Science Doesn't Work

[bhsmte]

Disagree. Your experiment might tell you your methodology was flawed, and that doesn't tell you anything about the data per se.

If the experiment tells you your methodology was flawed, there is still usefulness that comes from the experiment.

 

[Received]

On your last point, to an outsider, it would appear unreasonable to quit women altogether. To the person who dated the insane women and likely experienced significant emotional trauma, it may seem quite reasonable to give up women, at least for a while. Different experiences, can lead to different motivations.

I see what you're saying, but that's a stretch, IMO, of the term "reasonable". That's how I partly motivate clients to overcome traumatic events: is it reasonable that you avoid all men because of an instance of rape? "No," they say, "but it sure is painful." So it's a question of emotionality, not reason. Yes, emotions have a type of reason, but only in a very small, cutoff context. Clients "use" the broader reasoning of reasoning in general to overcome the more tunnel visioned reasoning of the emotions. But I agree completely: listen to the rationality of your emotions.

 

[Received]

If the experiment tells you your methodology was flawed, there is still usefulness that comes from the experiment.

Okay, fair point (hear that, Dogma?), but I still disagree. I distinguish data from methology; if the latter is to blame, you can't know anything about the former, and in my view only data is the sphere of useful/not useful.

 

[Received]

Galileo drops a rock from the Tower of Piza and it gets intercepted by a bird. What does that tell you about his data?

 

[bhsmte]

I see what you're saying, but that's a stretch, IMO, of the term "reasonable". That's how I partly motivate clients to overcome traumatic events: is it reasonable that you avoid all men because of an instance of rape? "No," they say, "but it sure is painful." So it's a question of emotionality, not reason. Yes, emotions have a type of reason, but only in a very small, cutoff context. Clients "use" the broader reasoning of reasoning in general to overcome the more tunnel visioned reasoning of the emotions. But I agree completely: listen to the rationality of your emotions.

Well, it is reality, we are all emotionally driven to think certain ways, some just rely on emotional highs and lows more than others.

Is it reasonable that a person who has a fear of heights can't bring themselves to cross a bridge in a car? No, it is not reasonable, but the emotion, overrides reason.

 

[Received]

But I do partly modify post 13: getting statistically insignificant results isn't useless, provided you have enough participants and therefore you're not committing a methodology error. If you have a methodology error, then statistical insignificance is useless with regard to data; the experimenter might have something to learn because of this experiment, but in terms of its usefulness to science the data aren't helpful by not being significant.

 

[Received]

Well, it is reality, we are all emotionally driven to think certain ways, some just rely on emotional highs and lows more than others.

Is it reasonable that a person who has a fear of heights can't bring themselves to cross a bridge in a car? No, it is not reasonable, but the emotion, overrides reason.

Right, but that doesn't make it reasonable, and if it did make it reasonable you'd have nobody with a fear of heights ever overcome this fear. "Reasonable" is what motivates people to change; the very idea of motivation is based on practically reasoning through the pros and cons to any behavior, for example.

 

[Paradoxum]

Yeah, blame it on the CONDUCTOR, I see.

It's true, man.

What it pretty much says, although obviously not in a strictly scientific sense.

But I don't know what it means for theology. If your theology says that people should be healed, but they aren't... at least not in a provable way?

That's a whole 'nother philosophical discussion, but I think you bring up the singular motivation for why people try a bedraggled version of fundamentalist whatever and conclude with a bad taste in their mouths that God just can't exist, because if he did then I wouldn't have to go through all this futile theology and he would just take the reins for me by showing me The Way.

Is the belief in a personal God who could reveal himself really that fundamentalist? I'd think even some moderates and liberal theists would still believe in a personal God.

First of all, the theology isn't futile just because it didn't work; it teaches you something, if wrong, about what God isn't, and should help you value better concepts of God, not just swipe off the chessboard entirely because you got your queen taken.

Theology to some extent doesn't matter to me because I don't believe in the subject it talks about. I can't see a chessboard to play.

It's not as if when I had doubts about my faith I clung on to conservative Christianity. My theology slowly became more liberal (though not as liberal as some). It's just in the end, the basic idea of there being a God didn't seem to have any justifying reason to believe.

 

[KCfromNC]

You guys speak like science is in some magical epistemological category all on its own, and only its criteria work in determining knowledge.

Not sure why this was in reply to me, since I never said anything of the sort. Did you mean to reply to someone else?

 

[KCfromNC]

But I do partly modify post 13: getting statistically insignificant results isn't useless, provided you have enough participants and therefore you're not committing a methodology error. If you have a methodology error, then statistical insignificance is useless with regard to data; the experimenter might have something to learn because of this experiment, but in terms of its usefulness to science the data aren't helpful by not being significant.

Maybe that methodological error points out problems in other studies which outside researchers can learn from.

Still not sure how any of this relates scientific research to debating over how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

 

[Received]

Maybe that methodological error points out problems in other studies which outside researchers can learn from.

