Elon Musk's 'Scientific Method' (rollingstone.com) 240
From a new wide-ranging interview of Elon Musk: An unfortunate fact of human nature is that when people make up their mind about something, they tend not to change it -- even when confronted with facts to the contrary. "It's very unscientific," Musk says. "There's this thing called physics, which is this scientific method that's really quite effective for figuring out the truth." The scientific method is a phrase Musk uses often when asked how he came up with an idea, solved a problem or chose to start a business. Here's how he defines it for his purposes, in mostly his own words:
1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
#5 diminishes with wealth and power (Score:2, Insightful)
#5's "refutation" seems to diminish with wealth and power. Ask anyone done in by a chorus of "yes men" afraid to challenge their meal ticket...
Re:#5 diminishes with wealth and power (Score:5, Interesting)
True, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try... you just need to be mindful that you may be in an echo chamber and attempt to break out of it.
I have found that anyone I've worked for I have been blunt and not a yes man and it has mostly gone well for me. The two times it really didn't I was saved by being shoved out because not long after I found that said team / company had severe issues and was disbanded / closed up.
Now, there is a difference between being honest and being obstructionist and that's where a lot of people screw up. My old employer had a policy of "Disagree and commit" and it makes for an awesome workplace when management and team embrace it. Management/tech leadership gets feedback, yes's and no's and the reasoning behind them. They take this information and act based on it. If you were a "no" and the decision was to move forward anyway then you commit to seeing it through, even if you don't think it's the best idea... same the other way, if you were a "yes" and it's decided to change directions you drop it and change directions.
When done correctly and with trust it can make for a great team and stupendous levels of output, plus it builds trust even deeper between leadership and team.
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Re:#5 diminishes with wealth and power (Score:4, Interesting)
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Management fads are almost never done correctly.
You should have seen the way they rolled out agile at my old place.
Fixed features, fixed delivery dates.
Agile became "work 80 hours or more per week to meet targets set by management".
I also loved their implementation of CMP.
"People who write their own goals tend to meet them" became "management will write and assign your "own" goals to you". You will meet them if you want a raise. But wait... let's lay "stack ranking" over the top of that just for shits and
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There is actually no big difference between RUP and XP/Scrum etc.
XP and Scrum basically say: the developers should pick from RUP what helps them to deliver robust software and omit stuff they don't need.
However: formal training is basically required all the time. E.g. which university student has used a version control system in a team? Most haven't ... so they are used to commit without merging, and when they see a merge conflict they like to try "commit and overwrite"
A formal training for Scrum or other A
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You are *absolutely* correct which is why I had:
When done correctly and with trust it can make for a great team and stupendous levels of output, plus it builds trust even deeper between leadership and team.
I have seen the flipside (in fact I was the one who said "No because of Foo which will likely cause Bar and will cause Baz and if Fizz also happens then we're going to have issues"). Said manager actually did try to toss my ass under the bus for "not being clearer about my reservations". My response was the 5 page document I initially developed that was if anything over verbose.
Interestingly that manager left the company within 6 months of that kerfluffle.
I
Re:#5 diminishes with wealth and power (Score:5, Interesting)
At (most likely) the same employer, I was nearly fired for disagreeing with my boss in the first place. "Bring me solutions, not problems." (Did he realize that's a line that only the villains say in movies?) Then nearly fired because things failed in more-or-less the way I expected. But then, that guy would yell at me for disagreeing with him, then yell at me for not raising concerns early enough.
Yeah, "disagree and commit" looks great on paper, but assholes gonna asshole.
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"Bring me solutions, not problems." (Did he realize that's a line that only the villains say in movies?) Then nearly fired because things failed in more-or-less the way I expected.
We operate on this philosophy. It's a good philosophy when it's embraced correctly. What it should mean is that you should be actively looking for solutions not just problems. It's useful to point out problems, but you're 10x more valuable if you can also quickly or on the spot start working alternatives.
"No, that will fail because of XYZ, but if we do UVW it will accomplish the same goal."
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Yeah, "disagree and commit" looks great on paper, but assholes gonna asshole.
