That thread is about understanding what science is. The same problem you seem to be having here.So are you saying science IS truth? No. Science is a process for discovering the probability that something is true
Your statements are not true but represent a common simplification of reality which can lead to serious prediction errors if more in-depth knowledge is disregarded.Why would you make these arguments? What is the point you are trying to make?
Your statements are not true but represent a common simplification of reality which can lead to serious prediction errors if more in-depth knowledge is disregarded.Why would you make these arguments? What is the point you are trying to make? He's a climate change denier, he just spent a lot of time trying to convince us that we really don't understand how climate changes during the recent glacial interglacial periods. The Milankovitch cycles apparently just don't cut it. Now he's attacking science itself, because it doesn't represent "truth" we can't trust it to tell us what will happen if we keep adding billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year is his message here I think. It's just more of the kind of attack on all science that underlies climate change denial and the threat of things like tobacco products. This intellectual fraud goes way, way back, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2
So the fight against a ban on passive smoking had to be associated with other people and other issues. Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a "grassroots" movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight "overregulation". It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones. APCO proposed to set up "a national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of 'junk science'. Coalition will address credibility of government's scientific studies, risk-assessment techniques and misuse of tax dollars ... Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will begin media outreach, eg editorial board tours, opinion articles, and brief elected officials in selected states."
By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows, the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking in a bad light with "broader questions about government research and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the "intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science".These are people who attack science by pretending to understand the scientific process then deny it has any relevance in the real world, Mike Yohe is a prime example of this here. This thread and another JohnH thread on climate and glacial periods is just one more way to cast doubt on the very solid evidence around human forced climate change. It's all about doubt in one direct - human forced climate change - and no doubt at all in the other direction. That burning massive amounts of fossil fuels has serious global impacts. Basically it's intellectual fraud...
It certainly doesn't seem to come close to a universal expression of reality that is applicable under all circumstances.That's because no such thing exists you fraud, all information is relative to other information. There is no such thing as an entirely objective observer in science as would be required by your definition. Science creates the best case scenario based on the most current information, it's not seeking to establish "truth". That is the function of religion and philosophy and has almost zero relevance in a discussion based on the scientific method which requires testable data applied in an agreed upon format in relation to previous data placed into a consistent context. Neither religion or philosophy which do deal in "truth" require that. On the contrary religion often forbids challenging "truth" with inquiry. By even trying to place science in the context of "truth" you are in fact revealing your deep dishonesty in this matter. So basically you're evoking an independent god-like figure then claiming that science doesn't reflect the nature of this "reality". Of course it doesn't, because science isn't religion.
Science creates the best case scenario based on the most current information, it's not seeking to establish "truth".I would add: It's about establishing clear understanding. :cheese: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Seems me that Lausten presented an excellent question so I'll repeat it, since I'm curious how John would responds to it:
Your statements are not true but represent a common simplification of reality which can lead to serious prediction errors if more in-depth knowledge is disregarded.Why would you make these arguments? What is the point you are trying to make?
That's because no such thing exists you fraud, all information is relative to other information.DougC, you have been warned in this thread about abusive language. Such language is against the rules and continued abuse of other members will lead to banning. Thanks for understanding.
That's because no such thing exists you fraud, all information is relative to other information.DougC, you have been warned in this thread about abusive language. Such language is against the rules and continued abuse of other members will lead to banning. Thanks for understanding. Unfortunately, this is how it works. It works like this in the "real" world too. Except you don't have police walking up and telling you what words you can use, you have fake news that calls people "snowflakes" because they want equal rights for all and those same news sources give voice to people who claim discrimination against white heterosexual males. As long as MikeYohe and JohnH claim they have some source of their information they will be allowed to say whatever they want. Mike has referenced file cabinets in his garage and pseudo-science websites. JohnH hasn't offered much of anything I've seen.
