22 ms·

> excessive arrogance Why excessive? The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produc

by lisper 3y ago

> excessive arrogance Why excessive? The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried. This is the whole reason science is even a thing. I think that justifies a little bit of cockiness until someone actually comes up with something better.

raskelll 3y ago
The arrogance I mentioned is directed towards the people who think of themselves as appropriate to speak for the century-long success story of science itself while not really addressing (and understanding) how science emerged. Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science.
- lisper 3y ago
  Ah. FYI, I have a whole series of unpublished chapters about the (very messy) history of science. I decided to take this different approach because I thought it would be a more effective way of reaching my target audience. > Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science. That's not true. There is one box you cannot get out of without destroying the process: any hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected (and as a corollary to that, unfalsifiable hypotheses must be rejected). But yeah, beyond that pretty much anything goes.
  - 6510 3y ago
    I'd fill that last bit under unnecessary and undesirable processing. Things are what they are(!) A hypothesis inconsistent with experiments is a hypothesis inconsistent with experiments. It is a mistake to attempt to make more or less from it. You get nothing extra or beneficial out of the effort of rejection. A failed experiment is a failed experiment. There are lots of ways to fail. Faulty materials, defective equipment, outside influences, incompetent experimenters, poor design, POLITICS etc etc A repeatedly failed experiment sounds just as bad as it should.
    - lisper 3y ago
      > repeatedly failed experiment That is an oxymoron. A repeatedly "failed" experiment is a valid scientific result. There is even a classic example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...
  - raskelll 3y ago
    Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then. Regarding your second statement, out of curiosity, I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons.
    - lisper 3y ago
      > Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then. You can find them here: https://flownet.com/ron/TIKN/ https://flownet.com/ron/TIKN/ Note that they are quite drafty. That was the result of a previous effort to tackle this project of writing about the scientific method for a general audience that I ultimately abandoned in favor of this current approach. The history part starts in chapter 5. These were based on a series of lectures I gave a few years ago. I can dig up those links too if you're interested. > I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons. I'm not sure what you expect me to say. The results have not been reproduced, so whatever happened in 1989 it was almost certainly not cold fusion.
      - maxnoe 3y ago
        This is easily solved by adding the well known quote (Sagan): "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." An older quote, addressing this case more directly would be (Eddington): "The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — *well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes.* But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
        mikhailfranco 2y ago
        No, the 2nd Law is just a statistical property relating macrostates to microstates. It can never be the foundation of physics for the underlying system. Life does a pretty good job of evading it, locally, for lifetimes. Civilizations overcome it for longer, perhaps indefinitely, as long as there are stars/blackholes in the sky, or uranium/hydrogen nuclear fuel to be scavenged. Wolfram recently tried to explain the 2nd Law, as a consequence of time-coherent computationally-bounded observers. As always with him, it is fascinating and infuriatingly in equal measure: https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/the-second-law-resolving-the-mystery-of-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/the-second-law-resolv... Those subsystems that evade it (life) also need explanation. Friston, Levin, Lane, England and others are starting to give plausible models and explanations.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    I'm with you that, if you don't close the loop via experiment, you don't have science. But you have to be careful that you not go too far, and say that science is the only way we can know truth. Logical positivism is dead for a reason. (Actually, for several reasons.)
    - lisper 3y ago
      > science is the only way we can know truth You need to read the third installment in my series: https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scientific-method.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient... and in particular Myth #3.
      - jfengel 3y ago
