Is the earth expanding?

No, I think some of them are being honest - they are just looney.

 

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dishonest as in dishonest to themselves i.e. Deluded so same thing. Still not answered the question.

using the expert classifications for pseudosciene by Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and A. Musgrave. Ratskep wilfully classifies together Protoscience and fringe science with Pseudoscience. A complete misrepresentation. Pseudoscience is clearly demarcated as not being treated with the scientific method and a form of dishonesty by the proponent of the idea, either to themselves (mostly) or to others. Most on that list use scientific methods. Some are pure theorists, who dont have access to methods, but so what. Since when was it wrong for an under-resourced person to try and work on an idea. Thats a valid preparation phase to proposing an idea for testing. Many PhD and masters projects follow this line.


In other words that forum is quite happy to misrepresent anybody who pushes the boundaries of science and uses scientific methods but who cannot at that time complete their works for various reasons, as intellectually dishonest pseudoscientists that fail to apply scientific methods.

Now this is clear and wilfull misrepresentation. They have no criteria according to the above guidelines (unlike this forum). They clearly state in their policy all fringe (and some proto) science gets binned as pseudoscience. They have no fringe or alt science section.

Now will you answer my question is this fair ? Can you be honest about it.

Trying to get a straight answer out of some people on a forum is like playing chess. At least others can make their mind up if you are being evasive.

 

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Oh in that case I think it is fair. It is an excellent way to keep the uneducated from mistaking silly, speculative pseudoscience from real science.

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well you sure are keen to be contrary on this one arent you ? What games we love to play online nowadays. I wonder how many of us do this as practise so we can be be winning debaters IRL no matter how bad our position is.

"dishonest as in dishonest to themselves i.e. Deluded so same thing"

clearly (or was it not ?) I was referring to the definition of pseudoscience. where as the point in question here is that a forum should demarcate between protoscience, fringe science and pseudoscience. Like they do here.

but if you just want to enjoy yourself not agreeing on that which is clearly obvious and play slippery games extracting bits what i say out of context on you go. Not like everybody here cant see it for themselves.

And doesnt bother me. quite opposite. I am really very interested in all these evasion strategies people use. Pulling them out and putting them into categories.

So far broadly there is (not including all the actual ways these are done)

1. Evades out of pure self delusion and confabulation

2. Evades because they just want time out to think about it, without losing face.

3. Evades out of pure strategy to protect a cognitive or other investment.

4. Evades purely to wind somebody up for pleasure.

5. combinations of the above.

 

rogerharris,
I don't need to have coached an ice hockey team to understand the Kuhnian dynamics of paradigm change. I lived through it in the sixties when Expanding Earth, Contracting Earth, Isostatically Oscillating Earth and Plate Tectonic Earth were all under consideration and vigorous, rigorous, downright violent self examination. Plate tectonics won because it produced the most convincing arguments, best matched the data and provided the most satisfying solutions in a wider range of contexts than any of the others.

Expanding Earth missed the boat. And there won't be another one along because plate tectonics has closed off that particular waterway.

 

WTF are you ranting about. Is there some point to this post?

My position is that if material is pseudoscience it should be treated as such. If someone wants to submit a paper that they feel is incorrectly identified as pseudoscience for peer review, then do it and see if it stands up.

I think it is wonderful for psuedoscience to be identified as such to help reduce the confusion of uneducated people.

Real science will continue to be advanced and new discoveries will be made precisely because poorly thought out, unevidences psuedoscience garbage will not muddy the waters.

 

Yeah, and don't forget the part that "real science" will be overturned in a decade or two, or ten. "Real science" advancing usually means the older "real science" was crap, and wrong, and lies, and garbage.... So your position that "real science" is somehow the truth is absurd!

Also, lest you forget, today's mainstream science was once laughed at, and will be laughed at again in the future. It's actually quite laughable how you think your current mainstream science is set in stone.

