(no subject)

[anotherusedpage]

neonchameleon; I saw this and thought of you. Or rather our ongoing discussion on the nature of reality.

Neil Gaiman puts it better than I ever could (as usual).



"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." - Sam, American Gods



I don't agree with every statement, but the gist of it is my impression of the way the universe works.

Comments

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

Amen to that :)

Especially

I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating ....Of course I wouldn't want to mention any young men in particular here ;)

I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time

I love Neil Gaimon.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I assume that that's a slight caricature of your actual beliefs.

There are several types of contradiction presented there - most of which aren't actually contradictions (such as the legal system) and some of which are obviously based on false understandings (such as the bumblebee) or unprovable statements that amount to the same thing (such as the theology).

That said, although there are dangers of lying from those who claim to know The Truth™, the dangers are at least as great from those who claim that there is no non-subjective truth. (There is no problem with the belief that the truth is obscure and impossible for a single human to reach). This is because that which such people convince themselves is true becomes what they know to be true - meaning that when they are lying, they do not know themselves to be doing so.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

This is because that which such people convince themselves is true becomes what they know to be true - meaning that when they are lying, they do not know themselves to be doing so.

See, that's what I see people that do believe in... well, just about anything... doing. I don't see how someone who thinks it's all lies can be accused of that.

Not a characature of my beliefs. An impression of my beliefs, which is a slightly different thing.

unprovable statements that amount to the same thing

And this is where I say, yes, but they're all unprovable, and you say, yes, but some of them are more unprovable than others :P I don't think the theology is more or less unprovable than the science, and I think that thinking it is is dangerous.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I don't see how someone who thinks it's all lies can be accused of that.


OK. Bad phrasing. Someone who believes that it's all lies can therefore never tell the truth. They also can't distinguish truth from lie.

and you say, yes, but some of them are more unprovable than others :P

That's because you equate provable with testable- and the two are not the same. You can test a statement to show that it is false relatively easily, but, outside the realm of mathematics, you can not prove a statement to be true. (I'll go into Rutherford Scattering if you want an example of this - an example of a situation in which such a test completely overturned the prevailing theories).

Statements that can be and have been tested significantly are more likely to be both approximately right and useful than those that haven't and aren't.

and I think that thinking it is is dangerous.

Of course it is. Progress is always dangerous.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Of course it is. Progress is always dangerous.

hehe, I meant dangerous in a fundamentalist-christian-with-a-gun kinda way, not a columbus-crossing-the-pacific kinda way. And you knew it :P I think the danger that comes with progress is thrilling, but I think that being caught within one way of thinking doesn't lead to progress, or at least only to contained progress. Again I go back to the crystal spheres analogy.

Someone who believes that it's all lies can therefore never tell the truth. They also can't distinguish truth from lie.

It's relative. Within my system, I have things I believe and things don't - things I see as true and untrue. Those things are not fixed, I am convincible - by evidence, by argument, by instinct. My system for distinguishing truth from lie is merely different from yours - and I accept the possibility that there might have been a fundamental flaw somewhere right at the very basic level of my (and everyone elses's) understanding, that renders the whole thing untrue. Not unuseful. Just... wrong.

The thing about being genuinely relativist and genuinely being able to believe incompatible things at the same time is that one can honestly say 'I don't believe fundamental truths' and 'the holocaust was fundamentally wrong and believing otherwise is flawed'. Again, I find this difficult to express, because I know it looks like inconsistancy, but... dammit, it's consistant inconsistancy.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

And you knew it :P

O:-)

I think that being caught within one way of thinking doesn't lead to progress, or at least only to contained progress.

Agreed- but failing to use the most relevant, accurate and precise tool you have available is also bad.

Again I go back to the crystal spheres analogy.

The Crystal Spheres were the best tools the users had available- and were overturned when something else was shown to be better. Your point?

Again, I find this difficult to express, because I know it looks like inconsistancy, but... dammit, it's consistant inconsistancy.

