I'm glad it is fascinating. You should think on this, and realise how much trust and faith you are putting into the stories you are told, and how much or how little it coheres with what is the gold standard - your personal experience.
Yes - at school, I think you were convinced I think by water condensating and by the loud pop (as was I). This is almost the definition of a magic trick! You are told it explains something, but of course at that age, you wouldn't have looked at the experiment with a critical or knowledgeable eye. The evidence that we were shown as kids should not be considered rigorous or acceptable in science - mixing invisible gases in an open container that allows air in, is not rigorous. Personally I have not seen any examples of this experiment that are undertaken in what I deem to be an acceptable scientific manner.
I too believe that computers work. :) I don't dispute that we are able to use things to create some excellent technology. What I dispute that we know what we're doing.
What I'm saying is that we do not get to see or understand the first principles. We do not see them in almost any of the science we are presented when we are taught at school. What we are given are claims and explanations that are not supported by the evidence. We are put in a position where we are forced to trust. It seems we require an explanation, so much so that we will latch on to any story rather than sit uncomfortably with one or 2 open-ended hypotheses.
The heart of the issue, we are not given evidence to know, we are given a claim to believe. I can know I am resting on a table. I can know that if I drop my pen it will fall on the table. There is no debate to be had. There is a clear path to experience, or empiricism. Empiricism is purported to be the basis of science, but some very basic ideas are not actually possible to experience it seems.
In the original article here, evolution is the implied explanation. But, we have no means to test or confirm the truth or not. We cannot see evolution occurring. (Feel free to point me to an article or something that you think shows this.) Yet we are all taught it as if it was true! If it is as I say, what we are presented with is an unfalsifiable theory which is without evidence. This is to say it is based on trust and faith. This is religious thinking, and is no different to a religion.
Finally, are you aware of the replication crisis in science?
"According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments."
There should be 100% replicability, not 30%. Science shouldn't be about playing the odds in a casino.
And as to the science we do, funding is probably the most serious issue. All science funding comes from the government, the military and corporations. These 3 entities form our governance structure. This is to say they have vested interests in ensuring that only certain areas are looked into, the point being is that science is not an independent field of enquiry - it is about what is expedient to the governance structure.
> The evidence that we were shown as kids should not be considered rigorous or acceptable in science - mixing invisible gases in an open container that allows air in, is not rigorous.
Well, have you seen other gas-gas reactions produce water vapor? Because most of the ones I've seen, especially exothermic ones, don't produce any vapor at all. So when a hydrogen-oxygen reaction produces vapor, why else would it be if not because they reacted and produced a gas that quickly condensed on the glass? (true, I never personally tasted that condensed liquid to confirm it is water and not some other liquid).
> I too believe that computers work. :) I don't dispute that we are able to use things to create some excellent technology. What I dispute that we know what we're doing.
Well, how could we reliably make them work if we don't know what we're doing? This is why I don't need to take so many things on faith: I see people reliably make them work. If I saw a faith healer or church reliably cure people, by the millions every day, I wouldn't even need faith: it would be obvious that they know something real.
> We cannot see evolution occurring. (Feel free to point me to an article or something that you think shows this.)
First of all, as I explained earlier, I don't need to literally see it happen to understand how it must have. The present derives from the past, and if you simply extend how we see genetics working today into the past (or future), evolution is in fact the only possible result (assuming no magical forces are acting). Your way of thinking is a dead end for any process that lies outside the limited human senses: if something is smaller than what we can see, or further away than we can see, or takes longer than a single human lifetime, it would be completely out of the reach of science. I do not accept this view of the world, and I don't see any reason why theories couldn't be extrapolated beyond what is immediately visible.
If I understand what my eyes see, and I understand how a lense works, and I understand how an electron microscope works, then I can trust that the image the electron microscope is drawing of a microbe is true, even though if I take away the microscope I can only see a mess. The same works if you apply this reasoning backwards in time, even over millions of years.
By the way, there have apparently been quite a few experiments of artificially producing new species from a single colony - there's a list here:
The crisis of reproducibility is a tangent, and it only affects a limited set of fields, it is not a crisis in all of science. It is also caused by all sorts of economic incentives (we live under capitalism, unfortunately) pushing scientists to avoid revealing too much data - it is not necessarily a crisis of bad science (though there are fields that should barely be regarded as scientific at all - nutrition "science" being a prime example).
By the way, to explain better what I mean by extrapolation: let's say you accepted one of those experiments, maybe you perform it yourself and find indeed that the two populations of flies have become separate species. I'm not saying that you should beleiev it now, just accept for a moment that that happened. Now, let's say it took 50 generations for this to happen, for a minor difference.
If you then tried to think how this could look like in dogs, it would presumably also take something like 50 generations to happen in dogs as well. Let's say again that you do this experiment on dogs, and a few decades later you become convinced that indeed you can produce two species of dogs through selective breeding. Since tthis took a few decades,it is obvious that for more pronounced changes to come about, it would take a lot more time than that, right? Sure, until we do the experiment, maybe it would happen, maybe not - but for sure, we can't find out in a reasonable amount of time.
But furthermore, if we did find out that through artificial selection we can produce 2 different species from the same dog, doesn't it make sense to wonder what would happen in nature if a group of dogs got naturally separated in 2? And also, if we let this process run for even more time, many many generations of separation, wouldn't it make sense that the species could become arbitrarily different from the original?
And if not, then you have to explain why the process doesn't continue - why would the species remain largely dog-like? (remember, this is all under the assumption that we have already confirmed that we were able to successfully produce 2 different species of dog through artificial selection).
