What is Something Scientific that you just don't believe in at all?
EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.
The idea that animals do not have feelings. I don’t believe complex thought is necessary for emotion. You can take away all our human reasoning, and we would still get mad, or sad, or happy at things.
I don’t think there is a scientific concensus on this. We are constantly finding previously unknown similarities between the minds of other animals and humans. I’ve put together a small lemmy community on animal communication and digital bioacoustics, it is somewhat related to this stuff.
Bees play with toys and do happy actions when given toys. I'm of the opinion that some form of internal experience extends at least as far down the brain size scale as at least some bugs, and might extend into single celled organisms and plants.
If anything I think emotional response is the least advanced part of a human mind. However, if we’re talking about brains of sharks, small lizards, or ants then I think emotion would be a word with a lot more nuance than whatever it is they do.
I recently heard someone make the argument that pain is could intense for simpler animals since they need more explicit punishment for doing dangerous things
We don’t have much way of knowing afaik but it seems plausible
The range of what “emotion” can cover is very broad as well. Like feeling good or scared and shame or respect.
I have remind my partner that dogs don’t share all of the complex emotions we do or at least it’s a lot easier to deal with them if you act like they don’t.
I.E. my dog is never going to care if feeding is fair, and they aren’t going to listen to you out of respect about it. They will however eat a certain way because the like being obedient and knowing their place in the pact, but that takes repetition, rewards and punishments.
I know, I was so hype a few years ago when a new gravity well model supposedly eliminated the need for Dark Matter, but recently it’s been in the news as a scandal that also doesn’t fix everything.
Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). It's been the dissenting voice in the modern Great Debate about dark matter.
On one side are the dark matter scientists who think there's a vast category of phenomenon out there FAR beyond our current science. That the universe is far larger and more complex than we currently know, and so we must dedicate ourselves to exploring the unexplored. The other side, the
On the other you have the MOND scientists, who hope they can prevent that horizon from flying away from them by tweaking the math on some physical laws. It basically adds a term to our old physics equations to explain why low acceleration systems experience significantly different forces than the high-acceleration systems with which we are more familiar -- though their explanations for WHY the math ought be tweaked I always found totally unsatisfactory -- to make the current, easy-to-grock laws fit the observations.
With the big problem being that it doesn't work. It explains some galactic motion, but not all. It sometimes fits wide binary star systems kind of OK, but more often doesn't. It completely fails to explain the lensing and motion of huge galactic clusters. At this point, MOND has basically been falsified. Repeatedly, predictions it made have failed.
Dark matter theories -- that is, the theories that say there are who new categories of stuff out there we don't understand at all -- still are the best explanation. That means we're closer to the starting line of understanding the cosmos instead of the finish line many wanted us to be nearing. But I think there's a razor in there somewhere, about trusting the scientist who understands the limits of our knowledge over the one who seems confident we nearly know everything.
There’s no scandal. Some people who are leading proponents of MOND theory recently published a new paper using what might be the best scenario we currently have to detect MOND (wide binary stars), and their more precise calculations…are not consistent with MOND. They published evidence against the very theory they were betting on.
Great example, and this brings up a great point about this topic - there's a difference between what's a scientific pursuit vs. what is current established scientific understanding.
Dark matter is a topic being studied to try to find evidence of it existing, but as of now there's is zero physical evidence that it actually exists.
I mean yeah that's why it's called dark matter. Because we know nothing about it except that it has gravity and doesn't interact much (if at all) with electromagnetic waves.
The problem is Dark Matter is a theory that proposes specifically currently unobserved matter exists to solve our math problem. That’s not something we can automatically assume, imo. It’s looking highly probable, but not certain. It’s not just a blanket term for impossible to understand forces, okay, it’s not a pseudonym for C’Thulu, it’s a very specific solution among many.
Nobody "automatically assumes" anything. Dark matter is the best candidate of possible explanations because it explains observation and still fits the standard model. Even if they find the necessary particles eventually, nobody would call it certain though. Certainty is a unicorn.
Well, not really. Your first reply to me got downvoted because you setup a strawman - arguing against something that wasn't even the point.
Your second, the one you claimed said the same as mine, insinuated Dark Matter is just some mathy explanation among many. This doesn't give it credit. It's the current no 1 explanation with lots of evidence. Still didn't get downvoted though.
I’m with you here, I don’t understand dark matter and dark energy and the expansion of the universe. We see shit moving all the time in the universe. I’m still not convinced we just don’t understand the motion of the universe outside our envelope of observation and it’s explainable with conventional matter and energy. Im trying to learn a lot tho. I’m gonna watch that video someone posted to you.
I am curious if the opposite of dark matter could be true; while dark matter inside galaxies would explain galactical motion, couldn’t the same be explained by something repulsive BETWEEN galaxies? If the latter were the case, it would also explain dark energy.
The observations of systems like the Bullet Cluster imply that dark matter is actual material -- baryonic matter. Stuff that exists in specific locations and has mass. Modifying the math of the physical laws does not explain these observations without absolutely going into contortions where dark matter explains them quite elegantly.
All of physics is a "math model". One we attempt to falsify. And when a scientist does prove some part of the model wrong, the community leaps up in celebration and gets to working on the fix or the next.
Dark matter started as exactly a catchall designed to make the model work properly. We started with a very good model, but when observing extreme phenomenon (in this case the orbits of stars of entire galaxies), the model didn't fit. So either there was something we couldn't see to explain the difference ("dark" matter), or else the model was wrong and needed modification.
There's also multiple competing theories for what that dark matter is, exactly. Everything from countless tiny primordial black holes to bizarre, lightyear-sized standing waves in a quantum field. But the best-fitting theories that make the most sense and contradict the fewest observations & models seem to prefer there be some kind of actual particle that interacts just fine with gravity, but very poorly or not at all with electromagnetism. And since we rely on electromagnetism for nearly all of our particle physics experiments that makes whatever this particle is VERY elusive.
Worth observing that once, a huge amount of energy produced by stars was an example of a dark energy. Until we figured out how to detect neutrinos. Then it wasn't dark anymore.
In short, you're exactly right. It's a catch-all to make the math model work properly. And that's not actually a problem.
Well that’s a fun hypothesis that should be falsifiable. Why not write a paper with some maths predictions? That is a pretty extraordinary claim, but definitely fascinating.
I just read up on it a bit, and there’s multiple things disproving my theory:
to reconcile our models with our observations, dark matter would have to be primordial, i.e. created shortly after the big bang.
to explain the movements we see, dark matter must be mostly concentrated in a ring far outside of a galaxy. Dyson spheres would probably be concentrated in clusters spreading from the center of a civilization.
Dyson spheres would radiate heat we can detect with infrared telescopes, unless you hand-wave it with “aliens found tech that breaks thermodynamics” and at that point it’s the same as saying it’s magic.
Other way around, the math model worked fine without dark matter, and it was experimental observation that revealed DM. And yes, the term dark matter is a catch all by design because we don’t have a single theory on it yet.
That sounds like it’s trying to take large scale phenomena and make them work on the quantum scale. What if the solution is the other way around: make modified quantum mechanics work on the large scale? (I guess those are effectively the same thing. You’d need a quantum gravity theory one way or another. Sorry, layman here. Just spitballin’ ideas)
The experimental observation did not reveal Dark Matter. Nobody has seen or proven Dark Matter, actually. That’s why it is called Dark Matter. The observation just showed that the math model was flawed, and they invented “Dark Matter” to make up for it.
My personal take is that they will one day add the right correction factor that should have been in the fomulas all the time.
Just like with E=mc² not being completely correct. It’s actually E²=m²c⁴ + p²c². The p²c² is not adding much, but it is still there.
I’m no astrophysicist - I just design computer chips. But this issue of “We need dark matter” came up with rotating galaxies, didn’t it? So I’d look into that direction if there is a potential connection. Classic bug hunting technique.
I wonder why lay people find adding a new form of particle to the stable to be so much more intuitively objectionable than hacking into our theory of gravity to make it align with observations.
No, I’m just wondering about the reasoning for something that has not been observed except for it’s gravity effects. I mean, physics has loads of incomplete models, so for me, just another incomplete model looks more likely than some phantom particles that nobody can explain.
That reasoning is public information; all of the data that led these conclusions has been published. I would recommend you have enough respect for scientists to actually read some of it before writing it all off out of hand.
Also, we can explain dark matter, in fact we have multiple explanations. What we don’t have is a way to determine which is right yet.
That reasoning is public information; all of the data that led these conclusions has been published. I would recommend you have enough respect for scientists to actually read some of it before writing it all off out of hand.
The problem is that most writing on that topic is incomprehensible even for me. And I’m not even part of the non-science crowd - my specialization is just elsewhere.
The Bullet Cluster, among several other systems, are very strong evidence that dark matter is actual baryonic matter that does not experience significant (or any) electromagnetic interactions. What we see when we look at these kinds of systems is that there is all evidence of STUFF there, but we cannot see the stuff. It's not an indication of a poorly-performing math model missing a function term.
It would be like if we saw ripples in the water like we know exist around a rock. But we don't see a rock. Sure, MAYBE we just fundamentally need to rewrite our basic rules of fluid mechanics to be able to create these exact ripples. But the more probable explanation is that there's a rock we can't see, and falsifying that theory will require just HEAPS of evidence.
The evidence we have suggests overwhelmingly that there is actual stuff that has mass that we simply do not have the tools to observe. Which isn't all that surprising given that we are only JUST starting to build instruments to observe cosmological phenomena using stuff other than photons of light.
What we see when we look at these kinds of systems is that there is all evidence of STUFF there, but we cannot see the stuff. It’s not an indication of a poorly-performing math model missing a function term.
