A Paradigm Shift in Thinking

Hey everyone, bit of a voice check. I wanted to pop up here real quick to also welcome everyone to the fall season of the science circle presentation series. We're excited for what we have upcoming and I'm sorry I couldn't be here last week for the actual first talk. I had family matters to take care of, but we're pretty excited. So, we are getting up to date on a lot of things. I want to remind you of some of our programming and how to make sure you know what's happening with the science circles. That one, our website is back up and running. This events calendar will always be the official record of what things we have that you can look ahead of time to. If you are in either the science circle group or the science students group, you'll get notifications as well as group chats to remind you of stuff going on. If you're not in the students group, again, the main group is for presenters and land management. The students group is the best way for anybody to join. Uh you can ask me for an invite. There's a group inviter in the pavilion upstairs. So let me know if you want to get get that, but the science circle group be there. And also we'll send out we have events and so the uh I don't know if there's a way to subscribe to this actually, but the uh SL events we always include that in there too. So let me just for example today's today's talk is here and that has the full abstract. The nice thing about that particular event thing is it has the full abstract. So anyway excited for Phil to get started. Today will be recorded uh as it as it is every week. So be aware of that including the group chat is a part of the the programming. So welcome and let's let's uh let's get started. Speaking of which, I'm kind of going to sit here so I can see the slides better. Um, you don't want to be seeing my avatar. Anyway, let's see. So, let's get started. Okay, today is a little different. It's not the same as last week. Last week was a big production. Spent probably as much more time in that than I have in just about anything else. This is going to be more of a discussion uh in concert with the uh theme of the discussion about science. We're going to uh talk together about science. I think it's time we do that uh for a lot of reasons. So uh we'll get started here. Hopefully everybody can a concert discussion. So as I mentioned in chat um I am in fact I'm thrilled to have stuff in chat. I uh love to have uh comments, respectful comments and questions and answers and all that good stuff. and I'll follow along the questions, answer them as I go along and such uh to make this a more participatory event for everybody. Okay. So, science, why are we here today? Well, last week we were here to celebrate our 18th anniversary in in science in Second Life. Uh next week I'll be talking to you about um all the updates with uh uh space exploration particularly to the moon. And I'm not the only one in that speaks in uh science circle. It's just I thought uh that I would throw my hat in the ring for the first few so that people didn't have to jump in um immediately and we could uh finish up our uh speaker schedule uh for this fall without panicking. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not. Okay. So, why are we here? Uh first of all, science is often misunderstood by the public. Um, probably not the people sitting in here, otherwise you wouldn't be here, but science is important to all of us, including the people who don't understand it at all. I would remind everybody that this is a respectful discussion, and you're welcome to use chat to agree or disagree. That's part of science with an expl explanation of why you would disagree or agree. And I uh will refrain mentioning names uh including people, places, dates, uh all that stuff. In other words, before you put something in, think about if what you're saying is still going to be valid 50 years from now. And then that will probably be more that you're talking about concepts rather than uh people or nations or whatever. Okay. Um Okay. So let's discuss science. So my premise mad scientists. Yes. Okay. Um part of the reason I think the idea of mad scientists is that the general public um tends not to Yeah. Angry scientist tends not to understand science well. And then scientists sometimes tend to sequester themselves in white coats and uh whatever Frankenstein type labs and stuff and u it'd be nicer if there were Oh, now my local chat is transmitted sim wide. Oh, good gracious. Okay. So, my premise is that you don't need anything special to view the world like a scientist does. And we'll talk about well, why would I say that? The same thing with the idea of being there's more. In other words, you could sit down and look at a leaf or an ant. And well, absolutely, Mike. And particularly in your field in chemistry there, if it doesn't smell of chemicals and have stains on it, you're probably uh uh not working hard enough. Okay. So, the the other thing premise is that you could sit down and look at a leaf or an ant, and there's probably more science in a leaf or an ant than we may ever understand. You could practice science alone. Gregor Mandel did it. uh from a cartoon. Let's see. It might be in Okay. Um you can practice science alone and I see your questions