physics is a weak argument

I put forth the proposition that the scope of human perception is so limited and narrow that it's utter foolishness to assume that we have unlocked the secrets of the universe in just the past, what? 200 years? It's important to be skeptical...But that does not mean to automatically assume something does not exist until it can be "proven" in a laboratory. True skepticism is NOT taking a stance either way. I'd like to also point out, that so far NOTHING can be proven. The best we can do is disprove something, but even that is a pretty weak way to decide if something really exists. (The same problems with proof exist with disproof...Often it just depends on your specific perception of the object.) Perception IS reality...Don't be so sure that your perception reaches to the ends of the universe, or even to all of the processes that exist just on this planet--We are all taught from a very young age how to perceive the world around us, and most of us believe absolutely that what we perceive is really the way things are...If you are really serious about discovering "reality", you would approach everything with a totally open mind and try to perceive every situation and every concept from as many different vantage points as possible.

According to you your position, we can close this subforum though. Or rather close anything that involves evidence and arguments.

Cmon...You can do better than that--I've seen your work, master-of-the-concrete. Let's hear a rebuttal with more heart!


My point in all of that, was that your brand of "skepticism" is pretty hypocritical. You automatically deny the existence of anything that does not fit into the "reality" that you have been taught to perceive, and yet you blindly accept anything that fits into this "reality" you have been taught to perceive. Just because there is a laboratory experiment conducted, does not prove that a phenomenon exists nor does not exist. In fact, you have no logical way of even knowing whether or not these laboratory experiments have really taken place, or if there is some sort of massive conspiracy built around your life just to fool you. Obviously, this is somewhat of an extreme idea, but you shouldn't be so quick to condemn theories and ideas that have existed for much longer than you (OBE, psionics and all that other nonsense), just because the current mainstream scientific paradigm says it's not possible. Remember, "science" has been proven wrong constantly since belief first came into existence...What it makes it so infallible now?


Just as a side note, I have no reason to believe that any "psychic" phenomena exists, but I also have no reason to believe it doesn't exist...Aside, of course, from all the scientists and professors with PhD's that say it's nonsense...

Why don’t you learn a little about science before belittling its contributions to human knowledge? Science is not a thing which can be proven wrong. Science is a process which advances our knowledge of physical reality through a process designed to minimize subjective human bias. As a the product of a process rather than a body of beliefs, scientific knowledge is constantly evolving and being refined as new technology is developed and new discoveries are made. Science has not been “proven wrong constantly since belief first came into existence” because you cannot disprove a process. Old knowledge is refined and replaced by new knowledge. Those old beliefs about the nature of reality were, at the time, the best that human scientific inquiry could provide. But technology changes, opening new avenues of investigation, and new ideas are conceived to test the old ones. Science is not invalid because it changes and grows in refinement and its ability to describe and model the natural world. That is precisely its strength. Unlike the dogma of religion which previously in western culture (and currently in other cultures) claimed the role of disseminator of the truth of reality, science is not fixed. It does not claim that the world is 6000 years old despite an undisputed body of evidence to the contrary simply because that’s what has always been believed. Stubbornness of belief should not be equated with correctness of belief. It is evidence of intelligence and a critical mind that new information is incorporated into old beliefs or, if justified, allowed to replace them entirely.

As for your position on the nature of “proof”: under the strictest definition of proof, nothing can be proven. But if for the history of human experience, apples fall toward the ground rather than toward the sky, it’s a fairly safe bet (I’d give it odds of about 1:10^20) that if you sit beneath an apple tree in the summertime and watch the apples fall, they’ll fall toward the ground. Does that prove that apples will always fall toward the ground? To most people, yes. But you could argue, and obviously have, that all that proves is that apples in the past have fallen to the ground. There could be a radical spontaneous reversal of gravity in the next second, caused by an unforeseen physical interaction, that causes the next apple that falls from a tree to fall toward the sky. It could. But it’s not likely. Really not likely.

Your argument is simply not a valid commentary on science. You propose to replace a well-researched, well-studied scientific phenomenon with a vast conspiracy theory. Do you have proof of a conspiracy? Because I could take you to a scientific laboratory and show you those experiments being performed. "But what if they really drugged you and put you in the most super-realistic, alien-technology-inspired VR Holodeck ever and it’s all just an illusion! See, then it’s still a conspiracy, just a bigger one!" But what if, what if. You can always come up with a more complicated, more unlikely hypothesis for a given phenomenon, but that does not in any way weaken the accepted scientific explanation unless you can present more compelling evidence of your position than can a global community of research scientists.

