Tags for this video have been changed from 'Gene Wilder, Cinema, Willy Wonka, Contract' to 'Gene Wilder, Cinema, Willy Wonka, Contract, Wrong Sir, You Lose' - edited by calvados

Science does in fact work through falsifiability. If the LHC doesn't end up finding a Higgs Boson, then the Higgs Boson theory in its present form will have been disproven. That is just how science and experimentation works. "What we can't prove doesn't exist" is an inherently false statement and incorrect world view because there are countless things we cannot test or prove that must exist. To quote Einstein, "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."

I wasn't arguing from ignorance because I wasn't asserting an untestable theory. All I said in my comment was that many religious practices have personal and societal benefits that atheists tend to undervalue because they are associated with religion. I've seen data that supports my theory.
In reply to this comment by demon_ix:
>> ^Lodurr:
Science doesn't say "what we can't prove doesn't exist"; science says "what we can disprove doesn't exist." That's the distinction in which I find many atheists to be on the wrong side.

You are wrong, sir. It's "what we can prove exists". Science will never attempt to prove a negative. If a scientist told you he managed to disprove God, you would only change your own definition of God and say "A ha, science, you are the one who's wrong".

What you are doing is called Arguing from Ignorance, which basically means you maintain that something is true because no one proved it isn't.

If we were to actually debate the merits of religion, God and why your particular faith is the correct one, you would not be able to finish the argument without invoking either the "Because the Bible says so" or "God did it" arguments. In the place of the words "Bible" or "God" insert the names of your holy scripture and deity, as are relevant to your particular faith.

>> ^Lodurr:
Science doesn't say "what we can't prove doesn't exist"; science says "what we can disprove doesn't exist." That's the distinction in which I find many atheists to be on the wrong side.

You are wrong, sir. It's "what we can prove exists". Science will never attempt to prove a negative. If a scientist told you he managed to disprove God, you would only change your own definition of God and say "A ha, science, you are the one who's wrong".

What you are doing is called Arguing from Ignorance, which basically means you maintain that something is true because no one proved it isn't.

If we were to actually debate the merits of religion, God and why your particular faith is the correct one, you would not be able to finish the argument without invoking either the "Because the Bible says so" or "God did it" arguments. In the place of the words "Bible" or "God" insert the names of your holy scripture and deity, as are relevant to your particular faith.

I completely agree and I love the English language.

In reply to this comment by gorillaman:
>> ^spoco2:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

He's wrong because words spell concepts, not just sounds. Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation.

>> ^Arg:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:
"There over there with there children."

This phrase is unambiguous because of English's strict word ordering. Every native speaker will intone this sentence as "They're over there with there children" because an English sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. For example, try pronouncing this: "There they're with there children". Most native speaker would be reluctant to pronounce this because it's actually a grammatical conundrum. This last phrase is in fact impossible. If you do pronounce it, you will pronounce it as the equivalent of the the first one, that is "They're there with there children". When you change the word order, you CANNOT contract the subject and the verb. You would naturally say: "There they are with there children". (Here I'm writing "their" as "there" just to show that there's no ambiguity whatsoever between those two words, because they're both words but not verbs)

So, in reality there's no need to "translate". When you pronounce the first phrase, you will understand it just fine. The real problem here is that reading is not the same as speaking, unless you read aloud or subvocalize. But any which way you read, when writing you cannot convey the intonation of the voice. That's one of the greatest pitfalls of alphabets. For example, in this case to be phonetically correct, you would have to specify by a typographic mark that the first "there" is actually a spoken contraction of two originally distinct sounds "they" and "r", so that a reader who doesn't know English very well can put the correct intonation on the correct words. That way the sentence becomes as clear as it needs to be phonetically. Of course, it's not always as easy as that, and to convey pure spoken language in a textual form without all the usual typographical baggage that you find in linguistics is impossible. Even Germans do not always pronounce exactly as they should, but for example all the different nuances of the sound "a" are all rendered as the letter "a" and only that letter. When a whole word is pronounced differently it becomes a matter of dialect and not of pronunciation per se.

Another example: in French, intonation is always on the first syllable of a word, so individual words are easy to separate. Add to that a strict word order plus a plethora of articles and you get yourself a quite clear language that can be written however you fancy.

So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.

They do, but it's a pittance because a spelling not based on pronunciation is too arbitrary. When retracing the origins of a word, pronunciation is much more useful than spelling. If spelling changed without equivalent modification in the pronunciation, it would make the linguists' job harder. But it almost always happens in reverse: the pronunciation changes and then some guy decides he's going to spell it the way he pronounces it. And the linguists thank him. But some old words get spelled in new ways and some others keep their original spellings, and in the end you get the orthographical mess that is known as English (or French for that matter).

>> ^Arg:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:
"There over there with there children."
Translate: "They're over there with their children."
So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.


Yes, but he's not entirely just pointing out differences like this. The their/they're/there examples are providing clarification in the written word over three words that sound identical (Which is pretty silly to begin with), so they have a place.

But really, the words HE shows are pretty silly in that anyone trying to learn the language can't learn some conventions and stick to them because there's a host of exceptions to every one.

"Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation." There is something in that, as the spelling of some words can give you an idea of their origin and, as such, sometimes clarify the meaning of the word... so yes.

But... his examples? Not so much.

How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:

"There over there with there children."

Translate: "They're over there with their children."

So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.

>> ^gorillaman:
>> ^spoco2:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
He's wrong because words spell concepts, not just sounds. Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation.


I kind of get what you are saying, but would you mind elaborating a little bit more? thanks

also, this guy seems to be or have been the chairman of the American Literacy Council which is founded by the American Philological Association. Doesn't etymology use philology to a certain extent? So maybe this is not a serious claim don't you think?

>> ^spoco2:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

He's wrong because words spell concepts, not just sounds. Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation.

>> ^gorillaman:
He's wrong but he's cool.


How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

>> ^spoco2:
Ha! That was brilliant... not least of which because I think the Metal
Gear series is one of the most overhyped things out there.


wrong sir! I respectfully disagree!