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fuck off are plates unobservable entities. current movement is measurable, past movement is inferred by magnetic stripes, hotspot chains and benioff zones. there is nothing it does not explain. "There are probably tons of other theories" such as? |
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plates are postulated through secondary observations like with atoms, and that there is nothing it doesn't explain.. well, read my post further up. as to what other theories there are, I wouldn't know as I've gotten as little information about them as you have due to the scientific self-censorship, but it's easy to imagine a theory in which there are no plates, just one large slab of rock which at its current temperature and compared to its size is quite viscous and mountains are created by a buildup of pressure under it that gets filled in with lava, but doesn't break due to its viscousity and subsequently bulges out which exposes it to the cold outside of the crust of the planet so that it hardens. volcanos would be when the lava hasn't hardened. earthquakes would be when something happens under the crust causing part of the huge plate to drop. now, I'm no geologist, so that theory may not be quite coherent, but you can imagine something along the lines of that or anything else for that matter. |
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no i cant imagine something along those lines. and yes, that theory is pretty incoherent. it doesnt explain wehy volcanoes and mountains are found where they are, or subduction trenches or spreading ridges. alfred wegener (continental drift guy) thought that continental drift was caused by the sun's gravity pulling the continents apart. now there is another theory, but it does not explain anything else. plate tectonics explains all the world's surface and lithospheric formations. and wegener's theory did not have a clear defined mechanism either. there is no self-censorship in this field. |
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"plates are postulated through secondary observations" we can see their boundasries on the surface, and see their boundaries with the mantle via seismic reflections. that is primary observation, isnt it? we can actually see them here and now |
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"there is no self-censorship in this field." well, that's proof enough that you REALLY need to be more critical of your own beliefs before you can be critical of others' |
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of course i am critical of my "beliefs". if i come across something i personally cannot explain, i try to explain it and consider whether or not new throries might be needed. there isnt any self-censorship in geology. plate tectonics is the most successful theory in geology. |
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you see fault lines, not necessarily plate boundaries. what you see is decided by what you believe in. a quick google brought up the "expanding earth" theory as an alternative. look it up and read it with a critical eye, then read your own with a critical eye. look at someone elses criticism of both. |
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you, sir, most definately are not. you may like to believe so, but you are not critical of your own views, at least not to any satisfying extent if you are to do any sort of science. |
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oh, I may have used some subject-specific terms without actually checking there.. you meant the fault lines when you said you saw the plates' boundaries, right? |
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yep, "expanding earth". not used since plate tectonics was developed in the 70s. subduction zones disprove it immediately i am critical of my "beliefs". assuming we are still on a geological topic here - look at a map of antarctica. it is surrounded by spreading ridges. maybe this means plate tectonics is wrong, since that would mean antarcrtica is being squeezed in all directions? i once thought this, but science beat me to it long ago. turns out some of the ridges are migrating outwards, which is evident in the relative thicknesses of the magnetic strips on each side |
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"If we were presented with some of the major alternatives to what we're being taught throughout, I have little doubt that this would lead to better and more accurate science " especially in geology, this is stupid. conventional geology and plate tectonics will predict and explain where mineral and oil deposits are found. and thers big big money in that. why teach other theories when they do not explain nearly as much as plate tectonics? Expanding Earth does not predict where you will find oil, so no one in the business with any sense will be interested in it. |
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it's been reworked since then, read new. |
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you keep saying you're critical and then disproving yourself right after... this isn't stupid in any form of activity. also, if you're in this for the money I suggest you go get yourself some other education; science is about describing reality and even though your description may fit, it at the same time may be untrue, meaning it should be exchanged for something closer to reality. |
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"even though your description may fit, it at the same time may be untrue, meaning it should be exchanged for something closer to reality." if a theory closer to reality is ever developed, then of course it would be accepted over the older one. in this case, i do not BELIEVE this will happen, as i have never seen anything that plate tectonics does not explain. if a better theory ever comes about then i would accept it |
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im giving Expanded Earth a chance, im looking looks pretty flimsy, thay seem to think that Pangea existed at the formation of the earth and that the expanding earth explains why it broke up. but pangea blatantly did not exist when the earth formed. its also mentioning "land breaks" where apparently the continental crust has been stretched, but somehow manages to ignore compressional formations like thrusts and reverse faults, and fold mountains. the pacific ring mountain thing sort-of works, but these mountains also occur on subduction zones so they are also explainable the conventional way. also, there are no mountains in antarctica where the expanding earth model would predict. |
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there is nothing of course about that.. you'd be surprised at how stubborn scientists are and I believe kuhn may have been right in asserting that a change of paradigm will take at least two but most often more generations of scientists; old geezers like sticking to what they have believed. also, there is no way of knowing if a theory actually describes reality closer than another and there is no real way of deciding which paradigm to go with except for in a leap of faith. |
