(Please pardon the "excessively" negative tone here, OP seems like a good guy!)
From a relative perspective, it's a great essay. But from an absolute perspective, I have some critiques (but I'm really digging deep into "pedantic" (oh what a powerful word to keep a society people dumb) here....no offense intended...and some praise too):
I loved this (that you left a part in but crossed it out, a true Rationalist!):
> The more information we have, the more confident we can be about ~~the world we live~~ (crossed out in the essay, not sure if markdown is supported in the comments) in tanks.
This part, I have more of a problem with:
> The more unbiased information we have, the more confident we can be.
> The less unbiased information we have, the less confident we can be.
I'm skeptical of this if the argument is (even implicitly, as I have a causality first perspective) that it can be applied to the metaphysical realm with the same effectiveness as in the physical realm (no caveats were noted, so, being not charitable to the science crowd, I will assume that is implied, hypocrisy be damned).
> The tl;dr here is that possible bias doesn’t have to be fatal to understanding, so long as we can identify which direction that bias is in.
A problem: how do you know if you're in such a situation where direction is deceiving? Or, how do you know if you might be in a black swan scenario? Tautologies are powerful when used safely, but it's easy to accidentally cut oneself (or others) using them.
> What I am interested in is time. My university training is in physics, and this is what physicists do: we think about the past, and the future, to try to understand how systems evolved to reach the present, and where they will go.
Ahem: a *subset of* (the physical realm, solely).
Also: I suspect you and I would not see eye to eye on what "Reality" is, but I also have an intuition we'd disagree less than usual.
> But what if, instead of this, we imagine that a well known discovery was never made?
10/10, high quality thinking, love it!
> For centuries at least, no one believed anyone in the ancient world was capable of making such a thing, because no evidence had been found.
I don't deny that at least *some* scientists can *sometimes* get the logic here right, but I could easily go onto social media and get 100 science fans (and some actual scientists, though they're much more rare than simple fans) in under two hours to assert as a fact that an absence of evidence is proof of abscence.
Another important (tangential) thing to keep in mind here from a general perspective: the output of any given scientist (a human) when writing a paper using "System 2" cognition is *very* different than when they're engaged in realtime, "System 1" cognition....but conveniently (so I am told, over and over and over, with supreme confidence):
- the former is all that counts
- if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
- various other Meme Magic
> Well, what would you have thought? I know exactly what I would have thought: I would have thought No, the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, since I have no evidence that they could.
Another common problem, at least among the faithful fan base: they literally(!) cannot distinguish between beliefs and knowledge - in this case, they would *perceive it as a fact* that the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, "since there is no evidence (yet another faith-based belief) that they could".
> Because I do know that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Actually, it is. (Your second "evidence" should be "proof" - there's a good paper out there somewhere on this. Notice also that you used the word "know" - uh oh!)
Here's a more reasonable articulation of my stance: I am ok with the good part of science, but I have a VERY big problem with:
- scientists laying claim to all lanes, when they belong in one: the physical realm (the red-headed stepchild Psychology being the exception....underfunded, and forced to follow a bunch of silly guidelines not appropriate outside of the hard sciences, *holding humanity back for decades, and counting*)
- the fan base, the fact that these idiots get zero negative attention (press coverage, for example) for their foolish behavior (never mind the Nth order metaphysical consequences (Trump?), and that "the institution of science" does NOTHING to reign them in (but if power is the goal, it is a wise strategy)
- the Climate Change (and other) narratives - I do not like how science gets praise for the positive things they do, but when its found out after the fact that the toys they put into the hands of babes without thinking turn out to destroy the ecosystem, they're nowhere to be found, if not "proven" to be innocent - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
So that's a short glimpse into the insane world of how I have a mean on for The Science. I encourage you to review me harshly, it's a fun!
EDIT - forgot this:
> This is not true.
Watch out for that word "is", it is (ha!) extremely tricky!! (The problem lies in set theory.)
> (Please pardon the "excessively" negative tone here, OP seems like a good guy!)
I understand completely! It's always a problem between strangers to clarify that a contrasting point of view doesn't necessarily indicate disrespect; you can see I wrestled with a similar problem in that original comment at Secretori https://www.secretorum.life/p/the-most-dangerous-idea/comment/51169682
> > The more unbiased information we have, the more confident we can be.
> > The less unbiased information we have, the less confident we can be.
