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.
“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
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.
The idea that SSRI antidepressants work by increasing serotonin levels. If that were the case, why don’t they start working immediately? Instead, most people don’t see positive effects for several weeks.
Plus the idea that SSRIs work, period. They only work slightly better than placebo, and they count them as “working” as long as they help with a single symptom. So if they don’t help your depression at all, but they do help with your insomnia, they put that in the “it worked!” pile. That’s why suicide risk sometimes increases on SSRIs. They do nothing for your crippling depression except increase your motivation, so before you were depressed and couldn’t accomplish anything, and now you’re depressed, but also have the wherewithal to follow through on your suicide plan.
I have been having some mental health issues, and I was reading about this the other day. I was going through wikipedia with the various types of antidepressants, and it seems that SSRIs are just barely better than placebo, or even in studies not even better than placebo.
I know there are multiple classes of antidepressants out there. Are there any that do a better job, even if they are not as common?
There’s different definitions of depression, for one.
And “do a better job” is going to be defined by the individual.
But there are SSRIs, SNRIs and SDRIs like Wellbutrin. They have vastly different side effects and play on different systems (serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine) many people find SNRIs to be more effective, but again it’s all the individual.
If you’re suffering from depression, look into Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). After over a decade on SSRIs and other meds had failed, it turned my life around in six months. Literally life saving.
The effectiveness is proven (at much better rates than SSRIs), but the exact mechanism is under study.
But… There was a recent study that suggested that many cases of depression are caused by misordered neuron firing, where the emotional center of the brain fires before the “imagine the future” bit finishes firing. Normally, when a healthy brain imagines a future state, the emotional center fires in response to our anticipated feeling. (Imagination: We’re going to the movies. Emotions: FUN) But in a depressed brain, the emotional core fires immediately, resulting in the current, crappy mood being applied to every imagined future. (Emotions: Everything is shit. Imagination: We’re going to the movies?)
TMS may work as well as it does because one of the things it does is increase neuroplasticity, allowing the brain to correctly order the firing of our emotional response to imagined futures.
Anyway - TMS is right at the edges of our understanding of treating depression, but it really does work for a supermajority of patients.
For me, I went from having literally lost all emotions and being essentially dead (and being willing to die), to feeling… normal. I haven’t had a major depressive episode in the two years since. It’s been liberating.
I duno about any that work, but if a dr offers you effexor tell them hell fucking no. Everyone I have talked to about it agrees its fucking absolutely awful. Worst drug I have ever taken.
I was listening to a sleep scientist the other day and they were saying that one thing we know is that depressed people have more rem sleep on average, and SSRIs decrease the amount of rem sleep.
If it is something sleep based that goes some way to explaining why it takes time to have an effect. Building up or wiping out a sleep debt can’t happen instantaneously.
That’s interesting… because I always thought that REM sleep was the most important part of sleep, and more was better.
In fact, I read an article once that suggested that REM sleep was when our spinal fluid flushed all the waste material out of our brains at night (which leads to the types of dream that occur during REM sleep), which is also a process that prevents brains from being clogged with waste material.
I always thought that our brains being filled with waste material was part of depression, and that flushing out that waste material would help our brains function more correctly.
Sounds like the opposite - like, our depressed brains are depressed because they think too much?
Characteristic sleep-EEG changes in patients with depression include disinhibition of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, changes of sleep continuity, and impaired non-REM sleep.
Yeah, I think we have multiple types of sleep because we need them, and if you’re getting too much rem sleep at the expense of other types it’s going to cause problems.
They can’t work immediately because the body isn’t producing enough serotonin to have an immediate effect, nor would you want that. Over time serotonin reuptake is slowed and eventually this has a cognitive effect. That doesn’t help everyone but that doesn’t make them ineffective.
Science should be questioned by people who understand the science, not by random people who don’t understand the research. Which a lot of people who know nothing about the science or the maths/data or whatever try to question it
Yes, and people that challenge the science who then become scientists actually research/experiment thenselves. They don’t go and claim science is false until they have actual reason/evidence to believe so. One can question science all they want when they do their own science on the matter and it isn’t handily disproved beyond reasonable doubt by existing evidence.
Most science deniers do not do that. Making anti-science claims without obtaining solid, consistent evidence is not science.
“There’s no law against it” is a laughably stupid reason to do something. They’re free to do it but everyone else is free to acknowledge that their uneducated/misinformed skepticism is harmful to society and that their opinions are meaningless to those who aren’t dumb. Leave the contemporary science denial to those who actually somewhat know what they’re talking about.
Let’s touch grass together to measure how much photosynthesis grass can do? Please, it will be fun. But I’m open to another scientific experiment if you have anything in mind
The top comment is a proper debate about leading scientific theories, and the most downvoted comment is somebody who thinks the moon landing is faked, both of which have healthy and honest debate with goodwill from both sides.