And there ain't no system that can stop them. My exit was a railroad job for taking one of said assholes to HR for ethics violations. Like I said, I walked out a martyr, because while I no longer am employed there, about 50 other people are, and are no longer being abused.
Re:#5 diminishes with wealth and power (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but you can easily identify the sycophants.
The optimal political process is a bit more complex. I'm finding that a lot of things make economic sense, yet raise human issues: a strictly sub-optimal path to address the complexities of political issues is often required.
Take the economies of trade, for example. Because of things like wage differential or cost of resources (e.g. is the climate better for cotton in China?), importing pants is cheaper than making them here. Because of that, whether you create or lose jobs, you're going to make people poorer by making pants in the USA than importing them in China (at $3.20/hr Chinese wage vs $8.25/hr +18% payroll overhead American, it's about 1.8 hours of work for a minimum-wage worker to buy Chinese pants, 3 hours to buy American). When the differential is big enough, you actually lose jobs by moving manufacture to America. That "big enough" is only slightly above minimum-wage today.
Okay, so what about outsourcing then?
Well... when you outsource, somebody's job goes away. It's very bad for some .01% of the population, and very good for the other 99.99%.
Here's the thing: a rising tide lifts all boats, and yet it's obviously barbaric for the folks spread across a million boats to torpedo your boat so as to lift the tide a fraction of an inch. Maybe that's net-positive in a big way; maybe it all works out for you in the end (after you abandon ship and somehow manage to get yourself a new boat); but you just lost a boat, dammit, and that puts you at huge risk and places the burden of all our success on your shoulders.
In faster transitions, lots of people's boats get sunk. So maybe, even though it's not as great for everyone else, maybe we slow down that transition. Maybe we have a stronger safety net--we all pay into it, and we still keep a large part of the profit of this new trade deal--so you don't get torpedoed so bad. We crew you on our boats so you can sleep and eat, and you at least have a secure place in life until you can get back on your feet.
Trade, technology, things that create lay-offs. I look at the hard economic facts. When I talk to unions about these things, I push back on globalism rhetoric: I tell them we need to focus on protecting labor, and that global trade and new technologies are coming and we're not going to outright halt progress. Near as I can tell, they like that: it's uncomfortable, and yet it's facing a problem head-on and taking ownership of and responsibility for the impact on working Americans. We're looking for ways to not simply hurl people into the streets, but rather to carry them securely to their next place in life.
I'm frequently surprised by what people will accept when they think you're being honest, when you won't compromise your position, and when you start incorporating their needs into your position. Politicians who waffle based on with whom they're talking seem to take a hell of a lot of flack--as do politicians who have their mind set and don't care what you think.
This is more-complex than mere science. Well, it is if you actually care about doing your job right.
Good insights there, IMO .... (Score:2)
I was just talking to a few union folks (bus drivers and truck drivers) the other day about the fears they have with the driver-less vehicle revolution. In every case, their first reaction was that "the automation must be stopped"! As soon as I argued that there's just no historical case of people successfully putting those genies back into bottles once new technologies emerge, they quieted down and seemed to listen.
The thing is? I don't have any definite solutions for all the disruptive job loss it will c
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When you remove a person's job from the local economy, you actually remove about 7x their salary from the local economy.
Moving that job to china or destroying a job in china affects the global economy but a fraction of the amount that local economies are devastated by job loss.
And it's even more than that because when you know someone laid off, you also cut back on your spending.
As long as wages are so different, offshoring is inevitable.
If prices were allowed to drop in the 1st world, then we'd be okay. B
Step 0 (Score:2, Funny)
Get billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies for something that nobody in their right mind would invest their own money in.
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I'm sure to be in the minority but I have yet to see any 'genius inventions' from Elon, all 'his ideas' seem to be things thought up over the years (some 100s of years old) and deemed to be too difficult to achieve at the time.
So your point of getting billions to throw at some problems seems to be right on the mark. If I wanted to complement Elon it would not be for his various projects that people are attributing to him to have thought up where he really has not, but instead that he has the balls to take
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His genius is in securing the subsidies, which does require some serious smarts to keep it going as long as he has across as many industries as he has, and money from investors, which requires little more than a glib smile and a firm handshake.