How would you know the difference? All the evidence of “STUFF” being there is obviously gravity based, as no other factors are involved. So that “STUFF” has a number of parameters that can be determined from the postulation of it’s existence: It should be baryonic to have the mass, and it should be stable, or one would probably observe energetic events related to state changes. Another point is: if it has mass, why does it not just clump together? I guess one can also rule out that it is charged, or one might see electromagnetic interactions. Did I miss a key parameter? Did I misunderstand anything here?
So do you know of any 3 (or maybe even 5 or 7) quarks baryon that would fit the pattern? The amount of combinations is limited, and CERN and others have created so many different particles over time that something of that kind that is actually stable should have made an appearance? Or are there any theoretical works on what kind of particle this could be, matching the pattern?
And, by the way, I would not call it a “poor performing” math model, as it covers quite a lot of the world we can observe. I deliberately used the term “incomplete”.
We observe patterns of behavior -- orbits, movement, gravitational lensing -- that are exactly what we would see if, for example, there were great clouds of matter or other galaxies in those places. But we don't see the hydrogen gas. We see non-uniform distributions of dark matter mass that imply there is not simply some consistent calculation error, but rather that there is dark matter that is not uniformly distributed. Again, read up on the Bullet Cluster because it shows a VERY clear example of what I am talking about, where the regular, electromagnetically-interacting matter behaves one way but the apparent shadow of dark matter behaves in a different way that is consistent with lack of electromagnetic interactions.
We've also discovered things like ultradiffiuse galaxies -- likely remnants from ancient collisions -- that have apparently been stripped of their dark matter. MOND cannot explain these observations because these galaxies essentially behave in a Newtonian manner that would be impossible in a MOND framework.
if it has mass, why does it not just clump together?
Why does stuff clump together? For all non-dark matter, the answer is electromagnetism. Outside of the extreme cases of neutron stars and black holes, where gravity overwhelms and defeats electromagnetism and the nuclear forces theoretically take over to create degeneracy pressure, electromagnetism is the reason things clump. Absent electromagnetism, what would cause clumping? Essentially nothing, stuff would whizz straight through other stuff and go into orbits. Potentially HUGE orbits, which is why there's so many theories around dark matter "halos". Maybe if there were DIRECT collisions of theoretical DM particles, that might cause an energy-releasing event -- this is one of the things current dark matter detectors are looking for and may yet find within the upcoming years.
are there any theoretical works on what kind of particle this could be, matching the pattern?
Yep, and more than a handful Many that make specific predictions we can test for and so are testing for. For example, you could look at axions, which are a theoretical particle predicted by an entirely different theory that may be a good fit for the dark matter particle.
We observe patterns of behavior – orbits, movement, gravitational lensing – that are exactly what we would see if, for example, there were great clouds of matter or other galaxies in those places.
Which would still not rule out anything else…
But we don’t see the hydrogen gas. We see non-uniform distributions of dark matter mass that imply there is not simply some consistent calculation error, but rather that there is dark matter that is not uniformly distributed.
That non-uniformity though, yes, this is a good point for a “dark matter exists” hypothesis. Although I would still word it differently: Not “We see non-uniform distributions of dark matter mass” but “We see a non-uniform mass-like effect”. I’ve learned that keeping the terms as neutral as possible, or it might exert too much pressure on the thought process to go in just one direction.
We’ve also discovered things like ultradiffiuse galaxies – likely remnants from ancient collisions – that have apparently been stripped of their dark matter.
Which is basically an extreme case on “not uniformly distributed”.
MOND cannot explain these observations because these galaxies essentially behave in a Newtonian manner that would be impossible in a MOND framework.
That is acceptable. I was not “selling” MOND here (or any other theory), btw, I’m just wondering what kind of possibilities are there to explain all those observations. “An invisible mass nobody has observed except for it’s gravity effect” sounded a bit thin of a leg to stand on there, while incomplete models are a rather widespread phenomenon.
electromagnetism is the reason things clump. Absent electromagnetism, what would cause clumping?
Gravity? I mean, we are talking about something that has gravity. Did planets form because of electromagnetism?
Yep, and more than a handful Many that make specific predictions we can test for and so are testing for.
Indeed. Try that with the wannabe-sciences like economics…
For example, you could look at axions, which are a theoretical particle predicted by an entirely different theory that may be a good fit for the dark matter particle.
Well, at least they share the common trait of not being found yet… ;-)
For myriad reasons, the answer to this is an emphatic yes.
Gravity may attract particles towards each other, but the force that actually causes them to interact with each other is almost entirely electromagnetism. The collisions of grains of cosmic dust are caused by electromagnetic fields interacting with each other. As is the gradual loss of kinetic energy -- the friction -- that allows some amount of potential energy to get converted to heat, allowing the particles to slow down and, as you described it, clump.
Absent electromagnetism, the actual particle nuclei would need to directly hit each other to cause an interaction via the nuclear forces, which is VERY improbable in the vastness of space. Improbable doesn't mean it wouldn't happen, but in this case it does mean the universe is way too big and young. Without electromagnetic interactions, particles just form orbits. Which again, that's what a "dark matter halo" is. It's all the dark matter stuff orbitting around a galaxy's center of mass because it doesn't get easily trapped in the center. It's all the dark matter in a gravitational system constantly whizzing back and forth across the center of mass since there's no electromagnetic force to rob them of the potential or kinetic energy and stop them from heading back out.
