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This seems more political than scientific, despite originating from scientists. I came to similar beliefs from some very personal experiences outside of the fi

This seems more political than scientific, despite originating from scientists. I came to similar beliefs from some very personal experiences outside of the field, and it's just that -- a belief. Trying to turn something that's not really easily provable or not into a labeled 'pseudoscience' or 'not pseudoscience' kind of thing seems to just be asking for grief. It sort of reminds me of the hullabaloo around a lot of things way back when historically, where the general opinion ended up being horridly wrong. It seems to me like one of the unifying threads was how politically motivated and communicated the outcry was. Again, just an opinion on my part. I can't say what the nature for reality is or isn't. I do find appreciation in an idea, as another post here alluded to, of consciousness being an illusion of experience. An analogy that I think of is how a rope gets tied up in a knot. The knot is information, it adds information, it does not change the rope. But also my beliefs do come from a belief in a more unified metaphysical 'thing' (as it were, to really simplify my belief into a silly analogy) that makes us all up, so a lot of the ideas for me come as our own self concepts being like these temporary hurricanes or bits of self-sustaining 'knots' of information that live for a time, and then pass on (with or without the body experiencing them, as a part of this greater 'thing'). Again, these are just a sort of partial translation of what I believe. Apologies if I explained it poorly. I think spiritual things are hard to study scientifically, and I feel that duality is alright. As others have noted here, you could call many theories "pseudoscience" by the very same logic as the above, as best as I understand it. :'(((( Unless there's a clear and present harm I don't see much reason in political pressure to suppress the idea. Perhaps I'm missing something here, unfortunately. I don't think I know the whole story yet, there has to be a cohesive explanation for how this (potential) rift has formed. :'))))

iammjm 3y ago
Except that testability is one of the core principles of science. If there isn't a way to prove/disprove what you are claiming then we can assert all sorts of things and call it science, at which point science loses all it's credibility
- deleted 3y ago
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- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Can't test String Theory, is it not science, are the people studying it not scientist? The testability argument is not all of science, a lot of science has to be done before reaching a point to figure out how to test something.
  - antonvs 3y ago
    There are many tests that can be done of string theory. The issue is that there are no good known tests that can confirm or refute its validity compared to that of the theories it is attempting to replace. You can't say the same about IIT. It doesn't really qualify as a theory in the scientific sense.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      I think the point is, there were many years (decades) where String Theory was NOT testable. During all that time, research was occurring, it was called science, even though it was not yet testable. Was String Theory during that time a pseudoscience? Science doesn't appear 'out-of-the-box' instantly testable. There is a lot of time of speculation, and thought, and pondering with ideas that ebb and flow, before something gets defined enough to test. If science is not valid if it is not testable, then what are all these researchers in theoretical physics doing? There is plenty of work going on today that is not yet 'testable'. How do you get to the point of having something to test, if the 'science' up until that point is not valid? My argument being, using testability as the measure to toss ITT out the window, is a bit premature, given testability is actually not the only benchmark for doing science.
      - antonvs 3y ago
        > I think the point is, there were many years (decades) where String Theory was NOT testable. That's inaccurate or incorrect. You're using "testable" in two different ways without realizing it. From the very beginning, string theory has been testable in the normal sense that scientific theories are testable: it makes predictions, and you can test those predictions. However, it was designed to make the same predictions as quantum physics and relativity. When people say string theory is "not testable", what they mean is that there are no known, viable tests that allow us to determine whether string theory might provide a better description of the universe than the existing theories. There was nothing such as, for example, the lensing of starlight around the Sun that helped determine that general relativity's predictions were more accurate than Newtonian ones. This is very different from the situation with IIT. IIT is not testable at all. In that sense, it is demonstrably pseudoscience, or if we're being charitable, a conjecture that hasn't yet been fleshed out to the level of a testable hypothesis.

iammjm 3y ago

Except that testability is one of the core principles of science. If there isn't a way to prove/disprove what you are claiming then we can assert all sorts of things and call it science, at which point science loses all it's credibility

deleted 3y ago
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FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Can't test String Theory, is it not science, are the people studying it not scientist? The testability argument is not all of science, a lot of science has to be done before reaching a point to figure out how to test something.
- antonvs 3y ago
  There are many tests that can be done of string theory. The issue is that there are no good known tests that can confirm or refute its validity compared to that of the theories it is attempting to replace. You can't say the same about IIT. It doesn't really qualify as a theory in the scientific sense.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    I think the point is, there were many years (decades) where String Theory was NOT testable. During all that time, research was occurring, it was called science, even though it was not yet testable. Was String Theory during that time a pseudoscience? Science doesn't appear 'out-of-the-box' instantly testable. There is a lot of time of speculation, and thought, and pondering with ideas that ebb and flow, before something gets defined enough to test. If science is not valid if it is not testable, then what are all these researchers in theoretical physics doing? There is plenty of work going on today that is not yet 'testable'. How do you get to the point of having something to test, if the 'science' up until that point is not valid? My argument being, using testability as the measure to toss ITT out the window, is a bit premature, given testability is actually not the only benchmark for doing science.
    - antonvs 3y ago
      > I think the point is, there were many years (decades) where String Theory was NOT testable. That's inaccurate or incorrect. You're using "testable" in two different ways without realizing it. From the very beginning, string theory has been testable in the normal sense that scientific theories are testable: it makes predictions, and you can test those predictions. However, it was designed to make the same predictions as quantum physics and relativity. When people say string theory is "not testable", what they mean is that there are no known, viable tests that allow us to determine whether string theory might provide a better description of the universe than the existing theories. There was nothing such as, for example, the lensing of starlight around the Sun that helped determine that general relativity's predictions were more accurate than Newtonian ones. This is very different from the situation with IIT. IIT is not testable at all. In that sense, it is demonstrably pseudoscience, or if we're being charitable, a conjecture that hasn't yet been fleshed out to the level of a testable hypothesis.