Capitalism Rules, Socialism and Communism Suck Thread

[TheSpoonald]

These are sourced facts, not feelings.

Science isn't determined by consensus

[MadMojoMonkey]

Science isn't determined by consensus

lolwat?
That's exactly how science is determined.

[TheSpoonald]

lolwat?
That's exactly how science is determined.

WRONG

Science = reality & truth. Not what some artificially credentialed human beings *think* is reality and truth.

500 years ago, would I be derided as a flat-earth denier?

[MadMojoMonkey]

WRONG

Science = reality & truth. Not what some artificially credentialed human beings *think* is reality and truth.

Adorable.

Where to start? OK.

You see, nanners, science isn't actually about truth or facts. This is a popular misconception, so I'm not surprised if you heard that from other people, but those people aren't scientists, or they are scientists who want you to think that what they do is more than it really is.

Science is really about knowledge and repeatability. Science is about predicting the outcome of something before it happens, like predicting the future a little bit. Whether or not the scientific model we use to make a prediction is "true," we don't know. We never have, may never at all. We only know if the prediction was "good enough" for our purposes.

The history of science is to disprove all the things we thought once were true. The things we think are true today will surely be shown to be not quite true by later scientists. It's easy to think that if a new scientific finding is better than the old one, that the new one is true, but that's not the case. It's probably (but not certainly) more true, but not necessarily capital T True.
For example, Newton figured out a bunch of stuff about gravity. Everyone thought it was true. Until Einstein came along and showed that Newton's gravity didn't really tell the whole story. Then everyone knew that Newton's gravity was not true. It's still workably close to the truth, but not the truth. Surely someday, some other scientist will show that even Einstein's gravity is close to the truth, but not exactly the truth.
That's what's happens in science. It's not so much about what is true, as it is about our best guesses so far.


Where does science come from, and why do scientists think it's a good way to find knowledge?
That's a long story, too. Let's try to boil it down.

The idea that science is a means to get knowledge comes from the philosophical study of epistemology - the study of how we, whose experiences may or may not be subjective, can determine the difference between knowledge and opinion. That field, as all philosophical fields, is based upon the agreement of the experts in the field, or by consensus.
The "Truths" of philosophical ideas must be subjectively accepted by people to be considered true. There's no way to collect data to prove it, so each person has to decide. A group of people decides they're educated and smart enough to figure it out and come to an agreement, or consensus, about it. In this case, the "it" is the question "What is knowledge and how shall we acquire it?"

An answer to that question goes something like this:
There's no personal basis to determine reality from hallucination. We posit (an unproven assertion) that if enough "reliable" witnesses agree on an observation, we consider that observation real. Everything about that is consensus.
Oh boy, that sounds very dangerous! Who is a reliable witness? What if reliable people hallucinate? What if reliable witnesses lie? What if a person guesses a truth and seems reliable, but is not?
That sounds like all this talk about "finding knowledge" is really just an elitist group deciding what is a fact, doesn't it?
I think it does, and I'm a scientist.

We definitely need a way to prevent ourselves from being fooled by some elitist group that probably wants to fool us or worse, have fooled themselves and want me to believe their foolery. (or even to be fooled by something we ourselves thought in the past)
That is the root of the scientific method. We need a way to combat the flaws in this "knowledge" acquiring method.

Uh oh... the method is about acquiring knowledge. How can we combat the flaws in finding knowledge without suffering the flaws of distrusting what it knowledge in the first place. We're facing a circular argument. Now you see why there's an entire field of philosophy that studies this question. It's very hard to not think yourself in circles once you question what is knowledge and how do you know when you have it.

So to build the scientific method, we take a risky step. We accept the flaws in this consensus based model and - risky - make another group to come to another consensus about how to handle the problems with relying on consensus. This sounds like a bad move. Still. I'm a reluctant supporter. The result feels good to me, but c'mon... circular logic. Whether or not it feels good should have no bearing on our determination. Argh.

This new group does an OK job, though. They say, "We can't trust people. People are not reliable witnesses. We need something else. We need to trust data, not people. We need to distrust the people who create the data, and to scrutinize their methods. Only when we cannot disprove their methods, do we begrudgingly accept their data. Once we accept the data, though, we embrace it whole-heartedly. Until and unless the methods are shown to be faulty, the data cannot be refuted. Not because of the scientists who created the methods, but because of the methods themselves.

But still... all this talk of "we" is just hiding more consensus. More agreement from other "reliable witnesses." Remember, we never solved that problem, we just put a bandaid on it.

So you see... it's a popular misconception that science is about creating true statements. Scientific Laws are not really "true" in the sense that, "I think nanners acts like a petulant teenager." is true. Ironic, right? Subjective statements can be true, but objective statements can't. You can "know" yourself, but you can never fully, 100% trust the consensus.

Now run along and check if Stevey has another controversial video for you to watch.

500 years ago, would I be derided as a flat-earth denier?

IDK, but Eratosthenes (c.276 - 195 BC) may have been.
500 years
lol


Run along, now.

[TheSpoonald]

Adorable.

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[MadMojoMonkey]

BAN

Are you asking for it? 'Cause I can do that for you, ya know?

Should I remind you that you and I operate under absolutely different rules, here?
Because you're here at my leisure, not the other way around.

[TheSpoonald]

Are you asking for it? 'Cause I can do that for you, ya know?

Should I remind you that you and I operate under absolutely different rules, here?
Because you're here at my leisure, not the other way around.

