quote:

Originally posted by Alccode Well, someone has to play devil's advocate here. Once again, simply because of ********'s, shall we say, eccentricities, the points he makes are ruthlessly and unfortunately swept aside as mad ravings by the rest of the "normal" populace in PDD. One point I'd like to bring up is that ******** is often making sociological/philosophical statements that literal-minded, strictly-scientific people are dismissing out of hand, especially when they're presented in slightly cryptic & occasionally grammatically incorrect English. E.g., Krypton, I believe you completely missed the whole point of the USENET issue. He was not using a USENET post to back up a scientific claim. He was bringing up USENET in a sociological context to illustrate social truths -- basically showing how it is a tool of a socially constructed reality. That what people will take as true more often than not comes from these kinds of sources, which includes news reports, hearsay, and so on. The notion of scientific research as a source of truth is a very recent newcomer, historically speaking, and is an odd fit to our cognitive capacities, which have evolved to construct a reality based on what our fellow tribesmen/women reported to us, as well as to folk notions of biology, astronomy, etc., which are basically "hacks" in our minds to try to understand the world around us, in a very un-scientific way -- using the strict meaning of the concept. ("Folk" here used in the sense of folk psychology). I understand that as a forum for debate, the PDD has a very heavy emphasis on citing sources and so on, but this often misses the philosophical/historical side that ******** refers to. His talk about social truth versus scientific truth is very much in the vein of serious debates in the HPS field (History and Philosophy of Science). Basically, the study of science and how it operates, what it actually is, the nature of its claims, its limits, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if many people here didn't know that the notion of "scientific reality" is heavily disputed in such areas of academia worldwide -- including such famous places as the London School of Economics (weird place to be an HPS hotspot, I know, but there's history behind that) where the famous Karl Popper made his mark. I.e., the notions of "realism" versus "anti-realism", e.g., whether atoms can be really said to be real. Of course, the literal minded (and philosophically unsophisticated) "scientific" person might think, "Of course atoms are real!!11" but upon reflection on history (hence the emphasis of history in the HPS field), the scientific notion of an atom has gone through very large shifts, unrecognizable to each other. E.g., from the Bohr model of an atom with discrete subatomic particles physically circling around a nucleus, to the current quantum mechanic notion of a probability cloud with no certain location for any particle. With this in mind, what on earth are we referring to when we talk about "atoms"? Are we referring to the theories? In which case we're not talking about "reality". Are we referring to the atoms "out there"? But what do these look like, if we keep changing our minds about them? Perhaps the most we can say is that we can only talk about atoms, with regards to their properties or how they interact with with each other and with the laws of nature -- which is the only thing that science can uncover. But we can't talk about what they actually are, since we don't really know. This is the position of the "structural realist" as opposed to the "entity realist" (who believes atoms are really real as depicted in their theoretical descriptions). But aside from the position of realism is the whole other realm of anti-realism. One point that is naturally hinted at from the discussion of atomic theory changes is that of the so-called Pessimistic Induction -- that is, that since each and every scientific theory in the past has been eventually shown to be incorrect (history presents a "graveyard" of scientific theories), so, by induction, our current theories will eventually be shown to be wrong, and replaced by "better" and "more accurate" theories which will themselves, eventually, be displaced as well. In light of this, how can we seriously talk about the objects that science discusses as actual, "real" things, if our ideas about their very existence or natures will drastically change in the future? This is the position of the anti-realist. Then there are sociological considerations to the philosophy of science, the sub-field called the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge or SSK. This part of the article will undoubtedly shed light on ********'s approach on "social truth" (the quote discusses the arguably more interesting form of SSK called the "strong programme"): This is saying that "scientific facts" are not necessarily just objective truths that we are discovering about the world, but are largely accurate and tentative notions (which we shall loosely call "truth") that are heavily influenced and shaped by the sociological forces that they arise in. Science is, after all, a human pursuit, made by humans with all our flawed and evolutionarily hacked cognitive systems, not the product of some Uber-rational perfect beings that make no mistakes (regarding mistakes, think back to the considerations from the pessimistic induction). Thus, "scientific facts" are human products as the article states, not Dictates from Reality. Obviously this is not claiming that all our scientific knowledge is worthless -- far from it. I fully trust science whenever I use my computer or step on a plane or -- while we're at it -- when the question of the moon landings comes up. And if it seems that this is what is being claimed, then I think that's just because my knowledge of HPS/SSK is very rusty (it's been a few years). So note that I'm just presenting HPS/SSK at a very brief/incomplete/inaccurate level, in order to try to show that ******** is making interesting points that people are completely overlooking in their blindness caused by mouth-frothing demands for citations, coupled with a prejudicial contempt for ******** as a person. For shame!! Mind you, it doesn't help that ******** himself doesn't address some of these things directly, so in the end, each "side" speaks over the head of the other, and it all gets reduced to ad hominem nonsense, with most people ganging up on ********. I've noticed this unfortunate pattern with most threads ******** gets involved in, and I at least would be very happy if it all stopped (even if I'm just mostly a lurker and rarely participate directly). There's too much ad hominem on these boards anyway, which sours the otherwise interesting discussions. P.S. If anyone is intrigued at all by the talk of philosophy of science -- and I don't see how anyone interested in science here wouldn't be! -- I heartily recommend you read up on it in Wikipedia and other "trusted" sources, then follow their references. Reading an introductory textbook is even better, and auditing or sitting in on a local university/college introductory course on Philosophy or History of Science is ideal (with the instructor's permission of course). [EDIT: for clarification]

right, but we're not debating the remotely tangible or the intangible here. a man landed on the moon or he didn't.

i understood ashley was going off on the philisophical tip.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo right, but we're not debating the remotely tangible or the intangible here. a man landed on the moon or he didn't.

The same considerations seem to apply. I agree that the factual possibilities are either a man landed or not, but our belief that it did occur, as outsiders to the actual event, is socially created through news reports, interviews, etc. "Outsiders" in the sense of space -- we weren't there when it occured, and time -- it was 40 years ago. Basically, you are implicitly trusting the whole patchwork of information sources that have come to you regarding the moon landings and concluding that they did really occur, but in actual fact you yourself have no way of knowing for sure. Even if you were around at the time and watched it live on TV, you still wouldn't know for sure. Unless you were the actual astronauts themselves, or the folks in mission control, or the engineers who built it all, or the direct friends and family of all those people, etc., in decreasing order of certainty of knowledge.

Well now we also have that Japanese probe that photographed the landing sites too, but again this is all being filtered through the societal lens. I think it would be less filtered for the operators controlling the probe, but even for them, what they're seeing is contingent on assuming that the engineers made an "accurate" camera, which then boils down to a scientific theory of optics which may or may not hold water 50 years from now. How much more uncertain for us, who learn about it third-hand (or even further removed). And then when something about the news reports or the info we're given doesn't make sense or is inconsistent, I would claim we see there the effects of the distortions of the societal lens. (Unfortunately, this is where people who are prone to think in terms of conspiracy theories find the fodder for their beliefs, when more often than not it all boils down to the messiness of the transmission of knowledge.)

In the case of the moon landings the sheer variety and volume of information about it indicates pretty positively that they did in fact occur. It's akin to the status of a scientific theory like evolution through natural selection. It, too, is uncertain and prone to change (it probably won't look entirely the same in the future), but the basic concept is pretty much indisputable given the sheer volume of evidence.

On the other hand, a scientific theory that has much less evidence going for it, like string theory, would be much more doubtful in its facticity, and this is even reflected in popular culture:


(source: http://xkcd.com/171/)

So, going back to the moon landings, the analogous situation is if ALL we knew about the moon landings was ONE single news report with one photo and a muffled recording of the radio communications, naysayers would be more justified in doubting that the landing occured. I think the fact that we (and yourself, I hope) would agree with this shows that we implicitly understand "societal truth" versus "scientfic" or "actual" truth. If we didn't, we would have taken that one news report on face value and believed. (We would also believe tabloids.)

