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
