3 ms·

You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Incorr

You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Incorrect information is worse than no information.

darby_nine 2y ago
> You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. You absolutely do lol, or you're just straight wrong. Take your pick. > The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Neither can hard sciences. Proofs are incompatible with empiricism. Abductive proofs (which is what the scientific process offers) are necessarily bounded by limited certainty. All you can do is progressively improve certainty approaching 100%, but reaching it is necessarily impossible. This is just basic Hume. You can never be 100% sure the sun will rise tomorrow or that the fundamental laws of physics won't arbitrarily change. But, the same applies to soft sciences. We can and do increase our certainty continually. This is absolutely worthwhile and is probably far more valuable to humanity than merely modelling physical phenomena.
- zarathustreal 2y ago
  > You absolutely do lol, or you’re just straight wrong. This is false, an obvious counter-example is an explanation that happens to be coincidentally correct (without being derived from any science) - This seems like an attack on the notion of objective truth which while interesting in the abstract, is not particularly interesting to me personally.
  - darby_nine 2y ago
    > an obvious counter-example is an explanation that happens to be coincidentally correct How can you establish "correctness" without something like the scientific method? How do you even bind loosely-defined english to verifiable claims to real-life referents without agreeing with others on terms? No, you're chosen simple, comforting delusion over anything resembling objective truth. > This seems like an attack on the notion of objective truth Yes, truth is an apriori concept; objective truth is a silly delusion. Coherence is generally a much stronger concept anyway.
    - zarathustreal 2y ago
      Correctness (of a given assertion) doesn’t need to be established to exist

darby_nine 2y ago

> You don’t need science to explain how dysfunctional society is. You absolutely do lol, or you're just straight wrong. Take your pick. > The problem with “soft sciences” is that they can’t produce provably correct information. Neither can hard sciences. Proofs are incompatible with empiricism. Abductive proofs (which is what the scientific process offers) are necessarily bounded by limited certainty. All you can do is progressively improve certainty approaching 100%, but reaching it is necessarily impossible. This is just basic Hume. You can never be 100% sure the sun will rise tomorrow or that the fundamental laws of physics won't arbitrarily change. But, the same applies to soft sciences. We can and do increase our certainty continually. This is absolutely worthwhile and is probably far more valuable to humanity than merely modelling physical phenomena.

zarathustreal 2y ago
> You absolutely do lol, or you’re just straight wrong. This is false, an obvious counter-example is an explanation that happens to be coincidentally correct (without being derived from any science) - This seems like an attack on the notion of objective truth which while interesting in the abstract, is not particularly interesting to me personally.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  > an obvious counter-example is an explanation that happens to be coincidentally correct How can you establish "correctness" without something like the scientific method? How do you even bind loosely-defined english to verifiable claims to real-life referents without agreeing with others on terms? No, you're chosen simple, comforting delusion over anything resembling objective truth. > This seems like an attack on the notion of objective truth Yes, truth is an apriori concept; objective truth is a silly delusion. Coherence is generally a much stronger concept anyway.
  - zarathustreal 2y ago
    Correctness (of a given assertion) doesn’t need to be established to exist