Taken from http://www.thebirdman.org/

"All the news that gives others fits to print."

"The time for violence is when they come for your guns." --JBR Yant

"Ideas are more dangerous than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?" --Josef Stalin

"Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty."
--Madame de Stael

"Making shishkebob out of sacred cows - Proving everything you know is wrong"

To attempt to silence a man is to pay him homage, for it is an acknowledgement that his arguments are both impossible to answer and impossible to ignore. --JBR Yant

Bigotry: Your enemies' opinions; as opposed to Truth: Your own.--JBR Yant

Crush your enemies. Make them your friends. --JBR Yant

Fucking is a family value. --JBR Yant

"Free speech is offensive speech." - JBR Yant

"The reason men are silenced is not because they speak falsely, but because they speak the truth. This is because if men speak falsehoods, their own words can be used against them; while if they speak truly, there is nothing which can be used against them -- except force."

"A good writer should be both insightful and inciteful."

"Things are interesting to the extent that they arouse controversy; and things which are the most interesting are those which are cursed and consigned to Hell."

"To be taken seriously, you must first offend. If you do not, people will say, "Oh, he's just like so-and-so, with perhaps a touch of such-and-such", and forget about you entirely; while if you touch a raw nerve, you at least know that you are on the pathway to the brain. The point is, men will rarely think new thoughts without a jolt, and if you expect them to think the ones you have, then you must first crash your way into their consciousness."

Gun control: The belief that no one has the right to shoot back.

Welfare: Taking money from the productive and giving it to the unproductive so they can not only remain unproductive, but can breed even more unproductives.

Bigotry: Your enemies' opinions; as opposed to Truth: Your own.--JBR Yant

Why is it that people can use this to describe other people's false "truth", and then be so completely simple-minded as to fail in applying it to themselves?

Why is it that people can use this to describe other people's false "truth", and then be so completely simple-minded as to fail in applying it to themselves?

It's absolute moralizing. A scientist on the other hand would simply want to know if the statement is true: look at the data to either confirm or reject.

It's absolute moralizing. A scientist on the other hand would simply want to know if the statement is true: look at the data to either confirm or reject.
Science deals in context as well, not just mindless analysis of data. Analyzing data without deriving meaning is just mental masturbation.

And as much as I would apply the statement about "truth" to many people, it isn't a "true statement" per se, because there are many people who don't look at "truth" in this relative way - it is just a description of a mental process many people use.

Science deals in context as well, not just mindless analysis of data. Analyzing data without deriving meaning is just mental masturbation.

And as much as I would apply the statement about "truth" to many people, it isn't a "true statement" per se, because there are many people who don't look at "truth" in this relative way - it is just a description of a mental process many people use.

Yes, "truth" depends on what method one values to find "truth." I choose a method that produces tangible/empirical results. The scientific method produces results I value: medicines, cars, planes, computers, electronics, etc., it provides "truth" that I can actually use to alter my environment in ways I desire. Sure, the Scientific Method does not show "truth" in some absolute sense, but rather in a sense I personally perceive as producing tangible/practicle results.

"Playing God is indeed playing with fire. But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discovery. We play with fire and take the consequences, because the alternative is cowardice in the face of the unknown." (Dworkin, 2000)

Sure, the Scientific Method does not show "truth" in some absolute sense, but rather in a sense I personally perceive as producing tangible/practicle results.The whole point of the scientific method is to accept truth as a relative measure and deal with it quantitatively.

Science is like the Western legal system: Like an accusation of a crime, all theories must be disprovable, not provable, in order to be accepted in the discourse. And just like guilt need be established only beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond all possible doubt, the truth of a theory need only be established beyond a reasonable doubt. In both cases the possibility usually exists that evidence disproving the accusation or the theory could conceivably arise in the future, but that probability is reduced to an acceptably low level by the process of establishing relative truth quantitatively.

This is what the two fundamental principles of science are all about:
1. Extraordinary assertions require extraordinary substantiation.
2. The simplest explanation for an observed phenomenon is most likely the correct one ("Occam's Razor").

Because of the low level of doubt, statistically, so very little of what we accept as scientific truth will ever be overturned, that our view of the universe is stable and can be built upon. As a result we have indeed used it to produce "tangible and practical results" like the computer you're using to read this.

The religious view of the universe (in most religions anyway) is a stark contrast.
1. Religious "theories" are ultimately derived from faith, not observation, and as such can never be disproven. There is no way to assign a probability of truth to any of them.
2. As science marches on and we develop an ever-more detailed and precise understanding of how the universe works, religious theories come to violate Occam's Razor ever-more egregiously. Many of them provide explanations so complicated, so rife with missing steps, and so flawed by circular logic--for phenomena that scientific theories explain succinctly and elegantly--that they defy any reasonable definition of "simplest" and stand as monuments to the unique human ability be unreasonable.

Regarding the tenet that for something to be scientifically sound, it must be falsifiable, can you give an example of this: take something that is currently accepted as scientific fact, and then give a hypothetical way it can be falsified.
Thanks.

Pretty much anything written by Ambrose Bierce fits. Except for the times when he tries too hard.

Regarding the tenet that for something to be scientifically sound, it must be falsifiable, can you give an example of this: take something that is currently accepted as scientific fact, and then give a hypothetical way it can be falsified.

General relativity. It was predicted that gravitational lensing would be a consequence of this particular model of the universe. During an eclipse stars close to the sun should be displaced due to the sun's gravity. If this didn't occur, then the theory of relativity would have been shown to be false.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=37889&fbodylongid=1786


An example from the other side of the fence.
String theory. There is no way, at present, to test any of the tenets of string theory. Therefore, it is not really a theory at all. It's mental masturbation.
Perhaps someday there will come a technology that is able to test it, at this time it will move into the realm of science as opposed to theoretical mathematics.


This is all pretty basic stuff.
Tell me. You're not the kind of person who worships science as a proponent of truth, are you? You do realize that there is a problem with the justification of knowledge and that induction is philosophically incapable of proving anything? That theory is simply the best fit explanation for any series of observations and will likely be turned over in favor of a new theory in the fullness of time?

If not, I suggest you read some Popper, Deutsch, or Penrose.

You do realize that there is a problem with the justification of knowledge and that induction is philosophically incapable of proving anything? That theory is simply the best fit explanation for any series of observations and will likely be turned over in favor of a new theory in the fullness of time?

I agree with you. What made you think otherwise?

I agree with you. What made you think otherwise?

Just curious.
Your request for examples of falsification seemed to indicate that you were one of the many who seem to think that science is about truth with a capital T. You'd be surprised how many people don't understand science. They're closet religionists with science as their new god.

Just curious.

Your request for examples of falsification seemed to indicate that you were one of the many who seem to think that science is about truth with a capital T. You'd be surprised how many people don't understand science. They're closet religionists with science as their new god.

I just wanted to have a better understanding of the tenet of falsification.

Yes, I'm not a truth absolutist, I understand that theories are just provisional truths until further data overturn it: we use the law of parsimony and ensure repeatability and predictabilty and then deam the solution as the current best practical explanation.

I'm one of those that believe "absolute" truth cannot ever be known.

There is no way, at present, to test any of the tenets of string theory. Therefore, it is not really a theory at all. It's mental masturbation. Perhaps someday there will come a technology that is able to test it, at this time it will move into the realm of science as opposed to theoretical mathematics.The word "theory" doesn't have the same meaning in mathematics as in the physical sciences. Wikipedia says it fairly well:A theory. . . is a set of statements. . . which is closed upon application of certain procedures called rules of inference. . . Theories used in applications are abstractions of observed phenomena and the resulting theorems provide solutions to real-world problems. Obvious examples include arithmetic (abstracting concepts of number), geometry (concepts of space), and probability (concepts of randomness and likelihood).With my limited understanding of string theory (when is somebody going to write a good explanation "For Dummies"?) I'd say it falls as much into the realm of mathematics as physics.

