Science vs. Pseudoscience

[Rippounet]

Wow, @Altherion would you look at that. You try to attack academia and you get a creationist boarding your train.
Perhaps tomorrow you'll get a flat earther.
I'd say one reaps what they sow.

6 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

This seems very plausible when we consider that things like ants, beetles and snakes probably don’t have anything like beliefs anyway. Once we reach organisms that do have beliefs about things we have no reason to imagine that true belief suddenly starts affecting survival chances, as it did not do that in other organisms (as they did not have beliefs).

1. Evolution and natural selection say nothing about beliefs. They may talk about behaviors.
2. You are correct that whether our beliefs and belief systems are true or not doesn't affect evolution and natural selection as long as they don't affect our behaviors too much. Basically, purely abstract or metaphysical debates don't affect the physical realm. They do affect however the social sphere and how we organize our public affairs. It matters, but it's a different story entirely.

To be clear: it doesn't change anything whether you think thunder is produced by Zeus or a giant spaghetti monster as long as you know how to protect yourself from it.

6 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

There is no reason to suppose that a true belief goes along with the neural structure,

You're obvously the living proof of that.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, evolution generally happens over millenia*. Homo sapiens appeared tens of thousands of years ago, and may be as much as 300,000 years old. Needless to say, belief systems were very different back then, and most of it based on an imperfect understanding of the material world and how it works**.

*There are some counter-examples, but let's not get bogged into details.
**Of course, that doesn't mean that our understanding of how the world works is perfect now. Scientific conclusions are simply the best conclusions we have reached at a given point in time based on empirical observation and experimentation. As observation and experimentation progress, so does science evolve (See what I did here? Ha ha?). In a nutshell, science is not dogma or doctrine, as you seem to believe.

Anyway you don't have to attack evolution to believe you have an immortal soul, that there is a superior being judging your actions, or that the universe was created, or that you should worship the flying spaghetti monster with a siever on your head. Evolution isn't about you, your parents, or your children. It's about how biology changes over eons. Science is not about finding significance or meaning to the human condition, it simply seeks to help understand some of its parameters. You still have philosophy or religion for the rest if you need it.

[Altherion]

6 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Question is why are they seemingly right and then what is the reason why they end up being wrong?

What is your explanation for this? Are they right just because of luck?

And if they end up being very wrong should they revise the model they are using or should they say "oh no worries. things might change back making us right again".

Should the rampant inflation around the corner crowd revise their beliefs? Or how about the skills gap crowd? Should they just continue believing what they believe because things might in the future change making their beliefs correct?

They're right until they're wrong because they rely on a combination of common sense, clever insight and luck. Keep in mind that the scientific approach is a relatively recent development -- for most of recorded history, we made do without it and still managed to manipulate fairly complex objects and systems. The drawback of this, then as now, is that the luck eventually runs out and you run into some corner case that the common sense and insights don't cover. The model should be revised if it can be made better; sometimes this is not the case.

7 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Certainly it is very difficult to predict when the next recession will happen or what unemployment will be from 2 years. However, that is not the same thing as saying no predictions can't be made at all. See the example I gave in my first post.

Certainly I don't know exactly what the U3 rate will be in July 2019. But that isn't being unscientific I don't think. That is merely being upfront that our current state of knowledge doesn't allow us to make those kind of predictions precisely.

It's not being unscientific to be unable to predict some things, but if a discipline that can't reliably predict anything important or even useful with certainty is not a science. Macroeconomics is not quite at that point, but it's fairly close and does more duty as a political propaganda tool than anything else.

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

No this is pretty much horseshit by you. The authors explain their empirical strategy in their paper.

Here is a copy of it.

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_paper.pdf

And if it so trivial to come up with an alternative explanation, then do it.

My impression was based on the summary that you linked. I briefly skimmed that 40 page paper and its 50 pages worth of appendices and I don't see anything there that would justify your statement. In general, I don't see the point to critiquing individual papers in this thread -- it's time consuming enough to answer stuff written by fellow boarders.

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

And now that you have taken such a keen interest in "rigorous arguments" then puuuleeze, for the love god, give us your "rigorous argument" why "identity politics" is so bad. Despite constantly complaining about it, I've yet to see you put your objections to it in a forthright and comprehensible manner.

