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Science is Drokking Fantastic Because...

Started by The Legendary Shark, 21 July, 2011, 11:05:57 PM

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Jim_Campbell

Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
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ZenArcade

The triumvirate set out by TB play on some people's yearning for more than what they see set out in what they see as a humdrum existence essentially with out concrete meaning; they are the modern (well not so modern) equivalent of nineteenth century snake oil sellers.
They have no place on a science thread....they would however be main stage actors on a debunking of farcical bullshit thread. Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

TordelBack

There can be some fun to be had with those guys, in the same kind of vein as Fortean Times, which I've always really enjoyed.  But science?  No.

Definitely Not Mister Pops

We could start a new thread called Pseudoscience is Drokking Hilarious because...
You may quote me on that.

ZenArcade

Good suggestion KP, maybe our cartilaginous friend Mr Shark could set it up....c'mon Sharky you know you want to. Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

The Legendary Shark

No, Z, I don't want to do that at all.
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In my view, this is one of science's biggest flaws - the out of hand dismissal of anything that falls outside contemporary paradigms and the automatic scorn heaped upon anyone who investigates these things. Does Hoagland get everything right? Almost certainly not. Does he get everything wrong? Almost certainly not.
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The Earth is round? Rubbish! Diseases caused by tiny invisible creatures? Rubbish! We're descended from apes? Rubbish! Man can travel to the Moon? Rubbish!
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Most science begins with an idea, with imagination, that is initially unproven and often regarded as unprovable and even daft. Those people who decide to investigate these ideas are often villified and sometimes even tortured and killed (though not so much nowadays, thankfully).
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In my view, these fringe investigators should be if not outright supported then at least encouraged. Who knows what part of their work might actually yield valuable insights? Is this not what science is all about? Taking something unexplained and making sense out of it?
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We can disbelieve something all we want, but to pour scorn on an idea, and its proponents, just because we don't "believe" it is more dogmatic than scientific. If you don't believe something then by all means say so and, if its something you passionately disbelieve, do the work to disprove it but don't just point and laugh because that accomplishes nothing at all useful.
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I understand that science shouldn't get bogged down believing everything that everybody says but neither should it limit itself by dismissing everything it doesn't currently agree with. It is this scornful and dismissive attitude which I find most disappointing about science, scientists and science fans.
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It is the job of religion to demonise. It is the role of science to investigate.
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JPMaybe

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 December, 2014, 04:08:26 AM
It is this scornful and dismissive attitude which I find most disappointing about science, scientists and science fans.
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It is the job of religion to demonise. It is the role of science to investigate.

The kind of evidence-free, unfalsifiable drivel cooked up by credential-free crackpots like Hoagland deserves scorn.  Science has occasionally followed something loosely approaching the Kuhnian paradigm model in the past, which is what I assume you're talking about, but that at least requires a falsifiable hypothesis in the first place.  Hoagland's prediction free, unparsimonious claptrap doesn't even present that.

I pour scorn on this kind of bollocks because it has all the intellectual rigour of an astrology column, and absolutely zero respect for the actual hard, demanding, unforgiving scientific method- the one that requires evidence and work.

Also, fact wise, we've known the earth was round since the ancient Greeks.  Germ theory was accepted as soon as repeatable experimental evidence was presented in its favour. 
Quote from: Butch on 17 January, 2015, 04:47:33 PM
Judge Death is a serial killer who got turned into a zombie when he met two witches in the woods one day...Judge Death is his real name.
-Butch on Judge Death's powers of helmet generation

ZenArcade

Gotta say the empirical process is where it's at Shark. Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

TordelBack

#893
Quote from: JPMaybe on 20 December, 2014, 10:20:01 AMGerm theory was accepted as soon as repeatable experimental evidence was presented in its favour.

