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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Death of Darwinism
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
[QUOTE]Don't concepts like "in order to have your hypotheses accepted you need to produce evidence" count as "ideology"?
No. You are stating a method, not an ideology. Science is a method of procuring data or evidence. An ideology tells you what to think about data or evidence regardless of what it is or shows. So someone could be ideological about a theory, such as creationism, and the method of scientific data collection would refute it and an ideologue still holds the disproven theory.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Don't concepts like "in order to have your hypotheses accepted you need to produce evidence" count as "ideology"?
Yes but also no. It is certainly true that Science follows a particular philosophy and that almost everyone has signed up to it to the extent that those who fall foul are named, shamed and excommunicated.
At the same time, it is hard to call it an ideology when it boils down to "do your damn work openly and honestly". That's like saying that the civic expectation on a policeman to work honestly and fairly is an "ideology". Err..
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arse
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
[Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Don't concepts like "in order to have your hypotheses accepted you need to produce evidence" count as "ideology"?
No. You are stating a method, not an ideology. Science is a method of procuring data or evidence. An ideology tells you what to think about data or evidence regardless of what it is or shows. So someone could be ideological about a theory, such as creationism, and the method of scientific data collection would refute it and an ideologue still holds the disproven theory.
Not true. The current mania for "evidence-based medicine" demonstrates perfectly how a scientific principle turns into an ideology. The critical step is an obfuscation: behind the scientific methodology sits the process of selecting the hypotheses to be tested, and before that, the problems in respect of which hypotheses and solutions are to be developed. The "evidence" produced by the development and evaluation processes is used to hide that process of selection, and protect it from questioning. That is how a scientific method becomes an ideology, and it's everywhere.
[ 10. June 2017, 11:41: Message edited by: ThunderBunk ]
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
No again. Evidence based practice is the ideology. This may be a misapplication of the research or not. The science is the data collection.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Seeing as the alternative to evidence-based medicine is medicine without evidence to back it up --- guesswork, unproven quackery, snake-oil --- I'm having a hard time seeing the "mania" as a bad thing.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
That may somewhat overstate it MT. There's a lot of nonspecific factors embedded in medical care, particularly at the level of family physicians. Medicine is both a science and an art. It does no good to have a physician (or nurse practitioner, physiotherapist etc) prescribe the exactly right evidence based treatment and have the patient not adhere to the treatment. -- though on the other hand, we have practitioners who manage the communication and adherence to treatment plans rather well, but are not very good at applying evidence to diagnosis and applying the right treatment, thus command great adherence to plans, but to the wrong ones.
To get back to the topic, we have good evidence, from multiple independent data sources that converges on the same interpretation - thus evidence for evolution. We also have people who take one data source and run with it to the wrong conclusions, not taking into account other sources. The one I've seen most is the evolution of the eye, which has actually evolved some 5 times independently, which refutes the anti-Darwinian idea that such structures cannot be formed by natural processes. Others are structures that allow flight and swimming (wings and fins/flippers).
"Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God." (Maria Mitchell, 1896)
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
romanesque, you'll find you get a better response to your points about Darwinism when you don't rely on articles from Evolution News which is published by the Discovery Institute, described by Wikipedia as:
quote:
best known for its advocacy of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).
and the Skeptico Forum that is run by Alex Tsakiris who:
quote:
advocates various forms of quantum woo, parapsychology and evolutionary teleology
Intelligent Design was part of this thread back from the start. There is a mention on page 1 - post 8 on this thread referring back to the mention of Behe in the opening post. In the first few posts, the argument was made that science and philosophy are looking at different aspects of the same problem. Intelligent Design is looking at the philosophy and the why, not the how that science considers.
Yes, there are problems around the distortion of scientific research by the pharmaceutical industry in particular, as outlined in Bad Pharma and there are various campaigns pushing for all results to be published, particularly All Trials. There are issues with the funding of research and the distortions that can cause but that doesn't mean all science is made up or should be ignored.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I guess the comment about links was aimed at me - and I wasn't saying links aren't acceptable, but I find that a post pointing to a link without explanation isn't always helpful, particularly when I am using phones to read.