As I already told you in the US politics thread, it's divisive and it's leading to a place you probably don't want to go. This is simply my opinion (a guess informed by history and recent events) -- there are no rigorous arguments here and there will not be.

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Well actually stochastic fluctuations can be quite large and the time series can be stationary so long as it's means and variances don't change.

It can certainly be stationary even the fluctuations are large, but the larger the fluctuations, the less useful it is for most purposes.

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I don't disagree that such time series can have structural breaks and so forth. But even that can give us useful information about institutional changes and so forth.

Yes... but only if the institutional changes and such don't alter society to the extent that evaluating such series is no longer relevant.

[Aemon Stark]

9 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

The reason for this is that the probability we will have reliable cognitive faculties (i.e. truth finding mechanisms in our minds) is very low if we suppose evolution via natural selection. That is P(R I E&NS) is low, where R is having reliable faculties. This is so because it seems evolution via natural selection would not select for true beliefs but only the neural structures advantageous for survival.

Natural selection describes a general process of species differentiation and change over timescales of varying length, generally driven by traits that confer survival advantages at the population level. It is not, however, a totalizing theory to which all phenomena can be ascribed, whether we're talking about "reliable cognitive faculties", specific beliefs, or the success of the Twilight series. You use a lot of interesting terms in this argument yet I note a lot of "it seems" and "probably" and a lot of claims that are, quite generally, wholly unsubstantiated. 

9 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

On evolution and natural selection that is all a decision-making process will be, a physical structure (brain structure in the higher organisms) that all things being equal leads to certain actions, and those actions will determine the likelihood of the organism’s survival. There is no reason to suppose that a true belief goes along with the neural structure, given it’s only the neural structure doing the determining which leads to the surviving.

As mentioned, evolution is about populations not individuals. But it hardly matters since most of what you're saying makes no sense at all. 

As for the original topic, it's worth pointing out that "hard" sciences such as physics are just as reliant on models of reality as any other. After all, anyone who's gotten as far as undergrad physics understands when we conceive of a problem by assuming that some structure or other is a sphere. All models are "wrong", however, insofar as they represent only a partial description of reality. Now we could get into discussions about metaphysics and the nature of truth and reality but... is that really what this is about?

There is certainly a divide between "hard" science - which can be quantified and subjected to repeated experiments or to the collection of empirical data - and everything else. Social science is problematic since it is primarily observational, and requires humans to observe other humans, with all the normative biases and influences that can entail. 

In medicine, there is a more historical tradition of knowledge from studying anatomy, physiology, and other basic sciences, paired with clinical reasoning, observation, and examination. But a lot of things were discovered through observation and experimentation without direct knowledge of what was going on - we had smallpox vaccination long before anyone knew what a virus was. Many of these experiments wouldn't meet anything approaching a contemporary ethical standard. Now much medical science comes in the form of large-scale industry-driven (and funded) trials - all very nicely randomized and constructed, but not always with direct relevance to "real life" patients. Even though these trials encompass the paradigm of "evidence-based medicine", we still must rely on experience and those "first principles" from basic science. 

Economics is tricky because it is often used for explicitly ideologically purposes, often with the idea that the "economy" is a phenomenon independent of politics and power structures (or should or could be). You can still proceed with a "scientific approach" that recognizes normative assumptions as they pertain to econometric models. Provided, that is, you recognize that while models can be useful, they're also all wrong on some level too. 

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Wow, @Altherion would you look at that. You try to attack academia and you get a creationist boarding your train.
Perhaps tomorrow you'll get a flat earther.
I'd say one reaps what they sow.

The same can be said of academia as a whole and in that case it's not funny at all. The price of all of this pseudoscience (and also political activism) is that, in the US at least, there's now a non-trivial fraction of the population clamoring for burning academia as a whole to the ground (figuratively -- or at least I hope it's figuratively) despite what this would do to the natural and formal sciences and to fields like literature.

[OldGimletEye]

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

They're right until they're wrong because they rely on a combination of common sense, clever insight and luck. Keep in mind that the scientific approach is a relatively recent development -- for most of recorded history, we made do without it and still managed to manipulate fairly complex objects and systems. The drawback of this, then as now, is that the luck eventually runs out and you run into some corner case that the common sense and insights don't cover. The model should be revised if it can be made better; sometimes this is not the case.

Science in a nutshell is about having a theory or model of how things work, until the data or events seems to reject the model, then yes you revise the model or maybe just tweak it. Ideally you test the model or theory in the laboratory before you ever deploy it for real world use. Sometimes that is not possible though and you have to rely on historical data or events to get an idea if the model is correct.

In one of your opening paragraphs, you stated basically that at least for the social sciences prior empirical work or prior events should not be used to make future predictions. I disagree. And the reason is that we don't have the luxury of waiting to make a decision about what to do. So you do the best you can given your understanding of what happened in the past.

If the economy crashes, should we lower the interest rate or should we raise it? Should we pass tax cuts for the rich on the theory it will lead to some supply boom? How should we regulate banking? The only thing to do is to look at past historical events to understand what happen in the past as a guide about what to do in the future. If future events should prove a theory wrong, then fine revise the model. But decisions have to made about policy. We don't have the luxury of waiting forever about what do. So you do the best you can hopefully backed by sensible theories or models backed by empirical evidence.

In my opening post, inf the first paragraph, I described a group of people that had a model of how things worked, until events proved their model of the world wrong. They should most definitely revise their ideas of how things work.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's not being unscientific to be unable to predict some things, but if a discipline that can't reliably predict anything important or even useful with certainty is not a science.

Keynesians like myself predicted that the FED's monetary actions during the GFC wouldn't produce rampant inflation. We seemingly were right about that. We also battled "structural explanations" including "skills gap" nonsense as explanations for high unemployment. We were seemingly right about that too, with unemployment falling.

I'm quite willing to admit the limits of our predictive powers with regard to things like what the inflation or unemployment will be exactly two years from now. However, it isn't true that no predictions can be made.

Quote

Macroeconomics is not quite at that point, but it's fairly close and does more duty as a political propaganda tool than anything else.

I don't disagree that macro still needs to work to derive better models. And I've written a lot about this very topic on these boards concerning things as my dislike for mindless Walrasianism, particularly when it is paired with "rational expectations", and my dislike for the "Calvo Fairy" and other matters.

Still it's a stretch to say we know nothing about this topic. I don't disagree that macro economic opinions are often tied up with one's political stances. However it would seem that one side has been getting a lot of big policy stuff very wrong lately. You know the one. The one that claimed rampant inflation was around the corner, explained high unemployment as being a "structural problem", assures us of the wonders of supply side tax cuts, and promoted "expansionary austerity". It would seem they are the ones in need of revising their priors, to use Bayesian terminology.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

ou linked. I briefly skimmed that 40 page paper and its 50 pages worth of appendices and I don't see anything there that would justify your statement. In general, I don't see the point to critiquing individual papers in this thread -- it's time consuming enough to answer stuff written by fellow boarders.

Well see they seemingly used a very large data set combining census information with tax records. And then they seemingly tested their data set by comparing it with the statistical results of the American Community Survey.

I'll quote some of it:

Quote

We combine two sources of data housed at the Census Bureau in our primary analysis: data from the Census 2000 and 2010 short forms and data drawn from federal income tax returns in 1989, 1994, 1995, and 1998-2015. For certain supplemental analyses, we also use data from the Census 2000 long form and the 2005-2015 American Community Surveys (ACS). The Census short forms are designed to cover the entire population; the Census 2000 long form is a stratified random sample covering approximately one-sixth of households; and the American Community Survey is a
stratified random sample covering approximately 2.5% of households in each year (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 2000; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 2003; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 2014).
These datasets are linked by a unique person identifier called a Protected Identification Key (PIK) that is assigned by Census Bureau staff using information such as Social Security Numbers (SSN), names, addresses, and dates of birth. The Census Bureau uses the Numident, a dataset covering all SSN holders, and other administrative data to assign PIKs. All analysis in this paper s conducted using a linked dataset that contains PIKs but is stripped of personally identifiable nformation.