Now, I could pull out Occam’s Razor as a justification for the scientific explanation, but I find it hard to believe that you actually subscribe to such a ridiculous proposition, so I’m just going to leave this as it is.

Also, who exactly was your intended audience with that post? Who is this “you” who “automatically deny the existence of anything that does not fit into the "reality" that you have been taught to perceive, and yet you blindly accept anything that fits into this "reality" you have been taught to perceive”? To direct such unsupported, blanket stereotypes at an entire forum is not only rude, but it weakens your argument. What is the validity of your argument if it is directed at nothing but a spurious psychological construct devised as an easy target?

now that had heart...

Clearly, you misunderstood...When I say that "science has been proven wrong", I mean not that the concept of science was proven wrong, but that at any given point in its "evolution" the underlying "beliefs" that make up its existence (yes, they are beliefs, not facts) have been shown by a more recent version of science to be blatant falsehoods...The fact that there still does not exist any one "version" of reality that has been discovered by "science" that can still hold up to any "scientific" testing is a pretty good indication that "science" still hasn't given us anything except for a vague way to describe a mind-blowingly small portion of the known universe (here's a good contribution from "science"). Blind belief in religion is no different than blind belief in the validity of physics, and it's obvious, when you have to keep coming up with different theories to explain why our current physics doesn't to describe that which lies outside the finite range of human experience.

You seem to be claiming that I am saying that no "science" has any meaning or use whatsoever, and that's simply not the case. Real scientists will use science as a tool to attempt to better understand the world around them and the universe, without turning it into a religious fanticism. A real scientist will know that the equations he uses are just a guide to help him predict the behavior of most of the common things he can perceive...But he must also realize that this science, as you say, is a process--a very young process, and has not included in its vast, blanketing reach something so simple as why apples fall to the ground...

Just because certain phenomena cannot be measured with our numerous instruments that can detect every kind of radiation in the universe or across every dimension that has been "proven" to exist (how many are there now? I've lost track..10? 11? 26?), simply does not mean that these phenomena don't exist.

As for Occam's Razor, it's more of an interesting idea than a theory to base your life around. Like I said, perception is learned, and Occam's Razor is totally subjective.

And the "you" in my post was directed towards Korittke, because I thought I might get a good argument from him, so I'll ignore the last bit.

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Originally posted by mongreloctopus
Clearly, you misunderstood...When I say that "science has been proven wrong", I mean not that the concept of science was proven wrong, but that at any given point in its "evolution" the underlying "beliefs" that make up its existence (yes, they are beliefs, not facts) have been shown by a more recent version of science to be blatant falsehoods

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Not true. Some previous scientific theories have been proven incorrect; however, the majority have been found to be specific instances or less precise versions of more encompassing theories formulated later. Newton’s formulation of the gravitational force, for instance, is still used by civil engineers and architects to build the bridges and buildings you use every day. Newton’s equations actually emerge from Einstein’s theory of general relativity for non-relativistic situations. Newton was not wrong. His theory was simply incomplete. The same is true of the evolution of our understanding of electromagnetism and atomic and subatomic structures and interactions. Scientists build on and revise the work of the past. This is the nature of the scientific process, and again, it is its virtue. Please actually study the history of science before you post inaccurate statements.

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...The fact that there still does not exist any one "version" of reality that has been discovered by "science" that can still hold up to any "scientific" testing is a pretty good indication that "science" still hasn't given us anything except for a vague way to describe a mind-blowingly small portion of the known universe[/b]

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Quantum mechanics is the most well-tested, most accurate, and most successful scientific theory in history. It is not “vague,” but a highly versatile and specific description of physical reality. It is not complete for well-known and freely admitted reasons, most notably the incapability of relativity and quantum mechanics at subatomic scales under relativistic influences and also because of the lack of a tested theory of quantum gravitation. This in no way negates QM’s usefulness nor its valuable insight into the nature of the subatomic world. Were science as wishy-washy as you attempt to portray it, you would never be able to make your posts because the computers on which you compose and post them would not work.

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Blind belief in religion is no different than blind belief in the validity of physics, and it's obvious, when you have to keep coming up with different theories to explain why our current physics doesn't to describe that which lies outside the finite range of human experience.[/b]

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Wrong on two counts.
One: Science is vastly different from religion, for the very basic reason which I stated in my first post and which you have conveniently ignored. It is the nature of science to evolve. It is the nature of religion to stagnate.
Two: Science does not attempt to describe that which lies outside the finite range of human experience. How can one test what one cannot experience? The limits of human perception are the limits of science – science seeks to describe the perceivable world. And of course, technology has vastly expanded the available range of experience, so “human experience” is by no means limited to the perception of the unaided human senses.