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good. I can't really say anything about the legitimacy of the source, but in general it's good to look at a few. anyway, you probably won't have to right now, but you should make this a common practice; look up alternatives when you learn something you are to hold as true.. I always do and sometimes I find better things, other times, my belief is strengthened. |
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"there is no way of knowing if a theory actually describes reality closer than another and there is no real way of deciding which paradigm to go with except for in a leap of faith." yes there is! if one theory describes something more accurately than another theory then the first is going to be closer to reality! the beauty of plate tectonics is that it predicts and explains numerous seemingly unrelated phenomena, so it resembles reality very well. |
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first off, how can you tell if one theory describes something more accurately than another? there is no objective platform for you to stand on to make this judgement. also, if you have a phenomenon you're trying to explain, chances are you'll create an explanation that seemingly explains it as closely as possible.. still doesn't make it any more necessarily true. also, it is often so that when you explain something, a prediction would be implicit in that explanation, so that's no way of telling either. |
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"I can't really say anything about the legitimacy of the source, but in general it's good to look at a few. anyway, you probably won't have to right now, but you should make this a common practice; look up alternatives when you learn something you are to hold as true.. I always do and sometimes I find better things, other times, my belief is strengthened. " thats what i do. and i enjoy it. when i first found out about the impact theory for the moon's formation, i first thought it was bullshit. surely if two planets collide, it would completely destroy them, not create new ones? and so i looked into the moon capture model, in which the moon is a seperate planet that was captured by earth's gravity, and i believed that for a while. but when i started learning about the relative chemistry of the moon and the earth, i realised that the impact model explains it. and there are plenty of models and simulations ive seen that demonstrate how a glancing blow between the "proto-earth" and another object would form the moon, explain its chemistry, captured rotation and recession. science kicks ass. |
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Observations aren't objective? Well, that was my point. Supertring theory is probably the worst example for self-censorship. If anything, it's an example with the fight with inertion in science. It's yet another completely irrational idea after the quantum theory. Nobody likes to work on irrational ideas because you have to trust the mathematical apparatus. Experiments proved that such irrational theories can describe energy and matter with astounding precision as was the case with quantum theory.Scientists long ago became humble in the face od facts (or observations if you will) and experiment results and if superstring theory proves suitable for describing our reality it will be considered true until it's proven wrong or another improvement in precision comes along. By the way, Newton's gravity still stands. You seem to imagine that there is an evil fund-hungry scientific lobby killing down the true free-thinkers, but the truth is that these free thinkers somehow never come with any proofs or reliable calculations and the "lobby" is a bunch of bald mathematicians who work their asses off doing calculations and simulations beyond the grasp of anybody on this forum. They don't even have time to spend the money they earn. I know a couple of guys working on quantum computers in my university and I can see that every single free minute they fight with some problems in their minds. They don't even have time to go through exams they need to check. It's surely not fucking fun to find out that you were wrong and they are probably holding to their ideas, but there is no way in the world today that can keep a failed experiment secret for long. |
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yeah, but you need to do it more, apparently. this also goes for other areas.. like, I know you're big into this anti-creationist thing, but have you looked at other alternatives on your own side other than the normal theory of evolution? |
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i'd say its easy to tell, assuming that "fitting evidence" means a theory is "close to reality" ill use plate tectonics again - it predicts that earthquakes will occur at subduction zones, and they would be deeper the further inland you go. and that is what happens. and i havent yet found an expanded earth page that even mentions this. admittedly in this case im not on an "objective platform", but the evidence is so amazingly conclusive in fitting plate tectonics, if i was on the other side i would "convert". i know i would, its happened before (see above) |
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Also, we've seen single atoms already. Remeber the IBM logo? Or maybe you think that our eyes are any better than electron scanning microscope? |
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no, string-theory is an attempt to save conventional physics; when they discovered that energy disappears and re-appears, which is contrary to what happens in macrophysics, they needed a way of conserving their paradigms current status, and... super flat dimensions that no-one can observe?! I mean.. come on! There's something wrong with einsteins physics which makes people think observations on the micro level are anomalous is what I think. |
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evolution - yep, i have. i looked into Lamarckism, probably the only other proposed evolution mechanism, aswell as "theistic evolution" which is basically "god=natural selection" i used to be a lamarckist up until i was about 16 or 17, until i actually bothered to find out how natural selection works. i used to think evolution was intentional and deliberate until then, but i eventually realised that natural selection explains evolution best, and evolution explains biodiversity, genetic similarities and the fossil record best. i have not always "believed" in the same things. what i now "believe" in is the result of looking into different theories. (i hate using the word believe in a scientific context, as people interpret it as implying religion) |
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when you have a phenomenon you want to explain, you formulate a theory. when you already have lots of observations of different phenomena, of course the theory you're formulating will fit the observations! it could just as well be a theory about air-bubbles below the earths crust, and if it was formulated with all observations in hand, it would not only fit the observations perfectly, but also have a 90% chance of being able to predict other things. how come earth is the only planet with plate tectonics? |
