The Sky Is Falling...?

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AuthorTopic: The Sky Is Falling...?
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Dude, this convesation is really long. :eek:

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Posts: 157 | Registered: Saturday, August 25 2007 07:00
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So is your sig. Shorten it.

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Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
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If your a mod than fine if not bugger off.

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Posts: 157 | Registered: Saturday, August 25 2007 07:00
Off With Their Heads
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quote:
Originally written by Starman1985:

If your a mod than fine if not bugger off.
That's not the right attitude to have around here, but it seems to be the one that you consistently have. You need to shape up if you want to stick around. Be nicer to people, try not to whine or make irrelevant comments, and shorten your signature.

[ Sunday, August 26, 2007 07:31: Message edited by: Kelandon ]

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Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens.
Smoo: Get ready to face the walls!
Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr.

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Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00
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Thuryl was a mod. Kel is a mod. I am a mod. We all request you to please shorten your exceedingly long signature. It is probably a good idea to do so before an admin asks you, because he won't ask twice (nor, presumably, nicely).

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Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

quote:
If I grab what we now call "one"(a singular item) can of soda and set it next to my monitor next to ANOTHER can of soda, then I have TWO cans of soda, regardless of whether we call this quantity "two" or "Sleestack".
The problem isn't in what we call "one", it's in what we call "cans of soda". There's no objective, unambiguous definition of a complex object such as a can of soda -- it's a social construct. Is a can of soda still a can of soda if you pour out 1% of the soda and replace it with water? What about 90%? 99%? Does the number two still exist if there are no objects for there to be two of?

You are posing irrelevant questions here. Again, this sort of wheel-spinning rhetoric probably appeals to solipsists and such but I see no point in it. The object still independently exists regardless of whether there is 1% water, half a tube of frosting or my entire bladder of piss in it. It will still exist as a can of soda + water/frosting/piss regardless of what words you use to describe/label it.

I know what you are angling for but I am not an idealist and do not care for the fluff that turns their cranks.

quote:
To put it another way, do you believe the number two is a real object or an imaginary object?
It is a thing with a dependent existence. it is like "walking". Ambulatory things exist and these things walk. That is what they do. Abstract thinking organisms exist and these things quantify(or program machines to do so for them). That is what they do.

quote:
According to you, if it's a real object it must be material: what substance is it made of? And if it's imaginary, it doesn't exist.
The number "two" is no such object. It is a conceptual entity.

quote:
To put it yet another way, what do two cans of soda have in common with, say, two horses?
They both exist regardless of what we think/believe about them(or DON'T). An unaware person can trip over the can of soda and another person can come along an hour later without being cognizant of the can's presence and trip over the same can. A horse might trample both of them.

quote:
"There's two of them" is not an answer.
Correct and the straw man fallacy is not an argument.

quote:
quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

So you are saying that no matter how repeatably we can demonstrate a ball rolls downhill(as opposed to straight up into the sky or changing into a big marshmallow or whatever) when released from the top of said hill, we should not infer that gravity works as it apparently does?! That just because we do not observe splitting atoms to result, by direct inference, in gold coins spewing from volcanoes half a world away is not reason to conclude that there is no reason to infer such a thing?!
I'm not saying there's no reason to; I'm saying there's no logical reason to, although there are perfectly good practical reasons to.[/qb]
That is absurd. What is illogical about understanding how things work and expecting them to work as inference would dictate by the mechanisms involved?

quote:
Have you heard of David Hume?
Yeah he used to front the Talking Heads before going solo in the 80's right? No waitaminute...he is that guy with the stick up his arse on Fox News right?

*Sigh*

quote:
Induction is certainly a useful way of gaining information in practice, but it's not logically valid, no matter how much you might like it to be. And because it's not logically valid, there's no way to reach a conclusion with 100% certainty through induction alone, no matter what axioms you start with.[/QB]
Deduction, induction and bald assertions notwithstanding, I am not buying what you are selling.

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"I am in a very peculiar business. I travel all over the world telling people what they should already know." - James Randi
Posts: 219 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

You are posing irrelevant questions here.
Irrelevant to what? I'm just posting questions I find interesting. They may not be relevant to what you want to tell me, but they're relevant to what I want to know about you.

quote:
It will still exist as a can of soda + water/frosting/piss regardless of what words you use to describe/label it. (emphasis added)
This is exactly the kind of naive thinking habit I'm trying to break you out of. Have you really gone through your whole life without encountering, say, the Ship of Theseus paradox?

quote:
quote:
To put it yet another way, what do two cans of soda have in common with, say, two horses?
They both exist regardless of what we think/believe about them(or DON'T). An unaware person can trip over the can of soda and another person can come along an hour later without being cognizant of the can's presence and trip over the same can. A horse might trample both of them.
I'll try again, since you're intent on deliberately misinterpreting me (and you accuse me of playing semantic games!): what do two cans of soda have in common with two horses that one can of soda doesn't have in common with one horse? I'm not convinced you've ever thought about what the word "two" means.

quote:
That is absurd. What is illogical about understanding how things work and expecting them to work as inference would dictate by the mechanisms involved?
How many times do you have to see a ball rolling down a hill in order to prove, without any possible room for doubt, that gravity works the way you think it does? Is one time enough? Is two enough? Is three enough? You need to give me an exact number when the principle is proven with 100% certainty. That's how logic works: there's no wiggle room. If there is, what you're doing may be science, but it isn't logic.

quote:
quote:
Have you heard of David Hume?
Yeah he used to front the Talking Heads before going solo in the 80's right? No waitaminute...he is that guy with the stick up his arse on Fox News right?
Gadzooks. You're serious. You haven't heard of David Hume.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

It's becoming increasingly clear why you keep misinterpreting my questions: you honestly have no educational underpinning whatsoever in philosophy. I find that rather sad, and I find it even sadder that you feel the need to hold such contempt for a field you know so little about.

quote:
Deduction, induction and bald assertions notwithstanding, I am not buying what you are selling.
The difference between an axiom and a bald assertion is only a false air of respectability.

[ Sunday, August 26, 2007 14:49: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
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This conversation that Thuryl has derailed the thread into reminds me of a thread on the Venganza boards, in the Comparative Theology and Theosophy forum, called "Atheism: Faith or Not? (and other -isms too)". www.venganza.org I think you have to register to view that section of the forums. I joined the discussion on the fourth page, I think, and started arguing something similar to what I think Thuryl is arguing, although in a somewhat different context.

At one point I mentioned Social Contract Theory, by which I meant the train of thought I expounded upon in my response to Cardinal Queequeg's post on the second page of the "Alright..." thread in the Political Issues forum and which seems to me to be the basic idea behind the Social Contract Theory real philosophers discuss, based on tangential mentions in previous conversations and cursory Wikipedia examination afterward. (Thanks to TM (I think) for the ROAR!!! by the way. I had been waiting for an opportunity to borrow that since I saw him (I think) use it.)

[ Sunday, August 26, 2007 18:16: Message edited by: The Almighty Do-er of Stuff ]

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Posts: 2957 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

EDIT: TM, do you think it's possible to use scientific method and arrive at different results?
Not if you're doing things properly, no.

I think you place too much confidence in scientific method.

If object A is moving at velocity V1 relative to an observer and object B is moving at V2 relative to object A, what is the velocity of object B relative to the observer? Depending on the knowledge of the scientists and the tools at their disposal the answer will be different. We think we know now. They thought they knew back then.

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quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

Everything which exists(outside of the imagination) IS natural/material/physical and must be so by definition.
I'm almost afraid to ask, but how do you know this? It seems you would have to know everything unless you define everything that exists with these terms, in which case your statement is meaningless.

I would not say the sciences are religion anymore than a hammer is. It's a tool. But if a guy collects hammers, dedicates his time and mental energies studying them, decorates them, and thinks they hold the answers to any questions worth answering then hammers have ceased to be just a tool - he's made them his religion. Not the superhuman, supernatural definition of religion, but the kind that involves devotion and belief. There are without question people for whom science holds this place.
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quote:
If object A is moving at velocity V1 relative to an observer and object B is moving at V2 relative to object A, what is the velocity of object B relative to the observer? Depending on the knowledge of the scientists and the tools at their disposal the answer will be different. We think we know now. They thought they knew back then.
Uh... unless you're moving at relativistic speeds, the answer to that question has been well known for as long as there has been science. If you're trying to point out that Newtonian mechanics breaks down as you extrapolate them out to far, far, far beyond anything that Newton was ever able to test, then okay, but that's not really relevant to anything.

