Ever feel like you're insignificant? Well...don't look at this...

The ridiculous impossibility of it is exactly why discovering such a thing would raise serious questions.

In the real world, we usually debunk "supernatural" phenomena via science. In fiction, this means that when the dead are rising from their graves, the biologists stamp their feet and plug their ears and say "That's impossible!" briefly before they get eaten (and similar denials for things in other fields). But really, IRL science opposes "supernatural" phenomena because we have no good evidence of them being real. When people all over the world corroborate that, yes, the dead are rising from their graves in violation of every principle of biology, and you rule out hallucination, you don't say "well that must not be true, because I know biology". At that point, the scientific course of action is to say "Zombies are real, and apparently I don't know biology as well as I thought". Once you're not at immediate risk of being eaten by zombies, you can try to figure out why/how it happened, and if the best explanation turns out to be that Hell was full and all the extra souls had to go back to their old bodies and walk the earth, well, you've now got scientific evidence of Hell and souls, and that becomes part of the realm of science.
Similarly, if you discovered a message coded in the digits of pi (or some physical constant, if you prefer, which avoids the "math is unchangeable" problem entirely), you wouldn't throw it out as obviously false, you'd investigate whether it was plausible for a message of that length to occur randomly in a chain of digits of that length, and you'd be able to get some statistical idea of how likely it was to be just a coincidence. If that likelihood is sufficiently low, the rational, scientific course of action would be to accept that might possibly be a message. And if it is a message, who or what put it there?

This also reminds me of a comic that, for the first few panels, asks "what if Earth isn't the center of the universe... because another planet is?": http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php...&id=2302#comic

No, because I can think of dozens and dozens of ways for zombies to be real and what sort of agency exists behind that because this is something that we don't know everything about and the things we do know suggest that is possible to create zombies. Plus it's a physical thing that is there.

Pi on the other hand is a concept that is represented by other concepts that mean specific things that can not change even in the slightest. A circle, square, or triangle are all themselves no matter in what universe or where you are because they mean a specific concept and the math around them mean a specific thing and they can't be changed. So my reaction to someone telling me there is a "message" in Pi would be, "Dear sit, you are an idiot, but that is an interesting phenomena"

And then you're trying to say well Occam's razor says you should beg the question well let's do the whole Occam's razor thing... Is it more likely that an unchangable (from any place in the 11 dimensional construct) law math is creating a pattern that seems like a message to a being that is a patter seeker that tries to attribute agency to things when it's not there OR is there a some unknown super-being that can alter math impossibly to leave a message.

Hrmmmm that's a tough one... I'll go ask the Bible Decoders what they think.

You, sir, win.

When the Transhumanists take over....


Well, you'd be one of us. Never mind.

Has the world ever corroborated something whilst scientist said "nay?"

No snark. I'm serious.

And, if you want zombies, I turn you to the ant fungus that controls their brains and Toxoplasmosis gondii. Especially T. gondii; new research there is startling.

Yes, quite a lot of times. For example, basically every revolutionary discovery in the history of man.

Edit: Well, in the sense of "data suddenly pouring in from around the globe while scientists deny it", no, not in the real world. It seems to happen sometimes in fiction, where the "scientific" or "logical" character ignores firsthand evidence in favor of what they already "know" (and usually are soon thereafter eaten by zombies, or some similarly gruesome fate). I first read your question as "has the universe ever done something that scientists adamantly claimed it wouldn't", which it definitely has.

*head scratch*

I'm unsure what you are saying here. The scientific method is rigid and inflexible because bad things happen when it isn't (see: vaccine/autism link scandal and the mounds of false evidence presented), so it's always hard to get it going with the scientific community.


But, the world... I mean, that's such a grandiose number I think you might have used hyperbole.

In this universe it is always four.

In some other universe that is possible, but not interfering with ours, it might be 77.


....OR IS IT, DURAKKEN?

*bounds around with truth sans evidence*

Ah, yes, indeed.

Let's see... major things "science" has said isn't the case and it turned out it was...

The world is a Globe... save for when it when it was flat. Only, the fact is the world being a globe was discovered around 2000 years before and it was held as such by most of academia since... it was only the masses catching up...which was caused by a organization that will be left unnamed.

The Earth not the center of the universe... well somewhat correct >.> The Earth is... as is every other point in the universe, but what you're really looking at is geocentrists vs solarcentrists... and to a degree this is true, but for a very important reason. Solarcentrists that lived thousands of years ago had no proof and all the evidence point towards geocentrism. It wasn't until much later that we figured out how certain things occurred that made it look geocentrical and again... the people that held out weren't scientists when the evidence lead them to solarcentrism.

Ahhh but then we discovered that we're in a vast expanse of stars and our star must be in the center of that... which scientists quickly discovered we weren't and not only that we weren't but that there are other galaxies out there and that those galaxies form structures and those structures form structures and the center of our structure is somewhere far off and the biggest most central thing we've found is billions of light years away... and strangely, as odd as this sounds scientists have accepted this pretty quickly, and that other organization that always tries to stop progress remained silent.

Science at one time said that the earth was really young, but then we found dinosaurs, and tectonic plates, and so many other things...but you know scientists still held out because there is no way the sun could burn for that long. You see back in the day the process for how matter and energy worked wasn't known and so we guessed at what could possibly fuel the sun...with all of our theories and resources all coming back with ludicrous numbers of scale either on size or time and for a time we knew that the sun would die soon because it couldn't sustain it's fires for a few hundred or thousand more years... Strangely we learned the answer a few short years later with Einstein proposing e=mc^2 and suddenly the numbers made sense and corroborated each other and we all accepted it...save for that unname organization that still believes the world is ~6,000 years old

This has largely focused on cosmology, but we could do the same for just about any scientific field out there. I can't think of any point where scientists were like "No. That's impossible" and then suddenly it was. Scientists have said "that idea right there at you are think in the way you are thinking it is impossible" For example FTL... Scientists have said FTL is "impossible" because when you think of FTL you are thinking of conventional speed where in you accelerate through space, but we were lucky to live in a world where sci-fi introduced all these concepts to us about how to get around that and noone has ever said those are "impossible"

For tech people it's kinda the same as trying to explain a computer to someone... and eventually you start using short hand non-explaining explainers that get them to do what you want them to do but they don't really understand what it is that that they are doing and you just start calling it magic because it is a lot easier to explain... and quickly accepted as "you're not going to understand the words that are about to come out of my mouth if i actually explain this to you so let's skip that and not waste both of our times since you're not really wanting to know any of that any ways."

This.

I try to explain transhumanism, the concept of the (tech) Singularity, branes, logarithmic increases in technological capacity, higher dimensions, and then, it happens....


Inevitably, you fall victim to being brief in explanation, which is seen as poor teaching.

It is true that any sufficiently advanced piece of technology is indistinguishable from magic but, given sufficient time and starting from basic principles, that technology can be explained to anyone, even someone in ancient times. It might take a decade of training but it's merely a matter of education.

Magic, at least by some definitions, is not supposed to be open to rational explanation--otherwise it just becomes another branch of physics or biology.

Maybe--at least by my opinion--this is what distinguishes magic from stuff like paranormal phenomena (Which I personally think is all bogus, but let's put personal opinions aside.). The parapsychologist claims that psychic phenomena, if they exist at all, are subject to scientific examination. I don't think anyone seriously claims that magic is.

it's sorta like Louis C.K.'s bit where his daughter is asking him questions...

Daughter: Daddy, does the Earth go around the sun?
Louis: Yeah
D: Does it do it all the time?
L: Yeah
D: Will the Earth always go around the sun forever?
L: Well no, at some point the Sun's going to explode.
D: Starts to cry
L: Oh, Honey, This isn't going to happen for a very long time until you and everyone you know has been dead for a very long time.


In this situation it's best to just say "yeah" and lie... even though you are being a "poor" teacher.

But if you want to have fun with yourself... mentally... Ask yourself how you see things. If you want to be thorough and cover every little thing you pretty much have to cover biology, psychology, physics, metaphysics, optometrics and that's off the top of my head. At some point you pretty much have to go "It's magic"

I'm not using magic properly as magic is by definition non-natural... I'm using it more in the way that most media today use it... There are laws and such that govern what is happening but either I don't understand them or we don't know them.

The best way to explain how most people view "magic" in most media is more akin to Gravity and Space-time... Gravity is a force that occurs that we can describe and know roughly if i do this then it will do that, but until the idea of Space-Time came about we didn't understand the why... most media views magic as gravity before Space-Time... This is incorrect usage as magic has no laws or rules. In other words... a break in the chain of cause and effect. ^.^

The other way is a synonym for "illusion" "mis-direction" or "lack of understanding" which is used when we're talking about "Magic shows" We know there is something behind David Copperfield floating around, but we don't understand what it is so we just call it magic to make it easier or to express a category of things that are meant to appear to fool our brains.

