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Disturbing Scientific Discoveries
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoIt's the comments I find the most disturbing about that article.
- zackattack 16y agoplease elaborate?
- kdeberk 16y agoSome of the first few comments are from evolution-denialists and climate-gaters. However, I have to agree with the point that the article places the church in a bad daylight for the first item. Galileo wasn't refused because what he said was against scripture (was it even?). The main argument from the church was that his theory was methodologically flawed. First there was no good reason to assume that telescopes provided a good image of distant bodies, so observations made using them had no credibility and could thus not be counted as 'evidence' as the article states. Secondly, if the earth moved and we with it, why did an object that was dropped from a tower, land at the bottom of that tower and not a good distant away from it? Assuming that the earth and the tower moved with it, but not the object since it was touching the earth nor the tower. Galileo had a lot of explaining to do: the observations he made simply could not be placed in the prevalent scientific model. The easy way out is was to refute the evidence because it did not fit, the long way out was to rebuild the model.
- pohl 16y agoThe main argument from the church was that his theory was methodologically flawed. True, but this is from an organization who accepts appealing to the revealed devine word as a methodology.
- jacquesm 16y agoDogma and religion go hand-in-hand, it's disturbing that this is still the case today. For instance, the roman catholic churches stand on on condoms is absolutely irresponsible and causes a lot of trouble for a lot of people every year. The only thing they'd have to do is to be able to admit they were wrong all along, wipe some of that dogmatic slate clean, but that's too high a price to pay for them, because it will lead people to wonder about what else they might be wrong about.
- tptacek 16y agoI'm pretty sure that's not why the Catholic church isn't going to promote condoms, Jacques. In the meantime: don't go to the Pope for medical advice. He's not a doctor.
- jacquesm 16y agoIt's not that he's not promoting them, he's actively condemning their use, besides that, there are large numbers of people that will follow his advice against the advice of their doctor. The pope should not be handing out medical advice precisely because he is not a doctor, but that does not seem to stop him. Real damage is done by this dogmatic stance.
- tptacek 16y agoIt was dumb of me to take the bait, and now I regret doing so. Sorry.
- jacquesm 16y ago> it was dumb of me to take the bait, and now I regret doing so. Sorry. An insult in an apology :) Joke for you: Judge: John, what did you say? John: I said he was an asshole. Judge: Apologize for that! John: Ok. "George, I'm sorry you're an asshole". It wasn't meant as bait, sorry you interpreted it as such. It's just that the way the church has dealt with scientific stuff (and medicine is science too) is really painful and problematic to me. Lives are at stake here, millions of them, especially in Africa and one word from one guy could change this, and he chooses not to speak it.
- dazzawazza 16y agothanks for the tip. reading those comments has further undermined my belief that there is intelligent life in this corner of the universe!
- rbanffy 16y agoThere is. It's just more rare than previously thought.
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- shrikant 16y agoFrom one of those comments: I'm still a teenager, so I've got plenty of time. Who am I to say it's wrong or right? For the most part I believe everything here, but that's because of what I see with the media and everything. This is good. :) No you whipper-snapper, it's not good. Sweeping generalisation: I weep for the teenager of today.
- jacquesm 16y agoGive it 20 years, they'll come around to your point of view eventually. At least they're interested, that's a beginning. Apathy is a much bigger problem than being still an uncritical consumer. I remember the first time I had first hand knowledge of an event that was covered by the media, and how much my personal, eye-witness experience deviated from what I read in the newspaper and saw on TV the next day. It was a moment of absolute amazement, and then I suddenly realized I'd probably been duped to a greater or lesser extent for years about any number of things.
- billswift 16y agoMaybe, but from my observations being apathetic and being uncritical are closely related.
- zokier 16y ago"c², or the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) times itself, which equals 34,700,983,524." Does that number actually tell anyone anything?
- brazzy 16y agoIt tells people that (because it's such a huge number) "a little" mass contains "a lot" of energy. The actual number and unit isn't really important to get that point across.
- lutorm 16y agoAny number can be huge if you put it in suitable units. Without units, the number is meaningless.
