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Rupert Sheldrake's TEDx talk: Detailing the issues
There's been a lot of heat today about Rupert Sheldrake's TEDx Talk. And in the spirit of radical openness, I'd like to bring the community into our process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO4-9l8IWFQ
While TED does not vet speakers at independent TEDx events, a TEDx talk can be removed from the TEDx archive if the ideas contained in it are wrong to the point of being unscientific, and that includes misrepresenting the scientific process itself.
Sheldrake is on that line, to some commenters around Twitter and the web. His talk describes a vision of science made up of hard, unexamined constants. It's a philosophical talk that raises general questions about how we view science, and what role we expect it to play.
When my team and I debate whether to take action on a TEDx talk, we think deeply about the implications of our decision -- and aim to provide the TEDx host with as clear-cut and unbiased a view as possible.
You are invited, if you like, to weigh in today and tomorrow with your thoughts on this talk. We'll be gathering the commentary into a couple of categories for discussion:
1. Philosophy. Is the basis of his argument sound -- does science really operate the way Sheldrake suggests it does? Are his conclusions drawn from factual premises?
2. Factual error. (As an example, Sheldrake says that governments do not fund research into complementary medicine. Here are the US figures on NIH investment in complementary and alternative medicine 2009-2010: http://nccam.nih.gov/about/budget/institute-center.htm )
As a note: Please know that whether or not you have time or energy to contribute here, the talk is also under review by the TED team. We're not requiring your volunteer labor -- but we truly welcome your input. And we're grateful to those who've written about this talk in other forums, including but not limited to Jerry Coyne, PZ Myers, Kylie Sturgess and some thoughtful Redditors.
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Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Bharath Hariharan
The part about natural constants is hilarious and should embarrass even high school science students. In his whole rant about how the constants might change, he never even considers the possibility that measurements have noise, and uncertainty improves as better techniques are discovered. He says the value of c decreased: by how much? Was it within the error bars?
In addition, the reason why these are constants is not because someone decreed them to be constants, but because there are theories that predict that these are constants. G is the proportionality constant in Newton's law of gravitation. To say that G is not constant is to question the validity of the law, a law which actually *predicted* the existence of Neptune before it was discovered. Not many laws can predict the existence of whole undiscovered planets. I would like Sheldrake to come up with an alternative that has similar predictive power.
Brad Hoehne
Past methods for measuring the speed of light were both less precise (larger error bars) and had systematic problems (as all measurements do to some greater or lesser extent) which led to decreased accuracy. Sheldrake has interpreted the minimizing of systematic errors over time as real data. While there may be something there, there is no way to tell, as it is lost in the "noise."
Bharath Hariharan
edward long 100+
Bharath Hariharan
1) Logic is not what we want, or rather not the only thing we want. Logic is sufficient for math; for science we need something more: notions of evidence, and notions of uncertainty.
2) And before we do any arguing or debating, we need to convert any terms which we might loosely throw, into well defined, testable, hypothesis. By that I mean that I should take a statement like "The universe is mechanical" and decide what predictions such a statement makes that *can be subjected to an experiment, and so falsified*.
Which is why we need to be careful about statements like "The Universe is purely mechanical", or "Consciousness has no relationship to material things". What exactly does material mean here? Is the electromagnetic field material? Is a computer program material? What does mechanical here mean? What exactly does consciousness mean?etc.
Now, I personally would be happy to talk about the validity of tens or hundreds of theories, but only *once they are fully specified*. Notwithstanding Sheldrake's many factually incorrect statements, he is also woefully vague, using ill-defined terms that can have any number of meanings in lay usage. That, to me, is not scientific, and is particularly out of place in a talk about science, of all things. Present alternative views all you want, but at least do so in terms of words and terms that can be unambiguously understood by all scientists who come to the table.
