The problems with science

@Olivier5,

That's incredibly interesting. You may be correct, but that great big humongous chip on your shoulder makes it difficult for the rest of the unwashed to see your remarks in the clear light of day. Not to worry, I hear Jerry Lewis is considered the king of comedy somewhere in Western Europe.....Say no more, say no more, wink wink, nudge, nudge Merci.

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@glitterbag,

Funny YOU would say that...

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@Olivier5,

Yeah, it is funny. Did somebody wiz in your wheaties this morning?

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@glitterbag,

What are you trying to do, Glitter? Pick another fight?

I'm just trying to state my position as clearly as possible. Sorry if I am bothering people with ethics and stuff.

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This thread is beginning to look like a bar brawl in a saloon, where the guy who threw the first punch is nowhere to be found !

Good to see Olivier has acknowledged the ethics angle in the activities of scientists, but his 'pusuit of truth' banner is a bit simplistic and sanctimonious...theories of 'truth' being a philosophical issue.

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@fresco,

If the phrase 'pursuit of truth' is sanctimonious, feel free to propose another. In my experience, truth is not an easy concept to get rid of.

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@fresco,

You and semantics, tsc, tsc...how about translating "truth" to the expression "has a value"? If it performs it is true enough pal!

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As far as I know, Oliver and Fil have zero experience doing science in any serious academic or professional setting.

Farmerman is a professional scientist. He has a solid education (at least Chemistry I think and geology). He has done experiments, written and defending papers, analyzed data, and developed new hypothesis... and he has done this professionally.

Farmerman has done real science as a real scientist.

It is absurd for these "philosophers" (with no experience) to be telling a real scientist how scientists do science.

There is a reason that many scientists (Feynman and Hawkings as the most famous examples) hate philosophers. Not only do many scientists say they find the field of philosophy useless in doing their jobs, philosophers continue to try to poke their noses into science anyway.

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@maxdancona,

Almost as absurd as you commenting on the language threads.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

So when farmerman misrepresent his and my past positions and disagreements, he is being unethitical and unscientific. And as a result he is confusing everybody and undermining the pursuit of truth.

NO, I disagreed with you because you were incorrect . Truth is culturally subjective, facts are not.

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@maxdancona,

Your constant (almost in any thread you are in) appeal to authority is a disgrace. Last time we talked you said programs do not write themselves in AI, it was demonstratively wrong in deep learning and neural networks. Your thinking is dumb and outdated thus you recur to arcane writing and constant appeal to authority instead of answering straightforward questions...once again when light propagates itself in space WHAT waves??? Better WHAT waves in gravity waves? Space is not a void so tell me precisely what waves?

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The reason scientists don't like philosophers poking in their affairs is precisely they don't like being called on their bullshit explanations regarding observed phenomena especially when there is funding to do...these days most of theoretical physics is bullshit top to bottom! Unfalsifiable multiverse string theory the king of them all!

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Truth is culturally subjective

Err... so in which culture is that true, then, and in which culture is that not true?

In science, truth is usually considered universal. Facts and mathematics are not culture-dependent. E=MC2 has the same truth value in the French and in the American cultures. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Quote:

I disagreed with you because you were incorrect

Well then, you should be able to prove it... :-)

I tell you what will happen: I will prove you incorrect, on both those debates you mentioned (A. "water dissociates in space" and B. "Neanderthal genes going out of the genome"). And as soon as this happens, "there will be no further desire from you to continue talking" as you put it so eloquently upthread... You will disappear without acknowledging that I was correct and that you were incorrect. Later on other threads, you will misrepresent this present discussion too, like you are doing now for A and B above... And I will once again be seen as the stubborn Jerry Lewis-loving asshole who picks fight with wholesome good American A2K regulars.

So what's in it for me? Nothing. If there's no ethics in those debates, there's no point in pursuing them. So... whatever.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Scientists are the authority on science. I don't see any problem with my appeal. They people who doing science are the people who know what science is.

That is why most scientists find little value in philosophy... and some of them, like Stephen Hawking, are outright hostile. Philosophers should be happy doing their philosophizing and leave scientists to do real science.

Most scientists care very little about philosophy. We don't study philosophy (other than a few elective courses we bitch about because we don't see the point). Instead Scientists are putting robots on Mars. They are developing the foundation of new technology like GPS, and the Internet, and new cures for diseases. Science doubled the average human lifespan in the past 100 years with antibiotics and medical treatments.

There is a bumper sticker that says "Don't pray in our schools and we won't think in your churches". You can interpret that to say "Don't philosophize in our science and we won't put facts into your philosophy."

Why not leave science to the scientists? Most of us are too busy curing diseases and putting robots on Mars to care about what philosophers do.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Philosophers have been doing real damage to science since at least the time of Galileo (who was dragged in front of a group of philosophers because he challenged their belief that the Earth was fixed at the center of the Universe). We still see people rejecting the clear evidence based facts of Darwin, vaccines and global warming based on philosophy.

When Scientists say "we have studied and observed this carefully and we are certain that this happens this way", the philosophers jump all over it... that can't be true, it contradicts with our philosophy.

I think I am going to start a new thread on this topic.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

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@Fil Albuquerque,

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Nice cherry-picking; FM said "truth" is culturally subject, but facts are not. I don't know what you're bleating about with water dissociating, but originally, I pointed out that water will dissociate in certain atmospheric conditions, on Mars. Mars has an atmosphere, and its gravitational effect is about .38 at mean surface level, of the gravitational effect on Earth at mean sea level. In "outer space" (it is better to refer to micro-gravity effects), water is neither liquid nor gaseous, it is frozen. Even above the datum on Mars, water does not just fall apart, rather, water vapor will be subject to dissociation. Mr. Scientific Culture here is ignoring the specifics of a discussion about water on Mars. Much of (most of, I believe, but I'd have to check) of the rings of Saturn are water. But it's frozen. It is unlikely to become water vapor. Frozen water will sublime, going from a solid directly to a gas, and the process of hydrogen and oxygen dissociating would then begin. Sublimation of water solids is as slow, perhaps slower, than the process of the dissociation of hydrogen and oxygen.

It's easy to play the scientific hot shot is one is willing to mis-characterize what others have said (the straw man fallacy), and to make vague statements which only look like science.

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@maxdancona,

WHAT WAVES? Very Happy

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@maxdancona,

Galileo was dragged in front the Roman Inquisition. These were not "philosophers" in the classic sense of the term, they were catholic judges.

Newton was a (underappreciated) philosopher. See:

Quote:

Newton's contributions to mathematics—including the co-discovery of the calculus with his (eventual) foe Leibniz—and to what is now called physics, including both its experimental and theoretical aspects, will forever dominate discussions of his lasting influence. But his impact on the development of early modern philosophy was also profound, so much so that it is difficult to grasp the history of philosophy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries without considering Newton's role. His engagement with Cartesian ideas and methods early in his life was just as significant to the transformation of philosophy in the seventeenth century as his debates with Leibniz were to the setting of the agenda of philosophy in the eighteenth. Obviously, Newton is not part of the traditional canon of the period, which would focus on the great sextet, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But [...] with the possible exception of Spinoza, Newton engaged with or personally influenced the other five canonical philosophers of the early modern era (cf. Schliesser 2012). Thus Newton's contributions to, and influence on, early modern philosophy is a rich topic.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-philosophy/

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The problems with science

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