Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong (1989) • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by RodericDay » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #55

mdpopescu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at this statement: _Its [sic] rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results_ I do not believe that this person is sarcastic; I say that because I have talked to hundreds of people with the same opinion. People actually believe this. My authority is better than yours so you uncritically accepting your authority is wrong, me uncritically accepting mine is not only right but obviously so. Igno…

It's not an argument from authority, just a statement of the implied Bayesian priors. One who gives greater weight to scientific papers than to religious pronouncements is entirely rational in doing so. That is the entire well-argued thesis of the Relativity of Wrong essay we are discussing.

Unthinking faith in "the institution of science", particularly the denial that it can be co-opted for certain policy goals, and influenced by funding, and lack the foresight to control for important environmental variables, has and will continue to lead into stuff like eugenics, craniology, and austerity.

I'm still reeling from "Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results"- smh.

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

#62

Post by pdonis » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:43 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #57

pdonis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, it means you don't care about the answer anyway. So why should you take any side? Why not just accept that you don't know?

I think what's being argued here is that the probability of being right by blindly following scientific consensus is greater than the probability of being right by blindly following non-scientific anything. Nobody's saying that science is never wrong, only that it's less wrong than other sources of knowledge, has a process that makes it even less wrong over time, and when it is wrong, it's only relatively wrong in th…

Asimov wasn't talking about following scientific "consensus". He was talking about things that are nailed down by data. The roundness of the Earth wasn't a matter of scientific "consensus"; it was a matter of making observations that showed the curvature of the Earth's surface (vs. earlier observations which were consistent with flatness), then further observations that showed that the curvature varied from place to place (vs. earlier observations which were consistent with it being a perfect sphere), and so on.

The point is that what is "less wrong" is the understanding we build up by extending the range of our data and our ability to predict what new data that we haven't yet observed will look like. It's not anything we build up by "consensus". So a lay person, trying to figure out what to "blindly follow", should not be looking at "consensus"; they should be looking at what data we have, how reliable it is, what does it cover, and how well we can predict what we will see when we get further data. As you can see, I put "blindly follow" in quotes because you can't do all this blindly; you can't just ask what the "consensus" is. You have to actually look at the content.

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

#63

Post by wglb » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

peter303 wrote: post #10

Asimov was ver clever and entertaining. But he was very arrogant to and would never admit someone might have a better idea than him.

Perhaps you might re-read the first paragraph which ends with but I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read on.

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

#64

Post by nitrogen » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #62

nitrogen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's being argued here is that the probability of being right by blindly following scientific consensus is greater than the probability of being right by blindly following non-scientific anything. Nobody's saying that science is never wrong, only that it's less wrong than other sources of knowledge, has a process that makes it even less wrong over time, and when it is wrong, it's only relatively wrong in th…

Asimov wasn't talking about following scientific "consensus". He was talking about things that are nailed down by data. The roundness of the Earth wasn't a matter of scientific "consensus"; it was a matter of making observations that showed the curvature of the Earth's surface (vs. earlier observations which were consistent with flatness), then further observations that showed that the curvature varied from place to…

By "consensus" I mean what you describe, the accumulation of data from multiple sources. But even a simple human consensus of scientists would be right more of the time than a simple consensus of non-scientists.

Edit: also, I was referring initially to the arguments from other comments, not to Asimov specifically.

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

#65

Post by ThrustVectoring » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

jleyank wrote: post #25

Nature "is". Science is an attempt to explain why Nature is the way it is. Collect data, make a prediction, test it, revise the prediction, rinse, repeat. Granted, there are belief systems aplenty in scientific work (string theory?) but as Kuhn has written, sometimes Nature laughs and forces a change. And Asimov's "level of error" discussion is valid. Newtonian physics, while "wrong" is perfectly useful when aiming s…

"The map is not the territory" is a concise way to phrase the idea you're pointing at.

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

#66

Post by calinet6 » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

JackFr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that many people trying to convince me about science are woefully unaware of their own assumptions and are typically ignorant of some basic philosophy. In particular, I accept that the scientific method is a reliable path to knowledge, that is, it reliably leads to a true understanding of true things. However it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge. It also does not fol…

I hear this a lot: morality is above science. I don't believe it for a moment. Just look at those that believe in ignorance over wisdom, or death over life - they do very, very badly. Empirically these moral codes are useful and effective. That's science right there.

Ask Oppenheimer, after the first atomic bomb test, if morality is above science.

