Anything you'd like to make up about "true reality" belongs in the domain of philosophy or metaphysics, neither of which have anything to do with science.
Good, then you wouldn't mind say, requiring this disclaimer to be required in every primary grade scientific textbook.....
A religious philosophy is a system of beliefs that explains the world by building a model of a worldview. It does not neccessarily need a god or gods (see Zen Buddhism and Confucism and Animism for three examples that do not). It doesn't need supernatural miracles (See Roman Catholicism, where miracles are quite often just fortunate coincidences and natural phenomena that came at the right time). It doesn't need to be superstitious (see Islam- a major world religion built on ending superstition). By those rules, science's belief in the scientific method and it's adjoining axioms and assumptions is most certainly a religious philosophy. In fact, it's a branch of Christianity, and was once called "natural philosophy".
That religion can explain everything doesn't mean that the explanations provided carry the same usefulness. If all else fails, "[Are|Is]n't [the] [g|G]od[s] mysterious!" Well, yeah, that can "explain everything," but what do you do with it other than generate a sense of comfort?
You control large populations of human beings with it. You create a unified singular morality with it, upon which civilizations rest. There's plenty of use in it- just because the fundamentalists are particularily bad at religion doesn't mean that we need to exclude it and become fundamentalist in the other direction.
Just calling science "another religion" is silly. Correct, science cannot explain everything. However, what it does attempt to explain is not based on faith that what we believe is right.
Uh, actually, no. Science is based on some very basic assumptions we have a lot of faith in, but which cannot be proved. Occam's razor for instance.
Rather the opposite, it is based on the perpetual pessimism that everything we believe, no mattern how many times we have "proven" it, is WRONG.
Nope, not quite- because we teach it in school as the single, only answer, banning competing theories from the classroom because we're scared of them.
Science can't explain everything, that's true. However, the "other religious philosophies" you espouse can't explain ANYTHING, whereas science does things like cure cancer.
Not at all true- that just shows your ignorance of other religious philosophies.
I'm a religious person, and I don't understand this false conflict that you seem so intent on creating between religion and science.
Actually, what I'm saying is that there is no reason for any conflict at all- and therefore there's no need to exclude alternate theories and explainations from the classroom. It's all human belief- best to be tolerant of all human beliefs.
Maybe because thanks to standardized testing, the next statement:
Science never claimed to explain everything. Never.
Is completely incorrect as far as most people are concerned. Answers on the tests in high school science class are either right or wrong, never giving points for original thought.
Not only that, science also has said what it will never be able to explain or predict - so not only did science not claim to explain everything, science mentions several things which it will never be able to explain: For example what happens in a black hole or what was before the big bang.
But that's NOT the way it's presented when you go to court to exclude other explainations from the classroom.
Science does claim to explain and predict a lot of things - and without it we wouldn't post here on Slashdot, we would still sit in cold caves worshipping sungod and moongod.
Not quite true- because there was a competing scientific method that wasn't exclusive that would have probably come up with the same ideas.
You know, one option to all of this is just to admit that science can't explain everything, and teach it for what it is: A religious philosophy equal to other religious philosophies (as opposed to teaching it as a religious philosophy while claiming that it isn't a religious philosophy and worse yet, preventing by law the teaching of other religious philosophies).
And actually, all it really proves is *why* we should teach intelligent design to schoolchildren: So that they can grow up to shoot down the stupider parts of the theory, thus leading to wonderful new aircraft and other inventions.
I'd go so far as to say any student using primarily Wikipedia as a source hasn't learned how to search for information- or how to discern a good source from a bad one. On that alone, their doctorate should be denied.
They lose jobs to them because the other person is better at doing the job, despite the inherent advantages they have in language and culture.
Cheaper != Better. Only idiots let economics dictate engineering projects.
I'd much rather see someone lose because the other person is better at the job than see someone lose because they were born in the wrong spot or have the wrong skin color.
And apparently for you, born in the wrong spot means *Born in the USA* and the wrong skin color is "white".
I agree with that. Here's what you need if you're designing a program to teach kids to read: Pictures relevant to the story, text, and a good text-to-speech subsystem. That's it. No fscking cartoons, no animation, no SOUND EFFECTS! Just click on the word and hear the computer speak it, and that's it.
You'd have to be pretty ignorant (or a liar) to maintain that a probability distribution implies determinism.
Which is why I wrote what I did. Either the universe is indeterministic on all levels, or it is deterministic on all levels and we just don't have all the information. I believe the 2nd- but probability distribution does NOT actually get us there. Based on you not understanding the sarcasm, my guess is that English is not your first language.
Heck, even classical mechanics can be shown to lead to unpredictability given inevitable errors of measurement (chaos).
Which does not neccessarily show an indeterministic universe, only an inability of man to be accurate.
Then again, your username implies that you've swallowed some pretty ignorant crap and not blinked an eye, so maybe you aren't consciously lying.
And yet you're arrogance is such that you actually think your own mistake in measurement implies an indeteerministic universe- so I guess you're pretty arrogant as well.
Maybe you just don't care about reality, or aren't smart enough to understand it.
Well, at least I'm smart enough to know that my own measurement mistakes only say something about how well I can perform, not anything about reality itself....
How can one do a peer review without trying to reproduce the results?
Confirm-only. You wouldn't be able to say something is false, only confirm that something is true.
But that's not what those journals were made for, and, judging by the number of successful journals that take that approach, doesn't seem to be a very successful one.
The point isn't success or lack of success- the point is that this is a logical hole in human belief systems, science included. One that for some strange reason, you refuse to acknowledge.
The observations were accepted, published, puzzled over. The species were puzzling, certainly, but there were other theorised mechanisms, the puzzle piece isn't actually that good a fit, myths don't always relate to the facts, overall there wasn't enough reason to believe that the continents just moved.
It's that third one I have a problem with. In my experience, myths *always* have a core of fact behind them, that's why they make good enough stories to become myths. That makes your conclusion that there wasn't enough reason to believe the continents were in fact moving belief based.
Once the plates were discovered it all made sense of course - the plates are created and destroyed at the edges - but that idea didn't make sense until we knew about the mid-atlantic ridge and understood that the seafloor was spreading at the sides of it.
Perhaps that's another key here- things don't have to make sense to be true, in fact, human reason is sufficiently imperfect for a lot of true things not to make sense.
Religious how?
The temple priests determined the calendar for the year, which determined the plantings, waterings, weedings, and harvest. This continued until the mid 1970s, when an anti-religious group of international aid workers said "this is mythical bunk and we know how to grow rice better". Within three years they had upset the predator/prey relationships on the island so bad that they caused a famine- at which point the farmers went back to the priests, and everything worked again just the same as ever.
Anyone can observe whether a canoe works or not.
But that's not how the T'Chinook got their design- it came from their religion about swimmers (Salmon) and whales and the Cedar Man.
Engineering is all based on observations that are entirely reproducible. Of course they often weren't, but they could have been.
The fact that they often weren't- means that they DON'T HAVE TO BE.
Reproducibility is key. If you have a reproducible experience, I'm sure that would be publishable. A controlled experiment is assumed to be reproducible because so far they always have been - which is why the controlled environment is specified so precisely.
Prayer is highly reproduceable- but I've only seen one published study on it. Tai Chi is reproduceable and has been done for centuries- but chiropracters are still not considered "real doctors" by insurance companies. There's a world of reproducibility in religion- all of which is considered to be subjective by science.
Education doesn't appear to mean people don't have religious beliefs.
But it does mean that they put asside the beliefs of their ancestors for a different set of religious beliefs, the beliefs of their degree. Which is all that is neccessary.
It depends, but in this case, yes. Scientists get unexpected results all the time, so what their degree taught them doesn't really affect what they expect from a "serious" experiment - one where the result is essentially unknown, even though the theory may well have predictions. Of course scientists aren't perfectly objective - they're only human - but they will try. On the whole, they seem to succeed - we see more than enough contradictory results published.
That's a surprise to me- but possibly because such contradictions rarely have fundamentalists on either side behind them t
By being humble and not insisting that a lack of evidence to you is equivalent to a lack of evidence to everybody.
It wouldn't make sense. It's not that you can't publish such things, just that you're looking in the wrong place to do so.
Not if the editors and the reviewers start from the idea that *all* evidence is useful, not just reproducible evidence.
Observations weren't rejected, or certainly would never have been if the system were functioning as it is meant to (and by and large does).
Actually, many other observations *were* rejected prior to the evidence that was accepted. Evolutionary evidence, such as similar species separated by an ocean, the puzzle piece continental drift theory, mythical evidence such as Homer's Whirlpool, were all observations that were rejected by *modern* science that could have led to plate tectonics much earlier than it was accepted. Some continents are currently drifting as fast as a few feet a year (Africa comes to mind)- that brings climate change.
But there has never been successful prediction of the world based on subjective observation.
Not at all true- rice production in Bali is an example of subjective, religious observation producing a more accurate successful prediction than objective observation, which when applied produced a famine. T'Chinook canoes are another example of successful subjective observation. In fact, subjective observation worked for a huge amount of time in human history to do practical engineering.
The fact that it's the same for different observers - the very definition of objective.
I'm no longer sure that is ever true. But just to say for a second that it is- what does that matter? Why is experimental evidence *assumed* to be objective, when experiential evidence is not? In fact, shouldn't it be the other way around, since the controled experiment is set up to manage it's environment, where the observation by experience is not?
If there were brainwashing that effective, it would be used a whole lot more.
It is, it's called education.
Anyone can look at the experiment and usually you can reproduce it if you're willing to put the time and effort in. Sometimes these days something will require very expensive equipment, but there will be at least one independent team verifying the results.
But can a team really be said to be independent if the subjective degrees are the same?
It's normal meaning is the meaning of the word. If you're allowed to define words how you like, anything you say is true - and meaningless to anyone else.
Now you're getting the idea of why science is meaningless to some people.
Science is constantly learning new things.
And yet, sometimes a new thing comes along and instead of actually even looking at it, it's rejected out of hand.
It's not taught as absolute fact.
If science were not being taught as absolute fact, then alternate theories would be welcome in the classroom- even incorrect ones- for the discussion they bring in.
Children are taught about the mistakes of science, the explanations that made sense and were useful for prediction but were eventually discarded and the experimental reasons why, like the luminous aether.
Interesting example- because I brought up the luminous aether and subaether theories back in high school- and was sent to the principal's office for disrupting the classroom. I've experienced the censorship of suggesting that science can make a mistake- it's probably the only reason I'm sympathetic when the courts step in to censor what can be said in a science classroom. Be that as it may- there is great value in letting children come up with whatever theories they can find and test those theories themselves. There's also a good deal of value
By being humble and not insisting that a lack of evidence to you is equivalent to a lack of evidence to everybody.
It wouldn't make sense. It's not that you can't publish such things, just that you're looking in the wrong place to do so.
Not if the editors and the reviewers start from the idea that *all* evidence is useful, not just reproducible evidence.
Observations weren't rejected, or certainly would never have been if the system were functioning as it is meant to (and by and large does).
Actually, many other observations *were* rejected prior to the evidence that was accepted. Evolutionary evidence, such as similar species separated by an ocean, the puzzle piece continental drift theory, mythical evidence such as Homer's Whirlpool, were all observations that were rejected by *modern* science that could have led to plate tectonics much earlier than it was accepted. Some continents are currently drifting as fast as a few feet a year (Africa comes to mind)- that brings climate change.
But there has never been successful prediction of the world based on subjective observation.
Not at all true- rice production in Bali is an example of subjective, religious observation producing a more accurate successful prediction than objective observation, which when applied produced a famine. T'Chinook canoes are another example of successful subjective observation. In fact, subjective observation worked for a huge amount of time in human history to do practical engineering.
The fact that it's the same for different observers - the very definition of objective.
I'm no longer sure that is ever true. But just to say for a second that it is- what does that matter? Why is experimental evidence *assumed* to be objective, when experiential evidence is not? In fact, shouldn't it be the other way around, since the controled experiment is set up to manage it's environment, where the observation by experience is not?
If there were brainwashing that effective, it would be used a whole lot more.
It is, it's called education.
Anyone can look at the experiment and usually you can reproduce it if you're willing to put the time and effort in. Sometimes these days something will require very expensive equipment, but there will be at least one independent team verifying the results.
But can a team really be said to be independent if the subjective degrees are the same?
It's normal meaning is the meaning of the word. If you're allowed to define words how you like, anything you say is true - and meaningless to anyone else.
Now you're getting the idea of why science is meaningless to some people.
Science is constantly learning new things.
And yet, sometimes a new thing comes along and instead of actually even looking at it, it's rejected out of hand.
It's not taught as absolute fact.
If science were not being taught as absolute fact, then alternate theories would be welcome in the classroom- even incorrect ones- for the discussion they bring in.
Children are taught about the mistakes of science, the explanations that made sense and were useful for prediction but were eventually discarded and the experimental reasons why, like the luminous aether.
Interesting example- because I brought up the luminous aether and subaether theories back in high school- and was sent to the principal's office for disrupting the classroom. I've experienced the censorship of suggesting that science can make a mistake- it's probably the only reason I'm sympathetic when the courts step in to censor what can be said in a science classroom. Be that as it may- there is great value in letting children come up with whatever theories they can find and test those theories themselves. There's also a good deal of value in teaching that science isn't always correct- and
As I said, if nothing else, when the sun dies we'll need it.
Considering that no species so far has survived the 100 million years that will take, I think that we can safely dispense with that as an option for now.
You're trying to question them at the wrong level. Questioning the existence of objective evidence in a peer-reviewed journal would be like questioning the existence of gravity when discussing characteristics of extra-solar planets we've found.
And yet, could be necessary for theories based on experiential instead of experimental evidence. A closed system does not allow out-of-system suggestions- which is a problem with ANY closed system. That's why Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both spoke against fundamentalism.
Few journals are corporate money-making entities.
No, they're corporate grant-gathering entities.
Since the theory was first seriously proposed, maybe fifty years, but as soon as evidence (from magnetometry) was found, it was less than a decade before it became the orthodoxy. When there was no evidence, yes, it was right for the journals to reject papers - anyone can come up with a nonsensical-sounding theory that explains a few particular observations better than the prevailing model, and until we started doing the magnetic measurements that was all plate tectonics was. I'm sure there were rejections that shouldn't have happened, but once the evidence was there, there was no difficulty in getting a paper published.
The point is, by rejecting the particular observations, they missed a major theory. That's what you get when you limit evidence to only the experimental and not the experiential.
Worse yet, there are several examples of science conflicting with subjective observation. That's where evolution falls down for many people, for instance.
Yes, of course. But so far all experimental evidence seems to be.
Why? What makes it more objective than experiential evidence? Might experimental evidence only APPEAR to be objective- because we've limited the people accepted to judge it to only those brainwashed into certain degrees?
It's not a lie, it's the normal meaning of the word. Students will see it used that way every day - I can't help thinking of the "Dettol protects: fact" adverts.
Also likely a lie- the use of the word fact is far too loose in normal meaning. Only the humble can learn new things- it would help if science was more humble. Likewise, I like the idea of the destruction of the advertising industry that would bring- they're a parasite on the system.
I said almost - of what I was taught, maths is the sole exception to this. If we only taught what we were absolutely certain of, we would have virtually nothing to teach. Any student who is able to understand the concept will know almost nothing is absolutely certain.
I'm not saying don't teach it. I'm saying don't teach it as absolute fact. There's a difference. It's the difference between being open to questioning basic assumptions and being closed to such questioning. It's the difference between censorship and free speech. If you are absolutely certain that evolution is and always will be the only fact of how we got here, then by all means teach it as you would math. But if not- then allow other people to come up with other competing ideas.
Agreed. But students also need to know about the world. Anything we're as confident of as we are of the sciences in question is something students should know.
Some are equally confident in ID. Why should we put your confidence above their confidence?
But wealth and science aren't intrinsically linked.
But they are philosophically linked (as are some forms of religion and poverty, actually). Wealth is linked to materialism, and materialism is linked to objectivism, which is linked to science.
I am confident I have a better existence now than I wo
No other approach is anywhere near achieving space travel, nor has made any significant steps towards it.
An article on the front page demonstrates that we're both right in different ways: science is nearing faster-than-light drive in theory, if not in fact. Development of it will require a major rethink of the indeterministic nature of the universe and the linkage between the EM-spectrum and gravity; thus requiring a major philosophical rethink of science itself. But if the basic theory is sound- then you're correct that science will rethink itself and in so doing, invent the kind of space travel we'd need to escape a supernova (an engine that creates a VERY strong magnetic field, strong enough to warp space into a fake gravitational field. Up it several million times in strength, and you end up with a gravitational field that can't exist in our normal dimension of space time, that can only exist in the realm of tachyons- objects that cannot go slower than light. Headline? Mars in 3 hours....)
It will succeed because, in the long term, we can't survive without it.
We survived somewhere between 5800 years and 1.8 million years without modern science. It's stupid to say that we can't survive without modern science, when modern science is less than 200 years old. Individual human beings may not survive- but that's natural selection for you.
The peer review process depends entirely on the existence of objective evidence so it would be nonsensical to publish results challenging it in a peer-reviewed journal.
Exactly my point. You claim the system allows for questioning of basic assumptions, and then say it's nonsensical to question basic assumptions.
If an alternative method was successful the journals would adopt it - reluctantly perhaps, with a lot of inertia, but they would adopt it.
No, in fact, they wouldn't. They make money off of censorship; they're not going to abandon that money just because an alternative method is more successful.
There are hundreds of examples of new theories overturning the orthodoxy - plate tectonics is the obvious one.
And that took what, a century? Tell me, was it right for the peer reviewed journals to reject papers on plate tectonics?
They might meet resistance and have a harder time getting published than theories that fit in, but ultimately there's no arguing with results - if the theory is right, experimental evidence will force its acceptance.
But only if that experimental evidence is objective.
The belief was declared anathema hundreds of years ago and this has never been rescinded.
Uh, no, it wasn't. It was rescinded by the Council of Trent.
The ban might not be enforced - to try and do so would probably weaken the church too much - but it's there.
It was there at the council of Nicea- and is no longer there due to doctrinal development by the Councilar Method. You sure have a twisted view of Church History, but that's not surprising given your othodoxy against religion.
It doesn't matter how we process it, just that we achieve the same result.
But we don't achieve the same result- if we did there would be no such thing as subjective evidence. Everybody sees the world slightly differently, and NO one view is absolutely correct. There is no single reality to discover; we all live in different realities.
The evidence for both evolution and quantum mechanics is solid.
No it isn't- it referes to randomness and probability estimates, neither one of which are solid.
No, neither is absolutely certain, but they're more than certain enough to teach to students
If you're going to teach anything at all to students, you'd better be absolutely certain, OR you'd better label your theories as only possibly correct. To call that which is NOT absolutely certain fact is a lie- and from what you're telling me, it's a malicious one.
more than most other "facts" they will be taught
Well, that's a problem also then, if 2+2=4 is not a fact either (it isn't, but we'll get back to that). I simply disagree with lying in the classroom no matter what your justification.
and not teaching them would leave students at an unreasonable disadvantage.
Actually- learning the difference between truth and lies would be an incredible advantage in this world. We need more of that.
Science gives us a very accurate approximation to the truth.
But only an approximation- not real truth, and thus, not absolute accuracy.
It predicts things very accurately.
But not absolutely accurately- and thus not truth and should not be taught as such.
Regardless of whether it's true in some mystical sense, it is enormously useful to base one's life on.
Depends on your definition of useful- to me the jury's still out on that.
OK, but that isn't necessarily success in understanding the world.
Correct- but unless understanding the world *also* brings happiness, it's destined to fall into the dustbin with other outmoded concepts, like canabalism.
Believing in the truth of the results of the scientific method is the best in that respect.
Yes, but you've yet to prove that success in understanding the world is actually best, or for that matter even useful. I'll grant that modern science has made great strides- but it's still relatively young, and it's caused a good deal of damage as well.
They can be questioned - if another method lead to more accurate predictions, science would adopt it.
Actually, no science would not- and that's the very problem. People who question the existance of objective evidence or the scientific method are considered heretics and not allowed to publish their thoughts in the peer reviewed journals, so there's no way for science to adopt a new idea in that arena.
Religions insist that core beliefs are true and must not be questioned.
So does science- just try getting a theory that doesn't match the orthodoxy into a scientific journal.
As an example, catholics are forbidden to associate with those who believe God and Satan have equal power.
Bad example- Zen Augustines are an approved Roman Catholic Order, and have been for 120 years now; and the balance between Good and Evil, the idea that God and Satan are equally matched, goes back at least to the 1300s and was the central theme in Dante's La Divinia Comedia. Certain American Catholic sects and orders do not agree with that concept, but by no means is it a churchwide ban.
Then why the doctrine of infallibility?
If you had actually read more than the title, you'd know that's exactly what I'm talking about when I refer to the Counciliar Method. The doctrine of infalibility does NOT say that everything the Pope says goes, rather it says that the Pope is fallible except in cases of faith and morals where his teaching is in keeping with Holy Tradition and the Councils and he is exercising the power of the Seat of Peter, which has traditionally been the office of "First among Equals", kind of like the chief editor of a peer reviewed journal, he gets the final say- for his time in office. I personally think they named it wrong...it has caused much confusion.
And there is a lot more that is held as core beliefs - everything in the Nicene Creed, for example, is a statement of belief that one must agree with to be catholic.
Also no- for we have the Eastern Rites under the Roman Pope as well, who do not use the Nicene Creed. You'd be correct for Latin Rite Roman Catholics- but that's just one culture among many.
I can't be certain, but there's enough evidence - I see the same things as people I talk to about what we're seeing, hear the same noises, and so on.
Actually, you only think you do- so far we haven't found two human brains that process input the exact same way. That's the reason we don't have brain interfaced computers yet.
How so?
Science fails in it's explainations when it refers to theological concepts and tries to call them facts- tries to assume absolute accuracy where there is none possible. This whole discussion started with just such a premature assumption of fact- in the theory of evolution- when the quantum mechanics simply wasn't there to call it an absolute fact.
I think science will survive because people need to know the truth or something close to it to base their lives on, even if they don't believe it.
But as you've shown before- science fails to give us absolute truth or anything close to it.
Ultimately science will be more useful than the alternatives not because it makes people happy but because it allows people to survive.
We're actually better suited to survive as a species without sci
No. Science has a small amount of error. Less than, say, the reasonable doubt that would save a murder suspect from conviction.
Well, that's not a very good indicator- considering that the law is just a contrived method to separate the classes and kill off the worst of the unwanted. But the point is- most scientists overstate their case, insisting on an accuracy that is both impossible and does not exist.
They're not something that can be objectively shown
And things that can't be objectively shown are subjective beliefs. Not that there's anything wrong with that- but to ascribe a value that doesn't exist is at best an untruth.
but they're worth believing as working assumptions based on the success we can have by believing in them.
Just like any other religious belief. Religious beliefs that don't bring some measure of success eventually do fall. It can take centuries though, to tell the difference- sometimes millenia.
The point is that a religion is different because it has an unquestionable core belief.
Kind of like the two above? Actually, all religious beliefs can be questioned- but it takes time to find the answers. Often centuries or millenia. To insist that something is accurate or factual before the religion has been through that trial, is premature and rather impatient.
The fact that they're having to split off shows that there is a cohesiveness to catholicism, one does have to agree on a substantial amount.
