Lays mistaken idea of what they've been told (blame/remedy)

[Marshall]

In a math-type science one normally does not assume that the models are 100% correct. They are provisional and subject to improvement. And they have limited ranges of applicability---they stop giving meaningful numbers if you push them too far.

General Relativity (GR) is a good example. It was formulated in 1915 and as I recall by around 1920 Einstein had already explained why it must fail if applied to very small phenomena. Sorry I don't have an historical source for that. But this isn't special to GR! It's widely known that generally speaking ANY mathematical theory of the physical world fails if you try to go beyond the bounds of that theory's applicability--we live with that, and it's one of the motivations for constantly improving theory so it fits nature better and covers more extreme circumstances.

A competent science writer or lecturer will normally have some ritual reservations and qualifications that they slip in like:

"According to Einstein's General Relativity the whole of the observable universe at one time occupied a space no bigger than the nucleus of an hydrogen atom."

This does not mean that the statement is correct, it is simply a mathematical consequence of GR (which we know has limited applicability). GR does not apply in very high density situations.

Also it does not say that the whole universe at one time occupied some finite volume. The observable universe is not the same as the whole place. There is a huge difference. In the most commonly used model the volume is infinite now and also back then. It is only a finite piece of the universe that is said to have been small---the observable portion, basically the stuff we have already gotten light from and therefore can say we see. A lazy listener may not realize that it is the observable chunk of the universe that is being talked about, not the whole thing.

Also the quoted statement does not say that the whole of the observable universe at one time occupied a point. A point has no volume. The nucleus of a hydrogen atom is, after all, not a point :-D

Now what's the topic here? What I've been hearing recently is sounding more and more like WHINING and destructive bickering. A tendency to argue (uselessly I think) about WHO IS TO BLAME for public misunderstanding.

Do we badmouth God for making the physical universe too hard for ordinary folks to understand? Heh heh.
Do we badmouth the Lazy Lecturer who failed to emphasize the limitations of the models he was describing?
Do we badmouth the Lazy Listener who did not HEAR the reservations, like "according to GR, the observable..."

And there are even Fundie websites which may intentionally misrepresent the message professional scientists are trying to get across, which quote scientists out of context omitting qualifiers, which have a hostile agenda: namely to convince people that the scientific picture of the world is absurd, incomprehensible, cannot make sense to ordinary folks. These sources may have a positive interest in promoting mistaken conceptions. Discourage seekers and bring them back to Genesis.

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And then you can say why don't we just stop the pissing contest about who is to blame and experiment to see what constructive steps could be taken to REMEDY the situation. For some of us this is an interesting hypothetical problem---I don't write books or give public lectures. I've taught some but am retired now. So I'd basically like to know how the problem MIGHT be remedied. Others of us might teach or write books and give public lectures. So basically they are in the front line facing this problem of public misconceptions and it's interesting to watch them coping. Communicators must constantly adapt. I think I learn something from watching this process of adaptation.

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And then there's the problem of GOOD FAITH. When someone comes and starts asking questions and engaging in discussion, I find myself trying to be sensitive to their "temperature". Does this person have real curiosity. Do they really want to learn? Or are they just trying to tear down the research community, impute absurdity incomprehensibility, misrepresent findings, etc. Is this a warm receptive seeking mind, or is it a cold opinionated possibly hostile mind? And I find myself constantly revising my perceptions of people. But that's more of a subjective personal footnote, not something I want to discuss in this thread.

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What I'd like to do in this thread, if anybody else is interested and wants to comment/discuss, is try to arrive at a NO-FAULT description of the problem from the average person's perspective. Where have scientists failed most miserably to communicate, and the public most miserably suffered from a lack of attention? What, if anything, can be done to remedy?

Mathematical sciences are a special case because understanding IS NOT VERBAL. So every verbal popularization has to be using analogies and graphic illustrations to "translate" understanding. Often the math is ridiculously simple (like the Friedmann equation used in cosmology) or I guess beautifully simple would be a better way to say it. And yet one can trip on ones own shoelaces and make it seem bewildering when one tries to explain. You know the "expansion of the universe" business---that's the equation Alex Friedmann devised in 1925.

Should the preface of every verbal interpretation book carry a WARNING LABEL that says mathematical models can be beautifully accurate to like 6 decimals where they apply and still go haywire if pushed beyond their applicable range?

That's the working conditions, and anybody who rejects math models because they are provisional with limited range, anyone who want the complete ANSWER right away and can't live with "I don't know". Well the person is a lost cause and should just leave the lecture hall or shut the book. Approximation, reservation, and uncertainty is what we live with.

That's one idea of a "remedy"---the warning label remedy. Maybe you can think of other kinds of remedies. Presumably if the problem can be solved it will be by a whole spectrum of remedies.

Also my statement of the problem may be wrong! I'd like to hear other people's description of the science communication glitch, if there is one.

[Marshall]

OK so with that preamble, let's take a specific case. What are we to make of this:

This intrigues me that we have two worlds opposing each other. The common accepted scenario of the BB and a single point, that we assumed, is no longer the case in more informed circles. So how does the quantum world describe the eventual look or shape of that point that we regressed to? Has it got all the mass of the universe confined in one place. You, hopefully, must admit from the lay persons perspective its becoming more and more like Alice in wonderland.

