Things Scientists Believe I Can't Accept

Scientists don't believe in dark matter, they theorized that it exists.

Read this for the (almost) latest:
Crash Course


Joe(If they find the Higgs,,,,oh my)Nation

Ack! Is it too late to stick the word 'that' into the title? Sorry, fresh out of a teacher test for licensing......

Quincy, I share your frustration. I think that it has to do with the human nature to want to believe in something...they feel the need to pick a theory, and stick to it, basically on faith. It's not much different from religion really.

It's true--Grand Unifying Theories are irresistible. Every field has flirted with them at one time or another.

stuh wrote-



How would the theories mentioned here contribute to the emotional satisfactions of masses of people, unify them ( to some extent) and provide a guide to social behaviour that helps them to survive and prosper as a group for long periods of time?

I have a hypothesis for the unifying urge. For some reason nature gave this semi-intelligent monkey the need to count. It must have something to do with pattern recognition and its need in foraging, or childrearing, or maybe something involving quantum thermodynamics.

As for the scientifically unbelievable---to me its helicopters. They're an optical illusion created by smoke and mirrors. You see they're not really overhead---that's just a projection from some ground site that provides the helicopter image. The sound is broadcasted directly to those magnets that are implanted on the back of my skull.

I've tested this hypothesis with a tinfoil hat of course. When I wear my tinfoil hat the sound disappears. And once, in Idaho, I snuck up on a helicopter on the back of a flatbed truck being ferried from projection site to projection site.

Rap

Theres always a "bandwagon effect" in most science. String theory has now developed a "counter bandwagon" that basically is of the opinion same as that which you started this thread. Bandwagons are like that, look at Global warming.

I too dont believe in helocopters, but I DO believe in "the Jersey Devil"

Much theoretical work in modern physics is utter nonsence, but it is, nonetheless, head and shoulders above the type of reasoning used to support religion. At least wrong physical theories in science are supported by mathematical models and logical deduction.

Right.

Joe

not so fast.In certain mathematical analyses of a single argument, there could be up to 81 correct answers. Dont count on math as being a crutch for poor logic. It can also be (and I have to thank soz for this) "mathturbation".

Models are often " desired outcome based" that is, they can derive a set of apparently reasonable conclusions that are just bullshit because of the inputs.

Statistical models are often the most covered with it. In applied we do a lot of stuff called "Variograming or krigging" and , although its based upon a density field of actual data, it selects functions that can often be wrong, thats why more field data, and still more field data , is the way to go.Most of the stuff in cosmology and even particle physics is "Hypotheses", not real theory. For example, the BIG BANG, is a throry because it fits the available evidence, String theory is a hypothesis because there is no evidence.

uh.

That's right, too.

Joe(No, I do not have hinges on my brain)Nation

Neither do I. I have flaps on my brain.

Do the doors of perception have hinges or flaps? It seens that if they have flaps, then the house of perception is a tent.

Rap

Only at the Weightwatcher's Club.

Brandon, I wholeheartedly agree that there is more evidence to support something like string theory than any part of religion. However, I do not consider theories based on assumptions that have less than a preponderance of evidence, and which are not well falsifiable, to be scientific.

A tentative acceptance in the likelihood of a theory like string theory or dark matter is not an illogical philosophical opinion, but a belief in it would necessarily have to be faith-based, and that meets my criteria of a religious belief.

TheCorrectResponse,

Thank you for sharing your opinion; I enjoy reading your posts. You ask how I find the time to post. Well I am usually working, but I work on the computer, and I like to take lots of little short breaks...so taking 5 minutes to make a post or two is something that helps me give my brain a rest.

Personally, I don't fault the proponents of string theory for looking for a theory of everything. String theory is likely not it in my opinion. However, I consider it probable that many of the seemingly uncorrelated fundamental laws at the quantum scale can be unified.


