At 5:16:52 AM on Sunday, August 31, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...>
>wrote:
[...]
>> Torsten is not a man of science but an ideologist,
> Not really. I stick to Popper's model.
George is right: what you do isn't science, à la Popper or
otherwise.
[...]
>> [He] is only interested in finding evidence in science
>> which supports this prejudice.
> Of course.
If you were a real scientist, you'd also be interested in
subjecting your 'theories' to rigorous testing.
> And it's 'theory'.
Perhaps; but it most certainly is prejudice, as you have in
fact acknowledged in connection with some of the off-topic
(political) threads.
[...]
>> Four of his favourite techniques are :
>> (1) the reversal of responsibility: i.e. he makes an
>> unproved assertion and then expects you to disprove it;
> Popper.
Absolutely not. Neither Popperism nor naive
falsificationism (which seems closer to what you actually
have in mind) says anything about where the onus lies. In
the real world a 'scientist' who doesn't take some
responsibility for testing his assertions is an
irresponsible jackass: irresponsible because he's wasting
everyone's time, and a jackass because eventually he's bound
to be caught in an obvious blunder, probably sooner rather
than later. 'Prove me wrong' is the crackpot's motto.
By the way, George left out at least one: routinely
appealing to invisible 'data', justified on the grounds that
it belonged to an unrecorded 'low' register.
Between your thoroughly unscientific approach and your
refusal to do even the most basic testing of your pet
conjectures, it's impossible either to take you seriously on
most of your favorite topics or to avoid displaying a
certain amount of exasperation. I do occasionally do your
work for you, when it's easy or when something piques my
interest, but your scientific irresponsibility still pisses
me off, and sometimes it shows.
Brian