It's more that they've got this idea that the Masons and scientists and Protestants have taken over- they reject the last 4 Popes on that score- but yes. The one substantial core belief for Catholicism is the Councilar Process- the idea that the magisterium develops doctrine adequately. It's very much like the peer review system- and has just about as much foundation behind it, as a belief in a working assumption that has worked for just about 1950 years, give or take a few decades. Like most fundamentalists, the traditionalists are failing to trust that process of change; they are wedding themselves to disproven theories.
So you're saying the scientific method implies morality is meaningless?
No, I'm saying that one interpretation of the scientific method implies that morality is meaningless. All religions, all belief systems, start spawning heresies and competing sects after the first hundred years or so; objectivism is just one of the more recent ones science has spawned. It's pretty easy to see how believers in objectiveism get there- the highest being in their universe is self, and what they don't experience directly they can't believe in. A universal morality requires belief- objectivists deny faith by their belief that nothing they haven't experienced directly exists.
I learn as much as I can. I have yet to see anything else as good as science in terms of making useful predictions about the world.
Depends on what you mean by the world; your world maybe but that isn't the only world that exists. You can't actually extrapolate your experiences to others except by belief.
Religions could have just as well achieved success through conquest, promises of afterlife, and tradition as through accurate results.
All that only goes so far; it's good for controling the individual life or the mob at the moment. But if the traditions become nonsensical the people will no longer teach them to their children, promises of the afterlife only are useful while people are afraid of death and thus can backfire, and conquest ends quickly because those who live by the sword also die by it. Eventually a religion must change, must grow up, must mature; otherwise it dies.
And I have yet to see a religion produce an accurate prediction without using science "behind the scenes".
Science was invented by religion to begin with, so why not? However, it is quickly appearing that science is failing in it's
Part of the problem is that people trying to discuss their politics/economics on slashdot is like taking a film, cutting it into lots of pieces, throwing them in the air, and taping the pieces you can find back together as best as you can. Dada professes that he can't figure out why sometimes he's reviled and now people support him, yet he only reveals his political stance one facet at a time. Frankly, some of these facets are quite repugnant (to me) when taken alone, but piecing them together I can begin to make a rather nice jewel (hmm... I seem to have changed metaphors mid-stride).
True enough. Especially I seem to have made the mistake in this discussion of not separating need from luxury from the start...
Maybe you should compare Europeans to white Americans alone.
Well, in that case, the Europeans really win out hands down- their lifespans are a good 10 years above your average white American.
62 mill is another lie. If you are poor, you have medicaid, particularly children.
Not at all true- especially after the last round of cuts to medicaid. There are plenty of people who monthly have to choose between insurance premiums and mortgage payments.
And really, if you are an adult without healthcare, either you don't want it or you need to get a job that offers it and stop whining.
Spoken like somebody who hasn't had their company go bankrupt out from under them in the last 5 years. Few private corporations today are stupid enough to damage profits by offering health insurance; there's a labor surplus in the United States and it's cheaper to make your employees pay their own premiums.
AAHH. I made a mistake. Your name - I should have known nothing you would say would be anything other than lies. Not replying anymore. Your typical tactic is to just bury people under your excrement of deceptions.
Funny how we what we see in text-based communications is just a mirror of our own perceptions.
Really? I've changed markets with 1 year of retraining. Many people learn a career after being duped into believing the market exists -- all that exists in some markets is temporary preferential treatment by local governments. I can't believe how many people keep entering some markets that are on the verge of collapse because the government can't prop them up any more (after 20-30 years of help).
The grand majority of people can't even afford that one year of training- most go bankrupt after that without ever retraining for anything else. The market wouldn't be on the the verge of collapse if people actually supported their neighbors by buying from them- but I'd agree, the government shouldn't prop anything up THAT way.
This is a myth. The farming industry has been destroyed by both the IMF and by currency manipulation that have made prices rise when in fact they should have fallen in many areas. Land values have gone up due to the fed manipulation of the currency base, causing farm land to be worth more to developers than would normally be true. This is a VERY complex problem, though, much more so than can be handled in a simple post.
IMF and currency manipulation are certainly a part of it as well, but in the 10 years the WTO has been around, we've seen a huge acceleration in the process. Needs should simply be produced locally to the consumer as possible- you shouldn't have to rely on food shipped from 12,000 miles away.
That is completely unfounded in reality -- efficiency is the basis for price and performance, period. Steel workers were duped by the governments (local and federal) into thinking there was demand for them. We paid for that fake demand in higher prices that could have allowed money to flow to where jobs would be needed. Those steel workers are getting what was coming to the industry 2 decades ago, it is unfortunate. Yet in my area we had approximately 10,000 open positions paying over $12 per hour within 30 minutes of my home. Don't tell me jobs aren't available -- they're readily available. The fact that people planted their lives in an area (Michigan) because they were duped by government is not MY fault. I know better than that, I would never trust a politician to secure my job. They did, they stole from me, they're not getting another cent out of me (check out my blog from today regarding Michigan and welfare).
What you should be able to do is trust your NEIGHBORS to secure your job, not some faceless politician. Oh, and those 10,000 open positions? I'm willing to bet at least half of them were fake propaganda- planted by the DOL to fake the labor "shortage" and get more guest worker visas.
Huh? Is that really going to be more efficient than just providing a good service?
Yes- any time you can cheat the system it's more efficient to YOU than providing a good service.
It seems that every socialist on slashdot wants to use the same old trite responses rather than look at what is really happening. Amazon and eBay performed tens of millions of transactions in the past 90 days -- the great majority of which went through with no problems. In every trade there is risk, but when the risk is less than 0.001%, to me it is a success.
My personal experience on EBay, which is why I quit using it, was about 50% risk. Unless you can actually talk to the properiter and become friends with them, you have *NO* idea how truthfull they are.
My church offers food kitchens for the poor -- in exchange for helping them get off of drugs and into work. I don't have any starving neighbors. The few who are starving are addicts unwilling to make changes, and I have no desire to give them money if they aren't making changes.
Lucky you- I'm in the Silicon Forest, where housing is about 25% vacant, and I know plenty of homeless people who aren't adicts. Several churches around me have the same service yours offers- and have seen a 200% increase in need in the last 5 years. Even the s
What's your definition of "locally", though? Is it OK to buy Hondas in Detroit, even though plenty of other cars are made there?
Not unless the Honda is made locally as well. Actually, ideally, Morgan should be encouraged to create a few more factories- and you should buy your Morgan from your next door neighbor who build and signed each first machined part.
What about buying Fords in Marysville, OH, where Honda has one of their largest manufacturing plants? In the case of Marsville and Honda vs. Ford, which one is "local"?
Honda is obviously.
For that matter, what's your definition of "made"? What if your local township had a company that makes widgets, but they only make them in green. You, for some reason, hate green, so you'd rather buy one in blue. But the only company that makes blue widgets is based two counties over. Is it ok for you to buy that blue widget, since you can't buy one "locally"? But you can buy widgets, so maybe you should just suck it up and spend your money on the local guy.
Or better yet, you should just suck it up, and ask the local guy to make it in blue- that's the magic of actually having a human connection between customer and manufacturer. Mass production is great, but only if everybody is the same.
Any time you place artificial restrictions on the market, all you're doing is removing choice from the picture for all actors. You're telling the producer "You have no choice, you can't sell that here", and you're telling the consumer "You have no choice, you can't buy that here". Do you really want someone putting a gun to your head* and telling you what you can, and can't, buy? How does that help anyone?
It avoids the other guy putting a gun to your head and simply stealing his needs from you.
* By definition, anytime the State enforces something, they have a gun to your head, in that if you don't do as they say they have the power to deprive you of life, liberty, or property. No one else has that power, not even multinational corporations. When they want to deprive you of property, they have to sue you first, in which case it's really the State doing it.
You've apparently never dealt with a multinational corporation directly when they *really* want something and know that you are powerless- they don't just stop at the lawsuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Anything you'd like to make up about "true reality" belongs in the domain of philosophy or metaphysics, neither of which have anything to do with science.
Good, then you wouldn't mind say, requiring this disclaimer to be required in every primary grade scientific textbook.....
