#scientific-inquiry — Public Fediverse posts

"Born to the manor" seems to rub people the wrong way but without people putting a lifetime into developing values around honorable, ethical service then all that remains of democracy is oligarchy and tribalism; all that remains of law is witch trials; all that remains of scientific inquiry is corporate flacks.

#ProfessionalEthics #RuleOfLaw #ScientificInquiry #InstitutionalIntegrity #AntiCorruption #EthicalService #DemocraticNorms #EliteCapture #PublicTrust #InstitutionalIntegrity #Oligarchy #DemocraticNorms #Expertise #InstitutionalFailure #ClimateScience #Lawfare

Is it aliens? Here's why that's the least important question about 3I/ATLAS.
https://atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug=is-it-aliens-heres-why-thats-the-least-important-question-about-3iatlas
"Beyond Aliens: Unveiling the Secrets of 3I/ATLAS"
#space #astronomy #interstellarobjects #scientificinquiry

Ah, the pinnacle of scientific inquiry: testing the cognitive prowess of radioactive bugs 🐞🧠! Because clearly, after a nuclear disaster, what the world really needs is a bunch of insect IQ tests to keep us entertained. #CNRS, your contribution to science is truly mind-blowing... literally. 🤯✨
https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/fukushima-insects-tested-for-cognition #scientificinquiry #radioactivebugs #cognitiveprowess #nuclearresearch #mindblowing #HackerNews #ngated

🎉 Ah, the pinnacle of scientific inquiry: studying inebriated humans while wrestling with the modern-day sorcery of #JavaScript and cookie settings 🍪🔮. Because nothing says cutting-edge #research like a browser error message. 🙄
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/09/03/how-to-study-people-who-are-very-drunk #scientificinquiry #inebriatedhumans #cookies #browsererrors #HackerNews #ngated

Problems are Places, Questions are Spaces

Last year, while regrouping myself and rebuilding my old curious ways, I had a thought. The common words “spaces” and “places” pass through our minds, fingers, and lips but they deserve a second thought. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the first one to consider this and the wealth of reading material helped me write We Need Homes in the Delta Quadrant. Spaces and places have been an enjoyable lens to look through.

Recently, through Agnes Callard’s Open Socrates, I was introduced to the Socratic concepts of questions and problems. Initially I thought of it as a newish way to look at things, but I’m converging toward the idea that problems are places and questions are spaces. A quick exploration below as to why.

Problems impede your quest and solving them makes them disappear. There are established ways of solving problems—recipes, algorithms, or rituals that nudge the obstacle aside so the original activity may continue unabated. Essentially, problems are tractable.

Places are tractable too as “an ordered worlds of meaning.” Place-making, like problem-solving, begins by drawing a boundary and then treating that encapsulation as a building black, whatever its inner workings. The moment you can stand somewhere and say “here” you have marked out a place; the moment you can name a difficulty and say “do this” you have packaged a problem.

The Socratic question, by contrast, is a quest. It is a hunt whose solution is unknown. Questions do not disappear when solved, instead they are additive and leave you with something, i.e. the solution. A real question insists on orientation before action: you must find north in the wilderness before plotting any march. And yet, along the path to an answer, you inevitably solve problems. Those problems are the markers that help you orient and keep you moving. A previous “solution” to a question can be used as a new place to further explore and prod at the question. In that sense, a question is like the horizon you constantly seek.

Spaces feel exactly like that horizon. Spaces are pure potential to be explored by the places that demarcate the space. Identity, orientation, and even memory of a space are created by and stored in the places that surround it. To explore a space you must create stable places around it

While the new way of thinking about Questions and Problems is great, I still prefer the lens of Spaces and Places. Q&P seem too narrow a set of lenses limited to the human mind. S&P expand that stage and allow us to think of more in that context. What I like even more is that spaces can also be places assuming we allow a boundary to be drawn around the fuzzy nature of a space. As a scientist, this feels a bit more satisfying because it allows you to explore and experiment even when the knowledge isn’t properly tied down by facts. 

#AgnesCallard #cognitiveFrameworks #conceptualMetaphors #curiosity #epistemology #knowledgeExploration #philosophy #placeTheory #placemaking #questionsAndProblems #scientificInquiry #socraticMethod #spaceAndPlace #systemsThinking #yiFuTuan

A great example of what seems to be the ever worsening uphill battle for scientists, scientific skeptics, and folks just trying to appreciate the wonder of our natural (not supernatural) world. - Local free range sun? - https://youtu.be/bhkcLOSkTP0?si=iM-sFr6ksz0QUHTt #ScientificSkepticism #ScienceLiteracy #CriticalThinking #ScientificInquiry #SGU #SkepticsGuide #SkepticsGuideToTheUniverse

✈️ Ah, the grand quest of discovering who first conjured the magical #myth of "equal transit-time"! 🤓 Because clearly, tracing the #origins of a #debunked theory is the pinnacle of scientific endeavors. 🧙‍♂️🔍
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/9931/where-did-the-false-equal-transit-time-explanation-of-lift-originate-from #equaltransittime #scientificinquiry #curiosity #HackerNews #ngated

@glyph
I hear you.

My favourite (perhaps less jarring?) example is when a court declares they have found someone guilty, and that their threshold of guilt is "on balance of odds".

I look at the lawyers and the witnesses and realise that none of them has studied actuarial or probability mathematics. I wouldn't even trust them to understand a bet on the horses. For a scientist to watch them is like observing a cargo cult. Worse, I am sure, is for a scientist to find themselves on the receiving end of such a court.

I would offer the meagre consolation that you can see the feedback loops that drive them to behave so, where they think themselves to have free will.

#cybernetics #actuarial #odds #maths #math #statistics #science #scientificInquiry #systemsArchitecture #justice #law #policing #cargoCult

🤖📈 Welcome to the world where thinking people are "cultists" and #online #trolling is now an official criterion in scientific inquiry. Apparently, if you're not being told to "kill yourself" by keyboard warriors, you're not questioning hard enough. 😅🔍
https://ewanmorrison.substack.com/p/the-tranhumanist-cult-test #cultistculture #scientificinquiry #keyboardwarriors #questioningtruth #digitalage #HackerNews #ngated

An "Isolation Chamber" could be defined as an Echo Chamber of One, where external forces impose limitations on exposure to new ideas, perspectives, and meaningful dialogue.

#Physics #EchoChamber #IsolationChamber #ScientificInquiry #ThinkForYourself #AcademicFreedom #IntellectualPrison #ChallengeTheNorm #CriticalThinking #OpenScience #BeyondTheEquations #IndependentResearch #BreakTheCycle #KnowledgeShouldBeFree #ScienceDebate #TheoreticalPhysics #OutOfTheBoxThinking #ScientificRevolution

@DrYohanJohn

#ScientificInquiry is the Immigration and Naturalization Service of All Kinds.