Heck, 15 years ago, way back in 2009, Obama said, “During the second hundred days, I will learn to go off the teleprompter and Joe Biden will learn to stay on the teleprompter.”

The dude hasn’t been able to keep his words straight for a while…

But the timing is… very poor to say the least…

I think it might be a bit of a bold assumption that everyone who thinks Biden is too old to do an effective job and should step aside is a huge Trump supporter.

There are plenty of people who hate Trump with a passion that thinks Biden isn’t up to the task of winning this election.

I was gonna post this if you didn’t, lol.

I would think the bigger issue would be the permanent ceasefire.

I would think Israel doesn’t trust Hamas not to break it, and it complicates the question of, “how do we respond if Hamas kills a bunch of people.”

I think this theory of science is so prevalent in this thread because you have to adhere to it in order to dunk on Elon Musk.

I doubt most of these ardents would have taken this position in a random thread about sea cucumbers or something.

I like dunking on Musk as much as the next guy, but the amount of double-think people are willing to commit to to do it is always pretty off-putting to me.

It’s like every ArsTechnica article on SpaceX has people come out of the woodwork to say that their accomplishments are trash and not even worth reporting because of Elon, which, like, you have to be delusional if you don’t think SpaceX is absolutely killing it.

Believing in alchemy isn’t quite the slam dunk you think it is, since at the time we didn’t even know atoms existed, lol. It turns out that people who have massive gaps in the information available to them come to wrong conclusions sometimes, lol.

You’re just restating the position that I’ve already argued a ton elsewhere in the thread, so instead I’ll ask for a moment of introspection.

Do you believe you would have taken this stance if Elon Musk hadn’t taken the opposite one?

You are currently arguing that Isaac Newton wasn’t a scientist until that moment someone found his notebooks, at which point he magically became one. You’re arguing that none of the people who did the research on nuclear physics during WW2 that led to the development of the atomic bomb were scientists, since none of that research was intended for publication or peer review.

Would you have said Oppenheimer wasn’t a scientist outside of the context of this image we’re responding to?

At this point I just feel like I’m arguing against people who are knowingly taking a position they never would have taken if not to “own Elon Musk.” It’s the knee jerk reaction of “I can’t agree with that person I hate, so I’ve gotta argue the opposite.”

Which, look, I get the hate and like to see him dunked on as much as the next guy, but it’s the definition of arguing in bad faith if you don’t actually believe the thing you’re arguing for.

Peer review isn’t typically included in the list of steps to the scientific method. Or, if it is, it’s a coda, not part of the main steps.

Dictionary.com for example lists the commonly accepted steps, and then follows it up with “usually followed by peer review and publication.”

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/scientific-method

Note the “usually.”

It’s also worth noting that there is no real “formalized” or “official” scientific method. Just some agreed upon commonalities. Any dozen science books will give you a dozen different graphs of the steps, and no two will be the same.

Absolutely agreed with the sentiment. Collaboration is integral to most scientific endeavors. Especially in the modern era. I think we’re in the same page on that point.

But, like, if the person had asserted something like, “grilled cheese is only grilled cheese when you eat it with tomato soup,” and then Elon responded with, “that’s a dumb take, since you can totally have a good grilled cheese without tomato soup,” I don’t think it’s “totally owning him” to list off a ton of reasons why you believe any grilled cheese without tomato soup is an invalid grilled cheese.

Like, we can all agree that grilled cheese is best with tomato soup. That doesn’t change the fact that arbitrarily changing the definition of grilled cheese to be “only when paired with tomato soup,” is actually just kinda dumb.

Fair enough. I’ll engage, lol.

Would you say that Sir Isaac Newton was a scientist? His research was almost entirely solo and was of limited release until much later.

Stephen Hawking has no published reproducible experiments as far as I’m aware. Is he not a scientist?

Is someone conducting research into a scientific field a scientist, or are they required to publish something before they can claim that title?

Honestly, I find arguments over how words are defined kind of exhausting, so maybe we should just cut to the heart of the matter. None of the definitions of science I can find in any dictionary include the word collaboration. Do you think that that’s a failure of the dictionary? And even if you do, do you think people who are operating under the belief that the dictionary definition is correct are wrong for doing so?

I reread my post and I’m not sure what you took as aggressive? That I used the word delusional? I didn’t intend that to be harsh, but sorry if it came across that way.

But, in my experience, arguments over how words are defined are usually unproductive because language is inherently arbitrary, so I’m fine calling it here. I doubt we’d make any progress.

I hope life is treating you well and you have a pleasant evening.

Do you also assert that my other two examples aren’t science?

If so, why?

If not, then I feel like my point still stands and don’t feel strongly enough to argue semantics over this particular one.

Ultimately this is a fight over the definition of words, and I think 99.9% of people (and the dictionary) would define all my examples as science. If you want to split the hair of saying, “that wasn’t science, it was just scientific research,” have at it, but I’ll just call you a pedant, lol.

If you aren’t saying that “science isn’t science without collaboration,” can you give an example of something that is science without collaboration? I only ask because you state that’s not what you’re saying, but follow it up with what, to my attempt at reading comprehension, is you just restating the thing you said you aren’t saying.

And I would argue science done in secret can have enormous impacts beyond “simply profits.” The Manhattan Project for example. I think it would be absurd to say what was going on there was anything but science, but there was no collaboration with the greater scientific community or intent to share their findings.

And look, of course you can be a researcher without being a scientist. Historians are researchers but not scientists obviously. But when what you are researching is physics and natural sciences, you are a scientist. That’s what the word literally means. When your definition requires you to eliminate Sir Isaac Newton, maybe it’s your definition that’s wrong.

You say you see no problem with calling an apple a fruit when broadly speaking. Neither do I. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be absolutely delusional to insist that an apple wasn’t actually an apple.

Another great example.

So, first and foremost it is important to recognize we are having a definition argument. The crux of our disagreement is over the definition of “science,” specifically as it relates to the act of doing it.

Now, obviously anyone can claim that any word means anything they want. I can claim that the definition of “doing science” is making grilled cheese sandwiches. That doesn’t make it so.

So, as with all arguments over the definition of words, I find appealing to the dictionary a good place to start. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science Which, having read through all the possible definitions, does not seem to carry any connotation of mandatory collaboration.

Now, the dictionary is obviously not the be all and end all. Words have colloquial meanings that are sometimes not captured, or nuance can be lost in transcribing the straight meaning of the word. But I think that the onus is on you to justify why you believe that meaning is lost.

And note, what I’m not arguing is that science isn’t collaborative. Of course it is. There are huge benefits to collaboration, and it is very much the norm. But you have stated an absolute. “Science isn’t science without collaboration.” And that is the crux of our disagreement.

And as to why I wouldn’t just call it “research.” First, I see no reason to. By both my colloquial definition and the one in the dictionary (by my estimation), it is in fact science. But, more importantly, if we take your definition, you are relegating the likes of great scientists like Newton, Cavendish, Mendel, and Killing to the title of mere “researchers.” And I find the idea of calling any of those greats anything short of a scientist absurdly reductive.

What makes science a group activity by necessity?

Why is one person employing the scientific method to better understand the world around them “not doing science”?

Heck, I can think of a half dozen other examples of things that aren’t published and/or can’t be reproduced but would be considered science.

If I had an unpublished workbook of Albert Einstein, would I say the work in it “isn’t science”?

If I publish a book outlining a hypothesis about the origins of the Big Bang, is it not science because it doesn’t have any reproducible experiments?

Is any research that deadends in a uninteresting way that isn’t worthy of publication not science?

I like dunking on Elon as much as the next guy, but like, “only things that are published get the title of ‘science’” seems like a pretty indefensible take to me…

Fair. I’ll admit, I did start skimming at some point and you’re right, it’s pretty explicit in section 5 and I just didn’t see it.

It’s a wall of text though for sure. I probably would have skimmed it in the same way if I was looking to travel there, lol. Which is on me for sure, but I also wouldn’t expect the penalty for skimming the list and missing something to be ten grand out of my pocket, lol.

I can’t find the pork ban on the link you provided. The closest I saw was “Quarantine inspection of animals, plants and their derived products” which isn’t a prohibition of anything in particular, and the link to the relevant authority literally goes to a dead page.

I googled what not to bring into Taiwan, and this was the first link that came up: https://support.carousell.com/hc/en-us/articles/115008674167-List-of-Prohibited-Content-Taiwan

I can see pursuing that and not putting together that your lunch violates it. It has a big red text about animal product imports, but specifies that it’s about animals under quarantine, which makes it seem like more of a livestock restriction. Especially when it starts referencing legal codes instead of giving you any kind of meaningful explanation.

Combine that with the fact that the dude was Indonesian and routed through a Hong Kong airport, and I think it’s not wildly unreasonable that he would have missed the memo, even if he’d done his due diligence.

And I stand by that, even if he’d not done his due diligence, the punishment is excessive. This feels like more of a “we confiscate the offending material, slap you with a $500 fine, and send you on your way.”

It’s not like he was smuggling in livestock. He had the equivalent of a carnitas burrito from Chipotle in his bag.

The guy was from Indonesia and routed to Taiwan via Hong Kong. There’s a good chance there were no signs or announcements in a language he could understand.