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You seem to be claiming that I am saying that no "science" has any meaning or use whatsoever[/b]

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You did title your post “physics is a weak argument”. Perhaps you should give more thought and consideration to your chosen subject line if you do not wish such misunderstandings to occur in the future.

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But he must also realize that this science, as you say, is a process--a very young process, and has not included in its vast, blanketing reach something so simple as why apples fall to the ground...[/b]

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Excuse me? That’s called gravity and it has been studied by the modern scientific process for almost 350 years.

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And the "you" in my post was directed towards Korittke, because I thought I might get a good argument from him, so I'll ignore the last bit.[/b]

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Well, he didn’t seem too interested, but you have piqued the interest of a “real scientist” who finds your critique of science weak at best. If you intend your post simply for one person, perhaps you should consider a private message, or, if you enjoy the public attention of a forum discussion, you should mention your target debater by name so as to avoid confusion.

Yes, you keep stressing "revision", and that's exactly my point. We expect for science to keep being revised and changed as new knowledge enters the system...So why put so much faith in it now?

Gravity may have been studied for 350 years or thousands of years...It doesn't matter. We still have absolutely no idea why it exists, or what it is--only that it does seem to exist.

And again, you go back to trying to prove that I disbelieve in science, which is sort of a silly point to try to make, since I've already explained that the only qualm I have with "scientists" is when they believe that theories we have today describe all of existence, and anything that doesn't fit neatly into a theory or a reading off of an instrument does not exist.

Religion evolves just as much as science does. Religion has just as much proof and evidence to the subscribers of religion, as science does to the subscribers of science. Just because you don't believe in religion doesn't invalidate it (side note: I do not subscribe to religion). To a scientific person like yourself, obviously, religion is utter foolishness, but it's just another way to experience and describe the perceptions of everyday life--just like science.

If there's one point I'd like you to take from my posts, without any sort of confusion, it would be this:

Science, like religion, like any kind of philosophy, is just a way to orient one's "internal" world with the "external" world. That is, as I'm sure we agree, perceptions ultimately make up reality. It's very easy to learn to perceive something, just as it is very easy to learn to not perceive something. I believe that many scientists proclaiming to be skeptics are not truly skeptical in nature because of their inherent bias towards anything that doesn't fit into a theory put forth by someone else who shares their learned perceptual capacities.

Some examples of this...The flat earth, earth being the center of the universe, blood being the medium of heredity, just the word "atom" itself (indivisible). In fact, I bet you would be able to find a large number of people who simply do not believe that lucid dreaming exists. There is no objective way to prove its existence (sure you can bring up EEGs or fMRIs conducted on people "lucid dreaming", but there's no way to know for sure whether they were lucid without asking them) There are countless "truths" that have been, as you say, "revised". I know I won't get you to admit that they were wrong, because "science is a process", but by that token you should never believe that anything science has to offer is guaranteed to be upheld by future generations of scientific progress. I'm not asking you to disavow that science has a place in human understanding of the universe, because that's not what I believe. I believe that any idea that can be imagined, should be considered as seriously as any theory that has been "proven" by today's standards--if not, wouldn't we find ourselves in the midst of stagnation?

Had I had any previous experience with you, Peregrinus, my posts would've been directed towards you. Ultimately it didn't matter...You became involved, so my plan worked. But, since this is what you seem to want,

I HEARBY CHALLENGE PEREGRINUS TO A PUBLIC DEBATE (retroactively, of course)

You asked for it:

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Yes, you keep stressing "revision", and that's exactly my point. We expect for science to keep being revised and changed as new knowledge enters the system...So why put so much faith in it now?

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Because it is the best we have now. It works now. And, I’ll just come right out and say this, it is not wrong now. It is incomplete in certain specific and acknowledged areas, and perhaps even in others not yet discovered due to technological limits. However, as was Newton’s formulation of gravity, our modern formulation of the standard model and quantum field theory (I am assuming here your beef is primarily with quantum mechanics since everyone who doesn’t understand it seems to have a beef with quantum mechanics) is more than likely an approximation of a more narrow range of situations which will be more thoroughly described by the next formulation developed. That is, incidentally, a major qualification for the next theory which will either modify or replace our current quantum mechanical model – it must match the quantum mechanical predictions on all of the myriad experiments which QM has predicted with heretofore unmatched precision. You work with what you’ve got, and what we’ve got now is pretty damn good. To decide to wander through the darkness of self-imposed doubt because what we have now isn’t perfect is no better than a man standing in a dark and windowless room bemoaning the lack of light but refusing to turn on the incandescent bulb which dangles above his head because the lightbulb isn’t natural sunlight and therefore illuminates the world only imperfectly.

