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Reductionism is the only way humanity ever progressed on anything.

• lukan 2y ago
  That's debatable. To me declaring that the world was made in a simple way like this and just listen to the priests was reductionism of the wrong kind. I know the kind you mean though, reducing external factors(like air), so you can isolate gravity as a force unrelated to density by finding out in a vacuum a feather and a metal ball fall with the same speed. (As for the paper I have not yet made up my mind.)
  • scotty79 2y ago
    I'm not sure why reductionism brings simplicity to anyones mind. Yes, you consider one thing at a time, but there are billions of such single things to explain. And isolating one is a challenge in its own right.
• ghurtado 2y ago
  Right, just like when we used to believe that "unexplained thing happened" = "god". Can't really get more reductive than that.
  • scotty79 2y ago
    How's that reductive? It's epitome of holism. Reductionism is setting everything but one thing aside and trying to figure out that one thing. Bringing in the second thing in only after you fail and trying again.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• freehorse 2y ago
  Yes but reductions have implicit or explicit assumptions. When our reductions give non-sensical results (10 bits/sec) we should not take these results seriously/understand them as an artifact of our reductions, rather than taking them seriously and giving them ontological existence.