 

Quote

In this appendix, we assess the representativeness of our analysis sample by comparing samplecounts and descriptive statistics to corresponding measures from publicly available survey datasets. We conduct three sets of analyses.

So it would seem the authors went to some lengths to get a very big data set and then did a "sanity check" by comparing it to the statistical information from the ACS.

Rather than giving us a specific criticism of their empirical methodology you instead would rather rely on a bunch of glittering generalities that I would argue make some questionable claims.

I feel like you are basically making the claim that we can't presume to know something unless we are 100% certain about it. But that is incorrect. In the real world, people and institutions have to make decisions all the time under a bit of uncertainty. So you do the best you can under what is probably likely the state of the world.

I'm not one to say that one should believe just one paper. But, this isn't the only paper or piece of empirical evidence that we have that race does affect income inequality or wealth inequality. There is other stuff out there.

Now of course you can say, "but, but, but, the relationship might change in the future!" But saying it "might" is not the same thing as saying it is probable. And you give no convincing case why it probably will.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

I told you in the US politics thread, it's divisive and it's leading to a place you probably don't want to go. This is simply my opinion (a guess informed by history and recent events) -- there are no rigorous arguments here and there will not be.

Certainly certain policy positions like advocating for gay marriage equality might ruffle some people's feathers. It doesn't mean it is the wrong position to take however.

Whenever some conservative sort of person goes on bleating about "identity politics" one of the problems I have is that it is hard to conceptually distinguish "identity politics" from "politics" in general. It would seem to me that throughout history various socio/economic and/or ethnic groups have advocated for some particularly policy position. The policy position maybe good or it maybe bad. But, I think making such a determination can't be simply made by labeling it "identity politics" which seems to me to be a pretty vague term.

Is a bunch of rich Republican white guys wanting tax cuts "identity politics"?

Back in the 1890s was it "identity politics" when midwestern farmers wanted silver to be added to the money supply.

Was the Prussian nobility's desire to keep tariffs on agriculture products "identity politics"? 

Please tell me the conceptual distinction between "identity politics" and "politics" in general. Cause I'm having a hard time figuring it out. Its sounds a lot like a made up conservative grievance, not that conservative sorts of people would do such a thing.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

It can certainly be stationary even the fluctuations are large, but the larger the fluctuations, the less useful it is for most purposes.

Less useful isn't the same as useless. A scientific sort of person would just say that their results are subject to less certainty, not that the information is completely useless, in moving our priors about how the world works.

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

Yes... but only if the institutional changes and such don't alter society to the extent that evaluating such series is no longer relevant.

Yeah but it's not a particularly good argument by you to just say that past relationships will not hold because said institutional changes might happen.  The sun may not rise tomorrow. It's possible. But, not likely.

It would be better if you gave a convincing case why said institutional changes will likely happen.

Again it seems to me that your saying  if we don't know something with 100% certainly then it's not "scientific". And that I do believe is wrong.

It seems you're quite fond of "anything could happenism", rather than making predictions on what is likely or probable to happen based on what is known.

[Rippounet]

9 hours ago, Altherion said:

The same can be said of academia as a whole

No. No, it' really can't.

Because let's rewind a little:

On 9/23/2018 at 3:50 AM, Altherion said:

However, there is nothing in this data that indicates who is disadvantaged and who is not -- they merely present a state of the system and not how the state was arrived at. The fact that at a given time, one group has more money than another says nothing about which one is disadvantaged -- it's entirely possible that, for example, the better off group works harder (on average) and/or has values better aligned with what it takes to make money right now (e.g. education). You need to tack things on to that data which do not follow from it in order to make the case about certain groups being disadvantaged and this is what people object to.

It seems you're not disagreeing with the data or the findings but with the interpretations.
And I guess that's fair, it's scientific even. As long as the alternative you're proposing is a better explanation for the data you have. If not, you're simply attempting to dismiss conclusions that don't fit your worldview.
Which... was my original assertion.

