SCIENCE -- for discussions which AREN'T confined to the conventionally banal

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SCIENCE -- for discussions which AREN'T confined to the conventionally banal

1proximity1
Modificato: Ago 14, 2022, 10:13 am

AS this is "Pro and Con", where actual differences of opinion are supposedly not forbidden, I propose this thread for any SCIENCE topics which aren't so settled as to leave barely any room for dispute.

this also qualifies:




https://astronomy.com/news/2022/07/rare-earth-hypothesis-why-we-might-really-be-... Rare Earth: Why We Might Really Be Alone
Doug Adler | Astronomy magazine| July 31, 2022


(exerpt)

..." 'Good science does a couple of things,' he says,'but the most important thing it does is it stimulates other science; good science makes people angry. It makes some people angry enough that they go out and do something about it.' ”





As good as that is, it still misses something quite significant: it's hardly only or even mainly "good science" which makes (some) people "angry", and, yes, it does. But "bad science"-- as in sloppy, unscientific, poorly designed and poorly done science work--the sort of science work we've seen a good deal of in the last ten to twenty years--that science also "makes people 'angry' and does that for very sound reasons.

So the far better point is simply that "anger" over the science--good or bad, done well or done very badly--is not a good indicator of whether the science is, per se,"good" or "bad". And this essential
point is simply and wholly lost on the present "Science" forum's authoritarian "moderator" (LOL!).

(For Your Information: this venue was suggested to me as an alternative to expecting any meaningful welcome for argument--*that is, at the properly designated "Science" group's page.)

(*added to rectify editing omission)
cheers.

2aspirit
Ago 4, 2022, 8:26 pm

Questions such as "Are rocks conscious?

"Could memories be stored in bioelectric fields?

"Are we complete human beings without the viruses, bacteria, fungus, and other living things that work with human DNA for our survival?"

3mikevail
Ago 4, 2022, 10:10 pm

"Can the average wine drinker tell the difference between Bordeaux and Malbec?"
"Is dark matter dangerous?"
"What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

4ljbryant
Ago 5, 2022, 12:16 am

>3 mikevail: Would that be an African swallow or a European swallow?

5John5918
Modificato: Ago 5, 2022, 2:27 am

>3 mikevail:, >4 ljbryant: And would it then be ethical to use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch against a rabbit?

6lriley
Modificato: Ago 5, 2022, 7:18 am

Actually I’ve been going through Vaclav Smil’s How the world really works and in chapter 2 he posits that in 1950 the world population was 2.5 billion and malnutrition to some degree back in 1950 affected about 65% of that population. That by 2018 world population had increased to 7.9 billion and malnutrition decreased to less than 9%. He goes on that without the massive increase in oil and gas production to create the conditions to accomplish that decrease for a much greater global population (that is expected to grow by another 2 billion by 2050) it wouldn’t have been possible….and is very skeptical that the world can get on top of this oil/gas extraction problem anytime in the near future.

What that also required and I’m sure conservatives aren’t going to like this is a lot of worldwide government intervention and social engineering. The necessary legislation for instance to create infrastructure projects to reach people where they are…..scientific projects to drive agriculture to produce food in much greater quantity. As far as infrastructure in the United States a lot of it is in poor shape and needs to be renewed and that again cannot be accomplished without government taking the lead.

7mikevail
Ago 5, 2022, 7:26 am

>4 ljbryant:,>5 John5918:
Um, I don't know. Arrrrrrrh...(gets punted)

8proximity1
Ago 5, 2022, 8:40 am

>2 aspirit:

Yeah, those and more.

if it's really about science concerns (includesl, of course, science's own concern for "Is 'X' really a proper concern of science?"

9proximity1
Modificato: Ago 5, 2022, 11:17 am

>6 lriley:

for example, yes.

That wouldn't be allowed over at "Science"-- but is allowed here --along with all other topics which directly or indirectly touch on science. There's really not a lot that is wholly lacking in any science angle.

BTW, Bertrand Russell wrote an interesting essay on just the point you raise. Some rather dodgy comment about that here.

10proximity1
Modificato: Set 17, 2022, 9:42 am

Interesting things about the history of Western societies' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic--which one wouldn't be allowed to post or discuss over at the "Science" fora:



(from Tabletmag.com : Deborah Birx’s Guide to Destroying America | The former White House coronavirus coordinator’s monstrous autobiography explains how lockdowns happened | by Michael P. Senger * | August 08, 2022

a book review/critique of Birx’s new book Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late (2022, New York, Harper Collins Publishers)

(excerpts from Michael Senger's Tablet Mag article)


"Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, was one of the “trifecta” of three leading public officials who successfully pushed COVID lockdowns in the United States. Virtually every page of Birx’s new book, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late, reads like a how-to guide from the front lines of subverting a democratic superpower from within. It bears repeating, from the outset, that lockdowns were never part of any democratic country’s pandemic preparedness plan prior to Xi Jinping’s lockdown of Wuhan, China.

"The lockdowns that Xi pioneered and Birx so zealously advocated for reportedly led to over 170,000 non-COVID excess deaths among young Americans while failing to meaningfully slow the spread of COVID anywhere they were tried. It would have been impossible for an enemy agent armed with anything less than nuclear weapons to have inflicted so much damage on America’s economy, social fabric, and historical freedoms in such a short period of time.

"Notably, though Birx’s memoir has earned relatively few reviews from human readers on Amazon, it’s earned rave reviews from Chinese state media, a feat not shared even by the far more popular pro-lockdown books of professional genuflectors to power like Lawrence Wright.

"The glowing response from Chinese state media should come as no surprise. Nearly every sentence of Birx’s book faithfully parrots the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign and domestic propaganda, which helped facilitate Xi’s weaponization of the COVID response to eliminate the independence of the CCP’s private sector rivals.

Chapter 1 opens with what Birx claims was her first impression of the virus:


'I can still see the words splashed across my computer screen in the early morning hours of January 3. Though we were barely into 2020, I was stuck in an old routine, waking well before dawn and scanning news headlines online. On the BBC’s site, one caught my attention: “China Pneumonia Outbreak: Mystery Virus Probed in Wuhan.” '


"Indeed, that BBC article, which was posted at approximately 9:00 a.m. EST on Jan. 3, 2020, was the first in a Western news organization to discuss the outbreak of a new virus in Wuhan. Apparently, Birx was scanning British news headlines just as it appeared. Birx then tells us where she got her philosophy of disease mitigation, recalling how she immediately believed Chinese citizens “knew what had worked” against SARS-1: masks and distancing:

"Government officials and citizens across Asia knew both the pervasive fear and the personal response that had worked before to mitigate the loss of life and the economic damage wrought by SARS and MERS. They wore masks. They decreased the frequency and size of social gatherings. Crucially, based on their recent experience, the entire citizenry and local doctors were ringing alarm bells loudly and early. Lives were on the line—lots of them. They knew what had worked before, and they would do it again.

"Birx spends several pages tut-tutting the CCP for its “cover-up” of the virus (which Chinese state media pointedly didn’t mind), then tells us:


'On January 3, the same day the BBC piece ran, the Chinese government officially notified the United States of the outbreak. Bob Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was contacted by his Chinese counterpart, George F. Gao'.


"Note that Jan. 3 was also the same day that heroic Chinese whistleblower Li Wenliang was reportedly admonished by Chinese authorities for sending a WeChat message about a “cover-up” of the outbreak. In other words, on the same day Li was 'admonished,' the head of China’s CDC personally called U.S. CDC Director Robert Redfield to share the same information Li supposedly shared. Some cover-up.

"From here, it gets worse. One page later, Birx tells us how traumatized she still is from having watched videos of Wuhan residents collapsing and falling dead in January 2020, and praises the “courageous doctor” who shared them online:


'The video showed a hallway crowded with patients slumped in chairs. Some of the masked people leaned against the wall for support. The camera didn’t pan so much as zigzag while the Chinese doctor maneuvered her smartphone up the narrow corridor. My eye was drawn to two bodies wrapped in sheets lying on the floor amid the cluster of patients and staff. The doctor’s colleagues, their face shields and other personal protective equipment in place, barely glanced at the lens as she captured the scene. They looked past her, as if at a harrowing future they could all see and hoped to survive. I tried to increase the volume, but there was no sound. My mind seamlessly filled that void, inserting the sounds from my past, sounds from other wards, other places of great sorrow. I had been here before. I had witnessed scenes like this across the globe, in HIV ravaged communities—when hospitals were full of people dying of AIDS before we had treatment or before we ensured treatment to those who needed it. I had lived this, and it was etched permanently in my brain: the unimaginable, devastating loss of mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, brothers, sisters.

'Staring at my computer screen, I was horrified by the images from Wuhan, the suffering they portrayed, but also because they confirmed what I’d suspected for the last three weeks: Not only was the Chinese government underreporting the real numbers of the infected and dying in Wuhan and elsewhere, but the situation was definitely far more dire than most people outside that city realized. Up until now, I’d been only reading or hearing about the virus. Now it had been made visible by a courageous doctor sharing this video online.


Birx’s book was published in April 2022. The early videos she recounts as the source of her trauma were exposed as fake by the Associated Press and other outlets in February of 2020.

"In the next paragraph, Birx tells us how she grew even more determined after seeing that the Chinese had built a hospital in 10 days to fight the virus:


'Dotting it were various pieces of earth-moving equipment, enough of them in various shapes and sizes that I briefly wondered if the photograph was of a manufacturing plant where the newly assembled machines were on display. Quickly, I learned that the machines were in Wuhan and that they were handling the first phase of preparatory work for the construction of a one-thousand-bed hospital to be completed in just ten days’ time … The Chinese may not have been giving accurate data about the numbers of cases and deaths, but the rapid spread of this disease could be counted in other ways—including in how many Chinese workers were being employed to build new facilities to relieve the pressure on the existing, and impressive, Wuhan health service centers. You build a thousand-bed hospital in ten days only if you are experiencing unrelenting community spread of a highly contagious virus that has eluded your containment measures and is now causing serious illness on a massive scale.'


"BuzzFeed had proved that images of rapid hospital construction in China were faked on Jan. 27, 2020.

"To recap, Deborah Birx—the woman who did more than almost any other person in the United States to promote and prolong COVID lockdowns, and attempted, with the support of mainstream media outlets, to silence anyone who disagreed with her—tells us in 2022 that she’d been inspired in her work by images that were widely known to have been faked (as if the real images of old age homes in Italy and elsewhere weren’t bad enough) before the lockdowns even started.

"That’s Chapter 1.

"Birx then spends hundreds of pages recounting what appears to be political maneuvering to intentionally deceive as many Americans as possible into willingly locking down for as long as possible, without making it seem like a “lockdown”:


'At this point, I wasn’t about to use the words lockdown or shutdown. If I had uttered either of those in early March, after being at the White House only one week, the political, nonmedical members of the task force would have dismissed me as too alarmist, too doom-and-gloom, too reliant on feelings and not facts. They would have campaigned to lock me down and shut me up.'


"Birx recalls using flatten-the-curve guidance' to manipulate the 'political, nonmedical members' of the government into consenting to lockdowns that were stricter than they realized:


'On Monday and Tuesday, while sorting through the CDC data issues, we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. At the same time, we needed the measures to be effective at slowing the spread, which meant matching as closely as possible what Italy had done—a tall order. We were playing a game of chess in which the success of each move was predicated on the one before it.'


"She also admits that her guidance regarding the maximum allowable size of social gatherings—10 people—was arbitrary, because her real goal was zero—no social contact of any kind, anywhere:


'I had settled on ten knowing that even that was too many, but I figured that ten would at least be palatable for most Americans—high enough to allow for most gatherings of immediate family but not enough for large dinner parties and, critically, large weddings, birthday parties, and other mass social events. … Similarly, if I pushed for zero (which was actually what I wanted and what was required), this would have been interpreted as a “lockdown”—the perception we were all working so hard to avoid.


"This is one of several quotes in which Birx refers to 'our version' of a lockdown, though she never makes it clear what the original “version” of a lockdown was (read: China’s). In fact, though Birx spends hundreds of pages boasting about her crusade for lockdowns across America, she never once explains why she wanted them or why she felt they were a good idea, other than the aforementioned brief asides about China’s supposed success using social distancing to combat SARS-1.

"Birx then says that she had a regular system for surreptitiously revising and hiding information from her bosses (whom she calls “gatekeepers”) after they reviewed her guidance to the states, in order to keep lockdown measures in place for as long as possible against the wishes of the White House:


'After the heavily edited documents were returned to me, I’d reinsert what they had objected to, but place it in those different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit.

Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected. In slipping these changes past the gatekeepers and continuing to inform the governors of the need for the big-three mitigations—masks, sentinel testing, and limits on indoor social gatherings—I felt confident I was giving the states permission to escalate public health mitigation with the fall and winter coming.'


"Birx’s plans seem to be going quite well for her until she meets the book’s leading antagonist: Scott Atlas, the former Stanford University neuroradiology professor serving as an adviser to the Task Force. To Birx’s disgust, Atlas took a strong stand against school closures, treating children as unique vectors of disease, and other heresies. Birx lists Atlas’ 'dangerous assertions': ...

"Birx then divulges her strategy of using federal advisories to give cover to state governors to impose mandates and restrictions" ....



-----------------------------------------------------

About the author: Michael P. Senger is an attorney based in San Francisco and author of the book Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World. Senger has a blog at Substack.com .




For MORE Posts on Covid-19, see #s 20 and 54, 61 et seq.

11proximity1
Modificato: Ago 14, 2022, 3:57 pm

SCIENCE --

THE "BIG BANG" THEORY of an inflationary, expanding universe collapses

To understand how and why that is, read on.

Subjects: Cosmology, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Inflationary/Expansionary theories of cosmology;



(excerpts from the article by Eric Lerner referenced below at (4.))
---------------------
"Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since. Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. 'Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,' says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, 'and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.'

"It is not too complicated to explain why these too small, too smooth, too old and too numerous galaxies are completely incompatible with the Big Bang hypothesis. Let’s begin with 'too small'. If the universe is expanding, a strange optical illusion must exist. Galaxies (or any other objects) in expanding space do not continue to look smaller and smaller with increasing distance. Beyond a certain point, they start looking larger and larger. (This is because their light is supposed to have left them when they were closer to us.) This is in sharp contrast to ordinary, non-expanding space, where objects look smaller in proportion to their distance." ...

"Smaller and smaller is exactly what the JWST images show. Even galaxies with greater luminosity and mass than our own Milky Way galaxy appear in these images to be two to three times smaller than in similar images observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), and the new galaxies have redshifts which are also two to three times greater.

"Smaller and smaller is exactly what the JWST images show.
...

"This is not at all what is expected with an expanding universe, but it is just exactly what I and my colleague Riccardo Scarpa predicted based on a non-expanding universe, with redshift proportional to distance. Starting in 2014, we had already published results, based on HST images, that showed that galaxies with redshifts all the way up to 5 matched the expectations of non-expanding, ordinary space. So we were confident the JWST would show the same thing—which it already has, for galaxies having redshifts as high as 12. Put another way, the galaxies that the JWST shows are just the same size as the galaxies near to us, if it is assumed that the universe is not expanding and redshift is proportional to distance.

...

"Big Bang theorists have known for years from the HST images that their assumptions necessitate the existence of these tiny, ultra-dense “Mighty Mouse” galaxies. JWST has made the problem far worse. The same theorists have speculated that the tiny galaxies grow up into present day galaxies by colliding with each other—merging to become more spread out. An analogy to this hypothetical merger process would be to imagine a magical toy car a centimeter long that nonetheless weighs as much as a SUV and grows up into a real SUV by colliding with many other toy cars.

"But the JWST has shot through this far-out scenario as well. If you could believe the toy car story, you would at least expect some fender dents in the colliding cars. And Big Bang theorists did expect to see badly mangled galaxies scrambled by many collisions or mergers. What the JWST actually showed was overwhelmingly smooth disks and neat spiral forms, just as we see in today’s galaxies. The data in the 'Panic!' article (.3 (below)) showed that smooth spiral galaxies were about '10 times' as numerous as what theory had predicted and that this 'would challenge our ideas about mergers being a very common process'. In plain language, this data utterly destroys the merger theory.

"With few or no mergers, there is no way tiny galaxies could grow to be a hundred times bigger. Therefore, they were not tiny to begin with, and thus the optical illusion predicted from the expanding universe hypothesis does not exist. But no illusion means no expansion: the illusion is an unavoidable prediction from expansion. Thus, the panic among Big Bang supporters. Tiny and smooth galaxies mean no expansion and thus no Big Bang." ...

___
(Eric J. Lerner is President and Chief Scientist of LPP Fusion. He is the author of The Big Bang Never Happened.)


References

to books:
1.) LERNER, Eric J.The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe (1991)

2.) Popper, Karl R. (1982)Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics

Popper, Karl R. (1959) The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books.
Popper, Karl R. (1963) Conjectures and Refutations. New York: Routledge.

to articles:

3.) Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at z > 3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field | Draft version July 29, 2022 | Received January 1, 2018; Revised January 7, 2018; Accepted July 29, 2022 | Submitted to ApJ
(Authors: Leonardo Ferreira, Nathan Adams, Christopher J. Conselice, Elizaveta Sazonova, Duncan Austin, Joseph Caruana, Fabricio Ferrari, Aprajita Verma, James Trussler, Tom Broadhurst, Jose Diego, Brenda L. Frye, Massimo Pascale, Stephen M. Wilkins, Rogier A. Windhorst, and Adi Zitrin.)

4.) The Big Bang didn't happen | What do the James Webb images really show? | from iai.tv (News); 11 August 2022

5.) Popper, Karl R. 1940. Interpretations of nebular red-shifts. Nature 145: 69-70, 701.

6.) Popper, Karl R. 1965. Time’s arrow and entropy. Nature 207: 233-234.



12JGL53
Modificato: Ago 14, 2022, 4:51 pm

So-and-so says the Big Bang is bullshit? Really? Well, saying something is so does not make it so. I've no doubt a persuasive argument can be made - to a layperson - for practically anything regarding cosmology and such but whom can a layperson trust?

The day that I hear that there is a consensus, e.g., among Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krass and Brian Cox that the Big Bang theory is essentially disproved or radically discredited by new evidence THEN maybe I will reconsider the B.B. Until then, not so much.

13prosfilaes
Ago 14, 2022, 11:54 pm

With something like the Big Bang, prove it. And not to me, because I can't tell; prove it to the astronomer community.

I like how you quote Alison Kirkpatrick, but don't cite that quote. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02056-5

Looking at arxiv.org, Eric J. Lerner does seem to publish in academic journals. Good; when he convinces his peers, then I might listen.

14proximity1
Modificato: Ago 15, 2022, 1:24 pm

Allison Kirkpatrick's comment ( a "Tweet") was directly cited (by Lerner) with the source shown as: https://twitter.com/AkAstronomy/status/1552350497729904640

in the body of the article which I cited and linked.

her, "That’s a problem, she says, because it contradicts earlier theories of galaxy evolution. “We’re going to have to figure that out” changes nothing materially--and she's to be commended for such prompt and open recognition--where others of her colleagues are lagging.

If you can't read or pay proper attention to such details, that's your problem, not mine.
Her tweet remains and even now says, (quote) "I stand by that statement."

--------------------------------

..."The day that I hear that there is a consensus, e.g., among Neil deGrasse Tyson, Lawrence Krass (sic) and Brian Cox that the Big Bang theory is essentially disproved or radically discredited by new evidence THEN maybe I will reconsider"...

You shall. And you may not have to wait long. All of these--and many, many others less well-known now look like exactly the closed-minded clowns that they are. They're going to come out and publicly acknowledge and accept the consequences of these data for present-day cosmology's view on an expanding universe. They'll do that because, unlike you, as scientists they're bound to yield to facts--even when that isn't pretty or flattering to their egos.

LOL!

--------------------------

P.S. It's Lawrence Krauss, not "Krass".

P.P.S.

In a detailed paper (already cited (and linked: https://www.lppfusion.com/storage/GOLE-Lerner.pdf ) above, Eric Lerner sets out methodically the historical background for the conception and eventual acceptance of the Big Bang Hypothesis (BBH) over decades of scientific investigation and disputatious interpretation of data--for some time and, at first, often, though not always, simply inconclusive for fault of the instruments and precision which became available later.

You could read that paper--it's freely available. But you won't like what he so clearly explains--so I have no expectation that you'd bother. It's just not like you to do that.

But, for others, some choice excerpts from this historical review:



... "2. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Predictions have been refuted by Observation

Over a period of many decades, but in recent years at an accelerating pace, actual observations have consistently and severely diverged from the light elements abundance predictions derived from Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) theories. Yet, although the accord of observations with
predictions should have been viewed as a critical test of the Big Bang, the increasing divergence of observation and prediction has not generally been viewed as a failure of the Big Bang, but rather as a persistently unexplained anomaly.
In testing BBN predictions against observations, it is essential to perform a chronological analysis, comparing published predictions with subsequent observations. It is always possible to create explanations of some sort for observations that have already been made—see, for example Kipling (1912). But this is not science, which requires validation by predictions made before observations.

"It should be noted that the abundance of light elements was not the first data set hypothesized as evidence for the Big Bang. In the very first proposal of the Big Bang hypothesis George Lemaitre (1931) cited the observation of high-energy cosmic rays as the key observational evidence for a “primeval atom” which burst apart at energies above those that could be achieved by any process in the present-day universe. But Millikan had already demonstrated in 1928 that most cosmic rays observed on earth could be produced by nuclear reactions (Millikan and Cameron,1928). By 1939, Alfven (1939) demonstrated that magnetic fields in the galaxy would so scramble the directions of cosmic rays that they should become isotropic.

"In 1946, Gamow (1946) proposed that the abundance of the elements, both heavy and light, could be predicted from a hot, dense, rapidly expanding origin of the universe, with only the density of the universe at a given time as a free variable. Once again, these predictions were almost immediately refuted. Hoyle (1946) showed that stellar evolution would lead to the production of heavier and heavier elements as the temperature in the center of a star increased.

"Far more detailed calculations ten years later by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle (Burbidge, et al 1957) showed that all the elements could be produced in roughly the right amounts by stars in the galaxy. As with cosmic rays, a phenomenon adduced as evidence of a Big Bang could be predicted in far greater and more accurate detail by processes in the current universe, specifically by stellar nucleosynthesis.

"The abundance of light elements was first hypothesized to be a consequence of the Big Bang in 1964 when Hoyle and Taylor (1964) published new calculations that indicated that 4 He, would be produced in approximately the observed amount by a Big Bang, although the predicted value was 39% by mass, which turned out to be considerably too high. Wagoner, Fowler and Hoyle (1967) showed in much greater detail that Big Bang predictions for the abundance of 4 He, 3 He, D and 7 Li could be obtained only dependent on the universal density of matter (Fig.1). Since the density variable was not at all easy to measure observationally with minimal accuracy, the predictions of BBN reduced to the existence of a range of density, η, that would give abundance predictions for all four isotopes that were consistent with observations.

