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Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

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Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#291

Post by feralimal »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #210
feralimal wrote: post #34

Ha ha - primitive Islamic religionists!! Only we are exactly the same, but are blind to our failings. This narrative plays on our conceited, flabby, unreasoned thinking. But its nice to laugh to others, eh? Science to me, is the application of the scientific method. This is to say that whatever is being looked at should be repeatable, and consistently provide the same results. Strictly speaking, when we say we know,…

> Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion. We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society. Whether a concept exists or whether it's believed to be true does not necessarily have anything connected to an objective reality, all you need is making it believable (different groups of people and different societies have d…

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

> We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society.

I object already! Knowledge does not reside in society. A library cannot know, nor can a computer. Knowledge that state that a man or woman over something in the objective world and can be objectively confirmed. You and I can know. It is not a societal exercise.

You raise the flat earth. And you say:

"I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification"

Well, having given a bunch of detailed examples to show why it is not possible to prove a spherical earth, why do you call it an 'absurd' theory? How was the earth being a sphere proven to you? You are supporting my point that people believe they know but are in error. Belief has no part in knowledge.

I wouldn't object to you saying 'I believe the earth is spherical', or 'my hypothesis is that the earth is a sphere', or that 'a sphere is the best theory to explain the movement of the planets'. All good. But to say 'you know', when you were only taught and shown imagery on a TV - that's overstepping things!

Did you 'know' that the film 'Independence Day' was true too, seeing as you saw that on TV? Or did you know it was false, because someone told you it was fiction. Why are you happy to assume film images are false, but news images are true?

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#292

Post by kmeisthax »

everybodyknows wrote: post #268
travisoneill1 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of emigrants from the middle east are poor migrants to Europe, not educated scientists.

@kmeisthax did not claim otherwise; your respective claims are not in tension. However, the "We" is ambiguous: US or EU? Or Canada, Australia, Japan?

In recent history we've had the Syrian refugee crisis which resulted in a large number of likely political refugees migrating to EU countries. This is still an abberation: most EU countries generally have immigration systems that favor well-trained economic migrants, and the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe will regress to the mean (if it hasn't already). Japan used to explicitly refuse work visas without a college degree, and has generally been very difficult to immimigrate to, but has softened on this because they've ran out of workers. Canada and Australia are similar to the EU in that they favor educated migrants on work visas, though their points system also explicitly favors English and French speaking migrants that can pass strict language tests.

The US is also an abberation: our immigration system favors family reunification ("chain migration") from a diverse pool of emigrant countries over economic migration. Most other countries heavily restrict immigration on the basis of family reunification. Diversity of origins is enforced through both per-country quotas as well as literally handing out green cards to people from countries that don't send us lots of migrants ("the visa lottery"). However, the primary effect of this is to make it very difficult for Mexicans to immigrate. I don't have detailed enough statistics to know if most Middle East emigrants immigrate to the US on work visas or through family sponsorship, but I would suspect that all of the above factors are a wash, as most of our immigrants come from Europe or the Americas.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#293

Post by feralimal »

jariel wrote: post #51
feralimal wrote: post #34

Ha ha - primitive Islamic religionists!! Only we are exactly the same, but are blind to our failings. This narrative plays on our conceited, flabby, unreasoned thinking. But its nice to laugh to others, eh? Science to me, is the application of the scientific method. This is to say that whatever is being looked at should be repeatable, and consistently provide the same results. Strictly speaking, when we say we know,…

"With the virus, has anyone here ever used an electron microscope? Did you see a virus with it? Why do you think it is a virus? Etc etc - its all on faith." You're in the wrong forum.

They've (electron microscopes) been around since 1933, why aren't they everywhere? On your phone even?

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#294

Post by mmmmmk »

disease wrote: post #256
sasaf5 wrote: post #178

Undoing the clickbait: After many paragraphs telling that the reason is not simple, it finally centers in occasionalism. > At the heart of Ash’ari metaphysics is the idea of occasionalism, a doctrine that denies natural causality. Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is completely free. Ash’arites believed that God is the only cause, so that the world is a series of discrete physi…

I'll admit to not having read the full article, but would a belief like this make the assumption that God's will could even overrule logic itself. Could God will 2 + 2 = 5? How would you rationalize this? Or perhaps the point is to irradiate rationality.