Newtonian mechanics were tested at Newtonian speeds (up to maybe 10^2 or even 10^3 m/s). Extrapolating those out to 10^8 m/s gets a little sketchy, but that's massive, massive extrapolation. We're not talking about "using the scientific method and arriving at different results." It's not like two people used the scientific method and got different results as to what happens at relativistic speeds. People were guessing, not getting results, until finally these guesses became testable, at which point everyone got the same results: relativity works at relativistic speeds.

I'm not saying that scientists are always right or that they never disagree with each other. I'm saying that experimental results, in order to be valid, need to be replicable and can't ever really directly contradict each other unless they're not really comparable or someone made a mistake somewhere.

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Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens.
Smoo: Get ready to face the walls!
Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr.

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The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever
Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00
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quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

Gadzooks.
Indeed. The reason we have faith in induction is that it has always worked so far.

The scientific epistemology that I like is that of Otto Neurath: we are building a ship at sea. We stand on the parts that float best at any moment, and try to improve the leakiest bit. There is no dry-dock, no firm foundation on which to construct systematically a stable structure. Epistemology is Waterworld.

Neurath's metaphor may seem excessively gradualistic, not allowing for true scientific revolutions; but I would say that a revolution is just the extreme where only a small part of the ship is still seaworthy, and most of the hull gets reshaped around it.

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Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by Student of Trinity:

The scientific epistemology that I like is that of Otto Neurath: we are building a ship at sea. We stand on the parts that float best at any moment, and try to improve the leakiest bit. There is no dry-dock, no firm foundation on which to construct systematically a stable structure. Epistemology is Waterworld.
That analogy was in Quicksilver too - I never realized Stephenson didn't invent it.

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quote:
Originally written by Kelandon:

If you're trying to point out that Newtonian mechanics breaks down as you extrapolate them out to far, far, far beyond anything that Newton was ever able to test, then okay, but that's not really relevant to anything.... experimental results, in order to be valid, need to be replicable and can't ever really directly contradict each other unless they're not really comparable or someone made a mistake somewhere.
My point is valid because there are complicated factors, unknowns, and untestables at this point as concerns our climate. I asked what we should do when opinions differ and the response from TM was 'scientific method instead of prayer' as if we're not talking about a scientific disagreement and as if scientific method is guaranteed to resolve all disputes.

BTW, relativistic measurements are more precise at all velocities. Our limitations before yielded less accuracy. In some cases out limitations in observation have returned completely wrong understandings. It's a good thing our resources and abilities are infinite now, otherwise we'd still have inaccurate and completely wrong beliefs.
Posts: 701 | Registered: Thursday, November 30 2006 08:00
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quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

Neither is math and yet math is still a pretty solid method for determining that 2 + 2 does in fact = '4'.
Ah, now this brings up a question for which I never got a straight answer out of you last time we talked. Are you a Platonist or not? Because your sentence as it stands is contradictory: either mathematical objects are purely human constructs and the only reason that 2 + 2 = 4 is that we define "2", "4", "+" and "=" so that it must do so (in which case saying "2 + 2 does in fact = 4" is vacuous, because you could just as easily define it to equal 5), or mathematical objects do exist independently of human agency.

Comic relief is sorely lacking in this debate.

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The Noble and Ancient Order of Polaris - We're Not Yet Dead.
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Did-chat thentagoespyet jumund fori is jus, hat onlime gly nertan ne gethen Firyoubbit 'obio.'
Decorum deserves a whole line of my signature, and an entry in your bookmarks.
Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00
...b10010b...
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quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

I would not say the sciences are religion anymore than a hammer is. It's a tool. But if a guy collects hammers, dedicates his time and mental energies studying them, decorates them, and thinks they hold the answers to any questions worth answering then hammers have ceased to be just a tool - he's made them his religion. Not the superhuman, supernatural definition of religion, but the kind that involves devotion and belief. There are without question people for whom science holds this place.
Let's analyse this.

I'm sure you'd agree that if a man were to collect hammers, dedicate his time and mental energies to studying them and decorate them, that would merely be a hobby, not a religion.

Therefore, your final point -- "think[ing] they hold the answers to any questions worth answering" -- must be essential to your definition of religion, since without it the activity you describe clearly fails to constitute religious behaviour.

Now, science is in the business of providing answers: that's all it does. So if one has another religion that "hold[s] the answers to any questions worth answering", then one has no place for science, because one has no worthwhile questions for it to answer.

Conclusion: by your definition of religion, science and religion are inherently incompatible. The rest of us should therefore be very suspicious of any claims you make about not being hostile toward science.

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Two things:

1. The well-ordering principle serves well enough to prove that mathematical induction works. Certainly I can't prove that all swans are white, but we mathematicians aren't liars like scientists are. Besides, Godel told us we can't prove everything anyhow. No matter how much we assume...

2. The number 'two' exists whether or not we want it. We named it 'two' but that doesn't mean we created it.

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Posts: 2462 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

Now, science is in the business of providing answers: that's all it does. So if one has another religion that "hold[s] the answers to any questions worth answering", then one has no place for science, because one has no worthwhile questions for it to answer.
My faith provides answers to the most important questions. It doesn't work so well for cutting through pipes and branches though. For that I use my trusty Sawsall (reciprocating saw). It's the answer to a lot of problems I encounter. But, when I cut through too much with my saw I have problems.

Science, like my saw, has its place. When used where it should be used it works well. Its methods are tools for figuring, like FOIL in math. No one ever says, "I don't go for religion because I just remember FOIL."

So no, I'm not hostile to science. I am partial to a balanced view of it and those that practice it though. Unless...Are you trolling? :rolleyes: Does anyone else note the similarity between "Troll" and "Thuryl"?
Posts: 701 | Registered: Thursday, November 30 2006 08:00
Shock Trooper
Member # 156
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quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:

quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

You are posing irrelevant questions here.
Irrelevant to what? I'm just posting questions I find interesting. They may not be relevant to what you want to tell me, but they're relevant to what I want to know about you.

Irrelevant to the discussion we are having. You may want to know what my favorite lunch was in 5th grade but asking me that in the course of a discussion about materialism/idealism would be pointless.

quote:
quote:
It will still exist as a can of soda + water/frosting/piss regardless of what words you use to describe/label it. (emphasis added)
This is exactly the kind of naive thinking habit I'm trying to break you out of.
You know what Thuryl, as someone who does an awful lot of debating and such across the web, I am accustomed to a lot of egotistical bull****. Most of it as bad or worse than what you are offering here. But there ARE only so many hours in a day and if you could just post your questions/rebuttals/etc. WITHOUT the grand proclamations/bald assertions about how everyone who dissents from your views is guilty of "naive thinking habits" and such, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Now, do you have some specific contention with anything I said? If so, present it here and we can examine it.

Hint: "I think you are a dumb ass/habitually naive thinker/etc." does not = "specific contention".

quote:
Have you really gone through your whole life without encountering, say, the Ship of Theseus paradox?
Hard to say...people make so many vague references to so many metaphorical ships that I lose track of which boat is made of what and has trouble getting to which destination for whatever reason.

perhaps you could just COME OUT AND SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY and save us some time here?

quote:
quote:
quote:
To put it yet another way, what do two cans of soda have in common with, say, two horses?
They both exist regardless of what we think/believe about them(or DON'T). An unaware person can trip over the can of soda and another person can come along an hour later without being cognizant of the can's presence and trip over the same can. A horse might trample both of them.
I'll try again, since you're intent on deliberately misinterpreting me (and you accuse me of playing semantic games!): what do two cans of soda have in common with two horses that one can of soda doesn't have in common with one horse?
I did not intentionally misrepresent ANYTHING. Lose the paranoia.

They both independently exist in similar quantities(if we take each "horse" and each "can" to be singular entities).

quote:
I'm not convinced you've ever thought about what the word "two" means.
Again, is this going to be one of those "But what is life?" meandering and pointless solipsist forays into curling up in a fetal position and chanting "WE cannot KNOW that we cannot KNOW that we cannot KNOW..." type deal? If so then I am not interested. I am NOT attacking your love of such exercises or anything like that so please do not threaten to slash your wrist or or launch into a Shakespearean monologue about how unjust men are.

I am simply NOT interested. We both KNOW how quantification works and why we rely on it. You are typing your replies using a product of materialistic reasoning right now and attempting to make your points via REASON(as opposed to "dreaming some knowledge" at me or "Intuiting some understanding at me"). If you want to contend reason itself then use ANY means aside from reason to do so and I will be happy to change my mind about engaging in pointless philosophical masturbation.

quote:
quote:
That is absurd. What is illogical about understanding how things work and expecting them to work as inference would dictate by the mechanisms involved?
How many times do you have to see a ball rolling down a hill in order to prove, without any possible room for doubt, that gravity works the way you think it does? Is one time enough? Is two enough? Is three enough? You need to give me an exact number when the principle is proven with 100% certainty.
AH...I recognize your straw man now! You are beating on the "certainty" dummy which you have affixed my name tag to! Brilliant!

But I will play your game for now. ;)

I am 100% certain that gravity works as I have always observed it to work precisely because of an unspecified number of times I have observed this to be correct. The better question for you to ask is "How many times would I have to observe the ball rolling in a completely random direction, not in accordance with gravitation before I doubted gravity?".

The answer is: One such observation would cause me to question and repeated experiments/confirmation would cause me to openly doubt gravitation.
Posts: 219 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

Again, is this going to be one of those "But what is life?" meandering and pointless solipsist forays into curling up in a fetal position and chanting "WE cannot KNOW that we cannot KNOW that we cannot KNOW..." type deal? If so then I am not interested. I am NOT attacking your love of such exercises or anything like that so please do not threaten to slash your wrist or or launch into a Shakespearean monologue about how unjust men are.

I am simply NOT interested.

Odd how you keep coming back here and having discussions that you're not interested in having. You could just stop replying if you're not having fun any more.

quote:
perhaps you could just COME OUT AND SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY and save us some time here?
The reason people refer to arguments made by others in the past is because doing so rather than going over them again saves time.

quote:
If you want to contend reason itself then use ANY means aside from reason to do so and I will be happy to change my mind about engaging in pointless philosophical masturbation.
What's wrong with a good old-fashioned reductio ad absurdum? If reason can be turned against itself to reveal its own limitations, then it should be.

quote:
I am 100% certain that gravity works as I have always observed it to work precisely because of an unspecified number of times I have observed this to be correct. The better question for you to ask is "How many times would I have to observe the ball rolling in a completely random direction, not in accordance with gravitation before I doubted gravity?".

The answer is: One such observation would cause me to question and repeated experiments/confirmation would cause me to openly doubt gravitation.
So your default position is to assume that any proposition for which there is some evidence and no disproof is 100% certain to be true? Congratulations: you've managed to combine the worst aspects of naive inductivism and naive falsificationism.

quote:
Alright I gave you your shot kid and your blew it. I am done with you now.
Sure you are. I've got ten bucks here that says you'll attempt to communicate with me again at some point in the future.

quote:
P.S. The difference between an axiom and a bald assertion is that a bald assertion remains a bald assertion by definition. It is unsupported by evidence/logic/reason. An axiom is rooted in concurrent observation and repeatedly, continually confirmed/substantiated through reason/logic/evidence. Bald assertions lead to confirmation bias while axioms lead to understanding.

Pretty significant difference to my mind.
How does the absence of observed counterexamples to a proposition prove that no counterexample will ever be observed?

[ Monday, August 27, 2007 05:41: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Off With Their Heads
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quote:
Originally written by Stillness:

My point is valid because there are complicated factors, unknowns, and untestables at this point as concerns our climate. I asked what we should do when opinions differ and the response from TM was 'scientific method instead of prayer' as if we're not talking about a scientific disagreement and as if scientific method is guaranteed to resolve all disputes.
It is, when we actually get conclusive data. If what you're saying is true — and I don't think that it is — the most that you could possibly say is that we don't have enough information yet, not that the scientific method is not useful in answering this question.

quote:
BTW, relativistic measurements are more precise at all velocities. Our limitations before yielded less accuracy.
Yes, but we're talking about correction factors of incredibly small fractions of a percent. If our predictions about climate change are anywhere near as accurate as that, it hardly matters if there are some other minute factors we have yet to take into account that may also add or subtract a thousandth of a degree.

quote:
It's a good thing our resources and abilities are infinite now, otherwise we'd still have inaccurate and completely wrong beliefs.
Quit being asinine. No one is actually saying this.