Unfortunately, this is how it works. It works like this in the "real" world too. Except you don't have police walking up and telling you what words you can use, you have fake news that calls people "snowflakes" because they want equal rights for all and those same news sources give voice to people who claim discrimination against white heterosexual males. As long as MikeYohe and JohnH claim they have some source of their information they will be allowed to say whatever they want. Mike has referenced file cabinets in his garage and pseudo-science websites. JohnH hasn't offered much of anything I've seen.That is the issue, we are facing something implacable and ruthless that in the end is totally counter to our interests and if carried much further can and likely will result in the loss of condition that allow us to live on Earth. This does fire my passion, I do not want to live in a world that ceases to allow future generations even to exist so a few people can enjoy almost unlimited wealth and power now. And this is enabled to a large degree by people who's only interest is to deceive on a grand scale. But as Doug Smith states there are rules we are all expected to follow to participate here and I apologize. My passion and concern for life can be expressed in other ways and there are ways to effectively shut down those who are attempting to defraud us of our very future in their interests by other means that directly stating what they are. sl...
Also keep mind how frustrating it can become for an individual who wants to participate in a real discussion on issues that can and do have life or death impacts for us all in the context of highly organized and hugely funded campaigns to deny anyone the ability to genuinely be part of this discussion in the interests of preventing changes that will have negative financial and political power impacts on just a few but very wealthy and powerful individuals but would in fact offer real salvation for billions of people.
After a while it can be very hard to not take personally the efforts of people who in the end are basically communicating, “shut up and die” to most of the rest of us.
After decades of this I now just assume that anyone who is dedicating any effort at all to attack the very well supported science on human forced climate change and other issues that have a huge amount of verifiable data behind them is doing so not out of a genuine desire for real inquiry, but because they either directly or indirectly benefit from the current but deadly status quo.
That is the opposite of genuine inquiry and at some point - we may already be passed it - all the discussion going on here and other places becomes totally moot if we’ve allowed highly destructive actions to be carried out behind the screen of deception.
In the case of climate change there is zero doubt this is in fact happening.
And it would be totally naïve to believe this isn’t happening here…
In the end I have no problem stating that I do not think that the Koch brothers, the people running ExxonMobil or those working for them have more right to life or to have their interests placed before us all than I or anyone else does. You don’t need to be a billionaire or their mouthpiece to have a valid viewpoint.
And that is fact what has been happening for decades, it’s to the point now of the fossil fuel lobby resorting to the tactics of organized crime in its efforts to defraud us all of our very future.
It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital, whose funding cannot be traced, has risen dramatically over the past five years. In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010. Meanwhile the traceable cash flow from more traditional sources, such as Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, has disappeared.Should someone who's the endpoint of a deception campaign that is funded by hundreds of millions of dollars now laundered through complex and untraceable mechanisms be allowed to impose their deadly interests on everyone else. That is the opposite of genuine inquiry and responsible presentation of facts. If this forum just becomes another forum for activities that are fact leading to conditions that become incredibly hostile to life on Earth then what is the point. This isn't fun for me, I've spent the summer looking up into skies filled with smoke, waiting to hear from relatives who have been evacuated from their homes for weeks due to massive wildfires that can be directly linked to human created climate change and know based on the evidence that this is just the start of a very terrible reality that is being enabled intentionally in the interests of a few against all the evidence that they spend huge sums to deny. At some point being polite in the face of psychopaths becomes suicidal I think...
That's because no such thing exists you fraud, all information is relative to other information.DougC, you have been warned in this thread about abusive language. Such language is against the rules and continued abuse of other members will lead to banning. Thanks for understanding. What if it is an honest label, rather than an empty insult? And why does John have the right to denigrate the scientific consensus with deception and malicious abandon? WHEN ARE MODERATORS GOING TO STAND UP AND SAY FRAUD AGAIN SCIENCE IS NOT PERMITTED ! (excuse me doug couldn't resist, da devil made me do it. ... but with time I always overpower that devil - I can't stick with it - I wouldn't want to be moderator either. There fixed that color thing. :cheese: )
DougC, though I often fail, I try to make a point of addressing the words,
Some of John’s statements are clearly fraudulent.
