On 22/07/2020 12:53, AnthonyL wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jul 2020 13:20:29 -0000 (UTC), (Nick
Maclaren) wrote:
In article ,
AnthonyL wrote:
When I hear them arguing and disagreeing with eachother the thought
that immediately comes to me is "You are scientists. If there is not
a proof there that satisfies all then shut up and go seek it".
It somewhat reminds me of what I learnt as an engineer "Safety factor
is simply ignorance factor".
The former shows your misunderstanding of complex issues - why do you
think there IS a single, explicable, complete answer? There very
often isn't - and, in some cases, there are questions that are quite
simply unanswerable in such terms.
So they may as well believe in a god and argue about that? They may
theorise one thing and it is in pursuit of theories that more becomes
known but to argue that one belief is better than another is the
anathama of what I understand science to be. What's the point in
believe a heavy stone will fall to the ground faster because it is
heavy?
You need to make a fine distinction here.
All real world knowledge is essentially *inductive* propositions. (what
Sherlock Holmes called wrongly 'deduction')
Inductive knowledge is the art of proposing causes (assuming causality
exists and is valid) from effects = Phenomena. Shit on the carpet? The
dog did it. Or the Russians.
If it ended there, one proposition would be as good as the other, BUT
the point about *science* is you take a DNA test and if its canine and
matches the pooch, then the probability that the dog did it is very high.
And that is the point about *science*. Its *inductive* propositions can
create *deductive* propositions that *can be tested*.
IF 'the dog did it' THEN the DNA will match. IF 'gravity' works as
Newton suggested THEN planetary orbits will be...what they are,
approximately anyway. (Einstein etc).
Religion however is 'IF GOD then...well...' nothing. Or everything. It's
all *untestable* and therefore not a *scientific* proposition. Might be
true, might not. Can't tell. No WAY to tell.
And the second is effectively ********. You cannot design for all
possible events - ships are designed only against (say) 'once in
a millennium' storms, not the worst possible storm, let alone such
things as Cumbre Viejo or the Storegga shelf collapsing.
That is not how engineering builds in safety factors. At least not in
the aviation (airframe and engine) environment I started off in.
Oh I think it is. Airframes are stressed to - for example - -2g to +4g
for a commercial aircraft. At some level that represents a 'once every
thousand year' event. A microprocessor might very well be likely to fail
from a timing issue once every ten years, but from cosmic ray impact
once every 3 months.. safety margins consist in building to meet the
unlikely knowns. Not the unknowns of which one is ignorant though.
If anybody has actually seriously said 'make sure your skyscraper can
withstand a 300 tonne aeroplane full of fuel impacting at 300mph' the
twin towers would still be standing...
As it was the 45 minute fire rating did its job and should have allowed
time to evacuate...if there had been any way to get people above the
fire out.
--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll
look exactly the same afterwards."
Billy Connolly