 

Wrong. For instance Newton's equations on gravity were not crap or lies, they in fact did explain observations. The new theory on gravity GR explained to a better degree some anomolies in observations

That is certainly not my postion. That is your misunderstanding (imagine my surprise) of my position. It is not the final truth, current theories explain what is observed. If a better explanation is found then that will be incorporated into the theory. Pseudoscience typically is a worse explanation or doesn't even correspond to observation (kind of like your ideas).

I doubt that since the theories explain observations, advances won't make the current theories seem silly at all.

No one who understands science thinks anything is set in stone! Actually the statement you made is the typical postion of the pseudoscience crowd. With most of the pseudo science ideas, any observation or data that goes against their theories is immediately discounted.

 

To add to Origin's thoughts:

Motor Daddy - science never proves anything: all findings are always provisional. Sometimes the old findings undergo slow modification. The modification may be in the detail, as was the case with Darwin's theory, which almost bit the dust one hundred years ago in the face of mutation theory and the rediscovered work of Mendel, but all was brought together in the Modern Synthesis. The modification may be in the epxansion of the concept to wider applications.

It is comparatively rare for the old findings to be universally discarded. 99% of geology remained unaltered by the shift to plate tectonics. What happened was the unaltered 99% was observation and the changed 1% was interpretation. So there was no wholesale overturning of the kind that you envisage.

What is not laughable is that you think your views on these matters is informed and accurate. Such self satsified delusion is an affront to the scientific method.

 

violent really ? Do tell me more. We just dont get to see this kind of controversy today and get sanitized versions of the struggle to read in class. We have all heard some classic quotes about the violent struggle and a few tales, but i get the impression a lot has been edited out from how low and dirty it really gets in science...

In real life we treat each other like crap, try to shaft each other a lot of the time. why should science be any different ? If anything it should be worse as there an ultra puritanic streak thrown in.

So Please do tell...start another thread even..

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Exactly what i have been trying to say for a long time. Theories have to conform to game theory, cost and benefit of overcoming the previous investment. Whether they are right or wrong is secondary and for pure scientists and dreamers to chase. There actually might be a commercial application for one of the mechanisms for EE (hydritic earth)....so surprise surprise, little private consortium's are forming to try and get together see if theres gold in those hills (or crust) .. They dont care about EE, even if they do help provide a mechanism.

 

Well no of course not. how could you get such a strange idea.:shrug:

Really some people these days. I just dont know.

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We have a current generation of pedantic plebians i notice. Victorious from the use of hyper rationalism that allowed them an easy victory over theism, they have killed every creative ounce of freedom in their own thought at the same time. There is also something about the internet and its anonymous culture thats helping this trend.

Well i guess they are just war wounded. We need to make them a nice home somewhere. give them crayons and classical music, and just hope a glimmer of creativity returns, but i doubt it. The damage is done. Hopefully their next generation will ask questions like "mommy, daddy did you ever invent a scientifc hypothesis, or propose ideas like all the great people in history did ?"....

"why not"... "...oh...so whats a pseudoscientist then... is that a bad man daddy ?"

 

actually having just slated the current generation of plebians i do have to give them respect. I mean they are just playing hedge bet games, and know full well what their game is. they do it pretty well, and i certainly dont complain when that competence is applied to science i think is correct.

The domination of one idea is just one dirty trick having to operate over another within reason. I really wish they wouldn't teach us all this bullshit in science history that makes us get these stupid ideas to be inspired to produce creative pure science breakthroughs without practical application or that does not wipe the ass of the established hierarchy will ever get anything more than a good kicking. Then we are taught, but ahh this is to be expected, dont worry if you did good work, it will come to light when you are dead and gone.

Great and just teach us atheism and oblivion of consciousness at the same time, so we work for some unknown reward in the hope that the youth of tomorrow might recognize that, when we will have died a painful death and be obliterated forever with some unknown idea we may gain satisfaction of recognition, or even for it to be unknow that this might even occur.

we should just race motorbikes and chase women. pure science is dead.