So yeah...in rebuttal... I'm not using magic the same way you're thinking...

They do. They're called Tongue Depressors >.>

But honestly it is a lot easier for some cases. I almost always use it in jest or because I know it doesn't matter whether i explain it or not. In most cases if you actually answer the question people will zone out on you so it becomes pointless.

I wouldn't use the word "magic." Instead I'd say, "I don't know the details," or "It's complicated," or "It's a mystery but maybe one day we'll have some answers to it," or, best of all, "Let's go see if we can find the answers."

If Louis CK's daughter cries, and having heard many of his jokes about his child I have a strong suspicion he's actually a pretty decent parent, I think that Louis gave the right response, soldiering on with the right answer despite her tears. It should be thought of as an exercise in growing up--sometimes the universe doesn't work the way we'd like. Einstein was unhappy with many of the implications of quantum theory--ironically despite the fact that his explanation of the photoelectric effect was a key discovery that made quantum theory possible--but sure enough, that's the way the universe works.

Richard Feynman said that his father was never afraid to say, "I don't know," because he'd always follow it up with, "You know what? Let's to the library and figure it out or at least learn if nobody knows yet." His father's tireless curiosity and unshakable skepticism made a very powerful impression on Richard.

I'd argue that it was stuff like this that lead directly to Richard's dunking a chunk of synthetic rubber into a cup of ice water and thereby demolishing hundreds of pages of obfuscation and CYA (Essentially saying, "It's magic folks. Don't worry about it, we've got the matter in hand.") in the investigation of Challenger disaster.

I hate bad journalism and especially bad science journalism. There is good science journalism where writers try their best to explain most of the details as best they can and then also to be unafraid to say, "We don't know that yet."

It is true that this is a world of extreme specialization. It has to be. There is just no practical way to be an expert in everything. I don't read all the verbiage of EULAs or the tax codes. I treasure my ignorance of gardening, farming or home repair. But never do I say these things are magic. People will take advantage of you if you're lazy or fearful of things you don't understand. In fact I say that many of the current debacles on Wall Street due to this problem. We grew lazy and trusted "experts" to handle it all and never asked any questions or ignored the ones that did.

There are many instances of this happening. My first example is the marine chronometer made by John Harrison. In the 1700s, when cross-continental transport by boat was becoming more common, navigation encountered a problem in that there was no way to adequately determine longitude. John Harrison invented a solution by making a precise clock, and by comparing the position of the sun with the time on the clock, you could easily determine how far you have traveled. It took Harrison three years to make this.

The British Empire had established a board of scientists to award a ton of money to whomever came up with a solution. This board of scientists was made up almost entirely of astronomers. Astronomy was the primary way of determining latitude, by comparing the angle between the horizon and the North Star at precisely midnight you could determine latitude. Now, this board of scientists was locked into the paradigm that the only way to solve the longitude problem was astronomical, so they kept turning Harrison away. First, they requested that he make more precise clocks, which he did twice in the following 30 years. Then, upon deciding that the new clocks were too precise to be a machine, they said it was cheating and hid away the clocks so they couldn't be tested.

After Harrison made another clock (over 60 years to accomplish this in total), he went directly to the King who had to force the board of scientists to quit acting like five year olds, and the board never admitted that Harrison had come up with solution.

So the genius that invented the clock and could've revolutionized naval travel and possibly many other future inventions that Harrison could've invented was halted by science.


Of course, this is taken from a rather hilarious article about petty feuds. It has some other interesting examples, though not following the best writing for telling the whole story. I would also like to expand on the #1 listing:

Alfred Wegener wasn't he first person to suggest continental drift. This goes to Antonio Snider in 1859, who derived the idea from an interpretation of Genesis 1:9-10. His research drew little attention, since it coincided with Darwin's publishing which drew most of the attention, and that his research was published in French. The scientific community that spurred the ideas of Wegener didn't do so just by calling Wegener names; their claims were that the mantel strength was too high to allow rocks to drift, and this strength was derived by studying the way seismic waves behaved as they traveled through the mantle. It took 50 years for geologists to accept that the continents were moving. The whole thing about similar fossils on both continents, radiometric similarities between coastlines, matching rock layers from across the continents, and the fact that from a topographical map the continents look like a jigsaw puzzle were dismissed as pseudo-science.

