Osama bin Laden Killed In Pakistan

We have a personal message system for that. All I'm saying buddy. Why would you recommend a book that you don't agree with to someone anyway? All I can gleam from a recommendation and looking at your previous posts is that you agree with this man; and was using his position to strengthen your earlier statements.

I will disregard that post now, as far as the thread is concerned as it seems it was really ment to be a PM.

This fact about what science is, is why I love being a scientist. Just about the facts.

 

Guys, I somehow disagree about science being neutral.

My example wouls be the gravitational waves theory: so far a huge amount of money has been spend trying to detect them, but there has been no success.

It may as well be that these waves are not detectable...the decison to keep searching for them is not based on facts, but theory. the theory could be wrong, but in order to keep searching for them, a scientist has to get funding, and to get funding you have to have some kind of political leverage. its not as neutral as its made out to be. scientists have to make a case for their research in order to get funded, and most of the time they get funded on the basis of their promised 'cure'. the ethical underpinning is that any 'cure' will be worth the effort.

An alternative case could be made on the idea that the same money could be spend to improve the life of people living here and now...its absurd that so much money is spent on weapons and prisons and some countries still dont have free national health service...

 

What you're talking about is the gravitron particle. It's the Higgs particle I believe. All science is based on theories beyond our current understanding. Physicists know it exists, it's just hard to produce because of the nature of the particle. They think it has something to do with alternate universes and what not. Pretty trippy stuff.

We all kinda got off point from the Main topic here which is Osama is dead.

 

@GodEater,EMX,MarlyJay,JinxHand et al

1) I never posted science invigorates my morality

2) I did post that my morality is based in logic and reason

3) And the biggest argument against the point you all are
trying to make is the very fact of my existence.

I do not believe, follow, acknowledge, or have faith in any type of god(s). Yet I have and excercise consistently more morality than most religious god fearing people that I know.
The 29 commandments of the papyrus of Ani, the 10 commands of the Torah, the basic commandments of the new testament are in the general case logical and ultimately self serving. They can be arrived at in the abscence of god or religion. I don't kill, steal, bear false witness against my neighbor, covet my neighbors ox, etc because those things are irrational and inconsistent with personal goals. Even if there were no law against killing, stealing etc., I would not commit those crimes
because in the final analysis they are illogical.

Note: my friends I am not bringing up science as justification
for morality or ethics, although I could use mathematics to do so. My assertion is that morality can be a by product of
logic thinking, inference, deduction, abduction, and induction. In other words morality is logical. And most people don't consistently exhibit it because religion and the god(s) require that they be illogical, non-seqitur

Science replaces the explanation of existence that is given by religion and the god(s). The scientific mind gives us an effective way to understand and interact with existence (Universe), and mathematics gives us a language to communicate and document that understanding in.

4) Its irelevant that bad people misuse religion which by itself is not bad. Religion served its purpose during the dawn
and childhood of mankind. We have now grown up beyond the simplistic paradigm of existence that religion and god(s) gave us. Religion helped us move from a life as wild animals in caves to families of hunters that lived in man built shelters.
Religion taught us not to use each other as a source of food. Religion taught us the notion of respect for property, religion taught us how to interact with others of our species and how work to gether to accomplish our early primitive societies. Religion and the god(s) gave us the notion of law, justice, and basically helped us to develop a sense of right and wrong. But religion and the god(s) function was complete thousands of years ago. Mankind can't stay in its infancy forever.

Religion and the god(s) were just like potty training, and walkers, play pens, high chairs, and bottles for infants. They are very necessary when a child is at a certain age, but the child eventually grows up, and its simply ridiculus to have grown mankind walking around with a bottle in his mouth waiting in the high chair to be fed.

Lets assume the premise that the notion of religion and god(s) is not bad in and of itself. then I may say religion and god(s) may not be bad, but they are no longer necessary. And any person in the 21rst century still hanging on to them, is the equivalent of adults using goo goo gah gah to communicate with each other, and depending on bottles with nipples for liquids, and still sitting in high chairs waiting for mommy or daddy to come feed them being afraid when they hear thunder and lighting outside, or when the lights are turned off, or when mommy or daddy leave the room.

Religion and god(s) may not be bad, but they are bad for mankind at this juncture of his evolution.

The god(s) were early explanations for a Universe that we had not yet learned to comprehend by any other means, its just that simple. At the time, it was better than nothing. But now the sciences, mathematics, and logic have long made the god(s) obsolete and have proven the holy books to be inaccurate, misguided, well meaning constructions that they are.

Again religion and god(s) may not be bad in an of themselves, but at this point, place, and time for mankind, they are the enemy

 

The first 4 out of 10 commandments are dealt on a man-to-God relationship, whereas the rest are on a man-to-man relationships... How can those be arrived at in the abscence of god or religion if the first 4 involve just that???


Ok, kinda back to the original topic, now Obama's saying "he doesn't want to show the pics"... It's outta fear that the US might incite some sort of violence... Wow...

 

marly, so are you saying that science exists outside of people's interests and agenda?

I doubt that. in fact, even master Po here is just preaching his particular scientific agenda.

science per se has no interests but the survival of science, in this respect science and religion are very similar, in that all they care is their goals, not about humanity.

 

PS: back to the topic: now that 'justice' is done, the american goverment should think about compensating the families of those 500.000 dead chidren.

 

That video of Albright refers to the 500,000 dead Iraqi children whose deaths were caused by the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990's. It is important to know that the reason that those sanctions were put in place had nothing to do with Saddam or American security. The issue was that Iraq was not to sell its oil to the world because if it had done so it would have hurt the profits of Western Oil companies and US client states, specifically Saudi Arabia who has long recycled much of its oil revenues into US Treasuries and assets, thereby helping to prop up the US economy and allowing the US to run huge deficits to pay for our massive military machine.

Religion and ethnic identity and jingoism are just distractions that the empire uses to control populations and obscure the perfectly logical and brutal things it does. Don't be suckers.

 

A huge amount of money was spent searching for Osama Bin Laden, and for almost 10 years there was no success. But we were vigilant and we kept looking and voila now he's dead, did we keep looking for him based on facts or theory?

Sometimes the decision to keep searching is based on obsession, you've spent most of your life on the trail of higgs, or gravitational waves, and you just can't believe they're not detectable, its as simple as that. To keep searching because you've got a strong hunch is rational depending on who has the hunch. A scientist that is well trained, accomplished, distinguished, and productive who has a hunch is very different from joe blow who has a hunch that man's influence on climate change is negligible.

the people that are looking for the gravitational waves continue to do so because

1) many things seem to point in that direction,
2) if found they would explain some of the important missing pieces to our understanding of the very very beginnings of the Universe

So there is an enormous pay off, although a lot of money has already been spent so what. We could spend all of the money on Earth and the value of the discovery could be considered worth it.

Like, the Money we spent searching for Bin laden, they say locating him took years of intelligence work (at what cost?)
obviously the payoff for finding (just like finding higgs) is worth it.

When we say that science is netural we mean its measurements, its quantifications are what they are, a mile is a mile, something that has the pull 9.8 m/s^2 is what it is. Our politics, our religions or economic objectives cannot change the mass of a star, or the digits of precision and in experiment. F = M/A and even if politically I would like to be some other way, there is nothing I can do about it.

On the other hand does science has ramifications that have political, social or economic consequences, of course it does.

In order for man to do something about climate change, we need to leave fossil fuels and move on to other cleaner forms of energy. But this would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions maybe even trillions in Oil company revenues and profits. So for some its easier to politicize the science behind climate change. That is make it intentionally non neutral. That why is the United States conservatives on balance believe that climate change is a democratic/liberal hoax .

And, in some manner that millions are spent on looking for higgs, or Bin Laden, Oil companies are spending millions to lobby the US congress to find a way to make climate change look like a political maneuver of the liberal democrats. So to fight the oil companies do scientist go out of their way to demonstrate the realities of climate change (of course they do) the stakes are too high. Although the science its self is neutral, the scientists are not, and in this case nor should they be.

 

I dont know marly, I think you are missing my point. science may be neutral in abstract terms, but in practical term its not neutral at all.

I think scientific method aspires to the ideal of neutrality, but in the real world there are ethical concerns that somehow have to be taken into consideration even for scientists.

I think the examples are worn out by now, so let me make an example about in-vitro meat. it has been promoted as an ideal alternative for animal rights supporters, but IMO its just a scam to create a new market. they are trying to pass it off as the ethical alternative to animal meat, rather than arguing that we should go vegeterian. this is a classic example of science being promoted through the promise of social 'good', but in practice its not really aiming at making people change, just at making them consume new products.

I think, if I had no alternative, I'd rather stop eating meat for good.

 

WTF happen to this thread??????? Science, really???? You know that Marlyjay is right.....

 

Po, F = ma, not m/a.

btw they think there's a graviton (not gravitron) because according to quantum mechanics, matter can be represented as waves or particles, they're just looking for the particle form of gravity.

but it seems to me they're something else entirely, and we simply model them as particles or waves in order to predict future phenomena. We can't really know what they really look like because they're too damn small. Wave properties of beams of electron particles are used in electron microscopes, our best magnifier afaik... think we can see an electron? nah... but as long as our predictions are correct, and we can recreate results and design electronic devices based on the theories, it does it really matter?

On topic, I don't see why an American or even any non-Muslim wouldn't be happy about Osama dying. Someone who wanted to kill you died. There are now less threats to your life. Furthermore, he was the general of the enemy's army in a war. This is a win that could finally end the war. Mission accomplished. Be happy.

 

Marly, Im still not convinced, but maybe this is boring for you.

Signia, if you are happy with such a simplistic idea of the world, know this: your government armed bin laden in the firt place.

 

OK Marly, as long as this is not boring, let me argue my point and I'm sure you can come up with more evidence. you say:

I say that you, as a teacher, must know that science can also be used as a meter to judge people, like the ability to read. science carries authority, and what is deemed worthy of 'scientific' status is also superior. a person who is able to read is judged superior to one who doesent. of course in abstract terms, one could argue that science per se is perfectly innocuous, but in practice, in our society, in the world we live today, if you believe in magic, or you are illiterate, your position in society will not carry much weight.

In this regard science can be used to draw a sort of table of more 'scientific' cultures; this is the way gross inequality is justified in our society, because 'science' is the standard term for comparison.

hope this makes sense, typing in a rush as usual.