15 ms·

Carl Sagan's Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking

205 points by haxiomic 3y ago

Animats 3y ago
"Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much." This. That's a good way to put it. I've mentioned Fred Hoyle's line on that, "Science is prediction, not explanation" (which is from one of Hoyle's novels), but Sagan's line is better. Key point: unfalsifiable theories do not lead to useful technology. Engineering requires predictability.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Add to that David Deutsch's point that "Good explanations MUST be hard to vary"
  - pengstrom 3y ago
    Deutsch also heavily argues for explanations as first-class existence on the level of matter. For him, predictions are simply a practical concern. I still fondly remember his dialogue between Socrates and Apollo in dream, where he convincingly makes the point that even there he can find true knowledge about the world.
    - crabmusket 3y ago
      I also loved that chapter. Deutsch really argues for Popper's "conjecture and refutation" model of science (or as he renamed it, "conjecture and criticism") and one of the great points he makes is that both those processes can be done entirely in the mind. Physical evidence may be necessary for some kinds of criticism, but sometimes reason alone can produce useful criticism.
      - pengstrom 3y ago
        That's true, I might have been a little aggressive on the claiming
    - walleeee 3y ago
      I also like his point (in conversation with Sean Carroll) that we have rigorous proof that the notion of explanation can't be formalized, yet explanation is at the core of the scientific endeavor anyway.
  - crabmusket 3y ago
    "Hard to vary" is, I think, some sort of isomorphism of "easy to refute". I found it difficult when reading Deutsch to pin down exactly what made something hard to vary.
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      Let's say we have 16 distinct phenomena. All of them are currently explained by a rooted tree T of explanations of depth 4. Say, we come across 8 new phenomena. Suddenly you can't rejig or shake your tree T anyhow. You have to preserve the original structure of T or at least relationships while constructing a new tree R such that it not only explains old 16 phenomena but also the new 8 as well. We might construct a new tree R such that tree T is a subtree of it. This new tree covers more ground and has more depth. In this sense, new explanations are constrained by whatever that came before and they are tasked with explaining more on top of that. There are very few ways to do it. In physics, they call the more general law to be valid at all time scales, energy scales and length scales, velocity scales and so on.
- wredue 3y ago
  I like Sagan, but he didn’t make these rules for a post truth world, unfortunately. There were certainly well funded lies in his day, but right now we are seeing massive investment, easily rivalling a large tech corporation or a Disney media empire, in to creating “news” orgs who’s specific goal is to lie, muddy waters, sow discord, and otherwise mislead the public, and who are seen as independent bodies of verification. It’s much more difficult now to find real facts, which is actually insane given that real facts should be available with the click of a button these days.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
    I think the increase in spending on spreading/amplifying certain kinds of information is because there's a greater depth and breath of information available now that people can and are using to derive their own opinion. Influencing people was less expensive when media/news/information/etc was relatively limited.
    - wredue 3y ago
      Yeah, but what Sagan is trying to give is a framework for forming opinions based on reality. While it’s a good start, it’s missing imperative steps like “if Fox News is your independent verification, it’s probably a lie”. As stated, we are in a post-truth world, and a framework from Sagan era for forming opinions with a factual justification is much more difficult.
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    Hello: "Flood the channels with shit." - Steve Bannon Goodbye: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
    - Animats 3y ago
      H. R. McMaster credits Putin's people with that concept. Until recently, propaganda was promoting your position. Russia came up with the breakthrough of just promoting extremists of all stripes to reduce the credibility of all news. This is a form of tactical misdirection. "To sow confusion and reap inaction", as Willie Sutton, the bank robber and prison escapee, put it. It wasn't really feasible at scale before the Internet, because it takes a large number of anonymous sources to make it go.
- esafak 3y ago
  Falsifiability is not his idea; it was promoted by Karl Popper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
  - vivekd 3y ago
    This is correct, Falsifiability was origionally concieved of by Karl Popper. I would also add, that while Popper had the best of intentions and good ideas in creating falsifiability theory, it is not generally accepted today by people who study philosophy of science. The consensus, which I agree with, is that it doesn't refelct how science atually works and it eleminatates many things that we do consider science. I mean many people may disagree with string theory, but it's hard for me to accept that it's science at all. Evolution also didn't pass Mr. Popper's tests, but he eventually recanted, not by changing his views on how evolution fits with his theories but just because his friends convinced him that it was "really important." Popper made contributions to science in that he was one of the main thought leaders that began the field of philosophy of science. That said, I don't think falsifiability by itself is a very good criterion for science or truth. I don't think the wikipedia article on this is very good. The encyclopedia of philosophy has a much better overview of his theory and where it stands currently https://iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/#H3 https://iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/#H3
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      " by people who study philosophy of science. The consensus, which I agree with, is that it doesn't refelct how science atually works and " Science 'works' today by p-hacking and data falsification. I'm not sure that we should consider current practices an argument against a quality threshold.
      - jimwhite42 3y ago
        Aren't you mixing two distinct things here?
        glenstein 3y ago
- clankyclanker 3y ago
  Or, more pithily, always ask "how can you disprove it?" - If you can't, it isn't science and can't be treated as such.
  - ukj 3y ago
    How can we disprove the hypothesis “If we can’t disprove it - it isn’t science.”? The scientific metaphysic relies on so many declarative/prescriptive statements which are themselves exempt from the criteria for science and are thus self-defeating on their own terms. It is so peculiar when scientists are so dogmatic about science. Are the formal sciences (logic/mathematics/computer science) not science? The testability/falsifiability criterion certainly excludes them from being sciences.
    - vivekd 3y ago
      and you hit one of the main objections to the theory of falsifiability as the criterion of science. There are also other more serious ones, like the obvious fact that actual science does't seem to actually work this way. The idea is more to explain observations in a coherent way rather than to be falsifiable for example. One example is the big bang theory being proposed by a Catholic astronomer who didn't like the then prevaling idea that the universe did not have a beginning or end because it went against his religious beliefs. Or Kepler looking for planets at locations in accord with musical harmonies because he though it was consistent with the existence of a God
      - ukj 3y ago
        Personally, I am weary of the notion of “actual science” since science is not a well-defined term. The demarcation problem isn’t solved; and philosophers like Fayerabend in his book “Against method” suggest that science is more of an anarchic enterprise than any particular set of methods. Take any criterion and apply it too strictly and there is some scientific discovery/progress in history which violates the rules and wouldn’t pass for “science” given any definition… Take any given methodological approach - and you will always find counter examples in scientific history. Almost like genius isn’t algorithmic.
