Comment by apu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apu | Hacker News Reader

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Many people here are writing about various techniques/books that talk about science, i.e., for distinguishing scientific truths from non-scientific falsehoods, but as a scientist myself (well ok, computer "scientist"), I think in some sense we give "science" too much credit. There are things we consider "truths" in science which are actually only a veneer on "beliefs as of today" -- i.e., not that far removed from even such non-scientific things as e.g. "religion".

This is very abstract, but more concretely, what I mean is that it helps to read about the philosophy/history of science. The canonical recommendation here is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1], but I also strongly recommend watching James Burke's Connections tv series [2] and then watching or reading his The Day the Universe Changed [3] to understand how our entire conception of "reality" or "truth" is so strongly determined by the technology of the time.

Finally, there are lots of "truths" in fields where this is no scientific basis to fall-back on -- politics, art, etc. For these, you have to seek out and find the best elucidators of each field (usually, but not always, books).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29

[3]

Science has not much to say about truth - sciences can tell you what is not true and provide a current best understanding of something but very rarely does science talk about truth. Math and a few other things aside.

There was a really good TED talk (which got banned), challenging the implicit assumptions by science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TerTgDEgUE

The talk didn't get "banned", it was merely disavowed by the TED organization, which interprets their mandate "ideas worth spreading" as excluding blatant pseudoscience such as the idea of "morphic resonance".

Effectively banned from the site.

Sorry but the scientific community needs to address a number of points that are raised. It may be psudoscience, but there are a number of things that can't be explained by science, and in these cases, looking for answers is better than ignoring the issue. In the talk he doesn't say any of these things are true, but seems to be exploring the possibility. I am sure when it was first suggested that the earth was round, that it sounded equally ridiculous.

> Effectively banned from the site

The TED organization decides which talks are worth "featuring". The two "banned" talks are actually far MORE prominent than all the talks they decide to simply not feature at all. TED is still hosting them, merely on a different page where they encourage discussion of the issues raised. You can easily find that page and engage the discussion there if you like.

> Sorry but the scientific community needs to address a number of points that are raised.

Does it? Says who? More to the point, does TED need to address those points, or is it okay for TED to say "no, this is just silly" until there's an actual there there in the form of, say, replicable results?

I would be careful to distinguish results that merely aren't explained by science from those that can't be. If they really can't be explained by "science", what's the point in addressing them? Why bother? That the earth was round could be explained by science. Did you mean to say instead that these points "run counter to conventional wisdom"?

If you think you have a case to make, why not just make it? What SPECIFIC "points" do you think he raises that "need to be addressed"?

Are you willing to support his views on, say, telepathy - including dog telepathy? Do you think his "ten dogmas" accurately reflect what scientific types believe? Some seemed pretty strawmannish to me. (It's easy to make yourself seem insightful if you are allowed to invent and caricature imaginary opposing views that you can then rail against.)

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

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