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Underground > Laboratory >

The Lab Meta Thread - What's our trajectory now?

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16:05 / 19.06.06

Just to be clear, I wasn't saying anything about ID in my earlier post on Evolution. I do strongly believe that scientists are still discovering the mechanisms of Evolution and that Darwin's theory is one of many scientific theories on the subject. It isn't just ID/Creationism vs. Darwin, it is ID/Creationism vs. Evolution. Darwin's might be the current best but it still leaves a lot unexplained and hopefully science will discover the other mechanisms. (like the problematic role of mutations)

I hope the Lab is the correct place to discuss things like this.

18:12 / 19.06.06

It certainly is.

a watch through of something like Primer, and several hours worth of highly theoretical time as waveform discussion.

Ooh me too! Like why not nest the boxes, and does the waveform have discrete states like the energy levels around an atom, and what would happen if you turned the box inside out with a really big power source, and...

11:14 / 20.06.06

Been busy, but let me return,

A sit down, a watch through of something like Primer, and several hours worth of highly theoretical time as waveform discussion. It's that kind of activity that discoveries are made of. - delta

I'm not sure I agree. It can be fun, for sure, but the thing with that sort of discussion is that it spoils the fun if one points out inconsistencies, technical obstructions, or the fact that wild speculation doesn't become more valid just because you can make it into an interesting film. So what you end up having is brainstorming session, where one loosens notions of rigour. On Barbelith, some of whose members can give the impression that they regard Grant Morrisson as a scientific authority, I think this would lead to a lot of threads I wouldn't enjoy so much. I guess my attitude is best summed up by the fact that, although they can (very rarely) have points of contact, I think that science and science fiction are actually rather different things. But to answer Quantum's

If as feared sci-fi and serious threads can't co-exist, how do people feel about calling Shenanigans on silly threads? Tightening up the Lab's remit to concern real science and shunting discussions of telekinesis and aliens to the convo, books, switchboard or temple as appropriate?
Would that be overly harsh, would it slow down the traffic, could it be justified, do we need to change the forum description?

I'm not sure I would feel able to move threads I didn't like too much, if for the reasons given above. If people want the Lab to be more like a place full of free form sci-fi threads, then it is really up to them. I think such things would do better in Books or the Creation, but this forum can only really be what people want it to be.

14:15 / 20.06.06

I guess my attitude is best summed up by the fact that, although they can (very rarely) have points of contact, I think that science and science fiction are actually rather different things.

I absolutely agree. Particularly in that if you get too bogged down in the original source of inspiration then you just wind up going round in unproductive circles. But, I think there's nothing wrong with brainstorming if you're careful to distinguish critique from projection. Every thread is started with an initial post, why not just state something like "Subject- time as waveform, Inspiration- Primer, if time were actually a wave rather than a dimension, what would that imply?". That makes the distinction implicit.

Different example off the top of my head...
"Subject- Teleportation, Inspiration- star trek transporters (high capacity for getting lost in geekery there), It's accepted that one way of (theoretically) getting matter from a to b quickly is the folding of space, and another involves the transferal of properties via entanglement, but could you just convert matter to energy/information, send and reconstruct?

Sure, you might get all kinds of "well in episode 456782 ensign redshirt made it go -purple-", but... What about inefficiencies? Would a real implementation of that kind of technology result in information loss and the equivalent of randomly distributed errors (like johnson or shot noise). Would the resolution of your sensor determine the level of resulting defect? Would that translate to 'transporter burn' damaging both surface and internal matter, or an increased risk of cancer due to damaged DNA at a finer scale? That kind of discussion is really worth while. The above is a silly example, but I think that pop.media is just as useful as falling apples. Particularly because it's inclusive of people with non-scientific backgrounds who, without the reference, might not be as interested.

Having said that, I understand your suspicion, and discussion concerning material like star trek, or star wars, or whatever, can become turgid incredibly quickly... Maybe I'm just being optimistic about the response of the Lab populace, but I like seeing discussion that takes a half thought out idea and sees how far it'll run, and I think the Lab is all kinds of good for that.

