seebs

And how many counterexamples do you need to not make this assumption? One? A hundred?

I don't think it's a good habit to make too many assumptions about people.

beyelzu

also read "whats so great about america" by denish dsouza. he covers this in the chapter talking about why people hate america. also starboy, you talk about he problem of first century thinking and use bush as an example. i think the biggest problem in american foriegn policy is that we too often dont exercise our powers enough. some people you just cant come to a mutual understanding with and if they are a threat to you, then you have to destroy them. north korea has the 4th or 5th biggest army in the world. they would like nothing better than to invade south korea again. and they need to be dealt with in a military fashion. you cannot compromise and bargain with terrorists, fundamentalists, or crackpots. there just is no middle ground.

beyelzu

seebs, if i meet 99 atheists and they are all assholes and then i meet one atheist who isnt , then i will figure that one in a hundred atheists arent assholes and act accordingly.

beyelzu

also amie brought up the example using atheists so i then used it. but for the record i am an atheist.

seebs

Hmm. I tend to overcompensate for stereotypes, I think; if I meet 99 jerks from a given belief system, and 1 decent guy, I try to give everyone else a *chance*, at least.

beyelzu

i respect your point of veiw seebs, but it is often easier to do the opposite.

seebs

Indeed. If it weren't easier to stereotype than not, I wouldn't make such an effort to resist stereotypes when I see them forming. I try to compensate for the known errors in my brain.

Starboy

seebs, why hold results tentatively and require they be verified if they are *believed*?

Starboy

seebs

What difference does "verification" make unless we believe that the "results" represent some real thing?

To say "I have repeated this experiment, and gotten the same results" is to make a claim of external truth; we claim that the results genuinely resulted from the experiment.

Verification is intended to address other sources of variance - but that's in terms of the *theory*. We always assume that the results we got really are results, and really did get gotten. We might believe that our *instruments* failed - perhaps we got a miscalibrated thermometer - but we assume that it is meaningful to say "the thermometer reported 72". Science depends on the belief that it is possible to answer questions like "what does this meter read right now". If there's no true answer to that, the whole thing falls down.

Starboy

I think your diffuculty stems from your equating "truth" with reality. You appear to think that we can just know reality. And since you think we just know reality therefore we know the "truth". But you see we don't just know reality. If we knew reality there would be no need for science. Science is an attempt to know reality by guessing and testing. The test is also a guess, because the test is constructed and interpreted based on the guess. All of this does assume that there is a reality, but don't forget, an assumtion is also a guess.

Let us use your thermometer example to illustraite this point. When you read the number 72 you are making a measurement based on the theory of the expansion of liquids. The theory is used to interpret the measurement. If the theory turns out to be wrong, what does this do to the reality/"truth" of your measurement?

Even so, you could still use the thermometer, you would just have to be wary that under certain circumstances it could be wrong. You would also have to factor into the interpretation and construction of your experiment the possible effects of using a measurement from a thermometer that could be wrong.

This is just a taste of how difficult it is to construct experiments. As has been noted by many scientific greats, what is amazing about science is not that we have learned so much, but that we can learn anything at all.

Science does rely on measurements, but those measurements are not independent of the guesses they are made for.

Guessing is not an act of belief, it is the process of creating working hypotheses. It is the act of creating knowledge. Add to that the process of testing and you get scientific knowledge.

Starboy