To put it another way... show me someone who's skeptical about the power of scientific thought in an aircraft at 40,000 feet and I'll show you an idiot.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Ghosts (Real or Bull)
- Thread starter manicmicky
- Start date
Fuel for the fire: I have two friends who worked for a major university lab in cutting-edge experiments. They told me about the sabotage, faked evidence and glory-grabbing that goes on. It shook my belief in the scientific community. One became a Christian in part due to his disillusionment in Science. His scientific analysis did not change, he's currently a professor. He's working on a book about how the accepted theories of science are constantly refuted.
Remember Bohr's model of the electron? It was outdated when I learned it, but that didn't stop anyone from teaching it.
Remember Bohr's model of the electron? It was outdated when I learned it, but that didn't stop anyone from teaching it.
Appeal to authority.
Science doesn't have rigid methodological rules. Results can be established well enough to overcome issues of methodology, otherwise scientific progress would be impossible. This refutes your contention that scientific results are invalidated by methodological flaws. The situation is more complex. Some results are solid, and some aren't.
Perfect methodology is necessary for other fields such as math and theology, because there is no external standard for truth. In science, GIGO is overcome because the "input" is the natural world.
You said that my distinction between science and technology is arbitrary.
That won't work. Pure and applied science are intertwined to an extent that they can't be separated. A great deal of pure science is motivated by applied science. You can only decide what is pure in retrospect. Classical thermodynamics and feedback control engineering were both developed by the same guy, trying to make steam engines work better.
Scientific research isn't flawless, but extrapolating that to say that applied science is a cesspit is sensationalist and unsupported by evidence.
I was offering a smattering of scientific facts, and asking which ones are invalidated by the likely methodological gaps in the underlying research. I'm sure that Lister didn't follow GLP. My point is that science produces robust results despite those gaps. I think that's the crux of our disagreement.
I'm too old to be postmodern.
My local alchemist is me.
One of the features of Medieval thought was the belief that the smallest error had infinite consequences. If you were wrong about theology, you went to hell. And the only way to know that you were right, was internal consistency. This is one of the reasons why no intellectual or humanitarian progress occurred in Europe during the dark ages.
Funny you should say that. I'm on both sides really. No 'specific' argument from me. I thought I was probably going too far overboard on the "scientistic" side (you may have missed my previous posts).
Logical empiricism may not 'necessarily' be a "scientistic" POV in most cases. In some cases, though, the scientific dogma of the superiority of existing scientific logic over some new concept is not conducive to further exploration and possible discoveries at all.
Non-scientific enquiry is definitely not something I'm referring (or have referred) to. My point is that there is scope for scientific enquiry of 'apparently' non-scientific phenomenon (in that current science cannot adequately explain them), which is something many cynical scientism-ists reject out of hand.
I consider myself to be the enquiring scientific type (apparently, I didn't make this point clear enough in previous posts, or maybe it got misinterpreted: a risk inherent in communication through the textual medium).
Which is why I'm still waiting in the non-believer section of the 'ghost debate' for proof
All of this is merely my Rs 0.02 (significantly less than your $0.02 in value, may I add
).
That's at least party valid, but I'm sure you see the flaws, starting with the fact that that's only relevant to the applied sciences.
If you do look at things like that, you also have to remember that success or failure has to be clear and apparent and not subject to more hokum, smoke and mirrors.
On the whole, by your guideline, pharmacology is in deep water, making wildly profitable drugs that materially worsen numerous conditions they purport to treat, never mind making up drugs for "diseases" that don't even clearly exist. The progress of real medicine for real diseases is overall much slower than the public (and medical professionals) have been led to expect, and the drug companies seem to have the biggest voice and control the dialogue in defining and announcing "progress" anyway.
And as fdeck asks, what disciplines even have any business calling themselves "sciences" in the first place?
