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Oh dear.

Started by omokuroi, January 15, 2018, 09:25:39 PM

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omokuroi

#30
Quote from: trdsf on January 16, 2018, 03:46:08 PM
The statement that there is no god simply assumes the universe is as we see it, and so far there is no evidence to indicate otherwise. To state that there is a god, or even that there might be one, is a statement that the universe is not as we observe it, and that claim requires evidence before I have any reason to take it seriously even as speculation.
Quite right. In order for us to conclude things we cannot experience may exist, we need to prove that things exist--that is, can be indirectly observed--which cannot be directly observed.

Unfortunately, this is quite easy. We now know that many species are capable of seeing infrared and ultraviolet light, and with the aid of technology, so can we. Of course, for millennia, this was entirely invisible and scarcely so much as suspected... to all humans. Fundamentally, human observation of the universe is... limited, at best.

Extending this further, we also know that countless exact "colours" exist, both as a spectrum of wavelengths and as combinations of various component "colours." Through research, we have been able to measure both the variation in said colours, and the ability of humans to tell them apart... and found that human "colour vision" has nowhere near the clarity to perceive colours as they actually are.

Taking another step, we know that a nigh-infinite spectrum of sounds exist. We have also proven that, with age, the ability of humans to perceive many of these sounds is lost--especially those in the higher range. This is leaving out that many of those sounds cannot be heard by even the most capable, youngest human ear.

Speaking of which, we also know that the various senses are processed within a single central nervous system. Oddly, it seems that some people experience colours when they hear sounds... despite sounds, of course, not having any light component. This is called synaesthesia. ...Oh, did I say "some people"? Actually, I meant "virtually all." We can find in almost any person in the world, a tendency to associate certain sounds with certain physical sensations--this is observed both in spoken language, with words which correspond to certain concepts (such as "sharp") also having a sound people describe as "sharp"--across cultures, as it happens--and in writing, with the shape of letters corresponding to the physical appearance of objects known to evoke that physical sensation... at rates greater than chance, across cultures.

Once again, things like infrared light and ultrasonic sound exist, but cannot be directly experienced. Things like the sharpness of sounds do not exist, but are readily observed. The universe has never, in any respect, been quite as humans--either individually or as a species--observe it.

QuoteThere's a saying in the Linux world that 'all problems are trivial' -- what this means is that what's intractable to one person may be obvious to someone else.
Rebuilding my entire system just because the Gentoo devs decided PIEs are worth it really wasn't trivial.

QuoteA comparable system works in research: what's obviously correct to one researcher may reveal an obvious flaw when looked at by someone else who doesn't have a potential emotional attachment to a particular theory, and the determinant is the data.
This assumes all observational inaccuracies and biases are individual rather than systemic, across the entire species or nearly so. This has been shown to be quite far from the case.

Quoteto hang back from a declaration of knowledge because 'humans are fallible' is to assume that all researchers are all making the same error
Science generally holds that there are seven colours in the rainbow, correct?

Unfortunately, we now have good reason to believe some people are tetrachromats and actually see ten. This is quite a recent discovery, actually... because colours don't exist as humans see them, and "human universals" aren't usually quite like humans believe them to be, either.

QuoteEven when a scientific consensus is in error, the research community itself will eventually find and correct that error.
There are two fundamental flaws with this.

First, you just made a claim with no evidence whatsoever.

Second, it's irrelevant. The assumption that the error will one day be corrected in no way implies it does not exist--and you are not committing it--right now.

QuoteThat's why the scientific method works: when one researcher makes a claim, it needs to be independently validated.
And you are resisting exactly that, stating "the system is obviously perfect, because people question things, therefore there's no need to question anything."

Quote...that includes an assumption on your part that the entire research community has a reason to obscure or manufacture evidence, and that treads dangerously close to conspiracy theory.
Hardly. Anyone who arises from particular genes, in a particular environment, will have a corresponding particular bias. To the extent that humans have similar genes, and are raised in similar social environments, it is virtually certain that they will commit the exact same errors.

QuoteClaiming knowledge based on evidence is more than just chicken-counting.
Are you asserting that mathematics, eyesight, et al. don't qualify as evidence? Chicken-counting is something scientists do on occasion. And if we broaden it to counting objects in general, many scientists do it quite frequently. If you had a point here, I'm not exactly seeing it.

