Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bobboau on February 04, 2014, 09:29:11 pm
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yeah, Bill is getting his ass kicked.
had no idea what he was getting into.
in his main presentation, it feels like he is doing a reverse gish gallop and it just isn't working.
not prepared for age of the earth /*facepalm*/
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This is why science is not settled by open debate. Even the Shapley-Curtis debate, which was between two well-respected scientists on the topic of the nature of spiral nebulae, was largely unsuccessful in actually resolving the issue.
Debates are meant to persuade the audience, and those who are most easily persuaded are those who enter the debate with few preconceived ideas or knowledge about the topic. Thus the direction in which they are persuaded depends more upon how they perceive the debators themselves, rather than the quality of evidence and analysis thereof. Tactics like straw-men, misdirection, fallacies, burying the opponent with more questions than he can conceivably respond to, etc, can persuade one into thinking that one side 'won' regardless of how good the arguments actually were.
Evolution vs. creationism was resolved ages ago; I don't think there's anything to be gained from a debate on it. The best remedy is a good education.
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which unfortunately will not happen, because the resolution you mention happened within scientific circles and not the greater public, who happens to be where decisions like 'what is tought in schools' are made
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This is why science is not settled by open debate.
But isn't that science actually is? The free and open exchange of ideas, and the cross-examination and testing thereof?
Or are you in favor of science behind closed doors, restricted to an elite few?
Debates are meant to persuade the audience, and those who are most easily persuaded are those who enter the debate with few preconceived ideas or knowledge about the topic. Thus the direction in which they are persuaded depends more upon how they perceive the debators themselves, rather than the quality of evidence and analysis thereof. Tactics like straw-men, misdirection, fallacies, burying the opponent with more questions than he can conceivably respond to, etc, can persuade one into thinking that one side 'won' regardless of how good the arguments actually were.
Fascinating. Bobboau seems to think that Ken Ham won the debate. Are you implying that Bobboau was persuaded in the manner you describe?
I don't think there's anything to be gained from a debate on it.
Oho, rubbish. I'm sure that if Bill Nye had won the debate, all the evolution enthusiasts would be rubbing it in the faces of the creationists.
I will have to watch this at a later time, but here is my conjecture at what happened, based on just the reactions in this thread. Bill Nye expected a cakewalk, and didn't expect to take Ken Ham seriously. In contrast, Ken Ham did his homework and showed up fully prepared.
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But isn't that science actually is? The free and open exchange of ideas, and the cross-examination and testing thereof?
Or are you in favor of science behind closed doors, restricted to an elite few?
Yep, that sure is Science. The point is that Science isn't settled in televised public debates the way, say, presidential candidates are. The dialogue happens in journals and articles, not in an auditorium; It should not be a matter of who is better at rhetoric, but who is better at facts.
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Science is absolutely about the free exchange and testing of ideas. Different scientists may have differing views, produce different models, and yes, they very often debate with one another as to whose are right. But which theory best represents the thing it tries to explain is not determined by debate, it is determined by which model is best verified by examination of evidence. This is what ultimately sways scientists to accept one thing versus another, not the quality of someone's arguments in an open debate such as seen above.
I agree with Bobboau that Bill Nye did not do as good of a job in this debate as his opponent. He was less persuasive and, as you say, was not prepared for the counterarguments. Nevertheless, his position is the correct one -- evolution is the only successful theory for the origin of species, and a young age for the Earth is untenable in the face of evidence.
I've no doubt that if Nye had won then a great deal of enthusiasts would indeed rub it in creationists' faces. They would also be very wrong if they suppose that his win is the reason that evolution should be accepted. :)
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Science should be settled by evidence.
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But isn't that science actually is? The free and open exchange of ideas, and the cross-examination and testing thereof?
Or are you in favor of science behind closed doors, restricted to an elite few?
That's a strawman argument and you really should know it.
Suppose you know little about Quantum Physics. Do you honestly think that the decision on which theory is correct should be decided by a televised debate between two scientists followed by a vote by the lay public? Or should the correct theory be decided by the proper scientific method of allowing people to prove themselves correct by presenting papers which can be examined in detail over time to determine their validity?
This is why debate of this kind is rather pointless. Subjects like quantum physics require a fairly large amount of knowledge to understand, you're not going to be able to judge who is correct based on this sort of public debate where the charisma and oration skills of the speaker can easily sway an audience in the wrong direction. Evolution is actually fairly easy to grasp but so many people haven't got the basic understanding to do so.
Oho, rubbish. I'm sure that if Bill Nye had won the debate, all the evolution enthusiasts would be rubbing it in the faces of the creationists.
That would never happen. Unless there was a serious mismatch in the quality of the debaters the creationists are always going to win simply because it's much easier to persuade people to believe a simple lie than a complex truth.
Hell, if you took a scientist determined to claim quantum physics was wrong into such a debate, he'd probably prevail. "You said light was a wave before, now you're saying it acts like a particle sometimes? What nonsense is this! Decide which one it is! It can't be both!" Anyone even attempting to explain that it really can be both could easily be painted as a liar and a fraud.
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Unless there was a serious mismatch in the quality of the debaters the creationists are always going to win simply because it's much easier to persuade people to believe a simple lie than a complex truth.
Not only complex but harsh -- we came into being not through creation as part of a perfect plan by a loving, omnipotent Creator but through a long, haphazard process of genetic variation kept only in check by natural selection. That's not going to be an easy sell.
Some religious people may be able to reconcile the two views, but for others it shakes the very foundations of their beliefs (nearby example (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85407.msg1710405#msg1710405)).
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2014.
Still can't wrap my head around the very concept of this debate.
2014.
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2014.
Still can't wrap my head around the very concept of this debate.
2014.
Time moves slowly in some places in this country.
115 years since the Origin of the Species was published, in case anyone was wondering.
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Unless there was a serious mismatch in the quality of the debaters the creationists are always going to win simply because it's much easier to persuade people to believe a simple lie than a complex truth.
Not only complex but harsh -- we came into being not through creation as part of a perfect plan by a loving, omnipotent Creator but through a long, haphazard process of genetic variation kept only in check by natural selection. That's not going to be an easy sell.
Some religious people may be able to reconcile the two views, but for others it shakes the very foundations of their beliefs (nearby example (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85407.msg1710405#msg1710405)).
Did you just link my post in there?? I am am a believer in evolution FYI! :wtf:
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It was KillerWhale, Wobble.
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Well that was weird! When I first opened the link it took me to the bottom of the page, where my post is the last on the page??
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I found this debate very interesting, in part because I'm not yet convinced of either debater's viewpoint.
And Goober's right here; this is a fair topic for a debate. A fair debate is always in the best interest of both parties. If you prove the other guy wrong, Great! If he proves you wrong, then you owe him one for making you more right than you were before the debate. If neither debater can convince the other, than the audience benefits from hearing points on both sides. Personally, I hardly consider this a closed question.
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This matter will never be settled in debate. It's already been settled with basic empirical evidence - but a debate is not about evidence, nor about finding common ground (there isn't any here, since one party is objectively wrong). A debate's about scoring points and building a narrative.
The audience rarely benefits because debates are not effective heuristics to select empirically supported truth. Instead, debates reward tactics more than substance. As a national-ranked debater in high school - I ended up doing such a good job as Turkey in one simulation they sent me to the Turkish embassy in DC for a dinner, I'm an international hero and I get all the ladies - I worked pretty much every conceivable geopolitical topic from every available angle. It didn't really matter what the truth was, or how much evidence we had in either camp: you could persuade an audience of your case with the same tricks no matter the substance of your argument.