A religious philosophy is a system of beliefs that explains the world by building a model of a worldview. It does not neccessarily need a god or gods (see Zen Buddhism and Confucism and Animism for three examples that do not). It doesn't need supernatural miracles (See Roman Catholicism, where miracles are quite often just fortunate coincidences and natural phenomena that came at the right time). It doesn't need to be superstitious (see Islam- a major world religion built on ending superstition). By those rules, science's belief in the scientific method and it's adjoining axioms and assumptions is most certainly a religious philosophy. In fact, it's a branch of Christianity, and was once called "natural philosophy".
That religion can explain everything doesn't mean that the explanations provided carry the same usefulness. If all else fails, "[Are|Is]n't [the] [g|G]od[s] mysterious!" Well, yeah, that can "explain everything," but what do you do with it other than generate a sense of comfort?
You control large populations of human beings with it. You create a unified singular morality with it, upon which civilizations rest. There's plenty of use in it- just because the fundamentalists are particularily bad at religion doesn't mean that we need to exclude it and become fundamentalist in the other direction.
Just calling science "another religion" is silly. Correct, science cannot explain everything. However, what it does attempt to explain is not based on faith that what we believe is right.
Uh, actually, no. Science is based on some very basic assumptions we have a lot of faith in, but which cannot be proved. Occam's razor for instance.
Rather the opposite, it is based on the perpetual pessimism that everything we believe, no mattern how many times we have "proven" it, is WRONG.
Nope, not quite- because we teach it in school as the single, only answer, banning competing theories from the classroom because we're scared of them.
Science can't explain everything, that's true. However, the "other religious philosophies" you espouse can't explain ANYTHING, whereas science does things like cure cancer.
Not at all true- that just shows your ignorance of other religious philosophies.
I'm a religious person, and I don't understand this false conflict that you seem so intent on creating between religion and science.
Actually, what I'm saying is that there is no reason for any conflict at all- and therefore there's no need to exclude alternate theories and explainations from the classroom. It's all human belief- best to be tolerant of all human beliefs.
Why do so many religious guys don't get it?
Maybe because thanks to standardized testing, the next statement:
Science never claimed to explain everything. Never.
Is completely incorrect as far as most people are concerned. Answers on the tests in high school science class are either right or wrong, never giving points for original thought.
Not only that, science also has said what it will never be able to explain or predict - so not only did science not claim to explain everything, science mentions several things which it will never be able to explain: For example what happens in a black hole or what was before the big bang.
But that's NOT the way it's presented when you go to court to exclude other explainations from the classroom.
Science does claim to explain and predict a lot of things - and without it we wouldn't post here on Slashdot, we would still sit in cold caves worshipping sungod and moongod.
Not quite true- because there was a competing scientific method that wasn't exclusive that would have probably come up with the same ideas.
You know, one option to all of this is just to admit that science can't explain everything, and teach it for what it is: A religious philosophy equal to other religious philosophies (as opposed to teaching it as a religious philosophy while claiming that it isn't a religious philosophy and worse yet, preventing by law the teaching of other religious philosophies).
And actually, all it really proves is *why* we should teach intelligent design to schoolchildren: So that they can grow up to shoot down the stupider parts of the theory, thus leading to wonderful new aircraft and other inventions.
I'd go so far as to say any student using primarily Wikipedia as a source hasn't learned how to search for information- or how to discern a good source from a bad one. On that alone, their doctorate should be denied.
They lose jobs to them because the other person is better at doing the job, despite the inherent advantages they have in language and culture.
Cheaper != Better. Only idiots let economics dictate engineering projects.
I'd much rather see someone lose because the other person is better at the job than see someone lose because they were born in the wrong spot or have the wrong skin color.
And apparently for you, born in the wrong spot means *Born in the USA* and the wrong skin color is "white".
I agree with that. Here's what you need if you're designing a program to teach kids to read: Pictures relevant to the story, text, and a good text-to-speech subsystem. That's it. No fscking cartoons, no animation, no SOUND EFFECTS! Just click on the word and hear the computer speak it, and that's it.
I believe Beyond TV 4 can do it. Or at the very least, record shows which then become available for streaming over the web interface on port 8129.
You'd have to be pretty ignorant (or a liar) to maintain that a probability distribution implies determinism.
Which is why I wrote what I did. Either the universe is indeterministic on all levels, or it is deterministic on all levels and we just don't have all the information. I believe the 2nd- but probability distribution does NOT actually get us there. Based on you not understanding the sarcasm, my guess is that English is not your first language.
Heck, even classical mechanics can be shown to lead to unpredictability given inevitable errors of measurement (chaos).
Which does not neccessarily show an indeterministic universe, only an inability of man to be accurate.
Then again, your username implies that you've swallowed some pretty ignorant crap and not blinked an eye, so maybe you aren't consciously lying.
And yet you're arrogance is such that you actually think your own mistake in measurement implies an indeteerministic universe- so I guess you're pretty arrogant as well.
Maybe you just don't care about reality, or aren't smart enough to understand it.
Well, at least I'm smart enough to know that my own measurement mistakes only say something about how well I can perform, not anything about reality itself....
How can one do a peer review without trying to reproduce the results?
Confirm-only. You wouldn't be able to say something is false, only confirm that something is true.
But that's not what those journals were made for, and, judging by the number of successful journals that take that approach, doesn't seem to be a very successful one.
The point isn't success or lack of success- the point is that this is a logical hole in human belief systems, science included. One that for some strange reason, you refuse to acknowledge.
The observations were accepted, published, puzzled over. The species were puzzling, certainly, but there were other theorised mechanisms, the puzzle piece isn't actually that good a fit, myths don't always relate to the facts, overall there wasn't enough reason to believe that the continents just moved.
It's that third one I have a problem with. In my experience, myths *always* have a core of fact behind them, that's why they make good enough stories to become myths. That makes your conclusion that there wasn't enough reason to believe the continents were in fact moving belief based.
Once the plates were discovered it all made sense of course - the plates are created and destroyed at the edges - but that idea didn't make sense until we knew about the mid-atlantic ridge and understood that the seafloor was spreading at the sides of it.
Perhaps that's another key here- things don't have to make sense to be true, in fact, human reason is sufficiently imperfect for a lot of true things not to make sense.
Religious how?
The temple priests determined the calendar for the year, which determined the plantings, waterings, weedings, and harvest. This continued until the mid 1970s, when an anti-religious group of international aid workers said "this is mythical bunk and we know how to grow rice better". Within three years they had upset the predator/prey relationships on the island so bad that they caused a famine- at which point the farmers went back to the priests, and everything worked again just the same as ever.
Anyone can observe whether a canoe works or not.
But that's not how the T'Chinook got their design- it came from their religion about swimmers (Salmon) and whales and the Cedar Man.
Engineering is all based on observations that are entirely reproducible. Of course they often weren't, but they could have been.
The fact that they often weren't- means that they DON'T HAVE TO BE.
Reproducibility is key. If you have a reproducible experience, I'm sure that would be publishable. A controlled experiment is assumed to be reproducible because so far they always have been - which is why the controlled environment is specified so precisely.
Prayer is highly reproduceable- but I've only seen one published study on it. Tai Chi is reproduceable and has been done for centuries- but chiropracters are still not considered "real doctors" by insurance companies. There's a world of reproducibility in religion- all of which is considered to be subjective by science.
Education doesn't appear to mean people don't have religious beliefs.
But it does mean that they put asside the beliefs of their ancestors for a different set of religious beliefs, the beliefs of their degree. Which is all that is neccessary.
It depends, but in this case, yes. Scientists get unexpected results all the time, so what their degree taught them doesn't really affect what they expect from a "serious" experiment - one where the result is essentially unknown, even though the theory may well have predictions. Of course scientists aren't perfectly objective - they're only human - but they will try. On the whole, they seem to succeed - we see more than enough contradictory results published.