- gadders 3y ago
  Doesn't that apply to climate science/ climate change though?
  - daanlo 3y ago
    Why? Climate science works with quantative models and makes concrete predictions. So if the predictions don‘t come true the model is false. E.g. this random blog I found googling compares IPCC predictions with actual outcomes: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-1990-ipcc-climate-projections/ https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-1990-ipc... [the link is just supposed to show how climate science is falsifiable. I have no idea whether the numbers in this specific source are trustworthy]
    - godelski 3y ago
      More comparisons here[0]. As is important, it's noticed that models even from the 80's made fairly accurate predictions. That's the real kicker: models accurately predict observable outcomes 20-40 years later (and have only improved since then). I'm not sure why there's so much contention about climate science given that we've been observing this trend for nearly 50 years now. Scientist makes prediction about something 50 years later and 50 years later the prediction is shown to be accurate. It feels weird to not trust a source with such a good and observable track record... [0] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...
    - gadders 3y ago
      The thing is - there are so many predictions made and a lot that don't come through, it's hard to find which are the "real" ones. I also read somewhere that there are several different scenarios available for the IPCC climate models and a lot of the more "scary" predictions are based on the least likely model. Finally - we saw the limitations of modelling in COVID in the UK, with adverse consequences.
  - Aunche 3y ago
    What are you implying? Scientists can't make stars either, but they can make models describing stars and make new observations about these stars that test the validity of these models. Plenty of climate models have been disproven by this exact way. What has been remarkably consistent is that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change. For example, models predict that man-made global warming would cause the stratosphere to cool, which is exactly what they measured. By contrast, increased solar activity would have also heated up the stratosphere.
- aeternum 3y ago
  Is climate change falsifiable?
  - HPMOR 3y ago
    Yes because you could simulate a small-scale atmosphere, and notice how changing the composition of the "atmosphere" affects average temperature or other features. John Von Neumann actually predicted climate change from first principles and described it as potentially more debilitating than nuclear weapons. --Great essay. https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf
    - aeternum 3y ago
      Well that's more evidence for it, not an attempt to falsify. If we want to falsify, we should ask questions like: Was there a time in the past when the atmosphere contained even more CO2 than it did now? What was the temp and did life survive? What evidence or experiment would convince you the theory is false? Or is that impossible?
      - mr_mitm 3y ago
        Climate change is not a fundamental theory. It is derived from thermodynamics, the Navier Stokes equation, quantum mechanics and probably quite a few assumptions on what is negligible. Falsify any of those and you falsify climate change.
      - glenstein 3y ago
        >If we want to falsify, we should ask questions like: Was there a time in the past when the atmosphere contained even more CO2 than it did now? What was the temp and did life survive? Do you believe that question isn't already asked and answered? Just going off the top of my head, I understand historical considerations to be a routine observation as part of your typical course or even presentation on the history of climate change. If you believe this counts, then your answer to your own question about the falsifiability of climate change is yes. I also don't think that's the only kind of example - I think the routine things talked about on a day to day basis, including year by year and decade by decade temperature predictions would qualify, and these data are quite frequently discussed and quite visible. I also also don't think the distinction between "evidence in favor" and "attempts to falsify" makes a whole lot of sense. These are two different sides of the same coin, and evidence in favor of something is the same as surviving a test of falsifiability.
- jfengel 3y ago
  Falsifiability is critical for engineering, but not all science is for engineering. The further you get from engineering, the fuzzier the line between science and non science. We try to apply the tools of science to things like astrophysics and paleontology, but they're practically never going to have engineering consequences. That's fine. It's great that we want to know stuff just because we like knowing -- even if "knowing" sometimes gets hard to define. Falsifiability is a great tool for being able to say some things don't work. But it's important not to let it limit curiosity.
  - croes 3y ago
    Without falsifiability it's belief not science. How can a hypothesis become a theory if it can't fail?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - foolswisdom 3y ago
    If you can't explain how the statement could be falsified, at least in principle (although it may be not practical to do so), then you are admitting that reality will always be the exact same regardless of whether your hypothesis is true. And in that case, it's really not useful or meaningful for any sort of reasoning at all. A concept which will in no way ever make a difference, is meaningless.
    - karencarits 3y ago
      But it can be hard to know whether a concept will make a difference in the future. String theory may for example provide some testable hypotheses at some point. Theory building is important and original thoughts may have unpredicted consequences some way down the road
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      MWI of quantum physics is most likely unfalsifiable. But if I believe that there are other versions of me that will definitely win the lottery if I am the sort of person to enter it in particular circumstances then that may well change my behaviour. I would argue that occams razor is unfalsifiable but is still a great principle.
- dzwa 3y ago
  Popper
- canjobear 3y ago
  What about, for example, the Drake equation? Not falsifiable, but a useful tool for thinking.
  - thicknavyrain 3y ago
    Certainly useful for thinking, but its lack of falsifiability, predictive power or validation is indeed why there's so much controversy around it and why it remains a hypothesised model rather than widely accepted scientific fact. The best you can do is test the assumptions of the model itself, or its constituent terms.
  - cwillu 3y ago
    Not everything _has_ to be science.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The Drake equation is falsifiable. All you have to do is plug the values (which are all things that could technically be measured) into the equation, then count the number of civilizations in the Milky Way, and see if that's equal to what the equation predicted. it is possible that it's not, so the equation is falsifiable. That it's impractical for us to actually do the experiment just means that we cannot perform the experiment and so it doesn't help us in practical terms. But it is a thing that could be done, strictly speaking. That said, it's also a thought experiment, not a scientific postulate, and isn't meant to be "scientific".
  - crabmusket 3y ago
    Not all useful tools for thinking must be considered science. I think it's quite fair to say the Drake equation isn't "science". However, I think Popper's "conjecture and refutation" is a more interesting model for thinking about the increase of knowledge than falsifiability is. Through that lens, you might say the Drake equation was a conjecture intended to stimulate refutations, which might lead to further productive theories. Popper's essays on Parmenides are really interesting on this. Popper frames Parmenides' philosophy as essentially a conjecture that "change is an illusion", and the history of western science since then as various "research programmes" in response to that. I'm summarising terribly, but I think he illustrates well the value of conjectures that aren't necessarily "scientific" in stimulating thought.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rossant 3y ago
  This is a problem with shaken baby syndrome, which asserts that infants presenting a certain pattern of medical findings (mostly subdural and retinal hemorrhage) MUST have been violently shaken if no other alternative medical or accidental explanation is found. It is a diagnosis by default, which raises a number of legal issues. [1, 2] This medical diagnosis is "certain" even with no witness, no admission of violence, no antecedents of violence, no sign of trauma on the baby's body. There is absolutely no way to falsify the idea that this gesture occurred (and no way to prove one's innocence — it's a presumption of guilt). Yet, this theory is qualified as "scientific" by its proponents, but it does not lead to any predictions, only explanations. That shaking must have occurred on a given child at a particular moment, while the only person present with the child denies any violence, is an untestable and unfalsifiable proposition that is totally anti-scientific. [1] https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-shaken-baby-syndrome-abusive-head-trauma-controversy/ https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-sha... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
- pengstrom 3y ago
  "Only a sith deals in absolutes" Science clearly works because humans have a genuine curiosity to find truth. While every person is flawed and prone to error, the curiosity points in the same direction, rising above the noise. We've only recently had to even discuss this after the deployment of large scale truth poisoning making the errors non-uniform.
  - BellsOnSunday 3y ago
    Recently like in the last hundred years?
zubairq 3y ago
Interesting read
chrisweekly 3y ago
Maria Popova is an extraordinary essayist; I highly recommend exploring themarginalian.org site. The breadth of topics, and the keen intelligence coupled with such warmth and humanity... it's a treasure trove.
umvi 3y ago
This article has good advice for logical thinking, but just one nit pick: > having just lost both of his parents, he reflects on the all too human allure of promises of supernatural reunions in the afterlife, reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people, but simply means that we need to equip ourselves with the right tools against them. I feel like grouping all religion in with psychics and con artists is a bit extreme. Sure, it's impossible by contradiction for all tenets of all religions to be simultaneously true. But... there were, are, and will yet be many intelligent people of different religions that, for various empirically-unprovable reasons, feel there is a God - even if they know at an intellectual level that their current church or belief system isn't entirely consistent or correct. It's important to respect their religious liberty even if you disagree. Many people (including on this very forum) have had spiritual experiences that seem to confirm the existence of a God at a visceral level. It's hard to explain unless you've had a spiritual experience, but they can include moments of emotional connection to deceased loved ones, "gut feelings" that helped you do something important or avoid something bad, or unexpected and unusual ideas or thoughts (in my case, sometimes even programming related) that aid in overcoming life's obstacles, just to name a few.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > respect their religious liberty even if you disagree Believe and do whatever you want with respect to religion, so long as it doesn't extend to telling me what I can or cannot do because of your beliefs. You and others have my full support for religious liberty up until that line (overwhelmingly in the form of "yeah, whatever; I literally could not care less what you believe or do").
- wredue 3y ago
  The article did not advocate for disrespecting liberty. It actually very hilariously directly talked about exactly your post: “Gut feelings” and “people experiencing things” are not independently verifiable facts. In fact, every time religious experiences are tested, they are not repeatable or verifiable.
  - ukj 3y ago
ckrapu 3y ago
These are excellent but I think #8 (statistics of small numbers) is one that, with some nuance, you can get more personal mileage out of if you're willing to tolerate being wrong some of the time. For example, I've noticed that of the managers I've had, the good ones and bad ones are cleanly separated by one trait or property. This is a sample size of maybe 7 or smaller. Depending on your priors, my P(Hypothesis | Data) is maybe 0.6-0.7 which is terrible from a research and scientific point of view. I'll take that level of certainty for day-to-day decision making anytime, though. Make enough of these weakly-backed hypotheses and you can avoid a lot of trouble.
- plugin-baby 3y ago
  > I've noticed that of the managers I've had, the good ones and bad ones are cleanly separated by one trait or property. What was the trait?
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Isn't this essentially the basis of decision theory and statistical hypothesis testing? The hard part is to determine an acceptable probability of being wrong in any given situation.
  - ckrapu 3y ago
    Yes, and my only commentary here is that the threshold for academic decision science is a lot higher than the one I have for managing my day-to-day life.
robomc 3y ago
> misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence); this one would be surprising though
- ls612 3y ago
  Intelligence doesn’t have much skewness in its distribution so the mean is approximately the median.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    Right, but that's less and assumption about basic statistical literacy than it is about a particular distribution that happens to describe the data. Many things in society and nature are not symmetric around their means.
- asynchronous 3y ago
  Also a bad statistical statement, because the way it is phrased implies that the average is being taken from the whole world, rather than just America.
throwmeouthn 3y ago
[dead]
tcbawo 3y ago
Carl Sagan was very wise. I find his insights thought provoking and salient. However, the cynic in me is sad that the default of human nature is to be gullible, tribal, delegate fact checking to authority figures, and prone to confirmation bias. I would love to become better at rational thought and discernment. But, I feel that I (and frankly, 95% of the people on this site) are already better than the vast majority of people out there in this regard. In other words, these messages are preaching to the choir. I’m not sure what media or messenger could bring these (or similar) lessons to the masses, or whether they could have an enduring impact. The optimist in me hopes that this will be possible some day.
- ironmagma 3y ago
  I think the answer is in better education. There is never a logic class in elementary school or middle school. Why?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    There was when I was in middle school. I'm always unpleasantly surprised when I hear what is no longer taught.
  - rdedev 3y ago
    I think a good place to start would be to teach it during highschool. Especially since a lot of bad science gets spread around social media. College may be a bit too late since that's when you really need to start applying those critical thinking skills
chmod600 3y ago
"Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." That's the most controversial, because a lot of people want to be authorities and don't want to be questioned. For instance, the origins of Covid... or really lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. It turns out many of those things were subsequently reversed or reasonably doubted.
- anon84873628 3y ago
