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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Re: Bang! or whot?
Message-ID: <564@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Aug-85 11:29:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.564
Posted: Tue Aug  6 11:29:16 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Aug-85 02:10:33 EDT
References: <460@sri-arpa.ARPA>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 53
Summary: Fallacies aren't facts


In article <460@sri-arpa.ARPA> SLONG@USC-ISIE.ARPA writes:
>When it comes to the "What or Who" of our beginnings, it matters
>not what FACTS one has.  The difference is what one's
>philisophical or religious position is.  It is possible to argue
>the who side equally well as the what side using the same FACTS
>to support the apology. [...]
>
>The first involves the first manned flight to the moon.  Using
>the predictions of the age of the moon and earth and their time
>together, scientists predicted that Armstrong would step out into
>eight feet of moon dust.  He stepped into two inches of dust.
>Using this true answer and recalculating the figures, the age of
>the moon is approximately 8,000 years.

This is fallacious.  By one theory, the moon would indeed have been
covered with eight feet of dust.  By others, there would have been
no dust at all.  Still others predicted values in between, including
ones on the order of the actual result.  In fact, very few scientists
expected eight feet of dust; it would have been a bit surprising if
there had been.  The point is that we didn't know what we would find,
which is why we went there.

Let me emphasize that these various predictions were all made *before
the fact*.  You can come up with all sorts of explanations after the
fact, and if the result is unexpected, you have to; but those explanations
aren't worth much until predictions based on them turn out to be correct.
Lots of predictions, and even one solid counter-example kills the idea.

>  There was a published
>article some years ago which reported that there are almost
>exactly 24 hours "missing" from the sun's position.  Hmmm.  One
>can verify this by doing the calculations on a computer (the
>mathematical modeling you referred to).

In what sense are these hours "missing"?  This is certainly not an
accepted scientific fact.  What was this article, and where did it
appear?

I can do many calculations on a computer without doing any mathematical
modeling at all.

>The point of all this is that one can use facts to support
>variuos view points, [...]

The point of all this is that one can use fallacies to support various
view points.  Facts limit one a bit more.  (They don't limit one to a
*single* viewpoint, but they eliminate a great many of them.)

-------------------------

To the rest of the net: my apologies for taking up your time with this.
I submitted it in the (probably forlorn) hope of discouraging some of
the nonsense which has been appearing here lately.