OK, at this point I think the effort gone into explaining this totally outweighs the importance of the issue. It's a very simple but subtle point. Here's a one sentence summary. Yes, I agree a man landed on the moon, but not because I know the truth of it but because, weighing the evidence, I feel it is reasonable to say that the social truth of the matter corresponds with the actual fact, though I can't know for sure.

The same can be said about scientific theories. I think it's important, and healthy, to have this kind of viewpoint. If we don't, then we are liable to become like Thomas Kuhn's "old guard", the influential people in science who are so attached to an outdated or overthrown theory, that real progress is hindered due to their rigidity, and can only proceed when they (literally) die off.

The analogous situation in society is the "you're either with us or against us" mentality. Not recognizing the "softness" and uncertainty of what we think we know, even if we're pretty sure some things are true, jeopardizes our welfare in the future when we are unable to change our beliefs to fit the changing reality. Sometimes, even something that we know "for sure" turns out to be false, and we have to be ready to let go of the old belief.

Last edited by Alccode on Jul-29-2009 at 16:05

I hope the next post isn't going to be: "yeah fine, but the issue is either a man DID land on the moon or DIDN'T."

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN who the fuck are you? that was an awesome post, and if ******** would express himself that coherently i suspect the ad hominems would be much, much rarer.

Thanks. But are the ad hominems really necessary in the first place, just because someone doesn't seem to fit in? My whole intention in the first place was to point out that some people are demonizing ******** without actually making an effort to understand what he's trying to say (with exceptions of course). Not that I fully agree with everything ******** says.

All this stuff about philosophy of science is incidental... but now that it has somewhat changed the course of the discussion, I guess its purpose has been served. Hehe.

I also don't think anyone here is inherently cruel -- I chalk it all up to the de-personalization of the internet. Like how people can easily get road rage and scream bloody murder at another person in a car, not realizing that it's a person. Chances are that if they stepped outside and actually talked to the person from the other car, face to face, they would not nearly be so angry.

I bet if everyone in PDD met in real life, it would be either an awkward situation at worst, or a fairly cheery one at best, despite the sheer harshness of some of the threads like this one.

quote:

Originally posted by Krypton How mystical! How do we know we'r not in some video game being ruthlessly manipulated by THE PROGRAMMER!?

Haha, ironically that's not far from the truth: "you" are living in a virtual world that is created by your brain. And not only that, but there's yet another layer of abstraction imposed by the society you live in (which also happens to be created by the mind/brain).

It just happens to be the case that the virtual world corresponds -- but doesn't exactly match -- the underlying, real world most of the time, which is indeed fortunate for us. But not in all cases.

In the end, however, we can't ever see, hear, touch, taste, or smell reality directly. It's all mediated by the experiences our brain creates to represent sensory stimuli. This is why "your" reality can be so easily manipulated. And not just when you take drugs -- even when sad or depressed, the whole world seems to take a downturn in your mind. That's because you're living in a dream world! Mwahahaha!

(But there is no "programmer"...)

quote:

