Phi for All

It's mostly the thug-type scientists, roaming in street gangs armed with over-sized calculators, coercing people to read labels and bicycle more.

Some might say tough and ludicrous. Like me trying to teach Peyton Manning about being an NFL quarterback: "I know, I know, I didn't even play in high school. But I'm telling you Pey (he let's me call him Pey), I've discovered that if you deflate the football, it's a LOT easier to keep hold of. That's been the problem behind virtually every fumble in the history of the game, and it took ME, an amateur, to point that out to you. Hey, you make sure I get credit for this, OK?" Dude, this is really not a scientific approach. If your ideas are strong, you should want people to try to show where they're wrong. This emotional attachment not only blinds you, it makes you deaf to all the times people have told you, SCIENCE DOESN'T CONCERN ITSELF WITH "PROOF". A very, very limited analogy (don't stretch it too far). An hypothesis that you're actively pursuing is like sculpting something out of stone. You pare away what you don't need, what is wrong for this piece, what is observably not part of the sculpture. You aren't creating anything new really, you're just removing what doesn't work for that piece, like science falsifies instead of "proves". When you're done, you didn't make what's left, you just removed everything it didn't need. If the piece then satisfies all the artist's requirements, and the requirements of anyone else viewing it, it's deemed a worthy piece.

It is a bit fascinating that it goes from "This theory has some difficult concepts that don't make sense to me" to "It MUST be wrong!", completely bypassing the normal "Maybe I misunderstood...."

This is two threads now where you talk about this idea, and claim you've overturned science, and now you're using the "this is my big science idea that makes up for snoozing in Physics, so I want full credit" stall tactic. More rigor, please, more meat and less waffle would be nice. We all get tired of these "pre-discussions" so you can feel up the crowd before committing to actually showing us something. I think you have two choices, my friend: 1. Put up. 2. Shut up. Take the plunge. It will be better for you to ask questions (in your real thread), but I know you don't work that way, so please be prepared to support any assertions you make. If you're going to tell us, "This is the way things are!", you need to show why, with evidence.

But somehow, people who get only the popsci education think that accepting mainstream means blind obedience, rather than simply standing firm by the best current explanation, while constantly testing, observing, and measuring to find an even better explanation. And even when corrected, the image of hidebound ivory academia towers breaking under their own rigidity persists. Reason will not penetrate. And they always want to believe they don't have to study formally. Yootoob is enough for one to overturn Relativity, apparently.

We have an Official Jokes section we could move it into. Bit of a compromise. Not really mainstream science, but not really funny either.

I think we only got honest journalism in the early days of television because the US government required it. I've never looked up the regs before, but I know broadcasters were required to do an hour of news every day to inform the American public, and iirc, they kicked and moaned about it at first, but it was the price for using the government owned airwaves. Then they saw how popular it was, how thirsty for real news the public was, and they got behind the idea fully. But somewhere along the line, earlier than when we went to 24/7 cycle coverage, the news was allowed to be treated like game shows, sitcoms, and soap operas, and journalism died a lot. We have no more trusted journalists like Murrow or Huntley or Cronkite. People we counted on to dig deep and tell it like it is, without letting their personal views taint their reporting. This gave rise to schmucks like Peter Jennings, who used to smile and nod on camera whenever Reagan was mentioned, or Reagan said something, or Reagan farted. Part of the whole media mechanism that kept such incompetence in office for 8 years.

Since the Big Bang theory doesn't say anything about the "beginning of the universe", referring to it in this context isn't appropriate. It's like saying, "I have issues with the theory of evolution because I believe trying to predict when the sun will set is a contradiction in terms". It helps if you can understand the work you're criticizing.

Cue the music, get ready for the close-up, switch on the CG light bulb. Welcome to science.

The idea has always been that if someone supports a speculation well enough that none here can refute it, we'll move it into the appropriate mainstream section and continue discussion there. I've never seen anyone come close. Mostly, they just toss out guesses with little evidence to support the ideas, then ignore everyone who refutes their arguments. Or they ask the same questions over and over, like they either don't like the answers or they can't hold more than two things in their head at a time. This type of person typically bulldozes his way through thoughtful, intelligent replies like a rhino through lace, cherry-picking what they like and ignoring all else. It's still all unsupported guesswork, and we wouldn't mind talking about it so much if we thought there was a chance this person might actually listen to replies.

! Moderator Note I think that's the best advice for anyone following this thread: study up and come back armed with science knowledge! Thread closed.

I think it's clear what happens when the media that's supposed to keep us informed is focused more on money than on information. They feel required to do anything to keep you viewing to promote their numbers, and sensational terrorism like Trump means they don't have to do anything but point and record. The public is glued, screwed, and tattooed. And ultimately, it's auto-accident journalism. The public is at fault for not demanding better from the regulatory system governing the media, and from the media itself, but they can't look away. It's almost impossible to ignore it and take the high road. But why doesn't someone in the media realize the voice they're giving to terrorism, which would wither without global media coverage? When do they become responsible, when can they be held accountable for skewing elections, breeding more jihadists, creating gridlock by equating all sides of an argument?

You're delusional. That doesn't help.