Shiloh. Hang on a second. Uh like Gregor Gregor Mendel did, but remember that uh and he did some marvelous science, but it wasn't actually discovered until nearly a century later. So my other my other premise is that science needs other people. We'll talk about that. Okay. So, how is a paradigm adopted? Well, the term paradigm shift is actually one from a little while back. I was looking at who invented that term. And the idea is that for some people, it's not necessarily a paradigm shift. Uh but for some people who science may be a new way of thinking about the world. Uh, now by the way, I can answer that one, Shiloh. I I don't think you're going to find anywhere where I say something is the best view. In other words, things like best or worst is a philosophical or religious term. It's not a scientific term unless you're talking about comparisons. So, I will not I won't put what's the best of anything. Um, and there are lots of biases and I'll talk I will talk about that. Okay. The best chemists have beards. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay. There you go. Now that's actually uh something that I have read before is that to uh seed super saturated solutions all kinds of good stuff. Probably a lot of science going on your beard too. Yeah, I know. Okay. Well, lone science let me let me explain Dolly here again. If I answer every question, I may not get any anything uh done uh short of answering questions. But loan science, you you could be a kindergartener and do loan science. It's just that loan science which then contributes to the body of knowledge. In other words, L science which is new and distinct uh from science that we know is getting rare because um of what we know already back a hundred years ago. In fact actually back turn of the century people were thought they knew everything and obviously they knew next to nothing. In which case I I always thought I always think that I was very happy when I heard about dark matter, dark energy, and that we only really know about 5% of the universe. It kind of sets you back to know that you don't know everything. Yeah. I I never understood what it what a sea change was. I heard that term, but I'll have to take a look at that. I don't know where it comes from. Okay. Sumo uh science can be defined as both a process, in other words, like the scientific method, but also what we know. In other words, if my understanding of the definition is that science is what we know as well as the process of learning it. Okay. Wow. lots of comments and I have yet to get to the my next slide which I need to do here shortly is the scientific method is continually evolving and I'll talk about how it has been evolving but it continues to evolve and there continues to be uh ways that we all agree that science is and I'll use the heard best, I guess, more effectively um practiced as a process. Well, I would I would not be surprised under the current political climate to find departments of alternative science, which they may as well just call philosophy, because state universities get their funding from the government, and if they don't want to be funded, uh, then they have to cowttow to whomever is in charge. But I'll talk about that here in a second. Uh, and I'm going to, uh, stop looking at the chat here for a moment or let and and let you continue to chat to your heart's desire. But I'd like to present a few things here. So, what's the difference between popular concept of a theory and a scientific theory? A lot of people um who are not familiar with science say, "Oh, well that's only a theory." Which what they really mean by that is that it has little credence. It's basically little better than opinion. Everybody has an opinion. Um so but that's not what a scientific theory is. So we will take a look here at our conspiracy theory science. Is astrology a science? How about alchemy? How about psychology or psy cyber security? How are they science and how are they not science? How did science evolve as a shift in thinking and why is it important? So the first thing we need to do is how did what was there before what we call science today. So back what we might call pre-science was like other animals um we gathered knowledge we I have a little puppy and it's amazing how curious that little puppy is and he follows around his big brother dog and he follows us underfoot everywhere and so he's constantly learning constantly gathering knowledge which then he applies to uh his day-to-day activities and techniques which he sees from his older brother dog. Um which whether his big brother likes it or not is passed on to him uh whether in an oral tradition or simply by example. And likewise for humans is that we passed things on orally until written languages came into vogue thousands of years ago that could preserve what we learned. And that's primarily how we learn about what we learned that far ago. uh besides uh observing um how say mummies were uh put together or how a pyramid was built or uh things like that. Okay. So in most cultures here again I'm not mentioning nations, regions, whatever but most cultures around the world observed the skies because they needed to eat. So they found long ago uh when agricultural when the agricultural revolution came into being that they could