(illustration/graph not reproduced here; see full article link)

(p. 4 in the text)

"In the first 15 years after these predictions were made, observed data provided only relatively wide ranges to compare with predictions. As a result, during this period there was no gap between the broad predictions of BBN and the equally broad range of observed abundances.

But by the early 1980’s this situation began to change, with much better data becoming available for all four isotopes. In 1982 Spite and Spite (1982) discovered a consistent Li abundance of close to 1.6 x10 -10 in Pop II dwarfs with a range of low heavy-elemental abundances. In the same period, measurements of 4 He abundances in H II regions started to accumulate evidence the 4 He abundance was no higher than 23% (Yang et al, 1984). As well, observations of D in interstellar plasma towards stars in the galaxy indicated upper limits for D around 2x10 -5 .

"As early as 1984, Vida-Madaj and Gry (1984) concluded that the observational results “seem to fit poorly the prediction of the standard Big Bang nucleosynthesis model.” They found that He observation required 0.3D require a range of 3.5Li in between. Already the gap between the He and D observations was about 2σ ( "s" "sigma" or standard deviations).

"In 1986, Ferland, (1986) calculated new collisional corrections that reduced the lowest 4 He values
to 18.6%. Melnick et al (1992) reported an observation as low as 21.6+-0.6% in 1992 while Mathews, Boyd and Fuller (1993) extrapolated data from over 40 galaxies plotted in Y vs Z to obtain a similar value of 22.3+-0.6%. Based on this and similar observations, the present author pointed out (Lerner, 1993) that 4 He could be, even at a 2σ limit, no more than 23%, which by BB calculations would imply primordial D of 1.7x10 -4 . This would be about 8 times the level observed in the ISM, requiring massive destruction of D in stars. Multiple observations showed this could not be the case because such thorough processing would produce wide variations in D and 3 He, which were not observed, and would over-produce 4 He, C,N and O. Walker et al (1991) claimed consistency in the narrow range of 2.74 He abundance of 24%.

"The failure of BBN predictions was acknowledged by Steigman, (1995) who termed it an “emerging crisis” and concluded that “the standard model of BBN” conflicted with observations at a 99.7% level. However, it should be noted that the author did not see this as evidence against the validity of BBN, but merely that some unknown physics, such as a massive tau neutrino, might modify the predictions.

"In 1997, Izotov et al (1997) began a series of papers that argued for a considerably higher observational value of 4 He, 24.3%, thus lifting h to 3.5 and relieving tension with the D and Li abundances. However, Izotov et al arrived at this higher figure mainly by either selecting out, for various reasons, or not including in the first place, all of the HII regions with the lowest 4 He abundances. This introduced a strong confirmation bias in the sample selection itself. Such selection was only deemed necessary after it was clear that lower 4 He abundances contradicted BBN."



Notes:

To facilitate reading, I've indicated elements' abbreviations in boldface-- e.g. D (Deuterium), He (Helium), 3 He (Helium-3), Li (Lithium), etc. "Three naturally occurring isotopes of the element hydrogen are often specified as H for 1H (protium), D for 2H (deuterium), and T for 3H (tritium)." (Wikipedia: "Element")

Other abbreviations are explained in the body of the text.

"An H II region or HII region (Wikipedia) is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized.(1) It is typically a cloud in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds of light years, and density from a few to about a million particles per cubic cm. The Orion Nebula, now known to be an H II region, was observed in 1610 by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc by telescope, the first such object discovered." ...

"η" (Greek letter "Eta" or "Heta")

Nucleosynthesis (generally)

Stellar Nucleosynthesis

Big Bang nucleosynthesis (: Cosmology, "baryon–photon ratio" (in "Big Bang Nucleosynthesis")

(Wikipedia) Stellar nucleosynthesis

ISM : "interstellar medium"

A periodic table (Wikipedia) will help with the less familiar scientific abbreviations for the elements referred to in the article.

15John5918
Ago 15, 2022, 9:32 am

Scientists are constantly evaluating and when necessary amending their theories as new data or new techniques become available. That's what science is all about. No need for any shock-horror hyperbole.

16jjwilson61
Ago 15, 2022, 4:38 pm

I think most scientists would be thrilled to find evidence that contradicts the current view. So much more opportunities to investigate why the old evidence which seemed so strong was misleading. After all, the old evidence is still there so why does it contradict the new evidence. I would think the saddest day for a scientist would be when they've finally figured it all out.

17librorumamans
Ago 15, 2022, 9:13 pm

>16 jjwilson61:

An even sadder day for grad students!

18proximity1
Ago 16, 2022, 11:28 am

>16 jjwilson61:

"I would think the saddest day for a scientist would be when they've finally figured it all out."

Fortunately, then, there's just no danger of that ever happening. Much more likely is that we'll lose more and more of the meager knowledge we've fought to gain--not just in science.

19kiparsky
Ago 17, 2022, 2:50 pm

>18 proximity1: I'm not sure what this is meant to mean. Where do you think this knowledge is going to go?

20proximity1
Modificato: Ago 27, 2022, 3:58 pm

Lockdown effects feared to be killing more people than Covid | Unexplained excess deaths outstrip those from virus as medics call figures ‘terrifying’ |
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 18 August 2022 • 9:30pm


(note: Regrets: full text is behind Daily Telegraph paywall)

"The effects of lockdown may now be killing more people than are dying of Covid, official statistics suggest"....

-------------------------------

The impact of lockdowns could be causing more deaths than Covid, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests | Tom Evans | Published Friday 19 August 2022 - 09:48 | (from GBNews)

Last updated Friday 19 August 2022 - 09:51
-------------------------
"ONS (Office of National Statistics) figures for excess deaths in the UK suggest that around 1,000 more people than usual are dying from illnesses and conditions other than Covid.

"This would make the rate of excess deaths 14.4 percent higher than the five-year average – and mean 1,350 more people than normal died in the week ending August 5.

"Of this 1,350, 469 were Covid-related deaths and the remaining 881 have "not been explained".

"Since June, almost 10,000 more deaths unrelated to Covid have been recorded – equating to more than 1,000 per week. ...
_______________________________________

See MORE on COVID-19's wake at Post # 54, below.

21proximity1
Ago 20, 2022, 1:27 pm


"Time" is a strange epiphenomenon which, strictly speaking, shouldn't be imposed as even a variable in describing and measuring physics' material phenomena. Outside a strictly "local" frame--which is inherently arbitrarily defined--there is no such thing as "now".

Sabine Hossenfelder explains in:

"Existential physics: What is happening 'now' is relative
In special relativity, the statement that two events happened at the same time is meaningless." (August 19, 2022)

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/special-relativity-existential-physics/

22aspirit
Ago 20, 2022, 7:24 pm

>20 proximity1: Daily Telegraph is not generally considered a credible news source. It has an especially bad reputation for how it handles scientific topics. Readers should be wary of anything it says involving COVID-19 or any disease outbreaks.

I don't recognize the name "GBNews" but after looking it up, I'm unsurprised their headline is an outright falsehood. They're not known for misusing scientific data to make up whatever's convenient for their political propaganda.

What many of us know from paying attention the last two years is that "excess death" studies during this pandemic capture unreported COVID-related fatalities. The extreme rise in excess deaths in many countries is widely recognized by researchers to stem from COVID cases that weren't confirmed and from outbreaks interfering with general healthcare. The UK's ONS data actually suggests UK has had insufficient testing as well as resource scarcity (such as hospital beds and able-bodied medical staff) during peaks of COVID cases.

Countries that made almost no attempts at a lockdown and that did not implement effective testing and reporting strategies to track viral spread show high levels of excess deaths through this pandemic. So, obviously, it's not lockdowns that were the cause.

Lockdowns of non-essential services reduce spread, which reduces the hospitalizations needed, meaning they prevent deaths.

See...

Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19 | CDC (USA)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

The true death toll of COVID-19: Estimating global excess mortality | WHO
https://www.who.int/data/stories/the-true-death-toll-of-covid-19-estimating-glob...

Why do the estimates show negative excess deaths for some countries?

Negative excess deaths could be observed if deaths that would have happened in the absence of the pandemic were averted due to measures taken to deal with the pandemic. Some public health measures (e.g., lockdown, social distancing, mask wearing, working from home) have led to decrease in the number of deaths from causes other than COVID-19. For instance, a decreased number of deaths due to road traffic injuries and seasonal flu has been observed due to restricted movement of people.

Quote source: https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/global-excess-deaths-as...

See also...

Covid-19: Critical care wards full in hospitals across England | BBC News (Jan 2021)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-55672901

-and- Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK: Cases in England | Gov.UK
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=Engla...

NOTE: The ONS report of excess deaths says, "The months with the highest number of excess deaths were April 2020 (43,796 excess deaths) and January 2021 (16,548 excess deaths); these were also the months which had the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19."

23aspirit
Ago 20, 2022, 7:28 pm

>21 proximity1: Time is relevant like height, width, and depth are relevant. When dealing with something small enough we can't interact with it well, the usual measurements lose meaning.

24kiparsky
Modificato: Ago 20, 2022, 10:59 pm

>23 aspirit: I'm no physicist, but as I understand it the statement that simultaneity is not meaningful under relativity is (a) so thoroughly accepted as to not even qualify as "trivial" and (b) not generally observable in non-relativistic contexts. So basically, yes, you can come up with scenarios in which simultaneity does not behave the way we want it to, but none of those scenarios occur outside of thought experiments, and nobody with even passing familiarity with relativity would be even vaguely surprised by any of them.

This idea has obviously provided great fodder for science fiction stories, probably the best of them being Joe Haldeman's The Forever War - which is about half a century old. When Haldeman wrote this, it was a striking metaphor for the distancing effect of war on soldiers. These days, I think it would be hard to lean much weight on temporal dilation as a plot point, as it's been pretty well covered. So I expect we'll be seeing some mainstream fiction writer delivering themselves of a pretentious stab at it any day now, and lauded for their daring cutting-edge ideas.

Anyway, if the idea that time dilation is considered non-banal, I'm not sure what this thread is for. Next thing, it'll be the remarkable discovery that objects attract each other in proportion to their mass.

When dealing with something small enough we can't interact with it well, the usual measurements lose meaning.

I think you're thinking of quantum effects here? You're at the wrong end of the telescope, I'm afraid. Relativistic effects are certainly observable at the macro scale, they just require relative velocities high enough to produce effects that matter, For example, we have to correct for them in satnav systems: when you have a satellite moving at orbital velocity and you're depending on the difference time between several signals traveling at light speed, you do indeed get time dilation effects that significantly affect your results.

There may be some interesting problems with simultaneity at the quantum scale, I suppose. Here we're definitely out of my zone, but I would imagine you could come up with something based on Heisenberg uncertainty: if you can't know the product of a particle's position and velocity beyond a certain precision (which is, to the best of my knowledge, what Heisenberg says) then perhaps you can find some way to turn that into a quantum-level simultaneity paradox. I wouldn't know, though.

25proximity1
Modificato: Ago 21, 2022, 10:28 am

RE: >21 proximity1:

I think that Hossenfelder--with whose views I typically agree (she's the professional expert and I'm her "student")-- might have made her point even more effectively if she'd presented a photo such as this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R136a1#/media/File:The_young_cluster_R136.jpg

Here, we're "looking at" an image of distant light-sources--but the light itself from these stars has "reached us", that is, the photons emitted from these sources--the distances of which are certainly not equal, which is the point I'm driving at with this--have travelled far, covered immense distances measured in light-years reaching "us".

And then explained that the "reality" "behind" this image is deceptive to us as lay readers for a very simple reason: most people import and assume their very natural "photographic bias" in viewing (thus, silently "interpreting") any photo --even one picturing vast distances across space. That bias silently supposes that all and everything in the viewing frame is temporally "equal"--all seen at the same "time". And, in a family photo, that's true, of course.

It is not true of the photo linked above.

Those stars' images are presenting partial momentary photographic glimpses of objects at wildly differing "times". One star's light may be 400+ earth-years distant (i.e. "old") while its nearest visible "neighbor" in the spatial confines of the photographic image might be 4000+ earth-years distant ("old"). (This is not dependent upon any supposed "expansionary" effect from a "Big Bang." The same essential facts, for these purposes, apply in a static (non-expanding) universe.) We naively don't distinguish between these--because they're "both" "present" in the "same" photo image and our view doesn't allow us to grasp the depth of field --as we could in a terrestrial family photo. Or, to put it in those family-photo's terms, imagine that, in the same photo, one member is shown as an embryo, while, next to him or her, there's a decayed corpse, another, a young child, still another, a man or woman in the "prime of life"--all in the same image--but having "reached the camera's lens" across quite different time's travel.

So, had Hossenfelder made this explicit, we'd better grasp her point about the essential galactic flimsiness of "now".

26kiparsky
Ago 21, 2022, 12:55 pm

>25 proximity1: Ah, I see.

That's even less interesting, really. All this means to say is that a photograph (or other image) of a stellar field is a record of photons (or other particles) which were all emitted at different times and reached the sensor at around the same time - that is to say, that C is constant and stars are at different distances. But of course, this has nothing to do with simultaneity at all. There's nothing about "two particles are detected in the same image" that implies any connection between those two particles, any more than two flights landing at Logan airport implies that those two flights took off at the same moment.

I thought this was about things that weren't conventionally banal?

27aspirit
Ago 21, 2022, 1:14 pm

>24 kiparsky: I was deliberately looking beyond microscopes rather than telescopes to find something to respond to in the previous post and chose to take up the general statement about time applied to material. (This thread has been looking sad, you know?)

Humans are better at sizing up in our comprehension of concepts than we are at sizing down. I don't know the scientific terms, only that we obviously can track time, like distance, for astronomical events. Seems to me as obvious that time is generally less meaningful with quantum events, but I've noticed try almost everyone avoids thinking in that direction to start with.

Either way, time is a measurement. Is this banal topic? Yes, but it's less annoying than "OMG, lockdowns kill! (Nevermind the deadly viral spread!)"

28kiparsky
Modificato: Ago 21, 2022, 3:55 pm

>28 kiparsky: I was deliberately looking beyond microscopes rather than telescopes to find something to respond to in the previous post and chose to take up the general statement about time applied to material
I see, I was confused since the post you were responding to specifically cited relativity. But if we want to go into quantum, that's always fun - again, I know less than I'd like to here, but enough to at least make sensible mistakes, I guess.

Seems to me as obvious that time is generally less meaningful with quantum events

Maybe you can help me understand this, I'm not sure what you're thinking of here. Unless maybe this is something to do with the double-slit experiment and particles "choosing their path"?

29mikevail
Ago 21, 2022, 9:28 pm

>28 kiparsky:
I think the general idea is that time is asymmetrical in the macro world as per the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This is a consequence of the probability inherent in statistical mechanics in a closed system. Quantum level events are discrete and time indiscriminate. It's really just matter of a particle with x energy and y momentum. Quantities like temperature and pressure only exist as macro level results of quantum level activity.

30proximity1
Modificato: Ago 24, 2022, 10:02 am

I recommend re-reading S. Hossenfelder's article--and doing some look-up of obscure terms and concepts--until things become clearer; she's rather clear about what she's saying and why.

"Existential physics: What is happening 'now' is relative
In special relativity, the statement that two events happened at the same time is meaningless." (August 19, 2022)

https://bigthink.com/hard-science/special-relativity-existential-physics/

She doesn't go into thermodynamics in any expressed or implied way for a very good reason: that's not really her concern in the article.

It's ironic that the bullshit petty invective directed at me here--where I've come as a refugee from a resolutely inhospitable "normal" "Science" group--would, if tried in the "Science" group, assuming (bravely) that that group's moderator were to apply her stated standards of practice consistently, promptly result, at least, in that group's moderator's scolding of those engaging in the kind of petty hectoring of me here going on here and implicitly warning of the risk of potential ejection from the group .

Those indulging in that while at the same imagining that they can expect to pose queries to me which I'll respond to with the kind of courtesy they refuse to show here is another indication of their being very confused.

31proximity1
Modificato: Ago 22, 2022, 10:47 am

>29 mikevail:

Not sure of your meaning by "Quantum level events are discrete and time indiscriminate" but if this is a way of stating that quantum physical phenomena are independent of macro-level space-time measures, then I suppose I follow you there.

Again, not sure of your meaning with "Quantities like temperature and pressure only exist as macro level results of quantum level activity". I might speculate that this is another way of saying that, at the atomic and sub-atomic particle level of matter, there is neither "heat" nor "pressure"--just the "strong" and "weak" forces of electromagnetic energy (and gravity's influences?--also devoid of a "heat" or "pressure" aspect).

Still, by conjecture, it's assumed, for example, that radioactive decays--which are certainly a quantum physical phenomenon-- are useful as "standard clocks" (1), independent of the macro-level physics going on "above". So, cesium-133 decay is supposed to be extremely regular.

Moreover, it's supposed that the instigator of a star's core fusion reaction is, indeed, just the accumulated mass of the star eventually creating sufficient _pressure_ (and _heat) at the core to create a fusion reaction at a molecular level. In that case, combined macro-effects of heat and pressure are
presumably among the most "common" of astrophysical phenomena, right?

-----------------------
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock

(related?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhomogeneous_cosmology

32aspirit
Ago 22, 2022, 12:09 pm

>30 proximity1: I'm sorry you feel you're being bullied. At the same time, I'm questioning if you understand why some of your comments so far have been referred to as banal and annoying.

There's honest confusion about what you want us to talk about as well as wariness as why it's here. This is the Pro and Con group, for politics. I'm not going digging into what's happening in the Science group, as the easy assumption is that you were directed here because of highly politicized science topics. Some of those topics that came up frequently online include the misuse of statistical data to protest against efforts to save lives with methods based on scientific consensus. It's annoying to see that dumped in the middle of what looks like unfocused philosophizing as if it's not political propaganda that is getting real people killed and injured.

As for what's banal vs. unique, that's going to bring up debate in a group created for debate. I think there's something interesting starting with the physics talk. I would like to see that continue and participate when I'm in a better mindspace for pulling up examples.

33kiparsky
Ago 22, 2022, 12:21 pm

Katie Mack published a book about two years ago (ish, can't recall exact publication date) called The End Of Everything, which provides five scenarios for the end of the universe, rooted in pretty modern physics. The writing assumes little or no physics background, and I found it quite a good read. Recommended for people looking for interesting reading on non-banal science topics.

(she had a conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson when the book was released, this was hosted by the Harvard Bookstore (not the Coop, but John Harvard's) and can probably be found with little effort by anyone interested)

34Molly3028
Ago 22, 2022, 12:24 pm

>32 aspirit:

Prox has apparently lost interest in defending Trump and his clueless cult followers this year. He seems to believe posting about science in this pro-con political group would be an interesting departure.

35kiparsky
Ago 22, 2022, 1:11 pm

In less physics-oriented science. I've got two titles on my stack that look like they're going to be fun:
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals and How the Mountains Grew - both tie in with my interest in deep-time thinking, looking forward to digging into both of them.

36proximity1
Modificato: Ago 22, 2022, 1:53 pm

>32 aspirit:


"There's honest confusion about what you want us to talk about as well as wariness as why it's here."


I doubt that. It's clear that you could and, I guess did, read the explanation I've already posted--right in the OP above and you and "Kiparsky" understood it well enough to leap upon the occasion to ridicule me, in the first place, and this thread, in the second place, as "banal".

That's what I call deliberately shitty _bad_ _faith_ pseudo-participation. For you to now come here and pretend that you and I, well, there simply must have been a "misunderstanding", is frankly just more insulting stuff.


"This is the Pro and Con group, for politics."


Yeah? Well, tell the Science" Führer-lady--because, for her this group constitutes the "go to" place for any and all controversial stuff--whether science, religion, layman's matters, etc. As I've already explained, I'm not welcome to raise and discuss these controversies, however "scientific" or not, over there.

But, as she sees it no one may boot me from "Pro and Con" on account of controversy; so it seems you'd like to achieve the same result on account of some narrow view which has it that "Pro & Con" is "understood" to mean "politics"--as you see them.


I'm not going digging into what's happening in the Science group, as the easy assumption is that you were directed here because of highly politicized science topics.


Easy and essentially correct.


Some of those topics that came up frequently online include the misuse of statistical data to protest against efforts* to save lives with methods based on scientific consensus.


(* efforts claimed to, as supposed, without any clear evidence for it, "to save lives"--a disputed claim and supposition within the scientific community. )

Right again.


It's annoying to see that dumped in the middle of what looks like unfocused philosophizing as if it's not political propaganda that is getting real people killed and injured.


That's your opinion--and until things here get even worse, you're entitled to it.

My "philosophizing" is always focused, always "to the point". Nor is "focused" or "unfocused" what conventionally defines what is or isn't fitting in "Pro & Con".

I'd like a "Science" group that affords enough tolerance for controversial discussion to include--not just my views but those of accredited, recognized, working professional scientists whose views I may cite-- but these are such that the "Science" moderator sees fit to rule out of bounds. So, I don't get such an inclusive place.

Now, you knew this and had every reason to have known it.

Speaking of bad-faith participation, I see no objections to >34 Molly3028:, above, from you.

I've done my best to this point to ignore--not even open or read--the sniping posts from you and Kiparsky. I'm returning to that habit. Finally, this thread, which I opened, is clearly labelled: "SCIENCE -- for discussions which AREN'T confined to the conventionally banal".

You're welcome to read it or not, post your opinions in it or not. No one has forced you to do either. I consider your complaints entirely out of line and against the spirit and the letter of this site's TOS. I won't entertain such objections here again from you or any others of your tag-team.

37proximity1
Modificato: Ago 23, 2022, 12:44 pm

With "simultaneity" (a matter of temporality) the key topic of S. Hossenfelder's (latest mentioned) article, cited above, I present this excerpt from Lee Smolin's 2013 book, Time Reborn: From the Crisis of Physics to the Future of the Universe :



"Can a theory be successful as a generator of predictions and still be off the mark, in the sense that future theories may overturn the assumptions it makes about the world? This has happened several times in the history of science. The assumptions underlying Newton's laws of motion were overturned by relativity and quantum theory. Ptolemy's model of the solar system served (...) well for more than a millennium, yet it was based on ideas that are wildly wrong. It would seem that effectiveness is no guarantee of truth.

" I have come to believe that quantum mechanics will suffer the same fate as the great theories of Ptolemy and Newton. Perhaps we can't make sense of it simply because it isn't true. It is instead likely to be an approximation to a deeper theory that will be easier to make sense of. This deeper theory is the unknown cosmological theory all the arguments of this book point toward. The key is, again, the reality of time." ... (p. 141)


and, from Karl Popper (1982) :



"Our theories which guide us in setting up our experiments and in the interpretation of their results have of course always been our inventions: they are inventions or products of our 'consciousness'. But that has nothing to do with the scientific status of our theories which depends on factors such as their simplicity, their symmetry, and explanatory power, and on the way they have stood up to critical discussion and to crucial experimental tests; and on their truth (correspondence to reality), or nearness to truth.

