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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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You're a complete moron, MikeL. That's what I think. I'll go back to rarely reading your posts. I wouldn't even know where to begin with that last post of yours. You got so many things wrong. There is nothing to learn from you.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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You're a complete moron, MikeL.
Wow. That's not a response I expect to see on this thread. That is depressing.
But I guess you would be ready to kill the Buddha if you meet him on the road.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Forgot Pinker, Dawkins...and Dennet. -MikeL
in the spirit of dmt...
moron: a really stupid person
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WBraun
climber
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Siddhartha Mukherjee actually is intelligent.
He knows the brain is not the living entity, he knows the brain is the vehicle for the soul who is driver, the consciousness, the source that drives the brains chemistry.
Without understand the science of the soul modern science will always remain incomplete in it's quest for understanding the complexities of all aspects of life .....
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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moron: a really stupid person
What a clever debate tactic. Learn that in science class?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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I would say just the opposite - that we don't understand many of the fundamental principles of biology and in the ones we have some understanding of that understanding is quite often largely incomplete.
Agreed. I might add " Grossly incomplete" as the last two words.
Moreover ,Science is as burdened by vested interests, conventional thinking, turf wars, and
unimaginativeness as any other human endeavor. Where more money goes, such as medical research, more true.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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What a clever debate tactic.
So where were you when I was (fashionably) called a "bigot" by one poster (for stating a historical fact no less) and then confirmed by another (with axes to grind) by posting up a (simple) internet dictionary definition to supposedly seal the deal?
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Ward, you have any examples of this (agreement)?
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Eeyonkee, hold your ground. "Science lives matter."
Do not be apologetic about responding harshly to the unending relentless streams of nonsense MikeL, WB, and others post.
What this thread exemplifies is what happens when minds over decades aren't raised in a general modern sciences environment (incl lots of hands on experience). In turn I think it only reflects the states-of-awareness across America at large. But then we're supposed to know this already right? from the many studies that have been conducted over the decades regarding science literacy (illteracy). Why expect middle-aged climbers who hang out on a climbing forum throughout the day to be any different?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Ward, you have any examples of this (agreement)?
Examples of what?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Examples of what? -Ward
Examples, apart from consciousness (sentience, the so-called Hard Problem) itself, where we do NOT have a good grasp of the fundamentals of biology?
While you're at it- for extra credit - how about examples where we are lacking in the fundamentals of medicine? or the fundamentals of engineering? or the fundamentals of chemistry?
We DO know the fundamentals (basics if you like) of these subjects. And of course it is a wonderful thing.
To express oneself in such fashion - as Healyje did - only emboldens and confuses the anti-science and non-science circles (incl FOX News and Rush Limbaugh) further - when clearly they're troubled enough already regarding science and their science illiteracy in the first place.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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I'll get back to you on this, I gotta go -- an appointment at the climbing gym-- an appointment with extreme shoulder soreness.
Perhaps you should think deeply about what is exactly meant by " fundamentals" and the we'll go from there.
Lates!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sure, Ward, I'll do that.
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"Science is as burdened by vested interests, conventional thinking, turf wars, and unimaginativeness as any other human endeavor."
Oh please.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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I'm thinking about fundamentals as hard as I ever have. I know I don't have them for tennis. That's as far as I have gotten. Like HFCS, I would be interested in examples by Ward or healyje. Maybe I'm way off-base.
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skcreidc
Social climber
SD, CA
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OK, I've gotta jump in on this. In my opinion (gotta make that statement) certain fundamentals are static, but others change with time and "knowledge". And the statement, "Science is as burdened by vested interests, conventional thinking, turf wars, and unimaginativeness as any other human endeavor." has certain truth to it as well.
Example; You all remember Alfred Wegner, the continental drift dude? Maybe not, but a while back before plate tectonics came into vogue, there was no mechanism to move the continents around the globe, sayith the geophysicists of the time and age. Wegner had noticed, along with some paleontologists noticing rocks and fossils matched on opposite sides of the Altantic Ocean, that you could slide the continents back to gether and get a really good fit. But the idea was poo pooed due to the lack of a mechanism. Fast forward in time and now in the 80's there is a mapping revolution, where in particular, every NW-SE trending in California was being mapped as left lateral strike slip. I remember Professor Richard Threet (structural prof) being adamant that one needs to demonstrate movement direction; you can't just assume. Being old, he was teased for not believing in plate tectonics or some such by the other profs. Upon retirement he said something like I accept Plate tectonics, but you cannot assume ect ect.
