@DampeS8N Which layman?

I.e. that grew up with an evangelical background, or non-religious?

@StevenJeuris Before I respond, I talked at length about this in another room. You can find that here. We refined this idea somewhat here.

People seem to get hung up on the layman example. Substitute this: No one person is an expert at everything, the answer to finding which group (Evangelicals v Mainstream Science, or any other example) has the correct ideas must therefore not boil down to doing individual research because then everyone would have to be an expert in the related fields. Most people must necessarily place trust in others to be following the rules.

What I'm saying is that the more complex a system is and the more people are needed to verify it, the more likely it is for bias to skew the results. To change the conclusions from the data. Which is how ID folks and mainstream science can reach opposite conclusions. Especially if ID folks have their own journals, experts, schools, and peer-reviewed research... Which they do.

(Which also mainstream science does)

My question is, without doing original research, can one really know if they are on the correct side?

@DampeS8N I believe the main difference is how open to criticism you are.

Which the traditional scientific community holds in very high regard. The mindset to allow for something to be disproven.

I don't know about ID 'science', but I imagine they would be much less open to criticism due to their religious motives.

@StevenJeuris Depends on how that criticism is worded. Honest criticism seems to be alive within the circle itself. They may have different assumptions, but all knowledge is predicated on assumptions. Mainstream science has 3 assumptions.

There is a danger to conflate all ID folks into the same camp. Calling out the Ken Hams of the movement is about as bad as if they called out Bill Nye. There are popular communicators of ideas and there are real researchers and they rarely overlap.

@DampeS8N But I suppose the real researchers in that case follow mainstream science?

As in its main assumptions, and taking into account current prove against ID?

@StevenJeuris Because you and I are on the side of mainstream science, we would say that ID researchers aren't doing real research. But they would say the same about "Evolutionists." The data is vast enough that it is easy to cherrypick enough info to convince yourself of either position.

@DampeS8N Then what are the core assumptions of ID researchers?

And if, as I suspect, the mountain of evidence is too great for a single person to really assess properly, the potential is there for whole groups to read the same data and come to opposite conclusions.

@StevenJeuris That there is a God and that the Bible is his word. But they would probably not agree that these are assumed.

But a large number of scientists and mainstream science followers also don't know or understand that those three things are assumptions for science either. Most people think they can be proven. Or they think that because science has predictive value that it retroactively makes the assumption that nature is consistent proven.

The main thing with 'real research' is even if you cherry pick, and you build on top of uncertain facts as in competing plausible theories, if foundations get disproven, so will the built-upon theories. That doesn't make them not useful, ... but no longer valid.

Also, most ID folks are not young-earth-creationists. Their primary disagreement is over evolution being a satisfactory explanation for all biodiversity.

@DampeS8N I would argue real scientists are very much aware of that. More so, I would argue there is a reason those are the core assumptions of science.

Having those as building blocks allows for productive useful knowledge.

@StevenJeuris And I would argue that core ID scientists also are aware of their assumptions. We aren't comparing the core of science against all of ID.

Investigating cause leads to the ability to manipulate it. Consistency, ... its repeatable.

That's a poor comparison.

@StevenJeuris For as long as it does. Nature could decide to stop being consistent tomorrow. It is assumed that it has always and will always be consistent. That is an assumption.

'Their primary disagreement is over evolution being a satisfactory explanation for all biodiversity.' ... makes me wonder whether there isn't a similar disagreement in evolutionary sciences? Most likely there is?

And one that ID folks also make

@StevenJeuris There isn't. Evolution by natural selection is the theory that currently best fits the available data without proposing extraneous things. The only examples of disagreement of this I am aware of are the ID folks.

@DampeS8N Depending which field you are talking about ...

@StevenJeuris Can you name a field where this is not an assumption?

I mean ... if you look at quantum mechanics its whole building blocks are that it is a consistent ... probability.

But building theory and knowledge on the assumption that it is 'consistent', is what makes those theories and knowledge useful.

@StevenJeuris You admit in that statement that it is still consistent.

The probability doesn't change from day to day

Its what science allows it to do what it does.

@StevenJeuris I agree. But it is still assumed to be.

I think we are getting off track

@DampeS8N Ok, ... but do all biologists agree on concrete instantiations of natural selection for any given biological feature?

I know that, from the perspective of someone couched inside mainstream science that it appears to me that I can easily prove my position to myself. I am admitting my own assumptions.

The mechanism they agree on, perhaps (and I doubt it fully), but the mechanism does not provide a full immediate understanding of how that diversity came to be.

@StevenJeuris Mainstream biologists may not agree on minutia, but agree on common ancestry.

Biologists agree that humans have great great grandparents that were single cellular.

ID Biologists (as much as that term pains me) do not all agree on this point. Most do not.

My point is not to call ID valid. It is to state my own assumptions. That I am not a biologist nor a scientist in any related field and that therefore I must accept the evidence I am given.

That evidence was generated by others, and those others could be mistaken. I trust that they are not because I lack the tools to verify it for myself.

But I do indeed trust them, and they absolutely could be wrong.

And if I grew up in the other camp, I would have to say the exact same things if I were intellectually honest.

@DampeS8N Obviously.

What I am trying to point out is the way that 'evidence' came to be.

This is more of a hypothetical me

It's essential to make a difference between evidence established through the scientific method (even taking all its flaws in practice into account) and evidence which is built up from 'other' core assumptions.

This is the me who was born into the other camp that I wish to save.

I don't believe in science and its results per se ... I believe in the methodology.

The results could be wrong, ... and when disproven I'll gladly accept that. This is the essential difference.

It's more a core philosophical outlook on how to create knowledge than anything else.

And you can't equate that with 'the other camp'.

They are inherently different.

@StevenJeuris You'll accept your mistake and find a new theory that fits the data. But ID folks seem to do this too. They just continue to reach the opposite conclusion. They also can make the same claim of their group that we are of mainstream science. How is a layperson to know the difference?

@DampeS8N By 'being a scientist myself' you mean you put the effort into digging down to the roots of knowledge, following the entire path which lead to a certain conclusion, understand it to then see it is 'the true position'?

@StevenJeuris Both sides rightly claim to believe in this methodology. The methodology can go awry if all of the machinery of the method is flawed. In its original conception, science was more like the ID camp than like mainstream science. If science really corrected for this mistake, where did the ID folks come from? We must admit that any method can go astray, right?

@StevenJeuris Can anyone do that? Can someone look at the entire path and all the data? If you just look at the logic from the data, and the data was skewed, you'll reach the incorrect conclusion.

At some point you either collect the data yourself or trust others. (and science is predicated on the latter being better)

That is, the data will be better if 10 different people collect 1/10th of it, than if one person collects it all.

We are getting sidetracked yes, ... I think I understand the core thing you wanted to discuss better now though: "You'll accept your mistake and find a new theory that fits the data. But ID folks seem to do this too. They just continue to reach the opposite conclusion. They also can make the same claim of their group that we are of mainstream science. How is a layperson to know the difference?"

And it is even better if an 11th person interprets that data. And even better if 10 other people do seperatly.

Specifically "How is a layperson to know the difference?".

@StevenJeuris correct

It is a very interesting question ... I would think (and actually it is a side project I've been wanting to work on for a long time) this can be achieved by making it more transparent which prior knowledge presented knowledge is built on top of.

I think if an answer that is repeatable can be found for that, ID can be defeated and in turn any similar malformation of science can be defeated.

As you stated, ... it is not clear enough what the core conflicting assumptions are between any given track of science.

@StevenJeuris agreed

There is no point in arguing about specific knowledge built on top of other knowledge, if you fundamentally disagree on the building blocks.

@StevenJeuris agreed

Or if you've reached opposite conclusions from the same building blocks.

If I look at every specimen with the lens of ID, versus the lens of EbNS, I come to different conclusions. So no amount of examples can convince either person.

EBNS?

Evolution by Natural Selection.

Ah.

But there is one more point I'd like to make. A skeptic finds conspiracy theories to be implausible because of the number of people involved and how easy it would be for the conspiracy to fall apart. Evangelical Society exists and it is implausible for it to be conspiratorial in nature. Therefore, the people in it probably mostly believe what they are espousing. If all your peers believe a thing, it is human nature to believe it too. So a conspiracy to keep evolution down is not needed.

Swap ID and Mainstream science in that paragraph, now.

I didn't know/don't necessarily believe in a conspiracy to keep evolution down.

@StevenJeuris There isn't one. But ID folks often cite one among mainstream science.

To keep ID down

Again ... the main thing you miss by swapping mainstream science, and supposing it's the same thing is the very nature is different.

Mainstream science builds on top of philosophical ideas of getting a true understanding of the world. Not on 'fitting in' into current society.

Rather the opposite if you look at history ...

I think the nature of the ID movement is not as dissimilar to mainstream science as we want it to be. I think mainstream science could be taken down a similar rabbit hole over some other misconception.

It all started out exactly by highlighting the very thing you state, ... how can we know what we believe in is true?

@StevenJeuris Agreed

Questioning knowledge ... it's what science does.

Again. I'm not concerned with people who actually have the right knowledge. I'm concerned for the people who ride along. They don't have the tools to tell truth from fiction. They are the ones taken in by ID. It is those people I seek to help.

Anyway. It is lunch time. I gotta jet. :)

@DampeS8N Not only by ID, ... also by mainstream science.

In all regard they are the same, yes.

Interesting discussion ... pop in here more often. ;p Just ping me if you want to continue the chat.

Enjoy your lunch!