You have strange ideas about what science is. That’s not surprising since philosophy and popular science have strange ideas about what science is. Science does not involve plucking theories out of thin air and subjecting them to tests. Hypotheses themselves are borne of experiments and the application of prior theory. The part of science you’ve chosen to eschew, the part where you obtain a formal education and spend many years integrating yourself into the professional community, happens to be the part where you learn to construct hypotheses. The fact that a hypothesis you borrowed from a popular science book written by a physicist playing outside his field of expertise was ridiculous is hardly surprising but tells us nothing more than that you were severely underqualified to judge its merits.
Science is the application of prior science to new scientific problems; it requires specific skills and expertise (none of them involve or have any use for “logic” or “reason” or Bayesian probability theory; none of these things are taught, used or applied by scientists). A huge part of developing these skills, and of the scientific process itself, involves a long period of apprenticeship within the scientific community so that one can learn to develop reasonable hypotheses grounded in and motivated by existing science. One of the easiest and simplest ways to demarcate between science and pseudoscience is heritage: science is the offspring of science—chemistry is a child of physics and biology a child of chemistry—whereas pseudoscience exists merely as a simulacrum of science. Pseudoscience tries to appear science-like by copying the alleged methodology of science.
It’s nice to see you openly admit that many-worlds, evolutionary psychology, nanotechnology and cryonics are all unscientific though.
You have strange ideas about what science is. That’s not surprising since philosophy and popular science have strange ideas about what science is. Science does not involve plucking theories out of thin air and subjecting them to tests. Hypotheses themselves are borne of experiments and the application of prior theory. The part of science you’ve chosen to eschew, the part where you obtain a formal education and spend many years integrating yourself into the professional community, happens to be the part where you learn to construct hypotheses. The fact that a hypothesis you borrowed from a popular science book written by a physicist playing outside his field of expertise was ridiculous is hardly surprising but tells us nothing more than that you were severely underqualified to judge its merits.
Science is the application of prior science to new scientific problems; it requires specific skills and expertise (none of them involve or have any use for “logic” or “reason” or Bayesian probability theory; none of these things are taught, used or applied by scientists). A huge part of developing these skills, and of the scientific process itself, involves a long period of apprenticeship within the scientific community so that one can learn to develop reasonable hypotheses grounded in and motivated by existing science. One of the easiest and simplest ways to demarcate between science and pseudoscience is heritage: science is the offspring of science—chemistry is a child of physics and biology a child of chemistry—whereas pseudoscience exists merely as a simulacrum of science. Pseudoscience tries to appear science-like by copying the alleged methodology of science.
It’s nice to see you openly admit that many-worlds, evolutionary psychology, nanotechnology and cryonics are all unscientific though.