I initially had the same thought and asked myself “what’s the alternative”. And then I realized that many people have alternatives. Add to that the fact that science is constantly evolving. People seek answers to questions. Science is hard. Understanding science is hard. Then you have the pointy hats. I may have said too much.
All I know is that many different weather sources/models can’t accurately predict the weather even 2-3 days out†, so how in Hell can they accurately predict what’ll happen 10/50/100/1000 years out?
The smallest little tweak to even a single parameter has a huge butterfly effect the farther out you let it play out. So of course you can shop around to pick the model whose prediction fits what you want to predict. Yet “scientific models predict…” blah blah blah, the end of life as we know it. :confounded:
† As of Monday, today was supposed to be rainy, but the sun’s shining quite brightly.
There are countless examples of why we should expect the future to be like the past. That does not mean that the future will always be like the past. However, the last time I clicked the button switch on my flashlight it turned off. I expect it will come on when I click it again. The science behind that is solid. I expect that it will get dark later tonight like it did last night. Again solid science behind why we should expect the future to be like the past.
From the point of view of database design the 1% are actual people. A simple binary choice does not cover that actual reality of a baby’s sex. Gender is something different.
As a philosophy it made sense of geology. But you need a long observational baseline to get it right, as there are occasional dramatic events like asteroid/comet strikes, or Mt. Saint Helens type eruptions, or the several recent undersea earthquakes followed by tsunamis. Taking those into account as part of the long slow pattern of changes over time, it works to expect the future to be like the past. If your window on the past is the last week or two, then maybe not.
You’re giving examples of how it’s been in the past. So, if you’re saying that because it always has been, aren’t you really begging the question? So I ask again why should we expect the FUTURE to be like the past?
Three years ago, this thread/question wouldn’t have been asked - and, incidentally, wasn’t - but now that so much of the population lives a reality based upon “alternative facts,” silliness such as this exists.
Can I come and live in the dimension where all science is performed to the utmost best of honest human endeavour no matter the results, where it is always completely transparent, the data procured and findings released in a manner that is never skewed, hidden or adjusted, without any agenda, bias or pre-determined goal set.
Where governments, politicians, organisations, corporations and companies have absolute integrity and put the truth before all else, even profits and personal goals?
It sounds really nice there and I promise I will be good too
Because I don’t expect that in the future the interaction of a switch or the effects of the earths rotation will change. Certainly given enough time the future may indeed be different. However, even though at some point in the future the earth may indeed stop turning, the past does indeed tell us that it is very much likely, and indeed reasonable, to expect it to remain rotating for the foreseeable future. What possible reasoning would inform one to believe otherwise?
In science one can test theories to determine if it can be proven or validated as fact. Philosophy uses arguments of principles rather than testing to explain things. Scientific fact can and will change as our body of knowledge/techniques expands (physics is a good example) but that’s a good thing rather than holding onto false ideas and beliefs. In philosophy it’s just a matter of opinion and not subject to testing or experimentation so it’s not worth much in my opinion.
I don’t understand the distrust of peer review. While clearly research and experimentation can be falsified peer review is the mechanism for determining if a study was falsified or incorrectly done. So what’s bad about that?
The comment that we should expect to the future to be like the past I think referred to “I expect that it will get dark later tonight like it did last night.”. I doubt that anybody would expect things to be different with regards to that.
Why indeed. The level of scientific illiteracy exhibited in this thread is disheartening and alarming.
But there is little point in berating ignorance. Some of the frustrating questions may be asked earnestly, and those might be well-served by answers. Maybe that would deserve its own thread, though even this thread might already be in the BLF Rules grey zone.
Agreed. It is an example of the application of “soft” sciences (sociology psychology) applied to a population to achieve a result — in this case the distrust of science in order to promote a different set of interests.
Newton and gravity are taught and largely understood. Whitaker and Baxter ought to be.
Even Aristotle knew that the earth wasn’t flat. It truly amazes and depresses me that some people today believe that the earth is flat. :person_facepalming: