"If we do not have causality, we are buggered"...

[eFestivals]

Einsteins General Theory was published in 1916, you do the maths.

it was a theory he had in 1905. You do the maths.

Fact is that gravity is far from the done deal you always seem to be implying it is. We don't really understand how it works.

Fact is that Newton got it right for all non-relative things. There was no idea of relativity at the point he did what he did, so he couldn't have got that part.

Einstein's theories were, in practice, an addition for non-relative applications to Newton's theories rather than a replacement.

I'm no psychology expert, but I'm sure there are parts of it which are well established and other parts which are constantly evolving and being tweaked - just like our understanding of gravity.

Yep, I agree. That's not my point.

We are a long long way into physical discoveries, where very few new discoveries undermine the previous ones (exactly, as it happens, as happened with Newton and Einstein). The new discoveries are almost all built on top of existing ones, without negating the previous discoveries - because they're mature ideas, all built on what time has proven as solid foundations.

The foundations of psychology are not solid in anything like the same way. They can (if worked as being the gravity idea) see that a brick is falling, but have no real idea for why. They don't know what forces are acting on the brick or even how they can be measured on any accurate basis, only that the brick is falling.

The ideas even at the basics of psychology are still immature, and so subject to huge revisions on a regular basis. This is exactly how 'pre-enlightenment' science was.

[eFestivals]

The problem psychology has is that humans are not insentient - so we're not passive reactors in the way that physical substances/forces are. We adapt, and that makes us unpredictable, unlike most physical phenomena.

absolutely.

I've not said that there's not good reasons for why psychology is as it is - I've just said that it is how it is.

[worm]

But psychology is claiming that there's such an abnormality as multiple personality disorder, and has linked it to all sorts of causes, biological and social, and then engineered the evidence in such a way as to 'prove' the existence of multiple personality disorder, when there's no solid evidence that this disorder even exists outside the minds of the therapists.

Science is meant to be studying things that actually exist, not using pseudoscience to promote some kind of psychological equivalent of the urban myth.

Edited October 3, 2011 by worm

[eFestivals]

What Neil is effectively claiming is that phsychological phenomena cannot be measured physically due to the inconsistency of findings.

PMSL. How many times can you misinterpret what I've said so that you're able to come back with some sort of answer which makes sense? "Makes sense", that is, only to you - because it's not relevant to anything that I've actually been saying.

What Neil is effectively claiming - and claiming truthfully, because it's the fact of the matter - is that psychological phenomena cannot be measured psychologically due to the inconsistency of findings.

You only get to take a relevant measure if you have something to measure with that's relevant for taking that measure, which is proven by the consistency of the measures that it takes.

When the measures are inconsistent and there's nothing which can be pointed to with certainty to explain the inconsistencies then EVERYTHING about that measure is thrown into question - what is measured, how it is measured, and even if it's something which can be measured.

Until psychology has an idea that's able to remain unchanged within the changing evidence around it - as Newton's gravitational theories have done (even with Enstien's addition to that work of Newton's) - then it has no basis of substance to work itself up into other more complex ideas.

If psychology has got the right ideas of what mental illness is, and how it can be recognised, then it becomes logically impossible for Shipman to not be mentally ill and to not show signs of that mental illness. Yet every test done on him shows that he's not mentally ill - and so something about those ideas is definitively wrong. Yet the psychological ideas of those two things remain (for the moment) unchanged, showing that the methods of science are not being applied to psychological ideas but only dogma.

[kaosmark2]

Fact is that Newton got it right for all non-relative things. There was no idea of relativity at the point he did what he did, so he couldn't have got that part.

[worm]

What Neil is effectively claiming - and claiming truthfully, because it's the fact of the matter - is that psychological phenomena cannot be measured psychologically due to the inconsistency of findings.

[eFestivals]

Only psychology can make them behave differently.

So what you're saying is that psychology has at it's heart the desire to always be wrong, worthless, and pointless in any application.

Yes, I'd already realised.

[eFestivals]

You take a measure of something. You measure another thing which appears the same. The results are different.

Such a thing can only be explained because the measure has changed, or the thing you believed to be the same was not the same after all, and so the starting presumptions for the experiment were worthless. The only meaningful conclusion can be: there can be no meaningful conclusion.

Welcome to psychology.

[worm]

You take a measure of something. You measure another thing which appears the same. The results are different.

Such a thing can only be explained because the measure has changed, or the thing you believed to be the same was not the same after all, and so the starting presumptions for the experiment were worthless. The only meaningful conclusion can be: there can be no meaningful conclusion.

Welcome to psychology.

Edited October 4, 2011 by worm

[eFestivals]

Lets test that shall we:

You measure a person eating. You measure another person eating. They eat differently. According to you, the measure has changed because they eat differently. So your conclusion is bollocks.

nope, your analysis is what's bollocks.

There's a number of possibilities - but none of them are the idjut one you've gone for, which (as ever with the bollocks you love to spout) is one I never said.

1. The measure could be unsuitable for taking that measurement - a bit like trying to measure speed with just a ruler (and no clock), a stupid idea.

2. The measure is only meaningful via an interpretation, with each being dependent on the other for any meaningful conclusion to be able to be drawn. Without consistent results from the measure, then the interpretation cannot be trusted.

3. the thing being examined is not suitable for measuring because there is nothing constant about it that can give a meaningful measure.

What is actually going on is that you are measuring the difference, not the consistency. It's entirely due to there being a difference between behaviours in the same physical constraint that you know that there's a psychological variable at work.

measuring the difference only tells you that there's a difference. It tells you nothing of why there is a difference - and it's all subject to the three points I've given above.

But your way of working 'science' has you pre-deciding that it's "a psychological variable at work", without supporting evidence for that (the reasons might be physical for all you know). Great science. PMSL.

All you can know is that there's a variable at work. You don't know what, you don't know why, you don't know effect (you only know the result you've seen).

So if worked in comparison with gravity: you know there's a brick and you know it falls. And that's it.

It's as basic as anything 'science' gets. Everything beyond that is baseless guesswork.

And the simple fact is (as history shows), the guesswork of psychologists gets proven as constantly wrong, and everything has to be revised from those basics upwards. There is no progression forwards into more complex ideas (not of any meaningful substance, anyway) because there's no solid foundations to work up other ideas of substance from.

It's pre-enlightenment science, just as the physical sciences were when we knew there was a brick and we knew it fell, but nothing more about it.

Edited October 4, 2011 by eFestivals

[worm]

measuring the difference only tells you that there's a difference. It tells you nothing of why there is a difference - and it's all subject to the three points I've given above.

[worm]

nope, your analysis is what's bollocks.

There's a number of possibilities - but none of them are the idjut one you've gone for, which (as ever with the bollocks you love to spout) is one I never said.

1. The measure could be unsuitable for taking that measurement - a bit like trying to measure speed with just a ruler (and no clock), a stupid idea.

2. The measure is only meaningful via an interpretation, with each being dependent on the other for any meaningful conclusion to be able to be drawn. Without consistent results from the measure, then the interpretation cannot be trusted.

3. the thing being examined is not suitable for measuring because there is nothing constant about it that can give a meaningful measure.

[feral chile]

You're talking w*nk again.

If there is a difference it tells us that there is an independent variable at play. This is what we call science Neil. For example, if you're measuring the speed of cars on a race track and one is faster than the others then you know that there is an independent variable within the car that is at play.

[worm]

Yes, but isolating that independent variable is pretty difficult when it comes to people, because people are so varied.

[worm]

With cars, you can mess about with the variables to determine the causal relationship between variables. With people, you can't really manipulate variables in any meaningful way, because of ethical constraints. So psychology will never be an exact science.

[eFestivals]

No. I followed your analysis and conclusion, which was proven to be mindless bullshit.

So now you show that you only have the 'science' of lies. You should be so proud.

At least that makes it clear that you don't have anything of substance to say.

Rather like psychology.

[worm]

So now you show that you only have the 'science' of lies. You should be so proud.

At least that makes it clear that you don't have anything of substance to say.

Rather like psychology.

Edited October 7, 2011 by worm

[eFestivals]

what you're doing is reading it wrong. It's what you do continually, as so many threads get to prove.

There can be no understanding from someone so determined to never understand.

[Ed209]

Getting back on subject ...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/06/opera_and_general_relativity/

[kaosmark2]

Getting back on subject ...

http://www.theregist...ral_relativity/

[eFestivals]

Getting back on subject ...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/06/opera_and_general_relativity/

An interesting read, thanks.

So the timing mechanism is a cludge they believe has take the 100ns margin of error of the GPS system clock and made it more accurate.

I'm sure it's all done in what they believe is a smart way, but when the timings are so critical to the result, and the result is supposedly saying that the neutrinos are travelling at 60ns faster than the speed of light (a number smaller than the inaccuracies of the GPS system), I reckon its likely that they'll end up concluding that there's an error in the timing system they've used rather than the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.

Without a timing system they can have absolute belief in, how can they have belief in the results?

[Ed209]

An interesting read, thanks.

So the timing mechanism is a cludge they believe has take the 100ns margin of error of the GPS system clock and made it more accurate.

I'm sure it's all done in what they believe is a smart way, but when the timings are so critical to the result, and the result is supposedly saying that the neutrinos are travelling at 60ns faster than the speed of light (a number smaller than the inaccuracies of the GPS system), I reckon its likely that they'll end up concluding that there's an error in the timing system they've used rather than the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.

Without a timing system they can have absolute belief in, how can they have belief in the results?

[feral chile]

This article has totally done my head in.

Any scientists out there who would like to translate it into Joe Bloggs for me?

http://www.quantum-mind.co.uk/

[kaosmark2]

This article has totally done my head in.

Any scientists out there who would like to translate it into Joe Bloggs for me?

http://www.quantum-mind.co.uk/

[feral chile]

To go point by point:

"There are 2 theories: Quantum theory and relativity

There's stuff, and there's nothing.

Quantum theory says that the most important things is stuff, which exists through energy exciting the nothingness. Stuff only exist when they're interacting with other stuff, and the nothing temporarily becomes something when energy excites it and makes it into stuff.

Relativity says that nothing is the most important thing, and stuff is defined by its position relative to other stuff in the nothing. Basically, if you're moving, it can be perceived as everything else is moving around you instead of you moving. Large stuff distorts nothing, creating an area in the nothingness of movement. The classic analogy used to explain this is describing space as a rubber sheet: - If you put a heavy object at a point on a rubber sheet, it dips, creating a distortion both in the rubber sheet, and causing other objects to roll towards that dip.

The main reason they're incompatible is that quantum theory says that everything is made up of little bits of stuff, while relativity says that everything is made up of a continuous near-nothing.

Neuroscience generally focuses from the biological point of view, saying what we see if what exists. It might be better for neuroscience and psychology if we think of what we perceive as as close to the real world as a train map is to the train lines - ie. we're mapping stuff - instead of that assumption.

Neuroscientists should stop thinking in terms of classic Newtonian physics and scaling it down to brain signals, but think in terms of modern quantum theory and/or relativity and scale up."

To summarise: It's got some rather mediocre explanations of quantum theory and relativity (I'm not saying I could provide a better one), points out that Newtonian physics is an approximation, and then preaches that on the scale of brain signals, it might be better to try and use quantum theory and/or relativity and scale up rather than rely on Newtonian approximations to understand neuroscience.