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The last thing I want to do is start a flame war, but I don't see anyone on here criticizing you for putting your faith in science. I would like to have thought

The last thing I want to do is start a flame war, but I don't see anyone on here criticizing you for putting your faith in science. I would like to have thought that the Hacker News community would be above unwarranted comments such as this.

sjwright 13y ago
Short of actually taking the first two paragraphs literally, I don't think you could have misunderstood the point of my post more. And no, I don't put faith in science. Faith means belief without evidence. I accept science. I acknowledge that scientists are human, and that humans can be fallible, corrupt, egotistical and plain old stupid. And I admire the Scientific Method for doing an excellent job of counteracting most of our human failings.
- bigfoot13442 13y ago
  The definition of faith is, "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". It has nothing to do with whether or not there is evidence supporting the thing you have faith in.
  - sjwright 13y ago
    Arguing dictionary definitions is so tedious. That's just one of numerous definitions of the word, a historically legitimate definition to be sure. Sadly any innocent use of the word for that purpose is -- to my mind at least -- tainted by the other, socially dominant meaning. And anyway, even using your cherry-picked definition, I still say I don't have faith in science, because I can't afford it "complete trust or confidence". While I do think the core principles of science are the best tools we have to describe the natural world, even these core principles can not be immune to questioning.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I am sure he doesn't have complete and total trust or confidence in evolution; evolution is after all, falsifiable. A rabbit in the Pre-Cambrian would surely rock his boat. The boat has already been rocked many times before, and course adjustments were made based on the new information conveyed by that rocking. It just so happens however that none of the things that would kill the theory have ever actually been shown.
- stephen_g 13y ago
  Faith does not mean belief without evidence, it is more belief in something not seen. That does not imply a lack of evidence. For example, you have faith in the efficacy of a pharmaceutical product based on the fact that you trust the peer reviewers of the reports of its clinical trials, and the reputation of the journals those reports are published in. Without faith you could not accept any scientific conclusion unless you had directly observed the experiments they were based on. Neither could you believe anything on the news or any historical event you hadn't observed.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    So there's evidence-based faith, and faith-based faith?
    - andrewflnr 13y ago
      There's pretty-good-guess faith and blind faith. Mathematical axioms and believing what other people tell you about science you haven't observed yourself are examples of the former. Belief in God varies between the two from person to person.
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        There's a way of formalizing this, so we don't have to rely on the imprecise and loaded word "faith": Bayesian probability, e.g. as described on http://lesswrong.com http://lesswrong.com. See also http://rationality.org http://rationality.org.
  - sjwright 13y ago
    > Without faith you could not accept any scientific conclusion Nonsense. I don't need faith to assign various claims varying degrees of trust and confidence.
    - stephen_g 13y ago
      Perhaps we're just arguing semantics, but I think that is a large part of exactly what faith is! Or perhaps you just dislike the term because it's often used in a religious context?

sjwright 13y ago

Short of actually taking the first two paragraphs literally, I don't think you could have misunderstood the point of my post more. And no, I don't put faith in science. Faith means belief without evidence. I accept science. I acknowledge that scientists are human, and that humans can be fallible, corrupt, egotistical and plain old stupid. And I admire the Scientific Method for doing an excellent job of counteracting most of our human failings.

bigfoot13442 13y ago
The definition of faith is, "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". It has nothing to do with whether or not there is evidence supporting the thing you have faith in.
- sjwright 13y ago
  Arguing dictionary definitions is so tedious. That's just one of numerous definitions of the word, a historically legitimate definition to be sure. Sadly any innocent use of the word for that purpose is -- to my mind at least -- tainted by the other, socially dominant meaning. And anyway, even using your cherry-picked definition, I still say I don't have faith in science, because I can't afford it "complete trust or confidence". While I do think the core principles of science are the best tools we have to describe the natural world, even these core principles can not be immune to questioning.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I am sure he doesn't have complete and total trust or confidence in evolution; evolution is after all, falsifiable. A rabbit in the Pre-Cambrian would surely rock his boat. The boat has already been rocked many times before, and course adjustments were made based on the new information conveyed by that rocking. It just so happens however that none of the things that would kill the theory have ever actually been shown.
stephen_g 13y ago
Faith does not mean belief without evidence, it is more belief in something not seen. That does not imply a lack of evidence. For example, you have faith in the efficacy of a pharmaceutical product based on the fact that you trust the peer reviewers of the reports of its clinical trials, and the reputation of the journals those reports are published in. Without faith you could not accept any scientific conclusion unless you had directly observed the experiments they were based on. Neither could you believe anything on the news or any historical event you hadn't observed.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  So there's evidence-based faith, and faith-based faith?
  - andrewflnr 13y ago
    There's pretty-good-guess faith and blind faith. Mathematical axioms and believing what other people tell you about science you haven't observed yourself are examples of the former. Belief in God varies between the two from person to person.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      There's a way of formalizing this, so we don't have to rely on the imprecise and loaded word "faith": Bayesian probability, e.g. as described on http://lesswrong.com http://lesswrong.com. See also http://rationality.org http://rationality.org.
- sjwright 13y ago
  > Without faith you could not accept any scientific conclusion Nonsense. I don't need faith to assign various claims varying degrees of trust and confidence.
  - stephen_g 13y ago
    Perhaps we're just arguing semantics, but I think that is a large part of exactly what faith is! Or perhaps you just dislike the term because it's often used in a religious context?