An idea worth censoring: 'The Science Delusion'

The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle... leaving only the details to be filled in.

A recent TEDX talk was given about this idea.

The talk ruffled feathers. It was censored.

People fought back.

TED backed down.

TED Backs Down: People Power Wins the Day Against Censorship

Here is the talk.



Discuss.

reply to post by BlueMule


Excellent video. I'll definitely be sharing this one around. s&f

reply to post by BlueMule

This week Big G was slighly up, the charge on the electron was down and the speed of light held steady.

Good talk. I was surprised to learn how they measure the value of "Big G", that is very interesting indeed...

reply to post by BlueMule


This is a very interesting idea. By no means is it a new one. this is what some refer to as spirituality, some call it a religious experience. Whatever you want to call it, it is a real phenomenon, and most people will admit to having some sort of similar experience. How each of us lablel it, is up to us, and mostly depends on the culture we grow up in. Trained scientists and laymen alike have been trying to put these experiences into perspective for longer than we have written records. And yet to this day, no one so far has been suitably able to explain it in material terms. Leading those with a more materialistic view to say there is not enough evidence to support these claims. While i tend to agree with this material view given all the material evidence presented, i still think it is possible that there is merrit in these ideas and that science has simply not caught up to the complexity of our material world. I still think it is a material world though. Phenomena are only supernatural until we can explain it then it becomes part of our understanding of the natural world. I think science and the scientific method are still the best and only way to figure these things out. Because without these strict methods we are still just speculating.

Anyways thanks for sharing this. I also like terrence mckenna who is mentioned in the clip. I certainly dont think we should stop investigating this view of our world. It will only bring a better understanding for or against it.

Freedom of Speech, Censor nothing.

The Talk makes some various points, however keep in mind a few things:

1. Arrogance is a beeatch!!!! We think we know alot today, but in the year 3000 the scientists at that time will look at us and either face palm or say we were super primitive in our knowledge. It's all relative.

2. All it take is one. One new discovery can come out any day, that complete undermines everything we ever thought we knew and pulls the rug out from under all the rules of reality. There are already Theoretical physicists that are discussing the possibility that other Universes operate under completely different sets of realities "rules." FOr example we have Light, Gravity, Energy, SPace, etc ...while another Universe next to us may have un-Space, Slime, Gorb, & Flim-Flam-Flimmity as the basic building blocks. Again it's all relative.

Even Einstein looked at Quantum Physics and didn't really want to dwell in it too much, as he called it "Spooky action at a distance." ......because at that point reality no longer had the kind of order that everyone expects.

At the end, I agree it's the best system we have to figure out what's going on, but Science doesn't know everything ......yet

Originally posted by dominicus
Freedom of Speech, Censor nothing.

The Talk makes some various points, however keep in mind a few things:

1. Arrogance is a beeatch!!!! We think we know alot today, but in the year 3000 the scientists at that time will look at us and either face palm or say we were super primitive in our knowledge. It's all relative.

I don't think so. Even though we now know that Sir Isaac Newton wasn't 100% correct, he was close enough that we still use what he came up with for most engineering purposes on human scales.

Instead of pointing to his ignorance for not yet knowing some details he didn't yet have a way to know, we actually admire how advanced his knowledge was, and how well it has withstood the test of time. I think people will still appreciate the accuracy of Newtonian mechanics as much in the year 3000 as we did in the year 2000, and the fact that it's slightly wrong in some extremes doesn't make us do a facepalm and talk about how ignorant he was. However, reading your post was almost enough to give me a face palm.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by BlueMule

 

This week Big G was slighly up, the charge on the electron was down and the speed of light held steady.

Good talk. I was surprised to learn how they measure the value of "Big G", that is very interesting indeed...

You won't learn much from this video about how Big G is measured.

He contradicts himself. He says he's evaluating these dogmas like "big G is constant" against the scientific method, but he's not. If he was really doing that, he would be publishing his paper with his data supporting the claim he made in the video that supposedly show big G is not constant. But he's not doing that, so he's contradicting himself.

Also, these beliefs are not as dogmatic as he claims, and some of them aren't even dogmas at all, he just made some of them up in a straw man logical fallacy argument.

If the scientific method is applied to any of those concepts they can be considered, but his talk is not scientific, even though he claims he applied the scientific method to evaluating the dogmas he made up.

What's really ironic, is that it is he who is actually inventing dogmas (or trying to), which are beliefs with no evidence. Beliefs that the constants (like big G) are constant have pretty good evidence.

His "dogma" that they aren't, has no good evidence. He even explains that the different measurements of big G were explained to him, but he rejects the explanation without demonstrating a better explanation.

