Unpopular Opinions Society

[FortyTwo]

well, the one I posted earlier. That is in science you are always going to need instruments, including your eyes and brain.
How can you really be sure how those instruments work? To find out how those work, you have to do experiments using those very instruments. Any error in understanding how your instruments work will lead to a faulty understanding of your results....it's a sort of catch 22......not explaining myself very well, but maybe you understand what I mean.

No, I get you. But I also think that's why we invented instruments and the like in the first place - instead of trusting our minds, we can trust something that we know is constant. The marks on a ruler are not going to spontaneously change, even if it is viewed by two different people.

 

[Blobbenstein]

The marks on a ruler are not going to spontaneously change, even if it is viewed by two different people.

I think that is still just an assumption.
If marks on a ruler altered when different people looked at it, but only by a few atom's widths, would anyone notice?

 

[Blobbenstein]

I was thinking, that maybe science is like an accelerating rocket; for the external observer the rocket approaches the speed of light, edging ever closer but never getting there; whereas for a person on the rocket he sees him/her self just getting faster and faster.

So may it be with science, that we probably can't know everything, but the more we know the more there is to know, and we could just keep getting more knowledge, and understanding....and from that, more and more advanced technology.

 

[cornsail]

Anaximander > Plato

I'm partial to Zeno.

 

[FortyTwo]

I think that is still just an assumption.
If marks on a ruler altered when different people looked at it, but only by a few atom's widths, would anyone notice?

It's an assumption, but assumptions are the best we have to go on, considering our unreliable reference frame. We've demonstrated for centuries and centuries through totally different people that the Universe has natural laws and is consistent. Unless you're ready to revert to that one ridiculous school of thought that claims nothing can be proven (for example, if I drop a pencil, it's just a coincidence that it falls to the ground - I can't prove it was gravity, or that it had any less of as chance of flying into the sky), you have to accept that sometimes assumptions have to be made. Science is the process of ironing out those assumptions to the best of our ability until we can have as few of them as possible and know as much about how things actually work as possible, even if we have to make assumptions on the way to get there.

I was thinking, that maybe science is like an accelerating rocket; for the external observer the rocket approaches the speed of light, edging ever closer but never getting there; whereas for a person on the rocket he sees him/her self just getting faster and faster.

So may it be with science, that we probably can't know everything, but the more we know the more there is to know, and we could just keep getting more knowledge, and understanding....and from that, more and more advanced technology.

Diminishing Returns is exponential, yeah. I sincerely doubt we'll ever know everything, even if everything is knowable, because we will extinct ourselves before it can happen.

 

[Blobbenstein]

science is always going to be based upon assumptions, or axioms, there is no getting away from that.

I'm not sure about diminishing returns; as with my analogy, a rocket can accelerate at 1g forever, as far as the passenger is concerned, so it may be with returns, more and more returns for more and more subtle discoveries.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I suppose one of the main assumptions that is made in science is that what ever law of the universe you appear to have discovered will be there tomorrow, and also on the other side of the Universe....you simply can't know for sure that that will be the case.

 

[Snowcone]

In my opinion, the Dalai Lama is an evil, evil man.

 

[FortyTwo]

science is always going to be based upon assumptions, or axioms, there is no getting away from that.

I'm not sure about diminishing returns; as with my analogy, a rocket can accelerate at 1g forever, as far as the passenger is concerned, so it may be with returns, more and more returns for more and more subtle discoveries.

What you just said is actually exactly what the principle of diminishing returns is.

I suppose one of the main assumptions that is made in science is that what ever law of the universe you appear to have discovered will be there tomorrow, and also on the other side of the Universe....you simply can't know for sure that that will be the case.

Unless we have reason to believe otherwise, that's what we have to believe. Also the evidence points towards it - we can tell what faraway objects are composed of through the analysis of their spectra, for instance, just as we can for objects on Earth.

 

[Blues]

A lot of photos taken with instagram filters , just look like my crappy photos , I use to take with my old Kodak box camera

 

[Blobbenstein]

truth is all very fine, but the ability to deny truth is one of mankind's best tools for survival on this planet; ask someone who works 14hours a day in a sweatshop.

 

[Alice-Bee]

A lot of photos taken with instagram filters , just look like my crappy photos , I use to take with my old Kodak box camera

Unless Ive missed the sarcasim. Isnt that the point of Instagram?

 

[Freesia]

In my opinion, the Dalai Lama is an evil, evil man.

Why?

 

[das_nut]

Why?

There's some things the current Dalai Lama has done which is questionable, like receive funding from the CIA to pay for Tibetian guerilla fighters.

Pre-1959 Tibet, under the Dalai Lama predecessors, was a rather poor, backwards society ruled by the nobles and the monasteries, where there were many serfs. It really wasn't a nice place to live (not that it got better under the Chinese).

 

[ledboots]

He eats meat too.

 

[Snowcone]

There's some things the current Dalai Lama has done which is questionable, like receive funding from the CIA to pay for Tibetian guerilla fighters.

Pre-1959 Tibet, under the Dalai Lama predecessors, was a rather poor, backwards society ruled by the nobles and the monasteries, where there were many serfs. It really wasn't a nice place to live (not that it got better under the Chinese).

Not to mention that if Wikileaks is to be believed, he made his orphans into child soldiers for the Indian army.

 

[Wolfie]

I like humid weather.

 

[KLS52]

I am amazed and in awe of people who like heat/humidity. I work with someone who positively thrives on it...me, I just melt into a puddle and become useless.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I melt into a puddle and become more useless.

 

[KLS52]

I dislike three-quarter length sleeves on blouses. I think they just make you look like the arms shrunk on your shirts.

That's not to say I never wear them...it seems to be all that is out there in the stores, lately. But I don't really like them much at all.