Hellbound
17th August 2007, 07:35 AM
You know, the word "evidence" keeps getting repeated in more and more posts.
And, really, that's where this discussion n eeds to be focused.
Why?
Because both science and skepticism both agree that evidence is what is required to accept a claim as true. The level of evidence varies, depending on the claim, and I'll say more on that in a moment. The default position of any claim is "false". Reality is not like a court of law (thankfully), "true until proven false" is the exact opposite of science and scepticism. The claim is, rightfully, viewed with doubt unless and until credible evidence can be shown. Even the OP talked about "ignoring evidence", yet the examples are all about things that were disbelieved without any evidence ebing shown. One must understand there is a difference between being mistaken and being biased.
As to the weight of evidence required, this does vary. If someone says "I had a hamburger for dinner last night", I really don't need any evidence to accept this as likely true. People eat dinner, hamburgers exist, and they're fairly common and easy to get. No known physical laws are broken or even stretched, and (assuming I know the person and they like hamburgers) there's no reason to doubt the statement.
Now, take something like "I can read minds instantaneously by quantum entangling my brain with someone elses". This requires a heck of a lot more evidence. In this simple satement, the two best-tested theories in the history of physics, relativity and QM, are both violated. They'd have to be wrong. IN this case, the weight of evidence required to accept this claim as true would, reasonably, be equal to the weight of evidence that currently exists for relativity and QM. That's a lot more than one study out of hundreds, or a 5% confidence level in a statistical study. Similar arguments apply for ghosts, UFOs, life-after-death, and others. They either posit things which would violate known, well-tested laws...or they posit things that, even if true, would be (by their own definition) impossible to ever discover...which means they cannot affect the observable universe in any detectible fashion.
A final comment. Think about trying to plan a trip. Let's go sci-fi and take a trip to Alpha Centauri on a new rocket. We have to make decisions about how fast we want to go. We also have to take safety into account.
We can go really, really, fast (say, close to light speed) and get there in about 4 years. However, that gives us almost no time to react if anything goes wrong, and uses a lot of fuel and resources, and makes it very, very hard to change direction if we find we're going in the wrong direction.
Or, we could go really, really slow (say a few thousand miles per hour). That would let us change direction easily, and use less fuel...but we'd all be dead by the time we got there. IT would take forever to get anywhere useful.
Or, we could go a reasonable speed that takes the best of both worlds.
And that's what science is, a reasonalbe speed. Science is slow to accept all new ideas, and requires evidence for them. This is good. It gives science stability, and keeps us from wasting resources on a lot of dead ends and nonsense research that could be better spent elsewhere. Also, it gives the things we do know a higher confidence level, because they've been put through the wringer before they gained acceptance. On the other hand, it still accepts new ideas, althoguh this takes time. Sure, we don't jump on new, correct ideas immediately...but we alos don't jump on new, incorrect ideas immediately. Guess which one there's more of?
My sig says a lot about this view, which I'll expand on a bit. Science is like crash-testing a vehicle. The goal of scientific experiment is not to prove a theory right. You don't try to crash your car into foam blocks and piles of pillows. That doesn't tell you anything. You take your new car desing and ram it head on into brick walls. You roll it down hills. You slam other vehicles into the side of it. You drop it upside down. You beat the ever-loving crap out of it until it fails in every way you can think of. It's by the failure that you learn, and find areas to improve, and get closer to a good design.
Likewise, in science, you desing your experiments around the weak points of your theory. You try to think of ways to falsify it, ways to prove it wrong. "We got this result on the test, but is it real or because of somethign else? Can we tighten controls to reduce anny possible outside influence? Is there any other explanation for this that we need to rule out?" And this is where parapsychology and most pseudo-sciences fail. They run their theories into piles of pillows. They look for a 5% confidence level (meaning random chance would give signifigant results one time out of 20) and claim it's proven. Experiments are designed with barely the power to reach this 5% level, or using selective data, or without good controls. In most cases, they don't even know what they should be controlling for, or what they should be looking for. The evidence has been evaluated, and it's been evaluated critically, with an eye for finding flaw. [NOTICE: important point ahead]: THIS IS EXACLTY THE SAME WAY ALL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IS VIEWED. YOU LOOK FO RHTE FLAWS IN THE EXPERIMENT, NOT THE SUCCESSES, AND A THEORY IS ACCEPTED BASED ON A LACK OF FLAWS, NOT ON A "PERCENT CORRECT".
Now, if you'd like to prove your statement in the OP, you need to quit just spamming your links. Many of the exampels don't show science at all, and many that do don't show scinece dismissing evidence (they show scinece dismissing or doubting a claim, which they then accept when the evidence is shown). So, YOU need to go through and pick out one that shows science rejecting evidence, not rejecting the claim presented without evidence.
