I wouldn't worry about that. Ultimately republican congressmen are going to have to put their neck out for whoever Bush nominates, and not even ultra-conservative senators are going to want to justify to their constituents why they appointed Ashcroft.
They want someone very conservative, but they need someone who hasn't built an ultra-conservative trackrecord yet so that it plays well for the constituents. Because of this, I think he will appoint Gonzales.
"Judicial philosophy and political affiliation are not strongly correlated."
I think this is key. I don't think liberals should fear conservative nominees just because they are conservative, but rather they should fear any conservative nominee who has a history of placing political affiliation (or personal bias) above judicial philosophy.
"Buy him out boys!"
Actually, I think only good can come from this. Microsoft tends to screw up any software that they aquire. In this case, screwing up popups is good for us all.
I think the Toyota vs. Hyundai thing is a pretty good metaphor in more ways than one.
Think of it this way, Toyota has had a great reputation for a very long time. If they produce some shit cans every once in a while, no one will care all that much and they will still sell pretty well.
Hyundai started in the US market with crappy cars. It has taken them a lot of work to try and get out from under their poor reputation. In many ways, Hyundai is building the better car, yet still has the worse reputation.
Apple has good rep because they built good product in the past. They have a great brand name now and can even sell so-so products. Creative, Sony et al started out by shoveling us crap music players and it is taking the market a long time to take another look at them. Certainly they have better product now, but they also certainly deserve their reputation for poor product.
The groundbreaking thing about the iPod is this: It gives the novice tech user an excellent experience.
The iPod is great to look at, easy to pick up and use and has a great tactile feel.
iPods vs. other mp3 players are like Honda's vs. Acuras. They use pretty much the same technology, but the little bits that dress up the acura makes all the difference to some users.
In addition to the above, Apple has iTunes. It's not "better" in the sense that you don't really have more options than the competing products, but it is better in that it allows you to do exactly what you want with very little drama.
Apple has delivered because they figured out the basics of what people wanted and delivered. They made a quality product that is easy to use. No poor designs, nothing to complicate the basic experience.
Only the OSS biased slashdot people want flexibility and an endless array of options. They don't buy music players for OGG or anything else, they buy it to play their music, without drama.
"He has shown that it is possible to get a mission to the actual planet (not the moons) relatively safely using the same kind of technology that we used to get to the moon in the 1960s."
Really? We can land on Mars with a video camera, soundstage and lots of paper Mache?
"Your major mistake is in confusing Creationism with a scientific theory. It isn't one, as it is not falsifiable. (If you don't believe me, try convincing a Creationist that there is no scientific evidence supporting their position.)"
This is incorrect. It is a theory, but it is not a scientific one and I've never stated otherwise. Philosophers have theories, theologians have theories, mathmaticians have theories. Theories are not relagated to science, nor do they need to be scientific. If they are not scientific, they also do not necessarily need to be falsifable. The ability to prove something false is important for a scientific theory, but not a prerequisite for other types of theories.
Additionally, you appear to be setting up a straw man with your statements about rabid neo-darwinists.
No sir, I am not. In general, slashdot is composed of intellegent persons. But there are many intellegent persons who take my skepticism of Darwinian ideas as sacralige. Just look at these past posts. For some, protecting darwinism has become as important as protecting a religious belief (gasp!). And we say that scietists are objective? This isn't objectivity. Objectivity would mean that a scientist believes a theory because they believe it is true. They then cease to believe it because it is no longer the case. It shouldn't matter what I say, what the religous right says, what anyone says about their theory. There is no reason to become fanatical. To use faulty logic in trying to prove a point.
You wouldn't happen to be a creationist by any chance would you?
Again, a foolish unobjective attack that further proves my point. Your are telling me I am creating a straw man? What are you creating here? Science isn't objective, nor are you. I am not a creationist, but that is not the point. Science has no better claim on knowledge than any other discipline. Science is problematic.
