That bothers me too
Mine is envy vs jealousy.
Jealousy is just envious because it didn’t make it into the Seven Deadly Sins.
Envy is the emotion behind coveting.
Covetousness is the primary motivation behind adultery.
The word theory has become (or at best is becoming) a clusterfuck of whatever, much like the word literally.
And we don’t even have (normal/easy/exact) replacements for those words.
Those words were already the scientific terms for nerds. But normies normied them into normedom, literally theorised into a fuck.(Also unfortunately Im a normie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about it)
I like the word “model”, I think it’s a better fit even. We’re modeling reality. Some models turn out to be shit, while others are well tested giving confidence that they mimic reality well.
But isn’t model used differently in different disciplines?
SomeMost models turn out to be shitFtfy
All models are shit. Some of them are useful tho
Like my model of fecal matter.
Every model is wrong. Some are useful.
Yeah I like that.
I use “theory” for theoretical things, like theoretical physics and math, that can be proven (in a mathematical way).
I use the word “model” for practical things, like practical physics. Models don’t need to be proven, but their accuracy can be more or less helpful, depending on the context.
Yes I agree entirely.
The word predates science
“But that’s just a hypothesis…a GAME hypothesis.”
…I’d sub to that channel
That entire universe of channels is more accurately described as “whatever” hypothesis.
I kinda wonder how they’re doing with the new hosts. Not enough to check, but it’s more than 0.
Damn it, you beat me to it!
Read the other day that there actually isn’t any official distinction. It’s just colloquially used that way in some scientific circles but definitely not all. Probably not by etymologists.
Normally, I’m all for language changing over time. If some word is used a certain way, so beit. But not here. Not in a case where people can end up saying dumb shit like “Evolution is just a theory.” I will physically fight people on that, If need be.
Theory meaning “unproven assumption” is one of the definitions in Merriam-Webster so it is not a new definition.
You’re just angry word means something you don’t want it to mean. Just like the literally-figuratively crowd.
If you consider gross misuse (i.e. mixing up “theory” and “hypothesis”) to be a valid form of etymology (e.g. making new words), I have a question to axe.
(I apologize to linguists’ families who now have to clean up bodily fluids and/or arrange a funeral.)
The aks variant pronunciation of ask is fine. It is part of a dialect.
It’s not gross misuse, it’s how the word work in common use.
I think anyone who uses the word “literally” to mean anything other than “in a literal sense” is a moron who never actually thinks about what the words coming out of their mouth mean, and I always will.
People who do not seem to understand that language is different than they wish it to be, are the actual morons. Not only morons, but pampas morons. Language is messy, imprecise, and always in flux. Language is a construct of the collective of its speakers, not you alone, nor anyone else. This is why we have specific lexicons for various industries, and academic fields. Even those are constantly being updated, and revised.
Language is […] always in flux
And, more importantly, I will use language as I please; I don’t have to justify my use of words to anyone. That is why I don’t see why people complain about using words “the wrong way”. Even if it is, I will still insist on my right to produce whatever gibberish my mouth is willing to put forward.
Edit: In other words, right to be wrong.
Yeah, as long as everyone involved understands what is being said I am fine with it.
In fact, not even everybody has to understand it. If I say something that I think is true, but in a language that only I can speak, then it would be okay for me to say it anyways, even if nobody understands it. That is because while it’s important to always speak the truth, it’s not always important to be understood by others.
You hate on people that use literally this way, but you do the same thing yourself…
Moron is a term once used in psychology and psychiatry to denote mild intellectual disability. The term was closely tied with the American eugenics movement. Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community, as it was used more commonly as an insult than as a psychological term. It is similar to imbecile and idiot.
But unless the people that use “literally” in the colloquial sense you are actually using a term that is tied to eugenics and the idea that disabled people are inferior. Maybe you should have thought about the words that come out of mouth?
He’s right. You’re righter
The use of literal to mean figurative has been common for hundreds of years (literally). If it’s good enough for James Joyce, it’s good enough for you
To be perfectly fair, you can’t “prove” or “disprove” a theory. You can only discover new evidence that supports the theory or another competing theory. Multiple competing theories can be equally accepted as correct.
The issue is people using exactly that definition to reject science. We also have a theory of gravity, but gravity itself is an observation. Evolution should be too, regardless of our theories about it.
Also, String Theory isn’t doing anyone any favors.
I remember seeing somewhere that the “colloquial” usage is actually the original and that the scientific community is the one that changed it. I do agree that the evolution argument is stupid but it’s hard to blame the non scientific populace for not knowing the distinction. The evolution denier just don’t have a lot else to stand on.
Evolution is just a theory
And so is gravity, and the concept of colors.
