Real Men Don’t Fit Curves

With the advent of cheap computing power and scientific software, much of the scientific pursuit of truth is mostly about “fitting the curve” rather than investigating what actually caused the curve.In the 1880, Johannes Rydberg a high school math teacher found the Rydberg formula which correctly imitated where the spectral lines occur in the spectra of various elements. It was pure numerology. He used the vast amount of experimentally observed accurate spectral line data, and just made a formula to fit the available data. He didn’t even know what caused the spectral lines.It took a Niels Bohr to actually derive the empirical Rydberg formula from his theoretical principles without relying on any experimental data.From what I know, most of the so-called scientists seem to be fitting curves and making empirical models for getting published. And in the paper, they “speculate” about what could be the underlying reality. I don’t think such scientists do any more work that a MATLAB programmer.

Second Life

I was reading about a new treatment that brings people back to life in some cases. You can read all about it somewhere else. What amazed me what the ex-widow of the ex-dead guy had to say:

Our grasp on life is so tenuous. It’s so fragile that it doesn’t really matter what you worry about tomorrow because you might not have it. You have to live as if you’re going to die tomorrow.

Death is still an intellectual concept for me. The closest I had got to death was when I was too drunk that I had to consciously keep breathing to ventilate me and my pulse got very low. It wasn’t a good feeling.

Evolution is not a story that scientists tell themselves

There is an enormous family of models belonging to the central underlying theory of life and biology; the underlying theory that is sometimes called neo-Darwinism, natural selection, or evolution. Some models in evolutionary theory are quantitative. The way in which DNA encodes proteins is redundant; two different DNA sequences can code for exactly the same protein. There are 4 DNA bases {ATCG} and 64 possible combinations of three DNA bases. But those 64 possible codons describe only 20 amino acids plus a stop code. Genetic drift ought therefore to produce non-functional changes in species genomes, through mutations which by chance become fixed in the gene pool. The accumulation rate of non-functional differences between the genomes of two species with a common ancestor, depends on such parameters as the number of generations elapsed and the intensity of selection at that genetic locus. That’s an example of a member of the family of evolutionary models that produces quantitative predictions. There are also disequilibrium allele frequencies under selection, stable equilibria for game-theoretical strategies, sex ratios, et cetera.This all comes under the heading of “fascinating words”. Unfortunately, there are certain religious factions that spread gross disinformation about evolutionary theory. So I emphasize that many models within evolutionary theory make quantitative predictions that are experimentally confirmed, and that such models are far more than sufficient to demonstrate that, e.g., humans and chimpanzees are related by a common ancestor. If you’ve been victimized by creationist disinformation – that is, if you’ve heard any suggestion that evolutionary theory is controversial or untestable or “just a theory” or non-rigorous or non-technical or in any wise not confirmed by an unimaginably huge mound of experimental evidence – I recommend reading the Talk.Origins FAQ and studying evolutionary biology with math.

The Twin Paradox

A pair of twins are usually born within a few minutes of each other. It is not unusual to find one individual of one such pair, who died in accident but the other of old age. I am sure it would not be unusual either, to find a pair in which one won a lottery but the other did not. It would be very easy to find twins with profoundly different lives and fates.

How will an astrologer explain this? Most astrologers, make their predictions based on the times of birth which are far from being accurate to the minute. And by their own admission, astrology works because of the influence of certain celestial bodies being at a certain region in the skies which wide enough to give similar fates to people who were born in the same time although separated by a few minutes.

When this paradox, proposed as challenge to astrologers, they will once again do what what every proponent of pseudo-science does: They will move the “goal post”. I bet they will conjecture a new criterion; something along the lines of how a few minutes can make a lot of difference. 

I’ve had proponents tell me that astrology does not work properly because the exact moment of conception is what matters. But when the “Twin Paradox” is posed to them, they are sure to make up another reason to counter it.

I strongly believe that a poor hypothesis needs to do fast footwork to avoid falsification – to maintain the appearance of a ‘fit’.