Scientists in general are often unsuited for debate because science encourages constant qualification and parametrization and often answers questions with 'we don't know yet' (rarely, if ever, in this topic, but often in others). These are awful things to do in a debate, because human authority heuristics punish uncertainty and reward confidence.
Karajorma's quantum physics metaphor is apt. If you put a quantum physicist up there to debate the existence of elementary particles with an Aristotelian philosopher, the quantum physicist will get shredded. His complex structures are counterintuitive and obscure, and they require enormous background to understand. The philosopher's positions are tangible and clear and he's able to focus on offense rather than simplifying a complex topic.
Of course, the analogy breaks down in the complexity - it takes no more than an elementary school education to understand who's right in this debate.
e: Put more simply, in InsaneBaron's terms: debates cannot work for the best interest of both parties (or the audience) because debates are not an effective means to select between theories. They are an effective way to select between debaters on the basis of human pyschology.
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I did debate in high school myself. Loved it :) and did pretty well, though not go-to-turkey well. It's definitely something I'd recommend to any student.
That said, I disagree on your point, but I respect your opinion. I'm not convinced of young earth creationism, but I AM convinced that basic evolutionary naturalism has a lot of holes. For example, the big bang: How did the matter for the bang get there in the first place? (A point that came up in the debate). I'd have to say that "In the beginning, God made the world" is pretty reasonable compared to "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made everything". That doesn't mean I think the world was made in six days though... if you ask me whether the world is thousands or billions of years old, I'd give you the same response you'd get if you asked me who I expected to win the next world series: "You're asking the wrong guy."
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We studied political persuasion at MIT - I think we had one of the finest labs in the world on the topic - and our conclusion was basically this: it's impossible to persuade people with a sharply different opinion from your own, and it's very difficult to use substantial or complex arguments to persuade anyone.
Instead, you should stake out a position in the extreme corner of your own camp and never give any ground. Moderation or nuance will cost you possible converts. Your targets are the undecided. You'll push some away, but on net you'll gain more by having a clear, simple message that can be delivered over and over again. Your best response to criticism is to ignore it or to deride the source of the criticism as untrustworthy. You should paint the conflict as a binary us-or-them to encourage people to identify clearly with one of two camps. Make it all about identity: you don't just believe in [cause], you are a [causer]. When an opponent attacks you, your faithful only need to know they're not a [causer] to deprecate the argument. It's not even a conscious choice. It happens automatically.
These tactics are battle-tested. It's no surprise that political campaigns and mass movements converge on them.
I did debate in high school myself. Loved it :) and did pretty well, though not go-to-turkey well. It's definitely something I'd recommend to any student.
That said, I disagree on your point, but I respect your opinion. I'm not convinced of young earth creationism, but I AM convinced that basic evolutionary naturalism has a lot of holes.
This is a great point! The Darwinian synthesis has come a long way, and Darwin's original theory was never adequate (even for him). But the constant need to defend basic science against attack prevents scientists from talking about what they've learned since then.
However, you're making a key error by connecting Darwin to cosmology. Darwin's synthesis is biological. I'm making a vow not to launch a science clinic here, since that big block of text I posted above explains why it's futile in a lot of cases, but I'll make one exception because you're cool.
For example, the big bang: How did the matter for the bang get there in the first place? (A point that came up in the debate). I'd have to say that "In the beginning, God made the world" is pretty reasonable compared to "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made everything". That doesn't mean I think the world was made in six days though... if you ask me whether the world is thousands or billions of years old, I'd give you the same response you'd get if you asked me who I expected to win the next world series: "You're asking the wrong guy."
This is a scientific question with a scientific answer - but not yet a single answer! We have a lot of theories as to what triggered the Big Bang right now, but our ability to select between them is hampered by the incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity, both of which are required to explore the high energy density and tiny physical scale of the first picoseconds after the Big Bang. We're working towards a theory of quantum gravity which should let us fill in those missing first few fractions of a second...and then we can get to work on before, assuming that key information hasn't been lost behind an event horizon.
As for 'asking the wrong guy', your answer should always be a confident 'billions'. The reason is that the 'billions' number comes from a theory with explanatory power. This is a key difference between science and pseudoscience. A big-picture scientific framework makes predictions: it says 'okay, based on what we have here, we should see a pattern of background radiation in the universe', or 'we should see distant pulsars receding at this fraction of the speed of light'. This makes the theory FALSIFIABLE. When a theory makes a prediction, but we observe something different than that prediction, the theory has been falsified. It needs to be reworked or thrown out.
The lambda-CDM model of cosmology and the Big Bang are our best explanations for the universe because they made a ton of predictions which turned out to be true. They were able to tell us things before we could even observe them, and when we did observe them, they lined up. We're always looking for places where the universe DOESN'T match up with the predictions of theory, because these are the spots where we can improve our theories.
Lastly, this:
I'd have to say that "In the beginning, God made the world" is pretty reasonable compared to "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made everything".
is a great example of a bad heuristic. It's the kind of thing we're always battling against in science. Don't try to confabulate explanations and then arbitrate between them on the basis of which seems simpler or more 'reasonable'.
Your question is 'what happened before the Planck epoch'? And the answer should be, in simplest terms: 'we don't know'. Not 'God' or 'm-branes colliding' or 'a vacuum fluctuation' or 'a black hole formed in a superordinate universe' (though many of these are valid theories, if not yet falsifiable).
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Well, if you define God solely as the "first cause" of the Universe that we know, you could say that God caused the Big Bang. :) However, you'll find that this sort of God doesn't exactly influence one's everyday life, and certainly doesn't look like an old man in the clouds.
In fact, this isn't a new idea. H.P. Lovecraft had arrived at a similar conclusion. The closest equivalent to God in his mythos (Azrael) can hardly be called sentient, at least by out standards. It created the Universe by accident and is impossible for a human to comprehend, though probably possible to express by some really weird mathematics (of the sorts that drive students insane and always come up on exams :) ). From what we know, the actual first cause fits that description disturbingly well, though it probably couldn't be "experienced" by a human the same way Azrael could.
TBH, in light of what we know today, Lovecraft pretty much nailed it. The Universe wasn't made for Humans, nor does it care about them. Of course, that's pretty disturbing, so Humanity came up with a nice, fatherly, predictable God who not only looked and acted like a Human, but also punished those harmful to society and rewarded those beneficial to it. Later, he even took responsibility for what they do off Humans' hands. God is a convenient, if imaginary, being that played a vital role in development of human civilization.
That's why atheism is not for everyone. It's a daunting task to accept the fact that you are, in fact, responsible for all your actions and that the Universe as a whole doesn't care about you. Not everybody is suited for this. So I say, let the believers believe, as long as they don't force their beliefs on anyone. I'm generally opposed to lies, but this is such a huge thing that it might be better to leave people to live in a lie than have them paralyzed with fear of their own insignificance. This situation is much like with "lies to children"; we don't tell some things to children until they can handle it. Some people just never become ready for that particular truth (personally, it took me 14 years to accept that idea, and about 2 more to realize the really scary part).
Yeah, I'm a bit depressed. Why do you ask? :)
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I felt this was not touched upon directly in GB's post:
The age of the earth, evolution, and the big bang are all things touched upon by seperate fields. For example, my field, Geology, simply states that the history of the universe starts with the Big Bang. Due to the nature of light, we still can observe part of the big bang as the light of the event reaches us from the far reaches of the universe (similarely to how you see a star as it was 8 years ago if it is 8 lightyears away). It also makes up 10% of the snow you see when you haven't tuned your TV set. We can't observe anything beyond the big bang, and therefore, we don't make statements about it. Not our field.
