The Big Bang: Why is it still being taught?

[History_Buff]

That's an interesting question actually. Is a compassionate and charitable behavior less commendable when people do it to please a magical sky wizard, to paraphrase Traitorfish?

Even within that question there's room for lots of variation.

If a person was acting compassionately and charitably because a magical sky god told him he should, then that's reasonably commendable. If a person was doing the same because he was afraid of eternal damnation from said sky god, then I think it's less commendable.

Then of course if there is an actual sky god appearing and ordering you to do stuff, then the question of agency is somewhat moot:

Link to video.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Link to video.

Could be relevant. Don't feel like watching all 48 minutes (it's worth it though) skip to 16 minutes in. Even has CGI.

 

[Kyriakos]

^I thought it would be Swayze and that Love vs Fear lecture from Donnie Darko :\

 

[bathsheba666]

Perhaps because it still fits ?

Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26605974

 

[El_Machinae]

Calling them fudge factors or 'without evidence' is a pretty horrid summary of the fields. And, of the three 'factors', I'd say that Inflation is the most important to the Big Bang model, and it's not really taught at lower levels. Only at higher levels where its evidence can be comprehended.

I'm gonna eat my words!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Perhaps because it still fits ?

Cosmic inflation: 'Spectacular' discovery hailed:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26605974

Well I trust this answers Classical .... whatshisname's ... hasn't posted for a while, I forget, question.

 

[Birdjaguar]

When I read the link and saw the image there, I was sure that it was predicting a democratic win in the mid term elections in spite of Republican gerrymandering the whole inflation issue and blaming it on Obama.

 

[warpus]

the problem isn't that science can't figure out how things work. It is good at that. I see a problem when science says because I cannot figure out how "it" works, it cannot be true.

Well, that just doesn't happen. What might happen is a scientist saying to you "We haven't figured out how that works, we can't assume it's A or B", which is an entirely different animal.

Frequently coincidence and probability are thrown around as an explanation for anecdotal experiences that are odd and not otherwise explained. Interpersonal events commonly fall into this group. Before cell phones folks often talked about picking up a phone to call Bob and Bob was already on the line without an rings or dialing. Mothers "knowing" a child is in danger before it is possible for them to know. Such anecdotal events are difficult to investigate scientifically. They tend to be dismissed because because many folks say that unless it can be shown scientifically, we cannot accept it as true.

And rather than give credence to such a thing as "mother intuition", which is dismissed, scientists spend untold man-years making sure that silly old string theory is internally mathematically sound in spite of that fact that it has no basis in experiment.

See, now you're just coming off as grumpy. You're not being rational in your attack on science (or whatever), you're just mad about some thing that happened whenever, and you're taking it out on this science thing. For whatever reason?

But assuming that the above was an honest question, what would you have scientists do? They can't "give credence to 'motherly intuition', because there is no such thing, as far as we know. It isn't even described in any way. What is this motherly intuition? Where is it located? What is it made out of? What internal processes drive it? If you want motherly intuition to be a thing you need to define all these things, form a hypothesis around it with falsifiable experiments that could eventually lead to a theory. Then this phenomenon could be studied and either falsified or used to predict things, like scientific theories do. As we stand now though all we have is "mothers sometimes know stuff". Okay, but so what? How does this work? What makes it tick? Just a sentence like that is nothing - you need a lot more than that if you're interested in finding out how something works.

Nobody's done this not because it's hard to study. Oh, people have studied this.. They just haven't been able to come to any specific conclusions, nor have they been able to formulate a scientific theory about it.

That's fine, but you don't have to get mad at science of all things about it. That just doesn't make any sense, but it also takes away from your post. I always approach your posts from a neutral stance.. "Oh, he's got something interesting to say. Let's see...".. but then at the end it was kind of like "Oh, he's just mad at something and doesn't have anything to contribute to the discussion."

A big letdown!

edit: turns out there is such a thing as motherly intuition! and it's been studied by science. There we go.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well, that just doesn't happen. What might happen is a scientist saying to you "We haven't figured out how that works, we can't assume it's A or B", which is an entirely different animal.



See, now you're just coming off as grumpy. You're not being rational in your attack on science (or whatever), you're just mad about some thing that happened whenever, and you're taking it out on this science thing. For whatever reason?

But assuming that the above was an honest question, what would you have scientists do? They can't "give credence to 'motherly intuition', because there is no such thing, as far as we know. It isn't even described in any way. What is this motherly intuition? Where is it located? What is it made out of? What internal processes drive it? If you want motherly intuition to be a thing you need to define all these things, form a hypothesis around it with falsifiable experiments that could eventually lead to a theory. Then this phenomenon could be studied and either falsified or used to predict things, like scientific theories do. As we stand now though all we have is "mothers sometimes know stuff". Okay, but so what? How does this work? What makes it tick? Just a sentence like that is nothing - you need a lot more than that if you're interested in finding out how something works.

Nobody's done this not because it's hard to study. Oh, people have studied this.. They just haven't been able to come to any specific conclusions, nor have they been able to formulate a scientific theory about it.

That's fine, but you don't have to get mad at science of all things about it. That just doesn't make any sense, but it also takes away from your post. I always approach your posts from a neutral stance.. "Oh, he's got something interesting to say. Let's see...".. but then at the end it was kind of like "Oh, he's just mad at something and doesn't have anything to contribute to the discussion."

A big letdown!

edit: turns out there is such a thing as motherly intuition! and it's been studied by science. There we go.

I never get grumpy (except at my wife from time to time). I certainly did not mean to come across grumpy in my post.

 

[El_Machinae]

Frequently coincidence and probability are thrown around as an explanation for anecdotal experiences that are odd and not otherwise explained.

