381–390 of 413 posts
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Knowledge IS a binary thing. Either it is coherent with reality or it is not.
We sent Voyager probes through the solar system using Newton laws, although we know that general relativity is more accurate. Knowledge is a spectrum. If you think that anything has a definitive answer, then I don't know what you are doing, but it is not science.
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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 object already! Knowledge does not reside in society. [...] You and I can know. It is not a societal exercise. Knowledge may or may not reside in society, but all practical effects and consequences of knowledge reside in society. A concept does not exist in an abstract and metaphysical world where you can go and find. And it's not possible to develop any concept, including scientific concepts, without social inte…
The only place knowledge resides in the minds of individual people.
In my view, you are making a category error to subsume your individual understanding, that no one else can access, into some concept called 'society'. There is no hive mind, no borg, no tangible collective consciousness. There are conceptual artefacts we all interact with, and all interpret in similar ways in our individual consciousness. We all know what a 'tree' is for example. These are common linguistic named 'tokens' that we use to interact with others. I say 'tree' and you understand me. But the concept of 'tree' only exists in our minds.
We discuss things in the objective world with others and that use concepts such as 'society' to describe part of that objective world. Our exchange of concepts does not make those concepts real in themselves. They are only real or animated in the mind of an individual - in you or I. They have no life of their own.
To treat 'society' as a real thing - as a sort of ultra-human - is to mistake the map for the terrain. On a map a group of people may be interpreted as a 'collection' or a 'society'. But that is just a concept to navigate the map at a certain resolution. The 'society' concept only resides in the mind of the individual looking at the map - its not actually a real thing. This can be confirmed as other individuals can use a different mental maps to successfully navigate the terrain - eg they may see a collection of individuals as a collection of individuals.
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Israel has that because the US accepts and supports that development. They won't allow that in the islamic countries.
If the Arab nations decided to embrace science education and to industrialise their economies there's nothing the USA or Europe could, or would want to do to stop it. In fact the West would gleefully sell them the technical know how and equipment needed to do it. After all, they even did the same for Communist China.
Agree. But to be fair, not all is rosy. Israel has been signaled as the responsible of serial killings of scientists "of interest" in other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nucle...
This means that we have less people in the planet able to find a solution for the problem of managing nuclear residues, for example. Something that would have greatly benefited Israel itself.
And there are more than 300 cases of teachers being kidnapped, tortured and/or assasinated by US army (or other agents).
http://www.iraqsolidaridad.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/...
The idea of a country systematically killing 320 academics in Occident would be clearly seen as something atrocious. This should be treated exactly the same by international organisms.
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There's nothing inherently wrong with being religious, I think the major problem is fundamentalism: if you consider your Holy Book (be it the Koran, the Bible or whatever else), or even more commonly a narrow interpretation of it, as the single source of truth and condemn all who deviate from it, that's a recipe for stagnation. That happened in Europe in the Middle Ages, and it's happening in the Arabic world now.
You are right and you are wrong. What’s happening in the Arabic world is far from this. What’s happening in the Arab world is a continuation of existing European and US foreign policy which seeks to maintain the low cost of energy by ensuring that the Middle East remains subjugated. It has to be the entire Middle East to ensure that those Saudis never look up and demand to be free. Instead they keep pumping that oil…
The history of fighting and division between Arabs / Muslims starts almost immediately after the death of Prophet Mohamed.
The Arabs have been colonized for many hundreds of years by the Ottoman Turks.
When mentioning "existing European and US" you avoid any mention of URSS and current Russia.
Basically you wrote an ideological rant that's fact-free.