And, conveniently, these halos are just what our observations seem to indicate dark matter is doing in a typical galaxy. The observations and theory align well
“An invisible mass nobody has observed except for it’s gravity effect” sounded a bit thin of a leg to stand on there
See, I think this is where you’re getting tripped up. You’ve got a strong instinctive bias against models that include new particles, and you probably need to examine why. New particles are no more of an update to an incomplete model then any other firm update, and is common in proposals for new science. We already know of atleast one extremely abundant, near undetected particle in the form of the neutrino, and one of the leading candidates for dark matter, the axion, comes from an unrelated model.
I don’t have a bias against new particles. For me as a non astrophysicist, just another theory having a big hole was simply more likely. And the theory of gravity breaks anyway when it approaches quantum theory, why shouldn’t it be broken elsewhere, too?
But I can easily accept the information given here, primarily the case with uneven distribution, which is a good case for something being there. Now you just have to nail the particle down.
For me as a non astrophysicist, just another theory having a big hole was simply more likely.
Why? If you don’t have a bias against new particles. Why is a hole in one theory more likely than a hole in another?
Why shouldn’t it be broken elsewhere, too?
Why should it?
But I can easily accept the information given here, primarily the case with uneven distribution, which is a good case for something being there.
Indeed, people think dark matter is motivated by observations disagreeing with theory in one consistent way, but it’s actually a case of observation showing a large distribution of invisible mass.
Now you just have to nail the particle down.
It’s tricky to do, as dark matter is non-interacting by nature. It will likely be a case of process of elimination.
Yeh, that’s how the scientific method works.
Observations don’t support a model, or a model doesn’t support observations.
Think of a reason why.
Test that hypothesis.
Repeat until you think it’s correct. Hopefully other people agree with you.
People are also working on modifying General Relativity and Newtonian Dynamics to try and fix the model, while other people are working on observing dark matter directly (instead of it’s effects) to further prove the existing models. youtu.be/3o8kaCUm2V8
We are in the “testing hypothesis” stage. And have been for 50ish years
For those with time to spare: study all you can about neutron stars (including magnetars and quark stars), then go back to “black holes” (especially their event horizons and beyond) and there’s a good chance you’ll feel like a lot of aspects in BH theories are mythologies written in math - all of it entertaining, nonetheless.
For those who seek extra credit, study zero-point energy before reflecting on cosmic voids, galaxy filaments, galaxies, gravitationally bound celestial systems, quantum chromodynamics and neutrinos. Then, ponder the relativity between neutron stars, zero-point energy and hadron quark sea.
Multiple experiments to detect dark matter directly here on earth have been constructed. They expected a handful of detections a year given the estimates of local dark matter densities. Those experiments have not yielded any detections. This sets very restrictive limits on candidates for particle like dark matter.
I’m fully aware of astronomical observations that suggest the need for dark matter. That’s not what I was referring to.
So far, astronomical observations are all we have, the lack of terrestrial observations have only been able to elliminate candidate particles, not measure them.
Yeah, it’s legitimate science being done, but some people treat it as sacred and would fight you to no end because they say Dark Matter is some certainty, rather than approaching it with the proper scientific skepticism or with a statistical outlook.
For the most part believers in Dark Matter are cool, but a vocal minority practically worship it as the only possible truth.
If a new hypothetical model showed that either some far off unobserved mass(es) or the currently observable mass can have the gravitational effects that were previously explained by dark matter, or any other far off idea about the nature of gravity at large scale: then there would be evidence there is nothing there. Currently there is no evidence that something is there, just that there are forces and motions that are not understood.
“just that there are forces and motions that are not understood.” - aka, there’s “something” there… Doesn’t have to be a physical something. You’re intentionally misunderstanding or misinterpreting just to try and win points on the Internet.
Okay I see what you mean, the meaning of your words missed me the first time, sorry. You’re saying something is happening, not necessarily that something else exists to cause it.
I mean, they are working on adjusting Newtonian dynamics for the situations where gravity between objects is low. This would fix the model for the strange galaxy spin and where 2 stars orbit eachother.
The issue with this is there are too many unknowns as we have a (relatively) fixed point of perspective. But statistical analysis is working on reducing the impact of those unknowns, and there is likely a paper published in the next few months regarding this.
Then, I guess it’s a matter of understanding why this applies. And maybe it applies because of dark matter, and it all wraps back round to an undiscovered thing.
Or, perhaps Newtonian dynamics isn’t complete but has been accurate enough to withstand all our testing (like taking 9.8 as the value of G on earth, even though it varies across the globe, and the moon/sun/planets also have a miniscule impact. For everything we do on earth, 9.8 is accurate enough)
Dark matter still has strong scientific support, although still undiscovered.