I'd have said you have a hierarchy there.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

The crystal spheres were believed in long after they were known to be inaccurate and unuseful, because they were more in line with the safe and accepted way of viewing the universe. Which of our fundamental ideas are blocking progress in this way? You can tell me that if a theory was found to be inaccurate, it would be discared, but there are countless examples of this not occuring. Again, my mind slips back to the feminist anthropology - it's more conveniant for our society to prevelate the man-the-hunter myth, because it is in line with the gender stereotypes which society wants to perpetuate.

And that one is visible - who knows where the invisible flaws in our logic are? We won't know until they are overturned.

I'd have said you have a hierarchy there.

hierarchy?

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

We won't know until they are overturned.

So keep checking the details both against each other and against external evidence that will not be affected by your theories.

hierarchy

Things that I believe and will get annoyed when someone else doesn't. Things I believe and will argue with someone about. Things I believe but don't care enough about to argue about. Things I don't believe.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

and against external evidence that will not be affected by your theories.

a) your view of external evidence will be coloured by your theories.

b) I personally don't trust external evidence to actually exist, certainly not in the format I experience it. Consensus reality and all that jazz.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

a) your view of external evidence will be coloured by your theories.

Which is why you need to quantify things and try to be honest. Just because vaccination isn't 100% effective doesn't mean that it isn't highly useful.

b) I personally don't trust external evidence to actually exist, certainly not in the format I experience it.

Again, in Science you quantify. Qualitative evidence is certainly subjective...

Consensus reality

If reality was pure consensus, the theories wouldn't be refined in ways the original proponents would have thought crazy half so often.

P.S. I think there are still a couple of outstanding threads (including one between you and Kat) in my LJ...

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

I mean one's view of external evidence, not yours personally.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'd be interested in Ruthford Scattering - I suspect I've heard of it but don't recognise it by that name, so gimme a quick summary.

Statements that can be and have been tested significantly are more likely to be both approximately right and useful than those that haven't and aren't.

Not if there's a fundamental flaw in the logic behind the understanding and/or the testing process :P

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

gimme a quick summary

The "Plum Pudding" model of atoms (large, not particularly dense atoms of positive charge, containing points of negative charge (electrons)) was the prevailing model. Rutherford fired alpha particles (small, desnse, positively charged things) at a thin sheet of gold foil- and instead of recording a lot of small deflections as he expected, he recorded most of the alpha particles being unaffected, but a few of them even bouncing back off the gold leaf and back the way they came (something akin to a tank shell bouncing off a piece of paper). This showed that the atoms had small, dense, positively charged centres which was incompatable with the Plum Pudding model.

Not if there's a fundamental flaw in the logic behind the understanding and/or the testing process :P

And here I question how big a flaw- and talk about signal to noise ratios.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember the plum-pudding stuff and testing. Don't get me wrong, I see what the usefulness of rigourous testing and the idea of unprovability is.

But... And here I question how big a flaw

Huuuuge flaw. Unbelievably huge flaw that totally undermines the whole of human thinking.

It's happened before... I don't trust it not to happen again. And if/when it happens, it'll be in the area of human thought we are most comfortable with and believe in most strongly - and we won't be able to predict what we've got wrong or how that will change things....

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Unbelievably huge flaw that totally undermines the whole of human thinking.

With luck, you end up with (dis)proof by contradiction.

And if/when it happens, it'll be in the area of human thought we are most comfortable with and believe in most strongly - and we won't be able to predict what we've got wrong or how that will change things....

I doubt it will be from the (physical) sciences (as you appear to be implying) - the constant checking against the natural world and against logic keeps it honest.

(And what has undermined the whole of human thinking?)

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

No, I suspect it will be in philosophy. Philosophy of ideas, philosophy of existance, that sort of thing. I just think it will effect science more because science expects logic and rules that don't change.

And what has undermined the whole of human thinking

No one thing. It's a process. But things are all interconnected - the world is at the centre of the universe because god put it there, and devils cause disease, and there's a natural order to the animal kingdom with man at the top, and god created the world in seven day - all the ideas are undermined together, and we end up with a totally different societal world view. One new idea affects all the other - if the world isn't at the centre of the universe, ideas shift subtly, it becomes easier to accept that disease is natural, and that the world was formed over a long period of time. And vice versa. Interconectedness.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I just think it will effect science more because science expects logic and rules that don't change.