QuoteAll the evidence to date indicates the universe is exactly what we observe: a natural object that evolves along natural lines following laws of physics that we are occasionally able to tease out.
Sure. And at what point did you conclude that a god is necessarily outside of nature, other than that certain very specific faiths say so? That's hardly a defining quality of gods. And beyond that, the moon doesn't stop existing if you go blind; likewise, "non-natural" existences wouldn't cease simply because humans are incapable of observing them.

QuoteI'm comfortable with not having 100% upon which to base knowledge, simply because if we waited for 100%, we'd never get anything done scientifically.
As am I.

QuoteAnd I am perfectly comfortable with the reliability of the scientific community on the whole, which has over and over and over and over demonstrated its ability to self-police and self-correct.
"Most published research is false."

(Now Playing: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth - Logic ~ The Way to the Truth)

Baruch

#31
Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 02:38:20 PM
Or else it knew about the effort-justification effect and devised making its book a pain in the ass just so people would hold it up as more important?

Originally the Bible wasn't written to be read.  Most people couldn't read, nobody had any books.  It was meant to be heard.  Same with with the Quran.  Of course with the Quran, as with the Psalms, it is meant to be memorized and chanted/sung.  People since 1500 simply can't imagine earlier illiterate society ... you either had a good memory, or you were a village idiot.  It is a modern conceit, that scripture is to be read by laymen.  Even most clergy couldn't read the Latin Bible, only theologians could.  In the early Middle Ages, it was a Jewish and Muslim ideal, to be able to read, write and memorize scripture, though of course before printing, this was hard to achieve.  Apostle Paul clearly stated that intellect was bad for you, and Apostle Socrates (the Athenian dude) said that reading was the death of true education.

If reality is just as we see it ... then we are demigods.  A rock can't do that.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

omokuroi

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 06:51:11 PM
Originally the Bible wasn't written to be read.  Most people couldn't read, nobody had any books.  It was meant to be heard.
I mean, even if that's true, other things written down from, and for, oral storytellers can still be page-turners. It seems to me like the Abrahamic faiths have a penchant for being particularly dull.

Matter of opinion, though.

Baruch

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 06:55:54 PM
I mean, even if that's true, other things written down from, and for, oral storytellers can still be page-turners. It seems to me like the Abrahamic faiths have a penchant for being particularly dull.

Matter of opinion, though.

Compared to watching sheep and goats procreate ... it was exciting stuff.  I love the Greek myths in particular, and the Hindu myths too.  And the Tanakh was meant to be the constitution of a theocratic state (think Iran) ... not entertainment.  This didn't work out so well by 135 CE.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

omokuroi

Quote from: Baruch on January 16, 2018, 07:01:07 PM
Compared to watching sheep and goats procreate ... it was exciting stuff.  I love the Greek myths in particular, and the Hindu myths too.  And the Tanakh was meant to be the constitution of a theocratic state (think Iran) ... not entertainment.  This didn't work out so well by 135 CE.
I've been partial to the Hindu myths ever since I played Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga.

(Neeeerd.)

There's some really cool stuff in there, though! Even if most of it is kind of, uh, batshit.

Baruch

The Mahabharata has gay moments, and other Purana have transsexuality.  Arjuna in one scripture becomes a maiden so he can surrender to Krishna.

None of this would be in the Bible or Quran.  But could have been in Babylonian stories.  One form of Shiva, Ardhanishvara is hermaphrodite.  But that existed in Greek myth too.  Common Indo-European heritage.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Hakurei Reimu

Hi. Welcome.

Well, enough foreplay, on to your last post:

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Quite right. In order for us to conclude things we cannot experience may exist, we need to prove that things exist--that is, can be indirectly observed--which cannot be directly observed.

Unfortunately, this is quite easy. We now know that many species are capable of seeing infrared and ultraviolet light, and with the aid of technology, so can we. Of course, for millennia, this was entirely invisible and scarcely so much as suspected... to all humans. Fundamentally, human observation of the universe is... limited, at best.