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Gravity may have been studied for 350 years or thousands of years...It doesn't matter. We still have absolutely no idea why it exists, or what it is--only that it does seem to exist.

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Wrong. I am not your science tutor, so I’m not going to give you a lesson on relativity or quantum mechanics. However, before you post such inaccuracies again, learn about that which you profess so ignorantly. Go read up on the relativistic and quantum mechanical understandings of gravity. Those certainly do not represent the profound ignorance you propose..

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And again, you go back to trying to prove that I disbelieve in science, which is sort of a silly point to try to make, since I've already explained that the only qualm I have with "scientists" is when they believe that theories we have today describe all of existence, and anything that doesn't fit neatly into a theory or a reading off of an instrument does not exist.

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Then you have no qualm and your entire “public debate” here is moot. No trained and respected scientist believes such nonsense. Unlike you, they have been trained in the history of scientific discovery and the methods of its progress. It is their job and their passion to revise and perhaps even overthrow the work of the past for more accurate understandings of the physical world. That is the point. You are, by the way, unqualified to hold this debate if you do not even comprehend such a foundational thing as that.

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Religion evolves just as much as science does.

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If you actually believe that you are far more delusional and disconnected from reality than you seem.

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Religion has just as much proof and evidence to the subscribers of religion, as science does to the subscribers of science.

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No. Religion is based on faith, which is quite the opposite of the physical evidence upon which science operates.

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Just because you don't believe in religion doesn't invalidate it (side note: I do not subscribe to religion). To a scientific person like yourself, obviously, religion is utter foolishness, but it's just another way to experience and describe the perceptions of everyday life--just like science.

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You should not presume the beliefs of those whom you do not know.

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I believe that many scientists proclaiming to be skeptics are not truly skeptical in nature because of their inherent bias towards anything that doesn't fit into a theory put forth by someone else who shares their learned perceptual capacities.

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That is a human bias, not a scientific one. The scientific process is designed to circumvent and overcome such biases through a rigorous methodology of experimentation and testing of hypotheses. If a scientist proposes a hypothesis which is in line with previous work, and that hypothesis, when tested, is shown to be false, it doesn’t matter whether the scientist liked that hypothesis or found it comforting. It is incorrect and s/he must abandon it. Now, personal bias can affect how thoroughly a given scientist tests a hypothesis; however, in a global community, when a new hypothesis is tested by one scientist, others test it as well to either confirm of disprove the earlier results. One person’s preference cannot stem the tide of research and progress.

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Some examples of this...The flat earth

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Even in ancient times, observant philosophers and scientists did not believe this. The very fact that as a ship sails toward the horizon, its mast gradually sinks indicates a round earth and not a flat one.

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earth being the center of the universe

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Without the proper technology to test this hypothesis, it could be neither confirmed nor rejected. The fact that the orbits of celestial bodies had to be incredibly complicated in order for the geocentric model to accurately predict the placement of objects in the sky should have been a clue of the model’s inaccuracies, and to some, it was. With the development and refinement of the telescope by medieval scientists (Galileo being the most well known), more detailed observations of celestial objects were possible and it was the Catholic Church (a vast, organized, stagnant religion with a vested interest in the status quo) which most vehemently opposed the heliocentric model which was suggested by Galileo’s discovery of moons orbiting the planet Jupiter.

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blood being the medium of heredity

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An approximation of the reality of DNA as the medium of heredity. The discovery of DNA as the carrier of genetic information in the mid-20th century was the culmination of discoveries which began almost a century before. Back in medieval times, when blood was believed to be the carrier of genetic information, there did not exist the precise biochemistry necessary to test that hypothesis. As stated before, many scientific discoveries are dependent upon technology which allows us to probe more deeply into reality, thus revealing where previous scientific models fail.

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just the word "atom" itself (indivisible)

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Again, this is an approximation. Before the discovery of electricity, there was nothing in ordinary experience to indicate that atoms were not indivisible. It wasn’t until J.J. Thompson’s work on cathode ray tubes which demonstrated that electrons, components of atoms, can be stripped from their atoms and emitted. Not until the technology of the cathode ray tube was developed could such an experiment be performed to test the indivisibility hypothesis.

