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> I hypothesize all zebras have stripes. I observe zebras 10 billion times. They all confirm my hypothesis. Then on the 10 billionth and first time I see a zebr

> I hypothesize all zebras have stripes. I observe zebras 10 billion times. They all confirm my hypothesis. Then on the 10 billionth and first time I see a zebra with spots. My hypothesis is wrong. This can happen any time. Even if the original belief turns out to be wrong, you only have to slightly weaken it and it will remain true: "the vast majority of zebras have stripes". Even if you discover a new continent full of hordes of uniformly-colored zebras, the true hypothesis becomes "the vast majority of zebras in my original continent are striped". Essentially every observation brings proof for a whole family of hypotheses. We normally only talk about the strongest of these hypotheses, but that doesn't meant that a negative example rules out the entire family. For example, even if we didn't find a deductive proof the Fermat's last theorem was wrong even after all of the empirical proof that it probably wasn't, a weaker version would have still remained true - the one validated by that empirical proof.

deltasevennine 4y ago
>Even if the original belief turns out to be wrong, you only have to slightly weaken it and it will remain true: "the vast majority of zebras have stripes". Even if you discover a new continent full of hordes of uniformly-colored zebras, the true hypothesis becomes "the vast majority of zebras in my original continent are striped". The hypothesis does not remain true. It was never proven to be true and the new hypothesis is still not proven to be true. Science cannot prove anything to be true. I can find a cave full of of spotted zebras, and you have to further weaken your hypothesis of continents, I can then find that the stripes were actually microscopic spots and my perfect observation tool, though never wrong has limited resolution. Ad infinitum. Nobody ever considers your made up philosophy because it's changing the rules of the game. It's making a statement then adjusting your statement once it's proven wrong... people look down on that kind of thing. What I'm writing here isn't something I pulled out of my ass. It's well known that in science, the scientific method, and reality itself, nothing can be proven. Proof is the domain of math and logic, not science. In science, things can only be falsified. To quote Einstein: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein obviously isn't saying stuff like a single experiment causes me to adjust my hypothesis and divide split it into two different ones because it's kind of inconsistent. There are people who truly understand science, but most of the population doesn't (including PG). I think what's going on with you is you're in the later camp, you've long held the incorrect belief that science can prove things and this long held ideology is coming into contact with the actual logic of the situation and your adjusting your belief to maintain a biased ideology. Do you look up to PG? Bias can be corrected when an authority confirms the opposite. I quoted Einstein here. One of the ultimate authorities on science, a person who overturned the hypothesis about Newtonian physics being a model for motion. A single experiment proved it wrong and now Newtonian physics is simply an approximation that is ultimately wrong. Hopefully that will clear things up, if not... then you must be an Alien far more strange then what PG is describing.
- simiones 4y ago
  Please don't act condescending. The problem of induction is well-known, and is closely related to what you are discussing here. I agree that science can't literally prove any hypothesis is true in the same sense that mathematics/logic can; but we also can't jump from here to considering inductive reasoning an entirely useless tool in the search for truth. That is the point that I am trying to make: experimentation can bring proof to strengthen a hypothesis. Even if a later experiment invalidates a hypothesis, all of the previous experiments' results don't disappear, and any new hypothesis we formulate still needs to be coherent with them to have any value: we have actually learned something important from our thousand experiments, even if our 1001st showed that the hypothesis we had in mind was false. Also, this is not unique to science. The same phenomenon can happen in mathematics or logic for theorems that have been neither proven nor disproven yet. We can perform numerical experiments to test a numerical theorem, and gain some amount of confidence in that theorem even if we haven't proven it to be true. We can often establish lower or upper bounds in the course of this experimentation, where we find that the theorem is True at least for some limited subset of all numbers - and this remains True and useful even if it later turns out that there exist counter-examples. This observation is also very important for understanding why the history of natural philosophy is essentially one of continuous progress, with very little backtracking: even if induction is not good enough to know that we have a perfectly complete and consistent theory (and we will never have one), we always have something salvageable from all of the experimentation done so far. Even geocentric models with their epicycles were actually working models, which predicted the positions of planets in the next 1000 years to quite good accuracy, even if they were clearly wrong in the end.
  - deltasevennine 4y ago
    >Please don't act condescending. Please don't accuse me of acting condescending. It's very offensive and hurts my feelings when I'm accused of something I'm not doing. I am criticizing you, but I am not being condescending. There is a huge difference. Perhaps the alien thing was bad. I apologize for that. The intent was a joke and was not condescension. >That is the point that I am trying to make: experimentation can bring proof to strengthen a hypothesis. Even if a later experiment invalidates a hypothesis, all of the previous experiments' results don't disappear, and any new hypothesis we formulate still needs to be coherent with them to have any value: we have actually learned something important from our thousand experiments, even if our 1001st showed that the hypothesis we had in mind was false. Yes but this was not part of the discussion. We're talking about science as a principle. Not what we have learned from the process of science. >This observation is also very important for understanding why the history of natural philosophy is essentially one of continuous progress, with very little backtracking: even if induction is not good enough to know that we have a perfectly complete and consistent theory (and we will never have one), we always have something salvageable from all of the experimentation done so far. Even geocentric models with their epicycles were actually working models, which predicted the positions of planets in the next 1000 years to quite good accuracy, even if they were clearly wrong in the end. Important or not, we diverged from the point. Whether Science is a valid principle shared by humans and aliens is the point. My point is, PG's view isn't even shared with humans, why should he assume it's going to be shared with aliens? You're talking about the importance of science. The value of science. That's off topic.

deltasevennine 4y ago

>Even if the original belief turns out to be wrong, you only have to slightly weaken it and it will remain true: "the vast majority of zebras have stripes". Even if you discover a new continent full of hordes of uniformly-colored zebras, the true hypothesis becomes "the vast majority of zebras in my original continent are striped". The hypothesis does not remain true. It was never proven to be true and the new hypothesis is still not proven to be true. Science cannot prove anything to be true. I can find a cave full of of spotted zebras, and you have to further weaken your hypothesis of continents, I can then find that the stripes were actually microscopic spots and my perfect observation tool, though never wrong has limited resolution. Ad infinitum. Nobody ever considers your made up philosophy because it's changing the rules of the game. It's making a statement then adjusting your statement once it's proven wrong... people look down on that kind of thing. What I'm writing here isn't something I pulled out of my ass. It's well known that in science, the scientific method, and reality itself, nothing can be proven. Proof is the domain of math and logic, not science. In science, things can only be falsified. To quote Einstein: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Einstein obviously isn't saying stuff like a single experiment causes me to adjust my hypothesis and divide split it into two different ones because it's kind of inconsistent. There are people who truly understand science, but most of the population doesn't (including PG). I think what's going on with you is you're in the later camp, you've long held the incorrect belief that science can prove things and this long held ideology is coming into contact with the actual logic of the situation and your adjusting your belief to maintain a biased ideology. Do you look up to PG? Bias can be corrected when an authority confirms the opposite. I quoted Einstein here. One of the ultimate authorities on science, a person who overturned the hypothesis about Newtonian physics being a model for motion. A single experiment proved it wrong and now Newtonian physics is simply an approximation that is ultimately wrong. Hopefully that will clear things up, if not... then you must be an Alien far more strange then what PG is describing.

simiones 4y ago
Please don't act condescending. The problem of induction is well-known, and is closely related to what you are discussing here. I agree that science can't literally prove any hypothesis is true in the same sense that mathematics/logic can; but we also can't jump from here to considering inductive reasoning an entirely useless tool in the search for truth. That is the point that I am trying to make: experimentation can bring proof to strengthen a hypothesis. Even if a later experiment invalidates a hypothesis, all of the previous experiments' results don't disappear, and any new hypothesis we formulate still needs to be coherent with them to have any value: we have actually learned something important from our thousand experiments, even if our 1001st showed that the hypothesis we had in mind was false. Also, this is not unique to science. The same phenomenon can happen in mathematics or logic for theorems that have been neither proven nor disproven yet. We can perform numerical experiments to test a numerical theorem, and gain some amount of confidence in that theorem even if we haven't proven it to be true. We can often establish lower or upper bounds in the course of this experimentation, where we find that the theorem is True at least for some limited subset of all numbers - and this remains True and useful even if it later turns out that there exist counter-examples. This observation is also very important for understanding why the history of natural philosophy is essentially one of continuous progress, with very little backtracking: even if induction is not good enough to know that we have a perfectly complete and consistent theory (and we will never have one), we always have something salvageable from all of the experimentation done so far. Even geocentric models with their epicycles were actually working models, which predicted the positions of planets in the next 1000 years to quite good accuracy, even if they were clearly wrong in the end.
- deltasevennine 4y ago
  >Please don't act condescending. Please don't accuse me of acting condescending. It's very offensive and hurts my feelings when I'm accused of something I'm not doing. I am criticizing you, but I am not being condescending. There is a huge difference. Perhaps the alien thing was bad. I apologize for that. The intent was a joke and was not condescension. >That is the point that I am trying to make: experimentation can bring proof to strengthen a hypothesis. Even if a later experiment invalidates a hypothesis, all of the previous experiments' results don't disappear, and any new hypothesis we formulate still needs to be coherent with them to have any value: we have actually learned something important from our thousand experiments, even if our 1001st showed that the hypothesis we had in mind was false. Yes but this was not part of the discussion. We're talking about science as a principle. Not what we have learned from the process of science. >This observation is also very important for understanding why the history of natural philosophy is essentially one of continuous progress, with very little backtracking: even if induction is not good enough to know that we have a perfectly complete and consistent theory (and we will never have one), we always have something salvageable from all of the experimentation done so far. Even geocentric models with their epicycles were actually working models, which predicted the positions of planets in the next 1000 years to quite good accuracy, even if they were clearly wrong in the end. Important or not, we diverged from the point. Whether Science is a valid principle shared by humans and aliens is the point. My point is, PG's view isn't even shared with humans, why should he assume it's going to be shared with aliens? You're talking about the importance of science. The value of science. That's off topic.