The idea that our world is not thousands but millions of years old was a point concieved by James Hutton, widely considered to be the first geologist. Before, it was thought that sedimentary stones were created by the Great Flood(tm). However, after visiting Siccar Point, James Hutton noted that many rocks were composited of layers. However, these layers were not always horizontal: Some were, for example, diagonal, but were then cut off by horizontal layers. Similar patterns can be found very strikingly in the grand canyon.
He concieved that these layers were formed on the seabed. Then the seabed would rise (or the sea itself would lower or dry out completely), which would cause the layers to shift. Eventually, the layers would be eroded, and new layers would be deposited on top of them. Such a process takes a very very very very long time, and thus James Hutton remarked that there was 'no vestige of a beginning, nor an prospect of an end'.
Currently, one way we can determine the oldness of things using radioactivity. Earth's athmosphere has contained a relatively consistent amount of radioactive particles troughout millions of years. By breathing that athmosphere, that amount stays constant. However, if you die and are buried, you stop exchanging radioactive particles with the athmosphere, and the remaining particles begin to decay. if you are dug up, one can use the particles in your body to determine how old you are. Those calculations are pretty conclusive.
To summarize: The question on how old the earth is, is irrelevant to the question on how the universe was created.
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It also makes up 10% of the snow you see when you haven't tuned your TV set.
What year is this? :P
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However, you're making a key error by connecting Darwin to cosmology. Darwin's synthesis is biological.
I'd just like to quote this for emphasis. The origin and evolution of the universe (cosmology) is quite another topic from the origin and evolution of life (abiogenesis and biology). Furthermore, The Big Bang is not a model of how the universe was created. It says nothing about what initiated the event, though as B.T. points out there is no shortage of ideas, many with good scientific merit, others not so much.
The Big Bang also does not say 'everything came from nothing'. The Big Bang, put most simply, says that the universe is expanding and cooling from a hot and dense initial state, and this behavior is well understood from physics (general relativity) and verified by multiple lines of evidence (cosmological redshift, background radiation, relative abundance of elements, evolution of structure, etc.) We understand remarkably well the evolution of the cosmos back to fractions of a second after the first moment of expansion. Beyond that is the Planck Epoch, where general relativity and quantum mechanics clash. What happened before then? We do not yet know. :)
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It also makes up 10% of the snow you see when you haven't tuned your TV set.
What year is this? :P
Analog FTW :nervous:.
It also makes up 10% of the static you hear when you haven't tuned your car radio.
EDIT: As a meta-discussion point: I love the well thought out posts everyone makes during these discussions :D.
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I'd have to say that "In the beginning, God made the world" is pretty reasonable compared to "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made everything".
But those are the same thing in the sense that in both, something comes from nothing; the first one is not "In the beginning, God made the world", it's "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made God, and God made the world". The universe doesn't require a creator any more than the creator would require a creator.
As Battuta said, it's a prime example of an argument which appeals to so-called common sense but which is ultimately just a rhetorical trick. Having to settle for "something came from nothing and that doesn't make any sense" isn't very satisfying, but that's what both of your options boil down to.
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We studied political persuasion at MIT - I think we had one of the finest labs in the world on the topic - and our conclusion was basically this: it's impossible to persuade people with a sharply different opinion from your own, and it's very difficult to use substantial or complex arguments to persuade anyone.
Instead, you should stake out a position in the extreme corner of your own camp and never give any ground. Moderation or nuance will cost you possible converts. Your targets are the undecided. You'll push some away, but on net you'll gain more by having a clear, simple message that can be delivered over and over again. Your best response to criticism is to ignore it or to deride the source of the criticism as untrustworthy. You should paint the conflict as a binary us-or-them to encourage people to identify clearly with one of two camps. Make it all about identity: you don't just believe in [cause], you are a [causer]. When an opponent attacks you, your faithful only need to know they're not a [causer] to deprecate the argument. It's not even a conscious choice. It happens automatically.
These tactics are battle-tested. It's no surprise that political campaigns and mass movements converge on them.
I agree that we see enough of this rot to make you sympathetic to the Shivans. However, I'd make a distinction between a bad debate (American politics...) and a good debate, like Socratic debate, or the kind of discussion we're having right now. It comes down to respecting the other guy. I'd say Ham and Nye had a pretty civil debate, especially compared to what we had to endure last fall.
I did debate in high school myself. Loved it :) and did pretty well, though not go-to-turkey well. It's definitely something I'd recommend to any student.
That said, I disagree on your point, but I respect your opinion. I'm not convinced of young earth creationism, but I AM convinced that basic evolutionary naturalism has a lot of holes.
This is a great point! The Darwinian synthesis has come a long way, and Darwin's original theory was never adequate (even for him). But the constant need to defend basic science against attack prevents scientists from talking about what they've learned since then.
However, you're making a key error by connecting Darwin to cosmology. Darwin's synthesis is biological. I'm making a vow not to launch a science clinic here, since that big block of text I posted above explains why it's futile in a lot of cases, but I'll make one exception because you're cool.
Two points. First, I'm glad we can agree that Darwin's theory has problems that haven't been resolved yet- a lot of people deny that point. Second, you're absolutely right that Darwinism is a biologic rather than cosmological theory; unfortunately people on both sides equate the two, and I slipped into that terminology myself. Both biology and cosmology were involved in the debate
For example, the big bang: How did the matter for the bang get there in the first place? (A point that came up in the debate). I'd have to say that "In the beginning, God made the world" is pretty reasonable compared to "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made everything". That doesn't mean I think the world was made in six days though... if you ask me whether the world is thousands or billions of years old, I'd give you the same response you'd get if you asked me who I expected to win the next world series: "You're asking the wrong guy."
This is a scientific question with a scientific answer - but not yet a single answer! We have a lot of theories as to what triggered the Big Bang right now, but our ability to select between them is hampered by the incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity, both of which are required to explore the high energy density and tiny physical scale of the first picoseconds after the Big Bang. We're working towards a theory of quantum gravity which should let us fill in those missing first few fractions of a second...and then we can get to work on before, assuming that key information hasn't been lost behind an event horizon.
This is a very complicated issue. Basically, I'm concerned with Aristotle/Aquinas's "Uncaused cause" point: basically, there's an inherent contradiction in saying that this matter and energy got here without some cause. Whole volumes can (and have been) written on the issue, and my ability to delve into it is limited, but the universe- or multiverse if you go there- couldn't simply have created itself.
However, I plead guilty to oversimplifying the heuristic.
Your question is 'what happened before the Planck epoch'? And the answer should be, in simplest terms: 'we don't know'. Not 'God' or 'm-branes colliding' or 'a vacuum fluctuation' or 'a black hole formed in a superordinate universe' (though many of these are valid theories, if not yet falsifiable).
I agree here; I'll simply point out that not all of the above are mutually exclusive. Creation by God (which I'm convinced of) is entirely compatible with billions of years, biological evolution, and the big bang- and I admit I'm beginning to lean towards the above theories.
We're hitting on a vast issue that involves physics, biology, astronomy, and even theology; and quite frankly I don't have anything left to say other than that I'm not done exploring the issue. But I appreciate the opportunity to actually have a respectful discussion of the issue on the internet (what's the world coming to? :P ) I'm still not confident that I know all the answers here, but the whole matter has given me more to chew on.
Anyway, It looks like a lot got posted while my internet was out due to snow, so this all might be a dead horse post.