Of course, I don't think I can convince you that the assumption I proposed is true. I for sure can't claim to have done this experiment myself, with flies or anything else. But the point was to show what kinds of arguments make peeople like me be highly confident in evolution, given some initial assumptions.
You have not produced a new species, when you reproduce different looking dogs. You might classify that as a new species, but it is not a new species in any meaningful or underlying way. You are talking about a system of classification that only exists in the minds of men. I will agree that these are somewhat useful distinctions in order to allow us to navigate and describe our world, but let's not kid ourselves that we are describing some underlying reality.
> First of all, as I explained earlier, I don't need to literally see it happen to understand how it must have. The present derives from the past, and if you simply extend how we see genetics working today into the past (or future), evolution is in fact the only possible result (assuming no magical forces are acting). Your way of thinking is a dead end for any process that lies outside the limited human senses: if something is smaller than what we can see, or further away than we can see, or takes longer than a single human lifetime, it would be completely out of the reach of science. I do not accept this view of the world, and I don't see any reason why theories couldn't be extrapolated beyond what is immediately visible.
You are lost in the stories. You think that because you have classified something as a new species, it is a new species. You can say what I say is a dead end. That's fine. I'm just not prepared to extrapolate theories ad infinitum. I'm certainly willing to entertain them. I'm not prepared to treat them as true or as knowledge, without actually being able to confirm them. Evolution might be as described, but I can't know that it is, as I am unable to confirm it. We are not given information to allow us to understand - we are given claims that we have to accept as true.
> If I understand what my eyes see, and I understand how a lense works, and I understand how an electron microscope works, then I can trust that the image the electron microscope is drawing of a microbe is true, even though if I take away the microscope I can only see a mess. The same works if you apply this reasoning backwards in time, even over millions of years.
My point is that you do not understand. You believe you understand. You are standing on belief, not knowledge. Knowledge is certain, indisputable. Beliefs might or might not be true.
> The crisis of reproducibility is a tangent, and it only affects a limited set of fields, it is not a crisis in all of science.
Well, I understand that you think this is a tangent. But for me, I see this as evidence of nefarious activity. Science is presented as a completed package, we are masters, etc. Yes, there are some bits that are changing, but we've got the big pieces in the right place. I think this idea - that science is basically right - is dangerous and plays on our ego. We think we know, but we have belief. We cannot be critical of the pronouncements of science. This 'science' is really religion.
Cutting to the chase, I think science has been bent to conform to some ideas that those that bent it, want us to accept. Those that bent it, have also ensured that we are all educated (indoctrinated) in these dogmas. We are presented with theories, we are not given the evidence we need to know, but we are told to believe these are truth. As children, we are pushed into a situation where we take these ideas as true articles of faith or nothing. And as we prefer a story to the absence of one, we cling to it. This is not logic, it is a psychological trick. At the end of this process, as adults, we have beliefs masquerading as knowledge.
This makes for very rigid thinking, such that whoever holds to it, cannot even consider other possibilities. To do so would be to destroy their sense of self. So 'adults' will double up and reject alternative ideas as they are seen as a personal attack. And they are - they are attacking that adult's beliefs - they must be rejected, as a Christian would reject some science explanations. This is not the way of science and the scientific method. We should be grateful for alternative ideas, as we will likely discover something new. But no, what we have is the idea that 'the science is in' and we just have to accept it. Science is a powerful means of control. Just like religion used to be.
Yes - at school, I think you were convinced I think by water condensating and by the loud pop (as was I). This is almost the definition of a magic trick! You are told it explains something, but of course at that age, you wouldn't have looked at the experiment with a critical or knowledgeable eye. The evidence that we were shown as kids should not be considered rigorous or acceptable in science - mixing invisible gases in an open container that allows air in, is not rigorous. Personally I have not seen any examples of this experiment that are undertaken in what I deem to be an acceptable scientific manner.
I too believe that computers work. :) I don't dispute that we are able to use things to create some excellent technology. What I dispute that we know what we're doing.
What I'm saying is that we do not get to see or understand the first principles. We do not see them in almost any of the science we are presented when we are taught at school. What we are given are claims and explanations that are not supported by the evidence. We are put in a position where we are forced to trust. It seems we require an explanation, so much so that we will latch on to any story rather than sit uncomfortably with one or 2 open-ended hypotheses.
The heart of the issue, we are not given evidence to know, we are given a claim to believe. I can know I am resting on a table. I can know that if I drop my pen it will fall on the table. There is no debate to be had. There is a clear path to experience, or empiricism. Empiricism is purported to be the basis of science, but some very basic ideas are not actually possible to experience it seems.
In the original article here, evolution is the implied explanation. But, we have no means to test or confirm the truth or not. We cannot see evolution occurring. (Feel free to point me to an article or something that you think shows this.) Yet we are all taught it as if it was true! If it is as I say, what we are presented with is an unfalsifiable theory which is without evidence. This is to say it is based on trust and faith. This is religious thinking, and is no different to a religion.
Finally, are you aware of the replication crisis in science?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
and
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778
"According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments."
There should be 100% replicability, not 30%. Science shouldn't be about playing the odds in a casino.
And as to the science we do, funding is probably the most serious issue. All science funding comes from the government, the military and corporations. These 3 entities form our governance structure. This is to say they have vested interests in ensuring that only certain areas are looked into, the point being is that science is not an independent field of enquiry - it is about what is expedient to the governance structure.