/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9072640
>>9072686
>>9072692
Wait, okay, yeah, they're obviously all from that Discord, not from /sci/. Sage and hide.

>>9062995
I find that it's mainly authoritarian-leaning people who put their left-or-right bias before the facts. Of course, that includes politicians, mainstream media, and those on the far left & far right. That just follows with authoritarians wanting to dictate the facts rather than having the facts dictated to them.

The social libertarians, those who put more stock in the individual and self-determination, are more likely to listen to people's ideas and the science for what it is because they don't just see people as in-groups and out-groups. They also don't see their own selves as bound to a particular group, so suggesting their position or their informants being misinformed doesn't translate into a personal attack the way it does with the authoritarian left & right.

That's just to say that you can have a strong political view but also allow room for doubting. In fact, that's one of the core tenets of classical liberalism.

>>8914267
The earliest stone tool findings were made in Ethiopia:
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14529651

The earliest use of fire was also found to be in Africa, while the latest evidence for tamed fire was in Europe:
>http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/archaeology/Publications/Hearths/Hominid%20Use%20of%20Fire%20in%20the%20Lower%20and%20Middle%20Pleistocene.pdf

Construction? Japan. Farming? The fertile crescent throughout the Middle East. Writing? Iraq. Wheels? Mesopotamia. Glass? Lebanon. By your logic, white people are dumb shits who could never invent anything on our own.

>>8878045
One of the first rules of scientific ethics: consensus is not evidence. Contrarians are important to move the field forward. It means more people are asking questions and testing hypotheses, getting us closer to a more fundamental truth that explains the phenomena cited by ALL competing sides, not just the one that you agree with.

However, issues arise in people drawing conclusions before they make observations. Having contrary or agreeing hypotheses is one thing, but touting these hypotheses as fact without an empirical test or case study is intellectually dishonest, especially if well-documented studies have given contrary conclusions.

The correct answer to a contrarian is not "Shut up." The correct answer is "Prove it."

>>8848528
Actually, the engineering done without explicit physics is done by direct experimentation.

Need to know the time it'll take for a somewhat simple system to reach steady-state? It's often cheaper to run tests than to do the math, because they're paying you 10 bucks for the 15 minutes of math, but it only costs 5 minutes and a few cents for you to stick a thermometer in a faucet. Need to know something similar but for a terribly complex system that would take weeks of math and still wouldn't be accurate because materials & assembly are not and cannot be ideal (i.e., a car's response to a high-speed collision)? Run tests. Need to know the convective heat transfer coefficient for a patented formula of oil with a complicated mix of chemicals? Run tests.

Essentially, it's what physicists do, but with specific systems for specific purposes. That's a big part of the job of a good engineer. Run tests, come up with a predictive mathematical model based on the data, and use that predictive model to parameterize aspects of your design. Tweak the parameters, see how your system's cost & performance would respond, rinse & repeat.

>>8815514
There's a difference between knowing the ingredients and knowing the theory. It's the difference between cooking and chemistry, between changing brakes and designing brakes, or between stargazing and astrophysics. Any asshat can pick it up, but you won't figure out why these things are happening unless you pick up a book.

Not that you'd want to figure out why unless you actually want to help to come up with something new. You'll never have an original thought about the subject in question unless you also know its background, and people without original thoughts are just stuck wherever they land.

>>8595337
Why does the general population of nearly every sexually reproducing animal (including humans) attempt to participate in sex right when sexual maturity is reached?

I dare to think that we might be more closely related to bonobos than we are to pandas.