Warning: tangent...Now, you'd probably think I was very naive if I told you that a friend and I have come up with a hypothesis (I won't be so bold as to call it a theory because it hasn't been tested and that is a requirement for usage of the word theory in any scientific context)...one that provides a unified explanation for why light has a maximum speed, as well as explains the gravitational attraction of matter, and the apparent warping of spacetime in GR, and the existence of uncertainty, and also inflation of the universe and its acceleration. Ok, so there is still one small problem with my theory...I am having trouble reconciling it with SR. We didn't set out to discover a grand unified theory, but it stemmed from a somewhat logical "what if" question my friend had, and based on that everything else just seemed to click and make perfect sense. But of course, I'm not going to tell you that, because you'd think I was very naive, or you'd just steal the Nobel prize for yourself

Anyway, that was a long tangent, and all I wanted to say was that I don't think grand unifying theories are fundamentally flawed because a single principle can result in very many effects at a different level of scale that at first appear to have no relationship...so it is not unreasonable to assume that many of the results we have observed stem from the same even more basic principles.

Perhaps you disagree with me on that, but I couldn't agree with you more that string theory has been a devastating mistake for science. By being misclassified as a theory (a misnomer which is confusing enough to lay men as it is), they have allowed the creation of all kinds of doubt in other theories that really are theories. Science touts itself on being built on pillars of evidence and supported by logical proofs...but we all know that a simple proof by contradiction is all that is needed to disprove something, and in that sense string theory is the "weakest" link that allows some to disprove all of science.

What do high-schoolers think? They think that scientific theories must be taken with a grain of salt -- which was always the case, hence the humbleness about calling things theories to begin with, and the openness and acceptance about theories occassionally being "disproven" (which usually just means generalized) -- but now all of a sudden the impression is given that you not only have to take scientific things with a grain of salt, you have to chug down a glass of seawater.

But I feel exactly the same way about GR. When it was used to correctly predict the bending of light due to gravity (rather than explain it), this was apparently enough for most people to believe the theory...maybe that combined with post-war mentality. But I doubt it would have received so much support if it had already been known apriori that light was bent by gravity...because honestly, this is such a weak piece of evidence to base GR on, and I'm not aware of any other. Hell no I don't believe it. I've asked to be convinced and nothing anybody has told me was remotely convincing. I also have a hard time believing that mass distribution can bend light but it can't slow it down (for the record, this is the problem that my little hypothesis has -- it predicts gravity to also be able to slow down light). I'd be interested to hear your take on GR, TheCorrectResponse.

Still reading on with interest.
TheCorrectResponse, thanks for your response; what is your take on Dark matter/energy?
I am still in a fog as to what the difference is between String Theory/Supergravity/M-Theory and all the other post-QM physics, if I may call them so.
To my mind the layman (like myself) usually can't distinguish between theory and hypothesis, as we often here creationists say "But evolution is just a theory" as though it was something very tentative and un-supported. Like when they say "How can the Universe be finite? GR is just a theory", and then they can liberally apply "just" before any theory and get away with making it sound like good ideas that scientist follow blindly. Which just makes String Theory more confusing (the name that is) as pointed out.
Back to the point.

One point: why would astrophysicists rather have dark matter than modify the physical laws?

Stuh are you working on some sort of grand unifying theory? It sounds like your doing pretty ground-breaking stuff; I am in awe and reverence to be in your e-presence. Is what you are working on based on the assumption that gravity bends light and slows it down, in the same way GR works on the premise that nothing can exceed the speed of light which is constant? If gravity slows down light as you say it should, wouldn't this have been detected already?

Hi Guys. I will post some responses this evening. I spent two hours at the dentist today so I had some "leisure time" to think about my responses, and I have some free time this evening. An unusual luxury for me.

But just to start: a theory has three necessary and sufficient conditions. 1. It must be empirical, you can think of this as it must be observable in some way, testable if you will. 2. It must be resproducible, ie. given the information that you needed to do your expiriment, observation, whatever, anyone should be able to reproduce your results. 3. It must be DISPROVABLE. Note: not provable but disporvable. Hilbert and Goodel showed that ANY axiomatic system (the scientific method, for example)can only be shown to be internally consistent. It cannot be shown to be cosistent outside of the system. So no theory can ever be shown to be correct to some absolute metaphysical certitude. So no theory is orovable in that sense.

See it is really rather simple. Can I test it, can others reproduce results, is it formulated as to be disprovable if it is incorrect? If yes to all it is a theory.

This is why religion in any of its forms is NOT science. I can't disprove God.

More a little later. I owe stuh a bunch of stuff too based on his reply of yesterday. I hope I have a few analogies that will get my points across in an understadnible fashion.