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> "I will skip the rest of what you have written for now to first address this fundamental misunderstanding, I might get back to it when we have cleared this up

> "I will skip the rest of what you have written for now to first address this fundamental misunderstanding, I might get back to it when we have cleared this up. I agree that those two statements are not the same. But neither is the standpoint of science generally. "We don't know, at least not yet" does not mean "we don't know but we will know", it means "we don't know and we don't know whether we will ever know", so it is skeptical towards both claims, that we will know, and that we won't know. Not being convinced of some claim does not imply being convinced of the negation of that claim, it is possible, and often rational, to be skeptical of both. OK?" The point I'm making which you're overlooking is that those two viewpoints are not equally likely. Just look at it logically. If science needs the accumulation of evidence to build an accurate understanding, but some parts of our world are highly resistant to this process, it is not at all likely that we will break that barrier. Like it or not, "We don't know, at least not yet" implies hope, I'm suggesting there are some parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry, and the sooner we accept that science (whilst very useful in some fields) has fundamental limits, the easier it'll be to take a more holistic view of what constitutes wisdom. To be clear, I have no problem with the scientific process whatsoever, I think it has been a fantastic tool in helping humanity advance. The issue I have is with stretching that tool beyond the point of utility, but giving it a pass because it's science. As I sense our debate will soon be winding down, I'll try to leave this on a more positive note. Here's Alan Watts saying in 2 minutes what I've failed to say in much more time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4vHnM8WPvU

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> The point I'm making which you're overlooking is that those two viewpoints are not equally likely. I am not overlooking that at all, which is why I said "generally". There can be reasons to think one direction is more likely than another to make progress--that in itself is actually again a question open to scientific inquiry. But the point is that the "we don't know yet" does not imply one way or the other, but some of your points assumed that it did, which is why I wanted to clear this up first. > If science needs the accumulation of evidence to build an accurate understanding, but some parts of our world are highly resistant to this process, it is not at all likely that we will break that barrier. Yeah, sure. But how do we know which parts of our world are highly resistant to scientific inquiry? > Like it or not, "We don't know, at least not yet" implies hope I'm not so sure I would go so far as to call it hope, but it obviously leaves open the logical possibility of progress at a later date, yes. The actual hope that people have of ever finding the answer to a given question, though, varies widely depending on the question. > I'm suggesting there are some parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry, and the sooner we accept that science (whilst very useful in some fields) has fundamental limits, the easier it'll be to take a more holistic view of what constitutes wisdom. But how do we distinguish those parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry from those that we simply didn't have the right idea yet how to approach them? I don't see any problem with the hypothesis that some parts of our experience might be fundamentally off limits to scientific inquiry. What I don't see is any justification for it actually being true, and in particular I don't see any justification for the hypothesis that a particular part of our experience is hostile to scientific inquiry, which would be required for this knowledge to actually be practically relevant (just knowing that something is off limits doesn't help you anything if you have no clue what it is that you are wasting your time on). Put yourself in the shoes of an educated person in the 10th century. Suppose you were asked to decide where to draw the line between which parts of our experience are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry and which parts it's reasonable to have hope of progress in understanding in. What do you think, which branches of modern day established scientific knowledge would you have cut off? Remember, not even optical microscopes have been invented yet. Germs as causes of diseases are unknown. A prevailing theory of disease is the theory of humors. And prevailing not among quacks, but among what you might call the medical elite of the time. You can not use anything we now know to make the decision, and that includes a whole lot of stuff that everyone just knows to be true, it's actually pretty hard to even figure out what you would have to discard to be in the position of that 10th century person, stuff that you have learned in elementary school and just consider an obvious fact of life was still fundamentally misunderstood and centuries away from discovery. Now, mind you that leaving open the logical possibility of answers at a later date does not imply that you assign it a high probability, and it in no way prevents you from prioritizing other things for investigation. By contrast, if you actually mean "there is no answer to this question", then that implies that you stop any further investigation forever. If you have concluded with absolute certainty that an answer is impossible, it would be nonsensical to search for an answer, as you would be doing what you are convinced to be a waste of time. I think you will agree that any decision to actually stop inquiry forever into certain parts of our experience in the 10th century based on the best knowledge available then could very well have ended with some very important and useful field of knowledge of