        I don't disagree with Myth #3, but I had a hard time getting to it after reading Myth #2: The scientific method assumes naturalism/materialism/atheism... This is false. The scientific method contains no assumptions whatsoever. The scientific method is simply that: a method. I don't think that's a good way to put it. There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do. A souffle recipe presupposes that you want a souffle, or you wouldn't be reading it. The scientific method hints ambiguously at epistemological commitments, and that ambiguity is not a point in its favor. Different people make those assumptions tacitly and don't realize that they disagree with each other, and don't even apply them consistently to themselves. I also happen to agree that the scientific method has some kind of epistemic benefit, especially as compared to the potential alternatives. But those benefits prove maddeningly difficult to nail down. The epistemic commitments always turn out to be too loose (admitting pseudosciences) or too strict (rejecting sciences that resist the kinds of experiments you'd like to do).
        lisper 3y ago
        > There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do. No, that is not an assumption. That is an observation. The scientific method produces theories with predictive power, and it does this better than any other known method. That is an empirical fact, not an assumption. This is the reason science is a thing.
  - fastasucan 3y ago
    >hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected Not really, this is a conclusion that is drawn only by looking at the big names and highlights throughout the scientific history. In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed, so if the hypothesis is not confirmed through experiments the experiment design need to be fixed. Other times they are confirmed where the experiments also was flawed. Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them.
    - lisper 3y ago
      > In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed Yes, of course. Experimental error is always a possibilities, but that is just another hypothesis that needs to be considered along with all the other possibilities. > Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them. Like what?
- anuraj 3y ago
  J D Bernal already addressed it through his magnum opus - Science in History.
strogonoff 3y ago
My pet theory is that success of predictions of modern science helped us achieve a local maximum which, while useful, also makes it difficult to evolve towards a higher (globally) maximum. The axioms are: 1. Some models are useful, but all models are necessarily incorrect, incomplete, and/or unfalsifiable. (This can be restated in an unsettling, for a natural science enthusiast, manner as “there is always the unexplained”.) 2. We cannot know where the incorrectness/incompleteness lies. However, the arrogance of modern natural science due to its success makes us disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models and tempts us into, e.g., treating the entities described by current models (wrong, per above) as ground truth, treating consciousness (you’d think, the only thing we have direct access to) as an illusion (red flag, explaining away), etc. Thus, we get entrenched in a local maximum.
- mikhailfranco 2y ago
  I don't think that all models are necessarily incorrect. Scientific models are precisely correct until they are falsified. For example, the inverse-square law for electromagnetism and Newtonian gravity is just an exact feature of continuous 3D space (surface area of a sphere). It only became an approximation when Einstein proposed warped spacetime, and will become even more incorrect in detail, if/when someone finds evidence for discrete spacetime structure. Then the inverse square law becomes a double approximation, over macro and micro structure of spacetime (lattice, wolfram graph, spin foam, ...). It just so happens that at the moment, we know that the whole of physics is pervasively incomplete (approximate nonsense), so very few current models are likely to be preserved in future better theories. QFT is a terrible hack, with renormalization and virtual hand-waving. QFT depends on a fixed background spacetime, but we know that background is dynamic (GR). We don't know how QFT and GR fit together, but I would guess almost all current models are incorrect. However, it is possible that some future Theory of Everything is correct indefinitely (until end of civilization, while not being ontologically True, of course).
- spywaregorilla 3y ago
  Seems to me we have very strongly evidenced beliefs about where incompleteness lies.
nairboon 3y ago
> The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried. Which scientific method? As far as i know, there is no such thing as "the scientific method". Though, there are many methods.
- mr_mitm 3y ago
  Which ones do you know? I have only heard it referred to in this context, that there is the scientific method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
- lisper 3y ago
  No, there is only one scientific method, which is to say, one method that works better than any other to produce theories with predictive power. I describe it in the inaugural post of the series: https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introduction-to.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti... If you know of a process that works better than the one described that would be Big News. https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-part-4-eating.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...
keiferski 3y ago
Arrogance is almost by definition against the values of scientific inquiry, and so if you see someone placing science on a quasi-religious pedestal, you’d best be skeptical of whatever that person is selling. This tends to go with excessive praise of particular thinkers and the wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers as “manifest nonsense” or some other ill-informed claptrap. If you read actual philosophy of science books and papers by real philosophers, you’ll find that the attitude is more appropriate and not so laudatory. As it should be.
