Why do most people find science boring?

Discussion in 'General Science & Technology' started by Magical Realist, Oct 19, 2014.

  1. river

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    How? What parameters are you using?
     
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  3. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Layman is OK with me bruce.

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    I have no qualms about admitting that either to the trolls and anti science nuts, nor to those that are scientists or cosmologists.
    Thanks anyway!

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  5. river

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    Of course the layman is ok with you pad because you are one, obviously.
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    In case you missed it........
    http://time.com/3971472/neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-universe/
    Neil De Grasse tyson is doing a lecture tour in Australia next month[August] I'm doing my best to get a ticket.
     
  8. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't suggest you're not a layman. Being a layman associated with these subjects requires intellectual honesty. Something a large contingent of this forum membership refuses to acknowledge. I saw where Rajesh wanted t dis me for my career in the oil industry. This is how it would have gone. He wouldn't have been considered for an engineering position. Because I would have been involved in his interview and I made sure we wouldn't bring intellectually dishonest cranks onto our team. His listing his place of employment on that crank paper he submitted to us would have really pissed me off. Like showing your ass in public.
    Ohh by the way. Thanks for defending me. We both would have fired him but you would be kind enough to tell him why.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2015
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  9. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    It'll be so cool. Your head will be in the stratosphere. Maybe we could have a group discussion about what question you'd ask if the chance presents itself? Then you could do want you want regardless. LOL. I wonder if he has a fav Cosmos Episode? My fav is the one about Michael Faraday. Especially the end when Maxwell put it into mathematics. There's one of those Giants you're always talking about. Actually two. Have a great time then tell us all about it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2015
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  10. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I agree with the assesment that the science (the maths) of QM and GR is beyond all who have not studied QM or GR as a discipline. But that includes everyone, regardless of any expertise they may have in other fields which require deep analysis and mathematics, all persons who are not physicists are lay in physics, by definition. This has nothing to do with intelligence.
    Thus one can be a brilliant scientist in any other scientific discipline, but be a layman in the field of physics.

    This is why I am not certain if I can agree that a layperson cannot understand or contribute to a philosophical discussion of the implications of scientific discovery.
    Allow me a small example (in non formal terms as a layman):

    a) QM (quantum mechanics) has proven that energy is transferred in quanta ("discrete packets of information") , the information being the value of the energy.
    To the average person this is an astounding concept to grasp, it is counter intuitive. Our very experience of reality conditions us to see everything happening as a smooth continuous stream of events and now we're being told that fundamentally this stream is not continuous at all. It is a series of little bits, which are so small, they "appear" to be continuous.
    Moreover, this process happens so fast that if we measure the speed of a particle, we cannot know its location in space at the same time, and vice versa (uncertainty effect), another counter intuitive concept (if we can measure the speed, why can we not measure its position?).
    Another counter intuitive (conditioned) proposition is that things appear to be solid, while actually solid objects may have relatively more space inside them than say, the solar system, which is clearly not solid when we look at it.

    So it is with GR, and SR in particular.
    b) SR teaches us that events seem to happen differently if observed from the different perspectives of the observers. IMO, this has profound implications of how all people can apply this in their daily life experience.

    When growing up things always happen from our own subjective viewpoint and we seldom stop to think why we should expect another person to see things differently, we naturally assume they don't.
    But sometimes we do "consider another's perspective" on a subject, so even lay person occasionally can unwittingly apply the SR principle, without realizing that everything is relative.

    I believe the current research in the "mirror neural network" of the brain, which may give us the ability to place ourselves into another's shoes, is very important. IMO, if true, this may be an important mental asset, with far reaching implications of RW application.

    If, a lay person accepts the veracity of the scientific method and the results of many years of scientific inquiry and tests, then a mental sea change can take place, even without knowing the maths.
    One can begin to look at the world with new eyes and a better philosophical understanding of the way things work, even without specific knowledge of the maths and proofs involved.

    And a mental sea change (on anything) is always exciting (not boring) to all, scientist and lay alike.
    The problem lies in the subjective expectation of depth of knowledge and communication skills on both sides.

    Scientists expect their peers to be knowledgeable in their field of expertise, i.e. the maths.
    But it is unrealistic for a scientist to expect in depth knowledge of the maths in lay persons.

    Similarly, a lay person expects a scientist to be knowledgeable of the maths.
    But it is unrealistic for a layman to expect a scientist to be interested in teaching the fundamentals of a specific field of science.

    The result, disappointment on both sides and eventual boredom on both sides.

