I´ve heard Chopra speak in favor of garlic, ginger,... the harm of artificial chemicals, or using motors near the head...´ I didn´t need more ´proof´ because it confirmed my knowledge and experience. He spoke as a doctor who used reason and Common Sense to integrate health into the bigger picture of western lifestyles, so I contrasted the information and decided it was good. I couldn´t care less about qm in this context, because it´s irrelevant.
If I get other direct material and it doesn´t add up for me, I will know it and/or contrast it again. No prob. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
Of course the world is flat! Otherwise we'd fall off!
Of course there have to be ether, and light cannot possibly have a fixed speed! That would result in all sorts of senseless absurdities in the very nature of time and space itself!
Etc. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
And it's fairly obviously tautological to say that bad science is the enemy of good...
Jake S puts it better below when he says common sense is fine but can't replace controlled studies.
It took a Newtonesque experience to actually understand gravity and the nature of the planet, so it made sense to me.
With quantum mechanics I'm not there yet, if I'll ever be. Sure, it can be both a particle and a wave, and stuff depends on if you look at it or not. I've done the math, know the theory, have done the laser experiment and seen it being proved with my own eyes, but still, it doesn't make sense! Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I remember quite well how as a small child I learned something about inertia. Not believing it I constructed experiments in a moving car. Throwing an object, and observing how it landed right in my hand, and did not move backwards as my hand ceased to impart impetus upon it, I verified to my satisfaction that it did indeed seem correct, no matter how counter to common sense. Galilean inertia is hardly a new or strange theory. No, physics does not seem 'rational' or 'sensible' or whatever. It just measures out correctly!
The problem in this thread is that on the matters that often seem more important or meaningful to us as human beings, not even the evidence or its interpretation is unambiguous and then you can get competing models (including competing logics) which all claim to give the correct answer but are mutually nonsensical. kcurie made a comment to that effect regarding economics in reaction to Jerome's deconstruction of Greenspan.
I just do not get anything... It seesm like Greenspan is saying this stuf because it can.. but one could make another narrative, as the one Jerome is doing.. but there is actually not fundamentals to support one or the other.Economics is void of any of the scientific fundamentals.. it does not even have a set of standard data features whcih could be analyzed. ... Add to this the contamination of non-enquiring scientific minds with no freaking idea about maths and you get a very awful picture... economic articles keep on sounding as other purely symblic knowledge ... like astrology...being everythign reduce to a competition of naraatives (which is not small featrue but still...).
Economics is void of any of the scientific fundamentals.. it does not even have a set of standard data features whcih could be analyzed.
...
Add to this the contamination of non-enquiring scientific minds with no freaking idea about maths and you get a very awful picture... economic articles keep on sounding as other purely symblic knowledge ... like astrology...being everythign reduce to a competition of naraatives (which is not small featrue but still...).
We also have a basic disagreement on "science". To some it represents methodological scepticism that can be applied everywhere and is more or less successful depending on the subject matter. To others it represents the scientific establishment, or academic "hard science" with little bearing on meaningful issues. Ultimately it is a disagreement on whether to take things on faith. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
That´s a long littany against and it only says you see no reason to look into it.
A summary that is as wrong as it is unkind. I gave you pretty explicit reasons why I don't see a need to look into it. I furthermore gave you a step-by-step guide of how to convince me that I'm wrong about the need to look into it. Just come up with a testable model, design a couple of experiments and show that there's a promising preliminary result. If you have a revolutionary development, that should not be that hard.
There seems to be a lot of so and so called it ´whatever´,
A rather heavy-handed accusation. I am going to have to ask you to quote the parts of my posts here where I refer to 'so-and-so-says' - the only place I've done that is when I referenced Orac and MarkH at the end of a post that explained - at some length - why I am unconvinced that Chopra is worth spending my time on.
but little understanding of context.
It's not my job to research every woo-woo claim that someone throws up on the 'net. Show me an experimental design that might actually work. That's the kind of context that matters.
You will convince yourself of what you need, when you want, so I don´t need to convince
Doggerel.
or prove and the vigor against doesn´t convince me.
I'm not asking you to be convinced by my vigour. I'm asking you to stop fencing with straw men and either evaluate my objections in some fashion or concede them. Your choice. Put up or shut up, as they say on the other side of the Pond.
I´ve heard Chopra speak in favor of garlic, ginger,... the harm of artificial chemicals, or using motors near the head...´ I didn´t need more ´proof´ because it confirmed my knowledge and experience. [Emphasis mine - Jake]
The plural of 'anecdote' is 'anecdotes,' not 'data.'