EDIT: Regarding the whole Ex Nihilo argument, my whole point was that there had to be something or Someone that wasn't created at some point- a self-existing being. I put it far too simply.
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To summarize: The question on how old the earth is, is irrelevant to the question on how the universe was created.
Almost, but not quite - the question of how old the earth is provides a minimum bound for the age of the universe. This was relevant in 1929, when Hubble calculated the age of the universe to be 2 billion years, at a point when we already knew the Earth was at least 3 billion years old. And it's also relevant today when you're trying to disprove young earth theories.
Insanebaron: I know you've said you're"leaning" away from young earth theories (and I applaud that), but just in case you needed more convincing, if you ever get the chance, spend an afternoon with a geologist. I can pretty much guarantee you that no matter where you live on earth, they'd be able to take you 25km out of your nearest city (much less in most places) and demonstrate to you ongoing processes that very cleary must have taken longer than 6000 years. You don't need a grand canyon - almost any sedimentary rock will do. A brief introduction to the geological timescale and the concept of gradualism isn't enough to prove a 4.5 billion year old earth - for that, we need radioactive dating - but it would be enough to disprove (aka falsify) a 6000 year old Earth.
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Just a couple quick points I want to clarity-snipe, I don't have much to add:
Two points. First, I'm glad we can agree that Darwin's theory has problems that haven't been resolved yet
Well...I'm not sure I'd say that. There are fields within evolutionary theory still undergoing work, but it's usually case of which of these is true, not how the heck does...? Any criticism you've heard of Darwinian evolution is probably flat-out wrong. The point I was making is that Darwin's theory had problems which have been resolved: they've been studied by scientists, the theory has been improved, and now we know more than we used to.
This is a very complicated issue. Basically, I'm concerned with Aristotle/Aquinas's "Uncaused cause" point: basically, there's an inherent contradiction in saying that this matter and energy got here without some cause. Whole volumes can (and have been) written on the issue, and my ability to delve into it is limited, but the universe- or multiverse if you go there- couldn't simply have created itself.
As several people have pointed out, the Big Bang theory describes everything that happens to the universe after the Planck epoch. It doesn't try to explain where the initial singularity came from. There's no attempt to create the singularity ex nihilo - we're simply unable to figure out what happened before the Planck epoch with our existing mathematical and empirical tools.
[quote[I agree here; I'll simply point out that not all of the above are mutually exclusive. Creation by God (which I'm convinced of) is entirely compatible with billions of years, biological evolution, and the big bang- and I admit I'm beginning to lean towards the above theories.
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This is very true. Belief in God should, I think, be based on faith, not the need for empirical proof. While I myself am an atheist I don't see why any particular scientific finding has to be an immediate threat to that belief. Conversely, faith should allow science to proceed by its own devices.
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For example, my field, Geology, simply states that the history of the universe starts with the Big Bang.
(https://static.ylilauta.org/files/r1/orig/136821581279692.jpg/stallman%20kyojin%201.jpg)
I don't think geology has any position on the history of universe in a scale larger than Earth itself. :p
To summarize: The question on how old the earth is, is irrelevant to the question on how the universe was created.
Precisely, but the universe must be at least as old as Earth is.
Of course it turns out to be significantly older than that, and contrary to what Genesis states, stars were not in fact made by a hyperintelligent shade of blue as a "by the way" during the fourth day of creation.
After watching the debate, I felt that Bill Nye did okay in a game that was always stacked against him (because reasons). Ham neglected to respond to repeatedly posed questions and instead deflected or obfuscated enough that there wasn't enough time to ask them again, and simply filled all gaps in his "arguments" with dogmatic drivel.
I was especially disgusted by the fact that he seemed to think "critical thinking" only applies to debasing science by taking apart things like cosmological principle, and simply discarding the basis of scientific observations like the ice layers, rock layers, and magnetic field line direction in the sea bed... on the most shamefully weak argument that since we don't know how these things came to being so we can't use them as evidence for anything.
While, on the contrary, a word-of-mouth account of nomadic tribes later put into writing and translated several times over is somehow a more convincing authority of what happened. :rolleyes:
Considering how blatantly Ham was claiming to support "critical thinking" I was sort of disappointed by the fact that Nye did not question the authority of biblical history in contrast to civilizations that also have records from same times. What makes the bible a specifically good source of "historical science" as opposed to history of ancient Egypt, or Alchera (Dreamtime) of Australian aborigines? What about the Greco-Roman mythology? Or how about the creation myths from India?
I agree with Nye's point near the end of the debate. I think the US education system should put a bit more emphasis on ensuring that students leave the schools equipped with at least rudimentary level of scientific literacy. And, most definitely don't let young earth creationists to teach children about critical thinking. That would be a complete travesty. In similar vein, his questions about "where do laws of logic" come from make absolutely no sense - that's the same as asking where mathematics comes from. Mathematics is a formal science, not a natural science; it's an entirely abstract construct (some of which can be used to model real physical things and behaviours of simple and complex things in the world) but mathematics and logic both exists independent of anything physical - they would exist even without the universe, and they are the same in every possible universe.
The question also belies a fundamental problem in Ham's thinking - namely, ignoring the fact that the universe doesn't have any particular obligation to be logical in the HUMAN context. It only needs to be logical in regard to itself, which just means it follows its own consistent laws of nature that happen to be what they are (finding out why is what theoretical physics and cosmology are all about). In contrast, Ham's insistence that we have no way of knowing IF the universe behaves in a consistent manner is exactly the reason why I think creationistic world views will, at least, severely hinder a person in a scientific career in most fields - because the moment there's a clear conflict between observation and preconception, a creationist will have to work overtime to make up explanations to get the observations to fit the expectations, and in the process they end up being only able to come to wrong conclusions every time such a conflict occurs.
Particularly in fields which can and will regularly conflict with creationist world views, such as biology, astronomy, cosmology, physics, geology, and most other natural sciences to be honest. YEC views would probably be less in the way in applied sciences such as engineering or medical sciences, or formal sciences such as computer science or mathematics.
They can be competent professionals, however it still does disturb me how they manage to reconcile their expertise and education with a world view that flies in the face of scientific literacy and still remain capable of doing their jobs. Clearly, they have to be aware of how things work, but then they have to come up with these vastly complicated and convoluted explanations for things such as why radioisotope dating isn't a reliable measure of age, or why indeed the fossil records don't show a mixture of earlier and newer animals in same layers...
By the way, the way Ham insists that the "terms need to be defined" (to suit his needs) and that the "secular" or "naturalistic" scientists have "hijacked" the terminology to use their "authority" to brainwash students into "naturalistic religion" is nothing new. It's been used by kooks since forever to obfuscate the actual issues and to move goalposts as needed. In that context, it doesn't surprise me at all that his term for "critical thinking" doesn't really correspond with established use of the term.
Good modern day example of this is Deepak Chopra who believes that scientists have hijacked the term "quantum" for their own nefarious purposes...
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That's a strawman argument and you really should know it.
On the contrary. Not only is it not a strawman argument, I'm not even making an argument at all. I'm merely exposing the flaws in watsisname's statement.
He said that science is not settled by open debate. A reasonable response to that would be to ask how it's settled. Is it to be settled by closed debate? Then that gives you science behind closed doors, subject to gatekeepers. Is it to be settled by some open process that is not debate? That violates testability, which is one of the key features of the scientific process.
Oho, rubbish. I'm sure that if Bill Nye had won the debate, all the evolution enthusiasts would be rubbing it in the faces of the creationists.
That would never happen. Unless there was a serious mismatch in the quality of the debaters the creationists are always going to win simply because it's much easier to persuade people to believe a simple lie than a complex truth.
