i am pleased, nay, outright tickled, to present this gatodunk award to “steak-umm" (yes, the real snack food account) for this truly epic clown dunk of neil degrasse tyson et al who, while he may be a smartish guy, has a real penchant for trite, self-aggrandizing public utterances. he stepped out of the lane on this one, and steak-umm drove hard to the hoop and smashed it home:
the set up was simple enough:
but then it really got good when an NDT teammate tried to wade and and rescue him:
because, as we all know, dunking on a pedant by being pedantic about their pedantry is a glory like flight and wins one a place in valhalla. taking this all the way down to the bare wood of theories of knowledge is just the sort of extra flourish that wins awards.
say it after me: “the science is NEVER settled and never “true".” it’s the best current set of hypotheses: always under attack, always subject to change, and never completed. skepticism IS science and data around prediction is how we judge it. not dogma. not ideology. and certainly not trite soundbites and appeals to authority. epistemology forms the integument of science. it is the wall that separates it from superstition.
it may seem like a small thing, but it’s not. it is THE thing. NDT speaks to and reaches a lot of kids with aspirations toward science. they look up to him. it would behoove him to make a better effort to communicate accurately to them the basic fundaments of the field and the philosophy.
Excellent. I'm a baby-boomer. In early school we had a course called "Science." As I remembr it should have been called biology. Perhaps that's where science = truth started. I think NDT may not be as smart as you think. Someone should send him this fine explaination of what science really is.
As things like this keep happening I really never want to hear the terms "expert", "science" and "truth" ever mentioned in the same sentences again! From what I can remember about classes in science, it all starts with something called a "hypothesis" which in fact is an "educated guess" about something...amIright?
Science is what old men of around 80 tell you. It's an evolving process because they frequently change what they are saying, perhaps even their minds, and may occasionally launch a process of enquiry towards those who are paying them. So it's epistemological in that believing everything they say, whatever it happens to be at that moment, is a totally rational thing to do. So... both sides of the above argument are correct. I think.
We used to be taught not only what “science” is, but about the scientific method, how to read and dissect a study and concepts such as validity and reliability in research. These days the phrase “believe the science” has taken on the flavor of religion—unquestionable and unknowable by the average person; to be taken on faith from “experts”.
Serious question: how would you go about the question of whom to consider evidence from? You hear anecdotes about physics professors inundated with emails sharing someone's new design for a supposed perpetual motion device, and it seems reasonable to me that they don't spend much time pouring through reviewing those claims. But the motivating factor for dismissing that is some intertwined mix of deference to the consensus views of Newtonian mechanics and strong priors (though I think the latter is over stated --- you don't personally rerun or review research every fundamental experiment in a science education; you take the basics for granted out of the textbook, with perhaps some color in a brief experimental description). In the most charitable terms, it's in this sense that "science is true" -- the results are so strong and the consensus so wide that our priors become high enough to take the established theory as fact.
But in the (albeit much lower sigma) field of epidemiology here, is the same distinction of established theory relevant? Of course, this has to set aside the particulars of the COVID case where, as you've shown, the orthodoxy is to summarily discard the previous consensus findings and systematically ignore contrary data. But backing away from that, is there still a sense in which established scientific results are essentially truths that carves out a legitimate dismissal of perpetual motion quackery without deep analysis of the raw data, while still considering work on the scientific edge as a truth finding methodology?
I particularly like the Steak-ummm misspelling of "misteaks"
Excellent. I'm a baby-boomer. In early school we had a course called "Science." As I remembr it should have been called biology. Perhaps that's where science = truth started. I think NDT may not be as smart as you think. Someone should send him this fine explaination of what science really is.
As things like this keep happening I really never want to hear the terms "expert", "science" and "truth" ever mentioned in the same sentences again! From what I can remember about classes in science, it all starts with something called a "hypothesis" which in fact is an "educated guess" about something...amIright?
epistemology is one of my favorite words: from the Greek: seek truth and have it accepted. what sceptics desire? philosophy of science.
"Space Jam: A New Sciency" “Eh, what’s up, doc?”
It is funny how dogma and science are becoming one.
Not “true” true ... “true” as in “I’ve got a Disney+ deal” true
Science is what old men of around 80 tell you. It's an evolving process because they frequently change what they are saying, perhaps even their minds, and may occasionally launch a process of enquiry towards those who are paying them. So it's epistemological in that believing everything they say, whatever it happens to be at that moment, is a totally rational thing to do. So... both sides of the above argument are correct. I think.
We used to be taught not only what “science” is, but about the scientific method, how to read and dissect a study and concepts such as validity and reliability in research. These days the phrase “believe the science” has taken on the flavor of religion—unquestionable and unknowable by the average person; to be taken on faith from “experts”.
Also...NDT is almost as much of a fraud as Fauci.
Serious question: how would you go about the question of whom to consider evidence from? You hear anecdotes about physics professors inundated with emails sharing someone's new design for a supposed perpetual motion device, and it seems reasonable to me that they don't spend much time pouring through reviewing those claims. But the motivating factor for dismissing that is some intertwined mix of deference to the consensus views of Newtonian mechanics and strong priors (though I think the latter is over stated --- you don't personally rerun or review research every fundamental experiment in a science education; you take the basics for granted out of the textbook, with perhaps some color in a brief experimental description). In the most charitable terms, it's in this sense that "science is true" -- the results are so strong and the consensus so wide that our priors become high enough to take the established theory as fact.
But in the (albeit much lower sigma) field of epidemiology here, is the same distinction of established theory relevant? Of course, this has to set aside the particulars of the COVID case where, as you've shown, the orthodoxy is to summarily discard the previous consensus findings and systematically ignore contrary data. But backing away from that, is there still a sense in which established scientific results are essentially truths that carves out a legitimate dismissal of perpetual motion quackery without deep analysis of the raw data, while still considering work on the scientific edge as a truth finding methodology?