How does science work?

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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RCSaunders
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Re: How does science work?

Post by RCSaunders »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 2:45 pm Notice that you ignored my key point. Even if analysis showed human error on behalf of your engineers, who ought to be held responsible for hiring incompetent engineers? Who ought to be held responsible for having insufficient checks&balances in their end-to-end process?
Then I don't know what your point is.

First, let's get something straight. There is a difference between, "human error," and incompetence. Perhaps you have not worked in management, but I can assure you, all the root cause analysis in the world will not cure incompetence. I would never hold anyone responsible for honest ignorance, but there is a difference between honest ignorance and a refusal to learn, which most claims of ignorance really are. Occasionally, an individual will not fit a certain job description just because it does not fit that individual's personality. In those cases it is absurd to attempt to train or force such an individual into a position he can neither enjoy or perform well. I have fired such individuals who have come back to me to thank me, because they were then motivated to find something they could do well and enjoy.

The biggest problem with so-called root cause analysis is that there is almost never a root cause, because production problems are always complex with many different contributing factors that must all be addressed according to their specific impact on the production process, and it is almost impossible to make an MBA understand that. ("... insufficient checks&balances in their end-to-end process" ... sounds like typical MBA-babble.)

Many business managers fail because they do not understand that every individual is different, and every production method is different and there is no procedure, system, or formula that will solve the problems of either, because the problems are all different as well.

Who's responsible for hiring incompetent engineers? Almost always it's HR. Department managers who hire their own engineers seldom make that mistake because they have a vested interest in their worker's competence and success.
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Re: How does science work?

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RCSaunders wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:04 pm Who's responsible for hiring incompetent engineers? Almost always it's HR.
Who allowed/delegated to HR the task of hiring engineers? Who tasked non-technical recruiters to assess technical skills?

Isn't this your hypothetical company we are talking about? First you were scapegoating your engineers, now you are scapegoating HR.

You sound like a real piece of shit boss. If your company builds bridges and your product fails - you are responsible.

Not your incompetent engineers (which HR hired and your managers kept).
Not your incompetent managers (which HR hired and you kept).

You are responsible. Your company - your decisions - your fuckup.

My point is as simple as the question which might get posed to you in a criminal proceeding following the death of people using your company's bridges.

How long before the collapse of the bridge did you become aware of your engineering and HR teams' incompetence?
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RCSaunders
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Re: How does science work?

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Skepdick wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:21 pm You sound like a real piece of shit boss...
Is that from your resume?

I'm sure you wouldn't have liked me as a boss. I was very demanding. I expected my employees to produce what they were being payed to produce. While I was always willing to help any of my employees work out how they wanted to perform their work, I did not hold their hands and guide them step-by-step. They were all grown-up self-starters. Most of my management was making sure my workers had the resources they needed to do their work, and as little interference as possible from others.

Because I understood that everybody is different and everyone's personal methods are different, I never demanded that some Company SOP be followed. Except when it was necessary for individual employees to interface with other departments, I did not hold any of my employees to any particular time schedule. They did their work at times that were best for them. I was only interested in the quality and timeliness of their product, not how or when they produced it. They were salaried. Some days they did not show up, but my department always delivered faultless products on time.

I received lots of complaints and criticisms from some upper management, but never from any of my employees. [Two managers, at different companies, who complained and tried to make trouble for me were fired for incompetence.] I considered it one of my responsibilities to insulate my employees from unreasonable and frequently wasteful demands of non-productive management. The fired managers had the same opinion of me as a boss as you, apparently you and they think alike.
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Re: How does science work?

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RCSaunders wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 7:14 pm
Skepdick wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:21 pm You sound like a real piece of shit boss...
Is that from your resume?
No. Just from your inability to focus on what matters. Safety.

Here are the questions you are still refusing to answer (while boring us with your career).

1. Will firing your engineers prevent recurrence of the bridge collapse?
2. How long before the collapse of the bridge did you become aware of the incompetence of your employees?
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RCSaunders
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Re: How does science work?

