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Do non-experts really appreciate the work and knowledge of experts?

Pete Harcoff

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Merlin said:
So OK,

you blindly accept the proclamations of anyone who is 'expert'.
I do not.

Oi. What we are having here is a failure to communicate.

This is the first line from the OP: "I've noticed that in some cases (particularly with creationists, but in other cases as well) non-experts seem to view their own knowledge as on par or even trumping experts in a certain field."

What I am saying is that in general the consensus of experts is going to trump the opinion of non-experts. Do you disagree with this?

And just to clarify, I am not saying that experts are necessarily infallible or that I wouldn't investigate things for myself. But if I had an expert and a non-expert giving me an opinion about a particular field, 99 times out 100 I'll go with the expert opinion.
 
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Tomk80

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Merlin said:
The Pentium computer chip looks evolved too.

does it?

I can trace its probable source to the bell labs transistor of long ago.
I can see various steps in the evolution and I can see different chip species branches.

And you'll also notice that you can't group them in a twin-nested hierarchy? Any idea why?

I notice how the chip in the Mac and PC are likely evolved from the same ancestor.
Yet I personally believe there was intelligent intervention and the ICs did not come about on there own by natural forces.
Because those are not really comparable. Chips do not look designed and cannot be classified the same way biological organisms can. In short, chips look nothing like biological orgnanisms.
 
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Mr. QWERTY

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FWIW, I do respect and follow the advice of the experts. If my doctor says to do something, I do it. If a geologist says that a rock is 3 billion years old, I believe him. I lurk on this subforum for just the reason that the scientists here know, and are willing to share, a huge amount.

This is not to say that one should blindly follow the experts. After all, Kent Hovind presents himself as an expert. Be informed, check credentials, watch for ulterior motives, but if somebody has dedicated their life study to something, they probably know what they are talking about.
 
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Loudmouth

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Merlin said:
So OK,

you blindly accept the proclamations of anyone who is 'expert'.
I do not.

You don't have to blindly accept their proclamations, that's the whole point of science. If you believe their conclusions are faulty because of bad data, incomplete data, or even falsified data then you can do the experiments yourself. If you think their data is right but their conclusions are faulty, then you are free to draw your own conclusions, and show how your conclusions are consistent with all of the evidence available. You can then sumbit these conclusions to peer reviewed journals where they become a permanent part of science.

Science was developed so that no one has to blindly accept anything. The power of science is the ability to show that someone is wrong through repeating their experiments (which is how the Cold Fusion fiasco was uncovered) or by finding new evidence. Sitting on your duff and proclaiming "That can't be right" is not a very good argument when there are ways to demonstrate whether or not someone is right.
 
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dad

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Loudmouth said:
... Sitting on your duff and proclaiming "That can't be right" is not a very good argument when there are ways to demonstrate whether or not someone is right.
That is fine only so far as it can be demonstrated, not assumed into the future or past!
 
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Loudmouth

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dad said:
That is fine only so far as it can be demonstrated, not assumed into the future or past!

Exactly. Assertions and stories about talking snakes are not demonstrations. Fulfilled predictions, such as the Oklo reactors and supernova 1987a, are demonstrations. Appealing to a sky daddy to make contradictory evidence disappear is not a demonstration.
 
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vossler

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I see myself agreeing with this thought. I too am frustrated when some creationists attempt to trump certain knowledge with their own theories. I have nothing against creationists using science, actually I encourage it, but what I don't want them doing is extrapolating the data to fit their preconceived notion of what it should say. I firmly believe science should report the facts and forget the non-observable hypotheses, evolutionary or otherwise.
Pete Harcoff said:
I can only imagine how scientists must feel when confronted by obviously un-educated and un-trained creationists. It makes me wonder if people really appreciate the work that goes into those disciplines.
Not to mention it makes them look rather foolish too.
Rightly so!
 
