Thunderbolts Forum

'15-11-02, 14:39 Zyxzevn	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Instead of TPOD Evaluation I do my own example again, but in a better view.. Instead of labels, I use smilies. It seems to work better. GALAXIES [Electric Universe] ( x8 x3) [Discussion] I think that the concept of dark matter is a wrong idea. The phenomena that are now related to dark matter are mostly real. But it is invalid to use the name "dark matter", because it implies that "matter" is causing them. ( x5 x3 ) The velocity of stars in galaxies are much faster than possible with just normal matter So I think that this is not possible with just gravity alone. The distribution of matter is also very strange to achieve such high speeds, and I do not think that such a distribution would be stable. ( x4 x3 ) I think that electric forces are responsible ( x2 ) The electric forces are not that strong between stars ( ) Where do these electric forces come from? ( x5 ) You are wrong = I like it = I don't agree = something is wrong = you need to study more / your perspective is not correct. = you are trolling / not contributing to the discussion. = I don't know = you are funny
'15-11-02, 20:45 Lloyd	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Charles, I'm willing to try your ideas and ZZ's and others on your site, if you like. As it is, all I can do there is edit old posts. I can't Add Comment's, or Post Reply's, or start a new Page etc. I was hoping to make up another questionnaire, similar to Jeffrey's. But that's not important at this point.
'15-11-02, 22:39 CharlesChandler	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Lloyd wrote: Charles, I'm willing to try your ideas and ZZ's and others on your site, if you like. As it is, all I can do there is edit old posts. I can't Add Comment's, or Post Reply's, or start a new Page etc. I was hoping to make up another questionnaire, similar to Jeffrey's. But that's not important at this point. You should be able to add comments in lots of places. What are you trying to do, and where?
'15-11-03, 03:07 CharlesChandler	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse CharlesChandler wrote: You should be able to add comments in lots of places. What are you trying to do, and where? I just found & fixed a bug with adding comments, so try it again.
'15-11-03, 09:28 Lloyd	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Thanks for fixing that, Charles. I tried it and it's working fine for me now. Where To Try Discussions etc? I started a thread in the Science Improvement Team Space at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=4741-13268-6226-9754. Would that work? Or do we need to have the thread remodeled first or something?
'15-11-03, 17:33 CharlesChandler	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Lloyd wrote: Would that work? That'll work. Please just bear in mind that this time, I'm not going to invest indeterminate amounts of time into pursuing ideas just to facilitate collaboration. Last time, that never led anywhere — for whatever reason, there was always a different idea that could be pursued, and we never really got any closer to a consensus on a working method. So I went my own way, and now, if I think that it's a snipe hunt, I'll just stay back at the lodge and spend my time doing something else.
'15-11-03, 18:47 Lloyd	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse I never did insist that you do something or try out any of my ideas. All I did was share ideas. I never pretended that anyone had to do anything in order to be proper collaborators. You got the wrong impression there. Okay?
'15-11-03, 22:12 CharlesChandler	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Lloyd wrote: You got the wrong impression there. OK.
'15-11-04, 19:08 Lloyd	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Well, I'm starting to understand how to do what Charles and Jeffrey thought of: commenting on papers and doing surveys. I want to learn more about both, but I'd like to see ZZ's idea too. We're discussing at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=4741-13268-6226-9754 ZZ. Can you go there and start discussing with us and/or working on your idea there? There seems to be several different ideas here about what is needed. Like to establish a way for societies to find scientific truth efficiently without getting stuck in blind alleys; - to give alternative theories fair hearings; - to have an efficient way for the public to have productive scientific discussion; - to have ways to find others who have similar scientific interests; - etc. I guess we're most interested in the last two items, aren't we? And especially the third, i.e. having a platform or something for productive discussion with the public? Charles, would you want your site to be such a platform? Would you like to have hundreds or thousands of people using it for mostly science? Or would you rather just develop a model that would then be used elsewhere? If we get one science topic started for discussion on the site, we could invite CNPS members and others to join the discussion.