Extending this further, we also know that countless exact "colours" exist, both as a spectrum of wavelengths and as combinations of various component "colours." Through research, we have been able to measure both the variation in said colours, and the ability of humans to tell them apart... and found that human "colour vision" has nowhere near the clarity to perceive colours as they actually are.
Irrelevant. All that is required is that your senses produce mostly consistent results for the same stimulus. It doesn't matter how red "really looks" because 'red' is a label we came up with to tag certain species of light spectra â€" that the same thing that appeared red the last time will continue to appear red in the future. That gives you the consistency of observation that is the start of science.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Taking another step, we know that a nigh-infinite spectrum of sounds exist. We have also proven that, with age, the ability of humans to perceive many of these sounds is lost--especially those in the higher range. This is leaving out that many of those sounds cannot be heard by even the most capable, youngest human ear.
Again, irrelevant. In the short term, the same sound will produce much the same sensation. It's not like we don't know that hearing is inexorably lost over time (though your milage may vary), but over the short term, a recorded song will consistently sound the same each time its played. Again, consistency of observation.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
This is called synaesthesia. ...Oh, did I say "some people"? Actually, I meant "virtually all." We can find in almost any person in the world, a tendency to associate certain sounds with certain physical sensations--this is observed both in spoken language, with words which correspond to certain concepts (such as "sharp") also having a sound people describe as "sharp"--across cultures, as it happens--and in writing, with the shape of letters corresponding to the physical appearance of objects known to evoke that physical sensation... at rates greater than chance, across cultures.

Once again, things like infrared light and ultrasonic sound exist, but cannot be directly experienced. Things like the sharpness of sounds do not exist, but are readily observed. The universe has never, in any respect, been quite as humans--either individually or as a species--observe it.
Once more, irrelevant. It's not that we perceive the universe as it appears; it's that the observations are consistent. We know synaesthesia exists because it produces consistent results. We know that color-number synaesthetics exist because we have tests able to show that such people can consistently show that they perceive additional information consistent with a coloring of numbers.

Furthermore, they don't confuse the color of the ink with the color induced by the synesthesia:

As C relates ... "It is difficult to explain...I see what you see. I know the numbers are in black...but as soon as I recognise the form of a 7 it has to be yellow." - Dixon, M.J., Smilek, D., Wagar, B. & Merikle, P.M. (2004). Alphanumeric-Colour Synaesthesia: When 7 is Yellow and C is Red. in Gemma A. Calvert, Charles Spence and Barry E. Stein (Eds.) Handbook of Multisensory Processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-03321-6

Once you have a sensory apparatus able to measure what corresponds to what your senses consistently experience, then such a thing may be reproduced and used as a standard. This is what allows discovery of the true nature of light, that of photons of disparate frequencies, and of colors, that of different spectra of frequency-vs-intensity.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Rebuilding my entire system just because the Gentoo devs decided PIEs are worth it really wasn't trivial.
Facetious comment is facetious.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
This assumes all observational inaccuracies and biases are individual rather than systemic, across the entire species or nearly so. This has been shown to be quite far from the case.
You say that as if we have never detected any sort of systematic bias, ever. This is not the case. A systematic bias would have to bias everything in just the right way, everywhere, to remain forever undetected. Such things are statistically unlikely to happen. Every systematic bias has limits to how much they skew results, and will be detected sooner or later.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Science generally holds that there are seven colours in the rainbow, correct?
Incorrect. The rainbow has long been recognized as a spectrum and as such has no fixed number of colors or even fixed boundaries or limits. Only convention puts this number at seven.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Unfortunately, we now have good reason to believe some people are tetrachromats and actually see ten. This is quite a recent discovery, actually... because colours don't exist as humans see them, and "human universals" aren't usually quite like humans believe them to be, either.
Which would tend to destroy the thesis that everyone would have the same systematic bias, wouldn't it? After all, it's not like we haven't known about color blindness for hundreds of years, isn't it? Or that different languages break up the color spectrum differently.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
There are two fundamental flaws with this.

First, you just made a claim with no evidence whatsoever.
The numerous examples of science being self-correcting notwithstanding, of course. :roll:

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Second, it's irrelevant. The assumption that the error will one day be corrected in no way implies it does not exist--and you are not committing it--right now.
That, in itself, is irrelevant. In fact, when we find these errors we know something new: that the old way of viewing the world was in error and this new way is a more accurate representation of that world. This constitutes legitimate knowledge about the world.