Sure, physics gets a shoo-in, but what about...oh...archaeology or psychology, for example? What clear standards do they have and what do they produce but a bunch of idle, unfounded speculations and pontifications that change from week to week while petty academic empires and hierarchies are established, tenures granted, nests feathered and egos inflated?
How are they real sciences?
When I was a very young man I was a spook, foot soldiering for a few years as a deniable asset for a highly-classified technical intelligence program. As decades passed, a lot of the technology and science in this program became less cutting-edge and secret and became part of general scientific research, often with startling results.
A couple of years ago, before I disconnected from TV entirely, I was half-watching a "science" program when I suddenly recognized that they were discussing the exact applied technology this intelligence program developed, now applied to (among other things) archaeology. One of the recent discoveries completely devastated the past hundred years of received wisdom about South American pre-Colombian civilization in several fields of "science." It was all dead wrong, right down to the most basic premises. Generations of "scientists" built their careers on completely erroneous speculation and rigorous academic conformity to gross, groundless error established as "fact."
So, was that even science in the first place? Was it just a career scam, a bad joke, what?
If you axe me, this whole science business needs to heed the sage advice of Archie Bell and Do the Tighten Up...never mind that the Drells seem to be about as loose as parapsychology, but maybe they were just having an off day.
[Aside to young people in scientific and technological majors at university: If you ever get tapped to work in technical intelligence, go for it if you have the requisite personality (and that is a big "if"). Technical intelligence is the neatest field in the world. And it gets results, even if nobody finds out about it for thirty or forty years.]
So do you believe in ghosts?
Of course! Science is overrun with market-driven research, designed to justify exorbitant profits, not the betterment of mankind. Science is a myth perpetuated to justify the unhealthy actions of the greedy corporate driven world.
Contrast that to the honest, benevolent, integrity-focused history of the ghosts, mediums, psychics, and all things related to the supernatural over the millennia. How could you NOT believe in ghosts when you compare the two?!?!?
Contrast that to the honest, benevolent, integrity-focused history of the ghosts, mediums, psychics, and all things related to the supernatural over the millennia. How could you NOT believe in ghosts when you compare the two?!?!?
I'd believe in ghosts much sooner than I would believe that the gubmint had no knowledge of California's "mystery missile".
Probably just like anyone else. Skeptics are just as susceptible to being startled as anyone else, they just wouldn't believe it a supernatural event.
That's at least party valid, but I'm sure you see the flaws, starting with the fact that that's only relevant to the applied sciences.
If you do look at things like that, you also have to remember that success or failure has to be clear and apparent and not subject to more hokum, smoke and mirrors.
On the whole, by your guideline, pharmacology is in deep water, making wildly profitable drugs that materially worsen numerous conditions they purport to treat, never mind making up drugs for "diseases" that don't even clearly exist. The progress of real medicine for real diseases is overall much slower than the public (and medical professionals) have been led to expect, and the drug companies seem to have the biggest voice and control the dialogue in defining and announcing "progress" anyway.
And as fdeck asks, what disciplines even have any business calling themselves "sciences" in the first place?
Sure, physics gets a shoo-in, but what about...oh...archaeology or psychology, for example? What clear standards do they have and what do they produce but a bunch of idle, unfounded speculations and pontifications that change from week to week while petty academic empires and hierarchies are established, tenures granted, nests feathered and egos inflated?
How are they real sciences?
When I was a very young man I was a spook, foot soldiering for a few years as a deniable asset for a highly-classified technical intelligence program. As decades passed, a lot of the technology and science in this program became less cutting-edge and secret and became part of general scientific research, often with startling results.
A couple of years ago, before I disconnected from TV entirely, I was half-watching a "science" program when I suddenly recognized that they were discussing the exact applied technology this intelligence program developed, now applied to (among other things) archaeology. One of the recent discoveries completely devastated the past hundred years of received wisdom about South American pre-Colombian civilization in several fields of "science." It was all dead wrong, right down to the most basic premises. Generations of "scientists" built their careers on completely erroneous speculation and rigorous academic conformity to gross, groundless error established as "fact."
