Sulphur on 29/6/2020 at 06:11
It really does come down to doing the difficult thing and learning more about something, especially if it's contradictory to what your beliefs might be, and using reasoned analysis to reconcile the difference: either you change your mind on the basis of what you learn / accommodate that there's more to it than you first thought, or redouble your convictions because it's easier to fall back to your original position. The breakdown happens when we take heuristic shortcuts - for example, confirmation biases and the like - but the fact that we know this happens means we can at least wade outside of the shallows and attempt to be more objective.
Like faetal said, science isn't about asserting you're 100% right, it's about studying something and making our models of how it works better to a reasonable degree of confidence, and hopefully that understanding leads on to more useful things that build upon it; and if at some point it turns out our understanding of something was wrong, it's about finding out why and learning from that, too. This is how our body of knowledge improves, and bad actors don't hold sway in this cycle - indeed, they're addressed and made irrelevant through this cycle, given enough time.
lowenz on 29/6/2020 at 10:55
Quote Posted by faetal
Again with the widely understood knowledge being dressed up as some kind of gotcha. Humans being humans, does not mean that the scientific method is not useful.
The strength of science is in peer review and the number of people working the same material, not from The Scientists being some kind of ubermenschen.
Yes, but it's not what drives someone to
become a scientist or have interest in science and knowledge at large.
The "perfect aseptic science" is of course what we need but not what pushes a person to become a scientist.
It's NOT a trivial question, it's about the "real" mind behind the professional head.
All those words to say "Do not consider nbohr stupid only 'cause he has a paranoid approach to scientific questions".
'cause behind the gears there is always some kind of "non-rational driving fascination" in human activity, scientific too.
lowenz on 29/6/2020 at 11:00
Quote Posted by Sulphur
indeed, they're addressed and made irrelevant through this cycle, given enough time.
Those pesky and stupid Democritus with his "atoms" and Aristarchus of Samos with the jerky idea of us orbiting around the Sun, they're gone (the medieval aristotelian scholar says)......OH WAIT
lowenz on 29/6/2020 at 11:04
Quote Posted by Tocky
And LOL at lowenz. I can only deduce he wants to
besmirch scientific endeavor while ignoring it's aims which are indeed admirable.
LOL at you man for this kind of "deductions".
Maybe JKCerda was right about the "self-rightousness" of some users here.
Praise the Good Fight and call the almighty mod ban hammer for the sinners! :D
You and Sulphur have this kind of crusader/templar attitude.
Sorry for you guys, you really WANT to see a non-existent "enemy".
lowenz on 29/6/2020 at 11:23
Quote Posted by Judith
You have two obsessive / compulsive minds here, both addicted to processing tons of data and spewing out their own chaotic noise as a result - they just have different goals.
What you're talking about? I only see nbohr "classic" paranoid approach.
The only obsessive thought about a totalizing goal I've read here is "
It pisses me off royal when people don't have truth as the ultimate goal."
"Progressive truth" is the science goal, not the scientist one as a human being, 'cause surely he can educate himself to that thought but it's not that "elegant rationalism" to push him choosing a career.
As I said before "Do not consider nbohr stupid only 'cause he has a paranoid approach to scientific questions".
faetal on 29/6/2020 at 11:57
Quote Posted by lowenz
Sorry for you guys, you really WANT to see a non-existent "enemy".
I've figured it out - you are just really poor at getting your point across.
Enlgish not your first language? In which case, not really your fault, but you genuinely come across like you are denigrating the importance of the scientific method.
Maybe you were instead trying to say that people who reject science are just human or something?
Either way, I don't think people are being self-righteous, they're responding directly to the things you are saying, because their meaning is obfuscated by quirky phrasing.
Tocky on 29/6/2020 at 12:36
Quote Posted by lowenz
LOL at you man for this kind of "deductions".
Maybe JKCerda was right about the "self-rightousness" of some users here.
Praise the Good Fight and call the almighty mod ban hammer for the sinners! :D
You and Sulphur have this kind of crusader/templar attitude.
Sorry for you guys, you really WANT to see a non-existent "enemy".
Dude I've never called for anyone to be banned in my life. I'm firmly in the camp of give a person enough rope and let them hang themselves. We can never see our own personality quirks but everyone else can. One of yours is to project. I would seriously consider why you attempt to foist a label of "self-rightousness" on others if I were you. It's really telling.
And faetal is right. It's hard to tell what you are getting at. My only "enemy" though is anyone who tries to push BS theories with no fact to back them up. And that can be anyone.
lowenz on 29/6/2020 at 12:37
I'm not even talking about the scientific method, I'm talking about "scientific-minded persons" who can't even see that they're driven to science not "because of science" but because their personality that "attunes" to the scientific method in different ways and styles.
So you got the "old scientist gone mad" not because "gone mad" but because he was always driven to science by that kind of strange paranoid/obssessive thinking that becomes evident only through ages, it's why I've said "Montagnier" ( (
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nobel_disease) ) but I can say *tons* of other "great scientists" (just remember that Einstein too totally rejected the hard interpretations of QM but it stands today).
So it's kinda funny to attack someone for a paranoid approach to Coronavirus questions when a Nobel Prize like Montagnier ("expert", right?) has the same way of (mis)interpret the phenomenon.
lowenz on 29/6/2020 at 12:38
Quote Posted by Tocky
why you attempt to foist a label of "self-rightousness"
Not my words, man.
"Truth" is a phantom, "truth
S" are simply a product of our knowledge ability and nothing more.
faetal on 29/6/2020 at 12:45
Quote Posted by lowenz
I'm talking about "scientific-minded persons" who can't even see that they're driven to science not "because of science" but because their personality that "attunes" to the scientific method in different ways and styles.
You are not qualified to suppose why other people are driven to science. Your speculation is not interesing, except maybe to yourself.
You talk of people imagining enemies, while you are railing against some archetype of scientists as though they are somehow fungible.
People in glass houses...
