The only thing standing between the wealthy and poverty is wealth — TogetherTurtle
You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars. — T Clark
I remember once being the the philosophy forum of a science forum. I brought up an issue about the cause of a medical condition. The condition was considered to be caused by a bacteria. I pointed out that this is an oversimplication of causes, since environmental factors, social factors, dietary factors can cause the condition. And to be clear the condition was now, because of scientific experiments considered not to be caused by anything but the bacteria. How the bacteria managed to be effectively opportunistic in some people but not others was not an issue to many of the scientists i encountered.Physicists are looked down on in philosophy forums too .. — I like sushi
I can see Kant's philosophy took a hit, but I don't see why philosophy in general should. Gauss was a physicist, though Schweikart was not, but he was not doing traditional scientific research. He was exploring math and what seemed like something interesting but not practical ended up being useful and in fact reflected reality. So we have mental activity not based on empirical studies aiding science. While not philosophy per se, I don't see it as undermining philosophical work. It is an example of something outside of science contributing to science.Regarding the relationship of physics to philosophy it took a big hit with the story of Kant and Gauss regarding non-euclidean geometry - but that is a thread in itself.
The view of today's physicists is probably summed up by Feynman 'Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.'. An example would be what is energy. Philosophers probably argued that one for yonks really getting nowhere. But along came Noether and all was clear, but in a way no philosopher would ever have thought of - its merely a consequence of symmetry in time. — Bill Hobba
its merely a consequence of symmetry in time. — Bill Hobba
As a matter of fact we now know much of physics is about symmetry - but most philosophers don't know it, and of those that do they probably argue about it like what was done about energy. — Bill Hobba
The laws are replaced by a critical assumption - The Principle Of Least Action. — Bill Hobba
Physicists are looked down on in philosophy forums too — I like sushi
But 'where' is the 'domain of natural numbers?' — Wayfarer
In my experience of talking with scientists about philosophy, I have found that many times most scientists seem to look down on it like if it were just speculative non-conducive discussions about random thoughts that anyone can make up. — Shushi
We should turn that around too, make people understand that so-called scientists who don't understand the intellectual underpinnings of what they do are just technicians. — T Clark
Can there be the case where some well-thought scientists think certain philosophical statements make more sense than their modern science's reach, but who do not dare to speak out loud? I have that kind a feeling after watching video interviews of big physicists. I also read some where that people change position (they used the word "retreat to a safer position", such as agnosticism) under harsh media attacks (provoking/luring questions). — Dzung
Currently, dark matter is the hypothesis which best matches the data, but it is still only a hypothesis - it is not established theory. If you could present an alternative explanation that successfully matches all the data and does not involve hypothetical invisible particles, you would go down in history along with Einstein. — EricH
Now of course this is a single interaction. — Coben
I just bring it up because it is a sort of classic philosophy/science encounter. — Coben
Sure, there's no reason for you to accept my version of the encounter. But then there's no reason to assume I had a superficial familiarity with the research. The person I was talking to was a physicist. I was a person who suffered from the condition in question and had researched it for years. My classic encounter was with a scientist who appealed to authority and was not willing to show that he understood my objection. What did he do? He read my post, then checked to see what the current cause was considered to be and reported back to me that I was wrong. Which was a strange thing to do since it was stated in my previous post what current consensus was. IOW he did not interact with my argument, he told me what I already obviously knew, but let me know that that was the end of the subject. I encountered this kind of pattern repeatedly with scientists on that site. Even in instances where I was less of an expert than the scientist - for example, when the topic fit their profession or I had no special background in the topic - I noticed a repeated lack of interest in actually dealing with the arguments, though they might spend time lecturing me about me or something not relevant about the group they think I am in or whatever. IOW it wasn't the effort they were resistent to, it was the having a discussion.Which is impossible to judge based on the retelling of one of the participants. For all I know, you could be right, but to a rational observer who knows only that the argument was between a non-expert with a superficial familiarity with the research and the experts who conducted the research (because even before you squabbled with someone on a forum you were in a virtual argument with the authors of the studies in question), the balance of credibility is obviously not in your favor. — SophistiCat
If it had been contrary that would have been a different situation. It wasn't. That was part of the blind spot, I thought, in the scientist I was dealing with.But toy examples like billiard balls colliding or stones smashing windows can only get you so far. Scientific practice provides a large pool of complex examples, from Newtonian dynamics to epidemiology, and here philosophers mostly learn from scientists, rather than the other way around. If a philosophical account of causality is contrary to the best scientific practices, this is usually taken to be philosophy's deficiency. — SophistiCat
I would guess in most cases, the vast majority, of case analyses you are correct. I think in medicine people outside the specific field can often produce great input because 1) so much of the research is funded by biased organizations and 2) we know, from scientific research, that funding sources affect results and what results are shared with us, and how the results are looked at by government oversight. 3) there are paradigmatic influences on medicine - with counter trends now - to isolate causes to single patients. Hm, that's not good wording. To look at diseases and chemical cures, rather than say public health, preventative medical approaches, and certainly not alternative approaches - in part becasue many of them cannot be patented. They want to find causes and treatments that involve pills in a lot of cases where other approaches might be just as effective and with less side effects.That is not to say that philosophers cannot contribute to the discussion of causality, but that would be more in areas where science runs up against conceptual difficulties, such as in quantum mechanics, for example. As for routine problems with the quality of studies and such, scientists and mathematicians are more adept at debugging those than most philosophers. — SophistiCat
It's not a coincidence that the discoveries in QM and the steep rise in the divorce rate correlate.when you ask questions like is QM casual...
— Bill Hobba
Causal? :chin: — Pattern-chaser
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