Originally posted by Alccode The same considerations seem to apply. I agree that the factual possibilities are either a man landed or not, but our belief that it did occur, as outsiders to the actual event, is socially created through news reports, interviews, etc. "Outsiders" in the sense of space -- we weren't there when it occured, and time -- it was 40 years ago. Basically, you are implicitly trusting the whole patchwork of information sources that have come to you regarding the moon landings and concluding that they did really occur, but in actual fact you yourself have no way of knowing for sure. Even if you were around at the time and watched it live on TV, you still wouldn't know for sure. Unless you were the actual astronauts themselves, or the folks in mission control, or the engineers who built it all, or the direct friends and family of all those people, etc., in decreasing order of certainty of knowledge. Well now we also have that Japanese probe that photographed the landing sites too, but again this is all being filtered through the societal lens. I think it would be less filtered for the operators controlling the probe, but even for them, what they're seeing is contingent on assuming that the engineers made an "accurate" camera, which then boils down to a scientific theory of optics which may or may not hold water 50 years from now. How much more uncertain for us, who learn about it third-hand (or even further removed). And then when something about the news reports or the info we're given doesn't make sense or is inconsistent, I would claim we see there the effects of the distortions of the societal lens. (Unfortunately, this is where people who are prone to think in terms of conspiracy theories find the fodder for their beliefs, when more often than not it all boils down to the messiness of the transmission of knowledge.) In the case of the moon landings the sheer variety and volume of information about it indicates pretty positively that they did in fact occur. It's akin to the status of a scientific theory like evolution through natural selection. It, too, is uncertain and prone to change (it probably won't look entirely the same in the future), but the basic concept is pretty much indisputable given the sheer volume of evidence. On the other hand, a scientific theory that has much less evidence going for it, like string theory, would be much more doubtful in its facticity, and this is even reflected in popular culture: (source: http://xkcd.com/171/) So, going back to the moon landings, the analogous situation is if ALL we knew about the moon landings was ONE single news report with one photo and a muffled recording of the radio communications, naysayers would be more justified in doubting that the landing occured. I think the fact that we (and yourself, I hope) would agree with this shows that we implicitly understand "societal truth" versus "scientfic" or "actual" truth. If we didn't, we would have taken that one news report on face value and believed. (We would also believe tabloids.) OK, at this point I think the effort gone into explaining this totally outweighs the importance of the issue. It's a very simple but subtle point. Here's a one sentence summary. Yes, I agree a man landed on the moon, but not because I know the truth of it but because, weighing the evidence, I feel it is reasonable to say that the social truth of the matter corresponds with the actual fact, though I can't know for sure. The same can be said about scientific theories. I think it's important, and healthy, to have this kind of viewpoint. If we don't, then we are liable to become like Thomas Kuhn's "old guard", the influential people in science who are so attached to an outdated or overthrown theory, that real progress is hindered due to their rigidity, and can only proceed when they (literally) die off. The analogous situation in society is the "you're either with us or against us" mentality. Not recognizing the "softness" and uncertainty of what we think we know, even if we're pretty sure some things are true, jeopardizes our welfare in the future when we are unable to change our beliefs to fit the changing reality. Sometimes, even something that we know "for sure" turns out to be false, and we have to be ready to let go of the old belief.

Now, this is all well and good, and for the most part (imo) accurate and sensible. However, your arguments simply do not correlate with the level of discussion any of us in the PDD have seen regarding “alternative” viewpoints of accepted factual data/history.

There is an astronomically huge difference between healthy scepticism and enquiry, and the anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-logic mantra of the conspiracy mindset. The simple fact of the matter is that none of these BS positions have anywhere near the levels of evidence or insight necessary to create doubt concerning “socially constructed” norms. So while I agree that some things should never be taken for granted, I think its extraordinarily disingenuous to equate that position with the crazies that proffer exactly the kind of “group-think” you’re criticising here.

Indeed, in the current example re the moon, it isn’t a debate about the validity of science at all. It’s an argument wholly created around conspiracy without any evidence. Im not sure how often you poke your nose in here but some of us are just fatigued from the pure, unadulterated bullshit being spewed by the usual suspects, and ad hominems seem to be the natural response to such a disregard for logic, deduction and established scientific knowledge. I don’t think it is unreasonable to arbitrarily dismiss such absurdities in favour of discussing topics that actually matter.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by Alccode I hope the next post isn't going to be: "yeah fine, but the issue is either a man DID land on the moon or DIDN'T."

actually my post was going to be, where do you stand on climate issues?

seeing as how this thread was over in about 3 pages i was curious to know how you feel about the current "scientific consensus" on anthropogenic global warming theory

I couldn't tell it if was or wasn't. If you believe they put a man -- on the moon? Doubt it. If anything the public lexicon could never be the same.

___________________
The Democratic Party

quote:

Originally posted by thedoggyworld I couldn't tell it if was or wasn't. If you believe they put a man -- on the moon? Doubt it. If anything the public lexicon could never be the same.

Is thedoggyworld a human? Doubt it.