That's a surprise to me- but possibly because such contradictions rarely have fundamentalists on either side behind them t
But one that's rather easy to defend against with server side scripting- just deny the "from" source....
Aw heck, missed a /.
How could you have peer-review of such a theory?
By being humble and not insisting that a lack of evidence to you is equivalent to a lack of evidence to everybody.
It wouldn't make sense. It's not that you can't publish such things, just that you're looking in the wrong place to do so.
Not if the editors and the reviewers start from the idea that *all* evidence is useful, not just reproducible evidence.
Observations weren't rejected, or certainly would never have been if the system were functioning as it is meant to (and by and large does).
Actually, many other observations *were* rejected prior to the evidence that was accepted. Evolutionary evidence, such as similar species separated by an ocean, the puzzle piece continental drift theory, mythical evidence such as Homer's Whirlpool, were all observations that were rejected by *modern* science that could have led to plate tectonics much earlier than it was accepted. Some continents are currently drifting as fast as a few feet a year (Africa comes to mind)- that brings climate change.
But there has never been successful prediction of the world based on subjective observation.
Not at all true- rice production in Bali is an example of subjective, religious observation producing a more accurate successful prediction than objective observation, which when applied produced a famine. T'Chinook canoes are another example of successful subjective observation. In fact, subjective observation worked for a huge amount of time in human history to do practical engineering.
The fact that it's the same for different observers - the very definition of objective.
I'm no longer sure that is ever true. But just to say for a second that it is- what does that matter? Why is experimental evidence *assumed* to be objective, when experiential evidence is not? In fact, shouldn't it be the other way around, since the controled experiment is set up to manage it's environment, where the observation by experience is not?
If there were brainwashing that effective, it would be used a whole lot more.
It is, it's called education.
Anyone can look at the experiment and usually you can reproduce it if you're willing to put the time and effort in. Sometimes these days something will require very expensive equipment, but there will be at least one independent team verifying the results.
But can a team really be said to be independent if the subjective degrees are the same?
It's normal meaning is the meaning of the word. If you're allowed to define words how you like, anything you say is true - and meaningless to anyone else.
Now you're getting the idea of why science is meaningless to some people.
Science is constantly learning new things.
And yet, sometimes a new thing comes along and instead of actually even looking at it, it's rejected out of hand.
It's not taught as absolute fact.
If science were not being taught as absolute fact, then alternate theories would be welcome in the classroom- even incorrect ones- for the discussion they bring in.
Children are taught about the mistakes of science, the explanations that made sense and were useful for prediction but were eventually discarded and the experimental reasons why, like the luminous aether.
Interesting example- because I brought up the luminous aether and subaether theories back in high school- and was sent to the principal's office for disrupting the classroom. I've experienced the censorship of suggesting that science can make a mistake- it's probably the only reason I'm sympathetic when the courts step in to censor what can be said in a science classroom. Be that as it may- there is great value in letting children come up with whatever theories they can find and test those theories themselves. There's also a good deal of value
How could you have peer-review of such a theory?
By being humble and not insisting that a lack of evidence to you is equivalent to a lack of evidence to everybody.
It wouldn't make sense. It's not that you can't publish such things, just that you're looking in the wrong place to do so.
Not if the editors and the reviewers start from the idea that *all* evidence is useful, not just reproducible evidence.
Observations weren't rejected, or certainly would never have been if the system were functioning as it is meant to (and by and large does).
Actually, many other observations *were* rejected prior to the evidence that was accepted. Evolutionary evidence, such as similar species separated by an ocean, the puzzle piece continental drift theory, mythical evidence such as Homer's Whirlpool, were all observations that were rejected by *modern* science that could have led to plate tectonics much earlier than it was accepted. Some continents are currently drifting as fast as a few feet a year (Africa comes to mind)- that brings climate change.
But there has never been successful prediction of the world based on subjective observation.
Not at all true- rice production in Bali is an example of subjective, religious observation producing a more accurate successful prediction than objective observation, which when applied produced a famine. T'Chinook canoes are another example of successful subjective observation. In fact, subjective observation worked for a huge amount of time in human history to do practical engineering.
The fact that it's the same for different observers - the very definition of objective.
I'm no longer sure that is ever true. But just to say for a second that it is- what does that matter? Why is experimental evidence *assumed* to be objective, when experiential evidence is not? In fact, shouldn't it be the other way around, since the controled experiment is set up to manage it's environment, where the observation by experience is not?
If there were brainwashing that effective, it would be used a whole lot more.
It is, it's called education.
Anyone can look at the experiment and usually you can reproduce it if you're willing to put the time and effort in. Sometimes these days something will require very expensive equipment, but there will be at least one independent team verifying the results.
But can a team really be said to be independent if the subjective degrees are the same?
It's normal meaning is the meaning of the word. If you're allowed to define words how you like, anything you say is true - and meaningless to anyone else.
Now you're getting the idea of why science is meaningless to some people.
Science is constantly learning new things.
And yet, sometimes a new thing comes along and instead of actually even looking at it, it's rejected out of hand.
It's not taught as absolute fact.
If science were not being taught as absolute fact, then alternate theories would be welcome in the classroom- even incorrect ones- for the discussion they bring in.
Children are taught about the mistakes of science, the explanations that made sense and were useful for prediction but were eventually discarded and the experimental reasons why, like the luminous aether.
Interesting example- because I brought up the luminous aether and subaether theories back in high school- and was sent to the principal's office for disrupting the classroom. I've experienced the censorship of suggesting that science can make a mistake- it's probably the only reason I'm sympathetic when the courts step in to censor what can be said in a science classroom. Be that as it may- there is great value in letting children come up with whatever theories they can find and test those theories themselves. There's also a good deal of value in teaching that science isn't always correct- and
As I said, if nothing else, when the sun dies we'll need it.
Considering that no species so far has survived the 100 million years that will take, I think that we can safely dispense with that as an option for now.
You're trying to question them at the wrong level. Questioning the existence of objective evidence in a peer-reviewed journal would be like questioning the existence of gravity when discussing characteristics of extra-solar planets we've found.
And yet, could be necessary for theories based on experiential instead of experimental evidence. A closed system does not allow out-of-system suggestions- which is a problem with ANY closed system. That's why Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both spoke against fundamentalism.
Few journals are corporate money-making entities.
No, they're corporate grant-gathering entities.
Since the theory was first seriously proposed, maybe fifty years, but as soon as evidence (from magnetometry) was found, it was less than a decade before it became the orthodoxy. When there was no evidence, yes, it was right for the journals to reject papers - anyone can come up with a nonsensical-sounding theory that explains a few particular observations better than the prevailing model, and until we started doing the magnetic measurements that was all plate tectonics was. I'm sure there were rejections that shouldn't have happened, but once the evidence was there, there was no difficulty in getting a paper published.
The point is, by rejecting the particular observations, they missed a major theory. That's what you get when you limit evidence to only the experimental and not the experiential.
Worse yet, there are several examples of science conflicting with subjective observation. That's where evolution falls down for many people, for instance.
Yes, of course. But so far all experimental evidence seems to be.
Why? What makes it more objective than experiential evidence? Might experimental evidence only APPEAR to be objective- because we've limited the people accepted to judge it to only those brainwashed into certain degrees?
It's not a lie, it's the normal meaning of the word. Students will see it used that way every day - I can't help thinking of the "Dettol protects: fact" adverts.
Also likely a lie- the use of the word fact is far too loose in normal meaning. Only the humble can learn new things- it would help if science was more humble. Likewise, I like the idea of the destruction of the advertising industry that would bring- they're a parasite on the system.
I said almost - of what I was taught, maths is the sole exception to this. If we only taught what we were absolutely certain of, we would have virtually nothing to teach. Any student who is able to understand the concept will know almost nothing is absolutely certain.
I'm not saying don't teach it. I'm saying don't teach it as absolute fact. There's a difference. It's the difference between being open to questioning basic assumptions and being closed to such questioning. It's the difference between censorship and free speech. If you are absolutely certain that evolution is and always will be the only fact of how we got here, then by all means teach it as you would math. But if not- then allow other people to come up with other competing ideas.
