Being open minded

[iNow]

Science changes its views in the face of contradictory evidence. That is the complete antithesis of close-mindedness, and your assertions Inquisitor are so laughable and baseless as to be completely useless and demonstrative of your own dogmatism.

[Phi for All]

Scientists, especially physists tend to think themselves open minded.

Up until the moment you ask them about God, or UFO:s. At which point they become all closed and scary eyed and so on.

There's a very good reason for this, and it really has nothing to do with being close-minded or scared of something smarter than you. When you say "God" to a physicist (or anyone), you're opening a very wide door. When you ask someone to remain open-minded about "God", you are requiring them to suppress their skepticism about every aspect of the word. You know what *you* mean when you say "God", but the physicist doesn't. Same with "UFO". Do you mean a newly discovered object with a seemingly erratic trajectory or are you talking about the saucer you think abducted your prize milk cow?

 

"God" and "UFO" are baggage-laden terms. Don't expect scientists to start nodding without rigorous clarification.

[mooeypoo]

I must interject here and state something I believe was left unsaid in this thread:

 

Physicists and Scientists do a lot of research in the realm of so-called UFOs and claims of the supernatural. The main problem is that when these researches a shown to produce a false outcome, physicists and scientists move on. Hardcore believers do not.

 

It's not like the subjects are being completely ignored by science; There are quite a lot of groups of scientists who take it on themselves to research supernatural claims and do proper case studies. Hardcore believers often disregard those studies (as was done in this thread) and claim that these cases (that were proven false) were never investigated (which is a false claim). Scientists, to be quite frank, are sometimes fed up with the fact that they need to repeat their results over and over and over again despite the Hardcore Believer's attempts to claim they did no research (FALSE), and just move on.

 

Anyone who has any doubts about scientists researching these allegations should look up the Skeptical society, whose ranks are filled with scientists and science-oriented folk, and who are - quite often - tackling these phenomena.

 

The other problem that usually comes up wth these issues is how broad the claims are. When a claim is put forth about "A UFO that no one can prove exists because its pilots are so intelligent they stole the government and brainwashed everyone into not seeing it ever" it's a ridiculously unfalsifiable, immeasurable claim that NO ONE can either verify or falsify, and it is, therefore, irrelevant. When someone makes a claim that "The lights over texas freeway were a UFO!" it is a bit more relevant claim, since it is a claim people can actually check. For more about these type of claims, you can check out the *awesome* short podcast "Skeptoid", it has quite a few episodes about UFO sightings that will explain what I mean.

 

 

If you think UFOs are real, show evidence - every time an evidence was shown, it was researched and proven wrong. As a physicist I am flat-out tellling any Hardcore Believer: I am open minded for the possibility of ghosts, UFOs and god(s), I just need evidence, and when I get it, I'll check it, and if it's true, I'll believe it, and if it's false, I'll do what the scientific method is all about, and what my predecessor scientists did so far: I'll move on.

 

I suggest everyone will do their own *FULL* research into these claims, see how many times each of them was proven false, and move on too.

 

~moo

[YT2095]

Scientists, especially physists tend to think themselves open minded.

Up until the moment you ask them about God, or UFO:s. At which point they become all closed and scary eyed and so on.

 

I think this is because scientist in general do not want to think that there could be, in the universe, anything smarter than they themselves are!

 

Which is not very open minded.

 

Or clever.

 

it`s foolish comments such as these that give us Theists a bad name! happily this IS a Science forum, and not everyone here tars us all with the same brush, as a Christian myself and Also a Scientist (if I must use that term) I`m well met by most here and respected as such.

your brand of nonsense is nothing but Truly transparent to the collective intelligence here.

IOW, you`ve wasted your time And a valid User account.

[CharonY]

Actually I found more physicists to be religious than chemist and biologists. More or less in that order. Just some random thoughts.

[Kyrisch]

Scientists, especially physists tend to think themselves open minded.

Up until the moment you ask them about God, or UFO:s. At which point they become all closed and scary eyed and so on.

 

I think this is because scientist in general do not want to think that there could be, in the universe, anything smarter than they themselves are!

 

Which is not very open minded.

 

Or clever.

 

:doh:

 

Did you even see the video posted three posts above yours? Or did you just look at the OP and then add your own ignorant, and obviously closed-minded two-cents for no other reason than to make waves?

 

The irony (at the closed-mindedness of your very statement) and the extreme disrespect is just too much for one post. Yet, you pulled it off. For that, you deserve a reward; you know, the kind that appears in that neat sticky that only moderators and admins can edit. Good day.

[lucaspa]

physics is like religion you believe what believe and the road you take will determine the destination you seek!!!!!

 

Let's test that. You are saying that physicists don't change "beliefs" or theories. But physics has changed theories lots of times!