  I agree that that particular point is one of the biggest problems when it comes to translating scientific understanding to public policy. Can there be "settled science"? What is considered an acceptable level of skepticism? Governing society is largely based on rough estimates of ROI and optimizing for certain value systems based on minimal firm data at best. Often under time pressure. The problem is that it's easy to generate bullshit skepticism to lock up the process (to benefit the status quo) whereas it takes lots of effort to scientifically disprove and debunk the bullshit. We generally use appeal to authority as a shortcut to overcome this effort asymmetry. The thing we need to be clear about is when/how that is a valid tool for public policy, but not science itself.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    The bullshit skepicism should usually be identifiable by applying the same set of rules to evaluate its claims. Take the claim that Ivermectin was effective in treating COVID. Some doctors did support this, but that's Argument by Authority, and probably also Statistics of Small Numbers if not several others.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. Whatever people's feelings about how this was handled, please don't include the scientists in the issue. The authorities mandating things were the political folks, not the scientists.
johnsanders 3y ago
I'm not sure if it's made my life better or worse, but this book above all others has had the most profound impact on how I have lived it.
Thrir94994i 3y ago
[flagged]
- billfor 3y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Sagan himself said to be skeptical of those in authority. "Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bZ0x3cQ0PnU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bZ0x3cQ0PnU
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Know the rules and then break them. If you are criticising a physicist, you should be competent enough to know their jargon and conclusively point out gaps in their knowledge. E.g. as Sabine is doing with lost in math. Just stating scientist could be wrong isn't helpful.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
See also Jim Lehrer's rules for journalism. That is, when you see these rules broken someone is very likely wanting to bullshit you and/or as a "journalist" has failed to use critical thinking. https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/jim-lehrers-16-rules-for-being-a-journalist-with-integrity.html https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/jim-lehrers-16-rules-for...
kazinator 3y ago
The point 9 about falsifiability needs a lot more nuance. The problem is that we cannot get away from unfalsifiable hypotheses. No matter how far we probe into some phenomenon, there is always the question "why?" beyond which we don't know. When we are left with a "why", our only choices are (1) take an agnostic stance and decline to make hypotheses, (2) make unfalsifiable hypotheses. If we choose (2) there are unfalsifiable hypotheses that are superior and those that are inferior. The superior ones are ones which postulate less. The best unfalsifiable hypothesis is the one which postulates no hidden variables. The answer to "why" (why things are the way they are, and not in some other arrangement) is that (a) other arrangements for a universe are valid and exist, but we are biased because we are intelligent beings which live in a particular arrangement and only that one is observable to us (the "anthropic principle"); and (b) in fact, why not: all the other possible universes exist, just not "here". (If they don't, then we need to come up with a hypothetical reason why they don't, which is more complicated than assuming there is no reason: by Occam's Razor, we just trim that out.) What we don't want to be doing is spouting some unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were unvarnished truth; but nevertheless, we can pick the best one and defend it against the others, when they come up. I should add that there is nothing wrong with postulating theoretical entities and processes; doing so has served us well, and in many cases, additional discoveries lended reality to the postulated entities. E.g. atoms were originally a philosophical construct based on the idea that subdividing matter into smaller pieces has to bottom out at some indivisible particle; and that's where we got the atom word. Subatomic particles were postulated initially too. These are not exactly the same as hidden variables because their existence is falsifiable. We have evidence that there exists an electron, for instance, even though originally it was just postulated.
apienx 3y ago
Thinking is hard. Learning to change your opinions/beliefs is even harder. It takes deliberate and consistent practice to get better at these things (join your local Skeptics/Humanists group if interested). To quote Bertrand Russell: “Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.” ;-)
- agumonkey 3y ago
  It's a subtle topic, but I think we're often conflating extrapolating from our current mental model with thinking. Often when I get into a dead end, I realize, all I had to do was to walk my knowledge slower, and try to poke holes at it, flip it backward, toy with it, do games with the problem at point .. it's more of a poetry seeking game than hard thinking. That's why (IMO) most eureka/new solution feels like a loosening, the hard part was going too hard in the wrong direction. After failing a few too many times you get the habit of not rushing the bad mode of thinking and rather play with ideas. my 2 cents
- passion__desire 3y ago
  We need to collect as many Thinking Tools (Daniel Dennett book) as early as possible.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
joering2 3y ago
Slight OT, but his suing of Apple was such a douchery move, I will never be able to understand how such brilliant and humble human being would want to entangle himself in such radicicolous petty and frankly baseless lawsuit.
Yizahi 3y ago
A thing of note - to wield such a kit, one must be a an expert in the baloney detection, even if a just a little. Example: It is year 2020 and there are these new and suspicious vaccines for the new illness and you want to understand what's going on. Smart people say that multiple hypothesis need to be evaluated, authorities are unreliable, unquantified promises bad and so on. So an unprepared person might simply drown in the sea of baloney hypotheses, like invermectin treatments, electrophoresis treatments, etc. If a person lacks critical thinking facilities which actually work, and aren't simply contrarian kindergarten style, then adhering to authorities would be the optimal path.
anotherevan 3y ago
The thing that bugs me a bit about Occam's razor [paraphrased] - All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one - is I've seen too many people smugly quote the second half, leaving off the, "All other things being equal" bit. That's not Occam's fault. Razors are meant to be sharp, and people cut themselves with far blunter implements.
norir 3y ago
Good thoughts overall. I will assume Sagan has deeper thoughts on religion than what he writes here, but I found those parts superficial and overly simplistic. The problem I have with his perspective is that we know from Godel's incompleteness theorem that no formal system can explain its own consistency in the language of the system. As a human, this means that there are things in life we have to accept as true but are fundamentally unexplainable. Religion does not explain the unexplainable but it provides a language and framework in which certain experiences of being alive can be felt and communicated. Both science and religion (to the extent to which these are even different concepts) have positive and negative sides. I personally think the dark side of science is just as dark as that of traditional religion but I don't deny the light or dark contained in both.
mihaic 3y ago
While Sagan's advice is great, it's still putting burden on the individual to handle bullshit. The more I've thought about bullshit as a phenomenon, the more I think the only real solutions are social ones, where non-bullshitters need to coordinate to make bullshitting a bad scenario. Things like shaming, publicly crying bullshit, coordinated dismissing bad actors. If handled individually, it'll always be asymetrically easier to bullshit than to defend against bullshit.
- thefascistleft 3y ago
  [dead]
dgudkov 3y ago
I've long been thinking that society is badly missing technology-enabled social tools for finding consensus because, unfortunately, the current social networks and their monetization principles drive exactly the opposite - i.e. polarization. Carl Sagan's Rules seem like a candidate for a framework for such a tool, or at least, a starting point.
ukj 3y ago
In the spirit of bullshit-busting and critical thought here's a thought experiment... Alan Turing: The claims made in the Halting Problem is genrally true, and is therefore unfalsifiable even in principle. Carl Sagan: Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. All computer scientists in synchronized act of distributed consensus: Bullshit.

