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What other assumption can you start with? Assuming the natural world is dumb is simple, consistent, and easy to explain. If you start with the assumption the

What other assumption can you start with? Assuming the natural world is dumb is simple, consistent, and easy to explain. If you start with the assumption the natural world is “smart”, what does that even mean? Does it mean that we should assume dog can do calculus, but choose not to? Or that dogs are capable of complex communication, but also choose not to? Saying the natural world is “smart” is a pretty meaningless statement. How smart is “smart”, everyone will have a different opinion, so you can’t use it as the basis for discovery or discussion. However everyone understands what the natural world being dumb means. From there you can start the journey of proving step-by-step where the smarts are.

nerbert 5y ago
I don’t think that the assumption is that the natural world is dumb. The scientific discovery process aims to highlight new insights to help us make a better and useful description of the world. Implying that the starting point is "dumb" is incorrect. The starting point is a blank page, that will be filled by the research, whatever they find out.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  I understand what your trying to say. But I don’t agree with words you’ve used. We don’t assume nothing, that’s clearly not true. A basic assumption we make is that the natural world is capable of perceiving us and responding to our actions. The question we’re normally testing is how complex the process between perception and response is. As general rule we assume that process is extremely simple (“dumb”), and work to understand how complex (“smart”) it actually is. For example, in this paper the scientists didn’t start by proving the dogs were capable of observing the humans and responding to their actions. That was a given. What was tested was how complex the dogs perception and decision making process was. Using words like “dumb” and “smart” are extremely crude. But it’s the words used by GP and OP.

nerbert 5y ago

I don’t think that the assumption is that the natural world is dumb. The scientific discovery process aims to highlight new insights to help us make a better and useful description of the world. Implying that the starting point is "dumb" is incorrect. The starting point is a blank page, that will be filled by the research, whatever they find out.

avianlyric 5y ago
I understand what your trying to say. But I don’t agree with words you’ve used. We don’t assume nothing, that’s clearly not true. A basic assumption we make is that the natural world is capable of perceiving us and responding to our actions. The question we’re normally testing is how complex the process between perception and response is. As general rule we assume that process is extremely simple (“dumb”), and work to understand how complex (“smart”) it actually is. For example, in this paper the scientists didn’t start by proving the dogs were capable of observing the humans and responding to their actions. That was a given. What was tested was how complex the dogs perception and decision making process was. Using words like “dumb” and “smart” are extremely crude. But it’s the words used by GP and OP.