“Extrasolar planets” isn’t a very common news item–hell, I consider myself interested in that sort of thing, and using wobble to detect them wasn’t something I’d come across until years after it was being used.
As a second point, the phrase “the earth revolves around the sun” for the average educated adult who cares incorporates the idea of a barycenter.
There’s nothing crazy about it! Google tells me that the barycenter of the Earth-Sun system is 0.0003% of the distance between the Earth’s center and the Sun’s center (280 miles out of 93m miles). That’s a tiny, tiny amount to be wrong.
And importantly, it’s very tiny relative to “the Sun revolves around the Earth”, which is 100% wrong.
Well from what I’m seeing so far in the American Journal of Public Health the trials done were not properly executed and so therefore are subject to criticism. Also, I’m still not understanding how you can say that if a method of treatment is only effective for some than it’s “bullshit”. Chemotherapy isn’t totally effective for everyone either but they still use it.
Because the data is not. Chiropractors (and, admittedly, certain more mainstream quasi-medical disciplines) produce the same results as not doing anything at all.
As far as the data is concerned, the only beneficial aspect of chiropractic care is that they’ll refer you for diagnostic imaging that will at least determine the scope of your problem. We had a long thread about this a few months ago (in the Pit, I think).
I can see how you can claim that it is no more effective than other methods but I don’t see how you can claim that it as effective as sitting on the couch. :dubious:
I dunno, I can imagine bed rest will cure a host of spinal pain problems.
Can you cite an accepted, well-regarded study that shows benefit from chiropractic? One sure sign (to me) of a therapy being potentially bullshit is when it is in widespread use without the benefit of clinical trials proving its efficacy.
How many is “some”? How does it compare to the placebo effect? That’s the long and the short of it. Chemotherapy is effective at a much greater rate than placebos and other treatments. Chiropractic has not been shown to be so, and has often been shown to be not.
You’re right its not as common as articles about Congress, you got me there. Except I was talking about Cosmology where such news articles are very common.
So adults should only be educated on easy to convey information that they care about. Since most adults, in their lifetimes, couldn’t care less about the Earth orbiting the Sun then it doesn’t matter if they think the Sun orbits the Earth. So 100% wrong is no different than 99.999…% wrong.
So wait, you owed me 93 million and short-changed me $280!!! That’s a Corei7 2600K!!! I want my money dammit!
Indeed, and if one is interested in cosmology, they should probably be somewhat more educated on it than the average.
Amazingly, that’s not what I said at all. I said, given a choice between 100% wrong and 0.0003% wrong, it’s asinine to claim there’s no difference whatsoever.
In other words, you’re not interested in debating the issue. Thanks for informing me.
While I was coming home from work today I remembered this woman I worked with. She performed radioligand binding where it was necessary to use radioactive decay calculations to estimate how much radioactivity you still had after X time in storage. She regularly performed the kinds of calculations that are used to demonstrate the Earth is easily older than the 6000 years or so estimated from the Bible. She was also a Creationist and thought I was silly when discussing evolution. I used to enjoy the irony of her doing the work that proved her view of Earth’s creation so incredibly wrong, but she was nice and hard working so I never really cared. She went on to become a pharmacist and probably does very well in her field. If she can work in a biochemistry laboratory and never make a major screw up in her experiments I don’t see why any facts are important at all unless they directly affect you personally. So common center of mass, orbiting around the Sun, the Universe orbiting the Earth, who really gives a shit. It doesn’t affect me directly so why should I care? Thanks for fighting my ignorance.
Well, that IS the position you’ve been arguing all thread.
I will reiterate one more time: being closer to right is better than being wrong, even if you are not perfectly informed. Being within a few hundredths of a percent of correct is generally acceptable for day-to-day life, and being completely off is not.
Your example of the technician who thought the earth was 6000 years old, she’s wrong. Unacceptably so. Contrariwise, if she thought the universe was 12 billion years old based on facts that were current when she learned it, I can’t be bothered to call her ignorant even if the current data is closer to 15bil or whatever.
Just to harp on SB’s nonsense. If the Earth-Centered view of the cosmos isn’t wrong, what is? It creates a worldview where information is worthless, and all facts are true.
Question: Who was the leader of Germany during most of WWII?
Answer #1: Adolph Hitler.
Answer #2: A sheep.
According to SB, they’re both right, because Hitler was a mammal. :rolleyes:
Yes, but it wasn’t that big an issue when people thought they were weightless spheres of light. The Ptolemaic system created a system of epicycles to explain this. It is important to remember that most of the ancient astronomers were a lot smarter than the people who laugh at them today. It would have made a huge difference if someone had invented the telescope in the 2nd century B.C..
If that’s what you think then obviously there is no effective means of communicating with you.
No, now that you have argued effectively that I should accept a little wrong, I see now how it doesn’t matter how wrong a statement is because thinking the Earth is flat with the Universe spinning about it is truly acceptable for day-to-day life. Only hobbyist cosmologists should worry about it.
Sure its acceptable because it does not interfere with her day-to-day activities. She has a great job, a wonderful family, and great friends. So it simply does not matter.
It seems that some debaters do come out and attack someone’s belief because they want the other side to clam up. They are not interested in exploring the merits of the other side – they merely want to argue that their side is the only one that is right (or that could even be right) and they want the other side to shut up.
The Mother Jonesarticle referenced in the OP addresses some interesting research on the psychology of beliefs but there’s little evidence of the practical applications of that research. I do like this, though:
Seems like a good suggestion, if the intention is to convince, and if you know what the relevant values are.
Seriously, don’t blame me because you don’t like the implications of your own thought process. The reason why you can’t see the interesting implication of what you are saying is because you don’t debate, you just ignore. Your entire argument against mine is to ignore or minimize what I write.
I actually do agree with what you are saying, but I extended the logic to where I have to ask myself if I am comfortable with it. Sorry that the interesting implications of your thought process eludes you.
“The gotcha” games are thought experiments and the results of those have informed my view of the “truth” and what I came up with is that it doesn’t matter. If you were interested in “debating” you would defend your position to and be able to argue why it is the best. Right now your argument amounts to “Cause it is”.
In fact, what I am seeing your position reduced to is little more than an authoritarian command of which facts are important and truthful enough and which ones are not. It’s little more than saying that this is the culture you must follow and no other reason is more important. It’s a dictate without justification.
You have demonstrated no understanding of my point. A little wrong and a big wrong are not the same thing. A belief that is a few millionths of a percent off is acceptable in a way that a belief that is 100% wrong is not.
You can twist that to mean “any wrong is acceptable”, but it just shows you up as being uninterested in actually discussing the matter. Hence, I’m not wasting my time trying to explain it as long as you keep trying to prove I’ve somehow said that.