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dad

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......Oklo shows that radioactive reaction took place, although basically precisely what kind is not demonstrated. The end result of the excercise resembles a reaction end result as we today in reactors. How it actually got there is not demonstrated at all. There is a big pile of assumptions, including how it, if I remember correctly, came up from miles below the earth at one point, in some imagined past. All of these are only as good as the underlying belief that the past was the same as today. If there was no decay in the past, generally, for example, and this was a special purpose group of reactors, we have no way of knowing how God actually did it. Did He use some type of reaction more resembling cold fusion, that leaves a similar isotopic signiture there? We wouldn't know, as man has only a limited knowledge of atom splitting. For all we know, it was a power source for onr of the rivers of Eden, set up by God (even if it was 'hot' like present reactions) to give them hot water!
.....Either way, the isolated reacion that happened here is measured only in the minds of men of present science by the present physical universe workings.
....... As for 1987a, I don't see any surprise there. What is it, the decay that went on there is as expected? This can be explained easily other ways. Again, demonstrating decay there does in no way demonstrate old ages. ......Another way to look at it would be that the event there was carried well on it's way to earth in the split process. Only natural in a universe that underwent a fabric change by seperating the spiritual from physical. Again, looking at the present universe light and it's limitations cannot be demonstrated to apply to the past!
....Appealing to a same old same old physical only past to imagine contradictory evidence to the real past is not a demonstration!
 
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Tomk80

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This last statement is a bit strange, don't you think? Physics is almost entirely build on non-observable hypotheses. We cannot 'observe' electrons, atoms, gluons and what more, we cannot 'observe' relativity or the reactions in chemistry. We can test the hypotheses against the evidence, though, and that's what matters.
[/quote]
 
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vossler

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I'm talking specifically about what happened in the past and how we interpret/hypothesize the evidence into the theories we hold today.
 
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Valkhorn

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I'm talking specifically about what happened in the past and how we interpret/hypothesize the evidence into the theories we hold today.

With regards to physics, if the laws were even slightly different then the universe would not have existed as it is today - even a slight change in gravity over the course of 10 years would send us into the sun or into outer space.

Of course creationists like to think the speed of light changed or that gravity changed (i.e. dad) but the truth is even one minute change over the course of 1000 years would yeild enough of a change over several that would be quite noticeable - and yet we have zero evidence for this. Period.
 
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Tomk80

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vossler said:
I'm talking specifically about what happened in the past and how we interpret/hypothesize the evidence into the theories we hold today.
There goes history, a large part of physics (all observations from the past), anthropology, forensic science etc etc.
 
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caravelair

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vossler said:
I'm talking specifically about what happened in the past and how we interpret/hypothesize the evidence into the theories we hold today.

that's not how it works. we don't take the evidence and use it to come up with a theory and that's the end of it, as you seem to think. we make an observation of some evidence, and come up with a hypothesis that might explain the evidence, THEN we TEST the hypothesis against further evidence. this is the important part. a scientific theory must make predictions about what evidence we will find in nature, then we look for evidence that might falsify these predictions. it is by testing that we can objectively determine which theory best explains the evidence. it's not a matter of interpretation or personal opinion, as you seem to suggest.
 
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dad

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You are dead wrong. The seperation of the spiritual left the physical temporary universe AS IS. If we were to change THAT, we would run into your problems, it was not THAT that was changed, it was the merged universe we are the change. Dig?
 
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Electric Skeptic

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dad said:
You are dead wrong. The seperation of the spiritual left the physical temporary universe AS IS. If we were to change THAT, we would run into your problems, it was not THAT that was changed, it was the merged universe we are the change. Dig?
Your nonsense about the spiritual past is pure fantasy for which you can offer not a snigle shred of evidence, as has been pointed out to you countless times before.
 
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dad

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Electric Skeptic said:
Your nonsense about the spiritual past is pure fantasy for which you can offer not a snigle shred of evidence, as has been pointed out to you countless times before.
No more fantasy than a spiritual added future. That is the way it is. Nothing you have to say can change that, or evidence a tiny thing to support your same same same past claims of shame.
 
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Electric Skeptic

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dad said:
No more fantasy than a spiritual added future.
Exactly as fantastic as a spiritual added future. You can't provide any evidence for that, either.

dad said:
Nothing you have to say can change that, or evidence a tiny thing to support your same same same past claims of shame.
False. You've been given evidence, repeatedly. You just put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes, and yell 'isnotisnotisnot'.
 
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vossler

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How do you accurately test something that happened in the distant past if you weren't there? No matter how you do it, you're basing it on assumptions, not facts.
 
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