by haxiomic on 10/29/23, 5:47 PM with 207 comments
by Animats on 10/29/23, 7:04 PM
This. That's a good way to put it. I've mentioned Fred Hoyle's line on that, "Science is prediction, not explanation" (which is from one of Hoyle's novels), but Sagan's line is better.
Key point: unfalsifiable theories do not lead to useful technology. Engineering requires predictability.
by umvi on 10/29/23, 7:25 PM
> having just lost both of his parents, he reflects on the all too human allure of promises of supernatural reunions in the afterlife, reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people, but simply means that we need to equip ourselves with the right tools against them.
I feel like grouping all religion in with psychics and con artists is a bit extreme. Sure, it's impossible by contradiction for all tenets of all religions to be simultaneously true.
But... there were, are, and will yet be many intelligent people of different religions that, for various empirically-unprovable reasons, feel there is a God - even if they know at an intellectual level that their current church or belief system isn't entirely consistent or correct.
It's important to respect their religious liberty even if you disagree. Many people (including on this very forum) have had spiritual experiences that seem to confirm the existence of a God at a visceral level. It's hard to explain unless you've had a spiritual experience, but they can include moments of emotional connection to deceased loved ones, "gut feelings" that helped you do something important or avoid something bad, or unexpected and unusual ideas or thoughts (in my case, sometimes even programming related) that aid in overcoming life's obstacles, just to name a few.
by tcbawo on 10/29/23, 7:58 PM
by anotherevan on 10/29/23, 9:50 PM
That's not Occam's fault. Razors are meant to be sharp, and people cut themselves with far blunter implements.
by johnsanders on 10/29/23, 8:22 PM
by ckrapu on 10/29/23, 7:44 PM
For example, I've noticed that of the managers I've had, the good ones and bad ones are cleanly separated by one trait or property. This is a sample size of maybe 7 or smaller.
Depending on your priors, my P(Hypothesis | Data) is maybe 0.6-0.7 which is terrible from a research and scientific point of view.
I'll take that level of certainty for day-to-day decision making anytime, though. Make enough of these weakly-backed hypotheses and you can avoid a lot of trouble.
by chmod600 on 10/29/23, 8:08 PM
That's the most controversial, because a lot of people want to be authorities and don't want to be questioned.
For instance, the origins of Covid... or really lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. It turns out many of those things were subsequently reversed or reasonably doubted.
by chrisweekly on 10/29/23, 7:21 PM
by norir on 10/29/23, 9:57 PM
by mihaic on 10/29/23, 11:53 PM
The more I've thought about bullshit as a phenomenon, the more I think the only real solutions are social ones, where non-bullshitters need to coordinate to make bullshitting a bad scenario. Things like shaming, publicly crying bullshit, coordinated dismissing bad actors.
If handled individually, it'll always be asymetrically easier to bullshit than to defend against bullshit.
by chiefalchemist on 10/29/23, 8:52 PM
https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/jim-lehrers-16-rules-for...
by dgudkov on 10/30/23, 2:56 AM
Carl Sagan's Rules seem like a candidate for a framework for such a tool, or at least, a starting point.
by joering2 on 10/29/23, 9:16 PM
by robomc on 10/29/23, 7:52 PM
this one would be surprising though
by apienx on 10/29/23, 9:01 PM
To quote Bertrand Russell: “Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.” ;-)
by Yizahi on 10/29/23, 9:37 PM
It is year 2020 and there are these new and suspicious vaccines for the new illness and you want to understand what's going on. Smart people say that multiple hypothesis need to be evaluated, authorities are unreliable, unquantified promises bad and so on. So an unprepared person might simply drown in the sea of baloney hypotheses, like invermectin treatments, electrophoresis treatments, etc.
If a person lacks critical thinking facilities which actually work, and aren't simply contrarian kindergarten style, then adhering to authorities would be the optimal path.
by ukj on 10/30/23, 12:13 PM
Alan Turing: The claims made in the Halting Problem is genrally true, and is therefore unfalsifiable even in principle.
Carl Sagan: Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much.
All computer scientists in synchronized act of distributed consensus: Bullshit.
by zubairq on 10/29/23, 7:12 PM
by kazinator on 10/29/23, 8:59 PM
When we are left with a "why", our only choices are (1) take an agnostic stance and decline to make hypotheses, (2) make unfalsifiable hypotheses. If we choose (2) there are unfalsifiable hypotheses that are superior and those that are inferior. The superior ones are ones which postulate less. The best unfalsifiable hypothesis is the one which postulates no hidden variables. The answer to "why" (why things are the way they are, and not in some other arrangement) is that (a) other arrangements for a universe are valid and exist, but we are biased because we are intelligent beings which live in a particular arrangement and only that one is observable to us (the "anthropic principle"); and (b) in fact, why not: all the other possible universes exist, just not "here". (If they don't, then we need to come up with a hypothetical reason why they don't, which is more complicated than assuming there is no reason: by Occam's Razor, we just trim that out.)
What we don't want to be doing is spouting some unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were unvarnished truth; but nevertheless, we can pick the best one and defend it against the others, when they come up.
I should add that there is nothing wrong with postulating theoretical entities and processes; doing so has served us well, and in many cases, additional discoveries lended reality to the postulated entities. E.g. atoms were originally a philosophical construct based on the idea that subdividing matter into smaller pieces has to bottom out at some indivisible particle; and that's where we got the atom word. Subatomic particles were postulated initially too. These are not exactly the same as hidden variables because their existence is falsifiable. We have evidence that there exists an electron, for instance, even though originally it was just postulated.