In other words, people who disagree must not be silenced, but this does not automatically make every person who has not even made the effort of defining his views properly worthy of being listened to. Given the limited number of talks that TED has, I would much rather listen to someone I can learn something from, rather than just a flurry of senseless English words embedded in laughable inaccuracies and misunderstandings.
edward long 100+
Rick Flick
Bharath Hariharan
edward long 100+
Conor O'Higgins 20+
I think you may be missing the point. We can only dismiss variations from the expected figure as 'just noise' if we know in advance what the 'right' answer 'should' be. But how did we find out in the first place what these constants are? By experiment and measurement, which always contain noise. See the problem?
Bharath Hariharan
The speed of light for instance is one part of a large coherent scientific theory: the theory of relativity. The theory of relativity has made many predictions, and has been tested numerous times, and so, provisionally, we accept it as largely correct.
Since this theory is accepted as largely correct, and this theory accords a special place to the speed of light as a constant, we accept, provisionally that the speed of light is a constant.
Now, given this, we see that measurements of speed of light vary. Which is more likely, that the theory is wrong, and so all of its myriad accurate predictions are completely wrong and all of astrophysics which relies on this must go out the window? Or that grad students tend to press stopwatch buttons a bit too soon?
There are two parts to science: experiment and theory, each with uncertainties, each with noise. Weighing all these uncertainties together is not easy. To say that something is possible is trivial, and everything is possible; the question is, which explanation is more likely?
Caveat: the last time I read about the speed of light was in high school. I literally am at best a high school student in physics.
Conor O'Higgins 20+
I assure you I am not looking at constants in isolation. My apologies if my answer gave that impression. On the contrary, I was trying to give a simple example of the method of scientific inquiry.
We never observe "the speed of light". We observe measurement1, measurement2, measurement3, etc. Agreed?
What about the "large coherent scientific theory" that goes with it? Do we observe that directly? I don't see how we could (and no philosopher I ever read says we do).
Where does the "large coherent scientific theory" come from? From the same place all scientific theories do: the human imagination interpreting measurements/observations. Agreed?
There's a doctrine many (but not all) scientists believe: measurement1, measurement2, measurement3, etc. prove the existence of The Constant, and likewise, evidence1, evidence2, evidence3, prove the existence of The Law.
Is a testable scientific hypothesis or a philosophical assumption? Take a moment and consider that.
This is the 3rd dogma Sheldrake refers to. It's Platonism plain and simple.
I am not smart enough to see how we can believe the material universe is governed by pure, perfect laws and constants without positing an immaterial, cosmic layer to the cake. I'm not saying that the Platonic realm, scientific constants, scientific laws or the Invisible Pink Unicorn definitely don't exist - just that no one's ever seen them. And even if we do accept that there are these Laws, that doesn't solve our problem: where do these laws come from? Why do they exist? Where do they exist? How is it possible to have an material universe governed by immaterial laws?
So Sheldrake's offering a different explanation for why our observations are kinda sorta fairly consistent most of the time: universe is habitual, and the more something happens, the more it will continue to happen. This is the broader scope of the morphic resonance theory as I undertstand it.
Bharath Hariharan
My answer to your comment will have to be that I don't know. I don't know where these laws come from. And it is an assumption that such laws exist, and such constants exist.
But here's the thing. That assumption has helped us a long way. That assumption works. The things we predict about astrophysics come true to a large extent. The things we predict about physics and chemistry and biology come true to a large extent, enough for us to build machines and spaceships, treat diseases, understand a vast number of natural phenomena.
These assumptions are not dogma. It is certainly possible that these assumptions are wrong. Maybe a truer alternative exists. But given the success of what my current assumptions are, for me to think about a particular alternative, someone will have to 1) define the alternative precisely, and 2) show that the alternative not just explains all, or most, of what I have managed to explain till now, but more.
Sheldrake on the other hand simply handwaves at vague words that make no sense to me, to state it simply.
Conor O'Higgins 20+
True. I did my best to represent my understanding of Sheldrake's theories, based on what I've read of his works, not just the talk. He uses the phrase "cosmic Darwinism" somewhere; the consistent patterns in universe's behavior evolved.
"But here's the thing. That assumption has helped us a long way. That assumption works. "
But alternatives like Copenhagnism or model agnosticism work equally well if not better.
Bharath Hariharan
I'll have to read up on that; thanks!