JamesG
Orbinaut
Physicists have been wrong/deluded/dishonest before...
Will an anti-gravity device ever be created? What would it involve?
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Physicists have been wrong/deluded/dishonest before...
JamesG
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Being the guy who discovers "anti-gravity" is quite a seduction...
Urwumpe
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And they have in the vast majority of all cases been right, realistic and honest. So what do you want to say? That you call people criminal idiots if you don't like their work?
---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:55 AM ----------
Being the guy who has discovered nothing after 30 years of research is quite a shock.
JamesG
Orbinaut
Color me... skeptical.
Just because someone went to university for a long time and has a jumble of letters after their name does not infallible do they become.
Do you remember "cold fusion"? Or "Martian bacteria fossils"?
Just because someone went to university for a long time and has a jumble of letters after their name does not infallible do they become.
Do you remember "cold fusion"? Or "Martian bacteria fossils"?
Urwumpe
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Yeah, but guess what: These people will be more often right about their field of expertise than you. It is like that. Just like you will badly suck in a discussion about Counterstrike with a 15 year old computer gamer. That is not even elitist, even if you would call it unfair. It is the way things go. Some people will always be better in something than you and it is communism to call for making all people equally stupid so you have a chance.
Unless you want to start a discussion on baseball trading cards with a professor for particles physics, your chances are not that good.
Q1: Can you name scientists researching cold fusion?
Q2: How many scientists are researching cold fusion AFTER 1989?
Q3: And how many scientists discovered Martian bacteria fossils?
Indeed.
I'm sure some people here know of my attitudes regarding views of formal education, but I digress.
Yes.
Martian meteorite bacteria weren't as much of a shambles as cold fusion though, IMO.
EDIT:
Who said that JamesG's field of expertise lay in baseball cards? :rofl:
Dig Gil
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If my memory is not playing tricks on me, when I've read about it for the first time (in a magazine) it is amusing to know that the U.S. Navy built their own "cold reactor".:thumbup:
JamesG
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My, what arrogant condescension. Must have struck a nerve for you to take it so personally.
Believe it or not, you do not have to devote years of your life to the exclusive study of something to be able to have an intelligent debate or opinion on it. There are also plenty of lettered morons in this world as well.
You missed my point, or are intentionally obfuscating to avoid it.
Urwumpe
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No, why do you think it is arrogant: It is like that. That is the plain reality. And reality doesn't have any feelings and reality doesn't even feel pity for you.
There are surprisingly many more morons who think that you do not have to devote years of your life to the exclusive study of something to be able to have an intelligent debate or opinion on it.
Or to say it with Dieter Nuhr: If you have no clue, just shut up.
No, I have understood your point too well. You try to make your opinion on something much more important, by claiming that regardless how little you know, you could maybe, with a tiny, but existing chance, be right as well. You also don't even know why you should be right, but your faith in your opinion is rock solid.
RisingFury
OBSP developer
Yes, you're right... that's exactly why intelligent high school students developed the string theory, without going to university.
You can have a good discussion in topics like religion, where facts and a load of knowledge and skills are not necessarily needed.
What prevents people who have not learnt in official institutions from doing so?
But the fact remains, that people can and do attain (often better) knowledge by themselves then in an official institution.
Denying this is illogical and irrational. If you are doing so you are clearly either defending your personal pride or popular dogma relating to the subject.
Urwumpe
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Nothing, but they just rarely do that. Also, if you read a book on particle physics, who do you think wrote it? And which institution paid this person for writing this book?
Wrong. That is like saying you learn flying better if you don't attend flight school.
There are really people who gained better knowledge than scientists, while being outside official institutions. But they are extremely rare. That is one aspect that you should NEVER ignore. We have one such exceptional genius per century on the whole planet, when going over history. One. Out of billions of people.
Most people and even child prodigies attended the normal academic career of their time for becoming as great as they are. Newton put it best in his words:
If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.
If you don't know what is known already, how can you find something new? You'll waste most of your life finding out, what other people already found out. That is the whole sense of education. Teaching you in weeks, what other people needed decades of their life to find out.
Denying this is the duty of any sane human.
What you call a fact is your personal faith that maybe keeps you warm at night, sitting at home, trying to reinvent the wheel or lament about those scientists spending lots of money for finding data, if they could just ask you.
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Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
Being skeptical about science is pretty ironic, since a real scientist is by definition a skeptic.
That said, I will admit that scientists are vulnerable to the human habit of following the crowd sometimes, especially in fields that are politically charged. But physics is not one of those fields.
When it comes to physics, you can only self-teach so far. At some point you are going to consult textbooks, and those are written by college professors and professional scientists. If you want to do research involving expensive or dangerous equipment, your garage is not going to cut it, you're going to have to use a university or corporate laboratory and you're going to have to work with people who have degrees.
The mad scientist who proves the entire establishment wrong is mostly a myth.
Back to skepticism: being skeptical means demanding those with unconventional ideas to demonstrate the validity of their ideas. It does NOT mean placing the lone unconventional idea on an equal footing with established science, such that the establishment has to keep re-proving itself to every moonbat that comes along.
This is not arrogance, it's prudence.
That said, I will admit that scientists are vulnerable to the human habit of following the crowd sometimes, especially in fields that are politically charged. But physics is not one of those fields.
When it comes to physics, you can only self-teach so far. At some point you are going to consult textbooks, and those are written by college professors and professional scientists. If you want to do research involving expensive or dangerous equipment, your garage is not going to cut it, you're going to have to use a university or corporate laboratory and you're going to have to work with people who have degrees.
The mad scientist who proves the entire establishment wrong is mostly a myth.
Back to skepticism: being skeptical means demanding those with unconventional ideas to demonstrate the validity of their ideas. It does NOT mean placing the lone unconventional idea on an equal footing with established science, such that the establishment has to keep re-proving itself to every moonbat that comes along.
This is not arrogance, it's prudence.
JamesG
Orbinaut
Academia has its own internal politics that does have an impact on what becomes accepted or not...
This discussion wandered from an off hand about an experiment into Urwumpe's defense of the Academic Institution. I don't think anyone can argue that universities and labs don't have a place of importance, and I was not. But the observations and theories produced by them should not be accepted blindly as the absolute truth either.
LOL! That is so mature and inciteful.
This discussion wandered from an off hand about an experiment into Urwumpe's defense of the Academic Institution. I don't think anyone can argue that universities and labs don't have a place of importance, and I was not. But the observations and theories produced by them should not be accepted blindly as the absolute truth either.
LOL! That is so mature and inciteful.
No, they shouldn't be accepted blindly. But they should be accepted long before the random outbursts of someone who has no experience.Academia has its own internal politics that does have an impact on what becomes accepted or not...
This discussion wandered from an off hand about an experiment into Urwumpe's defense of the Academic Institution. I don't think anyone can argue that universities and labs don't have a place of importance, and I was not. But the observations and theories produced by them should not be accepted blindly as the absolute truth either.
LOL! That is so mature and inciteful.
JamesG
Orbinaut
How do you know I don't have a superconducting doughnut attached to the end of my cordless drill right now?
Be careful of what you presume.
I'm not even going to justify that with a response, sorry.