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In fact, I bet you would be able to find a large number of people who simply do not believe that lucid dreaming exists.

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Probably. However, most people I’ve talked to have either experienced it or believe that it is indeed possible.

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There is no objective way to prove its existence (sure you can bring up EEGs or fMRIs conducted on people "lucid dreaming", but there's no way to know for sure whether they were lucid without asking them)

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Really? And experiments performed where lucid dreamers are told to move their eyes in a specific pattern upon attainment of lucidity and these patterns are then observed in their rapid eye movement – what are those?

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you should never believe that anything science has to offer is guaranteed to be upheld by future generations of scientific progress.

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No, you shouldn’t. However, that does not mean the you should not use what science has to offer now when it accurately describes the physical world in a useful and insightful way. If you are waiting for perfection, you will die an unhappy man.

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I believe that any idea that can be imagined, should be considered as seriously as any theory that has been "proven" by today's standards--if not, wouldn't we find ourselves in the midst of stagnation?

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Sure, you can ask me to consider the idea that flying purple armadillos really exist and just haven’t been discovered yet because when in the proximity of anything else, they have the ability to turn invisible, but I’m not going to go perform experiments to test that hypothesis unless you can present evidence for why you believe it. You have to have a reason for your ideas if you want them to be seriously considered. Just saying, “Well, I imagined it so go test it,” won’t cut it.

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I HEARBY CHALLENGE PEREGRINUS TO A PUBLIC DEBATE (retroactively, of course)

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I should warn you that that may not be a very wise move. So far, you haven't made a very impressive showing.

Hahahah it must be great to have already unravelled the mysteries of the universe. I hope you enjoy your brand of omniscience--afterall, perception is reality. I was under the assumption that science was generally practiced by the open-minded... but, then, we all know what happens when we assume. With such great scientists as you who can easily spew forth religious, er, scientific rhetoric, it's no wonder that modern-day science can already explain everything. I hope one day that I too can join the world of textbooks filled with facts.

We have reached an impasse, obviously, you refuse to even consider the possibility of something beyond the realm of scientific perception...And that just happens to be in what I'm interested. I hope your "scientific journey" leads you to exactly where you intend...Mine, on the other hand, I hope leads me to somewhere I never expected. Good day.

Wow. What a debate!
I am half and half here. There is the true an the untrue.
When my head stops spinning, I think I will put more thought into my response.

*But due to the fact that we are in large vobering a broad spectrum of ideas, I am going to move this to Extended discussion Forum!

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Originally posted by mongreloctopus
Hahahah it must be great to have already unravelled the mysteries of the universe. I hope you enjoy your brand of omniscience--afterall, perception is reality. I was under the assumption that science was generally practiced by the open-minded... but, then, we all know what happens when we assume. With such great scientists as you who can easily spew forth religious, er, scientific rhetoric, it's no wonder that modern-day science can already explain everything. I hope one day that I too can join the world of textbooks filled with facts.

We have reached an impasse, obviously, you refuse to even consider the possibility of something beyond the realm of scientific perception...And that just happens to be in what I'm interested. I hope your "scientific journey" leads you to exactly where you intend...Mine, on the other hand, I hope leads me to somewhere I never expected. Good day.

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Congrats on the most well written cop-out ever posted on DV.

EDIT: And by the way, lucid dreaming is an accepted and studied phenomenon in the realm of psychology, not at all controversial.

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Originally posted by bradybaker

Congrats on the most well written cop-out ever posted on DV.

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Here, here! :cheers:

However, I think its a little unfair that Peregrinus didn't get a quality response to validate her time and effort in posting her argument.

Mongreloctopus,


That was a sorry rebuttal full of inaccuracies and weak attempts at intentional deception. Indeed even calling it a rebuttal is a disservice to intelligent debate.

My response in no way indicates a sense of omnipotence or a belief that science has “unraveled the mysteries of the universe”. In fact, had you actually bothered to read my post and come up a relevant response rather than the trite cop-out you chose instead, you would realize that I stated quite the opposite – hence that lengthy discussion of revision and evolution in science. Neither did I spew rhetoric – my response was my own and certainly more well-contemplated than yours – and to call someone “close-minded” after they logically and methodically dissect your entire argument is nothing but childishness.

And like In The Moment, I, too, am sorry that you were not appropriately prepared to follow through with that gauntlet you so arrogantly dropped.