So, was that even science in the first place? Was it just a career scam, a bad joke, what?
If you axe me, this whole science business needs to heed the sage advice of Archie Bell and Do the Tighten Up...never mind that the Drells seem to be about as loose as parapsychology, but maybe they were just having an off day.
[Aside to young people in scientific and technological majors at university: If you ever get tapped to work in technical intelligence, go for it if you have the requisite personality (and that is a big "if"). Technical intelligence is the neatest field in the world. And it gets results, even if nobody finds out about it for thirty or forty years.]
you might want to check out popper's work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper#Bibliography
+1.
it's much easier to be inconsistent with this sort of thing, when one's reaction is governed by instincts encoded in the brains of a primate who, in a pinch, is likely to conjure the simplest model of what has happened (and possibly informed of tradition after socialization).
Funny you should say that. I'm on both sides really. No 'specific' argument from me. I thought I was probably going too far overboard on the "scientistic" side (you may have missed my previous posts).
Logical empiricism may not 'necessarily' be a "scientistic" POV in most cases. In some cases, though, the scientific dogma of the superiority of existing scientific logic over some new concept is not conducive to further exploration and possible discoveries at all.
Non-scientific enquiry is definitely not something I'm referring (or have referred) to. My point is that there is scope for scientific enquiry of 'apparently' non-scientific phenomenon (in that current science cannot adequately explain them), which is something many cynical scientism-ists reject out of hand.
I consider myself to be the enquiring scientific type (apparently, I didn't make this point clear enough in previous posts, or maybe it got misinterpreted: a risk inherent in communication through the textual medium).
Which is why I'm still waiting in the non-believer section of the 'ghost debate' for proof
All of this is merely my Rs 0.02 (significantly less than your $0.02 in value, may I add
yeah, i figured i was missing something. we are indeed in agreement, i believe, in that, in principle, ghost-y stuff might happen (though a long tradition of failure for evidence leaves one, perhaps, biased against future claims).
I answered that already, I thought.
Like M. R. James (possibly the best ghost story writer in the English language and one of the Twentieth Century's greatest scholars),
"I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me."
Seems fair and prudent.
I answered that already, I thought.
Like M. R. James (possibly the best ghost story writer in the English language and one of the Twentieth Century's greatest scholars),
"I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me."
Seems fair and prudent.
Me too. And the same goes for flying saucers, Bigfoot, honest politicians ...
well, according to popper, constantly refuting accepted theories is what science does.
bohr's model is still useful because it provides a simpler visualization of atoms (well... hydrogen) than the full-bore
p) results from the (better, yet still not entirely "right," as far as it goes) schroedinger equation.i don't know about you, but i'd rather NOT deal with the energy levels of hydrogen derived from the dirac equation. (and, for even more regress, that isn't the end of the story as we know it, and it's surely not the end of the story, period.
)
I answered that already, I thought.
Like M. R. James (possibly the best ghost story writer in the English language and one of the Twentieth Century's greatest scholars),
"I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me."
Seems fair and prudent.
to split hairs, that criterion isn't quite good enough, since what satisfies an individual could very well be in conflict with the "right" explanation (as far as that goes).
sagan to the rescue! Link Removed
You would reasonably expect a skeptical adult to remain indifferent in the event he or she happens to meet a corpulent white-beard man with a red coat with white collar & cuffs walking down the street around Christmas time!
Similarly you would expect a skeptic placed in a similar predicament, to stand up and calmly go check the TV out or the moving object that was on the table for instance. Not go beserk as in the video. I think thats a fair prediction!
I answered that already, I thought.
Like M. R. James (possibly the best ghost story writer in the English language and one of the Twentieth Century's greatest scholars),
"I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me."
Seems fair and prudent.
So do you believe in ghosts?
