The Truth about the Starting Strength Method

[Matthew_888]

I agree with Sullivan about the verb "to be" and the likes... "Exist" and these kind of legacy words forbid us to think clearly.
"We see the world as we are." (quote from somewhere in the Talmud if I recall correctly)
Hard to think about the color "blue" if you do not have a word for it... a few languages do not.

Anyway, misunderstanding here:

'Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.' cannot lead you very far... it does not tell you what to do.

Given the context, I am saying that defining science as 'the belief in the ignorance of experts' is inferior to defining science as 'the process of going up from experiments to models and down from models to experiments'
(and yes, you use 'X is blablabla' to introduce a definition... else you say it's incomplete. An implicit definition does not make sense.)
Here the complete definition of science that works best as far as I can tell at least:

Science is the process of going up from experiments to models and down from models to experiments.

It is superior to the other because it is operational: it tells you what science does, it tells you what you should do to do science: "going up from experiments to models and down from models to experiments".

ALL science defined in one line. Did not find better than this.

In other words: experiments -> data points, you fit as good as you can the data points by a model. You test the model (make a prediction) on new experiments and you repeat.

ALL models are fictions. ALL OF THEM. A model is what you think the world is, a reflection of the world in one's mind. I understand that the world does not fit in my monkey brain.

Tens of thousands of years of thinking to finally, about 400 years ago, arrive to this point... anyway, Fisher does a great job on the experimental part (The Design of Experiments)

Fisher was an asshole, but a good one.

Anyway, since God invited himself to the party let's not stop here.
Let's control our temper and really care about one an other.
'You shall love your neighbor as yourself' (Matthew 22:39).

There is an interesting idea to ponder: orthogenesis.
Ever wonder how hard it is to win the lottery?
Why crocodiles did not evolve but humans actually won the genetics lottery for millions of years for millions of times?

Digressing again... it's going to scare Sam McLeod again...

[Eric K]

I guess the desire to test ideas comes from God? Is that what this means?

No, it's not what that means.

Why do you and Erik want science to tell you what to do??? Again, what the hell are you talking about?

I'm not sure why you think I want science to "tell me what to do." I thought one of the points of this thread was to distinguish science from pseudoscience and religion. Science is a process of investigating the universe and distinguishing the accuracy of competing ideas in predicting future outcomes. That's it. How can that tell you what to do with that information? At best, you can use it to estimate the outcomes of different courses of action, but which outcome do you want?

[George Christiansen]

I'm confused. Despite all the facts, we still have Intelligent Designers. Please clarify your point here.

Or catastrophic climate change deniers? Or sociology and women's studies?

1-Repeatable experiments can demonstrate facts.

2-People are not rational. That is not the only or even necessarily the driving means by which they formulate theories or make decisions. Putting on a lab coat doesn't change this. Another guy putting on a lab coat to check your work is not somehow going to be more likely to be driven by being rational either.

Oddly enough, science totally supports this. Oddly enough the vox day quote points to this as well.

3-We get theories from adding the previous two things.

4-The influence of the second thing is often greater than the first because we cannot find anyone other than humans to do science...and they are not rational.

Why do you and Erik want science to tell you what to do???

Flowers? A nice box of chocolates?

I have no idea what Erik wants from science.

I am getting pretty much what I want from science. I'd certainly like a lot more humility and less religious zeal from certain scientists, but I'd cast that net a lot wider than just scientists.

Kinda the same thing your article and the quote is talking about: people to stop conflating something as entirely trustworthy, testable, and applicable as engineering with theories like catastrophic global warming.

Again, what the hell are you talking about?

I already addressed that you had taken my previous comment out of context. Did you go back and read it in context? I think it is fairly self explanatory as an answer to the claim that science can or should tell us what to do.

Hopefully the other stuff is clear from above.

[George Christiansen]

Facts are secret?

Facts. Didn't say anything about secrets or people hiding them.

Theories compete, some win.

Of course.

Are you assuming the best ones always win? How is this decided? Consensus?

The Demon Possession Theory of Disease has been largely supplanted by the germs explanation. The germ guys were not hiding the facts.

Is this supposed to be some sort of attempt to paint me as some religious nut? That would be rather ironic.

Major parts of Newtonian physics has been supplanted by quantum physics and the string theory guys are possibly going to supplant that. The original theory that evolution works from simple to complex has been supplanted.

"The first theory was wrong , but new one....this one....is the ticket!"

Being skeptical of scientific theories doesn't make you anti-science. It may very well just put you ahead of the curve.

I am skeptical of everything, including my skepticism. I am not claiming that that makes me ahead of the curve, but it doesn't make me anti-science...especially considering the facts found by science justify my skepticism.

[Bestafter60]

The last three pages notwithstanding, isn't this the point of the article:

"No other program in existence works as effectively and as efficiently, every time it is correctly applied, without exception.

And it’s time we said so."
?

[Jonathon Sullivan]

Major parts of Newtonian physics has been supplanted by quantum physics and the string theory guys are possibly going to supplant that. The original theory that evolution works from simple to complex has been supplanted.

