Christ, fuck dude.
(Let’s see, in three words I got blasphemy, foul language, heresy, intolerance, a hint of misogyny, and bad grammar.)
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Interesting article. I think that’s a slightly different subject, though.
I just meant that something in physics that could be called “metaphysical” (e.g., is the universe merely a simulation on a much larger computer?) can only be called conjecture – a hypothesis that may not ever be testable. But if it could be tested, and was found out to be true, then it would become hard physics – which I take to mean “has been shown by experiment to be an accurate description of the universe.” Thus it’s one or the other not both.
To get back to the social sciences vs. physics – I don’t know what to say, except that hypothesis testing is the core of hard science – but that’s just in the definition I used above. If you can’t formulate a hypothesis and then test it, then you can’t say much about it. Perhaps that’s what Lang was objecting to in the article you cited.
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Is it one of those cushy jails? will they have unlimited cake for $100 a night?
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That’s the worst of them! Shame, shame!
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to be fair, in Massachusetts our blasphemy laws cover the Red Sox, Dunkin Donuts, Car Talk, and Jack Kennedy.
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A shrubbery must be presented to the offended deity. A nice one.
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Blasphemy! Blas for you…
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“Your post was flagged by the community… please consider how you might revise your post to reflect their feedback… possible suspension of your account.”
I hypothetically considered the punishment for blaspheming Genesis 15:18 .
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Popperian-style hypothesis testing is an important part of science, but it’s not all of science. Observational science (e.g. most pre-20th C botany) and probabilistic sciences (e.g. meteorology, medicine) have been a part of science for just as long as physics.
Despite the jokes about “stamp-collecting”, observational science is just as vital and “scientific” as experimental science. And it’s the probabilistic sciences that make the most obvious contributions to human wellbeing.
This is related to my standard whinge about early Philosophy of Science; Popper was a physicist by background, and he based his theories on the idea that all science is or should be done in the same way as physics. It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be.
It’s ultimately a fight over the demarcation problem, which is still an unsolved issue. So far, all attempts to come up with a rigorous definition of “science” and the “scientific method” have failed. It’s easy to invent definitions, but it’s also easy to find exceptions to those definitions in both directions (i.e. non-scientific things inside the definition, and clearly scientific things outside).
Some (including myself) argue that the reason for this is that there is no such thing as “the” scientific method. Science isn’t a single thing; it’s a collection of things, thrown together haphazardly over the course of history.
The only thing that the sciences really have in common is that they have proven themselves to be relatively reliable means of producing increasingly accurate approximations of true answers to interesting questions. Any method that can do that eventually gets incorporated into science; fields of inquiry that fail or do not attempt the cumulative-accuracy trick stay outside the bounds of science.
OTOH…
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Two things.
- Any comment coda’ed by Randall has an automatic like.
- The study of measuring has only a single axiom, regardless of the numbers of axioms we already profess: measuring is fraught with peril.
The corollary is: science, beware the dragons.
I will now retreat to making fish puns and listening to David munrow.
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#Oh ffs you mean I have to clean up my comments!?
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[quote=“Melizmatic, post:8, topic:97350”]
In the complete absence of evidence for the existence of any deity, there should never be any kind of “punishment” for ‘blaspheming’ against someone’s religious beliefs.
[/quote]On the other hand, in the unlikely event that it’s discovered that some jackwagon actually is responsible for this whole mess after all, blasphemy should be mandatory.
How would I ever finish a goddamn sentence?
Sailors learned to swear from mine. Then again, she believed in God, so I can hardly blame her for taking every opportunity to blame Him.
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I am not sure BBC Asia should get any flack for asking the question. Any flack should be directed at Pakistan and other countries where blasphemy is actually seen as an issue the government should deal with.
As annoying as Christian Fundamentalists are, the most we have to put up with in the US is their opinions and angry letters to the FCC. The suggestion the government should do something about or punish people for blasphemy not only isn’t being asked in the US, but would be rightly laughed at an ignored if it was.
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Unless you’re a woman. Or not cis-het. Their influence on policy is pretty clear when it comes to things like reproductive rights and who’s allowed to get married. Even things like where people are allowed to take a piss.
I could see President Pence getting behind the idea. Probably under some sort of “protecting traditional values” bullshit.
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What is the right punishment for blasphemy?
Excommunication.
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Not talking is what got us into this mess!
[I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.]
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Oh, yeah, I agree. I imagine the further from hypothesis testing and closer to probabilistic you go, the less you are able to make predictions about related things. E.g., there are lots of simplifying models for turbulence, but have been used in places where they don’t apply. Seems to me social science is far worse than turbulence.
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Biomed as well.
This is my doctoral thesis:
As far as I can tell, there isn’t a single tested hypothesis in there, unless you expand “hypothesis” to include things like “people say this drug is a bit huggy like MDMA; MDMA is known to cause oxytocin release; so let’s have a look to see if this one does that too”.
It’s basically just a walk in the forest and seeing what’s there. Prior knowledge gives us clues about where we should look to have the best chance of finding interesting things, but I wouldn’t raise that to the level of a hypothesis.
Hypothesis testing comes after you’ve done the stamp collecting. For a demonstration of the dangers of premature hypothesising, see the history of 20th century psychology.
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I am not saying Puritan values, moral crusaders, and certain religious ideals haven’t shaped our country and law, and continue to do so.
And while I can see some people getting behind the idea of “protecting traditional values”, making an actual federal law to control blasphemy is so unconstitutional it isn’t even worth entertaining the possibility, unless you’re writing some neat fictional story.
As a side note, if there was a law, say a fine for saying “goddamn”, I’d be in debtors prison before the end of the year.
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