This entire post is about Skepticism, which is an integral part of Science. To shut down the conversation would be Anti-Science.
This is like the second or third post I have seen in the past week talking about “belief” in science. Science isn’t about belief, it’s about understanding. Maybe this post should be, “What facts are you questioning because you don’t understand the underlying data?”
That might have been a better title but it would get less responses and also the title never mentions “belief in science” as you put it, the explicit title is something Scientific that you DON’T believe in.
A lot of people not wanting to disassociate the term believe from relgion here. I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. I also believe the sun doesn’t rise. Neither have to do with a religious belief system for me.
Do you not know what a metaphysic is? A metaphysic is something that affects the world without actually existing. Information is metaphysics. Law is metaphysics. Gender is definitely metaphysics. Science is too.
Y’all downvoting me because you’re taking offense to a word you can’t bother looking up the definition of. Peak stupidity and tribalism right here. You make up your identity(which is also a metaphysic) based on imagery and social appeal and sling shit just like chimps.
Everything is based in philosophy. Science is based in philosophy. Click the first blue link in every Wikipedia page that isn’t the pronunciation and you’ll go straight to philosophy after a few pages!
What it is, is an extremely powerful tool for reducing uncertainty about the world. Not eliminate, reduce. What it is not is a tool for “proving” “facts”. Claiming a “proven fact” is belief, not empirical science. An extremely consistent and useful theory, of course! But not a proven fact.
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.
In my head, “dark matter” and “dark energy” are the names we’ve given to the limits of our understanding. At some point in the future the news is going to break that an Einstein or a Feynman or a Hawking will publish a paper titled “So we figured out what’s causing the thing we’ve been calling dark matter this whole time.”
But that’s literally true and fully acknowledged by the physics and astronomy fields. It’s why those things received the names “dark.” Because currently we can’t see what’s causing those effects. And there are currently physicists and astronomers who spend their time researching these effects in hopes of publishing that exact “Hey! I figured out what it is” paper. Then we’ll praise that person, add their name to the pantheon and fail to acknowledge the hoards of other people who contributed to the foundational research that allowed them to finally figure it out.
That’s literally what dark energy and dark matter are though, place holder names for phenomena we don’t fully understand yet. I’m not sure how you weren’t aware of that.
Yes, I completely agree. Dark matter and dark energy are supposed to make up over 90% of the universe, yet we failed to detect them yet? No way! Those are just fill-ins, because our formulas are obviously not working that great on a grander scale.
This suggests the question why do most of the highly educated people who have spent their lives studying the question think differently? Why is the universe obligated to be made of something easy to measure and understand?
The universe isn’t obligated to us for anything, but we want to understand it and be able to make predictions. Right now we seem not to be able to do that.
EU carbon permits shot up from €20 and have been hovering under €100 a tonne post-COVID. ~€200 is when existing direct air capture starts to become competitive. If it can be scaled at that price, we might be closer than we think.
I mean, carbon capture works but if people are not willing to pay 5$ extra to prevent the CO2 from being emitted then they sure as hell are not going to pay 50$ to capture it. And capturing will almost always be more expensive than not producing it.
Okay yeah that’s true. I should have been cognizant that not being economically viable / efficient enough does not mean it’s impossible/I don’t believe it’s real. Definitely works.
Yes, an absolute scam. Perfect for a demonstration project for a big polluter to point at to discourage legislation that would threaten their business model. Not useful for reducing carbon emissions at scale.
Science articles that reference paywalled journals you can’t actually read. Most of them are probably making stuff up because they know no one will be able to call them out on it.
First, let me start off by saying that I agree with what I believe your actual premise is (or should be) - that articles in science journals should not be behind paywalls. I’m strictly against the practice, I think it’s a massive scam, and so does everyone I know who does research. I have paid to open source every paper I’ve published. Well, not me personally. But thank you taxpayers for funding me to not only do my work but to make sure you have access to it too. I’ll talk about this more at the end.
With that out of the way, I’d like to mention a couple of things. First, the scam is on the part of the academic journals, not the researchers or the journalists writing the articles. It’s not part of some scam to hide the fact that the journalist is making crap up. If the authors were unwilling or unable to pay the fees for open sourcing their papers ($3-5k when I was doing it several years ago), then you’re either going to be in an institution that has a subscription to the journal or you’re going to have to find some way of acquiring it.
Search for the exact title in quotes. Sometimes the Google Scholar engine will return with the default link to the pay walled page, sometimes it’ll have a link to a prepublication server. Arxiv is one of the more popular ones for physics, math, and computer science of all stripes. Step 2 is to go to the institution web page of the first author. Very often, researchers will keep an updated list of their publications with links to the PDFs. If that still doesn’t work, you can write the author and request the paper. We love those emails. We love it when people read our work, especially when they’re so excited that they wrote to request a copy. None of these involve copyright infringement. That prepub that you get is the same paper (usually but you can confirm with the author if that’s a question), but possibly without the masthead and layout from the journal. It’s still cited the same.
So, why are so many journals behind a paywall? Because the publishers want to monetize what today should be a cost free (or minimal) set of transactions. Here’s what happens:
I have an idea for some research. If it’s good and I’m lucky, I get money from the government (or whomever) to do the work, and I use it to pay my expenses (salaries, materials, equipment, whatever). I also get taxed on it by my institution so they can pay the admins and other costs. When submitting a proposal, those are all line items in your budget. If you’re doing expensive research at an expensive institution, it’s pretty trivial to set aside $10-20k for pub fees. If your entire grant was $35k, that’s a lot harder to justify.
You write the paper after doing the work. You don’t get paid to write the paper specifically - it’s part of the research that you are doing. The point here is that, unlike book authors, researchers see zero of any money you’d pay for the article. If you do locate a copyrighted copy, you’re not taking a dime out of my pocket. Again, just thrilled someone’s reading the damn thing.
You pick a journal and send it in. The journal has a contact list of researchers and their fields, and sends out requests for reviewers. They usually require 2 or 3.
The reviewers read the paper making notes on questions they have and recommend revisions before publication. Reviewing is an unpaid service researchers do because we know that’s how it works. The irony is that it challenges the academic notion of the tragedy of the commons. You could be a freeloader and never review, but enough people do it that the system keeps rolling.
You revise, reviewers approve, publisher accepts and schedules date. There can be some back and forth here (this is a legitimate publisher expense, but the level of effort and interaction isn’t like with a book editor).
Your paper comes out.
As you can see, the role of the publisher is very small in the overall amount of effort put into getting an idea from my head into yours. At one point publishers had an argument that the small circulation numbers for things like The Journal of Theoretical Biology justified their $21k/year institutional subscription price.
And I shouldn’t have saved this til the end, but for the one person who skimmed down to see where all of this was going:
Any science article / press release that cites a paper whether or not you have access to it at least is citing something that has undergone peer review. Peer review can only do so much and journal quality has a wide range, but it’s about the best we have. If it’s a big enough deal to actually matter and the media in question has wide enough reach to care, then it will get back to the author who can then clarify.
Appreciate the thoughtful and in-depth response. My worry is more that a science article’s editorialized interpretation of the paper may be wrong or misleading, than that the public isn’t very able to scrutinize the quality of science in the paper itself. Waiting for a possible email response from a researcher is pretty much always going to be a little too high effort for someone wanting to spend a few minutes comparing claims in the article and claims in the paper to potentially call bullshit on discrepancies between them in an online comment.
I absolutely agree with you there. I just commented a short time ago on an article about the effects of primate vocalizations on the human brain. The article not only got the conclusion of the paper wrong, they got the very nature of evolution wrong. I didn’t even have to read the paper - I haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s admittedly the kind of mistake non-biologists make. Journalists should probably avoid drawing conclusions that aren’t specifically in the source material. My point is that, going off of the author’s quotes the pulled and my own knowledge of evolutionary dynamics, I knew it was wrong. However, I am not at all sure that someone without a background in biology would be able to understand the paper well enough to catch the error in the article.
I am all for open access, and I share your frustration. I think you should be able to access any paper you want for free. But I’ll also say that if you don’t have the background in the subject to know what the underlying paper will have said, the chances are pretty good that you’re not going to understand the paper well enough to find the flaws.
I used to talk to a physicist named Lee Smolin who proposed a Darwinian model for universe formation. I can follow the evolutionary part, but when it gets down to the physics of it, I’m lost at sea. So when I read an article about him - I read something about him recently - I mostly have to go on my basic understanding because there’s no way I’d make it through that paper.
And literally the only reason I’m throwing this out there at all is that, unlike a physics paper that’s totally incomprehensible and obviously so, people believe in their own interpretations on social science or public health papers. I see more kinds of cherry-picking abuses and simple misunderstandings there than elsewhere.
I think most of the time it’s really not going to be as hard as all that, because the problem is something like, article makes broad claim based on a very easy to understand study where the data is results of survey questions. The paper clearly and explicitly outlined caveats and qualifications for their results, but the article chose to ignore these, so all that would be required to call them out on it is basic reading comprehension and the ability to copy paste a brief quote from the paper. Or maybe there are stark, obvious differences between the question asked in a survey and the claim of a clickbait headline.
Even for something more complex, if the paper is well written I think people without a background in the field could get stuff out of it, at least enough to spot direct contradictions between it and a summary. It’s just reading. A lot of people can read and have some higher education.
For that wikipedia article, I think it would make more sense if it expanded on “may differ slightly” and how that interacts with this criticism of black hole information transfer being impossible. Would that criticism imply the parameters for new universes must be always the same? Have infinite variance with no reference point? Not exist at all? Is “may differ slightly” a claim that each universe is a reference point around which the cosmological constants of child universes randomly vary a little bit and then there could be drift based on which constants result in a universe with more black holes? If that stuff was concisely clarified it would probably seem less arcane.
I’ve had a field day while writing my thesis recently, realising I could bypass the paywalls by accessing the papers through the university proxy. It’s still bs, though, because it leaves this stuff only accessible to researchers and not your regular people who may be interested.
Though like PrinceWith999Enemies said, many paper writers will happily send you a copy if you email them about it.
To add onto that, whenever a newspaper says “based on the findings of researchers at [Random University]” but they don’t list the citation anywhere at all. That is just evil, but somehow industry standard.
I think it’s more accurate to say it’s a combination of both. Some brains are equally powerful overall but differently specialized. There’s also different levels of specialization via education and experience. Two people can have similar skillsets with one being more specialized than the other.
But there’s also things like brain injuries, malfunctions, and breakdowns that can reduce overall capability. With these, it’s possible to be worse at everything without anything you’re better at.
But isn’t it outcome based? No matter how you process information, if your conclusions lead you to a sub-optimal solution to problems, whatever they are in whatever context, isn’t that “dumber” than someone that can come up with the best or better solution?
If I decide “god will provide” instead of “if I research, think and work hard enough I can fix this problem”, which one is exhibiting intelligence?
That’s just capitalism rewarding some lucky shmuck at the right place at the right time, not someone able to solve a problem faster or more intelligently.
Right so how do IQ tests work exactly? We are told they correlate with stuff but every time we dig into it we find the correlation is poor. I can’t think of a single thing humans can measure that corresponds with real world data so badly that is still taken seriously except praying for the sick.
Lol, old memory popped in my head of a classmate back in highschool. She asked “won’t the US sink if it gets over populated?” She was processing information way differently.
There are people in the comments denying literal, established, concrete facts. That’s not questioning anything,; that’s ignorance at best and malevolence at worst.
You decide what’s fact. Everything you ever thought you knew is stuff someone told you and you believed it based on their presentation. You’ve never seen evidence. You’ve seen them telling you there’s evidence.
I agree with you that science publishing can be of variable quality. One solution for the reader IS to never trust one paper alone, scientific knowledge is established when many papers are published about the same topic and give the same conclusions.
Journal Impact Factor (JIF), is a very important part of establishing credibility.
Reputable journals are very selective about what they publish. They’re worried about their JIF.
If you get published in a journal with a high JIF, you can be as close to possible as establishing a foundation of fact, as their articles have a high chance of being both reproducible and accurate.
If there was a casino that took bets for which scientific discoveries would be true ten years from now, I would make money all decade long by betting on high ranking JIF articles.
What if you’re doing the research real-time? What if you, yourself, have done the experiments which logically are evidence? There are a lot of things you can scientifically prove yourself. And there are a lot of phenomena you can mathematically prove without even doing the experiments, although you have to try to mitigate or account for chaos / the specific environment you’re working with.
Conspiracy bullshit like “you haven’t seen the scientific evidence so it might just all be made up by so-called scientists” is garbage. You are a nut if you think that. It is on the same level as flat-earthers and anti-vaxxers.
Oh yeah, I’m not against the idea of science. Doing it yourself from the ground up is pretty solid. All of your own experiences are at the very least valid as you experienced them.
If you can believe the scale of vote fraud Trump pulled off, you can believe that textbooks are often written with an interest in influencing our young. I’m mostly against history as it’s taught. It’s written by the victors and so much of it comes off as fables and allegories to keep people in line.
All of your own experiences are at the very least valid as you experienced them.
Scientific rigor states otherwise. You must be able to prove or repeat your experiences for them to be accounted as valid within the context of experimentation.
‘Doing your own research’ isn’t the silver bullet you may think that it is. Most laypeople don’t know what effective research actually looks like; let alone understand how to actually do it or the covariates that may truly be impacting their observations or research. Further still, some may not even care to know as they may already have established biases. More often than not, it simply leads to further conspiratorial thinking.
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.
Social “sciences” are the epitome of opinions being pushed as fact via the appeal to authority fallacy. Much of what falls under that label are baseless belief systems built upon towers of lies
Economics is purely based on assumption, at it’s core. There’s no proof the assumption is true, and recent trends seem to point towards it being false.
Economics assumes people are rational spenders.
But the “economy” is often just represented by the stock market, which is both not rational, and not a good measure of the economy. It’s a great indicator of how much wealth is being extracted from the working class, but it’s shit at representing how most of the money is being spent.
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