The insecurity of ignorance

[GMT]

I do see what IB is getting at, he's just making his point badly. I may be wrong, but I think he's trying to say, when you buy a used car, because the salesman has been around the cars for ages, dont take his word that the car he's trying to sell you is a good deal because he says it is. He's trying to make the arguement for suspending blind trust, which would be a valid point to make. The examples are poor examples that''s all.

 

[LonelyNerd]

Smart people KNOW they don't know shit...ignorant ones think they do.

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

Mezz, you think there is a reasonable chance that in britain we use the disabled as puppets to wheel out and put voice overs on them that they have no say in, and pretend its them?
And you question whether the universe ever actually came into being in any sense whatso ever?
WOW. yeah you go too far for me. Too far for me to even bother trying to argue against it, as its like saying what if the moon really is made of cheese.

Re: Obviously it's not about "the British." Hawking being used and/or playing along...haven't stranger things happened?

Re: the "beginning" of the universe aka the Big Bang. Haven't you heard of evidence against it? The threading and superthreading of galaxies throughout space are an arrangement that could not plausibly occur in the Big Bang scenario with its' outward expansion. A universe without beginning - it never had to come into being because it always was. Ignorant about my facts?!

 

[LonelyNerd]

Ignorant about my facts?!

Yup. I dont see any scientific/mathematical proof of your facts in an effort to back what you say. So your closing the book ? You think you know it, which makes you ignorant. I wont support either theory until there is evidence. btw there is physical evidence to show that relative distance between objects in space move further away, even with the mass holding our universe together. Please bring math to the table and convince me otherwise..

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

Yup. I dont see any scientific/mathematical proof of your facts in an effort to back what you say. So your closing the book ? You think you know it, which makes you ignorant. I wont support either theory until there is evidence. btw there is physical evidence to show that relative distance between objects in space move further away, even with the mass holding our universe together. Please bring math to the table and convince me otherwise..

Just read some information on it. You'll get a better understanding that way than if I attempt to explain what I know about it. http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&...2&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=4e781b66e30e329a

I don't think I know anything for sure. I'm saying it looks like there are holes in the Big Bang theory. What I am doing is pointing out flaws in what I call false skepticism. Like "be skeptical of things that seem wacky." Well, a lot of things seem wacky at first but turn out to be true. When I talk about "my facts" I am being ironic. I don't vouch for Eric Lerner's theory or anyone else's. That's the idea I am trying to get across. When our ego identifies too much with an idea we lose our perfect objectivity.

 

[HempKat]

I do see what IB is getting at, he's just making his point badly. I may be wrong, but I think he's trying to say, when you buy a used car, because the salesman has been around the cars for ages, dont take his word that the car he's trying to sell you is a good deal because he says it is. He's trying to make the arguement for suspending blind trust, which would be a valid point to make. The examples are poor examples that''s all.

I think his problem isn't so much the examples as he tends to sound like he's saying don't trust any of it. Sure there are people who should be honest but aren't but it does not mean all people are dishonest.

Sure some science is bought and paid for by people with agendas although largely that applies to research of opinion thru polls where the way questions are worded and the sampling they use can virtually guarentee any result the person paying for the study wants. However, not all research is done this way and not all research serves an agenda beyond trying to determine the nature of the thing being researched.

Yes some media is bad and yes many if not most politicians are corrupt but that does not mean it's all bad and to disregard all is to "throw the baby out with the bath water" as the old saying goes.

The way I see it is this, if you are absolutely certain of the knowledge you have then you shouldn't even be looking at what new research might say, to do so in my opinion is to admit you really aren't sure of what you think you know. Although ironically to constantly seek new knowledge is the only way to really ever know anything.

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

Been watching this thanks to this thread.

The Big Bang Never Happened

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTfRy0LTD0&feature=PlayList&p=35A32C6E877FEAC3&index=0&playnext=1

 

[ibjamming]

Can you give some evidence of this? .... Established scientific theories usually don't change that fast. Maybe once a decade if that.