1. Physicists changed from Newtonian gravity to Einstein's General Relativity.

2. Physicists changed from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics.

3. Physicists changed from Steady State universe to Big Bang and an expanding universe.

4. Several physicists and groups of physicists are looking at different theories of quantum gravity: string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc.

 

All these are just major events in the 20th century. All falsify the claim.

[gre]

physics is like religion you believe what believe and the road you take will determine the destination you seek!!!!!

 

 

This is a funny and ironic statement... Because the whole reason he's here is because he probably read some conspiracy theory story wrt physics. Though some physicists are extremely closed minded, 'overly open minded' is much worse (because you'll believe every story that you read)

[Sisyphus]

One way of putting it is to say that science is fundamentally about rigorous skepticism, of both new and old claims. Ideas have to hold up to everything we can throw at them, and we never stop trying to falsify them. It is directly opposed to both dogmatism (rigid ideas that cannot be changed) and simple credulousness (accepting new ideas without scrutiny). However, those guilty of one of these extremes tend to accuse the scientifically minded as being guilty of the other.

[iNow]

In my estimation, this is another nice thread contribution. Enjoy.

 

 

eUB4j0n2UDU

[Severian]

In my estimation, this is another nice thread contribution. Enjoy.

 

Ironically enough, there is quite a lot of subliminal preaching in that video, in the form of statements which are not backed up by evidence, and sound a bit prejudicial.

[iNow]

Ironically enough, there is quite a lot of subliminal preaching in that video, in the form of statements which are not backed up by evidence, and sound a bit prejudicial.

 

To what, specifically, do you refer?

[GutZ]

I think the bit on climate change was a bit much. I think it's a lot less certain than evolution theory.

 

When someone can model the climate change in a world with and without humans I might agree with it but it seems like the video states that skeptism of climate change is by their definition "baloney".

 

I am not saying it's not true either, but I think more data is required to make a good judgement call for either position.

 

I tihnk the rest of it was pretty damn good though.

Edited June 24, 2009 by GutZ

[physicsfixes]

Scientia commented that open-minded scientist does not dismiss theories that he/she does not agree with without objectively examining the evidence. I would add that an open-minded scientist does discard a theory they have believed if it fails empirically even if the failure is preceded by many confirmations. Suppose (in math) one theorizes that all whole numbers are evenly divisible by two; one can produce an unlimited number of confirming examples, but only one example, say the number three, proves the theory invalid. There are many verifiable empirical falsifications of special relativity, but in this case physicists are not open-minded. One falsification, for example, is the absence of time dilation between GPS satellite atomic clocks: they all run at the same rate even though their relative velocity is in most cases greater than their orbital velocity.

[Strange]

48 minutes ago, physicsfixes said:

One falsification, for example, is the absence of time dilation between GPS satellite atomic clocks: they all run at the same rate even though their relative velocity is in most cases greater than their orbital velocity.

This is not a falsification of relativity.

They all run at the same rate, from the satellite's frame of reference. But the GPS receiver has to take into account the differing relative velocity of each satellite - the clock of each satellite will appear different for this reason. 

50 minutes ago, physicsfixes said:

There are many verifiable empirical falsifications of special relativity

Please provide some examples. (Real ones, not just based on your ignorance, as above.)

[John Cuthber]

2 hours ago, physicsfixes said:

 One falsification, for example, is the absence of time dilation between GPS satellite atomic clocks: they all run at the same rate even though their relative velocity is in most cases greater than their orbital velocity.

Nope.

The clocks in the GPS satellites were specially built to run at the "wrong" rate while they were on Earth, so they would seem to run at the right rate while in orbit.

To get back to the necromanced thread; as far as I can tell, it's impossible to be a scientist without being open  minded.

 

[Janus]

2 hours ago, physicsfixes said:

 One falsification, for example, is the absence of time dilation between GPS satellite atomic clocks: they all run at the same rate even though their relative velocity is in most cases greater than their orbital velocity.

A common confusion between "time dilation" and "total difference in accumulated time".  Time dilation is a direct moment to moment comparison of time rates, while total accumulated time is measured over a non-zero time period.   At any given moment, a GPS satellite could measure another GPS clock as ticking faster or slower than its own due to their relative positions in their orbits ( there are other considerations other that just relative velocity according to Relativity in this scenario).  But over the course the one orbit, the total accumulation of time for each satellite due to the additive effect of those variations will be the same according to each satellite.

Such proclamations that Relativity predicts something  other than what is seen as occurring are based on overly simplistic straw-man versions of the theory ( in many cases by not taking into account how Relativity deals with measurements made from non-inertial frames and how this differs from those made from inertial frames.)

If Relativity actually made predictions contrary to real measurements, it wouldn't hold its present status in terms of acceptance.