Another case is the delayed acceptance that DNA is the code that which life is accepted. I am having a very hard time getting the specifics on this, since all of my searches keep turning up with "50 year anniversary" stuff, so this won't have as much information as the above examples. The original theory in biology was that the information was stored in the protein components of chromosomes, and that DNA (isolated in 1869 by Friedrich Miescher) was a static and regular sequences that didn't hold information. You can thank Phoebus Levene for that theory in 1910. It wasn't until around 1950 (closest thing to a date I could find) that Erwin Chargaff finally showed that Levene was wrong. Until then, the theory that DNA held information was rejected due to Levene's tetronucleotide hypothesis, which had very little evidence to support it. Each time an experiment came up with different amounts of bases (which was EVERY experiment), it was considered error in the system because the A, C, T, and G bases just had to be equal. So, for 40 years, DNA was pigeonholed.

A final case, and my most informal one, is peptic ulcers. Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren did several studies to confirm that Ulcers can be caused a bacteria. The scientific consensus at the time was that Ulcers were caused by stress. Their proposal was rejected because Ulcers just had to be caused by stress. But there was no 40 year wait for this case: one of the scientists to prove his point took the mad scientist route, and then guzzled a vial of the bacteria. Later, when he developed several ulcers, whomever was reviewing him had to accept that he was right.


So there are many instances where "science" (whether it be the process, the people, or just the institution) has hindered a correct cause more than helping it. Whether or not the world "corroborated" on many of the things is up for question, because generally history documents the wealthy, powerful, and influential instead of the everyday man. Now, if only I could find that yahoo news article about how half of all scientific theories are disproved in 20 years or so... But regardless, science tends to give the appearance that it is always correct because it is taken as correct until it is incorrect, and then the new theory is "correct" until it is disproved again. As to whether or not what the community at large believes is correct, that is anyone's guess. There isn't anything else to compare it to.


That is strange, because last time I checked I believed that e=mc^2. I'm also not sure what group you are referring to, since the only group I can be described as belonging to is, according to the more recent gallup polls, is over one third of the U.S. But thank you for correct me on what I believe as if I wasn't here. At least it is good to know that all of the criticisms for modern theories are misunderstandings because it is too complicated to understand. All of this time I thought the criticisms everybody had were sincere. Silly me.

So if you read the Cracked article which you are using as a source...which should give you a clue you are likely not using a good source... Han Solo took 30 years to build his first clock, starting at the age of 20ish, which was rejected and then he took another 60 years to build the second. So let's do the math on Johnny and we get that his age was 110 years old. Clue that it might be BS popping up yet?

If you look at wikipedia... for giggle let's point out that he was born in 1693 and died in 1776 at the age of 83... apparently he worked as a Zombie for 30 years and noone was bothered by it... moving on... He started working on the clock in around 1730, presented the idea to a friend on that council and got got loans from people and it took 5 to make and in 1736 in was the first clock to be tested...

oooh did I forget to mention that the whole idea that everyone knew the answer to the problem? That a better clock was the answer, but that they just didn't know how to make a clock that kept time out in ocean due to waves an swaying and such? yeah...

Anyways he was awarded 500 pounds to make a better clock. war broke out and the clock was considered too important to let fall into the hands of the enemy (yeah the clock was the nuke of day apparently) and so the committee shelved the idea until the end of the war while at the same time Harrison found flaw in his design. The committee awarded him another 500 pounds when the war was over to make a 3rd clock...which he stopped working on for unknown purposed.

In the 1650s events conspired to give Harrison a eureka moment in which he realized that he'd pretty much invented the thing that he was trying to make decades ago and it just needed refinement which lead to him inventing the first Sea Watch.

When it was completed and tested a new method had arisen and the board attributed the accuracy to luck but not enough to keep them from offering him money and a "we'll pay after we've tested the design by letting others make it and see if it can be replicated" which Harrison declined... Though to be fair on both sides it is understandable... 2 full tests isn't enough imo so that was extremely generous likewise asking that it be proven that it can be replicated, especially in a time without manufacturing, is also a necessity, especially considering Harrison's advanced age.

A third test was conducted that should be tossed out because his rival was in charge and then Harrison had had enough, constructed a new watch and had the king test it personally, in not the most scientific way >.>, which he did and then told him to petition Parliament for moneys.

