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If you "only listen to science", you don't understand science. Science actually has a narrow focus. It only deals with things that are observable, reproducible

by GuB-42 5y ago

If you "only listen to science", you don't understand science. Science actually has a narrow focus. It only deals with things that are observable, reproducible, predictable and falsifiable. Since Gödel, science even proved itself as incomplete. The best doctors will always say that if something makes you feel better, by all means do it, even if it is not backed by science. It is not the same as going against science. This can be bad, because science is really good at what it does, thanks in part to its narrow focus. For example, eat all chicken soup you want if it makes you feel better, but if you want your cancer to go away, it is not a good idea to ignore the treatments that science has come up with. The best doctors will tell you that too.

vinceguidry 5y ago
I liked this a lot, but wanted to make a correction. > Since Gödel, science even proved itself as incomplete. The best doctors will always say that if something makes you feel better, by all means do it, even if it is not backed by science. Gödel proved mathematics to be inconsistent. This has much greater implications than just proving scientific inquiry to be insufficient. Science relies on the senses for its reliability and is grounded in the physical world. Mathematics has no such bounds. Given a "complete" formal (scientific!) understanding of the physical world, we still wouldn't know everything, there will always be systems that intersect with it that inform our world, but can't be understood using our rules. No matter how many formal systems we define to wrap our collective brain around the world, there will always be more things to understand. That's the significance of Gödel.
- pas 5y ago
  Nah, he did not. He proved that "it" cannot prove its own consistency. (Where it can express Peano arithmetic.) But "it" is not the whole of mathematics. There are "weak" systems that can prove their own consistency. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-verifying_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-verifying_theories )

by GuB-42 5y ago

vinceguidry 5y ago

I liked this a lot, but wanted to make a correction. > Since Gödel, science even proved itself as incomplete. The best doctors will always say that if something makes you feel better, by all means do it, even if it is not backed by science. Gödel proved mathematics to be inconsistent. This has much greater implications than just proving scientific inquiry to be insufficient. Science relies on the senses for its reliability and is grounded in the physical world. Mathematics has no such bounds. Given a "complete" formal (scientific!) understanding of the physical world, we still wouldn't know everything, there will always be systems that intersect with it that inform our world, but can't be understood using our rules. No matter how many formal systems we define to wrap our collective brain around the world, there will always be more things to understand. That's the significance of Gödel.

pas 5y ago
Nah, he did not. He proved that "it" cannot prove its own consistency. (Where it can express Peano arithmetic.) But "it" is not the whole of mathematics. There are "weak" systems that can prove their own consistency. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-verifying_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-verifying_theories )