today being erased from history? So, what makes you confident that you can pull it off now without the same risk for our ancestors 1000 years down the line? What makes you so sure that you are not as myopic about our future as they would have been about things that now seem trivial? We are now starting to fix genetic diseases in living organisms. They were still thinking about those diseases in terms of humors and demons. We can now reliably distinguish and treat thousands of diseases, compared to four hilariously inaccurate categories of humors. There is still much that could be better, but the precision we have now would have been just unimaginable to the medical elite of that time. So, what is your justification that distinguishes your position from someone a thousand years ago claiming that the human body is just too complex and demons are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry (well, the spirit of that statement, the conceptualization of the scientific method was still far in the future, obviously), and therefore we should accept that science has fundamental limits? > To be clear, I have no problem with the scientific process whatsoever, I think it has been a fantastic tool in helping humanity advance. The issue I have is with stretching that tool beyond the point of utility, but giving it a pass because it's science. Well, what is that point of utility, and how did you determine that? > As I sense our debate will soon be winding down Well, I'm happy to continue this, and even getting back to your previous post, as well as your still open question elsewhere in the thread, I'm just trying to avoid confusion by not continuing discussion on too many ideas simultaneously.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "Yeah, sure. But how do we know which parts of our world are highly resistant to scientific inquiry?" Let's focus on this for a bit, as it's clearly at the core of our different viewpoints. I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but I can say which parts of the universe are hostile to science, and that can be summarised as 'that which we would struggle to measure'. Using your example of the person from the 10th century, whilst they would have almost certainly not been able to envision all of the things we would eventually come to measure, the principals of measuring the physical world were in place, and we would have known, if not precisely but intuitively, some of the key concepts behind the measurement of physical objects, such as speed, acceleration, inertia, friction, heat, etc... Whilst our understanding of the physical world would've been much cruder than today, at least we had a framework by which we could explore it (at the level of detail available to us before the telescope and microscope were invented). Contrast this with the study of the metaphysical. What concepts do we have that help us to measure the metaphysical? Perhaps some are around the corner, but at best all we can do at the moment is statistical analysis. To clarify, whilst term 'metaphysics' could be used to describe anything that describes our world without necessarily being part of it. I gave the example before of society, which I still think is the most straightforward one to explore. Depending on your field of view, it's possible to say society doesn't exist. For example, if a person lives a hermit lifestyle, are they still living within society, or does it take interacting with others to be part of a society? I would suggest it's the latter, and sociology as a field of study is one that (amongst other things) looks at how living in a group affects the individual. So what do these groups look like and how does an individual find their role within them? When we seek to understand complex topics, our instinct is to put together a simplified model by which to reason with. In order to simplify, we need to know how best to do so. Where can we start with this? Okay, let's imagine we start by studying group dynamics in smaller groups, such as those found in tribes of people. Let's imagine we discovered some commonly observable traits in such groups. We then seek to take these observations and apply them more broadly. What can we do? We could imagine that the broader society still lives in a series of tribes (the work tribe, the home tribe, etc...), and look for similar dynamics confined within them, and look for the effects of interplay between tribes. Let's say again that we were successful in doing so, and found commonly repeated patterns of behavior amongst different classifications of people. Now let's introduce something disruptive like a new technology that changes the group dynamic. Computers are a good example of this, as they have undoubtedly changed society, socially and economically. The first question to ask is, do the classifications of humans within a society need to change to accurately model the new world? To give a crude example, if an "alpha" in a group is the individual with the highest status within that group, there may have been a time when the alpha male was the physically strongest, but today that position is not as simple to define, as there are some aspects of life within society where that is still the case, and others where it is not. Therefore someone can be an "alpha" in one group whilst not being an alpha in all groups. How does that varying social status change behaviour? I would suggest models need to be updated to accommodate for all this additional variability. As societies constantly change, and these models along with them, what underlying truths are we really getting at here? Is the purpose of sociologists to act as historians, doing our best to capture the zeitgeist before it changes again? I would suggest that whilst such activity is an interesting, and something worthy of study, we aren't really establishing fundamental understanding but instead cataloging change. Almost everything in society is fluid, there's only a small number of constants. Do you see why this constantly changing nature makes it hard to build up scientific understanding that lasts?