[ 11. June 2017, 10:04: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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romanesque
Shipmate
# 18785
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
romanesque, you'll find you get a better response to your points about Darwinism when you don't rely on articles from Evolution News which is published by the Discovery Institute, described by Wikipedia as:
quote:
best known for its advocacy of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).
and the Skeptico Forum that is run by Alex Tsakiris who:
quote:
advocates various forms of quantum woo, parapsychology and evolutionary teleology
Intelligent Design was part of this thread back from the start. There is a mention on page 1 - post 8 on this thread referring back to the mention of Behe in the opening post. In the first few posts, the argument was made that science and philosophy are looking at different aspects of the same problem. Intelligent Design is looking at the philosophy and the why, not the how that science considers.
Yes, there are problems around the distortion of scientific research by the pharmaceutical industry in particular, as outlined in Bad Pharma and there are various campaigns pushing for all results to be published, particularly All Trials. There are issues with the funding of research and the distortions that can cause but that doesn't mean all science is made up or should be ignored.
I'm too old and ugly to accept Rationalwiki as a value neutral window on the world. I don't happen to agree with Alex Tsakiris on any number of issues, but in the same way I don't hold the BBC in contempt for allowing terrorists and extreme nationalists to air their views as well as mainstream politicians, Tsakiris has interviewed some compelling voices outside the mainstream whose voices demand an answer.
Similarly for the Discovery Institute, one doesn't have to be a young earth creationist to welcome debates on C19th scientific perspectives. There's a problem funding any research that fails to acknowledge an exclusively physicalist interpretation of reality, which inevitably places all challenges to it in the academic margins. That doesn't mean the topic at hand is marginal to the nature of reality. I reject "woo" is a barometer of anything except the prejudices of its user.
In the case of Dean Radin, his research is concerned with the measurement problem of quantum physics and the implications of it for consciousness. When studying clear scientific inferences puts the researcher into the freakzone, the problem isn't with the hypothesis.
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romanesque
Shipmate
# 18785
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by romanesque:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
romanesque, you'll find you get a better response to your points about Darwinism when you don't rely on articles from Evolution News which is published by the Discovery Institute, described by Wikipedia as:
quote:
best known for its advocacy of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).
and the Skeptico Forum that is run by Alex Tsakiris who:
quote:
advocates various forms of quantum woo, parapsychology and evolutionary teleology
Intelligent Design was part of this thread back from the start. There is a mention on page 1 - post 8 on this thread referring back to the mention of Behe in the opening post. In the first few posts, the argument was made that science and philosophy are looking at different aspects of the same problem. Intelligent Design is looking at the philosophy and the why, not the how that science considers.
Yes, there are problems around the distortion of scientific research by the pharmaceutical industry in particular, as outlined in Bad Pharma and there are various campaigns pushing for all results to be published, particularly All Trials. There are issues with the funding of research and the distortions that can cause but that doesn't mean all science is made up or should be ignored.
I'm too old and ugly to accept Rationalwiki as a value neutral window on the world. I don't happen to agree with Alex Tsakiris on any number of issues, but in the same way I don't hold the BBC in contempt for allowing terrorists and extreme nationalists to air their views as well as mainstream politicians, Tsakiris has interviewed some compelling voices outside the mainstream whose voices demand an answer.
Similarly for the Discovery Institute, one doesn't have to be a young earth creationist to welcome debates on C19th scientific perspectives. There's a problem funding any research that fails to acknowledge an exclusively physicalist interpretation of reality, which inevitably places all challenges to it in the academic margins. That doesn't mean the topic at hand is marginal to the nature of reality. I reject "woo" is a barometer of anything except the prejudices of its user.
In the case of Dean Radin, his research is concerned with the measurement problem of quantum physics and the implications of it for consciousness. When studying clear scientific inferences puts the researcher into the freakzone, the problem isn't with the hypothesis.
