Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

You don't have to be so mean.

Slightly off topic, but related. This isn't so much about the label of scientist.

What about the notion of separating people who consistently interpret the world with the mindset required to accurately employ the scientific method and those who do not. One of the greatest goods in the scientific method for me personally comes down to a few things. Mainly its an acknowledgement of just how flawed I might actually perceive reality around me, and two its a challenge to always be vetting my best understanding of anything. Now clearly I am no scientist, but if I had to choose between groups of people, I want to go chill with the scientists. I try my best to understand their knowledge, I appreciate the effort and the diligence required to find a verifiable and sharable truth.

The documented trail of knowledge is what really sets Science apart from other forms of perfectly knowable information. For example, using Tuco's steak. You most certainly can craft an artisan's steak through understanding of things like smells, aroma's, heat and other shit. Maybe the best steak imaginable can only be created by some kind of esoteric talent. A close approximation of that perfect steak could clearly also be made if you understood ever aspect of flavor and texture as a function of their molecular interactions. You can put limits on time on heat that allows certain juicyness.

A recipe is precisely that, a generic bounding of a "good" steak can be made following a simple cook book. I think people who think in this manner can solve problems much easier than those who do not, and maybe that's the selling point I find most compelling in my everyday life. We are all sufficiently poor at being rational at all times. Applying this approach is a challenge at best and impossible at worst given the circumstances we might find ourselves in.

I really think when comparing people like Sarah Palin and Bill Nye is that it comes down to is those who will listen to Sarah Palin understand truth as a faith based endeavor. This is an enormous challenge. For example - talking age of the Earth with my Aunt. She interprets my position as an alternative version of faith - and not an empirical investigation of the Earth. This is a remarkablely difficult idea to convey. Telling her that we can go verify some of these claims ourselves falls deaf on her ears as she never approaches any problem in her life in this way. My understanding is that she sees Science in about the same light as Islam - A different - but wrong choice. By believing in the age of the Earth I do, I'm just making a wrong choice vs being educated by verifiable data and facts.

Would people here consider Adam Savage a scientist?

Researchers create super stretchy, self-healing material that could lead to artificial muscle[/url][/QUOTE]

Moogalak;1468643 said:

back to actual science, i thought this was pretty bad ass:



edit - too drunk to solve this riddle....fuck it

Click to expand...

Realistically though Dandain there is a certain level of faith that allows science to function pragmatically anyway. That is, you take data sets from experiments, an explanation and take it from a text book. While I fully believe gravity on earth to be approximately 9.8 m/s^2 I've never actually tested it to any degree of certainty.

That is to say that while scientists themselves may apply rigorous standards before collectively agreeing to a consensus in the field, for the rest of the world that means you take that result at faith. The distinction between the actually daily use of science and religion is a bit more complex. Even religious people are happy to accept the benefits of using science every day despite eschewing it when thinking about cosmology or causality or something where they inexplicably insert God at that point.

Tolan_sl said:

It varies.

Click to expand...

Of course it does but that's not the point.

Palum_sl said:

Realistically though Dandain there is a certain level of faith that allows science to function pragmatically anyway. That is, you take data sets from experiments, an explanation and take it from a text book. While I fully believe gravity on earth to be approximately 9.8 m/s^2 I've never actually tested it to any degree of certainty.

That is to say that while scientists themselves may apply rigorous standards before collectively agreeing to a consensus in the field, for the rest of the world that means you take that result at faith. The distinction between the actually daily use of science and religion is a bit more complex. Even religious people are happy to accept the benefits of using science every day despite eschewing it when thinking about cosmology or causality or something where they inexplicably insert God at that point.

Click to expand...

I don't think it is faith when I know it is something that CAN be tested and I know that if it was actually untrue, there would be countless reports saying so and providing evidence and so on.

So I don't think the word 'faith' is really appropriate here.

Exactly. The fact that I may not personally be able to do every scientific proof for any given scientific fact doesnt make said fact a matter of faith. Similarly, the fact that I dont speak Spanish doesnt make the language a matter of faith either. True faith derives from a belief in something that no one can prove, not just the believer.

To steal from Dr. Boghossian faith is pretending to know something that you don't know.

Maybe you all went to private Catholic school with rigorous science experimentation in class but back in my day of ole public education we got a text book that simply repeated things as fact and you memorized it and learned it and applied it to life. You didn't actually science 99% of knowledge.

That's textbook right there, no pun intended.

Just because you can empirically test it doesn't mean you do. To the vast majority of people science is basically religion because in both cases they are choosing to blindly believe text from a book due to trusting the sources without doing any thinking themselves. Ultimately this is necessary to a degree, the human race must necessarily rely on previously learned knowledge to advance. My point was simply that you can't extricate all facets of faith without also removing the pragmatic part of human scientific learning over generations.

Palum_sl said:

Ultimately this is necessary to a degree, the human race must necessarily rely on previously learned knowledge to advance. My point was simply that you can't extricate all facets of faith without also removing the pragmatic part of human scientific learning over generations.

Click to expand...

The key word there is advance. Billions of people could believe that 2 + 2 = 5. It doesnt make it accurate or true. And with no mechanism to test that claim, or basically any religious claim, the "previously learned knowledge" is pointless.

You are right, that humanity relies on information learned from previous generations for advancement. But ZERO times throughout history, has learned andusefulinformation had no one who could prove it.

I'm not sure what your point is. Dandain thinks we should somehow create some sort of stigma for people who rely on faith as some sort of ghost busters trap for religious people. My point is that 99% of people use faith for science or religion (or both) as a set of facts or doctrines. Just because one is right and one thinks gold plates were buried in upstate New York doesn't change the fact that really almost all of the human race only pays lip service to the scientific method.

Also I take issue with your characterization that no useful knowledge has been passed on without proof coming before, that flies completely in the face of theoretical branches of science and is provably false (eg relativity, standard model, etc. where pieces were proven by other people decades later).