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Skepdick wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 7:18 pm Here are the questions you are still refusing to answer (while boring us with your career).
I do not mean to deflate your ego but I have no obligation to answer your disingenuous questions.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by Skepdick »

RCSaunders wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 7:33 pm
Skepdick wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 7:18 pm Here are the questions you are still refusing to answer (while boring us with your career).
I do not mean to deflate your ego but I have no obligation to answer your disingenuous questions.
What the hell is a "disingenuous question"? I am asking. You are refusing to answer.

That's why most legal systems have the right to non-self incrimination.

If you own the company, and you knew that your recruitment team is hiring incompetent engineers, and you allowed those incompetent engineers to sign-off bridges as "safe" - it's your fault. Not the HR team, not the engineers. You are responsible.

The rest is scapegoating to cover your own, incompetent ass.

Here is wisdom. How complex systems fail..

Bridge-building projects are pretty complex, but fairly mature social systems. Pay attention to points 2 and 3.
2) Complex systems are heavily and successfully defended against failure.
The high consequences of failure lead over time to the construction of multiple layers of
defense against failure. These defenses include obvious technical components (e.g.
backup systems, ‘safety’ features of equipment) and human components (e.g. training,
knowledge) but also a variety of organizational, institutional, and regulatory defenses
(e.g. policies and procedures, certification, work rules, team training). The effect of these
measures is to provide a series of shields that normally divert operations away from
accidents.
3) Catastrophe requires multiple failures – single point failures are not enough..
The array of defenses works. System operations are generally successful. Overt
catastrophic failure occurs when small, apparently innocuous failures join to create
opportunity for a systemic accident. Each of these small failures is necessary to cause
catastrophe but only the combination is sufficient to permit failure. Put another way,
there are many more failure opportunities than overt system accidents. Most initial
failure trajectories are blocked by designed system safety components. Trajectories that
reach the operational level are mostly blocked, usually by practitioners.
If a bridge collapses, it is never ONLY because your "engineers are incompetent". More components had to fail. Leadership for one.
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RCSaunders
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Re: How does science work?

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Skepdick wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:08 pm What the hell is a "disingenuous question"?
It's just like this question. It's a subtle way of telling a lie, a pretense of ignorance.
Scott Mayers
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Re: How does science work?

Post by Scott Mayers »

uwot wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2019 8:04 am
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pm
I wrote: no amount of empirical evidence (or logic) can prove a scientific claim.
I underlined the above to point out that this is the stated example OF our 'paradigm' that is blinding us today.
It's the problem of induction.
In part. I take issue with the "(or logic)" part and believe that you can use more local initial empirical observations. If nature by itself 'created' itself, even such a non-observing reality had to have had some rationale that brought about our reality without a need for special laws that come from gods to dictate.
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmThere HAS to be a reality about Totality (meaning the absolute whole of which our Universe is a subset) that rationally 'explains' how our contingent world's laws are about and why.
Well yeah, the universe is what it is, and it does what it does. The thing is, no matter how well a theory accounts for the known behaviour of the universe, there is no way to know that it will account for all future observations. All theories are underdetermined. Maybe some bright spark will discover the Ultimate Truth. Trouble is, we'll never know it.
Again, I am troubled with this presumption. It's one of those logical circular claims: that there is absolutely no certainty. If this statement is an exception, then the choices made to 'determine' what is or is not true is related to the subjective person's capacity to observe. As to the community of subjects who are scientists, demarcation for the 'fringes' can be more political given they are harder to use the same methods we use for all the science in between. (and why I agree with Kuhn on paradigms.)

I mentioned that his parents were left-wing. I've no idea what Kuhn's personal politics were, but given that he lived through McCarthyism with no ill effects that I'm aware of, I'd be interested to know why you imply he was a communist.
It seems in context he is familiar with Karl Marx's "material dialectic and possibly Hegel directly. Marx argues that politics goes through cyclic phases in history. That they begin well intended and possibly constructive, they eventually end up becoming abusive by how we tend to eventually pass down the reigns of power rather and the latter generations getting spoiled. Thus the 'revolutions' and justification to overthrow the last governments with necessary force against those conserving the status quo. So they are almost certainly linked.

