Hypothesis & Theory Forum

Originally posted by sonhouse
Logical and RJ Hinds, an oxymoron.

You have become a real senile comedian in your old age.

Originally posted by RJHinds
You have become a real senile comedian in your old age.

Ron - you are the best argument yet for compulsory euthanasia.

Sonhouse is the best counter-argument.

It's as simple as that.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Ron - you are the best argument yet for compulsory euthanasia.

Sonhouse is the best counter-argument.

It's as simple as that.

That is an unproven hypothesis at best. No science in that.

Originally posted by RJHinds
That is an unproven hypothesis at best. No science in that.

There you go, weaponizing science again.

It must drag on you that nobody has fallen for your particular line of BS. Where are your converts if you are such a man of god?

Originally posted by googlefudge
Ahh, but would that falsify the hypothesis.

The hypothesis is that the subject likes thumbs down... not that the subject ONLY likes thumbs down.

Fetishists continue to do what they enjoy. So we should test to see if The Subject modifies his behaviour in terms of how he posts after a thumbing down to reduce the frequency with which he is thumbed subsequently.

No sign of that, by the way.

Originally posted by RJHinds
You have become a real senile comedian in your old age.

The sad part is you think I am joking.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Science is the proof something is true by repetitive testing and observation by independant[sic] researchers and always obtaining the ssme result.

There are no "proofs" in science, there are theories, and evidence that supports or refutes the theories.

[All] scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all available alternatives.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof

Originally posted by forkedknight
There are no "proofs" in science, there are theories, and evidence that supports or refutes the theories.

[All] scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all a ...[text shortened]... tific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof[/i]

Unfortunately, what it that link says, along with so many other links like it, is false because it completely fails to take into account probability which means there IS such thing as “scientific proof” (even outside pure mathematics and formal logic ). The link does this by completely failing to take into account what people, including people of science, generally actually MEAN by "scientific proof" in their every day language because what they mean takes into account of probability rather than absolute certainty.

And, unlike what the link claims, real scientists DO sometimes talk about “scientific proof” because a “scientific proof” need not be something that has absolute certainty like a flawless mathematical proof of a mathematical theorem has. In other words, it need not be purely deductive.
That is because what is often referred to as a “scientific proof” is evidence that is such a strong weight of evidence for a theory that any truly rational mind would see that the theory has a vanishingly small probability of being false but need not literally mathematically have a zero probability of being false.

For example, the “scientific proof” that there is a Moon (which orbits the Earth ) -we see it and we even have evidence that some people have even been their. But, of course, no matter how absurd a particular theory about the external world being false would seems to be, there must mathematically be a none zero probability that all that evidence that supports it just happens to somehow be all illusionary. However, any rational mind would think that such a theory with such strong evidence supporting it, such as there being a Moon, would think that the probability of it being false, although none-zero, must nevertheless be so vanishingly small that the possibility of it being false is not worthy of even consideration nor mention. And, when that is the case, we call the evidence for that theory “scientific proof” because that is exactly what we generally MEANT by “scientific proof” in our everyday language.

A load of web links contriving an arbitrary alternative explicit definition of "scientific proof" to this implicit definition of "scientific proof" that most people use in their every day language doesn't change the fact of what people generally mean by "scientific proof" and is erroneous for going against that implicit definition.

Originally posted by humy
Unfortunately, what it that link says, along with so many other links like it, is false because it completely fails to take into account probability which means there IS such thing as “scientific proof” (even outside pure mathematics and formal logic ). The link does this by completely failing to take into account what people, including people of science ...[text shortened]... enerally mean by "scientific proof" and is erroneous for going against that implicit definition.

A recent example of that is the discovery of the Higgs Boson, they started out with a 3 sigma level evidence string, then 4, then 5 and maybe now 6 sigma level, which is a probability of 6 standard deviations away from the norm, not sure exactly the number but the higher that number the more confident they are they have pegged the mass and the existence of the Higgs. In this case it takes many collisions of particles, trillions of them and then the analysis of the results, which might be one in a million hits as evidence of a Higgs so many tests are needed to raise the sigma level to a high order of confidence. That's all you get with the Higgs, no certainty, just a high order of confidence they have nailed the mass right.

Originally posted by sonhouse
A recent example of that is the discovery of the Higgs Boson, they started out with a 3 sigma level evidence string, then 4, then 5 and maybe now 6 sigma level, which is a probability of 6 standard deviations away from the norm, not sure exactly the number but the higher that number the more confident they are they have pegged the mass and the existence of ...[text shortened]... t with the Higgs, no certainty, just a high order of confidence they have nailed the mass right.

Yes, and there must be a minute none-zero probability that they got it wildly wrong because there must be a minute none-zero probability that, by a massive coincidence, all their measurements happened to be way off and by exactly the same amount. But that probability is so vanishingly small that we still correctly call our set of measurements "scientific proof" of the range of highly probable values we think it has.

Originally posted by sonhouse
A recent example of that is the discovery of the Higgs Boson, they started out with a 3 sigma level evidence string, then 4, then 5 and maybe now 6 sigma level, which is a probability of 6 standard deviations away from the norm, not sure exactly the number but the higher that number the more confident they are they have pegged the mass and the existence of ...[text shortened]... t with the Higgs, no certainty, just a high order of confidence they have nailed the mass right.

As long as there continues to be fallible humans doing science, then we can not declare any science infallible. Ain't I smart?

Originally posted by humy
Yes, and there must be a minute none-zero probability that they got it wildly wrong because there must be a minute none-zero probability that, by a massive coincidence, all their measurements happened to be way off and by exactly the same amount. But that probability is so vanishingly small that we still correctly call our set of measurements "scientific proof" of the range of highly probable values we think it has.

And then you have the possibility that the phenomena is not caused by the Higgs particle, and current theory states, but there is some additional or different explanation for the observation.

In which case the theory is not "wrong", but may be incomplete. This possibility is included touched upon in the article I linked. A scientific theory, once there is enough evidence that it is generally accepted, is most certainly not totally incorrect, but might be incomplete or improved upon.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Hmmm, ok so we have a hypothesis that RJHinds [hereto referred to as "The Subject"]
likes receiving, and seeks out thumbs down votes.

We therefore now need an experiment that will seek to falsify this hypothesis.

Do we have any proposals?

Well, at least in the Science forum people could stop responding to The Subject altogether and see if eventually The Subject will simply stop trying.

Dunno, just a thought...

Originally posted by forkedknight
There are no "proofs" in science, there are theories, and evidence that supports or refutes the theories.

[All] scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and nothing is final. There is no such thing as final proven knowledge in science. The currently accepted theory of a phenomenon is simply the best explanation for it among all a ...[text shortened]... tific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof[/i]

The problem with the numbnuts on here is that they think their pet scientific theory or idea is proven fact and so the currently accepted theory may not be the best of available alternatives, because their favorite scientists refuse to consider all the available alternatives

Originally posted by RJHinds
The problem with the numbnuts on here is that they think their pet scientific theory or idea is proven fact and so the currently accepted theory may not be the best of available alternatives, because their favorite scientists refuse to consider all the available alternatives

Oh? you mean alternatives like a fairy tale god inventing the universe and the Earth in 7 each 24 hour days? Just like the Egyptian creation tale a few thousand years older than Judaism.