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This would only be true if Edison had duped billions of dollars from the public via tax subsidies and billions more from investors.
You might want to read more about Edison.
Anyone can look smart when they are given unlimited access to money that isn't theirs.
And yet others didn't. Funny old world.
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It is not step 0 but it is definitely part of the process.
1. Oh, it would be great if....
2. Uhm... it looks like it can be subsidized...
3. Ok, so I can expect that much from the state...
4. Uhm... considering the political climate and other attempts by other companies, chances are good...
5. Is is possible that I don't get the subsidies I want? Can I do without it?
6. Ok, I think it will work.
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Yeah! I mean, it's not like we give billions of dollars to other industries like oil. Or have paid trillions of dollars in protecting those same interest abroad.
But it's not just oil. How about the $5.3 billion in improper subsidies for Boeing for the Dreamliner? Or that Boeing and Lockheed get billion dollar subsidies for launching absolutely nothing into space. Pork-barrel spending is never truer than in aerospace. How about the $20 billion we give to farmers to NOT GROW CROPS.
Do you know what Big Oil, Bi
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Get billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsidies for something that nobody in their right mind would invest their own money in.
That is precisely how subsidies work and why they exist. I don't know what people are so upset about. The whole point of creating a subsidy is to entice entrants into the market.
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And billions in taxpayer subsidies. The only thing he's ever done without subsidies was PayPal, and even that required a certain flexibility on the part of financial regulators.
Slashdot vs. RollingStone (Score:5, Insightful)
Who, among Slashdot's esteemed editorial board, decided, the publication's audience needs a refresher on what scientific method is?
And who, subsequently, chose the Rolling Stone — whoever it is they are interviewing — as the best fount of this illumination?
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Who, among Slashdot's esteemed editorial board, decided, the publication's audience needs a refresher on what scientific method is?
Well, anyone who thinks the Rolling Stone/Elon Musk got it right does need a refresher. And other comments here also show that it is important every so often.
Applied Pseduoscience (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Difficult for most people (Score:2)
But there is one thing people can try to develop and inculcate, as they rise in the hierarchy. Try to find the
Fairly Close (Score:2)
He has rigor, peer review, refutational intent, and falsification or confirmation (i.e. proof of falsehood but never proof of truth). It's better than most people. And he is correct about most people's tendency to not change their thinking. The firmly a belief is held, the more one tends to accept all new information as it fits in with the existing belief... often snowballing one's confidence in a falsehood.
axioms are overrated (Score:2)
By coincidence, I just watched this a couple of days ago:
Feynman: 'Greek' versus 'Babylonian' mathematics [youtube.com]
This excerpt is possibly from the 1964 Messenger Lecture series at Cornell University, collectively titled The Character of Physical Law.
"The method of starting with the axioms is not efficient."
AKA "axioms are overrated".
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AKA "axioms are overrated".
On the other hand, axioms when appropriately applied save a lot of time trying to prove useful things that cannot be proven. Like the five Euclidean geometry axioms. If you waste your life trying to prove that "parallel lines never intersect", then you've lost all the cooler and useful stuff that Euclid et.al. developed out of those five.
Catastrophic failure (Score:2)
If a large vacuum tunnel suddenly ruptured the in rushing air would strike passengers with a force of 15 lbs/sqin. On an average person's chest that would be 6,000 lbs of force, crushing them.
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You forget that the passengers are siting in an air tight capsule.
How did you come to those numbers? They make no sense to me. Why should there be a force higher than the atmospheric pressure?
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How did you come to those numbers? They make no sense to me. Why should there be a force higher than the atmospheric pressure?
It isn't higher than atmospheric pressure. One number is expressed as a force per unit area, the other as a total force. Both are "atmospheric pressure". That's why unit analysis is a critical part of any calculation.
What you just asked is like asking how a box of jelly beans can weigh more than one bean, since the "jelly bean" is 10gm/bean and a box of 100 would be 1kg/100 beans. One kg is much more than 10gm, isn't it?
This is always true (Score:2)
I always find it ironic when scientists say they don't believe there is a God when there is an overwhelming amount of evidence from physics that there is one.