11:34 / 27.07.06

I have a suggestion that I'd like to put before the Lab readers for discussion.

One of the ongoing problems (I feel) in Lab is that we do tend to get threads which are started simply to highlight a new piece of technology or a new scientific discovery. There isn't anything wrong with them, but a lot of them get very little feedback beyond a few posts worth of discussion.

We seem to have scads and scads of four or five post threads which seem to follow a similar trajectory of a link being posted with very little comment from the person who started the thread followed by a few one paragraph posts which comment on the linked info but don't really go anywhere else with it.

I'm as guilty as anyone else in this respect, although I have tried to up my game recently.

So my suggestion is that we, in the vein of the 101 threads, start a set of threads called New Developments in... where these little nuggets of info can be posted and commented on, but also where we can see if they're going to grow into a more developed and productive thread. If people show enough interest then a new thread can be started on the subject.

I really would like some feedback on this idea because I accept I may be the only one who feels Lab is a bit cluttered with dead-end threads.

Initial suggested threads would be:

New Developments in Biology/Medicine.

New Developments in Physics/Technology.

New Developments in Chemistry/Environment (not sure if its appropriate to lump these two together though).

Thoughts?

12:38 / 27.07.06

Why not just one Neotech thread?

13:08 / 27.07.06

Yeah, that could work too. Alternatively one neotech and one neoscience. Do you think the general idea is sound though?

17:39 / 27.07.06

You could always try it and see.

I'd kind of like the idea of doing something a little more detailed -- like instead of a biology thread, something on zoology, something on epidemiology and something on pharmacology, maybe.

Cosmology seems to pop up a bit, as does "energy science" (stuff about petroleum, peak oil and alternative energy sources). At least lately.

18:45 / 27.07.06

The idea is good, I was thinking too many very focussed threads might suffer from the same problem we'd be trying to avoid. I'd favour three or four at most, physics chemistry biology maybe? Plus a neotech for snazzy new computers and nanites?
Actually having more might work because presumably they'd be long running. I say first to start them gets to decide.

*

07:02 / 28.07.06

I get a lot of articles about nanotech, because a friend of mine seems to be spending a lot of time writing about that— I was thinking of starting a "New Developments in Nanotech" thread. Would that be too specific/cross-discipline?

18:21 / 04.04.07

9 months later- new mods! w00t! LabRevivingSciencePatrolGo!

18:34 / 04.04.07

Mwahahahahaha.

*Ticks off 'Stage 2' on evil plan checklist.*

08:10 / 05.04.07

So much for the Barbe-holiday.

Hi ho hi ho its off to Lab I go.

14:26 / 05.04.07

Welcome back to the Lab, your excellency.

15:29 / 05.04.07

I thought I was out and they drag me back for one final mission.

15:30 / 05.04.07

Ah was that my fault? Cocking up the IMG tags? Sorry, am a noob

16:38 / 05.04.07

No, no. Nothing you've done, guitargirl. It's us. The organization. We needed him.

12:46 / 06.04.07

I was looking at the stuff that has worked for other parts of Barbelith, especially The Temple, that might be easily tweaked and transplanted to the Laboratory. One thing that comes to mind, is the Bible study thread and the other topics that have spawned from it. Perhaps we could attempt something similar here; We could select cheap-ish books, books easily obtainable in a library, or those available for free as a PDF and host a discussion about the ideas presented in them. Of course, there's an abundance of texts that we could choose from, but as other posters have pointed out, a lot of the difficulty that people have with posting to the lab is a perceived lack of knowledge on the subjects involved in discussion.

If we selected books that were rudimentary and explored a lot of basic concepts, we'd have a series of interesting discussions, as well as rectifying the "lack of knowledge" problem.

In the department of physics, which is an area that I wouldn't mind brushing up on, I'd recommend something like "Six Easy Pieces," by Richard P. Feynman. The cost of the thing shouldn't be too much and besides, most people seemed to be able to get their hands on a copy of the bible (physical or otherwise) for the relevant discussions over in The Temple.

What do people think of this idea?