205 points by haxiomic 3y ago

"Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much." This. That's a good way to put it. I've mentioned Fred Hoyle's line on that, "Science is prediction, not explanation" (which is from one of Hoyle's novels), but Sagan's line is better. Key point: unfalsifiable theories do not lead to useful technology. Engineering requires predictability.

passion__desire 3y ago
Add to that David Deutsch's point that "Good explanations MUST be hard to vary"
- pengstrom 3y ago
  Deutsch also heavily argues for explanations as first-class existence on the level of matter. For him, predictions are simply a practical concern. I still fondly remember his dialogue between Socrates and Apollo in dream, where he convincingly makes the point that even there he can find true knowledge about the world.
  - crabmusket 3y ago
    I also loved that chapter. Deutsch really argues for Popper's "conjecture and refutation" model of science (or as he renamed it, "conjecture and criticism") and one of the great points he makes is that both those processes can be done entirely in the mind. Physical evidence may be necessary for some kinds of criticism, but sometimes reason alone can produce useful criticism.
    - pengstrom 3y ago
      That's true, I might have been a little aggressive on the claiming
  - walleeee 3y ago
    I also like his point (in conversation with Sean Carroll) that we have rigorous proof that the notion of explanation can't be formalized, yet explanation is at the core of the scientific endeavor anyway.
- crabmusket 3y ago
  "Hard to vary" is, I think, some sort of isomorphism of "easy to refute". I found it difficult when reading Deutsch to pin down exactly what made something hard to vary.
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    Let's say we have 16 distinct phenomena. All of them are currently explained by a rooted tree T of explanations of depth 4. Say, we come across 8 new phenomena. Suddenly you can't rejig or shake your tree T anyhow. You have to preserve the original structure of T or at least relationships while constructing a new tree R such that it not only explains old 16 phenomena but also the new 8 as well. We might construct a new tree R such that tree T is a subtree of it. This new tree covers more ground and has more depth. In this sense, new explanations are constrained by whatever that came before and they are tasked with explaining more on top of that. There are very few ways to do it. In physics, they call the more general law to be valid at all time scales, energy scales and length scales, velocity scales and so on.
wredue 3y ago
I like Sagan, but he didn’t make these rules for a post truth world, unfortunately. There were certainly well funded lies in his day, but right now we are seeing massive investment, easily rivalling a large tech corporation or a Disney media empire, in to creating “news” orgs who’s specific goal is to lie, muddy waters, sow discord, and otherwise mislead the public, and who are seen as independent bodies of verification. It’s much more difficult now to find real facts, which is actually insane given that real facts should be available with the click of a button these days.
- omgwtfbyobbq 3y ago
  I think the increase in spending on spreading/amplifying certain kinds of information is because there's a greater depth and breath of information available now that people can and are using to derive their own opinion. Influencing people was less expensive when media/news/information/etc was relatively limited.
  - wredue 3y ago
    Yeah, but what Sagan is trying to give is a framework for forming opinions based on reality. While it’s a good start, it’s missing imperative steps like “if Fox News is your independent verification, it’s probably a lie”. As stated, we are in a post-truth world, and a framework from Sagan era for forming opinions with a factual justification is much more difficult.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  Hello: "Flood the channels with shit." - Steve Bannon Goodbye: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
  - Animats 3y ago
    H. R. McMaster credits Putin's people with that concept. Until recently, propaganda was promoting your position. Russia came up with the breakthrough of just promoting extremists of all stripes to reduce the credibility of all news. This is a form of tactical misdirection. "To sow confusion and reap inaction", as Willie Sutton, the bank robber and prison escapee, put it. It wasn't really feasible at scale before the Internet, because it takes a large number of anonymous sources to make it go.
esafak 3y ago
Falsifiability is not his idea; it was promoted by Karl Popper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
- vivekd 3y ago
  This is correct, Falsifiability was origionally concieved of by Karl Popper. I would also add, that while Popper had the best of intentions and good ideas in creating falsifiability theory, it is not generally accepted today by people who study philosophy of science. The consensus, which I agree with, is that it doesn't refelct how science atually works and it eleminatates many things that we do consider science. I mean many people may disagree with string theory, but it's hard for me to accept that it's science at all. Evolution also didn't pass Mr. Popper's tests, but he eventually recanted, not by changing his views on how evolution fits with his theories but just because his friends convinced him that it was "really important." Popper made contributions to science in that he was one of the main thought leaders that began the field of philosophy of science. That said, I don't think falsifiability by itself is a very good criterion for science or truth. I don't think the wikipedia article on this is very good. The encyclopedia of philosophy has a much better overview of his theory and where it stands currently https://iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/#H3 https://iep.utm.edu/pop-sci/#H3
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    " by people who study philosophy of science. The consensus, which I agree with, is that it doesn't refelct how science atually works and " Science 'works' today by p-hacking and data falsification. I'm not sure that we should consider current practices an argument against a quality threshold.
    - jimwhite42 3y ago
      Aren't you mixing two distinct things here?
      - glenstein 3y ago
clankyclanker 3y ago
Or, more pithily, always ask "how can you disprove it?" - If you can't, it isn't science and can't be treated as such.
- ukj 3y ago
  How can we disprove the hypothesis “If we can’t disprove it - it isn’t science.”? The scientific metaphysic relies on so many declarative/prescriptive statements which are themselves exempt from the criteria for science and are thus self-defeating on their own terms. It is so peculiar when scientists are so dogmatic about science. Are the formal sciences (logic/mathematics/computer science) not science? The testability/falsifiability criterion certainly excludes them from being sciences.
  - vivekd 3y ago
    and you hit one of the main objections to the theory of falsifiability as the criterion of science. There are also other more serious ones, like the obvious fact that actual science does't seem to actually work this way. The idea is more to explain observations in a coherent way rather than to be falsifiable for example. One example is the big bang theory being proposed by a Catholic astronomer who didn't like the then prevaling idea that the universe did not have a beginning or end because it went against his religious beliefs. Or Kepler looking for planets at locations in accord with musical harmonies because he though it was consistent with the existence of a God
    - ukj 3y ago
      Personally, I am weary of the notion of “actual science” since science is not a well-defined term. The demarcation problem isn’t solved; and philosophers like Fayerabend in his book “Against method” suggest that science is more of an anarchic enterprise than any particular set of methods. Take any criterion and apply it too strictly and there is some scientific discovery/progress in history which violates the rules and wouldn’t pass for “science” given any definition… Take any given methodological approach - and you will always find counter examples in scientific history. Almost like genius isn’t algorithmic.
gadders 3y ago
Doesn't that apply to climate science/ climate change though?
- daanlo 3y ago
  Why? Climate science works with quantative models and makes concrete predictions. So if the predictions don‘t come true the model is false. E.g. this random blog I found googling compares IPCC predictions with actual outcomes: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-1990-ipcc-climate-projections/ https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-1990-ipc... [the link is just supposed to show how climate science is falsifiable. I have no idea whether the numbers in this specific source are trustworthy]
  - godelski 3y ago