As has happened with basically everything.  For me the key word in your post there JP was 'unparsimonious'. What makes Hancock et al fun is that their work throws economy of explanation out the window in favour of the most complex causes imaginable, all deliciously unfalsifiable, and thus engaging and entertaining.  That's what's enjoyable about it, and indeed as Shark tangentially says, in throwing out original flights of fancy it may have some value - if any of the ideas generated could be turned in testable hypothesis.  The reason that 'science fans' dismiss these things out of hand is because  (a). the premises of the arguments are usually based on utterly selective uncritical data; (b). the explanations offered always depend on far more complicated setups than the phenomena they purport to explain. 

E.g. Phenomenon: some carefully aligned large stones; Explanation: superintelligent aliens, interstellar transport, entire vanished civilisations based on ancient extraterrestrial contact, all of which require causes and origins vastly more elaborate and unknown than science's one for the same pile of rocks: 'clever humans + time'.
 
If/when these lads get out there and do the work, winnowing the evidence, constructing and testing hypotheses, no-one will dismiss them.  Like a spooky man once said, I want to believe. 

Spikes

Quote from: TordelBack on 19 December, 2014, 09:49:02 PM
There can be some fun to be had with those guys, in the same kind of vein as Fortean Times, which I've always really enjoyed.  But science?  No.

I'm reminded of the time when the X-Files was first hitting our TV screen's, and a whole raft of these fanciful magazines, and books, starting coming out. And everywhere you looked, it was faces on Mars, and Area 51, and Bob Lazar, and Timothy Good.

One lad were I worked, would often bring them in for us to read.
Enjoyable for a while, but I rather wittily said "They ought to re-name this magazine 'Pure nonsense and blurred photograph's monthly'....



Quote from: ZenArcade on 19 December, 2014, 09:32:02 PM
The triumvirate set out by TB play on some people's yearning for more than what they see set out in what they see as a humdrum existence essentially with out concrete meaning; they are the modern (well not so modern) equivalent of nineteenth century snake oil sellers.
They have no place on a science thread....they would however be main stage actors on a debunking of farcical bullshit thread. Z

^ And this sums it up for me as well. Bullshit merchants and liar's.

JPMaybe

Quote from: TordelBack on 20 December, 2014, 10:54:16 AM
Quote from: JPMaybe on 20 December, 2014, 10:20:01 AMGerm theory was accepted as soon as repeatable experimental evidence was presented in its favour.

As has happened with basically everything.  For me the key word in your post there JP was 'unparsimonious'. What makes Hancock et al fun is that their work throws economy of explanation out the window in favour of the most complex causes imaginable, all deliciously unfalsifiable, and thus engaging and entertaining.  That's what's enjoyable about it, and indeed as Shark tangentially says, in throwing out original flights of fancy it may have some value - if any of the ideas generated could be turned in testable hypothesis.  The reason that 'science fans' dismiss these things out of hand is because  (a). the premises of the arguments are usually based on utterly selective uncritical data; (b). the explanations offered always depend on far more complicated setups than the phenomena they purport to explain. 

E.g. Phenomenon: some carefully aligned large stones; Explanation: superintelligent aliens, interstellar transport, entire vanished civilisations based on ancient extraterrestrial contact, all of which require causes and origins vastly more elaborate and unknown than science's one for the same pile of rocks: 'clever humans + time'.
 
If/when these lads get out there and do the work, winnowing the evidence, constructing and testing hypotheses, no-one will dismiss them.  Like a spooky man once said, I want to believe.

I guess I find it far more tragic than fun.  If someone like Hoagland ever does provide an idea of value it will be accidentally, in the manner of a bust clock twice a day.  Carefully  aligned large stones that aren't really carefully aligned, a sodding image artefact: I'm not sure even a human astronaut standing on Mars saying "yup, no alien ruins here" would be enough.
Quote from: Butch on 17 January, 2015, 04:47:33 PM
Judge Death is a serial killer who got turned into a zombie when he met two witches in the woods one day...Judge Death is his real name.
-Butch on Judge Death's powers of helmet generation

ZenArcade

It wouldn't: because nut bags would be saying she didn't land on Mars; but that it was faked in a studio or with CGI. Z
Ed is dead, baby Ed is...Ed is dead

Mikey

#897
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 December, 2014, 04:08:26 AM
In my view, this is one of science's biggest flaws - the out of hand dismissal of anything that falls outside contemporary paradigms and the automatic scorn heaped upon anyone who investigates these things.

