Knowledge and subjectivity. Origin of life

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by mjs, Mar 17, 2014.

  1. mjs Registered Member

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    Maybe Einstein and Galileo were not mainstream scientists at their time, but they were the BEST scientists at their discipline, only the world was not aware of it yet.

    The only scientific thing that i see in paranormal, human consiousness expansion, telepathy etc, is why so many people still believe in them in the year 2015. This is a real area for scientific research. I read recently an interesting article by a psychologist: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141030-the-truth-about-the-paranormal
    Also, another interesting scientific problem is that, although no aliens have visited earth yet, not any other signals of alien life was detected, so many people (that are not on drugs) believe that we are visited by ufos and aliens on a daily basis....hmmm
     
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  3. river

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    Not " maybe " they weren't , mainstream scientists
     
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  5. river

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    The lack of knowledge or investigation by yourself , into all these ologies , leads to your statements above
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Of course they were! Don't be so naive.
    Einstein consumed and evaluated all before him, such as Fitszerald, Lorentz, Michelson, Morley, Poincare, and Maxwell.
    Einstein was Imaginative and Innovative, two highly prized qualities of a good scientist...but he was also humble and quite able to admit to errors and mistakes in judgments.
    In fact it was his greatest mistake to "automatically " adhere to the accepted static Universe model, once he had put together GR, and invoke his CC to purposely align with that static concept.
    So much for Einstein not being mainstream.

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    Last edited: Nov 2, 2014
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  8. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    And those TV programs such as X-Files and Millenium, certainly have a lot to answer for.

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  9. river

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    So the mainstream thinking before Einstein was what he was thinking ?
     
  10. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Einstein gathered many bits of relevant information from many mainstream sources, and put them together, and to his credit, came up with SR.
    With GR later on, Einstein was in keeping with the thinking at that time of a static Universe, although GR was telling him otherwise.
    He inserted the CC to align with that static Universe.
    Later when another mainstream scientist [Edwin Hubble] confirmed Universal expansion, Einstein called it his greatest blunder.
     
  11. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    What you are doing river, is confusing peer reviewed Imaginative and Innovative thinking, and new discoveries, with unreviewed, unproven, unsubstantiated, and unevidenced cock-eyed dreaming and wishful thinking.
     
  12. river

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    What happens when the thinker is beyond the peer review group ?
     
  13. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Thinking is open to every human being, as well as most animals.
    Not everyone's thinking is correct or right or even intelligent.
    Thinking is also refined by knowledge of giants of the past and present.
    That's why we have peer review...to sort the wheat from the chaff.
    And so far it has been pretty successful.
     
  14. river

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    you haven't answered the question ? pad
     
  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Sure I have. It just rubbishes the silly paranoid beliefs you are under.

    Again.....
    Thinking is open to every human being, as well as most animals.
    Not everyone's thinking is correct or right or even intelligent.
    Thinking is also refined by knowledge of giants of the past and present.
    That's why we have peer review...to sort the wheat from the chaff.
    And so far it has been pretty successful.
     
  16. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Quite right. He made, as innovative scientists often do, a brilliant synthesis of the cutting edge work done to date by the people you listed, by means of his key insights. But he solved the problem everyone was trying to solve, and he did so by studying what they had done and building on it.

    There is this silly myth around that "they laughed at Einstein". They did no such thing. His talent was apparent when he was a teenager, to the extent that he was offered advice by by the Principal of ETH in Zurich on where to study, after he had failed the general paper in the entrance exam. His reputation was established by the time he was 30. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
     
  17. mjs Registered Member

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    Einstein’s ideas were not mainstream in the beginning, but certainly he was a formal scientist and he relied on previous technical knowledge to propose something new. This new stuff maybe difficult to understand at first, and yes maybe sometimes be beyond the level of peer-reviewers if true, has 2 qualities: 1) Even a failure in a single experiment can prove it wrong 2)it changes the face of the discipline with providing new game changing knowledge.

    Ufologies, telepathy, mind expansion, flat earth, dragons, fairies, etc have the following problems:

    a)They are not new ideas. In fact they are ancient beliefs that existed before any kind of human progress occurred. Of course, they failed to produce predictable experiments over and over again for thousands of years. For sure they have no role in research journals, ie a place were new ideas are proposed.

    b)They are based on poor reasoning, based on hypothetical events or even delusional. At best, they are luckily coincidences and not the norm. But it is mathematically proven that any crazy coincident will happen somewhere in the world, as a result of pure mathematics and propabilities. Are there any statistically significant findings based on studies on groups of people? If yes, science can consider all these ideas, but isolated reports don’t count.

    c)Apart from this, all finding should be repeatable by other, independent researchers or researcher teams.
     