the best time to plant the best time to harvest the best time to do different things. That's that's where I'll use the word best in context. I won't say a practice is best but they found that it was more productive. Um okay. Um so it was more productive to plant at certain times and to harvest at certain times and such and so by observing they could create a calendar. Now the calendar was not just for agricultural purposes but a lot of them started out that way and then they added political and social events on top of that. Also from experiments people go well I guess that uh herb work didn't work or too much of that uh sure didn't do the person uh any better. But however, if you uh this poison here, if you give them just a tiny bit, uh it might uh help. And then there were certain people who learned about these practices who became like medicine women and men. Um, and then also people, my contention is that people have the answer to every question you could ask them. And the only reason they say I don't know is because that may be socially correct, but actually have a answer to everything. It's just the answer may not be the correct answer. So for basic questions about how the world worked, people came up with explanations. Whether they had whether the explanations had any basis in uh reality or evidence, uh they still came up with folk beliefs. If you throw salt over your left shoulder, you have good luck. if you throw it over your right shoulder or uh skip three times then this will happen and that sort of stuff. And they came people came to believe in both natural and supernatural forces and even took drastic actions like sacrificing people to appease the supernatural forces or to make the sun shine or rain when they wanted it. That sort of thing like that. So that's that's the pre-scientific way of looking at the world. A lot of cultures also discovered and used mathematics. Uh created number systems to record assets was one of the first ways of doing it and then things like geometry to measure land design buildings and such. Uh tagline could probably back me up or Yeah, there we go. do I think seeds of obser um I agree because observation will keep you alive and if you add communication like animals do uh true tag that's kind of how things got started in that direction and I'm moving that way next so mathematics was used for practical purposes. Astronomy, we you'll notice here with the mathematics, astronomy, divination sort of thing is that essentially science and religion and all of and culture and all that were kind of mixed together in uh early days. There was no kind of separation of it. There were philosophies about why the sun was up there and why the there were things that tended to move and um and then we believe that well obviously we Yeah. Well, natural philosophy is what I'm coming up to next. Exactly. So there were beliefs that objects up there since Well, did you create the sun? No, I didn't create the sun. Does the sun do good things for us? Well, sure does. Well, okay. So, somebody must have created it. And so, uh, it obviously does good things with their crops. And I didn't grow that, um, um, earwheat. Well, yes. And and sizz, if you haven't get it, he's he's our local very quick wit. Okay. Um, so they did create calendars then that could and they could even predict I mean the first person that actually predicted a solar or lunar eclipse uh was probably championed unless they were burned they were probably championed as a um some sort of semi- divine person. Speaking of which, uh, if you were actually able to predict something that was extraterrestrial or that even was important terrestrial like when the rains would come, when the floods would come, then that was uh really powerful for early humans. So natural philosophy, thank you for the leadin, is like I said, pre-science religion were interwoven. So the idea with natural philosophy was that how might the world be explained without simply invoking myths or religious beliefs about invisible dragons or um giant turtles or whatever about who acted on the world, how could it be controlled? So how could you how could you invoke other causes? Now bear in mind that natural philosophy resulted in alternative explanations. Going back to the department of alternative explanations. In other words, we tend to cherrypick some of the ones we agree with. We go, "Wow, look, way back in 321 BC or whatever, uh, this person here said, yeah, there are atoms." Well, not really. It it was kind of an alternative explanation. They said, "Okay, things are not all fluid. Uh maybe they are indivisible at a point." In other words, you get down far far enough it doesn't just keep going. is that there is some uh structure where atomic theory in other words or the idea of helioentric versus geocentric hedonism asinism deduction empiricism all of that were kind of alternative explanations none of which were necessarily best. It's just that they were great mind food. And I I always like to read tags one because they're well thought out. Okay. So, uh yeah, a lot tag considerably. There's there's a lot of historic u instances where slight word differences or uh ways to represent stuff have led to uh both um new ways of looking as well as misconceptions. Okay. So in natural philosophy remember also that classical natural philosophical explanations didn't go away. It wasn't like all of a sudden they went away and now they're discovered again. They were preserved and added to by the people that are to the east. Now, that's a very eurosentric direction, but basically what I'm talking about is to the east of Europe. uh to the east of Western Europe uh essentially in in Western Asia uh which people call the mid east because that's a euroentric um way to look at it. Um so they they were preserved for a long time in in areas uh in southern Asia and in uh and then there's a lot of uh discussion back and forth between Southern Asia, Western Asia and all that at the time when Western Europeans were still, you know, digging in the dirt and and and blaming it on um little people. Um and then due to wars and other um methodology, classical natural phil philosophical explanations were rediscovered during the renaissance. Uh but unfortunately a lot of them became dogma. In other words, uh instead of picking um so even if you look at if you look closely at for example capernicus and the idea it actually early capernic theory was based on the idea of sun worship. Um but whatever it became uh the idea is that uh a geocentric solar system could just as well have been chosen over a I mean a heliocentric uh solar system could just as well be chosen over a geocentric except that you had influences from religion. In other words, hey people are the are the epitome of creation. Uh, which if we're the if we're the top of creation, I don't um well, I have my own opinions. It's just I think we can do better. Okay. So, but anyway, some of these classical natural philos philosophical explanations became dogma which delayed modern science until the scientific revolution where uh in the 1600s where you know the uh uh gravitation and um circulation and other types of things were explained in ways that differed from class some classical natural philosophical explanation. Well, I agree and I think it's higher than 30% tagline. But yes, there's there's a lot of there's a lot of humankind that adheres to the same sorts of belief that people did thousands of years ago. Um, and you and you'll see it. I mean, as I I cringe every time somebody says witch or you know those sorts of ideas is it is like have we learned nothing and in some cases we haven't uh in some cases we won't it's p until you learn something about science part of the reason and why I'm doing it today although I'm so-called preaching it to the choir is because science and How we came up with science is poorly understood by the majority of people. So there is pseudocience. Pseudocience relies on confirmation bias. That is instead of trying to objectively determine how the world works, you're basically trying to confirm how you think the world already works. and you're not very open to evaluation of other data or explanations. Um, you may make up the practices as you go. And essentially, it's like uh Carl Sean wrote a book called The Demon Haunted World in which he describes an invisible uh dragon in his garage. And so, um, well, tagline, that's, uh, part of the problem is that when you combine, and a lot of people have forgotten all this, uh, when you combine religion with politics, you've got a one-two punch as far as control goes. Um, and then and then you can take it one step further and you can go, okay, great. In in some cases, the one two three punch is that for people who believe that dogmatists can control your afterlife as well. Or in other words, what happens when you die? Then they really got you. Uh if you if you buy into that that sort of thing. Um well, and they may But that doesn't make it true. And I I'll bring actually the flat earth there, psychic billies, etc. So the the big thing is is if you can create an unfossal viable hypothesis, then your argument simply has to be what if or what about, you know, what about the invisible dragon in my in my garage? Well, you that can't be proved or uh you it can't be proved or a lot of people have have worked on this or disproved. So if you can so protocience now let let's look at how science came to be there. Okay, good. Thank you Mike. Uh there again we are bringing out ideas and shall I say uh uh theories and so if you actually show a source where you people can read more about it that that's helpful and so protoscience well protoscience relies on hypotheses we'll talk about that in a second but no really valid supporting theories so no controlled experiment. So you you may have the idea back in the days of natural philosophy about alchemy uh or about atomism uh but there was nothing to support those theories. They were just alternative explanations for how things worked. Same thing with geological formations. You could you could invoke a religious belief in how the earth started and therefore cram all of the geological evidence into that or how the heavens are up there and all that sort of stuff like that. Now the reason why some explanations in psychology and cyber security and medical practices could be called protoscience is not because they don't have science involved in them but in some cases it's like do this because it works and we don't know fully how it works. In fact, tagline could probably agree that there are some medical practices or knowledge which we don't really know fully how it works but it does which does not say it's not science. It just says that we haven't fully explained how everything works. So that's kind of what protoscience, not pre-science, pre-science is just uh unfounded um speculative theories. Protoscience is well, we can't explain everything, but we can. Now in we've been talking for a while here about who may not agree with science and that has been going on that kind of um back and forth that antagonism between people who adhere to the logic of science and people who don't want to has been around for a long time because controlling truth and you'll see the word truth a lot in authorit in authoritarianism um and religion and political pundits and stuff. The word truth is thrown around a lot because truth is an absolute. It's a dog dogma. It's Isn't Wouldn't it be wonderful if we knew the truth? If we if we had these absolutes where we didn't have to turns blue. Okay. Uh yeah, if if we knew how things work, I mean, wouldn't it be so comforting to know we had knew everything and that we had absolutes that we could count on. Uh and there have been movements in different periods of just in the last century in the early 1900s essentially the people who wanted to control truth. What is truth exactly? And that's one of the more interesting quotes in that um in in in those texts. Um so logical positivism basically tried to separate the idea of scientific ideas from justifying them. In other words, okay, great. evolution. There's lots of evidence for it, but it can we call it really true because humans are at the top of creation and therefore how could you be descended from anything etc etc. In other words, the idea of that's kind of logical positivism. Social positivism as early or as recent as the 1990s of p Yeah. And then and then and then it will uh quickly because it can use all of the logic of that humans have used over many years. Uh it will be able to answer any or address any counterargument that humans have about why AI shouldn't be at the top of creation. So social positivism in the 1990s essentially pitted scientists, hardline scientists that said, "Yes, there's an objective reality and we discovered it because we're scientists against social constructivism, which was essentially the idea that hey, all of this is made up in the human mind and therefore uh natural philosophy etc. is just as important as objective science." And then of course today we still have the idea of particularly the authorities will invoke the image of common sense uh and actually nonsense to um say that they're the equivalent of science. Okay. So we've had this kind of antagonism type of stuff for for long. Um disclosure all of this was my own creation. I didn't get it from AI. Okay. So now um Okay. Here's the now disclosure. Here's the dis disclaimer. Is it disclaimer? Okay. Now the disclaimer is some of the following may be not perfectly correct and I and I invite you to say it better in chat. Okay? Because that's what science is all about. Okay? Um so scientific method what we have had and this is kind of the answer to I think Shiloh's at the very beginning is that um over the years none none of this was kind none of this was the ten commandments of science. It didn't all get handed down in stone tablets um or any other way to scientists. It was all developed over years of time. So the first thing though that scientists, all scientists have in common is curiosity. So you look around your world and you don't just automatically throw in an explanation. Yeah, the sun comes up because Well, observe the sun coming up. Does the sun come up in the same place all the time? Does it come up at the same time? Does it um is it going to come up tomorrow? Why would you say that? Well, because it came up yesterday. Well, don't give don't put that as an explanation. In other words, try to try to observe with curiosity of a child or a little puppy like like mine. Or it's not always observation, your personal observation. It could be listen to someone else. What what what is their experience? What was their experience? What was um read? Okay. Hey, but if you live at this if you live at Antarctica that that that may not be correct. So in other words, and that's part of the next part, which is essentially once you've observed, then ask questions. Don't just accept explanations. We already know whether it there are ways of asking questions. Uh okay. Uh there are ways of asking questions um that are quantitative in nature. In other words, that have numbers that can be processed by agreed on methods or that don't have quantitative data associated with it. So, in other words, and instead of saying why, you might say, in other words, why is the sky blue? Well, if you say why is the sky blue, an answer could be, well, the invisible dragons up there like that color. Um, okay. What makes the sky blue? What makes my brain assign blue to the wavelength that I receive in my optic nerve? You know, uh, try to be as precise as possible. So what makes it do that? What does that mean? What does that mean? Is not necessarily a philosophical question. If you're asking somebody what meaning does it have for you? What is the significance