In two words: (Score:2)
"Question Everything." -- Elon Musk
are we posting... (Score:2)
... obvious things now? Just because they are said by poster boys?
Re: OK so riddle me this: (Score:5, Insightful)
People need to get from point A to B.
Lots of people. Enough that current modes of transit are inefficient and congested.
They need to traverse the space between.
Ground level is at a premium.
Above ground is too visible for peopleâ(TM)s tastes.
Air requires a lot of coordination.
So go below ground?
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inefficient and congested.
I see railroad tracks all over.rarely see trains, maybe a few per day (~1 every 6 hours). I've read a number of papers and studies addressing just this. Solutions are rather involved and expensive, but not more so than digging underground tunnels,
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Perfect response to the tunnel nonsense thanks.
Would trains not be the 'perfect' place to automate nearly the whole process? Seems like there are pretty well defined paths and controls at every stage of the operation already. Compared to roads, rails seem super defined and 'easy' for robotic expert systems to handle.
I wonder how high we could get the rail utilization if it was all RoboTrains
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thejeffwhite claimed:
Currently, shipping goods to and from Hawaii on those Matson freighters takes a month each way.
You're talking through your hat.
In 1965, I traveled from L.A. to Honolulu on the Matson liner Lurline. It took 5 days.
If you're talking about the amount of time it takes for a given container to be offloaded from a freighter, cleared through customs, loaded onto a semi (or a train), and driven through the gates of the port facility, in addition to travel time from Hawaii to the West Coast, you're still probably wrong. (It depends on a bunch of things, including customs clearance.) If yo
Re: OK so riddle me this: (Score:5, Interesting)
Even tunnels without the vacuum are expensive. Although real estate in our most congested urban areas is equally expensive. Once you get out into open country subways don't make sense anymore. Doesn't matter what the underlying tech is.
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Unfortunately, that only works if we completely eliminate human drivers, which is going to be an *extremely* hard sell. For starters, we probably need to be approaching 100% adoption of fully autonomous vehicles before there's even a chance of banning human drivers.
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There are plenty of "robot trains" already.
Some of the Paris Metro are, I believe in Toulouse all are, and in Bilbao I think they also are all robotic (not sure, a bit to long that I was there).
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Maybe you're just not there when the trains are? It typically takes a train all of 30 seconds to pass by. Do you really sit and stare at the tracks for 6 hours and keep count?
Maybe the tracks you DO manage to keep a constant eye on are not along major commuter corridors. In order for trains to be useful, they need to have endpoints at or near places people and things need to be. A lot of tracks (especially in urban areas) were build to support specific industries or functions that might no longer exist, or
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Goods and services need to get from A to B? (Score:2)
Goods and services need to get from A to B. Given the cost on the environment, moving people from A to B is something we're going to look on as a a luxury.
Re: OK so riddle me this: (Score:5, Interesting)
Non sequitur. The fact that current modes of travel are congested does not prove [ggwash.org] that people need to get from A to B:
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Yes, like a timeshare!
If you don't eat, your job performance will suffer, so yes, eating is pretty much required for most people's jobs.
I see, the only way to g
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- Walking, Bicycling (Transportation on demand, short distance, lowest cost)
- Bus, Bus Rapid Transit (Transportation by schedule along fixed routes, short to medium distance, low cost per person)
- Commuter Rail, Passenger Rail (Transportation by schedule along fixed routes, medium to long distance, medium cost per person)
- Carpool, Vanpool (Transport
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Bus routes are NEVER convenient. They become LESS convenient the more crowded they become. Have you actually ridden a bus ever in your life? They're all the same. Doesn't matter if it's Moscow, Madrid, or Peoria.
Busses are so bad that you can fight the traffic and still come out ahead.
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Busses are so bad that you can fight the traffic and still come out ahead.
Are you talking about the experience on-board the bus? Or the elapsed time?
Because if the latter, there are several bus routes here in Vancouver, Canada that are faster than driving that same route.
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Are you talking about the experience on-board the bus? Or the elapsed time?
Both.
