Debating science with the non-science
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
And is that what you are here for? Primarily that? Only that?
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
I respect the topic a lot and have mixed feelings about trying to widen it, but there it is.
One issue perhaps behind a lot of this is the faith in rational argument. (this is not a rationality vs. faith or rationality vs. intuition argument, bear with me.) The faith is that if I formulate my ideas correctly and well other people will be convinced. Many of us believe this (at least part of many of us does) despite the evidence to the contrary. Frustration comes in when this faith is challenged by, well, reality.
It can seem at times like the other person is simply trying to find a hole or a possible weak area or to spin off on the interpretation of a word rather than doing the kinds of careful, open-minded checking of both their arguments and the other person's.
Also I see very little 'well, let's see what would happen if you were correct, let me really go into this with curiosity'. Or 'by what process did I come to this conclusion and did I skip any steps I shouldn't have). Some of this is the urge to win, but I think much of it is also a rather limited repetoire in action.
My goal is to convince the other of the truth is not a really flexible model.
Sometimes I think it is interesting to state a belief and see how it is attacked. Do the 'debaters' seem aware of what and why they are responding as they are? It feels a little bit like doing offensive line training (American football metaphor) or purely defensive Sumo wrestling. The question is 'will I be pushed backwards? and related questions around the details of that.
Sometimes it feels right to post things I normally do not believe. Ideas or positions that part of me thinks and feels sometimes but overall I have another opinion. I feel this honors the whole of me.
I also think it is useful and fun to be provocative. To try to come at an issue from a new angle. Sometimes even accepting assertions and beliefs that the other person has and seeing if they or their other ideas live up to these. Nastiness, exploration, curiosity, the urge to provoke something new, playfulness all come into such posts.
I wish I could begin more posts with an honest
'let's say you are right, what would that mean?'
(be careful, there are close-minded ways of doing this)
If the presumption is you have nothing to learn from a post it might be better for all concerned if you skip responding.
The goal of transferring information might be better left to books and other media.
You're preaching to the choir. I am a firm believer in entertaining ideas that I do not necessarily accept, of expressing opinions to broaden and give depth to an argument. Its largely considered intellectual dishonesty here. Sort of like my last advisor bemoaning that I think too much, an odd idea to me. Is it possible to think too much?
As Milton said: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties"
As Milton said: "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties"
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Of course not.
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
Absolutely. But that would lead us off topic.Is it possible to think too much?
What's to debate? There's no point arguing with somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.
Nor is there much point in arguing with educated people who refuse to remain open to any possibility that they could be wrong about something. -James R said:
Plenty of scientists and intelligent people believe stupid things. IOW, even people who are confident about what they "know", or their understanding, can be hopelessly wrong. Intelligent people can be just as dumb as someone who "doesn't know what they're talking about".
For instance, I haven't seen anyone else yet, who contributes to this forum, who appears to understand a simple thing like heat content, or heat capacity.
Although, no doubt, they sincerely believe they have grasped the fundamentals, and can "do the math", this is actually equivalent to a car driver who believes they understand the principles of heat-cycle combustion engines, that it's a matter of putting petrol in the tank and making sure there's enough oil and water and other lubricants, in the right places.
Not that I have any less respect for the average car, or bus driver, of course.
Last edited:
Nor is there much point in arguing with educated people who refuse to remain open to any possibility that they could be wrong about something. -
Plenty of scientists and intelligent people believe stupid things. IOW, even people who are confident about what they "know", or their understanding, can be hopelessly wrong.
I agree.
It's seldom true that somebody educated in a particular field of knowledge is as dumb as somebody not educated in that field when it comes to discussing that field. Obviously.
That's a pity. Do you have questions? Perhaps I can help.
But that has little to do with their status as scientists or laymen. Very few of either consider a fetus as not being alive, but those few are found in both categories of people - pretty evenly, as far as I can tell. And that illustrates the more common problem, visible for example in this:SAM said:
See, that's bullshit - whether you are scientist or not. Galileo was arguing with non-scientists about science, and picking a fairly unpersuasive rhetorical style if judged by the results. The example would be a good one, for the thread, if taken in that spirit - and the failure to take it in that spirit has little to do with scientific or layperson status.SAM said:
You are also a frequent exemplar of the dangers of evaluating - or even comprehending - ideas by the personalities of their proponents, or the agreeableness of their implications to you.SAM said:
I don't think the difficulties of discussion around here founder in the gap between scientist and layman very often.
