201–210 of 413 posts
> "We will turn to this question later, but it is important to keep in mind that the decline of scientific activity is the rule, not the exception, of civilizations. While it is commonplace to assume that the scientific revolution and the progress of technology were inevitable, in fact the West is the single sustained success story out of many civilizations with periods of scientific flourishing. Like the Muslims, th…
The reason for this is that historically most civilizations, or phases of civilizations have lacked two things. One is the strong, persistent social institutions needed to maintain the momentum of scientific progress. The other is a solid socialised understanding of scientific methods. To maintain consistent scientific and engineering development you need both, and possibly a third in the from of the printing press,…
There were more than one university in India thousand years back and hosted thousands of students. Islamic Invasions destroyed the culture.
It was really the switch over to valuing processes and methods, rather than facts and knowledge, that turbo-charged the rate of development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry - but you verify very little at school. It is an indoctrination system. IMO. Feel free to provide a specific example though, where you verified something at school.
I verified a _lot_ at school. Simple stuff, sure, but it's the method which matters, not the thing you verify. I guess it may depend on the education systems, but seeing it as an 'indoctrination system' is just dishonest, given that by _definition_ you want to change the minds of the children. There is no --or so little-- spontaneous learning when you reach something more complicated than the basic action/immediate c…
How was water proven to you to be made up of 2 gases?
Please don't refer me to youtube videos where a showman's pop is made, and we see some water droplets from the air condensate on the bottle. I want to see 2 gases being added together and making a liquid, that is water. We are apparently on a planet that is mainly water... surely this isn't too much to ask?
You might think this is basic, and it is. If you review this information, you will recognise just how little you actually know.
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…
I was nodding all the way until "bottlenecks in"... and then the Expanse slang. Tsk tsk :)
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Thank you. I always get heavily downvoted as I don't think others are as open minded to hearing a different viewpoint as you. I agree too. But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally. Whenever you don't do that, you are accepting a story - without testing you cannot know anything, it is all in the realm of belief. And you are right…
Be careful in bringing up "open mindedness". If the most compelling thing you can say about your position is that "it is so weird and obtuse that only true open minds will not reject it", I'm not sure you're making a point here... > But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally. Sure. But you can't. You literally can't. And since you…
> > But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally.
> Sure. But you can't. You literally can't. And since you can't, it means, given this sentence, that you consider all science to be in the realm of belief. This is really sad.
Yes, but when you haven't verified, you can't say you know. You literally can't. You believe.
> There's always the risk that the West might internally reject the scientific revolution This risk is real. Just see how many American citizens rejecting medical science in times of pandemic.
But was it medical science when the CDC advised people, very strongly, to not wear masks or that the virus coming out of Wuhan was of no concern to everyday Americans? How are people supposed to believe in capital 'S' science when our scientific institutions make claims based on their guts instead of just admitting they don't know (which is the only acceptable scientific answer when you can't back up a claim with rep…
Could you cite where and when the CDC said that?
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They knew that masks worked from the get go and openly admitted that their statements about masks being ineffective were driven by fears of shortages, not lack of data. This is why their statements were effectively "masks don't work unless you are a healthcare worker". Scientific organizations should not be issuing politically motivated or economically motivated statements; they should be stating the truth to the bes…
> Scientific organizations should not be issuing politically motivated or economically motivated statements How is this political or economic? It was purely public health. At the beginning of the pandemic, we thought we could trace and contain anybody with covid, thus ELIMINATING the virus. In this view, only healthcare workers need masks! If healthcare workers go without masks because every ordinary joe stocked up o…
Healthcare workers aren't getting masks through the same supply chains as regular people; they are getting them through hospitals. If it truly was the case that hospitals were being outbid for supplies by private entities, that is a commerce regulatory problem arguably out of scope of the CDC. The government should have bitten the bullet and passed a law to forcibly route material to hospitals and / or eminent domained existing stockpiles for sale by companies or individuals and given them to hospitals. It is not the CDC's job to handle supply chain management in these contexts. If the CDC would like to get involved, it should be encouraging people to give masks to health care workers because they work and because health care workers should take priority. This preserves their credibility and shifts the responsibility to act onto the entities that should be bearing it: the president and congress.
Mongols.
During the siege of Baghdad, the Mongols destroyed the Grand Library of Baghdad which contained countless precious historical documents and books on subjects ranging from medicine to astronomy.[1]
To think these invaders are glorified today makes me sick. In my opinion, not only did only cause the decline of the Arabic world, but they also severely impacted the technological development of the world as a whole. Some of the works in the library were believed to be ancient manuscripts from Greek sources.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)#Destru...
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,…
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 different standards on what qualifies as believable). Demonstrating it by direct observation using the scientific method can achieve this goal, creating a mythology or writing a textbook can do it as well. At the end of the day, you must start from an existing concept and assume it is true. Theoretically, You can start from simple and self-evident concepts and derive everything from first principles. However, in a modern society, the existing body of knowledge is too large for any individual to independently verify and too useful to refuse. Even the verification of the simplest fact can be non-obvious and expensive. Thus, we assume they're true without verification. And often, what we have accepted are not even technically accurate.
Now, I'm not interested in discussing any particular issues in the thread, but I'd like to use this chance to talk about my pet theory on the psychology of conspiracy theories... An interesting thought exercise: Consider the shape of the Earth. Now, design a physics experiment to provide empirical evidence for a spherical Earth, preferably also it's rotation. Requirements: This should be practical within the ability of a single individual, and should be as easy as possible. Only minimum pre-existing concepts should be used. The result should be as obvious and unambiguous as possible without too much interpretation. It should be able to defend itself from any challenge on its technical inaccuracy or alternative models... I think it's actually a non-obvious problem. It's amazing how much domain-specific knowledge it requires. Flat Earth conspiracy theorists have cherry-picked numerous arguments to support their positions, just to name a few...
* Bedford Level Experiment. A number of sticks were placed in an 6-mile uninterrupted straight line. Optical observations were made. Experiment failed to detect any curvature, or that the data showed the curvature was not outward, but inward. Many modern versions by Flat Earthers can be found in YouTube videos, often on lakes or sea - objects and buildings well beyond the horizon can be seen by telescopic lens. Laser beams have been detected 15 kilometers apart, etc. Why? Atmospheric refraction. After atmospheric effects have been corrected, the data will definitely show that the Earth is indeed a sphere. But from now, to interpret the data, you suddenly need a model of atmospheric optics, which is far from obvious and requires many additional concepts. Then, consider the cost and difficulty of this naive experiment - For an individual, it's already high enough and unpractical for a city dweller. Thus, all optical experiments are doomed? Radio based observations are even trickier than optical observations.
* Foucault Pendulum. It's the most famous physics experiment to show the Earth's rotation, but the instability of the original, unpowered pendulum is notorious, even minor imperfection in mechanical construction or startup can create unwanted mode of oscillation, such as an elliptic oscillation which can totally mask the Earth's rotation. For powered pendulum, a careful and complicated mechanical analysis is needed to show that the pendulum has no preferred direction of swing,. Thus, Flat Earth advocates reject Foucault Pendulum as a valid experiment - any expected result is refuted as a coincidence or the result of the experimenter's biases.
* Gyroscope. An accurate and sensitive gyroscope, such as a Laser Ring Gyroscope, can sense the Earth's rotation. But gyroscope observations are rejected by Flat Earthers in general - the raw data output is noisy with random drifts and noise, aquisation of useful data heavily relies on algorithms and data processing. They argue that the algorithms can be biased to show a rotational Earth. Of course, it's not the case, but then you need to justify the entire subject of statistics and digital signal processing, good luck with that.
* Astronomic and Geodesic Measurements. Examples include observing the fixed stars and showing their variation in altitudes, or showing the sum of a triangle on Earth is greater than 180-degree, etc. Many of these experiments require an individual to travel great distances, many geodesic measurements also require accurate navigation, which can be disputed.
Of course, obvious experiments that produces strong evidences do exist, good candidates can be lunar ellipses, sun rise and sun set, timezones. But it's just a rhetorical question, I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification - indeed, many people who believe the Earth is a sphere have proposed these experiments to Flat Earthers, while making the mistake of not realizing their limitations, which in turns strengthens the beliefs of many Flat Earthers that "people are too brainwashed to see the truth". If we move away from Flat Earth and step into more advanced subjects, obviousness completely disappears, and only domain-specific knowledge remains, which are heavily dependent upon preexisting results.
In my opinion, it's how numerous conspiracy theories are created. The conspiracy theorists will simply tell you: why do you assume they're true? It's entirely possible that everything you know is false. And all the gaps in your accepted knowledge can be exploited by them to make this point. And ultimately, you may come to the conclusion that the entire body scientific knowledge is a hoax. Then, one may ask, how can people build anything in engineering? The conspiracy theorist will tell you, the truths are carefully and systematic distorted in a way that appears to be self-consistent, enough for some applications, but it's distorted enough to kill truth. And since any pre-existing results couldn't be trusted and one is unable to derive or verify anything from first principles due to limited time and resources, science is hence rejected.
Conclusion: The theoretical and epistemological foundation of many conspiracy theories are the equivalent of Reflection on Trusting Trust - they claim the vast majority of knowledge is manipulated for malicious purposes, in the same way that the hypothetical attack by Ken Thompson claims one's compiler could be backdoored and no program in one's computer can be trusted.