Science Undecided on Room Temperature Superconductors

[mistermack]

Chaos Theory isn't about randomness, I don't think. It's about massive complexity that can't be comprehended in normal time/effort.

I know fuck-all about chaos theory, other than the vaguest impression about butterflies and weather.

But some things are prone to being chaotic and totally unpredictable, and others aren't, so it's not just the fact that one small thing can make a huge change.
Take a forest fire. You can have a million acres of forest, tinder dry, and one tiny spark can destroy it.
That's not chaos. It's a set of conditions that are predictable. But if you don't get that tiny spark, nothing will happen. So it's not really true chaos. Even though one tiny event leads to a gigantic result, the conditions were primed for it to happen.

That's what I thought chaos was about, the predictability of something, or not.

I suppose with the weather thing, there is a mixture of predictability and the unpredictable.
You can't predict it exactly, but you can statistically, given previous experience and data.

[JimC]

The mathematical unpredictability the article was talking about only concerns one narrow aspect of the physical behaviour of matter, the spectral gap of electron energies. Whether this unpredictability has a real connection with Chaos Theory is hard to say - the article was rather brief. I did notice a fair degree of speculation, when they were suggesting that it might extend to the Standard Model...

[mistermack]

The mathematical unpredictability the article was talking about only concerns one narrow aspect of the physical behaviour of matter, the spectral gap of electron energies. Whether this unpredictability has a real connection with Chaos Theory is hard to say - the article was rather brief. I did notice a fair degree of speculation, when they were suggesting that it might extend to the Standard Model...

Well done for getting that far. As far as I was concerned, it was written in a foreign language.

[Seth]

What are your qualifications for judging that "the physicists who are fucking about don't understand it"??

Their own admissions to that effect of course. If they understood it they wouldn't be experimentally fucking about with it, now would they?

[Jason]

Science is about fucking about with things not understood. Get over it.

[Seth]

Science is about fucking about with things not understood. Get over it.

Well, there you go, thanks for confirming that.

Now the only problem is when scientists fuck about with things they do not understand that have even the remotest possibility of destroying the entire planet. In such cases they should quench their curiosity until they can fuck about in a place where THEY are the only things that will be destroyed if they fuck it up.

As I said, the physicists at Los Alamos, during the development of the atomic bomb, were concerned that setting it off might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire atmosphere, and thereby all life on earth. They never, ever should have been permitted to fuck about with atomic bombs on this planet until they proved conclusively that such a thing was impossible and would not happen, perhaps by setting one off on an uninhabited planet somewhere.

Just because scientists want to fuck about with things they don't understand doesn't mean the rest of us are obliged to allow them to do so.

[JimC]

What are your qualifications for judging that "the physicists who are fucking about don't understand it"??

Their own admissions to that effect of course. If they understood it they wouldn't be experimentally fucking about with it, now would they?

Taken to its logical conclusion this means that nothing whatsoever is "understood"

You would be much better off worrying about some aspects of modern biology, such as research into the exact biochemistry behind how lethal viruses and bacteria achieve their effects on humans. Coupled with an ever-increasing ability to manipulate genetic material, the chances of misguided and/or malevolent research in this area being very dangerous to humanity vastly outweigh any risk posed by research into sub-atomic particles...

[pErvinalia]

What are your qualifications for judging that "the physicists who are fucking about don't understand it"??

Their own admissions to that effect of course. If they understood it they wouldn't be experimentally fucking about with it, now would they?

WTF?! Science is specifically about testing hypotheses. Where is this alleged "own admission to that effect"? Your anus must be fucking huge going by the amount of shit you pull out of it.

[Seth]

What are your qualifications for judging that "the physicists who are fucking about don't understand it"??

Their own admissions to that effect of course. If they understood it they wouldn't be experimentally fucking about with it, now would they?

WTF?! Science is specifically about testing hypotheses. Where is this alleged "own admission to that effect"? Your anus must be fucking huge going by the amount of shit you pull out of it.

Um, they don't know what this new particle is, they don't know what it does, they know nothing about black holes and admit it, but they want to continue to experiment with both despite not knowing what will happen if they fuck it up. Just because they want to test their hypotheses doesn't mean its either safe to do so or that the rest of us should allow them the unfettered ability or permission to do so. There are other considerations in play than some scientist's desire to meddle with methy-ethyl-bad-shit in Bohpal. When Union Carbide did that and fucked up, thousands died.

So you tell me, when and under what conditions do the rest of us have a right to tell scientists that they are not permitted to place the rest of us at risk and will have to wait to test their hypotheses until they can do so safely, somewhere else?

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

There are other considerations in play than some scientist's desire to meddle with methy-ethyl-bad-shit in Bohpal. When Union Carbide did that and fucked up, thousands died.

What utterly deceptive shit. There was no uncertainty in the scientific knowledge of chemistry and biology at Bohpal. Yes, "Union Carbide did that", not science or scientists... What happened was a direct result of your beloved capitalism taking fucking shortcuts to make more dollars...

[pErvinalia]

What are your qualifications for judging that "the physicists who are fucking about don't understand it"??

Their own admissions to that effect of course. If they understood it they wouldn't be experimentally fucking about with it, now would they?

WTF?! Science is specifically about testing hypotheses. Where is this alleged "own admission to that effect"? Your anus must be fucking huge going by the amount of shit you pull out of it.

Um, they don't know what this new particle is, they don't know what it does, they know nothing about black holes and admit it, but they want to continue to experiment with both despite not knowing what will happen if they fuck it up. Just because they want to test their hypotheses doesn't mean its either safe to do so or that the rest of us should allow them the unfettered ability or permission to do so. There are other considerations in play than some scientist's desire to meddle with methy-ethyl-bad-shit in Bohpal. When Union Carbide did that and fucked up, thousands died.

So you tell me, when and under what conditions do the rest of us have a right to tell scientists that they are not permitted to place the rest of us at risk and will have to wait to test their hypotheses until they can do so safely, somewhere else?

You still haven't shown where physicists say they have no idea what they are doing. They have mathematical models covering all of this. You have arse gravy about some sci-fi fear that the Earth is going to be sucked into a micro black hole.

[pErvinalia]

Seth wrote:

There are other considerations in play than some scientist's desire to meddle with methy-ethyl-bad-shit in Bohpal. When Union Carbide did that and fucked up, thousands died.

What utterly deceptive shit.

Yeah, that sums up most of Seth's posts.

[Brian Peacock]

is there anyone in modern society that you don't fear, Seth??

Only that bloke in the mirror, and even then he doesn't trust him not to slit his throat in the night.

[pErvinalia]

That's the truth of it. Conservatives don't even trust their own nature, hence why they seek out authoritarian structures and systems.

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

There are other considerations in play than some scientist's desire to meddle with methy-ethyl-bad-shit in Bohpal. When Union Carbide did that and fucked up, thousands died.

What utterly deceptive shit. There was no uncertainty in the scientific knowledge of chemistry and biology at Bohpal. Yes, "Union Carbide did that", not science or scientists... What happened was a direct result of your beloved capitalism taking fucking shortcuts to make more dollars...

So...you're saying that scientists didn't create methy-ethyl-bad-shit? Rly?

As if Marxists don't take shortcuts to save money for redistribution...I suggest you go walk the Road of Bones in Siberia, where Stalin saved lots of money by sending people to build it by hand, burying their corpses in the roadbed to save time and money as well.

So, you're hardly one to talk about "deceptive shit."