Oh, it's a doctor.
The Limits of Science
41–50 of 60 posts
Re: The Limits of Science
#42There are three things that bother me: 1. Using "true story," then telling a very general story without any citation. That he did it twice was worrying. 2. People like the writer who treat our current understanding of science as if it were a religious text that is complete. Science is an ongoing process of discovery and experimentation to try to further our understanding of the world. The fact that it's wrong is kind…
This is kind of an inappropriately intensely personal level of scrutiny to apply to a newspaper opinion piece, isn't it?
its an article about science so we are gonna do science
Re: The Limits of Science
#43Science is about developing models of reality that allow us to make better than random predictions. A model that says that unkempt hair in elderly female patients is a signal of distress is a scientific model. It is a probabilistic model based on some series of past observations. With enough pictures and medical histories, you could probably train an AI to make the prediction as well as the doctor.
Re: The Limits of Science
#44The core argument seems to be that, since scientific analysis isn't a perfect tool, we ought to hedge our bets by also acting based on emotional reasoning. > The time has come to pause the second phase of the scientific revolution — to recover a more humble and skeptical approach to what the scientific method can achieve, to unite the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions of life, and to find our way back…
In my view, at least part of the reason science has been so successful is precisely because it distanced itself from the emotional and spiritual. For those areas of life we have art and philosophy.
Re: The Limits of Science
#45Science is about developing models of reality that allow us to make better than random predictions. A model that says that unkempt hair in elderly female patients is a signal of distress is a scientific model. It is a probabilistic model based on some series of past observations. With enough pictures and medical histories, you could probably train an AI to make the prediction as well as the doctor.
>> With enough pictures and medical histories, you could probably train an AI to make the prediction as well as the doctor.
The only way to train the AI would be to give it the same human experience - to make an artificial human to walk around and interact with people in similar situations. Even then, not everyone will make the same discoveries about hair and wellness.
The patient making a general statement about not feeling well is something that may not even come out with an AI. That kind of comment seems more likely to be made in a "real" conversation between two people.
This desire to quickly move to "train an AI" seems to miss the entire point of the article.
Re: The Limits of Science
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I think it’s vague because it’s not accurately representing what is going on. Is that average kinetic energy even distributed throughout the system or can it be isolated to specific moving points of the system? Ie some particles in the north most part of the system have this energy and are moving around the system. Or even only the particles in the north have the energy. Feynman said it best that with each quest…
I agree with GTP, the author's definition is vague. As GTP alludes to, temperature is defined perfectly clearly in statistical mechanics, through the sensitivity of the entropy to changes in the internal energy of a system (though there are several, equivalent ways to express it). The author really is incorrect to claim temperature is not a clearly understood concept
>> The author really is incorrect to claim temperature is not a clearly understood concept
Temperature is a very inexact model of the dynamics of a system. It does not tell you anything about the energy of any individual atom. It's an aggregate number.
Thermodynamics was an eye opening course for me. Its impressive how much real engineering can be done with lumped parameter models. The author wants to convey the limitations of that approach.
Re: The Limits of Science
#47Science is all about gathering data. Theorise all you like; but if the theory can't be tied back to data at some point in time then it is at best maths or philosophy. Experiments and dispassionate language are about gathering clear data and representing it accurately. Claiming that science is all about "clarity and economy" is ironically unscientific - if nature is unclear and uneconomical then good science has to re…
> Science is all about gathering data.
isn't it about the replication of experiments?
you can gather all the data you want, but if you can't repeat an experiment to get the same data, then I don't think all your data qualifies as science.
Re: The Limits of Science
#48There are three things that bother me: 1. Using "true story," then telling a very general story without any citation. That he did it twice was worrying. 2. People like the writer who treat our current understanding of science as if it were a religious text that is complete. Science is an ongoing process of discovery and experimentation to try to further our understanding of the world. The fact that it's wrong is kind…
For 1 and 3 I think that the question is do these examples (assuming that they are real and true) support the argument made, and can we , do we, agree that it is plausible and reasonable to assume that these are real and true. If you doubt the notion that a social worker could be dismissed by this kind of data driven change of policy then I would concede that damages the argument. This is not a physics observation th…
> if you say that there is one example where a social worker wasn't dismissed in this way then I do not agree that is sufficient to derail the argument.
Isn't that kind of ridiculous? If you say "Thing A happens! Here's an example of when thing A happened," but it turns out that your example did not actually happen, well it sure seems like your argument is likely not true, or that thing A happens with such low frequency that I don't need to worry about it.
The argument is not how you phrased it "here's one time this thing didn't happen," it's the fact that the example you provided did not happen. You have every incentive to find real examples to support your case.
Re: The Limits of Science
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of red flags when people mention "spiritual" in any given argument is about as bad as someone talking about the Earth being flat or vaccines causing autism.
I know, completely agree. But one thing that struck me the other day, I read a tweet from some random person that got retweeted a bunch. It went something like this, "Don't shame me for looking to natural remedies/my doctor rolls my eyes when I tell him what my chiropractor suggests/my naturopath has never rolled their eyes at something my doctor has said." It made me sad also because so many people jumped in and sai…
It's not a bad thing to point out the failures of modern medicine or to choose to put your health in the hands of naturopaths. It is, indeed, effectively how the human race got along until modern medicine.
The problem is in forcing your choices on others.
Re: The Limits of Science
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with GTP, the author's definition is vague. As GTP alludes to, temperature is defined perfectly clearly in statistical mechanics, through the sensitivity of the entropy to changes in the internal energy of a system (though there are several, equivalent ways to express it). The author really is incorrect to claim temperature is not a clearly understood concept
>> The author really is incorrect to claim temperature is not a clearly understood concept Temperature is a very inexact model of the dynamics of a system. It does not tell you anything about the energy of any individual atom. It's an aggregate number. Thermodynamics was an eye opening course for me. Its impressive how much real engineering can be done with lumped parameter models. The author wants to convey the limi…
The limitations of that approach don't line up with the example. Someone running a fever is running a fever because of an immune response to illness a lot of the time, which is an aggregate response. The body has trillions of cells, in the case of temperature you don't need a reading of each one. Researchers sometimes do, and medical testing of methods, drugs, or devices is a lot more scrutinized before doctors ever get access.