How much science should we expect other people to understand?

Well … sure. If that’s all faith is to you … trusting your eyes to tell you the truth most of the time, then everybody operates on that level of faith. We all have faith that we aren’t just having a dream and that there actually is a reality outside ourselves to explore. And others are experiencing that reality the same way … as in … we all bump up against the same sorts of things which gives us a whole lot of confidence that those are very real things to bump into and measure. You can insist it’s all just in your head or my head if you want to, but assuming there are real facts out there to collectively discover together has served science really, really well. Denials of those same things can and does get people killed.

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Yes Mervin, we all operate that way, knowingly or otherwise does not matter.
For our own mental sanity we assume that what we touch, what we see, what we hear is all there for us.
And it is ok to go all our life with that assumption. No harm done.
However when it comes to making grand statements of academic knowledge I think it is important to be humbe and to realise that we don’t know much at all, not even if what we see is there or just a creation of our brain.
I like to think I am in my own minuscule way, a co-creator with God.

Yes, we get this.

Maybe we are housed in towering pods tended by mech’s who feed impulses to our brains. Perhaps a dead civilization has commandeered us as a remembrance of what their lives were like. We could be avatars in some kid’s video game. Or it is all just a very realistic dream. None of these camp fire musings can be disproved. Ergo sum, twiddly dum.

Another option that cannot be disproved is that our world is real, with the mundane and the measuring tapes and all, and that not only are our senses generally reliable to communicate reality, but do so quite unavoidably. Just because there is a subjective element does not mean it is hopeless and all assertions are of equal merit.

Besides, it does not much matter. If it is a simulation, it is realistic enough to play along with.

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Well I’m sorry to disappoint you, but science is a “numbers game” by its very nature. Measurement and mathematics are the very foundation on which science is built.

If you can’t stand the heat, then perhaps you shouldn’t be in the kitchen.

Isn’t that solipsism?

Well yes, some things that are thought to be facts at one point can turn out not to be facts after all. But that doesn’t give you a free pass to dismiss anything and everything that you don’t like as “so called facts”.

It’s possible that we might find out some day that covid originated in a lab rather than in a wet market. It’s not possible that we might find out some day that the Earth is flat, or six thousand years old, or the centre of the Solar System let alone the universe.

Counterexample: job interviews for any science or engineering based role.

In a job interview, you have to make judgments about candidates’ personal perceptions of reality. At least in the sense that their personal perceptions of reality have to match reality itself. If you didn’t, you would end up with them driving your company out of business and in some cases killing people in the process before they got through their probation periods.

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I think you misunderstood me, whether it was deliberate or not is hard to tell.

Inventing algorithms is an abuse of numeracy. Statistics can be used to give the wrong message.

2% in terms of genetic similarity means over 300 differences but that doesn’t sound so close does it?

Richard

PS I remember an algebraic proof which halfway through made 0=0 so that the rest was meaningless.(It was used to show the dangers of algebra)

I get your point. I did read How to Lie With Statistics when I was a teenager.

Yes it’s possible to give a wrong or misleading message with statistics. Yes it’s possible to fudge measurements, introduce mathematical errors and the like. But the correct way to respond to that is to point out precisely where the fallacies, fudging, errors and gaps in the logic are. Just dismissing the argument out of hand as a “numbers game” is hand-waving.

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Just to jump in with the real numbers . . .

As of the 2005 chimp genome paper, there are 35 million substitution mutations and 5 million indels that separate the human and chimp genomes. This is in line with what we would expect from neutral drift over 5-7 million years. As a comparison, there are about 5 million mutations that separates any two random humans. So the difference between the chimp and human genome is about 8 times that seen between two humans.

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Yes but theirs is only scientific if you agree with their conclusions. If you do not, theirs is pseudoscience.

Incorrect.

It is science when it follows the methodological ideals of science: the honesty of testing hypotheses rather than trying to prove them, and the objectivity of written procedures anyone can follow to get the same results.

It is pseudoscience when it claims to be science but does not follow these methodological ideals.

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No Adam. It’s not the conclusions that distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Nor is it just a matter of subjective opinion. It’s the methods used to reach the conclusions. As I keep pointing out, science has rules, and it’s sticking to the rules that determines whether something is scientific or not.

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The historical record is eyewitness accounts recorded in literature.
If you are correct, my eyewitness is only valid if you prove it scientifically.

I challenge that you explain the miracles of Christ then?

You must conclude that they never happened.

Now move onto Christs statement in Mathew 24 that Noahs flood happened. Clearly it cant be proven by your scientific method, so Christ (God) is wrong.

