h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Fanny

"The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but rather to think what no one yet has thought about that which everybody sees. - Erwin Schrödinger".

Indeed, and a wise old bird was he. I see, explore and think about things that Eddie et al do not, even though they are right in front of them, and I am the nutter. Ho hum...

"Oh and hi Math. You're one of the lovliest theists on h2g2. "

Why thank you Miss

See Eddie you're not the only one who loves me here

Blessings,
Matholwch .

>>It isn't a religion.

OK. Let's drop the R-word. But why, then, all the crap about Goddesses and spirits? Why the emphasis on things that simply cannot or understood or recorded measured or even plain *seen* by anyone except druids?

OK - so you don't proselytise...but you can see why someone might not feel the need to take you seriously, surely?

And you can see why someone might suspect that it's all just a (possibly self-deluding) ruse to make self-styled druids appear different and special?

It's not a religion -- it's a natural philosophy -- with gods and spirits and -- am I right? -- rituals.

And science is pretty much a religion since it depends on faith.


And black is white and up is down.



In the words of Jean-Luc Picard:

'There are *four* lights!'

>>"Some people believe in scientists others do not. Unfortunately scientists are human, and thus are capable of self-aggrandisement (Korean Cloners?), ignoring inconvenient results (GM crop trials), being unwilling to upset the established view of reality (look into the recent history of the politics of the String Theory), and outright lies (the dangers of tobacco). I don't think science is doing very well at the moment in the public eye."

Thing is, to anyone asking themselves the obvious question about repeatability, someone claiming to have done something no-one else has been able to repeat is under some kind of default suspicion.
Had other people managed to duplicate the Korean results by honest experiment, the cheating would have been somewhat moot, except for the wrong person getting the glory for being first.
Had other people continually failed to duplicate the Korean results, any confidence in them would have steadily declined, likely over a period of years.

It's not about *believing* in scientists. It's about making judgements about how dubious a claim sounds, how many people will be (or will have been) trying to duplicate or prove the claim wrong, etc. Before something is generally accepted as really reliable, it has likely undergone a serious amount of checking.
There's no binary accepted/disbelieved distinction in science - there are things more or less doubted or more or less trusted by various people. To have near universal support, something is likely to be pretty well-founded.

>>"There are standards, but only about a quarter of the world's electronics are built using them - think on that next time you plug in your £19.99 Chinese DVD player."

So what? That's irrelevant to the point I was making - that it's no leap of faith to accept that standards actually exist, or that there are people who understand them. Unless I have an actual reason to believe that you *aren't* a qualified inspector, it's no great leap of faith to assume you probably know your job.

>>"Bad example. Most serious solder joint faults are invisible to the eye, and they may be intermittent, so one minute the PCB is dead and the next it is operational."

You *were* talking about your visual inspection skills. Either you visually inspect the joints (or the board more generally), or you use some non-visual inspection method.
To the extent you use visual inspection, it must be possible to describe the nature of faults, or illustrate them with diagrams or pictures.

>>"Unfortunately there are competing theories on good soldering practice, mostly backed by competing manufacturers and in some cases by countries such as the USA, the EU and China. There is also an industry of interpretation of these varying standards (sounds a bit like christianity don't it?)."

So what? As I said, *if* there's essentially a single standard, one is likely to have a bit more confidence in it than if there are different incompatible ones, if one assumes there's some rational basis behind standards (like minimising failure rates). To the extent there are differences, people are likely to wonder what the foundations of the differences are.

However, one can at least assume that there's *some* reality-checking. If processes were being applied that resulted in a high failure rate, people would be expected to question the processes more than if the failure rate was low, assuming questioning was allowed.

>>"Unfortunately a blind faith in science is destroying our habitable environment. Just two widely hailed scientific achievements could spell the doom for us all - Nitrate Fertilisers and Antibiotics. People have a touching faith in both of these despite mounting evidence they are more dangerous to humanity than nuclear weapons."