Point being, 1) the fundamentals had changed for interpretation of data from no continent movement to plate tectonics, and 2) this "new" way of data interpretation affected data collection to some degree.
Science is not a religion, it is a methodology with the basic fundamentals of that methodology remaining relatively constant. It is imperfect and there are many examples of "groupthink" affecting the interpretation of data for a certain amount of time. That is until another major breakthrough is made, then we go through the cycle again. Men have a hard time separating their ego's from their work.
A little background on me. I was weened on science as a kid. For a father who could not do any sports (only hunting, fishing, and backpacking), our at at home bonding time was chemistry and minerals. By age 11, I could safely mix up a batch of aqua regia, dissolve a mineral sample, then proceed to identify it by the old processes (borax bead test, flame test, ect). When we were not in the mountains, that was fun and games around the Diercks household.
Anyway, my opinion...
Edit; I honestly don’t think you’d care much for real science. It can be very boring, painstaking, meticulous work. It takes a lot of focus. One digs down deeply into a very narrow subject area. The authors you’re pointing to (and I’ve heard and read some of what they have to say) are popularizers of conceits. Again, that's fine for what it is, but it’s not science as academics practice it. (You probably don’t care about that.)
A very dumb Assumption by you MIke L. He may have conducted more boring, painstaking, and meticulous work than you could ever imagine. After all, I doubt you have collected mass amounts of field data under Gordon Gastil's direction.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Experts can really talk to about 15-20 other guys in their fields about what they’ve been studying (MikeL)
Sadly, this is at most only a slight exaggeration. The small international group to which I belonged years ago wasn't more than 50 or 60 mathematicians. A smaller sub-group in which I was active was about 15. And you are correct about going deeper and deeper into channels of inquiry that became more and more narrow. When I retired in 2000 it was pleasant to feel free to play around with topics that were attractive to me but had little relevance to "mainstream" investigations. Thus, all the BASIC programs I've written and all pretty images I post!
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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joGill, while that might be true of some disciplines -- mathematics and physics in particular, it is not generally true of science. One of my older brothers went to Yale and got a doctorate in math. He explained to me how hard it was to find a good dissertation topic in mathematics. I told him that in geology, I could probably come up with 100 in a day.
I don't think that MikeL has any idea about what it is to be a scientist. I've been one. And for a topic like What is Mind, well there just aren't real scientific papers in real scientific journals that specifically address this. The topic would be considered absurdly too broad. What does that leave? -- Books like those by Dawkins and Dennett and Pinker. I've read Darwin's On the Origin of Species a few times. That, too, is not in a peer-reviewed journal. That Darwin was a real punter. Nothing to be learned from him.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Werner:
I liked Mukhrjee’s book. I read it when I was going through my own cancer treatment, and it embarrassed me compared to other cancers and their treatments that he had reported—especially those of children.
I didn’t intend to diss Mukerjee or another other author in eeyonkee’s list. As I said, they are all fine, whatever they are doing.
I meant the same thing that Largo keeps pointing to. Questions about “mind’ relate to experience; they have not been well-researched by academics, scholars, or conceptually oriented speculators.
If a person is truly interested, he or she can look for his or herself.
I would say this is the point.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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If a person is truly interested, he or she can look for his or herself.
What does this mean, exactly? So, the fact that we evolved from a common ancestor with the apes is not germane to the subject of what is mind? That's absurd. So, you just throw out all of the scientific knowledge that we have acquired over the past few centuries and just figure it out on your own? C'mon, get real!
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Examples, apart from consciousness (sentience, the so-called Hard Problem) itself, where we do NOT have a good grasp of the fundamentals of biology?
Well, if your grasp is so fundamentally sound at this time then it should simply be a matter of creating life from scratch.
Has anyone created life from scratch? From the constituents of life fully known and documented?
If not , then you are missing something fundamental which escapes your knowledge .
Logically it cannot be said you have a grasp of the fundamental of all fundamentals in biology-, namely, that key fundamental responsible for life behaving as life in its most complete way. It is intrinsic. An inherent categorical quality. Life behaving as life is fundamental. It's most fundamental trait. And yet no one can animate life based upon "a good grasp of the fundamentals" . Certainly not authors penning instructional books.
Therefore your biological knowledge is fundamentally incomplete in the most fundamental way fundamentally.
My shoulder feels great today. Thanks for your sincerely expressed concern.I had a great session of plastic bouldering.
Next week Tahquitz!
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