Okay, so let me summarize:
1) You agree with Bobboau that Ken Ham won the debate
2) You furthermore believe that in an evenly-matched debate between creationists and evolutionists, the creationists are always going to win.
I'll note that for future reference.
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I provided you with a very good (and empirically grounded) explanation of why that's probably true right in this thread. Debates are not effective arbiters of truth. It is easier to convince people of simplicity than complexity.
Scientific truth is settled by the generation of predictions and the comparison of those predictions with empirical findings. That's basically all you need.
'Winning' or 'losing' a debate is a meaningless and fairly subjective metric. A lot of wrong positions have won debates. I've won debates with a lot of very wrong positions I was asked to assume.
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A key fact to grasp is that persuasion is not based on empirical validity. Persuasion comes from the ability to game human cognitive heuristics. Persuasiveness means you are good at playing that game.
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yeah seriously, 'debate' as a form of intellectual discourse is what, your ability to sway the votes of a roomful of people with limited to no prior knowledge on the topic over the course of an hour or so? it's completely arbitrary and artificial, far more so than whatever goober's crazy idea of scientific discourse is
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He said that science is not settled by open debate. A reasonable response to that would be to ask how it's settled. Is it to be settled by closed debate? Then that gives you science behind closed doors, subject to gatekeepers. Is it to be settled by some open process that is not debate? That violates testability, which is one of the key features of the scientific process.
Science is inherently open. Therefore the distinction between "open" and "closed" science doesn't even seem to be a relevant question. By definition there can be no "closed science" - although commercial R&D facilities could fall under this, they typically still publish their major research in the open science community.
Science is done in open fora. It goes through pretty strict peer review before it is published, typically in field-specific journal or letter magazines. These are all accessible to both general public AND media, although usually not for gratis.
The reason why science often appears to be "closed" process is that most of it is very specialized. Scientific papers require quite a bit of expertise on the topic to be legible.
What ends up filtering to general public through mass media (news organizations, mainly) is typically either a journalist's spectacularly grandiose embellishment of some research publication that happens to seem like it would make a good headline, OR a sensationalist claim made by non-scientists to get publicity to their "research" which hasn't passed the peer review process (either rejected, or never even submitted) but the journalists don't have the expertise to distinguish it for what it is, and end up publishing it anyway. And the next thing you know, all the news aggregate sites blindly copy the text verbatim from page to page and then it ends up in wikipedia until some ardent editor looks at it, notices that there's no actual scientific published source claiming this, and removes it.
The distinction here is not between open and closed, but whether general public has any valuable input to matters of science.
They don't.
Individuals in the crowd can certainly have enough knowledge and understanding of the topic to know what's being talked of, and to even generally form an opinion on where a particular research is applicable, but in general, a random sampling of general population even in the most educated countries in the world would fail to provide any meaningful input in the vast majority of scientific research.
That's why they are not involved in the process. If someone is interested in participating in the scientific process, they are expected to give the science the courtesy of educating themselves to a level where their input can be meaningful and make a difference.
Sadly in many countries this is not an option for majority due to economic constraints. Ideally, university level education should be free of tuition fees and funded by the state budget. But that's another, political issue.
Science, as it's being made, has very little to give to general public.
General public has nothing to give to science, as it's being made.
The end results turns out to be - predictably - that most scientists don't really consider how general public perceives science and scientific community, and vice versa the general public knows very little about how science is made, and makes random guesses as to how it must be (generally based on popular culture depictions of scientists, which are typically based on how the creators of that particular thing perceived scientists).
There are some rare people in the scientific community who actually have consideration to how the general public perceives science. Some of them have the drive to educate, good writing and oratory talents, and enough charisma to appear in prime time TV. To these rare specimens falls the majority of the unenviable task of popularizing science. Among them are individuals such as Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and indeed Bill Nye.
It's not like we're all walking around underground particle physics facilities wearing lab coats, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and waving crow bars at violently hostile anomalies (only some of us have to do that).
So that's why public debates have no relevance to science.
Politics, however, is a completely different thing. It turns out, in many countries, research funding requires a bit of politicizing, especially on the large scale. And, as a result, the few scientists who end up being the "representatives" of science at their time, end up being involved in politics and that includes trying to convince ignorant people that giving money to the research will benefit them.
That's where debates like this come into the picture...
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I provided you with a very good (and empirically grounded) explanation of why that's probably true right in this thread. Debates are not effective arbiters of truth. It is easier to convince people of simplicity than complexity.
I don't think that's completely accurate.
For example, creationism requires a lot of complexity to work around all the evidence to the contrary.
I would propose that it's easier to convince people of things that appeal to their everyday experience, than things that involve either really big or really small numbers, or unintuitive behaviour.
Good examples of such things would be billions of years for evolution to work through millions of generations of life, the incredibly small scale structures of quantum world, wave-particle duality, or the fact that the Moon is being pushed away from the Earth as tidal forces act to slow its orbital velocity.
I would also posit that it's easier to convince people to believe in an imaginary answer than the truth that no one knows an answer (yet).
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Everyday experience is simple. Creationism requires complexity only when it's faced with the task of evading scientific evidence: it seems simple when you don't have a lot of information. Creationism also offers illusory certainty, which is enormously appealing to the human mind.
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For example, the big bang: How did the matter for the bang get there in the first place? (A point that came up in the debate). I'd have to say that "In the beginning, God made the world" is pretty reasonable compared to "In the beginning, there was Nothing, and Nothing made everything".
This is why I mentioned quantum physics though. The problem is that once you get into that field you start seeing things that make very little sense. For instance you can get diffraction patterns from a single photon (i.e have a single particle go through two holes at the same time). This make no reasonable sense. How can one object possibly be in two places at the same time?
Science is very hard to understand. Many people prefer to go with a simpler explanation because they can understand it. But that doesn't mean it's the right explanation. If you want to believe in God, that's fine. Believe in God for faith based reasons. But don't kid yourself that you need to believe in God to fill in the holes in scientific theories. Most of the holes you think exist have been explained but you haven't had the years of education in science necessary to understand those explanations.
That's a strawman argument and you really should know it.
On the contrary. Not only is it not a strawman argument, I'm not even making an argument at all. I'm merely exposing the flaws in watsisname's statement.
He said that science is not settled by open debate. A reasonable response to that would be to ask how it's settled. Is it to be settled by closed debate? Then that gives you science behind closed doors, subject to gatekeepers. Is it to be settled by some open process that is not debate? That violates testability, which is one of the key features of the scientific process.
Your argument comment is a strawman in that you know full well he meant public debate in opposition to scholarly review. Yet you try to paint this as there being gatekeepers for science. An elite that violates the openness of science.
If you truly believe your own argument, I urge you to never post on the SCP internal again. Because the exact same argument applies there. On a truly open source project, all decisions should be made in public. Otherwise we have gatekeepers to the SCP code. Which is fundamentally contrary to the goals of open source coding.
It's not a perfect analogy of course but it's close enough.
Okay, so let me summarize:
1) You agree with Bobboau that Ken Ham won the debate
Actually, I've not watched the debate, YouTube is blocked in China. But even if it wasn't, I probably still wouldn't bother. It would be a waste of my time for the reasons I mentioned in this thread. Hell, I further consider this sort of debate to be counter-productive in that it legitimises the creationist nonsense. You don't publicly debate creationists for the same reason you don't debate holocaust deniers. It simply gives them a public forum to spew forth more of their lies.
2) You furthermore believe that in an evenly-matched debate between creationists and evolutionists, the creationists are always going to win.
I'll note that for future reference.
As I said before, a complex truth is much harder to explain than a simple lie. And Young Earth Creationism is a simple lie.
And since most scientific debaters make the mistake of thinking "Since I'm in the right, I'll defend my position rather than attacking theirs" we rarely see debates where the audience can see how stupid a lie it is. Once you start digging, it gets complex and stupid very quickly.
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Everyday experience is simple. Creationism requires complexity only when it's faced with the task of evading scientific evidence: it seems simple when you don't have a lot of information.
Yeah, I guess I was still approaching it from the point of someone who does have science education. After all, that was part of the topic of the debate - not only whether creationism is true or false, but whether it's possible to be a creationist and a scientist at the same time.
And when you do have science education, the amount of evasion becomes quite incredible.
For scientifically illiterate people, yes, creationism is simpler but honestly, even cursory examination reveals lots of inconsistencies in YEC even without bringing scientific counter-evidences to the mix.
Creationism also offers illusory certainty, which is enormously appealing to the human mind.
Indeed (essentially same as what I posted but with less words).
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Actually, I've not watched the debate, YouTube is blocked in China. But even if it wasn't, I probably still wouldn't bother. It would be a waste of my time for the reasons I mentioned in this thread. Hell, I further consider this sort of debate to be counter-productive in that it legitimises the creationist nonsense. You don't publicly debate creationists for the same reason you don't debate holocaust deniers. It simply gives them a public forum to spew forth more of their lies.
This is why I've been reluctant to spend any time watching the thing myself. I mean I understand why Bill Nye would want to attempt to engage with this crowd, because in his mind that's a worthwhile cause, but doing so lends to the view that both sides are equally well-founded and worthy of consideration. I think it's far more worthwhile to focus on making sure kids get a proper education in basic science, while just pointing and laughing at the goofy Jesus-dinosaur people.
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Exactly. When was the last time you saw a debate with Flat Earthers or Holocaust Deniers? You just pity them for their ignorance, you simply say "You're wrong" and you ignore everything they have to say on the matter.
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Science is inherently open.
That may be the ideal, but it's not at all the reality. There have been plenty of incidents where scientists have been ostracized for the crime of presenting new theories that challenged the status quo.
The reason why science often appears to be "closed" process is that most of it is very specialized. Scientific papers require quite a bit of expertise on the topic to be legible.
Whether a process is open or closed is independent of its complexity. I'm sure climatology is quite complex, but there are numerous experienced and credentialed scientists who have challenged the consensus on global warming. Yet there is substantial political pressure to toe the global warming party line.
Your argument comment is a strawman in that you know full well he meant public debate in opposition to scholarly review.
The dictionary definition of debate is "to consider something; deliberate"; or "to engage in argument by discussing opposing points". That definition is broad enough to cover both spoken and written debate, as well as both rhetorical and empirical arguments. Now Battuta has drawn a distinction between rhetorical and empirical argument, but watsisname did not. And it was to watsisname that I directed my initial question.
In any case, watsisname answered the question I posed to him here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=86764.msg1733853#msg1733853).
Yet you try to paint this as there being gatekeepers for science. An elite that violates the openness of science.
Of course there are gatekeepers for science. The most obvious example is the editor who decides whether an article is to be included in a journal. But there are also more indirect gatekeepers, as I mentioned to Herra above.
If you truly believe your own argument, I urge you to never post on the SCP internal again. Because the exact same argument applies there. On a truly open source project, all decisions should be made in public. Otherwise we have gatekeepers to the SCP code. Which is fundamentally contrary to the goals of open source coding.
It's not a perfect analogy of course but it's close enough.
Again, I haven't made any argument. I haven't said whether science should be open or closed, or under what conditions, or why.
And not only is the analogy not perfect, it's not even applicable to SCP. The Source Code Project is engineering, not science.
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So?
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Science is inherently open.
That may be the ideal, but it's not at all the reality. There have been plenty of incidents where scientists have been ostracized for the crime of presenting new theories that challenged the status quo.
New theories should be challenged. Unfortunately, all scientists are humans and all humans can be arseholes; therefore all scientists can be arseholes and instead of challenging new theories, sometimes that translates to deriding the authors of said theories.
Very unscientific, very human.
Scientific model is a completely unnatural approach to problem solving. That's why we're so bad at it and we need to train hard to become better at it. But, at the same time, it's the best way of advancing our knowledge.
That said, whether some presenters of new ideas get challenged or not is, at best, an anecdote about how scientific community doesn't always behave in a rational way. It seems completely irrelevant regarding the argument of science being open or closed process.
Science is open to anyone who is able and willing to make a meaningful contribution. That means getting an education to the level where you can contribute. There are certain standards for those contributions, but no real "gatekeepers as such", as the term goes.
Whether that contribution ends up being significant on a science-changing level like all the ridiculous amounts of works by Einstein, that's anyone's guess. But that's also the beauty of it - basically, anyone doing the most basic research could stumble upon something that turns out to be important in hindsight...
The reason why science often appears to be "closed" process is that most of it is very specialized. Scientific papers require quite a bit of expertise on the topic to be legible.
Whether a process is open or closed is independent of its complexity. I'm sure climatology is quite complex, but there are numerous experienced and credentialed scientists who have challenged the consensus on global warming. Yet there is substantial political pressure to toe the global warming party line.[/quote]
Most climatologists will not refer to global warming precisely because no one knows what the hell is going to happen. It's usually referred to as global climate change instead because we can actually verify that the climate is changing at a shocking rate. What it's going to cause - well, most climatologists predict it will increase the temperature averages; that's basically a prediction from many simulations run with different parametres but there's no way of really knowing which one (if any) of them is actually right. All they can say is most of the models predict warming (I don't remember the sigma values for the current predictions and I'm too lazy to look up).
It's essentially the same reason why the weather forecast cannot really reliably tell you whether it will rain in grandma's birthday next month so you can choose whether to set up a grill party or stay inside, but instead of a month (or at most a year's prediction in case of birthdays), climate models are expected to project overall weather patterns years or decades into the future, and the smallest discrepancies or hidden variables can change things a lot. But, if grandma's birthday is in the summer, it's more likely to be warm and sunny than if the birthday is in autumn...
So while there's no clear consensus about it, most models and data trends predict comparatively fast increases in average temperatures if situation is unchanged with the greenhouse gas emissions. The critical factor is the speed of that change - the faster it happens, the worse it will be. That's why the scientific advisors to most governments in the world are telling them it would probably be a good idea to think of some ways to react to the already observed changes before things get a lot worse.
So, regardless of whether or not it's happening, to what magnitude, and how fast - there are political motivations to do something about it, and there are motivations to ignore it and keep doing everything just as before. Those don't really affect science as such, they are just examples of what happens when scientific community hasn't achieved a full consensus on an issue that is notoriously hard to predict, and there's political pressure to react to it one way or another - it turns out that in most political system there are the Incumbents and the Opposition (as well as subdivisions between them, and in most countries there's more than just two political parties), and the Opposition typically opposes whatever the Incumbents happen to do (though there are exceptions to this rule).
If you look at things over the globe and check where Incumbents have decided that global climate change is a real thing and something needs to be done about it, the Opposition is typically saying that this is all pish, there's no proof, and the government is wasting precious tax money on this nonsense. I expect the opposite is also true in countries where the government has decided not to react on climate change, but I can't really think of many... China, maybe? Possibly many developing countries where spending effort to be more environmental would be a serious detriment to the nation?