>
> I'm skeptical of this if the argument is... that it can be applied to the metaphysical realm with the same effectiveness as in the physical realm
Understandably so, but I'd say that if it applies elsewhere, it probably applies to metaphysical investigations as well.
> A problem: how do you know if you're in such a situation where direction is deceiving?
I'm guessing you know this now that you've finished the essay, but I'll clarify that this was, in simplest terms, the point of the essay: We are always going to be biased against appreciating what existed in the past, because remains decay over time. We have evidence for pyramids in ancient Egypt, so there were pyramids *at least*, not pyramids *on average.* We should be wary of thinking the past is just what we can establish; more probably, the past is more than we think.
> Ahem: a *subset of* (the physical realm, solely).
Physics is much broader than is commonly realized. People like to call physics "the study of motion," but statics is an entire subdiscipline of things that don't move. Wikipedia has "Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force." This is still rather dicey, as (for instance) photons are massless. When you look at the boundaries of physics in fields like quantum mechanics, cosmology, or nonlinear dynamics, it starts to be very difficult to say where exactly physics leaves off. You may regard a nonphysical realm as being extremely significant vs. the physical realm, but assuming such a nonphysical realm exists, it would have to no ability to interact with the physical realm at all to stop a physicist from studying it.
> > > Because I do know that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
> Actually, it is. (Your second "evidence" should be "proof" - there's a good paper out there somewhere on this. Notice also that you used the word "know" - uh oh!)
Words have no set definition. What I mean is that, if I have no reason to believe X, that does not mean that I have a reason not to believe X. If for you "evidence" should be "proof," that's fine, but "proof" to me has extremely strong overtones from mathematics.
> I don't deny that at least *some* scientists can *sometimes* get the logic here right, but I could easily go onto social media and get 100 science fans (and some actual scientists, though they're much more rare than simple fans) in under two hours to assert as a fact that an absence of evidence is proof of abscence.
Atheists, probably.
> - if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
> - scientists laying claim to all lanes, when they belong in one: the physical realm (the red-headed stepchild Psychology being the exception....underfunded, and forced to follow a bunch of silly guidelines not appropriate outside of the hard sciences, *holding humanity back for decades, and counting*)
I suspect you have a different attitude from me regarding how the word science is best used. I see science as a means of approaching the truth through questioning and checking ideas, especially through (though probably not strictly limited to) empirical means.
Did you reply to my other comment to this? I got an email this morning saying you did but when I come here I don't see anything....substack has bugs, man!
Maybe they emailed you as soon as I clicked reply and started writing, but I took 20 minutes to actually write it and hit post? Or maybe your server was experiencing a moment of precognition resulting from electronic TT.
How many logical or epistemic flaws can you spot here?
Or worse, how much plausible second order risk do you think *this sort of* behavior (this is but one among *millions* of manifestations) might introduce into the system our lives depend on?
I could argue with a lot of this, but I am exhausted from doing that.
Would you be interested in discussing this part?:
>> - if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
I have a strong feeling that this misses the mark in a Normie sense (~"Oh, that's just a classic No True Scotsman [nothing to see here, move along]"), in a Wittgenstein sense ("All philosophical problem are fundamentally language problems"), which while incredibly importantly correct, it seems *non-comprehensively* correct (but then, I've never read any Wittgenstein beyond bits here and there). While it is true that it is correct, I think he (and most of the big name philosophers) was born too soon to even have the opportunity to delve into *the causality* of it.
The phenomenon I've seen (because arguing on the internet is literally my hobby, I do it constantly, often about the same *extremely simple* topics, over and over and over) is very similar to NTS (which I perceive as a rather casual dismissal) but also crucially different. Lots of people (I'd even speculate ~all, *it's only a matter of finding the topics any given individual has the weakness on*) *experience* (I believe this perspective is extremely important) NTS as a logically correct assessment of the situation.
One of my favorite topics to argue is the shortcomings of science and scientists, and as impossible as it may to believe, I genuinely think that science fans (religious people are similar I expect, both things are fundamentally ideologies) *experience* reality as being that if a (genuine, employed in the field) scientist behaves non-scientifically (which all scientists do at least sometimes), then they are objectively(!) not a scientist. I don't think it ever occurs to them to consider how a person can switch back and forth between "being" something, *just like that*.
I think the problem is that humanity in 2024 literally has an incorrect model of reality itself. Most any time I hear people mention it (including eminent scientists), they think reality and the universe (planets, people etc) *are* (as in *equals*(!)) reality. But thinking about it carefully even for a while should clue one in that this simply cannot be possible. But then, I've only recently figured this out for myself, and I used to be more or less just like all these confused people, so it goes to show you I guess.
What you think? Does this make any sense? Do you think there's *something* novel here that doesn't get discussed, certainly in the mainstream but I'd say ~*at all* (I've never heard it come up in a philosophy meetup or forum for example, and if I ever mention it people act very strange, like they're intuitively nervous or something (like cats and cucumbers)....and, you can predict in advance a (small) set of possible responses, there's almost never a novel response that falls outside of the set (I don't know if I can remember even one).
> Lots of people... *experience* ...NTS as a logically correct assessment of the situation.
Personally, I think it's pretty obvious that of course scientists occasionally use emotional, intuitive, or non-objective reasoning in their processes. Hypothesis generation is inherently messy and creative. You notice something, you have a hunch, and then you see if it pans out. Maybe you're half crazy, even, and think you find something, and it's still not the end of the world, because when you show other scientists then they can check and find nothing is there.
The worst problem is when all scientists experience the same external pressure from political values, which makes all of them afraid of trying some hypotheses, or reporting some findings. That kind of thing can create a difficult situation to overcome - so difficult that there may be no way anyone can overcome it except to be honest with themselves individually, alone, and in secret, without sharing with others what they know. I may, quite possibly, have some vague sense of what this is like.
> I genuinely think that science fans (religious people are similar I expect, both things are fundamentally ideologies) *experience* reality as being that if a (genuine, employed in the field) scientist behaves non-scientifically (which all scientists do at least sometimes), then they are objectively(!) not a scientist.
I am probably what you would call a hardcore science fan, and I think it'd be really odd for anyone to think that if a scientist occasionally behaves "non-scientifically," they are not a scientist. Isaac Newton was probably the best scientist in the field of physics, and he believed in mysticism and Biblical prophecy. Newton was definitely a scientist, and a really good one at that. Hans Eysenck was probably the very best scientist in the field of psychology, and he dismissed the idea that smoking caused cancer long after the information started to come in. It was terrible reasoning, we take for granted today that he was wrong about that, and Eysenck was also definitely a scientist.
> What you think? Does this make any sense?
I think you're living in a crazy society, and it's made you very passionate about things that are pretty obvious. I used to be similarly passionate about things like division by zero and CYMK color mixing, because nobody I talked to, including authority figures who graded my papers, would believe me. It was incredibly frustrating. There's no easy way out of that emotional state, but, it does help to take a deep breath and say "Those people are nuts, and I have better things to do than get riled up about crazy people." You may find that gradually you stop interacting with almost everyone if you keep doing that; it isn't an absolute fix.
But what works pretty well for me to remember that most everyone I talk to is really, really trying, and really, really, so terrible at philosophy that they will fail to grasp really simple concepts like how the sun is hot or water is wet. This doesn't make them not people. It just means that it's not a surprise when they say crazy things.
> Personally, I think it's pretty obvious that of course scientists occasionally use emotional, intuitive, or non-objective reasoning in their processes. Hypothesis generation is inherently messy and creative.
Sure, zero errors in realtime System 1 cognition is impossible. The part that interests me is that they (those who cannot, which seems to be a vary large %, *on certain topics* (epistemically difficult, culturally tainted questions)) can't sort themselves out, *and cannot realize their state*.
Now....how true is this, in fact? "Thou shalt not inquire into such things" seems to be the status quo, according to the people who's ideology "is (whatever that means) based on self-criticism".
> The worst problem is when all scientists experience the same external pressure from political values...
Now add culture (aka "reality") into the mix!
> ...which makes all of them afraid of trying some hypotheses, or reporting some findings.
Or "semantically" hallucinate, *literally*. (Do you believe this is not in fact literally true?)
> ...so difficult that there may be no way anyone can overcome it except to be honest with themselves individually, alone, and in secret, without sharing with others what they know.
What if an alternate approach exists within the realm of possibility, and the reason we haven't found it is this:
As a (terrible) analogy: consider how differently people behave when they are sitting in the witness stand in a court of law, with genuine consequences hanging over their head.
> I am probably what you would call a hardcore science fan, and I think it'd be really odd for anyone to think that if a scientist occasionally behaves "non-scientifically," they are not a scientist.
If by odd you mean "unusual", you would be incorrect. As the saying goes: Perception is Reality. If you think about such things from the right angle, they become not just not hard to believe, but often literally unavoidable (under current conditions)....it *could not be* (in this era) otherwise!
> I think you're living in a crazy society, and it's made you very passionate about things that are pretty obvious. I used to be similarly passionate about things like division by zero and CYMK color mixing, because nobody I talked to, including authority figures who graded my papers, would believe me. It was incredibly frustrating.
Imagine how worse you would have felt if those things played a *massive* role in causality (war, poverty, hate, etc). And to make it worse: no one else cares, *including people who complain about such things constantly, legitimate smart people, etc*.
> There's no easy way out of that emotional state
I don't care about such things.
> but, it does help to take a deep breath and say "Those people are nuts
Correct.
> and I have better things to do than get riled up about crazy people."
I believe this to be objectively false.
> But what works pretty well for me to remember that most everyone I talk to is really, really trying....
*According to their conditioning*....but what if that could be changed? (consider a 50 year chart of levels of racism, sexual orientation prejudice, etc).......PEOPLE CAN IMPROVE!!!
> This doesn't make them not people. It just means that it's not a surprise when they say crazy things.
Your "just" is not justified. It also causes them to f*ck up the world, to the degree that it literally causes premature death. I am fascinated by the paradoxical nature of how our culture approaches avoiding death...remember covid, remember how saving lives "was" a HUUUUUUGE deal? Why doesn't that apply to all harms?
BIG FAVOUR THOUGH: could you remove the part after "who posts under the name...." - I just rcently changed my name to disassociate it from activities on another platform, and now you've undone the whole thing!!!! :)
(Please pardon the "excessively" negative tone here, OP seems like a good guy!)
From a relative perspective, it's a great essay. But from an absolute perspective, I have some critiques (but I'm really digging deep into "pedantic" (oh what a powerful word to keep a society people dumb) here....no offense intended...and some praise too):
I loved this (that you left a part in but crossed it out, a true Rationalist!):
> The more information we have, the more confident we can be about ~~the world we live~~ (crossed out in the essay, not sure if markdown is supported in the comments) in tanks.
This part, I have more of a problem with:
> The more unbiased information we have, the more confident we can be.
> The less unbiased information we have, the less confident we can be.
I'm skeptical of this if the argument is (even implicitly, as I have a causality first perspective) that it can be applied to the metaphysical realm with the same effectiveness as in the physical realm (no caveats were noted, so, being not charitable to the science crowd, I will assume that is implied, hypocrisy be damned).
> The tl;dr here is that possible bias doesn’t have to be fatal to understanding, so long as we can identify which direction that bias is in.
A problem: how do you know if you're in such a situation where direction is deceiving? Or, how do you know if you might be in a black swan scenario? Tautologies are powerful when used safely, but it's easy to accidentally cut oneself (or others) using them.
> What I am interested in is time. My university training is in physics, and this is what physicists do: we think about the past, and the future, to try to understand how systems evolved to reach the present, and where they will go.
Ahem: a *subset of* (the physical realm, solely).
Also: I suspect you and I would not see eye to eye on what "Reality" is, but I also have an intuition we'd disagree less than usual.
> But what if, instead of this, we imagine that a well known discovery was never made?
10/10, high quality thinking, love it!
> For centuries at least, no one believed anyone in the ancient world was capable of making such a thing, because no evidence had been found.
I don't deny that at least *some* scientists can *sometimes* get the logic here right, but I could easily go onto social media and get 100 science fans (and some actual scientists, though they're much more rare than simple fans) in under two hours to assert as a fact that an absence of evidence is proof of abscence.
Another important (tangential) thing to keep in mind here from a general perspective: the output of any given scientist (a human) when writing a paper using "System 2" cognition is *very* different than when they're engaged in realtime, "System 1" cognition....but conveniently (so I am told, over and over and over, with supreme confidence):
- the former is all that counts
- if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
- various other Meme Magic
> Well, what would you have thought? I know exactly what I would have thought: I would have thought No, the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, since I have no evidence that they could.
Another common problem, at least among the faithful fan base: they literally(!) cannot distinguish between beliefs and knowledge - in this case, they would *perceive it as a fact* that the ancient Romans couldn’t have done that, "since there is no evidence (yet another faith-based belief) that they could".
> Because I do know that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Actually, it is. (Your second "evidence" should be "proof" - there's a good paper out there somewhere on this. Notice also that you used the word "know" - uh oh!)
Here's a more reasonable articulation of my stance: I am ok with the good part of science, but I have a VERY big problem with:
- scientists laying claim to all lanes, when they belong in one: the physical realm (the red-headed stepchild Psychology being the exception....underfunded, and forced to follow a bunch of silly guidelines not appropriate outside of the hard sciences, *holding humanity back for decades, and counting*)
- the fan base, the fact that these idiots get zero negative attention (press coverage, for example) for their foolish behavior (never mind the Nth order metaphysical consequences (Trump?), and that "the institution of science" does NOTHING to reign them in (but if power is the goal, it is a wise strategy)
- the Climate Change (and other) narratives - I do not like how science gets praise for the positive things they do, but when its found out after the fact that the toys they put into the hands of babes without thinking turn out to destroy the ecosystem, they're nowhere to be found, if not "proven" to be innocent - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
So that's a short glimpse into the insane world of how I have a mean on for The Science. I encourage you to review me harshly, it's a fun!
EDIT - forgot this:
> This is not true.
Watch out for that word "is", it is (ha!) extremely tricky!! (The problem lies in set theory.)
> (Please pardon the "excessively" negative tone here, OP seems like a good guy!)
I understand completely! It's always a problem between strangers to clarify that a contrasting point of view doesn't necessarily indicate disrespect; you can see I wrestled with a similar problem in that original comment at Secretori https://www.secretorum.life/p/the-most-dangerous-idea/comment/51169682
> > The more unbiased information we have, the more confident we can be.
> > The less unbiased information we have, the less confident we can be.
>
> I'm skeptical of this if the argument is... that it can be applied to the metaphysical realm with the same effectiveness as in the physical realm
Understandably so, but I'd say that if it applies elsewhere, it probably applies to metaphysical investigations as well.
> A problem: how do you know if you're in such a situation where direction is deceiving?
I'm guessing you know this now that you've finished the essay, but I'll clarify that this was, in simplest terms, the point of the essay: We are always going to be biased against appreciating what existed in the past, because remains decay over time. We have evidence for pyramids in ancient Egypt, so there were pyramids *at least*, not pyramids *on average.* We should be wary of thinking the past is just what we can establish; more probably, the past is more than we think.
> Ahem: a *subset of* (the physical realm, solely).
Physics is much broader than is commonly realized. People like to call physics "the study of motion," but statics is an entire subdiscipline of things that don't move. Wikipedia has "Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force." This is still rather dicey, as (for instance) photons are massless. When you look at the boundaries of physics in fields like quantum mechanics, cosmology, or nonlinear dynamics, it starts to be very difficult to say where exactly physics leaves off. You may regard a nonphysical realm as being extremely significant vs. the physical realm, but assuming such a nonphysical realm exists, it would have to no ability to interact with the physical realm at all to stop a physicist from studying it.
> > > Because I do know that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
> Actually, it is. (Your second "evidence" should be "proof" - there's a good paper out there somewhere on this. Notice also that you used the word "know" - uh oh!)
Words have no set definition. What I mean is that, if I have no reason to believe X, that does not mean that I have a reason not to believe X. If for you "evidence" should be "proof," that's fine, but "proof" to me has extremely strong overtones from mathematics.
> I don't deny that at least *some* scientists can *sometimes* get the logic here right, but I could easily go onto social media and get 100 science fans (and some actual scientists, though they're much more rare than simple fans) in under two hours to assert as a fact that an absence of evidence is proof of abscence.
Atheists, probably.
> - if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
Rationalists, I'm guessing, but probably ones unfamiliar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
> - scientists laying claim to all lanes, when they belong in one: the physical realm (the red-headed stepchild Psychology being the exception....underfunded, and forced to follow a bunch of silly guidelines not appropriate outside of the hard sciences, *holding humanity back for decades, and counting*)
I suspect you have a different attitude from me regarding how the word science is best used. I see science as a means of approaching the truth through questioning and checking ideas, especially through (though probably not strictly limited to) empirical means.
If it helps to clarify the way I think and feel about things, you might look at https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/atheism-or-utilitarianism or https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/art-can-be-objectively-better-or
> > This is not true.
> Watch out for that word "is", it is (ha!) extremely tricky!! (The problem lies in set theory.)
Your remarks are very interesting; would you be willing to elaborate on this?
Did you reply to my other comment to this? I got an email this morning saying you did but when I come here I don't see anything....substack has bugs, man!
Maybe they emailed you as soon as I clicked reply and started writing, but I took 20 minutes to actually write it and hit post? Or maybe your server was experiencing a moment of precognition resulting from electronic TT.
A fun tangent:
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMrM7avj/
How many logical or epistemic flaws can you spot here?
Or worse, how much plausible second order risk do you think *this sort of* behavior (this is but one among *millions* of manifestations) might introduce into the system our lives depend on?
I could argue with a lot of this, but I am exhausted from doing that.
Would you be interested in discussing this part?:
>> - if a scientist *actually is* caught in wrong doing/thinking, then "they're not a scientist" (I've had easily 100+++ science fans tell me this with complete sincerity)
> Rationalists, I'm guessing, but probably ones unfamiliar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
I have a strong feeling that this misses the mark in a Normie sense (~"Oh, that's just a classic No True Scotsman [nothing to see here, move along]"), in a Wittgenstein sense ("All philosophical problem are fundamentally language problems"), which while incredibly importantly correct, it seems *non-comprehensively* correct (but then, I've never read any Wittgenstein beyond bits here and there). While it is true that it is correct, I think he (and most of the big name philosophers) was born too soon to even have the opportunity to delve into *the causality* of it.
The phenomenon I've seen (because arguing on the internet is literally my hobby, I do it constantly, often about the same *extremely simple* topics, over and over and over) is very similar to NTS (which I perceive as a rather casual dismissal) but also crucially different. Lots of people (I'd even speculate ~all, *it's only a matter of finding the topics any given individual has the weakness on*) *experience* (I believe this perspective is extremely important) NTS as a logically correct assessment of the situation.
One of my favorite topics to argue is the shortcomings of science and scientists, and as impossible as it may to believe, I genuinely think that science fans (religious people are similar I expect, both things are fundamentally ideologies) *experience* reality as being that if a (genuine, employed in the field) scientist behaves non-scientifically (which all scientists do at least sometimes), then they are objectively(!) not a scientist. I don't think it ever occurs to them to consider how a person can switch back and forth between "being" something, *just like that*.
This scenario is likely in here somewhere:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FaJaCgqBKphrDzDSj/37-ways-that-words-can-be-wrong
I think the problem is that humanity in 2024 literally has an incorrect model of reality itself. Most any time I hear people mention it (including eminent scientists), they think reality and the universe (planets, people etc) *are* (as in *equals*(!)) reality. But thinking about it carefully even for a while should clue one in that this simply cannot be possible. But then, I've only recently figured this out for myself, and I used to be more or less just like all these confused people, so it goes to show you I guess.
What you think? Does this make any sense? Do you think there's *something* novel here that doesn't get discussed, certainly in the mainstream but I'd say ~*at all* (I've never heard it come up in a philosophy meetup or forum for example, and if I ever mention it people act very strange, like they're intuitively nervous or something (like cats and cucumbers)....and, you can predict in advance a (small) set of possible responses, there's almost never a novel response that falls outside of the set (I don't know if I can remember even one).
> Lots of people... *experience* ...NTS as a logically correct assessment of the situation.
Personally, I think it's pretty obvious that of course scientists occasionally use emotional, intuitive, or non-objective reasoning in their processes. Hypothesis generation is inherently messy and creative. You notice something, you have a hunch, and then you see if it pans out. Maybe you're half crazy, even, and think you find something, and it's still not the end of the world, because when you show other scientists then they can check and find nothing is there.
The worst problem is when all scientists experience the same external pressure from political values, which makes all of them afraid of trying some hypotheses, or reporting some findings. That kind of thing can create a difficult situation to overcome - so difficult that there may be no way anyone can overcome it except to be honest with themselves individually, alone, and in secret, without sharing with others what they know. I may, quite possibly, have some vague sense of what this is like.
> I genuinely think that science fans (religious people are similar I expect, both things are fundamentally ideologies) *experience* reality as being that if a (genuine, employed in the field) scientist behaves non-scientifically (which all scientists do at least sometimes), then they are objectively(!) not a scientist.