Science expects logic. As for the rules not changing, Science in the 20th Century alone was able to relatively easily cope with Relativity replacing Newtonian mechanics, Atoms being first found then probed and split, Wave/Particle Duality, Quantumn Theory, Chaos Theory and many, many other revolutions that would have been considered crazy by 19th Century scientists.

A greater proportion of scientists than others will suffer from autodefenestration - but science itself will more or less say "Oh. Another revolution. How quaint. Half of you analyse it, the other half try to cover what was there before.

Science may expect logic and rules, but because it stays very close to them continually gets revoluted.

Actually, the two revolutions I see that could hurt science are Ludditism/Fundamentalism (see the _ing 'Merkin Creationists) and Postmodernism with equal validities for all viewpoints and quantification being impossible.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I don't think the theology is more or less unprovable than the science

The second answer here (in addition to the first I gave) is that many theologians will claim to have found The Truth™ and the discipline is (usually) set up to support this belief. On the other hand, although many scientists will claim to have The Truth™, the discipline is set up explicitely against this notion - there is a good reason you talk about Scientific Theories even when they are as widely accepted as the Theory of Gravity or the Theory of Evolution.

In short, neither is provable- but science doesn't even make that claim - the only claim it makes is that it is the most rigorous disprovable explanation we can come up with at that time.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Ok, this is the bit I feel most strongly about, and also the bit I have most difficulty in expressing.

When people believe in The Truth in terms of theology, the discipline is set up to support this belief. Bad Things follow. We're agreed on this, I think.

In the case of science - While each individual component of science is set up as a theory - despite many scientists seeming to claim The Truth about a specific theory - the set up of the disipline itself is touted as a The Truth. The idea of provability and unprovability and peer review (one of my least favourite aspects of the scientific set up) is seen as if it is the only sensible way of viewing the world. Beliefs that are not based on Hard Evidence are ridiculed.

My dad Believes in Science. Not in the sense that he believes every scientific theory - he doesn't - and not in the sense that he sees science as Ultimate Truth - he doesn't. (Incidentally, his study path was actually very similar to midnightmelody's - he did biochemistry and philsophy at uni...). The point at which I realised he believed in something that I had fundamental issues with was the point at which he said he could never believe in god because belief in such wasn't disprovable. Simply because he couldn't understand it within the bounds of scientific reasoning, he had to dismiss it altogether.

There are so many things that can't be understood in terms of provability, and I think they're some of the best things about humanity. All sorts of abstract concepts like love and beauty and inner-freedom - we have them, and the fact that we have them can't be proved; there will never be hard evidence for it, it simply cannot be understood within that framework.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

the set up of the disipline itself is touted as a The Truth

You've not heard me on the subject of Dawkins... (And no it isn't and wasn't - it just showed itself to be so vastly superior to the competition in a variety of ways that people tried placing it on a pedestal.)

was the point at which he said he could never believe in god because belief in such wasn't disprovable

Did he claim he couldn't believe in God because God wasn't disprovable or that he actively disbelieved in God because God wasn't disprovable? The second is daft (and the proponents of it are the best arguments I've seen for Theism), but the first simply lacks ambition. On the other hand, it can be summarised as "I can't see a way this could be proved either way so I'm going to leave it to those with time/those who care" - not my way, but hardly an illigitimate one.

peer review (one of my least favourite aspects of the scientific set up)

Peer review works if and only if you have a touchstone to hold everyone to - in this case the physical world. The absence of peer review allows real crap to be published as supposed thought (see the Sokal affair for details). It's not a perfect system (and I can't think that anyone would claim it was)- but can you come up with a better one?

There are so many things that can't be understood in terms of provability, and I think they're some of the best things about humanity.