    More comparisons here[0]. As is important, it's noticed that models even from the 80's made fairly accurate predictions. That's the real kicker: models accurately predict observable outcomes 20-40 years later (and have only improved since then). I'm not sure why there's so much contention about climate science given that we've been observing this trend for nearly 50 years now. Scientist makes prediction about something 50 years later and 50 years later the prediction is shown to be accurate. It feels weird to not trust a source with such a good and observable track record... [0] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...
  - gadders 3y ago
    The thing is - there are so many predictions made and a lot that don't come through, it's hard to find which are the "real" ones. I also read somewhere that there are several different scenarios available for the IPCC climate models and a lot of the more "scary" predictions are based on the least likely model. Finally - we saw the limitations of modelling in COVID in the UK, with adverse consequences.
- Aunche 3y ago
  What are you implying? Scientists can't make stars either, but they can make models describing stars and make new observations about these stars that test the validity of these models. Plenty of climate models have been disproven by this exact way. What has been remarkably consistent is that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change. For example, models predict that man-made global warming would cause the stratosphere to cool, which is exactly what they measured. By contrast, increased solar activity would have also heated up the stratosphere.
aeternum 3y ago
Is climate change falsifiable?
- HPMOR 3y ago
  Yes because you could simulate a small-scale atmosphere, and notice how changing the composition of the "atmosphere" affects average temperature or other features. John Von Neumann actually predicted climate change from first principles and described it as potentially more debilitating than nuclear weapons. --Great essay. https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf
  - aeternum 3y ago
    Well that's more evidence for it, not an attempt to falsify. If we want to falsify, we should ask questions like: Was there a time in the past when the atmosphere contained even more CO2 than it did now? What was the temp and did life survive? What evidence or experiment would convince you the theory is false? Or is that impossible?
    - mr_mitm 3y ago
      Climate change is not a fundamental theory. It is derived from thermodynamics, the Navier Stokes equation, quantum mechanics and probably quite a few assumptions on what is negligible. Falsify any of those and you falsify climate change.
    - glenstein 3y ago
      >If we want to falsify, we should ask questions like: Was there a time in the past when the atmosphere contained even more CO2 than it did now? What was the temp and did life survive? Do you believe that question isn't already asked and answered? Just going off the top of my head, I understand historical considerations to be a routine observation as part of your typical course or even presentation on the history of climate change. If you believe this counts, then your answer to your own question about the falsifiability of climate change is yes. I also don't think that's the only kind of example - I think the routine things talked about on a day to day basis, including year by year and decade by decade temperature predictions would qualify, and these data are quite frequently discussed and quite visible. I also also don't think the distinction between "evidence in favor" and "attempts to falsify" makes a whole lot of sense. These are two different sides of the same coin, and evidence in favor of something is the same as surviving a test of falsifiability.
jfengel 3y ago
Falsifiability is critical for engineering, but not all science is for engineering. The further you get from engineering, the fuzzier the line between science and non science. We try to apply the tools of science to things like astrophysics and paleontology, but they're practically never going to have engineering consequences. That's fine. It's great that we want to know stuff just because we like knowing -- even if "knowing" sometimes gets hard to define. Falsifiability is a great tool for being able to say some things don't work. But it's important not to let it limit curiosity.
- croes 3y ago
  Without falsifiability it's belief not science. How can a hypothesis become a theory if it can't fail?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- foolswisdom 3y ago
  If you can't explain how the statement could be falsified, at least in principle (although it may be not practical to do so), then you are admitting that reality will always be the exact same regardless of whether your hypothesis is true. And in that case, it's really not useful or meaningful for any sort of reasoning at all. A concept which will in no way ever make a difference, is meaningless.
  - karencarits 3y ago
    But it can be hard to know whether a concept will make a difference in the future. String theory may for example provide some testable hypotheses at some point. Theory building is important and original thoughts may have unpredicted consequences some way down the road
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    MWI of quantum physics is most likely unfalsifiable. But if I believe that there are other versions of me that will definitely win the lottery if I am the sort of person to enter it in particular circumstances then that may well change my behaviour. I would argue that occams razor is unfalsifiable but is still a great principle.
dzwa 3y ago
Popper
canjobear 3y ago
What about, for example, the Drake equation? Not falsifiable, but a useful tool for thinking.
- thicknavyrain 3y ago
  Certainly useful for thinking, but its lack of falsifiability, predictive power or validation is indeed why there's so much controversy around it and why it remains a hypothesised model rather than widely accepted scientific fact. The best you can do is test the assumptions of the model itself, or its constituent terms.
- cwillu 3y ago
  Not everything _has_ to be science.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The Drake equation is falsifiable. All you have to do is plug the values (which are all things that could technically be measured) into the equation, then count the number of civilizations in the Milky Way, and see if that's equal to what the equation predicted. it is possible that it's not, so the equation is falsifiable. That it's impractical for us to actually do the experiment just means that we cannot perform the experiment and so it doesn't help us in practical terms. But it is a thing that could be done, strictly speaking. That said, it's also a thought experiment, not a scientific postulate, and isn't meant to be "scientific".
- crabmusket 3y ago
  Not all useful tools for thinking must be considered science. I think it's quite fair to say the Drake equation isn't "science". However, I think Popper's "conjecture and refutation" is a more interesting model for thinking about the increase of knowledge than falsifiability is. Through that lens, you might say the Drake equation was a conjecture intended to stimulate refutations, which might lead to further productive theories. Popper's essays on Parmenides are really interesting on this. Popper frames Parmenides' philosophy as essentially a conjecture that "change is an illusion", and the history of western science since then as various "research programmes" in response to that. I'm summarising terribly, but I think he illustrates well the value of conjectures that aren't necessarily "scientific" in stimulating thought.
deleted 3y ago
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rossant 3y ago
This is a problem with shaken baby syndrome, which asserts that infants presenting a certain pattern of medical findings (mostly subdural and retinal hemorrhage) MUST have been violently shaken if no other alternative medical or accidental explanation is found. It is a diagnosis by default, which raises a number of legal issues. [1, 2] This medical diagnosis is "certain" even with no witness, no admission of violence, no antecedents of violence, no sign of trauma on the baby's body. There is absolutely no way to falsify the idea that this gesture occurred (and no way to prove one's innocence — it's a presumption of guilt). Yet, this theory is qualified as "scientific" by its proponents, but it does not lead to any predictions, only explanations. That shaking must have occurred on a given child at a particular moment, while the only person present with the child denies any violence, is an untestable and unfalsifiable proposition that is totally anti-scientific. [1] https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-shaken-baby-syndrome-abusive-head-trauma-controversy/ https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/05/a-journey-into-the-sha... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
pengstrom 3y ago
"Only a sith deals in absolutes" Science clearly works because humans have a genuine curiosity to find truth. While every person is flawed and prone to error, the curiosity points in the same direction, rising above the noise. We've only recently had to even discuss this after the deployment of large scale truth poisoning making the errors non-uniform.
- BellsOnSunday 3y ago
  Recently like in the last hundred years?

