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This article reminder me of this classic from 1994 by Steven Jay Gould, "Evolution as a fact and theory". [1] I adore SJG but this is one essay where I disagre

by kuhewa 4y ago

This article reminder me of this classic from 1994 by Steven Jay Gould, "Evolution as a fact and theory". [1] I adore SJG but this is one essay where I disagreed. Actually started the first day of a research design course in a pretty heated debate with the dead wood professor where this essay was the topic of discussion, he couldn't wrap his head around taking epistemological or practical issue with the label of scientific fact and accused me of being a creationist. But I digress: I don't see what use the word fact is except in a contextual sense. We have scientific observations, which are pretty close to facts, but they can still change when we later discover measurement error or similar. Everything beyond those observations is a matter of inference and I can't see how calling them a fact is useful beyond a term of convenience in the context of a dialogue where all parties are informed on the subject and can agree on something akin to the Gould definition: > In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." Because you won't be convincing the unconvinced by calling something a fact, especially not in the post-truth era, so it's not going to turn creationists and will have limited use for public health messaging or similar. [1] https://wise.fau.edu/~tunick/courses/knowing/gould_fact-and-theory.html https://wise.fau.edu/~tunick/courses/knowing/gould_fact-and-...

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
There are two worlds colliding here. The scientific world is primarily oriented towards finding stable consensus truths that are independent of individual bias. The political world is primarily oriented towards persuasion and behaviour modification - either for personal gain, or (more rarely) to promote fairness, equality, and perhaps even opportunity. To politicians, scientific facts are only one of many available tools for persuasion, and they're not particularly good at it. These worlds are incompatible to such an extent that people operating in one world are fundamentally unable to understand the other. So the question is really "How do you create a political consensus?" The answer is well-known - you set up numerous apparently independent think tanks and PR operations to promote your message across multiple media, you put journalists-for-hire in positions of notability and influence, you design soundbite concepts and memes that spread the message virally. You use psychological techniques learned from the ad industries and corporate psychology to dramatise and frame your message to make it more personally relatable. For bonus points you set up an enemy who opposes your message and you demonise, belittle, and humiliate them. Ideally you frame the "debate" to make disagreement literally unthinkable, while also making all supporters feel as if their beliefs are entirely their own, arrived at rationally and objectively. Scientific consensus on its own will do none of this. And a scientific "fact" is powerless against this process.
- ImHereToVote 4y ago
  You forgot that you also convince the people who oppose your message, that it's the other, also very undesirable group that is actually responsible for your message.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Ideally you frame the "debate" to make disagreement literally unthinkable, while also making all supporters feel as if their beliefs are entirely their own, arrived at rationally and objectively. The important prerequisite, and what I think is one of the major differentiator between your "scientific world" and "political world": promoting the idea of the debate itself, as an activity that's meaningful and useful in discovering the right solutions and objective facts about reality. The thing is, a debate is actually the exact opposite of that - it's entirely orthogonal to objective reality. But it sure does work well to build and reinforce "us vs. them" divisions and group people into conflicting sides. In the "scientific world", you don't do debates. It's obvious they're a stupid waste of time. In this world, you collate what you know, share the connections you see and the reasoning you use, and try to tease out some underlying structure from all of it, that's mapping reality better than the one you had before.
Certhas 4y ago
Could you please elaborate on why you insist that the word has no use? There are things that are merely probable, and there are things that are beyond doubt. Not using the word fact for the latter is useless pageantry if the "well, technically..." kind. The existence of atoms is not merely probable, after millenia of debate the question is settled. Everyone can perform an experiment to verify it. This ability is very interesting from a bayesian perspective. It means we have a statement for which we can generate additional evidence at will. No matter what your threshold for evidence needed is, it can be met. Before the scientific revolution, facts like this used to be fairly trivial: The ground and the sky exist. That kind of stuff. The enormous explosion of facts like this is a unique thing to our historical period. To forgot the obvious natural word for this serves one purpose: It makes communicating scientific insight harder.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > The existence of atoms is not merely probable, after millenia of debate the question is settled. Everyone can perform an experiment to verify it. Except atoms aren't atomic: they can be further subdivided. In the original sense of the word, we still don't know whether there are atoms. > It means we have a statement for which we can generate additional evidence at will. No matter what your threshold for evidence needed is, it can be met. Reading the same book over and over again only gives you evidence about what the book says, not whether the words in the book are true. Likewise, performing an experiment over and over again only gives you evidence about what the experiment does, not any models that generalise its results (beyond the marginal, diminishing-returns "we're pretty sure this experiment's results match up"). Nothing is ever beyond doubt; only beyond reasonable doubt.
  - matheusd 4y ago
    > Except atoms aren't atomic: they can be further subdivided Those are two different facts: 1. Atoms exist 2. Atoms can be divided GP was attesting to #1 being a scientific fact for which "no matter your threshold for evidence needed, it can be met". If you object to the word "atoms" on the grounds of it having a specific meaning from 2K years ago, replace that with "the modern standard model of particle physics". >> > It means we have a statement for which we can generate additional evidence at will. > Reading the same book over and over again only gives you evidence about what the book says "Generate additional evidence at will" is packing a lot of stuff, but in my read it means "Generate a hypothesis", "Model a new experiment that can disprove it to the desired or available precision", "Review the experimental setup for any defects", etc etc. "Generate additional evidence at will" when applied to the "scientific fact that atoms exist" means that any new experiment that you design and perform will be compatible to that fact. There is no evidence whatsoever that atoms (at their "level of abstraction") do not exist. The only way I see out of that is if you're _so_ reductionist to the point where you accept that the _only_ thing that exists is whatever is at the lowest level of reality (quantum fields, quantum foam, whatever), but then I guess neither you nor I exist to be discussing this.

