Known facts? You just acknowledged that Einstein may have been right. The facts still aren't known, so I don't see how his view was supposed to be "based on science".
Look again. I acknowledged that a couple of posts ago, but if he was right he was right by accident.
There are lots of facts that ARE known, such as the way sub-atomic particles behave. He refused to accept this. He refused to study theories that could predict it. Instead he isolated himself from everyone and looked for something that's still quite likely isn't there.
Good scientists base their views on what they think makes sense.
Horse shit. They base their views on an understanding, true. But that understanding must be based on evidence grounded in the real world. Refusing to accept something because it doesn't make sense when it's outside your arena of experience is stupid. The irony is that Einsteins own theories weren't accepted because people believed they didn't make sense. However when it was found that the world behaved in accordance to his theory, the theory was accepted. Yet when he was presented with evidence of the world behaving as he did not expect it he came out with drivel like "God does not play dice" and called it "spooky action at a distance".
Saying "God does not play dice," is a bit theatrical, but his statement wasn't a crazy faith-based assertion. What he's saying is that he can't make sense of a universe based on probability rather than actual existence, and so he doesn't believe that we live in such a universe.
Yes. He was denying reality, in preference for how he believes the world SHOULD work to make him feel good. That is the definition of a crazy faith based assertion.
Now you can call that science, but really it fits more into a particular branch of philosophy.
You can call it rock climbing for all I care. You're wrong, and public opinion certainly isn't with you. Very few people would agree with you that Einstein wasn't a scientist. By the way his work made specific testable predictions and if that isn't part of the scientific method I don't know what is.
If it's so freakin' open please tell me why I still need to have apps signed on my Nokia 6220 classic and will do for the foreseeable future unless I'm willing to try risky hacks.
Enough of your Feynman worship. He was very good at what he did, but was a womaniser and a drunk - certainly after he lost his first wife. Have you read one of the biographies on Feynman? I have. He also took unnecessary risks with his career for a basic ego trip (like showing up security theatre on the military base he worked on for the atom bomb) Furthermore his lectures aren't universally accepted as great. Some people think believe them to be long winded and confusing.
Personally I think he was as good as any other great scientist, but as an example of someone who lived with logical consistency you're not going to find a good one in a scientist.
Well I might argue that the people you're talking about weren't even "scientists" in the modern sense. What they practiced might be better described as natural philosophy. It's not as though Einstein was remembered for his lab experiments. Essentially his innovation was that he re-imagined what it meant to "measure" something.
Since when is a theoretician not a scientist? Only an experimental scientist is going to be remembered for his experiments. Most of the time modern experiments are too complex for lay people to understand., and require large collaborative efforts. How many of the scientists and engineers that worked on the Large Hadron Collider do you know by name?
No, it means there's (probably) no NON-LOCAL hidden variables. Given that nobody really understands what happens during wavefunction collapse (or rather, the mechanism behind it), it's hard to say that he's necessarily wrong. Quantum Mechanics are deeply weird, and science has been getting by describing how they work, rather than why.
Why should Quantum mechanics - something well beyond our everday experience - not be weird? You think Relativity is intuitive?
I'm not sure why you're trying to claim that scientists can't use intuition in science - if that were the case, nothing would ever get done. He put forth the EPR Paradox, and experimentation eventually proved it wrong. That's how science is supposed to go....and I'm not sure why you're trying to create a straw man. Intuition in science is fine. I'm not claiming that you can't use it. I'm saying that when all the other facts point to your intutition being wrong, you shouldn't spend half your life refusing to investigate the alternatives. THAT is unscientific.
On the other side, Hoyle famously rejected the notion of the Big Bang because he believed it would imply God existed, and he fought tooth and nail against it.
Not the other side at all. It is another example of allowing superstition to dictate what you choose to investigate and which facts you choose to accept. Very unscientific.
Scientists can't get into nasty academic arguments? Really.
Scientists are engaging in petty human squabbles and not science when they do so. Really.
Scientists have to have social skills, now? What planet do you live on?
A good scientist knows how to collaborate with others, and if you extend scientific method into your everyday life you find it's irrational to politically shoot yourself in the foot. All true on earth.
Your claim that these guys were not scientific may be valid (Galileo ignored evidence in favor of his theory), but your arguments against them have nothing to do with anything.
How very unscientific of you. Everything has to do with something. Now put your petty sarcasm away.
Einstein may still have been correct. Bell's Theorem proved that the effects of quantum physics cannot be both deterministic (hidden variables) AND adhere to the Principle of Locality. There are indications that the Principle of Locality is incorrect.
It doesn't matter if he's right or not. His belief was not based on science. It was based on him being unable to look at other possibilities. Ironic for a man that revolutionised physics.
Einstein wasted the last half of his life on wishful thinking "God does not play dice". Well turns out we're pretty sure he does. See Bell's theorum which shows that it can't just be hidden variables. And by all accounts for a theoretical physicist he sucked at advanced math.
Isaac Newton was a horrible little man. Ill tempered, neurotic, and did wild experiments that he was lucky didn't blind him. Let's not forget the nastiness with Leibniz.
Galileo had the social skills of a village idiot which led to the suppression of his work and his imprisonment by the authorities that he angered. (They were idiots too but that's beside the point)
They're three of the greatest but I could go on.
We like to pretend our scientists are great men with a couple of eccentricities that are way too smart to socialise or tolerate fools but the fact is their thinking isn't so superior OR logical OR scientific EXCEPT in their areas of expertise. THAT is why they are remembered. Not because they were above being unscientific.
Omega Centauri isn't even in the Milky Way galaxy. It was thought to be a globular cluster but there's now evidence it is actually the core of a dwarf galaxy long ago stripped of it's outer stars.
I'm sure it was refurbished and not entirely new but it was pretty good service.
And I'm sure the person that got your old phone "referbished" (meaning repackaged) thought the same thing. Fucking fanbois! Don't even know when you've been scammed. No wonder Apple's able to sell based on style rather than substance. Now watch me get modded troll for stating the bleeding obvious.
Can you name three patents for inventions in the past 20 years that were filed by Joe Basement which were subsequently abused by Evil Incorporated?
Can you even estimate the number of people who haven't invented anything because they know there's a good chance someone will have some vague patent that has almost nothing to do with what they might build but that they would have to fight anyway? I don't think ANYONE would recommend "inventor" as an occupation, and it is certainly NOT because all the good one man inventions are done. It's a freakin' mine field.
ROFL multiple degrees from MIT Harvard and Oxford, really. Not one from each place but multiple.
I think you should reconsider the value of a good education. For example, if you had a good education, even at a half decent state school, you would know how to lie more convincingly.
Everyone knows the only Bachelor of Bullshit worth it's salt comes from Cal Tech. He picked the wrong Uni.
I think you underestimate what the average person is willing to risk. Make steganography and encryption completely illegal with harsh penalties and they all but go away.
let them pass any law they want. no really: what is the value of an unenforceable law?
It's not unenforceable. The tech can be turned against it's users. Imagine a closed Internet where every communication, every URL and every download is logged. We're not that far off such a thing. So people stop using the net and start copying files. What do you think "trusted" computing is about. There will be a day when hard drives start dobbing their owners in. Imagine mass round ups of teenagers that are guilty until proven innocent and go to jail for years over copyright infringement. It's all possible if no one stands up to this madness.
It's not big corp vs small at all. It's a question of a lack of leadership. Businesses, and certainly small businesses are ill suited to leading when it comes to such long term goals. Outsourcing sub-tasks to them is fine. Outsourcing projects that could take decades is a recipe for corruption and failure.
If you want to convince people of the benefits of space exploration, you need to first convince them you are sane.
I guess the way to do that is to use childish personal attacks discrediting the sanity of someone who's opinion is different to yours.
Anti-corporatism for the sake of anti-corporatism is silly, and that's what you seem to be doing there.
If you read what I said carefully you'll see that I made no such remark. No, corporations certainly have their place. They did in the Apollo missions too. They just shouldn't be relied on to be leaders.
I am in favor of space research, but right now it has no real direction. Sending the shuttle into space to do more experiments of weightlessness on people is silly. We need to come up with a real reason for exploring space
There are plenty of good reasons for space exploration. Most benefits are long term. The trouble is politicians look in terms of 3-5 years as long term, whereas we're talking centuries.
If you can't get people to clearly see those three points, then they will never demand space exploration through their votes. Or anything else, really.
Well you'd need to start with a basic education in science, which too few people have today. I'm not proposing I can single handedly fix the situation. I am saying that putting your money on corporations to take up the slack for long term goals such as this is not realistic. Corporations can be part of the solution but they are even less suited to pursuing long term goals.
What you need is for people to realise the benefits that come with space exploration so that they demand, through their votes, that it be included in the budget. What you don't need to do is give up on NASA in favour of private companies that can only ever be expected to be SELF serving. Capitalism as a tool is a good thing, but as a religion it is as stupid as any other religion.
It use to be popular, but IT bust and recession means you don't see team building outings. Best I ever went on was a half day sailing on the harbour - large boat, team effort required, introductory sailing. A couple of people already knew what they were doing and shared the knowledge with the newbs. Only problem is that's just one day and can be expensive. Team sports last longer, but can lead to time off work due to injury. What you basically need to do is get people doing something they ENJOY together rather than just the work. People tend to genuinely give a shit about people they spend leisure time with.
You're assuming plenty of things yourself. That a generational ship would divert for a new food supply. That we're not poisonous to them (and that they can determine this based on our broadcasts). They're very unlikely to even have a compatible biology, and it's MUCH easier to sythesise food locally. You've basically been watching too much sci-fi.
Slashdot Mirror
Known facts? You just acknowledged that Einstein may have been right. The facts still aren't known, so I don't see how his view was supposed to be "based on science".
Look again. I acknowledged that a couple of posts ago, but if he was right he was right by accident.
There are lots of facts that ARE known, such as the way sub-atomic particles behave. He refused to accept this. He refused to study theories that could predict it. Instead he isolated himself from everyone and looked for something that's still quite likely isn't there.
Good scientists base their views on what they think makes sense.
Horse shit. They base their views on an understanding, true. But that understanding must be based on evidence grounded in the real world. Refusing to accept something because it doesn't make sense when it's outside your arena of experience is stupid. The irony is that Einsteins own theories weren't accepted because people believed they didn't make sense. However when it was found that the world behaved in accordance to his theory, the theory was accepted. Yet when he was presented with evidence of the world behaving as he did not expect it he came out with drivel like "God does not play dice" and called it "spooky action at a distance".
Saying "God does not play dice," is a bit theatrical, but his statement wasn't a crazy faith-based assertion. What he's saying is that he can't make sense of a universe based on probability rather than actual existence, and so he doesn't believe that we live in such a universe.
Yes. He was denying reality, in preference for how he believes the world SHOULD work to make him feel good. That is the definition of a crazy faith based assertion.
Now you can call that science, but really it fits more into a particular branch of philosophy.
You can call it rock climbing for all I care. You're wrong, and public opinion certainly isn't with you. Very few people would agree with you that Einstein wasn't a scientist. By the way his work made specific testable predictions and if that isn't part of the scientific method I don't know what is.
If it's so freakin' open please tell me why I still need to have apps signed on my Nokia 6220 classic and will do for the foreseeable future unless I'm willing to try risky hacks.
Enough of your Feynman worship. He was very good at what he did, but was a womaniser and a drunk - certainly after he lost his first wife. Have you read one of the biographies on Feynman? I have. He also took unnecessary risks with his career for a basic ego trip (like showing up security theatre on the military base he worked on for the atom bomb) Furthermore his lectures aren't universally accepted as great. Some people think believe them to be long winded and confusing.
Personally I think he was as good as any other great scientist, but as an example of someone who lived with logical consistency you're not going to find a good one in a scientist.
Well I might argue that the people you're talking about weren't even "scientists" in the modern sense. What they practiced might be better described as natural philosophy. It's not as though Einstein was remembered for his lab experiments. Essentially his innovation was that he re-imagined what it meant to "measure" something.
