FACT vs OPINION

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Proven me wrong.

... not at all. Whether or not you are aware of every little detail of the ingredients of said sandwich does not negate its essential sandwichness. Or that it was lunch.

I had leftover chili, btw.

[thinwater]

Or put another way...

You are entitled to your opinion, and I must respect your right to have it and to express it.

I am under no obligation to respect that opinion or to give it any weight whatsoever, when it is offered without good support. I do not have to accept that "it is possible" until some level of probability is documented.

Saying it loudly and more often is not support. Popularity of an opinion is not support, unless those people have said support or are experts in the field of inquiry (not just popular or smart people--experts in the field).


I should expect my opinions also to be subject to this standard.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Yihang

Prove me wrong.

I respect your opinion and fact that you ate chicken.
<cough>

[freshalaska]

I heard a scientist speaking on the radio and he said 50 percent of what scientists now believe to be true will latter be disproved. So tell me what is true.

[Marathon1150]

Originally Posted by freshalaska

I heard a scientist speaking on the radio and he said 50 percent of what scientists now believe to be true will latter be disproved. So tell me what is true.

One scientist saying what he said, is, IMHO, opinion.

[GordMay]

A philosophy professor walks in to give his class their final.
Placing his chair on his desk, the professor instructs the class, "Using every applicable thing you've learned in this course, prove to me that this chair DOES NOT EXIST."
So, pencils are writing, and erasers are erasing, students are preparing to embark on novels, proving that this chair doesn't exist.
All except for one student.
He spends thirty seconds writing his answer, then turns his final in, to the astonishment of his peers.
Time goes by, and the day comes when all the students get their final grades...and to the amazement of the class, the student who wrote for thirty seconds gets the highest grade in the class.
His answer to the question: "What chair?"

[freshalaska]

Yes this is kind of my point, to some degree everything could be called opinion. Not too much is really written in stone if anything. Even science can and often is wrong.

[JPA Cate]

This thread has been moved from the Off Topic Forum, because even there, the content is supposed to have something to do with cruising & sailing. Here, in the Covid 19 Forum, the rules require "kindness" as well as politeness.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by GordMay

...His answer to the question: "What chair?"

Recall the sculptor when asked how he cut an elephant from stone responded by saying "easy, just take all the bits away that are not an elephant."

So in an environment of practically countless bits, you've only got so much time to piece enough bits together to understand the world (and not everyone is as interested in looking at "boring bits" nor able to recall them later). But all the bits are always there, just that you may not agree that the bits are important. You can lead a horse to water using a bit, but you can't make him drink. After you drag his head into water...you know he knows that the water is there by how he reacts...it's just that he doesn't find the water important.

"The moon is full tonight -- as it has been many a night in the past, and we trust it will be many a night to come...Which may or may not interest you." --- George Herriman

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by freshalaska

Yes this is kind of my point, to some degree everything could be called opinion. Not too much is really written in stone if anything. Even science can and often is wrong.

Science goes through paradigm shifts. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn is a great read.

For example, we know that Einstein's Theory of Gravity solved some of the anomalies found in Newton's Theory of Gravity. However, when it came to landing men on the moon NASA used Newton rather than Einstein. They did did they need the precision found in Einstein's theory.

Celestial navigation is based on terrestrial and celestial spheres, which is the Ptolemaic model of the universe. And the 'modern" celestial navigation methods were developed AFTER Copernicus and Galileo.

Satellite navigation does require the precision of modern physics.

Celestial and satellite navigation are both based on establishing circles of position. Your fix is intersecting COPs.

I would not call a paradigm an "opinion". The paradigms can pass the rigours of the scientific method (they are predictive at certain levels) , an opinion cannot do so.

[Thumbs Up]

Originally Posted by Singularity

...................
Bears mentioning that Eastern cultures are doing pretty well with Covid and are otherwise eating the West's lunch economically (where it's curious who in the West is facilitating the sale of said lunch).

This is kind of a shocker to me to find out that bears talk about this stuff. It is very deep. I only ever heard them talking about preventing forest fires.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by freshalaska

I heard a scientist speaking on the radio and he said 50 percent of what scientists now believe to be true will latter be disproved. So tell me what is true.

Well, I've heard that 35.7% of statistics are made-up.

Science doesn't tell you what's true, it tells you what seems to be, and how scientists arrived at that. But do consider that they've been at it (whatever their particular 'it' is) for a while, so there's a reasonable chance that they have a better idea about 'it' than just about anyone else. This process has worked pretty well.

btw the scientific process is just that - a process, a system, for trying to figure things out. It's the best approach we have for minimizing the effects of human error, bias, or influence. About the only way to improve on a scientific conclusion is to do more science.

Yes this is kind of my point, to some degree everything could be called opinion. Not too much is really written in stone if anything. Even science can and often is wrong.

... no, I think that they're right (ie they provide information and ideas that agree with our experience to date) far more often than not. It's far more likely that a non-scientist will draw a wrong conclusion from not understanding (or deliberately ignoring or distorting) a scientific finding.

[Thumbs Up]

Originally Posted by GordMay

That Americans, for instance, have certain (Constitutional & other) rights, is true, in a metaphysical and legal sense, even though, we have no external verifiable (empirical) evidence to support that belief.

For example, the claim that all men are created equal, is falsifiable by self-evidence.
We could make endless empirical observations, without finding even two people, who are precisely equal in size, beauty, strength, intelligence, or wisdom.

Nonetheless, the axiom of equality must be accepted as self-evident, in order to have just government. Accordingly, we assume it to be true without external evidence.

I know that you didn't start this thread to talk about the US declaration of independence. The famous sentence is:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
We know that they actually meant ri men. Not women. Not slaves. Not poor people.

I guess what you bringing up is the subject about whether or not truth could become self evident. Another word for self evident is obvious. So it was obvious to them that they were endowed by god with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I think that it is still obvious today (to rich men) that they are endowed with these things.

Can truth be self evident? Of course some truths can. Eating prevents people from starving. Drinking water prevents dehydration. Closing the eyes prevents seeing. Touching a red hot coal is going to make your finger hurt. Stuff like that. But no matter how many people that you convince to have the same opinion, it won't make it into an incontrovertible fact. Newton's laws are pretty self evident to most people. I agree with them. But you can't lump most of todays science in the same category. There is a lot of bias involved.

The term scientific fact can be very misleading.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Thumbs Up

Newton's laws are pretty self evident to most people. I agree with them.

While Newton's laws might be self-evident to you, they were not self-evident to Einstein. Newton's laws are not applicable in all circumstances.

Einstein’s theory explained a famous observation that Newtonian gravity could not: a subtlety in the orbit of the planet Mercury. And his equations implied further slight deviations from Newtonian calculations. Over the last century, general relativity’s predictions have been repeatedly verified by modern precision measurements. To physicists today, general relativity and gravity are essentially synonyms.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...eption-gravity

[Thumbs Up]

Originally Posted by jackdale

While Newton's laws might be self-evident to you, they were not self-evident to Einstein. Newton's laws are not applicable in all circumstances.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...eption-gravity

Understood. I did say most people. On a basic level everyday though, I think that most people stand behind Newton's laws of motion. (Don't know about gravity) In a physical world, they are very self evident. They are not the same as a lot of this peer reviewed corporate sponsored science that people are claiming is the Holy Grail these days. I think that I made my point.