zubairq 3y ago

Interesting read

chrisweekly 3y ago

Maria Popova is an extraordinary essayist; I highly recommend exploring themarginalian.org site. The breadth of topics, and the keen intelligence coupled with such warmth and humanity... it's a treasure trove.

umvi 3y ago

This article has good advice for logical thinking, but just one nit pick: > having just lost both of his parents, he reflects on the all too human allure of promises of supernatural reunions in the afterlife, reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people, but simply means that we need to equip ourselves with the right tools against them. I feel like grouping all religion in with psychics and con artists is a bit extreme. Sure, it's impossible by contradiction for all tenets of all religions to be simultaneously true. But... there were, are, and will yet be many intelligent people of different religions that, for various empirically-unprovable reasons, feel there is a God - even if they know at an intellectual level that their current church or belief system isn't entirely consistent or correct. It's important to respect their religious liberty even if you disagree. Many people (including on this very forum) have had spiritual experiences that seem to confirm the existence of a God at a visceral level. It's hard to explain unless you've had a spiritual experience, but they can include moments of emotional connection to deceased loved ones, "gut feelings" that helped you do something important or avoid something bad, or unexpected and unusual ideas or thoughts (in my case, sometimes even programming related) that aid in overcoming life's obstacles, just to name a few.

sokoloff 3y ago
> respect their religious liberty even if you disagree Believe and do whatever you want with respect to religion, so long as it doesn't extend to telling me what I can or cannot do because of your beliefs. You and others have my full support for religious liberty up until that line (overwhelmingly in the form of "yeah, whatever; I literally could not care less what you believe or do").
wredue 3y ago
The article did not advocate for disrespecting liberty. It actually very hilariously directly talked about exactly your post: “Gut feelings” and “people experiencing things” are not independently verifiable facts. In fact, every time religious experiences are tested, they are not repeatable or verifiable.
- ukj 3y ago

ckrapu 3y ago

These are excellent but I think #8 (statistics of small numbers) is one that, with some nuance, you can get more personal mileage out of if you're willing to tolerate being wrong some of the time. For example, I've noticed that of the managers I've had, the good ones and bad ones are cleanly separated by one trait or property. This is a sample size of maybe 7 or smaller. Depending on your priors, my P(Hypothesis | Data) is maybe 0.6-0.7 which is terrible from a research and scientific point of view. I'll take that level of certainty for day-to-day decision making anytime, though. Make enough of these weakly-backed hypotheses and you can avoid a lot of trouble.

plugin-baby 3y ago
> I've noticed that of the managers I've had, the good ones and bad ones are cleanly separated by one trait or property. What was the trait?
nerdponx 3y ago
Isn't this essentially the basis of decision theory and statistical hypothesis testing? The hard part is to determine an acceptable probability of being wrong in any given situation.
- ckrapu 3y ago
  Yes, and my only commentary here is that the threshold for academic decision science is a lot higher than the one I have for managing my day-to-day life.

robomc 3y ago

> misunderstanding of the nature of statistics (e.g., President Dwight Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence); this one would be surprising though

ls612 3y ago
Intelligence doesn’t have much skewness in its distribution so the mean is approximately the median.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Right, but that's less and assumption about basic statistical literacy than it is about a particular distribution that happens to describe the data. Many things in society and nature are not symmetric around their means.
asynchronous 3y ago
Also a bad statistical statement, because the way it is phrased implies that the average is being taken from the whole world, rather than just America.

throwmeouthn 3y ago

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tcbawo 3y ago

Carl Sagan was very wise. I find his insights thought provoking and salient. However, the cynic in me is sad that the default of human nature is to be gullible, tribal, delegate fact checking to authority figures, and prone to confirmation bias. I would love to become better at rational thought and discernment. But, I feel that I (and frankly, 95% of the people on this site) are already better than the vast majority of people out there in this regard. In other words, these messages are preaching to the choir. I’m not sure what media or messenger could bring these (or similar) lessons to the masses, or whether they could have an enduring impact. The optimist in me hopes that this will be possible some day.

ironmagma 3y ago
I think the answer is in better education. There is never a logic class in elementary school or middle school. Why?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  There was when I was in middle school. I'm always unpleasantly surprised when I hear what is no longer taught.
- rdedev 3y ago
  I think a good place to start would be to teach it during highschool. Especially since a lot of bad science gets spread around social media. College may be a bit too late since that's when you really need to start applying those critical thinking skills

chmod600 3y ago

"Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." That's the most controversial, because a lot of people want to be authorities and don't want to be questioned. For instance, the origins of Covid... or really lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. It turns out many of those things were subsequently reversed or reasonably doubted.

anon84873628 3y ago
I agree that that particular point is one of the biggest problems when it comes to translating scientific understanding to public policy. Can there be "settled science"? What is considered an acceptable level of skepticism? Governing society is largely based on rough estimates of ROI and optimizing for certain value systems based on minimal firm data at best. Often under time pressure. The problem is that it's easy to generate bullshit skepticism to lock up the process (to benefit the status quo) whereas it takes lots of effort to scientifically disprove and debunk the bullshit. We generally use appeal to authority as a shortcut to overcome this effort asymmetry. The thing we need to be clear about is when/how that is a valid tool for public policy, but not science itself.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The bullshit skepicism should usually be identifiable by applying the same set of rules to evaluate its claims. Take the claim that Ivermectin was effective in treating COVID. Some doctors did support this, but that's Argument by Authority, and probably also Statistics of Small Numbers if not several others.
JohnFen 3y ago
> lots of things about the pandemic were pushed by authorities with little justification other than authority. Whatever people's feelings about how this was handled, please don't include the scientists in the issue. The authorities mandating things were the political folks, not the scientists.

johnsanders 3y ago

I'm not sure if it's made my life better or worse, but this book above all others has had the most profound impact on how I have lived it.

