What dreams may come in the days without toy safety regulations., Atomic Energy Labs and Cap Guns Options

[Dream79]

As for doing every experiment myself... well, I must concede that I do believe most of the things I read in my physics texts on their own merit. But, since my experience of my perceptions has led me to the conclusion that everyone experiences the same laws of physics, it is a very reasonable proposition for me to take the word of the author, whom has years more experience and more expertise, and access to better investigative facilities than I do. My belief in their words is not independent of evidence, then, and is not faith. My belief is dependent on the author's expertise, which is attested to the hundreds of schools staffed by other experts that have adopted his book as a guide. If I go by my previous assumption, that my perceptions are reflective of reality, then this is not problematic.

This is not science. This is faith. Regardless of the perceived validity of an authors statements it is not verified unless it is tested. Granted in some cases the best one can do is review the data and trust in the capability of peers. Though it still becomes a matter of faith in the author, peer review, your college and your faith in your own perceptions and judgment.

[pbangarth]

You know, we get on an airplane not because we have deductive logic that guarantees the wings will lift us all up, but rather because we believe the inductive logic that tells us wings have lifted us a million times, and so they will this time too.

If we weren't wired to think that way, we would all be rolled up in little balls and whimpering.

[Gawdzilla]

This is not science. This is faith. Regardless of the perceived validity of an authors statements it is not verified unless it is tested. Granted in some cases the best one can do is review the data and trust in the capability of peers. Though it still becomes a matter of faith in the author, peer review, your college and your faith in your own perceptions and judgment.

I must say, I disagree with that.
It is a popular thing to say, that science requires as much faith as religion.
But what you really end up arguing is that it is not possible for a piece of information to have degrees of validity.

What you're saying is that a piece of information has either been directly verified by yourself, in which case we are justified in believing it, or else you have no reason to believe it: it is an article of faith. But this disregards the reasoning process that we go through every day: is this used car salesman telling the truth about this car, or is the information on carfax more trustworthy? Will this pill really make my penis larger like the email said, or should I listen to the doctor and not take it? The fact is that information does have more or less validity based on the source, the clues we get from surrounding circumstances, and our previous knowledge. The end result is that we are more justified in believing some pieces of information as opposed to others. Since I have justification for my belief, it is no longer faith. This IS science, not faith. Science absolutely allows us to build upon the results of our peers -- in fact, it requires us to take our peers results as valid, or else the scientific process cannot work.

Now, you may simply be equivocating "faith" and "belief".
You say that it is an act of faith to believe in the author, the peer review process, or whatever. But do we not have good reasons to believe that those things work well? Do you think that it requires faith to believe information in a textbook, but maybe requires less faith than believing what the Hare Krishna on the street corner says? If so, then saying
"I believe that...",
"I think that...", or
"I have faith that...", all have exactly the same meaning.

While those words are often used interchangeably in informal speech, "faith" is usually used in a slightly different context: religious faith. This is often the sort of faith we mean when we have these discussions, and to use the word "faith" in the fashion you do robs it of this distinctive definition. Often religious people take pride in the fact that they need no justification for their beliefs. They simply have faith. They believe these articles of faith regardless of other information that upholds, doesn't uphold, or even outright contradict their beliefs.

This is a circumstance of a completely different fashion than believing the information in a textbook, because my belief in the information in the textbook is reliant entirely on the justifications that I have. If the book were NOT written by a Ph.D in physics, and it were NOT based on peer-reviewed papers, and it had NOT been adopted by a hundred schools, then I wouldn't believe the information in it. But if I truly had faith in the information, in the religious sense, then I still would believe it; I would need no justification, nor would I care if things seemed to contradict it.

Anyway, in short, the way I see it you have two options.
Either believing your textbook and having faith in your textbook are the same, and we need a new word for religious faith, or...
Believing your textbook doesn't require faith.
Either way is fine with me, just let me know what new word you choose for religious faith (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[hobgoblin]

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_Wrong

and i suspect the mods will come stomping soon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Kanada Ten]

Renraku's Imaginary Friends - Are you worried about the influence of other children on your child? Of course you are, any concerned parent would be. That's why we at Renraku designed the perfect friends for your perfect child. Now you no longer have to worry about bad language or dangerous memes infecting your child. Plus, our Friends will teach your precious angel important skills, and encourage them to grow their economic potential. Designed to steer your child away from negative influences and towards the positive, they'll also inform you of any disturbing behavior in daily reports. Renraku's Imaginary Friends are a perfect companion to Renraku's My First Datajack, and the Renraku GPS Angel.

