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Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

We start out by acknowledging that we cannot know with certainty. That is always Step One in science -- any science -- biological, atmospheric, physical.

Pointing it out doesn't make you edgy, it just makes you a PITA. You're still on Step One while we are working on the implications of "suppose x:y:z", having ruled out "x:w" sometime back, and "x:y:v" more recently.

Could it be "a:b:c", instead? Maybe, but that would require a to overcome all the problems x satisfied, lo those many years ago, before we embarked on y and z.

Call back when z and all its other alternatives, and the other possibilities given x, have been ruled out. Unless of course you have good evidence calling x in question, that nonetheless accounts for its apparent successes.

Reflexive skepticism and gullibility are two sides of the same plug nickel.

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This sounds like enthuastic and vigorous excuses for the fact that these theories are not falsifiable and even worse than phlogiston and luminiferous ether theories. Why such a full throated defense of them? I think because you want to get as far away from creationism as possible, as quickly as possible. “We are working on it! Shh!! One day I am confident we will know!”

No. I start out confident that we will never know, but can only surmise based on available evidence, and continue seeking further evidence. Further evidence can require revisiting choices -- even all the way back to the beginning, although that would need to be pretty big evidence.

The only alternative is the familiar, and very popular, self-deception; and its familiar companion, deception.

Well, Dawkins and other prominent promoters of modern evolutionary synthesis usually say the opposite: we are working on it, they say, and we BELIEVE one day we will know the answers to what right now we don’t!

They even derisively call any religious explanation a “god of the gaps” argument.

Richard Feynman says scientists are responsible to avoid self deception. Being able to admit your just-so story is currently unfalsfiable and is actually more similar to a fifth grade writing assignment than to science, is part of that responsibility.

I don't answer for Dawkins.

The difference between scientists and you is the difference between real work and hot air.

Go actually do something. Something hard, that takes real understanding, real work, and trial and error, failure and trying something else until you get somewhere no one has ever been. Something that involves more than talk.

Please don't cross into personal attack no matter how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We've had to ask you this before. We eventually ban accounts that do this, and your comments in this thread were consistently more flamewarrish and aggressive than anyone else's (that I saw). That's not cool. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules from now on?

Sure thing.

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