The connection between Anti-Science and Anti-Education views.

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In my discussions with the anti-science crowd here. There seems to be a couple of common threads.

1. Education is detrimental. The claim is that people without an education have a better understanding of "science". I think the idea is that knowledge of what the scientific community says hurts your ability to think creatively for yourself.

2. Academic and Research Institutions are waging a conspiracy The claim is that University teaching even basic science concepts (which should be apolitical) is part of a conspiracy to control how society and government operate.

There is something democratic, maybe even socialist about anti-science views. The idea that education doesn't matter and that anyone can be right about science. But there is a big risk to these views.

In reality science depends on expertise. You want people making decisions about scientific problems to have spent years learning. When it comes to making important decisions, you want experts.

Private Industry understands this. Successful companies hire PhD's and they pay them damn well ($300,000 a year is on the low end, at least in the technology field). I have friends with PhDs developing image processing for drones and working on scattering technology for explosive detection. These people understand Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and they are paid for it because the science works. The companies that reject science don't succeed.

However, this doesn't work in social policy. There is something politically attractive about attacking expertise. It makes low information voters feel good about themselves.

This anti-science, anti-education sentiment is not good for us. I don't know how to counter it.

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In the US right now, we have one political party claiming to be "pro-science". Unfortunately this party often misuses science; making claims that aren't exactly supportable or rejecting scientific findings that don't match political goals.

The other party seems to be hostile to science.

This doesn't seem very healthy for democracy. Our society depends on science, it not a good thing for it to be used as a political tools.

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@maxdancona,

You should discuss this issue in terms of more specific examples. At the vague level you're describing it, two people arguing about conflicting scientific views could both say it applies to the other.

Science is first and foremost about empirical observation. Clouds darken as they condense is an example of an empirical observation. If a theoretical explanation of condensation is contradicted by this empirically-observable fact about cloud-condensation, then it is clearly falsified.

E.g. if some theory claimed that clouds allow more light to come through them as they condense than when the water vapor is dispersed throughout a clear blue sky, that would be empirically-indefensible.

Once you get into more complex theories and their relationship with empirical observations, it is possible to have divergent theoretical views regarding how to account for the observable facts.

E.g. there is a lot of snow in winter and climate-deniers claim it's proof there's no global warming while climate-change theorists claim it is an example of an effect of more heat-energy being trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases.

The discussion of different hypotheses is what should be scientific, i.e. by focusing on critical thinking and reasoning about how empirical observations and various types of analyses speak to different hypotheses/theories.

When you just argue that "most scientists believe in climate change," that is not a scientific argument but a majoritarian-authority argument.

See the difference?

1 Reply

@livinglava,

1. When experts have "conflicting scientific views", they also have a way of resolving them. Experts have a deep understanding of mathematics, history and the underlying theories.

If I make a statement about Newton's Laws, and another Physicist diagrees, we can resolve it quickly. We the mathematics of Newton's Laws... so I have to show my claim mathematically. When I do this with a real scientist, a couple of things can happen. Sometimes there was just a misunderstanding in the statement of the problem, and stating mathematically resolves the issue. Sometimes either I made a mistake, or she did... either way we can prove who is correct mathematically.

For big questions, Physicists go with the experimental data. When there are two opposing theories, the physicists find an experiment that will have different predicted results from the different theories. Then they run the experiment, and the theory that fails is discarded.

In either case, Experts have the tools to determine which theories fail to explain how the Universe works.

2) Your example "clouds darken as they condense" is not a scientific statement unless it can be objectively tested. The word "darken" can refer to the color of the cloud or it can refer to how much light comes through. The word "condense" also needs to be defined in a way that can be objectively measured. Does this refer to the density of the cloud (mass per unit volume) or to something else?

If you can define these terms in a scientific way, and scientists run the experiment, then this statement will be scientifically correct.

3) The science behind climate change is based on mathematics, theory and experiment. Experts in climate science understand these things. You don't understand them. And as far as climate change, I don't understand them either.

Either we go back to graduate school to study climate change, or we have to listen to the experts. There are no shortcuts.