...

I understand that science shouldn't get bogged down believing everything that everybody says but neither should it limit itself by dismissing everything it doesn't currently agree with. It is this scornful and dismissive attitude which I find most disappointing about science, scientists and science fans.
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It is the job of religion to demonise. It is the role of science to investigate.

The role of science is also to test other science! That's a fairly crucial bit I think.

Something that doesn't seem to be acknowledged much is that, on the whole, scientists of any stripe are supposed to be kind of professional cynics. Generally, I'd say if you're talking about big, initially controversial ideas it takes a long time to change minds and that will only come about when there is sufficient evidence that allows the previous models or whatever to become obsolete - sometimes it can be a 'trend' thing rather than a complete dismantling of previous work. Even then a lot of scientists keep working with the 'older' stuff if its still giving results or is still a useful approach to certain problems.

For example, there was a paradigm shift in glaciology brought about by the advent, or availability, of high quality satellite imagery which allowed previously glaciated terrain to be viewed synoptically for the first time. This showed that the recent ice sheets were highly dynamic by providing evidence of in some cases the multiple changes in ice sheet geometry that occurred during glaciation. Before that, essentially people stood on hills and looked at muck to try and model ice sheet history piece by piece, and the general view was that ice turned up, sat there, then fucked off again - this approach is still alive and kicking and is all part of the story, but that change in scale and process perception has happened because it was too hard to argue against the evidence.

I'm not overly familiar with yer man Hoagland - I've not read any of his stuff, or heard him speak about it so I'll defer to my learned forumites on that one, but I also think that the first imagery of the Cydonian Head is one of the greatest images humans have ever created. Quite apart from the achievement of getting the image in the first instance, its such a fantastic thing to hang yer what ifs on and we can all agree it looks just like a face. It's incredibly unifying as it goes straight to the primate masterboard in the noggin, dunnit?

M.
To tell the truth, you can all get screwed.

The Legendary Shark

Well, I don't know if there's anything in what Hoagland says or not - but I suspect that there is. I know that suspicion is not science but I'm only simularae Selachii. I'm as prepared for him being right as I am for him being wrong. I have seen some of the images he's pointed out and sometimes I can see what he does and sometimes I can't.
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I have spent hours and hours looking through NASA's online image galleries and seen a lot of obviously natural stuff and a small amount of seemingly unnatural stuff.
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I have also had direct experience of seeing a poorly altered NASA image of Mars, full of anomalies, replaced - you might remember that I wrote about that on this board as it was happening. It is one of the greatest frustrations I've ever known to be unable to prove that. (Of course, it's entirely possible that said image was just something a bored NASA imaging technician had been doodling on while he waited for something else to render but it did not look like that to me.)
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Anyway, speaking of proper science, this year's Ig-Nobel prize for biology went to the team who, after investigating the sensitivity of our canine cousins to magnetic fields, discovered that dogs prefer to defacate and urinate along a north-south axis.
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news.discovery.com/tech/2014-ig-nobel-prize-winners-photos-140919.htm
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Richmond Clements

QuoteI have also had direct experience of seeing a poorly altered NASA image of Mars, full of anomalies, replaced - you might remember that I wrote about that on this board as it was happening. It is one of the greatest frustrations I've ever known to be unable to prove that.

This is some of the most egregious bollocks I have ever read - and that's saying something. NASA is a publicly funded body - BY LAW everything they do and every picture they take has to be available to the public.
To suggest that a picture was loaded to their website (a process that takes a few days, usually, from the pictures arriving) then someone realised it had, I dunno, fucking ET waving at the camera, and then removing it, altering it and putting it back is just fucking stupid.