Age of ancient humans reassessed ...

[woot]

Originally Posted by creekster

Gore is an idiot. HE may have been counterproductive. But you are asking too much for the average schmuck like me to be able to figure this out for all topics.

Why do you hate creationists? I find it hard to understand that. I suppose if you want to make sure this sort of bad thinking doesn't leak into policy, I can understand that, but I think we face more problems from simple pork barrel politics (when it comes to skewing policy in non-scientific directions) than we do from creationists.

Btw, 'working assumption' is OK for me. You are the one that first said scientists 'know' something. Look at your first post.

Oh I'm not denying that we do, in fact, "know" lots of things. I just find that these conversations tend to inevitably turn into foofy existential debates about the possibility of "knowing" anything. Such debates certainly have merit, but I don't find them particularly stimulating. I just allow people to think of all of science as plastic in these situations, since it's easier than trying to delineate the amount of confidence we have in various bits of information. There are certain things that we know 99%, and there are other things that we are willing to temporarily accept as a foundation for further work, as doing so is necessary for progress. If these foundational bits are adjusted, then the work in which they are employed will also be adjusted. I gave several examples of each earlier in this thread.