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Todd Hembrough
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 6:38am | IP Logged | 1  

Oxygen binds to hemoglobin.

Fact or theory?

Starts out as a hypothesis and then becomes a fact.

QED

edit.  I dont know why I bothered to even post this.  Everyone who 'knows' me on the board knows what I do.  Check my profile, and you can see my 'qualifications' to be party to any scientific conversation.  The 'debate' that Tishman seems to want to have is laughable, that  nothing is knowable, there are no facts, every fact is inherently biased, etc.



Edited by Todd Hembrough on 22 September 2005 at 7:03am
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Joe Hollon
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 6:47am | IP Logged | 2  

Todd wrote: "nothing is knowable, there are no facts, every fact
is inherently biased, etc."

There are no facts? None? Every fact is biased? I'm not sure I
buy that. Please elaborate.
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Todd Hembrough
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:04am | IP Logged | 3  

I edited it for clarity.  Those were Mike Tishman's arguments, with which I obviously disagree.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:27am | IP Logged | 4  

It becomes increasingly obvious that some folk hereabouts are forgetting Occam's Razor -- the simplest solution is usually the correct one.

Sure -- it is possible that the universe as we perceive it is actually something entirely other than what it seems to be, so that gravity really doesn't work the way it seems to, the laws of thermodynamics are all illusion, and the stars really are holes in a vast black velvet dome that covers our flat earth, But the likelihood that this is the case is not very, well, likely.

We can say "there are no facts", and if we want to we can proceed on that assumption and, by golly, the world as we know it will continue to function pretty much as it always has -- altho we may end up immolating ourselves as we dismiss the "fact" that fire burns, or suffocating when we seal ourselves in an airtight room, because we do not accept this "fact" that we need oxygen to breath.

Bottom line: if opinions were never wrong, and there was no such thing as true facts, then no opinion would ever change, while what we consider to be fact would be changing constantly.

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Brian Miller
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:28am | IP Logged | 5  

I don't know about you guys, but I think Tishman's the smartest guy on the board. He's obviously a lot smarter than the rest of us. I'm just glad he's letting us all know this.

( I guess his announcement of leaving the thread, board or whatever has it's degrees of truthfulness).

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Eric Kleefeld
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:31am | IP Logged | 6  

I do appreciate the point that we have an epistemological crisis in this
country. I've noticed politics is no longer about opinion, but people arguing
over their own sets of "facts." Just try taking in CNN, MSNBC, Fox N*ws, the
New York Times, the Wall St. Journal and others, and then tell me they're all
covering the same planet.

It's even to the point where a president will say science class is up for
argument and "informed" decisions.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:37am | IP Logged | 7  

Brian Miller: I guess his announcement of leaving the thread, board or whatever has it's degrees of truthfulness.

****

From a certain perspective. . .

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John Byrne
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:47am | IP Logged | 8  

Eric Kleefeld: It's even to the point where a president will say science class is up for argument and "informed" decisions.

*****

Again, we come back to the different way scientists and civilians use the word "theory". In science class in school -- a place where, it should be noted, all manner of drivel is presented as fact -- we are taught that there are three stages to knowledge, hypothesis, theory, law. Something is not "promoted" to a Law until it has been "proven", so a theory is, by definition, something which has not been proven.

Except that's not how real scientists use the term. In their world, a theory is something that has not been proven by observation. So, as with the earth moving around the sun, or atoms, or evolution, every scrap of evidence may point in that direction, but there is no practical way to do experiments which will present repeatable results every time. (We could, indeed, set up an experiment which would test evolution, for instance, but it would take hundreds of thousands of years, even millions of years*, for this experiement to play itself out, and even then it would have to be done at least a second time before the results could be considered valid.}

And so, people like our Beloved President get confused about the Theory of Evolution, and demand that "equally valid" alternate "theories" be taught along side it. Like "Intelligent Design". Or possibly Leprechauns. (He is not so confused as to demand that there be alternate solutions offered for atomic theory. His cel phone and microwave oven work, so in that case "theory" means fact. But only in that case...)




* "Seven and a half...."

"What, not till next week?"

"...million years!"

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Brian Miller
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 7:59am | IP Logged | 9  

JB, you're starting to sound like Obi-Wan!
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Todd Hembrough
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 8:09am | IP Logged | 10  

Brian, are you trying to insult the Chief by comparing him to that lying b*stard?
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Joe Zhang
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 8:12am | IP Logged | 11  

" I sound educated because I am educated. On this topic, I'm certainly better educated than anyone else who's popped up in this thread."

Oh, so what have you been educated in?
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Brian Miller
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Posted: 22 September 2005 at 8:15am | IP Logged | 12  

Oh, so what have you been educated in?

**************

Apparantly, insulting those that have a different thought than him.



Edited by Brian Miller on 22 September 2005 at 8:15am
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