I have the advantage of a scientific education. I have done problem sets on blackbody radiation, and I have taken classes on differential education. I still don't consider myself qualified to judge the people who actually know their **** about climate science.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

1. When experts have "conflicting scientific views", they also have a way of resolving them. Experts have a deep understanding of mathematics, history and the underlying theories.

If I make a statement about Newton's Laws, and another Physicist diagrees, we can resolve it quickly. We the mathematics of Newton's Laws... so I have to show my claim mathematically. When I do this with a real scientist, a couple of things can happen. Sometimes there was just a misunderstanding in the statement of the problem, and stating mathematically resolves the issue. Sometimes either I made a mistake, or she did... either way we can prove who is correct mathematically.

You make too much of math. Think about Galileo dropping two balls of different masses simultaneously from the tower of Pisa, or Michelson-Morley sending out radio signals in different directions and receiving them simutaneously. Math might be part of a discussion, but it doesn't have to be.

You need to stop trying to set standards of what counts as science and scientists and start doing the work of explaining the relationship between theories and data, whether it involves math or not. That is how you make your case for something, not by telling the other person they don't understand math as well as you do therefore you are right and they are wrong.

Quote:

For big questions, Physicists go with the experimental data. When there are two opposing theories, the physicists find an experiment that will have different predicted results from the different theories. Then they run the experiment, and the theory that fails is discarded.

In either case, Experts have the tools to determine which theories fail to explain how the Universe works.

Like I said in an earlier post, you need to focus on specific examples because you can talk about the general level until you're blue in the face and never say anything that connects back to anything empirically observable and/or analytically/logically reasonable.

Quote:

2) Your example "clouds darken as they condense" is not a scientific statement unless it can be objectively tested. The word "darken" can refer to the color of the cloud or it can refer to how much light comes through. The word "condense" also needs to be defined in a way that can be objectively measured. Does this refer to the density of the cloud (mass per unit volume) or to something else?

You are oblivious to the fundamental relationship between empirical observation and scientific knowledge.

You observe that clouds get darker as they are condensing and that less less light reaches the ground as a result. You know they are condensing because the eventually turn into droplets of liquid water and fall down. If you want to question that theory, you come up with an alternative hypothesis about what's happening and then you deduce some empirical observation/experiment to test your hypothesis.

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If you can define these terms in a scientific way, and scientists run the experiment, then this statement will be scientifically correct.

Stop using the term 'scientists' like it is a different species of human. Anyone can perform and experiment and draw conclusions in a scientific way. When they do, they are doing science. It's that simple.

What you do is like saying that only mathematicians can do arithmetic properly. Whenever someone successfully does arithmetic, they have done the exact same thing that a mathematician does when they perform the same operation.

When you keep asserting difference between scientists or other people in terms of their status and lay people doing the exact same thing, it's just rude. It would be like if you cooked the exact same thing as some restaurant cooks, but then your dinner guest started talking to you about the difference between you and a professional chef. The point is the food, not the status/qualifications/background of the person who cooked it.

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3) The science behind climate change is based on mathematics, theory and experiment. Experts in climate science understand these things. You don't understand them. And as far as climate change, I don't understand them either.

We all understand the things we understand and we don't understand other things. If you understand something, e.g. how greenhouse gases blanket heat, then you shouldn't deny that you understand that in order to defer to some other authority. That's inane.

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Either we go back to graduate school to study climate change, or we have to listen to the experts. There are no shortcuts.

You're hopeless. You only understand authoritarian deference. You cannot understand that everything comes down to critical understanding regardless of what people's status are and how they attained them.

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I have the advantage of a scientific education. I have done problem sets on blackbody radiation, and I have taken classes on differential education. I still don't consider myself qualified to judge the people who actually know their **** about climate science.

Judging people has nothing to do with evaluating claims and theories. A credentialed person can make a claim that turns out to be false and a lay person can pose a critical question that turns out to elucidate why the claim was false and some other hypothesis/model/theory would be better.

You have to stop thinking in terms of people and start thinking in terms of understanding what you know and/or learn. As long as you refuse to think about information in order to defer to experts, you are fundamentally alienated from what science is really about, which is questioning received knowledge and subjecting it to critical thinking, by empiricism or analysis.

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@livinglava,

You are anti-math, but the examples you use of scientists (i.e. Galileo) were all expert mathematicians.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are anti-math, but the examples you use of scientists (i.e. Galileo) were all expert mathematicians.

Maybe, but that has no bearing on whether the two cannonballs reached the ground simultaneously or not.

What I'm trying to make you see is that science is beyond math. Math is an analytical tool, but in and of itself cannot suffice as science.

I don't think you can really understand science or education, because you think in an authoritarian way that defies the fundamental purpose of both.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

You present science as story telling. You tell your tale of cannon balls, or space and anything else as you see fit. There is no need to study, no need for need for accuracy and no to test your story to see if it matches facts. You figure your story of "science" is as good as anyone elses.

All of the people you are using as examples are the exact opposite of how you do science. All of them were high accomplished in math. All of them were high educated. All of them worked hard. And all of them were had their ideas tested and proven mathematically.

Galileo was a scientist. He was an expert in mathematics. He studied at University. He had his ideas tested. Galileo was not just a story teller. We know his name because his ideas, written by someone who studied hard at University to reach the top of his field, were proven by experiment and by mathematics.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You present science as story telling. You tell your tale of cannon balls, or space and anything else as you see fit. There is no need to study, no need for need for accuracy and no to test your story to see if it matches facts. You figure your story of "science" is as good as anyone elses.

Of course you have to study the experiment/observation to see how it fits with the theory and why it proves what it does.

Galileo was testing whether two balls of different masses would fall at the same rate or different rates. If they fell at different rates, they would make two sounds, but if they fell and landed together, they would make only one sound.

They didn't have to measure the time that the balls fell, or the height from which they fell, or the speed or acceleration,etc. because the experiment was set up in a way that nothing needed to be quantified.

Why can't you understand that independent variable was the mass of the balls, everything else was controlled, and the dependent variable was measured as the same for both balls by them landing with a single sound?

Quote:

All of the people you are using as examples are the exact opposite of how you do science. All of them were high accomplished in math. All of them were high educated. All of them worked hard. And all of them were had their ideas tested and proven mathematically.

Measuring and calculating isn't science. Science can utilize measurement and calculation as part of analysis, but analysis doesn't necessarily involve measurement and calculation.

Quote:

Galileo was a scientist. He was an expert in mathematics. He studied at University. He had his ideas tested. Galileo was not just a story teller. We know his name because his ideas, written by someone who studied hard at University to reach the top of his field, were proven by experiment and by mathematics.

Science is not about where you work or where you expertise lies. Science is about questioning things and thinking critically about how to gain better knowledge.

Science is about not trusting or deferring to experts/authority. The whole purpose of science is to present a case for a claim and let people see the veracity of the claim for themselves by its self-evidence.

Galileo designed the ball-drop experiment to do exactly that. He may have studied at University and/or done math, but he was able to communicate his science to people who were capable of understanding two balls of different masses reaching the ground simultaneously as proof that gravity accelerates objects of different mass at the same rate.

The reason why that experiment is so well-known is precisely because it isn't dependent on equations to understand it.

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth movie achieved a similar scientific goal. It simply showed how CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so if CO2 levels keep rising, the biosphere is going to keep getting warmer on average.

It was not necessary for people to understand any math related to the basic fact of greenhouse gases causing warming to understand the science.

What you should do instead of preaching math, university, and deference to authority is to discuss actual science in ways that people can understand and discuss with common knowledge derived from empirical observation and commonly-understood principles.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Here is the problem Living Lava. There are some basic principles of Physics that you don't understand. It is not that you disagree with them. From talking to you it is clear that you really don't understand them to the point that you can't even disagree with them.

1. You would learn a lot from taking Physics 101 at your local University. If you did this you would not only learn Newton's laws, but you would also learn enough mathematics that you could confirm if they were correct.

