| Re: OT: getting older/wiser [message #185126 is a reply to message #185123] |
Thu, 27 February 2014 17:52   |
Thomas 'PointedEars'
Messages: 701
Registered: October 2010
Karma:
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Senior Member |
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Daniel Pitts wrote:
> On 2/27/14 5:22 AM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>> On 2/27/2014 7:04 AM, bill wrote:
>>> On 2/26/2014 1:52 PM, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>>> Recent research indicates that the reason older folk think "slower" is
>>> that they have more memories to go through to find what they are looking
>>> for (tested with word finding).
>>> It is reasonable to conclude that older = wiser, not slower.
> […]
>> Yes, but that research is controversial and has not been validated by
>> peer review yet. Possibly in the future it will be, but until it is, it
>> is only a theory. Remember cold fusion?
> You clearly mean hypothesis. Theory is once its proven.
A fundamental, but common, misconception in both statements; in part
purported by some scientists employing informal language (non-scientists
doubly so). Theories are just elaborate(d) thought processes, based on a
number of theses; they can only be either confirmed or falsified (by
reality, e.g. experiment). (The more a theory is confirmed, the firmer it
is believed to be true. And if something passes peer review it just means
that the people who reviewed it have found *nothing* logically *wrong* with
it; it does _not_ mean that the conclusions therein are true.)
For example, Einstein's general theory of relativity – which BTW grows 100
years in two years from now – has not been proven at all and will never be
proven; science just does not work that way. We only assume that the
assumptions he made are true because what follows from them explains our
observations so well. Likewise for Quantum Field Theory and all other
theories.
HTH
PointedEars
--
When all you know is jQuery, every problem looks $(olvable).
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