To be absolutely clear, my point all along (exceptionally short cliff notes version) is this: Science has been wrong in the past, science will be wrong again. Historically, change in science has been done by "revolutions" rather than the slow modification of a thought over time. Darwinism can predict some things (it better, or it would have no business being a scientific theory at all), but there is a lot that it is uncapable of accounting for. This being the case, historically, scientists will now alter the theory to fit reality (which is what is currently happening with darwinism) within the accepted theory. But, eventually, they are faced with enough problems with the theory, that they reject it entirely. I believe that this will happen to darwinism. I believe this to be so because there are problems now, and because this is the way science has always acted.
Evolution is also a theory. Though, as you state, it is a more accepted theory than natural selection. I did mean Natural selection though, not evolution.
My argument is from a historical perspective. Although Darwinism is 150 years old, it is still a relatively young and unrefined theory.
We like to perceive science as supporting a theory based on fact, and then gradually refining it to account more accuratly account for phenomina, but historically, I do not believe that this is the way science has worked.
Darwinism can explain some phenomina very well. If we research certain habitats, what we see tends to support Natural Selection very well (i.e. the beaks of finches on the various islands of the Galapagos). But there are other instances where one can not clearly state how natural selection is working in an environment.
The fact that Natural Selection can not explain these things is a problem for the theory.
I have stated that historically, I agree with Thomas Kuhn, science tends to go through "revolutions" and discards theories once they become unweildy or problematic, and move onto something completely different.
I am saying that Darwinism and it successors are becoming unweildy and are not as robust or as predictive as theories in other fields (i.e. quantum mechanics).
I do not see any error in my logic.
The only error in logic that I see in this argument is by the rabid neo-darwinists on this thread. Science has been wrong thousands of times in the past, why is it suddenly logical to believe that our current theory is absolutely right.
This argument has been approached way to often as and Either/Or proposition. Either Darwinisim, or Creationism. What I am saying is that as far as theories go, we need another option.
As I said in a previous post. Neo-Darwinism is problematic because it does not have as much predictive power as a good theory ought.
If you are looking for me to provide a silver bullet that slays neo-darwinism, I don't have it. If I did, you and many other people would be much more skeptical of the theory. All I can point to, is that it is not providing as much predictive power of our natural world as a good theory ought.
Here's a good theory, it takes just less than 365 for the earth to revolve around the sun. If every forth year, we add a day, we will be able to constantly predict the sunrise, sunset, winter solstace and summer solstace. With this theory, we can predict these things. The theory is useful because it is predictive. It seems to approximate truth, because various pieces of evidence seem to concur with the theory.
Evolution, does not have this type of predictive power.
It is not shooting ones own foot to say that it is a theory. It is a theory, though not necessarily a scientific one. Theories that are not necessarily scientific have just as much claim as those based in science.
However, without scientific proof, they are not going to win scientific support.
Again going back to retrograde motion and the theory that the sun revolves aroung the earth. It was a theory. It was a theory based in religous belief, but with (at the time) scientific usefulness and support.
Just because a theory begins within philosophy or theology, does not necessarily make them invalid. In fact most theories begin with a philosophical or theological assumption.
One measure upon which to test a theory is it's predictability. If a biologist visits a habitat and thinks to themselves "Hmmm... I didn't expect this to happen." It means that the theory one which they rely is not serving it's predictive purpose. It may mean that the theory needs to be modified (ergo neo-darwinism) or it may mean that there are fundamental issues with the theory.
Biologists and zoologists are somewhat regularly confronted with behavior and aspects of habitat that prove to be unexpected. This is problematic.
There is no "nail" in Evolution's coffin. If there were, there would be far fewer scientists who believe in it. But, there are cracks, if there weren't we wouldn't have neo-darwinism.
It is an either/or proposition in the sense that the big controversy is whether humans take a part in global warming, or they don't. Other things might also cause global warming, but that's not what stirs the hornet's nest.
I agree that many scientists believe that human activity contributes to global warming. But, this is certainly still open for debate. That is, there are still much discussion on this point, and there are still scientists who will not conceed this point.
I am not saying that the global warming is not caused by human beings, But I am saying that there obviously debate on this topic as we here on/. and the community at large still argue about it and scientists are still trying to find more ways to prove it.
To put it another way, there is more debate on this topic than whether the world is flat. This is because there is more conclusive evidence showing that the world is indeed not flat and therefore more people are convinced and we are able to function as a society assuming this truth. The reason we have so much research on Global warming is because there are more people that still need convincing.