But as a theoretical matter, talking about science to a layman would require different approaches for different laymen. And there are a couple of specialized arguments - a biologist talking to mathematicians and physicists about Darwinian evolution, for example - when an intelligent and educated layman often makes a more reasonable audience than a scientist of buttressed bigotry.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
My pet peeve is the scientific vocabulary. As I have stated in several threads, science has the nature of a medieval guild craft. One of the rites of passage for joining the guild is to master the use of the terminology so we can communicate with other scientists. (I say "we" even though I'm not a career scientist. I've got the education and the ability to communicate its ideas.) This terminology seems almost deliberately designed to make it difficult for us to share the secrets of the guild with outsiders. So that they will remain outsiders. This demeans science, since we should be proud enough of it to want to share it.
The concept that I hit on most frequently is that of "truth" or "facts." Those words don't mean the same thing in science as they do to laymen. No scientific theory can be proven true. They can only be proven false, or they can fail to be proven false despite many generations of scientists trying to do so. Yet we can never be certain that one day someone will not find the evidence that falsifies any theory. It just happens so rarely that when it does it does not cause the entire scientific canon to come crashing down, so we're comfortable building that canon on theories that have been proven... that have been proven... what?
I have introduced the term "true beyond a reasonable doubt," language I got from the lawyers. (The only good thing they've ever done for me and I got it for free.
) Laymen understand that to prove something true beyond a reasonable doubt is good enough to send a man to prison for life, or in Stone Age countries like mine, to execute him, even though a finite possibility remains that this thing upon which he was convicted is false. Therefore they should be able to understand that to have a scientific theory proven true beyond a reasonable doubt is good enough to include it in their children's textbooks and to base government policy on it, even though a finite possibility remains that it will one day be found false.There are myriad scientific terms that serve to widen the gap of understanding between scientists and laymen, rather than helping us connect with them. We don't even use the word "theory" itself the way they do. In police work, it's just a hunch. Of course even our brethren the mathematicians add to this particular confusion, since what they call a "theory" is based entirely on abstractions and logic, and has in fact been proven completely true.
So the first step in any communication with laymen, whether debating or teaching, is to establish terminology that won't be misunderstood.
I see others have pounced on this and I agree with them. Any scientist may try to convince his peers that a particular line of research or reasoning is promising and therefore worth devoting a share of their time and energy and other finite resources to. But he does not need to convince them that his hypothesis is correct. It should speak for itself.
Now if you're talking about communication with people outside the academy, then a little convincing is in order. You have to convince laymen that sharks, the apex predators of the sea that constitutes the majority of the earth's ecosystem, are vital and should not be hunted to extinction. You don't have time to give each of them a university-level course in marine biology, and even if you did, most of them don't have the aptitude and/or interest to pay attention.
You're illustrating my pet peeve by using "theory" where, if I read you correctly, you mean "hypothesis." A theory has been tested and peer-reviewed and judged by the community of scientists to be true beyond a reasonable doubt--although they haven't all adopted my terminology yet.
Exactly. "Truth beyond a reasonable doubt."
Sure, but by the time of the Enlightenment helio- and geocentricity had come to refer only to the revolution of the one body about the other, not that of the entire universe about either of them. Coordinates were to be established just for our own solar system, and the motions of the other planets made it clear which body makes the most logical origin point.
Believe it or not, about ten years ago the verb "overthink" enjoyed a flash of popularity in America. The idea was that if you spend "too much" time thinking about something, you'll never reach the point of taking any action. I heard the word used specifically in the halls of the various levels of American governments, where indeed our civil "servants" spend endless hours on "studies" and "conferences" and "analyses." These activities really do seem to have the sole purpose of prolonging the lead-in time to any real endeavor, in order to justify their positions and their salaries. It was an unfair slight against thinking, since very little of what went on in those meetings and other "working" sessions was actually any sort of cognitive process.
Thanks for the clarification. I learned in India that six days in the library can save six months in the lab. Perhaps that is a novel concept.
This is an interesting topic simply because awhile ago I proposed on another forum... actually it was a writing forum.... that sociological "bridges" should be established which would allow for a better conductivity/sharing of ideals between various groups or institutions.
The idea behind it: Balance.... it is my belief that aggression occurs due to inequalities between various groups. These inequalities vary in from, perhaps having common attributes in those who are in opposition to each other. The trick: methods of balancing those inequalities.
One way is communication... in fact it is critical. However it would be a fairly complicated system if done precisely... I imagine.
The idea behind it: Balance.... it is my belief that aggression occurs due to inequalities between various groups. These inequalities vary in from, perhaps having common attributes in those who are in opposition to each other. The trick: methods of balancing those inequalities.
One way is communication... in fact it is critical. However it would be a fairly complicated system if done precisely... I imagine.
Its fairly important now that research has become interdisciplinary. You have psychology working with nutrition and economics. You have engineers working with biologists. While not non-science, there is a similar difference of perspective when having a mixed group together attempting to define a concerted goal.