"Independent Thinking" vs Appeal To Authority In Science
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From: Androcles on 13 Jul 2010 13:35 "Richard Dobson" <richarddobson(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message news:Cm0%n.208050$Yb4.97895(a)hurricane... | On 13/07/2010 16:02, Androcles wrote: | .. | > Einstein had no kit when he wrote it, you need no kit to respond to it. | | 'Nuff said, really. Does this neo-post-modern non-experimental approach | apply to physics in general, or just to Einstein? | | | Richard Dobson | There is a mini-cult that surrounds him -- Minkowski, Lorentz, Weyl... then there are the cosmologists, the black Hawking holes and the big bang gangbangers, and at the other end of the spectrum the atom smashers that refuse to run a 27 km long vacuum tunnel in a ring under the Alps any faster than 11 kHz without upsetting the god of modern physics. To do so is literally unthinkable blasphemy. "What is the LHC? The protons will be accelerated in opposite directions in the Large Hadron Collider, an underground accelerator ring 27 kilometres in circumference at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Crashing together in the center of ATLAS, the particles will produce tiny fireballs of primordial energy. LHC will recreate the conditions at the birth of the Universe -- 30 million times a second. Relics of the early Universe not seen since the Universe cooled after the Big Bang 14 billion years ago will spring fleetingly to life again. The LHC is in effect a Big Bang Machine. (Portions of this text are paraphrased from an article written by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times on May 15, 2007, with permission.)" http://atlas.ch/what_is_atlas.html#3 Portions of this text are quoted hyperbole suitable for readers of Superman, Batman and Spiderman comics. No Catwomen were harmed. Of course such a monumental cave is worth every penny as a monument, it is the modern equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids and gives the same immortality to Einstein as the pyramids did to Cheops; and just as useful. In 5000 years our descendent archaeologists will say it was built by alien visitors, it is far too perfectly round to have been dug out by beer-swilling dullards like ourselves with our strange mythologies, churches, temples and minarets like this one to call the people to prayer. http://www.meritweb.com/seattle/seattle/space_needle.jpg Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton must be turning in their graves.
From: Richard Dobson on 13 Jul 2010 19:27 On 13/07/2010 18:35, Androcles wrote: > > "Richard Dobson"<richarddobson(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message > news:Cm0%n.208050$Yb4.97895(a)hurricane... > | On 13/07/2010 16:02, Androcles wrote: > | .. > |> Einstein had no kit when he wrote it, you need no kit to respond to it. > | > | 'Nuff said, really. Does this neo-post-modern non-experimental approach > | apply to physics in general, or just to Einstein? > | > | > | Richard Dobson > | > There is a mini-cult that surrounds him -- Minkowski, Lorentz, Weyl... then > there are the cosmologists, the black Hawking holes and the > big bang gangbangers, and at the other end of the spectrum the atom smashers > that refuse to run a 27 km long vacuum tunnel in a ring under the Alps any > faster than 11 kHz without upsetting the god of modern physics. To do so is > literally unthinkable blasphemy. > Hmm - you said no kit was needed to "respond" to Einstein; yet you wish the LHC could be ramped up somehow specifically to disprove him (or rather in particular, I assume, the limit of c). So QED, a piece of kit might be just what you need. Of course, this being a conspiracy-rich list, the reason they can't is because they won't, rather than because they can't. I confess I have not heard of that particular conspiracy theory before. Independent thinking takes so many unpredictable forms! Heaven forbid the limit of c might actually be real. I suppose if they could get it colder than Absolute Zero (another pesky limit - who thought ~that~ one up?) they might manage it - budget permitting of course. > Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton must be turning in their graves. > On the contrary, I have it on the Very Best Authority that they (plus a few others) are loving ever minute of it, although with some impatience, and saying to anyone who cares to listen "You ain't seen nothin' yet - watch this Space!". Sadly no kit has so far been developed that will enable everyone to hear their Words; so you will just have to take my Word for it. :-) Richard Dobson
From: Immortalist on 13 Jul 2010 21:42 On Jul 13, 7:15 am, Claudius Denk <claudiusd...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > On Jul 12, 4:36 pm, Immortalist <reanimater_2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > > > > On Jul 12, 7:35 am, Claudius Denk <claudiusd...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > > > On Jul 11, 1:15 pm, M Purcell <sacsca...(a)aol.com> wrote: > > > > > On Jul 11, 10:51 am, Claudius Denk <claudiusd...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote: > > > > > > A real scientists, like myself, may, at time, suspend their disbelief > > > > > temporarily until they've had a chance to further investigate. But > > > > > you are wrong to suggest that any real scientists would choose to > > > > > believe something just because some other "expert" said it to be > > > > > true. Believing without evidence is the realm of science-based > > > > > whackos, like AGW advocates. It's not the realm of any intellectually > > > > > honest real scientist. > > > > > Increasing average global temperatures indicate accelerated warming > > > > Leave your imagination out of the discussion. > > > I see that you are disagreeing with M Purcell but you offer nothing to > > back up what you claim. It will do not good to just say something is > > true or false and then offer not a shred of evidence. Or is it that we > > are not privy to your prior conversations where you did offer evidence > > for why you thought that it is not true that increasing average global > > temperatures indicate accelerated warming? And does the Purcell just > > let you get away with such hollow claims? > > Only fruitcakes believe in global warming. There is no credible > evidence of global warming. It's adherents are just a bunch of > dimwitted nose pickers. > You continue you portray yourself as an ignorant person. You have not shown us any reasons to believe what you say, this whether I already believed what you say or not. You do yourself no service to just make hollow claims with no evidential support at all besides name-calling and ad hominems. Can you define Global Warming as your using the phrase and what would be necessary for it to happen and then show how this has not happened? > > > > > > and we obviously dump various chemicals into the atmosphere which > > > > along with increasing waste heat production does affect the weather.. > > > > But I suspect the political drive to reduce carbon emissions has more > > > > to do with air quality than climate change, global temperatures can be > > > > reduced by the addition of sulfates in the upper atmosphere. > > > > nonsense.- Hide quoted text - > > > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text - > > > - Show quoted text -
From: Immortalist on 13 Jul 2010 21:47 On Jul 13, 2:51 am, Richard Dobson <richarddob...(a)blueyonder.co.uk> wrote: > On 13/07/2010 00:39, Immortalist wrote: > .. > > > ...If a person says that he knows the answer to some question or > > problem, and then tells us what he knows, his claim to know is > > intended to end debate on the topic. > > Really? Usually it is intended to enable the debate to move on to a > further stage. If we establish A and b as givens (perhaps, say, the > Pythagoras theorem, which we are told from "reliable authority" is > proven for all right triangles etc etc etc), we can move on to consider > C, D.... If, every time we debate that theme, we have to prove A and B, > as if for the first time, chances are we will never get to C, let alone D.. > The dogmatist does none of those things instead he or she gives assumptions which are made uncritically, with no attempt at reflective justification, and which he or she feels is perfectly evident, something which, stands in no need of serious examination. But you the reactionary have jumped and humped someones leg without thinking since to snip out the definition is no justification for a straw man argument. > Now proofs are interesting in themselves for many people, and often a > new proof of something already proven a different way is greatly valued. > Perhaps a shorter, simpler proof of Fermat's last theorem will be found > some day, but given that it has now been proven to the satisfaction of > all "peers" in the subject, other can now proceed to develop new > theorems dependent on it, without having to exhaustively "prove" it all > over again from first principles. All they have to do now is cite the > relevant paper - a few words instead of a book. > > Of course if you have some cogno-political objection to the whole > principle of peer review and authority, you are obliged to prove every > statement you make from first principles, however banal or repetitive it > may be. The usual short cut at least in sci.physics is to shout as loud > as possible "I am a genius and all other so-called physicists are > charlatans and frauds" and leave it at that. Enjoy the irony... > > Richard Dobson
From: Marvin the Martian on 16 Jul 2010 10:27
On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:37:42 -0700, Bret Cahill wrote: < snip far left anti-American political rant > > So appeal to authority is something every astute person does at some > time or another. The ones who appear ignorant of vetting processes and > institutions are called "wingers." < snip far left anti-American political rant > Actually, here's an authority: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/bridgman.htm "Hence the scientist is the enemy of all authoritarianism. Furthermore, he finds that he often makes mistakes himself and he must learn how to guard against them. He cannot permit himself any preconception as to what sort of results he will get, nor must he allow himself to be influenced by wishful thinking or any personal bias. All these things together give that "objectivity" to science which is often thought to be the essence of the scientific method." So, someone like you who uses the appeal to authority fallacy would have to listen to Percy Bridgman, as he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. But Percy Bridgman says that the real scientist is the enemy of authoritarianism! He's telling you NOT to make appeals to authority. Ergo, appeals to authority fails. |