    However, I do believe that on fora such as this the fundamental philosophy of science and its implications can be discussed in context of real world application and communication by the layman.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2015
  11. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    This is how I feel about that. I find it most interesting when all the participants are expert in their respective fields. Everybody should want to make a contribution.
    Another thing right in front of our faces is all the great comments we've been getting from some really interesting scientists. Thanks to Tasjha. Those folks are pretty cool in my book. They don't seem like elitist to me.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2015
  12. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Any lay person can contribute to a subject at reasonable levels. It takes some good reading, researching, asking questions and being able to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak.
    Some scientists on the other hand can be "mavericks" and have an inbuilt desire to surpass whatever his peers and academia has accepted.
    And of course there is always a non zero chance that this maverick may uncover some ground breaking discovery...but certainly a chance closer to zero than to one.
    Nothing wrong with new ideas, but when "mavericks" let their egos get the better of them, [as sometimes happen] their new ideas are inflated in their own minds far more than they deserve.
    The scientific method has served science well. To bypass any step [as I listed previously] invalidates the model and calls for a reappraisal of the mavericks idea.
    Einstein had humility, along with the knowledge, and Imagination to make him as great as he obviously was. Humility and the ability when confronted with evidence to admit error played no small part in his greatness.

    The Universe is a weird and wonderful place that over the last 100 years or so, we are just starting to understand.
    At times counter intuitive ideas will certainly over thrown more intuitive ideas that have appeared to be the norm for thousands of years. SR and GR attest to that fact.

    More ground breaking discoveries will probably happen within the next century, but I will bet my balls that it will be from within academia and mainstream circles.
    The state of the art equipment like the HST, and LHC just to name two supply the overwhelming advantage to the scientists working in mainstream.
    The mavericks are like the proverbial cocky on the biscuit tin: They just ain't in it.
    For the uninitiated: The phrase "Cocky on the biscuit tin: He just ain't in it" is an Aussie slang taken from the old Arnott's biscuit tin that was around in the thirties and forties.......It refers to the bird on the front of the old biscuit tins. It means you're on the outside looking in.....out in the cold.

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  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you Brucep, for that clear and concise answer.

    I am trying to understand the concept Causal Dynamical Triangulation (CDT), which is purported to be instrumental in the unfolding of spacetime itself.
    I used this wiki link as reference.
    To me, CDT seems a formal scientific paper, written by qualified scientists and supported by other qualified scientists. As highlighted elsewhere even Poincare seems to have envisioned a fractal aspect to spacetime.
    However I understand that the formal submission of CDT is a fairly recent development and not yet formally accepted as a viable (alternative) Theory. That still remains to be determined.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2015
  14. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    Something I forgot paddoboy. It's interesting when you look at the MIT course on Exploring Black Holes part of the curriculum is to read the Thorne book we like so much. I think a lot of that is it's such a great history text on gravitational physics. Plus those folks are longtime friends.
     
  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Spot on! All tashja's contacts, seemed anxious and glad to help, and she certainly had no shortage of replies.
    I believe she deserves a medal!

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  16. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    In your interpretation.
    It is quite normal for scientists to care about details. This is part of their job. For a layman this may look like pedantry. What is silly are your continuing speculations about motives (which you probably make to add credibility to your own view, not? ;-) )

    Some repetitions without arguments omitted.
    Completely wrong. One of the main arguments string theorists claim in favour of their theory is that it gives a quantum theory of gravity. Simply that they have it - not at all that it predicts something different or so, and not at all that GR does not match observations. And, wonder, this is considered as an argument for string theory.

    Reputable - maybe, but not really good. "All known singularities in the theory seem to be hidden behind event horizons." LOL. Except for the big bang singularity.
    They would. Young scientists have to - not following fashionable mainstream would be the death penalty in a publish or perish world.

    You will name it conspiracy, but it is simply a fact of live. Before making his experiment, Aspect has asked Bell if he would recommend him doing it. Bell asked him, if he has a permanent position. And only after the answer was positive, he gave a positive answer.

    Established scientist could, in theory, switch to something completely new. This would not be a death penalty for them, only far less grants, thus, less power in their university. And old people are not known to switch often to something completely new.

    And, no, there is no conspiracy, simple sociology, and Duff with very high probability really does not know about my theory. And if I would send him a link, he would ignore it simply "yet another ether crank" without even taking a look at it.
     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    "Apparently" to you may be.
    Learn to read. What I have named wise is the rule itself. Misinterpreting a rule is of course not wise but an error.

    Is there somebody else who will participate in whining about the poor victim of harassment who has been confronted, for recommending a good book, with the horrible attack of a recommendation of a good book?
     
  18. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    Generally a model such as you're trying to discuss will recover GR at some limit. Such as 4 dimensions. Way over my head.
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Hm. What could this word salad mean?

    There is an idea. There is a known argument against theories with graviton mass like RTG what they have a field with the wrong sign of kinetic energy named "ghost". In my preferred variant, the term with \(\Upsilon>0\) is such a "ghost". It is also the part which gives the most interesting differences to GR - inflation and stable gravastars.

    A term giving inflation is fine, giving stable gravastars may appear problematic, but, given the known parameter restrictions coming from inflation appears at least actually unproblematic. Its interpretation as a ghost may provide another, more serious argument against it. This is, of course, something worth to be studied. But there is a qualitative difference between a ghost field in standard QFT and this field - this field is a coordinate, which severely restricts its possible values. And, then, it has no interaction at all with matter, except via the gravitational field. Ideal dark matter. Dark matter exists, and does give away its energy to usual matter. Why would the ghost, being ideal dark matter too, simply of another sign, take away energy from usual matter?

    Anyway, the other point is that I can give up this ghost, by simply using \(\Upsilon<0\), without having to change anything else in the theory.
     
  20. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Yep, and that interpretation is supported by others.
    I accept the details, what I don't accept is the "getting out from under" unnecessary pedant and irrelevant philosophical clap trap you are so apt to use.
    You seem utterly confused. Perhaps your agenda is at fault?
    I havn't compared any QGT with GR, and I do realise that is what string theorists is all about.
    Again you also seem to be far removed from what is accepted by mainstream, despite your continued chest puffing claiming otherwise.
    GR is overwhelmingly accepted as a correct theory within known zones of applicability.
    Your hypothesis is not.

    Reputable most certainly and a few pay grades above you I might add.

    Sorry, I don't accept fabricated unproven sill conspiracy type theories. You use enough of that in your political rantings.
    Of course, because that's all it is, and that is the only argument you can ever use to attempt to fool others as to the hypothesis you are so keen in pushing.
    We do have a conspiracy section you know....try your stuff there.

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    Whatever it takes Schmelzer, whatever it takes!
    No wonder they are giving you a whitewash over at the political forum.
     
  21. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Quick reminder...You don't have a theory...you have an hypothesis.
     
  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I am not sure I understand the term "recover" in context, but from what I have read, the 3D fractal function results in the formation of dodecahedrons, which would allow for the 11 dimensions as proposed in M theory.

    The idea of fractal properties to the universe was already put forth by Plato, but of course his knowledge was very small compared to the current state of cosmological knowledge and its mathematics.

    I realize that I am also way over my head here, but when I see commonality in seemingly unrelated theories, I wonder if there may be some actual connection in reality.
    I even see a possible relationship with Schmelzer's concept an "ether". Of course I may be way off base here also.

    @ the mods,
    please allow me to link to this Nova presentation and another unidentified presentation which appears to be simple enough to be reliable, to illustrate the thrust of my observation. I promise not to abuse the freedom in other, more formal threads.

    I know it is not strictly scientific, but (as layman) these types of available explanations of the mathematical nature of the universe sure peak my interest and I'm sure is equally of interest and delight to other interested lay persons and hopefully of some general interest to scientists as well.
    http://video.pbs.org/video/2365464997/
    http://www.dodecahedron.us/Dodecahedron.html
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2015
  23. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Given that I'm not a democrat, thus, don't care about the number of people supporting some nonsense (else, I would have to start choosing some religion), but care about the arguments, I couldn't care less.

    I accept the details, what I don't accept is the "getting out from under" unnecessary pedant and irrelevant philosophical clap trap you are so apt to use.

    You seem utterly confused. Perhaps your agenda is at fault?
    I havn't compared any QGT with GR, and I do realise that is what string theorists is all about.

    Sorry, I have answered to "And any alternative would only ever be considered if GR appeared to not match observations." A QGT is certainly an alternative, given that GR is not a QGT.
    Given that I accept myself GR as a good approximation almost everywhere (except some zone where it is not applicable), and have never claimed that my theory has been accepted by the mainstream, where do you see the disagreement? I see only a minor disagreement, of the type you seem to reject as quibble or so.
    Yes. If scientist are paid for their research, they are obliged to give information about this. I would guess this is not because being paid adds reputation. ;-)

    (Rants about conspiracy which show only that you cannot distinguish conspiracy theories from economic arguments omitted.)
     

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