2. You are wrong about education You keep saying that education is a form of brain washing, or that it is "memorizing" facts. In reality it is quite the opposite; education is about developing skills, in particular the ability to analyze data to determine for yourself what is correct.

You reject education. You reject mathematics. So what are you left with. You have invented for yourself your own ideas about what science is.

You are just making up science for yourself.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Here is the problem Living Lava. There are some basic principles of Physics that you don't understand. It is not that you disagree with them. From talking to you it is clear that you really don't understand them to the point that you can't even disagree with them.

1. You would learn a lot from taking Physics 101 at your local University. If you did this you would not only learn Newton's laws, but you would also learn enough mathematics that you could confirm if they were correct.

2. You are wrong about education You keep saying that education is a form of brain washing, or that it is "memorizing" facts. In reality it is quite the opposite; education is about developing skills, in particular the ability to analyze data to determine for yourself what is correct.

You reject education. You reject mathematics. So what are you left with. You have invented for yourself your own ideas about what science is.

You are just making up science for yourself.

You talk about science, physics, etc. but you don't actually talk science, physics, etc.

When I read that there are "some basic principles of Physics that you don't understand," I expect you will explain those in your post and why you think I don't understand them.

The fact that you don't give details about what exactly you're talking about just makes the rest of your post groundless. You're telling me there's something I don't understand and that I should go back to school to learn it, but as far as I know you just don't understand what I know;

so all your going on about going back to school is just a marketing scam to get me to take on more debt and pay tuition. Why should people take on debt and pay tuition just to get people like you to stop accusing them of being ignorant when you don't actually discuss anything taught in school outside of school?

The whole point of education is to have an educated public who is free to discuss things intelligently. If all you do is deny the possibility of intelligent discussion outside of academia, you are undermining the fundamental purpose of academia to generate an educated sphere of public discourse.

If there was intelligent public discussion going on, some people might want to go back to school and/or to otherwise seek background knowledge, but if the only purpose of public discussion is to get them to go to school, it fails.

It's like when you watch a trailer to a movie where you can tell the movie lacks substance and the trailer is just made to trick you into buying tickets to the movie. Some movies are made with no greater purpose than to sell tickets. Other movies are made by conscientious directors who truly want to stimulate people to think and discuss the movie and not just to pay to watch it; but others just want to sell tickets - and you seem to just want to sell tickets/tuition and not to discuss actual science and other topics that education is supposed to prepare you to think critically about.

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@livinglava,

Quote:

You talk about science, physics, etc. but you don't actually talk science, physics, etc.

When I read that there are "some basic principles of Physics that you don't understand," I expect you will explain those in your post and why you think I don't understand them.

For the record, I have tried this several times.

You people get to some philosophical point, and then drop into irrelevant bickering. I have seen anyone here take actual physics seriously.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Am I wrong in characterizing you as anti-education?

- Several times you seem to say that studying Physics in a University hurts your ability to understand. This would mean that someone who is uneducated knows more than someone with an education.

Do you stand by this?

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
You talk about science, physics, etc. but you don't actually talk science, physics, etc.

When I read that there are "some basic principles of Physics that you don't understand," I expect you will explain those in your post and why you think I don't understand them.

For the record, I have tried this several times.

You people get to some philosophical point, and then drop into irrelevant bickering. I have seen anyone here take actual physics seriously.

You couldn't even understand how momentum is a form of (passive) propulsion enabled by a moving object's inertia.

All you understand is how to do math.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

You couldn't even understand how momentum is a form of (passive) propulsion enabled by a moving object's inertia.

All you understand is how to do math.

Bingo!!!!

If you took physics 101, you would understand why this "principle" (which you made up yourself) is ridiculous and at odds with Newton's laws. If you had any understanding of science, I could disprove this with math. I could disprove this with experiment. But, you have your idea (that you invented yourself) and you are sticking with it.

This is exactly why I can't talk about real Physics with you.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

livinglava wrote:

You couldn't even understand how momentum is a form of (passive) propulsion enabled by a moving object's inertia.

All you understand is how to do math.

Bingo!!!!

