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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Re: How do you guys get away with talking about all this weird stuff? I mean... posted by Steve Eddy on October 20, 2006 at 20:53:23:
Two distinctions.1. Reporting observations versus asserting causality
Science depends on collecting lots of data. Even everyday life depends on collecting a fair amount of data. You collect a lot of data on anything and look at it and some of the data will obviously be wonky and you set it aside. But collecting more data is almost always better than collecting less. So yes, nobody should be afraid to report an observation no matter how weird.
What the woo-woo crowd doesn't get or deliberately confuses is the distinction between reporting a datum (a "what") and making a scientific claim about causality or mechanism (a "how" or "why"). We have, ever since Bacon and Galileo, a very conservative Scientific Method which requires repeatable experiments, clear communication of methods and measured results, and vigorous efforts to disprove theories. And under that regimen natural science has produced much more impressive results, from electrical circuits to the medicine without which most of us wouldn't be here, than it did when it was a bunch of alchemists, astrologers, and mountebanks, entertaining though those guys were. (If you visit a country that still has street medicine men, curanderos ambulantes, go find some and watch their acts. The good ones are amazing performers.)
2. Fooling yourself versus being suckered by charlatans.
I've fooled myself on occasions, wanting to hear a difference that further listening showed was not there. The charming part of this forum has been people playing around with scrounged or low-cost materials. Good clean fun. The less-charming part is bunco artists reselling low-cost generic items at enormous markups. Arguably the victims deserve it, and maybe for some of them $100 is a reasonable price to pay for a fairy story. But it does lower the tone of discussion.
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- Amen - CD 10:35:43 10/21/06 (6)
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