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that last question is not a critical one, I just want to know (what plate tectonics theory says, at least), as I don't already know. |
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no-one's seen an atom. |
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using belief is the only sound thing to do. everyone needs to become more critical, and if you say knowledge, this will re-inforce the "lazy stupidity." |
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"when you have a phenomenon you want to explain, you formulate a theory. when you already have lots of observations of different phenomena, of course the theory you're formulating will fit the observations! it could just as well be a theory about air-bubbles below the earths crust, and if it was formulated with all observations in hand, it would not only fit the observations perfectly, but also have a 90% chance of being able to predict other things." hmmmmmm............ but when that theory then correctly predicts new evidence from a different field, wouldnt that confirm it? and plate tectonics also gives a coherent mechanism that perfectly fits with other knowledge of the earth's interior. the "air bubbles" thing would not work in light of this other knowledge of the earth's interior. maybe other mechanisms would, but i have never heard of any. how come earth is the only planet with plate tectonics? it isnt! theres plenty of evidence from many of the planets and gas giant moons that plate tectonics did once operate but later stopped. it is mainly due to (presumably) the size of the body, since smaller bodies would cool quicker and without the constant mantle convection driven by this heat, plate tectonics cannot operate. since earth is the biggest rock body in the solar system, it retains the most heat, and therefore plate tectonics occurs here at present. i think seismic studies of the moon show that the mantle is solid, which supports the idea that it has lost the heat necessary to drive plate tectonics. |
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but when that theory then correctly predicts new evidence from a different field, wouldnt that confirm it? nah, that's the same as predicting evidence within its own field. the only distinction between the fields is the one we make; if something is indeed linked to something else, whatever explains one thing would necessarily be able to predict something of the other. |
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Then no-one was ever able to read very fine print using a magnifying glass. If you don't trust the processes that allow us to display an image of a single atom on a computer screen, than why do you trust a lens refracting light? How do you know what it really displays? |
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Also, you seem to have taken a very negative viewpoint on superstring theory. It's origins, as far as I know, reach the times when scientists finally decided that they need a quantum gravity theory and went a step further into unification of the forces. I'm not an expert on this one but neither are you if you didn't notice my mathemiatical mistake earlier in this god-forsaken topic. |
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the only images of atoms are artistic impressions of what we think they may look like. |
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You meen the structure of the atom? |
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Never heard of scanning tunneling microscopy, eh? |
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inference isn't observation. |
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What would make it observation? Seeing it with an optical device? Also, I'm still bothered by your "common sense" disdain of superstring theory. It seems pretty arrogant and antropocentric. |
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not inferring it from other measurements. in that case, we could've stopped at the cloud chambers. why antropocentric? |
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What is seeing? Electromagnetic frequencies reflected off an object are detected by photosensitive cells in our retinas and our brains assemble them into an image. We infer the existence of an actual object from this indirect process. How is scanning tunneling microscopy essentially any different? Also, you're extremely foolish if you think observation is magically separable from the observer's conceptualizations, biases, preconceptions, ideas, bad habits, farts, and tooth decay. (below: atoms of platinum) |
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I somehow can't see a difference between inferring done by the control system connected to the microscope and the one done by the control system that is our brain connected to the eye. Of course, there are 2 stages in the first measurement, but then how is double inferrence worse than single one? Because we cannot imagine more than 3 spacial dimensions. |
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You could of course diss the scanning microscope by saying that the way it works is based on our view of atoms, but that's precisely why it indeed proves that atoms are what we think they are. |
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because it just detects electric currents and is told by whoever made it to output this as something. this is not the same as seeing something; I could create a machine that detected magnetic fields and hover it over the ground and tell it to represent stronger magnetic fields as underground rivers, but it could just as well be cables or ore or something. of course obsvervation isn't separable from the observers beliefs! when did I say otherwise? |
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no, that is precisely why the apparatus can't be trusted to tell the truth. |
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the difference in this case would be the source material of the inferrence. |
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I like that we basicaly said the same thing. I'm the more polite though haha |
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It's the same as seeing something. In a great simplicity, our eye just measures the amount of fotons and their energy (or whatever light is) and you are to believe that the source of the fotons is an object of colour, shape and size. You can't be even sure that the object exists. |
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The eye measures light and is designed by whatever to measure light. It can't be trusted to say anything about anything else than light. |
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Enough! I drive NW, you drive SE, we meet in Denmark. Take your knife and vodka (to wash the cuts, not to be friends). |
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