Thrir94994i 3y ago

[flagged]

billfor 3y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Sagan himself said to be skeptical of those in authority. "Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bZ0x3cQ0PnU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bZ0x3cQ0PnU
passion__desire 3y ago
Know the rules and then break them. If you are criticising a physicist, you should be competent enough to know their jargon and conclusively point out gaps in their knowledge. E.g. as Sabine is doing with lost in math. Just stating scientist could be wrong isn't helpful.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

See also Jim Lehrer's rules for journalism. That is, when you see these rules broken someone is very likely wanting to bullshit you and/or as a "journalist" has failed to use critical thinking. https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/jim-lehrers-16-rules-for-being-a-journalist-with-integrity.html https://www.openculture.com/2020/01/jim-lehrers-16-rules-for...

kazinator 3y ago

The point 9 about falsifiability needs a lot more nuance. The problem is that we cannot get away from unfalsifiable hypotheses. No matter how far we probe into some phenomenon, there is always the question "why?" beyond which we don't know. When we are left with a "why", our only choices are (1) take an agnostic stance and decline to make hypotheses, (2) make unfalsifiable hypotheses. If we choose (2) there are unfalsifiable hypotheses that are superior and those that are inferior. The superior ones are ones which postulate less. The best unfalsifiable hypothesis is the one which postulates no hidden variables. The answer to "why" (why things are the way they are, and not in some other arrangement) is that (a) other arrangements for a universe are valid and exist, but we are biased because we are intelligent beings which live in a particular arrangement and only that one is observable to us (the "anthropic principle"); and (b) in fact, why not: all the other possible universes exist, just not "here". (If they don't, then we need to come up with a hypothetical reason why they don't, which is more complicated than assuming there is no reason: by Occam's Razor, we just trim that out.) What we don't want to be doing is spouting some unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were unvarnished truth; but nevertheless, we can pick the best one and defend it against the others, when they come up. I should add that there is nothing wrong with postulating theoretical entities and processes; doing so has served us well, and in many cases, additional discoveries lended reality to the postulated entities. E.g. atoms were originally a philosophical construct based on the idea that subdividing matter into smaller pieces has to bottom out at some indivisible particle; and that's where we got the atom word. Subatomic particles were postulated initially too. These are not exactly the same as hidden variables because their existence is falsifiable. We have evidence that there exists an electron, for instance, even though originally it was just postulated.

apienx 3y ago

Thinking is hard. Learning to change your opinions/beliefs is even harder. It takes deliberate and consistent practice to get better at these things (join your local Skeptics/Humanists group if interested). To quote Bertrand Russell: “Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.” ;-)

agumonkey 3y ago
It's a subtle topic, but I think we're often conflating extrapolating from our current mental model with thinking. Often when I get into a dead end, I realize, all I had to do was to walk my knowledge slower, and try to poke holes at it, flip it backward, toy with it, do games with the problem at point .. it's more of a poetry seeking game than hard thinking. That's why (IMO) most eureka/new solution feels like a loosening, the hard part was going too hard in the wrong direction. After failing a few too many times you get the habit of not rushing the bad mode of thinking and rather play with ideas. my 2 cents
passion__desire 3y ago
We need to collect as many Thinking Tools (Daniel Dennett book) as early as possible.

deleted 3y ago

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joering2 3y ago

Slight OT, but his suing of Apple was such a douchery move, I will never be able to understand how such brilliant and humble human being would want to entangle himself in such radicicolous petty and frankly baseless lawsuit.

Yizahi 3y ago

A thing of note - to wield such a kit, one must be a an expert in the baloney detection, even if a just a little. Example: It is year 2020 and there are these new and suspicious vaccines for the new illness and you want to understand what's going on. Smart people say that multiple hypothesis need to be evaluated, authorities are unreliable, unquantified promises bad and so on. So an unprepared person might simply drown in the sea of baloney hypotheses, like invermectin treatments, electrophoresis treatments, etc. If a person lacks critical thinking facilities which actually work, and aren't simply contrarian kindergarten style, then adhering to authorities would be the optimal path.

anotherevan 3y ago

The thing that bugs me a bit about Occam's razor [paraphrased] - All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one - is I've seen too many people smugly quote the second half, leaving off the, "All other things being equal" bit. That's not Occam's fault. Razors are meant to be sharp, and people cut themselves with far blunter implements.

norir 3y ago

Good thoughts overall. I will assume Sagan has deeper thoughts on religion than what he writes here, but I found those parts superficial and overly simplistic. The problem I have with his perspective is that we know from Godel's incompleteness theorem that no formal system can explain its own consistency in the language of the system. As a human, this means that there are things in life we have to accept as true but are fundamentally unexplainable. Religion does not explain the unexplainable but it provides a language and framework in which certain experiences of being alive can be felt and communicated. Both science and religion (to the extent to which these are even different concepts) have positive and negative sides. I personally think the dark side of science is just as dark as that of traditional religion but I don't deny the light or dark contained in both.

mihaic 3y ago

While Sagan's advice is great, it's still putting burden on the individual to handle bullshit. The more I've thought about bullshit as a phenomenon, the more I think the only real solutions are social ones, where non-bullshitters need to coordinate to make bullshitting a bad scenario. Things like shaming, publicly crying bullshit, coordinated dismissing bad actors. If handled individually, it'll always be asymetrically easier to bullshit than to defend against bullshit.

thefascistleft 3y ago
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dgudkov 3y ago

I've long been thinking that society is badly missing technology-enabled social tools for finding consensus because, unfortunately, the current social networks and their monetization principles drive exactly the opposite - i.e. polarization. Carl Sagan's Rules seem like a candidate for a framework for such a tool, or at least, a starting point.

ukj 3y ago

In the spirit of bullshit-busting and critical thought here's a thought experiment... Alan Turing: The claims made in the Halting Problem is genrally true, and is therefore unfalsifiable even in principle. Carl Sagan: Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. All computer scientists in synchronized act of distributed consensus: Bullshit.