"We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him he takes on his multiarmed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"

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

#67

Post by pdonis » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #64

pdonis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asimov wasn't talking about following scientific "consensus". He was talking about things that are nailed down by data. The roundness of the Earth wasn't a matter of scientific "consensus"; it was a matter of making observations that showed the curvature of the Earth's surface (vs. earlier observations which were consistent with flatness), then further observations that showed that the curvature varied from place to…

By "consensus" I mean what you describe, the accumulation of data from multiple sources. But even a simple human consensus of scientists would be right more of the time than a simple consensus of non-scientists. Edit: also, I was referring initially to the arguments from other comments, not to Asimov specifically.

> even a simple human consensus of scientists would be right more of the time than a simple consensus of non-scientists.

This is probably true, at least in fields where we have a reasonably developed science, but you realize, I trust, that it's not a very high bar. :-)

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

#68

Post by foldr » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

This is amusing, but the key terms in Asimov's argument are ambiguous, and he's taking a very selective look at the history of science. The position that science edges gradually towards theories that are "more right" (or "less wrong") is roughly correct in the sense that science tends to be empirically conservative. That is, when scientists replace theory A with theory B, it's generally the case that theory B accounts for most or all of the data that theory A accounted for. However, if we look at the actual content of scientific theories, it's clear that radical change and total reversal are quite common. E.g., the germ theory of disease and the theory of continental drift bear little resemblance to their predecessors; Rutherford's model of the atom is not a minor revision of the "plum pudding model"; a relative space-time is very nearly the opposite of an absolute space and time; and the thesis that the universe has a beginning in time is the negation of the thesis that it does not. The last example is probably the best one. At various times, the scientific consensus has been clearly for or against steady state models. So we know that the scientific consensus on that issue has simply been flat out wrong at one time or another.

Of course, there are many areas where we do expect progress to be conservative. So for example, we are not going to discover that DNA does not actually exist, or that the Earth is larger than the Sun. But on some issues it is reasonable to assume that the scientific consensus is quite likely to undergo radical revision. As Scott Adams points out in an article that someone else linked to here, the science of diet and exercise is a case in point.

So to my mind, it all depends on the particular issues that Asimov's lazy caricature had in mind. If the "Eng Lit major" was expressing skepticism about, say, the age of the Earth, or the atomic theory of matter, then Asimov's response would be a fair one. If they had something else in mind, then perhaps not.

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

#69

Post by pdonis » Sat, May 30, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38

cinquemb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are a vast majority doing good work. Your cell phone is a towering testament to this. To be fair, try making the converse argument: how many religious zealots avoid bias? Zero. Lets not condemn science on the basis of a strawman ("some scientists somewhere are not very good") Yet to uphold what people consider science today, you use one example. As if the vast majority of scientists had anything to do with th…

I leave other examples to the reader. Hint: point at anything near you. It was the result of science. As for honoring the religious who supported science. I say, to the degree they pursued religion, they shortchanged their scientific accomplishments. Consider what else Newton might have done, had he abandoned his alchemy and astrology.

> point at anything near you. It was the result of science.

The result of some particular branches of science where we do, in fact, have reliable knowledge and the ability to make accurate predictions.

But that is very, very different from "science" in general. There are many more fields that are called "sciences" but do not have anything like that kind of reliable knowledge or predictive power. So it's not enough to just say "science"; you have to specify the field, so we know which category it falls into.

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

#70

Post by justifier » Sat, May 30, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

this is one of my greatest gripes with academics

pedantry directed ridicule

this same essay could have been written exactly as is but with the tone of 'you are so right, here are some examples' but instead he chose to try to make a fan feel like an asshole..

this is my biggest problem with degrasse tyson.. he goes out of his way to make himself a public figure in science but uses the information he has accumulated to make people think they know so much less than he

a perfect example was when he visited the daily show, twice, and complained, jokingly, that the earth was spinning backward in the opening graphic

that graphic was made by some artist and now tyson is using his acquired information to ridicule the individual's effort

if you are knowledgeable then use that knowledge to lift people up

how can we have a graphic of the earth spinning backwards?

perhaps the camera has a capture rate that makes the earth appear to spin backwards, like car tires in films..

or maybe you could talk about geosynchronous orbit and angular momentum and really make people think you know more than them all the while lending excuse for why the earth is spinning backwards..

isaac, you got called out on some stupid thing you said out of a myriad of other entertaining things you have said, have some grace.. or at least a sense of humour