- lisper 3y ago
  > wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers Like what?
  - keiferski 3y ago
    Like dismissing the work of Feyerabend or Wittgenstein without seemingly having read either: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=manifest%20nonsense&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... I'm really not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take writings about the philosophy of science when the author thinks major thinkers in the field, like Feyerabend, are just writing gibberish. That's...not really a serious opinion, whether you agree with his ideas or not.
    - lisper 3y ago
      I read Feyerabend a long time ago. It was recommended to me by someone I deeply respect so I was predisposed to like it, but it struck me as unalloyed nonsense. It was a long time ago and I don't really remember the details any more. My impression is that Feyerabend is mostly cited by crackpots who are bitter because they are not being taken seriously. However, this question too can be settled empirically: can you point to any useful results that were produced by someone who credits them to Wittgenstein or Feyerabend? I'm not aware of any.
      - 3y ago
wddkcs 3y ago
That would depend upon what you count as a prediction. The Oracles of Delphi operated for hundreds of years, the Sibylline Oracles were relied upon for thousands of years, and both were universally regarded in their day as unnerving accurate. Dismissing their longevity as religious superstition I would argue is itself anti-science. It is the arrogance of dismissing such history that leads people to eventually declare themselves to be 'the science'.
- lisper 3y ago
  Actually, science can explain oracles. There is a whole field of study devoted to understanding how to deceive people. It's considered more art than science, but it actually is both. It's called "magic". And there is a whole sub-field of magic called mentalism that deals specifically with things like what the oracles did. BTW, since you brought up oracles, you might enjoy this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-will.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...
mistermann 3y ago
What if your premises are less solid than they seem, and because of the "our thinking style is not only better on a relative scale, on average, it is near flawless in an absolute sense" mindset that often comes along with the culture of "science" you're unable to even consider such possibilities?
- lisper 3y ago
  What premises? The scientific method has no premises, it's just a method. If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities. The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    > What premises? - The objective fact of the matter - the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried - This is the whole reason science is even a thing - I think - that justifies - a little bit of cockiness - until someone actually comes up with something better - [reality], the phenomenon that shall not be discussed, upon which your entire argument/experience/reality rests > The scientific method has no premises https://www.google.com/search?q=axioms+of+science+site%3Aphilosophy.stackexchange.com https://www.google.com/search?q=axioms+of+science+site%3Aphi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism > it's just a method. By "just", do you mean only? If so, you have a burden of proof on your hands (and proofs of nonexistence are some of the trickiest, in no small, part because they typically have the appearance of being (thus "are") the easiest). If not, what do you mean? An angle to test your claim against: are scientists a part of science? If not, how does "science" accomplish anything in the material plane (concrete reality)? > If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities. a) Is "I am unable to consider..." actually happening though, in shared reality? (Is this mind reading, or persuasive, misinformative rhetoric?) b) What if your "Science is just (only) a method" premise is not true though? What if science also has culture (like most any organization involving Humans), or even a style of thinking (say, delusions of omniscience, or Pure Perfect Rationality)? c) Might you have any shortcomings in your mental abilities, and is it possible that those shortcomings could cause unrealized/unrealizable (due to your cultural thinking style) error in your evaluation of my mental abilities? > The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment. If these claims are True (in JTB, be careful your mind doesn't get so obsessed with the "J" that you forget all about the "T", or forget that the "B" is ever present, and very misleading), you should be able to present a proof (an articulation of one of your own, or simply link to or reference by name an existing one). Do you have the ability do do that, and if so can you demonstrate you actually have the ability, by actually doing it, physically, in this thread? (inb4: "well of course I'm just expressing my opinion, that's all everyone is ever doing", and various other rhetorical get out of jail free (or, look over there) cards science folks appeal to when they get caught engaging in Scientific Soothsaying.) Also, let the record show that you did not even attempt to address the majority of my comment (perhaps you will later, I am just pointing it out).