Agreed. On the other hand, where provability (or rather falsification) works it is manifestly superior to hand-waving and ex-cathedra arguments. Take it for what it is - and what it is is a damn useful tool. Unfortunately, some people take it as their only tool- and when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Culturally, we put that way of thinking on a pedestal. I know individuals who don't. I'm not disputing that it's a useful tool, I just dislike the number of people with an awful lot of influence who take it as their only tool. You have a tendency to do it in argument - to say 'where's your evidence for that' - when what I'm trying to do is discribe how I feel or how I view the world. I'm thinking of some of the feminist debates here - If I say 'women feel excluded by androcentric language' saying 'where's your evidence?' isn't particularly helpful in my opinion... I very very strongly hold the point of view that just because you hold the most evidence, it doesn't make you right :P

(I know there are problems with that as a position, and I know I sound like I'm coming close to saying 'I'm right no matter what...' which isn't what I mean.)

The second is daft (and the proponents of it are the best arguments I've seen for Theism), but the first simply lacks ambition.

He was talking about the first - why does this lack ambition? I'm not saying that it's not a stupid position to hold, but I don't see why it lacks ambition...

Nope, can't come up with a better option than peer-review, but I violently, violently dislike it because anyone who disagrees with any of the fundamentals is going to have difficulty getting to a position where they can take part in the process. Kinda like the issue of democracy again. "Dictatorship by me" sounds like the best system from where I'm sitting, so maybe "review by me"? Only I don't understand enough to make judgements on most of it...

ex-cathedra arguments

huh?

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I just dislike the number of people with an awful lot of influence who take it as their only tool

Agreed - with the caveat that that would apply to any tool and science is a more benign one than most.

And there are far, far fewer than there were. I wish there were more scientists in fairly promenant positions such as on newspapers (the correlation between New Scientist headlines on Thursday and newspaper headlines on Friday isn't coincidental - and the BBC has sacked the entire Horizon staff).

To be accurate, I wish that there were far more people trained in science- and the limitations of science.

You have a tendency to do it in argument - to say 'where's your evidence for that' - when what I'm trying to do is discribe how I feel or how I view the world. I'm thinking of some of the feminist debates here - If I say 'women feel excluded by androcentric language' saying 'where's your evidence?' isn't particularly helpful in my opinion...

And here I would say that the issue is one of precision and accuracy (not synonymous). Were you to say "I feel [foo]", I would accept your statement as it stands. Were you to say "A few women feel [foo]" "Some women feel [foo]", I wouldn't bother to challenge - you are almost certainly right. If you say "Women feel [foo]", you've missed a signifier off - you almost certainly mean "Some Women feel [foo]", but you've spun it so that "All Women feel [foo]" is an equally valid reading- I'm going to challenge. If you say "[foo] happens", I may well challenge both whether it does and the extent- you are making statements about external realities rather than feelings, and at this point it is time for science to get involved.

I very very strongly hold the point of view that just because you hold the most evidence, it doesn't make you right :P

I agree. On the other hand, the person with the most evidence and the best understanding of the evidence is the one most likely to be right. Anyone who deliberately ignores the evidence in favour of their ideology is likely to be wrong.

He was talking about the first - why does this lack ambition?

He's restricting himself to what Science™ can say. Very good within the limits of scientific knowledge, but utterly and completely useless outside it.

I violently, violently dislike it because anyone who disagrees with any of the fundamentals is going to have difficulty getting to a position where they can take part in the process

What do you mean by fundamentals? A flat earthist is not going to get to publish in an astrophysics journal and an astrophysicist is unlikely to publish in a flat-earthists journal. All being published means is that the peer-reviewers employed by that journal don't consider you to be wrong (and it's easier to overturn ideas in the sciences than the humanities for obvious reasons).

Either that, or if the academic discipline is intellectually bankrupt, they can be made subject to a Trojan Horse (see Alan Sokal and Social Text for details).

Only I don't understand enough to make judgements on most of it...

That doesn't stop those responsible for the "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge" from pontificating. [/Rant]

huh?

Appeals to (often irrelevant) authority.