ITT I explain why the nation is so fucked up

[a500lbgorilla]

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.

Yeah, but thanks to our limited life-spans, limited knowledge, limited everything, you've got to go with something and the scientific method has proven itself reliable. Maybe it'll never get us a perfect understanding of all things, but that's not a big problem. The answers to the greatest questions that we can pose of nature don't affect my day to day, but the advances of science on the scale of those things that we can know very well has improved my lot in life an incredible amount. Welcome to the best we've got. You can worry on how it's not perfect, but it swings pretty good. And there's no reason it can't be improved in future.

I do need to get this book you're talking about though. It seems pretty on the money.

[Ash256]

[Ash256]

empiricism cannot invalidate intuition, and here's why I think that. We observe the force of gravity and have correlated whatever factors influence gravity to things being pulled towards massive objects. It is theoretically possible there are mechanisms involved in the force of gravity that we cannot perceive, such as things occurring in other dimensions. Or God.

Let's get out of metaphysics for a second and start talking real science.

A man without scientific knowledge has a shitty throat infection. He's offered the choice of two courses of medicine. One has Fluconazole as its active ingredient, one has Penicillin. Intuition tells him nothing about this situation. However, we know that over many trials, the Penicillin will make him better faster than the Fluconazole.

This is why science > intuition.

Here are medieval cures for The Black Death. Cures for the Black Death

Now look at the sum of our medical knowledge in comparison and tell me the scientific method sucks. Go on, I dare you!

[wufwugy]

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge.

This strikes me as the crux of your argument, and it's a misunderstanding of science

Antipodal paradigm shifts are almost non-existent in science. They have happened in primitive times/fields, but because the body of work represents established fact, there's a great narrowing of what paradigm shifts are even possible

We're never going to discard the theory of gravity. Never. It can get us to the moon. It will never ever ever be less accurate than that. But that doesn't mean it's comprehensive. Its lack of comprehensiveness doesn't mean it could ever go topsy turvy. Physicists are currently trying to find that quantum gravity theory, and if they ever do, it will change nothing about the facts of our current theory; it will only rework some of the problems. We don't have to test every hypothesis, just the ones with the most interesting results and most probability of being right

The reason no theory will ever "prove" gravity theory wrong is because of the fact of observation. If it was possible for gravity to be a completely misguided theory, then it wouldn't be possible to have the maths to successfully go back and forth between here and the moon.

It is the repeatable happenings of reality that allows us to have knowledge.

About this Einstein had said, "Evolution has shown that at any given moment out of all conceivable constructions a single one has always proved itself absolutely superior to the rest," and let it go at that. But to Phaedrus that was an incredibly weak answer. The phrase "at any given moment" really shook him. Did Einstein really mean to state that truth was a function of time? To state that would annihilate the most basic presumption of all science!

I generally steer clear of non-hardline science philosophy because of things like this. Sounds nice, but meh. Did Einstein think truth was a function of time? Sure, everything in the physical universe is a function of time because time is a dimension. But don't kid yourself into thinking that anybody understands it enough to claim that it invalidates things like the scientific method

[lolzzz_321]

Wuf - less year one gifs and more talking about this :

YouTube - Former CIA Analyst schools CNN host

[surviva316]

Wuf - less year one gifs and more talking about this :

YouTube - Former CIA Analyst schools CNN host

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. i guess some good news we can get out of this is that if we have this many failures in intervening in the middle east over such a short time period, then we can reach a tipping point to where we finally say fuck it?

[wufwugy]

Disagree with a lot of what he says. Not just because he's a corporate apologist

[mbiz]

Science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Science is the practice where people, usually as collectives, make controlled observations and testable predictions. This is done in the hopes of constantly refining their models and understanding of the world."

People that dont understand science think its claiming to be something that it isnt - eg. climate change skeptics (aka morons).

[spoonitnow]

Yeah, but thanks to our limited life-spans, limited knowledge, limited everything, you've got to go with something and the scientific method has proven itself reliable. Maybe it'll never get us a perfect understanding of all things, but that's not a big problem. The answers to the greatest questions that we can pose of nature don't affect my day to day, but the advances of science on the scale of those things that we can know very well has improved my lot in life an incredible amount. Welcome to the best we've got. You can worry on how it's not perfect, but it swings pretty good. And there's no reason it can't be improved in future.

I do need to get this book you're talking about though. It seems pretty on the money.

I think you'd like it. The general idea being talked about here is that choosing which hypothesis to test is outside of the scope of the scientific method. Instead, the scientific method can only start once a hypothesis has been chosen/suggested/whatever.

So you've got effectively infinite choices for which hypothesis to test, and instead of choosing randomly, we end up choosing those which have a higher quality. This (among other things) leads to Pirsig's metaphysics of quality.

[a500lbgorilla]

YouTube - Why We Fight Part 1 of 10

I'm sure this has been mentioned somewhere on this forum, but it goes a long way to answering this thread's question.

If you want the tl;dw you can just watch these 5 or 6 minutes.