Since when is a theoretician not a scientist? Only an experimental scientist is going to be remembered for his experiments. Most of the time modern experiments are too complex for lay people to understand., and require large collaborative efforts. How many of the scientists and engineers that worked on the Large Hadron Collider do you know by name?
No, it means there's (probably) no NON-LOCAL hidden variables. Given that nobody really understands what happens during wavefunction collapse (or rather, the mechanism behind it), it's hard to say that he's necessarily wrong. Quantum Mechanics are deeply weird, and science has been getting by describing how they work, rather than why.
Why should Quantum mechanics - something well beyond our everday experience - not be weird? You think Relativity is intuitive?
I'm not sure why you're trying to claim that scientists can't use intuition in science - if that were the case, nothing would ever get done. He put forth the EPR Paradox, and experimentation eventually proved it wrong. That's how science is supposed to go. ...and I'm not sure why you're trying to create a straw man. Intuition in science is fine. I'm not claiming that you can't use it. I'm saying that when all the other facts point to your intutition being wrong, you shouldn't spend half your life refusing to investigate the alternatives. THAT is unscientific.
On the other side, Hoyle famously rejected the notion of the Big Bang because he believed it would imply God existed, and he fought tooth and nail against it.
Not the other side at all. It is another example of allowing superstition to dictate what you choose to investigate and which facts you choose to accept. Very unscientific.
Scientists can't get into nasty academic arguments? Really.
Scientists are engaging in petty human squabbles and not science when they do so. Really.
Scientists have to have social skills, now? What planet do you live on?
A good scientist knows how to collaborate with others, and if you extend scientific method into your everyday life you find it's irrational to politically shoot yourself in the foot. All true on earth.
Your claim that these guys were not scientific may be valid (Galileo ignored evidence in favor of his theory), but your arguments against them have nothing to do with anything.
How very unscientific of you. Everything has to do with something. Now put your petty sarcasm away.
Well how on earth is your belief supposed to be "based on science" when there isn't adequate scientific proof?
Your belief shouldn't blind you to other possibilities, and should be consistent with the known facts.
Einstein may still have been correct. Bell's Theorem proved that the effects of quantum physics cannot be both deterministic (hidden variables) AND adhere to the Principle of Locality. There are indications that the Principle of Locality is incorrect.
It doesn't matter if he's right or not. His belief was not based on science. It was based on him being unable to look at other possibilities. Ironic for a man that revolutionised physics.
Einstein wasted the last half of his life on wishful thinking "God does not play dice". Well turns out we're pretty sure he does. See Bell's theorum which shows that it can't just be hidden variables. And by all accounts for a theoretical physicist he sucked at advanced math.
Isaac Newton was a horrible little man. Ill tempered, neurotic, and did wild experiments that he was lucky didn't blind him. Let's not forget the nastiness with Leibniz.
Galileo had the social skills of a village idiot which led to the suppression of his work and his imprisonment by the authorities that he angered. (They were idiots too but that's beside the point)
They're three of the greatest but I could go on.
We like to pretend our scientists are great men with a couple of eccentricities that are way too smart to socialise or tolerate fools but the fact is their thinking isn't so superior OR logical OR scientific EXCEPT in their areas of expertise. THAT is why they are remembered. Not because they were above being unscientific.
Omega Centauri isn't even in the Milky Way galaxy. It was thought to be a globular cluster but there's now evidence it is actually the core of a dwarf galaxy long ago stripped of it's outer stars.
Why is CNNIC untrustworthy ? In plain English please.
I'm sorry sir, the certificate is in Chinese.
I'm sure it was refurbished and not entirely new but it was pretty good service.
And I'm sure the person that got your old phone "referbished" (meaning repackaged) thought the same thing. Fucking fanbois! Don't even know when you've been scammed. No wonder Apple's able to sell based on style rather than substance. Now watch me get modded troll for stating the bleeding obvious.
Can't you just see Elin as Miss Piggy? Haaaaayyyyaaaahhhh!