Modifying Newtonian dynamics has so far been disproven.
Both are worthy of pursuing
Modified gravity theories are a well explored alternative to dark matter, but they aren’t popular for the simple reason that dark matter fits the observational data far, far better. Because currently there is evidence that something is there, extensive evidence.
“If the car is behind Door 1, you lose. If the car is behind Door 2, Monty would have opened Door 3, so you would switch to Door 2 and win. If the car is behind Door 3, he would have opened Door 2, so you would switch to Door 3 and win. The odds of winning with the “Switch” strategy are two in three, double the odds of staying.”
The Monty Hall problem has always bothered me when considering it on the basis of 3 doors. However when the concept is extended to 100 doors, and 98 are opened, it starts to click for me that of course the odds arent 50/50. It’s much more obvious that the prize was in the field (and the odds shift to reflect that)
Are you saying you don’t believe it? Because you explained why it works pretty well. When the host opens the door, they will always open a non-winning door, so it doesn’t affect the odds at all. There is still a 1:3 chance it’s the door you picked, and a 2:3 that it’s one of the other 2. All the host did is showed you which one it wasn’t behind, and that means the odds of that remaining door is 2:3
If one wrong door is always opened, your chance was never 1/3 to begin with, so you are thinking about this problem with the wrong premise, making it hard to grasp. You were just assuming it was 1/3 because you didn’t know one door would be taken away.
As soon as the wrong door is opened, your odds are never 1/3 nor 2/3. It’s 1/2 because there’s only two doors. What did you think the number after / stood for?
EDIT: Now I’ve tried to look through the examples in the article, and it honestly just makes it worse.
The example about picking a door at 1/1000, and then Monty removing 998 of the doors, leaving two doors, therefore making it more likely you should pick the one Monty left open, is also stupid - because it’s not comparable.
The above example is true. The likelihood of Monty being right is much higher.
But your pick is never 1/1000 when there’s only 3 doors, making the example not compatible with the other. The 1000 door example is not wrong - you just can’t compare them.
And now to explain why it’s different:
In the 3 door example, your “pick power” is 1. Means you can pick 1 door. Montys “pick power” is also 1, making you both equally strong.
This means that you picking a door gives as much intel as Monty picking a door does. No matter what, you will always be left with 1 door not being picked.
Now you look at the 2 doors. The one you picked, and the one nobody did. Now this problem suggests that Monty has given you new information because he removed a door, but he didn’t give you that, and here’s why:
The problem suggests that Monty gives you intel by removing a door in a 1/3 scenario. But he doesn’t. That’s an illusion.
From Montys perspective, he only has 2 doors to pick from, because he can NEVER remove yours, no matter what you picked.
Now Monty has made his choice, and this is where we turn the game around making it clear it was a 1/2 choice all along.
Because the thing you are picking between is not the doors anymore. It was never about the doors.
You are picking between if Monty is bluffing or not.
Let’s say you always pick door 1 as your first option. Monty will always remove 2 or 3. Either Monty removes door 2 or 3 because he helps you, or he’s doing it because he’s bluffing.
If you didn’t get any more help, this WOULD’VE been a 1/3. You’d have to choose between if Monty bluffed at door 2 or he bluffed at door 3, or he bluffed at both, because it was your door.
But then Monty goes ahead and removes a door, let’s say 3 (or 2 if you want, it doesn’t matter). He tells you it’s not that one. Now you have to choose if he’s bluffing at door 2 or he’s bluffing at your door.
Monty isn't giving you new information - he's giving you an extra "pick".
If you never change your choice, you can completely ignore anything Monty does, because your first choice is always going to be 1/3 that you picked the right door.
You only have 2 options, but that doesn't mean your odds are 1/2.
Because Monty opened door 3 for you, if you change your choice, that means you have a "pick power" of 2 doors, because you get to choose both doors (2 and 3).
Basically, your two choices are:
Door 1 - odds = 1/3
Doors 2 and 3 together - odds = 2/3
The singularity that supposedly lies inside black holes is more likely just a result of a huge gap in our understanding and a dead end in general relativity.
You might be misunderstanding the problem, though. “Traveling” is relative. It absolutely is not impossible to arrive somewhere faster than light traveling in “normal” 3D space would. For example, 3D space itself is a medium, not an absolute thing. A medium can always be manipulated.
It also depends on how you are measuring time. From the perspective of the light, all travel is nearly instantaneous. It’s only from our perspective that it appears to take a long time.
For everyone else, yes, but for you, no. The faster you go, the more time dilation affects your own experience of time. If you were to travel 1 light year at the speed of light, it would be instantaneous for you, but a year would pass for everyone on Earth.
The prompt is dangerous and indulgent for anti-science idiots. You don’t “believe in” science… Science is. You can choose to believe in fairy tales, conspiracy theories and other made up shit like religious dogma, don’t causally equate the two categories - ESPECIALLY not while naming science directly. Maybe say, “what’s a thing that you can’t believe it’s real?” If you need to post.