...

"The view that theories are nothing but instruments, or calculating devices, has become fashionable among quantum theorists, owing to the Copenhagen doctrine that quantum theory is intrinsically ununderstandable because we can only understand classical 'pictures', such as 'particle pictures' or 'wave pictures'. I think this is a mistaken and even a vicious doctrine.
...

"I do not happen to believe that Schrodinger and Eckart have validly established the full logical equivalence of wave mechanics and matrix mechanics: there seem to be some loopholes in these equivalence proofs. On this point I agree with Norwood Russell Hanson (and E. L. Hill), although my views on the logic of the equivalence or identity of theories differ somewhat from Hanson's. Yet I do not think that such a proof is impossible, in spite of the great difference between the conceptual frameworks of the two theories.

... "Thus, although I am pleading here for realism in physics, I do not intend to define 'realism' or 'reality'. In pleading here for realism in physics I wish, in the main, to argue that nothing has changed since Galileo or Newton or Faraday concerning the status or role of the 'observer' or of our 'consciousness' or of our 'information' in physics. I am at the same time quite ready to point out that even in Newton's physics, 'space' was somewhat less real than 'matter' (because although it ('space') acted upon matter it could not be acted upon); and that in Einstein's special theory of relativity an inertial frame was less real than a spatio-temporal coincidence of two events or the spatio-temporal distance between them." ...

(all italics as in the original text)
------------------

Karl Popper, (1982) Hutchinson & Co., London; Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics
(Introductory Comments : I. Against the 'Observer; 2. Theories Versus Concepts) from pp. 41-46 (passim)


38kiparsky
Ago 22, 2022, 2:55 pm

>36 proximity1: Just to clarify, I questioned the notion that relativistic time dilation and its implications for simultaneity would be other than banal. The science is over a century old, is well understood by anyone who's had a high-school physics course in the last, oh, fifty years I'd guess, and it's well-attested in pop culture and popular science going back decades.

It's definitionally banal. Which, okay, maybe this thread includes both the banal and the non-banal, but the title promises at least a focus on stuff that's closer to interesting.

You personally may or may not be banal, I have no data on that and make no assertions about it one way or another.

My "philosophizing" is always focused, always "to the point"

This is a matter of opinion, and if that's your view I'm afraid we're not likely to come to any agreement on this. That's okay. It's not going to change my opinion of you one way or another.

39mikevail
Ago 22, 2022, 5:01 pm

>31 proximity1:
Yes, to both of the summarizations in your first two paragraphs. I would add that quantities like temperature are the result of interaction of vast quantities of quantum particles and are essentially a function of probability. Meaning improbable arrangements are less likely. It's possible that the egg you cracked could reassemble but it's extremely unlikely. The arrow of time implied the the 2nd Law has cosmological implications.
It seems like you want discuss the possibility of a static universe versus a dynamic (expanding/contracting) universe. This is, for sure, a fascinating topic but I think it'll require (for me anyway) a re-reading of information on General Relativity, Friedmann's equations, Boltzmann, Lemaitre and maybe Olbers' paradox.
Or maybe you're interested in the politics involved in challenging dogmatic adherents of Big Bang Theory. In which case, I would say that empirical evidence usually wins out in disputes between scientists. Someone, maybe Sagan? once said, "the exercise of the imagination has it's own rewards, but it's not scientific observation.

40kiparsky
Ago 23, 2022, 12:45 am

>37 proximity1: Can a theory be successful as a generator of predictions and still be off the mark, in the sense that future theories may overturn the assumptions it makes about the world? This has happened several times in the history of science. The assumptions underlying Newton's laws of motion were overturned by relativity and quantum theory. Ptolemy's model of the solar system served (...) well for more than a millennium, yet it was based on ideas that are wildly wrong. It would seem that effectiveness is no guarantee of truth.

Surely nobody expects a scientific inquiry to produce an absolute and permanent truth, do they? "Absolute truth" seems more the province of idiocy, Republicans, and religion: supreme confidence unsullied by any taint of reality. I don't think that anyone would argue with the idea that any scientific theory gains acceptance as a generator of predictions and eventually is supplanted by a more effective generator.

This, however, does not mean that the theory becomes less true in any interesting way. A theory that is supplanted by a better one does not suddenly become wrong - Newtonian mechanics is still an excellent way to understand the motion of the planets, and neither relativity nor quantum mechanics nor any future science will change that fact.

I have come to believe that quantum mechanics will suffer the same fate as the great theories of Ptolemy and Newton.

What, that it'll be a perfectly good theory capable of explaining everything it set out to explain, but not the final theory? This doesn't seem like a fate to be "suffered", it seems like the highest degree of success that any theory could achieve.

What exactly is it that you think you're getting at here? Your technique of generous dollops of quoted material surrounded by a marked absence of any actual claims of your own leaves you, as usual, in a position of smug incoherence. It might be helpful if you were to take a chance and say something that you mean. I know it's scary, but honestly, you couldn't be held in any more contempt by most of the readers of this forum than you are now, so what's to be lost? You have literally nowhere to go but up.

41proximity1
Modificato: Ago 23, 2022, 12:55 pm

>39 mikevail:

..."maybe you're interested in the politics involved in challenging dogmatic adherents of Big Bang Theory"

Rather more than that. The consequences for the adherents of the BBH (Big Bang hypothesis) are, foremost, the trouble of and the problem for professionals in astrophysics, cosmology.

For me, it serves as an example of the larger troubled state of science research generally; this could and ought to take in the wildly irresponsible moral panic --yes, "even" or, indeed, especially--but not only-- among the medical profession (as it was there that we've had one of the most spectacular failures of sound science practice in reasoning and responding) when faced with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. The typical western state's response--led by outrageously shoddy medical reasoning--was to impose draconian measures on no sound basis. (This is why I highlighted the dismal story of Dr. Deborah Birx, above, who violated every precept of responsible medical research theory and practice. Mainstream mass-media are now in the midst of a very concerted effort to keep taboo any critical questioning of those early science decision-makers' judgements unacceptable for open public discussion.) We now live in a perpetual case of moral panic described in Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds which lends itself to lynch-mob type scapegoating of those who refuse to toe the conventional line / (lie).

Research science has reached a sordid low-point in modern times and suffered a great loss in public confidence for that.

It happens that, for reasons having to do with his peculiarly acute insights into logic and reasoning and the overlooked errors so commonly associated with them, Karl Popper was one of the earliest observers and critics of this disastrous downturn in rigorous research design and the practice of logic in applied theory. As I expect you're already aware, Popper developed his critiques as postscripts to his work, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1951-56), the English translation of Logik der Forschung, written twenty years before (published in 1934). Those post-scripts eventually covered what he was persuaded to publish in three separate volumes:

Realism and the Aim of Science
The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism
and Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics

(To our shame, his term, "indeterminism" hasn't even succeeded in entering the language sufficiently to be recognized by this site's text-editor resident dictionary.)

Popper, using the term "schism", could not possibly have failed to know the great historical freight that the term carried and, so he chose it specifically to highlight the religiously cult-like character which, not just in physics, was developing in so many areas of scientific research in his time.

Most today have very little idea of the theoretical swamp the science of that time has left us swimming in--despite the best efforts of Popper to counter it. It wreaks tremendous harm on us.

These matters drive and inform my interests and aims here. And I thank you for the openness to have contemplated those interests and aims in so friendly a way.

-------------------------------


"Our elites are now viewed with the disdain they have earned on their own merits. And they are none too happy about it." | by Victor Davis Hanson | 21 August 2022 | from amgreatness.com


... "A generation from now(*), in the emperor has no clothes fashion, someone may innocently conclude that most “research” in the social sciences and humanities of our age is as unreliable as it is unreadable, or that the frequent copy-cat Hollywood remakes of old films were far worse than the originals."

...

"The reason why the United States begs Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil is not because of lazy frackers in Texas or incompetent rig hands in North Dakota, but because of utterly incompetent diplomats, green zealots, and ideological 'scientists.'
...

"Current universities produce more bad books, bad teaching, bad ideas, and badly educated students, not because the janitors are on strike, the maintenance people can’t fix the toilets, or the landscapers cannot keep the shrubbery alive, but because their academics and administrators have hidden their own incompetence and lack of academic rigor and teaching expertise behind the veil of woke censoriousness."
...


* It won't take a generation to come to this and it certainly won't be confined to the social sciences and humanities.

("Most-read" article in the past 24 hrs. (23-08-2022) @ RealClearPolitics.com )


42aspirit
Ago 23, 2022, 12:14 pm

"Speaking of bad-faith participation, I see no objections to >34 Molly3028: Molly3028:, above, from you."

You haven't seen me respond because I was elsewhere. I'll say for the benefit of a record that no one but you should be speaking for you. Although, sometimes it does help to have a translation of your posts.

As for the rest... that was interesting insight into your thought processes.

What's clear to me at this point is that participating in this thread is not worth my time and energy. I'll just pick up a physics book instead if I feel like returning. The books in >35 kiparsky: are also appealing.

43mikevail
Ago 23, 2022, 7:02 pm

>41 proximity1:
I think scientists (particularly physicists) are conservative in that they're not likely to abandon well-supported theories without compelling empirical evidence or strongly reasoned argument. I think this is a strength of the scientific method. It's usually pseudoscientists that throw out existing principles in favor of whatever garners media attention or website clicks. So sure, there are establishment types that protect the status quo but even they are obliged to follow the evidence.

44prosfilaes
Modificato: Ago 23, 2022, 11:01 pm

>41 proximity1: In 1956, the life expectancy of the average American was 66.7 for men, 72.9 for women. Now, it's 75.1 for men, and 80.5 for women. The key of science is evidence, and that's strong counterevidence that medical research works. I'm not saying it's perfect, I can talk about Cerivastatin and other dramatic medical failures, but as a whole, it's better than not having it.

"Our elites are now viewed with the disdain they have earned on their own merits. And they are none too happy about it." | by Victor Davis Hanson | 21 August 2022

To start at the end:
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.

Written by an elite. Check. A classics professor, a Californian, someone from the upper class...

The elite found in the truly poor—neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base—an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes, and romance of the far distant underclass.

Huh? Okay? I see two problems: for one, like always, things aren't put in their political contexts. Fetishizing the laborers and having contempt for the middle class is pretty standard in American history, I think, and even history in general. Secondly, Democratic base? What, George Herbert Walker Bush, second generation Yale student, son of Wall Street, Director of CIA, wasn't elite?

Second, race became increasingly divorced from class—a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals.

Like this is a bad thing? I'm confused what he's saying here.

The net result was more privilege for the elite and wealthy nonwhites, more neglect of the inner-city needy, and more disdain for the supposedly illiberal clingers, dregs, deplorables, chumps, and irredeemables.

Here's some way he's different from those he despises; no footnotes. No justification. No facts.

The twentysomething who coded a video game that went viral globally became a master of the universe, while the brilliant carpenter or electrical contractor was seen as hopelessly trapped in a world of muscular stasis.

Clark Gable, in 1934, got paid $2000 a week, or $44,000 a week in 2020 dollars. Admittedly, he was 33 by then. Welcome to capitalist reality, or maybe just reality; the world needs many carpenters, and few will get to experience any one, so a carpenter is not going to be the person making the big bucks or being famous, unless it becomes art. (Even then, I suspect Clark Gable making movies for millions beat any contemporary making individual art pieces.)

In short, money and education certification were no longer synonymous with any sense of competency or expertise. Just the opposite often became true. Those who thought up some of the most destructive, crackpot, and dangerous policies in American history were precisely those who were degreed and well-off and careful to ensure they were never subject to the destructive consequences of their own pernicious ideologies.

Again, what's new?

The masses of homeless in our streets were a consequence of various therapeutic bromides antithetical to the ancient, sound notions of mental hospitals. The new theories ignored the responsibilities of nuclear families to take care of their own, and the assumption that hard-drug use was not a legitimate personal-choice, but rather a catastrophe for all of society.

Again, so much to unpack there. It's so much easier to be a pundit than a scholar, isn't it? In any case, how do state-funded "mental hospitals" fit with "the responsibilities of nuclear families to take care of their own"? How does "the assumption that hard-drug use was not a legitimate personal-choice, but rather a catastrophe for all of society" fit in here? I don't even know if he supports or opposes that idea.

Ancient notions such as that punishment deters crime were laughed at by the degreed who gave us the current big-city district attorneys. Their experiments with decriminalizing violent acts, defunding the police, and delegitimizing incarceration led to a Lord of the Flies-style anarchy in our major cities. Note well, those with advanced or professional degrees who dreamed all this up did not often live in defunded police zones, did not have homeless people on their lawns, and found ways for their children to navigate around racial quotes in elite college admissions.

Again. a scholar might have to cite something. The US has the highest per-capita prisoner rate in the world, so acting like we don't punish criminals is absurd. "Defund the police" is a phrase that largely came up in 2020, and didn't really go much of anywhere. This is just conservative ranting. Nobody has lived in defunded police zones. Some of the worst homelessness I've seen was in Central Square in Cambridge, MA, less than half a mile from Harvard and less than a mile from MIT. It's not the rural people, nor the lawnless poor that have homeless people on their lawns.

Or were we to take seriously the expertise of “17 Nobel Prize winners” who swore Biden’s “Build Back Better” debacle would not be inflationary as the country went into 9 percent plus inflation?

UK is looking to hit 19% inflation while the US stays under 10%. It's almost like we exist in a larger world.

On the operational level, the elite proved even more suspect. Militarily, the middle classes in the armed forces proved as lethal as ever, despite being demonized as racists and white supremacists. But their generals, diplomats and politicians proved so often incompetent in translating their tactical victories in the Middle East and elsewhere into strategic success or even mere advantage.

They proved lethal, when using the tools that the educated "elite" created and provided them. The drones that delivered bombs took advantage of the latest technology from people at elite universities to work. Most people know that the Middle East is hard, and that killing a bunch of people often doesn't make the rest of them like us.

Nationally, the failure of the elite that transcends politics is even more manifest. The country is $30 trillion in debt. No one has the courage to simply stop printing money. The border is nonexistent, downtown America is a No Man’s Land

Because all it takes is courage to screw up the economy. The border is where it's always been, and far better guarded than it has been in decades past. Downtown America is not a No Man's Land--refer back to my statement about Harvard, MIT and Central Square--and to the extent it is, it's about the suburbs and white flight and things that happened in the 1950s

and our air travel is a circus—and not an “expert” can be found willing or able to fix things. Is Pete Buttigieg the answer to thousands of canceled flights or backed-up ports?

For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong. How do you fix a backed-up port? Expanding takes years and money--money we apparently should stop printing. If the problem is transitory, maybe the only realistic solution is to wait it out. Likewise with flights; the problem seems to be that the airlines were hit hard by the pandemic, and let go of a lot of people (especially with early retirement), and mothballed a bunch of planes, and now they're struggling to match demand with a smaller, less experienced workforce and fighting to get those planes back into service. The government could try throwing money at the problem, but I think it's probably best to let the capitalists handle their own businesses.

The universities are turning out mediocre graduates without the skills or knowledge of a generation ago, but certainly with both greater debt and arrogance.

The universities are turning out a lot greater part of the US population. And the greater debt is because nobody wants to pay for it, unlike the GI Bill and state support that cut school prices in the past.

Our bureaucratic fixers can only regulate, stop, retard, slow-down, or destroy freeways, dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, ports, and refineries

Again, whine and moan. The only reason many of those things were created is because of "bureaucratic fixers", and the only reason they still exist is because "bureaucratic fixers" have maintained them.

the frequent copy-cat Hollywood remakes of old films were far worse than the originals.

You can "back in my day" all you want, but most old films were crap, because 90% of everything is crap. Not only that, remakes have always happened, and rarely been as good as the original, because people remake great movies, and they aren't the director Alfred Hitchcock was (neither was anyone else back in the day), and even Alfred Hitchcock has 56 movies and only one Psycho. If people tried remaking Hitchcock's The Paradine Case, they might have a chance of making a better movie. Hollywood has changed over the years, adapting to TV and then home theaters and streaming, and we've gone from the 1930s where they pumped out cheap movies because people would go just for the air conditioning, to today where a theatrical movie better be huge to make it worth going to the theater. Whether it was at the drive-in, on TV, on VHS or DVD, or on streaming, there has always been low-quality crap.

And here's the thing; we are better than any time in history for movie availability. (Yes, streaming is more limited then people like, but you can always buy old VHS or DVDs.) You want to watch any of these old movies, do so. It turns out that they might be great, but not enough to overcome being of their time, at least for most people.

Homes are built better than they were in the 1970s. Cars are better assembled than in the 1960s. The electrician, the plumber, and the roofer are as good or better than ever. The soldier stuck in the messy labyrinth of Baghdad or on patrol in the wilds of Afghanistan was every bit as brave and perhaps far more lethal than his Korean War or World War II counterpart.

Computers, modern technology, the Japanese auto industry. Oh, and the Korean War was hardly a victory, since we've been there 70 years and the Communists haven't given up yet. Frankly WWII can be debated; maybe Churchill was right, we should have kept going to Moscow. I certainly feel a little frustrated about the people we condemned to 50 years of Soviet Communism. Was it the diplomats or the soldiers who just weren't good enough, Mr. Hanson?

they assume the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department are as likely to monitor Americans as they are unlikely to find and arrest those engaged in terrorism or espionage.

Again, American history is not his strong point. I know of no recent terrorist cases that have gone solved. J. Edgar Hoover was big into monitoring Americans; do you not consider those citizens "real Americans", Mr. Hanson? Perhaps you rolled your eyes at American history that would tell you that MLK wasn't treated as the second coming of Christ, and that the FBI illegally spied on him.

The reason why the United States begs Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil is not because of lazy frackers in Texas or incompetent rig hands in North Dakota, but because of utterly incompetent diplomats, green zealots, and ideological “scientists.”

We aren't begging Russia, Iran or Venezuela to do anything. American oil is expensive, in part because we've pumped the easy to get stuff, and in part because US labor costs are higher. So when world oil gets cheap, US corps stop drilling. As for green zealots and ideological "scientists", again, that's just figuring that if you yell loud enough, it'll drown out the evidence.

Had the views of majors and colonels in Afghanistan rather than their superiors in the Pentagon and White House prevailed, there would have been no mass flight or humiliation in Kabul.

Sure. If you had been in charge, everything would have gone great. Ignore everything that everyone who has studied Afghanistan has said, any idiot could have done better.

Note Merrick Garland’s sanctimonious defense of the supposed professionalism of the Justice Department and FBI hierarchies—while even as he pontificated, they were in the very process of leaking and planting sensational “nuclear secrets” narratives to an obsequious media to justify the indefensible political fishing expedition at a former president’s home and current electoral rival to Merrick Garland’s boss.

Socrates said "I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either. " As a classicist, Hanson should know that, and not act like he knows something about what's going on under judicial seal in an affair where he has no privileged information.

I've wasted way too long dealing with this thing, and it's just impossible, throwing line after line of half-truths and outright lies that take time to counter. I wish academics wouldn't use their training to deceive in the name of conservativism, but far too many do.

45kiparsky
Ago 24, 2022, 12:53 am

>41 proximity1: it serves as an example of the larger troubled state of science research generally;

I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but a model like the Big Bang is generally developed by theoreticians, not research scientists. So if you're using the Big Bang as an example for "the larger troubled state of science research generally", that's kind of a massive category error. If you're interested in "the state of science research generally", the news is actually mostly good. Since you've started us off in space, let's catalog some of what we've seen in the last few decades.

We've expanded the catalog of known planets by factor of something like ten billion in the last couple of decades, that's not too bad. We've seen imagery of a black hole, which would have been pretty inconceivable a decade ago, we've pushed back our observational limits of the universe by unbelievable amounts and in the last two decades we've been conducting systematic explorations of Mars fer Pete's sake. Not to mention the kind of jaw-dropping stuff we do regularly. We've had multiple missions to asteroids, including sample-return missions, we've landed on a bloody comet, and oh, next month we're going to take a test run at changing an asteroid's orbit.

That's a lot of science research. What's wrong with it?

And that's just in space! Closer to home, I can't resist pointing out that we have a whole new family of vaccines that allowed researchers to roll out multiple distinct vaccines for COVID-19 in a matter of months, when most of us were predicting that it would take years. Do you think that's because science research isn't working well? If so, please explain exactly what sucks about preventing people from dying from a severe respiratory illness. With examples.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding, since you haven't actually detailed what you think is wrong with the state of science research, despite writing lots of words in the vicinity of your assertion. (hence my qualms about your self-assessment as "always focused, always to the point" - a strikingly inapt description of a text that spends that many words and manages to omit its actual point)

46John5918
Ago 24, 2022, 2:31 am

>45 kiparsky:

I would add that the "state of science research" is now being "troubled" by things like Brexit (which has separated the UK from European colleagues and funding) and the war in Ukraine (which is affecting Russian cooperation in science research, including in space), but apparently these are not part of proximity's argument.

47kiparsky
Ago 24, 2022, 8:44 am

>46 John5918: Excellent points! And who knows, maybe that's what they had in mind. I look forward to finding out.

48proximity1
Modificato: Feb 24, 2023, 9:39 am

>43 mikevail:

There's something to that; but I've _always_ respected genuine science over superstition. You'd find Karl Popper--a genuine scientist if ever there was one--very interesting for his critiques of fellow scientists' susceptibility to deterministic presuppositions (which he refutes as inherently unscientific in character, despite the many* esteemed philosophers who'd adopted it)--the logical grounds of which he methodically demolishes in the tri-volume post-script to The Logic of Scientific Discovery, part of my current reading.

Here again, a relevant excerpt which also puts our current, still more depraved state, into perspective:


1.)
--------------
"Einstein and others who appreciated quantum mechanics as a revolutionary breakthrough but did not accept its finality, or what I call the 'end-of-the-road thesis', believed there must be a further, deeper level in physics, a level beyond quantum mechanics.

"Einstein supported this view for a long time by the argument (in my opinion mistaken) that quantum mechanics is a probabilistic theory and that probability comes into physics only because of our lack of ((ed. note): sufficient) knowledge.

"I always regarded this subjectivist view of probability as
mistaken, and I think that Einstein gave it up--perhaps finally--during our discussion in 1950. But even those who did not agree with Einstein about this particular reason for rejecting the end-of-the-road thesis did agree that there may be a deeper layer of physical reality beyond that described by the equations of quantum mechanics--perhaps in nuclear physics. After all, quantum mechanics had, essentially, developed as the theory of the electronic shells surrounding the atomic nucleus.

"But this was certainly not Heisenberg's view. I spent an evening with him (I think in 1935) when he came to Vienna. At that time he suggested that quantum mechanics would not be deepened by the investigation of the nucleus. He predicted, rather, that the situation prevailing in the atomic nucleus may make indeterminacy worse: it may turn out that the limits to our knowledge in nuclear theory may be even more severe that those in atomic theory (the theory of the atomic shell), and what we shall be prevented forever from understanding the working and the stability of the nucleus even to the extent to which we can understand the working and stability of the electronic shells.