The link to this post is:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16524&p=162585#p162553
If you quote other people please consider giving the link to the post, so one can quickly find context and see what was being discussed. The little red icon at the upper left, by the title of the post, has the URL.

Here's another related post:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=16524&p=162585#p162585

Let me be entirely clear...

Nobody since about 1925 has believed in the singularity...

...This is the beauty of science. When we don't know, we say "we don't know." There are many ideas, all competing. The ideas held by the pros are consistent with data. (After all, if they weren't consistent with data, the pros wouldn't hold them.)

Things might look like Alice in Wonderland to the lay audience. (They look odd to us pros as well.) But nobody said that things had to be intuitive. Relativity and quantum mechanics are damned weird and yet they're true.

Regarding the beginning of the universe, you should put it in "the pros have some cool ideas and they're working on it" category.

Im sorry lincoln but you are sending mixed messages, that i am unable to dispute in science only in logic. logically the mass of the universe was indicated to be located in a very small area of which I was told was a singularity..... If it was not the accepted vision of a singularity what in hell was it?

So here's the problem! Lincoln is leveling with Xris (whose handle may signify Christian and who may have been getting his ideas of modern Cosmology from Christian websites, but we don't know, he doesn't say.)

Whoever said "the mass of the universe was indicated to be located in a very small area"?

That statement is normally qualified. It is about the observable chunk of the universe and it is the result you get using Einstein 1915 GR equations. We already know GR is not applicable. Einstein himself pointed out very early on, by a thought experiment using a hydrogen atom, that it must fail because of quantum reasons. Current research is aimed at making quantum corrections in the GR picture.

If Xris had been paying attention, he would not be saying that L. gives mixed messages. Earlier in the thread L. lays out the business very clearly. A "singularity" is a breakdown of a theory, where a theory does not apply, and so on.

"which I was told was a singularity..... If it was not the accepted vision of a singularity what in hell was it?"

Traditional meaning of "singularity" going back to I guess 18th or 19th century is the breakdown of a model, usually some kind of blowup where it starts giving infinities or meaningless numbers. Physicists make it their business to fix singularities by improving theories so they don't blow up. Many historical examples.

So if you were told there was a singularity, you were being told that GR breaks down back where the density gets very high. Singularity means breakdown.

The thing to ask is then "what progress has been made towards devising models which eliminate the singularity?" But Xris does not ask this.

Instead, Xris starts accusing L. of "mixed messages" and blaming L. (it looks like) for some earlier misconception he got somewhere ("I was told..."). Blame is being thrown around. We aren't told what the source is.

And he starts talking with rude impatience like "where the hell was it?" What can we learn from this? Is it just an act? Is Xris being intentionally dense? Disingenuous? L. has not given any mixed messages. AFAICS he has consistently leveled. What he says about the scientific picture of the universe does not correspond to what you might read at a Fundie website or get from Discovery Channel garbage broadcast.

Or maybe it is not Xris fault! Maybe he has been misinformed by some unprincipled science popularizer who is more interested in selling books than in honest presentation.

Or maybe Xris was the victim of TV soundbites---short quotes taken out of context, of famous scientists talking, accompanied by confusing pictures of things exploding---unscrupulous TV directors getting at people's subconscious. Leaving the audience with vague impressions of what they have been told.
A kind of dumbdown "music video" pseudoscience version of real science.

Sorry Xris for taking you as an example. You are wellspoken and articulate compared with many who say similar things and give a similar impression---so an excellent exemplar.

The puzzle is one does not know whether to think of you as a VICTIM of bad communication. Or as putting on an anti-science act. The accusation of L. giving "mixed messages" is the most potentially tell-tale, because you are clearly intelligent and must realize that L.'s message has not been mixed. It has been consistent but different from what you may have gotten from the POP-SCI SLOPS. Hawking books. Michio Kaku, Discovery Channel, History Channel, whatever. Folks here are not responsible for what producers who are anxious to sell books or raise ratings decide to put together.

Or have I missed something? Was there really some internal inconsistency in what Lincoln said? Something I missed, with my sometimes tired eyes?

[ronjanec]

Marshall,

I wanted to try to respond to your original thread, but I am not sure what you are looking for here? Are you saying science should come up with something better than the singularity? If everything in the universe originally existed in a very tiny size before the rapid expansion, why not just say everything just existed in the form of a very dense tiny sphere?

[Lincoln]

Well technically the universe didn't exist in the form of a dense sphere within our space. The space itself was small and dense. But that's a side point.

I think Marshall was trying to understand the source of the occasional hostility we see. I think it's simple. People are interested in this sort of thing. They rummage around and try to learn something. Learning is hard and when people find some insight that took them some effort to internalize, they hold onto it. Later, when they find out that they've learned only a part of the truth or a simplifying approximation, they react badly. After all, we all want to think that we've understood well the things we think we understand.

It doesn't help that the popularizations and the media repeat each other. By hearing the same things from multiple sources helps with the confirmation bias.

It is for this reason that I am patient when I encounter pushback by an educated layman. It's to be expected. My patience will eventually disappear, but I expect them to touch the electric fence a couple of times first.