"Did you have fun with your robot buddy?"

I can't express how much respect and admiration I have for this man. His "Science will win because it works" statement is simple, to the point, and true. I'm just honored that I'm alive at the same time he is and not having to read about him in a history book like Einstein.

I completely agree with Hawkins here and nearly everywhere. I guess that means AnimalsForCrackers will have to disagree with me (And thereby Hawkins.) After all, me (and it must mean Hawkins too,) I am an atheist apologist.

But I digress and hyperbole; what I mean is Hawkins rocks!

Science does work. Get that man some cures.

http://xkcd.com/54/

Maybe someone could clarify, but what exactly is being "won?"

I would give a qualified agreement to Hawkings... the scientific method works at expanding our knowledge about the objective world. But science itself does not always work. This interview is proof of that. Doctors used science to predict that Hawkins would be dead 43 years ago. They were wrong. People can use observation and reason and still come to the completely wrong conclusions. This does not make science useless, but Hawkings should have qualified his statement to say science usually works. Or rather, it works more reliably than other methods (revelation for instance) for discovering things about the objective world.

Also, I think the view that all religion is based on authority is a very narrow view of religion and more accurately describes fundamentalists and dogmatism. Furthermore, I'd disagree with him that somehow science is not based on authority. It absolutely is. It has to be. If it wasn't, any crackpot who did a study and got some result that disagreed with scientific consensus would get to have their results accepted immediately.

But there's a huge downside to that--new scientific ideas can take decades before they finally overturn prior "consensus." Adenoidectomies (getting your tonsils out) are one example. Scientific consensus in the early 1900s was that everybody should get their tonsils removed--and nearly everybody did. It took nearly 30 years for researchers to turn the tide and convince doctors that removing the tonsils could actually do more harm than good. Meanwhile, during those 30 years, based on their authority as doctors, surgeons unnecessarily removed the tonsils of millions of kids.

All this is to say simply that science is not some magic bullet. I guess I get a bit annoyed when people try to glorify science. Science isn't perfect, but it's the most reliable method we have for exploring the objective world. That's all you can say about it. And really, that's all that needs to be said.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

I completely agree with Hawkins here and nearly everywhere. I guess that means AnimalsForCrackers will have to disagree with me (And thereby Hawkins.) After all, me (and it must mean Hawkins too,) I am an atheist apologist.
But I digress and hyperbole; what I mean is Hawkins rocks!


Why is that? Feeling persecuted or threatened because some random "asshat" on the Internet didn't take too kindly to your poorly thought out arguments?

I have no intention of bothering with your baiting comments any more, so please feel free to fuck off and stop mentioning me and mucking up someone else's Sift for your own personal reasons.

@SDGundamX

Doctors didn't say Hawkins would be dead 43 years ago. They said 'based on available data, your life expectancy exhibits the following probability curve (with the most likely outcome being that you'll be dead [43 years ago]).'

Science always wins in the sense that it always creates the future, the same as it created the modern world. If we think science and technology will never progress past the current cutting edge of organ regeneration and iPhones, we're the same as the luddites that have characterized every other era in the history of science.

@SDGundamX

I think, perhaps, you interpreted the statement "authority" differently than it was meant. By authority, I believe he means someone taking a position of certainty without needing any external justification/confirmation. Whereas science is based on only taking positions which can be supported through observation, confirmation, reason, etc... In this sense, science is NOT based on authority.

Science is a self corrective system - like you point out with your tonsils story, its views and opinions shift and change with the changes in available data. And this data is incoming faster and faster, as technology improves, which improves our ability to turnaround improvements (maybe it won't take 30 yrs to make such improvements, anymore). So your tonsils story is a good piece of punctuation for Hawking's point about religion being based on authority, while science is based on observation and reason.

As for what "win" means - I think it merely means whenever there is a conflict between science and the popular religion of the day, science will win out. We saw it with the flat earth vs round, we're seeing it with evolution. It's likely we'll continue to see more clashes in the future, until religion either dies out or popular religion becomes much less rigid than the major religions we have today.

@everyoneinthisthread

It's Hawking. Not Hawkins, Hawkings, etc. lol.

@SDGundamX, you seem to have a skewed view of the situation. You say doctors used the scientific method to predict how long it would take for Hawking to succumb to his disease, and that their failure to be correct somehow means science failed and didn't work.

You've got it backwards. The scientific method explicitly claims the opposite...that out of all the predictions we make, only a few are ever close to the real truth. Science basks in wrongness all the time. Being wrong in science is a boon, because being proven wrong means you're just a little closer to the truth.

It's the people who make predictions or observations about the world and never admit they can be wrong who are a problem.

EDIT: I just have to add...you're totally simplifying the doctor prediction example. You weren't there when the doctors gave their information to Hawking. Maybe they said, "It is likely you'll die by XX age, but we don't know for sure." Doctors are constantly asked to give people certainties when there are none to be had. Yet, people use this as "evidence", saying that if science doesn't know everything then it isn't worth using. Just because a doctor can't tell you exactly when you're going to die doesn't mean science "doesn't work". This logic illustrates a misunderstanding of what scientific methods of experiment and thought claim to accomplish.

@mgittle (and also indirectly @chilaxe)

I said the scientific method works--in the long term--for coming close to the objective truth about something. In the here and now, though, those doctors used reason and observation to draw a conclusion. And they came to the wrong conclusion. My point being that science sometimes comes to the wrong conclusions--which you agree with, according to your post.

Science is a tool for understanding the world around us. If it leads us to the wrong conclusions, then indeed it has failed. We may as well have cast stones, read the winds, or gazed into a crystal ball for the answers. But in the long term, such failures will be corrected. That's science's strength over superstition. Which is why I stand by the statement that science usually works--or rather it works in the long haul. And it certainly works much better than superstition for understanding the physical world.

@braindonut

Actually, if the climate change debate is any indication, I think technology is leading to data overload that actually makes it harder to form a consensus, rather than easier. I agree with you though that any time religion tries to make pronouncements about the physical world it will be smacked down by science.

@SDGundamX

I think we're basically in agreement, but I still maintain that short term wrongness is not a bad thing and it is not a failure of the scientific method, but evidence of it doing exactly what it means to do, which is make guesses and test them. Some tests just take years to find out whether you were right or wrong

EDIT: lol...bam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5X64QCDVnI&feature=related