Still not sure how any of this relates scientific research to debating over how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

Debating over the number of angels over a head of a pin is more a pointer to how useless we can philosophize over things than a matter of religion or science. And you can totally substitute "QM" for angels here and get the same secular point.

 

[Received]

But I don't know what it means for theology. If your theology says that people should be healed, but they aren't... at least not in a provable way?

Then their theology is wrong, or at least not fully exlained. Time to update and move on.

Is the belief in a personal God who could reveal himself really that fundamentalist? I'd think even some moderates and liberal theists would still believe in a personal God.

Yeah, I agree, but this is more about the philosophical question of why God doesn't intervene in the ways you think he should in particular circumstances.

Theology to some extent doesn't matter to me because I don't believe in the subject it talks about. I can't see a chessboard to play.

It's not as if when I had doubts about my faith I clung on to conservative Christianity. My theology slowly became more liberal (though not as liberal as some). It's just in the end, the basic idea of there being a God didn't seem to have any justifying reason to believe.

Well, you do have a theology, just one that involves no gods.

 

[variant]

...because I tried an experiment and didn't get results.

God doesn't work...because I tried a specific theology and didn't get results.

Right?

No, we would have to examine your methodology. Please present your work.

FYI, guys, I'm a research coordinator, so forgive me if I'm using informal speech to get home an idea that wouldn't be literally formally accepted. "I didn't get any results," means, "I didn't get the results I wanted," or "I didn't get statistical significance," therefore the results are useless.

Negative results are not useless, they mean your hypothesis is unsupported by the experiment.

It means you either need to collect more data, rethink the hypothesis, or question your experimental design.

"My hypothesis may be incorrect because it is unsupported by my experiments." is entirely correct, while "science" doesn't seem to be unworkable by your argument at all here.

Science is for gaining knowledge not a full proof plan for proving yourself to be correct.

Contrast that with religious ideas and you will get the picture of why your analogy fails.

When religious ideas fail people often find a reason to excuse them rather than rethink them.

By what mechanism does theology actually fail? Consider that question for a bit.

 

[Paradoxum]

Then their theology is wrong, or at least not fully exlained. Time to update and move on.

Yeah, I agree, but this is more about the philosophical question of why God doesn't intervene in the ways you think he should in particular circumstances.

Why do you think he doesn't?

Well, you do have a theology, just one that involves no gods.

That would be a philosophy then, not a theology.

 

[Received]

No, we would have to examine your methodology. Please present your work.

Are you being literal here?

Negative results are not useless, they mean your hypothesis is unsupported by the experiment.

It means you either need to collect more data, rethink the hypothesis, or question your experimental design.

"My hypothesis may be incorrect because it is unsupported by my experiments." is entirely correct, while "science" doesn't seem to be unworkable by your argument at all here.

Disagree. There's data and there's the methodology of the experimenter. The latter tells you nothing about the data, or more particularly what the data represent (i.e., quantified objectivity),

Science is for gaining knowledge not a full proof plan for proving yourself to be correct.

Contrast that with religious ideas and you will get the picture of why your analogy fails.

When religious ideas fail people often find a reason to excuse them rather than rethink them.

By what mechanism does theology actually fail? Consider that question for a bit.

I have, which is why I made a thread on it. And so far I'm seeing no intrinsic difference between philosophical approaches as to why religion is able to fail in this way and science. Plenty of scientists use raw data to hold to a theory which this data doesn't fit; it's all over the place in academia. But we're not going to boot them out of the universe like you would a religious person who stubbornly does the same, right? And likewise, if a religious person is biased, how does that say anything about the limitations of religion like how a biased scientific person would say something about science?

And the point of the OP is getting missed a bit. The point is that if you try something once and then quit claiming that the thing you tried represented what you thought it did (science, religion), the error is on you. Try again, don't hastily generalize.

 

[variant]

Are you being literal here?

Yes, "science" isn't really an abstract, it would be a process and the objective data involved that we all could examine to see what the issues are.

We could then compare that to, say, my religious experiences and see if your comparison holds.

It gets much less murky that way, we're talking about real things and not a bunch of floating abstractions.

Disagree. There's data and there's the methodology of the experimenter. The latter tells you nothing about the data, or more particularly what the data represent (i.e., quantified objectivity),

That doesn't address what I said there.

If your experiment failed and, as you put it fail means it did not meet the standard of statistical significance, this means you need to:

A. Collect more data if the data you have is promising enough to warrant it (ie failed slightly).

B. Re-evaluate your methodology. You need to know whether something was wrong with your experimental design that may have skewed nullified, or introduced noise into the system.

Or C. Re-evaluate your hypothesis.

None of this means "science" has failed to work, it is actually exactly how it is supposed to work.

I have, which is why I made a thread on it. And so far I'm seeing no intrinsic difference between philosophical approaches as to why religion is able to fail in this way and science. Plenty of scientists use raw data to hold to a theory which this data doesn't fit; it's all over the place in academia. But we're not going to boot them out of the universe like you would a religious person who stubbornly does the same, right? And likewise, if a religious person is biased, how does that say anything about the limitations of religion like how a biased scientific person would say something about science?