EDIT: I didn't see Howetzer's reply and dislike double posts.
Science is a bounded method of inquiry into reality. I've never claimed otherwise and have, in fact, argued extensively on this board about where those boudaries lie. However, the problem is that far too many people who lack a basic understanding of science misinterpret "bounded" and "limited" as "useless." They hold science to a standard of perfection that it itself does not profess. Science seeks to describe what is perceivable and testable. It strives to answer how the world works, not why it works. Science does not ascribe meaning to the world. It cannot investigate religious, mystical or faith-based beliefs unless those beliefs make some claim about physical, perceivable reality. (This is exactly what I was arguing w/ Belisarius about last year, incidentally.) Science is very good at what it does. It has allowed for vast advances in our understanding of the physical world which has resulted in amazing new technology with the potential to greatly improve human life. But if you want insight into God, go talk to a priest, not a scientist (at least not a scientist in his or her professional capacity).

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Originally posted by mongreloctopus
Perception IS reality....

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So If I would take some shrooms those dancing yellow midgets would be real :o :D

First off, I agree with the dead ol' greek dude that said that we can not obtain any objective truth. Our mind creates the image of the world we see, not our eyes. It goes with all sences and things.
However within this perception we can state that there are likeabilities. Like evolution, it's likely, but not proven. And the big-bang theory sounds likely to me, but it might not be true. Physics have shown to be correct 100% of the time till now, even for expetions theories have been created. I would have to say physics is one of the most 'likeable' theories there is. Certainly in the apects of things like for gravity, it seems to be correct all the time. So I would have to say Physics is a good argument.

WOW Peregrinus, that was impressive, although you probably have a too much time on your hands. :mrgreen:

:bravo:

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Originally posted by dudesuperior
you probably have a too much time on your hands. :mrgreen:

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Thanks. And no doubt. ;)

You see, the problem which I discovered shortly after getting into this long session of repeating the same thing over and over, and reading the same thing over and over, is simply this: what I am trying to discuss is something that lies outside of the boundaries of current known science. To argue the case for this current scientific paradigm, a prepubescent school girl could easily misspell "quantum physics" in google and get all the material she needed. There is no evidence and no proof for those concepts that lie outside of the framework of this paradigm. That's exactly the point. If you had studied the "history of science" as much as you claim to, you would know that all paradigm shifts have been as a result of some usually small, radical group of people that defied the current mainstream beliefs, by proposing theories and ideas that went completely contrary to what was accepted and "proven". Scientific progress is not made by burrying your legs in several feet of mud and jerking off on the faces of the other idiots around you, but by actually trying to discover something NEW.

Here's a novel suggestion: instead of BLINDLY believing in everything your professors teach you, why not try to think critically instead, and realize that NOT everything you read in reports is actually true. You know, I heard that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, from what I've read, there were multiple sources of intelligence....

I'd be willing to bet that you have NEVER conducted any kind of experiment dealing with quantum physics, astrophysics, string theory, whatever.

Yeah, it's a great skill to be able to read and take notes on what someone else has written, but when you start to close the walls in around you take everything for granted (that's called faith, darling), then you are no different than a religious zealot.

Denying even the possibility of the existence of some kind of phenomena that are not detectable (yet) by scientific instruments just means that our technology is lagging behind our ability to conceptualize the possible.

I suggest you take your sense of intellectual superiority and place it squarely in your ass next to your head, your blind faith, narrow field of view and your recycled, boring arguments--I'm sure there's plenty of space.

As to the cop-out, that's fine. Hearing your repeat over and over that science is never proven wrong, it evolves, blah blah blah..Yeah, yeah I know. That's great. There's more to science than being able to prove or disprove something. If I'm not mistaken, the point is to try and perceive as much as possible, using tested ideas as stepping stones. You're missing the next step.

As for me, cop-out or not, this argument IS totally fruitless--to be interested in an argument, I have to be learning something new or opening my eyes to a new perspective. I've heard all of this many times before during the undergraduate process--thus my quest for something new... but thanks anyway.

Although this discussion has seemed to be milked to it's fullest extent I feel it could go on.
It is two sided. Not much will transpire from that.

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Originally posted by mongreloctopus
This argument IS totally fruitless--to be interested in an argument, I have to be learning something new or opening my eyes to a new perspective. I've heard all of this many times before during the undergraduate process--thus my quest for something new... but thanks anyway.