Rampant harassment on Wikipedia: http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/investigating-skeptics/wikipedia-captured-by-skeptics/rampant-harassment-on-wikipedia/
Posts: 119 | Registered: May 2017
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romanesque
Shipmate
# 18785
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by romanesque:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
[qb] romanesque, you'll find you get a better response to your points about Darwinism when you don't rely on articles from Evolution News which is published by the Discovery Institute, described by Wikipedia as:
[QUOTE]best known for its advocacy of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).
and the Skeptico Forum that is run by Alex Tsakiris who:
quote:
advocates various forms of quantum woo, parapsychology and evolutionary teleology
Intelligent Design was part of this thread back from the start. There is a mention on page 1 - post 8 on this thread referring back to the mention of Behe in the opening post. In the first few posts, the argument was made that science and philosophy are looking at different aspects of the same problem. Intelligent Design is looking at the philosophy and the why, not the how that science considers.
Yes, there are problems around the distortion of scientific research by the pharmaceutical industry in particular, as outlined in Bad Pharma and there are various campaigns pushing for all results to be published, particularly All Trials. There are issues with the funding of research and the distortions that can cause but that doesn't mean all science is made up or should be ignored.
I'm too old and ugly to accept Rationalwiki as a value neutral window on the world. I don't happen to agree with Alex Tsakiris on any number of issues, but in the same way I don't hold the BBC in contempt for allowing terrorists and extreme nationalists to air their views as well as mainstream politicians, Tsakiris has interviewed some compelling voices outside the mainstream whose views demand an answer.
Similarly for the Discovery Institute, one doesn't have to be a young earth creationist to welcome debates on C19th scientific perspectives. There's a problem funding any research that fails to acknowledge an exclusively physicalist interpretation of reality, which inevitably places all challenges to it in the academic margins. That doesn't mean the topic at hand is marginal to the nature of reality. I reject "woo" is a barometer of anything except the prejudices of its user.
In the case of Dean Radin, his research is concerned with the measurement problem of quantum physics and the implications of it for consciousness. When studying clear scientific inferences puts the researcher into the freakzone, the problem isn't with the hypothesis.
[ 13. June 2017, 20:23: Message edited by: Louise ]
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romanesque
Shipmate
# 18785
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Posted
Editing has turned the whole post into quotes. I don't know how to avoid this but it's clear who is speaking.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
<tangent>You haven't edited your posts (pen and paper symbol) when trying to correct them but have quoted (inverted commas symbol) and added to them.</tangent>
It's very difficult to find much on Alex Tsakiris other than his publications. However, there are queries about his interviews in that he changes the topic of the interview at the last minute to throw the interviewee off balance and make himself look good (from that Rational Wiki article), and a critical review of his book here querying his ideas and methodology.
I'll leave the quantum mechanics discussions to Alan Cresswell, as he's so much better at this.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Seeing as the alternative to evidence-based medicine is medicine without evidence to back it up --- guesswork, unproven quackery, snake-oil --- I'm having a hard time seeing the "mania" as a bad thing.
It's a bad thing if it obscures the decisions taken before evidence is gathered. For example, the use of aspirin in many contexts probably doesn't stand up to the scrutiny of "evidence-based" zealots, but that's because no-one can make enough money out of it to pay for that scrutiny to take place. My point is that, without a rigorous and publicly funded research base, this is true of an alarmingly wide range of potentially useful, cheap therapies. It's also true of a lot of approaches to psychotherapy that can't attract the money thrown at CBT. CBT has been crowned without the essential competition.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Seeing as the alternative to evidence-based medicine is medicine without evidence to back it up --- guesswork, unproven quackery, snake-oil --- I'm having a hard time seeing the "mania" as a bad thing.
It's a bad thing if it obscures the decisions taken before evidence is gathered. For example, the use of aspirin in many contexts probably doesn't stand up to the scrutiny of "evidence-based" zealots, but that's because no-one can make enough money out of it to pay for that scrutiny to take place.
Really? No one?
The supplement industry is a multi-billion £/$ industry. Much of it sold with nothing more than an outrageous, improbable promise.
There is money.
[ 11. June 2017, 15:49: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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romanesque
Shipmate
# 18785
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
It's very difficult to find much on Alex Tsakiris other than his publications. However, there are queries about his interviews in that he changes the topic of the interview at the last minute to throw the interviewee off balance and make himself look good (from that Rational Wiki article), and a critical review of his book here querying his ideas and methodology.