by lisper 3y ago

raskelll 3y ago

The arrogance I mentioned is directed towards the people who think of themselves as appropriate to speak for the century-long success story of science itself while not really addressing (and understanding) how science emerged. Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science.

lisper 3y ago
Ah. FYI, I have a whole series of unpublished chapters about the (very messy) history of science. I decided to take this different approach because I thought it would be a more effective way of reaching my target audience. > Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science. That's not true. There is one box you cannot get out of without destroying the process: any hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected (and as a corollary to that, unfalsifiable hypotheses must be rejected). But yeah, beyond that pretty much anything goes.
- 6510 3y ago
  I'd fill that last bit under unnecessary and undesirable processing. Things are what they are(!) A hypothesis inconsistent with experiments is a hypothesis inconsistent with experiments. It is a mistake to attempt to make more or less from it. You get nothing extra or beneficial out of the effort of rejection. A failed experiment is a failed experiment. There are lots of ways to fail. Faulty materials, defective equipment, outside influences, incompetent experimenters, poor design, POLITICS etc etc A repeatedly failed experiment sounds just as bad as it should.
  - lisper 3y ago
    > repeatedly failed experiment That is an oxymoron. A repeatedly "failed" experiment is a valid scientific result. There is even a classic example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...
- raskelll 3y ago
  Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then. Regarding your second statement, out of curiosity, I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons.
  - lisper 3y ago
    > Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then. You can find them here: https://flownet.com/ron/TIKN/ https://flownet.com/ron/TIKN/ Note that they are quite drafty. That was the result of a previous effort to tackle this project of writing about the scientific method for a general audience that I ultimately abandoned in favor of this current approach. The history part starts in chapter 5. These were based on a series of lectures I gave a few years ago. I can dig up those links too if you're interested. > I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons. I'm not sure what you expect me to say. The results have not been reproduced, so whatever happened in 1989 it was almost certainly not cold fusion.
    - maxnoe 3y ago
      This is easily solved by adding the well known quote (Sagan): "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." An older quote, addressing this case more directly would be (Eddington): "The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — *well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes.* But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
      - mikhailfranco 2y ago
        No, the 2nd Law is just a statistical property relating macrostates to microstates. It can never be the foundation of physics for the underlying system. Life does a pretty good job of evading it, locally, for lifetimes. Civilizations overcome it for longer, perhaps indefinitely, as long as there are stars/blackholes in the sky, or uranium/hydrogen nuclear fuel to be scavenged. Wolfram recently tried to explain the 2nd Law, as a consequence of time-coherent computationally-bounded observers. As always with him, it is fascinating and infuriatingly in equal measure: https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/the-second-law-resolving-the-mystery-of-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/ https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/the-second-law-resolv... Those subsystems that evade it (life) also need explanation. Friston, Levin, Lane, England and others are starting to give plausible models and explanations.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  I'm with you that, if you don't close the loop via experiment, you don't have science. But you have to be careful that you not go too far, and say that science is the only way we can know truth. Logical positivism is dead for a reason. (Actually, for several reasons.)
  - lisper 3y ago
    > science is the only way we can know truth You need to read the third installment in my series: https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scientific-method.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient... and in particular Myth #3.
    - jfengel 3y ago
      I don't disagree with Myth #3, but I had a hard time getting to it after reading Myth #2: The scientific method assumes naturalism/materialism/atheism... This is false. The scientific method contains no assumptions whatsoever. The scientific method is simply that: a method. I don't think that's a good way to put it. There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do. A souffle recipe presupposes that you want a souffle, or you wouldn't be reading it. The scientific method hints ambiguously at epistemological commitments, and that ambiguity is not a point in its favor. Different people make those assumptions tacitly and don't realize that they disagree with each other, and don't even apply them consistently to themselves. I also happen to agree that the scientific method has some kind of epistemic benefit, especially as compared to the potential alternatives. But those benefits prove maddeningly difficult to nail down. The epistemic commitments always turn out to be too loose (admitting pseudosciences) or too strict (rejecting sciences that resist the kinds of experiments you'd like to do).
      - lisper 3y ago
        > There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do. No, that is not an assumption. That is an observation. The scientific method produces theories with predictive power, and it does this better than any other known method. That is an empirical fact, not an assumption. This is the reason science is a thing.
- fastasucan 3y ago
  >hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected Not really, this is a conclusion that is drawn only by looking at the big names and highlights throughout the scientific history. In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed, so if the hypothesis is not confirmed through experiments the experiment design need to be fixed. Other times they are confirmed where the experiments also was flawed. Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them.
  - lisper 3y ago
    > In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed Yes, of course. Experimental error is always a possibilities, but that is just another hypothesis that needs to be considered along with all the other possibilities. > Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them. Like what?
anuraj 3y ago
J D Bernal already addressed it through his magnum opus - Science in History.

strogonoff 3y ago

My pet theory is that success of predictions of modern science helped us achieve a local maximum which, while useful, also makes it difficult to evolve towards a higher (globally) maximum. The axioms are: 1. Some models are useful, but all models are necessarily incorrect, incomplete, and/or unfalsifiable. (This can be restated in an unsettling, for a natural science enthusiast, manner as “there is always the unexplained”.) 2. We cannot know where the incorrectness/incompleteness lies. However, the arrogance of modern natural science due to its success makes us disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models and tempts us into, e.g., treating the entities described by current models (wrong, per above) as ground truth, treating consciousness (you’d think, the only thing we have direct access to) as an illusion (red flag, explaining away), etc. Thus, we get entrenched in a local maximum.

mikhailfranco 2y ago
I don't think that all models are necessarily incorrect. Scientific models are precisely correct until they are falsified. For example, the inverse-square law for electromagnetism and Newtonian gravity is just an exact feature of continuous 3D space (surface area of a sphere). It only became an approximation when Einstein proposed warped spacetime, and will become even more incorrect in detail, if/when someone finds evidence for discrete spacetime structure. Then the inverse square law becomes a double approximation, over macro and micro structure of spacetime (lattice, wolfram graph, spin foam, ...). It just so happens that at the moment, we know that the whole of physics is pervasively incomplete (approximate nonsense), so very few current models are likely to be preserved in future better theories. QFT is a terrible hack, with renormalization and virtual hand-waving. QFT depends on a fixed background spacetime, but we know that background is dynamic (GR). We don't know how QFT and GR fit together, but I would guess almost all current models are incorrect. However, it is possible that some future Theory of Everything is correct indefinitely (until end of civilization, while not being ontologically True, of course).
spywaregorilla 3y ago
Seems to me we have very strongly evidenced beliefs about where incompleteness lies.

nairboon 3y ago

> The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried. Which scientific method? As far as i know, there is no such thing as "the scientific method". Though, there are many methods.

mr_mitm 3y ago
Which ones do you know? I have only heard it referred to in this context, that there is the scientific method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
lisper 3y ago
No, there is only one scientific method, which is to say, one method that works better than any other to produce theories with predictive power. I describe it in the inaugural post of the series: https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introduction-to.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti... If you know of a process that works better than the one described that would be Big News. https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-part-4-eating.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...

keiferski 3y ago

Arrogance is almost by definition against the values of scientific inquiry, and so if you see someone placing science on a quasi-religious pedestal, you’d best be skeptical of whatever that person is selling. This tends to go with excessive praise of particular thinkers and the wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers as “manifest nonsense” or some other ill-informed claptrap. If you read actual philosophy of science books and papers by real philosophers, you’ll find that the attitude is more appropriate and not so laudatory. As it should be.

lisper 3y ago
> wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers Like what?
- keiferski 3y ago
  Like dismissing the work of Feyerabend or Wittgenstein without seemingly having read either: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=manifest%20nonsense&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... I'm really not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take writings about the philosophy of science when the author thinks major thinkers in the field, like Feyerabend, are just writing gibberish. That's...not really a serious opinion, whether you agree with his ideas or not.
  - lisper 3y ago
    I read Feyerabend a long time ago. It was recommended to me by someone I deeply respect so I was predisposed to like it, but it struck me as unalloyed nonsense. It was a long time ago and I don't really remember the details any more. My impression is that Feyerabend is mostly cited by crackpots who are bitter because they are not being taken seriously. However, this question too can be settled empirically: can you point to any useful results that were produced by someone who credits them to Wittgenstein or Feyerabend? I'm not aware of any.
    - 3y ago

wddkcs 3y ago

That would depend upon what you count as a prediction. The Oracles of Delphi operated for hundreds of years, the Sibylline Oracles were relied upon for thousands of years, and both were universally regarded in their day as unnerving accurate. Dismissing their longevity as religious superstition I would argue is itself anti-science. It is the arrogance of dismissing such history that leads people to eventually declare themselves to be 'the science'.

lisper 3y ago
Actually, science can explain oracles. There is a whole field of study devoted to understanding how to deceive people. It's considered more art than science, but it actually is both. It's called "magic". And there is a whole sub-field of magic called mentalism that deals specifically with things like what the oracles did. BTW, since you brought up oracles, you might enjoy this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-will.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

mistermann 3y ago

What if your premises are less solid than they seem, and because of the "our thinking style is not only better on a relative scale, on average, it is near flawless in an absolute sense" mindset that often comes along with the culture of "science" you're unable to even consider such possibilities?

lisper 3y ago
What premises? The scientific method has no premises, it's just a method. If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities. The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > What premises? - The objective fact of the matter - the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried - This is the whole reason science is even a thing - I think - that justifies - a little bit of cockiness - until someone actually comes up with something better - [reality], the phenomenon that shall not be discussed, upon which your entire argument/experience/reality rests > The scientific method has no premises https://www.google.com/search?q=axioms+of+science+site%3Aphilosophy.stackexchange.com https://www.google.com/search?q=axioms+of+science+site%3Aphi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism > it's just a method. By "just", do you mean only? If so, you have a burden of proof on your hands (and proofs of nonexistence are some of the trickiest, in no small, part because they typically have the appearance of being (thus "are") the easiest). If not, what do you mean? An angle to test your claim against: are scientists a part of science? If not, how does "science" accomplish anything in the material plane (concrete reality)? > If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities. a) Is "I am unable to consider..." actually happening though, in shared reality? (Is this mind reading, or persuasive, misinformative rhetoric?) b) What if your "Science is just (only) a method" premise is not true though? What if science also has culture (like most any organization involving Humans), or even a style of thinking (say, delusions of omniscience, or Pure Perfect Rationality)? c) Might you have any shortcomings in your mental abilities, and is it possible that those shortcomings could cause unrealized/unrealizable (due to your cultural thinking style) error in your evaluation of my mental abilities? > The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment. If these claims are True (in JTB, be careful your mind doesn't get so obsessed with the "J" that you forget all about the "T", or forget that the "B" is ever present, and very misleading), you should be able to present a proof (an articulation of one of your own, or simply link to or reference by name an existing one). Do you have the ability do do that, and if so can you demonstrate you actually have the ability, by actually doing it, physically, in this thread? (inb4: "well of course I'm just expressing my opinion, that's all everyone is ever doing", and various other rhetorical get out of jail free (or, look over there) cards science folks appeal to when they get caught engaging in Scientific Soothsaying.) Also, let the record show that you did not even attempt to address the majority of my comment (perhaps you will later, I am just pointing it out).