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Science vs. the Feelies
12 years ago
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. -Albert Einstein
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potholer54 wrote:1) "You didn't understand what [insert name here] meant."
Yes, that's entirely possible. In the absence of facts and figures, a feelie argument is usually vague and ambiguous, often hinting at some elusive point that's never explained. When I read a scientific paper, on the other hand, I understand exactly what it's saying. The hypothesis is laid out, the methodology explained, the observations and calculations clearly shown, and the conclusion spelled out. That's the difference.
2) "The idea that CO2 is a trace gas is not a 'feeling'. It can be shown that it has no effect on climate." My response: Yes, but the 'feeling' is that because CO2 is a trace gas then it follows that it has no effect on climate. If this is correct, please cite a study that has some facts and figures to support it, otherwise it remains just a 'feeling.' If you have a source with some other evidence that CO2 has no effect on climate, then I have probably covered it in a previous video.
potholer54 wrote:1) "You didn't understand what [insert name here] meant."
Yes, that's entirely possible. In the absence of facts and figures, a feelie argument is usually vague and ambiguous, often hinting at some elusive point that's never explained. When I read a scientific paper, on the other hand, I understand exactly what it's saying. The hypothesis is laid out, the methodology explained, the observations and calculations clearly shown, and the conclusion spelled out. That's the difference.
2) "The idea that CO2 is a trace gas is not a 'feeling'. It can be shown that it has no effect on climate." My response: Yes, but the 'feeling' is that because CO2 is a trace gas then it follows that it has no effect on climate. If this is correct, please cite a study that has some facts and figures to support it, otherwise it remains just a 'feeling.' If you have a source with some other evidence that CO2 has no effect on climate, then I have probably covered it in a previous video.
Thankfully in the real world feelings don't dictate science. It's fine to have a hunch or follow your instinct, as long as it leads you to carry out experiments that will then confirm or disprove those lovely feelies.
(I don't know whether to laugh or cry.)
* gas in a warm enough environment
There is mistakes we all have made and more than likely there will be mistakes in the future. It is to hopefully learn from them and not believe stereotypical things to always be true.
Hopefully there can be a balance of these things of feelings and thought. To much and to little of anything is not really a good thing. To hide emotions, the truth, and hide ourselves only creates inner turmoil and solves nothing.
Then if we do not question and explore the objective truth then we miss out on things to grow from.
More media literacy and other literacy would be a good thing for schools to have as a class I do think for all of such things.
It give me a good feeling. lol
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”
Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin
It works because a lot of 'controversial' 'scientific' debates happen in the public sphere, where the onus of proof is on the side that says the other is wrong. In science, whichever has the most data is correct; in public, it's whoever shouts loudest and most often. In practice, that is the kind of tactic that rapidly polarises the debate - it makes people angry, and once someone in a debate is angry, the entire topic becomes emotive. Once it's emotive, people aren't swayed by evidence at all, they can and will rationalise any belief that puts them in ideological alignment with the people they most like, and against the people they dislike - and forever attribute a variety of negative character traits to anyone disagreeing with them on that hot-button issue.
For further reading, have an interesting blog post about the benefits and pitfalls of comment threads; semi-related and pretty interesting, I thought! http://blogs.scientificamerican.com.....or-not-at-all/
I am quite fine if they are emotional while doing science but not if they try to distort truth. Then as well for pseudo science ... it is a good thing that things of science can be tested over and over to see if one can get the same empirical result.