As Isacc Azimov put it, "When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
And you are resisting exactly that, stating "the system is obviously perfect, because people question things, therefore there's no need to question anything."
Nope, trdsf didn't say that science was perfect, ever. Nor did he say that there was no need to question anything (especially since it is the scientist's job to do exactly that). But there is sensible inquiry and then there's nonsensical inquiry. It makes sense for a scientist on the bleeding edge of his field to question basic assumptions about that field, because he is best equipped to challenge them â€" he knows where the holes in our knowledge lay. Someone like you, however, does not know the limits of our knowledge, and as such he is far likely to issue a PRATT (Point Refuted A Thousand Times) rather than a genuine puzzle.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Hardly. Anyone who arises from particular genes, in a particular environment, will have a corresponding particular bias. To the extent that humans have similar genes, and are raised in similar social environments, it is virtually certain that they will commit the exact same errors.
How do you get from "similar genes and similar environemnts" to "exactly the same errors"? Also, the fact that we accumulate new ways of verifying our knowledge, you apparently think that the "exact same errors" will be somehow be built into each and every one to exactly the same magnitude in each and every new way of measurement as to keep the truth concelaed forever. Sorry, but that's not credible. Just random noise would assure that some of those errors will be too big or too small to ignore.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Are you asserting that mathematics, eyesight, et al. don't qualify as evidence? Chicken-counting is something scientists do on occasion. And if we broaden it to counting objects in general, many scientists do it quite frequently. If you had a point here, I'm not exactly seeing it.
The point is that knowledge need not be 100% to be counted as knowledge. Knowledge is justified true belief, not perfectly assured true belief. To be called knowledge, the belief need only be underpinned by a significant amount of work, data, etc. to give reason why someone not only came to believe some knowledge, but in many ways was forced to the conclusion of that knowledge. 100% assurance for a bit of knowledge is simply too stringent a criterion to be taken seriously.

To take your chicken counting example, if you have counted chickens in many ways, using many different, very disparate methods of determining that number, and they all came up with the same answer, then you can legitimately call that number of chickens "knowledge" because it is very unlikely that all of those disparate ways of counting chickens (which would have wildly different ways of failing to count correctly) would result in not only an incorrect answer, but the same incorrect answer. You are fairly justified to think that the number of chickens in your coup really is that number, so your belief in that number is justified and likely true.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Sure. And at what point did you conclude that a god is necessarily outside of nature, other than that certain very specific faiths say so? That's hardly a defining quality of gods.
For me, it was the fact that each and every one of the proposed gods needed some kind of "out" to the rules in place to establish them in order to do what they needed to do to make them established. They are thus supernatural by definition. Further, I would argue that being supernatural in some way is a defining quality of gods in general.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
And beyond that, the moon doesn't stop existing if you go blind; likewise, "non-natural" existences wouldn't cease simply because humans are incapable of observing them.
The moon is well-established by a large suite of phenomena that are indicative of its existence. The fact that we've brought back parts of it is particularly damning. The same cannot be said of gods. The problem with gods is not that we can't observe them at the moment, but that they seem to leave no trace of their existence at all, anywhere. This is consistent with the hypothesis that they don't exist, and Occam's Razor is a thing. It is thus justified true belief that there is no gods out there interfering with the universe because that is what the evidence indicates, hence it is knowledge.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
"Most published research is false."
Misleading. If you read the study, the key feature that most published research lacks is replication. This is exactly what trdsf is talking about and what is necessary for good science. Indeed, most scientists are resigned to the fact that most of their research will eventually turn out to be duds. Otherwise, the Nobel Prize wouldn't exist.
Warning: Don't Tease The Miko!
(she bites!)
Spinny Miko Avatar shamelessly ripped off from Iosys' Neko Miko Reimu

Gilgamesh

#37
I agree with everything you've laid out in the OP. While I am a flesh eater, I recognise that it isn't a moral act, given the choice to live healthy while not being a flesh eater - a choice I do have. I just don't give a fuck because I hate life and am so fucked on drugs half the time that I can't be bothered to care with what I eat. Nutrients is nutrients.

You sound like a sharp guy.

omokuroi

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 16, 2018, 08:09:07 PM
Hi. Welcome.
I love Dr Pepper more.

Quote
...

All that is required is that your senses produce mostly consistent results for the same stimulus.

...

That gives you the consistency of observation that is the start of science.

...

In the short term, the same sound will produce much the same sensation. It's not like we don't know that hearing is inexorably lost over time (though your milage may vary), but over the short term, a recorded song will consistently sound the same each time its played. Again, consistency of observation.
Oh, really?

Unfortunately, senses aren't consistent, either.

QuoteHow do you get from "similar genes and similar environemnts" to "exactly the same errors"? Also, the fact that we accumulate new ways of verifying our knowledge, you apparently think that the "exact same errors" will be somehow be built into each and every one to exactly the same magnitude in each and every new way of measurement as to keep the truth concelaed forever.
I made the point in the prior post, but it doesn't have to remain undetected forever, only right now and for the foreseeable future. If such a bias or observational limitation were present in sufficient magnitude and in the proper direction to prevent the detection of a god, there could be evidence of a god right in front of us right now and we would be unable to make sense of it.