You answered your own question...every decade or so...ESTABLISHED theories change. So why "believe" something that will be obsolete in 10 years?

I do see what IB is getting at, he's just making his point badly. I may be wrong, but I think he's trying to say, when you buy a used car, because the salesman has been around the cars for ages, dont take his word that the car he's trying to sell you is a good deal because he says it is. He's trying to make the arguement for suspending blind trust, which would be a valid point to make. The examples are poor examples that''s all.

THANK YOU!! Yes, usually I'm all fucked up when I'm replying...it makes it hard to get my point across. It would be easier in person.

You can't blindly trust what ANYONE says to you! ESPECIALLY...the "officials"...their agenda isn't to be truthful...it's to get/do what they want.

. When our ego identifies too much with an idea we lose our perfect objectivity.

Nice... I'm not sure we're CAPABLE of "perfect objectivity". Especially towards ourselves.

I think his problem isn't so much the examples as he tends to sound like he's saying don't trust any of it. Sure there are people who should be honest but aren't but it does not mean all people are dishonest.

Sure some science is bought and paid for by people with agendas although largely that applies to research of opinion thru polls where the way questions are worded and the sampling they use can virtually guarentee any result the person paying for the study wants. However, not all research is done this way and not all research serves an agenda beyond trying to determine the nature of the thing being researched.

Yes some media is bad and yes many if not most politicians are corrupt but that does not mean it's all bad and to disregard all is to "throw the baby out with the bath water" as the old saying goes.

The way I see it is this, if you are absolutely certain of the knowledge you have then you shouldn't even be looking at what new research might say, to do so in my opinion is to admit you really aren't sure of what you think you know. Although ironically to constantly seek new knowledge is the only way to really ever know anything.

It's not that I don't "trust" it...because what we know works...for now. I just "know" that it's not the END of the story...

ALL science is bought and paid for by someone wanting the study done. Our scientists USED to be rich educated guys with family money who could do their own research. Now ALL research is paid for by "grants"...How do you get a grant? You kiss ass and report what the people paying you want to hear. We don't do "pure" science any more.

MOST media and MOST politicians...so yes, let's throw it ALL out and start fresh.

That's what I've been saying!!! We don't REALLY know anything because the "truth" keep changing. you have to keep looking for the answers...but I'm not so sure we'll ever get them.

As for Hawking...all I know is what I'm shown. If you say he's "aware", so be it. I'll "believe" you...until I see different...I'm not so convinced.

He must have quite the brain then. To keep all those thoughts organized when he can't make notes...it seems impossible to keep it ALL straight in his head. That's why I question. Complicated ideas usually require the ability to "storyboard"...like they do making movies and writing books.

BTW...government and industry shills are to be found in abundance. So don't act like it can't happen. Who better than someone who can't communicate? I'm ALWAYS questioning.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

I think it is funny, that ibjamming imagines that each new piece of the puzzle causes us to throw out the pieces we've got in place.


I wish, instead of continuing to push the same bullshit assertions over and over, he would attempt to post a single example of any recent discovery that changed any theory in a manner significant enough to consider assumptions based on that theory as obsolete.


But he can't, because that is not how it works.




The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood
Not sure why people don’t make a bigger deal out of this fact. Physicists (and scientists more generally) are infamous for making grandiose claims about how close we are to Figuring It All Out, only to be shocked by some sort of revolutionary discoveries soon thereafter. Personally I have no idea how close we are to a comprehensive theory of absolutely everything. But I do know how close we are to having a comprehensive theory of the basic laws underlying the phenomena we encounter in our everyday lives — without benefit of fancy telescopes or particle accelerators or what have you. Namely, we already have it! That seems to be worth celebrating, or at least remarking upon, but you don’t hear it mentioned very much.