YouTube - Why We Fight Part 4 of 10

[wufwugy]

I mentioned Why We Fight a long time ago. I recall it being excellent, but it's been about two/three years since watching, so in order to give a current assessment, I'd have to give it another go. Recollection is it was one of the best

[a500lbgorilla]

I posted this in the Obama BC thread but decided to put it here. This thread allows for a more bitchy tone.

One of the problems is that if you lean right economically, you have no one to vote for. If you want to vote for someone to take steps to actually reduce the deficit, you have no one to vote for.

Can't touch defense spending, can't touch social security, can't touch medicare. Can't raise taxes on the wealthy. Better argue over funding for PBS and NPR. Better argue over funding for Planned Parenthood.

Vote for a President to end the expensive wars, elect a president who'll fire billions USD in missiles on Libya.



People will say they'll lower the deficit to get elected, then once they're elected they'll do everything in their power to not lower the deficit while appearing like they tried.

"We tried to raise taxes on the rich, but the right wouldn't have it."
"We tried to cut bloated and wasteful gov't spending but the liberals wouldn't have it."

[wufwugy]

I posted this in the Obama BC thread but decided to put it here. This thread allows for a more bitchy tone.

One of the problems is that if you lean right economically, you have no one to vote for. If you want to vote for someone to take steps to actually reduce the deficit, you have no one to vote for.

If Democrats took a cue from the Tea Party inasmuch as they started primarying their guys, this would change. The problem among progressives is that we're not that militant, so it won't really ever happen. The GOP has it easy inasmuch as they push fear and hate and that triggers and develops strong emotion, and that's why they're so successful at getting their base to vote on hardline ideology

Can't touch defense spending, can't touch social security, can't touch medicare. Can't raise taxes on the wealthy. Better argue over funding for PBS and NPR. Better argue over funding for Planned Parenthood.

This is one of the most profound thing about GOP politics for the last several decades. Their strategy has been to push highly emotional social issues like guns and abortion while behind the scenes working for plutocrats.

Vote for a President to end the expensive wars, elect a president who'll fire billions USD in missiles on Libya.

I honestly don't know what to think of this stuff. There is a huge problem with war contractors, but the real reason we're in these wars is oil. If we didn't control it, somebody else would, and there might actually be more bloodshed. We can really only fix the problem by getting the world off oil.

Also, I think it's neat to note that I speculate that Obama believes that real change is grassroots change, and that's why we see him "dilly dallying around" in so many ways on domestic issues, while he takes a strong and fast line on foreign issues. I also agree with what he's done in Libya. Even if I didn't agree, I'd probably still agree because the opposition (GOP) has flip-flopped and gone against him on this issue at every single turn, and there have been a lot of turns. Part of me gets behind Obama simply because his opponents have no purpose other than to destroy him regardless of anything else

People will say they'll lower the deficit to get elected, then once they're elected they'll do everything in their power to not lower the deficit while appearing like they tried.

There's irony in that the GOP ran on "jobs jobs jobs" then in 2011 so far they have footed over 350 anti-women bills. Not only have they not touched the issue of employment, but they've worsened it with cuts in public works with fantastic economic multipliers. What irks me the most is how voters for GOP just don't realize that their guys are doing what they do for the purpose of hurting Obama. "Save a baby? Fuck that, let the baby die and blame it on the black guy". And there's more irony in that their policy goes against even those things their voters claim to care more about. Like abortion. Planned Parenthood and lots of other social services actually reduce abortions, but don't tell that to the brainwashed anti-abortion folk

"We tried to raise taxes on the rich, but the right wouldn't have it."
"We tried to cut bloated and wasteful gov't spending but the liberals wouldn't have it."

The crummy thing is that no people on the right or independents even know what liberalism is. I'm the biggest liberal on the planet, yet a huge fiscal conservative and social libertarian. It's about policy that works, and nothing else

I think part of the problem is that people think in sweeping generalizations. Like libertarians see how the free market is good in some ways, then extrapolate it to being good in all ways. Uh no, it's good in some ways and bad in others. The free market is amazing in places like entertainment industry but devastating in banking.

[Ash256]

Not to sound depressive, but what is the actual point in all this political discourse? wuf, touch wood you don't, but if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, would you, in your final moments, look upon the time you spent researching and debating politics on the internet favourably?

I'm starting to get the feeling that the day to day business of politics that the media gets so wrapped up in is nothing but a distracting sideshow and a complete waste of time. If I (touch wood I don't) got hit by a bus tomorrow, the outcome of politics in the next 200 years would not change at all, not even in the slightest. If I spent a year out in the wilderness with no internet, very very little, if at all would have changed politically. Life is short. Why become engrossed in this babble?

[CoccoBill]

For me, I think it's a mixture of idealism, concern and compassion for the humankind and generally towards life on earth. I've also always had this semi-neurotic need to fully understand any phenomenom or issue I'm interested in. Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. It's quite easy to get cynical and think nothing will change, that there's nothing one individual can do about anything, but things always change, one way or the other. Yes, what anyone can accomplish by themselves is extremely limited, but another way of looking at it is that it's the individuals that have ALL the power, we collectively are the only ones that can make any change occur. You can of course choose ignorance and negligence, bury your head in the sand and hope bad things go away, but personally I just can't do that. How this is possible without having good Christian morals is still beyond me.