Anyway: If you ask most climatologists what their stance on climate change is, the honest ones will tell you they can't know exactly, but the projections of the models tend to scare the crap out of them - and most of them are also alarmed by the rate of change in atmospheric composition and oceanic pH levels; both of these are really big changes in a really short time, and when you do that to an organic system like Earth, whatever the changes are, they're more likely to be vast and cataclysmic than gradual and beneficial.
Then there are some who present worst case scenarios as facts, and as a response to them there are some who oppose them with the best case scenario models or question the validity of the worst case scenarios. These are all parts of the (more or less) scientific ongoing discourse on the matter.
And then, and then you have the guys with agendas. The "climate skeptics" who make it their business to oppose the idea that the climate is changing to a worse direction (or in a milder case claim that it might change but humans have nothing to do with it so there's nothing to worry about).
Most of these "climate skeptics" tend to have no actual credentials to evaluate climate science. They are just saying things because they're expected to have an opinion and their opinion generally tends to be influenced by their political and economic standing in the societal hierarchy. There is a paper written about that accessible here (http://www.climateaccess.org/sites/default/files/Lewandowsky_Motivated%20Rejection%20of%20Science.pdf).
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio
Posting this because it's related and it hurt my brain enough to post
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4, 5, 6, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 22 are hilarious...
... examples of why science education needs to be improved drastically. They're so far into "not even wrong" territory, it's just not funny.
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I've always loved the "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys" statement. I always reply with "If orange juice comes from oranges, why are there still oranges?" :p
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or the fact that the Moon is being pushed away from the Earth as tidal forces act to slow its orbital velocity.
This is highly tangential and I know what you're meaning to show, but this example was not quite stated right. Tidal forces act to accelerate the Moon -- speed it up, not slow it down. It then slows down because it speeds up. Ah, there's the nonsense of orbital mechanics. Acceleration means an increase in energy, pushing the Moon into a larger orbit. Larger orbits are slower. Put a massive ship with a slow ion-drive in low Earth orbit. Fire the engines, prograde. The ship is accelerating, but the velocity drops by virtue of the vis viva equation.
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http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio
Posting this because it's related and it hurt my brain enough to post
You are a monster. :shaking:
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this thread is so depressing.
just kill it.
please?
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or the fact that the Moon is being pushed away from the Earth as tidal forces act to slow its orbital velocity.
This is highly tangential and I know what you're meaning to show, but this example was not quite stated right. Tidal forces act to accelerate the Moon -- speed it up, not slow it down. It then slows down because it speeds up. Ah, there's the nonsense of orbital mechanics. Acceleration means an increase in energy, pushing the Moon into a larger orbit. Larger orbits are slower. Put a massive ship with a slow ion-drive in low Earth orbit. Fire the engines, prograde. The ship is accelerating, but the velocity drops by virtue of the vis viva equation.
Yeah, I skipped a few intermediary stages there.
There are some misconceptions about it - I've seen it explained as some kind of force "pushing" Moon away (even though there's no repulsive forces in the whole system!) and that then requires the Moon to slow down - because, allegedly, there's no prograde/retrograde forces on the Moon (which is the wrong part in this misconception) and if angular momentum is constant and radius is increased, velocity must be decreased...
The energy transfer is from the rotation energy of Earth to orbital (kinetic and potential) energy of Moon. And while total conservation of angular momentum applies, the Moon's angular momentum doesn't conserve - it increases (while Earth's angular momentum decreases), but the whole thing manifests as increased orbital radius rather than increased orbital velocity, because the orbit is a very gradual spiral.
So the net effect is "pushed away while slowing down" which appears very counter-intuitive unless you've played a lot of Orbiter or KSP. And, even if someone understands the mathematics behind it, they may have difficulty in understanding WHERE the accelerating torque comes from... :p
So, yeah. Even a relatively simple problem of classical mechanics requires pretty good understanding of the underlying causes and mathematics.
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Ah, yes, that's a very good point. To say the moon is 'pushed' into a higher orbit is figurative but quite incorrect, for of course there are no pressure forces at work here. The only relevant force is gravity. Because the rotation rate of the Earth is faster than the orbital rate of the Moon, the tidal bulge raised on the Earth is dragged a bit in front of an imaginary line connecting the centers of the two bodies. Therefore a component of the gravitational force of the bulge acting on the Moon pulls the Moon prograde. The Moon pulls back on the bulge as well, causing a decelerating torque on the Earth's rotation.
I've often seen the description of the Earth's decreasing spin rate as being due to conservation of momentum to counterbalance the momentum gained by the Moon's expanding orbit. The angular momentum is indeed conserved, but the causal mechanism is left rather mysterious. Here it is simply a result of the above symmetry of forces.
This explanation is still pretty simple though and can lead to misconceptions. For instance, there are really two 'tidal bulges', not one. More precisely, the Moon's gravitational field distorts the Earth's shape (otherwise an oblate spheroid) into a triaxial ellipsoid, with the torques being determined by this mass distribution and its orientation.
But anyway, yeah, the whole thing is a great example of fairly simple physics producing totally counter-intuitive behavior. :)
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cringeworthy (referring to the original debate)
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there are numerous experienced and credentialed scientists who have challenged the consensus on global warming. Yet there is substantial political pressure to toe the global warming party line.
can you produce a paper by one of these guys that lays out some evedence, makes some predictions, ect?
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there are numerous experienced and credentialed scientists who have challenged the consensus on global warming. Yet there is substantial political pressure to toe the global warming party line.
The opposite is true, actually. The IPCC has to tone-down their findings to prevent themselves being called scare-mongerers :blah:.
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That's highly speculative and insubstantiated. Their data is actually undermining many assumptions and predictions made in AR4, and yet they upgraded their "certainties" from 90% to 95%, regardless of the meaningless of this number in any objective means (it's mostly a "subjective" statement that somehow "follows" from the reading of the evidence, iow, it's how scientists are "feeling").
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no, actually there is a mathematical formula they are fallowing certainty.
it basically is them saying that if they remeasured everything the same number of times there is a 95% probability they would get data that was the same or more in the direction of their conclusion.
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You're actually both sort of right and sort of wrong -- there are instances in climate science where the confidence in a result can be determined quantitatively, and there are other instances where it is based on expert judgement of the quality and quantity of evidence.
This stuff is talked about in great detail in the introduction of the reports btw.
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yes but luis is far too clever to read the opinions of so-called 'experts'
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I'm clever, yes, but that is irrelevant. "expert judgement" is just institutenglish for subjective assessment from the part of the IPCC.
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Frankly, I don't think a true discussion between scientific and creationist viewpoints is even possible as one of them, as exemplified in this very discussion/video, consist basically of repeating "but you are wrong because I believe what is written in an ancient book more than any uh ... "testable evidence". Rewatch it if you don't believe me ... that is exactly what he said.
And he also basically said that he will never ever change his mind, no matter what, as an answer to the question about "what" would change his mind. He pu**yfooted around the issue a bit and quickly passed the question over to Nye without giving a direct answer, but do rewatch it, that is what his answer boils down to: "I am right because of what I believe and everybody else is wrong ... and f*** all the evidence to the contrary."
There is valuable discourse about science and religion however:
This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfQk4NfW7g0 was actually a joy to watch.
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I'm clever, yes, but that is irrelevant. "expert judgement" is just institutenglish for subjective assessment from the part of the IPCC.
What is so subjective about these assessments?
(And regardless of that whole discussion, the subjective assessment of an enormous group of climatologists still carries a lot more weigth then some random internet dude).
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I'm clever, yes, but that is irrelevant. "expert judgement" is just institutenglish for subjective assessment from the part of the IPCC.