Agreed. But students also need to know about the world. Anything we're as confident of as we are of the sciences in question is something students should know.
Some are equally confident in ID. Why should we put your confidence above their confidence?
But wealth and science aren't intrinsically linked.
But they are philosophically linked (as are some forms of religion and poverty, actually). Wealth is linked to materialism, and materialism is linked to objectivism, which is linked to science.
I am confident I have a better existence now than I wo
No other approach is anywhere near achieving space travel, nor has made any significant steps towards it.
An article on the front page demonstrates that we're both right in different ways: science is nearing faster-than-light drive in theory, if not in fact. Development of it will require a major rethink of the indeterministic nature of the universe and the linkage between the EM-spectrum and gravity; thus requiring a major philosophical rethink of science itself. But if the basic theory is sound- then you're correct that science will rethink itself and in so doing, invent the kind of space travel we'd need to escape a supernova (an engine that creates a VERY strong magnetic field, strong enough to warp space into a fake gravitational field. Up it several million times in strength, and you end up with a gravitational field that can't exist in our normal dimension of space time, that can only exist in the realm of tachyons- objects that cannot go slower than light. Headline? Mars in 3 hours....)
It will succeed because, in the long term, we can't survive without it.
We survived somewhere between 5800 years and 1.8 million years without modern science. It's stupid to say that we can't survive without modern science, when modern science is less than 200 years old. Individual human beings may not survive- but that's natural selection for you.
The peer review process depends entirely on the existence of objective evidence so it would be nonsensical to publish results challenging it in a peer-reviewed journal.
Exactly my point. You claim the system allows for questioning of basic assumptions, and then say it's nonsensical to question basic assumptions.
If an alternative method was successful the journals would adopt it - reluctantly perhaps, with a lot of inertia, but they would adopt it.
No, in fact, they wouldn't. They make money off of censorship; they're not going to abandon that money just because an alternative method is more successful.
There are hundreds of examples of new theories overturning the orthodoxy - plate tectonics is the obvious one.
And that took what, a century? Tell me, was it right for the peer reviewed journals to reject papers on plate tectonics?
They might meet resistance and have a harder time getting published than theories that fit in, but ultimately there's no arguing with results - if the theory is right, experimental evidence will force its acceptance.
But only if that experimental evidence is objective.
The belief was declared anathema hundreds of years ago and this has never been rescinded.
Uh, no, it wasn't. It was rescinded by the Council of Trent.
The ban might not be enforced - to try and do so would probably weaken the church too much - but it's there.
It was there at the council of Nicea- and is no longer there due to doctrinal development by the Councilar Method. You sure have a twisted view of Church History, but that's not surprising given your othodoxy against religion.
It doesn't matter how we process it, just that we achieve the same result.
But we don't achieve the same result- if we did there would be no such thing as subjective evidence. Everybody sees the world slightly differently, and NO one view is absolutely correct. There is no single reality to discover; we all live in different realities.
The evidence for both evolution and quantum mechanics is solid.
No it isn't- it referes to randomness and probability estimates, neither one of which are solid.
No, neither is absolutely certain, but they're more than certain enough to teach to students
If you're going to teach anything at all to students, you'd better be absolutely certain, OR you'd better label your theories as only possibly correct. To call that which is NOT absolutely certain fact is a lie- and from what you're telling me, it's a malicious one.
more than most other "facts" they will be taught
Well, that's a problem also then, if 2+2=4 is not a fact either (it isn't, but we'll get back to that). I simply disagree with lying in the classroom no matter what your justification.
and not teaching them would leave students at an unreasonable disadvantage.
Actually- learning the difference between truth and lies would be an incredible advantage in this world. We need more of that.
Science gives us a very accurate approximation to the truth.
But only an approximation- not real truth, and thus, not absolute accuracy.
It predicts things very accurately.
But not absolutely accurately- and thus not truth and should not be taught as such.
Regardless of whether it's true in some mystical sense, it is enormously useful to base one's life on.
Depends on your definition of useful- to me the jury's still out on that.
How so? There's a correla
OK, but that isn't necessarily success in understanding the world.
Correct- but unless understanding the world *also* brings happiness, it's destined to fall into the dustbin with other outmoded concepts, like canabalism.
Believing in the truth of the results of the scientific method is the best in that respect.
Yes, but you've yet to prove that success in understanding the world is actually best, or for that matter even useful. I'll grant that modern science has made great strides- but it's still relatively young, and it's caused a good deal of damage as well.
They can be questioned - if another method lead to more accurate predictions, science would adopt it.
Actually, no science would not- and that's the very problem. People who question the existance of objective evidence or the scientific method are considered heretics and not allowed to publish their thoughts in the peer reviewed journals, so there's no way for science to adopt a new idea in that arena.
Religions insist that core beliefs are true and must not be questioned.
So does science- just try getting a theory that doesn't match the orthodoxy into a scientific journal.
As an example, catholics are forbidden to associate with those who believe God and Satan have equal power.
Bad example- Zen Augustines are an approved Roman Catholic Order, and have been for 120 years now; and the balance between Good and Evil, the idea that God and Satan are equally matched, goes back at least to the 1300s and was the central theme in Dante's La Divinia Comedia. Certain American Catholic sects and orders do not agree with that concept, but by no means is it a churchwide ban.
Then why the doctrine of infallibility?
If you had actually read more than the title, you'd know that's exactly what I'm talking about when I refer to the Counciliar Method. The doctrine of infalibility does NOT say that everything the Pope says goes, rather it says that the Pope is fallible except in cases of faith and morals where his teaching is in keeping with Holy Tradition and the Councils and he is exercising the power of the Seat of Peter, which has traditionally been the office of "First among Equals", kind of like the chief editor of a peer reviewed journal, he gets the final say- for his time in office. I personally think they named it wrong...it has caused much confusion.
And there is a lot more that is held as core beliefs - everything in the Nicene Creed, for example, is a statement of belief that one must agree with to be catholic.
Also no- for we have the Eastern Rites under the Roman Pope as well, who do not use the Nicene Creed. You'd be correct for Latin Rite Roman Catholics- but that's just one culture among many.
I can't be certain, but there's enough evidence - I see the same things as people I talk to about what we're seeing, hear the same noises, and so on.
Actually, you only think you do- so far we haven't found two human brains that process input the exact same way. That's the reason we don't have brain interfaced computers yet.
How so?
Science fails in it's explainations when it refers to theological concepts and tries to call them facts- tries to assume absolute accuracy where there is none possible. This whole discussion started with just such a premature assumption of fact- in the theory of evolution- when the quantum mechanics simply wasn't there to call it an absolute fact.
I think science will survive because people need to know the truth or something close to it to base their lives on, even if they don't believe it.
But as you've shown before- science fails to give us absolute truth or anything close to it.
Ultimately science will be more useful than the alternatives not because it makes people happy but because it allows people to survive.
We're actually better suited to survive as a species without sci
No. Science has a small amount of error. Less than, say, the reasonable doubt that would save a murder suspect from conviction.
Well, that's not a very good indicator- considering that the law is just a contrived method to separate the classes and kill off the worst of the unwanted. But the point is- most scientists overstate their case, insisting on an accuracy that is both impossible and does not exist.
They're not something that can be objectively shown
And things that can't be objectively shown are subjective beliefs. Not that there's anything wrong with that- but to ascribe a value that doesn't exist is at best an untruth.
but they're worth believing as working assumptions based on the success we can have by believing in them.
Just like any other religious belief. Religious beliefs that don't bring some measure of success eventually do fall. It can take centuries though, to tell the difference- sometimes millenia.
The point is that a religion is different because it has an unquestionable core belief.
Kind of like the two above? Actually, all religious beliefs can be questioned- but it takes time to find the answers. Often centuries or millenia. To insist that something is accurate or factual before the religion has been through that trial, is premature and rather impatient.
The fact that they're having to split off shows that there is a cohesiveness to catholicism, one does have to agree on a substantial amount.
It's more that they've got this idea that the Masons and scientists and Protestants have taken over- they reject the last 4 Popes on that score- but yes. The one substantial core belief for Catholicism is the Councilar Process- the idea that the magisterium develops doctrine adequately. It's very much like the peer review system- and has just about as much foundation behind it, as a belief in a working assumption that has worked for just about 1950 years, give or take a few decades. Like most fundamentalists, the traditionalists are failing to trust that process of change; they are wedding themselves to disproven theories.
So you're saying the scientific method implies morality is meaningless?
No, I'm saying that one interpretation of the scientific method implies that morality is meaningless. All religions, all belief systems, start spawning heresies and competing sects after the first hundred years or so; objectivism is just one of the more recent ones science has spawned. It's pretty easy to see how believers in objectiveism get there- the highest being in their universe is self, and what they don't experience directly they can't believe in. A universal morality requires belief- objectivists deny faith by their belief that nothing they haven't experienced directly exists.
I learn as much as I can. I have yet to see anything else as good as science in terms of making useful predictions about the world.
Depends on what you mean by the world; your world maybe but that isn't the only world that exists. You can't actually extrapolate your experiences to others except by belief.
Religions could have just as well achieved success through conquest, promises of afterlife, and tradition as through accurate results.
All that only goes so far; it's good for controling the individual life or the mob at the moment. But if the traditions become nonsensical the people will no longer teach them to their children, promises of the afterlife only are useful while people are afraid of death and thus can backfire, and conquest ends quickly because those who live by the sword also die by it. Eventually a religion must change, must grow up, must mature; otherwise it dies.
And I have yet to see a religion produce an accurate prediction without using science "behind the scenes".
Science was invented by religion to begin with, so why not? However, it is quickly appearing that science is failing in it's
Part of the problem is that people trying to discuss their politics/economics on slashdot is like taking a film, cutting it into lots of pieces, throwing them in the air, and taping the pieces you can find back together as best as you can. Dada professes that he can't figure out why sometimes he's reviled and now people support him, yet he only reveals his political stance one facet at a time. Frankly, some of these facets are quite repugnant (to me) when taken alone, but piecing them together I can begin to make a rather nice jewel (hmm... I seem to have changed metaphors mid-stride).
True enough. Especially I seem to have made the mistake in this discussion of not separating need from luxury from the start...
Maybe you should compare Europeans to white Americans alone.
Well, in that case, the Europeans really win out hands down- their lifespans are a good 10 years above your average white American.
62 mill is another lie. If you are poor, you have medicaid, particularly children.
Not at all true- especially after the last round of cuts to medicaid. There are plenty of people who monthly have to choose between insurance premiums and mortgage payments.
And really, if you are an adult without healthcare, either you don't want it or you need to get a job that offers it and stop whining.
Spoken like somebody who hasn't had their company go bankrupt out from under them in the last 5 years. Few private corporations today are stupid enough to damage profits by offering health insurance; there's a labor surplus in the United States and it's cheaper to make your employees pay their own premiums.
AAHH. I made a mistake. Your name - I should have known nothing you would say would be anything other than lies. Not replying anymore. Your typical tactic is to just bury people under your excrement of deceptions.
Funny how we what we see in text-based communications is just a mirror of our own perceptions.
Really? I've changed markets with 1 year of retraining. Many people learn a career after being duped into believing the market exists -- all that exists in some markets is temporary preferential treatment by local governments. I can't believe how many people keep entering some markets that are on the verge of collapse because the government can't prop them up any more (after 20-30 years of help).
The grand majority of people can't even afford that one year of training- most go bankrupt after that without ever retraining for anything else. The market wouldn't be on the the verge of collapse if people actually supported their neighbors by buying from them- but I'd agree, the government shouldn't prop anything up THAT way.
This is a myth. The farming industry has been destroyed by both the IMF and by currency manipulation that have made prices rise when in fact they should have fallen in many areas. Land values have gone up due to the fed manipulation of the currency base, causing farm land to be worth more to developers than would normally be true. This is a VERY complex problem, though, much more so than can be handled in a simple post.
IMF and currency manipulation are certainly a part of it as well, but in the 10 years the WTO has been around, we've seen a huge acceleration in the process. Needs should simply be produced locally to the consumer as possible- you shouldn't have to rely on food shipped from 12,000 miles away.
That is completely unfounded in reality -- efficiency is the basis for price and performance, period. Steel workers were duped by the governments (local and federal) into thinking there was demand for them. We paid for that fake demand in higher prices that could have allowed money to flow to where jobs would be needed. Those steel workers are getting what was coming to the industry 2 decades ago, it is unfortunate. Yet in my area we had approximately 10,000 open positions paying over $12 per hour within 30 minutes of my home. Don't tell me jobs aren't available -- they're readily available. The fact that people planted their lives in an area (Michigan) because they were duped by government is not MY fault. I know better than that, I would never trust a politician to secure my job. They did, they stole from me, they're not getting another cent out of me (check out my blog from today regarding Michigan and welfare).
What you should be able to do is trust your NEIGHBORS to secure your job, not some faceless politician. Oh, and those 10,000 open positions? I'm willing to bet at least half of them were fake propaganda- planted by the DOL to fake the labor "shortage" and get more guest worker visas.
Huh? Is that really going to be more efficient than just providing a good service?
Yes- any time you can cheat the system it's more efficient to YOU than providing a good service.
It seems that every socialist on slashdot wants to use the same old trite responses rather than look at what is really happening. Amazon and eBay performed tens of millions of transactions in the past 90 days -- the great majority of which went through with no problems. In every trade there is risk, but when the risk is less than 0.001%, to me it is a success.
My personal experience on EBay, which is why I quit using it, was about 50% risk. Unless you can actually talk to the properiter and become friends with them, you have *NO* idea how truthfull they are.
My church offers food kitchens for the poor -- in exchange for helping them get off of drugs and into work. I don't have any starving neighbors. The few who are starving are addicts unwilling to make changes, and I have no desire to give them money if they aren't making changes.
Lucky you- I'm in the Silicon Forest, where housing is about 25% vacant, and I know plenty of homeless people who aren't adicts. Several churches around me have the same service yours offers- and have seen a 200% increase in need in the last 5 years. Even the s
What's your definition of "locally", though? Is it OK to buy Hondas in Detroit, even though plenty of other cars are made there?
Not unless the Honda is made locally as well. Actually, ideally, Morgan should be encouraged to create a few more factories- and you should buy your Morgan from your next door neighbor who build and signed each first machined part.
What about buying Fords in Marysville, OH, where Honda has one of their largest manufacturing plants? In the case of Marsville and Honda vs. Ford, which one is "local"?
Honda is obviously.
For that matter, what's your definition of "made"? What if your local township had a company that makes widgets, but they only make them in green. You, for some reason, hate green, so you'd rather buy one in blue. But the only company that makes blue widgets is based two counties over. Is it ok for you to buy that blue widget, since you can't buy one "locally"? But you can buy widgets, so maybe you should just suck it up and spend your money on the local guy.
Or better yet, you should just suck it up, and ask the local guy to make it in blue- that's the magic of actually having a human connection between customer and manufacturer. Mass production is great, but only if everybody is the same.
Any time you place artificial restrictions on the market, all you're doing is removing choice from the picture for all actors. You're telling the producer "You have no choice, you can't sell that here", and you're telling the consumer "You have no choice, you can't buy that here". Do you really want someone putting a gun to your head* and telling you what you can, and can't, buy? How does that help anyone?
It avoids the other guy putting a gun to your head and simply stealing his needs from you.
* By definition, anytime the State enforces something, they have a gun to your head, in that if you don't do as they say they have the power to deprive you of life, liberty, or property. No one else has that power, not even multinational corporations. When they want to deprive you of property, they have to sue you first, in which case it's really the State doing it.
You've apparently never dealt with a multinational corporation directly when they *really* want something and know that you are powerless- they don't just stop at the lawsuit.