of this phenomenon to the culture which uh you in which you define yourself? Um Arian, yes. Curious kids are smarter than adults in that way. They're more scientific if you want to think of it that way. In other words, they don't feel fear or shame or anything else for asking why, how, and you don't have to have all the questions or answers. Maybe you can help them look it up if you're able to do that. Ask AI. Um, but then look at where AI gets the answers from. And if it's from Quir or YouTube or um, social media, you might want to look for other sources and see if they agree. So, okay. So, anyway, curiosity, observation, listening, questions, asking questions, and then follow through on your questions. In other words, if your kid asks you questions and you have time, it's not like go ask your father or go ask the cat. Um, then you may be able to um follow through on the questions and you go, "Well, what if the sky were red? Would that be any different?" Uh, the sky can be red. Under what conditions does the sky look red? Could we make it red? In other words, what is going on up there? Uh what why how exploring is the sky red all the time? Um what happens if we mix this into the soil? Will the plant grow better? What you know all of these sort of things? What if I put salt in a fish tank? Don't do it. Um in other words, this these are the sorts of things which we uh look at um as scientists. So, we follow through on the questions by hypothesizing going, okay, I think that the sun's going to come up tomorrow and I think that it's probably going to come up over here because I understand this etc. Uh and it will probably come up four minutes later. Okay, great. That's a hypothesis. So you or guiding question when it's more exploration. In other words, you don't say how because like I said, how is kind of a philosophical question. Bet your bottom dollar. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And why could you bet your bottom dollar? Of course, first of all, it'd be great if you don't have any dollars. That'd be easy. Uh I don't think you'd bet your life, although you might experience. Absolutely. Okay. In other words, it's become a scientific theory that the sun does this or the earth does this. Therefore, I can make a pretty darn close prediction based on experience and theory. Even if it's your own experience, in other words, if you have over a year or two uh plotted exactly where the sun comes up and at what time, you could probably go, "Okay, on this day of the year, the sun will come up here." And it probably is pretty close. And you don't even have to rely on um uh science. Okay. So then the next thing we do is Oh, you know what I should have been doing? I should have been asking you, not telling you. So what have we done so far? Okay. What are the what are the things we've done so far? I want to make sure you're live out there. I I notice a few people that are definitely live. So what's the first thing that we do in science in the science uh scientific method that cats do, little dogs do, kids do. Observe. Okay. Question. Yeah. Hypothesis question. Eat a snack. Okay. Very good. Okay. And then yeah in other words the exactly prediction test all that um even before the testing parts. In other words, prediction is part of the part of the question, the hypothesis stuff experiments and or with testing. Even before that, what we should do or at least part of the scientific method is to review what others have done, how they've approached the question, how they've researched it. The idea is that so we can learn that if what we're ask uh well read the literature but you might also what if there's no literature on it what is something new which would be hard but okay uh what does quantitative and qualitative I'm going to answer that in a second actually thank you for the question um and if you want to put a hypothesis of what you think it means in chat we could go from there, but I will address that in just a second. Okay. Um maybe. Okay. So anyway, so what you want to do is if you want to actually contribute to what we know about the world, the first thing you need to know is if other people have already answered the same questions and how they've answered it. And then you could say, well, what about under these conditions? And then if you actually do things, yeah, quantitative generally means measurement numerical data which then to analyze it there are really good methods called statistics which have been mathematically developed and proven to be uh the best ways to h to to to create certain results from the data. So qualitative uh yes in other words what is the meaning of the sun coming up um of the of a red sky at morning? That's not a quantitative question. Uh what is the meaning of what is the significance of black black cats in your culture? That's not a quantitative um question or approach. Qualitative often means things having to do with social science about people. And so you quantitative. Yep. Well, yeah. Qualitative. The sun is hot. Um that's relative. In other words, hot may be. Now hot could be quantitative in that you have descriptors hot, cold, lukewarm, very hot. Those are can be quantified. Um, okay. I knew somebody was going to come up with that. Okay. So then you have to design your your research garbage in garbage out as somebody told as I think uh hope told me earlier today when we were talking about this okay so what information is required to answer the questions that you have and what's the most doable ethical reliable way to collect it is kind of part of what well exactly uh now yeah Okay. So, in other words, if you if you don't design the experiment well to be able to answer the questions, yeah, that's where all that comes from. Okay. Then you're not going to get answers. Well, well, you're not going to get the answers that will reliably you're not going to get the information data that will reliably answer your questions. So then you have to analyze. It's not just collecting the stuff. Well, okay, wordsmith um keep that in copy that right there because that's also coming up. In other words, there are some premises having to do with science that we all adhere to and that's part of uh what the scientific method is and and premises of what it means to be science versus something else. So great, you collect the best data in the world, but if you don't use it, if you don't treat it well, if you don't examine it and you uh for example, statistical methods, you examine it, you prepare it by eliminating uh real outliers, but you know, explaining why you did it and what defines an outlier. uh performing tests in appropriate manners. In qualitative data, you tend to categorize the data. You look for themes. Uh you you continue to exhaust the idea of the themes and stuff until you've found all of them. You make sure you've got enough data. I mean, there's all kinds of different ways of Okay. Okay. Non-numerical explanation says temperature less than or equal to atmospheres something like that. 24 hot people trying to render to qualitative. Um, okay. Yeah. You know, um, hot could be hot could be qualitative if you if you don't have it on a a scale of some sort. Um, because it's a it's it's the impression that it leaves on somebody. In in some cases, somebody could say one place is hot and another person say, "Nah, it's not very hot today." And they could both be right. Okay, that's uh going to be a long one. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to read all that because I'm looking at the time here is but everybody else read it. Okay, when you're not, you're not. Thank you. Okay, so scientific method here is uh the rest of that. Okay, so you've analyzed your data. Now, what was what did you learn the findings? What did the did the data answer the questions, conclusions, limitations? Uh, did you only talk to a few people? Did you talk to just a few of your friends? Um, were were you only allowed to talk to a few of your friends? In other words, limitations on on how widely you can accept what you've concluded, how could you improve the study? What could other people do to help? And then of course publishing. Why publish? I mentioned at the beginning that people are important in the process because why? Okay, one is that science is reproducible. This is what I asked wordsmith I think about. Uh yeah, spicy food for example. But then again, you know, wordsmith part of that may be genetic as well. In other words, hot is not just subjective, but it could also be how people experience spicy food. Uh that sort of thing. Um so science is these are some of the premises which are accompanying science. Science is reproducible. You should under the same controlled conditions be able to get the same results. If not there's something wrong somewhere. maybe trans u um transparency of methods or the results themselves or all that. Well, the other thing is hot needs to be defined in the case of spiciness stuff like that. Okay. Another premise of science is and you could ask Sizz about this and others is that yeah the Scoville there you go now that is a quantitative measurement of hotness right Scoville scales if it's a 100 thousand don't eat it okay if it's a million definitely don't eat it okay so science here is science out there so it's not just science in your room it's science on the next planet or the next galaxy So there are no absolute truths. This is another pre premise just explanations that we have agreed on because like we've seen them a billion times. Okay. And they that sort of thing. 16 million. Good gracious that would just destroy your taste buds. Okay. Um that is so what this is the bottom line. what a lot of people um while yes and I've actually had one was hot enough that it made me run out of the room and seek cold water or ice cream or whatever because it just fried my brain was hot. A little taste of it was hot. Okay. Yeah. Ghost pepper. Exactly. I think it was a ghost paper but it was just uh it was the only qualitative decision. Um well tagline there are of course this qualitative and quantitative are not opposing um ideas. A lot of times you have hybrid studies where you might look at something qualitatively to begin with and then back up what you're seeing uh it with a quantitative part of your research or vice versa. You might go by, you might go, okay, Scoville units, these are how the peppers are measured. And now we're going to see which one is called hot. In other words, is it 10,000 Scovilles where people say, "Yeah, that's hot or that sort of thing." So, in other words, one