To be fair, our brains lie to us a lot. I've come to think that science speculations like this happens because this is what the general public think scientists do, they guess and then check it out. It's what the general public does with lots of things. The average person who snoozed through science classes, only to later learn how important it was going to be, has no idea how much learning the way science works eliminates most of this type of speculation. As a working physicist, you probably have LOTS of ideas you're able to easily dismiss five minutes after you had them, because you can work out so much of it in your head, and recognize through finely honed critical thinking skills that "this idea will never work". I think some people without training and education in science spend years chasing down these rabbit holes, while you calmly run some calculations and easily see things are off by several orders of magnitude. I think people without this training and education would like to pretend it really doesn't matter, because they just KNOW they're right.

Here is what you're doing. You've done some research, but only very topically. You've grasped some concepts, and ignored others that didn't make sense to you, but are critical for understanding. But since you're only skimming, and not digging deep into the knowledge you're criticizing, you have patches of clarity in your explanation (the one only you can see in your head) but no continuous thread of evidence maintained rigorously that supports you. So you do what humans do better than anything, your brain stitches together those patches of clarity to make a pattern, and you end up filling in the blanks with guesswork, to make it seem "logical" to your brain. And the filled-in blanks make you think you've got a Eureka! moment on the horizon. You can't seem to grasp the right words for it, but you convince yourself you are right! The real problem is you don't know what you don't know, because you lack formal study. You probably also think it's too late for you to go back to school, or it would be too much work, or you have another excuse. You should combat your own ignorance, not compound it with this pointless guesswork. You should be asking questions, not telling everyone how things really work.

Questioning is great. What you do, the thing that removes you from the ranks of true skeptics, is your unwillingness to listen to informed rebuttal of your arguments. You tend to create a soapbox derby, where you make assertions, replies show where you're wrong or have no support, but you ignore them and just keep preaching. That's not what a skeptic does. You're no skeptic. Skeptics question, then they find out the best supported explanation, then they don't need to question that bit until there's conflicting evidence, and they move on with a bit more knowledge. Remaining an eternal skeptic is so counterproductive to science as to be a crime, imo. A crime against the learning process.

Without being too simplistic, we're seeing what happens when the extreme fundamentalists of a religion are given a world stage, which gives them money and influence to increase their efforts. Normally, their own societies would take care of such extremism, but these sects become armed, dangerous, and very difficult to deal with by normal, societal measures. Imagine the Westboro Baptist Church suddenly getting a big boost of money and weapons. And guidance from experts on waging shadow wars. They would probably also suddenly gain a bunch of new members who aren't as interested in killing LGBT folks as much as just killing in general. Causes like that always attract people for many reasons. They could easily go underground, split up into cells to make it harder for the FBI to identify them. Bob's your uncle, religious extremists become terrorists. Or they would say they're doing the Lord's work, which makes them Christian Soldiers.

But for a while, you had the better machine. While it was supported, the tapes were smaller, you had four heads vs VHS two heads, the quality was better, and you had justified bragging rights. By the time I could afford a VCR, VHS had won. But I have a buddy just like you, and he always argued that buying state-of-the-art was expensive, but you had technology nobody else would get for at least a year. You got to enjoy it while everyone else was waiting for the price to come down. He loved that, and I can see the appeal. Bringing this back to medicine, we need pioneering research and products. I look at this sort of like immigration. It's necessary if you want your population to grow. Holding on to the old because it would cost jobs isn't very progressive. Look at how long we've held on to fossil fuels for many of the same reasons. Electric cars won't kill oil, but maybe it will promote more responsible use of it. Similarly, medicine will benefit from cures, and since something else always seems to crop up, it will make room for more research to end the new maladies.

They say every time a bell is rung, it means a LDS has slipped on the way over.

! Moderator Note Hey! Deep breaths, please. Let's focus on the arguments and avoid making things personal. And report this if you want to respond to it, but don't bring it up in the thread.

I don't think that's EVER the way to look at it. Dyson forced giants like Hoover to abandon most of their product lines when he popularized the bagless vacuum cleaner. Iirc, selling people disposable bags was a US$3B industry, turned on its head practically overnight. Sure, some jobs shifted, but Hoover is still around, Dyson has moved on to electric cars I'm told, and the world is a better place for all that, at least when it comes to extra bags in the landfills. As far as the business of medicine, it's really a poor industry to apply business models to. We want care and maintenance to grow, but not diseases and pharmaceuticals. It really bothers me to think some of these folks have money as the priority, rather than helping people treat or avoid disease in a high-density society.

Showing where your ideas lack support isn't ridiculing you. Nobody needs martyrs in science.

That would only be true if there was no gravitational field. Weight measures the pull of gravity.

I don't think there's anything inherent about technological progress that erodes moral fortitude. I think modern marketing wants as wide-open a path to your money as it can get, so they always push the boundaries of what's allowed. Our entertainment used to be more heavily regulated. Some of the shows we watch today would have brought shocked reaction if they aired 20 years ago. Producers would have been crucified. It is interesting to note the attitude towards foul language. It used to be more heavily enforced, but now the perspective seems to be, "These kids hear worse in school all day". Well, of course they have, that's not the point. Do they need to hear it all evening, too?

! Moderator Note Waiting for the "theory". No more wasting people's time for you. Thread closed.