Australian Killers

[Scooter]

Fine. It was demonstrated with objective evidence that the Israeli military has been putting women in combat positions for the last decade.


It was also demonstrated that you are an idiot.


QED.

[Grim Reaper]

To the person who thinks as a scientist, something is either true or it is not. If it can be demonstrated as such with a objected experiment, it has to be accepted as a fact by any reasonable person. But a fact is not a fact just because you say it. And we will leave God out of it; he requires no proof.

That's just being skeptical. A scientist is someone who tests whether something is true or not. A skeptic considers those results when someone else makes a wild claim. For instance, say, that women have never been in combat roles before anywhere on earth and that putting them in combat roles is the end of all things.

And God is an extraordinary claim, one that requires extraordinary proof. Whether he's real or not is also irrelevant to this discussion.

[Lord Jim]

This discussion reminded me of an old SNL Bill Murray routine...

He was doing a commentary on the Weekend Update segment on the topic of women in combat. Murray argued that we should only send women into combat. His rationale:

"Okay, lets say we get into a battle with the Russians, and we just send women into fight. If they win, great. But if they lose, we can say, 'Well so what, big deal. So you were able to beat a bunch of women'"....

[Guinevere]

I have always thought women should be in combat, and then I went to law school with a female West Point grad who served as an intelligence office in the first Gulf War, and I knew they should. She served as close to the front as she could at the time, and was frustrated she couldn't do more. That was one of the reasons she left the Army, in the end. Seems to me that is a very bad thing for our armed forces.

[rubato]

What does being a scientist have to do with this?

To the person who thinks as a scientist, something is either true or it is not. If it can be demonstrated as such with a objected experiment, it has to be accepted as a fact by any reasonable person. But a fact is not a fact just because you say it. And we will leave God out of it; he requires no proof.

"a person who thinks as a scientist"

Yet another subject about which you know nothing. In science we do experiments which are designed to show that a statement is false. It is impossible to prove a statement to be true in the strictest sense.

yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

What does being a scientist have to do with this?

To the person who thinks as a scientist, something is either true or it is not. If it can be demonstrated as such with a objected experiment, it has to be accepted as a fact by any reasonable person. But a fact is not a fact just because you say it. And we will leave God out of it; he requires no proof.

"a person who thinks as a scientist"

Yet another subject about which you know nothing. In science we do experiments which are designed to show that a statement is false. It is impossible to prove a statement to be true in the strictest sense.

yrs,
rubato

It is not true and provable as a fact that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen?

[Scooter]

No, that's why it's called molecular theory and not molecular fact.

[Grim Reaper]

It is not true and provable as a fact that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen?

It's been tested by other countries. They can manage having females fulfilling combat roles, but Australian women are somehow incapable of pulling it off.

But go ahead, keep nitpicking away.

[Long Run]

If women are allowed in combat, it is just a short slide before gays will be fighting on the front lines too.

[dales]

Are bi-sexuals combat-ready?

[Lord Jim]

"a person who thinks as a scientist"

Yet another subject about which you know nothing. In science we do experiments which are designed to show that a statement is false. It is impossible to prove a statement to be true in the strictest sense.

yrs,
rubato

Well, that's just about the most ridiculous claim I've seen made around here, since a feller on this board tried to claim that Alan Turing was better known than George C. Marshall...


It is of course, every bit as simple or difficult to prove a statement scientifically "true" as it is to prove it "false"...

In fact it is easier, because all that is required to prove a proposition "true" scientifically, is to be able to replicate it, holding all other factors constant....

Of course one can take the philosophical position that we can't prove something true, because all we see is an illusion , and there's no independent way to prove that it isn't an illusion...

But if one wants to take that collegiate stoner approach, the same can be said for proving something "false"....

[Scooter]

It is of course, every bit as simple or difficult to prove a statement scientifically "true" as it is to prove it "false"...

In fact it is easier, because all that is required to prove a proposition "true" scientifically, is to be able to replicate it, holding all other factors constant....

Not quite.

One can replicate an experiment 1000 times and get the same result, but you can never be absolutely sure that will be the case on the 1001st try. So while for all intents and purposes the proposition can be considered to be true, there is always the possibility that something can emerge to disprove it. That is why scientific explanations of the way things work are called theories and not facts.

[Sean]

It depends on what you are trying to prove really. Positives can be proven but negatives are generally more difficult to prove (sometimes impossible). In the name of science I have just proven that Colleague A is in the office by throwing something at him and having it thrown straight back at me. It is more difficult to prove that Colleague B is not in the office. He does not appear to be here but he could be hiding or refusing to return fire.

[BoSoxGal]

Agreed. (eta: because Sean cross-posted; my agreement is with Scooter's post)

This is not really a debatable topic, no matter how much you dislike rubato, LJ.

On the subject of women in combat - that's as preposterous as leaving our front lines to be populated by hormonal teenagers!

Oh, wait . . .

[Lord Jim]

One can replicate an experiment 1000 times and get the same result, but you can never be absolutely sure that will be the case on the 1001st try. So while for all intents and purposes the proposition can be considered to be true, there is always the possibility that something can emerge to disprove it. That is why scientific explanations of the way things work are called theories and not facts

Well, that's a fair point, but it's also fair to apply common sense...

Even if the Wright Brothers, and others, were able to demonstrate over and and over and over again, that motorized human flight is possible I suppose it remains theoretically possible to demonstrate that the next time it won't work... Though it has worked effectively at this point millions of times, and does so day in and day out thousands of times...

Even to the point that we've been able to go to the moon and back...

Of course none of this "proves" that in the next 5 minutes we wont discover that this "theory" about human motorized flight was wrong, and that planes wont start suddenly falling from the skies....

But that's not the way I'd bet....

[Scooter]

That's because saying that something can't strictly be proven true is not the same thing as saying that one should act as if it were false.

[Lord Jim]

This raises a larger and more interesting question, in my view...

If the argument is going to be made that "science can't be counted on to be predictive"....

Then of what value is "science"?

It seems to me that the whole raison darte for the validity of science is that it is "predictive"...

The very core of what is considered "scientific" (as opposed to the "superstitious") is that it is reliable; it can be replicated...it represents universal truths that are indifferent to ideology....

That water is going to freeze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit whether the freezing experiment is being conducted by Sarah Palin or Michael Moore...

[Scooter]

Clearly science is about being predictive, but being predictive is not the same thing as saying that one has absolute certainty of what an outcome will be.

[rubato]

The very core of science is the materialist limitation. ...

"All physical effects have physical causes."

And the fact that only statements which can be tested and proven false (in principle) have any meaning.

Statements like "all green-eyed dragons dream furiously" are without meaning.

F=ma has meaning because I can measure force, mass, and acceleration and I can tell you what experimental outcome would prove that generalization to be false.

Scientific theories (which we can use to make predictions about where the planets will be at some time in the future, for example) are the output of science. Scientific theories are the best tools humans have ever discovered for making reliable predictions about the physical world.

This:

"science can't be counted on to be predictive".

Is a stupid statement. Who said it?


Science does not, in general, prove things to be true. It subjects concrete statements about the physical world to experimental falsification. We have increasing confidence in statements which we have rigorously tried to falsify.


yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

32 degrees F is the temperature at which both ice and water exist in equilibrium. Above that it exists as liquid water, below that it becomes a solid.

yrs,
rubato