Would you want to see cutting edge theoretical debates?????

Another God

Howdy everyone, I am doing a little bit of 'research' for a website idea of mine and I am very very eager for some feedback on it.

Essentially I want to know if you, the people of our world who are interested in Science/Engineering/Philosophy would be interested in reading an online debate between leading advocates of opposing theories.

Say someone could organise the most respected QM theorists (for example), one for each opposing theory to agree to participate in an online forum and argue for each of their cases over a period of time, would You go and read what they say?

If you are interested in any other field (Say how the mind works, what the pyramids were for, how complexity arises, what blackholes are...whatever), then assume that is the debate that will be on display, and my question to you is: Would you actively go to the website and read the debate?

(there would also be forums available in the background for you to discuss the debates with other people, although no one could participate in the professional debate...)

Another God

If you want to give me any more help, feel free to offer topics that you would like to see debated and who you think would be good at representing either side. Any comments and or suggestions at all would be appreciated actually. Thanks.

selfAdjoint

THis is a self selected poll. Any lurker who would actually fire up and vote is a potential contributer! Therefore he/she would pick option 2.

Monique

[6)] I think so too, we ARE on physics forums you know.. [6)]

The question will be: what are these debates going to be about and how are you going to motivate the experts.

I mean, in my field there is the debate whether whole genome haplotype blocks exist or not, and whether those can be defined. I went to a conference and this was the hot topic there, researchers claiming that it was the holy grail, after which the opposer point blank said it was crap [6)] that was Leena Peltonen vs Joe Terwilliger [:D] for those who know Joe Terwilliger, know how opinionated and straight to the point he is [6)]

So yeah, I'd like him to debate something. For him to do that, the website needs to have a REAL scientific community. Right now all the debates are fought out in publications and at conferences already..

Monique

For instance, you could also debate the use of performing all those genome wide scans to look if a gene for a certain fenotype can be found.

Again ask J. Terwilliger for that, he also rediculed the researchers by compairing the effort with collecting a research sample of people who have broken their leg, you might find a stupidity gene [:D]

Or debate the number of research participants that are needed to make results from a whole genomescan significant.

All interesting things to find out, but are you in the right forum for the audience? You ARE asking an audience of highschool students. For what you have in mind to work, you need to target the research community for your audience.

Another God

Once again Monique, thank you for all of the consideration. I am taking them all in, and they are all things that I will have to deal with if I am to make this happen. I have brought a couple of friends of mine into this with me (there is no way I could do it alone (even with the PF community assisting me!)) and we are discussing all of the variables and considerations. The process of selecting the topics and selecting the repreentatives of those topics is a long way off (this probably wont happen for 2 years...) but when it does come, we will have to work hard to figure out not only which topics are worth being discuss, which topics are discussble, but also who is will to discuss this stuff for the public and do so to the best of their ability. So in reality, we're going to need not only the most knowledgeable about any given field, but we are also going to need people who have a knack for presenting their knowledge....

Another God

Thats OK. I don't really need to see positive vs negative votes....all that matters is whether there are people who are interested or not. If bugger all people are interested, then there is no point.

Monique

You already saw the Nature and the Science debate forums? And that other forum, sciencedebates.com? I've put it in your other thread :)