  18. Enoc Registered Senior Member

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    Actually I think that life is about money and only money.

    In the world we live in money is actually more important for most people than science. That is why scientists don't actually make a lot of money unless they discover something that sells extraordinarily.

    It makes me sad to think this truth that the world revolves around money.

    For example if a teacher won the $350 million dollar mega jackpot, he/she would quit their job. Thats how much they really care about their job, and their students.

    If a politician, or president won the $350 million dollar mega jackpot he/she would quite their job, I don't see them being in office, doing a stressful job, etc, its all for money at the end of the day, to feed your children, to pay for your house, etc. (Yup after getting all that money, leave it in the hands of someone else, its not their problem anymore, that's how much they genuinely care deep inside)
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2014
  19. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Quite a lot of truth in what you say.
    I'm an optimist though, and firmly believe [and hope] that as we get more technologically advanced, and combine our resources [eg: manned trip to Mars] we will see the error of our ways.
    I'm also a firm believer that one day we will get to the stars, but to achieve this we will have to do it as a united species.
     
  20. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Hmm. I'll give you an example. I submitted a grant a couple years back. They rejected, and mostly on the basis of the first reviewer, whose central complaint was that it was "too much genetics... you can't assume that everyone is a genetics expert". Or to that effect. This was on a grant that I'd dumbed down as much as I could for the non-genetic audience, and the complaint was that there was still too much genetics. Which they assigned to a non-geneticist. When I get paper review requests for areas that I don't work in, I return them. I don't play along and hope I'll get it. The reviewer process is about as good as the reviewers. If it were really so benevolent, it would be an open process.
     
  21. Forceman May the force be with you Registered Senior Member

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    As long as there are people in the universe to view it there will be life with people. People have always been around so there has always been life. The problem is if there has always been life then when would an origin of morality kick in making it improbable for life to evolve past a particular point.
     
  22. Xanthippe Registered Member

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    When you lose out on frontiers/space as the population expands and curbing competitive violence would demand a co-operative morality - an institutionalized dumbing down to maintain internal stability, that I've elaborated in my Notes on Modernity thread here.
     
  23. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    5,160

    Morality appeared because of free choice and will power. Animals lack free choice. They maintain their instincts which integrate them with nature via ecosystems. Human free choice allows us to break away from the integration of natural instinct, in favor of ego-centric choices and short term solutions. These free choices may not be not good in the longer term for either oneself or the group/species. Morality appeared as a way for humans to re-approximate natural instinct, so the species and culture could progress, while still allowing free will for progressive choices. Not all free will was restricted, just some categories.

    Morality was never about the ego-centric needs of individual choice. Rather morality was designed to maximize the group, similar to the way instinct maximizes a species. Immorality increases the resource cost to the group. This extra cost puts the group at risk. For example, sex outside of marriage, often results in the state having to pay for the needs of illegitimate children. This is an extra social cost that would put a strain on a poor ancient culture. These extra resources should be used for their defense or for building the culture, not for maintaining the immorality of a few.

    Back in the day when morality was formed, culture was poor and life was rough and constantly at risk from natural and social destruction. Culture could not afford an extra expense that was preventable. Morality restricted social behavior to minimize extra social costs. If you look at the ten commandments, each one prevents extra social costs. If you commit adultery or steal, this can divide the group and require resources for personal defense and countermeasures. There is less for cultural growth.

    In modern first world cultures, that have plenty of resources, the added cost of immorality is easier to absorb. These hidden costs makes the uninformed assume all behavior is relative. But such people tend to lack math skills; liberal arts, and don't do a cost balance that clearly shows all behavior is not relative when it comes to social resources. Some behavior has a larger social cost and is therefore lower level behavior.

    In America, if culture decided not to fund immorality, since all is relative (morality is not funded the same way), there would be high rates of attrition, due to immorality, from disease, crime and from unsupported children. This would not be good for culture since even those people are needed as hands on deck. So standards of morality are maintained to protect culture and the immoral from the costs of immorality.
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2014

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