Where does 'blind faith in science' come into it? Even when people are aware of the possible problems of misuse/overuse, many seem to carry on regardless. I don't think that's primarily down to assuming that science can fix everything, but down to short-termism and selfishness.

Antibiotic *misuse* would seemingly at the worst render antibiotics useless - the end result possibly being that we're no better off than before we had them.

>>"What if it were revealed that the aliens' mode of transport broke all the accepted limits of our understanding of physics. Such as acceleration far past the speed of light? The public would believe it because they've seen Star Trek, but you couldn't because you are rationalists for whom the lack of evidence that you could understand would be an unsurpassable barrier."

I don't quite understand you there. If it clearly *did* move faster-than-light, scientists would be extremely interested in finding out *how*. Certainly, it'd take a little evidence to convince scientists it really was FTL, but it would seem only right that there was cautious skepticism on such an issue.
Even in the absence of an adequate explanation of 'how', I'm not sure how many people (scientists or otherwise) would think "It's magic!" rather than "It's techology we don't understand"

>>"I also think the public would be able to make the leap of faith required to believe in telepathy. You could not, even if it were true."

The fraction of the public who were most eager to believe from the word go that it was some organic telepathy would be the fraction of the general public whose beliefs I would probably find the least persuasive.

If it could be shown that there *wasn't* a technological assist, there wouldn't be a need for a leap of faith. One could approach the issue incrementally. If there were apparently no technology involved despite looking for it, no EM radiation for communication, then even if one couldn't find an organic mechanism, one could conclude that there seemed to be something like telepathy happening.
What is more, if one had actually looked for explanations, one's conclusion would actually be worth more than a knee-jerk conclusion of someone who simply wanted to believe, since one could explain *why* one came to the conclusion.

Except where urgency is required, a leap of faith to a desired conclusion simply in order to bypass study that could have supported or questioned that conclusion seems to be undesirable.

I also find it deeply suspicious when viewpoints have to be defended - read 'obscured' - by going off on irrelevant tangents about the minutiae of soldering and even...what the f was that about?...Nazi eugenics.

The soldering thing does seem a bit of a red herring.

Now, if Math could offer advice on the best way of hand-soldering connections to SMT Cree 7090XR-Es which have already been thermal-epoxied to a heatsink, that might at least be useful to me, if not deeply relevant to the discussion.

<>

I thought (from New Scientist) that it was eleven!

Hi Eddie

At last we have agreed to drop the R-word, at least around druidry - phew! My work here is done

As you well know I am more than happy for anyone here not to take me seriously, If you can't laugh at yourself then you should go back to picking fleas off your mate.

Hmmm... me special? Only as in the term 'special needs' maybe.

Right, onto the meat as we say...

The Soldering Example began as a quick aside and then developed into an entire shoal of scarlet kippers. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa It's not often here when I am the expert and I let meself get carried away OK?

Apologies to Potholer et al... except for the aliens thing, that was his wild detour, not mine

The reason I go on about goddesses and the spirits of the land is that, in my special needs reality over here, I have experienced them, indeed I have an ongoing experience of them. Being of a scientific and rational bent (for the most part) a lot of my last thirty years has been spent trying to find out why I have these experiences, and more recently why there seem to be a whole group of other people who have similar ones.

This is why I don't have 'faith', or a 'belief', I've been there and done it, and that's what worries me.

Does that explain it? In essence I actually need you guys to discuss this with in order to keep a grip on the frame of the door back to reality.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

Potholer,

A little more info please. A SMT Cree 7090XR-Es, what type of device are we talking about here? IC? Quad Flatpack? How many leads? Are they gull-wing, flat, J leg etc.

What sort of soldering equipment and solder are you trying?

Blessings,
Matholwch .

J-Std-001 Certified Application Specialist.

>>This is why I don't have 'faith', or a 'belief', I've been there and done it, and that's what worries me.