But it's funny because, if I think about it a bit, I believe what you're really trying to do is absolve society or history of any responsibility for the plight of minorities in the US, especially blacks, and shifting the blame back to individuals and their families. You're rejecting what I would call "macro-analyses" as well as historical perspective.
And that's a very conservative to do, saying that people shouldn't blame society or history, and instead improve their values and work hard for their family and their future. Which, quite frankly, when society and history haven't been on your side, is nothing but abject cruelty, since you're basically blaming the victim. Of course ideally there should be no such thing as determinism and each individual should have the same opportunities, regardless of their ethnicity (among other things). But we absolutely know this is not the case. Lack of social mobility in the US hardly needs to be proven ; the cost of higher education alone makes it easier to perpetuate existing inequalities. With segregation and discrimination having been illegal for only about fifty years and hate groups being on the rise today, arguing that there is no disadvantage for minorities in the US is truly an extraordinary proposition.
It's almost as if your entire notion of causality is completely out of whack.

[Chaircat Meow]

20 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Wow, @Altherion would you look at that. You try to attack academia and you get a creationist boarding your train.
Perhaps tomorrow you'll get a flat earther.
I'd say one reaps what they sow.

1. Evolution and natural selection say nothing about beliefs. They may talk about behaviors.
2. You are correct that whether our beliefs and belief systems are true or not doesn't affect evolution and natural selection as long as they don't affect our behaviors too much. Basically, purely abstract or metaphysical debates don't affect the physical realm. They do affect however the social sphere and how we organize our public affairs. It matters, but it's a different story entirely.

To be clear: it doesn't change anything whether you think thunder is produced by Zeus or a giant spaghetti monster as long as you know how to protect yourself from it.

You're obvously the living proof of that.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Seriously though, evolution generally happens over millenia*. Homo sapiens appeared tens of thousands of years ago, and may be as much as 300,000 years old. Needless to say, belief systems were very different back then, and most of it based on an imperfect understanding of the material world and how it works**.

*There are some counter-examples, but let's not get bogged into details.
**Of course, that doesn't mean that our understanding of how the world works is perfect now. Scientific conclusions are simply the best conclusions we have reached at a given point in time based on empirical observation and experimentation. As observation and experimentation progress, so does science evolve (See what I did here? Ha ha?). In a nutshell, science is not dogma or doctrine, as you seem to believe.

Anyway you don't have to attack evolution to believe you have an immortal soul, that there is a superior being judging your actions, or that the universe was created, or that you should worship the flying spaghetti monster with a siever on your head. Evolution isn't about you, your parents, or your children. It's about how biology changes over eons. Science is not about finding significance or meaning to the human condition, it simply seeks to help understand some of its parameters. You still have philosophy or religion for the rest if you need it.

Which part of what I said are you objecting to?

You've agreed with me that E&NS selects for behaviour, not beliefs, so we're still no nearer to seeing why we should assume, given we owe our cognitive faculties to E&NS on your view, that our cognitive abilities are reliable at generating true beliefs.

You then say evolution happened over a long time, which is not being denied. That it is justifiable to believe E&NS is being denied. 

[Seli]

15 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Which part of what I said are you objecting to?

You've agreed with me that E&NS selects for behaviour, not beliefs, so we're still no nearer to seeing why we should assume, given we owe our cognitive faculties to E&NS on your view, that our cognitive abilities are reliable at generating true beliefs.

You then say evolution happened over a long time, which is not being denied. E&NS is being denied. 

We have had a model of how a process very similar to evolution by natural selection can work on beliefs for decades. Although to be fair I don't know if there is a better theoretical framework to support that model these days. Since it was first popularized by a science communicator in a popular science book.

That model is of course the concept of memes and memeplexes, ideas and networks of ideas that live in our minds. Which can increase and decrease in popularity, similar to different alleles. And which could actually correlate to survival of populations.

 

I think this also correlates to some models of our minds. Where small models/ideas percolate and those who fit our surroundings survive. Mostly because increased quality of the model of our environment we have in our mind does correlate to our ability to survive. Which is where our ability to have beliefs can be easily selected for by basic evolutionary processes.

[alostsister]

"Science" follows an algorithm, a fancy term for a set of instructions/how-to. IE the Scientific Method- the How. As for Pseudoscience, just because it isn't widely accepted, doesn't mean it isn't credible. Einstein, Tesla, Bohr, Rutherford, Planck, Newton, Feinman all had curiosity and tried to figure out whys and hows by performing experiments/tests. 