It’s the words that are the strategically fabricated lies coming from a mouth piece.
It’s not the gun that kills, it’s the bullets. Something like that.
After a while it can be very hard to not take personally the efforts of people who in the end are basically communicating, "shut up and die" to most of the rest of us.Becoming a skeptic late in life was both freeing and depressing. If I'd understood all this earlier I might have studied harder in school and probably found a different set of friends. My values haven't changed, but what I think is life threatening certainly has. If my friends are right, I'm a horrible person who supports "Big" this and that and I hate farmers and want to inject babies with poison and I don't care about chemicals in the water and all those things are going to kill me. If I'm right, organic farming means cutting the world's population in half and it uses just as much fish killing crap as any other farming and babies will die of diseases we almost eradicated.
If we want to be talking about truth, one of the central facts of our lives now is that we are in fact being defrauded in a fundamental way that is already deadly and will only become more so as the fraud continues.
We know how, we know by who and we know why. When someone posts in a consistent manner that denies evidence so well supported that there is no reasonable doubt as to its accuracy and scientific confidence, what is more likely. That that person is in possession of such a fundamentally superior fount of knowledge that they make irrelevant the input of intellectual giants across history. Or that they are intentionally deceiving in a pattern so well established and supported by evidence that like climate change itself there is no reasonable doubt as the existence, purpose and source of this systemic deception.
I wasn’t throwing the term fraud out lightly, I did so based on the critical nature of this subject, how it affects us all profoundly and how much clear evidence this is in fact taking place.
Someone engaging in this behavior taking advantage of the open access of this forum to engage in what is in fact intellectual fraud is also attempting to use the rules of this forum to shut down anyone attempting to address this fraud.
I’ll leave it up to others to decide what kind of a person it would take to do that, in my opinion it’s not a moral or just position to take in any sense of those words.
When someone posts in a consistent manner that denies evidence so well supported that there is no reasonable doubt as to its accuracy and scientific confidence, what is more likely? That that person is in possession of such a fundamentally superior fount of knowledge that they make irrelevant the input of intellectual giants across history.I've experienced enough of this face to face to say there are people that believe they can dismiss the wisdom of the ages. This guy is local. I know he's syndicated, but I don't know where.] I have been begging them to stop giving this guy a platform for years. A team of doctors have written a letter of warning about his anti-vax stance, but he keeps on keeping on. When I write letters to the editor, he responds not only to me via his article, but friends and supporters of his write the paper as well. I don't think they get too many letters, so they all get published. (Note the language at the end of "Just get your damn shots" on Jul 26. "I also don’t expect influencing paid or unpaid trolls to actually go to the many references and scholars that I have referred to in the past.") I don't know who is worse, the guy who writes it or the paper that publishes it.
That’s why instead of a few individuals, we need many many speaking up, getting vocal. Why not aggressively object to damaging bullshit and those who spout it?
Rights aren’t given! Rights are taken!
As the whole Reaganomics, Jesus Freak absolutism and xenophobia, tea party hatred of government and the embrace of self inflicted ignorance,
harnessed all along by oligarchs with their siren song, demanding that easy acceptance of malicious lies and fraud is some sort of expression of “Free Speech” rights.
Well, it’s what they say it is until many, many, many, many Americans manage to let them learn differently.
Can the children of the enlightenment muster the energy to defeat this formidable foe that is the alt-right and their alt-universe built upon lies glued together with fear, resentment, and hatred?
P.S.
Fuck Truth, how about if we strive to bring Honesty back into vogue !!!
Science IS the search for truth, it is just never-ending. Any fact can face upheaval if it evidence leads somewhere else. It’s like peeling la piece of fruit one millimeter at a time, while predicting what’s at the center, with each layer peeled you learn a little more and adjust your prediction accordingly. With something like an you may figure out what’s inside long before you reach the center, whereas with a peach you would have to get all the way to the pit to figure it out, because the result was so unexpected.
Science IS the search for truth, it is just never-ending. Any fact can face upheaval if it evidence leads somewhere else. It's like peeling la piece of fruit one millimeter at a time, while predicting what's at the center, with each layer peeled you learn a little more and adjust your prediction accordingly. With something like an you may figure out what's inside long before you reach the center, whereas with a peach you would have to get all the way to the pit to figure it out, because the result was so unexpected.I agree with most of that. But along the way of our inquiry we may run across some things that are true, either as constant or relativistic phenomena The point I am trying to make is that there is no single Truth which explains all values and functions of the universe. The closest we can come to a single truth is the generality of Cause and Effect, with its subsets of Potential, QM, GR, Gravity, a kind of hierarchical ordering of natural phenomena. Each value and function contains it's own relative truth. When we discover a common denominator of all functions, we call them universal constants, or universal truths, because everything in the universe is subject to that certain universal aspect. IMO. Potential is such a common denominator of all conceivable universal values and functions. Potential (a latent ability which may become expressed in reality). But what holds true in our gross physical expressed world, may not necessarily be true at the very subtlest levels. Things can not be measured as true or false or even as dualities, but become probabilistic, some of which we can demonstrate by experiment.
This is funny in a pathetic way. The most active three bullies in the canal of dubious characters posting here have accused me of climate change denial and of being anti-atheist. I have challenged them to come up with posts to support their accusations. None have managed to so. WHO IS BEING DISHONEST?
Time and time again I have been denigrated for holding views that these bully-boys oppose without these same bully-boys justifying their accusations. Lausten in one thread wants us to take a pledge of honesty yet fails to live up to the criteria he asks others to meet. WHO ARE THE FRAUDS?
Now they start a campaign against the moderator attempting to calm them. It isn’t about “politically correct” or protecting “snowflakes”. It is about recognizing a group of bullies who have taken over these forums and vent their bile at anyone who doesn’t bow to their rule. It isn’t just me, it is newcomers and other members too - who have made reasonableness introductory comments in the forums only to be met with bile from the cabal. And it has been to other members too.
This kind of secular behavior of turning upon one another rather than finding common ground has been criticised by some secular commentators (Nonreligious Questions, https://noreligionrequired.com/tag/the-atheist-movement/). Furthermore, the aggressive and dishonest tactics adopted by these bullies seems counter to the intent of CFI (There must be a system that can bring together all the members of the “reality-based" community. Whether we identify as atheists, freethinkers, humanists, secularists, or skeptics, we all share basic values rooted in inquiry, naturalism, and the scientific method—values that urgently need to be demonstrated and advanced in the broader culture.). They are certainly not bringing anyone together and seem to be driving people away. Indeed, DougC’s comments seem to confirm that sentiment…
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/18948/
Welcome to the real world, too bad your stay here will likely be fleeting.
there are ways to effectively shut down those who are attempting to defraud us of our very future in their interests by other means that directly stating what they are.One new user who wrote a reasonable post asking for enlightenment in this thread] was greeted with this:
Sounds like you've listened to a few talks and not done much else.. It was their last post. Another poster asked a perfectly reasonable question in this thread] and was greeted by a trail of undeserved derogatory comments simply because other members "suspected" the poster had ulterior motives. We could all have learned something from respectful discussion. Opportunity lost. This post] by DarronS offers a similar criticism. These represent just the tip of an iceberg of nasty posts by a handful of individuals who seem to have pretty much run everyone else out of any reasonable discussion. The forums as they stand at the moment should be an embarrassment to CFI and certainly not a face of secularism that they would want to show to the world. If the CFI organisers have no interest in supporting informative forums focussing on CFI priorities and interests, they should seriously consider closing them down to avoid further embarrassment and damage to the secular cause. I'm disgusted!
Now they start a campaign against the moderator attempting to calm them.There's some malicious creativity in action right there buddy. Please pray tell, what "campaign against the moderator" doest thou speak of? Offer up a quote let's look at it.