This message was self-deleted by its author

[BootinUp]

This message was self-deleted by its author (BootinUp) on Sun Nov 26, 2023, 01:28 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[keithbvadu2]

1. 1+

[Blue Owl]

2. K and freaking R

Where has all the critical thinking gone?

[mitch96]

3. Dictators don't like critical thinking. It messes up their plan...nt

[Wonder Why]

4. Sagan was a big BSer himself.

He "calculated" how many planets would contain life by making up numbers. I remember watching that show on TV and wondering how he got away with that.

[Wonder Why]

8. I stand by what I said. He got too much into polularizing science that, IMHO, he was trying to prove that other

planets existed with life that he used a bit of mumbo jumbo on his show using too much supposing.

[Wonder Why]

15. His book or his show. I'm referring to the latter where he did a lot of speculating but didn't make it clear when he did

so resulting in people thinking he was presenting fact. I knew his numbers were made up based on what he said on the show and how he said it, but I never heard him clarify that which means it was falsely presented. I watched all his shows when originally aired and used to complain to my uncle, a university professor of Chemistry and Astronomy.

[Woodwizard]

6. If I remember correctly.

He put theoretical numbers of how many suns would have planets, we did not have the technology at the time to know for certain to detect planets. His numbers were actually probably lower than what we now know.

But it is over 40 years since I watched it.

[Wonder Why]

7. That's right and that's not science. It was BS. Science uses proofs for facts, not invented numbers.

And it's not a matter of voting by scientists that determine the facts. That's why the Big Bang is referred to as a theory (unless it has been proven to be true since I last checked).

As to intelligent life, we still have only one planet to use as a reference and you can't make calculations as to how many other planets also have intelligent life based on a count of one. Even now.

[NNadir]

9. Good science often, and perhaps most of the time, originates from speculation.

It is true that if speculation is based on math, extending even down to the crude back of the envelop level, it's generally more worthy of pursuit than if it merely springs from, say, wishful thinking, but without imagination there is no science.

I was never a giant Carl Sagan fan, but I do note that as a result of his advocacy for space exploration, particularly the useful kind involving robotic probes, we are collecting real data about the frequency of planetary systems, extending even down to some, if limited, information about their chemistry.

I often speculate that the origins of life are astrophysical since radiation/matter interactions possibly explain chemical asymmetry. This is certainly not provable or disprovable with current technology, but I think it a worthy speculation, and I believe it does at least involve science.

[Woodwizard]

10. But he did not call it science.

He stated it was just an educated guess not fact.

[Warpy]

13. A bigger problem than not liking what you saw on a TV show

is reducing a scientist's entire body of work to what you saw on that show.

That TV show was watered down so that people with little understanding of current scientific understanding could digest it in hour long segments once a week. Also, it was the understanding of what we knew 50 years ago, so we've moved on considerably.

It was slightly dated when it ran, and PBS has repeated it far beyond it's "best by" date, which is why there is so much criticism of Sagan, especially by the young.

It was what it was, opening minds to possibilities when it was fresh and new, both naive and shopworn in current context.

[NNadir]

11. I was never a big Sagan fan, but I do like his statements of logical fallacies better than many others I read.

Hence I bookmarked it.