"Studies" and "Observations" require energy and to be published, financial resources. Sometimes research might be classified under Pseudoscience due to the results and acceptance, or research may not be published because it is the opposite of the hoped-for results.  Quantum, for instance, states that the "parts are the sum of the whole" instead of the "whole is the sum of the parts ( the things that make up the object are the object vs the object is the object no more no less", and that an event, object, etc must be viewed or it doesn't exist. Or Research may not be published because it is the opposite of the hoped-for results.  As Hawking said about Biology "Too many variables".

[TrueMetis]

I've apparently lost a lot of my patience for this shit at some point. Like not to long ago I'd be perfectly willing to keep going even despite the fact I'm dealing with someone who apparently doesn't understand that beliefs affect behaviour and therefore can be selected for, and thinks that saying the only theories of mind that are compatible with evolution are the ones with actual supporting evidence is some kind of point.

 

You all have fun with this I've got a chem paper due soon.

[Rippounet]

13 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

You've agreed with me that E&NS selects for behaviour, not beliefs, so we're still no nearer to seeing why we should assume, given we owe our cognitive faculties to E&NS on your view, that our cognitive abilities are reliable at generating true beliefs.

Silly you, that's just a logical fallacy.
The fact that natural selection doesn't favor individuals holding true beliefs (that don't affect behavior) does not imply that humans cannot reach true beliefs.
A different way to put it is that natural selection favors individuals whose brain is better at assessing the material world, but it remains up to individuals to form a mental picture of the world that is as accurate as possible through experience. Not just through individual experience, but also by using the combined experience of many generations and entire civilizations, thanks to language and writing.
And we know that some beliefs are "truer" than others if they explain the material world better and/or give us more influence over it.
Mistakes are still possible, but all humans are able to look at two theories about the material world (including human societies) and see which one does better at describing and explaining it (not to mention, making predictions). The implications will always be up for debate, of course. Weirdly enough, humans don't always modify their behavior, even when confronted with theories telling them they should.

Anyway, you talk of evolution and natural selection as if it were an abstraction or a metaphysical thought experiment when on the contrary it is based almost exclusively on material elements. For instance:

Quote

Therefore, if we suppose evolution and natural selection is true we have good grounds for thinking any and all beliefs generated by the belief-causing structure it provides are likely to be false, or as likely to be false as they are to be true, which includes the belief in evolution via natural selection.

This could be true... If you dismissed all the material evidence there is for evolution and natural selection.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Yeah this entire line of reasoning is as clearly flawed as the thing @Ser Scot A Ellison likes to say about how arguing for moral relativism is a paradox because saying something is relative is an absolute statement.  It's an argument that relies on, at best, a shaky semantic foundation and then just spirals into utter nonsense.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

22 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Yeah this entire line of reasoning is as clearly flawed as the thing @Ser Scot A Ellison likes to say about how arguing for moral relativism is a paradox because saying something is relative is an absolute statement.  It's an argument that relies on, at best, a shaky semantic foundation and then just spirals into utter nonsense.

 

Not “something”.  Saying “all things are relative” is an absolute statement.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Not “something”.  Saying “all things are relative” is an absolute statement.

Semantics, at best.

[A wilding]

1 hour ago, alostsister said:

As for Pseudoscience, just because it isn't widely accepted, doesn't mean it isn't credible. Einstein, Tesla, Bohr, Rutherford, Planck, Newton, Feinman all had curiosity and tried to figure out whys and hows by performing experiments/tests. 
 

 

Pseudoscience, by definition is not credible, while sadly being all too widely accepted. Conflating pseudoscience with the ideas thrown out by a list of great physicists is frankly insulting to them. They all understood the scientific method, and tried to come up with hypotheses that were falsifiable (even if most of them were theoretical physicists who left the experiments to other people).

[Chaircat Meow]

51 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Silly you, that's just a logical fallacy.
The fact that natural selection doesn't favor individuals holding true beliefs (that don't affect behavior) does not imply that humans cannot reach true beliefs.

