Tim: "And does "noise" help or harm the scientific conversation? Think about it, it motivates others, indirectly helping science; am I right?"
- There's no question that noise of the kind mentioned, like any background noise, interferes with the dissemination of useful, coherent information. In the midst of the noise scientists are easily able to identify non-science, alias determined ignorance. To many non-scientists, especially the unanalytical and uneducated, the bilge exuded by some people can sound quite plausible. For that reason it can be a very harmful influence, and most likely to lead to a misunderstanding of science. It certainly has nothing to offer by way of help.
Basically, this is what chaos is about in modern science:
The tiniest difference in the initial conditions of a system can lead to a hugely different large scale scenario at a later time. The system (e.g. the troposphere), functions according to determinstic rules of cause and effect, and yet owing to its complexity, it's unpredictable beyond a very limited timescale. It's "chaotic".
Oddly enough, a simple dripping tap can be a chaotic system:
"The drip intervals could now be seen to occur over a range of 50 milliseconds. The drip interval is now unpredictable. The
system had now progressed from a periodic state to a chaotic state."
http://www.physics.dit.ie/resources/yearbook2004/fisher.pdf