Well, not just those two things (which, I think you should just agree appear to exist as 'real' things). "Probability" is a stand-in, physically, for events that have a pattern when viewed from far enough back. Toss a coin, and I betcha you can predict the flip based purely on Newtonian physics. You'd need reasonably accurate knowledge of inputs, but it should be possible. But, from the outside, '50% of the time, heads' works well enough.

So, we don't just use 'probability' to explain the outcomes, but we can also use 'cognitive biases' as part of the explanation. These biases are reasonably well-defined, and we're rather certain they exist? Why do they exist? Well, that's gonna be a combination of evolution and culture.

We don't need to invoke intuition if someone can predict 3 coin flips in a row. We can invoke probability.

 

[warpus]

I never get grumpy (except at my wife from time to time). I certainly did not mean to come across grumpy in my post.

It's just that this is how I read parts of your post: "Goddamn scientists investigating string theory, whether sex leads to babies, and other useless crap, instead of researching useful stuff I want to know more about "

Either way though I hope the exchange helped clear some things up, because I really did get the idea that you have something against science.. or something.

 

[Takhisis]

Maybe the Big Bang is still being taught because we have no better theory and it does occasionally get some random bits of confirmation such as the totally inconsequential findings yesterday?

 

[History_Buff]

Isn't the whole "Mother's Intuition" thing just confirmation bias writ large? Mothers worry about their children basically always.

 

[peter grimes]

so do fathers.

I'm with Warpus on this: Mother's intuition can be entirely chalked up to confirmation bias. He used an illustrative example of how we never note how often we happen to think of an old friend just before that person doesn't call. We only notice the coincidences that align.

Maybe the Big Bang is still being taught because we have no better theory and it does occasionally get some random bits of confirmation such as the totally inconsequential findings yesterday?

The Big Bang makes predictions which continue to be verified, and yesterday's announcement [of an upcoming announcement ] is part of that body of success.

But it's not inconsequential at all. Someone posted in a reddit thread answering the question "why should a regular guy eking out his existence care?" Gekko_The_Great's answer was very clever:

Spoiler :

Is this really something a regular guy working hard to eek out his existence REALLY needs to know or is it just something you physics types get all tingly in your underpants about?

Imagine you woke up naked in a field, in the middle of nowhere. You have no idea where you are, or how you got there. What do you do? First, you'd probably go into survival mode; you'd look for the basic necessities to sustain life: water, food, and shelter from the elements.

Once you had everything you needed to stay alive, and you knew that, if nothing else, you could at least remain in your current location indefinitely, you might start to wonder what in the hell happened: one minute you're bouncing around Reddit, the next you're bare-ass in the middle of nowhere.

After you come to grips with the reality of the situation, you'd probably want to try and figure out where in the hell you are. You might try and look for clues from your environment or maybe a constellation you recognize, or perhaps you decide to do a little exploring around the immediate area, to see if there's anything around that could give you some clue as to where in the hell you are.
Let's say that your efforts reveal that you're in the middle of Africa. Once you've figured out where you are, you only have two choices left: stay there and simply exist as long as you can, or attempt to get back to civilization; either option has it's own risks.

If you chose to stay where you are, then that's essentially it for you, you now know how your future will play out: you'll remain at your current location until you either die of old age, or your area becomes unable to sustain life. Either way, the game is over for you; your entire existence becomes about survival, and you're just running out the clock until, at some point in the future, you cease to exist.

Maybe you decide to try and leave a message for someone to find in the future, maybe you're content to simply fade off into oblivion, either way, your fate is sealed.

Now let's say you decided to try and get back to civilization. Since you know where you are, your logical next step is going to be to try and figure out someplace to go, and then of course, how to get there. Now you have a goal, something you're striving towards. Life ceases to be about mere survival and becomes an epic journey to get you where you want to go.

This is the timeline of humanity. We woke up with nothing, on a little rock, in the middle of nowhere. We figured out how to survive, and we struggled to come to grips with our own reality. Then we started exploring, trying to find out just exactly where we were in the Universe. Now we're faced with the same choice: exist, or move on.

You ask if it's something that a "regular guy REALLY needs to know", to me it's the most important thing he/she needs to know: that humanity chooses more than an existence of mere survival. That humanity chooses to move forward and keep exploring and expanding. To know that, even though we might never make it, at least we're making the effort. That we have hope.
The alternative is to simply run out the clock and wait to fade off into oblivion.

 

[warpus]

That actually wasn't me, but I'll take credit np.. until the real slim shady stands up.

We probably agree anyway peter grimes

I read that reddit post earlier in the day and thought it was brilliant. It even touched me emotionally somehow, not many written things have that effect on me these days.

 

[Takhisis]

peter, I was being sarcastic about the announcement being inconsequential…

 

[peter grimes]

Woops, my bad

 

[warpus]

Hey so you guys know this article? It's been going around.

I couldn't resist and made a spoof of the present situation. (only the title, main story text, and video are altered, to save you time from hunting for easter eggs that are not there)

My apologies classical_hero right away for your apparent age in the spoof, but that was unavoidable! Plus it sort of REALLY works

 

[Crezth]

Even within that question there's room for lots of variation.

If a person was acting compassionately and charitably because a magical sky god told him he should, then that's reasonably commendable. If a person was doing the same because he was afraid of eternal damnation from said sky god, then I think it's less commendable.

Is it even possible to divorce the two? More to the point, does it even matter? Are people moral because a sky-god told them to be moral, or are people moral for another reason?

I hazard to guess that a lot of so-called moral and religious people would be just as moral without their religion, and the immoral and religious people just as immoral without their religion. The difference being that they both have the same excuse as long as they can say "God told me to."

 

[Kyriakos]

So, what is the announcement related to the BB theory supposed to be focused on?