It implies the likelihood of our having enough true beliefs to repose trust in our faculties is low. So if you assume there is no connection between behaviour and belief, as one is selected for as it is causal, the other isn't as it's not, you'd have about 50/50 chance of a given belief being true. And if that's the case the odds of you having enough true beliefs to think your faculties are reliable (say 70%) would be really low.

 

51 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

A different way to put it is that natural selection favors individuals whose brain is better at assessing the material world, but it remains up to individuals to form a mental picture of the world that is as accurate as possible through experience. Not just through individual experience, but also by using the combined experience of many generations and entire civilizations, thanks to language and writing.

Well that's just vague.

Come on, the theory says survival is selected for not true beliefs. Unless you have some reason to think survival enhancing behaviours go along with true beliefs you can't suppose successful species are likely to have true beliefs. And if you don't have reliable belief forming mechanisms, as E&NS never caused you to have them, it is unclear how you would go about getting them, as you lack the ability to form them, writing and civilisation not withstanding.

 

51 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

And we know that some beliefs are "truer" than others if they explain the material world better and/or give us more influence over it.
Mistakes are still possible, but all humans are able to look at two theories about the material world (including human societies) and see which one does better at describing and explaining it (not to mention, making predictions). The implications will always be up for debate, of course. Weirdly enough, humans don't always modify their behavior, even when confronted with theories telling them they should.

Anyway, you talk of evolution and natural selection as if it were an abstraction or a metaphysical thought experiment when on the contrary it is based almost exclusively on material elements. For instance:

 Well obviously I agree we do have reliable cognitive faculties. That's fine and is not at issue. The issue is if we suppose E&NS is true we have very good reasons for thinking we don't have reliable faculties and thereby beliefs that don't explain the world well but only seem to.

Beliefs could explain the world well and give us influence and be all false. I even gave examples, like the tribesmen who run away from the lions so they don't make friends because they are scared of the giant penguin. 

 

51 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

This could be true... If you dismissed all the material evidence there is for evolution and natural selection.

 

No, material evidence taken to provide support for E&NS on the basis of cognitive faculties that are unlikely to be right given E&NS.

 

 

 

 

[Chaircat Meow]

40 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Yeah this entire line of reasoning is as clearly flawed as the thing @Ser Scot A Ellison likes to say about how arguing for moral relativism is a paradox because saying something is relative is an absolute statement.  It's an argument that relies on, at best, a shaky semantic foundation and then just spirals into utter nonsense.

 

Have you heard the one about the barber who only shaves those who don't shave themselves?

[Larry of the Lawn]

11 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

It implies the likelihood of our having enough true beliefs to repose trust in our faculties is low. So if you assume there is no connection between behaviour and belief, as one is selected for as it is causal, the other isn't as it's not, you'd have about 50/50 chance of a given belief being true. And if that's the case the odds of you having enough true beliefs to think your faculties are reliable (say 70%) would be really low.

 

Well that's just vague.

Come on, the theory says survival is selected for not true beliefs. Unless you have some reason to think survival enhancing behaviours go along with true beliefs you can't suppose successful species are likely to have true beliefs. And if you don't have reliable belief forming mechanisms, as E&NS never caused you to have them, it is unclear how you would go about getting them, as you lack the ability to form them, writing and civilisation not withstanding.

 

 Well obviously I agree we do have reliable cognitive faculties. That's fine and is not at issue. The issue is if we suppose E&NS is true we have very good reasons for thinking we don't have reliable faculties and thereby beliefs that don't explain the world well but only seem to.

Beliefs could explain the world well and give us influence and be all false. I even gave examples, like the tribesmen who run away from the lions so they don't make friends because they are scared of the giant penguin. 

 

 

No, material evidence taken to provide support for E&NS on the basis of cognitive faculties that are unlikely to be right given E&NS.

 

 

 

 

"since our senses are unreliable even all the evidence garnered by the entire history of science is probably wrong".  This is lazy intellectual nihilism and nothing more.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

31 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Semantics, at best.

No.  If “all things are relative” then relativity is within the set of all things that must be relative.  This means that relativity itself (if all things are relative) must include some absolutes.  It “all things are relative” is a self contradictory statement.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Have you heard the one about the barber who only shaves those who don't shave themselves?

I have.  I’ve also heard about “the set of all sets not contained in a set”.