Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends on the distribution. And which average.
IQ is distributed normally.
That's begging the question.
To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
231–240 of 307 posts
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Modern science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle, and we’ll explain the rest.’ The one free miracle is the appearance of all the mass and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it in a single instant from nothing"
That's nonsense. Modern science is based on gathering information and forming ideas and hypotheses around it. The origins of matter and energy are an active area of investigation, not a guilty secret.
"Guilty secret" is an uncharitable reading of the parent post, I'd say more out of the realm of scientific inquiry and more the philosophical. It's like asking "what was there before time existed?" - the scientific answer is null because that's a nonsense question - "before" implies the existence of a "time" to count it.
And yet, if the universe suddenly exists at T+0:00, it'll be impossible for science to understand the conditions at T-0:01 because that information does not exist given consensus understanding of time.
Still, we can comprehend the concept of "before time existed" on some abstract level, but the sciences cannot, absent some external source of information that a scientist must necessarily reject until it appears.
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#233Learning how to do this is an essential skill. Most people are not idiots. If they disagree with you, it's probably not because they are being irrational, but because they're starting from a different premise, making different assumptions, or assigning different values to different aspects of the problem. Only when you understand their argument well enough to articulate it in your own words can you effectively presen…
Indeed, and since nobody has posted it yet, and while it's not perfect, this is so far the best-written readily acessible simple guide for anybody about the tactics of practical modern discussion: http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like an opportunity for a more opinionated error logging tool... "@Dave, you seem to have made yet another type error on line 56. @jon recently committed code that didn't fail any integration tests. Why can't you be more like @jon?"
Hmm... I wonder what would be the implications of one with positive reinforcement: "Wow @Dave! that's the smartest code I've ever seen! just one thing, there's a probably-not-that-important error on line 56"
Positive reinforcement which is perceived as insincere will at best have no effect and at worst be seriously insulting. I can't imagine how an automated system which says vaguely positive things about code that it cannot understand would be seen as anything but insincere.
If you build a system which successfully encourages actual humans to say nice things about one another's code _and mean it_ while incorporating constructive feedback, it would work beautifully, but that is a markedly more challenging problem...
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without hypothesis you don't have scientific method on a particular subject. This is the weakness I was talking about. Since you can't use scientific method to bootstrap itself - as far as anyone can tell - this is enough to question scientific method's ability to resolve _all_ issues and declare any result on things not applicable to it. Is this important? You tell me. You may find it useful not to apply unsuitable…
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? I can pull an idea out of my butt (all grasshoppers are blue!), state it formally as a hypothesis and then apply scientific investigation to it. I don't see this bootstrap problem you're talking about. Scientific method likely cannot resolve all possible categories of question, no. Empiricism is a fundamental assumption, that things are repeatable and…
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method?
Because a thing which you believe and yet is not defined by the scientific method (or rather, empiricism) is known as "faith", a concept which you and the rest of this thread has spent a good deal of energy attacking.
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? I can pull an idea out of my butt (all grasshoppers are blue!), state it formally as a hypothesis and then apply scientific investigation to it. I don't see this bootstrap problem you're talking about. Scientific method likely cannot resolve all possible categories of question, no. Empiricism is a fundamental assumption, that things are repeatable and…
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? Because a thing which you believe and yet is not defined by the scientific method (or rather, empiricism) is known as "faith", a concept which you and the rest of this thread has spent a good deal of energy attacking.
A hypothesis is not something that you believe though, it is something subject to test.
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does a hypothesis need to be defined by the scientific method? Because a thing which you believe and yet is not defined by the scientific method (or rather, empiricism) is known as "faith", a concept which you and the rest of this thread has spent a good deal of energy attacking.
A hypothesis is not something that you believe though, it is something subject to test.
And yet before you test it (if you get around to testing it, and you have the ability and resource to do so), it's just another thing you believe might be the cause of some effect.
In other words, it has no empirical base. It's an idea. A thought, held in the belief that some future action by you or others may prove it correct.
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
A hypothesis is not something that you believe though, it is something subject to test.
And yet before you test it ( if you get around to testing it, and you have the ability and resource to do so), it's just another thing you believe might be the cause of some effect. In other words, it has no empirical base. It's an idea. A thought, held in the belief that some future action by you or others may prove it correct.
Sure, it's an idea, it's not something you believe anything about though, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. A hypothesis is a statement of a possibility to be investigated and either upheld or invalidated. It is in no way equivalent to a belief.
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet before you test it ( if you get around to testing it, and you have the ability and resource to do so), it's just another thing you believe might be the cause of some effect. In other words, it has no empirical base. It's an idea. A thought, held in the belief that some future action by you or others may prove it correct.
Sure, it's an idea, it's not something you believe anything about though, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. A hypothesis is a statement of a possibility to be investigated and either upheld or invalidated. It is in no way equivalent to a belief.
I'm not seeing the substantial difference between those two things, aside from the unrelated-to-my-point variable of how much the idea-holder wants it to be upheld.
That variable certainly exists - it's why we have blind-controlled trials as the gold standard of research.
Re: To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, it's an idea, it's not something you believe anything about though, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. A hypothesis is a statement of a possibility to be investigated and either upheld or invalidated. It is in no way equivalent to a belief.
I'm not seeing the substantial difference between those two things, aside from the unrelated-to-my-point variable of how much the idea-holder wants it to be upheld. That variable certainly exists - it's why we have blind-controlled trials as the gold standard of research.
Surely that's the whole point of a belief - here is something I know to be true.
As compared to a hypothesis - here is an idea that should be tested by investigation, I make no prior judgement to its truth