3mo ago

Guilty as charged

80 comments

Pedantic rant, but I hate people saying they "believe" in science. Science is not a matter of belief. It's the realm of the empirical.
Leave belief to religion and knowledge to science. Mixing the two turns out bad every time.
- I quite like that expression. It seems accurate to me, since, as it was pointed out by another commenter replying to you, people do not, in fact, check the experiments themselves, ensure that proper methodology was used, etc. They simply believe what the people in authority positions are telling them, so the word believe is quite accurate - you do not actually know the reasons why certain beliefs, theories are accepted by the scientific community, you just take their word for it.
  Furthermore, any scientist does the same thing to the body research that was developed before him, otherwise, every scientist would have to start over.
- I think people are more talking about believing in scientific institutions to ensure credibility and good faith research. Not necessarily that an individual institution is credible, but more the scientific community as a whole can be relied on.
  Science is absolute, however the way we interpret and understand it isn't flawless and at the end of the day some level of belief has to be put into the fallible people behind it.
  
  If science, as it is practised is flawed, by your own admission, what do you mean when you say that it is absolute?
  
  The scientific laws that govern how everything functions from subatomic particles, to beehive structure, to gravity are absolute and unchanging. Our understanding of them is flawed and changes over time, but the laws themselves can't be changed.
  
  As far as I understand, science is a human endeavour, so I would certainly not say it is absolute, but I see what you mean.
  Although I would say, my position is somewhat different, I do not see any reason to believe that even if these "laws" exist, science has at any level access to them, the "nature of reality", if you will, "laws of the universe" are metaphysical concepts that can only ever be speculative, scientific laws are not interpretations of them, they are separate constructions.
- First, no, not all science is empirical. You can't empirically test historical hypotheses, and some psychological ot sociological theses would be very much immoral to test.
  Second, whether we accept some results (or any other information) as "knowledge" is an epistemological issue: What do we classify as knowledge? When can we be sure that it's not just an assumption sustained by bias? What burden of proof applies where? Can some assumption be useful even if it doesn't rise to the level of knowledge (yet)?
  Third, the post says "I believe science", meaning: I trust their results. That is a subjective thing and beyond any empirical or epistemological scope. No matter how sure you may be that a given thesis is knowledge rather than just speculation, whether someone else shares that conviction is a separate question not fully dependent on yours.
  You can call that ignorance, but that doesn't make a difference either way: If I don't believe you in the first place, calling me ignorant doesn't have any more weight either.
  Hence: "I believe that science confers knowledge" is a valid assertion and fundamental premise for working with scientific results in the first place. Whether or not you'd phrase it that way, "Science is not a matter of belief" is a matter of belief too.
  That said, I believe in the importance of tempering assumptions with evidence, empirical or otherwise, in order to constantly test and refine our understanding of the patterns and principles that govern the physical world and our social behaviour within it. I believe that we may not have all the answers, that some things may be fundamentally unanswerable, and that raising assumptions to the level of fundamental truths (like beliefs about the afterlife) is intellectually dishonest. I believe that it is better to say "We don't know" when that is true, and that we should acknowledge this limit to our knowledge (which doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to push it).
  In short: I believe in science.
  
  You made my exact point at the end.
  "We don't know" is not a statement of faith or belief.
  I don't know how how my phone works. That doesn't mean I believe in Android or Samsung. Humanity doesn't understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but that doesn't make the reason for the acceleration a matter of faith. It's simply a gap in knowledge.
  Knowledge is the realm of fact. Belief is the realm of the unknowable, not the unknown.
  
  That doesn't mean I believe in Android or Samsung
  You do, in the sense that you believe they know what they're doing.
  Humanity doesn't understand why the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but that doesn't make the reason for the acceleration a matter of faith. It's simply a gap in knowledge.
  But you do believe that it expands and that there is a rational, scientific explanation for that. You believe in a reasonable, explainable universe.
  So do I, don't get me wrong, but I'm trying to point out that there is a premise underpinning our theory of knowledge that is ultimately unknowable: That we can know at all, and that the methods of rationality lead us to that knowledge.
  