[more later]
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Re: How does science work?

Post by Scott Mayers »

uwot wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2019 8:04 am
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmI have a pointed example of how the paradigm on Einstein relates to Aristotle and other philosophies overlooked. Aristotle's explanation of why something continues to move, though not seemingly correct, is reconstructed through relativity.
It really isn't. Pretty much everything Aristotle said about why things move and continue to move is complete bollocks.
Coming from his perspective you have to interpret them IN their 'paradigm' with certain charity. I know a lot of people oddly interpret Plato too on 'forms' and so am skeptical of the WAY some may be reading into past works. He was the one we have as an extant source for the Zeno paradoxes and, to tie in to the next response,...
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmIn particular, Zeno's paradox of The Arrow, is where Einstein's idea likely came from either directly or indirectly. That the SHAPE of something changes when moving, is akin to Aristotle's' interpretation of what the difference between an arrow standing still versus one moving comes from.
Well Zeno's argument was that the arrow couldn't move and that change is therefore an illusion. I made that point in another article 5 years ago: https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/Ph ... d_Branches Einstein's claim was that objects moving relative to you, specifically coming towards you, appear shorter in the direction of travel. This is based on Lorentz transformation which is basically a consequence of the Doppler effect. If moving objects actually became shorter, they would appear even shorter than they in fact do.
The paradox resolution I understood by Aristotle was to assume that the 'force' that initiates an object stays with it. This error is only trivial because while the literal defined concept by Newton doesn't require this, the understanding without needed depth is that some information is still transferred to the object that stays with it. Where Aristotle proposed a kind of energy from the front of the arrow coming around to its rear end, Einstein has just replaced this concept with the change of shape. In a sense, it still operates similar to Aristotle's idea but by getting down to the atomic level, something Aristotle would not be privileged to to in his day.
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmAlso, because of the way I learn by attempting to reconstruct the theories from how the past learned step by step...
That's pretty much what Kuhn advocated. As the article quotes Kuhn: “When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them”
I'm glad for this era of the Internet and libraries (when I started). People learn differently depending on their interests and needs. But for the kind of thinking with respect to theories, I think philosophy is the proper approach to 'find' (as in 'foundational') meaning and understanding of motives and self-discovery with more priority than the means of being lead into learning where the student is not permitted the freedoms to be philosophical as much until they have earned the 'labor of science' before the mastery.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by uwot »

Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amI take issue with the "(or logic)" part and believe that you can use more local initial empirical observations.
As it happens, that parenthesis was tacked on by the editors. Didn't challenge it when the proofs came back, because I can see their point, but I'm not going to argue it.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amIf nature by itself 'created' itself, even such a non-observing reality had to have had some rationale that brought about our reality without a need for special laws that come from gods to dictate.
I've no idea whether nature created itself. Nor why there had to be some rationale. I suppose that's where logic comes in, as I cannot imagine any sound argument that could demonstrate any necessity.
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmAgain, I am troubled with this presumption. It's one of those logical circular claims: that there is absolutely no certainty. If this statement is an exception, then the choices made to 'determine' what is or is not true is related to the subjective person's capacity to observe.
Granted we can't be absolutely certain there's no certainty. So, er, there is absolutely no certainty. Yeah, it's not very impressive, but I don't see how you break the circle. Underdetermination is no biggie, it's basically the fact that we cannot know that all our predictions will come true until they do. Or don't.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amAs to the community of subjects who are scientists, demarcation for the 'fringes' can be more political given they are harder to use the same methods we use for all the science in between. (and why I agree with Kuhn on paradigms.)
Sure they can be overtly political, but could you tell the political allegiances of say, a string theorist as opposed to an advocate of loop-quantum gravity?
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amIt seems in context he is familiar with Karl Marx's "material dialectic and possibly Hegel directly. Marx argues that politics goes through cyclic phases in history. That they begin well intended and possibly constructive, they eventually end up becoming abusive by how we tend to eventually pass down the reigns of power rather and the latter generations getting spoiled. Thus the 'revolutions' and justification to overthrow the last governments with necessary force against those conserving the status quo. So they are almost certainly linked.
I think it is very unlikely that anyone within sniffing distance of a philosophy department in the 20th century wasn't aware of Marx and Hegel. I suppose you could construe the dialectical trinity of thesis, antithesis and synthesis as prediction, null result and paradigm shift, but it seems a stretch.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by uwot »

Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amComing from his perspective you have to interpret them IN their 'paradigm' with certain charity.
Well again, as I quoted Kuhn in the article: “When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them”
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amI know a lot of people oddly interpret Plato too on 'forms' and so am skeptical of the WAY some may be reading into past works.
You and me both!
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amThe paradox resolution I understood by Aristotle was to assume that the 'force' that initiates an object stays with it. This error is only trivial because while the literal defined concept by Newton doesn't require this, the understanding without needed depth is that some information is still transferred to the object that stays with it. Where Aristotle proposed a kind of energy from the front of the arrow coming around to its rear end, Einstein has just replaced this concept with the change of shape. In a sense, it still operates similar to Aristotle's idea but by getting down to the atomic level, something Aristotle would not be privileged to to in his day.
Well, that's one way to interpret Einstein. I've always assumed that it is the movement of the arrow that changes the shape of spacetime rather than the other way round.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amI'm glad for this era of the Internet and libraries (when I started). People learn differently depending on their interests and needs.
The internet is a wonderful thing, but it does give cranks like flat-earthers the platform to make more noise than their fruitloopery deserves.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amBut for the kind of thinking with respect to theories, I think philosophy is the proper approach to 'find' (as in 'foundational') meaning and understanding of motives and self-discovery with more priority than the means of being lead into learning where the student is not permitted the freedoms to be philosophical as much until they have earned the 'labor of science' before the mastery.
True, there is currently no mature science of meaning and understanding. Personally I think it's a thankless task, but some people are working on it.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by Scott Mayers »

uwot wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:37 am
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amI take issue with the "(or logic)" part and believe that you can use more local initial empirical observations.
As it happens, that parenthesis was tacked on by the editors. Didn't challenge it when the proofs came back, because I can see their point, but I'm not going to argue it.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amIf nature by itself 'created' itself, even such a non-observing reality had to have had some rationale that brought about our reality without a need for special laws that come from gods to dictate.
I've no idea whether nature created itself. Nor why there had to be some rationale. I suppose that's where logic comes in, as I cannot imagine any sound argument that could demonstrate any necessity.
If we treat everything as a container with a question mark with any possible ports (inputs and/or outputs) or contact points of the structure representing the interface of the rest of reality, I think of science (in general) as using observation to try to interpret how the exchanges of environmental factors ("data" in the most general way) interact with or through this unknown container. This is reverse engineering of particular parts of reality to determine its logic. Since everything is just about finding patterns of behavior, the patterns form the rules of the logic of this machine [as a container, portal, or point that exchanges information]. Then we test it to see if it conforms to the presumed logic and if it does, it becomes convenient to become a successful discovery that we may use for prediction purposes or to create new technology.

If you also treat each environmental factor (the relative 'data') that gets input, output, or bounced off of it as 'containers' also, then everything can be reduced to LOGIC. Nature, for our contingent Universe, is just a subset of all the possible abstract logics in which those that 'fit' to consistent stories (or worlds) just happen to be interpreted by our perspective as those "laws" of physics.

We don't necessarily have to know what is inside the box -- at first -- to begin our 'science' in determining the how the box exchanges information/energy. But then when or where we can, we then try to break that container open into subcomponent unknowns and repeat this process. We don't necessarily NEED to always know for certain what is precisely inside if we can find elemental machines (another word for these containers) but we can still induce ACROSS all machines to determine the smallest logical-type units. If we can use these to explain everything from this induced set of meta-logical elements, these can then act AS the elements without having to literally prove it because we've already agreed that science is about determining the PRACTICAL truths.

