Recently in sci·ence Category

I love this video.

I wish I could argue this well.

It would make these blog posts much better written. * The last maybe one day discussion ever. I wish * The god in the coincidence

I think this is letter number 4 to the metro.

Click on the image for the full PDF chain of article, letter, sev-slam.

I wanted to go into more detail explaining "evidence based science" but thought that might be too complex. Keep it short to get published.

I like the time 3:33. Also I like 12:21 on the 21st of December. They numbers have something special about them. Of course I know that 3:33 is no different from 3:34 or 3:51. Or any other time.

However the mind like makes sense of things, and so we find patterns where there are not. We find rationality in random events. It’s called Apophenia or sometimes more specifically Pareidolia when it relates to a specific stimulus. This allows us to see “the devil in the smoke”

Now I know that Pareidolia doesn’t disprove the devil actually existing. You can’t disapprove a negative and I suppose technically it could be the devil in the smoke. However it offers a far more likely answer, one that is scientifically significant. Of course that doesn’t mean you’ll ever change the mind of someone who thinks the devil is real because they have seen it’s face in a fire.

I’ve had two conversations with two different people in the last month or so, both where they saw “the god in the coincidence”. Both people said virtually word for word the same thing to me :

I know god exists [I believe in god] because I walked away from a situation that I shouldn’t have survived.

This for me is the devil in the fire, but in reverse.

Again, I can’t prove that it’s not actually god that saved this persons live. But the fact that a person’s life was saved by no means proves that it was god. What it does prove is that the person who “walked away” felt like it was because of a god. But I think this is a far more likely (significantly so) our coping mechanism, than the hand of god.

Otherwise I’d really want to know why god choses to kill the other people who don’t walk away.

Another way of looking at it, is why does god help people walk away, but never help amputees that only half walk away?

I guess the short is, whilst god could exist, I suppose, the feeling that god saved your life is no proof of it. It’s just a comfortable feeling.

I’ve managed to get into a maybe one day argument again. It looks like a discussion with Matt, but really it’s a maybe one day argument. I suspect I’ll be having them for the rest of my life.

I wonder if it’s more about a different way of thinking, than a difference of opinion. I’ve never had a maybe one day discussion with anyone from a science background. That might have relevance.

See it’s really not about a difference of opinion at all. Because I don’t see there being any opinion involved. Which is also relvent, as those putting forward maybe one day points of view often claim that it’s all about differing opinions.

Let’s say it is.

I’ll quote Richard Dawkins

“When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.”

The ‘argument’ is about the speed of light one day maybe being broken. Again (I get into this argument a lot)

Now let’s start off assuming either side could be wrong. That leaves us with two possibilities

1. The speed of light will never be broken
2. The speed of light will maybe one day be broken.

Now if this was a differance of opinion either side could equally be right. But it’s not. So one side is at the very least more wrong than the other

1. Lots of scientific proof and supporting evidence (including the fact the universe is working) that the speed of light is a constant
2. Nothing A few odd things we don’t understand that may or may not be related to the speed of light

So if we were to be generous and assign 1% to the speed of light being broken (i.e. not constant) then I’m still more likely to be right by near on two orders of magnitude. And that’s being really generous. The reality is that number (1) significantly outweighs number (2) by such a large order that number (2) is deemed false.

In fact the crux of the maybe one day is that whilst (1) appears to be correct, based on past experience we cannot dismiss (2) as ever being zero.

Which sounds true, but is also false, because if we could apply an “Reductio ad absurdum” argument and I can then say

Maybe one day we will prove that we will never be able to exceed the speed of light

Which holds true if we accept maybe one day arguments, which is then clearly false as it conducts the maybe one day argument, thereby showing that maybe one day arguments are not proof of anything.

And if you followed that all I’m really impressed.

The crux is, that “maybe one day” is a statement, not a truth.

It has nothing to do with being open minded, having a healthy scepticism and nothing to do with science.

“maybe one day we will exceed the speed of light” has no more meaning than “maybe one day we wont exceed the speed of light”.

Both can’t be true. Hence one must be.

I’m backing the one with all the science behind it.

When talking about weight and gym and stuff, I hear people often say "... you know that muscle is heavier than fat though, so you'll actually put on weight by going to the gym if you're doing a lot of weights ..."

Leaving for the moment that it's much harder to build a kilogram of muscle than it is to lose one of fat, so this never really happens this statement always bothers me.

See muscle isn't really heavier than fat. It's more dense. At least for me, if you say something is heavier, it's an absolute measure between two actual things.

So for example, a car is heavier than a bicycle. My mate Simon is heavier than me. 10 cubic meters of bubble wrap is heavier than my laptop. And 5 kilos of fat are heavier than one of muscle.

These are all absolutes. The one item is absolutely heavier than the other. And both items are explicitly mentioned. If you don't mention the items, but are just talking about generic things, I suppose you are implying the same volume of both, but for me this just rings as rather unscientific.

That's why when comparing two generic substances, like say fat and muscle, we should really talk about density. Muscle is more dense than fat, which then leads to muscle being heavier than the same quantity of fat.

In fact muscle is about 20% (give or take) more dense than fat. So the reason you'd be thinner with more lean muscle than fat is that it takes up less space, because it's more dense. Even though you might weight the same.

It all reminds me of the old school yard joke, "Which is heavier, a kilo of feathers of a kilo of lead".