Or maybe it means that it's the judgement of people who have spent years dedicating their lives to studying and understanding the climate. As opposed to, say, an architect.
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And he also basically said that he will never ever change his mind, no matter what, as an answer to the question about "what" would change his mind. He pu**yfooted around the issue a bit and quickly passed the question over to Nye without giving a direct answer, but do rewatch it, that is what his answer boils down to: "I am right because of what I believe and everybody else is wrong ... and f*** all the evidence to the contrary."
Sadly that is the point of view of most YECs. Which is ****ing hilarious given how often they complain about scientists not being willing to listen to a dissenting opinion.
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Qualitative assessment is necessary because often there is no clear way to define a metric for the confidence level that a result is correct. Consider the question 'Are human activities a significant contributor to current climate change?'. It's not like we can say 'we changed the composition of the atmosphere in this way X number of times, keeping all else the same, and we observed warming N% of the time'.
What we can do is model the climate system with and without the anthropic forcing (http://i.imgur.com/6fENWyq.png), doing some statistical analysis of how many models show a response from the anthropic forcing and how significant that response is. Of course, we should not simply judge confidence by model output, we should also review the knowledge upon which these models are based. How well do radiative-convective models portray the physics? How well do we understand the radiative forcings, natural and anthropogenic? How good are our constraints on the roles of internal variability and feedback effects?
There is no way to quantitatively assess these things together to arrive at a level of confidence in our finding. Instead confidence is based on expert judgement of the robustness of evidence and our understanding of the processes and underlying physics.
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That's all well and fine, and I agree with the need for qualitative assessments. I think it's hilarious they need to glue a "95%" number on it, as it tries to capture a quantitative measure of a qualitative subjective assessment. It's also contradictory to the fact that they have reached some consensus that some particular dangers pointed out in AR4 were overblown (like extreme weather phenomena, etc.) and the empirical assessment that the models are clearly running hotter than reality. In the overall scheme of things, however, this is almost peanuts. Overall, I accept the IPCC's findings as much as I would accept any other political bodied scientific report. It has a load of ideological shenanigans but it also has a good chunk of data and analysis that is well needed if we are to make decisions over that issue.
The bringing climatology over this discussion was, I think, due to the ease of which some scientific challenges to mainstream consensus theories get bogged down and marked as the word of some heretic, an "evil-doer" that is in the payroll of some evil corporation doing evil nasty things like spreading lies and confusions and what nots. The conversation gets polarized and some nuances or other small snippets of skepticism here and there are gargantually hyped as evidence that we are in the presence of someone we should get pitchforked. This usually makes for bad conversation and that was the only thing being pointed out, as far as I see. In the wider internet, I clearly see the victims and destruction of this polarization, with journalists and bloggers fighting endlessly against the evil on the other side, all claiming scientific and moral superiority over the others, stepping and effectively destroying any sensible and rational, calm and nuanced discussion we could possibly ever have.
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What exactly do you mean with "Politically bodied"? Is it because it's part of the UN?
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It's filled with politics from its inception, to its purpose and thorough its process. Conclusions are vetted and only written down if the most important countries accept it. This both goes towards a more hardline assessment in some particular cases, or towards its watering down for others.
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The problem being that the findings of this report are coloured by what the politicians want to hear, and do not represent a complete scientific consensus on the topic (Which is another example for why Science should not be open to public, political debate).
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It's filled with politics from its inception, to its purpose and thorough its process. Conclusions are vetted and only written down if the most important countries accept it. This both goes towards a more hardline assessment in some particular cases, or towards its watering down for others.
This seems weird. I have talked to some climatologists who teach at our university (who now face getting fired because the university is stupid) who often feel that not enough has been done, or is being done. Considering how often the IPCCs report are played down or outright scandalized during political discussions, and considering that "climate summits" don't achieve anything except that one country tries to limmit economic growth of another country whilst negating any sort of responsibility themselves. I think that if those "most important" countries actually had a say, they would have just shut the entire operation down.
Considering how the IPCC works (Which mainly involves feeding a lot of data into a lot of models, and increasing the fidelity of those models and the data) I can not really see how politics are at play here (as it's mainly maths). I also perfectly see why there could be a quantative measure to it, as it's maths.
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You are confusing the IPCC process with the daily production of scientific papers. Those are not to be confused, they are wholly separate. The IPCC process is one of a giant report that tries to assess the available scientific papers over all the relevant issues, organizes a giant file of them and editorializes on all those issues. This is an international process that is overseen by the UN, and all countries can de facto decide to veto or not the final report. There were widely reported issues with China and Germany (for instance) before.
The fact that some people think "not enough was made", etc., has little to do with the IPCC. The political summits are political in nature and they are about deciding political action, not science. Regarding the harshness of the report, some think it wasn't dire enough (read, alarmist enough), some say it was more alarming than the evidence supported. It's always funny to me how people who are slightly more skeptical of the alarmist message we get constantly about the "nasty effects" of GW than the IPCC are considered to be in the wrong side of science denialism, while those who promote radicalism and alarmism that is unjustified by the very wording of the IPCC reports are somehow on the "right side".
This points to an obvious ideological bias in the mediatic reasoning. It's something just profoundly human and personally, I just "sigh" at it and let it slide. I hope the alarmists are wrong, but I also think we should have some kind of technological and political process able to curb the potential dangers ahead.
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This matter will never be settled in debate. It's already been settled with basic empirical evidence - but a debate is not about evidence, nor about finding common ground (there isn't any here, since one party is objectively wrong). A debate's about scoring points and building a narrative.
The audience rarely benefits because debates are not effective heuristics to select empirically supported truth. Instead, debates reward tactics more than substance. As a national-ranked debater in high school - I ended up doing such a good job as Turkey in one simulation they sent me to the Turkish embassy in DC for a dinner, I'm an international hero and I get all the ladies - I worked pretty much every conceivable geopolitical topic from every available angle. It didn't really matter what the truth was, or how much evidence we had in either camp: you could persuade an audience of your case with the same tricks no matter the substance of your argument.
Scientists in general are often unsuited for debate because science encourages constant qualification and parametrization and often answers questions with 'we don't know yet' (rarely, if ever, in this topic, but often in others). These are awful things to do in a debate, because human authority heuristics punish uncertainty and reward confidence.
Karajorma's quantum physics metaphor is apt. If you put a quantum physicist up there to debate the existence of elementary particles with an Aristotelian philosopher, the quantum physicist will get shredded. His complex structures are counterintuitive and obscure, and they require enormous background to understand. The philosopher's positions are tangible and clear and he's able to focus on offense rather than simplifying a complex topic.
Of course, the analogy breaks down in the complexity - it takes no more than an elementary school education to understand who's right in this debate.
e: Put more simply, in InsaneBaron's terms: debates cannot work for the best interest of both parties (or the audience) because debates are not an effective means to select between theories. They are an effective way to select between debaters on the basis of human pyschology.
Late to the party, but oh so much this.
I've long since come to the opinion that it is simply not worth the effort trying to logically explain how creationist beliefs are empirically wrong and disprovable to someone who holds them deeply. Explaining evolution to people who are confused about it is a worthy endeavour; trying to disabuse people of their entrenched religious notions is not.
When it comes to teaching in school, we lobby that public school remains secular in funding and curriculum; we ensure that no religion gains precedence in public education, and we use constitutional arguments to do it. And if the religious crowd would like to run their own school system and teach religious education in addition to the approved curriculum there - fine. They can pay for it.
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Charter schools - we pay for it, they can teach whatever they want.