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Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:55 am
by teo123
I used to have a bit of desire to learn more about physics. However, by showing just how arrogant people who have studied physics can become because of that, you've killed that desire in me.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 4:55 am
by brimstoneSalad
teo123 wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:55 am I used to have a bit of desire to learn more about physics. However, by showing just how arrogant people who have studied physics can become because of that, you've killed that desire in me.
I didn't realize a whole year had gone by, that was so quick! :roll:
I thought you could manage the honor system.

You're forum-wide banned for three days teo. Don't post in this thread again when your ban is over for one year. Particularly something so petulant and provocative. You're clearly trying to start a fight in a conversation thread you've been banned from. If you are against learning a hard science then you'll never really be able to understand the difference, and I don't think there's anything less intellectually honest than that. If you choose to remain ignorant so you can retain your delusions then that is you prerogative, but it disqualifies you from engaging in honest discussion on the subject, and as such if you don't change your tune about being anti-physics by next year I think you'd better stay off this topic for good.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2019 8:48 am
by teo123
brimstoneSalad wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 4:55 am
teo123 wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:55 am I used to have a bit of desire to learn more about physics. However, by showing just how arrogant people who have studied physics can become because of that, you've killed that desire in me.
I didn't realize a whole year had gone by, that was so quick! :roll:
I thought you could manage the honor system.

You're forum-wide banned for three days teo. Don't post in this thread again when your ban is over for one year. Particularly something so petulant and provocative. You're clearly trying to start a fight in a conversation thread you've been banned from. If you are against learning a hard science then you'll never really be able to understand the difference, and I don't think there's anything less intellectually honest than that. If you choose to remain ignorant so you can retain your delusions then that is you prerogative, but it disqualifies you from engaging in honest discussion on the subject, and as such if you don't change your tune about being anti-physics by next year I think you'd better stay off this topic for good.
OK, I worded it wrongly. I didn't mean to say people shouldn't study physics if it interests them. I meant to say that many people, who know some physics (and my guess is not actually much of it), become arrogant because of that, and think that they are qualified to talk about topics not really related to physics, yet alone that part of physics which they know about (physics is a really broad term). I don't think I need to give you examples. And I suppose you might be slightly affected by that. If you suggest the reason linguists agree that Finnish and Samoyed languages are remotely related is because of genetic evidence, that shows you don't really understand how historical linguistics works, and are making uninformed guesses based on your knowledge of natural sciences. Genetic evidence plays little to no role in linguistics, and that's for a very good reason.
The same goes for philosophy, people who have studied a bit of philosophy often think studying philosophy somehow gives them qualifications to talk about how science works, and even contradict what actual scientists say about matters of science. Particularly, I am thinking of my father, who studied philosophy and history, and who thinks that the idea that people in the early 20th century often got TBC because they didn't eat enough meat so they lacked vitamin D, who thinks that that idea is scientifically valid. And who has, although he claims he has studied philosophy of science, never heard of the term p-value. And who doesn't understand probability theory at all, he doesn't even know what "factorial" means.

Anyway, I still haven't managed to publish my paper about applying computational linguistics to the names of places in Croatia. I don't know what to comment, it seems to me that there is indeed some publication bias in the field of Croatian toponyms. I mean, the paper I am trying to publish is certainly of higher quality than the papers I've already published. But, the ones I've already published generally agree with the mainstream science of the field. Now that I have written a paper that shows a lot more knowledge of the field, and that openly disagrees with a lot of that "knowledge", now I have trouble publishing my paper. I mean, I am not even sure if that's a towards-mainstream bias. It was easy for me to publish a paper in which I claimed that "surduk" (a regional Croatian word for "stream") comes from an unattested Late Latin word for "bridge", meaning literally "that which leads over", which is obviously wrong and which disagrees with the mainstream science (mainstream science claims it comes from a Turkic language, though, as far as I can see, that also isn't based on evidence). In fact, it seems to me it's a bias against trying to use computational linguistics in the field of Croatian placenames. Which is rather odd, because phonetics and syntax use computer models extensively. But, when you try to publish a paper in which you apply the basics of computational linguistics to the names of places in Croatia, instead of using biased naked human pattern-recognition, your paper will again and again be rejected as "unclear". I mean, I am studying computer science, and I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to editing that paper. And, put it bluntly, I see no reason to think it would actually be unclear to somebody who knows what they are talking about. I still hope it will eventually get published. I don't know if that happens in other sciences. I mean, in every science, including in mathematics, there are journals that publish whatever gibberish people write for it, but this is not the same thing. I can only hope Nina Teicholz isn't right when she suggests that's what's going on in the field of nutritional science, that there is a strong bias against controlled experiments and towards old-fashioned observational studies.

Anyway, I've recently written a seminar about implementing QuickSort in my own programming language, about measuring how good my compiler is at optimizing compared to free C compilers (not very good), and, most importantly, about trying to predict how many comparisons QuickSort will do based on the known number of elements in the array and the known sortedness of the array. Would you then call that hard science? I was doing controlled experiments and measurements, and I plotted those measurements onto graphs, however, I wasn't actually calculating p-values, I used informal methods (as is seen on the graph...). The most advanced mathematics I appealed to was basic calculus (determining the signs of the derivatives from the graph).

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2019 9:24 am
by Red
@teo123 I'm not sure about your perception of time, but it still hasn't been one year.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2019 10:08 am
by teo123
Red wrote:@teo123 I'm not sure about your perception of time, but it still hasn't been one year.
How much has actually passed? I don't know about you, but I only vaguely remember what we were talking about. If much more time passes, I won't remember what we were talking about at all.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2019 11:42 pm
by Red
teo123 wrote: Wed Dec 25, 2019 10:08 am
Red wrote:@teo123 I'm not sure about your perception of time, but it still hasn't been one year.
How much has actually passed?
Stop playing stupid (although with you it's nigh on impossible to tell). I don't believe you are that lazy that you can't go back one page just to check the fucking date.
teo123 wrote: Wed Dec 25, 2019 10:08 amI don't know about you, but I only vaguely remember what we were talking about. If much more time passes, I won't remember what we were talking about at all.
Oh yeah, I forgot that posts disappear after a while, meaning we can't know what they were about.

Come on Teo, are you really acting like we're so dumb we'll take your word that you just forgot, and won't/can't ever go back and check what the thread was about? Not happening pal. We might just have to get the ban hammer out.

What I am fairly confident in is that you're just posting here to be provocative so as to get a response from brimstone, and just so you can boast about your academic "accomplishments." And about that; I don't know if you've ever been told this, so I'll tell you now; No one fucking cares. No one is impressed or is interested in hearing this trash. If you were doing research in a Western Country in a field that more people knew about, were interested in, or saw more value in, then we'd possibly care. But it isn't.

Teo, I see potential in you, but your brain is clouded by such levels of arrogance, ignorance, and possibly boredom. You have to acknowledge that you aren't one of the smartest people on Earth, and almost definitely never will be, and that's OK; sometimes, just being intelligent is quite enough. I understand that accepting the fact that many people are simply better than you is a tough pill to swallow (and it's even harder when it's in a field you're passionate about), I can relate. I've learned however, that once you accept the fact that you aren't one of the smartest people ever, it feels as though so much weight gets lifted off your shoulders; Now, you are no longer burdened by such a high standard, and you can be left to your own devices doing the best you can, with the abilities and resources that you do have. I think that's all that really matters.

I made that quick, so I hope that got the point across. Don't respond to me.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2020 12:16 pm
by Not The Real JReg
@teo123 It still hasn't been one year.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2020 2:52 pm
by Red
Thank you JReg.
Teo, I am deleting your post until one year has passed.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:03 am
by teo123
One of the things that can't be stressed enough when discussing hard sciences versus soft sciences is that there is a huge gap between how outsiders (including I guess philosophers) think various sciences work and how they actually work.
Before I started to seriously study computer science, I used to think it was a lot harder science than I now perceive it to be. Similarly, before I started seriously studying linguistics, I used to perceive it as a lot softer science than I now perceive it to be.
Before studying how compilers work, I used to think there is something much more magical, I can't think of a better word, in them, than there actually is. I used to think that compilers, except perhaps assembly language compilers, need to understand the code in order to be able to compile it. In other words, that if some program can compile a code, that same program can also easily interpret it. But now I see that's not the case. I've made a simple programming language, called AEC, and a compiler for it, and here is an example program in it:

Code: Select all

n:=20
i:=0
While i<n | i=n
	If i=0
		fib(i):=0
	ElseIf i=1
		fib(i):=1
	Else
		fib(i):=fib(i-1)+fib(i-2)
	EndIf
	i:=i+1
EndWhile
fib(n) ;Store the n-th Fibonacci number into "result".
It's embedded into the new version of SimpleCalculator, you have to run the JAR file, click "Compile Expression to Assembly", then click "Open Advanced Version", and then click "Convert AEC to Assembly". And please install Java 11 (which I used to develop the app) or newer, there is some weird quirk in Java 8 (which I guess is the most popular version on Windows PC-es these days) preventing the app from compiling multi-line expressions, although it can compile single-line ones, I have no interest in finding out what's going on there.
The compiler I've made can translate that program into assembly language line by line, but that doesn't enable it to interpret that code, it has no way of telling what the "result" of that code will be. And the math I had to use in programming that compiler is all high-school math. The compiler doesn't understand how the processor computes the sine and cosine or the arcus tangent (using basic calculus). I used to think it wouldn't be very hard to make a compiler that will translate arithmetic expressions into BrainFuck (a Turing Complete but very difficult to use language), since a compiler can determine how to translate mathematical operations to an assembly of a new platform if it knows the specifications of that platform. It turns out, nothing could be further away from the truth.
As for linguistics, well, I used to think linguistics is what's taught in our Croatian Language classes, which is rather far from the truth.

Re: Soft Sciences Vs. Hard Sciences

Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:27 am
by Not The Real JReg
@teo123 It still hasn't been one year.