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago

> The point I'm making which you're overlooking is that those two viewpoints are not equally likely. I am not overlooking that at all, which is why I said "generally". There can be reasons to think one direction is more likely than another to make progress--that in itself is actually again a question open to scientific inquiry. But the point is that the "we don't know yet" does not imply one way or the other, but some of your points assumed that it did, which is why I wanted to clear this up first. > If science needs the accumulation of evidence to build an accurate understanding, but some parts of our world are highly resistant to this process, it is not at all likely that we will break that barrier. Yeah, sure. But how do we know which parts of our world are highly resistant to scientific inquiry? > Like it or not, "We don't know, at least not yet" implies hope I'm not so sure I would go so far as to call it hope, but it obviously leaves open the logical possibility of progress at a later date, yes. The actual hope that people have of ever finding the answer to a given question, though, varies widely depending on the question. > I'm suggesting there are some parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry, and the sooner we accept that science (whilst very useful in some fields) has fundamental limits, the easier it'll be to take a more holistic view of what constitutes wisdom. But how do we distinguish those parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry from those that we simply didn't have the right idea yet how to approach them? I don't see any problem with the hypothesis that some parts of our experience might be fundamentally off limits to scientific inquiry. What I don't see is any justification for it actually being true, and in particular I don't see any justification for the hypothesis that a particular part of our experience is hostile to scientific inquiry, which would be required for this knowledge to actually be practically relevant (just knowing that something is off limits doesn't help you anything if you have no clue what it is that you are wasting your time on). Put yourself in the shoes of an educated person in the 10th century. Suppose you were asked to decide where to draw the line between which parts of our experience are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry and which parts it's reasonable to have hope of progress in understanding in. What do you think, which branches of modern day established scientific knowledge would you have cut off? Remember, not even optical microscopes have been invented yet. Germs as causes of diseases are unknown. A prevailing theory of disease is the theory of humors. And prevailing not among quacks, but among what you might call the medical elite of the time. You can not use anything we now know to make the decision, and that includes a whole lot of stuff that everyone just knows to be true, it's actually pretty hard to even figure out what you would have to discard to be in the position of that 10th century person, stuff that you have learned in elementary school and just consider an obvious fact of life was still fundamentally misunderstood and centuries away from discovery. Now, mind you that leaving open the logical possibility of answers at a later date does not imply that you assign it a high probability, and it in no way prevents you from prioritizing other things for investigation. By contrast, if you actually mean "there is no answer to this question", then that implies that you stop any further investigation forever. If you have concluded with absolute certainty that an answer is impossible, it would be nonsensical to search for an answer, as you would be doing what you are convinced to be a waste of time. I think you will agree that any decision to actually stop inquiry forever into certain parts of our experience in the 10th century based on the best knowledge available then could very well have ended with some very important and useful field of knowledge of today being erased from history? So, what makes you confident that you can pull it off now without the same risk for our ancestors 1000 years down the line? What makes you so sure that you are not as myopic about our future as they would have been about things that now seem trivial? We are now starting to fix genetic diseases in living organisms. They were still thinking about those diseases in terms of humors and demons. We can now reliably distinguish and treat thousands of diseases, compared to four hilariously inaccurate categories of humors. There is still much that could be better, but the precision we have now would have been just unimaginable to the medical elite of that time. So, what is your justification that distinguishes your position from someone a thousand years ago claiming that the human body is just too complex and demons are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry (well, the spirit of that statement, the conceptualization of the scientific method was still far in the future, obviously), and therefore we should accept that science has fundamental limits? > To be clear, I have no problem with the scientific process whatsoever, I think it has been a fantastic tool in helping humanity advance. The issue I have is with stretching that tool beyond the point of utility, but giving it a pass because it's science. Well, what is that point of utility, and how did you determine that? > As I sense our debate will soon be winding down Well, I'm happy to continue this, and even getting back to your previous post, as well as your still open question elsewhere in the thread, I'm just trying to avoid confusion by not continuing discussion on too many ideas simultaneously.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