Could you explain the difference to me? 🙏
In physics we call some results “laws” and some “theories.” The difference has absolutely nothing to do with our certainty in the validity of the results.
Newton’s Laws of motion are called that because they can be written as concise mathematical equations, and allof the content is there. Einstein’s Theory of special relativity is just as valid, and even contains Newton’s Laws as a special case, but the content of the theory can’t be written in simple, concise equations. There are several equations included in special relativity, but they do not represent the entire content. For example, the most important statement of the theory cannot be written in equation form at all: “The measured speed of light in a vacuum will be the same for all observers in inertial reference frames, regardless of the relative speed of their reference frame.”
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution likewise cannot be written in concise statements (mathematical or otherwise), but our certainty in its validity is no less than in Newton’s Laws.
Another important subtlety: I was careful to say that we are certain of the validity. People who don’t know better are fond of saying that Newton’s Laws are wrong. This is a fallacy. Scientific laws and theories can only be valid or not, they can never be true.
Now do theorem
You mean, as opposed to lemma? I’ve never been confident that I understand the difference between those. :(
A law describes what happens, a theory explains why. The law of gravity says that if you drop an item, it will fall to the ground. The theory of relativity explains that the “fall” occurs due to the curvature of space time.
I was referring to the difference between a theory and a hypothesis.
Theorem would also be interesting to add to the mix.
In a scientific context, a hypothesis is a guess, based on current knowledge, including existing laws and theories. It explicitly leaves room to be wrong, and is intended to be tested to determine correctness (to be a valid hypothesis, it must be testable). The results of testing the hypothesis (i.e. running an experiment) may support or disprove existing laws/theories.
A theorem is something that is/can be proven from axioms (accepted/known truths). These are pretty well relegated to math and similar disciplines (e.g. computer science), that aren’t dealing with “reality,” so much as “ideas.” In the real world, a perfect right triangle can’t exist, so there’s no way to look at the representation of a triangle and prove anything about the lengths of its sides and their relations to each other, and certainly no way to extract truth that applies to all other right triangles. But in the conceptual world of math, it’s trivial to describe a perfect right triangle, and prove from simple axioms that the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the remaining two sides (the Pythagorean Theorem).
Note that while theorems are generally accepted as truth, they are still sometimes disproved - errors in proofs are possible, and even axioms can be found to be false, shaking up any theorems that were built from them.
4 months later, sorry for the late reply. Thank you for this explanation! 😁🙏
Science can never answer “why.” In your example, the question why is just moved, from “why does it fall?” to “why does mass distort space-time?” In both cases physics just describes what happens.
But that is why it happens. Causality in most certainly something that can be discerned scientifically.
But then, to follow up on your statement, what is the cause of all causes?
In other words, where does the chain of causes begin?
Not every action needs a cause. Especially when entering the subatomic level, quantum effects appear to be fully probabilistic. Nothing causes the electron to emit a photon exactly then at exactly that energy, it’s just something that happens.
Even at the largest scales, quantum effects have shaped the structure of superclusters of galaxies and in many models underpin the beginning of the universe.
At these extreme ends, the concept of causality gets weaker, and asking “Why?” starts to lose meaning. You could say nothing caused many things, or equally say they happened because they could.
In all cases encountered so far however, learning more has enabled us to identify new limits on possibility, and usually to narrow down on the details. It’s a practically endless series of "why"s that grow ever more exact, until we find the limits of what can be known. Maybe this chain has an end, maybe not, but to claim that science cannot answer any “Why?” is just wrong.
I appreciate your passion for scientific literacy - it’s crucial for combating misinformation. However, I’d like to share some perspectives that might broaden our understanding of scientific knowledge and how it develops.
First, it’s worth noting that the distinction between “theory” and “hypothesis” isn’t as clear-cut as we might think. In “The Scientific Attitude,” Stephen McIntyre argues that what truly defines science isn’t a rigid set of rules, but rather an ethos of critical inquiry and evidence-based reasoning. This ties into the “demarcation problem” in philosophy of science - the challenge of clearly defining what is and isn’t science. Despite this ongoing debate, science continues to be a powerful tool for understanding our world.
Your stance seems to align with positivism, which views scientific knowledge as objective and verifiable. However, other epistemological approaches exist. Joseph A. Maxwell’s work on critical realism offers a nuanced view that acknowledges both the existence of an objective reality and the role of human interpretation in understanding it.
Maxwell defines validity in research not just as statistical significance, but as the absence of plausible alternative explanations. This approach encourages us to constantly question and refine our understanding, rather than treating any explanation as final.
Gerard Delanty’s “Philosophies of Social Science” provides a historical perspective on how our conception of science has evolved. Modern views often see science as a reflexive process, acknowledging the role of the researcher and societal context in shaping scientific knowledge.
Larry McEnery’s work further emphasizes this point, describing how knowledge emerges from ongoing conversations within communities of researchers. What we consider “knowledge” at any given time is the result of these dynamic processes, not a static, unchanging truth.
Understanding these perspectives doesn’t diminish the power or importance of science. Instead, it can make us more aware of the complexities involved in scientific inquiry and more resistant to overly simplistic arguments from science deniers.
By embracing some psychological flexibility around terms like “theory” and “hypothesis,” we’re not opening the door to pseudoscience. Rather, we’re acknowledging the nuanced nature of scientific knowledge and the ongoing process of inquiry that characterizes good science.
What do you think about these ideas? I’d be interested to hear your perspective and continue this conversation.
No! I want to tilt an windmills instead!!
/jk you’re entirely right
where people can end up saying dumb shit like “Evolution is just a theory.” I will physically fight people on that, If need be.
Then again, why bother? If people want to say dumb shit, what concern is it of yours? It’s the same when people say “the earth is flat”. It’s not, but I would never fight someone over it. That’s just not worth my time in most cases.
Descriptive linguists unite! Words evolve and that’s okay. Really science should pivot away and start calling more proven theories a different word if they’re upset about the confusion.
The etymology of the word theory comes from a word with a meaning closer to “to look at or speculate” so even in that sense science kind of hijacked a word that was further from the modern scientific understanding of the word “theory” and descriptively transformed it themselves for use in their community. And that’s okay too.
I’ve ranted about this so much to people close to me. Scientific community just needs to adopt a new word like you say, theory is a lost battle
Would courses like Music Theory also need to get a new name?
I accept it in colloquial discourse. I’m not happy about it, and I will smartass at everyone who isn’t asking, but I accept that I’m probably fighting a losing battle. But in science, it’s absolutely non-negotiable for words to mean what they mean, and not their own opposite.
Tell that to conventional current vs electron flow. Science is ever updating with new information and the words we use to describe it will change over time as well, but I get what you mean. Prescriptive linguistics especially in formal settings like scientific writing is helpful for clear communication.
Various fields have to adapt their terms all the time. For example, “idiot”, “moron”, and “mental retardation” were all official medical terms. Then they got used as an insult by the population at large, and got so bad that the medical field had to abandon them.
Medical terms being used as an insult is a very specific (and problematic) case. And they also weren’t turned into their own opposite. They were equalized with stupidity.
Counterpoint:
The language of science is specific because it is beneficial to have standards that allow explicit specificity. Scientific linguistics evolve differently from the way colloquial linguistics evolves due to different motivations and this difference is okay.
The real problem isn’t that scientific language is too strict but that we gatekeep scientific participation in every form, preventing most people from participating in such a way that scientific communication is not confusing. This is in addition to most scientific publications being unnecessarily written in inaccessible language. Specificity is helpful, but the excessive use of jargon and buzz-words to make yourself sound smarter through obtuse language is unhelpful for everyone involved. When jargon cannot be avoided, define it. If you cannot define it, reference a definition.
Clarity and accessibility in all scientific communication is the key to understanding.
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While theory and hypothesis are not the same if you are talking about science, in general everyday use theory is used as a synonym.
In wiktionary: 5. A hypothesis or conjecture. [from 18th c.]
But I’m a wannabe scientist, don’t come here with your colloquial language explanations
You’re talking to scientists not linguists
Their comment was about everyday use.
When someone uses “hesitant”
When they mean “reluctant”
I suggest we use new words.
Hypothesis - the great pondering
Theory - mystical workings of the orbI support this. If you’re going to fluff a paper with a load of bullshit words and clunky phrasing, it should at least be fun.
As an addendum, I would like to abolish the use of the word “herein.”
This is my biggest pet peeve and I will die on this hill.
Yes, I drive my family nuts.
Deez nuts?
Yes, they are the Deez family, and yes they have nuts. Enough doxing.
How about when they say “a phenomena”?
Or “a criteria”.
a data
Mmh… Careful now…
Nobody in the history of humanity has been asked how pedantic they are.
How pedantic are you?
Just a joke. It’s just a way to set up the joke. It doesn’t make sense, practically, but it isn’t supposed to be part of the funny bit. Or it is… It could be, in an ironic way.
🤷♂️ Take it with a pinch of salt.
Me when people treat theory as if its concrete fact that they themselves penned and proved.
And then say “it’s just a theory” to completely dismiss something they don’t like.
This is a personal attack.
Edit: who’s downvoting jokes in this community? 😂
Hypothesize deez nuts
I conject deez nuts aren’t nuts.
I hypothesise deez nuts will break apart entirely differently in a nutcracker to confirm this.
tests in nutcracker
I put forward the theory that deez nuts are a man’s testicles.