___________________

If tehy wuz on teh moon? NOOOOO

How cud teh flag WAVE?!!11!

___________________
Captain Planet is gey.
Water, Fire, Earth, Wind, Heart???
These forces are supposed to combine to create Captain Planet?
Bullshit.
Those forces combine to create a soaking, boiling mudstorm on Valentine's Day.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo actually my post was going to be, where do you stand on climate issues? seeing as how this thread was over in about 3 pages i was curious to know how you feel about the current "scientific consensus" on anthropogenic global warming theory

Heh, nice one. This whole issue dovetails very well with all the sociological considerations mentioned before.

The simple question of human activity affecting the climate is, I think, probably beyond dispute (with the answer being in the affirmative). But I dunno, maybe you or someone else (since I don't know your position on this either, thus not knowing if this is a "trick question" or not) will post an article showing how some credible study found no correlation between CO2 emissions and rising global temperatures. These things can happen. I'm sorry to say that I haven't been too involved in reading about the whole climate change debate. It used to be the case that smoking cigarettes wasn't widely believed to be so deleterious to our health, and I'm sure that at least some of the studies that came out in support of the tobacco industry showed that smoking is not dangerous. In the heyday of that debate, I'm sure that people who were not in the "know" could honestly be confused as to what to believe.

The same is occurring today in several areas, including the question of climate change. My personal belief is that, yes, the growing scientific consensus is converging on the conclusion that human activity is causing significant and, perhaps, irreversible climate change. And that there are really wealthy and powerful interests -- the entire oil industry -- who probably honestly don't really care about the truth of the matter but want to keep making a lot of money, or (and more psychologically interesting) honestly believe a priori that carbon emissions don't cause global warming, because then it's consistent with their internal belief structure and resolves the cognitive dissonance. They want to believe they are making an honest living, after all. (It's interesting to note that this latter belief is more socially acceptable since it agrees with the scientific consensus, but if it wasn't the case, then that "oil industry" statement could probably be labelled as a conspiracy theory.)

So the oil industry is probably akin to the tobacco industry during the whole smoking debate: just as the question of the danger of smoking is pretty much now indisputable, likewise the question of human-caused global warming is probably going to turn out to be indisputable as well.

BUT, but, but. It is absolutely important, for the purposes of scientific methodology, that an "open mind" be maintained throughout. There are undoubtedly anomalies in the scientific picture of climate change. It's always the case in science that not all of the data fits the theory. Actually, in many cases a lot of interesting data doesn't fit the theory at all. Almost all of the revolutions in scientific theories in the past have been ultimately caused by the dominant scientific paradigm not being able to fully address some really burning anomalies in the data that didn't fit the theory. Thomas Kuhn, the famous physicist-turned-philosopher/sociologist (who was responsible for the notion of "paradigm shifts" entering the mainstream vocabulary), classified anomalies into two types. Most anomalies are of such little consequence to the dominant paradigm that they are simply ignored or, in some cases, are eventually shown to fit the theory after all. But there are significant anomalies that can cause a crisis to occur, where eventually the paradigm is shown to be unsatisfactory and thrown out. This is the standard pattern of scientific work. Wikipedia has a great introductory exposition of this process in their article on Paradigm shifts.

Anyway, the relevance of that for our discussion is that, seeing as how if you want to do good science you must not ignore the anomalies, thus if some scientists show dissenting evidence for the dominant consensus on anthropogenic climate change, they must not be brushed aside simply because they don't fit the theory. There might be some kernel of truth in a piece of dissenting evidence that, upon further investigation, turns out to bring the whooooole house of cards down.

A prototypical historical case of this was in physics at the turn of the last century, when Newtonian/classical mechanics was the dominant scientific paradigm for explaining how objects move in space -- basic physics. This was at a time in history when the scientific consensus was that humans were, for the first time, pretty much in possession of nearly complete scientific knowledge of how the universe works. Only the minor details had to be worked out. Now, difficulties in classical mechanics started to pop up here and there, and perhaps the most (in)famous of all was the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had some strong evidence against the notion of the "luminiferous aether", a critical component of classical mechanics. It was this, among other equally "disagreeable" anomalies, that eventually resulted in the complete rejection of classical mechanics, and the introduction of relativity theory, as pioneered by Einstein, to supplant it. In fact, it was Einstein's famous first paper on special relativity that not only established a totally new understanding of space and time, but that also conclusively demolished the notion of the aether, thus putting the final nail in the coffin of classical mechanics.