And, really, that's where this discussion n eeds to be focused.
Why?
Because both science and skepticism both agree that evidence is what is required to accept a claim as true. The level of evidence varies, depending on the claim, and I'll say more on that in a moment. The default position of any claim is "false". Reality is not like a court of law (thankfully), "true until proven false" is the exact opposite of science and scepticism. The claim is, rightfully, viewed with doubt unless and until credible evidence can be shown. Even the OP talked about "ignoring evidence", yet the examples are all about things that were disbelieved without any evidence ebing shown. One must understand there is a difference between being mistaken and being biased.
As to the weight of evidence required, this does vary. If someone says "I had a hamburger for dinner last night", I really don't need any evidence to accept this as likely true. People eat dinner, hamburgers exist, and they're fairly common and easy to get. No known physical laws are broken or even stretched, and (assuming I know the person and they like hamburgers) there's no reason to doubt the statement.
Now, take something like "I can read minds instantaneously by quantum entangling my brain with someone elses". This requires a heck of a lot more evidence. In this simple satement, the two best-tested theories in the history of physics, relativity and QM, are both violated. They'd have to be wrong. IN this case, the weight of evidence required to accept this claim as true would, reasonably, be equal to the weight of evidence that currently exists for relativity and QM. That's a lot more than one study out of hundreds, or a 5% confidence level in a statistical study. Similar arguments apply for ghosts, UFOs, life-after-death, and others. They either posit things which would violate known, well-tested laws...or they posit things that, even if true, would be (by their own definition) impossible to ever discover...which means they cannot affect the observable universe in any detectible fashion.
A final comment. Think about trying to plan a trip. Let's go sci-fi and take a trip to Alpha Centauri on a new rocket. We have to make decisions about how fast we want to go. We also have to take safety into account.
We can go really, really, fast (say, close to light speed) and get there in about 4 years. However, that gives us almost no time to react if anything goes wrong, and uses a lot of fuel and resources, and makes it very, very hard to change direction if we find we're going in the wrong direction.
Or, we could go really, really slow (say a few thousand miles per hour). That would let us change direction easily, and use less fuel...but we'd all be dead by the time we got there. IT would take forever to get anywhere useful.
Or, we could go a reasonable speed that takes the best of both worlds.
And that's what science is, a reasonalbe speed. Science is slow to accept all new ideas, and requires evidence for them. This is good. It gives science stability, and keeps us from wasting resources on a lot of dead ends and nonsense research that could be better spent elsewhere. Also, it gives the things we do know a higher confidence level, because they've been put through the wringer before they gained acceptance. On the other hand, it still accepts new ideas, althoguh this takes time. Sure, we don't jump on new, correct ideas immediately...but we alos don't jump on new, incorrect ideas immediately. Guess which one there's more of?
My sig says a lot about this view, which I'll expand on a bit. Science is like crash-testing a vehicle. The goal of scientific experiment is not to prove a theory right. You don't try to crash your car into foam blocks and piles of pillows. That doesn't tell you anything. You take your new car desing and ram it head on into brick walls. You roll it down hills. You slam other vehicles into the side of it. You drop it upside down. You beat the ever-loving crap out of it until it fails in every way you can think of. It's by the failure that you learn, and find areas to improve, and get closer to a good design.
Likewise, in science, you desing your experiments around the weak points of your theory. You try to think of ways to falsify it, ways to prove it wrong. "We got this result on the test, but is it real or because of somethign else? Can we tighten controls to reduce anny possible outside influence? Is there any other explanation for this that we need to rule out?" And this is where parapsychology and most pseudo-sciences fail. They run their theories into piles of pillows. They look for a 5% confidence level (meaning random chance would give signifigant results one time out of 20) and claim it's proven. Experiments are designed with barely the power to reach this 5% level, or using selective data, or without good controls. In most cases, they don't even know what they should be controlling for, or what they should be looking for. The evidence has been evaluated, and it's been evaluated critically, with an eye for finding flaw. [NOTICE: important point ahead]: THIS IS EXACLTY THE SAME WAY ALL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IS VIEWED. YOU LOOK FO RHTE FLAWS IN THE EXPERIMENT, NOT THE SUCCESSES, AND A THEORY IS ACCEPTED BASED ON A LACK OF FLAWS, NOT ON A "PERCENT CORRECT".
Now, if you'd like to prove your statement in the OP, you need to quit just spamming your links. Many of the exampels don't show science at all, and many that do don't show scinece dismissing evidence (they show scinece dismissing or doubting a claim, which they then accept when the evidence is shown). So, YOU need to go through and pick out one that shows science rejecting evidence, not rejecting the claim presented without evidence.