Because if the latter, there are several bus routes here in Vancouver, Canada that are faster than driving that same route.
They cannot be, since buses by definition must make stops at places other than stop signs and traffic lights. Each stop takes time. A car going the same route does not make those stops. Ergo, a car can go the same route faster than a bus. In terms of math: A +xB > A for all B,x > 0. For the bus to be faster it must make fewer than zero stops or the average stop time must be less than 0. Both are physically impossible. The best the bus can do is break even when there are 0 stops.
But you've forgot
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In Sydney Australia (population about 4 million) and in most of the major cities we do have bus lanes which predominately follow the major roads however normal drivers are banned from these lanes except in an emergency or turning left (we drive on the left-hand side) otherwise you risk a fine. In addition, some bus lanes have corridors which can bypass more potentially congested roads. So yes a bus can get to a particular destination faster than cars can even though it may have to stop every two to three ki
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Nice double decker buses and comfortable train carriages for all, however this is subsidised (50%) by local government property rates i.e. taxes.
And with better vehicles, dedicated bus lanes, quicker train schedules more and more people are using public transport.
Then again long term investment in such infrastructure is probably anathema to many readers here and I am just another dirty, filthy pinko thinking that cheap urban transp
Re: OK so riddle me this: (Score:4, Informative)
"Enough that current modes of transit are inefficient and congested."
You obviously do not live in the LA Metro area or Inland Empire. The Metrolink trains are very under-utilized. Every time I see one pass, I can usually count on one hand the amount of heads I see in 5 train cars total.
Re: OK so riddle me this: (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because LA's mass transit doesn't connect at all well. I have a job that until recently took TWO HOURS to drive to.
Mass transit, via Metrolink, would have gotten me 80% of the way there in only 1 hour.
The other 20%? a 1.5 hour bus ride followed by a ten minute train ride again.
And, as none of these were coordinated, each step needed at least 20 minutes between.
So my entire transit was something like three plus hours
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Your mistake is getting into LA and expecting to go anywhere quickly via vehicle.
Ever hear the song "Nobody Walks in L.A." or "Driving in the Metroplex" (John Mammoser parody of "Living in America"?)
If not, perhaps you should. They pretty much highlight why you aren't going anywhere in a vehicle in Los Angeles.
The 4 hour Dearly Departed tour is that long precisely because of traffic and parking restrictions in LA. You can walk the entire route in about an hour and a half.
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"3. Demand lots of investor money.
4. Demand even more government money.
5. ?????"
Investors are not forced to fund any project.
The government isn't forced to fund any project.
5 ????? == lots of hard work, which who think socialism is a free ride don't understand.
That's what the axioms are for (Score:2)
> If we are trying something new how would we even have a probability of it being correct? Isn't that point of experimentation - to figure it out?
I've never tried knocking this computer off of this table. We can, however, make some reasonable predictions about what would likely happen based on some axioms:
Things knocked off tables tend to fall down
Tile floors are typically hard
Delicate electronics tend to break about 70% of the time.when they hit hard surfaces
Based on what we know, we can predict that t
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What bizarre set of questions, axioms and probabilities of truths would lead someone to conclude that anyone was talking about "drilling" tunnels without government permission?
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What bizarre set of questions, axioms and probability of truths would lead someone to conclude that drilling lots of tunnels without governmental oversight under major metropolitan areas is something that will reduce traffic, be good for the environment, etc?.
He's not building a tunnel that will leave his property, I'm nearly 100% sure of this.
This is another "Glomar Explorer" cover story (we are planning to mine the sea floor) for some black project that some three lettered organization realizes cannot be hidden from view. The Glomar Explorer really was built and used to raise a Russian nuclear sub. The tunnel to the airport story is to explain why some big holes are being dug on Space-X property. It's a cover story...
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He's not building a tunnel that will leave his property, I'm nearly 100% sure of this.
Obviously you didn't read the article:
"We're interrupted by Teller, Musk's chief of staff, who informs him that as we were talking, the Hawthorne City Council ended an hours-long debate with a 4-to-1 vote allowing Musk to burrow his tunnel two miles into the city."
