Slashdot Mirror

You will be forced to live forever!

speaks to this issue. Here's a link, and here's their link to the essay.

The funny thing is, Darwinian Evolution is wrong.

It was one of the first things a professor of Population Genetics taught us upon entering his class.

Your professor doesn't understand the meaning of wrong, and you repeat it. Why? Probably because it makes for more clickable subject lines.

http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relativity_of_Wrong

read the full thing.

Ha! Extremely unlikely! It is not that the universe increases in size by 4% over a period of a few years!

The simplest explanation is someone is wrong[1], including the theory. For centuries no one could explain why Mercury wasn't returning to same position in its orbit every revolution, until Einstein explained it. [2]

[1] - http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tcOi9a3-B0

[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_General_Relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury

Science is never wrong.

Sure it is. In fact, it's almost always wrong. But it's wrong in a useful way, and it's steadily getting less wrong. For instance, Albert Einstein came along and proved that Isaac Newton was partially wrong. Later physicists like Stephen Hawking came along and proved that Einstein was partially wrong. But Einstein was significantly closer to right than Newton was.

As Isaac Asimov put it:
"When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Time is a remarkably poorly defined concept in the deeper levels of physics, even less understood than gravity.

Yes, but I was referring to http://www.timecube.com/

I think the big difference between you and me is that you seem to find it completely unacceptable that anyone be wrong.

Depends what you mean by wrong and depends what you mean by unacceptable.

People are allowed to be wrong, and I would advocate no law against that. In that way, I accept them. There are also degrees of wrong: I'm vastly more accepting of people believe that the earth is an ellipsoid than people who believe the earth is flat (http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html).

Perspectives can only come in to play when something is up for debate. For example, I love arguing with roman_mir about the benefits of the free market. I think he's wrong, and he thinks I'm wrong, but those are both perspectives, because neither of our opinions could be considered to be objective fact. It doesn't stop me feeling he's very wrong and arguing loudly though.

'd like the power to disagree with something that people say is objectively true, because people can be wrong about objectiveness.

Well, that's OK. Whether something can be regarded as objectively true _may_ be up for debate.

However there are plenty of emperical, objective facts. For example whether the earth is flat or not. Refusing to acknowledge them isn't IMO a perspective, it's ignorance or stupidity.

That's "acceptable" inasmuch as I feel they should be allowed to live their ignorance/stupidity filled lives in peace if they wish to and if they wish to remain ignorant. But they shouldn't expect any respect or worse reverence for it.

Nine billion names of God is what you're thinking of