"Today, it is fairly obvious that those who disbelieved the end-of-the-road thesis were right. Heisenberg himself contributed to transcending it. In fact, the thesis looks so absurd by now that I suppose few physicists will believe that it was ever held; or, if it was held, that it was taken seriously.

"Yet this end-of-the-road thesis did underlie the great clash of the titans, the discussions between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr.

"It is commonly accepted that Einstein was defeated in this fight. But the truth is quite different. The real issue between Einstein and Bohr was what both called, somewhat vaguely and misleadingly, the problem whether or not quantum mechanics was complete.

...

"It is important to remember in this connection that Einstein never regarded any of his own revolutions as a final breakthrough." ...



1.) --- Popper, pp. 6-7, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, (1982), Hutchinson & Co. publishers, London.
--------------------------------------------------------
2.)


"I see our scientific theories as human inventions--nets designed by us to catch the world. To be sure, these differ from the inventions of the poets, and even from the inventions of the technicians. Theories are not only instruments. What we aim at is truth: we test our theories in the hope of eliminating those which are not true. In this way we may succeed in improving our theories--even as instruments: in making nets which are better and better adapted to catch our fish, the real world. Yet they will never be perfect instruments for this purpose. They are rational nets of our own making, and should not be mistaken for a complete representation of the real world in all its aspects; not even if they are highly successful; not even if they appear to yield excellent approximations to reality.

"If we keep clearly before our minds that our theories are our own work; that we are fallible; and that our theories reflect our fallibility, then we shall doubt whether general features of our theories, such as their simplicity, or their prima facie deterministic character, correspond to features of the real world.

"What I mean is this. If we have tested a statement like 'All dogs have tails', and it has stood up to our tests, then perhaps all all dogs (or cats) have tails, or at least approximately all. But it would be a mistake to conclude from the fact that such a universalized subject-predicate has been found to be fairly successful in describing the world, or even from the fact that it is true, that the world has a subject-predicate structure, or that it consists of substances having certain properties. Similarly, the success, or even the truth, of simple statements, or of mathematical statements, or of English statements, ought not to tempt us to draw the inference that the world is intrinsically simple, or mathematical, or British. All these inferences have in fact been drawn by some philosopher or other; but upon reflection, there is little to recommend them. The world, as we know it, is highly complex; and although it may possess structural aspects which are simple in some sense or other, the simplicity of some of our theories--which is of our own making--does not entail the intrinsic simplicity of the world." ...



2.) --- Popper, pp. 42-43, The Open Universe, (1982), Hutchinson & Co. publishers, London.
---------------
(all italics throughout are as in the original text)

------------------------------------------

* Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, J. S. Mill, Moritz Schlick (until at least 1927), Einstein (temporarily and then apparently abandoned)

-- but, how many accredited working scientists today are effectively fully subscribed "determinists" without even reflecting on this position?

Popper's point--given in the last two sentences of the first paragraph of the second of the excerpts above, and what follows that--is a good summary of precisely what so many have so badly lost sight of today: they are incapable, often, of doubting their hypotheses or of even distinguishing their hypotheses from real life's realities and, by this, have taken their presupposed hypotheses to be real life itself.

49jjwilson61
Ago 24, 2022, 2:26 pm

Isn't this belief that there is some deeper level of physics below quantum mechanics just what you're complaining about? Where's the evidence?

50mikevail
Ago 24, 2022, 5:15 pm

>48 proximity1:
Are there a huge number of scientists clinging dogmatically to their findings? I don't know; probably not. Scientific research is pretty compartmentalized these days. Some scientist working independently on some obscure aspect of molecular biology might be inclined to defend their findings to the last bit of available evidence. This is likely a feature not a bug.

As for Popper, the problem is that the principles of critical rationalism are woefully missapplied by the ignorant or by bad faith actors. They believe that if a scientific theory can not proven to be absolutely true than all theories are on equal footing (see rrp). Of course this is hypocritically applied to whatever their pet peeve is. Are climate change deniers equally skeptical of the operation of the automobile? I'm guessing they know as little or less about eternal combustion engines than they do about climate science but they still drive their cars. How do you know that putting that tray of water in the freezer won't turn it into plutonium? Just because it's never happened before? Popper might say that no finite number of observations can prove a universal truth. In everyday life most people trust the science without thinking about it. I guess you can apply absolute skepticism and critically analyze every aspect of your life but I think that would be exhausting.

Here's some reading on Popper and the pandemic:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-021-00317-9

51proximity1
Modificato: Ago 26, 2022, 10:25 am

>50 mikevail:

Adam Chmielewski's paper is quite a hodge-podge of claims but in much of it there's a de facto defense of Popper's views. Here's an example:

..."I shall attempt to show that Popper’s radically rationalist view of science is able to provide, precisely because of its radicalism, a strong rationale for trusting science. This is dealt with in part II" ...

this "attempt", really, is hardly a great feat. I'd put it on a par with a typical healthy person's getting up in the morning and getting dressed.

But what really caught my attention was this, right in the introduction:


... "Popper was a rationalist, but his rationalism differed significantly from the comprehensively rationalist doctrines of Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, or Hegel: his was critical of reason itself."


First, who has read Plato's dialogues and read Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies: (Vol. 1: The Spell of Plato and took from either of these that, according to Plato, Popper or anyone since, that Plato was ever some sort of "rationalist"?

Second, how does Chmielewski arrive at the view that Popper "was critical of reason itself" ?

By the time I've found a good deal to approve in this next, it's just a bit too late to take this paper's author or his judgement seriously.



... "Science deserves to be trusted in so far as it is based on a rigorous distrust of itself. It follows that if science is to be relied upon in the design of reliable technologies, be it a plane or a vaccine, the proper attitude is to institutionalize the demand for bold theories and a distrust of them, rather than leniency. The institutionalization of this demand lies at the foundation of the regime of science. Yet, the institutionalized regime of science is embedded in a number of other regimes. The social, cultural, and political ones, in which scientific practice is grounded, and which enable science to function in the first place, influence at the same time, sometimes adversely, the pursuit of the aim of science: their overlapping, dynamic, and constraining influences affect in various ways the production of scientific knowledge (Jasanoff, 2004).

"Trust in science depends also upon the social context within which scientific theories are employed, through technology, in serving the public."


and I think it's fair to say that it largely squares with much in Popper's views, rightly understood. But, again, this is neither news nor anything of a feat in an academic paper. Chmielewski's work here is the academic equivalent of junk-food: "no nutritional value".


"This area of investigation thus far has not been of paramount importance for critical rationalists (Ormerod, 2013, p. 469).(*) The above argument indicates that technological instruments are more likely to fail and endanger human safety not because of insufficient inductive support for scientific theories, but
rather due to the dysfunctions of the public institutions which are responsible for enabling these theories’ technological employment. All too often such institutions turn out to be ill-designed and badly manned (Popper, 1945/1994, p. 120), as well as improperly managed
and impervious to change generated by the growth of knowledge and technology. What is thus needed is a sustained reflection on how to establish, manage, and reform the institutional, organizational and political regimes charged with the task of serving and protecting
the public interest by rigorously controlling the technologies offered to the general public
."

-----------------------------------

(italic emphasis added)

* Whatever the facts about "this area of investigation's" importance for today's "critical rationalists", I think there's no question about Popper's having regarded it as "of paramount importance."

thanks for the reference.

With regard to


... "the problem is that the principles of critical rationalism are woefully misapplied by the ignorant or by bad faith actors. They believe that if a scientific theory can not proven to be absolutely true then all theories are on equal footing (see rrp). Of course this is hypocritically applied to whatever their pet peeve is. Are climate change deniers equally skeptical of the operation of the automobile?"


I admit that there are some people who were ready to deny even the existence of the Covid virus but I discount such people as too tiny a portion of the public to either worry about or take seriously. But I strongly object to cavalierly lumping them together with "climate-change deniers" (which include a significant number of respectable scientists) and object to the assertion that these groups are fairly described as contending that, "if a scientific theory can not proven to be absolutely true then all theories are on equal footing"...

52proximity1
Modificato: Ago 25, 2022, 11:44 am

>49 jjwilson61:

No, I don't think it is. "Evidence" of a "deeper level"?

"lots of unanswered questions" prompts the hypothesized as-yet-not-understood "deeper level" or whatever one may prefer to call it.

Popper:

"Admittedly, the formalism of quantum mechanics is still applied by physicists to the old problems, and its methods are, with many modifications, partly used in connection with the many new problems of nuclear theory and elementary particle theory. This is certainly a great credit to its power. Yet at the same time, most experimentalists, though much concerned with the limits of precision of their results, do not seem to be more worried about the role of the observer or about interfering with their results than they are in connection with sensitive classical experiments; and most theorists are quite clear that a new and much more general theory is needed: they all seem to be in search of a really revolutionary new theory" ...

------------------------
(italics in the original)

p. 40, Popper, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (1982)

53proximity1
Modificato: Ago 26, 2022, 10:57 am

The COVID-19 Lock-down: The disaster that keeps on Taking

----------------------------------------------



"(Education) | "The lost boys of Covid" |
School closures have set off a devastating domino effect | from The Spectator (London, U.K.) by Bethany Mandel | 25 August 2022 |
---------------------------------

(excerpt)

... "For an entire generation, this real “long Covid” effect in kids will linger for decades, if not whole lives. Two years of Zoom school, masks and excessive and repeated quarantines, on top of canceled sports and extracurriculars, and extended amounts of time online will have a ripple effect not just for individual children, but for entire communities, and will extend far beyond “just” academics.

"It all started with school closures. Writing for an academic journal of bioethics in summer 2022, Shamik Dasgupta argues that school closures were a 'moral catastrophe' that progressives were responsible for. 'My argument that they were a moral catastrophe is directed at progressives and will draw on progressive principles. This is primarily because I believe those principles are true. But it’s also because extended school closures occurred disproportionately in progressive areas. If we’re to avoid repeating the catastrophe, it is progressives who most need to listen.'

"School closures were indeed catastrophic for children, especially those in progressive strongholds like Dasgupta’s home state of California, where families endured some of the most prolonged shutdowns in the country. A new (report of a) Brookings Institute study (January, 2022) offers a comprehensive overview of the effects of the closures on test scores. It’s not pretty. After tracking math and reading test scores for the first two years of the pandemic for more than five million students in third to eighth grade, the authors found that:


Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina — math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees.


"Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20 percent in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15 percent in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

"Kids fell behind and, two years later, they fell further behind. It makes sense. If you never learned how to read in first grade and you’re now in fourth grade, every part of your academic progress is stunted; everyone around you is moving on but you can’t keep up, not just in reading and writing, but in social studies, math and science." ...



54proximity1
Modificato: Ago 28, 2022, 10:56 am

As, more than two years ago, I posted publicly that it should inevitably come about, the really ugly truths about the period of enforced mass-house arrest for millions of Britons--healthy Britons, neither guilty of any crime nor deserving of a ill-thought out open-ended and epidemiologically useless mass curfew, are starting to come out--now, long after the initial damage, which shall ripple through generations to come, has been set in motion but remains far, far from "done". (Parenthetical clarifications are my own additions for readers not familiar with these details.)

"LOCK-DOWN: The Inside Story: Rishi Sunak* on the fear messaging--and the questions that weren't asked" | (The Spectator, 27 August 2022) (Weekly), (London) | by Fraser Nelson


(Excerpt)
"When Britain was being locked down, the country was assured that all risks had been properly and robustly considered."



Those assurances were, in fact, damnable lies.



"Yes, schools would close and education would suffer. Normal healthcare would take a hit and people would die as a result. But the government repeatedly said the experts had looked at all this. After all, it wasn't as if they would lock us down without seriously weighing up the consequences, was it?

"Those consequences are still making themselves known: (schools) exams madness, the NHS (U.K. National Health Service) waiting-list surge (now years-long for many patients' serious chronic ailments), thousands of unexplained 'excess deaths', judicial backlogs and economic chaos. Was all that expected, factored in, and thought by leaders to be a price worth paying? Right at the start of the lockdown, ministers had already started to worry that the policy was being recklessly implemented without anyone thinking about the side-effects. Only a handful of key players at the very top made the decisions: among them Rishi Sunak, the chancellor. He has now decided to go public on what happened.

"When we meet at the office ... he says at the outset that he's not interested in pointing the finger at the fiercest proponents of the lockdown. No one knew anything at the start, he says: lockdown was, by necessity, a gamble. Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the (government's) chief medical officer and (the government's) chief scientific advisor, would openly admit that lockdown could do more harm than good. But when the evidence started to roll in, a strange silence grew in government: dissenting voices were filtered out and a see-no-evil policy was applied.

"Sunak's story starts with the first Covid meeting, where ministers were shown an A3 poster (roughly two standard (8.5x11 in.) letter pages, side by side) from scientific advisors explaining the options. 'I wish I'd kept it because it listed things (measures) that had no impact: banning live events and all that,' he says. It was saying: you should be careful not to do this stuff too early, because being able to sustain it is very hard in a modern society.' So the scientific advice was, initially, to reject or at least delay lockdown.

"This all changed when Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College (London) published their famous 'Report 9', which argued that Covid casualties could hit 500,000 if no action was taken--but the figure could be below 20,000 if Britain locked down. That, of course, turned out to be a vast exaggeration of lockdown's ability to curb Covid deaths. Imperial (College) stressed it (its projections) did 'not consider the wider social and economic costs of suppression, which will be high'. But surely someone involved in making policy would figure it out.

"This was the crux: no one really did. A cost-benefit calculation--a basic requirement for pretty much every public health intervention--was never made. 'I wasn't allowed to talk about the trade-off,' says Sunak. Ministers were briefed by No. 10 (Downing Street, i.e. the Prime Minister's office) on how to handle questions about the side-effects of lockdown. 'The script was: oh, there's no trade-off, because doing this for our health is good for the economy.' "



----------------------------

* Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, under Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government.

55proximity1
Modificato: Ago 28, 2022, 9:31 am

(On the general decline of integrity in the practice of science)
------------------------------------------



(from Quillette.com)
"The Fall of ‘Nature’ " | A once-respected journal has announced that it will be subordinating science to ideology. | by Bo Winegard | 28 Aug 2022


"Although the modern prestige bestowed upon science is laudable, it is not without peril. For as the ideological value of science increases, so too does the threat to its objectivity. Slogans and hashtags can quickly politicize science, and scientists can be tempted to subordinate the pursuit of the truth to moral or political ends as they become aware of their own prodigious social importance.

"Inconvenient data can be suppressed or hidden and inconvenient research can be quashed. This is especially true when one political tribe or faction enjoys disproportionate influence in academia—its members can disfigure science (often unconsciously) to support their own ideological preferences. This is how science becomes more like propaganda than empiricism, and academia becomes more like a partisan media organization than an impartial institution.

"An editorial in Nature Human Behavior provides the most recent indication of just how bad things are becoming. It begins, like so many essays of its kind, by announcing that, 'Although academic freedom is fundamental, it is not unbounded.' When the invocation of a fundamental freedom in one clause is immediately undermined in the next, we should be skeptical of whatever follows. But in this case, the authors are taking issue with a view very few people actually hold. At minimum, most academics will readily accept that scientific curiosity should be constrained by ethical concerns about research participants." ...

"In plain language, this means that from now on, the journal will reject articles that might potentially harm (even 'inadvertently') those individuals or groups most vulnerable to 'racism, sexism, 'able-ism', or homophobia.' Since it is already standard practice to reject false or poorly argued work, it is safe to assume that these new guidelines have been designed to reject any article deemed to pose a threat to disadvantaged groups, irrespective of whether or not its central claims are true, or at least well-supported. Within a few sentences, we have moved from a banal statement of the obvious to draconian and censorious editorial discretion. Editors will now enjoy unprecedented power to reject articles on the basis of nebulous moral concerns and anticipated harms." ...







This is an example of Stupidity's long-term, slow-motion train-wreck you can watch happening right before your eyes.

56prosfilaes
Modificato: Ago 29, 2022, 10:49 pm

>55 proximity1: (On the general decline of integrity in the practice of science)

One of the signs of bias in journalism is a headline that isn't backed up by the story. Frankly, I get real tired of "good old days" stories, because like this, you get anecdotes of today and at best promises of how things were better in the past. (Sometimes they won't even bother with stating that things were better in the past; that's obvious in their eyes.) In reality, if you want a decline, you need to demonstrate through broad studies (not anecdotes) both periods and compare them that way.

For as the ideological value of science increases, so too does the threat to its objectivity.

Meh. I don't see low-value fields being inherently objective. People will bend their own stuff into their own biases no matter how strong the ideological value.

This is especially true when one political tribe or faction enjoys disproportionate influence in academia—its members can disfigure science (often unconsciously) to support their own ideological preferences.

Classic conservative bullshit. Inconvenient data and research are most at risk of being politically suppressed when all major political tribes agree on something, especially on something beyond question. 1950s LGBTQ research, for example.

"An editorial in Nature Human Behavior

So specifically in a field known for pumping out racially charged bullshit.

Editors will now enjoy unprecedented power to reject articles on the basis of nebulous moral concerns and anticipated harms." ...

Do you believe that immoral, harmful articles should be published? That's not meant as an attack, but "these actions will do more harm than good" and "harm to people is irrelevant to academic freedom" are very different arguments with very different responses.

This is an example of Stupidity's long-term, slow-motion train-wreck you can watch happening right before your eyes.

If you like science, you'll know that that's not good enough, that one's preconceptions are often wrong, which is why actual experiments and data collection combined with solid statistics is the standard in science, not listening to a bunch of anecdotes and yelling "it's obvious".

57proximity1
Modificato: Set 13, 2022, 1:10 pm

Another excellent article from Sabine Hossenfelder's blog:



Physics alone can't answer the big questions | The blurry boundary between religion and science (12 Sept. 2022)



Her points echo marvelously the arguments presented in Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and that works subsequent three-volume post-scripts.

In the first of these post-script volumes*, Popper cites this comment of Albert Einstein:



"A disastrous fear of metaphysics ... (is the) malady of contemporary empiricist philosophizing. ... This fear seems to be the motive of interpreting, for example, a 'thing' as a 'bundle of qualities' --- 'qualities' which may be discovered, it is assumed, among the raw material of our senses. ... I, on the contrary, do not think that any dangerous kind of metaphysics is involved in admitting the idea that of a physical thing (or a physical object) as an autonomous notion into the system, together with the spatio-temporal structure appropriate to it."



* Popper, 1983, Realism and the Aim of Science
(Section 7, "Metaphysical Realism", at p. 80.)

58kiparsky
Set 13, 2022, 2:12 pm

>57 proximity1: Why are you talking about religion in a thread about "SCIENCE"?

59DugsBooks
Set 16, 2022, 12:23 am

Well, I thought I had finally found a place to post my “Diet Coke and Mentos “ experiments but it looks like they won’t be accepted here either.

To further display my ignorance; on the cosmological topics, universe origins etc., haven’t a lot of scientists accepted they are just throwing stuff at the wall to see if it will stick until they learn more about dark matter & the also conjectured dark energy? I thought I had run across that in casual reading several times.

60lriley
Set 16, 2022, 2:41 am

>59 DugsBooks: it’s a good topic…..discovery of things by accident or setting out on one thing you fail at that but some other discovery comes along.

61proximity1
Modificato: Set 17, 2022, 9:54 am




COVID HUMAN GENETIC EFFORT (www.covidhge.com)

mission
about
get involved
get involved
participants
partners
steering committee
sequencing hubs
participating centers
coverage
press
social
contact

Our Mission…

The COVID Human Genetic Effort is an international consortium aiming to discover the human genetic and immunological bases of the various clinical forms of SARS-CoV-2 infection. In particular, we search for:

(i) Monogenic (or digenic) inborn errors of immunity (IEI), rare or common, underlying severe forms of COVID-19 in previously healthy individuals, including hypoxemic pneumonia, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), Long COVID, COVID Toes, etc.

(ii) Phenocopies of these monogenic IEI, such as auto-antibodies neutralizing gene products of loci whose variants underlie these IEI (e.g. auto-antibodies to type I IFNs mimicking inborn errors of type I IFNs).

(iii) Single-gene variants, rare or common, which make certain individuals resistant to the infection by the SARS-CoV2 itself, despite repeated exposure, or resistant to the development of clinical manifestations despite infection.

With these three projects, the COVID Human Genetic Effort aims to discover truly causative genetic and/or immunological anomalies, rare or common, and decipher in depth the molecular, cellular, and immunological mechanisms by which they underlie resistance to viral infection or disease, or predisposition to one or another form of severe disease (Casanova JL & Su HC Cell 2020; Sancho-Shimizu V Journal of Experimental Medicine 2021; Arkin LM The Journal of Investigative Dermatology 2021; Andreakos E Nature Immunology 2022; Brodin P Nature Medicine 2022).
...


----------------------------------

Related research article in the Journal Cell ( Commentary |
A Global Effort to Define the Human Genetics
of Protective Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 Infection

| Jean-Laurent Casanova1,2,3,4,5, *, Helen C. Su 6, and the COVID Human Genetic Effort )


62kiparsky
Set 17, 2022, 8:36 pm

>59 DugsBooks: I'm not sure I'd call it "throwing stuff at the wall" although I suppose some researchers might use that sort of language in a sort of self-deprecating way. What we have to keep in mind is that in order to even be "throwing stuff at the wall", the stuff you're throwing has to be a coherent theory with some explanatory value, consistent with observed evidence, and making testable predictions about experiments that we haven't run yet.

If that's "throwing stuff at the wall", then sure. But let's keep in mind that everything we know about physics comes from that sort of exercise.

63jjwilson61
Set 18, 2022, 2:46 pm

>62 kiparsky: Mostly. But string theory has been criticized for not being testable without a particle collider the size of the universe.

64proximity1
Modificato: Set 18, 2022, 4:55 pm

>63 jjwilson61:

Right. And, more than that---

Popper sets out better than any of his "interpreters" the whys and wherefores of his reasoning about the problems surrounding the virtually exclusive reliance on supposed or real positive support for some proposed (or accepted) theory--which he deals with as always never more than conjectural in foundation-- as opposed to a vigorous, determined (i.e. honest and intellectually respectable) effort to find a means by which the theory may, if possible, be falsified---shown to be invalid. It's only at that point that the theory may be deemed one which can deserve a status as "tested"--and "science" may be regarded as having made an "advance". And it always remains, despite that tested status, susceptible to future falsification as new work brings to light new information which throws into doubt --or falsifies in its turn-- the formerly held tested and provisionally accepted conjecture(s).

Much--and a growing proportion of current science practice has virtually completely lost its way by having failed to learn, apply and heed Popper's key understandings in these matters. Much in contemporary science is, for that failing, sheer junk--threatening to undermine the very integrity of the sciences themselves. That is a social disaster of epic proportions.

There's no substitute for reading Popper's writings on this in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (Harper & Row, 1963), and, among others, Realism and the Aim of Science,( 1956–57 (published as a book 1983), ISBN 0091514509).

How, for example, do the proponents of "string theory" propose its testing and falsifiability? Briefly, they don't.

These epistemological trends in reasoning have infested and corrupted reasoning in places and ways now far beyond the strict confines of science practice. A stunning example of the risks of failure is in the now famous and disastrous approach to the problem of the existence or non-existence of Saddam Hussein's "WMD"--"weapons of mass destruction". Against all odds, a concerted effort to uncover them--and, thus, show their conjectured existence to be a fact was done in a shortened and botched way. Despite that, it was argued and gained acceptance that the searches had been effective enough and, worst of all, claimed that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

We know what happened next.

None of this would have surprised Popper in the least.

Covid's variants are merely a fresh example of the subsequent failure to recognize and use Popper's (and his fellow scientists') insights properly and conscientiously.

We're still wandering in a maze of confusion about conjecture and refutation.

65DugsBooks
Set 18, 2022, 6:29 pm

>62 kiparsky: yep, you are right. I am being too dismissive of serious topics but I remember in 1998 when it was discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating (& accepted by most researchers), in the tone of a lot of articles about cosmology it seemed they were tossing a lot of previously widely held theories unceremoniously in the rubbish bin - perhaps in a manner as described by >64 proximity1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_expansion_of_the_universe

66kiparsky
Set 19, 2022, 12:12 am

>63 jjwilson61: True, there are a lot of criticisms of string theory which sound reasonable to me. (neither my grasp of the physics nor my arrogance is sufficient for me to take a firmer position on whether they are reasonable or un-) However, we should perhaps bear in mind that theory does tend to run ahead of experiment. Many of the claims of quantum mechanics were dismissed as untestable when they were made, and arguably were untestable at that time, and in the form in which they were made. When Heaviside proposed "gravitational waves" in 1893, he probably did not anticipate that LIGO would bear him out a century-plus later.

So I suppose it's not out of the question that some extremely clever person might come up with some improvements to the theory or a clever hack that would allow testing of some of the claims. Alternatively, it's possible that the ideas of string theory will end up leading to more testable claims, which would also be a win. I don't know. What I do know is that I find it's a lot more interesting to read about the theories than to read blog posts by people who couldn't have devised them trying to explain why they couldn't be true. Even if they're wrong, they've got a lot more in them than J. Random Blogger's bloviations (or J. Random Forumposter's opinions about those bloviations) which don't even manage to get to wrong.

67kiparsky
Set 19, 2022, 12:25 am

>65 DugsBooks: I would expect that a lot of theories get tossed in the rubbish bin! That's exactly how science should work, isn't it?
To me, this doesn't suggest "throwing stuff at the wall", it suggests that a lot of previously plausible ideas became less plausible in light of new information and were abandoned. Hooray! It seems to me that sentence represents an absolute constellation of things going right in science.

I have to confess I'm not sure what you're referring to in the cited post. Is there a particular nugget of sense in that bowl of word salad that is relevant to anything in particular?

68proximity1
Modificato: Set 19, 2022, 11:20 am

more from Popper about conjectures and refutations in science :




(Realism and the Aims of Science (1983) Hutchinson, London.)

... "Our scientific procedures are never based entirely on rules; guesses and hunches are always involved: we cannot remove from science the element of conjecture and risk.

"How can we reduce this risk? Only by trying to think out, as well as we can, the consequences of every decision--that is to say, of every adjustment to our theory--which looks promising, (We have to think out, as it were, all promising combinations.) In this respect, the situation is the same as in any other case in which we have to think out a new theory: the decision to ascribe the refutation of a theory to any particular part of it amounts, indeed, to the adoption of a hypothesis; and the risk involved is exactly the same. To meet it, we need ingenuity, daring--and some luck.

"There is no routine procedure, no automatic mechanism, for solving the problem of attributing the falsification to any particular part of a system of theories--just as there is no routine procedure for designing new theories. The fact that not all is logic in our never-ending search for truth is, however, no reason why we should not use logic to throw as much light on this search as we can, by pointing out both where our arguments break down and how far they reach." ... (p. 189)




(at p. 217)
... "a mistaken solution to the problem of induction ...unfortunately is still widely accepted as valid... (T)he view that although induction is unable to establish an induced hypothesis with certainty, it is able to do the next best thing: it can attribute to the induced hypothesis some degree of probability (a probability of 1 would be certainty.)

"This view is radically mistaken; yet it can be supported by a highly persuasive argument. ...

"The whole problem of induction, the argument runs, clearly arises from the fact that inductive inferences are ;not valid : which is the same as saying that inductive conclusions do not follow deductively from the inductive premises. But there is no need to get alarmed about this somewhat trite fact; especially as there exists a large and important class of inferences in which the conclusion does not strictly follow from the premises. In fact, every deductive inference may be modified so as to yield an inference which is not valid, but only 'more or less valid', or 'valid to a degree.' ...


...


(Sec. 31: Corroboration. (p. 233) )

"The trouble about people--uncritcal people--who hold a theory is that they are inclined to take everything as supporting or 'verifying' it, and nothing as refuting it. Many empiricists have seen this danger, for example Bacon; and they have tried to counter it by counselling the scientist to abstain from theorising, and to rid his mind of all 'preconceived' theories--until, as the result of pure and unprejudiced observation, a theory forces itself on his mind. As we have seen, this counsel is impracticable, and can only lead to self-deception and to the habit of holding one's theories unconsciously (and therefore uncritically). The proper counsel to the scientist is that he will always hold, consciously and unconsciously, a host of theories and that he is well advised to adopt a critical attitude towards them--even though he cannot, as a rule, be actively critical of more than one theory at a time." ...




(from p. 258)

..." 'Nothing even in mathematical science can be more certain than that a collection of scientific facts are of themselves incapable of leading to discovery,' wrote (Sir David) Brewster over a hundred years ago--expressing, perhaps, a more mature attitude towards science than our own. For today, we are told that universal laws and theories are not really needed in science--that science can infer its predictions (with probability) from a mere collection of singular facts.

"Two attitudes or tendencies that are at times found together foster a belief in induction. One is the wish for a super-human authority of science, far above human whims, and exemplified in the 'exact' science of mathematics, and in the natural sciences, so far as they are based, firmly and squarely upon fact: verified, confirmed fact. The other is the wish to see in science not the work of an inspiration or revelation of the human spirit, but of a more or less mechanical compilation which in principle might be performed by machines. (For what else are we but machines?) At bottom, the two tendencies may be one: the tendency to debunk man.

"Now a little debunking may do us a lot of good, especially if it is done with the good grace and the good humour of Betrand Russell. 'Put in a nutshell,' he wrote in the preface to Mysticism and Logic , 'the change in my outlook comes to this, that I can no longer regard solemnity as a means of attaining truth; observation of life shows one that solemn people are generally humbugs, and solemn moods also contain some humbugging quality.'

"But there are other debunkers, and among them quite solemn ones. And as opposed to those who honour Science with a capital 'S', because it is verified, or (since I have debunked verfication) 'confirmed', or 'exact', there are not a few who believe that though it is made 'firm' by confirmation, it is not deep; that since the world has no depth, science does not need any theories but only a collection of facts from whose frequency it can induce the probability of their future repetitions.

"I see science very differently. As to its authority, or confirmation, or probability, I believe that it is nil; it is all guesswork, doxa rather than episteme. And probabilty theory even 'confirms' me in this, by attributing zero probability to universal theories.

"But seen as the result of human endeavour, of human dreams, hopes, passions, and most of all, as the result of the most admirable union of creative imagination and rational critical thought, I should like to write 'Science' with the biggest capital 'S' to be found in the printer's upper case.

"Science is not only, like art and literature, an adventure of the human spirit, but it is among the creative arts perhaps the most human: full of human failings and shortsightedness, it shows those flashes of insight which open our eyes to the wonders of the world and of the human spirit. But this is not all. Science is the direct result of that most human of all endeavours--to liberate ourselves.

Sapere aude! ("Dare to know") This is the maxim of the enlightenment. ..."This should be taken as a challenge to reject even the scientific expert as a leader, or even science itself. Science has no authority. It is not the magical product of the given,the data, the observations. It is not a gospel of truth. It is the result of our own endeavours and mistakes. It is you and I who make science, as well as we can. It is you and I who are responsible for it."



69kiparsky
Set 19, 2022, 5:41 pm

>42 aspirit: Following up, the Dvorak book (How the Mountains Grew) was a pretty good overview of how the North American continent reflects the history of geology. Probably not a lot new there if you're familiar with the subject, but for a novice like me it was a great introduction.
Also can recommend Martin Elvis's recent book on asteroids, if you want something that goes from basic science to near-future practical applications.

70mikevail
Set 19, 2022, 7:34 pm

>63 jjwilson61:, >65 DugsBooks:
Interestingly, many well thought-out, mathematically intricate grand unified theories have crumbled while waiting for something to happen at a giant underground water tank in Japan. The "something" being evidence of proton decay.
https://www-wired-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.wired.com/2016/12/decaying-prot...

71John5918
Modificato: Set 20, 2022, 8:01 am

>64 proximity1: a growing proportion of current science practice has virtually completely lost its way

Do you really think that's true of science and of serious scientists, or do you think it's more of a comment on the way science is being presented by the media, politicians, pundits, culture warriors, conspiracy theorists and assorted people who have little understanding of what science is and what it isn't?

72proximity1
Set 20, 2022, 8:28 am


I don't claim to have done anything "original" in any of the above. What I've been doing is excerpting some of what are my ideas of the best of Popper's insights as they highlight and apply to this present very dismal state of science-practice.

In the style of good scientists, we could take Popper's arguments and actually apply them, test their validity by seeking to refute them in showing counter-examples.

We're looking for, then, as many instances as may be found of science-practice which does not reflect Popper's description

""There is no routine procedure, no automatic mechanism, for solving the problem of attributing the falsification to any particular part of a system of theories--just as there is no routine procedure for designing new theories. The fact that not all is logic in our never-ending search for truth is, however, no reason why we should not use logic to throw as much light on this search as we can, by pointing out both where our arguments break down and how far they reach." ...

Science advances by looking for and finding valid refutations, not by stacking up trivial claims of "positive" (i.e. "confirmatory") evidence.

Are there plenty of examples in current science research which aren't case-studies of the flawed approaches Popper describes? These would suggest that science is being done better, differently, than what his critique described. I very much doubt that to be the case. But the possibility remains open. Refutations are required.

73DugsBooks
Modificato: Set 20, 2022, 11:44 pm

>67 kiparsky: “ That's exactly how science should work, isn't it?” I agree . By “word salad” , I am not sure if you are referring to my meanderings or the wiki link.

My intent was to convey the extent of revisions made with the discovery. I understand your not wanting to trivialize well founded theories, I usually preface my opinions on such matters as “you need to be able to do the math to make any sort of serious comment” and I most assuredly can not do any of the math used with theoretical physics as pertains to cosmology.That said I have no real qualms about using bad metaphors for a topic with such a high bar for serious reviews. Few people would let my opinion on the matter influence them I am sure.

74kiparsky
Set 21, 2022, 12:42 am

>73 DugsBooks: When I used the phrase "word salad", I was actually referring to >64 proximity1:
I may be too impatient, but when I come across a load of bafflegab, I usually don't spend a lot of time trying to decipher it. If someone can't write clearly, they're usually not thinking clearly, so it's generally not worth the effort. Was there anything in there that was actually any use, or was it just prox diddling their fingers on the keyboard again?

For the rest, yeah, I think we don't have any substantive argument. I hope you'll forgive my persnickety language policing - it's unfortunately common for people to use that sort of casual phrase to selectively dismiss scientific results, sort of the way people used to dismiss evolution or climate change as "only a theory", as though a "theory" were equivalent to a "guess". But if you mean "throwing stuff at the wall" in the sense of "having a go at devising a serious theory in the hopes that it might stand up to serious scrutiny", then fair enough. That is indeed what scientists do.

75proximity1
Nov 19, 2022, 12:38 pm



Comment
"We’re all now paying the terrible price for lockdown"

| An historic failure of government during the pandemic set a ticking time-bomb not just under the economy, but also in health and education | Jonathan Sumption
18 November 2022 • 7:00pm | The Daily Telegraph (London) | Saturday, 19 Nov. 2022

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/18/now-paying-terrible-price-lockdown/

76JGL53
Modificato: Nov 20, 2022, 9:43 pm

prox is not a genius. Far from it. According to Neil deGrasse Tyson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJLh6Wha76A

Ditto Brian Cox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVKeOmZ7umQ

Of course, prox will never give it up. HE is convinced that he truly is a genius and that Tyson and Cox are just, uh, low energy thinkers - as opposed to prox, who is, uh, a very stable genius.

Hmmmm. And of whom does that remind us?

77lriley
Modificato: Nov 21, 2022, 5:42 am

Lockdowns certainly helped to curtail the spread of Covid which was particularly important when doctors and scientists were trying to figure out what exactly they were dealing with and trying to determine ways to combat it. Without a doubt lockdowns saved lives.

Of course there are those who would choose their own prosperity over that or the survival of others.

Prox would have been in his element if he lived in the late Middle Ages during the Black Plague. Survival of the fittest….or luckiest and all.

78terriks
Nov 21, 2022, 10:13 pm

>76 JGL53: Hear, hear! Way too much of the discourse in this group is spent trying to reason with this one poster. I blocked the guy long ago.

79proximity1
Nov 22, 2022, 12:12 pm

>78 terriks:

"Way too much..."

LOL!

Says the poster from whom I can recall not a single attempt to "reason". Well, "terricks", you should be delighted then since, with your affinities for the groups "Feminist Theory" and "Queer Nation"---from the first of which I'm formally barred from comment and, to the second of which I could not have less inclination to wish to comment---, you're very unlikely to even see my comments unless you coming looking for them and, rarely--though not rarely enough for my wishes, come dumping your disparaging comment.

You're so far just part way to success in ignoring me.

I wish you full "success" without further delay!

There's "reasoning" "nipped in the bud"!!!

LOL!!!

80proximity1
Nov 24, 2022, 1:28 pm


EVERY claim supporting the massive world-wide house-arrest of people on the pretext of protecting them from the spread of COVID-19 is proving, little by little, to have been based on false or greatly exaggerated data and, in some cases, deliberately suppressed information which either did not support the authorities' claims or directly countered the validity of those
claims.

The early cases concerning a choir-practice in Skagit, WA. on which nearly the entire ensuing world-wide lock-down claims relied for supposed support as a health emergency necessitating such dire measures are now shown to have been
the result of shoddy data analysis which did not in the slightest justify the conclusions drawn and reported.


Covid choir ban was based on ‘exaggerated’ evidence | New study finds choral society outbreak that sparked panic was misunderstood, with most choristers having been infected outside of rehearsal | By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 15 November 2022 • 3:50pm



2022 NOVEMBER 16 | The DAILY TELEGRAPH, p. 4 ; Sarah Knapton
HEADLINE: "Scientists change their tune and disown Covid choir ban"

"THE ban imposed on choirs during the pandemic was based on flawed evidence, scientists have concluded after finding that an outbreak at a church in America early in the crisis was not caused by a superspreader.

"On March 10, 2020, a rehearsal of the Skagit Valley Chorale in Mount Vernonn, Washington, led to 52 of the 61 attendees being infected with coronavirus, and two deaths. And investigation by Skagit County public health officials laid the blame on a single chorister who turned up with symptoms and later tested positive for the virus.

"Its findings were cited by countries that banned choirs and church gatherings on the grounds that indoor singing could spread the virus. The paper was was quoted in 772 papers and downloaded or viewed 618,000 times.

"But a review of the case by Nottingham Trent University, Brunel University and the Brighton and Sussex Medical School concluded that many of the choristers' symptoms started too early to have been caused by the rehearsal. It appears that the majority of people had been infected two to four days beforehand and that coronavirus was rife in the community.

"Prof. Robert Dingwall, of Nottingham Trent University, one of the review's author's, said: 'There have been a lot of papers saying that choirs are dangerous, and citing this paper, without actually questioning its findings. It was one of the first papers so it was very influential. But we looked at it and thought the speed with which people were getting infected and displaying symptoms was not very plausible. It didn't fit the epidemic curve.
... ...





(Daily Telegraph (London) : UK experts helped shut down Covid lab leak theory - weeks after being told it might be true | Sir Patrick Vallance among scientists behind paper that stifled debate into the origins of the virus | By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor and Ashley Rindsberg 23 November 2022 • 9:10pm



"Top scientists including Sir Patrick Vallance were warned that Covid-19 could have evolved in laboratory animals, but collaborated in a paper which shut down the lab leak theory, it has emerged"....

Related Topics
Coronavirus, China, Wuhan, Wuhan Institute of Virology


81lriley
Nov 24, 2022, 2:21 pm

Covid spread was very much about the proximity of people with the virus to other people. Whether they were in some kind of pre-stage with the virus to becoming sick when they went to choir practice or not. Let’s also keep in mind the various mutations of Covid since it made it’s first appearance. A lot of people who got the first variation hardly even noticed it. They were very often just carriers. As it mutated further there was less of that and more likelihood of getting sick. There are more deaths of United States citizens from Covid than all our wars combined from the American revolution until today. That we would do nothing…..try nothing to mitigate the damage and disease….that some are so determined to play backseat quarterback about mitigation efforts is par for the course.

As well there are people who test negative but have many of the symptoms including symptoms of long Covid…..some of which are very debilitating. We have loads of people who have suffered major organ damage….are physical shells of what they were only a short while ago and will be rehabbing for what remains of their lives.

82proximity1
Modificato: Nov 27, 2022, 11:04 am

>81 lriley:

No, it wasn't.

If that had been true, neither Sweden nor Norway, which didn't order separation measures should not have seen their far, far better outcomes. If that had been true, families locked down together should not have found that, despite many weeks of close proximity, only one out of say, five or more ever became symptomatically ill--though all contacted the virus and developed antibodies to it.

Your suppositions, like the shitty, shoddy "science" you claim to "follow" are crap.

All the following is either false or beside the point.


Whether they were in some kind of pre-stage with the virus to becoming sick when they went to choir practice or not. Let’s also keep in mind the various mutations of Covid since it made it’s first appearance. A lot of people who got the first variation hardly even noticed it. They were very often just carriers. As it mutated further there was less of that and more likelihood of getting sick. There are more deaths of United States citizens from Covid than all our wars combined from the American revolution until today." ...


You're now reduced to simply parroting moronic Biden talking-points. That's sad.

See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/23/bidens-messed-up-math-compari...

Only those war deaths in wars which reasonably, could not possibly have been avoided altogether--and certain of these there were-- are pertinent here.

Once this virus was in the open, able to circulate, there was no serious question of containing its spread---and, this, despite the paucity of other things we could have reliably stated about this pathogen--was both true and understood in the world of epidemiology.

There was then, as now, zero sound scientific data showing that any of the measures taken to suppress the transmission actually had any soundly shown benefits.

Your claims of the efficacy of the lock-down measures could, with equal justice, be said of people who wore enchanted talismans, amulets, to ward of the disease and, though infected, never having become seriously ill, assert that their escape is due to the talisman they wore.

IOW, your claims amount to sheer superstition and nothing more. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" bullshit.

83prosfilaes
Nov 25, 2022, 8:10 pm

>82 proximity1: If that had been true, neither Sweden nor Norway, which didn't order separation measures should not have seen their far, far better outcomes.

Far, far better? The US, per 100,000, had 30k cases and 300 deaths. Sweden had 25k cases and 200 deaths. Norway had 27k cases and 80 deaths. Canada had 12k cases and 130 deaths. China, with its extreme lockdowns, had 0.1k cases and 0 deaths. Sweden did worse in deaths per capita than any country in Asia, Africa or Oceania except for Tunisia, Georgia or Russia.

If that had been true, families locked down together should not have found that, despite many weeks of close proximity, only one out of say, five or more ever became symptomatically ill--though all contacted the virus and developed antibodies to it.

I'm confused why you would think this is remarkable. Typhoid Mary is an extreme example, but many diseases have asymptomatic carriers, people with minor sickness, and other people who die to the disease, even in the same family.

Once this virus was in the open, able to circulate, there was no serious question of containing its spread---and, this, despite the paucity of other things we could have reliably stated about this pathogen--was both true and understood in the world of epidemiology.

Except that China seems to have done it. There were cities that were pretty successful quarantining themselves from the Spanish flu, and we constantly give instructions to try and contain the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

A lot of this was going to happen anyway. Sure, the kids can go to school, until half the teachers are out sick and 10% of them are dead, and subs are going to think twice about taking their place in the plague den. People were going to stop casually going to restaurants and the like to avoid this.

There was neither then, as now, zero sound scientific data showing that any of the measures taken to suppress the transmission actually had any soundly shown benefits.

By the same standard of evidence, there's no evidence any of the measures actually had any soundly shown detriments. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" yourself.

Look, the spread of Covid-19 is interesting and confusing. Why was India and Africa so lightly hit? Has there been any work on getting accurate estimates on disease rates? E.g. official records say Turkmenistan has never seen a case, to which most people call bullshit. The US seems to have areas that have willfully undercounted Covid cases, and certainly we have a lot lousier case counts than places with socialized medicine where people are much more likely to call their doctors. But I'm seriously tired of the fact it's all political bullshit, stuff like complaining about the lockdown instead of figuring out how to go ahead.

84proximity1
Nov 27, 2022, 11:10 am


More of muddled thinking's idiotic insanity :

... "stuff like complaining about the lockdown instead of figuring out how to go ahead."

There is no such thing as any meaningful "figuring out how to go ahead" without first thoroughly reviewing what was done, where, when, by whom and for what reasons and purposes.

People like you would ensure that that is never done because you're filled with a disgraceful insecurity from having championed a massive policy failure which was as destructive as it was dishonest and unnecessary.

85kiparsky
Nov 27, 2022, 11:57 am

So, to get this straight, am I to understand that this guy's preferred public health response to the Covid pandemic would have been to do nothing? That is, that in the absence of perfect knowledge it's better to take no action than to take a potentially wrong action?

86lriley
Nov 27, 2022, 4:33 pm

>85 kiparsky: in a nutshell Prox's scientific and/or medical take is 'let whoever is going to die die and let God sort them out' or yes pretty much do nothing. That the medical world and science stepped in to mitigate suffering and death is something that was always going to be open to a critique....and here Prox is another backseat quarterback. Prox here is not really different from DeSantis's worldview or much different from Trump's both of whom fuss over business interests and the bank accounts of the well to do and wealthy people over lives saved--both of whom by the way would rather muddy the waters with jackass cure-alls as long as they or their interests are not put out at all.

It would have been something if Donald had succumbed to Covid when he was seriously ill. Prox might be singing a different tune now---probably something like 'murdered by the Chinese at the behest of Biden'.

87prosfilaes
Nov 27, 2022, 5:05 pm

>84 proximity1: There is no such thing as any meaningful "figuring out how to go ahead" without first thoroughly reviewing what was done, where, when, by whom and for what reasons and purposes.

If you add more hyperbole, it's just going to be more convincing. To figure out how to best go ahead, you need to understand what happened before. It doesn't really matter by whom or for what reasons. And it's easy to fuss about fine details of the past that just aren't going to matter in the future; you have to get the broad strokes that won't change when the virus mutates or medical technology advances a little.

People like you would ensure that that is never done because you're filled with a disgraceful insecurity from having championed a massive policy failure which was as destructive as it was dishonest and unnecessary.

Exactly. You're using this as an attack instead of actually learning how to do better. Why did Nigeria and DR Congo do so well, despite having huge cities/metropolitan areas? Why did Canada do so much better than Sweden and the US--it had lockdowns like the US and unlike Sweden? But, no, it's US vs Sweden only and "people like you" and "it was dishonest". Where COVID-19 came from might matter for future diseases, but mattered not a whit for COVID-19. But like the people pointing fingers at China at the time, you want to make it a political matter, not a tool for preventing future disasters.

88proximity1
Nov 29, 2022, 11:54 am

>86 lriley:

in a nutshell your scientific and/or medical take is:

lock up millions of healthy people in their homes--without asking them, without getting legal authority for it, and, though there is no good reason to expect or to believe that this shall materially change other than the tiniest marginal outcomes, keep them in that house-arrest, for many, deprived of their livlihoods, driven, in many cases, beyond their ability to endure physically or mentally, and, at the same time, reduce the available medical to inadequate remote consultations. Businesses driven out of business, forced to close, to fold and face bankruptcy, even as billions of $/£ per week are spent on useless programs which also change nothing important in the general outcome. In total, trillions of $/£ squandered on a failed exercise from which useful learning also failed.

The full scope of this disgace is hardly known or measured.

Oh, and by the way, having done this, then stubbornly refusing to learn from it so that, at any time, this entire nightmare shall be repeated by the same or similar fools.

That the medical world and science stepped in to mitigate suffering and death is
an empty claim made by people now too embarrassed to face up to the hardly-believable stupidity they advocated and defended over the course of many months, directly in the face of clearly demonstrated facts that their assumptions and claims were so much bunkum.

89lriley
Nov 29, 2022, 1:23 pm

>88 proximity1: no one was locked up in their homes. For a period of time some businesses were closed. For a period of time there may have been mask mandates. For a period of time if you wanted to attend an event a vaccination may have been required. This contention that your freedumbs were being taken away is a bunch of nonsense. You might have been chased out of a grocery for not giving a shit about the health and welfare of others but if you returned with a mask you would have been free to shop to your hearts content.

No one ever suggested that this was going to go on forever. Your inability to understand anything other than the pandemic was everyone’s concern….not just something that put a crimp in your lifestyle. You don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about others though and that happens to be your problem and one most people don’t have or at least not to the degree that you have. I’m sorry that you have issues coping but there are professionals that might be able to help you. Why don’t you give them a try?

90kiparsky
Nov 29, 2022, 2:43 pm

>88 proximity1: lock up millions of healthy people in their homes

Where are you claiming that this happened?

That the medical world and science stepped in to mitigate suffering and death is

....simply true.

If you're going to argue anything else, you're just going to have to review the facts. They're not hard to find, though it might require that you actually look at a newspaper. Any library in this country will be able to provide you with access to the day-to-day reporting. Since you seem to have completely missed it as it was happening, I'll warn you: it's a pretty grim story. '

(Just as an aside, I know you're not a big fan of facts, but I think you'll find that they're much more convincing than whatever it is you're doing)

91prosfilaes
Nov 29, 2022, 6:16 pm

>88 proximity1: without getting legal authority for it,

My understanding is that courts have been generous with the powers of health authorities.

and, though there is no good reason to expect or to believe that this shall materially change other than the tiniest marginal outcomes

As I said, hyperbole doesn't help your argument. It's a disease passed by close contact between humans, and, for good reason, those have long been handled by quarantine. China's extreme version of it worked very well. This is simply coming across as political attack, not discussion of optimal response.

92kiparsky
Nov 29, 2022, 9:05 pm

>91 prosfilaes: I honestly wouldn't say that China's "no covid" policy has "worked very well", because as far as I can tell, simply because as far as I know there isn't a whole lot of data that doesn't come from the Chinese government and the reliable reporting I get from that part of the world, while largely anecdotal, suggests that the attempt to eradicate the disease has not been particularly effective at any stage in the game. Just to state the obvious: if any government in the world is going to be able to manage an eradication-through-lockdown strategy, it's going to be the biggest, best-funded, and most unashamedly totalitarian one going. And they're still trying, which suggests to me that eradication of the Covid virus by enforced lockdown is not a viable strategy.

(in fact, the last couple of days have suggested that the lockdown policy may be leading to the first serious popular challenge to the totalitarian state, which is an interesting development)

Of course, this has nothing at all to do with Prox's point, unless they're complaining about the Chinese zero-covid policy, which I don't think is what they're on about. (I have no idea what they're actually on about, and very little reason to believe that they have any better information on that than I do, but it doesn't seem like they're whinging about China's policies. I could be wrong.)

What Prox seems to be knicker-twisted about is the zero-covid total-lockdown situation in the US - which of course doesn't exist and never did, which would be more than a little embarrassing for anyone who cared about making real points in real arguments. So it's hard to know whether to talk about the (admittedly mixed) effectiveness of the actual US policy - which would pretty much lock Prox out of the discussion, since he doesn't believe in reality - or to just make fun of him for believing in fairy stories.

Frankly, it seems to me that Prox is only here because he enjoys - for some reason or other - being mocked for his enthusiastic belief in literally and fairy story that his handlers choose to come up with for him to believe in, and if that's the entertainment he seeks, I am happy to provide it. So I'll just carry on making fun of him for having absolutely no idea what he's talking about, and he'll enjoy the fact that someone is paying attention to something he says - which I suspect is pretty rare in his real life - and we'll all have a gay old time.

93John5918
Modificato: Nov 30, 2022, 12:30 am

>92 kiparsky: Frankly, it seems to me that Prox is only here because he enjoys - for some reason or other - being mocked for his enthusiastic belief in literally and fairy story that his handlers choose to come up with for him to believe in

Well, yes and no. For Prox as an individual, that might be true, but in the current climate of fake news, conspiracy theories, deliberate misinformation and disinformation, denial of facts, anti-science, anti-academia, etc in social media which many people trust more than mainstream professional media, and alongside a type of populism and identity politics which eschew critical thinking and rational debate, I wonder. It does seem to me as if elements of the extreme right wing are deliberately trying to move the discourse rightwards at every opportunity, so that people on the political left and centre, and even the moderate right, find themselves defending against this extreme ideology simply in order to prevent the "centre" or the "mainstream" from being moved further to the right without anybody noticing - like the proverbial slow boiling of a frog. If the mainstream is constantly having to debunk sheer nonsense, which in the past might have been dismissed out of hand by most thinking people, then it has less time and energy to concentrate on real issues. That seems to me to be the extreme right wing agenda these days. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I don't claim it is necessarily planned or organised, but it does seem to be happening, and Prox would appear to be acting as one of its vehicles.

And "being mocked" also feeds into a right wing fantasy that they are "victims", despite the fact that they are still broadly a wealthy, privileged and controlling group in the world and particularly in the USA and the rest of the Global North.

94kiparsky
Nov 30, 2022, 1:29 am

>93 John5918: If you wanted to suggest that people with a right-wing ideology have figured out that by making their ideas as idiotic as humanly possible, they make them palatable to people stupid enough to carry those ideas around, not minding that they don't actually understand them, and repeat them to others in the hopes of sounding clever or at least on-brand, then you're not describing a "conspiracy theory", you're describing a marketing campaign. And, as we can see from its effect on Prox (and, as you say, other vehicles), it's a hugely successful one.

And the astounding thing is, Prox actually thinks he's clever. He truly believes that he's understood something that the rest of us don't understand, and he believes that because there's a whole lot of people who make a good paycheck telling him this. Turns out that affirming your audience's self-image is not a bad way to sell shaving cream and tinned soup.

And, as advertising executives and fake Nigerian princes have known for years, if you want to lead someone around by the nose, it's helpful to ensure that you're not talking to smart people to begin with. Which is probably why right-wing media rakes in dollars by the bucketload, and the left-wing media, in the US at least, is is a couple of scrappy monthlies and the Nation.

So yeah, it is planned, and it is organized, but not in the sense of "there's a secret cabal of people planning this". The people planning this are pretty upfront about what they're doing: they pay Tucker Carlson and all of that lot a whole bunch of money to say idiotic things to massively stupid people, which brings in a profitably gullible audience, and they sell advertising at a very lucrative rate. And as a result people like Prox become convenient vehicles for the idiotic things that the Tucker Carlsons say.

This is not rocket surgery.

And "being mocked" also feeds into a right wing fantasy that they are "victims"

That may indeed be why he enjoys it so much. Or for all I know, it might be a sort of a weird kink, I couldn't say. But he's definitely getting off on it, one way or another.

95lriley
Modificato: Nov 30, 2022, 9:05 am

Just to jog Prox’s memory a bit……for a while at the beginning of the pandemic in the USA…..NYS (particularly from the surrounding NYC metropolitan area) in May, June, July, August 2020 was on a daily basis losing 800, 900, occasionally 1000 souls to the virus. There wasn’t enough PPE to go around and the medicos as in Asia and Europe were flummoxed and had not developed strategies and even many of them were getting sick and dying.

Were we to do nothing to try to slow the spread? The virus had also taken root in New Jersey and New England and the freedumb loving Florida governor DeSantis had his state troopers up at the borders denying entry to anyone with NYS license plates. Later on he would welcome the virus into his state because it was best for business. Since then and despite the huge head start NYS had in pre-vaccine USA Florida has even surpassed NYS’s overall death count but it’s all about freedumb and what’s good for business for Ron. The dead are dead and don’t matter anymore I’d guess is how he looks at it.

What makes Prox’s bs about total lockdowns more preposterous is his hero DJT’s handling of the pandemic which he pretty much left to the Governor’s of the respective 50 states to do as they would…..only griping about the effects to the stock market and the restrictions in some states on his evangelical voter base to sing their hearts out. Donald literally did as little as he could apart from monetizing his control over protective gear. He was always an obstacle in the way of any kind of mitigation. He didn’t care about the sick or dying nor did he take it very seriously…..he was sloppy and it ran through his own White House and nearly killed him too.

96proximity1
Feb 8, 2023, 10:59 am


STUDY:
"Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses"

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6

Database: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Version published: 30 January 2023see what's new

Copyright: Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. on behalf of The Cochrane Collaboration.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence , which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Authors:
Tom Jefferson
Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2JA, UK
Full affilitation: Senior Associate TutorDepartment for Continuing Education, University of OxfordRewley House1 Wellington Square Oxford OX1 2JA, UK ‐ tom.jefferson@conted.ox.ac.uk
and Liz Dooley, Eliana Ferroni,Lubna A Al-Ansary, Mieke L van Driel,Ghada A Bawazeer, Mark A Jones, Tammy C Hoffmann, Justin Clark,Elaine M Beller, Paul P Glasziou, John M Conly.

97proximity1
Modificato: Feb 20, 2023, 4:05 am

The "science" behind the imposition of face-masks to supress the spread of Covid-19 WAS ALWAYS JUNK.

See article above this reader's comment (at City Journal)

Mike Granby (excerpt)

"A lot of posters here are saying that masks were actually about control, and that is to an extent true. But there was another factor, and one that actually required a non-trivial number of people to ignore the masking mandate, and that was the creation of division to solidify target constituencies.
Masking and the rest of the COVID theatre proved to be a boon to Democrats who were looking to motivate key demographics to whom such safetyism appealed, but that appeal was made all the more powerful if it could be combined with a sense moral superiority over a class of people who were associated with the opposition. If you are to make yourself out to be a COVID saint, you need sinners on whom to look down." ...





..."The researchers compared the results from a nationwide sample of Covid infections in the Netherlands at several points in 2020 and 2021 to nationwide excess death totals. To determine the Covid death rate, they assumed all the excess deaths resulted from Covid infections.

"This method likely overstates Covid deaths. Some extra deaths were likely drug overdoses, suicides, or untreated heart attacks and other lockdown-related health problems. In addition, the sampling technique they used may have understated infections.

"Put those issues aside, since they don’t change the most important finding. The researchers determined the death rate from Covid infections was about 1 percent overall in the Netherlands during 2020. (Again, that figure almost certainly is high.)

"The researchers then did what governments and Covid hysterics have tried not to do for three years. They explicitly stratified deaths by age, from under 10 to over 80.

"The results are… enlightening.

"The chart below measures infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from the second Covid wave in the Netherlands, in fall 2020. That stretch probably marks the truest measure of Covid’s lethality. It occurred after the ventilator and nursing home catastrophes of the first wave but before the short-lived happy vaccine valley of spring 2021, when the mRNAs sharply reduced infections.

"The crucial column is the rightmost.

"The researchers had to combine deaths under 50, because they had so few. They estimated that the 10.5 million people under 50 in the Netherlands had a total of 24 excess deaths during the second half of 2020.

"10 million people, 24 deaths.

"The researchers estimated 1.06 million infections in people under 50 in that time period. Assuming all 24 extra deaths were Covid-related, the infection fatality rate for people under 50 was 0.002 percent - about 1 in 45,000, give or take.

"Again, that number is blended. The researchers didn’t try to figure out who in that under-50 group had died. But other research has shown that most people under 50 who die from Covid have two or more health problems, such as diabetes or even cancer diagnoses. Anyone under 50 who doesn’t have severe preexisting conditions, such as morbid obesity, likely has a Covid death risk almost too low to measure accurately.

"Even people in their fifties had only about a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying from Covid, the researchers reported - again, without taking account of any comorbidities.

"Meanwhile, they estimated that during the same period Covid killed as many as 36 percent of the people over 80 it infected - roughly one in three.

"(24 excess deaths under 50, 8,374 over 80. The second chart is just a close-up on the right column.) ..."
______________________________

Alex Berenson | SUBSTACK: Unreported Truths | "1 in 45,000" | 15 February, 2023



98jjwilson61
Feb 18, 2023, 11:21 pm

Everyone seems to forget that the Covid virus has only been known for about 3 years and in the beginning all that was known about it was that it was spread through the air. Given that limited knowledge wearing masks was the best advice that could be given. Public health is based on science but it can't wait for scientific certainty before developing policies

99proximity1
Feb 19, 2023, 8:46 am

>98 jjwilson61:

The principles of safe justice and fair justice cannot and do not allow people to be watched, recorded, followed, arrested or punished on the assumption that, one day, they might think, say, or commit some act deemed unconventional or against the whims of popular opinion.

Otherwise the door is wide open to a totalitarian state which makes Orwell's dystopian vision in 1984 look like a fairyland of childhood delight.

100John5918
Modificato: Feb 19, 2023, 8:58 am

>99 proximity1:

Wearing masks was a sensible precaution given, as >98 jjwilson61: says, the uncertainties about the transmission of COVID. It was barely an imposition on most people, no more than a slight inconvenience which might have saved many lives. Those who couldn't wear masks for genuine reasons were exempted. The impetus to wear masks came from the medical professionals using the best knowledge they had at that time. The impetus to refuse came from an extreme political ideology. I know which one I prefer to follow.

101kiparsky
Feb 19, 2023, 9:33 am

>99 proximity1: The principles of safe justice and fair justice cannot and do not allow people to be watched, recorded, followed, arrested or punished on the assumption that, one day, they might think, say, or commit some act deemed unconventional or against the whims of popular opinion.

This is a fine claim, but what does it have to do with masking? I mean, the principles of justice also cannot and do not allow people to be folded, spindled, or mutilated on the grounds that they might one day grow tomatoes in August or spit on the sidewalk. What's your point?

102lriley
Modificato: Feb 19, 2023, 12:10 pm

Not sure where Prox lifted his link from but Mike Granby is not the author of the article. John Tierney is. Tierney is a writer for City-Journal a Manhattan (NYC based) right wing think tank. Looking through some of the material that the City-Journal pushes....stuff that is anti-LGBTQ, anti-environment and all kinds of horseshit about critical race theory. The possibility that they can possibly be right about anything is kind of sabotaged by all the boiling over resentments they push on to their readership.

Whether or not Prox once upon a time felt pressured into wearing a mask say to buy a loaf of bread or a half gallon of milk as a courtesy or safety measure to others in a time of pandemic (that has led to millions of deaths) he somehow construes as a loss of control or of his freedoms. I mean really? It's fucking ridiculous. Does he run through stop signs and stop lights without any regard for others? Couldn't we construe that as some kind of loss of control too? The individual is more important than the society he/she lives in. This screwy libertarianism.

Anyway to me just about every link he throws is just a lot of blah blah blah garbage.

103proximity1
Modificato: Feb 19, 2023, 1:15 pm

Glenn Greenwald talks to Fox News's Dan Bongino
Greenwald: Networks Don't Apologize For Lying Because Their Audience Wants Them To Lie ...
| Posted By Ian Schwartz | On Date February 18, 2023



... " 'It used to be the case that if a journalist got caught lying they were a disgrace,' Greenwald said. 'There was a penalty for it. That was the reason people sought to avoid doing it and if they did it, they apologized. That has changed completely now. The model on which they depend is exactly the opposite.'

" 'If you look at how balkanized our media is, liberal outlets only speak to liberals,' Greenwald continued. 'Even institutions that used to be considered kind of neutral and and in the middle like NPR (National Public Radio) and The New York Times - at least that is what they claimed - CBS News, the networks, overwhelmingly they are only speaking to liberals and Democrats. And they know that. And their audience wants them to lie to help advance the Democratic party. So when they are caught they don't need to apologize because their audience is in favor of them doing that.'

" 'Lying is not something they do because they are incompetent... lying is their actual function,' Greenwald told Bongino." ...

104jjwilson61
Feb 19, 2023, 4:56 pm

Holy switcheroo Batman. I thought this was going to be the story where Fox lied to its viewers about the results of the last presidential election

105kiparsky
Feb 19, 2023, 6:22 pm

>104 jjwilson61: I suppose if this view is widely accepted on the right, we now know why Republicans are wrong about literally everything that involves facts. Apparently, "fact-checked" now means "liberal lies".

106proximity1
Modificato: Feb 20, 2023, 1:05 pm

>98 jjwilson61:

..." the Covid virus has only been known for about 3 years." ...

Utterly false.



Covid-19 was a variant the rDNA of which precursors had been identified (sequenced) and studied since
"(t)he first known cases occurred in November 2002, and the syndrome caused the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. ..." (Wikipedia | "SARS")



..."all that was known about it was that it was spread through the air."

False.


... "First identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, and a pandemic on March 11, 2020. SARS‑CoV‑2 is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus that is contagious in humans.

"SARS‑CoV‑2 is a virus of the species severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV), related to the SARS-CoV-1 virus that caused the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak.... (Emphasis added)
... " The virus shows little genetic diversity, indicating that the spillover event introducing SARS‑CoV‑2 to humans is likely to have occurred in late 2019." ... (Wikipedia | "SARS-CoV-2")
(emphasis added)




"Public health is based on science but it can't wait for scientific certainty before developing policies."


False (and, used as an excuse for patently irresponsible haste in public-policy making on health matters, a misstatement of medical science research standards of practice).

First, science never "waits for 'certainty'" nor is it ever supposed to do so as there is never "scientific certainty" in medical science. So, to raise that as some supposed reason for undue haste and an abandonment of due care in public-healthcare policy is a snare and a delusion, deliberately trafficked to obscure the actual facts.

Second, all medical science, whether done well and properly or badly botched, as in the case of the panicked world-wide reaction to Covid-19, proceeds without "waiting" and proceeds on the basis of statistical probabilties. In 2019, those known probabilities in no way or manner justified the draconian measures adopted throughout most of the advanced "civilized" world. From a cost/benefit point of view, the lock-downs were, in the annals of modern medicine, virtually an unprecedented and uselessly self-imposed disaster.

107kiparsky
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 1:06 am

>106 proximity1: Just a note of sanity here:

First, science never "waits for 'certainty'"

This is exactly what was said in the quote you're responding to.

As for the rest of it, SARS-Cov-2 is a previously unknown member of a species of viruses. The species had been known, the variant was unknown. This is what "novel" means.

Your supposed quote from Wikipedia is misleading. Half of the text you identify as a quote does not appear on the page you identify, and the other half does not refer to Covid-19 (the disease) or to SARS-Cov-2, it refers to a different virus in the SARS family. I honestly don't know why you people to lie about things that are so easily checked, but once again you're lying.

Here's the introductory section of the wikipedia page, as it appears on 20 Feb 2023:

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV).3 The first known cases occurred in November 2002, and the syndrome caused the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. In the 2010s, Chinese scientists traced the virus through the intermediary of Asian palm civets to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township, Yunnan.4

SARS was a relatively rare disease; at the end of the epidemic in June 2003, the incidence was 8,469 cases with a case fatality rate (CFR) of 11%.5 No cases of SARS-CoV-1 have been reported worldwide since 2004.6

In December 2019, another strain of SARS-CoV was identified as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).7 This new strain causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a disease that brought about the COVID-19 pandemic.8


Just to make sure that we're all clear on this, COVID-19 is not a virus, it's a disease. It's caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is a variant of the SARS family. COVID-19's symptoms and treatment are distinct from the symptoms and treatment of other diseases caused by other members of the SARS family, and have only been known for the last three years.

Okay, there's some facts for you to ignore, now feel free to get back to lying about the press or whatever it is you want this "SCIENCE" thread to be about.

108YavorD
Feb 21, 2023, 5:26 am

>102 lriley:
QUOTA Whether or not Prox once upon a time felt pressured into wearing a mask say to buy a loaf of bread or a half gallon of milk as a courtesy or safety measure to others in a time of pandemic (that has led to millions of deaths) he somehow construes as a loss of control or of his freedoms END QUOTA

This exactly describes my feelings even a few days ago when I was forced to wear a mask in order to be able to talk with a doctor, or to enter a pharmacy.

Let made it clear. I totally disagree with most of the anti-COVID measures. I was lucky to live in a Nordic country in which a court prevented a government attempt for a large-scale lockdown.

109John5918
Feb 21, 2023, 6:34 am

>108 YavorD:

I hope you'll take this question as a genuine attempt to understand and not as a challenge, but would you care to explain why you felt this way? My own feeling was completely different. I was very willing to put up with the minor inconvenience of wearing a mask if that potentially contributed to my own health and, more importantly, the health of others. If subsequent research suggests that it wasn't as effective as medical professionals believed at the time, well, no harm done. Better safe than sorry, err on the side of caution, etc.

110YavorD
Feb 21, 2023, 7:28 am

>109 John5918:
"err on the side of caution" is never my first choice. I am approaching a safety problem as an engineer. Mechanical engineers do know (need to know) something about fluid mechanics, aerosols and filters. Pretending to do something for a good cause is not an excuse to do stupid things.
Last but not least, for me the mask is not 'minor inconvenience'. Someone telling me not to go into a forest for a walk without permission is not a 'minor inconvenience'. It is an offense. Harm is done.

111prosfilaes
Feb 21, 2023, 10:24 am

>110 YavorD: In the US and England, there is no right to roam. Much of the US West is federal land and open to all, but having moved farther east, I'm finding lists of local mountains filled with notes about troubles or impossibilities about getting rights from the local landowners. Is that an offense? What about nudity ordnances? You're asked to put on a small mask with no known harmful effects, but underwear has studied effects on fertility, shoes warp the growing foot, and any covering reduces vitamin D production. If you take umbridge at such minor things, why not fight the underlying systemic offenses?

112YavorD
Feb 21, 2023, 10:59 am

>111 prosfilaes: 'In the US and England, there is no right to roam.'
Including Right to Roam. This is a very good example, actually! Such things are important when You have a choice. I am fighting for my right of choice.

113proximity1
Modificato: Feb 21, 2023, 1:41 pm

>108 YavorD: >110 YavorD:



..." 'err on the side of caution is never my first choice. I am approaching a safety problem as an engineer. Mechanical engineers do know (need to know) something about fluid mechanics, aerosols and filters. Pretending to do something for a good cause is not an excuse to do stupid things. "...



So right, you are! But, an important quibble:

"Caution" as a principle, has been turned on its head in this case. (You understand that very well but others don't.) It should have been the "cautious" course NOT to have placed the entire nation under preemptory house-arrest and disrupted and seriously damaged the mental and physical health of millions of healthy people--including young children and infants--who'd commited no offence.
------------------------------------------

Not "pressured"---

flatly denied entry, refused entry, barred, blocked, shut out:
of shops, of public buildings, of public transport, for many months on end, denied the right to go out of doors without a document showing an approved purpose (Note: to be clear, this edict, passed in haste and first promulgated by mere fiat,without legal authority, was of course and by sheer necessity, violated by many, many adults. The fact remains that among them were some who were stopped by police, questioned, required on demand to show evidence of their approved purpose for being outdoors, and, when they could not, were issued fines when a verbal warning was not deemed sufficient deterrent. Authorization by legislative act came only later, after the fact.)

In a disastrous, never-before-attempted "social-nightmare-"experiment" "grandure nature" this entire country was placed in compulsory suspension. Children, confined indoors in their homes, lost many months --for some, their entire young lives to date-- of any society beyond their own immediate families.

One devastating consequence for these infants and toddlers is that their normal immune systems, for lack of normal exposure to public spaces and crowds, did not develop in healthy and protecting ways. In short, their bodies were severely immuno-deficient and whether, if ever, and how they might recover from this deficiency is still not known.

Never mind my personal inconveniences. Millions of children under the age of five had their physical and mental lives severely--and perhaps permanently--damaged and disrupted.

ALL FROM STUPID ZEALOTRY which cannot learn or even apologize !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

114proximity1
Feb 21, 2023, 12:27 pm

>111 prosfilaes:

Damnable lies.

115kiparsky
Feb 21, 2023, 12:28 pm

>110 YavorD: I don't know what sort of engineering you practice, but "err on the side of caution" is certainly standard engineering doctrine in software, at least when you're working on systems that matter. If there's an outcome that you would prefer to not experience, that's a risk that you include in your planning.
In the case of Covid-19, the risk involved in uncontrolled spread was pretty clearly known very early, it seemed pretty clear that masks would help control that spread, and the harm caused by wearing a mask was zero, so from an engineering perspective, there was no reason not to request or require the use of masks in public spaces.

You say the mask is not "minor inconvenience", but honestly, most people find it's a pretty simple thing to do. Can I ask why it's a major inconvenience for you?

116kiparsky
Feb 21, 2023, 12:33 pm

>113 proximity1: denied the right to go out of doors without a document showing an approved purpose.

Can I ask where this happened? From your previous posts I'd assumed you were based in the US, but this suggests that you were outside of the States during the pandemic.

shut out of shops, of public buildings, of public transport

In other words, people asked you to put a mask on if you were going to be in their space. That's not "shut out", that's you deciding not to go in. Which, frankly, is your right, but it's no good whining about the choices you made, you were free to make other ones.

117YavorD
Feb 21, 2023, 1:57 pm

>115 kiparsky: Did You ever see the face of a medic or another professional after a shift in protective gear?
Did You comprehend that a mask worn for about two hours is not less harmful to You than the infection it is supposed to prevent?
For me it happen to know how the protective gear works and when it is useless.

118proximity1
Modificato: Feb 21, 2023, 2:51 pm

Fanatical advocates of general-public mask-wearing at all times and in all places have
no understanding of either the purposes of important surgical sterility protocols in operating theatres or of the differences between these and what makes hygenic sense in public life.

They actually imagine that we can transpose a meaningful use of surgical sterility to common public settings. In this, they resemble hopelessly naive children's wishful thinking about safety. They're intent on imposing this stupid naiveté on all, healthy or not.

119prosfilaes
Feb 21, 2023, 3:43 pm

>117 YavorD: Did You ever see the face of a medic or another professional after a shift in protective gear?

No, but I've seen a lot of them mock anti-maskers for complaining about simple masks when they have to put on full protective gear.

Did You comprehend that a mask worn for about two hours is not less harmful to You than the infection it is supposed to prevent?

Do you comprehend that such a claim bewilders me? Nearly seven million dead worldwide, with hospitals in some cases being overloaded by COVID-19, versus what? I've never heard of a single mask related death or collapse or hospitalization.

120prosfilaes
Feb 21, 2023, 3:47 pm

>114 proximity1: I have no idea what you disagree with there. That it can be hard to hike local highpoints because of land-owner restrictions? That clothing can have a negative effect on the body? That forcing people to wear clothing over much of their body is a bit more intrusive then requiring them to wear clothing over a small bit of their body?

121kiparsky
Feb 21, 2023, 3:48 pm

>118 proximity1: Fanatics are not generally known for displaying a lot of understanding.

However, to assert that everyone who disagrees with you is a fanatic is usually the sign of fanatical thinking.

They actually imagine that we can transpose a meaningful use of surgical sterility to common public settings

I think you're intentionally misunderstanding for rhetorical effect. If nothing else, it's obvious to anyone who's thought about this as much as you seem to have done that the use of masks in clinical settings is not restricted to conditions where one is hoping to achieve surgical sterility. Masks are indicated in situations where one or more of the parties in the room may be carrying an airborne infectious virus and wishes to reduce the chances of spreading that virus to others. Which is exactly the situation that all of us found ourselves in in the spring of 2020, and that's why masks were quickly and uncontroversially adopted as a public health measure.

To be honest, I'm not sure why you're getting so worked up at this point, when infection and hospitalization rates in many communities have been low enough for long enough that very few businesses are requesting or requiring that customers wear masks.

122kiparsky
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 1:07 am

>117 YavorD: Did You ever see the face of a medic or another professional after a shift in protective gear?

FWIW, I do not require the formal capitalization on my pronouns, but I appreciate the mark of respect.

To your question, medical professionals I know were very relieved when they were able to get and wear protective gear during the pandemic, and they were very concerned when it was not available. None have complained to me of adverse consequences from wearing masks on the job.

That being said, I can understand that someone with sensitive skin might find it uncomfortable to wear masks for extended periods of time. However, even the most delicate flower should have no trouble putting one on for the fifteen minutes it takes to go into the grocery store and pick up the shopping.

Did You comprehend that a mask worn for about two hours is not less harmful to You than the infection it is supposed to prevent?
This is news to me. I have worn masks for a lot of hours over the last few years, and I can tell you that one exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the ensuing infection, was a lot more harmful to me than any of the time I spent wearing masks.
But do go on and explain the harm you think is caused by breathing through a bit of cloth for a while. I'm very curious.

123YavorD
Feb 21, 2023, 4:38 pm

>122 kiparsky: "But do go on and explain the harm you think is caused by breathing through a bit of cloth for a while. I'm very curious."

It takes a little patience and effort to learn what kind of life is developing inside the mask You are breathing in. Somehow this cautionary message was omitted from the recommendation of mask use.

The precautionary measure I am willing to accept is to avoid places with crowds and poor ventilation. For me it was not difficult to follow because I am doing this for years. I am sixty years old now and hope to enjoy my life a few years more.

124prosfilaes
Feb 21, 2023, 5:14 pm

>123 YavorD: It takes a little patience and effort to learn what kind of life is developing inside the mask You are breathing in.

It doesn't matter how much life is developing inside the mask; what matters is the effect it has on the wearer. Perhaps you have a link to evidence that masks are terribly harmful?

The precautionary measure I am willing to accept is to avoid places with crowds and poor ventilation.

So you're willing to accept the precautionary measure that without lockdowns most poor people can't. Many people are going to be working in factories, warehouses or in grocery stores, crowded with other people and poor ventilation. They can put on masks, they can have the people they work with put on masks, or if the state orders lockdown, or the state can pay to help those people. But they can't just say they won't work in those environments, because that's basically saying they won't work at all.

125proximity1
Feb 21, 2023, 5:55 pm


These people might as well be handed lucky charms to wear and be told that by wearing the charm they're protected from disease. This is, of course, sheer bullshit cargo-cult thinking but that is what dumb-fuck anglophone societies can now be convinced to believe is true.

We're over-ripe for the picking. Wear your own fucking mask. Don't impose your stupidity on others.

126kiparsky
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 1:07 am

>123 YavorD: The precautionary measure I am willing to accept is to avoid places with crowds and poor ventilation.

This is of course a fine idea, during a pandemic, and I think it's a key part of the idea of "social distancing".
The other part, of course, is that if you do find it necessary to go into a public space like a store or a government building or a public transit vehicle, to limit the time you spend there as much as you can and to wear a mask.

Nothing controversial about any of that.

It takes a little patience and effort to learn what kind of life is developing inside the mask You are breathing in.

Oh, I see. You're concerned about bacteria thriving in a moist, warm environment. That's not totally crazy, but of course there's a few considerations. First of all, the fifteen minutes you might spend in the grocery store is not a lot of time for anything to develop. More important, any bacteria developing in the mask comes from one of two places: either it's from inside your body, in which case you've already got plenty of it, or it's from outside your body, in which case the fact that it's on your mask means that it's not in your body, so if that's your concern then you've just demonstrated that the mask has in fact helped you avoid inhaling at least some of that, and allowed you to avoid contamination by that particular bug.

Now, if you're spending many hours on end in a mask, as for example the counter staff at my local coffee shop, you're probably going to do like medical professionals do and change the mask out once in a while. Depending on the mask, you'll replace it with a new one (if it's a disposable) or set it aside for cleaning, or replace the filters. But most of us do not work in settings that require extended mask wearing, so that's not really a thing. The longest stretch I've spent wearing a mask in the last six months was about 90 minutes at a concert, at the performer's request. And again, it was fine. Much better than the week I spent on my back when I was exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and came down with Covid-19 as a result. That was a real drag, and avoiding it for three years was certainly worth the minor inconvenience of putting a mask on when I went to get my groceries.

127kiparsky
Feb 21, 2023, 6:43 pm

>125 proximity1: These people might as well be handed lucky charms to wear and be told that by wearing the charm they're protected from disease.

The irony is lovely. Here we are in a thread that you've started, with the title of "SCIENCE", and you don't know the difference between science and superstition. This is lovely.

Don't impose your stupidity on others
This is exactly the point that someone is making when they require that you wear a mask in their place of business: You can be an idiot if you want, but not here. If you want to go unmasked, that's your business, but you can take your stupidity, and your business elsewhere.
So, when you complain about being "shut out of shops", just keep in mind your own words, and don't impose your stupidity on others.

128proximity1
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 8:06 pm

>117 YavorD:

"...the fact that it's on your mask means that it's not in your body, so if that's your concern then you've just demonstrated that the mask has in fact helped you avoid inhaling at least some of that..."

You see the level of "sophistication" in science understanding you're dealing with here.

And, for the millions of the infectious Covid-bearing viral organisms "filterable agents causing infectious diseases of plants and animals" the mask allows to be inhaled unimpeded--i.e. the near-totality of these-- "ignorance is bliss" and most people do not fall ill for the simple reason that most people 0 to 79 years, even when directly exposed to the Covid-bearing virus "filterable agents causing infectious diseases of plants and animals", do not fall ill anyway. Waves of Covid-bearing viruses "filterable agents causing infectious diseases of plants and animals" come and go. Human stupidity is a constant. (revised per Kiparskian pedantry)

129kiparsky
Feb 21, 2023, 10:50 pm

>128 proximity1: You see the level of "sophistication" in science understanding you're dealing with here.

I don't know how much sophistication is required to notice that bacteria which are setting up the colonies that >123 YavorD: was concerned about are bacteria that are not resident in your lungs. That seems actually pretty obvious to me, at least.

And, for the millions of the infectious Covid viral organisms the mask allows to be inhaled unimpeded

"Viral organisms"? Viruses are not organisms. This is why I refer to bacteria above, because >123 YavorD: was concerned about "life" setting up shop on his mask, which viruses cannot do, since they are inert until they encounter a cell in which they can replicate themselves. This is worth knowing, if only so you don't look like a fool when you're trying to make arguments about viruses, as could easily happen if you were in more judgemental company than you find here.

For the rest... you seem to be convinced that masks are somehow completely ineffective in stopping this particular virus (and, by extension, in stopping any airborne respiratory virus), and that also, people don't get sick from this virus in any case. Given that we've seen millions of people die from this disease that you think people don't get, and given that we know this disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus which you think people don't get sick from, and given that masks are quite effective in impeding the transmission of airborne viruses in general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular, that sounds completely deranged.

Do you want to try to make a coherent claim out of all of this, and present some sort of argument to support that claim, or do you just want to leave it there? "Leave it there", of course, is the one where you admit that you have no idea what you're talking about, that there is no argument to support what you're saying, and that you can't even make it make sense to yourself, let alone to anyone else, and that's why you're not even going to try.

You know, your usual move.

130proximity1
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 8:04 pm

Outside a temporarily-contrived sterile environment, masks are virtually completely ineffective in stopping this particular virus and, by extension, in stopping any airborne respiratory virus. We cannot all live indefinitely in a bubble-environment as, for a time, David Vetter was able to do. Though, unlike you, I do not impute that absurd claim to you, though you do contend other absurdities.

RE: "'Viral organisms'? Viruses are not organisms."

I used the phrase colloquially. Even scientists dance around the taxa of viruses:

Ought I have used exclusively such cumbersome phrases as "filterable agents causing infectious diseases of plants and animals" everywhere in place of "organism"? You're merely looking for something to pick on.

In the same article cited above (a joint statement issued under the auspices and in the name of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses Executive Committee), the authors write,


... "To understand the true extent of virus genomic diversity—which may be significantly broader than that of their hosts—and the origins and forces that shape this diversity, virologists will have to systematically rationalize the more distant relationships between viruses, ideally reflecting their ‘macroevolution’, and virus taxonomy should provide an inclusive yet dynamic classification framework to reflect these relationships. In contrast to the taxonomies of cellular organisms, this new virus taxonomic framework will have to accommodate the current view that viruses have multiple origins (polyphyly) and that their diversity cannot be represented by a single virosphere-wide tree (note:14). (Emphasis added)

... The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) oversees the official classification of viruses and nomenclature of taxa, that is, taxonomy (Box 1) (15). In its earliest versions, the ICTV classification of viruses into taxa formally recognized only genera and families but, over time, this classification scheme developed into a five-rank hierarchy of species, genus, subfamily (used rarely), family and order(16),(17). This five-rank structure matched a section of the Linnaean hierarchical structure used in the taxonomies of cellular organisms and remained in place until 2017 (Fig. 1, left). In addition to changes in the rank hierarchy, the recognition of virus taxa has also evolved over time, from a traditional phenotype-based characterization process to a multistage process that increasingly, but not exclusively, includes genomic properties and sequences (Box 2) (15),(18) ...


This is a completely false and deliberately dishonest representation of my position:



... you seem to be convinced that ... that also, people don't get sick from this virus.... ...from this disease that you think people don't get, ... and ... which you think people don't get sick from,



I'll leave that comment for others here to take as typical of the kind of low stuff in which you indulge. Any more responsible person than you are would retract and apologize for posting that disgraceful misrepresentation. But it epitomizes your tawdry standards of comment here.

When it comes to risk of looking like a fool in these comments sections, I would not trade places with you even if that were possible. I note that YavorD has not seen fit to comment further on the ridiculous stuff you post here. No other well-informed readers bother to reply to you and, of those who do reply, none take you seriously.

----------------------------------------

A beginner's basic introduction to the anatomy of the human immune system and to immunodeficiency.

131bnielsen
Feb 22, 2023, 6:55 am

>130 proximity1: Is that a quantum theory? I.e. If we test the masks, they work, but outside the tests, they "are virtually completely ineffective"?

132proximity1
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 8:00 am

>131 bnielsen:

I'll answer your (facetious?) question first with another question:

Is that your opening "bid" to challenge and take kiparsky's place here?

As hypotheses go, the quantum hypothesis of the behavior of sub-atomic particles is much less well founded than the germ theory of disease and the basics of microbiology of infectious disease. No informed medical scientists would admit in unguarded moments or believe that the science of immunology and the germ theory of disease "aren't really accurate", being, rather, only crude approximations, only what are statistical models, not things intended to be taken as actual real-world physical behavior.

Masks do not "work" either in tests or in real-world use except as they're designed and intended to do in the limited sphere of a hospital's version of the controlled sterile environment of an operating theatre. One does not typcially see doctors going around a hospital wearing a surgical face-covering. They understand that to do so is pointless-- even "for show purposes".

133bnielsen
Feb 22, 2023, 8:25 am

I think kiparsky does a good job, so I'm not challenging :-)

"No informed medical scientist" is a "No true Scotsman" argument. Lots of things can only be described as statistical models. That doesn't make them or the models useless. Using a mask doesn't mean that you can't get sick. It just means that you adjust some parameter in a statistical model. I'm fine with that.

If someone won't use a mask or get vaccinated, that's fine with me. I just object to claims that masks, vaccines, antibiotics, seat belts, whatever are useless.

134proximity1
Modificato: Feb 23, 2023, 7:36 am

>133 bnielsen:

RE: "I just object to claims that masks, vaccines, antibiotics, seat belts, whatever are useless."

I claimed and I claim that, outside sterile hospital environments for which they were developed, face-coverings are virtually useless in the prevention of the spread of airborne infectious pathogens such as Covid-SARS types or influenza, etc.

I've never tried to argue that any of these are useless:
vaccines,
antibiotics,
seat belts.

You assert that this falls afoul of some supposed "No true Scotsman" "argument". But I haven't asserted that there is "no true Scotsman". When I do you may raise that objection to me. Meanwhile, with respect to this:


..."No informed medical scientists would admit in unguarded moments or believe that the science of immunology and the germ theory of disease "aren't really accurate", ...


Just as I was challenged by kiparsky:



...Do you want to try to make a coherent claim out of all of this, and present some sort of argument to support that claim, or do you just want to leave it there? "Leave it there", of course, is the one where you admit that you have no idea what you're talking about, ...



either one of you is welcome to show, point to, a reference supporting your implied claim : that qualified medical doctors who dispute the accuracy or validity of the germ theory of disease or the any aspect of the science of immunology pertinent to this discussion are as easily found as true Scotsmen.

I invite you or any others here of the same opinion to let me know (here) if you can find any credible reference to such a medical doctor now (or recently) living who disputes the accuracy or validity of the science of immunology and the germ theory of disease.

Take your time. I won't be holding my breath.

135kiparsky
Feb 22, 2023, 4:12 pm

>130 proximity1: This is a completely false and deliberately dishonest representation of my position:

Okay, so you did claim that

  • masks allow "the near-totality" of "the infectious Covid-bearing viral organisms" to be inhaled unimpeded and
  • most people 0 to 79 years, even when directly exposed to the Covid-bearing virus "filterable agents causing infectious diseases of plants and animals", do not fall ill anyway.



But you object to my summarizing this as "masks are somehow completely ineffective in stopping this particular virus (and, by extension, in stopping any airborne respiratory virus), and that also, people don't get sick from this virus in any case".
Perhaps you're splitting some hairs a little finer than I am, but let's nail down what you actually mean, so that I don't inadvertently misrepresent you going forward.
Two questions for you:
Do you think that it is correct to say that masks - are effective in preventing the transmission of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2? Please note that I use the word "effective". In this context, this means "having some effect". If you think they impede the transmission of viruses to some appreciable extent, then you think they are effective in this sense, and we can then discuss the degree of effectiveness that they have.
Do you think that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the mechanism by which Covid-19 is transmitted? That is to say, do you believe that a person exposed to a sufficient quantity of the virus will develop the Covid-19?

I ask because I notice that so far you seem to be taking the "leave it there" approach, in that you're not actually responding in a substantive way to my questions about your position. Again, I take a lack of response as tacit confirmation - if you had a response, you'd offer it. You don't offer a response, which tells me that you haven't got one. This is, as I've said, your typical reaction when challenged on your claims - rather than defend what you've said and try to convince me that you've actually got a point, you run a mile. That silence says a lot, and I suspect that everyone here can read it as well as I can.

136kiparsky
Feb 22, 2023, 4:16 pm

>134 proximity1: Invite you or any others here of the same opinion to let me know (here) if you can find any credible reference to such a medical doctor now (or recently) living who disputes the accuracy or validity of the science of immunology and the germ theory of disease.

This seems a little curious, since nobody here as far as I can see is objecting to either of those things, and in fact the position that masks are effective (in the sense described above) in preventing the transmission of disease. The most obvious interpretation of this salvo is that you're trying to confuse the issue because you've found yourself in a corner. If you think there's anything about my position or anyone else's that involves doctors rejecting the accepted facts of immunology or germ theory, I invite you to expand on what what might be.

137kiparsky
Feb 22, 2023, 4:35 pm

>132 proximity1: the quantum hypothesis of the behavior of sub-atomic particles is much less well founded than the germ theory of disease and the basics of microbiology of infectious disease

This is a tangent, of course, but it's utter nonsense. Quantum theory, while difficult for the lay person to understand, is certainly one of the most tested areas of modern science and claiming that it is not "well founded" is simply balderdash. You might not understand it, but you use the predictions of quantum theory every day. For example, the electronics that are fundamental to the computers which drive this site and enable you to access it arise directly from properties of quantum mechanics. If quantum mechanics is wrong, there is no way to explain the fact that your computer works.

One does not typcially see doctors going around a hospital wearing a surgical face-covering.

Is this true? I have not spent much time in a hospital lately, but my understanding is that today most medical facilities do require that people be masked while on premises these days, precisely to prevent the inadvertent transmission of SARS-CoV-2, in particular to patients whose immune systems may be compromised.This is certainly true of my dentist's office, and also of the physical therapist I saw recently - basically, masks were worn by all people at all times (unless the doctor needed access to the patient's mouth, of course).

Perhaps someone reading this has been in a hospital recently and can shed some light on this.

138proximity1
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 8:00 pm

>135 kiparsky:

I'll cite in full the portion from your comment >129 kiparsky:, above, and then indicate in boldface the part which is a deliberate misrepresentation of my views:



"For the rest... you seem to be convinced that masks are somehow completely ineffective in stopping this particular virus (and, by extension, in stopping any airborne respiratory virus), and (1) that also, people don't get sick from this virus in any case. Given that we've seen millions of people die from this disease (2) that you think people don't get, and given that we know this disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (3) which you think people don't get sick from, and given that masks are quite effective in impeding the transmission of airborne viruses in general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular, that sounds completely deranged."
(Emphasis added)



I never claimed that people do not contract Covid-19 and fall ill from it (which you claimed in 3 iterations that I'd claimed); I never claimed that people don't die from the disease.

AGAIN, Re: ..."Do you want to try to make a coherent claim out of all of this, ..."

I did that; and you deliberately misrepresented what I'd clearly written; you've refused to admit that and, corrected, here, you have a fresh opportunity to stop misrepresenting my views and admit that that is what you've been doing.

It is no such "given" 'that masks are quite effective in impeding the transmission of airborne viruses in general and SARS-CoV-2 in particular',...

And it's rather your assertion which qualifies as "completely deranged."



One does not typcially see doctors going around a hospital wearing a surgical face-covering.


(You) "Is this true? I have not spent much time in a hospital lately, ..."



Yes, it's true in my recent experience. (Though, currently, masks (outside of hospitals, that is) are not now required everywhere by legal edict) hospitals have signs out stating that all patients and those with them must wear a face-covering or face expulsion --without some exceptional excuse not to wear one.

In the past two months I've had repeated visits to two major hospitals. At each visit, while the desk-reception (at Accident & Emergency) and all waiting patients and their attendant friends or relatives are wearing maks by order of the hospital, the regular medical staff (doctors and nurses) are not.

Maybe your local hospitals are different. If you haven't been lately, then how would you know?

139Taphophile13
Feb 22, 2023, 5:01 pm

>137 kiparsky: Hospitalized five times in last twelve months. Doctors, nurses, technicians, therapists, staff/housekeeping, visitors (anyone who isn't the patient) all wear masks all the time. Patients wear masks if they leave their room for any reason.

140proximity1
Feb 22, 2023, 5:09 pm


>137 kiparsky:

Re: ..." If quantum mechanics is wrong, there is no way to explain the fact that your computer works."

As usual, you confuse things conceptually. I suppose that's because you've never thought clearly about them or read much beyond the things you select and adopt by prepossession.

There's a working hypothesis of how quantum mechanics works --and it is first and foremost the "how" of such things which interests scientists. Frequently, including in the case of QM, the "why" is little or not at all understood. Lot's of things were practically possible before people had any good conception of why things worked as they were observed to work.

The scientists who first theorized, hypothesized QM did not claim that it was true in fact. They merely posited it as a hypothesis. Certain of the expectations derived from the hypothesis have or seem to have been borne out. That by itself is not proof of the validity of the entirety of the hypothetical assumptions.

141proximity1
Feb 22, 2023, 5:12 pm

>139 Taphophile13:

Voluntarily or by compulsion?
Do you know?

And, generally, where is this?, if you don't mind saying.


142proximity1
Modificato: Feb 22, 2023, 8:12 pm

I see no clear indication that face-coverings are required at medical facilities in general in the U.S. --though that doesn't mean that these facilities may not voluntarily adopt rules --whether enforceable or not-- asserting that all patients and visitors must wear a face-covering while on hospital premises.

---------------------



"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today emphasized that its new (i.e. relaxed) masking recommendations (emphasis added) for people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 do not apply to health care settings.

“This means that staff, patients, residents and visitors should (emphasis added) continue to wear masks as recommended in all healthcare facilities,” the agency said in an email on the May 13 recommendations. AHA (American Hospital Association) had requested the clarification.

"CDC said health care facilities should continue to refer to CDC’s infection prevention and control guidance for recommendations regarding source control and physical distancing in health care settings. 'We will keep you informed if any changes are made to the guidance for healthcare settings,' the agency said.

"For more information on masks, see the AHA's Wear a Mask webpage* and Wear a Mask social media assets. For more information on COVID-19 vaccines, see the AHA's COVID-19 Vaccine Communications Resources and COVID-19 Vaccine Communications Toolkit.
----------------------------------
Link to source page: https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2021-05-17-cdc-masks-still-required-health-car...



* This is pure public-relations stuff. There is no compulsory power behind this, otherwise there'd be no cause for this pathetic "Join the Million Mask Challenge" .

Crap.

143John5918
Modificato: Feb 23, 2023, 6:20 am

Sorry to be so obtuse, but as with many of prox's posts, I'm having difficulty understanding what their actual point is.

Is it an objection to masks, social distancing, lockdowns, etc on medical and scientific grounds? Even if you now believe with hindsight that it was a flawed decision, do you not accept that there was pretty global agreement amongst medical professionals and governments of all political shades, based on available evidence and analysis at the time, that it was the right decision and that these helped to reduce the spread of and the death toll from COVID? That hardly sounds to me like ZEALOTRY, to use a word that you have used in this thread to describe the process.

Or is it a more general ideological objection to governments taking measures to protect both the individual and the population at large? Are you against the compulsory wearing of seatbelts, the legal limit on how much alcohol you can consume before driving a car, the requirement to be tested and licenced to drive a motor vehicle and to have third party insurance, all health and safety regulations and labour laws, etc? Do you think we should be free to drive our cars on any side of the road rather than all being forced to drive on a particular side?

Or is it something else completely?

144proximity1
Feb 23, 2023, 8:27 am

>134 proximity1:

THIS IS AN UPDATE Re: "I invite you or any others here of the same opinion to let me know (here) if you can find any credible reference to such a medical doctor now (or recently) living who disputes the accuracy or validity of the science of immunology and the germ theory of disease."

It turns out that it's not difficult at all to find accredited medical doctors who've been accused of denying one or more of the commonly held medical opinions with respect to the characteristics of the Covid family of SARS viruses. You notice how belabored that description is? It has to be. That's because these doctors invariably do not fall into any reasonably or fairly described category of "science deniers" or "anti-Vaxxers" or doctors who dispute the germ theory of disease itself.

They do, however, dispute that the term "vaccine", as that has been understood for centuries, is a medically-accurate and scientifically-correct term to describe the agents being prescribed and administered to the public as anti-Covid (SARS family) "vaccines" for the simple reason that they a.) have been rushed through the usually more rigorous protocols of pharmaceutical testing and approval prior to a grant of a license, or b.) do not meet the normal constituent elements present in a traditional vaccine product or both a) and b). As a consequence of the short-cut methods in the trials and approvals of the range of Covid-19 (SARS family) viruses' vaccines, they also apparently contend that the claimed therapeutic benefits of the vaccines do not justify the inherent risks in the indiscriminate administration of these so-called "vaccines" to people of all ages as a prophylaxis to counter or reduce the spread and virulence of a SARS-family virus outbreaks.

None of this constitutes their being opposed to vaccines generally and, still less, to the germ theory of disease.



...

"We doctors are pro-vaccine, but this is not a vaccine," AFLDS founder Simone Gold, MD, JD, said in a statement on the group's websiteopens in a new tab or window. "This is an experimental biological agent whose harms are well documented (although suppressed and censored) and growing rapidly, and we will not support using America's children as guinea pigs."

"Among the 11 plaintiffs are two physicians: Scott Jensen, MD, of Minnesota, and Steven Roth, MD, of Alabama.

"Jensen, a family medicine physician, is a former Minnesota state legislator and is running to be the state's next governor. He faced complaints to the state medical board last year after making allegations that Minnesota health officials were inflating the number of COVID-19 deaths. The board dismissed those complaintsopens in a new tab or window in July." ...

--------------------------------
(Link to page source (with related documents and links) :
Simone Gold's Group Sues to Stop COVID Shots for Kids
— Founder of America's Frontline Doctors is awaiting trial for her role in Jan. 6 Capitol storming | by Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage | May 26, 2021





145kiparsky
Modificato: Feb 23, 2023, 1:13 pm

>138 proximity1:, >139 Taphophile13: I'm sorry that you've both had occasion to find out about masking in hospitals recently. It sounds like some hospitals may have relaxed masking requirements, but in other hospitals the staff are masked.

Locally, I see that hospitals in the area - at least the ones that I looked up - are requiring that all persons be masked while on premises, presumably with exceptions for eating and oral examinations.
A typical policy statement reads
As part of our continued efforts to protect our health care workers, our patients, and the community, facility-issued face masks are required in all McLean Hospital locations.


So in the greater Boston area, at least, one does "typcially see doctors going around a hospital wearing a surgical face-covering", by policy, and I haven't heard any objections to that policy.

Maybe your local hospitals are different. If you haven't been lately, then how would you know?

Well, that's exactly why I asked. And now I have a few more data points, which suggest that some hospitals are allowing a little more discretion, and a number of them are maintaining the strict policies. Presumably, as wastewater numbers remain low and vaccines continue to be effective, we'll see that more hospitals loosen up their requirements, and this will probably be partly determined by local attitudes, but I would imagine that in general they're going to be lagging behind society as a whole on this, if only because there is a duty of heightened vigilance in a hospital setting due to the presence of lots and lots of sick people. I suppose we'll see as the year goes on.

I see no clear indication that face-coverings are required at medical facilities in general in the U.S.

Medical care in the US is largely treated as a regulated private enterprise, and given the manufactured political contention about Covid, I'm not massively surprised to find that there have been no nationwide regulations set by the federal government. I would imagine that if you look hard enough you'll find that the CDC has issued guidance strongly suggesting that masks be worn in medical facilities, and that most hospitals abide by those guidelines by default. If nothing else, "we followed the relevant CDC guidelines" is a good position to be able to take in case of legal complications.

146kiparsky
Feb 23, 2023, 1:37 pm

>140 proximity1: Certain of the expectations derived from the hypothesis have or seem to have been borne out. That by itself is not proof of the validity of the entirety of the hypothetical assumptions.

I'm taking the Popper position here, so the idea of "the proof of validity of the entirety of the hypothetical assumptions" is not something that I'm actually looking for, and indeed is something that I think can't be had. Quantum mechanics predicts phenomena which would be very surprising under other existing models, and when we look for them, we find those phenomena in the world. That is, quantum mechanics is a model of the world which both explains otherwise inexplicable phenomena and also makes novel predictions which are confirmed by experiment. To me, that's a well-founded theory.

Some of the things that "well-founded" does not mean, to me, would be
- "complete". There is a lot that quantum mechanics does not explain. Some of these things may be explainable under QM, others may turn out not to be. This doesn't mean that the theory is not well-founded, it just means that the theory is limited in what it can explain.
- "final". While I can't imagine what this theory would look like, it's certainly possible that there is another theory that takes an entirely different form from QM, and explains all of the things that QM explains, plus some of the things that it doesn't. That would be wonderful, and it would not mean that QM is not well-founded. Note that this future theory would have to account for everything that QM accounts for, which includes a lot of results that are very strange and hard to get one's brain around, but also well-attested in experimental research.
- "perfectly correct". While QM's model of the world is precise to a degree that is literally mind-boggling, it's almost certain that there are constants that will be known to better precision in the future, and that there are interpretations that will be improved by future work. That's the nature of science: it proceeds by constructing imperfect models and making them more perfect. If a theory had to be perfect to be considered "well-founded", then we would never have theories.

Now, if you want a theory whose validity can be entirely proved (at least as far as hypothetical assumptions), and that's what you mean by a "well-founded theory", then yes, by your definition QM is not well-founded. In that case, I'd be very interested to have some examples of theories that you consider to be "well-founded" by your definition.

147proximity1
Modificato: Feb 23, 2023, 2:47 pm

The real key to this issue is stated clearly in the words of the long-experienced medical doctors who find themselves on the "wrong" (i.e. unpopular) side of the very contentious division over supposed vs. real "safety" and "safety measure policies" which are disputed for their necessity by medical professionals whose experience and qualifications are entirely comparable.

Those who "see no reason not to go about masked" and who "feel no constraints" by being formally or informally required to submit--by reason of the same imperatives which drive others into a medical facility seeking treatments-- are "lucky" that "this time," the axe falls on others' strongly-held beliefs rather than their own.

That could change at any time. There is nothing but fickle luck between you and your principled stand on a matter of essential importance to you being next in the cross-hairs of a zealous popular opinion which shall not abide that principled stand on your part and a popular opinion which can and shall impose itself on your ability to choose to live as you see fit to live without also having to sacrifice something which almost everyone else takes for granted: easy, unhindered access to publicly-open (though perhaps privately "owned" and operated) spaces-- including medical facilities.

Once upon a time, signs read, not "Vaccinated Only" but "Whites Only", "Men Only", etc.


... "If you had asked me about academic freedom five years ago, I would have complained about the obsession with race, gender and ethnicity, along with safetyism on campus (safe spaces, grade inflation, and so on). But I would not have expressed concerns about academic freedom.

"We each have our own woke tipping point—the moment you realize that social justice is no longer what we thought it was, but has instead morphed into an ugly authoritarianism. For me that moment came in 2018, during an invited speaker talk, when the religious scholar Reza Aslan stated that 'we need to write on a stone what can and cannot be discussed in colleges.' Students gave this a standing ovation. Having been born under dictatorship in Brazil, I was alarmed.

"Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming 'free speech harms' and demanding that white male professors 'sit down' and 'confess to their privilege.'

"The restriction of academic freedom comes in two forms: what we teach and what we research.

"Let’s start with teaching. I need to emphasize that this is not hypothetical. The censorious, fearful climate is already affecting the content of what we teach." ...

-----------------------------------
An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science | What scientists are able to teach and what research we can pursue are under attack. I know because I’m living it, writes biologist Luana Maroja. | By Luana Maroj* | November 7, 2022

* biology professor at Williams College, Williamstown, MA. .



Doctors have an ethical duty to respect a patient's wishes in all matters and at all times concerning the patient's decisions about treatment. A patient's refusal of medication or other therapy is a doctor's duty to respect without prejudice to the patient's right to therapies and care which the patient does approve and accept by informed consent. Once informed of his doctor's advice and opinions with respect to a therapy, medication or other treatment, thereby discharging the duty of a patient's informed consent, a doctor may not ethically substitute his or her own personal views for those of the patient after full information has been provided and a therapy declined, refused, for whatever reason. Alternative treatment may not be withheld on the basis of a patient's exercise of his right to refuse a medication or other treatment.

In short, a doctor may not constrain the patient's free consent or the free refusal of it by making a patient's access to care facilities and treatment conditional on accepting a treatment, medication or therapy. A doctor may not say, "Take this medication, follow these therapies, adopt these measures, or I refuse to treat you."

Doctors have an ethical duty to render aid and care whether or not a person, under his care or not, is only partially amenble and approving of the advice offered. That is, he is ethically bound to render any and all aid possible which the patient is willing to receive with informed consent.

Denial of that care on the grounds that the doctor's medical opinions are at odds with what the patient wants, after having been informed of the risks and consequences, is barbaric medical practice-- but it happens!

U.S. case law and statutory provisions:
https://casetext.com/search?q=duty%20of%20care%20and%20right%20to%20refuse%20tre...

148John5918
Modificato: Feb 23, 2023, 1:54 pm

>147 proximity1: Once upon a time, signs read, not "Vaccinated Only" but "Whites Only", "Men Only", etc.

That's a false analogy. Your ethnicity and your gender (with some exceptions in the case of trans people) are part of who you are over which you have no control. Whether or not to get vaccinated (with certain medical exceptions) is a personal choice. Choices have consequences.

149kiparsky
Feb 23, 2023, 1:57 pm

>138 proximity1: I never claimed that people do not contract Covid-19 and fall ill from it (which you claimed in 3 iterations that I'd claimed); I never claimed that people don't die from the disease.

In that case, it would be very helpful if you would state simply and clearly what you do believe, particularly in regards to the points I cited above, which I repeat here:

  • masks allow "the near-totality" of "the infectious Covid-bearing viral organisms" to be inhaled unimpeded and

  • most people 0 to 79 years, even when directly exposed to the Covid-bearing virus "filterable agents causing infectious diseases of plants and animals", do not fall ill anyway.



Again, the former suggests that you believe that masks are entirely or almost entirely ineffective when it comes to preventing transmission of airborne respiratory virus in general. Is this what you believe?
If I combine your assertions, I think you're putting a lot of load on the word "most" in the latter point, and this takes us, at last, into the realms of the statistical. Is this where you're trying to get to? If so, that'd be lovely. Public health is about statistical outcomes, not about individual outcomes, and epidemiology likewise, so the statistical is exactly the place where we should be to talk about the effectiveness of masks.

I do want to point out that you've still not made any effort to respond to my request that you clarify your position. Instead, you continue with your handwaving, and when anyone tries to challenge you on what you say, you deny that what you said is what you meant, and we go around again.

This is a dodge, and once again it only hurts your position, since the only conclusion that anyone can reasonably draw from your refusal to answer a simple question is that you have no answer to offer. If you think I've misunderstood your position, or that I'm misrepresenting it, why would you not want to state it clearly and succinctly so that it can't be misunderstood or misrepresented?

150kiparsky
Feb 23, 2023, 2:00 pm

>143 John5918: Sorry to be so obtuse, but as with many of prox's posts, I'm having difficulty understanding what their actual point is.

You're not the only one!

Or is it something else completely?
This is the key question. If we have to make guesses about what someone's arguing, then it seems to me they have not yet made an argument.

151kiparsky
Feb 23, 2023, 2:06 pm

>147 proximity1: This post (starting with "The real key to this issue is stated clearly in the words of the long-experienced medical doctors who find themselves on the "wrong" (i.e. unpopular) side of the very contentious division" and continuing to "Once upon a time, signs read, not "Vaccinated Only" but "Whites Only", "Men Only", etc.") is completely devoid of any meaningful content that I can find. You seem to be trying to make some sort of equivalence between civil rights and refusing to wear a mask, but there's an absolute fog where the connection between these things ought to be made.
If you think this is something that people should be taking seriously, please take it seriously enough to make your point clear. If you are not willing to make yourself clear, then you have no right to complain when people fail to understand you.

152prosfilaes
Feb 23, 2023, 4:59 pm

>147 proximity1: Those who "see no reason not to go about masked" and who "feel no constraints" by being formally or informally required to submit--by reason of the same imperatives which drive others into a medical facility seeking treatments-- are "lucky" that "this time," the axe falls on others' strongly-held beliefs rather than their own....

Once upon a time, signs read, not "Vaccinated Only" but "Whites Only", "Men Only", etc.


Still today, signs read "no shoes, no shirt, no business". Again, I ask you why demanding others submit to wearing a shirt (for modesty reasons) is more fundamental than demanding others submit to wearing a mask (so people don't die).

153proximity1
Modificato: Feb 24, 2023, 9:41 am

"Science" practice fails again and again for the same essential reasons, with one underlying one connecting many of these: human fallibility and stubborn habits of stupidity which spring from that fallibility.

Here's just one more example-case. It is essentially the same as all those already mentioned above; but I believe it helps to bring these together and notice how the same shitty erroneous confidence subtends them all:

(excerpt)



...
A Powerful Theory With No Proof

In 2019, the celebrated science writer Sharon Begley wrote a startling investigative story for the health and medicine publication STAT about why Alzheimer’s research was mired in decades of failure. She asserted this wasn’t just due to the complexity of the brain or the infernal nature of Alzheimer’s itself. There was another reason that had less to do with the nature of the disease, and more to do with the nature of research.

As she wrote:

The most influential researchers have long believed so dogmatically in one theory of Alzheimer’s that they systematically thwarted alternative approaches. Several scientists described those who controlled the Alzheimer’s agenda as ‘a cabal.’ In more than two dozen interviews, scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas…This stifling of competing ideas, say a growing number of scholars, is a big reason why there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s.”
(emphasis added)


The story of this theory starts in 1906, when a German psychiatrist named Alois Alzheimer was studying the brain of a recently deceased woman with dramatic short-term memory loss. During the autopsy, Alzheimer saw dense plaques and tangles in her brain. ...



-----------------------
"The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s" | Medicine had nothing to offer my father and millions of other Americans. I set out to find out why | By Joanne Silberner | January 4, 2023



Good science practice requires that scientists notice and supress their stupid habits of thought. We live in stunningly stupid times and, in the realm of science practice, this has much to do with so many scientists' having forgotten--if they ever learned of it-- Popper's wise advice:


"If we keep clearly before our minds that our theories are our own work; that we are fallible; and that our theories reflect our fallibility, then we shall doubt whether general features of our theories, such as their simplicity, or their prima facie deterministic character, correspond to features of the real world."
-- -- Karl Popper, pp. 42-43, The Open Universe, (1982), Hutchinson & Co. publishers, London.

154kiparsky
Feb 25, 2023, 3:43 pm

Hm. Prox seems really eager to move on.

Why might that be, do we suppose?

155proximity1
Modificato: Mar 4, 2023, 6:53 pm

A joint research team (Harvard Univ./ Northwestern Univ. (Evanston, IL.) has refined the measurement of an electron's magnetic moment to a new fine degree.
NOTE: Abstract only. The full Research at The Physical Review Letters article is NOT openly accessible without fee.

Science news article : (Physics | 28 February 2023 By David Nield)
LINK: https://www.sciencealert.com/we-just-got-the-most-precise-measurement-of-a-prope...


Topics: Particle physics, high energy physics

"Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment" | February 2023 |
Physical Review Letters
130 (7)

DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.071801
Authors:
( Harvard University, Physics)
Xing Fan
T. G. Myers
Benedict Sukra

(Northwestern University, Physics)
G. Gabrielse

156kiparsky
Mar 4, 2023, 7:27 pm

Definitely wants to move on. Sorry, prox, must have hit a nerve. That's okay, we don't have to talk about the shit that you thought you knew something about but didn't know anything about after all. Go on, what's that about magnetic fields? Sounds really interesting.

157proximity1
Modificato: Mar 5, 2023, 4:15 am


TOPIC KEYS: Covid-19, government scandals, official lying, pandemic,

News report reference:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/04/project-fear-covid-lockdown-files-ma...
-------------------------------

More about the Covid-19 policy scandals:

Matt Hancock, still (at this writing) a serving and not-yet-sacked minister in the present U.K. government's cabinet, used lies and exaggerations regarding the actual circumstances of Covid-19's threat when, as the then Health Secretary, he was recorded in conversations with colleagues as intent on "scaring the pants off" members of the public in hopes of inducing their acceptance of the government's restrictions on movement and gatherings of groups of people.

Thus, with this fresh revelation, coming three years late--though that doesn't stop the British press from congratulating itself on its professional skills-- shows us that Mr. Hancock had recognised certain of his defenders --that those who'd defended him as being only an incompetent fool rather than a lying incompetent fool -- as being _half_ correct.

---------------------------------------

Hey, Everyone! :

"Follow the "Science"! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!