But...in that case you're completely mis-using words like 'rational', 'evidence'...even 'see'. Your test for your (I have to call them) 'beliefs' is that they satisfy yourself. You put way too much faith in your own powers of observation and deduction. Irrespective of whether you wish to proselytise or be taken seriously, it's simple good sense to expose your ideas/observations to external scrutiny. And I'm not just talking about the world of science here.

So it seems to me that, despite you're protestations, you *are* inhabiting the world as those who but their faith in received beliefs. The faithful say "That's good enough for me".

(I can't solder for toffee, btw)

Hi Eddie

"Irrespective of whether you wish to proselytise or be taken seriously, it's simple good sense to expose your ideas/observations to external scrutiny. And I'm not just talking about the world of science here."

And what, pray, do you think I am doing here? Do I hear a hoisting petard?

"So it seems to me that, despite you're protestations, you *are* inhabiting the world as those who but their faith in received beliefs."

Er... no I am not. Faith cannot be challenged, I can, and continue to be. I am willing to accept that I might be mad, whereas the abrahamics have a certainty of the kind that can massacre innocents.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

(btw my actual soldering stinks too, but I am certified to know that and why).

Of course, it can be challenged. The fact that people rarely listen is immaterial. It does seem that the Xtians who realise its all a load of hogwash actually realise on there own and it is their deductions and conclusions from observations of their fellow Xtians etc. I.e. they challenge their own faith.

But Math...you're not even challenging your own standards of what constititues evidence. You're not challenging your observations and objections. You are starting with the premise "This is what I've perceived" as opposed to "This is what *I think* I've seen...but before I can be sure I need to get some cross-checking from others." It's symptomatic that you offer no evidence for scrutiny...indeed, you make a virtue of not doing so...but insist that others suspend disbelief until they see the same things. This contrasts with peer review based empiricism.

(Obviously even the most sceptical rationalist doesn't follow this rigidly in daily life - it would be most inconvenient if we always had to cross-check that a tree was a tree. But if you're going to insist that they are more than wood and leaves...)

On another matter...you repeated criticism of (what you call) 'the abrahamics' is extremely uninformed. Yes, some of them follow received scriptures uncritically. By no means all, though. Some would claim that their starting point is their personal revelation of the reality of God, and they are interpreting this within the framework of their faith. This seems to me extremely similar to your own approach. I find precisely the same fault with them as I do with you.

"Oh wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/ To see ourselves as others see us."

>>You're not challenging your observations and objections

I meant '...observations and perceptions.'

Hi Eddie

Ok, my happy little empiricist, please show me how I could offer evidence for something I experience, given the nature of the sort of things I experience? I couild take you to the same places, show you what I do, when and how, but I cannot guarantee that you will experience it. Do you see the nature of my conundrum?

I have not asked you to suspend your disbelief, just to understand that people in many fields would find it hard to describe their speciality to someone who hasn't the least grounding in that field.

(An individual tree is indeed a lot more than just wood and leaves, they are an entire eco-system, a world within a world, but we won't go there).

My criticism of the abrahamics is well-informed having been brought up as one and spent considerable time since steeped in their theology. You know as well as I do that my 'attacks' are on their organisations and their published theology/doctrine rather than individuals, so it is a little disingenuous to state otherwise.

I think you would find it hard to find an abrahamic in the western world who was utterly unaware of their God or his teachings prior to their 'personal revelation'.

The 'framework of their faith' is a pretty inflexible set of doctrines and dogma that allows little room for theological maneuver, however much some would like to say they wriggle free (such as Della). Of late this framework seems to be hardening further as can be witnessed by the predicament of the Anglican communion.

it's interesting to see you 'defending' them .

Blessings,
Matholwch .

apparantly Wikipedia is too left wing, biased and godless...

So we now have:-

http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page

Marvellous....

http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia

Hmmmm.... this page is startiing to make me think it is perhaps a joke....

I particularly like their lambasting of using the "English" spelling of "English" words.... What a left wing hate crime....

crikey not meaning to go on about this but this one is a cracker....

http://www.conservapedia.com/Faith



So there you go Math, what you have isn't faith....