So it's really, really ironic that he's a far worse offender than what he accuses others of, which is having dogmatic beliefs.

But he shouldn't be censored...let him make a fool out of himself, if that's what he wants. 20% of Americans think the sun orbits around the Earth, so they might believe just about anything, so they might actually be impressed by this. Anybody with critical thinking skills however, won't be impressed.

The example in the OP of them censoring the talk is pretty case in point eh.




reply to post by Arbitrageur


Hes not saying in reality big G isnt a constant. He is saying over the years sciences knowledge of what that constant is, has changed...even though, it is in reality a constant.

Actually he may be bringing up the point that we cannot know for sure if G is constant. Something to the extent of, if we have only been measuring gravity for 100 or so years, and the universe can potentially exist for 100s of billions and the universe is a dynamic system, G might not be eternally constant. (yes I understand the scientific laws are for the now and the useful)

I dont care much about or for his points, but I do agree that it is bad that scientists think they already know the universe very well. You will tell me "scientists admit they dont know or understand everything about the universe", and I will agree. But my point is, and I think his is, is that every scientist has a model of the universe created in their mind, that they are comfortable with, and that they believe correlates very well to reality, better then any non scientists world view at least. So if the universe is stranger then scientists are willing to believe or imagine, then humans knowing truth is slightly doomed. If someone brings claims to scientists attention that dont fit into the scientists imagination or world view, the scientists will be unwilling to question the validity of those ideas or statements, and take them for being wrong, because, the scientist thinks he already knows mostly all about reality. Is it possible scientists only know a smidgen about reality?

Talk is cheap, it takes data to challenge science.

All I got out of the lecture was another new age huckster pitching a strawman argument to sell a book ( what a disappointing excuse for a TED talk, it is fairly easy to see why the organisation chose not to feature the content)

After reading this guys bio, it is clear that he comes from a traditional academia background so I doubt he is truly as ignorant of the scientific process as the bit of his presentation mocking the efforts of science to quantify the gravitational constant would imply.

Obviously he has a willing audience proving P.T. Barnum's adage regarding a sucker being born every minute still applies.

After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock’s and Rupert Sheldrake’s talks from TEDxWhitechapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel.

We’re not censoring the talks. Instead we’re placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump.

All talks on the TEDxTalks channel represent the opinion of the speaker, not of TED or TEDx, but we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.

UPDATE: Please find Rupert Sheldrake’s response below the video window.

According to our science board, Rupert Sheldrake bases his argument on several major factual errors, which undermine the arguments of talk. For example, he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.

He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example.

But, in truth, there has been a great deal of inquiry into the nature of scientific constants, including published, peer-reviewed research investigating whether certain constants – including the speed of light – might actually vary over time or distance. Scientists are constantly questioning these assumptions. For example, just this year Scientific American published a feature on the state of research into exactly this question. (“Are physical constants really constant?: Do the inner workings of nature change over time?”) Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.

In addition, Sheldrake claims to have “evidence” of morphic resonance in crystal formation and rat behavior. The research has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, despite attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work.

Open for discussion: Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake from TEDxWhitechapel

Be sure to read Rupert Sheldrake's response at the link above, it would seem Rupert Sheldrakes critics are being led by "militant atheist bloggers"

Who is Rupert Sheldrake? From his own website...

Rupert Sheldrake biologist author telepathy research, morphic resonance, powers of animals, psychic pets, dogmatic skepticism, media skeptics.

Rupert Sheldrake, Biologist and Author

Psychic pets and dogmatic skepticism

Yeah, TED didn't 'censor' him to keep his evil truth out of the spot light. It's more like he said he was going to give one talk, and gave some whackadoo talk in its place.

It's sort of like having Kaku show up and give a talk on trance mediums and how they are an underutilized resource in the development of mathematical proofs, it's not the sort of thing you'd want your name on.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I don't think so. Even though we now know that Sir Isaac Newton wasn't 100% correct, he was close enough that we still use what he came up with for most engineering purposes on human scales.

You know what though, most people (average joe's) and scientists aren't sitting there thinking about Newton and hanging from his testes. If he hadn't discovered the premises of what we use today as a foundation in science and reality, then some other guy would have come shortly after him and discovered it. So in reality i could care less about Newton, cause I understand that what get's discovered, is already there, existing, waiting to be uncovered and shown to everyone else.

The present modern age, everyone is interested in the most recent news and how to advance where we are. No one is jocking Newton because we are light years ahead of Newton, just like the year 3000 will be Quadrillions of light years from the year 2013 science.

