Post by Apollo Gnomon on Dec 4, 2008 2:21:55 GMT -4
This started in a hoax thread. The HB wandered off after making vague and unsubstantial statements about some picture of moon dirt.
Dec 2, 2008, 9:24pm, oldman wrote:
If hypothetically speaking "there should be a track but there isn't" (in other words, its absence cannot be explained in terms of the "this photo is legit" hypothesis) then I would think that no matter how improbable it may seem, the "this photo is fake" hypothesis would have to be considered.
Nomuse said:
It might -- just barely -- be a hypothesis, but it is far from a theory.
A theory is testable, and had predictive power. It is also generally falsifiable. There just isn't enough in "It might be fake" to test. The entire Moon "might be fake." This conversation itself might be a drug-dream of an 18th-century opium addict in some dive on the bad side of Constantinople. Without detail there is no where you can go.
Which part is faked. Why was it faked. How was it faked. Why was it faked in that way?
As premature as they might be, the questions about lunar rovers on studio cranes are the kinds of questions an actual theory would face.
This is what an actual competing hypothesis would look like; "I suggest the tracks are not visible in this picture because giant wind machines were being used on the set and all the marks -- tracks, footprints, etc. -- of the previous day's shooting were completely erased."
Or here's another; "I suggest the tracks are not visible in this picture because this picture is a composite; the elements to the left are from a miniatures set, matt painting, or even a photograph taken by robotic lander. The other elements are matted on top. To have tracks in that portion of the photograph would have required they be painted in by hand."
Both of those are fleshed out to the point where they can be tested; tested to see if they answer observations better than the existing theory.
I said:
The whole argument about the "theory of evolution" from the ID crowd hinges on the "falsifiable" nature of a hypothesis. No hypothesis (theory) is ever "proven" as much as it stands "un-disproven" at any given time. Evolution (and gravity) are still called "The Theory of..." despite years of functional testing, the deep predictive nature of both, and the fact that nobody has come up with a decent way of "falsifying" either one using good scientific techniques and information.
Yesterday at 8:45pm, Jason wrote:
I always wondered what useful predictions you can actually make with evolutionary theory, since it seems to me that it will generally take tens of thousands of years to see if any of them are right.
I replied:
MRSA: www.mayoclinic.com/health/mrsa/DS00735
Mosquitoes: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/bc-dtw040408.php
Weeds: www.weedscience.org/In.asp
These have all evolved in the last 50 years. Prediction using evolutionary theory: if you kill 99% of the population with something, the survivors will be resistant. Keep that in mind when someone offers you waterless hand cleaner, and when you pick cleansers for you home (like 409). Better is to vary your cleaning routine to keep the threat changing. What one germ survives another will not. And occasionally bleach the heck out of things.
On the long term, if 1% of a population is resistant to a persistent threat, the population will eventually consist exclusively of individuals with that trait. It takes a while, like the old "compound interest on 1 cent" math problem. Same thing with breeding advantages. Evolution is a long term relationship between "differential fertility and differential mortality."
Did you know that one aspect of human evolution ended in the late 19th century?
Yep. It's true.
Anesthesia in dental care increased the use of tooth-pulling to relieve wisdom tooth problems. Until then, people with sore jaws from wisdom teeth coming in and shoving other teeth around were more likely to suffer "not tonight, I have a headache" evolutionary pressure, so the genetic trait of having less teeth was favored. Maybe it's a difference of one or two children between the involved breeders over a lifetime, but that's where the immensity of time comes in. As you suggest, in 10k years we wouldn't have wisdom teeth.
tofu said:
I swear that I hate derailing threads (even though oldman is likely gone forever) but come on, antiseptic is not the same thing as antibiotic. Staphylococcus has become resistant to antibiotics because antibiotics are selective. You put an antibiotic inside your body and you want it to kill Staph but not kill your cells. Staph becomes resistant by becoming a little more like your own cells. An antiseptic is a nuclear weapon compared to that. Staph will never, ever become resistant to iodine or 409 or those hand cleaners you're (apparently not) using. Those things are nothing at all like antibiotics.
If you kill 99% of the population with nuclear weapons, it could be that the remaining 1% were just lucky enough to be in a subway tunnel at the time. It doesn't automatically follow that they are magically resistant to nuclear weapons.
This whole anti-antibacterial soap debate strikes me as an example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. We all learn about evolution in school, but sometimes we apply what we learned incorrectly. You want a reason to steer clear of AB soap? Here's one: they're not more effective than regular soap, but they're more expensive.
Dec 2, 2008, 9:24pm, oldman wrote:
If hypothetically speaking "there should be a track but there isn't" (in other words, its absence cannot be explained in terms of the "this photo is legit" hypothesis) then I would think that no matter how improbable it may seem, the "this photo is fake" hypothesis would have to be considered.
Nomuse said:
It might -- just barely -- be a hypothesis, but it is far from a theory.
A theory is testable, and had predictive power. It is also generally falsifiable. There just isn't enough in "It might be fake" to test. The entire Moon "might be fake." This conversation itself might be a drug-dream of an 18th-century opium addict in some dive on the bad side of Constantinople. Without detail there is no where you can go.
Which part is faked. Why was it faked. How was it faked. Why was it faked in that way?
As premature as they might be, the questions about lunar rovers on studio cranes are the kinds of questions an actual theory would face.
This is what an actual competing hypothesis would look like; "I suggest the tracks are not visible in this picture because giant wind machines were being used on the set and all the marks -- tracks, footprints, etc. -- of the previous day's shooting were completely erased."
Or here's another; "I suggest the tracks are not visible in this picture because this picture is a composite; the elements to the left are from a miniatures set, matt painting, or even a photograph taken by robotic lander. The other elements are matted on top. To have tracks in that portion of the photograph would have required they be painted in by hand."
Both of those are fleshed out to the point where they can be tested; tested to see if they answer observations better than the existing theory.
I said:
The whole argument about the "theory of evolution" from the ID crowd hinges on the "falsifiable" nature of a hypothesis. No hypothesis (theory) is ever "proven" as much as it stands "un-disproven" at any given time. Evolution (and gravity) are still called "The Theory of..." despite years of functional testing, the deep predictive nature of both, and the fact that nobody has come up with a decent way of "falsifying" either one using good scientific techniques and information.
Yesterday at 8:45pm, Jason wrote:
I always wondered what useful predictions you can actually make with evolutionary theory, since it seems to me that it will generally take tens of thousands of years to see if any of them are right.
I replied:
MRSA: www.mayoclinic.com/health/mrsa/DS00735
Mosquitoes: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/bc-dtw040408.php
Weeds: www.weedscience.org/In.asp
These have all evolved in the last 50 years. Prediction using evolutionary theory: if you kill 99% of the population with something, the survivors will be resistant. Keep that in mind when someone offers you waterless hand cleaner, and when you pick cleansers for you home (like 409). Better is to vary your cleaning routine to keep the threat changing. What one germ survives another will not. And occasionally bleach the heck out of things.
On the long term, if 1% of a population is resistant to a persistent threat, the population will eventually consist exclusively of individuals with that trait. It takes a while, like the old "compound interest on 1 cent" math problem. Same thing with breeding advantages. Evolution is a long term relationship between "differential fertility and differential mortality."
Did you know that one aspect of human evolution ended in the late 19th century?
Yep. It's true.
Anesthesia in dental care increased the use of tooth-pulling to relieve wisdom tooth problems. Until then, people with sore jaws from wisdom teeth coming in and shoving other teeth around were more likely to suffer "not tonight, I have a headache" evolutionary pressure, so the genetic trait of having less teeth was favored. Maybe it's a difference of one or two children between the involved breeders over a lifetime, but that's where the immensity of time comes in. As you suggest, in 10k years we wouldn't have wisdom teeth.
tofu said:
I swear that I hate derailing threads (even though oldman is likely gone forever) but come on, antiseptic is not the same thing as antibiotic. Staphylococcus has become resistant to antibiotics because antibiotics are selective. You put an antibiotic inside your body and you want it to kill Staph but not kill your cells. Staph becomes resistant by becoming a little more like your own cells. An antiseptic is a nuclear weapon compared to that. Staph will never, ever become resistant to iodine or 409 or those hand cleaners you're (apparently not) using. Those things are nothing at all like antibiotics.
If you kill 99% of the population with nuclear weapons, it could be that the remaining 1% were just lucky enough to be in a subway tunnel at the time. It doesn't automatically follow that they are magically resistant to nuclear weapons.
This whole anti-antibacterial soap debate strikes me as an example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. We all learn about evolution in school, but sometimes we apply what we learned incorrectly. You want a reason to steer clear of AB soap? Here's one: they're not more effective than regular soap, but they're more expensive.