I'll leave the quantum mechanics discussions to Alan Cresswell, as he's so much better at this. [/QB]
Alex Tsakiris has interviewed the cutting edge scientists and thinkers he claims in his Skeptiko podcast, but is far more inclusive and increasingly so of stuff that would press most people's crank button. What you describe as changing the topic is really nothing more than his guest's complete unfamiliarity with the research. People go on the show to promote their book, and when he offers a vying perspective they've rarely heard of the other perspective no matter how academically respectable. This - and the Skeptiko title - leads guests to claiming they've been bounced, when most were hoping to get an easy ride before a tame audience. Listening to the archive soon reveals a pattern of academics working in their individual silos and making bold claims, not least in the areas of consciousness studies, that don't bear scrutiny. This is not always easy listening.
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
No romanesque, what is said about Alex Tsakiris is that he edits the interviews and changes the words of his interviewees in the transcripts as well as introducing the topics at short notice. That's not presenting ideas, that's changing the goal posts to show himself in a good light and others in a poor light.
The book review suggests that he starts with a hypothesis and will accept anything, including a satire that refutes the hypothesis as evidence, to prove his idea.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There is money.
Yes, and in the case you cited it is buying silence. My point about the need for a fully publicly funded base of high quality research stands.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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romanesque
Shipmate
# 18785
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
No romanesque, what is said about Alex Tsakiris is that he edits the interviews and changes the words of his interviewees in the transcripts as well as introducing the topics at short notice. That's not presenting ideas, that's changing the goal posts to show himself in a good light and others in a poor light.
The book review suggests that he starts with a hypothesis and will accept anything, including a satire that refutes the hypothesis as evidence, to prove his idea.
I don't believe that's the case for one minute, it sounds like materialist evangelicals muddying the waters. I've listened to most of the podcasts and the transcript matches the audio, given the voluntary nature of the transcription and the inevitable umms, arrs of discussion.
The idea that he edits audio maliciously sounds like sceptical fantasy, there's no necessity for such monkey business when the guest hangs themselves so enthusiastically.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There is money.
Yes, and in the case you cited it is buying silence.
I did not cite any case. Just pointing out that a large pharmaceutical company makes money from aspirin, a non-prescription* drug. They would be happy to increase that use if presented with a feasible idea.
*Depending on the form.
quote:
My point about the need for a fully publicly funded base of high quality research stands.
I do not dispute this. Good luck making it happen.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Don't concepts like "in order to have your hypotheses accepted you need to produce evidence" count as "ideology"?
Yes but also no. It is certainly true that Science follows a particular philosophy and that almost everyone has signed up to it to the extent that those who fall foul are named, shamed and excommunicated.
At the same time, it is hard to call it an ideology when it boils down to "do your damn work openly and honestly". That's like saying that the civic expectation on a policeman to work honestly and fairly is an "ideology". Err..
Well, "rule of law" is also an ideology. And science dictates not just "do your damn work" but also has rules for what counts as evidence, or "work" as you put it. Spectral evidence, for example, falls outside the realm of science, largely because it usually can't be reproduced or examined by anyone else. This may seem unfair to those who wish to rely on such methods, but you can't really do anything that can properly be called "science" without such standards.
[ 12. June 2017, 01:29: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
For example, the use of aspirin in many contexts probably doesn't stand up to the scrutiny of "evidence-based" zealots, but that's because no-one can make enough money out of it to pay for that scrutiny to take place.
Actually there's a tremendous evidence base behind the use of aspirin, most of it paid for by the public purse. The UK government invests quite a lot in healthcare trials, all of it to advance treatments that wouldn't be supported by private funding. Similar things happen in the US.
It is actually happening, it's not just an idealistic dream. It is probably true that mental health care, and especially psychological therapy, has been underfunded, but I think the reason for funding trials of CBT over other forms also relate to the fact that it is easier to write down what CBT is and to deliver it in a set time period. Other therapies that are harder to write down and neatly deliver are less attractive to a high throughput health service.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Aijalon:
I think there is always "something" behind the thing that we are observing, looking for the next layer.
If the Higgs Boson is the something, once that is resolved, there will be a next something. What is the ultimate objective we hope to find?
The Higgs Boson is not the something "behind" the previous layer in the sense that I think you mean.
Quarks would be a layer "behind" hadrons - in a nutshell, you could begin with the existence of protons and neutrons, move on to the discovery of other baryons, observe that they appear to have this property called isospin, and finally come to the quark model as an explanation for all of that.
If you want something to be "behind" the existing standard model, you could look at superstring theories. String theorists, however, have a computational problem - they find it difficult to make predictions that are testable at attainable energies.
What is the ultimate objective? A single theory that describes the universe. A theory that can include both gravity and quantum mechanics. A theory that can explain why the universe is matter-dominated. Understanding what dark matter, and dark energy, really are.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Leorning Cniht--
You mentioned an idea that that the universe is matter-dominated. Is that standard, accepted science?
(Not poking at you. I'm just not sure if I've heard that before.)
Thx.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
You mentioned an idea that that the universe is matter-dominated. Is that standard, accepted science?
Yes. We know that the bits close to us are matter. If there were regions of antimatter, we'd see annihilations at the boundaries. We don't see that.
Is it possible that there are antimatter superclusters sufficiently well separated from their matter cousins? We can't quite rule that out, but nobody has a mechanism to produce it (and some reasonable arguments in support of it not happening.)
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
It does rather depend on what you mean by "matter". Does it, for example, include energy that can transform into particles? Or, just as one side of an arbitrary line between "matter" and "antimatter"? How do you incorporate that we call the particles emitted in beta- decay an electron and antineutrino (conversely, beta+ decay emits an antielectron and neutrino and electron capture a neutrino) - would it make any difference to the argument about the dominance of "matter" if we had called the particle emitted in the more common decay mode the neutrino rather than antineutrino? Is the distinction between "matter" and "antimatter" significant? Or, is it just a particular naming convention for mutually annihilating particles, and "antimatter" is just another form of material particles?
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
The most difficult questions some of us ask run along the lines of is there honey still for tea. Now, they do matter.
[ 06. August 2017, 08:30: Message edited by: Gee D ]
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Or, just as one side of an arbitrary line between "matter" and "antimatter"?
I'm confused. In what way is this line arbitrary? I was under the impression that if you mix matter and antimatter they react rather decisively with one another. That seems a pretty thick black line.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
The arbitrariness is in the nomenclature. There could be a decent argument to call an electron "matter" and positron "antimatter" on the basis that one is far more common than the other. But, why have it one way round or the other for neutrinos when the anti-neutrino is produced in the more common form of beta decay?
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I'm having a hard time thinking somebody flipped a coin. There must be something neutrinos have in common with protons, photons, neutrons, electrons, etc. (things that are indisputably "matter") that anti-neutrinos do not?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by romanesque:
quote:
Originally posted by romanesque:
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
romanesque, you'll find you get a better response to your points about Darwinism when you don't rely on articles from Evolution News which is published by the Discovery Institute, described by Wikipedia as:
quote:
best known for its advocacy of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).
and the Skeptico Forum that is run by Alex Tsakiris who:
quote:
advocates various forms of quantum woo, parapsychology and evolutionary teleology
Intelligent Design was part of this thread back from the start. There is a mention on page 1 - post 8 on this thread referring back to the mention of Behe in the opening post. In the first few posts, the argument was made that science and philosophy are looking at different aspects of the same problem. Intelligent Design is looking at the philosophy and the why, not the how that science considers.
Yes, there are problems around the distortion of scientific research by the pharmaceutical industry in particular, as outlined in Bad Pharma and there are various campaigns pushing for all results to be published, particularly All Trials. There are issues with the funding of research and the distortions that can cause but that doesn't mean all science is made up or should be ignored.
I'm too old and ugly to accept Rationalwiki as a value neutral window on the world. I don't happen to agree with Alex Tsakiris on any number of issues, but in the same way I don't hold the BBC in contempt for allowing terrorists and extreme nationalists to air their views as well as mainstream politicians, Tsakiris has interviewed some compelling voices outside the mainstream whose voices demand an answer.
Similarly for the Discovery Institute, one doesn't have to be a young earth creationist to welcome debates on C19th scientific perspectives. There's a problem funding any research that fails to acknowledge an exclusively physicalist interpretation of reality, which inevitably places all challenges to it in the academic margins. That doesn't mean the topic at hand is marginal to the nature of reality. I reject "woo" is a barometer of anything except the prejudices of its user.
In the case of Dean Radin, his research is concerned with the measurement problem of quantum physics and the implications of it for consciousness. When studying clear scientific inferences puts the researcher into the freakzone, the problem isn't with the hypothesis.
Rampant harassment on Wikipedia: http://www.skepticalaboutskeptics.org/investigating-skeptics/wikipedia-captured-by-skeptics/rampant-harassment-on-wikipedia/
Ohhhhhhhhh! Bollocks.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
There must be something neutrinos have in common with protons, photons, neutrons, electrons, etc. (things that are indisputably "matter") that anti-neutrinos do not?
That's the point, there isn't really anything. Positrons and electrons are both leptons, both have the same mass and spin, it's only their charge that makes them different. Neutrinos and antineutrinos have the same (zero) charge, spin and mass with opposite chirality and lepton number. Basically each particle comes in two almost identical forms - electrons and positrons are far more similar to each other than either is to a neutrino or proton. Given sufficient energy (and some other conditions) these particles can be created in matching pairs, and those pairs can convert back to energy when they collide.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It does rather depend on what you mean by "matter". Does it, for example, include energy that can transform into particles?
Well, the photon is its own antiparticle, and pair production will produce matter and antimatter in equal quantities. When I talk about matter here, I really mean fermions.
quote:
Or, just as one side of an arbitrary line between "matter" and "antimatter"? How do you incorporate that we call the particles emitted in beta- decay an electron and antineutrino
Actually, that's the same reason. A photon can produce particle-antiparticle pairs, or equivalently, a charged particle can emit a photon (it's the same process.) A W- boson can produce an electron and an electron antineutrino, or equivalently an electron can transform into an electron neutrino by emitting a W- boson.
quote:
Is the distinction between "matter" and "antimatter" significant? Or, is it just a particular naming convention for mutually annihilating particles, and "antimatter" is just another form of material particles?
The difference between "matter" and "antimatter" fermions is significant. You can't trade the neutrinos for the antineutrinos, for example.
The left-handed electron and the (left-handed) electron neutrino form a doublet under the SU(2) symmetry of the weak interaction. In other words, a neutrino is "like" an electron because they transform into each other under SU(2) transformations. Physically, that means "emit a W boson".
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I'm having a hard time thinking somebody flipped a coin. There must be something neutrinos have in common with protons, photons, neutrons, electrons, etc. (things that are indisputably "matter") that anti-neutrinos do not?
Photons aren't "matter". A photon is also an antiphoton, so it doesn't get to play for either team. When we talk about matter, we mean the fermions.
But the protons and neutrons thing is interesting. In the current Standard Model, quarks and leptons don't couple. That means that there's no mechanism to connect the matter-ness of electrons and neutrinos with the matter-ness of up and down quarks, and so in the current SM, we make the arbitrary assertion that electrons are "matter" like up and down quarks (and hence protons and neutrons).
In the unified theory that everyone thinks must exist, leptons and quarks are combined in an irreducible representation of the symmetry group of the unified theory (SU(5) is the smallest possible such symmetry group, although I think the non-observation of proton decay has pretty much ruled out all the SU(5) possibilities.) This combination places quarks and leptons in the same representation, and so ties the matter-ness of quarks and leptons together.
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
LC--
Thanks.
Alan--
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
It does rather depend on what you mean by "matter". Does it, for example, include energy that can transform into particles?
That's what I was thinking of. In that view, aren't matter and energy flip sides of each other? Sort of like energy is matter dancing very fast, and matter is energy meditating? (Don't laugh too hard, please! ![[Biased]](wink.gif) I've been using that comparison for a long time, and it makes sense to me.)
Thanks.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
That's what I was thinking of. In that view, aren't matter and energy flip sides of each other? Sort of like energy is matter dancing very fast, and matter is energy meditating?
When photons undergo pair production (which they do), they produce a particle and its antiparticle at the same time. So matter-ness is conserved: you start with a photon (no matter) and end with an electron and a positron, say (no net matter - a particle and its antiparticle).
In order to generate a matter-filled universe from a big bang, you need a mechanism that produces matter from energy without producing antimatter at the same time.
Or alternatively, you make equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and then have a mechanism to sweep all the matter over in one direction, and all the antimatter in the other direction, and leave a big gap in the middle.
The former is easier to imagine than the latter.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So why does 'matter' predominate?
I imagine in me complete ignorance that there was an imbalance in matter-antimatter creation, but to what degree and why how can one know?
Any road up, I came here to muse on a conversation outside the public toilets at Wells-next-the-Sea on Saturday, in shadow of the terribly moving memorial to the 11 men drowned in the 1880 Eliza Adams lifeboat disaster, leaving 10 widows and 27 orphans, unmemorialized, in a small town.
I was photographing Solanum nigrum (in the OPPOSITE direction to the front of the toilets ...), across the road from the tide monitoring station where the iridescent starlings roost, which is germane. A woman commented on the colours which she which 'you don't usually notice'. I repressed the impulse to hold forth on them not being due to pigmentation but to iridescence. Then I realised I couldn't explain the latter more deeply without opening up the Pandora's box of interference, phase shifting, thin-film interference and diffraction. I imagine in feathers it's thin-film interference. Or diffraction. Or both.
An older chap like me came out the toilet and stood by me as I crouched by the flowers, 'A nightshade.' I said. He launched in to a little homily about looking at a butterfly 'the other day' and saying that it didn't have to be SO beautiful.
I didn't get his agenda and said it was due to competition. He ignored me and said that it was excessively beautiful because it had a designer, 'God' and walked away as I said 'Maybe both'.
What a typically depressing interaction.
Particularly as I don't subscribe to ID in the slightest degree apart from in the original creation of this universe.
In which there was a bias toward matter.
[ 23. October 2017, 08:56: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
'strewth! Sub-cellular, 100 nm, melanosome-keratin layers. The blind watchmaker strikes again!
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
It's 43 years since university so I have forgotten most of it, but if I remember correctly it would not need that great an imbalance between matter and anti-matter, then it snowballed.
I am sure someone who is more up to date in their Astro-physics will now correct me.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
So why does 'matter' predominate?
A less matter-centric view might be that matter doesn't predominate, empty space does. Non-matter, not matter nor anti-matter.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Matter predominates because, like the woman that John Lennon wants, wants so bad it's driving him mad, it's so heavy.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Like life and death, matter and energy are actually the same thing. You just have to understand that our ideas of life and death, and matter and energy are products of our languages and thus metaphors at best. Symbolic representations of underlying reality.
Plato told us thousands of years ago that we see shadows of reality reflected on the walls of the cave. We don't see actual reality. So when you think matter versus energy you're doing what I do:thinking in human terms. More easily (for me) consider 3 dimensions: then try to think of a 4th at right angles to those. Warps the mind, but it's on the track toward understanding. Similar also is particle-wave: light is both and neither. Sometimes it's useful to think of as one or the other, but these are merely metaphors not really approaching what it truly is. Because we haven't a concept for it.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
matter and energy are actually the same thing.
Well, yes. And, no. In certain circumstances matter and energy can exchange between each other - energy becoming matter, and matter becoming energy. But, that doesn't make them the same.
At a very (with lots of other very's) early time in the universe the initial energy of the universe cooled sufficiently for it to transform into "matter" and "anti-matter" (both of which really are different forms of matter). There was a very (with lots of other very's) slight bias towards matter in that process, so that as that matter and anti-matter annihilated to produce photons (yet another form of matter) there was a little bit of matter left over, just enough to form stars and planets and galaxies .... and people like us to wonder about it all.
The problem is that we don't know why there was that little bit of extra matter formed. We invoke "symmetry breaking", something where the properties of matter and anti-matter are very slightly asymmetric - mass, magnetic moments ... something. Though, we've yet to find any such asymmetry - within the last few days results have been published measuring the magnetic moment of anti-protons, identical to that of protons to 19 decimal places.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Alan--
Perhaps, when matter and anti-matter love each other very, very much...?
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Thanks Alan. That's the piece of the jigsaw. Symmetry breaking. You've brought it in from the Oort Cloud for me. Can we quantify the tilt toward ordinary matter in baryogenesis?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
And ooh, Alan, are the monopole, flatness and horizon problems real?
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