Strange

It depends what those negative opinions are, surely. Does hate speech not deserve a negative vote? And that is not a “for example” - I haven’t read much of the thread, but some of mistermack’s comments are grossly offensive and can only be categorised as hate speech. The only reason I can see for people disagreeing with that is because they are not aware of the regular and systemic abuse that women receive, and so think it is OK because it is “just an opinion”. Would it be “just an opinion” if someone said a particular racial or ethnic group were lazy/stupid/criminal? I am slightly surprised he hasn’t been censured (or even banned) and that the thread is still open.

I’m not sure that is the key point. The issue is not that “gods did it” is not an explanation (it is) but that it is an explanation that prevents any further enquiry. “Don’t ask any more questions because we have given you The Truth” (and anyone who says that is clearly not to be trusted). This is opposed to a scientific approach where you can keep asking, of every explanation, “OK, but what caused that” or “how did that come about” or “how can we test that further”

Indeed. It is important to distinguish incomplete/limited (every scientific theory) from wrong (I can only think of a couple of examples in the history of science - interestingly, only one of which was paradigm changing). Theodore!

Uh. Yeah. That was kind of the point.

p.s. I have “Reg” on ignore (Sturgeon’s law) so I only see his idiocy when others quote him. This is still a dangerous level of exposure!

True. But showing that relativity is wrong would, itself, require more than showing one thing to be wrong (in part because so much else is consistent with / dependent on it). I haven’t read any Philosophy of Science for a long time but I think “Reg” may be misrepresenting him. For example: “the "paradigm" in Kuhn's jargon -- is, by and large, not challenged (or "questioned") at all. Rather than being subjected to severe testing, it is simply taken for granted. Normal science is extremely conservative, dogmatic even.” This is not dogmatism, it is pragmatism. When you want add two numbers, you don’t go back to set theoretical definitions of arithmetic. When writing software, one doesn’t worry about the quantum theory underlying the transistors in the processor, or even the correctness of the compiler. One takes the underlying mechanisms for granted. Until thing go wrong. Then you might have to consider all possibilities? Is it my code? Is the compiler buggy? Is there a bug in the processor caused by a transistor misbehaving? Similarly, most paradigm changing advances in science arise from “normal” science when people notice something odd (insert Asimov(*) quote here). And at that point all possibilities are open. For example, when the energy deficit that led to the discovery of neutrinos was spotted, one serious suggestion was that maybe energy was not conserved. That is the exact opposite of dogmatism. (*) Attributed to Asimov (by the Unix ‘fortune cookie’ program) but probably based on something said by Fleming.

Some people seem to think it is a house of cards (“if I can just prove this one detail wrong, the whole thing collapses”) whereas it is more like a complex structure of mutually supporting pillars and beams. Change one thing and a few other bits might need to be adjusted, but the whole structure is stable.

As we are still seeing fairly regular headlines such as “GR passes another test” (almost a century after the first experiment) I find it hard to understand how anyone could imagine science isn’t constantly being tested. (GR is just an example, there are similar tests of pretty much every area every day - at every level: we had a great science teacher at school who encouraged the students to think of new ways of testing what they had been taught)

Sorry, should have added a to my comment.

Are you saying that software engineers are uncivil?

That assumes that glaciers will be around for another 5000 years, which is looking increasingly unlikely.

What do you think this extra stuff is? Why do you think the universe is like a simulation? Why do you think the universe has rules? why do you think those rules need to be enforced? Who or what do you think is enforcing them? Why will your next post not answer any questions and jump to a new topic?

Evidence required. I see no reason to believe you.

Give us an example. Of course it isn’t. Unless you have some evidence? (You don’t)

Having spent many years as a maintenance engineer I can assure you that this is not true. Now, how about answering my questions? This is usually a sign that you haven’t really organised your thoughts. In other words you don’t really know what your idea is yet.

Why do you think there are rules that need to be enforced? Maybe you mean, why does the universe behave in a consistent way that we can describe mathematically? A lot of philosophers have debated this. I don’t think there are any definite answers. Eugene Wigner wrote a paper called “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” on this. You should read it: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf

What do you mean by "spacing"? The integers have, by definition, a difference (spacing) between them of 1. I fail to see the relevance of this. We can all estimate things with more or less accuracy, and we get more accurate with practice. So you need to come up with some objective tests for your idea, so we can see if it works or not.

Have you tried google?

And is therefore (according to my understanding) part of the phenotype. I think you are trying to describe the difference between what is in the genes (ie the genotype) and the different ways that can be expressed in the phenotype (and then the consequences of that being further modified by the environment, etc). So it sounds (to me) more like you are talking about the "nature vs nurture" issue. So the urge to attach is (I assume) genetic and is always expressed, but then later environmental factors can change what happens because of it.

Invent a time machine. Or a matter transporter. Or a machine to turn lead into gold.

Wow. I bet they would never have thought of that by themselves.

Write a best selling novel and then sell the movie rights. Simple.

You mean, by hiding the hole. As it isn’t possible to hide something that doesn’t exist this must mean holes exist.

Yep. That’s mature.

Or just abstain.