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Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

chem.tufts.edu

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Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#11

Post by kijuhygf »

alan-crowe wrote: post #9

This doesn't tackle the issue head on. The problem that emerged in the 20th Century was a lay perspective on science that looked at the old theory of Newtonian Mechanics and compared it to the new theories of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity and saw the differences but not the similarities. Science consists of both theory and experiment. The old theory does a reasonable job of explaining the old data that came from t…

>The new theory cannot just beat the old theory on the new data, it has to beat the old theory on the old data,

Erm, yes - if you come up with a new theory of gravity, it had better explain the current orbits of the planets.

Suppose I have a wonderful new theory of gravity, it doesn't work for anything on earth, or anything you can measure in space - but that's ok because that's old data and doesn't count.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#12

Post by jamesbritt »

Jun8 wrote: post #7

This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading. However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread p…

" If you don't believe me, just find a liberal arts major and talk for 10mins. He/she will be dumbstruck that you think otherwise. A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth."

What I've often seen is a sort of "convenient relativism" about truth.

I've known people who, for some things, claim there's no real truth, it's all relative, you cannot prove or know anything, etc. (Which makes me wonder how they know you can't know anything, or why, if it's all relative, my belief in an objective universe is not just as valid as any other belief.)

And they'll occasionally toss this charge at matters of science. Yet in their day-today life, they happily take aspirin, ride elevators, use electricity, and put gas in their cars, all with the belief that these things will follow a known and predictably consistent behavior.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#13

Post by olalonde »

Jun8 wrote: post #7

This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading. However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread p…

Then, there's a third category of questions where these two approaches fail. In fact, when asked a question of this type, one does not immediately know how to go about proceeding to investigate it, e.g. "What is truth, Is there a God", etc. [...] But apart from its misapplication to scientific matters (such as the shape of the earth), is the moral relativistic approach a useful one, despite its acceptance as an axiom in a lot of universities? Now, that is a long debate.

IMHO, the moral relativistic approach as you describe it constitutes an interesting mental exercise, but not a useful one per se.

If there is absolutely no hint or proof that something exists, how can it be useful to debate it (apart from intellectual masturbation) ?

Let's say we live in "the matrix" and that there is _absolutely_ no way to get out of it or anything that could hint its existence. Given that assumption, what is the point of debating whether it exists or not ? Even if there really was a matrix, how could it be useful for us to know this piece of information ? That knowledge wouldn't serve any purpose as the said matrix wouldn't in any way interfere with our universe and even less with our mere human lives. Of course, if there was any way to escape the matrix or if it would even subtly interact with our universe, that would be another question.

In the same vein, I dislike the concept of "agnosticism". If we had to be agnostic about everything that is not possible to prove (or even partially, through subtle hints) then we'd have to be agnostic about an amount of things only limited by our collective imagination. For instance, we'd have to be agnostic about "the matrix", the fact that our universe is an "atom" inside a much larger universe, that we're all imagining this universe through an induced dream, etc.

On a side note, this is one of the reason I find it more interesting to debate with theists that believe they have evidence for God than agnostics or theists that base their belief on faith.

PS: I'm not trying to discard philosophy and I actually admire this discipline. All I'm saying is that it should not attempt to answer the wrong questions.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#14

Post by philwelch »

olalonde wrote: post #13
Jun8 wrote: post #7

This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading. However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread p…

Then, there's a third category of questions where these two approaches fail. In fact, when asked a question of this type, one does not immediately know how to go about proceeding to investigate it, e.g. "What is truth, Is there a God", etc. [...] But apart from its misapplication to scientific matters (such as the shape of the earth), is the moral relativistic approach a useful one, despite its acceptance as an axiom…

"Let's say we live in "the matrix" and that there is _absolutely_ no way to get out of it or anything that could hint its existence. Given that assumption, what is the point of debating whether it exists or not ? Even if there really was a matrix, how could it be useful for us to know this piece of information ? That knowledge wouldn't serve any purpose as the said matrix wouldn't in any way interfere with our universe and even less with our mere human lives. Of course, if there was any way to escape the matrix or if it would even subtly interact with our universe, that would be another question."

The standard answer is that all of our naive beliefs about the world would be false. You are not actually sitting on a couch, your simulated body-projection is simulated to be sitting on a simulated couch. The very fact we can't tell whether or not we're in the matrix undermines all our knowledge.

The more insightful answer is that even if we're in the matrix, everything about the physical world is still true, there is just a metaphysical fact we are unaware of--namely, that the universe happens to be a simulation. You're still sitting on a couch, and the couch is still made of atoms, and the atoms are still made of subatomic particles and so forth, but it turns out all the subatomic particles are just data structures in the matrix and we didn't know that before. Nothing is undermined.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#15

Post by olalonde »

philwelch wrote: post #14
olalonde wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, there's a third category of questions where these two approaches fail. In fact, when asked a question of this type, one does not immediately know how to go about proceeding to investigate it, e.g. "What is truth, Is there a God", etc. [...] But apart from its misapplication to scientific matters (such as the shape of the earth), is the moral relativistic approach a useful one, despite its acceptance as an axiom…

"Let's say we live in "the matrix" and that there is _absolutely_ no way to get out of it or anything that could hint its existence. Given that assumption, what is the point of debating whether it exists or not ? Even if there really was a matrix, how could it be useful for us to know this piece of information ? That knowledge wouldn't serve any purpose as the said matrix wouldn't in any way interfere with our univer…

I assume this was meant to be a clarification as opposed to a counter-argument because I totally agree with you. My point was that there is absolutely no use in knowing "metaphysical facts" as long as they don't change anything about our knowledge of the physical universe.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#16

Post by philwelch »

olalonde wrote: post #15
philwelch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Let's say we live in "the matrix" and that there is _absolutely_ no way to get out of it or anything that could hint its existence. Given that assumption, what is the point of debating whether it exists or not ? Even if there really was a matrix, how could it be useful for us to know this piece of information ? That knowledge wouldn't serve any purpose as the said matrix wouldn't in any way interfere with our univer…

I assume this was meant to be a clarification as opposed to a counter-argument because I totally agree with you. My point was that there is absolutely no use in knowing "metaphysical facts" as long as they don't change anything about our knowledge of the physical universe.

Metaphysical facts are fundamentally unknowable anyway--if you could determine them through some type of experiment, they'd be physical facts. There might be some metaphysical facts you can prove by argument, but I doubt it.

You could even argue that metaphysical statements are meaningless, though you run into problems going too far that way as well.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#17

Post by olalonde »

philwelch wrote: post #16
olalonde wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this was meant to be a clarification as opposed to a counter-argument because I totally agree with you. My point was that there is absolutely no use in knowing "metaphysical facts" as long as they don't change anything about our knowledge of the physical universe.

Metaphysical facts are fundamentally unknowable anyway--if you could determine them through some type of experiment, they'd be physical facts. There might be some metaphysical facts you can prove by argument, but I doubt it. You could even argue that metaphysical statements are meaningless, though you run into problems going too far that way as well.

Metaphysical statements are indeed meaningless if you can't determine them through some type of experiment. That being said, the fundamental laws of our universe could also be considered as metaphysical statements since they "describe the physical", the precise definition of "metaphysical". However, those metaphysical statements can be determined through experiments and that's why they're "useful".

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#18

Post by lotharbot »

Jun8 wrote: post #7

This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading. However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread p…

"The guy's obvious error is to apply this approach to the scientific realm"

Which is, of course, the point. As a rule, new scientific theories must match the data better than old ones. Over long periods of time, then, science becomes less wrong in its explanation of those things which can be scientifically investigated. The English Lit major's approach may work well with religion or philosophy, but it doesn't translate well to science.

There is a minor problem with the "less wrong" approach, though: it depends upon your metric for measuring wrongness, and that choice of metric may have a philosophical basis. Consider a small set of points that nearly follow a quadratic. One might say "this appears to be quadratic with small errors"; another might say "this fits a higher-order polynomial with even smaller errors", yet the first might be conceptually/philosophically a better description of data that was quadratic but measured from a sinusoidally-vibrating platform. A poorly chosen method for measuring wrongness could actually make it more difficult to discover underlying explanations of phenomena.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#19

Post by Confusion »

Jun8 wrote: post #7

This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading. However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread p…

A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth.

An example that's so wrong that it's not even wrong.

Newton's theory wasn't wrong, because it's a theory that describes observed reality pretty well, which is the main criterion for a proper scientific theory.

Einstein's theory isn't an approximation to, or correction of, Newtons theory. Rather, it is a completely new theory, because it completely overthrows fundamental concepts. 'Mass' and 'simultaneity' are not nearly the same thing in Einstein's and Newton's theories. That they give nearly identical results in a certain domain doesn't mean the theories are nearly identical. They just give the same results, because they are both good scientific theories of that domain.

Completely apart from that, there is no absolute truth. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein destroyed what remained of that possibility.

Re: Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

#20

Post by jerf »

Confusion wrote: post #19
Jun8 wrote: post #7

This is a truly brilliant essay on the scientific method, clearly showing why Asimov was regarded as one of the best writers popularized and explained scientific concepts. His "Please Explain" should be required reading. However, I think he has misclassified the error of the English Lit correspondent in this essay. Since I have witnessed this misunderstanding many times (and I want to postpone writing my C++ thread p…

A common example with such people is how Newton's theory was "wrong" and Einstein's theory "corrected" it, clearly showing there's no absolute truth. An example that's so wrong that it's not even wrong. Newton's theory wasn't wrong, because it's a theory that describes observed reality pretty well, which is the main criterion for a proper scientific theory. Einstein's theory isn't an approximation to, or correction o…

"Completely apart from that, there is no absolute truth. Nietzsche and Wittgenstein destroyed what remained of that possibility."

O, well, that's that then.

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