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> You seem to be very strong down the nihilism philosophy. I have a view point that nihilism isn't a useful philosophy & doesn't yield any particularly meaningf
by neonological 6y ago
> You seem to be very strong down the nihilism philosophy. I have a view point that nihilism isn't a useful philosophy & doesn't yield any particularly meaningful insights that help you find success in this world. It's very much, at least to me, of the same vein as the Omphalos hypothesis (also known as Last Thursdayism by atheists such as myself) which says "Sure sure. You've got all these fancy theories. But how do you know the universe wasn't created in its current state Last Thursday & so all your measurements are meaningless?".
What I'm talking about isn't a philosophy. This is the fundamental tenet as illustrated by academia. I'm not pulling this out of my ass. This is what educated scientists understand about science. If you don't know this you literally don't know what you're talking about. I am not arguing my opinion here, I am arguing the academic definition of science.
To prove it to you I'll literally quote Einstein:
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
If you don't understand why he said the above quote. You don't understand science in the same way a physicist or a scientist understands science. In fact the above was said in reference to Einsteins and newtons theories.
What einstien is basically saying is this. Science can never prove anything to be correct. It can ONLY falsify things.
>I'm always fascinated by people who claim that Einstein's theory of relativity somehow undermines the bedrock of scientific inquiry when it's 100% the thing that supports it. Newton's theories weren't wrong. They were 100% correct for the environments we were testing them in.
Your fascinated at the entire academic definition of science being different from your own personal definition? You're misunderstanding of science is the real enigma here.
Nothing is undermined. I'm not against science I am simply elucidating what science is to you in the sense that science can never prove anything to be true. Science can ONLY falsify things. It is a very limited tool, but it is also the only tool we have.
I'm an atheist like you, I get where your coming from. But you have not explored science deep enough. Look deeper into this as you are not understanding what is going on here. I am not arguing for religion or creationism or any of that BS as "valid" I am simply stating a fundamental well known flaw with science that is known by all people who know the technical definition of science.
Additionally, Newtons theory is 100% wrong in every environment. It only appears to be correct given limited accuracy of tooling. When you increase the accuracy of the observation the environment is irrelevant, it is always wrong.
>If it helps you, the scientific method of inquiry of in some ways is directly supported as a fundamental tenet of mathematics via calculus.
This is highly highly misguided. Logic and Science are completely separate. This is well known among people who understand the concept.
Logic is a game with rules axioms and a well understood domain. We create the rules and universe and therefore we're able to prove things within that universe.
Science is not the same. It is not an axiomatic game created by us. Science is the consequence of applying certain assumptions to a universe we did not create but only participate in.
We assume two things that are true in science. We assume logic is true. We assume rules like induction will always work even though we have no means of verifying it will work. We also assume probability works. We assume rolling a six sided dice will produce a certain outcome based off of probability and we again currently have no way of verify why or how this occurs. We just assume it.
Based off of these two assumptions we can create the scientific method. But this method is limited as it can only axiomatically falsify things. We can never prove anything to be true with science. This occurs, again because the domain of the real world is not limited like it is in our logical games of math. At any point in time the domain can change, shift and we can encounter a new unexpected observation that can change the entire arena.
Again, this isn't some BS I'm pulling out of my ass. This is science as Feynman and Einstein understood it. You lack understanding and I suggest you read up on the notion of what "proof" and science is.
Proof is only relevant in maths and logic, it is irrelevant in science and therefore reality as we know it. Science is the best tool we have but it is highly highly limited in the sense that it can never actually prove anything.
What ends up happening is science at best produces conclusions in the form of "We think this is true because our repeated attempts to falsify this hypothesis have failed." It can never produce anything definitive.