2. The simplest explanation for an observed phenomenon is most likely the correct one ("Occam's Razor").
I wish there was a better way to state this.
Pretty much everything we know about science is more complicated than many alternate explanations available.
Even "proven" theories within science (Newton's theory of gravity is less complicated than einstien's), belie the truth of Occam's razor when stated this way. Occam's razor is not meant to be evidence for a theory but rather a method for science, a tool, i.e., "test the simpler theory first, and you will cut out a lot of wasted time".

Stated the way people usually put it, it would be evidence that God creates consciousness, as that would be simpler explanation than the vast ambiguous set of "maybe"s we have now. As much as I would like to have that proof, Occam's razor just doesn't work that way.
Occam's razor is a great tenet of science, and extremely useful for reasearch, but is an obviously false assumption if used as a proof.

Stated the way people usually put it, it would be evidence that God creates consciousness, as that would be simpler explanation than the vast ambiguous set of "maybe"s we have now.This would be "simpler" only to the simple minds that don't think beyond lunch. If everything in the universe were creations rather than the results of the working of natural laws, then that must apply to everything. So who or what created God? The original explanation now becomes a very complicated one because of all the missing bits that need to be collected. At some point in the ensuing discussion, if indeed any religionist has stuck around to hold a discussion, the religionists will start tossing around the term "blasphemy" and as far as they're concerned that ends the discussion.

The ambiguity in our understanding of consciousness is small compared to the ambiguity in a refusal to reason at all.

They are perfectly willing to give answers to our questions so long as the answers are the ones that were already scripted for them back in the Stone Age. If the question requires any degree of unconventional thought, they fall back on faith. "God never gave me that answer but I have faith that he has one."

Of course we have "faith" too, but ours is a reasoned faith. It is a faith in probability theory, a faith based on the observation that the ways of assigning probablities to events are, themselves, based on centuries of observing events that have already transpired and abstracting a mathematical theory to describe their pattern of outcomes.

It's like the "Law" of Gravity. If one day we start seeing apples falling upward, we'll cheerfully repeal that law. Our belief that the possibility of that happening is infinitesimal is not based so much on faith as on knowledge.

This would be "simpler" only to the simple minds that don't think beyond lunch. If everything in the universe were creations rather than the results of the working of natural laws, then that must apply to everything. So who or what created God?
That is a huge assumption.
"If God created everything, what created God?", is not a problem. Man creates everything man creates, and yet nothing but time and the pressure of existence may have created man.
Perhaps God evolved from non-physical forces we don't have measurement for, into a being that was advanced enough to create the physical world, just like humans can create whether or not they are created. Of course that is not a scientific answer, but my point was not to use Occam's razor wrongly to prove a presently unproveable point, it was to show that the common description of Occam's razor could easily be misused.

Also, another assumption is that everything works according to the systems we have created to describe our universe, which seems to me highly improbable considering our level of information - can we even measure the specific path of the electron with a testing instrument yet? That seems like pretty basic stuff considering the fact that we can't even begin to find out about what happens inside a singularity like a black hole, much less what happens in the dimensions we only have mathematical hints about. EDIT - we could very well be at a point analogous to the invention of the lever and the scale for weighing physical mass when it comes to really measuring our universe.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think religion or philosophy are science, so I would never even try to use Occam's razor to describe something it doesn't apply to. I am just saying that Occam's razor is about an order for testing for theories that can be tested, and it is not a valid test in itself. Einstein's theory, among hundreds of others, would invalidate it if it were.

EDIT - the God thing is not my point - can we all just agree that Occam's razor is not proof of validity in any way and stop using it that way, at least here on sciforums, where we should know better? Just look at theories about disease, I mean one disease is caused by genetic mutation, others by little creatures with rna, others (supposedly) by weird proteins with no conceivable life of their own or reason to multiply.
How simple is all that???