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What would make this a learning curve.
What do you actually want from this topic mongreloctopus? Aside from pointing who why OR what to blame.
What can change to make things different :?:
A societies change of curriculum maybe?
More funded research?
:idea:

Wow, resorting to personal insults. Now that definitely furthers your arguments! Way to elevate the discussion, man! :goodjob2:

As for my scientific qualifications which you insult preemptively: I graduated with my degree in Physics magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. I have conducted original peer-reviewed, published research on the thermal conductivity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes grown via plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition and also at the US Department of Energy on the detection of elemental mercury released at coal-fired power plants via the technique of cavity ringdown spectroscopy. Now you’ve seen mine. Why don’t you show me your creds.

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what I am trying to discuss is something that lies outside of the boundaries of current known science.

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Well, then attacking science on what it does study is rather futile, isn’t it?

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To argue the case for this current scientific paradigm, a prepubescent school girl could easily misspell "quantum physics" in google and get all the material she needed.

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Not to argue it well. Was that your own tactic, though?

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There is no evidence and no proof for those concepts that lie outside of the framework of this paradigm.

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Duh. Science studies what is physical and perceivable. There is no evidence outside of this because you cannot, by definition perceive anything outside of the perceivable.

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That's exactly the point. If you had studied the "history of science" as much as you claim to, you would know that all paradigm shifts have been as a result of some usually small, radical group of people that defied the current mainstream beliefs, by proposing theories and ideas that went completely contrary to what was accepted and "proven".

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Oh, I’ve read my Thomas Kuhn. And those revolutions, by the way, were the result of an accumulation of evidence in support of a hypothesis counter to that which was currently accepted. That “radical group of people” don’t hold up picket signs at scientific labs to get their views accepted. They have to support their position with experimental or at least mathematically theoretical evidence. And, by the way, if you would actually read my response, I said that “the majority” of old scientific theories were not patently incorrect but rather less accurate than their revisions. The idea of an interstellar ether, for instance, was just plain wrong.

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Scientific progress is not made by burrying your legs in several feet of mud and jerking off on the faces of the other idiots around you, but by actually trying to discover something NEW.

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Lovely image, but you might want to attempt a somewhat more intellectual approach if you want to be taken seriously.

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Here's a novel suggestion: instead of BLINDLY believing in everything your professors teach you, why not try to think critically instead, and realize that NOT everything you read in reports is actually true. You know, I heard that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, from what I've read, there were multiple sources of intelligence....

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You really need to stop making assumption about people you do not know. How can you possibly presume to know my behavior and level of skeptical inquiry in class. You need to check your arrogance at the "reply" button. And as for your immature implication that I am a poor scientist because the country from which I hail involved itself in an unjustified war – that is low and in very poor taste. The manipulation of the intelligence information which was used to justify an invasion of Iraq was political, not scientific. And just so you’ll shut up with these personal jibes, I protested the authorizations for war on the ground that the evidence presented was flawed and fallacious weeks before the US Congress even signed it. Do not resort to personal attacks, Mongreloctopus. It is a sign of a person who no longer has anything constructive to add and nothing left to lose except for some shredded pride.

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I'd be willing to bet that you have NEVER conducted any kind of experiment dealing with quantum physics, astrophysics, string theory, whatever.

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And you would lose that bet, wouldn’t you? Want me to set up a paypal account for the transfer of your money?

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Yeah, it's a great skill to be able to read and take notes on what someone else has written, but when you start to close the walls in around you take everything for granted (that's called faith, darling), then you are no different than a religious zealot.

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You are getting far too personal. You do not know me and are setting me up as some sort of straw man. You are not justified in this and it does not further your argument. At all.

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Denying even the possibility of the existence of some kind of phenomena that are not detectable (yet) by scientific instruments just means that our technology is lagging behind our ability to conceptualize the possible.

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Did I suggest otherwise? Add some more straw, Mongrel. Just keep stuffin’ it in.

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I suggest you take your sense of intellectual superiority and place it squarely in your ass next to your head, your blind faith, narrow field of view and your recycled, boring arguments--I'm sure there's plenty of space.

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Oh, now that’s convincing! You sure must know what you’re talking about, because the utilization of head-in-ass metaphors is certainly an indication of vast intellectual capacity and a thorough comprehension of the issue at hand.

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There's more to science than being able to prove or disprove something. If I'm not mistaken, the point is to try and perceive as much as possible, using tested ideas as stepping stones. You're missing the next step.

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Well, you are missing the point. The point is not to perceive as much as possible, but to perceive and describe in such a way as to futher our understanding of the phenomenon and, if applicable, enable predictions about future behavior.

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As for me, cop-out or not, this argument IS totally fruitless--to be interested in an argument, I have to be learning something new or opening my eyes to a new perspective.