Yes, Al-Ghazali made that point. I don't remember the specific passage but he made the comment that if he left a book in his library, he has no way to know that god did not turn it into a donkey, which was at that moment pissing on all his other books. I'll search for that quote, because it was pretty exciting for a medieval philosophy class.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#295

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kalenx wrote: post #129
feralimal wrote: post #34

Ha ha - primitive Islamic religionists!! Only we are exactly the same, but are blind to our failings. This narrative plays on our conceited, flabby, unreasoned thinking. But its nice to laugh to others, eh? Science to me, is the application of the scientific method. This is to say that whatever is being looked at should be repeatable, and consistently provide the same results. Strictly speaking, when we say we know,…

That's the kind of argument that could make sense in a vacuum, but does not apply at all in practice. Sure, _in theory_, I would be glad to know enough, to have enough time and to have enough money to verify every scientific theory since the dawn of times. In practice, it's been totally not scalable for a single person for about 500 years. _Careful trust_, with verification systems in place, is then the second best c…

This makes the mistake that science is there to be verified. It's not. It's there to be falsified.

We don't require verification of science above and beyond its contribution to our ability to predict and control the world. As the famous slightly cliched saying goes: all models are wrong, some models are useful.

There are some people who think that the point of science is to move us closer to truth. Some of those people are actual scientists, most of them are not.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#297

Post by Retric »

feralimal wrote: post #239
Retric wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is making the false claim that individual aspects of a video can’t be independently falsified. A simple example is to track down the original referenced paper. Another is knowing that at the time the video was created, VFX wasn’t good enough to fake the shot. That’s not verification of say the amount of effort involved, as they could be scamming their backers or whatnot. But, it does demonstrate the differ…

With all respect, I think you missed the point. I am talking about how information is presented to us, and how we are put in a position of having to accept whatever is presented despite not being presented any evidence. This is not a conspiracy, it is logic. The video is saying that information is presented to us in such a way that it is impossible to know whether it is true or false. When you edit the shots and do n…

> with CGI technology being as good as it is, we still cannot be sure nowadays.

CGI is still extremely limited. There is an ever expanding list of things that can be reasonably faked, but high definition turbulent flows for example are not one of them.

Now you personally may simply not know where that line is, but that doesn’t mean nobody does. Which is my point, your personal level of ignorance isn’t universal. Science is still surprisingly accessible, learning and verifying say thermodynamics can give you more confidence about say global warming than simple blind trust.

The same is true of a great many spurious claims from say kickstarts that can’t work as advertised. Which means a slick video on it’s own isn’t enough.

PS: I don’t mean for this as a personal attack, more a suggestion that if you find separating fact from fiction difficult there is a path forward.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#298

Post by aebtebeten »

watwut wrote: post #174
DSingularity wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the comments here people will bring up countries like japan as a contrast. Why did the Japanese, unlike the Arabs, rise again after their fall? Could the centuries of direct colonial rule by the Ottomans and Europeans played a role? The Ottomans were by no measure gentle but the Europeans were nothing short of barbaric. Take Palestine. To solidify their hold the British simply rounded up and executed fighting…

Japan had democracy imposed on them and so did Germany, both had them imposed by winning forces. The comment you are responding to complains about demoracy in Arab world being subverted by west.

Also: japan and west germany were next door to communist (china and east germany) countries. Capitalism appears to work best with competition.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#299

Post by yamrzou »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #86
mrwnmonm wrote: post #62

I am an Arab and I am pretty sure the article is full of misinformation before even reading it, but will read it anyway. Take the first paragraph > Contemporary Islam is not known for its engagement in the modern scientific project. But it is heir to a legendary “Golden Age” of Arabic science frequently invoked by commentators hoping to make Muslims and Westerners more respectful and understanding of each other. Pres…

I would guess that Islam have no issues with good science, right? In my opinion, blaming religion for any decline of science is completely accepted even if there's no direct correlation between both, which is very bad because it's creates a false believe that religious people aren't educated.

Islam has no issues with good science. On the contrary, the Quran has some verses which encourage enquiry, such as:

"Say: 'Travel through the earth, and reflect on how he [god] started the creation." - 20 Al-'Ankabut.

Re: Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

#300

Post by vivekpandian »

It's incorrect to say that algebra was from Arabia or middle-east. Mathematics, science, medicine etc travelled from India to Arabia. During their trade with India, Sanskrit works were translated by arabs. And during their european conquest, these arabic works travelled to europe
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