I am learning a lot from the strategies of this current generation of rationalists. Maybe they are right to be so pedantic and anti-creative. Maybe that is rational. I wouldn't want to use that approach in science, by preference but i got brainwashed by idealism so perhaps it is me who is deluded.

Fact is all this game playing has been great for legal matters and business. Since i started transferring the tactics of pedantic scientific "rationalists", into my personal life, I have won a few minor legal type cases, without even requiring to hire a lawyer !!

 

Translation: Scientist require theories to be coherent, rigorous and to be consistent with observed phenomena. Rogerharris is not capable of doing this, so science is bad.

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Ahh im glad we agree on something.

so then do you think there should be a clear coherent, rigorous and consistent demarcation between protoscience/fringe/alt and.....wait for it pseudoscience ?

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Just to be clear so there is no misunderstanding here is the question again in pared down form.

do you think there should be a demarcation between (protoscience/fringe/alt science) and pseudoscience ?



I await the next political type diversionary method to evade this question with a lot of interest. notepad ready.

 

That's why I still have to write a paper to explain them what they have to measure ;-)

 

And this will be the same for EE. Although I would say that observation is more like 75% and interpretation 25%.

A change of paradigm is just a change of perspective.

 

Theories must be productive. If they're not, they are ignored.

 

its way more than that florian. As neal adams has said "it is a very big deal".

Think about just what an update to a minor theory does.

Affects the careers of everybody involved.

They have to reposition all their perspectives and education on what may be a complex and demanding subject. Increasingly hard for the brain to do between age 23 and 65. rigidity hits a peak at about 40.

If these people are working in these fields like most jobs they will be stretched to the max. Hence there must be a benefit to take on more stress. Many have a problem getting time to read monthly news to they can be on the edge while having a chinwag with colleages. Even discussing little things carried out by big labs they have to sound skeptical to look competent. Bring up EE and they will be roars of laughter in the social setting.

Then there is the institutionalized aspect. Some of these peoples books and works will be outdated, so sales will drops. Grants and projects could be shelved as the new idea is deemed worthy of resources.

Jeez even the educational agenda would have to be altered...costly.

Its all about resources really. A shift of resources in these areas is a very big deal. It threatens jobs, income, status, induces stress. So the payoff has to overcome that. Truth has very little to do with this.

that applies just to small stuff increments. Bring in a big one like EE, and well. I think we can agree with neal adams ,unless EE has some kind of amazing application OR the evidence is constructed in such a way it forces geology into a corner in the public sphere and forces them to make some kind of competent answer...

not a lot is going to happen.

Who actually was it taught us truth and science were directly correlated anyway ? I have been mis-educated along the way. Its just not the way it works IRL..

BTW seen this recent Cornell Psyche study. evidence does not alter bias against new ideas.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-people-biased-creative-ideas.html

• Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable.
  
• People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical -- tried and true.
  
• Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it.
  
• Anti-creativity bias is so subtle that people are unaware of it, which can interfere with their ability to recognize a creative idea.

hope i dont talk you out your sterling efforts on EE though. If anything knowing the psychology has to assist.

 

I think this EE strategy has to be like this.

Bring out all the best guns. The evidence that is just so powerful it cannot be argued with (easy part).

Find a platform where some top geologists are forced to answer to this evidence in a public setting and for that process to be put in video. Even if it means them walking out, being insulting etc. just get it on tape.

Everything shifts florian. getting articles published in a journal is all very nice, but its not enough today. The latest trend now is that people say, well the editors should be fired. Still i advise to publish and have peer review. i do in my own field. Absolutely great process for figuring whats what and just working through the problems with rigour. Peer review can have problems but mostly it is a very good process.

However i am not in anything this controversial so my ride is more painless than i thought it would be. For EE a platform has to be devised to induce public shame. Either that or an application for EE that greases everybodies palms so they are knocking down your door to hire you.