Comment by pixl97
2 hours ago
The difference between science and woo is science makes falsifiable predictions.
I mean, go back 500 years. Tell everyone that everything is actually make of fields (no not the kind you grow things in). These fields manifest waves that carry certain amounts of energy. Those bits of energy build larger structures that are still so incredibly tiny the human imagination fails. But then you take those larger structures in a pattern and it builds atoms. Those atoms are actually 99.9999999% nothing but empty space end fields of force and electricity. This is why you don't pass thru things. Oh yea, these tiny empty things connect to each other in predictable ways creating molecules that are the basis of life. Just a tiny speck of them contains quadrillions of these molecules, crazy tiny.
[The people you are talking to]: Get the wood, we're burning this witch.
We cant even verify if these fields are real though. It is an ordered mythology for making predictions that work. If I have a machine that can reproduce the footprints of an animal no one has ever seen, I have not discovered that animal. (This is personally a more powerful analogy than saying "the map is not the territory" which gets at the same point.)
>We cant even verify if these fields are real though
We can perform casual experiments that are falsifiable against them. This is the scientific definition of real within a probabilistic framework.
Sure. Just making sure people understand that the "scientific definition of real" is based on a metaphysical assumption that real = works. It is very hard to remember this since philosophy of science is not taught in school.