If you took physics 101, you would understand why this "principle" (which you made up yourself) is ridiculous and at odds with Newton's laws. If you had any understanding of science, I could disprove this with math. I could disprove this with experiment. But, you have your idea (that you invented yourself) and you are sticking with it.

This is exactly why I can't talk about real Physics with you.

What you understand as 'real physics' is just math.

There is nothing mathematically interesting about calculating the relationship between inertia and mass, which are equal.

The thing that's scientifically interesting about inertia is that it keeps moving objects in motion in the absence of propulsion, which makes it a form of passive propulsion.

If you understood the concept of inertia, you would grasp what I am saying; but you don't because all you can do is memorize dogma and do the math that the teacher tells you goes with the dogma.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

One of the features of real science is that it is testable. Give me any principle of Physics, and I can explain to you an experiment that can be used to test it... and a condition that would disprove it.

For any given Physics theory, I can say if we run this experiment and if we get these results, then the theory is wrong. This is the difference between real science and philosophical musings.

That is the reason that I know that I understand inertia and LivingLava doesn't. Because my understanding is a scientific statement that can be tested. LivingLava is just telling a story.

Lava talks a lot about "critical thinking". Critical thinking is the ability to question and abandon your own beliefs when they contradicted by facts. That is related to the point, if you can't explain what evidence will cause you to change your mind, then you aren't doing critical thinking and you aren't doing science.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

One of the features of real science is that it is testable. Give me any principle of Physics, and I can explain to you an experiment that can be used to test it... and a condition that would disprove it.

For any given Physics theory, I can say if we run this experiment and if we get these results, then the theory is wrong. This is the difference between real science and philosophical musings.

That is the reason that I know that I understand inertia and LivingLava doesn't. Because my understanding can be tested.

Why do you imply that inertia can't be tested as a form of passive propulsion?

"An object in motion tends to remain in motion."

Don't you test that in numerous ways every day?

Yet you argue about the term 'passive propulsion,' because you haven't read it dogmatically off a page in a text book.

When you understand that science goes beyond dogma, you understand science.

Otherwise, all you understand is how to recite dogma and do math . . . and in your case how to talk endlessly about what science is without actually talking about any actual science.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

So... why don't you think critically. What evidence would change your mind?

If your principle is wrong and an object in motion could stay in motion without any form of passive propulsion... what experiment would show this?

Edit: I am curious. Do you envision your "passive propulsion" as a force?

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

So... why don't you think critically. What evidence would change your mind?

If your principle is wrong and an object in motion could stay in motion without any form of passive propulsion... what experiment would show this?

What are you talking about?

The theory of inertia contrasts with the theory that objects require active propulsion to remain in motion.

It is clear that anything that causes an object to slow down amounts to some form of friction.

There is no such thing as an object that can slow down without friction.

That said, there is also no such thing as a real situation in which totally frictionless motion occurs.

So really Newton's theory of motion is just a way of modeling/understanding motion in terms of the interaction between inertia/mass and various forms of friction (acceleration/deceleration)

When you ask how to test whether something can stay in motion without inertia, that doesn't make sense, because nothing with mass lacks inertia.

Otherwise put, whether or not an object with mass has inertia doesn't vary, so it can't be an independent variable in an experiment.

What you could test is whether greater quantities of inertia/mass are more effective at keeping the same object in motion in the same situation of friction than another. E.g. drop two bowling balls of equal size/shape but different masses into water and see if one reaches the bottom first; or roll them both down the gutters of a bowling lane by letting them go from a stopped position and see if one passively accelerates faster than the other. Neither of these empirical experiments is really necessary, though, because you can just analyze each situation in terms of forces and friction; i.e. the water exerts friction against the sinking balls and the gutters exert friction against the rolling balls. You only really need to do an empirical experiment where you get to a point in your model/theory where you don't know what's causing the effects. You can test any model, regardless of how sure you are of it, of course; but it is a waste of resources/energy to test things you already know.

Anyway, you're making pointless philosophical debates out of something that is not that complex. The point is that you can have discussions about science without quantifying anything or doing any math. What's more that is exactly what you should be doing with your science education in a public discussion forum.

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