Another way of thinking of this is to imagine us using computer programs to create virtual worlds such that if we could recreate a world within it that simulates ours precisely, this demonstrates the possibility of whatever logic used to get us there to infer that we too were possibly derived similarly. That would then also 'prove' the component logical elements suffice to describe reality without needing to know if it was exact. Then we only requestion this if we find the machine does something unexpected OR we can seek different computer languages to see which architecture COVERS all cases. [This can also require a collection of architectures and where the limits in a single logic doesn't mean there is no real overall reality consisting of logic but rather a SET of logics.]
uwot wrote:
Scott Mayers wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmAgain, I am troubled with this presumption. It's one of those logical circular claims: that there is absolutely no certainty. If this statement is an exception, then the choices made to 'determine' what is or is not true is related to the subjective person's capacity to observe.
Granted we can't be absolutely certain there's no certainty. So, er, there is absolutely no certainty. Yeah, it's not very impressive, but I don't see how you break the circle. Underdetermination is no biggie, it's basically the fact that we cannot know that all our predictions will come true until they do. Or don't.
What is important is to recognize the contradiction and then stop using it as a blanket statement about the supremacy of the institute of science. This contradiction proves that the resolution HAS to be political only. And since nature's truth could care less about how popular any collection of humans deem it is, then we at least can use logical dialectic through 'philosophy' to try to find the mechanism of reality that everyone can agree to regardless of what background they have. This is where philosophy to me is more important to keep open to all topics of human concern. It 'governs' all areas in this way.

What is 'certain' to us about reality, especially physics, is that our existence assures we are founded on some 'logic of patterns' that themselves don't have to be anything more than accidental pixels on a screen that form pictures that give us the illusion of meaning. And THIS CAN BE determined as a certainty without a need for a 'qualified' scientific consensus. The premises in logic that we treat as initial assumptions can have a mathematical-calculus like solution that demonstrates approaches to zero where we know we can never get to but KNOW it still exists.

Then we can reintroduce the 'a priori' reasoning that usually gets abused and what caused the questions raised about demarcation of science in the first place: the inappropriate uses of logic by the 'religious' thinking (or any similar artistic imposition of truth upon reality). The problem was assuming that as long as A logic is sufficiently functional and true for some, that it is 'universal'. Then it gets abused by permitting inputs that are not 'sound' (formal meaning of the word). This errors we have made are like the child attempting to put a toaster waffle into the opening of a VCR. The VCR is a real logical machine but we cannot allow just ANY inputs to it. The same has been used of reasoning that goes against physics that compete against other human concerns politically.

I don't like HOW Hegel expressed his philosophy but recognize it as just someone recognizing multivariable logic. Something is A, not-A, or both (which equals neither in this context). As such, The paradigms of Kuhn may be thought of as the cultural political and real environmental limitations of a time, an era, or place, that FRAMES how the politics of the ANALYTICAL types to which science is one behaves in practice. Given A = Ancient Egypt at the time of the pyramids, the limitations are such that even if we could travel in a time machine back to that time with all the intelligence in the world about things, we would not 'fit' and thus be a factor of "not-A". There is no possible way we could actually be successful, for instance, in 'proving' to anyone a cellphone could exist because that tech depends upon all the infrastructure evolved through the times along with the general population's wisdom that goes into producing all the parts for it, etc. THIS is what I understood of Kuhn's 'paradigms'. All the factors of a time and place contribute into the political institute that becomes the defining ruler of what 'science' can discover, what 'tech' can follow, etc.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by Scott Mayers »

