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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)

#111

Post by coldtea »

foldr wrote: post #95
coldtea wrote: post #91

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. 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.…

>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.

That's the whole point of Asimov's article - the relativity of wrong. The example he gives for this is not at all different from yours (earth being flat and earth being non-flat are also opposite propositions). So it's not like the "plate tectonics" examples changes anything in his argument.

The argument is that P and ¬P can both be useful if the first could explain a phenomenon to the best degree available at a time, and the second to an even better degree available at a later time. In that sense P and ¬P are degrees of wrongness and truthness.

His is the argument that "wrong" depends on utility, as there's usually no absolute match with the objective status universe (ding an sich), so we just have approximations with different degrees of wrongness.

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

#112

Post by foldr »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #110
foldr wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you answer all the subquestions, then whether it's right or wrong doesn't matter. It may matter to a person who has a conscience.

Presumably, the effect the action has on the actor's conscience is taken into account.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If I have a troubling ethical decision to make, I might very well answer all of your questions and still be unsure whether the action I was going to take was right or wrong.

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

#113

Post by foldr »

pdonis wrote: post #109
foldr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not actually assuming that ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ are absolutes. I’m just pointing out that some widely accepted scientific theories have turned out to be very clearly at the ‘wrong’ end of the spectrum. If you don’t like the particular example of plate tectonics then just take one of the other examples that I mentioned. E.g., our conception of the structure of matter has undergone several radical changes in the cour…

> our conception of the structure of matter has undergone several radical changes in the course of scientific history Really? The original conception (or at least the commonly accepted one--even some ancient Greeks hit on the idea of atoms) was that matter was continuous, and it is pretty close to being continuous. Then we started to make observations that indicated that matter was made of atoms. Then we began to get…

> Where is the radical change?

You mentioned one of the radical changes: the change from a continuous model to an atomic one. I mentioned another radical change in my post (Rutherford).

As for the claim that matter is close to being continuous, I am not a physicist, but I was under the impression that this was false. I.e., speaking naively, there is far more "empty space" than there is "stuff". I realize that QM makes it difficult to give precise content to that kind of statement, but something like that appears to be true.

> It's quite possible that both viewpoints--the universe had a beginning in time, and the universe didn't--are useful approximations to something deeper.

I can't really answer speculation. However, your only reason for making this speculation, so far as I can see, is your desire to deny that any scientific theory has ever been flat out wrong.

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

#114

Post by foldr »

coldtea wrote: post #111
foldr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.…

> 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. That's the whole point of Asimov's article - the relativity of wrong. The example he gives for this is not at al…

Yep, that's what I said in the first paragraph of my original post. In purely empirical terms, scientific progress is usually quite conservative. However, if you look at the content of the theory, and not just the predictions that it makes, scientific progress looks much less conservative. In the case of the flat earth example, it is indeed true that the flat Earth theory was not totally wrong in the sense that it made some approximately correct predictions. However, it was totally wrong in its assertion that the Earth is flat -- it simply isn't.

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

#115

Post by hyperpape »

coldtea wrote: post #111
foldr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.…

> 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. That's the whole point of Asimov's article - the relativity of wrong. The example he gives for this is not at al…

I think you're going too far here, both in saying something that sounds incorrect, and in reading things into the essay that I don't see there.

There's no need to say that P and ¬P are ever both (somewhat) true, only that evaluating a scientific theory isn't just a matter of finding some single consequence of it to say "this prediction is false: REJECT" (a sort of crude Popperian picture). Instead, the theory should be tested on its overall explanatory power, ability to predict, etc, etc. For each statement the theory implies, that statement is either true or false. But considering two theories, each of which implies some falsehood, we may wish to say that one is still less wrong.

I also didn't notice the sort of Kantian picture you allude to in the essay.

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

#116

Post by justifier »

andyidsinga wrote: post #77
justifier wrote: post #70

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…

hmmm - re asimov: he received a letter from a fan severely lecturing him on a subject. He appears to have read it thoughtfully and then responded in kind - severely, but fairly thoughtfully and with detail. When I send someone a pithy email/comment on a subject and they respond like asimov did -- its pretty cool to me, even though to an observer it may appear somewhat dickish.

yeah i lamented the lack of the actual letter

i recognise the strengths in being able to determine if the kid 'had it coming' but still isaac was in the position of power here, and to me it reads like he was embarrassed to be called out by someone he feels unworthy of correcting him

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

#117

Post by justifier »

5F36B5F62640 wrote: post #105
justifier wrote: post #70

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…

The lack of capitalization and most punctuation makes that jarring to read, which is why I downvoted you from my normal account. (Commenting to let you know why using a throwaway because I believe that if one both replies and downvotes the downvote is removed.)

