If you are a computer program, then you have no hair, and my hypothesis would be correct.
And in order to conclude that, a premise is that computer programs can't grow hair. By definition or whatever. An axiom.
Quote (HarbingerDawn)
Following this logic, you could follow the development of scientific ideology back to a point where hardly any rational person would call it "science"
Ultimately, science and philosophy are the same, and philosophy goes back as far as man has been able to reason about his existence. Your definition of "science" might be more contemporary coloured than mine. Could we then follow your logic and say that sufficiently far into the future hardly any rational person would call what we have today "science"?
Quote (HarbingerDawn)
Thus I argue that while they may have applied SOME methods of science in that story, overall it was pretty unscientific.
If you feed a method with garbage, it just means that you get garbage out, not that the method is unscientific. The biggest problem with the method in this case, however, isn't that the premises were wrong (garbage). Much more that the result was far from statistically significant (just one child and the story doesn't say anything about the second child). By today's standards we can therefore call the method "unscientific", but not for the premises used for the conclusion.
Quote (NovaSilisko)
Only on this forum...
The topic on speech impediments and linguistic evolution reminded me of this story, and I wanted to share it since there might be many science minded people here. Quod erat demonstrandum.
And in order to conclude that, a premise is that computer programs can't grow hair.
Ok, then if you as a computer program can grow hair then my hypothesis would be proven false. The point is that I don't have to assume anything that has not been demonstrated in order to reach a conclusion, other than solipsism being false, which is an exceptional case.
Quote (midtskogen)
Could we then follow your logic and say that sufficiently far into the future hardly any rational person would call what we have today "science"?
It's certainly conceivable, though I can't say for sure without knowing what kind of further developments of principles and methods science is capable of making. And if science did radically change in the future and become a superior truth-seeking mechanism to what we have today, then I would not begrudge anyone in the future who decided that what we currently call science doesn't fully qualify as science.
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Your definition of "scientific hypothesis" seems to differ slightly with contemporary use, which is an educated guess, that a hypothesis needs to be backed up with substantial empirical evidence. It's not just any statement pulled out of thin air. On the other hand Newton wrote "hypotheses non fingo", and he seems to declare that "scientific hypothesis" is an oxymoron ("hypotheses in philosophia experimentali locum non habent")
Quote (HarbingerDawn)
For all practical purposes, solipsism should be treated as false unless it is proven true, and even then a very strong case could be made for treating it as false.
I think solipsism is a position that ultimately must be based on faith, and equally the position that it is false. In order to reason about anything at all, you need to start out with some things unproven, but in my view you can reason more and more interestingly from the position that solipsism is false.
Your definition of "scientific hypothesis" seems to differ slightly with contemporary use, which is an educated guess, that a hypothesis needs to be backed up with substantial empirical evidence.
In this case my hypothesis was a "common" one, not a "scientific" one. I guess I should have made that clear since we were talking in the context of scientific methodology. My bad. But it seems to me that there will be cases in which a hypothesis will have to be a shot in the dark with no particular reason to believe that it is true, so that seems scientifically valid to me as well, provided you don't make undemonstrated assumptions.
Quote (midtskogen)
In order to reason about anything at all, you need to start out with some things unproven, but in my view you can reason more and more interestingly from the position that solipsism is false.
You exist in a world that has a set of rules and consequences. This is true regardless of whether solipsism is true or false. So even if it were true you could still not ignore the rules of the reality in which you exist, and as such would still need to act as if solipsism were false. So it's not just a question of better reasoning, it's a matter of necessity to assume that solipsism is false, since you need to act that way in any case. (If some of that didn't make much sense it's because we've reached my knowledge/ignorance boundary and begun crossing onto the ignorance side of the border).
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You exist in a world that has a set of rules and consequences.
That is still unproven. Descartes tried with "cogito ergo sum".
Of course, the idea that the world is ultimately chaos without universal rules and consequences contradicts what we experience. And certainly what religious faith wants us to think. But what if the only way that our brain and senses are able to experience the world is to organise according to rules and structure that really don't exist outside ourselves, so we only see a fraction of reality that comes out as order because that's what our perceptive filter does. But I think we're beginning to tumble down into the dark cellar of philosophy now. And metaphysics. It's outside my comfort zone as well.
What I meant was that clearly we "exist" in some sense. Whether this existence and the context of it is external or internal to our minds is not the point. And by rules and consequences, I meant that there are natural laws, and there are also social considerations. So even if everything that you think is real is internal to yourself, you still have to cope with the aspects of it that you can't control, and the consequences of performing any given action, whether those consequences be a product physics or social forces. Ergo, whether solipsism is true is - from a practical standpoint - an irrelevant question.
But as you said, this is moving outside of both of our comfort zones and I'm pretty sure that half of the stuff I'm saying now is probably inaccurate to some degree
...lulz
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Edited by HarbingerDawn - Monday, 15.04.2013, 12:18
This guy must really be an idiot okay, how about just really, really ignorant regarding the concept of time travel and information. (EDIT: I mean the iranian "scientist." Not the guy in the posted video.) That sounds harsh but consider this: If you invent a TIME MACHINE then you're rich- instantly. Just predict the stock market or something. You wouldn't need to sell it or worry about knockoffs!
The Shape Of Space:
This is brilliant: I was always confused about what they meant by "what shape is the universe- flat, or round, etc." and this video describes it perfectly.
Edited by werdnaforever - Tuesday, 16.04.2013, 03:24
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