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The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov (1989)
- jcoffland 10y agoSince there are infinite things about which we are wrong and only a finite number of things we are right about learning one more thing does not make us any less wrong. Take that Asimov.
- ominous 10y agoThus, the point is not to be right or wrong, but to improve?
- Voloskaya 10y agoSince we are able to reason by deduction and learning, there is an infinite number of things about which we are right.
- jcoffland 10y agoI don't see how that follows. There are a finite number of humans each with finite capacity for knowledge and infinite capacity for ignorance.
- munchbunny 10y agoWhile I could see plenty of mathematical/philosophical arguments that you would be correct, I don't see how this is a useful statement, unless its implication is that science actually doesn't move our understanding of the world forward. Then we have a real disagreement.
- jcoffland 10y agoThe implication is that we should be humble about what we do know. Pop science is always going on about how great we are at AI, gene editing, quantum computing, drug design, etc. but when you really start to dig in to these topics it's much more amazing how primitive our understanding really is. It's no surprise that we awe ourselves.
- jordan0day 10y ago> Since there are infinite things about which we are wrong That's... ahem... wrong. How could there possibly be an infinite number of things "we" (humanity, I presume?) are wrong about, given that there have only been a finite number of human beings with (as far as I know) finite life spans?
- jcoffland 10y agoIt's quite simple. I am assuming there are an infinite number of things to know. That which we do not know we are wrong about.
- db48x 10y agoThat's not a very good assumption; the universe has a finite size and therefore cannot contain an infinite amount of information.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe observable universe appears to have finite size. I don't know how you could prove it though.
- nitrogen 10y agoThe observable universe is effectively defined to be finite in size. The proof comes from the speed of light.
- jcoffland 10y agoAssuming a big bang is the source of all matter. Our observable universe may only be a spec in something much larger with out violating any of our "laws" of physics.
- jcoffland 10y agoAssuming the observable universe is everything there is is not a good assumption.
- mwfunk 10y agoThe point is that we are wrong about everything to one degree or another. Maturing intellectually is a never ending process of becoming less wrong about the things we choose to study, but at no point do we ever cross a finish line and become right about anything. As soon as you think you're right about something, the only thing you can be certain of is that you're wrong.
- sunshiney 10y agoI think a more accurate observation is that we always exist in a state of incomplete understanding and we will never achieve full understanding. Wrong and right connote a state of absolutes that are often relative and even if not, their usage assumes there will be an end point to deeper levels of understanding. I think not. :-)
- simulate 10y agoThis essay reminds me of George Box's famous and often misused statement that "All models are wrong, but some are useful." A spherical earth model is useful and a flat earth model is not. Also, as Asimov explains here, wrong is relative and a spherical model of the earth is much less wrong than a flat earth model.
- nitrogen 10y agoIn fairness, a flat earth model is still useful for navigation within limited distances.
- 13of40 10y agoIn fairness, the vast majority of the models of the earth people use day-to-day are flat. Case in point: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0279156,-94.0814245,3z https://www.google.com/maps/@43.0279156,-94.0814245,3z
- Double_Cast 10y agoxkcd relevant to this thread. https://xkcd.com/1318/ https://xkcd.com/1318/
- pdonis 10y agoThis doesn't model the earth's surface as flat. It uses a distorted flat map to model the actual curved geometry of the earth's surface. If the earth were actually flat, the flat map wouldn't be distorted.
- 13of40 10y agoMy point is that Google Maps is possibly the most widely used model of the earth we have, and there's no use case for it where the curvature of the earth comes into play.
- Natanael_L 10y agoThe projection chosen IS the model, and we chose a useful one - and that projection is flat. Is paper maps not models of the real world?
- 13of40 10y ago"...the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes noted that the sun cast a shadow of different lengths at different latitudes (all the shadows would be the same length if the earth's surface were flat)." This is an interesting statement, because it means he had some idea of how far away the sun was from the Earth. If it was, say, a thousand miles up, you'd see huge differences in shadow length depending on where you were standing on a flat earth. Since it's tens of millions of miles away, the difference is negligible.