14:20 / 06.04.07

Hrm. One of the things that helps those Temple thread along (for me, at least) is that the texts are easily accessible on the internet.

Is the same true for much scientific writing?

jentacular dreams

21:10 / 06.04.07

If you're posting from a university - yes! Otherwise, when it comes to published papers, try sciencedirect, which has a huge amount of free papers (all distinguished from the subscription ones by the green icon on the side). For biomedical sciences, pubmed is also a good'un (as it has a much larger database). Though for both sites it might be better to mainly look at reviews, rather than the hard-research papers themselves.

I was thinking something similar, though maybe a step onward from this, 'problem solver' threads, for people to basically speculate and bounce ideas (native or borrowed) off one another on overcoming the big issues of the day?

jentacular dreams

14:22 / 08.04.07

OK, thought I might pop up a few options for analysis on climate change, which I think is probably one of the more accessible topics of the era. All are pdf formate. If anyone can't read them, PM me and I'll send you a link to the HTML version.

Climate change and solar variability: What's new under the sun?

Transport and climate change: a review.

Promising the future? Global change projections of species distributions.

Climate change and human health: present and future risks.

So if anyone wants to pick one of these up and run with it (or a paper/topic I haven't included obviously), feel free! Otherwise hopefully I'll be able to think up an interesting spin on one of them for discussion in the near future.

16:46 / 08.04.07

General discussions are good, but I'd also like to see some actual scientific experimentation acted out. Some proposals for a theory, and then results - with other posters perhaps trying stuff out and discussing their own results. There was a great thread a while ago about calcium intake and how too much could be a bad thing, which I found fascinating as it followed a paterns of proposal, test and result with discussion.

jentacular dreams

17:15 / 08.04.07

Benny, I have to say that the first half of your post made my jaw drop at what appeared to be a proposal to misappropriate research funding, time and equipment to investigate the whims of the community. I'm glad to see the second half (implicitly) blew that preconception out of the water. Great idea!

Query: does psychology or psychiatry fit into the lab? I can see it being seen as belonging here, but am thinking, could we maybe conduct an experiment along the lines of wolfangel's positive psychology thread (which has been on my mind for a while now, though I have yet to frame a post of my own).

Ask for volunteers who feel they could do with perking up a bit (not neccessarily those suffering from any clinical form of depression per se) and see if we can get them to try various methods for building a more positive outlook?

07:40 / 11.04.07

Query: does psychology or psychiatry fit into the lab?

I'd say it does. Certainly the areas that study things like memory and perception are entirely appropriate to Lab. Discussion of the ethics and applications of psychiatric would be more than at home here too.

14:48 / 11.04.07

Psychology definitely, psychiatry I'd say less so. Except as ES says, the medical ethics side or discussing the validity of talking cures etc.

*

17:07 / 11.04.07

Quants—since psychiatry deals more with neurochemistry, wouldn't it be more appropriate to Lab than psychology, rather than less? or was that a typo?

15:44 / 12.05.07

Given the criticisms of the Transhuman Technologies thread I was wondering if it might be an idea for someone with a good solid background in feminism to start a Lab thread about science and it's relationship/treatment of women?

01:20 / 13.05.07

You are SO not evil.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

09:40 / 13.05.07

I would love to see a thread like that.

17:10 / 13.05.07

I had a go at it, hope it's useful.

10:56 / 05.06.07

What are people's thoughts on some kind of "New Developments"-esque thread to talk about climate change and general environmental badness? A place to bring together reports on how climate change is affecting the world, as well as things like endangered species and ways people on the site can(and do) help to combat these things?

12:20 / 05.06.07

Ooh yes please, ecotechnology and science used by politicians and how long we actually have and the biodiesel scam and...

Lagrange's Nightmare

12:11 / 06.06.07

Yeah that would be great,

especially like the idea of an enlarged new developments thread, (perhaps 'barbelith environmental review' maybe?) where we can add observation, action and questions etc...

14:14 / 06.06.07

I'm thinking of a laboratory humour thread, yay/nay?

16:19 / 06.06.07

I don't think it's a bad idea. G'wan! Give it a try!

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