Doesn't quite work when it's "like a Vespa" ;-)
I have a mental image of Howard from "Big Bang Theory" on his scooter, with Sheldon in a pink Helmet screaming and clinging on for dear life.
Can you name three patents for inventions in the past 20 years that were filed by Joe Basement which were subsequently abused by Evil Incorporated?
Can you even estimate the number of people who haven't invented anything because they know there's a good chance someone will have some vague patent that has almost nothing to do with what they might build but that they would have to fight anyway? I don't think ANYONE would recommend "inventor" as an occupation, and it is certainly NOT because all the good one man inventions are done. It's a freakin' mine field.
ROFL multiple degrees from MIT Harvard and Oxford, really. Not one from each place but multiple.
I think you should reconsider the value of a good education. For example, if you had a good education, even at a half decent state school, you would know how to lie more convincingly.
Everyone knows the only Bachelor of Bullshit worth it's salt comes from Cal Tech. He picked the wrong Uni.
I think you underestimate what the average person is willing to risk. Make steganography and encryption completely illegal with harsh penalties and they all but go away.
Imagine technically illiterate people with better things to do.
it only highlights the life-or-death importance of good interface design
Yes, I've lost track of the number of colleagues who've committed suicide after having to use Vista.
let them pass any law they want. no really: what is the value of an unenforceable law?
It's not unenforceable. The tech can be turned against it's users. Imagine a closed Internet where every communication, every URL and every download is logged. We're not that far off such a thing. So people stop using the net and start copying files. What do you think "trusted" computing is about. There will be a day when hard drives start dobbing their owners in. Imagine mass round ups of teenagers that are guilty until proven innocent and go to jail for years over copyright infringement. It's all possible if no one stands up to this madness.
It's not big corp vs small at all. It's a question of a lack of leadership. Businesses, and certainly small businesses are ill suited to leading when it comes to such long term goals. Outsourcing sub-tasks to them is fine. Outsourcing projects that could take decades is a recipe for corruption and failure.
If you want to convince people of the benefits of space exploration, you need to first convince them you are sane.
I guess the way to do that is to use childish personal attacks discrediting the sanity of someone who's opinion is different to yours.
Anti-corporatism for the sake of anti-corporatism is silly, and that's what you seem to be doing there.
If you read what I said carefully you'll see that I made no such remark. No, corporations certainly have their place. They did in the Apollo missions too. They just shouldn't be relied on to be leaders.
I am in favor of space research, but right now it has no real direction. Sending the shuttle into space to do more experiments of weightlessness on people is silly. We need to come up with a real reason for exploring space
There are plenty of good reasons for space exploration. Most benefits are long term. The trouble is politicians look in terms of 3-5 years as long term, whereas we're talking centuries.
If you can't get people to clearly see those three points, then they will never demand space exploration through their votes. Or anything else, really.
Well you'd need to start with a basic education in science, which too few people have today. I'm not proposing I can single handedly fix the situation. I am saying that putting your money on corporations to take up the slack for long term goals such as this is not realistic. Corporations can be part of the solution but they are even less suited to pursuing long term goals.
What you need is for people to realise the benefits that come with space exploration so that they demand, through their votes, that it be included in the budget. What you don't need to do is give up on NASA in favour of private companies that can only ever be expected to be SELF serving. Capitalism as a tool is a good thing, but as a religion it is as stupid as any other religion.
It use to be popular, but IT bust and recession means you don't see team building outings. Best I ever went on was a half day sailing on the harbour - large boat, team effort required, introductory sailing. A couple of people already knew what they were doing and shared the knowledge with the newbs. Only problem is that's just one day and can be expensive. Team sports last longer, but can lead to time off work due to injury. What you basically need to do is get people doing something they ENJOY together rather than just the work. People tend to genuinely give a shit about people they spend leisure time with.
You're assuming plenty of things yourself. That a generational ship would divert for a new food supply. That we're not poisonous to them (and that they can determine this based on our broadcasts). They're very unlikely to even have a compatible biology, and it's MUCH easier to sythesise food locally. You've basically been watching too much sci-fi.