- brazzy 16y agoAgain: the number is big by most people's standard, and that gets the point across. It doesn't need to be any more meaningful, and it most definitely does not matter that one could convey a false impression by choosing an even larger unit.
- zokier 16y agoThe point was that as mph is quite arbitrary unit it is practically impossible to see the amount of energy. If the speed of light was given in m/s then the amount of energy would have been easy to see. ie E = mc². c = 300 × 10^6 m/s, c² = 9 × 10^16 (m/s)², so with that equation 1kg of mass actually contains approximately 9 × 10^16 joules of energy which is a lot. What would the equivalent thought process be in imperial units? Lets say you have 1 lb of mass and want to figure out the amount of energy contained in it with the equation E = mc² and c² being 3.47 × 10^10 miles per second, just to know the scale of things (which was kinda the point in the article imho). How would you do that? edit: Another point of view: velocity and kinetic energy. E = 0.5mv², that should be familiar to anyone familiar to physics. So with a velocity of 5.5 × 10^9 inches per year you don't need a lot of mass to have a lot of energy, because the multiplier is so huge, right?
- daniel-cussen 16y agoI remember Keats and the whole truth is beauty, beauty truth thing. I feel like it's actually, truth is ugly, always. I mean, have you ever found out the truth and not been disappointed?
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- samdk 16y agoAll of the time. The universe is pretty incredible. The stories we make up about it don't come close. Douglas Adams said it better than I can: "I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."
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- clay 16y agoHave you ever proved a mathematical theorem on your own?
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- daniel-cussen 16y agoYes; that's actually a pretty good counterpoint. But what about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem? That is a mindbreaker.
- pradocchia 16y agowhat about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem? That is a mindbreaker Why? If I had to guess, I would say you are uncomfortable with intrinsic uncertainty. Or is it something else?
- j_baker 16y agoA bit of a correction: dark matter isn't "exotic". It's the most common form of matter there is.
- axiom 16y agoPersonally I find Godel incompleteness to be a far more disturbing discovery than any of the things listed in the article. Something about a fundamental limitation on deductive systems just scares the hell out of me.
- Avshalom 16y agoThe idea that there is a fundamental limit to how far you can get when starting from something declared true by fiat has always struck me as kind of obvious. Though that's probably at least partly because I grew up well after the invention of science and the work of people like Godel.
- dmoney 16y agoGodel's theorem implies that in a consistent system there are unprovable truths. I've always wondered if those truths could be things no one would care about anyway. Are statements like "this statement is unprovable" useful for anything other than proving the Incompleteness theorem?
- dgordon 16y agoThe halting problem seems kind of important. Also, at least two of Hilbert's problems -- the continuum hypothesis and solving general Diophantine equations -- turned out to be undecidable (the latter because it reduces to the halting problem.) Edit: Er, actually, the Diophantine equation question would be uncomputable (like the halting problem), not undecidable. The ideas are closely related, though.
- dmoney 16y agoI meant statements which state that the statement itself is unprovable. Or are you saying that the halting problem exists because of incompleteness?
- terrble 16y agoThis article is going to sound really silly when archaeologists dust off the bits in 500 years.
- waratuman 16y agoSome of these aren't even scientific discoveries: - We’ve already changed the climate for the rest of this century - There have been mass extinctions in the past, and we’re probably in one now. Seriously?
- brazzy 16y agoYes, seriously. Realize that most of the doubt about climate change is engineered by astroturfing campaigns and financed by oil companies. Among the actual scientists, the overwhelming consensus is that climate change is happening on a scale that is threatening, and to a significant extent caused by humans.
- waratuman 16y agoThat is great! But the point is that this a prediction into the future and is not a fact. A fact is something that you can prove, and you can not prove the future. If you can, come talk to me we can start a business :)
- psyklic 16y agoIt isn't that WE are becoming extinct. The mass extinction is of other species due to us.
- angstrom 16y agoWe are the extinction-level event, but many people don't grasp that. Society is what's at stake. Humans can migrate and adapt as they have in the past.
- arethuza 16y agoIf anyone finds that list disturbing then they really need to get out more. Personally, I find what people capable of in our darker moments disturbing, but science is essentially the antidote for that. Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" being strongly recommended: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
- malkia 16y agoAt least bacon is good :)