QuoteThe point is that knowledge need not be 100% to be counted as knowledge. Knowledge is justified true belief, not perfectly assured true belief. To be called knowledge, the belief need only be underpinned by a significant amount of work, data, etc. to give reason why someone not only came to believe some knowledge, but in many ways was forced to the conclusion of that knowledge. 100% assurance for a bit of knowledge is simply too stringent a criterion to be taken seriously.
This is a semantic argument, and one many wouldn't agree with you on. It's a point that's been credited to Socrates, and desCartes, and acknowledged by even many celebrity atheists: we don't actually know, people just like to think they do.

Hakurei Reimu

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 08:40:52 PM
I love Dr Pepper more.
Oh, really?

Unfortunately, senses aren't consistent, either.
Yeah. Really. Notice that, actually, the McGurk effect is consistent. The mishearings don't occur randomly. This is because the brain regularly gathers up data from all sorts of sources, and what you "hear" is actually what you understand what the person has said, which is actually a composite of what the clues your brain has gathered, not a raw input. Notice also, that when you close your eyes, the McGurk effect disappears.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 08:40:52 PM
I made the point in the prior post, but it doesn't have to remain undetected forever, only right now and for the foreseeable future. If such a bias or observational limitation were present in sufficient magnitude and in the proper direction to prevent the detection of a god, there could be evidence of a god right in front of us right now and we would be unable to make sense of it.
You are assuming that this observational limitation is of sufficient magnitude and in a proper direction is actually a thing, and would tend to suggest deliberate manipulation rather than an accident of nature, especially if it is so specific to affect only our detection of god and not anything intersecting with our survival, comfort, and advancement. Only a god that is hell-bent on hiding all signs of his existence would do such a thing, in which case GG, but there's still no good reason to assume such a thing exists. A universe that looks like one without a god is still consistent with a universe that really is without a god.

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 08:40:52 PM
This is a semantic argument, and one many wouldn't agree with you on. It's a point that's been credited to Socrates, and desCartes, and acknowledged by even many celebrity atheists: we don't actually know, people just like to think they do.
No. Again, such a definition of knowledge that requires 100% assurance is too stringent to be taken seriously, because it's too stringent to be useful in any way, shape or form. The knowledge we have acquired, even though it is not 100% assured and proven, is nonetheless useful. It helps us survive. It helps us thrive. It helps us become comfortable. It helps us explore the universe without being able to leave our own planet.

TL;DR, science delivers the goods. It works too damn well in that endeavor to believe that be as fundamentally and inexorably flawed as you claim. Even your cited evidence is misleading and doesn't show what you intend to show, so nihilism can take a hike, like most philosophies.
Warning: Don't Tease The Miko!
(she bites!)
Spinny Miko Avatar shamelessly ripped off from Iosys' Neko Miko Reimu

omokuroi

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on January 16, 2018, 09:09:47 PM
Yeah. Really. Notice that, actually, the McGurk effect is consistent. The mishearings don't occur randomly. This is because the brain regularly gathers up data from all sorts of sources, and what you "hear" is actually what you understand what the person has said, which is actually a composite of what the clues your brain has gathered, not a raw input.
That's not really the usual explanation, though. The usual explanation is that you hear what you expect was said, rather than what actually was.

Actually, we can find similar effects in various disciplines. Multiple people with different experiences can see, hear--or think they saw, think they heard--different things. And worse, you can manipulate what they think they see or hear by dropping a single sentence to prime them.

It even works on memories, too.

Consistent? Sure, maybe, for the same person, in the same position, at the same time, you'll always get the same result... and if that same result is always wrong? If human observation is always, consistently incapable of getting reliable data?

How do you bypass that to magically arrive at a correct answer, exactly?

Quotebut there's still no good reason to assume such a thing exists.
I never said there was reason to believe a god exists. I'm an atheist. An agnostic one, who recognises limitations and flaws in human perception, and in human reasoning, which make it impossible to be sure.

QuoteNo. Again, such a definition of knowledge that requires 100% assurance is too stringent to be taken seriously, because it's too stringent to be useful in any way, shape or form.
I think this is a case of the is-ought problem. You think that information ought to be useful. I contend that such a thing as usefulness doesn't exist, because the universe is inherently without purpose.