Obviously there are plenty of things we don’t understand. We don’t know how to quantize gravity, or what the dark matter is, or what breaks electroweak symmetry. But we don’t need to know any of those things to account for the world that is immediately apparent to us. We certainly don’t have anything close to a complete understanding of how the basic laws actually play out in the real world — we don’t understand high-temperature superconductivity, or for that matter human consciousness, or a cure for cancer, or predicting the weather, or how best to regulate our financial system. But these are manifestations of the underlying laws, not signs that our understanding of the laws are incomplete. Nobody thinks we’re going to have to invent new elementary particles or forces in order to understand high-Tc superconductivity, much less predicting the weather.

All we need to account for everything we see in our everyday lives are a handful of particles — electrons, protons, and neutrons — interacting via a few forces — the nuclear forces, gravity, and electromagnetism — subject to the basic rules of quantum mechanics and general relativity. You can substitute up and down quarks for protons and neutrons if you like, but most of us don’t notice the substructure of nucleons on a daily basis. That’s a remarkably short list of ingredients, to account for all the marvelous diversity of things we see in the world.

A hundred years ago it would have been easy to ask a basic question to which physics couldn’t provide a satisfying answer. “What keeps this table from collapsing?” “Why are there different elements?” “What kind of signal travels from the brain to your muscles?” But now we understand all that stuff. (Again, not the detailed way in which everything plays out, but the underlying principles.) Fifty years ago we more or less had it figured out, depending on how picky you want to be about the nuclear forces. But there’s no question that the human goal of figuring out the basic rules by which the easily observable world works was one that was achieved once and for all in the twentieth century.

You might question the “once and for all” part of that formulation, but it’s solid. Of course revolutions can always happen, but there’s every reason to believe that our current understanding is complete within the everyday realm. Using the framework of quantum field theory — which we have no reason to doubt in this regime — we can classify the kinds of new particles and forces that could conceivably exist, and go look for them. It’s absolutely possible that such particles and forces do exist, but they must be hidden from us somehow: either the particles are too massive to be produced, or decay too quickly to be detected, or interact too weakly to influence ordinary matter; and the forces are either too weak or too short-range to be noticed. In any of those cases, if they can’t be found by our current techniques, they are also unable to influence what we see in our everyday lives. We have very little idea how big the region of our understanding is, compared to all that there is to be understood; but we know that it’s bigger than what we need to understand to make sense of the world we see with our unaided senses.

That’s pretty amazing. Science will certainly push forward along the frontier of phenomena that are too big or small or subtle to be detected without delicate instruments, as well as along the much more jagged and unpredictable frontier of how the basic laws play out in complicated ways. But getting the basic laws right is an extremely impressive accomplishment, especially for good old human beings who have only been doing science systematically for a few centuries. Way to go, human beings!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/co...ly-understood/
__________________

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

I don't recall having ever blindly accepted anything, or having ever accepting anything as 100% true in all cases.
It is not even in my nature to do so.

BUT

Blindly denying everything is no better than blindly accepting everything,
The only people doing either are fools.

 

[el dub]

There are many reasons why a person might spend twice as much on a car as they needed to. Some are logical, some aren't and none of them are anyone else's bidness unless the guy paying top dollar comes looking for an opinion or advice.

lw

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood
Not sure why people don’t make a bigger deal out of this fact...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/co...ly-understood/
__________________

I highly recommend watching the video I linked about the Big Bang.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

I highly recommend watching the video I linked about the Big Bang.

I will, but it has no bearing on the article I just posted.




Edit... I watched the video... full of cherry picked misinterpreted information and improbable conclusions.
Thanks for the link though, their spin was interesting. I can see how easy it would be for it to convince people without a decent background in the subject.



Surely you don't blindly believe Youtube vids... Dig Deeper.
It is easy to educate yourself in this modern where world we live.

 

[sac beh]

There are many reasons why a person might spend twice as much on a car as they needed to. Some are logical, some aren't and none of them are anyone else's bidness unless the guy paying top dollar comes looking for an opinion or advice.

You seem to be under the impression that the OP and others are advocating forcing their views on others in some unjust, not compassionate way. But its quite the opposite. What I hear the OP saying is that reason is the preferred and only useful way to come to understandings and to seek knowledge. Reason is the only compassionate way because it doesn't force itself on anyone against their will or use violence, but it just requires that the other person be reasonable and open minded too.

So his question is more: what to do in those cases when reason breaks down, when you have to deal with someone who isn't able to have a rational conversation. He's not saying how can I force my view on others, how can I convince others that everything I believe is true.

Reason is a prerequisite to a compassionate society. Fantasies and close-minded individualism cause violence.

 

[sac beh]

I will, but it has no bearing on the article I just posted.

I agree with this. I watched the video last night and there's nothing too interesting in it, though the sound effects and mysterious voice might make it sound amazing.

If it were true, and we have misinterpreted red shift data, then that will be shown over time and across several data and experiments within the scientific community. And since I know less about the issue than I should, I at least know that a youtube video offering very few opinions on a topic of great importance is not going to reach any reasonable bar for evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The scientific community isn't scared of new ideas, but rather understands the necessity of passing every claim through the rigorous process of scientific claim validation.

Example: Physicists Claim to Have Spotted Sought-After Hawking Radiation
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/8...-have-spotted-sought-after-hawking-radiation/

It’s one of Stephen Hawking’s most famous hypotheses (though one often co-credited to other researchers): According to the rules of quantum mechanics, a black hole—from which nothing should be able to escape—actually can emit material in the form of Hawking radiation. In the thirty-plus years since the reknowned physicist made his prediction Hawking radiation has remained theoretical, but a research team now claims to have seen it right in the lab.

Such a claim would validate Hawkings and current understandings of black holes. But the reaction isn't blind fundamentalist acceptance. The reaction is rather:

Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so now we await the experiments to come that will try to repeat this find and see whether Belgiorno’s team has really done it.

So whether a claim validates or challenges the current view, science always reacts the same to it: the bar for evidence is high in proportion to the implausibility of the claim.

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

I will, but it has no bearing on the article I just posted.




Edit... I watched the video... full of cherry picked misinterpreted information and improbable conclusions.
Thanks for the link though, their spin was interesting. I can see how easy it would be for it to convince people without a decent background in the subject.



Surely you don't blindly believe Youtube vids... Dig Deeper.
It is easy to educate yourself in this modern where world we live.

You watched the whole thing? I spent a fair bit of time watching it yesterday, not to mention reading Lerner's book years ago. I recommend it too. What specifically is "cherry picked" and misinterpreted? Non-cosmological redshift? If so, why.

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

But the Big Bang is looking more implausible as the theory becomes more convoluted. Are they not fudging data with Dark Matter and Dark Energy? How is it scientific to squash better models while shoring up a failed model with imaginary data?

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Start a big bang thread, and I'll gladly discuss it.
There is tons to cover, and it would hijack this thread.

To facilitate discussion, list up the arguments you found most compelling, and we'll restrict the discussion to their 'bestest' arguments.

But the Big Bang is looking more implausible as the theory becomes more convoluted. Are they not fudging data with Dark Matter and Dark Energy? How is it scientific to squash better models while shoring up a failed model with imaginary data?

M-theory is the best model at the moment, and doesn't need to fudge data with dark anything.

 

[Mezz Mezzrow]

Start a big bang thread, and I'll gladly discuss it.
There is tons to cover, and it would hijack this thread.

To facilitate discussion, list up the arguments you found most compelling, and we'll restrict the discussion to their 'bestest' arguments.

M-theory is the best model at the moment, and doesn't need to fudge data with dark anything.

I think the most relevant aspect of it in this thread is how the scientific establishment treats people who offer elegant alternatives to convoluted and tightly held theories.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

the scientific establishment treats people who offer elegant alternatives to convoluted and tightly held theories.

until that is actually demonstrated to be the case, it's just empty rhetoric.

No worries. We don't have to have the big bang discussion if you don't feel up to it... I just thought since you seemed so keen on it...

(There is not a theory out there more elegant than M-theory, btw)