A scientist must go where the evidence leads • Hacker News Board

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#71

Post by wellpast » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #48

wellpast wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take my example of the person who believes in Resurrection encountering the Scientific dissenter. Either they are having a fair debate and they are talking in the same domain or they are not. I say they are not. Yet they are still having the debate. Ergo, I say they are "tricked". What better word to use for two people fervently engaging in debate based on a senseless equivalency? I also point to history b/c it seems…

You don't have to make up some hypothetical, you can just look at what actually happened with, say, heliocentrism or the beginnings of scientific geology. These were real, genuine cosmological disputes. In what way was this a 'trick'? What is the history you are pointing at that clarifies your position?

The trick was in both sides acting as if geo or helio-centrism from a scientific method pov had anything to do with the derived value to the religious.

The religious derives value — perhaps — from the concept of centrism, perhaps the centrism of the soul/consciousness from a relational POV but whether or not the litmus paper proves an earth center matters two shits to the religious.

The trick was that these two domains were confounded and a yes genuine dispute (based on a genuinely stupid equivalency) played out.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#72

Post by dabbledash » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

catawbasam wrote: post #68

dabbledash wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there are claims (normative, aesthetic, etc.) that are not amenable to scientific inquiry. But most religious people would claim that 1) a god exists and 2) that god has observable effects on the material world. If claim 2 is true we should be able to use the usual tools to know it. If claim 1 is true but claim 2 is false, that is practically indistinguishable from a situation where God does not exist at…

Re claim 2, I claim that it has an effect on my experience: Though I was at one time an atheist, I experienced what I can only describe as the presence of God or the divine spirit. I am far from the only witness. Does this count as an observable effect on the material world? I am certainly a material being living in the physical universe, but you could not detect that experience with a telescope. Maybe with an MRI? D…

I definitely count that as an observable effect on the material world. There’s not enough information for me to know what caused it, but yeah I think it’s a totally normal datapoint.

I’m not arguing about the existence of God per se, I’m saying that I find the idea that claims about God are totally different than other kinds of claims unconvincing.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#73

Post by miles7 » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

Too many religious people that I know think that scientists have it out for them and/or are conspiring against them. Enough articles like this and it will prove their point for them (the statement equating being irreligious with acting like an adult), even though I don't think it's true of scientists as a whole.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#74

Post by RickJWagner » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

I like it, especially the constant referal to checking models against results.

For me (and I suspect many others), this is the key to making a convincing argument about the state of climate change. It seems we have lots of headlines (and guesses) about exactly how bad things are, but nobody seems able to correctly forecast even a year or two out.

I think a short pattern of correct predictions would really, really deserve attention.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#75

Post by MRAutumn » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:17 AM UTC

wellpast wrote: post #18

> There are major aspects of our life that remain unexplained, leaving professional scientists with the choice of whether to accept the general notion that they will also be resolved one day by the scientific method. ... This ambiguous state of affairs explains why some of the best scientists are religious. This to me reflects huge deficit in the author's thinking and perception. It also reflects a common sentiment a…

> Corollary to this is that everybody is Religious and everybody is Scientific, and plays the card when its needed.

Only if you define religious as 'spiritual'; as more than the physical atoms that make up a person.

If you are claiming that being religious is an integral part of being human I guess we are going to need a new word to describe those who believe in a divine power guiding the events of the universe.

I am certainly not religious.

> What a Religious person derives from their beliefs has nothing -- zero, nothing -- to do with the measurable/observable particle interactions of the material world. Even if they say it does, self-reports are not to be trusted here.

> What a Scientist derives from their observations has nothing -- zero, nothing -- to do with how they approach the world and others in the way of morality, pursuit of contented life, etc. Again self-reports are not to be trusted here.

I do believe you are wrong in both counts here. If you don't think religious doctrines can shape how a person percieves and acts in the world I guess you have not meet many devout people. And if you think the observations of science have nothing to do with how people approach their interactions in the world, well, I don't know what to say. Science in human reproduction has made unthinkable positions just a couple of decades ago, morally acceptable today, and that is just one example of hundreds I could list of the top of my head.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#76

Post by MRAutumn » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:28 AM UTC

wellpast wrote: post #71

pvg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to make up some hypothetical, you can just look at what actually happened with, say, heliocentrism or the beginnings of scientific geology. These were real, genuine cosmological disputes. In what way was this a 'trick'? What is the history you are pointing at that clarifies your position?

The trick was in both sides acting as if geo or helio-centrism from a scientific method pov had anything to do with the derived value to the religious. The religious derives value — perhaps — from the concept of centrism, perhaps the centrism of the soul/consciousness from a relational POV but whether or not the litmus paper proves an earth center matters two shits to the religious. The trick was that these two domai…

With all due respect, I think it is you the one who's been tricked into the ethereal realm of 'the religious', which you've used often in this thread to get out of the real discussion.

The historical debate came about because of specific claims about the physical world. No one is, or was, discussing the derived value of 'the religious', that is not the point of contention most of the time.

