You don't have to believe in anything to study science. That's because science doesn't care what you believe in, it is what it is.
this post was submitted on 30 May 2024
30 points (75.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
36457 readers
409 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Attempting to learn about science is more effective if you believe that one wiki entry will not make you an expert, there will always be someone who knows more than you, facts shift, and the unknown is part of it.
But either way, when you start, you just have to accept that something has a cause and effect.
It is what it is, that's the point I was trying to get across. People get held up on the why or how which is impossible to know without further studying because it's not always intuitive to our perceived everyday experience.
You know I didn't really mean a "belief" right? Just the ability to let your mind sink in an experience or knowledge without first grasping the full concept "like 'magic'".
Very wise and excellently articulated, AdamEatsAss.
Tough crowd for this one! I think I get it though - like magic in the sense there are unseen forces that do amazing things, but also like a wizard in the sense that if you study giant books, gather various artifacts and take the right steps in the right order you can harness the unseen forces.
stay away from theoretical physics then. lol it's all smoke and mirrors. and an occasional 2.
I kinda agree. Sure there's observable/measurable phenomena out there, but past a certain point it's like a toddler asking why? You just have to say "because that's the way it is:
Why did that apple hit me in the head? Because of gravity
Why does gravity make things fall? Objects of larger mass attract objects of smaller mass
Why do they do that? Well the more massive something is the more it warps space around it
Why do massive objects warp space around them? Well there's some theories that certain sub-atomic particles interact in a way that causes these forces
Why do those particles do that? Well that's just what they do
(yes, I know these are overly simplified)
Eventually you reach our furthest level of understanding and we just have to say "that's just what we have observed happening, we don't have a root cause or explanation yet." That bottom level is basically magic in our universe until we learn more about it
Oh, magic is real, alright. I love science, but am also not very smart. I left school at 16. But despite that I have continued to follow and learn to the best of my abilities. And there have been so many things over the last 40 years but anything with the word quantum in it looks like black magic to me.
Science requires that you do not simply start with a belief in something, quite the opposite in fact.
Sure, things that have been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt may become the foundation for further research, standing in the shoulders of giants and all, but if you are starting with a conclusion you are doing science wrong.
Magic has two common definitions: a trick which is designed to create the illusion that something supernatural has occurred, or an assertion that the supernatural does indeed exist with magic being the ‘evidence’.
As I am sure someone has said at some point, real magic is fake and fake magic is real.
Magic has nothing to do with science, even though someone once famously said that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
"kinda have to believe in real magic" a better terminology for the premise is "suspension of disbelief". I can't believe people are in here arguing about actual magic and not seeing the metaphorical aspect of the shower thought. If it's a conceptual barrier like which can happen with Autism then I apologize.
It’s not autism, it’s the word ‘real’ that threw me off. But I don’t know that suspension of disbelief is any better.
Belief is irrelevant, all that matters is what can be tested and demonstrated.
Also I didn’t realize that shower thoughts required metaphors.
I suppose shower thoughts are generally just half baked ideas, and science is magic is quite half baked, so I think we are good.
The first philosophical astonishment is that anything at all exists. When I was first learning mathematics I was astonished to see that x^2^ + y^2^ = 1 was the formula to create a circle : such a simple formula to create something so fundamental was astonishing to me.
Today I would say our capacity to be astonished is probably an important mechanism to help us stop and say to ourselves : "hey ! there is something important to learn here !"