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How can you open your eyes when they are so clearly glued shut?

It's late and I'm lazy, so I'm just going to give my opinion based on the first post.

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Originally posted by mongreloctopus
I put forth the proposition that the scope of human perception is so limited and narrow that it's utter foolishness to assume that we have unlocked the secrets of the universe in just the past, what? 200 years? It's important to be skeptical...But that does not mean to automatically assume something does not exist until it can be "proven" in a laboratory.

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True. I agree with you that there's too much of a 'Science = Truth' mentality these days. This leads to two dangerous things:
1) Pseudo-science which also proves lots of things. This can lead to wrong ideas by applying the scientific method improperly or by consciously falsifying data.
But there's a much more horrible monster here then pseudo-science...
2) 'Not Science = Not Truth'. It was not scientifically proven? It's untrue. It CANNOT be scientifically proven? It CANNOT be true. Science is not the only source of knowledge. Science has it's limits. Science can be wrong. To assume it alone is the criteria for truth is something that's done far too often these days.

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True skepticism is NOT taking a stance either way.[/b]

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Not true, actually. True skepticism resigns to the fact that we can doubt everything and therefore it is impossible for us to attain true knowledge about anything. A point of view of which I believe disproves itself by it's own uselessness.

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I'd like to also point out, that so far NOTHING can be proven. The best we can do is disprove something, but even that is a pretty weak way to decide if something really exists.[/b]

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I've had this discussion with someone once. I still think Descartes proved his own existance with the simple cogito ergo sum. I, at least, can't see what Descartes disproved here, except for his own non-existance. Which, by the principle of contradiction, again proves his existance.

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Perception IS reality...[/b]

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Does the name Berkeley ring a bell?
Berkeley still needed God to keep a room from disappearing whenever everyone left and stop perceiving it, though. Perception is indeed everything we know about reality... But there's also a priori knowledge (no senses, knowledge originating in thought only). Whether this knowledge says something more about reality is a debateable subject, though.
There's a degree of consistency in the universe that makes science practical. Maybe not a source of true knowledge, but I don't think that was ever the domain of science anyway. Science wants to attain knowledge about the world we can perceive, the empirical. It is then up to philosophy to determine whether our senses can be trusted.

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Don't be so sure that your perception reaches to the ends of the universe, or even to all of the processes that exist just on this planet--We are all taught from a very young age how to perceive the world around us, and most of us believe absolutely that what we perceive is really the way things are...If you are really serious about discovering "reality", you would approach everything with a totally open mind and try to perceive every situation and every concept from as many different vantage points as possible.[/b]

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Have you ever tried to see a tree just as it is? According to Kant, this is impossible, we can only see a tree in the way it presents itself to us, not it's objective reality. Our minds cannot comprehend all the sensory data we get, so we structure reality using language. Seeing everything might well just be beyond human capabilities.

Science tries to understand and label things in the reality we perceive with our senses. Due to the large amount of consistency in the empirical world, it is succesful up untill now. One mistake is trying to apply science to the non-empirical (like the mystical). Another is assuming science is the only way to obtain true knowledge, and the extreme variant is even worse, assuming that if it is not scientific, it is UNTRUE. If science stays within its domain, there's nothing to worry about, and it is a very powerful tool in understanding the empirical world. Again, the mistake is assuming science holds true over all domains.

I wouldn't call this a "debate" as much as a beatdown. :shakehead2:

HEY!I have credentials too :furious:
I have ummmm math 101 and aahh I know there is something else in there? :huh:

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Originally posted by ataraxis
I wouldn't call this a "debate" as much as a beatdown. :shakehead2:

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Yes ataraxis. My attempt to broaden the conversation and to add a comedic atmosphere has not been successful.

This seems like an attempt to hijack the point behind my "But it defies the laws of physics" (all the way do to the 'an invalid can get on google and research blah blah' line) while completely misinterpreting the point, so I won't bother to comment much on it. (Bnd shame on you for that duck-out attempt at the 'debate' that You challenged Peregrinus too, Mongrel. :nono: )

But, as usual:
"Very well made points, Peregrinus." :goodjob2:

From what I have gathered from the original post, mongrel seems to point out a dead old philosophical parable formulated from what he probably heard somewhere in philosph101. As if anyone on a lucid dream forum does not "keep an open mind"

A s far as what Peregrinus has posted which was really a sheer intelectual clarity on physical science and its worth, well you just cant argue against it unless your an anarchist and anarchy leads to destruction which is what we aim against as scientists and explorers of the endless.. :!: