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Comment: Re:Science should never be dogmatic (Score 1) 184

by MightyMartian (#40211815) Attached to: When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience

I don't buy it. Give me an example, because the one's provided so far; Einstein's objections to QM and Victorian naturalists objections to Natural Selection, don't prove your point at all, quite the opposite, they indicate that scientists, when presented with a good theory, will give it due consideration. Einstein may have had his objections to QM, but even his own peers were giving away to it, because it explained observations very well.

If what you said was true, theories would come in fits, only when the old guys kicked it, but looking at the history of science, particularly over the last two centuries, that's not how it happens at all. The old guys, if they insist upon the old view, get sidelined long before they become worm food.

In the case of continental drift, the issue was that the theory had some serious issues at that point and thus those who objected to it did not object to it out of dogmatism, but rather because it was still a very shaky hypothesis. The same thing applies to string theory. It isn't dogmatism that leads the majority of the physics community to push it to the side and to seek for other potential theories of quantum gravity, but rather the fact that it is as of yet untestable, and therefore, no matter how well it might explain certain features of the Universe, remains essentially stunted by the inability as of yet to differentiate its predictions from a number of other theories (and, to be fair, none of the other theories, like loop quantum gravity or causal dynamical triangulation, are as of yet testable either).

This "old guard" argument is absolute nonsense. It's not as if the late Victorian and early 20th century biologists and naturalists had to all die off before the Modern Synthesis was seen as the grand unifying theory of evolutionary biology. It's utility was accepted very quickly, and didn't have to wait for the "old men" to die off.

Comment: Re:So was every other theory... (Score 2) 184

by MightyMartian (#40210151) Attached to: When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience

Let's not forget that Einstein's work didn't come out of thin air, but was based on previous work like Lorentz and Maxwell. We have mythologized Einstein to some extent, just as we did with Newton and Galileo, tending to forget that these men, while instrumental in scientific advancement, built upon previous work.

Comment: Re:Science should never be dogmatic (Score 1) 184

by MightyMartian (#40210081) Attached to: When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience

I don't think that's all that correct either. Plenty of naturalists that objected initially to Darwin were won over in his own lifetime, and most certainly while Einstein objected to QM, some of his own peers accepted it in due course. The "old guard" is not some homogeneous band of group thinkers, but is as diverse in view as the new guard is. Even Einstein himself modified some of his views, calling the cosmological constant that he had inserted into GR "the biggest mistake" of his career (of course, the irony being that the inflationary model went and re-inserted it).

Comment: Re:Heat and movement (Score 0) 184

by MightyMartian (#40209961) Attached to: When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience

Thank you. This idea that we have to have a complete explanation before a theory has explanatory power is total bunk, more the mad imaginings of Creationists or the silly claims of people who have based their understanding of science solely on Kuhn (and taking his position to such extremes that even Kuhn later regretted some of what he wrote).

Science simply does not work like some people believe it does. If you have a body on the floor and a bullet hole through the head, you can make a preliminary hypothesis that the person was shot, even without the bullet or gun that fired it in hand. Even that incomplete a theory has explanatory power.

Comment: Re:Heat and movement (Score 1) 184

by MightyMartian (#40209921) Attached to: When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience

There is no ID model. You're just dressing up catastrophism in fancy new clothes, making odd claims about C14 (which is absolutely no use in questions around tectonic plates and continent drift).

Where do people like you come from. I mean, what you've written above is so absurd, it's not even wrong.

Comment: Re:Good to Know (Score 1) 358

by MightyMartian (#40194301) Attached to: Judge Rules API's Can Not Be Copyrighted

Since this has been a total victory for Google, they will likely get a fair amount of legal fees back. So the real point is that Oracle should have played ball with Google. They're greed cost them not only the case but also the presence of Java on the Android ecosystem.

As to whether Dalvim damages Java, I could care less. Let the two forks compete and may the best one win.

Oh and you're a fucking idiot.

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