- pdonis 10y ago> it means he had some idea of how far away the sun was from the Earth He didn't really have any idea of the actual distance to the Sun. He just knew it was far enough away that the Sun's rays could be assumed to be parallel.
- bladedtoys 10y agoEratosthenes did not know the sun-earth distance and tentatively assumed it was infinite for that measurement. But then his successor Aristarchus under took to measure the sun-earth distance as follows: He looked at the angle the earth and moon form when the moon is exactly half full. This would give the sun distance as a multiple of the moon's distance using trigonometry. He observed the earth's shadow during lunar eclipses. This gave the moon's size in terms of earth size. He knew the earth's size from measuring shadows at different latitudes on earth and the distance between those sites. Knowing the moons size vs apparent size, simple trigonometry gave him the distance to the moon. And therefor also the distance to the sun. Unfortunately his angle measuring techniques were primitive and he decided the sun was 20x further from earth than the moon (rather than about 400x). But his other figures are quite passable.
- angersock 10y agoIf he was only off by an order of magnitude, given the equipment at the time, that's still quite impressive!
- elevenE 10y agoPrevious discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629797
- kemiller 10y agoRelativity, which was the original subject, was not just a refinement of what we knew, it discovering that what we knew was just a special case of a much weirder universe. Actually, so was round-earth, for that matter, relative to the mental models available at the time. In both cases a rather abstract notion with no immediate practical impact. It's NOT a case of just coloring in the details, like the detailed measurements of the precise shape of the earth, it's a revolution in understanding. Pre-relativity, the general consensus was that we knew almost everything, save a few niggling details, like the black body problem. But pulling on that thread revealed a whole world underneath. Newtonian physics was, and still is, extremely useful. And there is certainly a hierarchy of wrongness, but the point is the arrogance of believing yourself to live closer to the end than the beginning.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bad_user 10y agoScience, or at least math and physics, works by modeling the world with imperfect but useful models. And evolution in these fields happens by finding newer models that are more and more precise in modeling the universe, but such breakthroughs can't really happen without the help of old models which shaped our understanding. Einstein stood on the shoulders of giants. And when we'll have a unifying theory between general relativity and quantum theory, you can sure that it wouldn't have been possible without the theories before it. And when that theory will happen, it will not disprove current theories, just as general relativity did not disprove Newton's theory, it will just replace it with something that is more precise. And I think the article does a good job of explaining this.
- bo1024 10y agoThat's an interesting point. There are different ways to look at it. In terms of a huge change in our understanding of the world, I agree. But I think Asimov is thinking in terms of effectiveness of the model in explaining observations and making predictions. In say 2000 BC, a flat-earth and spherical-earth theory were probably both about the same level of effectiveness in explaining observations and making predictions about new observations. In the year 1800, Newton's mechanics were extremely effective in making correct predictions. As technology advanced and new observations were possible, some gaps were revealed. But even today, Newton's mechanics are extremely effective and accurate for explaining and predicting many observations in our world; just not all of it. Einstein's relativity does a much better job, but also not perfect. Now again, you can say that there is a huge fundamental difference between the flat-earth and round-earth theories, or between Newton and Einstein, and I agree, but here I think Asimov is just arguing from this "correctness of model in explaining/predicting" perspective.
- EGreg 10y agoScience has built-in regression testing. We eliminate things that have been disproven, and over time we refine our knoweldge. The main phenomenon I think in the progress of science is how much we come to know that we can eliminate as wrong. And that is why Karl Popper considered theories which make testable predictions to be advancing science.
- iamcreasy 10y agoI like to think what Michael Stevens(VSauce) said in his video[1] as a continuation of Asimov's letter. "Susan Haack compares knowledge to a crossword puzzle. Old answers interweave with old one. They all reinforce one another. The clues are the question we ask. And the way the answers fall into a predetermined grid...well, that's our confidence that we are on the right track." [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqNnUJVcVs