To a non string theorist, string theory seems like a theory which makes few testable predictions, like phlogiston
it made testable predictions and was falsified for them. There are a lot of retrodictive and purely theoretical constraints on a candidate ToE, they have to be pretty good just to be in the running.
What? I really didn’t understand that.
Shminux’s arguments have screened off his authority, and then some.
That isn’t a fact. I don’t see anything going on here except the same blind side-taking as before.
The majority of physicists working on those kinds of questions are using some form of M-theory of string theory. The next nearest rival is Loop Quantum Gravity. Other theories are minority views. M-theory is favoured because milage can be got out of it in terms of research. The metaphor or a random grab into hypothesis-space isn’t appropriate.
Except that poor white neighborhoods are much safer then poor black neighborhoods
...in the US.
Um, now that you mention it, this is not a bad description of the politics of a number of African nations.
It’s not at all good. A few rich people exploiting a lot of poor ones is not the same as a few poor people robbing a few wealthier ones. And,it is not as if the politics of most African countries now is so very different from the politics of most European ones up until a few centuries ago; There’s no gene for fair government either.
is more concerned with politics than truth...is more concerned with politics than truth.
And that’s a bad thing? Trying to translate Hard Science directly into real-world action without considering the ethical, social and political consequences would be disastrous. We need something like social science.
I will point out, for a third time, that “not on (narrowly construed) facts alone” does not mean “not on facts at all”.
You need to establish some truths before worrying about the consequences. Scientific facts need controls, for instance. When have you shown any interest in controlling for the effects of environment?
[shrugs]. You construed riots in a sweepingly negative way as “blackmail”. The fact that I do not agree does not mean I am construing them in a sweepingly positive way. This is as a pattern you have repeated throughout this discussion, and it illustrates how politics mindkills.
there are still good game theoretic/decision theoretic reasons not to respond to blackmail.
I am glad that the tyrants of the past did not know of them, or you and I would not now enjoy freedom and democracy.
Please provide proof. Please don’t point, yet again, to the highly debatable “solution” to FW.
Is any of that avoidable?
“if we implement such-and-such policies, people will riot” is a fact of a sort, but not the sort that is discovered in a laboratory.
If we dont’ base policy on (narrowly construed, laboratory-style) facts alone, we use other things in additiojn. Like ethics and practicallity.
If people insist on drawing inferences from what was never intended as a hint...what can you do?
‘On hearing of the death of a Turkish ambassador, Talleyrand is supposed to have said: “I wonder what he meant by that?”’
Do you see how it isn’t always the reader’s job?
Strangely enough, I never said it was...
One has to grasp literal meaning before inference even kicks in.
ETA: What’s unclear about “not on facts alone”?
It’s the reader’s responsibility to read your words, and read all your words, and not to imagine other words. Recently, someone paraphrased a remark of mine with two “maybe”’s I had used deleted and a “necessarily” I hadn’t used inserted. Was that my fault?
Phlogiston. Falsified because combusted materials gain weight.