I see your edit, but it’s still a bullshit post, OP.
I don’t see the issue. Here is the truth, do you believe in it or not? Plenty of stuff I have had a hard time accepting which is another way of saying I didn’t believe it. That doesn’t mean I gave up.
Science absolutely involves belief, the idea that the scientific method is a divorced concept from belief might fly in a badly written Wikipedia article description but in terms of actual science, belief absolutely factors massively into science. So does intuition.
Science is just a meaningless constellation of data points without any belief to connect them. One has to be very careful and continually retrospective about what those beliefs are, but it is absurd on the face of it to say that science is magically outside belief.
Science isn’t a collection of facts, it is a collection of questions that arise from hypotheses that themselves arise from belief and intuition. Just because that is scary and opens up the door to conversations about how belief always shapes our thoughts and actions even when it is in the context of science doesn’t mean you can just slam the door and demand that somehow science doesn’t include these things.
What differentiates science from other things is the intentional practice of questioning one’s conscious and subconscious beliefs, not the absence of belief.
Authoritarian minded centrists always want to bludgeon people with the idea that science is just a set of facts handed down by authority, but that is a lazy and ultimately fundamentally incorrect way to understand and advocate for science. The mistake we made was letting the word “skeptic” be redefined from a lifelong practice of questioning one’s own beliefs to being what some random person who knows nothing about a subject is when they just decide not to believe in something for no good reason.
I disagree. Science is making models to explain the data and testing them. Whichever model fits best the data becomes a leading theory. There is no belief whatsoever.
This aside, I agree with you that many people tend to mistake scientific theories for reality, they are merely good models. Thinking otherwise is belief.
Let’s say the universe is a clock that we can’t open. Even if we make a perfect model that predicts the exact motion of the hands, it doesn’t tell us anything about what is inside the clock (it could be anything really). Belief is when you start believing your model IS what is inside the clock.
I agree it is not straightforward. Evolution arises from gene reproduction, flies are just one easy example because they reproduce very fast. Humans are also using genes reproduction and our evolution can be also be traced. The evidence for evolution is everywhere and it is the simplest explanation that fits all the data.
Flies are very different than humans, but they are built using the same building blocks and processes.
It is not belief it is observation: humans are composed of cells that contain chromosomes. Genetic data is mixed with errors during reproduction (both with flies and humans) resulting in different characteristics in the individuals of the next generation (observable with flies and humans)
Sexual attactiveness of individuals will depend on their genes and their environment (also based on observation), which will impact their number of offspring, effectively selecting some genes and discarding others.
All of this is based on simple observation and you sée that belief has no place in this line of reasoning.
Of course there is more to flies and humans than evolution, yet evolution is such a simple process that it applies to both! Nature is truly amazing
Where do you see belief in what I explained? I’m genuinely curious.
It can’t be the observations as you can make them for yourself, and you cannot find a model that fits the data better with less assumptions as it already fits the data perfectly and has no assumption beyond “organisms make copy of themselves with mutations”
you cannot find a model that fits the data better with less assumptions as it already fits the data perfectly and has no assumption beyond “organisms make copy of themselves with mutations”
It is just a logical statement. A theory must maximize data fitting and minimize assumption. You cannot beat a theory that fits all the data with only one assumption.
Sadly we are not having a debate as I’m giving arguments and you are not willing to criticize them on a core level. I hope other people find this one sided conversation useful.
I understand that this is a nice way to teach kids how science works, but if you don’t think belief factors into every single thing that humans do in science you are massively off the mark.
Even if belief is very present in human nature, the scientific method is not a form of belief because it is just selectionning the model that fits best the data.
Coming up with models does not necessarily require intuition either when we can automate this process.
Umm. So here’s the thing. The scientific method is the best system we have for learning things about the world around us. The problem is scientists are humans.
There are papers published in reputable journals written by lobbyists and special interests to use the trappings and gravitas of science to push their agendas. There are medicines on the market that mostly or entirely don’t work because they were in use before the FDA was a thing. There are lots of papers written by academics entirely to keep the grant money coming, or edited by university management to prevent casting the school in a bad light.
Science, as an institution, is not infallible, and should be examined and audited.
And indeed, a core principle of the scientific method is incredulity. A scientist publishes something, you’re supposed to say “That doesn’t seem right, I don’t think I believe it.” and then repeat the experiment to see if you get the same result.
It took me awhile to accept it. But apparently planting trees on the wrong area could actually contribute to global warming. E.g. Planting on areas, traditionally has no trees, while reforesting would contribute to lowering temperature.
I’m not sure there are many examples for that, since scientific journals all require peer review and there are many cases of poorly written studies costing a person their degree or credentials.