I am probably what you would call a hardcore science fan, and I think it'd be really odd for anyone to think that if a scientist occasionally behaves "non-scientifically," they are not a scientist. Isaac Newton was probably the best scientist in the field of physics, and he believed in mysticism and Biblical prophecy. Newton was definitely a scientist, and a really good one at that. Hans Eysenck was probably the very best scientist in the field of psychology, and he dismissed the idea that smoking caused cancer long after the information started to come in. It was terrible reasoning, we take for granted today that he was wrong about that, and Eysenck was also definitely a scientist.
> What you think? Does this make any sense?
I think you're living in a crazy society, and it's made you very passionate about things that are pretty obvious. I used to be similarly passionate about things like division by zero and CYMK color mixing, because nobody I talked to, including authority figures who graded my papers, would believe me. It was incredibly frustrating. There's no easy way out of that emotional state, but, it does help to take a deep breath and say "Those people are nuts, and I have better things to do than get riled up about crazy people." You may find that gradually you stop interacting with almost everyone if you keep doing that; it isn't an absolute fix.
But what works pretty well for me to remember that most everyone I talk to is really, really trying, and really, really, so terrible at philosophy that they will fail to grasp really simple concepts like how the sun is hot or water is wet. This doesn't make them not people. It just means that it's not a surprise when they say crazy things.
> Personally, I think it's pretty obvious that of course scientists occasionally use emotional, intuitive, or non-objective reasoning in their processes. Hypothesis generation is inherently messy and creative.
Sure, zero errors in realtime System 1 cognition is impossible. The part that interests me is that they (those who cannot, which seems to be a vary large %, *on certain topics* (epistemically difficult, culturally tainted questions)) can't sort themselves out, *and cannot realize their state*.
Now....how true is this, in fact? "Thou shalt not inquire into such things" seems to be the status quo, according to the people who's ideology "is (whatever that means) based on self-criticism".
> The worst problem is when all scientists experience the same external pressure from political values...
Now add culture (aka "reality") into the mix!
> ...which makes all of them afraid of trying some hypotheses, or reporting some findings.
Or "semantically" hallucinate, *literally*. (Do you believe this is not in fact literally true?)
> ...so difficult that there may be no way anyone can overcome it except to be honest with themselves individually, alone, and in secret, without sharing with others what they know.
What if an alternate approach exists within the realm of possibility, and the reason we haven't found it is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
As a (terrible) analogy: consider how differently people behave when they are sitting in the witness stand in a court of law, with genuine consequences hanging over their head.
> I am probably what you would call a hardcore science fan, and I think it'd be really odd for anyone to think that if a scientist occasionally behaves "non-scientifically," they are not a scientist.
If by odd you mean "unusual", you would be incorrect. As the saying goes: Perception is Reality. If you think about such things from the right angle, they become not just not hard to believe, but often literally unavoidable (under current conditions)....it *could not be* (in this era) otherwise!
> I think you're living in a crazy society, and it's made you very passionate about things that are pretty obvious. I used to be similarly passionate about things like division by zero and CYMK color mixing, because nobody I talked to, including authority figures who graded my papers, would believe me. It was incredibly frustrating.
Imagine how worse you would have felt if those things played a *massive* role in causality (war, poverty, hate, etc). And to make it worse: no one else cares, *including people who complain about such things constantly, legitimate smart people, etc*.
> There's no easy way out of that emotional state
I don't care about such things.
> but, it does help to take a deep breath and say "Those people are nuts
Correct.
> and I have better things to do than get riled up about crazy people."
I believe this to be objectively false.
> But what works pretty well for me to remember that most everyone I talk to is really, really trying....
*According to their conditioning*....but what if that could be changed? (consider a 50 year chart of levels of racism, sexual orientation prejudice, etc).......PEOPLE CAN IMPROVE!!!
> This doesn't make them not people. It just means that it's not a surprise when they say crazy things.
Your "just" is not justified. It also causes them to f*ck up the world, to the degree that it literally causes premature death. I am fascinated by the paradoxical nature of how our culture approaches avoiding death...remember covid, remember how saving lives "was" a HUUUUUUGE deal? Why doesn't that apply to all harms?
Sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring or forgot about you; I am pretty busy lately, but I tried to answer you in a long post: https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/just-enjoy-it-when-other-people-dont
No problemo....
BIG FAVOUR THOUGH: could you remove the part after "who posts under the name...." - I just rcently changed my name to disassociate it from activities on another platform, and now you've undone the whole thing!!!! :)