165
« on: April 17, 2008, 01:46:04 am »
What science is and what science isn't:
Science isn't belief.
Science is a hypothesis which states something about the natural world. Scientific theories must correlate to the real world, they must be able to make predictions about events, they must testable with empirical evidence, reproducible AND above all there must be a method to prove them wrong (kind of comes with testable, but worth re-state).
Intelligent design is theology not science, there is no way to test for it, there is way to make predictions with it, there is no way to gather empirical evidence on it and it is a belief.
I find it hilarious that he used that argument that living in Galileo's time wouldn't of been an issue if he had published that article! Of course not! Galileo was put under house arrest for arguing that the Earth revolved around the Sun!
Articles have to be well edited and thoroughly peer-reviewed to go in prestigious scientific journal. If the editor decided to put in and defended something that wasn't well peer-reviewed, wasn't scientific and just propagated a theological view point without any good understanding of science or mathematics then it doesn't surprise me that he found it difficult to seriously carry on science after that.
Free speech is tolerated! To say that it isn't is naive and quite frankly foolish. You don't see the Communist manifesto in republican weekly. Science has always been harsh and critical to those ideas which aren't scientific and are new. There are good reasons for this, non-scientific ideas are non-testable and just waste scientists times (think astrology and alchemy, they aren't seriously taken anymore).
New ideas are harshly treated so they have chance to prove themselves, if they can survive and show themselves and flourish to be true in such a harsh environment, then it's a good test to make sure these ideas are just concocted artificially in the minds of scientists. If you want to disprove evolution (and I'm not using the world Darwinism because that has been horrible twisted and tortured by people who don't understand evolution) then come up with testable, predictable, empirical science.
Evolutionary psychology (Nazism to Planned Parenthood) is a pseudo-science, it mimic's science. It makes the fatal flaw that most pseudo-science's make, which is to make predictions about things which have already happened. This means it can claim to be 100% correct, reproducible and testable, but this is in fact rubbish, because it can't do any of this, because the whole point of a scientific hypothesis is to be able to predict things. My observation of evolutionary psychology, is like most pseudo-sciences, is that it exists to further the political aims of the people who spout it, these are usually sexist aims and occasionally racists ones. They often use the argument that society is how it is because that's who we are, so we shouldn't change this and I've even heard it be used to conclude that liberal independent women are the downfall of modern society.
Show Posts
just a short update on the his x1950 pro q3 ice agp graphics card. using the e4500 core 2 duo processor, i didnt realise i could change bios at start up to 1066 fsb which cpu supports. now getting better results . original cpu at 2.2ghz now at 3.3ghz with room for much more. futuremark 3d results now well into the 6500 score. broadband speeds on toast over 7mb. graphics are good but nothing like the scores on the 8800gt sli rig over 13000 marks now).