Apples and oranges. History is not science. It is subjective and the conclusions of history are open to interpretation.
Eyewitnesses may be correct without dependence on objective evidence, but objective evidence (science) if you will, can be supportive, contradictory, or neutral. But again, they are not the same.
Jesus’ miracles? Few would claim they are subject to science, thus their truth remains dependent on faith.
Truth is not dependent on science, but science is dependent on truth.

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John5:19 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing;

Science applies to scientific measurements and observations. What you talk about is nothing of the kind.

Wrong. I conclude that the people saw what they said they saw. What I don’t do is insert some wild interpretation into the text to say that what they saw means there was some kind of magic or violation of the laws of nature.

Noah’s flood is a great example. There no way possible that the word translated as “earth” in the text has anything whatsoever to do with the planet we call Earth. And indeed all the evidence shows that no planet-wide flood ever happened. Matthew 24 does not contradict this fact either.

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Is that a fact?

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Must not be. Probably just an opinion.

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Ahhh… but are you really, though?! These days a statement like that is usually just a thin veil over a hardened dogma that lies just underneath. It’s exactly what merchants of doubt always say … “Yeah - but is it really proven that cigarettes are tied to lung cancer?” And they real agenda they pursue is the opposite of any real curiosity. Real curiosity doesn’t run away from real data when it’s available.

As Chesterton has said, “the mind, like the mouth, is meant to be open, so that it can close on something nutritious.” So real curiosity embraces and rejoices in existing evidence and understanding, while also holding it tentatively (but with confidence proportionate to the evidence), always open to new data or better theory that will likely clarify and refine - or even in rare cases, maybe even completely overturn. That’s curiosity.

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The bible clearly says, Moses spoke to God directly…face to face. So this means the designer explained his design directly to Moses…and again to his disciples as the incarnate God that died for the sins of mankind on a cross.

Moses recorded Gods explanation to him regarding the 7 day creation…you do not believe it

Moses wrote the global flood…you do not believe it

Moses tells us all about noah, his family their ages when they enterred the ark…you do not believe it

Jesus directly references noahs flood in matthew 24, the apostle Peter directly references noahs flood in 2 peter 3, luke directly references the flood…you do not believe any of these, not even the incarnate Gods own recorded statements.

How do you reconcile that denial? Christ (your creator) is wrong, told lies, or couldnt be understood, because your scientific theory dissagrees?

You are leaning heavily on the claim, our creator is incapable of being understood by his own creation. God created us stupid! If we are stupid, then all scientific theory is wasted on dimwits and the entire argument there is self defeating!

Start with Godel incompleteness theorem. Math cannot give all the answers. there are true statements that cannot be proven.

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Wow. This thread has drifted way off topic with all the discussion about dietary science. It’s all very interesting (especially since I’ve been on a drive over the past 18 months to lose weight myself), but it should perhaps be spun off into a separate discussion.

Coming back to the original question of how much science we should expect non-scientists to understand, it seems that people have been making quite a persuasive argument for “None whatsoever.” The fact of the matter is that compulsory school level science education in some countries is pretty pathetic. You get taught a whole lot of facts and end results, but it can all seem pretty disjointed at times and it’s only once you start to specialise that you are taught the underlying principles of what ties it all together and how scientists know what they know. On top of that, many kids don’t pay any attention in science class either. I remember one biology class when I was fourteen, we were doing an experiment with earthworms and two boys started playing a game of table tennis with the worm as the ball and their rulers as bats. Needless to say that was not one of the objectives of the experiment.

Having said that, I don’t think we should set the bar so low that they get away with everything. At the very least, they should be able to understand, when it is pointed out to them, that there is such a thing as measurement, that it is constrained by strict rules, and that the rules apply to every context. Even if they struggle to get a grasp of what the rules actually are.

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The thread has drifted way off topic but could there be something similar in how people react to health advice and to what science tells otherwise?

There have been lots of health advice about how much fat and sugars we should eat, about the need to balance our intake and consumption, the need to exercise, etc. Some people try to live according to the health advice, a large proportion of people do not. Many feel sometimes guilty about eating too much and moving too little but the uneasy feeling does not lead to a change in the life style. The flow of information and entertainment through screens is too addictive and steels the time that could be used to something that would consume more calories. After some time of living an unhealthy life style, the mental barrier to start exercising becomes quite high. It is easier to ignore and try to forget all the troublesome health advice.

Could there be something similar in how many react to other type of scientific information? If the information seems too demanding, demands some thinking or may lead to uneasy conclusions, it is easiest to ignore and try to forget the troublesome information. Denying the message (and shooting the messenger) is a quick solution to threatening information. These people could understand the basics if they wanted and would put some time and effort to learning but they are not willing to act in a ‘healthy’ way.

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