> What's true is determined by the scientific method. Not quite. This is how what is said to be True is determined...within some subset of the (culturally dom

> What's true is determined by the scientific method. Not quite. This is how what is said to be True is determined...within some subset of the (culturally dominant) population, at this particular era in our semi-self-aware species' ongoing development. Science practices watered down epistemology even in the lab, and the further you get away from the lab and toward public discussions, it gets watered down even further. And by the time it gets to the point of public discussion (science's fan base), epistemology is pretty much gone from consideration, it's regurgitation of memorization, if not worse (LLM level hallucination). > You can make as many theories as you want but if you can't make predictions based on that theory and devise experiments to verify those predictions... So far so good.... > ...and perhaps most importantly, be open to abandoning your theory when even a single one of those experiments doesn't pan out... Ah crap. Crash and burn. > all you have done is shot an arrow in the dark and claimed it could have hit the target. This isn't true, and there's also no way for you to know these things (what individual scientists are doing, saying, thinking). > Yes, but that information is nearly useless... There's no way for you to know this. > ...and definitely can't be put on the same pedestal as someone providing actual evidence that the arrow missed the target. Yes it can. You can literally say and do pretty much whatever you want in this simulation. There are almost no constraints whatsoever, other than sheer lack of imagination (which is an extremely big problem imho)....I mean, just take your comments, and the vast majority of other comments in this thread. There's (almost) no need for anything anyone says to be true....in fact, even venturing a little outside of the Overton Window (to the positive side, on certain topics) of acceptable levels of epistemology here will certainly get you downvoted, if not warned by moderators. We have a culture here, and cultures have beliefs, and those beliefs are to be respected, regardless of the actual truth of the matter. The truth of the matter, very often (on certain topics), is off limits for discussion. And even more interestingly: it seems like all social media platforms have somehow adopted the same set of rules for That Which Cannot Be Discussed. I often wonder if this is sheer coincidence.