is quantitative and the other is qualitative. Or you, like I said, you could start out with qualitative and then go to quantitative. So, they're kind of different ways of approaching research, but they're not opposed. They're just different ways of approaching it. Um, but the big the big thing is speaking of science and approach and an and approach to how we view the world is that science is fallable. Now, right there, you're going to lose a lot of people. In other words, actually saying what everything we know is uh what we know may be incorrect. Now what the journalists and I'm I'm using science is provisional. Good. That's a better way of saying it. It's open to revision. It's provisional on conditions. But then again, we may not know everything because uh before quantit before quantum chemistry and physics was discovered, we thought that everything was pretty much cause causal causality theory. Uh that sort of thing. We could explain everything causation. Um well yeah uh qualitative uh categories themes um that sort of thing where exactly no causation on oh thank you neural. Uh so the but science will never say this is a fact unless um well it they won't say this is a fact. This is open to revision if there's reliable data that doesn't fit it and that needs a different explanation for example but isn't that exciting to know that we don't know everything. So I'm on my last couple slides here is first of all I'd like to impress that science is important. What I find fascinating is the people that poo poo science. That's that's a technical term. The people that poo poo science are the ones that are using social media and telecommunications and all of that to do it. In other words, technologies like that grew out of decades of scientific understanding. Um, and yet they're the first to say that science doesn't work. Uh, so anyway, technology scientific findings have led to new technologies and explain how those technologies work. But science. So that's part of the reason why science is important. But part of the reason why I think science is important is consensus. It's not a small group of people with some cult leader that is trying to get people to adhere to some unchecked speculation theory that promotes fear or controls populations. Science is a universal agreement on how the world works based on transparent data and methods which can be corrected. Uh journalists, I'm not going to poo poo journalists, but journalists sometimes because they want people to read what they've written, will say evolution upended by new findings in, you know, Krakan, whatever. Um yes, there you go. Tagline, science is the most effective, successful approach to practical knowledge and understanding, etc. Okay. Well, uh, absolutely, Arian. Why not? And wouldn't that be marvelous if it did? Okay. So far, super string theory is just trying to, uh, predict what happens at the smallest scales. Um, like you know, uh, okay, the other part, and this is my last slide, Flagistan, yes, a warm country. Um, by all accounts. Okay. Yes. Uh, now that Mike, you may have to explain that as an inside joke because of what? Flawist. What was it called? Um, it was an early term. Um, yeah. Flagiston. Yeah. Uh, okay. So, oh, what did I just do? I think I just um there science is interesting. I think I hit my keyboard. So, one of the reasons why science is is is important is science is interesting. The world is more exciting and less fearful if we know about it. We acknowledge that there's things we don't know, but we welcome learning it. It's not a it's not fear anymore. It's not it even if it means that we have to revise what we believe. The world is less fearful the more you know about it. Science creates community like the science circle. Wasn't floist on what they thought was needed to create fire or something or came out of fire. Um we welcome like like early ideas about why it went up and oxygen and all that. Okay. Yeah. Early theory of combustion. Exactly. Okay. So science is also interesting. It creates community. So we welcome curiosity. We welcome diversity of thought and experience because it may lead us to new ideas about what we know and the opportunity to explore and share those findings. So the last two slides there are my summary of why science is important. Science is important because it it it leads to consensus and away from fear and control of populations. And that's why authorities that would rather tell you the truth than you agree to it. Yes. Okay. Uh yes, we have another event during the week which is the concert which is coming up on Sunday. So authorities would rather tell you the truth than you to explore it on your own or to ask questions or to um get a consensus about uh alternative explanations and stuff. and authorities would rather you be fearful of the world than to be excited by it. And so that's essentially the end of my presentation. Okay. Um I am always interested in your opinions and if you want to uh send me something in chat or or some better way of saying something or whatever then um I'm all ears. Thank you for coming. Okay, so remember Thank you. Remember this week we've got the concert on Sunday, the moon base group on Monday, math club on Thursday, and science all day. Yeah, there we go. Tag humble pie. I love it.