And so, the "naysayers" in the whole global warming question shouldn't be rejected out of hand, at our own peril. Of course, just because there might be a lot of dissenting voices, some being religiously or culturally prominent, obviously doesn't give them much credibility. I'm talking about "that one" scientific theory that gets rejected from a journal because it's "too controversial" and the author loses his or her tenureship, but that actually turns out to be the initiator for yet another revolution in our understanding of climate and the human role. I'm not saying such a paper or study exists, just that we shouldn't label naysayers as "crazies".

Bah, again that was way too long of a post. Sorry about that. All I'm really saying is that, yes, I tentatively believe that humans are the main factor in the cause of climate change, but as to a whole bunch of other issues -- whether the planet would have started warming up on its own, e.g., due to the sun, apart from human factors and thus we're not sure just how much of a difference human activity is making, etc. etc. -- I just don't know. I'm not a climatologist. But the point is that neither are most people who are "debating" the issue!! Thus any strong positions, like "science has indisputably proven that humans are causing climate change, and you're a crazed conspiracy theorist if you don't believe that with equal fervor" (or the opposite, being equally fervent that humans aren't causing climate warming), are unjustified both historically and scientifically. In my opinion.

Last edited by Alccode on Aug-01-2009 at 19:03

quote:

Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN There is an astronomically huge difference between healthy scepticism and enquiry, and the anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-logic mantra of the conspiracy mindset. The simple fact of the matter is that none of these BS positions have anywhere near the levels of evidence or insight necessary to create doubt concerning “socially constructed” norms. So while I agree that some things should never be taken for granted, I think its extraordinarily disingenuous to equate that position with the crazies that proffer exactly the kind of “group-think” you’re criticising here.

The point about "group-think" was that we are all subject to it, even the non-conspiracy theorists! Have you been to the moon yourself, or were you in mission control on July 20th, 1969? No, you are just taking it on a kind of faith. It just so happens that the social belief that people did land on the moon is pretty darn well backed up by a whole boatload of evidence, so it's pretty safe to say that it's true -- and that thus your faith is not blind. In this sense I agree with you.

What I disagree with is the divisive spin that's placed on this. Just because the lunar landings were most definitely not faked, it doesn't mean that those people who are just plain sure that humans landed on the moon are, because of the obviousness of the evidence or due to their conviction, somehow not subject to social pressures but are above them, in some heavenly Rational Realm. Such things don't exist -- we are social creatures and acquire our knowledge and beliefs about our reality through social means. The whole point of the sociological study of science, I think, is to show that even science is a social means of gathering the truth. (Though it happens to be veridical most of the time.)

quote:

Indeed, in the current example re the moon, it isn’t a debate about the validity of science at all. It’s an argument wholly created around conspiracy without any evidence. Im not sure how often you poke your nose in here but some of us are just fatigued from the pure, unadulterated bullshit being spewed by the usual suspects, and ad hominems seem to be the natural response to such a disregard for logic, deduction and established scientific knowledge. I don’t think it is unreasonable to arbitrarily dismiss such absurdities in favour of discussing topics that actually matter.

I agree with you entirely. I just don't like calling people crazies and thus heaping abuse on them. I believe it's preferrable to simply kindly yet firmly argue with people you disagree with, even if you believe that they are simply wrong and are " crazy conspiracy theorists". (They probably think you are simply wrong too!)

EDIT: ok, so because I haven't been active as much as you or others have, I probably haven't lost my patience as much for this, but again, even if I lost patience I wouldn't go as far as some people have here, which is at times a bit cruel, IMO.

Last edited by Alccode on Aug-01-2009 at 18:59