Great debate tactic stalin

[TheSpoonald]

Honestly dude, all you did there was give yourself a finger-workout. I'm not here to split ball hairs with you over definitions or have a philosophical discussions with you about the purpose of science. What I am telling you is that it flat out doesn't fucking matter what a "consensus" of scientists say. 1) they're often wrong and 2) who defines what a "consensus" is.

If you weren't such a petulant teenager and watched the video for ten goddamn seconds, you'd see that the "consensus" is really just a few dozen people. Someone found a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of scientists and 97% of them said "ZOMG". That's not a consensus. That's a narrow and biased observation play-dough-ed into a political talking point.

Science is about predicting the outcome of something before it happens, like predicting the future a little bit

See posts 522 and 523. How many times does science get to be wrong before I get to stop believing you and not be called crazy?

[MadMojoMonkey]

Honestly dude, all you did there was give yourself a finger-workout. I'm not here to split ball hairs with you over definitions or have a philosophical discussions with you about the purpose of science. What I am telling you is that it flat out doesn't fucking matter what a "consensus" of scientists say. 1) they're often wrong and 2) who defines what a "consensus" is.

Just can't help yourself from moving the goalpost, can you, you silly goose?

You remember that thing you just said?
"Science isn't determined by consensus," you said.
"That's exactly how science is determined." I replied.
"WRONG Science = reality & truth. Not what some artificially credentialed human beings *think* is reality and truth." you continued.

Remember?

As to the question, I specifically answered that in the prior post you maybe scanned and told yourself you perfectly understood. The point is to distrust scientists, but to trust in your own ability to understand what they've done and if you can't find fault in it, then you begrudginly accept it.

Stop trusting sound bites about science. If scientific discoveries were simple enough to explain in a sound bite or a 30 minute show that covers lots of topics, then it wouldn't have required a team of researchers months to do it. Anyone attempting to do so has another agenda. IDK what the range of agendas that could encompass, but their primary intent is not to deliver an accurate assessment of their findings to intelligent, but uninformed people.

If you weren't such a petulant teenager and watched the video for ten goddamn seconds, you'd see that the "consensus" is really just a few dozen people. Someone found a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of scientists and 97% of them said "ZOMG". That's not a consensus. That's a narrow and biased observation play-dough-ed into a political talking point.

I'm not interested in whatever nonsense you pretend is evidence of anything. You have repeatedly demonstrated and now properly admitted that you are not making rational arguments, but irrational ones. You pick and choose your data to support whatever conclusions you like.

You're not making intelligent arguments. You're making intelligent-sounding arguments. The difference is that the latter is just your opinion, which you're perfectly entitled to. I'm not trying to change any irrational opinions of anyone 'cause that's a perfect waste of time.

My position is the polar opposite of petulant teenager. It's not "uncool" to click your links. It's intellectually vapid.

@ bold: BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAA.
So my point holds and you're arguing anyway. See? Irrational.
Those people are not reliable witnesses... 'cause people are not reliable witnesses. Stop putting trust in sound bites. Look at their methods, and see if you can find fault.

See posts 522 and 523. How many times does science get to be wrong before I get to stop believing you and not be called crazy?

The fact that you don't understand what science is or the goals of science is a totally separate issue from the fact that you are not a rational thinker. Well... I mean the latter probably significantly contributes to the former.

[TheSpoonald]

Just can't help yourself from moving the goalpost

What exactly is your "goal"?

You remember that thing you just said? "Science isn't determined by consensus," you said.

Yeah. Remember how you decided to spend a half hour of your life typing a bullshit explanation of what you think "consensus" means just because you have a hard-on for me? That was weird. And just so you know, still, science isn't determined by consensus. Science and consensus are two completely different things. Science is constant, consensus isn't. Science never changes, just the consensus of our understanding of it does. And the consensus is often wrong.

The point is to distrust scientists, but to trust in your own ability to understand what they've done and if you can't find fault in it, then you begrudginly accept it.

NO. I'm not a climatologist, that doesn't mean I have to begrudgingly accept everything a climatologist says about climate. Fuck that. Using that same logic, Bill Barr is an attorney and you're not, so everything he says about the law you have to begrudgingly accept. Somehow that doesn't seem to hold true around here. Are you a soldier trained by the military? Are you an expert in wall-building? The consensus of those folks and the wall-builders say a ladder won't work. You refuse to begrudgingly accept that.

Both the current and former heads of border patrol say WE NEED A WALL. Are you ready to begrudgingly accept that?

You really are way out of line accusing me of irrational thinking when you talk like this. It's ok to be skeptical of consensus when ORANGE MAN BAD, but when it's your pet issue, or your profession that's getting challenged...suddenly your position changes to "NOD AND OBEY OR WE WILL CALL YOU DUMB"

Look at their methods, and see if you can find fault.

I did exactly that. You would know if you weren't such a close minded whelp who buries your head in the sand in the face of anything that refutes your argument. Did you watch the video? It does exactly what you're saying. It goes DEEP into the methods, and finds fault.

For example: 30,000+ scientists signed a government petition expressing a skeptical view of climate change. The response to that was "well, not enough of them are climate scientists....this isn't really a consensus". Mr. Crowder and I agree with that. We would just like that exact same standard applied to the tiny population of scientists who say "ZOMG". So there is some fault for you....inconsistent definitions of consensus.

Honestly, that whole video is "looking at their methods and finding fault". But you just wanna say "CROWDER BAD", which is a slur, not an argument.

[TheSpoonald]

Run along, now.

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