With the lag in publishing an article, he probably already has gone past the boundary of his property.
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"We're interrupted by Teller, Musk's chief of staff, who informs him that as we were talking,
It's a shame he changed jobs. He and Penn were very good together. Did he slip Musk a note or text him? But then, Penn was good by himself, back when he played Spicoli. Dude.
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government oversight
I bet you miss the good old days [shmoop.com], huh?
Re:The Scientific Method is outdated (Score:5, Funny)
1. Decide the answer you want.
2. Ask a leading question.
3. Find a comfortable echo chamber that gives you the answer you want.
4. Don't look at sources. If you do by accident, ignore their validity and nuance.
5. Shout "fake news" if you accidentally see facts that challenge your pre-decided views, especially when unedited and with all relevant context included.
Re:The Scientific Method is outdated (Score:5, Informative)
We use "scientific consensus" now.
1. Ask a question.
2. Find a group of people who give the answer you want.
3. Misconstrue their statements to remove nuance and ambiguity
4. Package them all together into a "meta study"
5. Tell everyone "the science is settled".
More like:
1. Decide the answer you want.
2. Ask a leading question.
3. Find a comfortable echo chamber that gives you the answer you want.
4. Don't look at sources. If you do by accident, ignore their validity and nuance.
5. Shout "fake news" if you accidentally see facts that challenge your pre-decided views, especially when unedited and with all relevant context included.
Wrong on both. Scientific consensus is not science. Any scientist will tell you that.
Science proposes hypotheses and then proceeds to test them with experiments, observations, and analyses. A consensus, if any, occurs after such studies produce consistent conclusions. But the consensus is not the science. It is the collective opinion on the current state of knowledge.
The scientific method will become outdated only when another method is discovered that does a better job of capturing our knowledge of the natural world in a useful way. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
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The scientific method will become outdated only when another method is discovered that does a better job of capturing our knowledge of the natural world in a useful way. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
While there is surely a better approach than the scientific method, as it seems to converge on a better answer only by luck, I'm not holding my breath either.
There is a more practical problem that needs to be fixed, though: since no one is focused on trying to replicate or disprove ordinary results form other teams, there are fields where more than half of published results are wrong (sometimes just falsified to keep up a quota, as in biochem). That's not a problem with the scientific method, but it's a r
Re:The Scientific Method is outdated (Score:5, Insightful)
While there is surely a better approach than the scientific method, as it seems to converge on a better answer only by luck, I'm not holding my breath either.
Only by luck? I think that dismisses the training, creativity, and perseverance of scientists. Luck is helpful, but science would not progress unless a prepared mind can spot when it occurs. I think patience is more important.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' -- Isaac Asimov
There is a more practical problem that needs to be fixed, though: since no one is focused on trying to replicate or disprove ordinary results form other teams, there are fields where more than half of published results are wrong (sometimes just falsified to keep up a quota, as in biochem). That's not a problem with the scientific method, but it's a real problem in modern science.
I don't think it's fair to say that "no one is focused on trying to replicate or disprove ordinary results". First of all, many studies overlap with others, so some repetition of investigations does occur, and rightly. Second, it would not be wise for a scientist to submit a proposal to a granting agency that calls for an exact repetition of someone else's study. Rather, it would be better to spend money and effort trying to find whether the same conclusions hold if a different approach is taken, or better experimental techniques or instruments are developed and employed. And finally, publication of bogus results can be a problem (more in some fields than others) but the self-correcting nature of the scientific method exposes and corrects the mistakes eventually.
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A bit as missed out, a very subtle bit. How much effort should be put into converting the question into understanding. For some low risk, non actionable question, consensus is enough, for higher risk actionable question, you should be more effort into generating an understanding. Think of it like, wanting to select the most tasty peanut from a bowl of peanuts, consensus is a particularly appearance will define better taste, logically it is not true, you would have to individually test each peanut in the bow
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You sound just like those feminists who say science is a white male conspiracy to keep oppressed people down.
Congratulations on that impressive stretch; pulling gender & race from all the way in left field.
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Thanks! Anti science types piss me off. As this was obviously a right wing, climate change denying anti-science type troll, I thought the gender and race bit would add insult to injury. That's the thing with tribalists, they really hate being compared to the other tribe.
