Excellent writing. I lost my patience to uncovering such details, although it was fun and inspiring. Not any more - which is why I truly appreciate the thorough work like yours.
The scene, even if it had no real-life predecessor, shows nicely how scientists (may / like to) think and why they are (almost) all wrong. Incidentally, many such discrepancies (gaps) in logical thinking are ascribed to the biggest names, Freud and Einstein being just a few examples. Completed with “true” fantasies of the cornerstones of modern “science” (Darwin, human genome project actors, etc.), these incidents give us a terrifying view of how completely blindly we are, all the time covering up the absence of common sense with various measures.
For a long time I have suspected there's no 'there' there in the outer reaches of speculation that is called science. One of the best examples is 'string theory', which enjoyed a vogue some years ago as a purported successor to whatever imaginative construct preceded it. While it is true that Einstein worked out the math for nuclear energy before it became an explosive reality, numerous other math-whiz notions are still awaiting empirical confirmation. Your post linked above includes many intriguing examples of science-fiction utterly removed from empirical reality. At the very least it should put funding agencies and those who pay for them -- the taxpayers -- on notice that they've been cutting scientists way too much slack. Of course, merely to hint at such justifiable skepticism is to call down upon one's head the dreaded charge of being 'anti-science'. Au contraire. It's those who claim knowledge of things happening millions or trillions of years ago or in future who are anti-science.
Isn’t it funny? With absolute certainty in their voice, these people put events at give or take xxx millions years here or there and link creatures which they have never seen as “direct” descendants or evolving species... the same people who cannot remember their spouse’s birthday or what they had yesterday for breakfast...
The most absurd thing is the life span. A being who has about 30 years or roughly an intelligent lifetime, all based on borrowed knowledge from dead books and equally dead teachers, is “educating” the whole humanity about millions of years and galaxies far and away. The stupidity of even assuming that this “science” has any value is beyond human comprehension. Maybe this is why aliens are bypassing the Earth as much as they can. Common people here are ok, but meeting earthly scientists would be a disgrace to any alien traveller :-)
Excellent writing. I lost my patience to uncovering such details, although it was fun and inspiring. Not any more - which is why I truly appreciate the thorough work like yours.
I took a different take on the movie: https://thepathishere.substack.com/p/oppenheimer
The scene, even if it had no real-life predecessor, shows nicely how scientists (may / like to) think and why they are (almost) all wrong. Incidentally, many such discrepancies (gaps) in logical thinking are ascribed to the biggest names, Freud and Einstein being just a few examples. Completed with “true” fantasies of the cornerstones of modern “science” (Darwin, human genome project actors, etc.), these incidents give us a terrifying view of how completely blindly we are, all the time covering up the absence of common sense with various measures.
For a long time I have suspected there's no 'there' there in the outer reaches of speculation that is called science. One of the best examples is 'string theory', which enjoyed a vogue some years ago as a purported successor to whatever imaginative construct preceded it. While it is true that Einstein worked out the math for nuclear energy before it became an explosive reality, numerous other math-whiz notions are still awaiting empirical confirmation. Your post linked above includes many intriguing examples of science-fiction utterly removed from empirical reality. At the very least it should put funding agencies and those who pay for them -- the taxpayers -- on notice that they've been cutting scientists way too much slack. Of course, merely to hint at such justifiable skepticism is to call down upon one's head the dreaded charge of being 'anti-science'. Au contraire. It's those who claim knowledge of things happening millions or trillions of years ago or in future who are anti-science.
Isn’t it funny? With absolute certainty in their voice, these people put events at give or take xxx millions years here or there and link creatures which they have never seen as “direct” descendants or evolving species... the same people who cannot remember their spouse’s birthday or what they had yesterday for breakfast...
The most absurd thing is the life span. A being who has about 30 years or roughly an intelligent lifetime, all based on borrowed knowledge from dead books and equally dead teachers, is “educating” the whole humanity about millions of years and galaxies far and away. The stupidity of even assuming that this “science” has any value is beyond human comprehension. Maybe this is why aliens are bypassing the Earth as much as they can. Common people here are ok, but meeting earthly scientists would be a disgrace to any alien traveller :-)