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Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens.
Smoo: Get ready to face the walls!
Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr.

Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me
The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever
Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00
Shock Trooper
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Profile #195
quote:
Originally written by Stillness:


quote:
Originally written by SkeleTony:

Everything which exists(outside of the imagination) IS natural/material/physical and must be so by definition.
I'm almost afraid to ask, but how do you know this? It seems you would have to know everything unless you define everything that exists with these terms, in which case your statement is meaningless.

When we discuss these matters we MUST necessarily define our terms/usages to remove ambiguity. If I say "Snozzwogglers do not exist" and no one knows what a snozzwoggler is or what the Hell I mean by "exist" then it is a pointless statement.
Our first order of business is to define "existence" in a way that distinguishes it from usages of the same word which lead to ambiguity. If a 'snozzwoggler' is "a magical gremlin who is larger than a giraffe but lives in my shoe" then it only "exists" in my imagination but does NOT exist as an independent entity.
To define "existence" so that we may distinguish "existent" things from imaginary things, we are left with sense contents and linear sequence as the defining characteristics. Anything which DOES exist in a way that is distinct from an imaginary thing MUST, by necessity have sense contents(otherwise it IS imaginary by definition).
And it must also conform to linear sequence(cannot be "beyond time" and similar nonsense for obvious reasons) because the simple act of BEING(let alone ACTING) requires such a span entailing the preceding moment to said action and/or the sequence that comprises "being".

quote:
I would not say the sciences are religion anymore than a hammer is. It's a tool. But if a guy collects hammers, dedicates his time and mental energies studying them, decorates them, and thinks they hold the answers to any questions worth answering then hammers have ceased to be just a tool - he's made them his religion. Not the superhuman, supernatural definition of religion, but the kind that involves devotion and belief. There are without question people for whom science holds this place.
There is a difference between the "hammer" of science and the spandrels of religion though. The "hammer" can methodologically arrive at results. it can be used to achieve ends. Religion has no methodological approach. The faith of radical Muslims is only opposed by the faith of radical Christians by virtue of subjective and geographical biases. Neither of them are objectively "wrong" and both are equally (un)justified by faith/appeals to non-reason.

The difference between science and religion is = the difference between math and "I like pie."

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"I am in a very peculiar business. I travel all over the world telling people what they should already know." - James Randi
Posts: 219 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00
Shaper
Member # 32
Profile #196
I wouldn't quite say that. I'd say most mathematicians love pi and pie...

As far as scientists breaking down walls with hammers. Some like to pretend that they have x-ray vision...

[ Monday, August 27, 2007 06:20: Message edited by: Lt. Sullust ]

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Lt. Sullust
Quaere verum
Posts: 2462 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00
Shock Trooper
Member # 156
Profile #197
quote:
Originally written by Lt. Sullust:

I wouldn't quite say that. I'd say most mathematicians love pi and pie...

As far as scientists breaking down walls with hammers. Some like to pretend that they have x-ray vision...

I wouldn't know, not having met or even heard of many such scientists.

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"I am in a very peculiar business. I travel all over the world telling people what they should already know." - James Randi
Posts: 219 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00
Shaper
Member # 32
Profile #198
How about the South Korean scientist who claimed to have cloned?

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Lt. Sullust
Quaere verum
Posts: 2462 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00
Shock Trooper
Member # 156
Profile #199
quote:
Originally written by Lt. Sullust:

How about the South Korean scientist who claimed to have cloned?
Is that relevant to the claim that "some scientists like to pretend to have x-ray vision..." though? I was reading your comment to mean that you felt some significant number of scientists were of some superiority complex. Who knows what the South Koreans are actually claiming or why!? The Raelian 'scientists' claimed the same thing a few years back and were simply lying as part of a religious propaganda campaign.

Doesn't say much about science though as they were above and beyond all else, religionists.

Edit: Corrected the comment above about scientists and x-ray vision

[ Monday, August 27, 2007 07:25: Message edited by: SkeleTony ]

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"I am in a very peculiar business. I travel all over the world telling people what they should already know." - James Randi
Posts: 219 | Registered: Saturday, October 13 2001 07:00

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