He spoke as a doctor who used reason and Common Sense to integrate health into the bigger picture of western lifestyles,
Common sense is all well and good, but it does not and can not replace controlled studies. Lots of things that were considered 'common sense' turned out to be wrong. Geocentrism, astrology, the divine right of kings, etc.
I couldn´t care less about qm in this context, because it´s irrelevant.
Sloppy thinking is rarely completely irrelevant. If somebody says things about QM - a field in which I am competent to evaluate what he's saying - that are not only embarrassingly wrong but downright absurd, then I have to question either his honesty or his ability to judge his own competence. Which one is at fault matters less than nothing to me; either one makes me highly suspicious of him in fields where I can't judge his competence directly or haven't taken the time to read his opinions.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
You are supporting your view with jumping links that may be credible science and I don't need to read them thoroughly to discuss the central point: Science is GOOD, but it is not... ´everything there is´. For example, science is beginning to understand pieces of brain functions, but AFAIK it cannot explain, cell memory, olfactory triggers, a sneeze, or a yawn yet, and we are not going to stop experiencing them because of it. If that´s not a good example, take exams´ first-guess, intuition, mind, gut feeling, chicken soup for a cold, or people acting out under a full moon like yes-today (: etc., etc., etc.
I´ll ignore your demands for scientific study on what science hasn´t answered for us because I´m not denying science. If pure science was my vocation, I´d have studied it, so I leave that to you/science when it´s time.
In the meantime, I guess I have become more and more of a generalist instead of a specialist, which is just a non-exclusive, different view, with the same human value. Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
There is nothing unkind about different people having different interest priorities, so don´t find offense.
I do not find offence at your difference of priorities, or at the fact that you note said difference. What I find unkind is that you summarise my post(s) as nothing but an out-of-hand dismissal when I have in fact gone to some length to explain the reasons for my dismissal.
On the other hand, my definition of Common Sense is an innate, personal knowing integrated from experience that continues to adapt to new information as I live and learn.
And I largely agree with that definition, apart from the fact that I see nothing 'innate' about common sense, simply learned behaviour. What I point out is that common sense is all well and good when you're dealing with common phenomena. If you throw me a ball, I don't roll out Newton's Second Law and the Navier-Stokes equation to determine the motion of the ball and then look up which nerves to activate in order to move my hands to intercept the trajectory. I just use my common sense and experience with thrown objects to catch the ball (or not, as the case often is - I'm bad with balls).
But once you venture into the uncommon - when you look at the cell, or inside the atom, or when you fall ill - you are better off supplementing your common sense with the kind of uncommon sense derived from systematic controlled experiments. After all, controlled experiments are the best-yet way to learn from other people's mistakes.
And the repetitive, offensive wording like ´po-mo (?), woo-woo, new age, crank, doggerel, wacky´, et al, prove nothing, yet when you wrote ´guess´ I thought you got the idea.
You may rail and rant all you want against 'offencive wording' (I would note, however, that I am much kinder to Chopra than most of the critiques I've read), but that does not detract from the fact that many of the rhetorical gambits used in this thread have been doggerel, many of the ideas promoted have been admitted and/or shown to be new age, several passages that I have quoted in my posts have been indistinguishable from po-mo-babble [1] and taken together this makes "wacky" and "crank" among the kinder of the terms that I could have applied.
(Po-mo is shorthand for post-modernist. Means different things in different disciplines (which should raise red flags right there, by the way...). Used here in a pejorative sense where it denotes a position of extreme epistemological scepticism couched in fancy but vacuous and/or nonsensial rhetoric. The left-wing version of Intelligent Design, if you will.)
You are supporting your view with jumping links
Yes. That's called providing references and giving credit where credit is due. I kinda like those concepts.
that may be credible science and I don't need to read them thoroughly to discuss the central point:
True. That is also in the nature of references. Then again, in some cases you do need to read them thoroughly for other reasons. Going through Bronze Dog's doggerel list is a good idea all of its own - it'll both sharpen your thinking considerably and give you a pretty good idea what arguments any sceptic who's been on the 'net for more than a month has already heard a bazillion and one times before.
Science is GOOD, but it is not... ´everything there is´.
I see your straw man...
For example, science is beginning to understand pieces of brain functions, but AFAIK it cannot explain, cell memory, olfactory triggers, a sneeze, or a yawn yet, and we are not going to stop experiencing them because of it.
...and raise by an argument from ignorance.
- Jake
[1] I would love for someone to prove me wrong on that count - just take one of those passages and explain in your own words what it says. If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
I understand your self-importance requires attention, but I recommend you can take your frustration to the source.
Next! Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
And you do lose the ability to argue back if you refuse to read his points. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