uwot wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:00 am
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amThe paradox resolution I understood by Aristotle was to assume that the 'force' that initiates an object stays with it. This error is only trivial because while the literal defined concept by Newton doesn't require this, the understanding without needed depth is that some information is still transferred to the object that stays with it. Where Aristotle proposed a kind of energy from the front of the arrow coming around to its rear end, Einstein has just replaced this concept with the change of shape. In a sense, it still operates similar to Aristotle's idea but by getting down to the atomic level, something Aristotle would not be privileged to to in his day.
Well, that's one way to interpret Einstein. I've always assumed that it is the movement of the arrow that changes the shape of spacetime rather than the other way round.
Wasn't one side of the equation of Einstein's general theory about expressing this 'relativity' of spacetime to matter? The cause of the movement is the 'force' and what is incorrectly interpreted by Aristotle's explanation as persisting in the arrow. But when reinterpreted about WHAT the force 'informed' upon the arrow that does stay within the object -- its relative potential energy to it's prior state of reference or frame -- then it makes sense to justify Aristotle through the added understanding of Einstein. That is, Aristotle's explanation 'fits' with the modern understanding of potential relative energy of a kinetic object should it return back to its initial frame of reference. The 'shape' is what Einstein expressed this as. But he also had the advantage of knowing that there is a fixed and limited speed to everything.....Aristotle didn't. THAT lack of knowledge for Aristotle is what made his 'theory' unsound. And it related to the 'paradigm' of his time and place in history.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amI'm glad for this era of the Internet and libraries (when I started). People learn differently depending on their interests and needs.
The internet is a wonderful thing, but it does give cranks like flat-earthers the platform to make more noise than their fruitloopery deserves.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 6:03 amBut for the kind of thinking with respect to theories, I think philosophy is the proper approach to 'find' (as in 'foundational') meaning and understanding of motives and self-discovery with more priority than the means of being lead into learning where the student is not permitted the freedoms to be philosophical as much until they have earned the 'labor of science' before the mastery.
True, there is currently no mature science of meaning and understanding. Personally I think it's a thankless task, but some people are working on it.
We are entering a phase of controls on the Internet that scares me way more! I'd rather keep all the crap if even 99.9% of it was junk for the preservation of tat 0.01% that is valuable and FREE to access. My province of Saskatchewan [Canada] just passed another law that permits government censors through our spy agencies to REDIRECT our searches. The excuse is about those terrorists seemingly spreading 'flat-earth'-like myths that are arousing the politics that WILL get used eventually to also prevent us from learning of that 0.01% with ease. The particular excuse is about 'extremists' regarding presumed Nazis everywhere spreading hate propaganda. To me, the censorship and spying only makes me fear that the actual censors are as equally as irrational and more dangerous for this power. Philosophy is a 'safe haven' to at least permit us to speak on science just as the very same kind of censorship is permeated through those forums too.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by uwot »

Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:35 pmIf we treat everything as a container with a question mark with any possible ports (inputs and/or outputs) or contact points of the structure representing the interface of the rest of reality, I think of science (in general) as using observation to try to interpret how the exchanges of environmental factors ("data" in the most general way) interact with or through this unknown container.
Scott, this is bloody hard work. It sounds like everything is in a box, but outside this box of everything is the rest of reality to which everything, which clearly isn't everything, is connected by inputs and outputs, and maybe question marks.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:35 pmThis is reverse engineering of particular parts of reality to determine its logic.
Whut? Sorry mate, I give up. I'm clearly not in your league.
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Re: How does science work?

Post by Scott Mayers »

uwot wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 11:51 pm
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:35 pmIf we treat everything as a container with a question mark with any possible ports (inputs and/or outputs) or contact points of the structure representing the interface of the rest of reality, I think of science (in general) as using observation to try to interpret how the exchanges of environmental factors ("data" in the most general way) interact with or through this unknown container.
Scott, this is bloody hard work. It sounds like everything is in a box, but outside this box of everything is the rest of reality to which everything, which clearly isn't everything, is connected by inputs and outputs, and maybe question marks.
Scott Mayers wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2019 4:35 pmThis is reverse engineering of particular parts of reality to determine its logic.
Whut? Sorry mate, I give up. I'm clearly not in your league.
Sorry for confusing you. I understand and follow you but obviously need better means of expressing myself to you. I guess I need literal illustrations rather than words to express myself but am not at present in an artistic mindset. I'll have to get back to you when I'm prepared to do these. Just be patient with me.
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