English is a juggernaut truck, it goes on regardless
Mine is envy vs jealousy.
Me when people treat theory as if its concrete fact that they themselves penned and proved.
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.
Could you explain the difference to me? 🙏
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.
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.
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.
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?
