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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)

#21

Post by JackFr »

aout wrote: post #2

Surely everybody knows an "English Lit expert" but even after reading this exquisite requiem to believers I still find it impossibly hard to argue with these people. It always feels like they are trying to make the last stand of humanitarian values against the dictat of science. In all their glorious "everything science says will be as wrong as religion and you my friend are blindly following it" it seems they can't…

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 follow that all true knowledge, or even a fraction of it can be acquired through the scientific method.

Other unvoiced assumptions speak to one's life's purpose. The old quote from Emil Faber, 'Knowledge is good', is certainly not a scientific conclusion, or a testable hypothesis. Valuing wisdom over ignorance and indeed freedom over slavery and life over death speaks to a purpose in life which is necessarily ungrounded in any science. I certainly do value all of those things, but it is not a belief anyone achieved through falsifiable hypotheses.

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

#22

Post by JoeAltmaier »

JackFr wrote: post #21
aout wrote: post #2

Surely everybody knows an "English Lit expert" but even after reading this exquisite requiem to believers I still find it impossibly hard to argue with these people. It always feels like they are trying to make the last stand of humanitarian values against the dictat of science. In all their glorious "everything science says will be as wrong as religion and you my friend are blindly following it" it seems they can't…

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.

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

#23

Post by DanBC »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #20
cinquemb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says". We had a subject in my lab yesterday that after the experiment had a "heated" debate where he put physics vs rel…

Its easy to be smug about science; its so often right. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.

That's foolish. Scientists have to work hard to avoid bias. A lot of them don't manage it. Most science isn't as rigorous as eg ATLAS at CERN at avoiding biases.

There are plenty of scientists who are fucking idiots.

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

#24

Post by gizi »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #18
mdpopescu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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…

So we think that is a dangerous thing? Believing the best, tested results of experiments (science) is not superior to random religious tracts written thousands of years ago? The critical difference between treating science as a religion, and treating religion as a religion, is that the science people have a good chance of being right. Its rational and reasonable to be uncritical of scientific results - the scientist…

The essence of science is its method: Setting up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a scientific statement. Therefore, anybody who is uncritical of scientific results and does not desire to find counterexamples, is not engaging in science but in anti-science, which in turn is a dangerous and counterproductive ideology. The science-as-religion people do not have a good chance of being right. They are always completely wrong.

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

#25

Post by jleyank »

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 spacecraft away from the sun. Box: "All models are wrong. Some models are useful". And Feynman's talked about this as well.

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

#26

Post by JackFr »

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.

What does 'badly' mean? Sounds a lot like an opinion to me.

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

#27

Post by cinquemb »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #20
cinquemb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In any case, my original argument wasn't about the scientists; my argument was: most people treat science as a religion. They feel very superior to the religious people who are accepting everything they are told uncritically and then turn around and accept everything that is prefixed with "science says". We had a subject in my lab yesterday that after the experiment had a "heated" debate where he put physics vs rel…

Its easy to be smug about science; its so often right. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.

If one considers all the research papers that have ever been published and retracted, and could enumerate over them and calculate their "rightness" and notices that greater than half are "right" then that would be a fact. As of today, no one has done that, and to assume it to be "often right" is quite dogmatic.

I posit that if one doesn't have time to research the subject themself, one shouldn't form opinion about such subjects beyond that they now know such subjects exist. But I suppose asking that of human beings is too much :P

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

#28

Post by JoeAltmaier »

JackFr wrote: post #26
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does 'badly' mean? Sounds a lot like an opinion to me.

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

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

#29

Post by JoeAltmaier »

DanBC wrote: post #23
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its easy to be smug about science; its so often right. If you don't have time to research the subject yourself, I'd always advise taking the side of the scientist.

That's foolish. Scientists have to work hard to avoid bias. A lot of them don't manage it. Most science isn't as rigorous as eg ATLAS at CERN at avoiding biases. There are plenty of scientists who are fucking idiots.

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")

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

#30

Post by gizi »

RodericDay wrote: post #19
mdpopescu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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…

I'm an engineer too, and I fully agree with you. My particular peeve is engineers who kowtow to economics, putting it in a much higher pedestal than sociology or anthropology, because it is "mathy". The implicit assumptions are usually along the lines of "the assumptions seem obvious enough, and look at all those formulae in the transformations thereof!"

Science id defined by its method: to set up experiments in order to look for counterexamples for a theorem. It is pretty much impossible to set up experiments in economics. While I agree that sociology and anthropology do not satisfy the definition of science, economics does not either. Where are the experiments? Without experiments, no science.
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