The power of anomalies

Yazata said:
It was uncalled for. (But a great deal of 'humor' is socially-sanctioned sadism isn't it, when people laugh at other people rather than with them?)

MR posted some opinions about scientific anomalies written by a noted contemporary scientist. I don't think that's any occasion for ridicule. It's more of an occasion for saying something intelligent about anomalies.

Yet ridicule and insults is exactly how the thread developed from post #2 on. And you just added to the stupidity.
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Anything posted by Magical Realist is an occasion for ridicule. :D
 
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"Although writing about meteorites goes even farther back than the Romans, writes French researcher Matthieu Gounelle, prior to the late 1700s nobody thought of them as something that needed scientific explanation. Like rains of less likely substances—including ”blood, milk, wool, flesh and gore,” according to historian Ursula Marvin—eighteenth-century rationalists with their fancy new scientific outlook thought the stories of rains of iron rocks weren’t real."----
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ped-establish-existence-meteorites-180963017/
 
Magical Realist said:
So to not be called a masturbator in public I shouldn't post threads on scientific anomalies? What was publicly ridiculous about that?
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It's like the boy who cried wolf. When you have a long history of jumping to conclusions, people have little reason to take your conclusions seriously. There is a chance that you might be right one of these times but we're likely to miss it because of your lack of credibility.

Your arrogant attitude doesn't help either.
 
Magical Realist said:
"Although writing about meteorites goes even farther back than the Romans, writes French researcher Matthieu Gounelle, prior to the late 1700s nobody thought of them as something that needed scientific explanation. Like rains of less likely substances—including ”blood, milk, wool, flesh and gore,” according to historian Ursula Marvin—eighteenth-century rationalists with their fancy new scientific outlook thought the stories of rains of iron rocks weren’t real."----
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ped-establish-existence-meteorites-180963017/
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In 1790 a fireball was reported over Barbotan in southern France, which locals said exploded and resulted in a shower of stones. Naturalist Jean Saint-Amans requested official testimonies, expecting that he wouldn't receive any. Instead he got a signed affidavit from the mayor, along with the sworn affidavits of 300 witnesses (at least one of whom was a university professor). Saint-Amans forwarded it to his friend Pierre Bertholon, editor of the Journal des Sciences Utile. The latter published the affidavit, along with a lament that so many Frenchmen obviously hadn't yet awakened to the Age of Reason:

"How sad, is it not, to see a whole municipality attempt to certify the truth of folk tales... the philosophical reader will draw his own conclusions regarding this document, which attests to an apparently false fact, a physically impossible phenomenon."

(Described on pp. 14 and 15 of Meteorite: Nature and Culture by Maria Golia (2015, Reaktion Books)
 
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sideshowbob said:
It's like the boy who cried wolf. When you have a long history of jumping to conclusions, people have little reason to take your conclusions seriously. There is a chance that you might be right one of these times but we're likely to miss it because of your lack of credibility.
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Hey you're the ones using schoolyard taunts like "masturbator" to insult me with when I've done nothing to deserve it. As if anyone could deserve that. You said I was acting ridiculous. Tell me what I posted here that was ridiculous or admit you're trolling.

Your arrogant attitude doesn't help either.
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What have I posted that was arrogant? Quote it.
 
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Magical Realist said:
You said I was acting ridiculous. Tell me what I posted here that was ridiculous or admit you're trolling.
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One example is the samurai ghost thread, where you went through ridiculous contortions trying to deny that a policeman could have been anywhere near the scene - and claiming that the photographer couldn't possibly have missed noticing him. Ridiculous.

Another example is the bigfoot thread where you claimed that human sounds couldn't possibly be distorted to sound inhuman. Ridiculous.
What have I posted that was arrogant?
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Posting LOL instead of a substantive response is arrogant.

If you're ever right about anything, it's an anomaly.
 
One example is the samurai ghost thread, where you went through ridiculous contortions trying to deny that a policeman could have been anywhere near the scene - and claiming that the photographer couldn't possibly have missed noticing him. Ridiculous.

Another example is the bigfoot thread where you claimed that human sounds couldn't possibly be distorted to sound inhuman. Ridiculous.
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So arguing positions you disagree with merits me being called a masturbator a month later? What is wrong with you?

Posting LOL instead of a substantive response is arrogant.
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That's it? Laughing out loud is somehow arrogant now? Since when?
 
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river said:
what science is about , today is conformity of thought by those who control the funding of any research .
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I doubt you're in any position to comment on what working scientists actually do or think.

river said:
Science today is about memory not original ideas .
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It's possible you think that because of how science was taught to you at school. The science presented in school textbooks tends to be the science that we are very confident about. The cutting edge stuff - the controversial stuff - doesn't make it into school textbooks.

Also, if science is taught by teachers who regard science as a collection of facts to be memorised, then we should not be surprised if their students come out of their schooling thinking that science is "about memory".

All cutting-edge science is done by "standing on the shoulders of giants", but the fact is that at the frontiers of research nothing is certain; if it was then the research would be pointless.
 
Yazata:

Yazata said:
In a sense, learning anything new would be an anomaly to somebody who believes that he/she already knows everything there is to be known. The new fact wouldn't have a little preexisting category in that person's conceptual scheme.

In a way, science seems to have a tendency to behave that way. ....

... they kind of assume that they already know all the physical principles and laws that govern everything that happens everywhere.
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That is very much not the case. Take physics right now, for example. As far as we can tell, we don't understand what makes up about 90% of the universe. Dark matter is a mystery. Dark energy is a mystery. Sure, there are different hypotheses being offered up and examined - that is what scientists do. But nobody working in physics would be so arrogant as to claim he knows all the physical principles and laws that govern everything that happens everywhere.

Having said that, we would be very surprised if it were to turn out that our most fundamental understandings of certain physical laws were seriously flawed. If, for example, the law of conservation of energy turned out to be false, it would be a major surprise and require us to revise virtually the whole of physics as we know it.

So they assume that they already know the range of possibilities of what can and can't happen on all of those exoplanets. They may not know how the game has played out everywhere, but they are pretty well convinced they have a good handle on the rules of the game.
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In the end, all science must answer to the available evidence. It is quite reasonable to assume that Mars is just like Earth, until we have evidence to the contrary. It is quite reasonable to assume that exoplanets are similar in many respects to the planets we are already familiar with, until there is evidence to the contrary.

The assumption that the universe is "regular" in some sense - that it can be understood - is a philosophical one that must be made for science to make any progress at all.
 
James R said:
In the end, all science must answer to the available evidence. It is quite reasonable to assume that Mars is just like Earth, until we have evidence to the contrary. It is quite reasonable to assume that exoplanets are similar in many respects to the planets we are already familiar with, until there is evidence to the contrary.
The assumption that the universe is "regular" in some sense - that it can be understood - is a philosophical one that must be made for science to make any progress at all.
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This brings to mind The Cosmological principle and the metric expansion of space.
You work with a model until you find enough evidence to alter the model or start a new model altogether.
 
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Yazata said:
MR posted some opinions about scientific anomalies written by a noted contemporary scientist. I don't think that's any occasion for ridicule. It's more of an occasion for saying something intelligent about anomalies.
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Yazata, It's not the subject it's the person. People here know how MR reacts to something s/he doesn't want to hear. So, '' saying something intelligent'' is a waste of time on a MR thread.
In another thread I posted pictures/maps from Google Earth (later to be confirmed by JamesR).
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/ghost-photobombs.159003/page-30#post-3532513
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/ghost-photobombs.159003/page-30#post-3532516

MR didn't bother to check it out but straight away called it ''more lies''. My bold.
Magical Realist said:
LOL! More lies. She wasn't photographed anywhere near there. It was near the samurai cemetery in Zushi. We already established that.
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Yazata, notice there MR saying ''We already established that.'' No one but MR in that thread had '' established '' that.
Magical Realist said:
LOL ! Because it's a beach. They don't build palaces on the beach. The sand is too unstable.
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Why the ''LOL'' when later from MR we have:
Magical Realist said:
Here's the Imperial Villa on Hayama Beach.
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And then from you we have:
Yazata said:
I'm probably one of the few Sciforums participants who is formally qualified to teach 'critical thinking' classes.
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Yazata said:
I'm probably the most intelligent and reasonable participant that you have on this board.
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sweetpea said:
Yazata, It's not the subject it's the person. People here know how MR reacts to something s/he doesn't want to hear. So, '' saying something intelligent'' is a waste of time on a MR thread.
In another thread I posted pictures/maps from Google Earth (later to be confirmed by JamesR).
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/ghost-photobombs.159003/page-30#post-3532513
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/ghost-photobombs.159003/page-30#post-3532516

MR didn't bother to check it out but straight away called it ''more lies''. My bold.
Yazata, notice there MR saying ''We already established that.'' No one but MR in that thread had '' established '' that.

Why the ''LOL'' when later from MR we have:

And then from you we have:
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Another attribute of trolls: repeatedly bringing up issues from other threads a month later. Sweetpea actually searches other forums I frequent online to mock what I post there. There's something sick and obsessive about that.
 
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Magical Realist said:
Laughing out loud is somehow arrogant now?
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Laughing out loud at a post without presenting anything substantive is arrogant because you're implying that your position is soooooooooo much better that it doesn't need to be defended at all. It's also unscientific.
 
sideshowbob said:
Laughing out loud at a post without presenting anything substantive is arrogant because you're implying that your position is soooooooooo much better that it doesn't need to be defended at all. It's also unscientific.
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Oh unscientific laughing now? Wow! You really are desperate for evidence for my arrogance. Just admit it. You're a fucking troll.
 
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