Remember, kids:
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Sorry to be a pedant, a Law is the hardest it gets. You can't fuck around with the Laws of Gravity.
Theories come and go and many are a work in progress: some withstand the test of experiment and observation better than others as the theory gets better and better at explaining all the facets of a phenomenon. However, as far as lay people are concerned, science as a constantly moving feast goes against the absolutism promoted by many non-scientists to justify the shit they come out with.Ehh, "law" is really just another word for "observation".
It's from before we had a good understanding of scientific progress.
Back then it was thought that we "discover" the "laws of nature".But that is just another way to fool ourselves into thinking our theories are completely true and infallible.
Correctly understood, the law is how the world behaves in some respect.
We don't really have any direct access to that, so instead we make measurements and form theories.
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Remember, kids:
In proper scientific terms, an attempt to explain observable phenomena is called a "hypothesis".
It is called a "theory" when it fits all the observable facts, and there is no observable evidence to the contrary. We don't call it a "truth" because there's always a chance that it might be overturned by later evidence - but as far as science is concerned, a "theory" is as hard as it gets.
This is often confusing to people who dismiss science they don't like as "it's just a theory". But this distinction should be kept in mind when discussing things like the "Theory of Evolution", "Theory of Relativity", "Global Warming Theory", and "Dead Internet Theory".
#PSA #Evolution #GlobalWarming #DeadInternetTheory #Science #Theory
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@lritter @juergen_hubert
It is *not* a theory. Climate science has worked intensely the past forty years, based on theory that was first formulated in the 19th century, that the observed global heating is caused mainly by the emissions from burning fossil fuels.
We know this for sure. Period.@swoonie @lritter @juergen_hubert
It's still possible that some alien is carefully firing a invisible heat ray to make us believe in global warming as it buys time for the massive oil rig to arrive.
Improbable in the extreme but possible. Functionally impossible but not truly impossible.
That's why global warming is still a theory, because we don't know what we don't know and we never can.
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@swoonie @lritter @juergen_hubert
It's still possible that some alien is carefully firing a invisible heat ray to make us believe in global warming as it buys time for the massive oil rig to arrive.
Improbable in the extreme but possible. Functionally impossible but not truly impossible.
That's why global warming is still a theory, because we don't know what we don't know and we never can.
@MadCowKastor @swoonie @juergen_hubert another one. this truly is a case of babylonian confusion.
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@MadCowKastor @swoonie @juergen_hubert another one. this truly is a case of babylonian confusion.
@lritter @swoonie @juergen_hubert
I should be clear that much of my post is in jest. I don't actually believe it could be true, just to highlight the fact that we can never know for sure. -
Remember, kids:
In proper scientific terms, an attempt to explain observable phenomena is called a "hypothesis".
It is called a "theory" when it fits all the observable facts, and there is no observable evidence to the contrary. We don't call it a "truth" because there's always a chance that it might be overturned by later evidence - but as far as science is concerned, a "theory" is as hard as it gets.
This is often confusing to people who dismiss science they don't like as "it's just a theory". But this distinction should be kept in mind when discussing things like the "Theory of Evolution", "Theory of Relativity", "Global Warming Theory", and "Dead Internet Theory".
#PSA #Evolution #GlobalWarming #DeadInternetTheory #Science #Theory
@juergen_hubert
Also, "Truths" are just a person's perspective. They don't even have to be based on reality. There is an entire social media platform full of them. -
@lritter @swoonie @juergen_hubert
I should be clear that much of my post is in jest. I don't actually believe it could be true, just to highlight the fact that we can never know for sure.@MadCowKastor @swoonie @juergen_hubert jürgen explained it really well, so you should have gotten it.
otherwise, ask the clanker; even they understand it:
> what is the difference between colloquial "theory" and scientific "theory"?
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Remember, kids:
In proper scientific terms, an attempt to explain observable phenomena is called a "hypothesis".
It is called a "theory" when it fits all the observable facts, and there is no observable evidence to the contrary. We don't call it a "truth" because there's always a chance that it might be overturned by later evidence - but as far as science is concerned, a "theory" is as hard as it gets.
This is often confusing to people who dismiss science they don't like as "it's just a theory". But this distinction should be kept in mind when discussing things like the "Theory of Evolution", "Theory of Relativity", "Global Warming Theory", and "Dead Internet Theory".
#PSA #Evolution #GlobalWarming #DeadInternetTheory #Science #Theory
@juergen_hubert teacher here offering unsolicited advice.
This is great info, however, starting it off with “remember kids” can come across as patronizing and so people may get their backs up and check out before they get to the great points you make.
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Remember, kids:
In proper scientific terms, an attempt to explain observable phenomena is called a "hypothesis".
It is called a "theory" when it fits all the observable facts, and there is no observable evidence to the contrary. We don't call it a "truth" because there's always a chance that it might be overturned by later evidence - but as far as science is concerned, a "theory" is as hard as it gets.
This is often confusing to people who dismiss science they don't like as "it's just a theory". But this distinction should be kept in mind when discussing things like the "Theory of Evolution", "Theory of Relativity", "Global Warming Theory", and "Dead Internet Theory".
#PSA #Evolution #GlobalWarming #DeadInternetTheory #Science #Theory
@juergen_hubert didn't help that you put "dead internet theory" in there, since wikipedia says it's just a concept. probably your pet hypothesis.
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@juergen_hubert The people who try to discount evolution for being "just a theory" should also feel free to discount gravity for being "just a theory."
@ljwrites @juergen_hubert
Aren't there people who are actually doing that? -
@ljwrites @juergen_hubert
Aren't there people who are actually doing that?@t_robinart @juergen_hubert Yeah that's what I was referring to.
