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Consensus by humans doesn’t mean that it’s fact. By presenting the asteroid theory as fact is doing a disservice to science. It should be taught as a theory wit

Consensus by humans doesn’t mean that it’s fact. By presenting the asteroid theory as fact is doing a disservice to science. It should be taught as a theory with pretty good evidence. I personally think this is the most plausible explanation but it’s when people call it fact or near-fact it makes me bristle. It creates massive groupthink and stifles discussion on the topic which is worse, because it becomes politicized especially in this day and age.

quesera 6y ago
I understand your point, and I agree. But there's nuance here. Some theories, ranked by the strength of their supporting evidence, e.g. and IMO: 0 Baby-eating lizard aliens run the US government 1 .. 2 String theory 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 Asteroid extinction event 8 Relativity 9 Evolution Scientists and specialists should draw a critical line between theory and fact. But there are always unknowables, and if "fact" requires the elimination of uncertainty ("10" in the above), then it is a useless word. So we'd need a new word, that means "very well-supported theory, based on all available evidence, with no strong competing explanations". Open to suggestions here! But for non-specialists, at what score is it reasonable to treat a theory as "fact"? I'll vote for 7.5. :) Obligatory: Colloquially, "fact" as "true idea" -- not "quantum of isolated information which can be knowable". The latter definition is lovely, but has little application in the world of people.
- plank_time 6y ago
  Relativity is lower than evolution? I would put relativity at 9.5 because it can be verified with actual experiments today. Regardless I’ll say the same thing I tell my kid which is the same as what you said. Everything that isn’t a fact is a theory with various levels of evidence. The stronger the evidence, the more likely the theory is correct. But a theory will weak evidence could suddenly improve if a new piece of strong evidence comes to light. And a strong theory could become weak if a piece of evidence disproves the entire thing. So keep an open mind and don’t mistake theories for facts.
  - quesera 6y ago
    > I would put relativity at 9.5 Fair point. It was crowded up there, and my physics is less than current. I think we agree, really. I'm just not as strict on the semantics of the word "fact". I agree that laziness on the margins of fact is lazy, esp for specialists. I don't think we can authoritatively say that anything is an absolute truth. But there are some really useful models. The extinction event model serves a purpose for paleontologists, and it's pretty good for most of them. It serves a different purpose for non-specialists.
renewiltord 6y ago
Well, clearly you don't subscribe to the same epistemology as the critical rationalists, etc. So naturally you bristle. There are few facts, only conjectures that your sensorium fails to reject to various degrees. We then overload 'fact' to mean more things than logical truisms constructed from axioms and to extend to conjectures that we have collectively failed to reject despite strong attempts. The asteroid extinction hypothesis is fact in this (mainstream) terminology.

quesera 6y ago

I understand your point, and I agree. But there's nuance here. Some theories, ranked by the strength of their supporting evidence, e.g. and IMO: 0 Baby-eating lizard aliens run the US government 1 .. 2 String theory 3 .. 4 .. 5 .. 6 .. 7 Asteroid extinction event 8 Relativity 9 Evolution Scientists and specialists should draw a critical line between theory and fact. But there are always unknowables, and if "fact" requires the elimination of uncertainty ("10" in the above), then it is a useless word. So we'd need a new word, that means "very well-supported theory, based on all available evidence, with no strong competing explanations". Open to suggestions here! But for non-specialists, at what score is it reasonable to treat a theory as "fact"? I'll vote for 7.5. :) Obligatory: Colloquially, "fact" as "true idea" -- not "quantum of isolated information which can be knowable". The latter definition is lovely, but has little application in the world of people.

plank_time 6y ago
Relativity is lower than evolution? I would put relativity at 9.5 because it can be verified with actual experiments today. Regardless I’ll say the same thing I tell my kid which is the same as what you said. Everything that isn’t a fact is a theory with various levels of evidence. The stronger the evidence, the more likely the theory is correct. But a theory will weak evidence could suddenly improve if a new piece of strong evidence comes to light. And a strong theory could become weak if a piece of evidence disproves the entire thing. So keep an open mind and don’t mistake theories for facts.
- quesera 6y ago
  > I would put relativity at 9.5 Fair point. It was crowded up there, and my physics is less than current. I think we agree, really. I'm just not as strict on the semantics of the word "fact". I agree that laziness on the margins of fact is lazy, esp for specialists. I don't think we can authoritatively say that anything is an absolute truth. But there are some really useful models. The extinction event model serves a purpose for paleontologists, and it's pretty good for most of them. It serves a different purpose for non-specialists.

renewiltord 6y ago

Well, clearly you don't subscribe to the same epistemology as the critical rationalists, etc. So naturally you bristle. There are few facts, only conjectures that your sensorium fails to reject to various degrees. We then overload 'fact' to mean more things than logical truisms constructed from axioms and to extend to conjectures that we have collectively failed to reject despite strong attempts. The asteroid extinction hypothesis is fact in this (mainstream) terminology.