As you mentioned, politics and profit certainly play into this debate. But there are certainly outside political pressures on both sides of this debate.
I see where you're going with this... My last post summarizing Kuhn was a bit oversimplified.
From his point of view, science goes through "revolutions." That is, a theory, when it is problematic enough will be completely discarded and replaced with something else.
By going to post-darwinian theories, we are trying to correct some of the problems with the original theory of evolution, without discarding the entire theory. What will eventually happen is that the theory will show too many holes and science will need to discard it entirely. I am not saying that evolution is a "bad" theory, I am just saying that in the historical progression of science, it will one day be replaced by something entirely different.
Personally, I think evolution (even post-darwinian evolution) isn't going to last much longer (i.e. big problems developing within the next three decades).
So back to global warming... The human affected climate change and non-human affected climate change theories both have problems. Because we are putting this in an "either/or" discussion (either we affect climate change, or we don't), one will have to win out, but we won't know which until the theories behind whether humans affect change or not are more predictive in nature and secure both scientific and popular support.
Well, that's the rub. It's hard to tell what they are discarding, since they are discarding it. Also, it is hard to look at the evidence in a different light since we are viewing the evidence through the lens of our theory.
Theories are similar to a Gestalt picture (you know, the bunny-duck drawing?). At first we see the bunny. We see the lines that make up the bunny and we discard the rest of the lines in the drawing.
When we later see the duck, some of the same lines that made the bunny also make the duck. In addition, other lines that we previously discarded also make up the duck. Those lines that do not form part of the duck are now discarded.
The bunny is like our first theory, the duck is like the second. All of the lines in the Gestalt picture is the evidence that is available to us. The lines that make up the theory is the evidence that we choose to focus on.
I absolutely agree. Science is self correcting. There are theories that scientists are proposing right now that will be corrected.
We view these past theories as problematic, short-sighted and biased. Most all discarded theories are treated as such. Therefore the theories that we currently hold will at some point be considered problematic, short-sighted and biased because at some point, they will be discarded. History tells us this is the case.
Theories approximate truth. They are not in themselves true. They will be discarded for something that we believe more closely approximates truth.
It is obvious that science has a method. I just don't believe that the method is as objective and unbiased as you take it to be.
Oh yes, your right. Thomas Kuhn is Bullshit... I mean, look a these crappy reviews!
"A landmark in intellectual history which has attracted attention far
beyond its own immediate field. . . . It is written with a combination
of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of
aphorisms. . . . Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of
scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be
true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior
paradigm, [this book] has been a resounding success." --Nicholas Wade,
Science
"Perhaps the best explanation of [the] process of discovery." --William
Erwin Thompson, New York Times Book Review
"Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence far beyond its
originally intended audience. . . . Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions . . . has clearly emerged as just such a
work." --Ron Johnston, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Among the most influential academic books in this century." --
Choice
--One of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World
War," Times Literary Supplement
You have said that you have been around science for the past decade. Perhaps the problem is that you have not been around science for the past 200 years. Science has had it's share of failures and false claims. A little historical perspective might help you see that.
"Your lack of understanding of science is noted. Science works solely off the evidence. Pure and simple. A theory must reflect the evidence, and if evidence comes up that is contrary to the theory, then the theory is either discarded or revised. Science is not right wing or left wing. It is not a political methodology. Consensus is reached when the theory explains the evidence."
Your kidding right? Do scientists live a bubble? Are they just completely unaware of the world around them and live in bubbles of objectivity and rationalism?
The answer of course is no. Look at the theory of the Sun revolving around the earth. Those scientists had evidence, they even had preditability in their concept of retrograde motion. But, it was ultimately wrong.
If you really believe that science is detached and objective, you haven't seen science in action. Everyone has bias. In general, scientists are going to have the most bias. Those studying Greenhouse gases are studying it for the very fact that they are passionate about it. Because of our human nature, science will hold up the evidence that supports their theory, and discard evidence that does not. This is how science works, because this is how humans work.