  Idk man, have you done the math on whether the universe expands yourself? Because i haven't. I simply believe that the scientists who have aren't lying to me, same as I believe that Jupiter is in fact a giant sphere of gas, because that's what I've been told.
  No one can verify all of science, so we must all trust that those who came before us got things right (unless we discover that they didn't ofc).
  Therefore, i believe in science.
- I have always seen the word “believe” to just mean you are convinced of something, or at least for some reason you think it is more likely than not. How much that belief relies on faith or evidence will vary based on the subject.
  If I tell somebody I “believe in” science, it’s because I have spent decades observing the results of actually measuring and studying the world around us. It’s kind of a philosophical statement and not a factual one though, because the “belief” is that it’s the best way forward.
  I also don’t think the word “believe” suggests certainty, because when it comes down to it I don’t think I am really 100% confident in anything. Not that it makes a practical difference in real life.
- Knowledge is often defined as "justified true belief."
  Flat Earthers have the science. The science is justified and true. But they refuse to believe it.
  Philosophy has considered those two pretty intertwined for a rather long time.
  
  Science isn't something you can have, it's a method of getting information. Flat earthers don't use the method so instead they apply other methods, and those can give them different, empirically wrong results.
  
  Science isn't something you can have, it's a method of getting information.
  Oh alright mister pedantic. See sometimes sentences have things like implications in them. Saying someone "has" some arbitrary concept or system, like asking a ship"do you have navigation", doesn't mean the person asking that thinks of navigation as a singular object.
  They have the science available to them. Ie they have the ability to look at endless amounts of it.
  "They have other methods"
  (How annoying would it be if here I started autistically screeching about how you don't "have" methods, you use them)
  You completely misunderstood my comment, and are now pretending that one of the most common definitions of "knowledge" is different from what I said; having justified true belief. In something.
  Flat earthers have justified true information available to them, but they REFUSE TO BELIEVE IT.
  It's caller amathia.
  Here, read this.
  https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
- But you do have to believe though. If you are just a brain in a jar, then all your empirical evidences are just illusions. At the very least you have to have faith that that's not the case.
  
  At the very least you have to have faith that that's not the case.
  Nah, I don’t think I do.
  I openly admit that I am not 100% confident of not being a brain in a jar, or being part of a simulation, or being in the matrix, or being the only mind that exists (i.e. solipsism). But that uncertainty doesn’t really affect me day to day.
  Whether I am “really” a bit of code in a ridiculous alien computer, or an ethereal spirit waiting to return to heaven, or just an emergent biological process built out of energy packets in quantum fields, it’s not going to change any of my decisions or actions today. And honestly, the actual probability of each being true doesn’t matter either (and it would just be a guess).
  I try to take actions that improve my quality of life. My experience leads me to think/believe that other humans probably experience life like I do, so I like to help them out when I can.
  If I’m helping other pieces of code enjoy existence rather than helping fellow physical biological beings enjoy existence, I don’t see a reason to change anything I’m doing.
  Likewise, I assume that the physical processes around me will keep working consistently, that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that the changes I make in the world today will persist into the future. I have no way to prove to you or myself that those things are true. I don’t have 100% confidence in my own mind that they are true. But that doesn’t change my plans for today.
  
  I think you are making a good argument, and I think we are getting a little bit into an edge case of faith here. So here's a scenario: say you met a priest that tells you "Oh I am not sure if God exists, not at all. I just assume God exists and behave accordingly because that benefits me. Since I will get into Heaven when I die if I do so."
  Will you call this priest an atheist/agnostic? I don't think either answer is right or wrong, just curious where people draw the line.
  
  I would call that person an agnostic theist.
  Many people use the terms on two different axes. Theist/atheist refers to belief and gnostic/agnostic refers to knowledge. Or at least, belief that you know it is absolutely true.
  In many cases, people who call themselves atheists and agnostics are both just agnostic atheists that choose their label for whatever reasons they have (that could include disagreeing with my definitions here, lol).
  
  Not knowing the answer to something isn't a belief problem, it's an ignorance problem.
  For millenia we were ignorant regarding the relationship between the sun and the earth. That didn't make cosmology a belief system. We were just wrong.
  Faith is not the source of science.
  
  You are not getting what I was saying, let me put it this way, how do you know this isn't just all a dream you will one day wake up from, and find out that the real real world is run by wizards and dragons?
  
  That's a gap in knowledge, not a matter of faith.

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