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Yeah, but those guys were paid by big oil to do that.
Re:The Scientific Method is outdated (Score:5, Funny)
This makes no sense whatsoever, your trolling brings dishonor to Mother Russia. Report to the gulag for reeducation, comrade.
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Is this nonsense supposed to represent something intelligible? Your trolling is so bad I can't even tell what you're trying to do. Are you trying to troll right wingers, or left wingers, or are you doing one of those trolls where you act like an idiot so people correct you?
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Nope, you just sound retarded. Maybe practice at home before trying that stuff out in public. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it eventually.
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You find it mostly in post modern literary criticism. I'm not dissing feminists though. It just felt like it would hit the stupid anti-science troll harder if his shit was compared to something feminists say. Personally, barring the TERFs I've got nothing against feminists.
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You think?!? +5 insightful right there bud.
Re:The Scientific Method is outdated (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll no doubt regret agreeing with Spun on anything, but he's right.
Science, and for that matter logic has been condemned as an instrument of the patriarchy for around 30 years now. It's a core tenet of Post-Modernism that logic itself is a tool of oppression to be discarded, and Post-Modernism devoured academic feminism decades ago. I read peer-reviewed papers (in philosophy) to this effect in the early 90s, and it's only become more mainstream in academia.
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This is some A+ level conspiracy bullshit right here. I mean, it's not original or anything, yes, I've heard it before.
This imaginary left you've invented sounds like a right frightful boogyman. You'll mostly find it in the minds of crazed right wingers rather than in objective reality. I challenge you to prove that this mindset is commonplace in any group of real, existing humans.
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Yeah, that really isn't the scientific method.
"Attempt to disprove the conclusion."
This seems to be running fast and loose with the requirements of experimentation. One really needs to prove a hypothesis otherwise the effort is somewhat incomplete.
"Attempt to disprove the conclusion" is most definitely part of the scientific method. It is the discipline of intellectual honesty that makes you ask yourself the question "Can I be wrong?"
Also, note that there is a well-established method of scientific inquiry known as "disproving the null hypothesis" that embraces this principle elegantly.
I can't disprove God exists, but to make the assumption that the entity does exist for this reason is lazy and dishonest.
Nobody is saying that an inability to disprove is an argument for proof. Except you.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be running fast and loose with the requirements of experimentation. One really needs to prove a hypothesis otherwise the effort is somewhat incomplete.
No, that is not the scientific method. You cannot prove a hypothesis. You can only disprove the null hypothesis.
What? Let me expand on that. Let's use an old example. Galileo at one time hypothesized, based on observations and thought, that gravity should cause two objects of different masses to accelerate at the same rate and go the same distance in the same time. But clearly, dropping a feather and a bowling ball shows that this cannot be true. Ahhh, if the hypothesis was true, then there must be a reason why feathers take so long to fall. Hypothesis: air resistance. Let's design an experiment to prove this. Well, you can't actually prove that air resistance is the cause. You can only disprove the null hypothesis, which in this case is "air resistance has nothing to do with the result." That one is easy to disprove. Simply remove air from a long tube and drop the objects without air. Since the feather and bowling ball now reach the bottom at close to the same time, the null hypothesis has been disproven. Air resistance does have an effect, and we now have support for the original hypothesis. But not proof. "Close to" or "as close as we can measure" is not "the same time." If our original hypothesis is true, then there must be some other cause for the difference. For more recent, more complicated things, scientific lifetimes are spent in both hypothesizing about the remaining causes or improving measurement techniques to make the measurement error so small that "close" starts to approach "same". (And there are lots of things we learn as we start to account for what we thought was "measurement error" and really wasn't.)
More complicated systems create more interactions, and experiments must be more carefully designed. For example, not too long ago some radio astronomers were seeing signals that looked too regular to be random. They removed all known hypothesized causes other than true alien signals. Did this prove the hypothesis that they were alien signals? Sorry, no. They finally found the cause: the microwave oven in the snack area in the building next door.
But Musk is not anywhere close to the scientific process, either. His step 3 is: "3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one."