You sir, need to read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A cliff-notes version goes like this:
1. Most of the scientific community believes in Theory A.
2. Unexplained issues develop with theory A, but nobody minds too much because the theory is entrenched in the community.
3. Theory A becomes more and more problematic. A few scientists start to become suspicious of theory A. But the majority still believe.
4. Theory B is developed by dissenting scientists. Theory B scientists are scoffed by the larger community.
5. Theory B explains more and predicts more and is more concise. Theory B eventually replaces Theory A within the scientific community.
6. Most scientists now beleive in theory B.
7. But, theory B develops problems, and along comes theory C... and so on...
The point is this, just because there are few people believing in a theory in no way implies that they are wrong. Once upon a time, most academics believed that the sun was the center of the universe.
Furthermore, if you are looking at evolution vs. creationism, as "A seems more likely than B, so therefore I believe in A," you are falling into a fallacy of logic. Are A and B the only options? Theories, especially Evolution, have a lot of problems. I am not saying creationism is true, I am just saying that there is going to be a better theory that comes along to displace both ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
They want someone very conservative, but they need someone who hasn't built an ultra-conservative trackrecord yet so that it plays well for the constituents. Because of this, I think he will appoint Gonzales.
I think this is key. I don't think liberals should fear conservative nominees just because they are conservative, but rather they should fear any conservative nominee who has a history of placing political affiliation (or personal bias) above judicial philosophy.
I haven't heard that flawed of an arguement in a long long time.
"Buy him out boys!" Actually, I think only good can come from this. Microsoft tends to screw up any software that they aquire. In this case, screwing up popups is good for us all.
You've been modded "5, Interesting." Ha Ha!
Think of it this way, Toyota has had a great reputation for a very long time. If they produce some shit cans every once in a while, no one will care all that much and they will still sell pretty well.
Hyundai started in the US market with crappy cars. It has taken them a lot of work to try and get out from under their poor reputation. In many ways, Hyundai is building the better car, yet still has the worse reputation.
Apple has good rep because they built good product in the past. They have a great brand name now and can even sell so-so products. Creative, Sony et al started out by shoveling us crap music players and it is taking the market a long time to take another look at them. Certainly they have better product now, but they also certainly deserve their reputation for poor product.
The groundbreaking thing about the iPod is this: It gives the novice tech user an excellent experience. The iPod is great to look at, easy to pick up and use and has a great tactile feel. iPods vs. other mp3 players are like Honda's vs. Acuras. They use pretty much the same technology, but the little bits that dress up the acura makes all the difference to some users. In addition to the above, Apple has iTunes. It's not "better" in the sense that you don't really have more options than the competing products, but it is better in that it allows you to do exactly what you want with very little drama. Apple has delivered because they figured out the basics of what people wanted and delivered. They made a quality product that is easy to use. No poor designs, nothing to complicate the basic experience. Only the OSS biased slashdot people want flexibility and an endless array of options. They don't buy music players for OGG or anything else, they buy it to play their music, without drama.
"He has shown that it is possible to get a mission to the actual planet (not the moons) relatively safely using the same kind of technology that we used to get to the moon in the 1960s."
Really? We can land on Mars with a video camera, soundstage and lots of paper Mache?
Earth's in beta release, eh? Looks like God's release schedule is just a tad quicker than debian...
This is incorrect. It is a theory, but it is not a scientific one and I've never stated otherwise. Philosophers have theories, theologians have theories, mathmaticians have theories. Theories are not relagated to science, nor do they need to be scientific. If they are not scientific, they also do not necessarily need to be falsifable. The ability to prove something false is important for a scientific theory, but not a prerequisite for other types of theories.
Additionally, you appear to be setting up a straw man with your statements about rabid neo-darwinists.
No sir, I am not. In general, slashdot is composed of intellegent persons. But there are many intellegent persons who take my skepticism of Darwinian ideas as sacralige. Just look at these past posts. For some, protecting darwinism has become as important as protecting a religious belief (gasp!). And we say that scietists are objective? This isn't objectivity. Objectivity would mean that a scientist believes a theory because they believe it is true. They then cease to believe it because it is no longer the case. It shouldn't matter what I say, what the religous right says, what anyone says about their theory. There is no reason to become fanatical. To use faulty logic in trying to prove a point.
You wouldn't happen to be a creationist by any chance would you?
Again, a foolish unobjective attack that further proves my point. Your are telling me I am creating a straw man? What are you creating here? Science isn't objective, nor are you. I am not a creationist, but that is not the point. Science has no better claim on knowledge than any other discipline. Science is problematic.
To be absolutely clear, my point all along (exceptionally short cliff notes version) is this: Science has been wrong in the past, science will be wrong again. Historically, change in science has been done by "revolutions" rather than the slow modification of a thought over time. Darwinism can predict some things (it better, or it would have no business being a scientific theory at all), but there is a lot that it is uncapable of accounting for. This being the case, historically, scientists will now alter the theory to fit reality (which is what is currently happening with darwinism) within the accepted theory. But, eventually, they are faced with enough problems with the theory, that they reject it entirely. I believe that this will happen to darwinism. I believe this to be so because there are problems now, and because this is the way science has always acted.
My argument is from a historical perspective. Although Darwinism is 150 years old, it is still a relatively young and unrefined theory.
We like to perceive science as supporting a theory based on fact, and then gradually refining it to account more accuratly account for phenomina, but historically, I do not believe that this is the way science has worked.
Darwinism can explain some phenomina very well. If we research certain habitats, what we see tends to support Natural Selection very well (i.e. the beaks of finches on the various islands of the Galapagos). But there are other instances where one can not clearly state how natural selection is working in an environment.
The fact that Natural Selection can not explain these things is a problem for the theory.
What have I stated thus far?
I have stated that historically, I agree with Thomas Kuhn, science tends to go through "revolutions" and discards theories once they become unweildy or problematic, and move onto something completely different.
I am saying that Darwinism and it successors are becoming unweildy and are not as robust or as predictive as theories in other fields (i.e. quantum mechanics).
I do not see any error in my logic.
The only error in logic that I see in this argument is by the rabid neo-darwinists on this thread. Science has been wrong thousands of times in the past, why is it suddenly logical to believe that our current theory is absolutely right.
This argument has been approached way to often as and Either/Or proposition. Either Darwinisim, or Creationism. What I am saying is that as far as theories go, we need another option.
If you are looking for me to provide a silver bullet that slays neo-darwinism, I don't have it. If I did, you and many other people would be much more skeptical of the theory. All I can point to, is that it is not providing as much predictive power of our natural world as a good theory ought.
Here's a good theory, it takes just less than 365 for the earth to revolve around the sun. If every forth year, we add a day, we will be able to constantly predict the sunrise, sunset, winter solstace and summer solstace. With this theory, we can predict these things. The theory is useful because it is predictive. It seems to approximate truth, because various pieces of evidence seem to concur with the theory.
Evolution, does not have this type of predictive power.
However, without scientific proof, they are not going to win scientific support.
Again going back to retrograde motion and the theory that the sun revolves aroung the earth. It was a theory. It was a theory based in religous belief, but with (at the time) scientific usefulness and support.
Just because a theory begins within philosophy or theology, does not necessarily make them invalid. In fact most theories begin with a philosophical or theological assumption.
Biologists and zoologists are somewhat regularly confronted with behavior and aspects of habitat that prove to be unexpected. This is problematic.
There is no "nail" in Evolution's coffin. If there were, there would be far fewer scientists who believe in it. But, there are cracks, if there weren't we wouldn't have neo-darwinism.
I agree that many scientists believe that human activity contributes to global warming. But, this is certainly still open for debate. That is, there are still much discussion on this point, and there are still scientists who will not conceed this point.
I am not saying that the global warming is not caused by human beings, But I am saying that there obviously debate on this topic as we here on /. and the community at large still argue about it and scientists are still trying to find more ways to prove it.
To put it another way, there is more debate on this topic than whether the world is flat. This is because there is more conclusive evidence showing that the world is indeed not flat and therefore more people are convinced and we are able to function as a society assuming this truth. The reason we have so much research on Global warming is because there are more people that still need convincing.
As you mentioned, politics and profit certainly play into this debate. But there are certainly outside political pressures on both sides of this debate.
From his point of view, science goes through "revolutions." That is, a theory, when it is problematic enough will be completely discarded and replaced with something else.
By going to post-darwinian theories, we are trying to correct some of the problems with the original theory of evolution, without discarding the entire theory. What will eventually happen is that the theory will show too many holes and science will need to discard it entirely. I am not saying that evolution is a "bad" theory, I am just saying that in the historical progression of science, it will one day be replaced by something entirely different.
Personally, I think evolution (even post-darwinian evolution) isn't going to last much longer (i.e. big problems developing within the next three decades).
So back to global warming... The human affected climate change and non-human affected climate change theories both have problems. Because we are putting this in an "either/or" discussion (either we affect climate change, or we don't), one will have to win out, but we won't know which until the theories behind whether humans affect change or not are more predictive in nature and secure both scientific and popular support.
Theories are similar to a Gestalt picture (you know, the bunny-duck drawing?). At first we see the bunny. We see the lines that make up the bunny and we discard the rest of the lines in the drawing.
When we later see the duck, some of the same lines that made the bunny also make the duck. In addition, other lines that we previously discarded also make up the duck. Those lines that do not form part of the duck are now discarded.
The bunny is like our first theory, the duck is like the second. All of the lines in the Gestalt picture is the evidence that is available to us. The lines that make up the theory is the evidence that we choose to focus on.
We view these past theories as problematic, short-sighted and biased. Most all discarded theories are treated as such. Therefore the theories that we currently hold will at some point be considered problematic, short-sighted and biased because at some point, they will be discarded. History tells us this is the case.
Theories approximate truth. They are not in themselves true. They will be discarded for something that we believe more closely approximates truth.
It is obvious that science has a method. I just don't believe that the method is as objective and unbiased as you take it to be.
"A landmark in intellectual history which has attracted attention far beyond its own immediate field. . . . It is written with a combination of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of aphorisms. . . . Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior paradigm, [this book] has been a resounding success." --Nicholas Wade, Science
"Perhaps the best explanation of [the] process of discovery." --William Erwin Thompson, New York Times Book Review
"Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence far beyond its originally intended audience. . . . Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . . . has clearly emerged as just such a work." --Ron Johnston, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Among the most influential academic books in this century." -- Choice
--One of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World War," Times Literary Supplement
You have said that you have been around science for the past decade. Perhaps the problem is that you have not been around science for the past 200 years. Science has had it's share of failures and false claims. A little historical perspective might help you see that.
Your kidding right? Do scientists live a bubble? Are they just completely unaware of the world around them and live in bubbles of objectivity and rationalism?
The answer of course is no. Look at the theory of the Sun revolving around the earth. Those scientists had evidence, they even had preditability in their concept of retrograde motion. But, it was ultimately wrong.
If you really believe that science is detached and objective, you haven't seen science in action. Everyone has bias. In general, scientists are going to have the most bias. Those studying Greenhouse gases are studying it for the very fact that they are passionate about it. Because of our human nature, science will hold up the evidence that supports their theory, and discard evidence that does not. This is how science works, because this is how humans work.
You sir, need to read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A cliff-notes version goes like this: 1. Most of the scientific community believes in Theory A. 2. Unexplained issues develop with theory A, but nobody minds too much because the theory is entrenched in the community. 3. Theory A becomes more and more problematic. A few scientists start to become suspicious of theory A. But the majority still believe. 4. Theory B is developed by dissenting scientists. Theory B scientists are scoffed by the larger community. 5. Theory B explains more and predicts more and is more concise. Theory B eventually replaces Theory A within the scientific community. 6. Most scientists now beleive in theory B. 7. But, theory B develops problems, and along comes theory C... and so on... The point is this, just because there are few people believing in a theory in no way implies that they are wrong. Once upon a time, most academics believed that the sun was the center of the universe. Furthermore, if you are looking at evolution vs. creationism, as "A seems more likely than B, so therefore I believe in A," you are falling into a fallacy of logic. Are A and B the only options? Theories, especially Evolution, have a lot of problems. I am not saying creationism is true, I am just saying that there is going to be a better theory that comes along to displace both ideas.