I don’t believe scientific progress is analogous with human progress or can be used to “decode” morality, ie the science vs religion dichotomy I don’t believe in. I don’t think science or “reason” guides human societies for instance. This belief is a result of studying Hume and moral philosophy. I think science tells us what is but not what ought to be, and that gap is irreconcilable through science alone, yet it can inform our sense of right and wrong. I disagree with objective morality as well, so the popularization of this science=objective morality idea that Sam Harris has attempted I disagree with entirely. I’m much more aligned with Patricia Churchland’s ideas here, and her popularization she outlines in her book “Braintrust.” I don’t think, as some do, that measuring brain activity decodes human morality, because I don’t believe such a thing exists. I don’t believe human society is controlled and determined by rational actors, I have a more Darwinian and Maxian view on that. When people profess things like “politics should be scientific” I likely agree with their sentiment but I think “science” is not the reason why, and more of a distraction/lazy way to assert being morally right about something, which science can’t actually do because it requires an appeal to human notions of morality, which science cannot determine as it has no measure of which values we ought to hold.
So you don’t care that the majority of people who abuse drugs are doing it to self-medicate something, be that pain, depression from the state of their life, or an undiagnosed neurological condition?
(Adderall is just a dilute relative of meth, and so has similar effects on ADHD brains, i.e. makes us more functional. Also, there is research showing that cannabis has a positive effect on autistic brains, which would explain why so many autistic people I know love their greenery. Plus, anecdotes from fellow ADHDers of “I microdose weed because it helps me focus better, and it’s easier to get than legal adderall”)
No. I don’t care. A junkie is a junkie. Having a neurological condition doesn’t give you an excuse to get whacked out on meth 7 days a week. CANCER is a disease. Addiction is NOT.
I say this as someone with ADHD and ASD, and as a person who lost a friend to addiction this year.
So, unpacking your worldview here, how do you feel about cancer brought about by smoking, or by prolonged exposure to materials that you know are radioactive and/or carcinogenic? Does that change with the knowledge that processed meat and plastics, things that are impossible to avoid unless you structure your life around limiting exposure to them, are most likely mild carcinogens?
Also, please tell me, regardless of how you classify addiction, that you at least understand that the only evidence-based approach to drugs is decriminalisation. Almost all of the societal ills associated with them are entirely the fault of their possession and sale being crimes. You can’t find safe environments to use them in if they’re illegal, nor can you feel safe seeking medical aid if you’ve taken too high a dose without realising it. If you’re a dealer, you have no regulatory bodies to answer to, and pay no taxes on the money you make. If you’re running organised crime, you’re already sitting on enough of a supply to land you in jail for the rest of your life, and that makes murdering competitors seem like a much more palatable option. And then there’s the developing world. Most of the money this makes ends up back in the hands of rebels, warlords and cartels in the developing world, where they cause untold misery and suffering.
But if you legalise them, that nips most of those problems in the bud. You can publicly admit to using them, feel safe seeking medical aid when you mistakenly take too much, get help from programs designed to end your dependence. The dealers go out of business, replaced by actual stores that pay taxes and follow regulations, like not being able to sell to minors or water down your product to sell more of it. Organised crime loses one of its biggest sources of money overnight, given that their expensive material of unknown origin and purity is suddenly replaced by cheaper material of known origin and purity. The cross-border smuggling also ceases, because what else are you going to find that is illegal, compact, and high in value? Oh, and the developing world can actually benefit from drug production, since the criminal groups will be greatly weakened from the loss of profits, and developed world importers would rather deal with legitimate businesses than violent criminals and rebels.
We learnt this shit a century ago with alcohol, one of the most destructive drugs (even meth would not be as destructive if legalised), why are we still doing it?
Believing that the moon landing was a hoax, or that dark matter doesn’t exist, is ultimately harmless. The same cannot be said of disagreeing with proven, helpful medical knowledge, in favour of a gut-feeling based alternative that only makes things worse. It is a moral imperative to make you realise you are wrong, or failing that, thoroughly demonstrate it to everyone watching, so your harmful ideas do not spread.
Well, for starters, thank you for answering the prompt.
But, I mean, the barebones definition of Disease is when the organism’s functions behave outside of their evolutionary purpose. I don’t think people evolved their brain’s Sigma Receptors and Dopaminergic Systems just to be triggered by Meth, much less to form a habit based on the results of that interaction, so by definition I think that fits the terminology.
2 people take the same dose of heroin, they repeat the experience 5 times each on the same time line. Lets say they both has the same surgery. One person stops easily, experiencing mild withdrawal that feels like a flu and goes on with their life without ever thinking about it again. The other feels a powerful compulsion to take more, they maintain their usage say initially through extending a medical script and later the black market.
What was different between the two? Maybe you think person 2 had terrible moral character but if they had never been given heroin this would never have manifested. We call that pathological difference a disease and try and treat it. What would you call it?
So you say the difference is some moral deficiency? ok well why don’t we try and treat that. After all we need pain killers in medicine and we want to make them as safe as possible.
Let’s call junkeyism a disease and see how we can stop it happening. Maybe by understanding if some people respond better or worse to different kinds of drugs, maybe we could identify a test we could do to work out what would be safe for someone?