'15-11-04, 20:00 Zyxzevn	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Some points that I found: Large discussions are hard to follow if they are in a list, and when there is no voting. On a site like http://www.reddit.com you can have a discussion with 10000 items, and still you can see interesting posts. In sections like www.reddit.com/r/askscience the moderators mark the leading answers (and remove many "non-science" answers). What I do miss in that site is that when 10000 people vote, you only see the idea that the majority has. So I introduced viewpoints. But that is not necessary on a small site. The idea to have "theory"/"experiment"/"observation"/"conclusion" is interesting, but it is also restricting things that are hard to theorize. I would rather focus on observations first. We can observe stars, galaxies, electricity, etc. So you have a natural structure of the topics. It forces everything to have a observation basis. So instead of having "big bang" as a section, we have "redshift" & "CBR". Instead of "relativity" we have "relative speed of light". And "quasars near galaxies" instead of "plasma redshift". With an observation (or witnesses) we can build a "theory" of what this might be. With this theory we can build an "experiment" and see if it is possible to repeat the "observation". After that we can "discuss" and have "conclusions" (conclusions may change depending on viewpoint). Observations also point out "failing theories". The "quasars near galaxies" example clearly points out the fail of the redshift=expansion theory. "relative speed of light" makes the static aether theory fail. The non-bending light around heavy objects (except in plasma region) points out the fail of general relativity. How much the theory fails can always be discussed. By starting with observations you have something solid. With that you usually have something that people agree on. CC. This is not what you must implement. This is just my idea about how a discussion website might work best.
'15-11-04, 22:31 CharlesChandler	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Lloyd wrote: Charles, would you want your site to be such a platform? Would you like to have hundreds or thousands of people using it for mostly science? Absolutely! I have put a lot of effort into facilitating collaboration, because I think that there is a huge amount of potential in it. Lloyd wrote: If we get one science topic started for discussion on the site, we could invite CNPS members and others to join the discussion. I think that we need to get a workgroup going, with a handful of people at first, to flesh out some of the folders, and to load test the features. Many of the folders simply have place-holder content, that I put in there just so that I could visualize working folders. Is there any chance that we could get Brant and/or Michael to get involved, to help flesh out the solar models folders? All kinds of data can be added to the Observations folders, and more of the arguments for/against can be added to the Hypotheses folders. zyxzevn is interested in the paranormal, and in particle simulations, so maybe he'd like to try fleshing out those folders. Then there are the team folders, and related functionality. So I think that a small workgroup should test drive the functionality, and the protocol that we develop, before putting out a press release saying that we have invented something. Zyxzevn wrote: What I do miss in that site is that when 10000 people vote, you only see the idea that the majority has. So I introduced viewpoints. But that is not necessary on a small site. I don't know what you mean by "viewpoints", but I had a related idea that I'll run past you. I understand the problem — votes aren't necessarily useful, if the majority of people think differently from you, or if a circle-jerk network up-votes everything within their circle, and down-votes everything else. To get past this, I was thinking that votes could be weighted. So if you're reading somebody's blog, and you develop a high opinion of the person, you can give the person a high ranking. If somebody does a list of blogs, and they sort it by rankings, your vote will influence the sort order. But more importantly, every time that person ranks something else, that person's vote will have more weight for you. So if you have ranked "Fred" highly, and if Fred has ranked an item highly, in a folder that is sorted by rank, it will be like Fred casted 5 votes, instead of 1, thereby weighting his vote stronger, and this could affect the sort order. If you have ranked all of the rankers, then you'll see results that will be much more like your world view. In other words, the stuff that interests you the most, and/or that you consider to be high in quality, will bubble up to the top for you. Meanwhile, somebody else who has ranked the rankers differently would see a different sorting order, because the weightings will work out differently. It will be a pain to implement this, but I think that there could be an enormous amount of value in it. Zyxzevn wrote: The idea to have "theory"/"experiment"/"observation"/"conclusion" is interesting, but it is also restricting things that are hard to theorize. I agree. That's why there are also the Documents and the Discussions folders, for free-form material. We could expect a lot more activity in those folders, than in the more structured Observations ~ Hypotheses ~ Predictions ~ Conclusions folders. Zyxzevn wrote: It forces everything to have a observation basis. So instead of having "big bang" as a section, we have "redshift" & "CBR". Yes, redshift is an observation, and big bang is an hypothesis. Separating the observations from the hypotheses allows everybody to scrutinize the observations, to make sure that they're being presented in a theory-independent way. And then they can all take a shot at their own explanations. The downfall of an hypothesis is generally that the modeler wasn't aware of some relevant data. But since everybody only presents the data that support their own hypotheses, it's hard to find a complete inventory of the data. So this is what the Observations folder is about — if everybody contributes the stuff that they know about, it will make it easier for modelers to check their models against the data. It also stresses the point that we're all trying to explain the same things, so we shouldn't all have to duplicate the labor of presenting the data too — that should be factored out into its own folder.
