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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)

#91

Post by coldtea »

foldr wrote: post #87
andyidsinga wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems as though asimov agrees with you in the last paragraph: >Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.

That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete".

>That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong.

They still seem incomplete (and not "wrong" to me). They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years.

>Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete".

Only if "previous dietary advice" was only all about fat, and only if it consisted of just saying "fat makes you fat".

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

#92

Post by foldr »

coldtea wrote: post #89
foldr wrote: post #68

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 account…

> 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. That's because most of it in the form it reaches people is not actually a "science", but mostly pop culture and BS from mass media.

That's true, but it's also true that the actual scientific consensus has changed a lot over time. You can't blame this all on the media and pretend that dietary advice from experts has been fully consistent for the past 50 years.

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

#93

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

coldtea wrote: post #89
foldr wrote: post #68

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 account…

> 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. That's because most of it in the form it reaches people is not actually a "science", but mostly pop culture and BS from mass media.

>That's because most of it in the form it reaches people is not actually a "science"

...because it's really just "a word from our sponsors".

It uses the language and status of science for marketing and persuasion, without providing any of the rigour or repeatability.

Unfortunately this poisons the well for real science, because non-scientists decide that scientists don't really know anything useful and it's all just a matter of opinion anyway.

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

#94

Post by foldr »

Locke1689 wrote: post #90
foldr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete".

It is incomplete in the sense that a theory can only be measured against others by its predictive power and simplicity. You're creating a metric of "success" that Asimov doesn't believe exists -- that a theory has an essential quality which is measurable in any way other than its predictive success.

Right, this is what I said in my first paragraph: science tends to be empirically conservative. As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here, not successful or unsuccessful. If the scientific consensus in 1900 was P, whereas the current scientific consensus is ¬P, then it's silly to pretend that the previous theory was merely "incomplete". Take plate tectonics as an example. Either the Earth's surface is split into moving plates or it isn't. As it turns out, this hypothesis is correct, and the scientists who denied it well into the 20th century were just flat our wrong.

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

#95

Post by foldr »

coldtea wrote: post #91
foldr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. Similarly, if it turns out that eating lots of fat doesn't make you fat, that doesn't mean that previous dietary advice was merely "incomplete".

> That seems false as applied to most of my examples. If the Big Bang theory turns out to be true, then that doesn't mean that steady state theories were "incomplete", it just means that they were wrong. They still seem incomplete (and not "wrong" to me). They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years. > Similarly, if it turns out that eating lot…

>They served their purpose and were good approximations for calculations we did and observations we had all those years.

In other words they were empirically more-or-less correct. That's what I was talking about in my first paragraph.

>Only if "previous dietary advice" was only all about fat, and only if it consisted of just saying "fat makes you fat".

I don't see the point of picking over the details of the example. Take plate tectonics. The scientific consensus used to be that the Earth's crust was not formed of separate moving plates. The current scientific consensus is exactly the opposite. If you have a concept of wrong according to which it's possible for neither of P and ¬P to be wrong, then I'm not sure where we can go from there.

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

#96

Post by ThrustVectoring »

foldr wrote: post #88
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game Theory explicitly talks about behavior in a rigorous way. That should be enough of a counterexample. Science can talk about specific events ("John stabbed Joe with a knife"), it can talk about how people categorize them ("the stabbing had features X, Y, and Z that the typical mind categorizes at "murder"), and it can talk about how typical minds perceive and judge events it has categorized. Morality is little mo…

>"most people think killing people is bad" can be reduced, with great difficulty, into statements about human behaviors and brain activity. I doubt it, but in any case, the important point is that you can't do the same thing for "Killing people is bad." It's an important distinction. Most people think that homosexuality is bad, but we wouldn't want to conclude that it therefore is.

It feels like you can't do the same for "killing is bad" because people mean a bunch of different things by "killing is bad". Each piece, individually, is much more amenable to a reductionist treatment. Let me be more specific.

Suppose Alice gets in an argument with Bob, and stabs him. Is Alice worse off having done that? Is Bob? What is the impact on Bob's family, friends, and co-workers? Is society better off having a policy of arresting people in Alice's situation? And imprisoning them? Or socially disapproving of such action? When you learn that Alice stabbed Bob, how do you feel about it?

This is vaguely the lines which you'd take to talk about human morality in terms of behavior and mental states. This is not an exhaustive breakdown, and there's some parts that "morality" still claims afterwards. The point is that there's only so many things that people can mean by putting moral judgement on something, and there's nothing left when you've addressed them all. Addressing the pieces is usually done by going to human behavior and experiences.