"The first theory was wrong , but new one....this one....is the ticket!

(Emphasis added)

Yes, this is the tried-and-true approach to libeling science: It's always wrong. They're always changing their tune!

But it is interesting to note that in the examples you provide, the original theories are not actually "wrong"....they're incomplete. The progress of science (when did that become a loaded phrase, FFS?) did its job. Einstein didn't make gravitation go away, you know. He just gave us a deeper, more complete and more predictive understanding of what gravitation is. As to evolution, our understanding of its underlying mechanisms continues to...well, evolve. But evolutionary theory has never ceased to be a linchpin of modern biology.

Except in Kansas, where it's been "supplanted."

[tallison]

The article was well written and bracing. The bit about science v engineering muddies rather than sheds light on the main, quite strong claims being put forward in the rest of the piece. Jonathan Sullivan raises the quality of the discussion on this board to an extent that is unique in my experience of ongoing public online communication on *any* subject.

[stef]

The bit about science v engineering muddies rather than sheds light on the main, quite strong claims being put forward in the rest of the piece.

I disagree. It highlights the problems that arise from a confusion of science with truth, problems that are given strength by the conflating of "peer review" with validation of published work. Peer review does not do this.

Instead we have mountains of publications containing studies of varying quality, with the unprocessed data nearly always unavailable, and the methods incomplete enough that replication - testing - is very difficult to undertake. When we wade into this mess, to quote Sullivan,

"We should all be prepared for an immersion into the ugly reality that is Rippetoe’s Law: 95% of the shit that goes on everywhere is fucked up. This unfortunate mandate applies doubly to biomedical research in general and strength research in particular. Anybody who has to wade through biomedical literature looking for valuable knowledge knows that it’s comparable to looking for pearls in an outhouse bucket."

Taking things out of the artificial confines of the lab has the advantage of having the testing built into the process. You get called on your mistakes much faster, and don't get credit just for pushing something into print.

[George Christiansen]

Yes, this is the tried-and-true approach to libeling science: It's always wrong. They're always changing their tune!

Please point out the place where I said anything like "It's always wrong. They're always changing their tune!".

I can't tell if you're being a zealot, and asshole, or both, but pointing out particular contradictions, flaws, or whatever isn't the the same thing as saying something is altogether worthless. By the standard you're using on me, you're a commie because your criticisms of market driven solutions in healthcare.

My "The first theory was wrong , but new one....this one....is the ticket!" comment isn't what science claims, but it is what plenty of those in the public discourse of it, including many scientists themselve, are saying.

But it is interesting to note that in the examples you provide, the original theories are not actually "wrong"....they're incomplete. The progress of science (when did that become a loaded phrase, FFS?) did its job. Einstein didn't make gravitation go away, you know. He just gave us a deeper, more complete and more predictive understanding of what gravitation is. As to evolution, our understanding of its underlying mechanisms continues to...well, evolve. But evolutionary theory has never ceased to be a linchpin of modern biology.

Bullshit. The theories were not just incomplete. There were genuine errors that were supposedly corrected and then the theories were adjusted with the things believed to be errors either removed or corrected.

It was accepted as fact that everything evolved from simple to complex, but that has been show to not be the case. They didn't just add new information on top of the theory they had, they changed the theory.

My understanding beyond basic physics is fairly limited, so I cannot point, off the top of my head, to the particular issues in it's development thus far, but the people I know who have a better grasp than me in this field talk in terms of Newton and Einstein being wrong about particular things, not just having an incomplete knowledge.

The way science progresses is why everyone should and needs to be somewhat skeptical of the theories even if they trust the data/facts that currently seem to support that theory. Without it there is no more development only some kind of religious orthodoxy, just like what we have right now in much of the public discourse of scince right now.

Except in Kansas, where it's been "supplanted."

That would probably be Texas, considering that was Rip's choice of words.

[Mark Rippetoe]

It was accepted as fact that everything evolved from simple to complex, but that has been show to not be the case. They didn't just add new information on top of the theory they had, they changed the theory.

This was a function of cultural bias influencing the development of the theory. And once again, which process generated the revision, science or non-science? A "theory" is an explanation for a set of observed facts. As new facts accumulate, the explanation usually changes. It would be surprising if it didn't. An accumulative process does not always appear to be superficially additive. For example, electric cars are an automotive development.

And as to Sully's dated Kansas reference, from Wikipedia:

On February 13, 2007, the Board approved a new curriculum which removed any reference to intelligent design as part of science. In the words of Bill Wagnon, the Board chairman, "Today the Kansas Board of Education returned its curriculum standards to mainstream science."[38] The new curriculum, as well as a document outlining the differences with the previous curriculum, has been posted on the Kansas State Department of Education's website.[39]

In June 2013, Kansas adopted the national Next Generation Science Standards, which teaches evolution as a fundamental principle of life sciences.[40]

As to your Texas reference:

In July 2011, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), which oversees the Texas Education Agency, did not approve anti-evolution instructional materials submitted by International Databases, LLC, while continuing to approve materials from mainstream publishers.[50]