Instead of pointing to his ignorance for not yet knowing some details he didn't yet have a way to know, we actually admire how advanced his knowledge was, and how well it has withstood the test of time. I think people will still appreciate the accuracy of Newtonian mechanics as much in the year 3000 as we did in the year 2000, and the fact that it's slightly wrong in some extremes doesn't make us do a facepalm and talk about how ignorant he was.

Many people see Newton as ignorant for his religious and occult views and his failures in Alchemy. Sure his knowledge of certain subjects were advanced for the time, but look where we are now. Genius in some aspects, ignorant and failure in others.

However, reading your post was almost enough to give me a face palm.

I came in here and give you mutual respect and an audience for your thread. However I'm realizing your comment and this thread is now one giant Facepalm ...so I'm out. Peace in the middle east

reply to post by Drunkenparrot

Many thanks for that, in particular for mentioning the authors of this farrago –

Graham Hancock and Rupert Sheldrake

– and more generally, for posting an informative discussion of the issue, something the OP annoyingly neglected to do. You saved me having to click the YouTube link to learn what his silly video was about. A star for you, just for that. If I could give you another for the content of your post, I would.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

You won't learn much from this video about how Big G is measured.

Ok... so they don't take all the measurements from labs around the world and average them? And the values produced by labs around the world are always extremely close to each other? It seems to me like he had really looked into this and knew how it worked...

reply to post by Drunkenparrot

All I got out of the lecture was another new age huckster pitching a strawman argument to sell a book ( what a disappointing excuse for a TED talk, it is fairly easy to see why the organisation chose not to feature the content)

Agree. What I got out of it was the implication that since we haven't quite figured out how the mind works, then it must be not in our heads. Since gravity wavers a bit here and there, then gravity must actually be a state where all matter is in the fist of a god, and that fist tightens and relaxes. The really sad part of this talk is that people WANT to believe in things that can't be validated in any way - like magic.

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

You won't learn much from this video about how Big G is measured.

Ok... so they don't take all the measurements from labs around the world and average them? And the values produced by labs around the world are always extremely close to each other? It seems to me like he had really looked into this and knew how it worked...

You will learn a little bit more about the difficulties in measuring G here than from Sheldrake's video:

asd.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Several measurements in the past decade did not succeed in improving our knowledge of big G's value. To the contrary, the variation between different measurements forced the CODATA committee, which determines the internationally accepted standard values, to increase the uncertainty from 0.013% for the value quoted in 1987 to the twelve times larger uncertainty of 0.15% for the 1998 "official" value. This situation is an embarrassment to modern physics, considering that the intrinsic strength of electromagnetism, for instance, is known 2.5 million times more precisely and is steadily being improved. (The situation of G becomes more understandable if one considers the weakness of gravity: the total gravitational force twisting on the pendulum of a typical Cavendish torsion balance is only equivalent to the weight of a bacteria and that small force must be measured very precisely.)

That's a little dated but even the latest measurements are usually accompanied with remarks about the measurement difficulty and the recommendation that more measurements continue to be made independently in different labs, like this for example:

Atom Interferometer Measurement of the Newtonian Constant of Gravity

The possibility that unknown systematic errors still exist in traditional measurements makes it important to measure G with independent methods.

This will also tell you more than Sheldrake: CODATA estimate of G
Click the link that says "Definition of Uncertainty", and read that, and also, read the links posted here to learn more about that topic:

Uncertainty of Measurement Results
If you read the sources I provided, the different measurements are more an expression of the difficulty of measuring G and not really evidence that it's changing. To say with any confidence it's changing would require more precise measurements with smaller error bars and less uncertainty.

Originally posted by ImaFungi
Hes not saying in reality big G isnt a constant.

You weren't paying attention. He did say that he thought it might have some kind of cyclical variation, did you miss that? Only problem is, he never published his idea even though he claims to be applying science, and since a scientist would publish his claim in a paper, he's not being scientific contrary to his claim he is.

This refutes his claim that science doesn't question if constants are constant, which is Sheldrake's straw man argument misrepresenting the mainstream view. Of course scientists wonder about these things and Sheldrake is dishonest to claim otherwise:

math.ucr.edu...

The fundamental laws of physics, as we presently understand them, depend on about 25 parameters, such as Planck's constant h, the gravitational constant G, and the mass and charge of the electron. It is natural to ask whether these parameters are really constants, or whether they vary in space or time.
...
Over the past few decades, there have been extensive searches for evidence of variation of fundamental "constants." Among the methods used have been astrophysical observations of the spectra of distant stars, searches for variations of planetary radii and moments of inertia, investigations of orbital evolution, searches for anomalous luminosities of faint stars, studies of abundance ratios of radioactive nuclides, and (for current variations) direct laboratory measurements.