> "Yeah, sure. But how do we know which parts of our world are highly resistant to scientific inquiry?" Let's focus on this for a bit, as it's clearly at the core of our different viewpoints. I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but I can say which parts of the universe are hostile to science, and that can be summarised as 'that which we would struggle to measure'. Using your example of the person from the 10th century, whilst they would have almost certainly not been able to envision all of the things we would eventually come to measure, the principals of measuring the physical world were in place, and we would have known, if not precisely but intuitively, some of the key concepts behind the measurement of physical objects, such as speed, acceleration, inertia, friction, heat, etc... Whilst our understanding of the physical world would've been much cruder than today, at least we had a framework by which we could explore it (at the level of detail available to us before the telescope and microscope were invented). Contrast this with the study of the metaphysical. What concepts do we have that help us to measure the metaphysical? Perhaps some are around the corner, but at best all we can do at the moment is statistical analysis. To clarify, whilst term 'metaphysics' could be used to describe anything that describes our world without necessarily being part of it. I gave the example before of society, which I still think is the most straightforward one to explore. Depending on your field of view, it's possible to say society doesn't exist. For example, if a person lives a hermit lifestyle, are they still living within society, or does it take interacting with others to be part of a society? I would suggest it's the latter, and sociology as a field of study is one that (amongst other things) looks at how living in a group affects the individual. So what do these groups look like and how does an individual find their role within them? When we seek to understand complex topics, our instinct is to put together a simplified model by which to reason with. In order to simplify, we need to know how best to do so. Where can we start with this? Okay, let's imagine we start by studying group dynamics in smaller groups, such as those found in tribes of people. Let's imagine we discovered some commonly observable traits in such groups. We then seek to take these observations and apply them more broadly. What can we do? We could imagine that the broader society still lives in a series of tribes (the work tribe, the home tribe, etc...), and look for similar dynamics confined within them, and look for the effects of interplay between tribes. Let's say again that we were successful in doing so, and found commonly repeated patterns of behavior amongst different classifications of people. Now let's introduce something disruptive like a new technology that changes the group dynamic. Computers are a good example of this, as they have undoubtedly changed society, socially and economically. The first question to ask is, do the classifications of humans within a society need to change to accurately model the new world? To give a crude example, if an "alpha" in a group is the individual with the highest status within that group, there may have been a time when the alpha male was the physically strongest, but today that position is not as simple to define, as there are some aspects of life within society where that is still the case, and others where it is not. Therefore someone can be an "alpha" in one group whilst not being an alpha in all groups. How does that varying social status change behaviour? I would suggest models need to be updated to accommodate for all this additional variability. As societies constantly change, and these models along with them, what underlying truths are we really getting at here? Is the purpose of sociologists to act as historians, doing our best to capture the zeitgeist before it changes again? I would suggest that whilst such activity is an interesting, and something worthy of study, we aren't really establishing fundamental understanding but instead cataloging change. Almost everything in society is fluid, there's only a small number of constants. Do you see why this constantly changing nature makes it hard to build up scientific understanding that lasts?