Comments by "Lawrence D’Oliveiro" (@lawrencedoliveiro9104) on "If “The Universe Isn't Real..." Then What Is It?" video.

The difference between science and religion (and other ideologies) is that science is about discovering what reality is all about, not about trying to bend reality to fit some preexisting ideology. And a key part of that is learning from your mistakes. Another difference is that science doesn’t try to pretend its mistakes never happened.
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@uglymolly2138 Nothing in science (or at least in physics) really explains “why” anything. General Relativity doesn’t explain why gravity does what it does: all it really says is that the curvature of spacetime and the mass of objects are two aspects of the same phenomenon. This tells us how gravity works, but it doesn’t shed any light on what gravity really is , any more than Newton’s theory did. Quite often when we say “why”, we really mean “how”. For example: “Why is the sky blue?” Talking about scattering of different wavelengths of light is just telling us how the sky becomes blue.
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@nicolawebb6025 I like to distinguish between “scientific knowledge” and the “scientific process”. The knowledge is the product of the process, of course; the process is all about asking questions, and figuring out suitable experiments and measurements to answer those questions. If you’ve done much reading about scientific research, you’re likely familiar with the phenomenon that every answer seems to lead to more new questions. It’s all about figuring out new ways to test what we think we know. Again, this is very much the opposite of how religion (and other ideologies) works. There is this T-shirt available online somewhere: it says “I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned.”
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@uglymolly2138 “Theory” and “law” in science are essentially interchangeable. Both are frameworks for making sense of the evidence. Thus, Newton’s theory of gravity is traditionally called his “Law” of gravity. But Einstein’s replacement, is usually referred to as the General “Theory” of Relativity.
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@nicolawebb6025 Sounds like the “Cosmological Constant” issue. It was an extra factor he stuck into his General Relativity theory, to stop it predicting an expanding Universe (which seemed an absurd idea at the time). And surprise surprise, Hubble later discovers that the Universe is indeed expanding. Einstein called this “the greatest mistake of [his] life”. But more recently, cosmologists are finding a different role for the “Cosmological Constant”, to try to fit newer observations.
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@squirlmy I used to think the non-monotheistic religions were somehow better in this regard. But hearing about oppression of minorities in Hindu- and Buddhist-majority countries like India and Sri Lanka has led me to, quite reluctantly, abandon that notion. The problem comes in when religion is used as the basis for deciding what is right and what is wrong. That is one of the major ingredients of religious intolerance. “The greatest tragedy in human history may have been the hijacking of morality by religion.” -- Arthur C Clarke
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@Dragrath1 Scientists are human, and are prone to all the usual human errors and biases. Who points out these mistakes? Is it religious people? Followers of “alternative” philosophies, or some other such mumbo-jumbo? No, it is other scientists, also doing science. Because, you see, science is a self-correcting process.
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@mrosskne That’s a very good way to put it.
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@uglymolly2138 Does your dictionary explain why Newton’s theory of gravity is described as a “law“, while Einstein’s, which notionally replaces it, is not? Don’t just read what’s in the book, try to understand what’s in the book.
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@uglymolly2138 Feel free to explain, then, how quantum “theory” explains why quantum weirdness happens. Because it doesn’t.
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But then, if the Universe isn’t real, then none of its contents can be real. This “proof” that the Universe isn’t real is part of that contents, is it not? So how can it be real?
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