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Sorry to be a pedant, a Law is the hardest it gets. You can't fuck around with the Laws of Gravity.
Theories come and go and many are a work in progress: some withstand the test of experiment and observation better than others as the theory gets better and better at explaining all the facets of a phenomenon. However, as far as lay people are concerned, science as a constantly moving feast goes against the absolutism promoted by many non-scientists to justify the shit they come out with.@tribactam @juergen_hubert relevant natural law for Global warming (theory?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#Planck's_law_of_black-body_radiation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#Effective_temperature_of_EarthAnd this law may (or may not) save us:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law -
@Virginicus @malte @juergen_hubert In the context here: Is Newton's theory still a (scientific) theory or just a formula good enough for many/most practical purposes?
@goedelchen @malte @juergen_hubert For me, it’s a perfectly good theory. Except that Newton thought of it as the “law of universal gravitation”, and it’s not quite universal. Now we know that a theory has to have a domain of validity attached.
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Remember, kids:
In proper scientific terms, an attempt to explain observable phenomena is called a "hypothesis".
It is called a "theory" when it fits all the observable facts, and there is no observable evidence to the contrary. We don't call it a "truth" because there's always a chance that it might be overturned by later evidence - but as far as science is concerned, a "theory" is as hard as it gets.
This is often confusing to people who dismiss science they don't like as "it's just a theory". But this distinction should be kept in mind when discussing things like the "Theory of Evolution", "Theory of Relativity", "Global Warming Theory", and "Dead Internet Theory".
#PSA #Evolution #GlobalWarming #DeadInternetTheory #Science #Theory
@juergen_hubert
Ask yourself, "How can I find out more about the 'Dead Internet Theory'"?
Then do it.
Bong hits 4 Jesus.
#DeadInternetTheory -
@juergen_hubert The people who try to discount evolution for being "just a theory" should also feel free to discount gravity for being "just a theory."
@ljwrites @juergen_hubert people who try to discount evolution are typically unable to accurately re-state the claims of evolution, and people really ought to start quizzing them when they speak up.
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@MadCowKastor @swoonie @juergen_hubert jürgen explained it really well, so you should have gotten it.
otherwise, ask the clanker; even they understand it:
> what is the difference between colloquial "theory" and scientific "theory"?
@lritter @MadCowKastor @swoonie @juergen_hubert "Clankers" understand nothing. They are not capable of engaging in dialectic and are algorithmic constructs which enumerate a Hilbert-space-like embedding via a net-of-neural-nets.
If straw man detection were a thing, that would be a killer app. But for the unreliable imitative narrators, which statistically approximate the outputs at the mercy of the system prompts and RLHF, reason is not possible.
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@ljwrites @juergen_hubert people who try to discount evolution are typically unable to accurately re-state the claims of evolution, and people really ought to start quizzing them when they speak up.
@ljwrites @juergen_hubert (e.g. if you hear someone say shit like, "i can't believe that the formation of life is all just random", that's when it's quiz time. remember, we're not looking for _agreement_; we're only looking for signs of _basic reading comprehension_.)
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@juergen_hubert Good reminder! One thing I'm missing from your description: Can you have competing scientific theories in your definition? I'm reminded of Kuhn's concept of paradigms which entails that there is always some conflicting evidence that any paradigm tends to dismiss (as noise, mistakes etc). Paradigms tend to shift when the conflicting evidence becomes overwhelming and a new theory manages to account for those previous exceptions.
Can you have competing scientific theories in your definition?
You can. You rarely have two theories that make exactly the same predictions. You often find that the differences are in things that are really hard to build experiments for (a lot of recent decades of physics has been about that: all of the things where the experiments are easy to do are fairly settled). It's fairly common to find that there are a few different models that all have the same behaviour in the common cases and make different predictions in outlying cases.
There is one special case, which Occam's Razor covers. If two theories provide the same set of predictions but one requires a superset of the things of the other, you should disregard the additional elements. This is because you can take any theory that provides useful predictions and add other irrelevant factors and create an infinite number of theories that make the same predictions. This doesn't mean that the more complex theories are wrong, it means that the additional factors are not providing useful information. If, at some point in the future, you come up with an experiment that would give different outcomes for the variants, you can add them back.
Newton's Laws are not a good example here because they are known to be wrong, they're kept around because they're useful. For anything much bigger than an atom or smaller than a moon (and slower than a satellite), the measurement errors that you get are likely to be much bigger than the errors from Newton's formulae. But the way in which they are wrong is very different for big things and small things. You can't predict the behaviour of electrons with general relativity and you can't predict the behaviour of gas giants with quantum mechanics. So there are a lot of attempts to build theories that work at both scales and then run experiments to attempt to falsify them.
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@ljwrites @juergen_hubert (e.g. if you hear someone say shit like, "i can't believe that the formation of life is all just random", that's when it's quiz time. remember, we're not looking for _agreement_; we're only looking for signs of _basic reading comprehension_.)
@ljwrites @juergen_hubert (i mean, if someone says, "i can't believe it's all just random", that's a pretty clear sign of reading comprehension failure, but it's important to drill down to the specific point of that particular person's failure.)
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Sorry to be a pedant, a Law is the hardest it gets. You can't fuck around with the Laws of Gravity.
Theories come and go and many are a work in progress: some withstand the test of experiment and observation better than others as the theory gets better and better at explaining all the facets of a phenomenon. However, as far as lay people are concerned, science as a constantly moving feast goes against the absolutism promoted by many non-scientists to justify the shit they come out with.You can't fuck around with the Laws of Gravity.
You absolutely can, Einstein did and this is why no one has the hubris of Newton when it comes to naming their theories anymore.
