Banned TED Talk: The Science Delusion - Rupert Sheldrake

[LastPoet]

All I see is someone that doesn't understand what science IS. Because it will end the moment we know everything.

[Pat Mustard]

I see a lot of people claiming this guy doesn't know what he is talking about, but I don't see why he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Because he talks about stuff like the scientific method in such a way that you know he's referencing what they want to be than what they are. For examples from what I read of him he believes scientists hold to a dogma as inflexible and irrational as that of hardline catholics, despite the fact that the whole point of the scientific method is to make the survival of dogma imposdible, at which it is impressively successful. Individual scientists can be and are dogmatic, but when something comes along which disprovesdl their thinking it gets trampled. Sometimes it takes years but it always happens.

[Abaddon_ire]

Sheldrake is one colossal asshat.

[The Grand Nudger]

Probably, but even if he was a super swell guy he'd still have this particular bit as wrong as he could get it. If we imagined that every item on the list was legit and we removed anyone or anything that confirmed or conformed to them, it wouldn;t change any observation from which we conclude any of those items or lend credence to the counterclaims they;re meant to support.

Telepathy would still fail to appear, rocks would still sit there doing nothing, people with trauma would continue to suffer memory loss, and we'd still see no news reports from beyond the grave. The trouble with these items( and items like them) isn;t that theres any dogma holding them down..it;s that they fail to hold themselves up.

[polymath257]

I'm just going to address the question of the constancy of the constants of nature.

His first example was that of the speed of light. Speed is defined as the distance traveled divided by the time it takes to travel that far. So, we have two questions: how do we define distance? And how do we define time? Well, it turns out that the definitions of *both* of these change over time. Early on in this century we primarily used mechanical clocks to measure time. These have a very limited accuracy, which means that different clocks will measure different time intervals and the same clock will do so at different times. So, while the second was defined as a certain fraction of the year 1900, this simply wasn't an accessible standard for making sure different clocks kept the same time.

Later, we started getting quartz clocks, which are much more accurate, although still have issues with synchronization between different clocks. This lead to more accuracy in our measurements of the speed of light. We should also appreciate the sensitivity of these measurements. We are trying to measure accurately the distance light travels in a fixed period of time. Well, light is moving at over 186,000 miles per second (even with the variations claimed). If your clock is only accurate to 1 millisecond, then you expect to be off by 186 miles per second or so. Alternatively, if you are measuring in a lab, you are talking about times on the order of nanoseconds to microseconds and you have to measure them to within one part in 10000. Not such an easy thing to do.

But, it is possible to determine the *constancy* of a constant much more accurately than we can determine the *value* of that constant in many cases. The easiest to show is the gravitational constant. if it varied in the way proposed, this would have very obvious effects on the orbits of satellites. We don't see such effects, so G certainly doesn't vary nearly as much as is claimed here. We don't need to know the value accurately to know whether it is changing at the level of 1 part in 10,000 over time.

Now, the definitions sof the 'meter', the 'second' and the 'kilogram' have actually changed over time. At the turn of the 1900s, the meter was defined as the distance between two marks on a bar kept in Paris. All other distance measurements had to use that as a reference. You can imagine the difficulties of making sure everything across the world kept to that standard. Similarly, the second was defined as a certain fraction of the year 1900. That was hardly an accessible standard for calibrating a clock.

So we have an issue that the very definitions of our measurements can potentially vary. So, even if the speed is 'constant', the actual numbers can vary. An easy example is a car that is moving at 60 mph that is also going 100kph. The numbers look different, but the speed is the same.

So, how to fix this? One is to get a standard that is relatively easy to check in labs around the world. The other is to find 'constants' that do not depend on the definitions of the meter, second, or kilogram.

The second is the more interesting one: there are numbers we can compute that are 'dimensionless' and so will be the same no matter how meters or seconds or kilograms are defined. One of these is the fine structure constant. And yes, we can and do investigate whether these constants change over time, whether they fluctuate, etc.

But yes, the speed of light is now a defined quantity as part of our definition of the meter. So the question today isn't whether the speed of light changes, but whether the length of a meter changes. And, again, if there were significant changes, those would be obvious from other effects.

Now, people do consider whether these dimensionless constants change over time. There was even a suggestion a few years ago that the fine structure constant was slightly different in the early universe. That wasn't supported by later evidence, but the question of whether basic constants change has been and continues to be addressed. But, at this point, no measurements support such changes.

So, this guy is wrong in several ways. he ignores how our definitions have changed over time. He ignores that we *do* investigate how these constants change. And he doesn't seem to grasp the role of dimensionless constants in this discussion.

[Napoléon]

I see a lot of people claiming this guy doesn't know what he is talking about, but I don't see why he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Because his entire proposition is based on numerous assertions that simply aren't true. 

Science is a world view. Wrong.

Humans are somehow robots. Wrong.

The laws of physics are the same now as they were at the big bang. Wrong.

These are just the obvious ones.

[polymath257]

I'll also comment about the 'assumption' of the conservation of energy.

This isn't an assumption! This is a deduction based on many, many different test cases over a century and a half.

There is one interesting episode involving beta decay that is instructional here. The observations of beta decay were such that it appeared that energy was not conserved in the reaction. of course, this would be a significant fact if it were true and it was actively investigated at the time. But Fermi instead asked how it would be possible, given the observations, for energy to be conserved and concluded that another particle, not observed, was involved that carried the energy difference away. So, he proposed the neutrino.

it wasn't for another 2 decades that a neutrino was actually observed. But it was, and energy conservation was supported. So, not only has energy conservation been a consistent fact in all observations, it has been successfully used to predict the existence of unknown aspects of matter.

Now, there *are* difficulties with the concept of the 'total amount of energy' in the context of general relativity. In essence, the curvature of spacetime makes the definition of total energy problematic.

So, even in this regard, this guy is simply not telling the full story.

[The Grand Nudger]

The full story is that the things he takes issue with are all the things that make his specific area of pseudo-science a big giant non-starter, lol.

Why is "morphic resonance" not a thing? Items 1-10 in any incarnation. Ergo our entire body of knowledge is flawed.

[polymath257]

Let's see.....once we figure out how to crystallize something, it is easier to crystallize it....go figure....

[Abaddon_ire]

I see a lot of people claiming this guy doesn't know what he is talking about, but I don't see why he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Because his entire proposition is based on numerous assertions that simply aren't true. 

Science is a world view. Wrong.

Humans are somehow robots. Wrong.

The laws of physics are the same now as they were at the big bang. Wrong.

These are just the obvious ones.

With gritted teeth, I stuck it out to hear his ten "dogmas". In the end, I was foaming at the mouth. The scale of the lies was astounding.

And the "banned" talk? How is it banned? The delusional on yooboob have plastered it everywhere they can. 

And it was a TEDx talk, not a TED talk. In the UK, which only recently decided to defund frakkin' homeopathy.