Like what do you think it means when a doctor calls something a disease? People can make bad decisions and still get diseases. If inject yourself with the blood of everyone you meet you’ll eventually get a few, they don’t stop being a disease just because you gave it to yourself (and also we might ask why someone felt compelled to do something so foolish and could we have helped them).
Junkeyism ALSO isn’t a disease. It’s a bad decision. Tens of thousands of children die of cancer every year. Cancer- a REAL disease. A disease they never asked for.
Their cause of death shouldn’t be categorized alongside dipshits that chose to shoot drugs into their veins.
It’s very rude to just swear at someone who hasn’t done anything to you. You don’t seem very nice.
I’m still confused though, if someone ate some mercury because they bit down on a thermometer or something should their mercury poisoning not be diagnosed as mercury poisoning? should it not be treated the same way?
IQ score is a sham - the tests are quite fallible, and historically they were used as a justification to discriminate against people who are poorer or with worse access to education. Nowadays, I see it quite a lot in the context of eugenics, where some professors and philosophers attribute poor people being poor due to their low intelligence (low IQ score), and that they can’t be helped while rich people got where they are due to their intelligence (as in they have a high IQ score on average).
Not only that, but a lot of developmental disabilities are only recognized as needing accommodations if the person scores low enough on an IQ test. But many score high on these tests, but do poorly in school because they are stuck in a system that only values people who learn from lecture, repetition, and regurgitation. So they are considered lazy rather than needing help.
IQ testing is reification fallacy. If I told you I had an instrument that could objectively measure every human by how beautiful they are, you’d see the problem immediately.
IQ depends on their being one kind of intelligence. You only get one score and it’s the supposed measure of general intelligence. If street smarts vs. book smarts is a thing, IQ cannot be.
IQ measures racial difference that cannot be biological. Race is cultural, so since the test measures consistent difference between racial lines, it’s proof that it’s not measuring something biologically determined. It’d be like if IQ showed blondes really were dimmer than their peers, but you found out the effect carried over to bottle blondes.
I recommend the book “Mismeasure of Man” by Gould. His thesis shows the historical folly and logical impossibility of not just IQ, but biological determinism. I’ve just posted the common sense arguments against IQ, Gould brings the receipts.
But it doesn’t necessarily show if they have common sense. If you have many low complexity problems then maybe, but it can’t predict the best performers
Quantum entanglement. Having two particles latched in the same state even if separated by light years distance is something I currently cannot believe. Maybe too dumb, but my belief is that it ‘has’ to be some experiment error.
An incomplete but better than most pop science explanations is as follows: Suppose I have 2 envelopes and 2 letters. We have a stamp that has A and B on it next to each other. Without looking we put the letters next to each other, randomly Orient the stamp and apply it. Then we fold the letters up and put them in the envelops. Now we look at the stamp as see it has A and B on it.
We know that one letter contains A and the other B but not which, you take one and fly to Siberia while I enjoy a nice holiday in Tasmania (sorry but this is the sacrifice of science). I open my letter and see a B, instantly I know that in Siberia there is a letter containing A.
Light speed etc isn’t violated here because we travelled below light speed when setting it all up, I haven’t affected your letter just gained some insight about the overall system by inspecting one part of it.
Now there are a lot of things I’ve glossed over but it’s much closer to opening letters than psychic woo particles.
edit: as to keeping them latched it’s hard. The coupling is like conservative laws (e.g. spin up and spin down so no net overall spin) but any interactions destroy the coupling (or rather extend it to whatever just might’ve swapped spin with a particle). AFAIK nobody has maintained a system over lightyears for that reason among many, but like shipping pineapples to England the barrier appears practical rather than theoretical.
This is a good answer to the prompt, I wish people would stop downvoting the good ones like this so they could get sorted a little higher up in the comments.
It’s a great demonstration of why people are saying this prompt is indulging anti-science cranks. This person has not done any research and doesn’t understand the concept of entanglement, but they’re declaring that one of the most vigorously tested and fundamental ideas in modern science is wrong.
Yes but it’s also easier to discuss with them so long as you’re not a total asshole about it. Take for example concave brain_in_a_box’s comment insulting them and offering no insight in stark contrast to naevaTheGOAT’s comment explaining Quantum Entanglement in a concise manner.
Concave brain_in_a_box and naevaTheGOAT? Really? That’s the level you decided to go with while trying to argue that your prompt led to meaningful discussion and not lowest common denominator anti intellectualism.
Notice that they didn’t bother to reply to neava either. More to the point, it’s pretty unreasonable to have to craft long explanations to people basically saying that their ignorance is better than the entire scientific establishments knowledge. Especially when it will likely either get rejected or ignored. Just look how many times people have tried to explain dark matter in this thread.
Pretty sure the science is very clear that they are. Research papers about smartphones are enough to make the KGB Blush. A study not too long ago looked at the data being collected and sent by TikTok app, turned out the app’s installed data is more spyware than it is the app itself. I like using CalyxOS, which was built up from way back when Android was Open Source, personally because I can disable Microphone and Camera use with the slide-down screen.
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