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Farewell Perfect Cosmological Principle?
In article ,
Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: Bottom line: How empirical evidence, and the lack thereof, is judged appears to depend on the answer that is expected on the basis of prevailing theoretical bias. No surprise there. Nor should there be. 'Theoretical bias' is a pejorative way of saying that we interpret individual results in the framework that successfully incorporates other observations. This is certainly likely to be more productive than ignoring all other observations and developing a novel ad hoc explanation for every individual phenomenon (the standard approach of the internet crackpot). Of course, sometimes the framework (paradigm) is simply wrong, but new paradigms are successful only when they can incorporate the old observations as well as the new ones. In the specific case of dark matter, there is no direct evidence that dark matter is particles, but particle physics is one of the great intellectual successes of the last century and it makes a lot of sense to use the resources and techniques that it makes available, *in parallel with* other observational tests. Most working astrophysicists are probably pretty agnostic about the expected outcome. Martin -- Martin Hardcastle School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, UK Please replace the xxx.xxx.xxx in the header with herts.ac.uk to mail me |
#12
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Farewell Perfect Cosmological Principle?
In article ,
"Robert L. Oldershaw" writes: So, my reaction to Balazs et al is basically "wait and see". If the result is genuine, within a few years we should have a confirmation without post-hoc statistics. And if we don't get that confirmation, that will imply that the result was basically a statistical fluke. It is interesting to compare the general responses to empirical evidence in the case of particle dark matter and the case of cosmological inhomogeneity/anisotropy. Forty years of experimental searches have failed to find evidence for particle dark matter, and yet the general consensus is still that the dark matter is some kind of subatomic particle. Because essentially all other candidates have been ruled out. Over the same period of time there have been published observational findings that indicate that the inhomogeneity/anisotropy that is so common on less than cosmological scales continues up to the largest scales that we can adequately sample. I posted an example where the first such of your examples was refuted. You haven't replied to that, but continue to make claims which have been disproved. Yet in this case, the general attitude is to be skeptical of the empirical results and to assume that the more idealistic models will be vindicated. Bottom line: How empirical evidence, and the lack thereof, is judged appears to depend on the answer that is expected on the basis of prevailing theoretical bias. No surprise there. Are you any different in this respect, apart from having things switched around? One could just as well say that you ignore arguments ruling out your dark-matter candidate and are too accepting of isolated claims of large structures. When you make an argument, and someone points out a flaw (such as citing a paper which refutes the paper you cite), you at least have to explain why the refutation is wrong. |
#13
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Farewell Perfect Cosmological Principle?
On Thursday, July 9, 2015 at 6:20:09 PM UTC-4, Martin Hardcastle wrote:
=20 Nor should there be. 'Theoretical bias' is a pejorative way of saying that we interpret individual results in the framework that successfully incorporates other observations. This is certainly likely to be more productive than ignoring all other observations and developing a novel ad hoc explanation for every individual phenomenon (the standard approach of the internet crackpot).=20 But you imply that there are only two extreme choices: have a high degree of faith and trust in currently popular models or "ignoring all other observations and ..." Talk about "pejorative"? That's a nice example. There is a middle path that does not ignore well-tested observations, but questions assumptions that are used to explain them, and keeps an open mind about new conceptual/theoretical frameworks that might better explain the existing observations and make predictions about what will eventually be observed. but particle physics is one of the great intellectual successes of the last century=20 I have posted a list of 7 serious shortcomings of the standard model that even its proponents say make the SM clearly a provisional model of how nature works, and therefore not how it actually works. I have posted this so many times to different sites that everyone has probably seen the list, but I would be happy to post it to SAR if there is an interest in it and it will not be summarily rejected as outside the SAR purview (even though some members freely talk about it on SAR with impunity and treat it as virtually infallible. An open-mind is all I really ask for or could hope for, given that we are all humans. RLO Fractal Cosmology [[Mod. note -- 1. Our newsgroup charter forbids "excessively speculative" material. I usually interpret this as (roughly) the union of "not even wrong" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong and "wronger than wrong" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wronger_than_wrong 2. I think our charter is silent on whether philosophy-of-science material is acceptable. In the past I think Martin has often rejected it, but I am more inclined to accept it. 3. \begin{philosophy-of-science} Saying that the SM is "clearly a provisional model of how nature works, and therefore not how it actually works" is entirely consistent with it being "one of the great intellectual successes of the last century". With a change in the time period, the same can be said of the theory/model that the Earth is is spherical -- this is briefly but very clearly discussed in the wronger-than-wrong Wikipedia page. \end{philosophy-of-science} -- jt]] |
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