sorry.. its how i write

i've developed the style over time, i think it somehow informed from growing up behind a glowing screen

myself, i find i read single sentences quicker than walls of text and just prefer the equanimity of lowercase

again, i apologise.. i suppose some may call it 'crabbed penmanship'

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

#118

Post by pdonis »

foldr wrote: post #113
pdonis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our conception of the structure of matter has undergone several radical changes in the course of scientific history Really? The original conception (or at least the commonly accepted one--even some ancient Greeks hit on the idea of atoms) was that matter was continuous, and it is pretty close to being continuous. Then we started to make observations that indicated that matter was made of atoms. Then we began to get…

> Where is the radical change? You mentioned one of the radical changes: the change from a continuous model to an atomic one. I mentioned another radical change in my post (Rutherford). As for the claim that matter is close to being continuous, I am not a physicist, but I was under the impression that this was false. I.e., speaking naively, there is far more "empty space" than there is "stuff". I realize that QM make…

> As for the claim that matter is close to being continuous, I am not a physicist, but I was under the impression that this was false.

We only know this because we have precise enough measurements to detect atoms and their internal structure. Atoms are about a billion times smaller than ordinary macroscopic objects, so it's a very good approximation to treat a cup of water, for example, as a continuous fluid, rather than a bunch of atoms.

> speaking naively, there is far more "empty space" than there is "stuff".

Only on a very naive definition of "empty space". Pop science books and articles often say that "atoms are mostly empty space", but that's because they are thinking of the electrons as little pointlike objects, which they're not. So "atoms are mostly empty space" is wrong, by the definition you've been trying to use, just like "matter is continuous" is wrong.

And before you object that I'm saying "electrons are little pointlike objects" is flat out wrong, electrons are close to being little pointlike objects; you have to make very precise measurements (like the ones that have mapped out the structure of atomic orbitals) to see the quantum "smearing out" of electrons. But in many other contexts, electrons do behave like little pointlike objects.

> I can't really answer speculation.

It isn't just my speculation; it's a serious theoretical proposal in cosmology. Google "eternal inflation".

> your only reason for making this speculation, so far as I can see, is your desire to deny that any scientific theory has ever been flat out wrong.

Quite the contrary; cosmologists consider such proposals seriously because neither simplistic model--"the universe had a beginning in time" or "the universe did not have a beginning in time" as flat statements with no wiggle room--works well.

The problem you are having here is that you continue to think that we humans can get something absolutely right. But every single one of your "absolutely right" statements turns out to have hidden qualifications when we dig deeper. And your "flat out wrong" statements turn out to be workable approximations in many contexts.

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

#119

Post by eli_gottlieb »

JackFr wrote: post #37
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets not pretend we don't know how badly murderers end up in court. This is getting silly.

It's not silly -- it's the whole point. Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well. Or consider Richard Dawkin's famous criticisms of Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa unashamedly put religion ahead material comfort among the poor she ministered too. To say she was wrong in so doing is not a statement of…

>Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well.

And objectively, suicide bombers are dead, which puts them far behind those of us who remain alive -- at least, by any sensible measure. Of course, when you unravel the story behind the average suicide bomber, you usually find that they were shamed or pressured into the deed, and in fact, have not accomplished, in committing a suicide bombing, all their own noble goals in life.

They are actually sad, pathetic people exploited by powerful clerics to be turned into little more than explosive puppets.

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

#120

Post by eli_gottlieb »

mdpopescu wrote: post #15
mdpopescu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the people you're caricaturing here. I understand science, and mathematics, and logical thinking, which is why I believe (most) people blindly follow science as if it were a religion. (For a very recent example, see this article - io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800 ) See also Scott Adams' musings on the subject: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/109880240641/sciences-bigge…

... and, of course, the rebuttals to this were mostly of the "no true Scotsman" flavor. "It's not the fault of scientists, it's the bad media". Let's ignore http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ (Why Most Published Research Findings Are False) and many other similar results - we have to defend scientists because! Look - I'm an engineer. I use a sort-of Bayesian reasoning: I started from what I learned…

>Ten years ago, I used to make fun of people for believing the Earth revolves around the Sun - I have yet to find a single one who could do better than "that's what scientists say".

Wait... what? If the Earth didn't go around the Sun, why would we have seasons based on the angle of the Sun to the ground? Why would that angle continually cycle throughout the year? And what about the movements of the planets in the night sky, relative to Earth?

Sure, you could have a god who designed perversely complex features into the world for no causally sensible reason, but really, the simplest explanation for our available geological and astronomical data is that the Earth orbits the Sun.

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