Comment on Just answer the question you fuckin' nerd
dustyData@lemmy.world 1 day agoOne of them was that in a vacuum, absent of any container or gravity, a liquid’s shape is that of a sphere.
Another one was that depending on the definition of liquid, liquids might or might not have a shape. It also varies depending on the definition of the attribute shape.
The point of the exercise was to challenge the notion of objective truth in science.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Without gravity it’s a sphere, or in free fall without air drag it’s a sphere (if it has sufficient surface tension anyway, which is what makes lava or molasses flow that way, in combination with its viscosity).
But in a vacuum it will boil off until the vapor pressure is high enough to eliminate the vacuum. But then it’s not in a vacuum anymore.
Really a fluid or liquid will always try to minimize its surface area while fighting gravity.
It’s a definitions problem that a lot of people who think there aren’t “objective truths” in science.
dustyData@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Exactly, remember the point was not to be right. But to have the discussions. It wasn’t the physics we were interested in, but in the ways to construct knowledge. Definitions and models are human constructs. The universe doesn’t care that we do or do not have neat words and models of its workings. However, language and knowledge, as human endeavors, require human interaction.
i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 9 hours ago
It’s important to make sure our basic definitiins and assumptions are well defined… That being said I’ve always been pissed at epistomogists that opened the door to crackpots and manipulators to “define their own truth” and invite fascism.
I’m not saying epistomology is bad, but creating a debate about a well established fact is exactly what right-wing people will do when trying to impose their anti-scientific ideas.
anomnom@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Yeah especially about things that are considered fundamental like the physics of fluids.
Unless they’re arguing about some quantum effect that hasn’t been proven maybe, but then they’re either a physicist or a Feynman bro who thinks they figured it out after “thinking hard about at and watching 7 hours of YouTube videos”.
dustyData@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Oh, please. Let’s not go there. Epistemologists have never suggested or promoted any such thing, your wariness is misplaced, it seems. If anything, fascism will use any and all rhetorical resource to promote their rise and stay in power. Remember, before post-modernism—which is the source of the “every person has their own truth” thing you dislike, not epistemology which predates post-modernism by a couple of centuries—fascism used objective truth as justification for the superiority of the in-group in power. Eugenics was touted by fascists in the 1800s as the epitome of scientific enlightenment. It was obvious and proven scientific knowledge that black people were an inferior race, etc. All the classical Nazi pseudo-arguments. A harsh and closed view of objective truth is precisely the kind of mindset where fascism thrive. Fascists like absolute truths quite a lot, even when they contradict each other.
The point of epistemology is to analyze the ways in which humans come up with and use knowledge. It has absolutely no prescriptive tenets at all. It is entirely descriptive.
Like, you can’t look at me in the eye and seriously suggest that Bertrand Russel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Locke, Hume or Immanuel Kant were fascists.