Jedi Pyramid

maynoth wrote: The metaphysical vs physical distinction is a false dichotomy.

I don't think false, just fluid... language is a tool for communication and supernatural and metaphysical to me just means things that are natural but beyond science. Meta can mean beyond and physical can refer to scientific truth.

In popular culture its usage goes beyond the frontier of science, and its there that it asserts truthfulness on faith alone, and the difficulty is that beyond science the truth cannot be proven and therefore its hard to discriminate between truth and delusion.

Personal experience is always truth of that experience, but experience is not always connected to reality. Your statement avoids this by qualifying it with 'if they do indeed exist'. Language is a rudimentary tool of science, and science is the art of determining truth. It's seems risky to abandon science as counter-productive to truthful experience.

maynoth wrote: A few hundred years ago you would have been considered insane if you said you could use invisible waves to talk to someone miles away through walls and forests even.

We all know radiowaves aren't supernatural or metaphysical.

We know that now due to science being able to determine aspects of truth to its existence. I'm sure there are plenty of people from a few hundred years ago that think they are monkey's with dragon wings. It might be real for them, but it's classified as delusion by everyone else because the mind is a very powerful thing.

Don't get me wrong though, I try to be very open and engaged in universal consciousness and reality as an illusion, but I think that's heading off into the multiverse thread direction.

Adder wrote: experience is not always connected to reality.

It is if you film it for your for your own observation.

Adder wrote: It's seems risky to abandon science as counter-productive to truthful experience.

Science is a process, not a conclusion. If we had a completely accurate paradigm for reality we'd be Gods, we don't but we act like our science is absolute truth (it isn't)

Science is not a conclusion, nor is it a dogma.

Frequently people say X cannot happen or X cannot exist because we'd have to rewrite our understanding of physics.

So?

Isn't that kind of the point?

As new evidence arises we aren't supposed to say: "that evidence is probably fake because it contradicts everything we know is true."



That is just the same as a christian defending their dogma.

Changing a scientific paradigm takes a small army, and maybe even your life itself.

Ask Ignaz Semmelweis what happens to people who challenge paradigms.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/06/04/1216242/when-continental-drift-was-considered-pseudoscience?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed


When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience

"I Love this article in Smithsonian by Richard Conniff. One of my geology professors was in grad school when the theories for plate tectonics, seafloor spreading, etc., were introduced; he remembered how most of his professors denounced them as ridiculous. The article chronicles the introduction of continental drift theory, starting a century ago with Alfred Wegener. From the article: 'It was a century ago this spring that a little-known German meteorologist named Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been massed together in a single supercontinent and then gradually drifted apart. He was, of course, right. Continental drift and the more recent science of plate tectonics are now the bedrock of modern geology, helping to answer vital questions like where to find precious oil and mineral deposits, and how to keep San Francisco upright. But in Wegener’s day, geological thinking stood firmly on a solid earth where continents and oceans were permanent features.'"

"Radio has no future."

"X-rays are clearly a hoax".

"The airplane is scientifically impossible."


- Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-9

maynoth wrote: As new evidence arises we aren't supposed to say: "that evidence is probably fake because it contradicts everything we know is true."

Evidence being the key word, but yes I completely agree and all scientists should too I think - that science is about discovery of new things.

Adder wrote:

maynoth wrote: As new evidence arises we aren't supposed to say: "that evidence is probably fake because it contradicts everything we know is true."

Evidence being the key word, but yes I completely agree and all scientists should too I think - that science is about discovery of new things.

How does a person obtain funding to prove something widely regarded as a hoax or fools errand?

How do you propose new evidence be presented if the whole of the scientific community fights tooth and nail to do anything possible to discredit it?

To fight this pathological skepticism takes brute force, lots of money and supporters willing to sacrifice their careers and reputations, and sometimes even waiting for the old generation of academic elite to die off completely before it can take hold and become accepted.

Science by it's nature is supposed to change as new evidence is presented, rarely does this ever occur however as human nature prevents it.

Don't be fooled, changing a paradigm is an absolutely brutal affair.

First they ignore you

Then they laugh at you

Then they fight you

Then you win.


-Mohandas Gandhi

Clarke's Three Laws:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-Arthur C. Clarke.

Adder wrote: Evidence being the key word

I take it you TLDRed our convo via pm earlier.

maynoth wrote:

Adder wrote: Evidence being the key word

I take it you TLDRed our convo via pm earlier.

Hey why jump to such conclusion.... I read them, and I've read about the topics before too. What are you now talking about because I think you may have switched topics from what I was talking about!?? I don't see anyone here saying science is perfect or static or anything like that?

Sure funding for science is difficult. Its a much talked about thing in science, how funding determines where science can go, but the basics of evidence are pretty simple and commonly used in all areas of society, commonly by the Police and investigative services to determine truth from falsehood etc.

We look back at science from hundreds of years ago and laugh at how silly and primitive it was, do you think people who were alive then thought so?

Do you think people thousands of years from now will look back us and think our scientific paradigms aren't silly and primitive?

It's all a matter of perspective.


We aren't nearly as technologically and scientifically advanced as we believe ourselves to be.

I don't believe a person needs to conduct a double blind study with thousands of participants to determine what color car they drive, they just need to look with their own eyes.

What I am talking about is no different.

I encourage people to use their own observation to draw their own conclusions.

Most of the time however people aren't interested, as they already know the truth

No, I think what most of us are saying is that Nobody knows 'the truth'...not you, not I, not even jestor. And that this insistence, this certainty in light of this truism is somewhat offputting.

Of course, I could be wrong. But then, so could you.

Desolous wrote: No, I think what most of us are saying is that Nobody knows 'the truth'...not you, not I, not even jestor. And that this insistence, this certainty in light of this truism is somewhat offputting.

Of course, I could be wrong. But then, so could you.

You're right! If only there was some way... some method by which people could see and experience this for themselves first hand. I mean that would be pretty incredible wouldn't it? People could see and experience such things for themselves and make up their own minds directly without relying upon the opinions of other people. It would really change everything if such a method existed wouldn't it?

Too bad nothing like that exists.

Darn...