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Nixorbo
UberMod
DOOP Secretary
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Because, you know, you need a background in science to see if a chunk of truck tire traveling at 45 miles an hour will knock your head off.
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Anarchy_Balsac
Bending Unit
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Err, it's more the other way around, if you're going to try and make the call on whether or not something is possible at all, you need details. And they certainly don't always call in experts when needed.
On the credit card episode for instance, did they call in an electronics expert who would surely tell them it was the coulombs, not the gouse that would erase a credit card? No, and what's worse, they used 8-bit ASCII, credit cards use 5-7bit non-ASCII digits. The experiment was totally flawed, that's just one example. Another is when Jamie dropped a wax covered mentos into carbonated water to "prove" nucleation. Small problem, only the wax touched the water, not the ingredients of the mentos, which, by the way, were previously demonstrated to be a part of the reaction.
And I'm sorry winna, but drawing a conclusion from a lack of evidence, knowing your evidence isn't sufficient isn't being scientific. It's only being scientific in the same manner that crashing crashing into a brick wall is being safe.
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Anarchy_Balsac
Bending Unit
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Ok gotcha, I misunderstood what you meant when you said they get the scientific thing right. Here's the thing, they are better at experiments than elementary school kids, but only in the same manner that pouring balsamic vinegar on your eyes is better for them than pouring ammonium hydroxide on them. It's still not Visine, and still a terrible idea to do.
Is it wrong to draw conclusions from their experiments? In the manner that they do it, yes. Sometimes they call stuff "busted" despite the fact that the video shown demonstrates it is at least plausible, or vice versa. Also their calls are absolute, they don't just sit there and say, "Our data suggests X, so X may be the case", no they say, "X is true, end of story", and it bothers me because people blindly take their word for it. They don't "bust" anything from a scientific standpoint, but their show's title, marketing, and their absolute callings, and their attitude about it in general leads the public to think that they do. And that is a very bad thing.
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Gopher
Fallback Guy
Space Pope
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« Reply #88 on: 09-03-2008 02:45 »
« Last Edit on: 09-03-2008 02:46 »
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Oh for fuck's sake.
1) if the moon landings were faked it was to fool russia, not the us people. And unlike the US people, russia had comparable space observation technology and an extensive intelligence network. So a landing wouldn't have to fool YOU, it would have to have fooled THEM. Which is a whole different matter, as they had the capacity to observe the launches, compute their trajectories and, if NASA were not really going to the moon, Russia would've known it. And they would have revealed it, too.
2) One of the projects performed by Apollo 11 was the installation of a bank of mirrors, oriented to face earth. The purpose of these mirrors was to allow lasers to be bounced off the moon. Many advances in our understanding of the moon's orbit have come from experiments using these mirrors with increasingly powerful lasers and sensitive sensors here on earth. Projects involving these mirrors are still on-going, and not just by NASA but independent universities as well. If we didn't go, where the hell did the mirrors come from that make this possible?
[edit]er... responding to last page I guess. Oh well.[/edit]
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winna
Avatar Czar
DOOP Ubersecretary
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I'm pretty sure they have a warning label on their show.... so worst case scenario is that someone takes their word on a subject as the absolute truth and lies to me.... then says "I saw it on Mythbusters." This would be in the same category as "I read it in the Bible." and ummm "my physics professor told me so." Fact of the matter is that as a society most of us take information for granted without checking into the reasonableness of it. And that's fine with me, I'll take someone's word on it, I don't need evidence.... if it seems reasonable then sure, why not... if it doesn't, I'll argue with you and give an explanation as to why I disagree. I don't need evidence for it.... and it would only be good evidence if I could verify it on my own. Fact of the matter is, trying to get a clean slice through a gun barrel with a katana isn't very applicapable to my everyday life.... it's just neat that somebody tried it and has video of it. Although they aren't entirely thorough, they do experiment with what they can think of at the time. And they do a decent job of following the scientific method, planning out their experiments, measuring their variables and testing out their hypothesis. At the very least they show that you probably won't get the results you want if you just go out back and try to build a potato gun with whatever you can find. Young people can get interested in the subject, learn a little about the basics, and when they decide to go into a scientific career get into the specifics later on down the line. See, as it is... I'll take somebody's word for it... but I know there's a possibility they're wrong, so I don't cross out the other possibilities. Weren't you the one debating about the legal status of ED and I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.....then one of my colleague's actually did research and showed precedence determining your stance to be incorrect? I think that was you.... but I'd have to look up the files.... if it's not... my bad.
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Anarchy_Balsac
Bending Unit
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« Reply #92 on: 09-03-2008 11:32 »
« Last Edit on: 09-03-2008 11:42 »
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I think I can see your point a little bit there, yeah, it's not as though they are the only ones spreading bad information. I still say it would be better if they didn't, but the same goes for the others though.
And your assertion that your colleague did "research" is erroneous. He stated his opinion, which is different. But is it really necessary to bring up an argument where we basically agreed to disagree and then dropped it? If you are really that bothered about it, revive the other thread. If you must know why I dropped the argument there, it's because anything we discussed that we were going to agree upon was already discussed, there was no point in continuing to discuss the things we weren't going to agree upon, but I'll oblige you if it's that important, but leave it, and your friend out of this.
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winna
Avatar Czar
DOOP Ubersecretary
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« Reply #93 on: 09-03-2008 11:51 »
« Last Edit on: 09-03-2008 14:39 »
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I have no need or desire to bring that argument up again. As you said, we ran the course with that debate, and the conclusion was acceptable in my opinion. I was merely pointing out an example where someone made an assertion without having evidence to back up their conviction. Also, although most of what was stated in that thread was opinion... my colleague did in fact do research, and he did cite legal cases as evidence for his position. No, my argument here is that there's nothing wrong with having a position without having hard scientific absolute proof; as long as it is a reasonable position to take and one has the ability to explain their position in a way that can make sense in a general understanding. My original argument in this thread, however, was that if you're going to cite evidence for something to claim it as absolute, you might as well have really good evidence that can be validated and reproduced multiple times from multiple angles. In my opinion, mythbusters does not fulfill these requirements. In other words, it would be alright to use them as examples for explaining your reasoning, but they're not good enough to claim as fact beyond a shadow of a doubt. And I happen to agree, unless I am misunderstanding, your assertion that the word science is thrown around too easily as a basis for an argument when there's hardly anything scientific about the evidence proposed.
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Nixorbo
UberMod
DOOP Secretary
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... I'll be in my bunk
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Smarty
Professor
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Yeah, Plausible.
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Nixorbo
UberMod
DOOP Secretary
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it's taught me important things about non-dairy creamer.
Like we have a project for the next PEELathon?
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Nixorbo
UberMod
DOOP Secretary
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... Mythbusters just used the Willheim Scream? Srsly?
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FemJesse
Liquid Emperor
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*bumpity bump* I love the Mythbusters... and they're still going strong. The hour and a half top 25 special is free on Discovery's site right now and it was a pretty good show. Where am I going with this picture? Hmmm....
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DrThunder88
DOOP Secretary
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The myth of Rule 34 has been confirmed.
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