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"explain reality" seems like it is not at all the objective of the Shaman, or even of a Western mental health worker (psychiatrist, for example). the objective

"explain reality" seems like it is not at all the objective of the Shaman, or even of a Western mental health worker (psychiatrist, for example). the objective is to help a suffering person. the measure of success or failure is whether or not the person is suffering more or suffering less. even within the positivist worldview you are advocating it is wise to consider that there are, in fact, non-falsifiable premises underlying some of our most important tools. mathematics requires axioms. the standard model of physics requires non-falsifiable assumptions about initial conditions. there is no escaping this. not everything is falsifiable.

sixstringtheory 10y ago
We must first understand the reality of a problem before we can begin to address it. Redefining "suffering" and "mental illness" to be completely fluid ideas that depend on who you ask moves us farther from the objective of helping people, in my opinion. I don't think we can redefine "suffering" to be a state of spiritual exaltation and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. You are excusing a departure from the progress we've made in understanding the human mind because: not everything is falsifiable, so may as well throw rigor out the window?
- metaphorm 10y ago
  > We must first understand the reality of a problem before we can begin to address it. I fundamentally disagree with this statement. But then, I'm just an engineer, not a real scientist.
  - sixstringtheory 10y ago
    What kind of engineer are you? One of the types that must gain a license to practice? Regardless, I'm interested to hear elaboration on how you could fundamentally disagree that engineers must achieve a rigorous consensus on the facts before e.g. landing a rocket booster on a moving target in an ocean, after propelling to low earth orbit.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      I'm a software engineer. Rigorous consensus on the facts is a completely different statement and objective than what you originally mentioned, which was "understand the reality of a problem". you're moving your target here and that discredits your argument. We can certainly (and are required to) have a rigorous consensus on the facts in order to do good engineering (yes, even software engineering). That doesn't mean we must "understand the reality of the problem". I can fix a bug in my code without understanding the theory of computation. I do know a lot about the theory of computation, but it just doesn't come up in my day to day problem solving. That's the point. The facts that are required to begin solving a problem are a very restricted sub-domain of the set of all possible facts that pertain to the problem, and are relatively independent of also having an understanding of the fundamental theories underlying the domain.
      - sixstringtheory 10y ago
        I feel obliged to respond to your accusation that I'm moving the goalposts, which I don't believe I've done. I meant "understanding the reality of a problem" insofar as that understanding can be achieved by more than just the internals of one person's mind by achieving "a rigorous consensus on the facts" from a group/team/society. If the team of engineers at SpaceX responsible for landing that rocket booster had a mixture of people who 1) worked with the known facts governing physics, and 2) believed that chariots are pulling the sun across the sky, or that the concept of gravity is a poor approximation of the spiritual energy binding all things, then I doubt they would have gotten close to success. They would have fundamental disagreement on the "reality of the problem" (need to land an object on a floating target) because they'd have no consensus on the facts of the constraints involved (gravity, thermo/aerodynamics, degrees of freedom, confidence intervals, probably a bunch more I can't imagine). Those constraints constitute the reality of the problem. More to your point of fixing bugs, just because you don't understand every tenet of theories of computation, does not mean that you can substitute whatever explanations you imagine for how computers work and they become truth in reality.
        metaphorm 10y ago

sixstringtheory 10y ago

We must first understand the reality of a problem before we can begin to address it. Redefining "suffering" and "mental illness" to be completely fluid ideas that depend on who you ask moves us farther from the objective of helping people, in my opinion. I don't think we can redefine "suffering" to be a state of spiritual exaltation and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. You are excusing a departure from the progress we've made in understanding the human mind because: not everything is falsifiable, so may as well throw rigor out the window?

metaphorm 10y ago
> We must first understand the reality of a problem before we can begin to address it. I fundamentally disagree with this statement. But then, I'm just an engineer, not a real scientist.
- sixstringtheory 10y ago
  What kind of engineer are you? One of the types that must gain a license to practice? Regardless, I'm interested to hear elaboration on how you could fundamentally disagree that engineers must achieve a rigorous consensus on the facts before e.g. landing a rocket booster on a moving target in an ocean, after propelling to low earth orbit.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    I'm a software engineer. Rigorous consensus on the facts is a completely different statement and objective than what you originally mentioned, which was "understand the reality of a problem". you're moving your target here and that discredits your argument. We can certainly (and are required to) have a rigorous consensus on the facts in order to do good engineering (yes, even software engineering). That doesn't mean we must "understand the reality of the problem". I can fix a bug in my code without understanding the theory of computation. I do know a lot about the theory of computation, but it just doesn't come up in my day to day problem solving. That's the point. The facts that are required to begin solving a problem are a very restricted sub-domain of the set of all possible facts that pertain to the problem, and are relatively independent of also having an understanding of the fundamental theories underlying the domain.
    - sixstringtheory 10y ago
      I feel obliged to respond to your accusation that I'm moving the goalposts, which I don't believe I've done. I meant "understanding the reality of a problem" insofar as that understanding can be achieved by more than just the internals of one person's mind by achieving "a rigorous consensus on the facts" from a group/team/society. If the team of engineers at SpaceX responsible for landing that rocket booster had a mixture of people who 1) worked with the known facts governing physics, and 2) believed that chariots are pulling the sun across the sky, or that the concept of gravity is a poor approximation of the spiritual energy binding all things, then I doubt they would have gotten close to success. They would have fundamental disagreement on the "reality of the problem" (need to land an object on a floating target) because they'd have no consensus on the facts of the constraints involved (gravity, thermo/aerodynamics, degrees of freedom, confidence intervals, probably a bunch more I can't imagine). Those constraints constitute the reality of the problem. More to your point of fixing bugs, just because you don't understand every tenet of theories of computation, does not mean that you can substitute whatever explanations you imagine for how computers work and they become truth in reality.
      - metaphorm 10y ago