by kuhewa 4y ago

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

There are two worlds colliding here. The scientific world is primarily oriented towards finding stable consensus truths that are independent of individual bias. The political world is primarily oriented towards persuasion and behaviour modification - either for personal gain, or (more rarely) to promote fairness, equality, and perhaps even opportunity. To politicians, scientific facts are only one of many available tools for persuasion, and they're not particularly good at it. These worlds are incompatible to such an extent that people operating in one world are fundamentally unable to understand the other. So the question is really "How do you create a political consensus?" The answer is well-known - you set up numerous apparently independent think tanks and PR operations to promote your message across multiple media, you put journalists-for-hire in positions of notability and influence, you design soundbite concepts and memes that spread the message virally. You use psychological techniques learned from the ad industries and corporate psychology to dramatise and frame your message to make it more personally relatable. For bonus points you set up an enemy who opposes your message and you demonise, belittle, and humiliate them. Ideally you frame the "debate" to make disagreement literally unthinkable, while also making all supporters feel as if their beliefs are entirely their own, arrived at rationally and objectively. Scientific consensus on its own will do none of this. And a scientific "fact" is powerless against this process.

ImHereToVote 4y ago
You forgot that you also convince the people who oppose your message, that it's the other, also very undesirable group that is actually responsible for your message.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Ideally you frame the "debate" to make disagreement literally unthinkable, while also making all supporters feel as if their beliefs are entirely their own, arrived at rationally and objectively. The important prerequisite, and what I think is one of the major differentiator between your "scientific world" and "political world": promoting the idea of the debate itself, as an activity that's meaningful and useful in discovering the right solutions and objective facts about reality. The thing is, a debate is actually the exact opposite of that - it's entirely orthogonal to objective reality. But it sure does work well to build and reinforce "us vs. them" divisions and group people into conflicting sides. In the "scientific world", you don't do debates. It's obvious they're a stupid waste of time. In this world, you collate what you know, share the connections you see and the reasoning you use, and try to tease out some underlying structure from all of it, that's mapping reality better than the one you had before.

Certhas 4y ago

Could you please elaborate on why you insist that the word has no use? There are things that are merely probable, and there are things that are beyond doubt. Not using the word fact for the latter is useless pageantry if the "well, technically..." kind. The existence of atoms is not merely probable, after millenia of debate the question is settled. Everyone can perform an experiment to verify it. This ability is very interesting from a bayesian perspective. It means we have a statement for which we can generate additional evidence at will. No matter what your threshold for evidence needed is, it can be met. Before the scientific revolution, facts like this used to be fairly trivial: The ground and the sky exist. That kind of stuff. The enormous explosion of facts like this is a unique thing to our historical period. To forgot the obvious natural word for this serves one purpose: It makes communicating scientific insight harder.

wizzwizz4 4y ago
> The existence of atoms is not merely probable, after millenia of debate the question is settled. Everyone can perform an experiment to verify it. Except atoms aren't atomic: they can be further subdivided. In the original sense of the word, we still don't know whether there are atoms. > It means we have a statement for which we can generate additional evidence at will. No matter what your threshold for evidence needed is, it can be met. Reading the same book over and over again only gives you evidence about what the book says, not whether the words in the book are true. Likewise, performing an experiment over and over again only gives you evidence about what the experiment does, not any models that generalise its results (beyond the marginal, diminishing-returns "we're pretty sure this experiment's results match up"). Nothing is ever beyond doubt; only beyond reasonable doubt.
- matheusd 4y ago
  > Except atoms aren't atomic: they can be further subdivided Those are two different facts: 1. Atoms exist 2. Atoms can be divided GP was attesting to #1 being a scientific fact for which "no matter your threshold for evidence needed, it can be met". If you object to the word "atoms" on the grounds of it having a specific meaning from 2K years ago, replace that with "the modern standard model of particle physics". >> > It means we have a statement for which we can generate additional evidence at will. > Reading the same book over and over again only gives you evidence about what the book says "Generate additional evidence at will" is packing a lot of stuff, but in my read it means "Generate a hypothesis", "Model a new experiment that can disprove it to the desired or available precision", "Review the experimental setup for any defects", etc etc. "Generate additional evidence at will" when applied to the "scientific fact that atoms exist" means that any new experiment that you design and perform will be compatible to that fact. There is no evidence whatsoever that atoms (at their "level of abstraction") do not exist. The only way I see out of that is if you're _so_ reductionist to the point where you accept that the _only_ thing that exists is whatever is at the lowest level of reality (quantum fields, quantum foam, whatever), but then I guess neither you nor I exist to be discussing this.