This isn't another Sheldrake, this is a "Frequently asked Questions" answer on a university physics website. So it's not true that constants are automatically assumed to be constant. However we also have some idea how precise our measurements are, and we know it's difficult to measure big G. Given this knowledge, when we see different measurements, isn't it kind of silly to assume G is changing instead of appreciating that it's just hard to measure, because it's such a weak force?

Yet we have Sheldrake claiming it's not measurement uncertainty, but he thinks some kind of cyclical variation, and you, who missed that point completely.

What the speaker was trying to get at was: "Science doesn't verify my own theories; therefore, I should attack it." But it's difficult to attack science with pseudoscience.

Very good video. From my studies and observations throughout my life I agree with this. I guess I agreed with it already forty years ago. I had no interest in being a part of the deceptions. It is now time to make people aware of this, the guy is not deceiving anyone. Science does create some astonishing things but misuse of science's creation is destroying god's creation.

Talk is cheap. Rupert wants a debate!

I would be happy to take part in a public debate with a scientist who disagrees with the issues I raise in my talk. This could take place online, or on Skype. My only condition is that it be conducted fairly, with equal time for both sides to present their arguments, and with an impartial moderator, agreed by both parties.

Therefore I ask Chris Anderson to invite a scientist from TED’s Scientific Board or TED’s Brain Trust to have a real debate with me about my talk, or if none will agree to take part, to do so himself.

www.ted.com...

So far just crickets....

Perhaps a few takers here?

One thing is for sure, this Sheldrake and Hancock thing has certainly blown up in Teds face. And we can thank Coyne and PZ meyers for making thier talks more popular than they ever would have been. Censorship is a great way to say hey! Look at this!

As for big G, he is asking a question. "Is it really a constant?". The fact that so many a ruffled by this seems to prove his point about dogmatic assumptions. Personally it doesn't bother me. I don't know and neither does anyone else with certainty. People are misrepresenting what he is saying, including posts here. And I'm quite sure they are not familiar with his research on the matter.

Both sides should be heard, this is how science progresses, not by silencing dissenting views. One is open inquiry the other is DOGMATIC fundamentalism that only stiffles progress, again proving his point.

Are the constants really constant? The measured values continually change, as I show in my book Science Set Free (The Science Delusion in the UK). They are regularly adjusted by international committees of experts know as metrologists. Old values are replaced by new “best values”, based on the recent data from laboratories around the world.

Within their laboratories, metrologists strive for ever-greater precision. In so doing, they reject unexpected data on the grounds they must be errors. Then, after deviant measurements have been weeded out, they average the values obtained at different times, and subject the final value to a series of corrections. Finally, in arriving at the latest “best values”, international committees of experts then select, adjust and average the data from an international selection of laboratories.

Despite these variations, most scientists take it for granted that the constants themselves are really constant; the variations in their values are simply the result of experimental errors.

The oldest of the constants, Newton’s Universal Gravitational Constant, known to physicists as Big G, shows the largest variations. As methods of measurement became more precise, the disparity in measurements of G by different laboratories increased, rather than decreased.

Between 1973 and 2010, the lowest average value of G was 6.6659, and the highest 6.734, a 1.1 percent difference. These published values are given to at least 3 places of decimals, and sometimes to 5, with estimated errors of a few parts per million. Either this appearance of precision is illusory, or G really does change. The difference between recent high and low values is more than 40 times greater than the estimated errors (expressed as standard deviations).

What if G really does change? Maybe its measured value is affected by changes in the earth’s astronomical environment, as the earth moves around the sun and as the solar system moves within the galaxy. Or maybe there are inherent fluctuations in G. Such changes would never be noticed as long as measurements are averaged over time and averaged across laboratories.

In 1998, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology published values of G taken on different days, revealing a remarkable range. On one day the value was 6.73, a few months later it was 6.64, 1.3% lower. (The references for all the data cited in this blog are given in Science Set Free/The Science Delusion).

In 2002, a team lead by Mikhail Gershteyn, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published the first systematic attempt to study changes in G at different times of day and night. G was measured around the clock for seven months, using two independent methods. They found a clear daily rhythm, with maximum values of G 23.93 hours apart, correlating with the length of the sidereal day, the period of the earth’s rotation in relation to the stars.

Gershteyn’s team looked only for daily fluctuations, but G may well vary over longer time periods as well; there is already some evidence of an annual variation.

By comparing measurements from different locations, it should be possible to find more evidence of underlying patterns. Such measurements already exist, buried in the files of metrological laboratories. The simplest and cheapest starting point for this enquiry would be to collect the measurements of G at different times from laboratories all over the world. Then these measurements could be compared to see if the fluctuations are correlated. If they are, we will discover something new.

No we wouldn't want to discover something new would we?