Do you believe in ghosts?

Ghosts are real, I've just never found a reasonable enough of an explanation to explain their existence.

I don't believe in ghosts. I won't until someone gives me a scientific explanation about ghosts. Or something.

No. Unless someone can scientifically prove how ghost form and why they exists, I'll never believe in dumb garbage like that.

Nope we have a word for people who strongly believe in ghosts...it is called unstable.

Even if ghosts existed they'd be completely insubstantial. They wouldn't be able to do anything to you. A "ghost's" power comes from making you paranoid enough to hurt yourself. So, really, whether they exist or not is irrelevant. Calm down, think about nice things, and don't get jittery around sharp objects or the tops of stairs and you'll be fine.

There are several theories about why ghosts exist, but they are all theories, just thoughts. But shit, there's a lot of "scientific" stuff that's pretty much just thoughts. *cough, M theory, cough*

Yeah, but you can't test it. You need a lot more than a hypothesis for something to be considered science.

True, but there are a few things in the scientific world that are accepted far more than ghosts but have just as much real evidence supporting them. I haven't seen anything that actually supports, really, any part of M theory (that I've heard about, that is), but it's much easier to find a person that believes in M theory than ghosts. At least, when we're talking about scientific possibility. There's a fuckload of people that believe in ghosts and don't think about any sort of explanation.

Ah, now there's something worthy of asking my physics professor about. 3 easy questions: Is M Theory actually a scientific theory or a hypothesis? (Expectation: Hypothesis.) What makes M Theory scientific rather than just making stuff up? (Expectation: It is described using mathematical logic, which was used to describe our universe before with special/general relativity, making such speculations have prior plausibility, unlike ghosts, which have ZERO prior plausibility.) What differentiates M Theory scientifically from something like ghosts? (Setting aside the implications of the first question, this is actually redundant as the second question would distinguish between the scientific and the unscientific [Ghost shit]. But for the sake of thoroughness, I'll add the third question, which I'll word differently.)

At least that's how I see M-theory is a scientific effort unlike ghosts/god/etc that simply says it's not explainable and that's the end of it.

What I hate about this shit is that no amount of the lack of valid evidence or more prosaic explanations will convince the true believer that maybe that shit just doesn't exist. Their response to that is just "It needs more research done" or "You weren't there, man, I've see this shiznit with my own two eyes, man." Their best evidence is anecdotal.

you mean the M-theory?

No, I mean ghosts, god, etc.

Ah, now there's something worthy of asking my physics professor about. 3 easy questions: Is M Theory actually a scientific theory or a hypothesis? (Expectation: Hypothesis.) What makes M Theory scientific rather than just making stuff up? (Expectation: It is described using mathematical logic, which was used to describe our universe before with special/general relativity, making such speculations have prior plausibility, unlike ghosts, which have ZERO prior plausibility.) What differentiates M Theory scientifically from something like ghosts? (Setting aside the implications of the first question, this is actually redundant as the second question would distinguish between the scientific and the unscientific [Ghost shit]. But for the sake of thoroughness, I'll add the third question, which I'll word differently.)

For the most part, they are not currently testable, and a theory should be falsifiable. This is not the fault of the theorists. It's just that these ideas apply at such large energies that we don't yet have the technology to probe them. There is a caveat. We currently believe that string theory on certain geometries are dual to certain strongly coupled quantum field theories. For example, the endpoints of a string moving by a black hole follow the same dynamical rules as quarks moving through a quark-gluon plasma. This idea has been partially tested out with some positive preliminary results-- the string theory predictions roughly agree with the experiments.

naysayers tend to proclaim how its been 30 years and string theory has not shown any results. However, the theories of gravity and electromagnetism took many decades, if not centuries, to fully develop.

While string theory is a misnomer, this is not to say that it's the same as believing in ghosts and pink elephants. There is a huge amount of mathematical structure in which things work out precisely and perfectly. It would be rather surprising, but not impossible, if all of that was just by coincidence. Here's one example. In quantum field theory, there are indications that the forces unify at high energy, at which point they all have the same strength. However, it turns out that they don't quite have the same strength until you add supersymmetry (an idea associated with string theory), with which the forces then have the same strength precisely. While it is always possible that this is just a coincidence, this could be pointing to some profound underlying physics at work that we don't yet fully understand. Ghosts don't have this type of mathematical beauty associated with them. So while string theory does not yet deserve the title of theory, I believe that it may hold much more promise than ghosts.