'15-11-05, 08:45 Lloyd	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Group Effort on Observations Folder? Yes, ZZ, I agree that science does need to focus on Observations and that means us too, of course. There is often trouble discerning whether something is observation or theory. The Big Bang, for example, is thought by many to be an observation, since the redshift seems to show them that mostly everything is moving away and the universe is expanding. So they will want to say Universal Expansion is an Observation. I agree that we should emphasize Observations and should consider a trial and error group effort to put some data into an Observations folder and evaluate the input to see if we can agree on what really belong there. Maybe we'll then find ways to persuade people that Universal Expansion is only a Theory and that galactic redshifts are Observations and things like that. Working Group I agree that it's premature to invite the public to use the QDL site for discussions etc and that we need to have a working group to start with. I'll see if Brant and Michael would like to help out. And I'll ask a few other folks too. ZZ, what about you? I saw your username mentioned today as someone who was on the QDL site, but I didn't see where you were.
'15-11-05, 11:34 Zyxzevn	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse I can get to work soon I just have a new computer for development, so I can finally get some work done. I have some more projects, but I can do some javascript work to make a discussion system. observations I think that by focusing on observations, we can stand out from the rest of the sites. Most sites are to promote a certain hypothesis and add some biased observations. Mainstream just full with hypotheses. But even this website has a hypothesis as a basis (Electric Universe). By doing it the other way around, the site will be accessible to more people. One consequence would be that weak theories will be much less prominent. With weak theories, I mean theories that rely on very biased interpretation of observations. There should be a clear rule on what observations are. Expansion is not an observation. Redshift is. Maths Additionally there can be a math section. Math is often related to theories. This way we can discuss certain math problems around general relativity for example. Quantum physics is full with math and probabilities. Math problems should be clear and understandable. They are not only tools to describe something, we should also be able to understand them. Votes and weights The purpose of Voting is to separate the interesting stuff from the non-interesting. If we have weights for each different vote, we will have a system that looks like our brain. This will become much too complex in my opinion. I thought of managing these weights with viewpoint-groups. People that share your viewpoint are usually more interesting. So these votes will have more importance to you. Separating viewpoints might be a bit difficult. Another variant might be something like "helpers". Helpers are people who's opinion you find important. If you like someones article or reply you can make him/her a "helper'. After that his/her vote and remarks will be more important for you. This can be someone that has the same viewpoint as you, or someone that has a good knowledge on the subject.
'15-11-05, 19:20 Lloyd	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse There are now these three practice efforts at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=4741-13268-6226-9754. Practice Listing Observations Preparation for Practice Science Discussion Practice Science Discussion HERE? Do you guys have better suggestions on how to come up with observations more efficiently? Would it be better to go through Wikipedia entries and sort out Observations in them? Or what?
'15-11-05, 22:45 CharlesChandler	Re: Chris Reeve's et al Ideas to Improve Science Discourse Zyxzevn wrote: Votes and weights If we have weights for each different vote, we will have a system that looks like our brain. This will become much too complex in my opinion. I haven't ruled it out yet. There would be a table for Weights, which would store the info whenever a user ranked another user. (In QDL, you would click on the user's name in the by-line, to go to that user's profile page, and then you'd rank the profile page. Alternatively, if you ranked the user's blog page, you'd be ranking the user, not just the content of the blog.) The fields in the Weights table would be ranker, rankee, and rank. So suppose I value your opinion, but not Groucho's. The data would look like this: ranker | rankee | rank ------------------------ Charles | Zyxzevn | 9 Charles | Groucho | 1 In QDL, 5 is average, so 9 is 4 notches above average, and 1 is 4 notches below. So if I'm browsing a folder that is sorted by rank, the software has to: 1. Find all of the votes that were cast, and who cast them (already stored, in a different table). 2. Search the Weights table for me as the ranker, and any of the voters as the rankees. 3. If any are found, weight the votes accordingly. An average user gets 1 vote. A user ranked 1 notch above average gets 2 votes. 4 notches above average yields 5 votes. 4 notches below yields 1/5 vote. 4. Multiply the votes by the weighting factor, and add them up, for each item in the list to be sorted. 5. Sort the list. So I don't think that it would be all that tough to do. Lloyd wrote: Do you guys have better suggestions on how to come up with observations more efficiently? Few people will be willing to step through an article, one sentence at a time, evaluating the observational content of each sentence. I tend to think that people preparing articles will break out the observations. It's good form in a scientific paper to describe the instrumentation and the data that were collected, and then, in a different section, to discuss the interpretation thereof. So what I'm saying is that those sections that deal just with the data collection would appear in the Observations folder. The advantage will be that you won't have to read through each individual article to get to the data — they'll be in their own folder, organized per topic. And people will be able to discuss the validity of the data collection methods as an independent topic.