In fact, to the contrary, I find my scepticism very useful, because it means I am open to more possibilities, and I enjoy that very much. Oh, and evidence also suggests that believing in God is useful, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter to you--perhaps because you're part of the Atheist Tribe and are judging "usefulness" from whether something agrees with said tribe? But that's hardly objective.

QuoteTL;DR, science delivers the goods. It works too damn well in that endeavor to believe that be as fundamentally and inexorably flawed as you claim. Even your cited evidence is misleading and doesn't show what you intend to show, so nihilism can take a hike, like most philosophies.
Science delivers the goods... according to science and its proponents.

Funny. I could say the same about the Bible.

trdsf

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 04:21:42 PM
Quite right. In order for us to conclude things we cannot experience may exist, we need to prove that things exist--that is, can be indirectly observed--which cannot be directly observed.
.
.
.
Hakurei Reimu covered a lot of the territory I was going to, so I'll leave that stand as is.  What I have to add is:

Whole lotta stuff there, all of which you're trying to boil down to 'because I can't experience it directly personally, I can't discount it'.

Well, yes I can.

First of all, the extension of my senses by technology doesn't mean those observations don't count because I had to resort to artificial means to make them.

Second, the fact that I don't make a particular observation myself doesn't make the observation invalid.  What makes an observation invalid is when someone makes a contrary observation and that observation is verified.

What you're preaching here is a message of scientific despair -- that without 100% verification, and without personal verification, nothing can be known.

I reject your despair.

The whole point of the scientific method is: repeatability of observations, and the testable predictions and potential falsifiability of theories.  It has nothing to do with faith, or belief, or taking an authority's word for things.  It has everything to do with the fact that every researcher knows that any other researcher in the field needs to be able to duplicate their results.  It has everything to do with the fact that every researcher knows that if they can demonstrate an important observation is incomplete or even wrong in a verifiable and repeatable way, that's the fast track to a Nobel.  It has everything to do with the fact that falsification of results has nowhere to hide in science.

You, however, want perfect knowledge and absolute certainty.

Bad news.  Perfect knowledge doesn't exist, and the lack of perfect knowledge doesn't mean undemonstrated things get a pass.  You make do with the data at hand.


Let me go to a particular problem here.

Quote from: omokuroi
I made the point in the prior post, but it doesn't have to remain undetected forever, only right now and for the foreseeable future. If such a bias or observational limitation were present in sufficient magnitude and in the proper direction to prevent the detection of a god, there could be evidence of a god right in front of us right now and we would be unable to make sense of it.
Two major problems with this.

The first is that you assume we should take into account data which we not only don't currently have, but for which we don't have any reason to suspect even exists.  This is simply ludicrous on the face of it.  You would thus blame Galileo for not taking Relativity into account when he measured the rates at which different masses fell, or Democritus for not putting forth the idea of protons, electrons and neutrons when he first put forth an atomic theory.

The second is that if there is a god for whom data exists, it's a pretty weak-ass god that can't do something to at least drop a clue in front of people.  If you have a god that can make himself known and does not, whose fault is that?  Hint: it's not the humans.


Lastly, if you want to reject the scientific method -- and it seems to me you do, at least in part --why are you even online?  Why do you accept the products and not the process?  That smells of hypocrisy to me.


One final point, specifically about that Ioannidis paper you referenced.  First: this was not a full-bore study, but an essay for PLoS Medicine.

Second: Ioannidis himself did another paper that same year which contraindicated some his own essay, finding that most published findings aren't false -- he himself found rates of 16% contradicted, 16% showing a lesser effect than claimed, 44% replicated and 24% not challenging the results.  Let me help you with the math here: that's 16% falsified, and 44% duplicated.  So we can just flush the word 'most' right now.  The most you can turn that into is 32% contradicted/lesser effect, and that's not more than 44% replicated.

Third: Ioannidis himself is involved in the field of meta-analysis, the whole point of which is to minimize systemic errors across research papers in the same field.  Or did you think that because someone pointed out the possibility of flaws in research in 2005, the entire scientific community just shrugged and has continued doing so for the last 13 years?
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Hydra009

Quote from: omokuroi on January 16, 2018, 09:52:36 PMScience delivers the goods... according to science and its proponents.

Funny. I could say the same about the Bible.
He says, over the internet.  Unironically.

Baruch

And the Internet again shows we are demigods.  Rocks can't do this.  At least compared to rocks, we are demigods.  Compared to infinity, we are rocks.  Some prefer to think of themselves as rocks.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Blackleaf

I could tell from the OP that you were going to be obnoxious, and every post since then has only confirmed my expectations.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--