showing a concrete. You objected because is was not "ideal science" and just someone who said something. Yet you resort to using the same fundamental process, talking about "murder and mayhem" as if that were all religion is.

When you make statements like the following, they exhibit precisely this error.

The use of force is prohibited to scientists and merchants. It is allowed, encouraged, justified, and advocated for both religion and politics. Faith and force are complementary. Neither has any place in science.

That is why physicists argued the Copenhagen model without resorting to murder and martyrdom. Even the worst cases in science, such as the rejection of continental drift, involved no imprisonments or executions. Even when Thomas Edison propagandized against alternating current, he killed dogs, not other engineers.

With all due respect, this is BS.

Prohibited by whom? And encouraged, justified and advocated by whom?

Just someone who said something?

That's who in both cases. And there are others who say the contrary. You cannot pretend that science exists without people in it. Not if you are interested in truth.

Eugenics was "science." Even in peer reviewed literature of the time. And the friggin' big bang is nothing but faith, especially that hedge that "nobody knows what happened before it." How about "nobody has seen the face of God"? That's the same goddam statement dressed up in other language.

Once again, as Terence McKenna said, "Science is saying give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest."

And, as I said before, letting the government do the dirty work of collecting taxes by force to fund science is nothing but hypocrisy if you want to claim, "The use of force is prohibited to scientists." They use force. They just let the government do their dirty work and lobby and kiss ass plenty to make sure that happens.

And they serve their masters well when more destructive weapons, covert mass behavior control, experiments with unwilling subjects, and so on are needed.

The day they stop doing that is the day I will start trusting them to talk about morality. The "scientific method" did nothing to convince them that stuff is evil.

So science does not prohibit force and faith, at least not as it currently exists. It only prohibits that in theory.

Here's how I read your argument:

1. When scientists use force or advocate using force, they are not being true scientists.

2. When religious people eschew using force and preach using force is evil, they are not being true religious people.

End of story.

But this is argument by prejudice, not argument by looking at what exists and asking why.

People who look and compare--who are more interested in validly doing so than anything else--try to compare the same essential things rather than blast straw men and blank out inconvenient facts, then compare a dressed up ideal against a dressed up concrete, to proclaim superiority.

Here's a book that makes your argument (or what I think your argument should be) a hell of a lot better than you are doing, and without the fallacies you are using:

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker.

I have this, but I have only skimmed it. And I've seen Pinker lecture on it. So I have enough knowledge of it to know that he compares things that exist properly. He looks at real evidence and compares it to real evidence, not just idealized prejudices.

Michael

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MM: "Falsifiability just means you can prove a scientist wrong."

But if you can't prove a scientist wrong that doesn't mean his theory escapes falsifiability, so your statement is wrong, for falsifiability is more than what you say. And if you can't falsify the theory qua theory sans scientist falsifiability still remains regardless if the theory is correctly constructed. Falsifiability is not the work of falsification.

--Brant

Right I think, the apparent object of the exercise is only to show that a theory qualifies as *scientific*. Not if it's valid or false. A kind of preliminary test to separate science from "pseudo-science" e.g.. astrology.

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Incidentally, I decided to skim some more and, by chance, came across the following quote (p. 680):

A state that uses a monopoly on force to protect its citizens from one another may be the most consistent violence-reducer that we have encountered in this book.

He is talking about a Leviathan devised by rational principle ("monopoly on force to protect its citizens from one another") that has "a female counterpart Justitia--the goddess of justice," not a dictatorship.

So Rand and Pinker meet on a fundamental...

I don't know how he deals with individual rights yet.

Michael

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MM tends to come onto OL all lumpy then leave leaving the lumps behind which we smooth out. My hypothesis (theory?) is he himself doesn't stick around for that because he doesn't want to be smoothed out. That's fine with me for I prefer him just the way he is. Now, however, he can falsify my proposition at any time just by coming back and fight for his lumps.

--Brant

got a devil in me--too much fun--get away from me, priest!

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In my freshman geology class in college ('62-'63), continental drift was posited as a possibility. You only get "worst" cases in science when science is combined with politics and a politics that is combined with religion. This religion may even be secular as in the religion of recycling and AGW. There's a lot of money bucking up this secular orientation--money which corrupts science, especially the "science" generated by academia. It's otherwise known as federal grant seeking.

--Brant

harris.jpeg

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In my freshman geology class in college ('62-'63), continental drift was posited as a possibility. You only get "worst" cases in science when science is combined with politics and a politics that is combined with religion. This religion may even be secular as in the religion of recycling and AGW. There's a lot of money bucking up this secular orientation--money which corrupts science, especially the "science" generated by academia. It's otherwise known as federal grant seeking.

--Brant

That evidence that nailed down theory of continental drift was finally gathered in the late 60's The evidence for the widening of the Atlantic Ocean made the case for continental drift and tectonic dynamics.

About the same time 1965 the case for the Big Bang (as opposed to Hoyle's steady state hypothesis) was delivered by two Bell Telephone engineers, Wilson and Penzias. They identified the cosmic background radiation at 2.7 Kelvin using the antenna at Holmsdale N.J. This temperature was predicted by Hans Betha on the basis of the Big Bang hypothesis. Wilson and Penzias won a Nobel Prize for their work. So the Big Bang is relatively recent --- 50 years.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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In my freshman geology class in college ('62-'63), continental drift was posited as a possibility. --Brant

That evidence that nailed down theory of continental drift was finally gathered in the late 60's The evidence for the widening of the Atlantic Ocean made the case for continental drift and tectonic dynamics.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Right. Again, Wegener offered the theory from 1912 until his death in 1930, but his work was rejected. As I recall, the movement of the tectonic plates and the widening of the Atlantic trench were detected by satellite imaging ( or perhaps by satellite radar?).

About the same time 1965 the case for the Big Bang (as opposed to Hoyle's steady state hypothesis) was delivered by two Bell Telephone engineers, Wilson and Penzias. They identified the cosmic background radiation at 2.7 Kelvin using the antenna at Holmsdale N.J. This temperature was predicted by Hans Betha on the basis of the Big Bang hypothesis. Wilson and Penzias won a Nobel Prize for their work. So the Big Bang is relatively recent --- 50 years.

That speaks to the heart of this discussion. Science makes predictions. The significant fact is not just that those who propose a theory include predictions to be tested (though there is that), but that others who examine the work suggest experiments to test it. Eddington's measurements to confirm that a gravitational field can bend light is an example. That is totally different from religious prophesy and political action. In religion, you have no outcome. In politics, you get the opposite of what was predicted.

In this case, I remember that announcement. It made the daily newspapers. I cut the story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and kept it in a science notebook for several years.

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