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…
It goes on to talk about its usage of "Arabic science" at the beginning of the second section. "A preliminary caution must be taken about both parts of the term “Arabic science.” This is, first, because the scientists discussed here were not all Arab Muslims. Indeed, most of the greatest thinkers of the era were not ethnically Arab. This is not surprising considering that, for several centuries throughout the Middle…
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I'm from a 3rd world Muslim country, I also agree that the number of people who actively oppose "western education" is extremely small. They are on the fringe even in the rural, comparatively religious society I grew up in. It's important to remember that most people don't really worry about this kind of ideological questions, like whether studying in university is incompatible with Quran. Hell, most people don't eve…
I agree. I am and live among white first world people and I often hear the opinion that the problems of muslim immigrants both here and in their home country are caused by their bad character traits, either culturally or genetically. To me this is bullshit. Most of these problems are caused by poverty. If you're poor you don't have good education, information, nutrition, health systems and all the like. And that caus…
To me this is bullshit. Most of these problems are caused by poverty. If you're poor you don't have good education, information, nutrition, health systems and all the like. And that causes all sorts of disadvantages people can't imagine. It's not character or genetics."
Too bad a simple A/B testing will reveal your own belief to be wrong. There are many countries where poverty creates masses of people without "good education, information, nutrition, health systems and all the like", yet is it consistently Muslims countries who create first-hand violent extremists (aka "terrorists") and their supporters.
To further destroy your thesis, most of the 9/11 terrorists were educated Saudis from middle-class to rich families.
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Sure, prepend all your sentences by "The evidence that I have seen indicates" if it makes you happy. It changes nothing about the fact that knowledge exists even if you can personally experience it using solely your senses. I know that we've been to the Moon (do you?) although I wasn't even born when this happened.
Were you born yesterday? :) Knowledge is certain. If there is a possibility that some claim could be wrong, it is only a hypothesis. And that's perfectly fine. Call that knowledge if you like, but you are over-stating your case. Lying in fact. The reality is that we have far less knowledge than we think. We may be aware of lots of hypotheses, we can have knowledge of hypotheses. But this is not knowledge of the thing…
All the best.
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We sent Voyager probes through the solar system using Newton laws, although we know that general relativity is more accurate. Knowledge is a spectrum. If you think that anything has a definitive answer, then I don't know what you are doing, but it is not science.
We. The royal 'we'. Did we? What exactly was your part in this? Did we watch it on a video?
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Sure, here's the first youtube result I got: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQaYLbsl33g > I can only say that I will watch in good faith. You won't. > If, as you seem to suggest, I do see issues with the video and evidence, and you don't, what does that tell you about your threshold for the acceptance of what is presented as true to you? Of course my threshold of acceptance is lower than yours! This whole discussion…
I watched it. Issues I have with the video you provided. I can't believe that this passes muster with you as a scientist. I can't help but notice the gas he creates at first is white in colour. In the second the gas is clear in colour. Both white and colourless gas are the same apparently. The difference in colour is not explained. In the second experiment, Brian Cox says he is using hydrogen + AIR (not oxygen). Air…
All the best.
Heterodox explanation: > ”Nothing in Europe,” notes Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, “could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600.” Before the portuguese (1498-1974?) and the spanish (1492-1976?) overseas empires, the arab world was in the middle of the prime trade routes between asia and europe. Afterwards, their status as middleman…
> Science happens where there are rich people; rich people happen where there are bottlenecks in trade. It can't be that simple. How do you fit there, for example, russian space exploration?
Two things happened in 1985: KSA opened the taps to full production, tanking oil prices, and the Plaza Accord weakened the dollar. Since oil is denominated in USD, this further kneecapped soviet hard currency income. While they were simultaneously attempting to fight a war in afghanistan, the real price of oil had dropped by a factor of 3. Elsewhere, as a result of the Plaza Accord, west germany used its stronger marks to buy out east germany as a fire sale from the Warsaw Pact, but I still have no idea what japan (or perhaps just the LDP selectorate?) got from its stronger yen, other than (averaged across the whole country) stagnation.
TIL Polan can into space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirosław_Hermaszewski (double checking received opinions never hurts, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737221 )
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Conspiracy theory:
Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24736853 and consider that anyone outside who for whatever reason had been modelling the soviet economy might have been able to show to the actors within it (especially after Gorbi's transparency reforms) that it was worth more in pieces than as a going conglomerate, in which case the implosion of the soviet union would have been the ultimate stakeholder activism geopolitical LBO.
If Mark Felt had been a Belter, he would have said du chesh peyeting instead of "follow the money."