The heliocentric debate refers specifically to a physical description of our shared universe. It is about an object, about many objects, objects that can be touched, smelled and seen.

Religion is not some ambiguous collection of moral view points, it is and has been something concrete for many people for many centuries, something for which they've died and sadly something for which they've killed.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#77

Post by JunkDNA » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

The discipline of science (and its sibling mathematics) has been one of the great achievements of human civilization. It has been so astonishingly successful, we can’t even fathom there being any phenomena beyond its reach, given enough time and enough foundational understanding. Because I like to stretch my mind in uncomfortable directions, I often wonder: is there something else? Something that can lead us to Truth other than mathematics and science? Has human civilization gotten stuck in a local maximum where it appears as though we now have a means for understanding the entire universe, but there is another whole level we are as yet too primitive to reach? I worry that as a species we haven’t spent enough time trying to answer this question.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#78

Post by MRAutumn » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 2:50 AM UTC

ta1234567890 wrote: post #20

wellpast wrote: post #18

> There are major aspects of our life that remain unexplained, leaving professional scientists with the choice of whether to accept the general notion that they will also be resolved one day by the scientific method. ... This ambiguous state of affairs explains why some of the best scientists are religious. This to me reflects huge deficit in the author's thinking and perception. It also reflects a common sentiment a…

Very good point. Adding to it, there are things in life which are ineffable. This means they are (by definition), impossible to model or explain with words. Thus, these things will forever evade scientific scrutiny as science cannot deal with the ineffable. Despite the above, we (and science) are continuously trying to reduce the immensity, inconmensurability and ineffability of reality into something that can easily…

> Adding to it, there are things in life which are ineffable. This means they are (by definition), impossible to model or explain with words. Thus, these things will forever evade scientific scrutiny as science cannot deal with the ineffable.

The concept of 'Ineffable things', is a very poetic way of describing something but it does not reflect reality. If a word exists to refer to something it is because is not ineffable. Let's take your example of love, for which you say is impossible to model or explain with words: Now, perhaps it is, if we are being pedantic and requiring a 100% concrete description of it where every one of its possible expressions are explained to the total satisfaction of every one every where every time. But that is not the bar we are aiming for, we are only aiming for it not being ineffable. As it happens, we can describe love at the very list in a vague sense, which is a lot more than no description at all.

We can say for example that love is an emotion, we can say love is not hunger. Love is not the number 9. Love is related to affection, love is a feeling expressed by humans, among other creatures. Just in those few sentences we know a lot more about love than we did if we just accepted its condition as ineffable.

In fact, we could spend days describing love, as many many poets already have, and while it is true we do not understand it completely, we do know what we are talking about when we say love enough to write millions of inspiring pages about it.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#79

Post by roca » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

chousuke wrote: post #47

wellpast wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this with no offense but I think you're reflecting the deficit in thinking I mention. E.g. here: > If you're just saying that people can use religions to make themselves feel better by believing in things that are false, I assume you're using science's rhetoric of false here. Which is really just can it be observed using the tools & vocabulary of science. > I have serious problems with this sentiment that ther…

> I assume you're using science's rhetoric of false here. Which is really just can it be observed using the tools & vocabulary of science. What useful definition of true and false exist besides the scientific one? And why would any religion have a claim to this? > > I have serious problems with this sentiment that there's some other way of knowing things besides studying reality > What is reality? Is science reality?…

> We can simply decide that striving towards universal wellbeing is morally good, and that suffering should be minimized.

Your "axiom" will also have to define what "universal wellbeing" and "suffering" actually mean, and how these maxima/minima are to be computed, etc. That is not simple at all.

Having done that, you have to admit that your decision is arbitrary (except, hopefully, it aligns modestly well with the evolved/cultural preferences of some set of brains). I hope you won't lapse into dishonesty and tell brains that reach different conclusions from their evolved/cultural preferences that your decision is "right" or "wrong" in any sense similar to the "right" and "wrong" of scientific truth. Unfortunately I have never yet met anyone who is able to resist that temptation.

Re: A scientist must go where the evidence leads

#80

Post by yesenadam » Fri, Aug 16, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

JunkDNA wrote: post #77

The discipline of science (and its sibling mathematics) has been one of the great achievements of human civilization. It has been so astonishingly successful, we can’t even fathom there being any phenomena beyond its reach, given enough time and enough foundational understanding. Because I like to stretch my mind in uncomfortable directions, I often wonder: is there something else? Something that can lead us to Truth…

It sounds like you may mean philosophy. You are getting philosophical, being meta..(although I'm suspicious of capitalizing things like 'Truth') Philosophy asks "What is X?" e.g. what is science, how does it work? Tries to understand things. When the answers philosophy gets in an area become complete enough, that area is called science/maths/logic etc.. That happened with science itself, which used to be 'natural philosophy'. Also, if there was some new way discovered for increasing scientific-type knowledge, it would itself become a part of science.