That's the whole point. They don't have to think. Theyve been indoctrinated into a religion where questioning things is a sin. And even worse, their bought-out politicians that don't practice Christianity are using their religion as a weapon against human beings, and the Republicans go with it because in their eyes, Rebulicanism is basically an extension of Christianity, so they don't question that either.

It's basically giving themselves the right to punish people because God is going to punish them anyway.

I don't agree at all with what this article is saying. First of all a theory is the hypothesis with the most proof. It doesn't mean it's proven. It just means its better at predicting than other models.

> If a programme predicts nothing new or its predictions can’t be tested, then it is bad science, and might be degenerating to the point of pseudoscience.

Theories have always out paced experimental advancements. General relativity was created during a time where it couldn't be proven. It was only a few years ago that they detected gravitional waves. The Hot vs Cold Big Bang theory wasn't able to be tested until they launched COBE into space to measure if there was a Comic Microwave Background, falsifying the Cold Big Bang and advancing the Hot Big Bang theory. The Dark matter theory has multiple splits, but the main one is with WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), which, as the name implies, don't interact with other matter, so how can you use matter to probe it? But DM is there, or at least, something is causing more mass in the universe than there should be based on observations of matter. They mention String theory as a bad science since it can't be falsified. But it just can't be falsified yet. Doesn't mean the theory is incorrect. We just can't prove any of it.

It just seems like the author is conflating "unable to be truly falsified" with "unable to be falsified yet" like their example of astrology vs astronomy. If a theory intrinsically has no way to experiment, then it isnt scientific. "God is blue" isn't the same as "Dark matter exists."

There's always been a cycle of conjuring a theory that needs to wait for experimental advancements to catch up. And I would agrue that this strongly propels science forward. If we name these theories as "bad science," then how would we ever advance? How would we ever challenge ourselves by improving experimental techniques?

Also the examples they give are just straight up wrong.

> Some are inherent in the mathematical formulation of the theory, such as the assumption in Isaac Newton’s theory that the masses of gravitating bodies are located at their centres.

That isn't an assumption of the theory at all. It can be proven with simple Calculus that if you have a sphere of matter, then the cumulative newtonian gravitational force of all points of the sphere is the exact same as if it had all its mass in its center point. It's a by product, not an assumption.

> Others are necessary to simplify calculations, such as the assumption that in experimental studies of the electromagnetic force, the effects of other forces (such as gravity) can be safely ignored. This means that the resulting predictions are never derived directly from the theory itself, but rather from the theory as adapted by one or more ‘auxiliary’ hypotheses. If these predictions are then falsified, it’s never clear what’s gone wrong. It might be that the theory is indeed false, but it could be that one or more of the auxiliary hypotheses is invalid: the evidence can’t tell us which.

Yes, it can be safely ignored. The ratio between the electric force and gravitional force of two electrons is 4.17e ×10^42 (meaning the electric force is 4170000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times stronger than their gravity). Well beyond any experimental error that we can detect. And since forces are additive, if you wanted to add in gravity, then you could just add the force to the equation (but you're just practically adding zero). But since it's so small compared to the electric force and you wouldn't be able to detect it within error, it is very very safe to assume the gravitional forces can be neglected when trying to prove electric theories in subatomic particles. If there is a big enough discrepancy between the predictions of electric forces, then it is very clear it isnt your neglect of gravity. It is something wrong with your understanding of electricity. (This is actually another good point. We can't make experiments for Quantum gravity yet because we don't have the equipment to detect such a small force. Does mean the theory is bad science? Not at all.) The inverse of this is with measuring gravity in Cosmology: we can safely assume the electrical force acting between two galaxies is negligible compared to their gravitional force and any expirmental discrepancies would be too large to be caused by their electrical force. Physicists make approximations all the time, but that doesn't mean they are doing it willy-nilly.

The theory of QM has very different philosophical approaches to understanding what a probability wave means and how observation collapses it into a particle. It's very hard to truly falsify any of them, but you would be laughed at by saying the theory is bad science because we lack the fundamental understanding of its implications.

Yeah you're on the right track but have some misconceptions.

Time is a measurement of causality. Lightning strikes, then you hear thunder after a certain amount of time. So time definitely does have a single direction, otherwise things could happen before the event that caused it to happen. E.g. you hear thunder before you see the lightning strike, which is completely unphysical. It's kind of impossible to think of a universe if time could move both ways. What's also interesting to think about is without events that cause things to happen (if nothing happened), how can you measure time? Does it even exist then? This whole premise of causality, along with the discovery that light travels the same speed no matter how fast youre going, eventually led physicists to come up with special and general relativity.

What you're talking about with spacetime acting like fluid is just a property of waves in general. It isnt that spacetime is a fluid, it's that both spacetime and fluids (liquids, gasses, and plasma) are what physicists call "media" for waves to travel through. A wave is just engery moving through a medium. And youve even said it! The medium wants to stay still, and this restoring force is the whole reason why waves exist, why energy can travel. There are a bunch of media:

• Matter (solids and fluids) is the medium for sound (compression) waves or waves that move up and down like water (transverse).

• Electromagnetic field is the medium for light (photons).

• Spacetime is the medium for gravity. (General relativity implies gravity is the bending of spacetime).

• The Higgs field is the medium for the Higgs boson.

• Crystals (or solids in general) even have little waves traveling through their molecular bonds called phonons.

• Quantum Mechanics describes everything as a probability wave.

The list goes on and on. If you're interested, look up wave theory. Or if your more interested in how special/general relativity came about, look up the Michelson-Morley experiment (We used to think light traveled through a medium called the "ether". This experiment drove them mad when they couldn't prove it, but their findings were huge and led us down the path to our current understanding of spacetime).

You know there is a thing call rounding

(14 - 12) / 12 = 2 / 12 = 0.16 ~ 0.2 => 20%

It's just rounding .16 to .2