Circling back to people thinking homosexuality is bad - we can make moral judgements about moral judgements. Statements like "'Thinking homosexuality is morally wrong' causes a great deal of pain for the people I care about."

Minor quibble: at one point, scientists believed that you couldn't prove whether or not two particles were identical in every respect. "I don't think that it's possible to prove X" isn't a proof that it's impossible to prove X. I'd rephrase that quote as "I don't know what a proof of X would look like."

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

#97

Post by Locke1689 »

foldr wrote: post #94
Locke1689 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incomplete in the sense that a theory can only be measured against others by its predictive power and simplicity. You're creating a metric of "success" that Asimov doesn't believe exists -- that a theory has an essential quality which is measurable in any way other than its predictive success.

Right, this is what I said in my first paragraph: science tends to be empirically conservative. As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here, not successful or unsuccessful. If the scientific consensus in 1900 was P, whereas the current scientific consensus is ¬P, then it's silly to pretend that the previous theory was merely "incomplete". Take plate tectonics as an example. Either the Earth's s…

As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here

Right. My entire claim is that right and wrong do not exist, only successful or unsuccessful.

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

#98

Post by pdonis »

jleyank wrote: post #81
pdonis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As others have said "If it's not testable it's not science".

If only everyone applied that rule when deciding what fields to call "sciences".

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

#99

Post by foldr »

Locke1689 wrote: post #97
foldr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, this is what I said in my first paragraph: science tends to be empirically conservative. As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here, not successful or unsuccessful. If the scientific consensus in 1900 was P, whereas the current scientific consensus is ¬P, then it's silly to pretend that the previous theory was merely "incomplete". Take plate tectonics as an example. Either the Earth's s…

As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here Right. My entire claim is that right and wrong do not exist, only successful or unsuccessful.

If it's only possible to deny that scientific theories are ever wrong by denying the very distinction between right and wrong, then I think that underlines my point. Freedom from being wrong at the price of never being right doesn't seem like a very good bargain.

As to the question of whether pragmatist theories of truth are viable, that is a separate one, but I tend to think that the standard objections are quite decisive.

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

#100

Post by pdonis »

foldr wrote: post #94
Locke1689 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incomplete in the sense that a theory can only be measured against others by its predictive power and simplicity. You're creating a metric of "success" that Asimov doesn't believe exists -- that a theory has an essential quality which is measurable in any way other than its predictive success.

Right, this is what I said in my first paragraph: science tends to be empirically conservative. As for metrics of success, we're talking about right or wrong here, not successful or unsuccessful. If the scientific consensus in 1900 was P, whereas the current scientific consensus is ¬P, then it's silly to pretend that the previous theory was merely "incomplete". Take plate tectonics as an example. Either the Earth's s…

> we're talking about right or wrong here

And you're treating "right" and "wrong" as absolutes, with no in between, which is exactly what Asimov was saying you shouldn't do.

You could apply the same logic you're using for plate tectonics to the shape of the Earth, which is Asimov's main example. If the Earth is a sphere, then it's not flat. If it's an oblate spheroid, then it's not a sphere. If it's slightly pear-shaped, then it isn't an oblate spheroid. So every previous scientific theory about the Earth's shape was just wrong.

The problem with this, as Asimov points out, is that just putting theories into the buckets "right" or "wrong" doesn't tell you how far off they are, predictively, which is what's important. The Earth is not flat--but it's almost flat. It curves about 8 inches per mile; 8 inches per mile is not zero, but it might be indistinguishable from zero if you don't have very good measuring instruments. (And similarly for the increasingly more accurate measurements that have given us more precise knowledge of the exact irregular shape of the Earth.) So treating the Earth is flat is wrong, but it's not very far wrong. It is, however, more wrong than treating the Earth as a sphere, since the error involved is smaller in the latter case.

Similarly, the continents are not motionless, but they're almost motionless. So treating them as motionless is wrong, but it's not very far wrong. You have to have accurate measurements to distinguish the actual motion of the continents from no motion at all. And you have to have even more accurate measurements and more comprehensive data to know that the cause of the motion is that the continents are sitting on plates that are floating in magma.

> the scientists who denied it well into the 20th century were just flat our wrong.

They were wrong, but they were still a lot less wrong than, for example, the Flat Earth Society. Which is Asimov's point.

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