Now you're proposition is "scientists" held this back and to some degree that was true, but in all reality it wasn't. It was business men and practical thinkers, and war, and several other things that slowed the process by a few, as in 2 or 3, years... but then the watch was never tested properly and doing so would have taken those years if not more anyways considering voyages to test took months or years to take. Further more he wasn't conned out of the money either. They had given him 23,065 pounds which is 3,065 pounds more than the prize was. Yes it was over his life time, but then the watch/clock wasn't being worked on for several of those years and they had nothing that said they had to give him money. They gave it to him as an investment and such, in our world, the watch didn't even belong to him in the first place so yeah >.>


Yes like many other theories this was actually thought up by someone else and it wasn't until evidence was provided that took into account all the other things that made other theories more likely to be the case. Up until that time, even though i'm not looking this up right now, that the presiding hypothesis at the time was the Expanding Earth hypothesis where the earth was a lot smaller at some point and it has grown since then which accounted for the jigsaw thing and some of the other stuff.

DNA wasn't found until Francis Crick and his partner actually found it in the 1950s and thus not accepted until then. This is not a case of being held back either. It's a case of lack of evidence.

If someone actually did that I wouldn't be swayed at all as it would be likely that the stress of being infected with something and it working, or the stress of it not working and me being shown to be an idiot would combine and create a stress ulcer...

interestingly enough, Ulcers can apparently be caused by stress in itself, as well as the bacteria... Of course it's also known that "stress" in itself can cause many things such as shorter life span, and again this how is this an example of being held back?

You seem to be under the misconception that science always comes up with the right answer right away and when the right answer is proposed that the wrong answer is just tossed away regardless of evidence or proof. Sorry, doesn't work that way. No matter if the right answer is right in front of your nose and you know it in and out and all of what it would mean and all that... it needs to be backed by evidence and the hypothesis/theory that is backed the most is the one that taken as right at that time.

As far as your article is concerned I bet it mistakenly takes that when scientists correct and modify a hypothesis/theory that it means they were "wrong" which isn't the case. According to that then Newton was wrong because Einstein's math "corrects" Newton's by placing Newton's equations inside his own, thus adding to it, and showing that you have to show how the previous was able to work within the new model.


If you believe the Earth is 6,000 years old you have no credibility what-so-ever and that is all that really needs to be said. And no it's not a misunderstanding about anything I said and I personally view those people as parasitical scum as they are the only people to have ever not just stopped progress but reversed it and made humanity regress. And just to be clear if you are not a Young Earther, I'm probably not talking about the group you're in...

As a side note: You seem to take offense at a group being derided because of a label that you share. More often than not people are not talking about the majority of the group that have that label. I think you're all insane but there is a difference between "I think there is a groovy dude up in the sky watching me" and "The groovy dude up in the sky wants me to stab you in the face and then terrorize your family" or "No, it's a universal (as in the whole universe is in on it) conspiracy to make you not believe in the groovy dude in the sky." Most people fall into the benign groovy dude in the sky watching category... And while there are problems with that I'm not going to discuss them here.

Here's a example... People who like pizza covered in tar are insane. I like pizza therefor you are saying I'm insane... See how that's a pretty ludicrous thing to jump to? It's actually a fallacy, but I can't think of the name of it.

Strangely enough, the initial message could be interpreted that way.

Yes, I'm sure you would. The story itself specifically makes the point that there will be people who would say exactly that, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. That's sort of the point of the story.

I don't know since I haven't read Contact. Only seen the movie. The idea of there being a "message" in Pi is nonsensical and can mean only one of 2 things. Either there is no message and it's just that we coincidentally see it OR there is a message and we live in an irrational universe where there is but one element of the universe that is irrational... I choose the former despite believing the universe is ultimately illogical.

I would take that the alien is messing with me if it said that, because it is illogical on the level that it isn't possible to do, and also on the level that it is a universal message, and it would take either the most insane individual or a pretty advanced civilization to find it...which means only the insane or eminently godlike beings could find it.

As far as "Some people won't believe you," you do realize that we believe things based on evidence and various rules of logic. I would bet that that was brought up to placate theists especially since to read it any other way doesn't fit with the story that I know of, because the story is that she goes back, noone believes her but she has evidence of the journey via the camera that can't be explained any other way... And obviously people aren't going to believe her because people don't believe a lot of things that we know as fact.

Also, as I know you look to look up things, look up The Euthyphro Dilemma. It's a discussion on morality and the gods by Plato in a part of the Death of Socrates. The basic question is... modified for this discussion... Is it a Circle because intelligent beings made it so, or do intelligent beings call it a Circle because it is a Circle.

Pi is Pi because everywhere Pi is Pi. Even nowhere Pi is Pi. Kinda like a Square will always be 4 equilateral lines connected at 90 degree angles. The only way that isn't the case is if we live in an illogical universe and if that is the case then everything is true and there is just as much chance that if a message was to be found in pi that it came from nowhere and every where at once and you've lost all coherency then.