Try asking a few working scientists whether there is any difference in meaning between a theory in science and outside of science, and if so, what that difference is. I think you’ll find the mythology I allude to here is very deeply ingrained indeed. One can hardly open a book on science nowadays without encountering it, usually in the opening “How Does Science Work” section lol.
No, absolutely. But it is a cognitive dissonance. The “religious” part of their brain believes it, but somehow when they go to actual work, it all disappears into the ether and has no effect on what they actually do. Relevantly, they don’t notice this disconnect at all.
Correct.
But open a scientific research paper, or a million, and point me to where any of it operates.
Excellent point. This is my own experience too. These science educators I allude to have “two moods,” if you will. In their first mood, they explain what science is “all about” (i.e. the philosophy of science).
In their second mood, they forget everything they said in Mood #1, return to the real world and business as usual, and proceed to contradict themselves left, right, and center.
For example, wanna hear a scientist (in Mood #1) say “Theories are just tools. They’re all wrong” then a few minutes later (switching to Mood #2) declare that the theory of evolution is true?
Wanna hear a scientist say “Science never proves anything” (Mood 1) then proceed to tell his viewers how such-and-such has been proven (Mood 2)?
I could go on . . . till Xmas. Just ask, and I’ll point you in the right direction. 
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Labor unions came from Marxism and socialists, if anything liberal progressives co-opted it like they do to many things.
(And ruin them in the most perverse manner.)
The problem with conservatives is that they cannot tell the difference between actual authentic Marxists versus controlled opposition groups that carry the banner of Marxism falsely but are in fact not Marxist at all.
Capitalists within their military industrial intelligence state love infiltrating groups controlling all of the political opposition cementing their power and few are intelligent enough within the general population to see that.
We could have a more philosophical value based system for the scientific method regarding morality, ethics, and civic public virtues but the capitalists would just say it is evil socialism.
He thought he was gonna sneak that one through, didn’t he?
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You know, people invested in academia are trying to get funds. That’s what you are seeing. It’s not a feature of science, it’s a feature of academia. Almost everyone in academia (any academia, not necessarily science) needs to look for funding first of all, and to elevate what they do in the public opinion to something more worthy of being funded than other stuff that could be.
So, you get that. You can read Feyerabend’s account of academia, which portrays something like this: the basic predisposition of a stereotypical scientist is not rationality, but opportunism.
Academia, to raise its public opinion, needs to quash down that science can be done outside of it, so it poses trapping definitions, which in the end make no sense if you actually look for it: let’s say an example - the first theory of all couldn’t be part of any paradigm, nor it could be done only on the back of prior science.
What you are looking at is not science, tho it is done by scientists. For example, every scientist says ‘hello’ when entering their lab or so. That doesn’t make saying hello to be part of science, nor makes paperwork part of science.
Since something dubbed ‘scientifical’ has more status socially, they’re keen to attach that to anything they do, in particular if it is convincing (as parts of academia that are not part of science).
There is an important distinction in the next items, which are all different:
- Science
- What scientists do
- How science is taught
- How science is actually done
There are two types of ways science is compared with. Some compare the doing of science with the doing of basketball. Once the match is over, there is no ‘basketbal’ there. It only exists as an action.
Now, doing science is more akin breadmaking. Once science is done, there is something there - it just doesn’t disappear.
We can all question stuff about science, but what science is, at least, are ways to relate past measurements between themselves. Now, it may be only just that.
What people pushing forward what you point out are trying to do is to bandwagon that minimal view of science, with the rest of things they want more funding for. In your ‘moods’ paragraphs, you can see that in the first case, they are talking about science per se. In the second, they are talking about academia, because not many people would fund something that never can prove something is true. The people you are hearing from are fairly evidently keen on academia.
To look for what science truly is and isn’t (which is way more important), it’d make more sense to ask people that have no stakes at the game they are talking about. The people you hear from have a vested interest. The same would go for people going against science.
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I’d just repeat something I posted maybe 15 mins ago or so. This post is not a criticism of science. It’s a criticism of what incompetent educators say about science. This should not be understood as an “anti-science” thread.
There is one more side to this, though. Which is that actual science is actually profitable. Engineers use it. Even when it’s too cutting edge to have immediate engineering application, smart people can see its value and have ready funds.
What you describe has to do also with the desire to extend science beyond this natural market.
But there are more than market forces. When a schoolteacher says something to you, unless you are a special kind of individual, it has a way of sticking in the subconscious, even when all further experience negates it. Many pop sci writers, even ones that are or used to be serious researchers, or even just serious researchers who informally discuss the philosophy of science, simply do it because that is what is stored in their subconscious.
Yes, perhaps so. I don’t dispute it. Notice also that the mythology I allude to (and similar) is also frequently wielded as a weapon to embarrass an opponent (usually some hapless Creationist lol). E.g.
“Look! This idiot doesn’t understand the difference between a theory in science and a theory in colloquial usage. What a moron! Totally discredited!”
Dunno if you’ve noticed yourself or not, but this kind of thing is very common too.
