Comments by "SsjC" (@ssjcosty) on "JRE Clips" channel.

  1. I think there's an issue of viewpoint here as well. When Joe says that Ben is a great guy he says that because in person Ben is friendly, funny etc. But this is because Joe greatly values these personal things, whereas someone else might say yeah Ben IS friendly and funny and smart, but he is a horrible guy because of the really vile things he spouts against so many people (gay, black, palestinians, criminals, etc.).
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  2.  @gowk0  There's also the term "cosmos", which some scientists use as everything that exists.
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  3. I think there are different types of people. Some will be friends with someone regardless of that person's political opinions, whereas some cannot, and I don't blame either group. And I get it - if I care about how a specific group of people (e.g. LGBTQ) is being discriminated against, why would I be friends with someone who intentionally discriminates them and hates what they represent? On the other hand, I might value my friendship with this person more than I care about LGBTQ issues. My point is that it's not wrong either way, it's just a matter of personal values, priorities, and viewpoints.
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  4. Here's another relevant thing here: Joe Rogan knows Ben Shapiro personally, so he can fall back and on his positive interactions with Ben and appreciate his qualities. However, we as audiences who know Ben Shapiro only as a public figure, we have no personal connection with him whatsoever so we can only judge his character based on his public persona and the opinions he spouts. With that in mind, I think that it is reasonable for us to hate Ben and at the same time reasonable for someone like Joe to like him. Here is a somewhat similar situation from my personal life. I have a friend who in the past 6 years has become an extremely conservative and dogmatic Christian. He goes on religious pilgrimages, he has extremely derogatory views about women, Jews, gay, atheists and people of other religions and he is very vocal about these things. Now, I am still friends with this guy, even though he has pushed away a lot of his other friends. However, I would find it personally reasonable for someone who hasn't had a friendship relationship with him to find him absolutely despicable, because for all intents and purposes, he is. Same with Ben Shapiro.
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  5. But how did God come about? The Big Bang theory isn't a "freaking joke", it's a cosmological model supported by measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe and running the math backwards in time, which was done by Georges Lemaître - a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. It was further investigated and developed by other scientists, and due to the preponderence of evidence it replaced the previously accepted cosmological model - the Steady-State Universe. Read more about it on Wikipedia, it's quite an interesting history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang
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  6. What are you talking about? This is all just educated speculation, nothing more. The fact that the Universe is expanding is true, and has been observed and the rate of expansion has been indeed calculated, but the possibilities of other Big Bangs and so on are indeed speculation.
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  7. Whike Krauss himself is indeed quite insufferable (in my opinion), it's not good to generalize scientists based on him. That said, most of what Krauss talks about here is just educated speculation, nothing more. The fact that the Universe is expanding is true, and has been observed and the rate of expansion has been indeed calculated, but the possibilities of other Big Bangs or cyclic universes and so on are indeed speculation, and this is exactly how Krauss presents it: as speculation. The study of astrophysics has produced quite a lot of practical value for us, and it's not different than any other scientific pursuit of knowledge, be it geology, biology, neuroscience, electro-mechanics etc. Moreover, science doesn't make proclamations of truth, but instead it builds models (which can be revised) to explain phenomena that we observe in the world. Science is a a collection of methods for systematically investigating the world and building models of knowledge that help us understand the world to the best of our capacity, all the while reducing bias and unfounded models as much as possible. An important thing to remember is that scientific models are always tentative, and they can always be revised when better knowledge and new observations come along. As for the Big Bang - it's not fantasy. It is a cosmological model supported by measurements of the rate of expansion of the universe and running the math backwards in time, which was done by Georges Lemaître - a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. It was further investigated and developed by other scientists, and due to the preponderence of evidence it replaced the previously accepted cosmological model - the Steady-State Universe. Read more about it on Wikipedia, it's quite an interesting history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang When you say that "Truth is a living experience of peace, joy, and liberation" - I would agree with you that this is important, but this talks about what we value whereas science is a tool that we can use to learn about how the world works. > _"Scientists will NEVER understand eternal consciousness until they abandon science. Science is great for technology etc. but when people combine science with truth.. no no no no no. Big no no. It will only take you away from truth." _ Science isn't only great for technology, but it is the best tool that we have for investigating how our world works and how things came about. However, science cannot tell us what our values should be, it cannot tell us how to treat each other and how to live our lives, it can't tell us how we should dress, what words to sing, who to love, who to marry, who to befriend etc. These things come from us, they are usually formed within a larger context - family, philosophy, religion, literature etc. You don't need to abandon science in favour of these things, because they are not enemies. We can use science to learn more about how the world works, and in doing so we can solve various problems (e.g. famine, floods, diseases, etc.), science has proven itself time and time again.
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  8. Hmm, science never speaks in absolutes. In fact, scientific models are always tentative, and they can always be revised when better knowledge and new observations come along. This is a fundamental principle in the philosophy of science, so I don't know where you're getting the "absolute" thing.
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  9. What are you talking about? This is all just educated speculation, nothing more. The fact that the Universe is expanding is true, and has been observed and the rate of expansion has been indeed calculated, but the possibilities of other Big Bangs or cyclic universes and so on are indeed speculation, and this is exactly how Krauss presents it: as speculation. The study of astrophysics has produced quite a lot of practical value for us, and it's not different than any other scientific pursuit of knowledge, be it geology, biology, neuroscience, electro-mechanics etc. You will notice that most scientists preponderently use terms like "we think", "it might", "we may" etc. because in science nothing is absolute, because scientific findings, explanations and models are always tentative. Scientific theories are the highest degree of knowledge in science, and even they are simply the current best explanations we have for the topic they describe, but they can always be improved, updated, or even overturned by new discoveries and observations. I know Krauss is a sex offender, but that has nothing to do with what he talks here about the Universe.
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  10. Well not quite. Science is only limited by what we can investigate. Science is a a collection of methods for systematically investigating the world and building models of knowledge that help us understand the world to the best of our capacity, all the while reducing bias and unfounded models as much as possible. That is the best we can do, and we are limited by what we can observe, meaning that our scientific models will also be limited. As Carl Sagan once said: "Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have."
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  11.  @RenatoRosabb  Agreed. And indeed I've previously heard this idea that the language you speak determines the way you think, and it can also determine what you are able to conceptualize. In fact it's highlighted even in this video by the discussion about how the meaning of the word "universe" has changed - I've also heard universe as "the local presentation of space-time" and cosmos as "everything that exists". The fundamental principles of the philosophy of science are very important and it is quite obvious to understand why they are important (e.g. falsification, testing hypotheses, etc.), but I wouldn't call the philosophy of science dogmatic. The problem is that Krauss is quite ignorant of philosophy in general. I think that when scientists say that they are "seeking the truth", they mean that they ar seeking to make discoveries about the natural world and create models that map well to reality. And that's basically the definition they use for "truth": that which is in accordance with fact or reality I also think that some scientists are simply not good communicators when talking to laypeople. In science, there are words that are used differently than the way laypeople use them, "theory" being a good example. What Krauss is doing here is just expressing some educated speculations, but nothing more, and that's the way he presents it. I have other issues with Kraus (aside from him being a sex offender of course), mainly about his (ignorant) stance on philosophy.
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