We know that when science is done properly it yields very consistent results. We do not know this about religion at all because there is no consistent way to understand when we have failed.

And the point of the OP is getting missed a bit. The point is that if you try something once and then quit claiming that the thing you tried represented what you thought it did (science, religion), the error is on you. Try again, don't hastily generalize.

And my point to you is that it's faulty to equate processes where one has clear criterion for failure and the other has ????

It would be your usual equivocation. Not "working" in these two contexts is oceans apart.

 

[Received]

We know that when science is done properly it yields very consistent results. We do not know this about religion at all because there is no consistent way to understand when we have failed.

This is the heart of it.

You're saying that science has no way of failing? How do you know you fail when you're doing an experiment? When you don't get the hypothesis you want. Does that mean your hypothesis is unreachable? No. You could always increase your sample size to reach statistical significance. You could always alter a part of your methodology. In each and every case it's always possible that one of these changes could result in statistical significance. That makes this the very problem of not knowing when you've "failed". Science by definition doesn't allow for knowing when you've failed; it just offers probabilities based on everaccumulating failed hypotheses. Likewise with religion. You drop religion because your specific theology has failed after trying once, that's your error. You drop it after multiple attempts, giving a fair shot at all the religious perspectives and theologies you think are humanitarian or reasonable, then the error is on religion. I know a million people who fit the former, and probably nobody who fits the latter.

And again, you're not getting the point of the OP. Per your response that it's "faulty" to equate processes here, this is only the case if we understand science literally rather than as part of a bigger point. The bigger point is: if you try something once and then quit claiming that the thing you tried represented what you thought it did (science, religion), the error is on you. Try again, don't hastily generalize.

And you're making me warm and fuzzzzzzzzy by accusing me of things pointlessly. Maybe you should join Israel?

 

[Aldebaran]

I don't think it's fair to compare science to theology. Science deals with physical objects, while theology deals with God, who is a person, or personality--a living being. It would be like a person coming up and hitting me and getting a surprised reaction from me, and then a second person doing the same thing and I respond by hitting him back. Should these 2 people get together and try to form a scientific idea based on their little experiment, what should they conclude? Since I'm a person and not just an object, they would see that things don't always work out the same way when given the exact same conditions.

Why should we expect God to behave as an inanimate object if even human beings don't operate that way?

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

Debating over the number of angels over a head of a pin is more a pointer to how useless we can philosophize over things than a matter of religion or science. And you can totally substitute "QM" for angels here and get the same secular point.

How many angels can fit on a pin head? I thought everyone knew this......all of them!

 

[variant]

This is the heart of it.

You're saying that science has no way of failing? How do you know you fail when you're doing an experiment? When you don't get the hypothesis you want. Does that mean your hypothesis is unreachable? No. You could always increase your sample size to reach statistical significance. You could always alter a part of your methodology. In each and every case it's always possible that one of these changes could result in statistical significance. That makes this the very problem of not knowing when you've "failed".

Incorrect, you certainly know when the hypothesis is unsupported and that is why the two processes are different. You can't tell that an experiment failing to uphold your hypothesis means your hypothesis is wrong but it certainly leads in that direction. Consistently having that result will tend to stifle even the most optimistic ideological researchers, and it certainly won't advance their careers by putting forward ideas they can't evidence within statistical significance.

We can't even get there with God. We can't even define parameters to test or what our expectations are. We can't tell a positive result from a negative one.

There simply is no testing with religion. The only test is what you are willing to believe. No process, no objectivity, no falsifiable hypothesis that may or may not be upheld through testing.

Simply put, nothing reins in the believer in religion like the believer in a false hypothesis. The believer in false hypotheses gets multiple failed objective experiments. A believer of religions simply can't be reined in, there is nothing to bound them.

Science by definition doesn't allow for knowing when you've failed; it just offers probabilities based on everaccumulating failed hypotheses. Likewise with religion. You drop religion because your specific theology has failed after trying once, that's your error. You drop it after multiple attempts, giving a fair shot at all the religious perspectives and theologies you think are humanitarian or reasonable, then the error is on religion. I know a million people who fit the former, and probably nobody who fits the latter.

You just have to stop right there and explain what if any checks there are on religious ideas.

What does failing look like with religion? Not believing? How many tries should we have? and what standards should we use to evaluate them?

And again, you're not getting the point of the OP. Per your response that it's "faulty" to equate processes here, this is only the case if we understand science literally rather than as part of a bigger point. The bigger point is: if you try something once and then quit claiming that the thing you tried represented what you thought it did (science, religion), the error is on you. Try again, don't hastily generalize.

And you're making me warm and fuzzzzzzzzy by accusing me of things pointlessly. Maybe you should join Israel?

You are doing exactly what I said you are doing though, trying to equate two vastly disparate processes as if they are somehow equivalent.

If this post doesn't show that I'm not sure what would.

If religion had some sort of methodology for giving it a "fair shot" maybe we could converse on that point no?