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That is a very egotistical and self-centered way to think about it. The world doesn’t revolve around Marxism and Marxist ideology. I don’t need Marxism, coming from a Jewish/Christian Apostate, where someone was stealing concepts from Christianity, twisting them, and selling them to the public in a corrupt way.
Labor Unions were part of the Progressive Movement. Progressivism came out of Christian Churches. Christians were build a “City Upon a Hill” John Winthrop. In 1850, progress may have been helping out the widow and the orphan. In 2020, progress was open borders and men in girl’s bathrooms. Marxism works to create chaos and disorder towards revolution. In Global Communism, Americans talking and fighting about frivolous things, and the emasculation of men, that helps communist China, and leads towards chaos and disorder.
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Yeah. Cognitive dissonance has a smell of importance to those who have never achieved anything, specially when it ties into all the slithering tentacles that give this particular one institutional credit (such as the ones pseudoai pointed out).
First off, I am a Buddhist. Abrahamic religions to me are like cancer best to be avoided.
Second off, Christian socialism was always weak, ineffective, and directionless which is why socialist thought later evolved into secularism away from religion altogether.
Things like radical feminism, racial redistribution, homosexuality tolerance, and public support of transsexualism are all liberal perversions with its hyper individualism.
Do you think any of that stuff is tolerated in a nation like North Korea or Vietnam?
Global chaos and disorder? You mean like evil capitalists trying to take over the entire world in captivity setting up an international organization of world governance?
@axocanth who said that anyone here was anti-science?
@Socrates true, but you see that much science is funded by states. Engineering has uses for science, but the scientists themselves mostly don’t benefit from it. It’s like someone making bridges. The person using the bridge benefits from moneymaking out of using the bridge, and some goes back, but it’s not something directly profitable. To get funds, you need to convince politicians with no scientific background.
So, if you show politicians with no scientific background what science is (‘relate measurements’), they wouldn’t see that as something they can win votes from, UNLESS it has to do with stuff that is outside the scope of science (engineering, metaphysics as saying what is real, practical medicine and so)
Now, the education of science educators is generally subpar. Education has generally a ‘we tell but we don’t judge’ kind of attitude towards it. They are trying to motivate students, not really go to the nitty gritty. You can see that the most advanced thing is Kuhn or so - Feyerabend, for example, is always shunned or strictly ignored, or rahter it is ignored as if he didn’t write anything.
You know, the view of science always being ‘just moving at the border of what is known’ paints a quite optimistic view of science. Looking at it that way, it doesn’t seem as something frightening. They are depicting academia, not science, in which you have to be an ‘et al’ for years and years until you get a ground yourself to stand on (which is mostly never, to be honest). An honest view of academia, a very competitive environment, would go against portraying it as something worthy of following for most. Plus,if you say that science really doesn’t have a method, and that most science that is really worthy doesn’t really build much on prior things (the less it relies on previous things, the better science you make), would be quite a disincentive.
By that portrayal of academia, you can lasso up people that want more stability in their life, and not just a researching spirit. Because you can fail at science pretty much, and still go in fairly well in academia. Suppose, too, that you follow that path for 20 years and you get bored or tired… you have nowhere else to go, mostly, for the same job. So, you have to have some plan B.
You can see that in string theory. It’s mostly a dead end, but it’s very hard to understand even the beginning papers to get into that circle. Once you got 10 years on your back, and a family to provide to, you are faced with honesty and starting from scratch or rather produce papers that go nowhere but that mostly nobody will notice it’s just logical and mind games at this point. What would you think people in that situation would do? Essentially, it’s security by obscurity.
Yes, the mythology of scientificism is weilded to avoid criticism towards academia quite frequently
Cut it with marxism or so, it is a completely independent topic
During the rise of fascism, a good portion of active feminists were also card-carrying memebers of fascist parties.
Check yourself.
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It was democratic liberals that gave women the right to vote. Feminism has always been a byproduct of political liberalism.
That’s not really true. Research scientists often get direct funds from active businesses, or get their salaries from institutions that get all or a significant poriton of their budgets from them.
Companies that rely on engineering aren’t stupid. They know where the dope comes from.
That’s what’s going to account mostly for pseudo-science bullcrap like what @Nausamedu cited. Politicians mainly fund meaningless shit that has no science in it.
No it most definitively is not. Pop sci string theory is, what thousands of idiots write books about to sell at news stands. But pick up a cutting edge quantic mechanics paper, the type used to make quantum computers or all sorts of things either present, in the pipeline, or vaguely in the peripheral view of big money, and string theory is ubiquitous.
They got blackmailed into it. By card carrying fascists.
Look it up.
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While some of the educators may belong to the category you describe, I do not believe that this is the case for all of them. Science-communicators try to pass the message that science is established through rigorous studies and verification from different sources. To achieve this goal sometimes they intentionally generalize concepts, while they actually know that these generalizations are not correct at every case. It is not always the ignorance of the philosophy of science, it is also the intention to convey certain messages to the public.
I understand your frustration. In my field (engineering) I also feel the same when experts-communicators use these tactics to make things more appealing to the public. They know that their statements are not rigorously correct, yet they make them for publicity.
Radical feminism will always be the legacy of political liberals everywhere to which it will take decades assuming there is a global future at all to repair that mess.