What? An axiom is defined [dictionary.com] as " a self-evident truth that requires no proof." Some dictionaries include "cannot be proven" as part of the definition, with the example "For every two points P and Q there is a unique line that contains both P and Q".
So, creating axioms from evidence is not science. Creating HYPOTHESES is science. Hypotheses are statements that require, even beg for, attempts to be disproven. Axioms are what are used to build universes, like the five axioms of Euclidean geometry. You cannot prove any of the five, they are the assumed truths. In fact, there are two other [wikipedia.org] geometric systems (elliptic and hyperbolic) that are based on changing the axiom regarding parallel lines that Euclidean geometry assumes.
If Musk assumes the truth he seeks to prove, then he's failing at science.
I can't disprove God exists, but to make the assumption that the entity does exist for this reason is lazy and dishonest.
No, it is neither lazy nor dishonest. You're trying to apply scientific method to religion, which is like comparing apples and oranges. You cannot prove God exists, and you cannot prove He does not. This puts the question well outside the scope of the scientific method. The only dishonesty would be trying to apply the scientific method to a question that we know cannot be answered that way.
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If something exists, then I think it is reasonable to say there is a way to prove that it exists. If we accept the idea that things can exist, which cannot be proven to exist, then what does it mean to "exist"? How does the concept of "exist" differ from the concept of "doesn't exist"?
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If something exists, then I think it is reasonable to say there is a way to prove that it exists.
No, there is no such way.
The only objective proof would be to find it and show it to others.
You can search for ever and never find the thing you want to prove to be existing. However, not finding it does not make a proof that it does not exist.
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Not finding something does not prove it does not exist - true. However, if you accept that things can exist, which cannot in principle be measured, then there is no gating function to your credulity.
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The only dishonesty would be trying to apply the scientific method to a question that we know cannot be answered that way.
He's pointing out that because science doesn't prove that horses exist some will claim that believing in unicorns is an equally valid position. Ex facto that might be true, like if you grew up in a Fritzl basement and have only seen western and fantasy movies then horses and unicorns might seem equally real. But if you get out in the real world you'll find a ton of knowledge on horses and none on real unicorns. And if you don't believe in anyone else, you can go meet actual horses. Of course that doesn't di
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A whole lot of hearsay from some guys who said they saw a guy walk on water 2000 years ago?
That is a mistranslation from aramaic via greek into latin. "Walking on the water" is an aramaic idiom for "strolling at the beach".
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science is not about proving or disproving. It is about measuring and collecting data in a repeatable way.
Thank you for proving true my comment later where I say a refresher is required even here every so often.
You can collect all the data you want in a "repeatable way" and still not be a scientist. It's only when you decide what data you need to collect and what it means, based on hypotheses and experiments to disprove a hypothesis, does it become science.
For example, I can collect the outside temperature at noon every day for ten years and it will mean nothing, despite being "repeatable". It is only when
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This seems to be running fast and loose with the requirements of experimentation. One really needs to prove a hypothesis otherwise the effort is somewhat incomplete. I can't disprove God exists, but to make the assumption that the entity does exist for this reason is lazy and dishonest.
You're looking at the wrong aspect of testing. Yes you set a hypothesis, but you also have to actively look for "potential sources of error" when designing your experiment. If you're testing whether a ball of a greater mass will fall faster than a ball of lesser mass you need to identify what confounding variables might exist. If you drop a feather and drop a bowling ball but the feather drops slower you need to "attempt to disprove the conclusion" by rigorously soliciting potential confounding variabl
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Incorrect.
Science is a Subtractive system: It removes falsehoods.
There is a corresponding Additive system but the arrogance of the male ego is too blind to recognize it.
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An unfortunate fact of human nature is that when people make up their mind about something, they tend not to change it -- even when confronted with facts to the contrary. "It's very unscientific,"
Or maybe they're just not unbelievable pussies! “You know, I think I’ve come around to your way of seeing things,” the weakling said, reportedly reassessing his viewpoint to accommodate new information like an unbelievable pussy instead of doubling down on his previously held belief like a real man." [theonion.com]