4 ms·

You seem rustled.

• PeterWhittaker 12y ago
  Me? Nope, never been stolen in my life. :-> Seriously, not bothered in the least. Just curious why someone would question empiricism, reductionism, etc., given how successful they have been for us in so many areas. Especially on a site like HN, when hacking is ultimately about curiosity and discovery - and those tools, empiricism, reductionism, analysis, synthesis, etc., the whole modern package of modern science, are the best tools we have for discovery, for satisfaction of curiosity. They're not perfect, but they are far better than many alternatives folks espouse (mysticism, anti-rationality, etc.). Can we explain everything? Of course not! Not yet, anyway. Are there any reasons in principle why we will not be able to, eventually? Hmm, well, if there are, we will discover those reasons using those same tools of investigation and exploration, e.g., there may be things that we determine we can never explain for reasons of computational complexity - it's just impossible to get there from here, or for reasons of incompleteness, etc.