[hobgoblin]

hmm, meme pollution. i thought that was horizons turf (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Gawdzilla]

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

My answer to him was, "John, 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."

Haha, that is one of the greatest things ever!

[Rad]

Internet ate my post again. In response to some of your earlier posts, Gawdzilla:

Reality is a concept, which has a given meaning regardless of whether it can be proven to exist. Just like the term "Technomancer" has a specific meaning even though it's entirely fictional. Generally, the term "reality" refers to an objective reality, that exists independent of ourselves--as you said, "what is actually true." People don't always use the word properly though, which can make things confusing.

Science can deduce the laws of perceived reality, assuming they are consistent enough, but even the existence of objective reality remains unprovable without the ability to independently verify our perceptions.

This distinction might not seem important, but remember that science's investigations into perceived reality often show our perceptions to be unreliable--subject to errors, misinterpretation, and outright delusions or hallucinations. In other words, if we assume our senses are reliable, science works--and then proceeds to tell us that our senses are not reliable, invalidating the entire process.

I don't believe anyone here has made the statement that science requires as much faith as religion. It doesn't--at least not to my way of thinking. In my experience, science takes as little on faith as possible, and gathers the rest of it's doctrine from observation and reasoning. I do find it imperative, however, to keep in mind precisely how much one is taking on faith when assessing the validity of any theory.

It is an act of faith to trust anything. It's true that some sources are considered more trustworthy than others, but this decision is often made without empirical evidence.

Do you have any proof that your doctor is more reliable than those e-mails? I agree with your assumptions, but I don't have any scientific basis for that opinion. I've seen doctors lie and be dishonest in order to make more money. Hell, my current dentist is drawing out treatment for one of my teeth so that it will get worse and require a more expensive procedure to fix.

I don't know any more about carfax than I do about the salesman, so I can't empirically judge which is more reliable. If anything carfax is more suspect because I don't know what their motives are.

As for peer review and textbooks: The history of science is filled with new theories being viciously opposed by the old guard without any scientific basis--including theories that were eventually accepted. That strikes a pretty big blow against the objectiveness of peer review right there, and I've personally had to correct math textbooks that had errors in them.

Trusting a book or a person because they have a PHD isn't scientific. Rationally examining and testing their theories and statements is. Question Everything. That's my religious doctrine. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Back on topic, I don't think 2070's toys would necessarily go back to being more dangerous just because the corps make all the rules. Remember that they have a vested interest in keeping the public powerless and non-threatening, and that their number one rule is to make money.

I can see dangerous toys slipping by if it's more profitable to use lead paint than non-toxic polymers, but toy guns that let an ungrateful teenager pose a risk to their wageslave parents would probably be frowned upon by the board.

(Shooting someone's eye out is bad for productivity.)

[Dream79]

As for peer review and textbooks: The history of science is filled with new theories being viciously opposed by the old guard without any scientific basis--including theories that were eventually accepted. That strikes a pretty big blow against the objectiveness of peer review right there, and I've personally had to correct math textbooks that had errors in them.

Trusting a book or a person because they have a PHD isn't scientific. Rationally examining and testing their theories and statements is. Question Everything. That's my religious doctrine. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Right on. Understand nothing till there's nothing left to understand.

That's likely not possible since answers usually spawn more questions but it does sound pretty. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Back on topic, I don't think 2070's toys would necessarily go back to being more dangerous just because the corps make all the rules. Remember that they have a vested interest in keeping the public powerless and non-threatening, and that their number one rule is to make money.

I can see dangerous toys slipping by if it's more profitable to use lead paint than non-toxic polymers, but toy guns that let an ungrateful teenager pose a risk to their wageslave parents would probably be frowned upon by the board.

(Shooting someone's eye out is bad for productivity.)

A safe wage slave with a long life is a valuable consumer. It is about dollars and sense after all. I wouldn't doubt that on a curtain level that safety yields even greater consumerism since personal fulfillment becomes more dependent on possession than life experiences.

[Gawdzilla]

Reality is a concept, which has a given meaning regardless of whether it can be proven to exist. Just like the term "Technomancer" has a specific meaning even though it's entirely fictional. Generally, the term "reality" refers to an objective reality, that exists independent of ourselves--as you said, "what is actually true." People don't always use the word properly though, which can make things confusing.

Science can deduce the laws of perceived reality, assuming they are consistent enough, but even the existence of objective reality remains unprovable without the ability to independently verify our perceptions.

I guess I have no objection to that idea.
But my response to that is just exactly what I said in my previous post:
That it just simply doesn't make sense to concern ourselves with the discovery or investigation of an idea that is, by your reckoning, intrinsically inscrutable. So far we have little-to-no reason to believe that this "objective reality" is any different from the "perceptive reality" that we regularly study. If objective reality affects perceptive reality in any consistent way at all, we will be able to discover and study it, and it will simply become part of perceptive reality. But if objective reality doesn't affect perceptive reality, then it is irrelevant anyhow and becomes no different than speculating on the existence of God; it may be there, but nobody will ever know because it doesn't appear to be required in any explanation of our experiences.

In short, objective reality is either irrelevant because it is undiscoverable and doesn't affect us regardless of how different it is from perceptive reality, or it is discoverable because it is part of the perceptive reality that we already study.

This distinction might not seem important, but remember that science's investigations into perceived reality often show our perceptions to be unreliable--subject to errors, misinterpretation, and outright delusions or hallucinations. In other words, if we assume our senses are reliable, science works--and then proceeds to tell us that our senses are not reliable, invalidating the entire process.

I disagree that it invalidates the entire process.
If our investigations can show that our perceptions deceive us in regular, systematic ways, it becomes entirely plausible to understand the reason that we are deceived, and how reality relates to our perceptions. This has the double benefit of telling us about reality and about ourselves. Assuming that reality behaves in predictable ways, this is an entirely defensible way of approaching the issue. You'd be right if the ways in which we were deceived were incomprehensible, but they appear to be perfectly amenable to description.

It is as I said before: our perceptions need not reflect reality perfectly for them to be useful, they must only reflect it in ways that are consistent. If we are having the same trick played on us over and over, it is only a matter of time before we figure out how we are being tricked.

I don't believe anyone here has made the statement that science requires as much faith as religion. It doesn't--at least not to my way of thinking.

I agree with you, but I was disagreeing with the post at the top that suggested as much.
In a broader sense, I was more objecting to the way in which the word is being used.

If you say that something can require "less faith" or "more faith", you are already using the word in an entirely non-religious context; beliefs held on faith in the religious sense are completely independent of any and all justification or refutation. By saying that believing a textbook requires an act of faith, even if it is less faith than a religious belief, we begin to equivocate what I see as two different words:
Faith in the common usage sense, meaning to have a degree of trust in an idea based on the strength of its justifications, and
Faith in the religious sense, meaning to be committed to an idea regardless of surrounding ideas.

It is an act of faith to trust anything. It's true that some sources are considered more trustworthy than others, but this decision is often made without empirical evidence.

See, this is what I mean (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
To me, an act of faith seems to be something very different from this.
I will submit that all ideas have degrees of uncertainty attached to them, based on the strength of the arguments and observations used to support them. If you wish to call holding these ideas "acts of faith", then we will have to come up with some other descriptor for religious beliefs, lest they become confused.

Do you have any proof that your doctor is more reliable than those e-mails? I agree with your assumptions, but I don't have any scientific basis for that opinion. I've seen doctors lie and be dishonest in order to make more money. Hell, my current dentist is drawing out treatment for one of my teeth so that it will get worse and require a more expensive procedure to fix.

I don't know any more about carfax than I do about the salesman, so I can't empirically judge which is more reliable. If anything carfax is more suspect because I don't know what their motives are.

As for peer review and textbooks: The history of science is filled with new theories being viciously opposed by the old guard without any scientific basis--including theories that were eventually accepted. That strikes a pretty big blow against the objectiveness of peer review right there, and I've personally had to correct math textbooks that had errors in them.

I both agree and disagree with you here. It is true that we can never be absolutely certain about our evaluations, and sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes our reasoning does not hold up. But you seem to be making the mistake that Mr. Asimov was talking about:

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

Yes, it is true that I cannot say with 100% certainty that any particular doctor, or car salesman, or dentist, or what-have-you is a reliable source of information. But we divine clues all the time in order to aid us in these decisions. Some are good clues and some are not, but the point is that all of them provide some justification for our decisions.

However, I do disagree that we have no scientific basis upon which to make these decisions. Countless thousands of people every day whose lives are saved or whose illnesses are cured by doctors are testaments to their knowledge and expertise. Their schooling is rigorous, and they are generally scrutinized to some degree. All of this stuff is documented; it is, in effect, data. Using data to make evaluations is the essential hallmark of science. It is even unfair to say that those "old guard" scientists of the old theories don't have any scientific basis. They most certainly do! They have all of the data and experiments that led to the theories they are espousing! Perhaps they have a bias against any data that supports new and different theories, and this should be taken into account when evaluating their opinion. But to suggest that they have no basis for their opinion is patently false. As for the implications on the peer-review process, I don't think the idea that some old scientists might be reluctant to embrace some new theories reflects particularly poorly on the peer-review process. There are many many many scientific journals, all of which have multiple reviewers who have to review each paper, and any undue stodginess will be kept in check by the knowledgeable readers who follow the publications. I agree that your idea poses some concern for the trustworthiness of some journals, but the impact on the trustworthiness of the entire peer-review system is negligible IMO.

It is a peculiar thing that you would have had to correct math books because of such an idea, though... math is something of a different color. Generally something is either a theorem, or it is proved. You can't really object to something that is proved unless you object to logic, in which case, why are you a mathematician?

Trusting a book or a person because they have a PHD isn't scientific. Rationally examining and testing their theories and statements is. Question Everything. That's my religious doctrine. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I didn't say that trusting the author was scientific, I said the author is simply one of the many reasons you might have to put some degree of trust in the information in the book. Not every piece of information need be put under a microscope in order to be useful for offering support to an idea. Once again, right and wrong are not absolutes, and there are shades of gray in between certainty and faith.

Besides, the author is irrelevant as long as the information in the book coincides with the information in other books. This is easily verified, and assuming that we're talking science texts and students, we will be rationally examining and testing most of the ideas in the book anyway.

Back on topic, I don't think 2070's toys would necessarily go back to being more dangerous just because the corps make all the rules. Remember that they have a vested interest in keeping the public powerless and non-threatening, and that their number one rule is to make money.

I can see dangerous toys slipping by if it's more profitable to use lead paint than non-toxic polymers, but toy guns that let an ungrateful teenager pose a risk to their wageslave parents would probably be frowned upon by the board.

(Shooting someone's eye out is bad for productivity.)

This sounds like the sort of thing that Ed Norton's character in Fight Club would have been involved in: Risk Assessment.
If it is going to cost less to fix the hazardous product than to settle a few lawsuits, then go ahead and do it. If it costs more to fix than they'd pay out in lawsuits and other projected profit losses, well then hey... money talks!

[Rad]

If you say that something can require "less faith" or "more faith", you are already using the word in an entirely non-religious context; beliefs held on faith in the religious sense are completely independent of any and all justification or refutation. By saying that believing a textbook requires an act of faith, even if it is less faith than a religious belief, we begin to equivocate what I see as two different words:
Faith in the common usage sense, meaning to have a degree of trust in an idea based on the strength of its justifications, and
Faith in the religious sense, meaning to be committed to an idea regardless of surrounding ideas.

Like "reality", the word "faith" has a specific definition--even if people use it incorrectly 90% of the time.

Religious faith is not a different kind of faith, it is a subset defined by what the faith is placed in. It sounds like what you are referring to is blind faith, which is a different subset defined by the strength of the faith and it's resistance to opposing ideas--not what that faith is in. There are religious people whose faith is not blind, though it seems pretty rare to find one, and there are people whose faith in non-religious matters is just as blind.

>shoves inner grammar nazi back in a closet<

I both agree and disagree with you here. It is true that we can never be absolutely certain about our evaluations, and sometimes we are wrong. Sometimes our reasoning does not hold up. But you seem to be making the mistake that Mr. Asimov was talking about:

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

Not at all, if anything I'm arguing the other side of the coin: that there are relative levels of correctness. Calling the earth a sphere may be more correct than calling it flat, and calling it an ovoid may be more correct than calling it a sphere, but none of these statements are absolutely correct--so we shouldn't claim otherwise.

Yes, it is true that I cannot say with 100% certainty that any particular doctor, or car salesman, or dentist, or what-have-you is a reliable source of information. But we divine clues all the time in order to aid us in these decisions. Some are good clues and some are not, but the point is that all of them provide some justification for our decisions.

However, I do disagree that we have no scientific basis upon which to make these decisions. Countless thousands of people every day whose lives are saved or whose illnesses are cured by doctors are testaments to their knowledge and expertise. Their schooling is rigorous, and they are generally scrutinized to some degree. All of this stuff is documented; it is, in effect, data. Using data to make evaluations is the essential hallmark of science. It is even unfair to say that those "old guard" scientists of the old theories don't have any scientific basis. They most certainly do! They have all of the data and experiments that led to the theories they are espousing! Perhaps they have a bias against any data that supports new and different theories, and this should be taken into account when evaluating their opinion. But to suggest that they have no basis for their opinion is patently false. As for the implications on the peer-review process, I don't think the idea that some old scientists might be reluctant to embrace some new theories reflects particularly poorly on the peer-review process. There are many many many scientific journals, all of which have multiple reviewers who have to review each paper, and any undue stodginess will be kept in check by the knowledgeable readers who follow the publications. I agree that your idea poses some concern for the trustworthiness of some journals, but the impact on the trustworthiness of the entire peer-review system is negligible IMO.

Wow, that's a very large statement of faith there.

That's what I was trying to point out: Not that we have no scientific basis to make these determinations on, but that we don't use them. Stop and evaluate the statement you opened up with there:

"Countless thousands of people every day whose lives are saved or whose illnesses are cured by doctors are testaments to their knowledge and expertise."

What evidence do you base this on?

You could cite some medical journal or government statistic to back up the claim, but that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking what evidence you had when you originally made that statement. I'm guessing none. I'm guessing you can't even tell me where you got the idea from--it's just one of those things that everybody "knows."

If so, you are basing your opinion of who is trustworthy on an unsubstantiated belief that you can't even determine the origin of. Doctors heal the sick, cops catch the bad guys and protect the innocent, and violent videogames are responsible for the rise of violent crime among our nation's youth. Interestingly, I've seen FBI statistics that directly contradict that last one, and I've had my share of run-ins with dishonest cops and incompetent doctors whose malpractice resulted in worse health for their patients.

If you're going to be a hardcore empiricist, you should subject all your assumptions to the same rigorous standards as a new theory. If one of those assumptions doesn't hold up to scrutiny, it should either be abandoned or all lines of reasoning that rely on it should be prefaced "if we assume X", where X is the assumption. Otherwise you are misrepresenting unfounded claims as facts.

As for peer-review, historical evidence shows that new theories are often met belligerently by the old guard. Not distrusted because of evidence the contrary, but opposed out of personal bias. I've even heard scientists go so far as to decry a new theory as "heresy", as though physics were a religious doctrine instead of a field of study.

It is a peculiar thing that you would have had to correct math books because of such an idea, though... math is something of a different color. Generally something is either a theorem, or it is proved. You can't really object to something that is proved unless you object to logic, in which case, why are you a mathematician?

Yes, and when the math book gives an answer to a basic multiplication problem that--according to two calculators and a computer--is wrong...

I don't remember the exact problem, honestly I wish I did. Something to the effect of [number] x [number] = (not what [number] x [number] equals)

I'm just thankful that my teacher allowed us to correct our own work, instead of checking our answers against those in the teacher's edition without question. Instead of taking the book's answer on faith, I checked it, then checked it with two other sources to be scientifically rigorous, and empirically proved the math book to be wrong.

I have to wonder how many kids at other schools using that book got marked wrong for answering the question correctly. I have to wonder how many times that book was proofread before it was printed and sent out to those schools. I have to wonder how many scientific theories might have similar mistakes in them which go similarly overlooked.

Even if the math checks out, I wonder how many physicists measure and calculate the constants in their formulas themselves, instead of flipping open a book or checking a table. All it takes is one typo to screw up every theory and calculation based on it.

I didn't say that trusting the author was scientific, I said the author is simply one of the many reasons you might have to put some degree of trust in the information in the book. Not every piece of information need be put under a microscope in order to be useful for offering support to an idea. Once again, right and wrong are not absolutes, and there are shades of gray in between certainty and faith.

Besides, the author is irrelevant as long as the information in the book coincides with the information in other books. This is easily verified, and assuming that we're talking science texts and students, we will be rationally examining and testing most of the ideas in the book anyway.

Now this just makes me angry. You may not realize it, but you've just argued that:

A) rigorous fact-checking is not necessary when evaluating the truth of a theory

and

B) the source of information is not important, so long as there appears to be a consensus

By that logic, we should believe what we read in the supermarket tabloids!

I wonder if you've read Issac Asimov's foundation trillogy. There is a part where a foppish official explains that it is no longer necessary to dig in order to evaluate archeological theories, one must simply compare the various theories against each other to determine their validity.

This was intended to illustrate the decline of civilization.

Not that we should take Dr. Asimov's opinions with any more faith than anyone else's, but since you brought him into the debate I feel obligated to point it out when you make an argument that would have Harri Seldon spinning in his grave. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

This sounds like the sort of thing that Ed Norton's character in Fight Club would have been involved in: Risk Assessment.

If it is going to cost less to fix the hazardous product than to settle a few lawsuits, then go ahead and do it. If it costs more to fix than they'd pay out in lawsuits and other projected profit losses, well then hey... money talks!

Indeed, and don't think scientists scrounging for grant-money are immune to this. I'd say most of the opposition to new theories is about protecting job-security. After all, if peer review were being handled empirically, the evidence would speak for itself, and the old guard would have no complaints about a new theory supplanting the one they built their careers on.

[Dream79]

Also, if we did not question and test established theory/belief regardless of who's it is, we would still believe the earth is flat, All physical health is dependant on balancing the humors, all matter is composed of four base elements and maggots and flies spontaneously generate. It is important to remember that these things were considered establish theory or at least common sense at one time or another. Without questioning and testing the information accepted as 'correct', there really is nothing to say older invalidated theories are not incorrect but changes in the views of the 'establishment'.

Through critical analysis of established theory and hypothesizing what could be, science advances much like Rad stated. I also have to say that I share Rads sentiments in regards to being somewhat angered (more frustrated) by the statements regarding not needing to critically analyze what has consensus. Is this truely what higher learning has come to?

[Gawdzilla]

Like "reality", the word "faith" has a specific definition--even if people use it incorrectly 90% of the time.

Small nitpick: "faith" doesn't have a specific definition independent of how people use it. It refers to a specific idea. The idea that a word refers to can change depending on how people use it, and/or a new word can be made to refer to the same idea. If 90% of people use it "incorrectly", it eventually comes to refer to a different idea. Hence the evolution of language.

Not at all, if anything I'm arguing the other side of the coin: that there are relative levels of correctness. Calling the earth a sphere may be more correct than calling it flat, and calling it an ovoid may be more correct than calling it a sphere, but none of these statements are absolutely correct--so we shouldn't claim otherwise.

Is that what you think I'm doing? Claiming that physics is absolutely correct, and that Relativity or Quantum Mechanics is an absolutely true description of the world? Because I've claimed no such thing, and neither would most (if any) physicists. It makes accurate predictions, insofar as they have been tested, but nobody would claim that either of them are the whole truth. They are best thought of as "incomplete", though, rather than simply wrong. Just as Relativity must resemble Newtonian Mechanics within certain constraints, so will any future theory have to encompass what we already understand.

Wow, that's a very large statement of faith there.

That's what I was trying to point out: Not that we have no scientific basis to make these determinations on, but that we don't use them.

That isn't what you were originally arguing.
You were, in fact, arguing that we do not have a scientific basis on which to make determinations, because it is impossible to make scientific determinations due to the unreliability of perception. I hope this means you've let go of the idea that somehow reality is inscrutable, because any philosophy that suggests that it is impossible to know anything is tiresome and futile.

I mean, sure I could talk about increases in statistics and scientific surveys, those are certainly empirical evidence. But when I made the claim, you're right, I was not staring at those statistics ready to quote them. Instead I was basing my argument on a whole lifetime of experiences. The time I went to the hospital after my car accident, the time the paramedics saved my mom's life, the scores and scores of articles and news stories I've read of doctors saving the lives of countless people. The fact that I have, in my life, actually read articles containing all the statistics on average lifespan, and increasing survival rates for everything from premature babies to cancer patients. Are all these sources of information incorrect? Are they all trying to be deceptive?

Take a look at what it would mean for me to hold the viewpoint that doctors are not knowledgable and that they do not save lives.
It would mean that:
- Millions of people every year pay substantial sums of money for treatments that do little to no good.
- Insurance companies also pay substantial sums of money for said treatments.
- Doctors go through many (expensive) years of schooling, testing, and certification, and yet obtain no expertise in how to practice medicine properly.
- Increases in average lifespan and survival rates for many illnesses and conditions are not at all dependant on the expertise of medical professionals.
- Doctors harm their patients a large percentage of the time, yet people keep returning to them for treatment and do not sue them a vast majority of the time.
- Hospitals still hire lots of doctors even though none of them have expertise in medicine and often harm the patients.

I could go on, of course, but it makes the point I think.
Either the above are true, or doctors can be said to have expertise in medicine and do save lives. One of those conclusions is reasonable, and the other is, quite frankly, not. The same sorts of arguments can be made about textbooks or what-have-you. Your accusation that I have made a "very large statement of faith" relies upon the idea that I am not basing my argument on anything at all simply because I was not basing it on specific data. From my point of view it requires very little faith, because I do, in fact, have mountains of experience to base my statement on. The only caveat is that conclusions using inductive reasoning do not necessarily apply to specific instances. I cannot, for instance, conclude beyond question that a specific doctor is competent based on that argument, but it does offer reason to trust doctors in general until they prove otherwise. Clearly, measured, empirical evidence is usually preferrable, but it isn't always available or realistic to obtain, and telling somebody that they are making a "large statement of faith" because they aren't citing primary literature is just being obtuse.

If so, you are basing your opinion of who is trustworthy on an unsubstantiated belief that you can't even determine the origin of. Doctors heal the sick, cops catch the bad guys and protect the innocent, and violent videogames are responsible for the rise of violent crime among our nation's youth. Interestingly, I've seen FBI statistics that directly contradict that last one, and I've had my share of run-ins with dishonest cops and incompetent doctors whose malpractice resulted in worse health for their patients.

Ignoring that those statements are not equally believed by the general population, I'll just point out that your run-in's with a handful of bad doctors or cops represent a very small sample. Your experience gives you the basis to conclude that not all doctors help people all the time, a claim that nobody here or anywhere is making. It does not give you grounds to conclude that "doctors do not help people", nor to say that someone is making an unfounded statement if they say that doctors do help people. If you want to dispute that doctors help people, the burden of proof would be on you to show that some or all of the things I listed above are true.

If you're going to be a hardcore empiricist, you should subject all your assumptions to the same rigorous standards as a new theory. If one of those assumptions doesn't hold up to scrutiny, it should either be abandoned or all lines of reasoning that rely on it should be prefaced "if we assume X", where X is the assumption. Otherwise you are misrepresenting unfounded claims as facts.

Apparently you're unfamiliar with the process of "reductio ad absurdum", otherwise known as a proof by contradiction.
The job of science is to reject false hypotheses. One of the best ways to do that is to assume that a hypothesis is correct, and then show that it leads to wrong conclusions. One can only do this if one understands the hypothesis or theory being tested. Given the complexity of physics, this generally requires many years of schooling. It is only after these theories are understood that there is any utility in subjecting the assumptions of the theory to rigorous testing, since trying to falsify a theory that you do not understand fully is an exercise in futility and is likely to lead to wrong conclusions. I might also point out that Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have held up to scrutiny, and they have certainly been scrutinized. Calling them "unfounded claims" is totally false, unless you were still making the argument that we can't trust our senses, but I thought we were past that.

As for peer-review, historical evidence shows that new theories are often met belligerently by the old guard. Not distrusted because of evidence the contrary, but opposed out of personal bias. I've even heard scientists go so far as to decry a new theory as "heresy", as though physics were a religious doctrine instead of a field of study.

And yet, physics continues to progress, and sometimes new theories are embraced wholeheartedly even if they are radical (see inflationary cosmology). It could even be argued that some stodginess is desirable, to keep well-grounded theories from swaying in the breeze of the slightest experimental evidence. Because current theories have vast amounts of evidence supporting them, it generally takes vast amounts of evidence (or a couple very good experiments) to defeat them. I don't think that this is an unreasonable process.

Yes, and when the math book gives an answer to a basic multiplication problem that--according to two calculators and a computer--is wrong...

..

instead of checking our answers against those in the teacher's edition without question. Instead of taking the book's answer on faith, I checked it, then checked it with two other sources to be scientifically rigorous, and empirically proved the math book to be wrong

A typo or error in a problem in a math book is your proof that textbooks are unreliable?
Pardon me if I don't find that particularly troubling nor compelling. Also, empirically proving that a math book gave the wrong answer seems silly, unless you're unaware of the definition of multiplication. Math is not empirical, it is pure deductive logic.

Even if the math checks out, I wonder how many physicists measure and calculate the constants in their formulas themselves, instead of flipping open a book or checking a table. All it takes is one typo to screw up every theory and calculation based on it.

First, measuring every variable yourself would not only not be helpful, it could be detrimental. Many of the values we have for constants have been refined over decades of testing by people who sought to pin down the value of these constants as precisely and as accurately as possible. Any measurement conducted on ones own is likely to be less accurate, and this doesn't make you less likely to make a typo anyhow. There is no problem with looking a value up, and I would say that doing so would increase the validity of your results rather than decrease them. Part of the reason that science can even advance is precisely because we don't have to go back and repeat every experiment ever done in order for our results to be valid!

Second, the idea that it only takes one typo to screw up a whole theory is just totally false. Theories have been rigorously tested, and any random error would long have been exposed and ironed out by the people who have tested it. And yes, calculations can be made wrong by typos, but who cares? No amount of backing up research is going to make anyone immune to making simple random mistakes.

Now this just makes me angry. You may not realize it, but you've just argued that:

A) rigorous fact-checking is not necessary when evaluating the truth of a theory

and

B) the source of information is not important, so long as there appears to be a consensus

Save your indignance, I've done no such thing.

A) Evaluating the truth of a theory happens after you understand what it says. When you go to actually evaluate it, you do your rigorous fact checking. If you're still learning it, you aren't evaluating the truth of the theory, you're simply understanding it. Checking the book against other books is a perfectly valid way to show that the textbooks in question are representing the theory correctly; by inductive logic, it is highly improbable that every single textbook is wrong in the exact same way about what a theory says, and claiming that they are would require extraordinary proof.

Once again: you don't evaluate the truth of a theory by reading a textbook, you only understand how it works.

B) Also not what I said! For the same reason as above! Never did I suggest that new theories should be checked against other theories in textbooks, I was only talking about the capability of textbooks to accurately represent current theories. Current theories do not equal truth, neither do textbooks, and for the n-th time, textbooks are to learn current theory so that you can test and evaluate it later. The only job of a science textbook is to tell you what is known, not what is true.

Indeed, and don't think scientists scrounging for grant-money are immune to this. I'd say most of the opposition to new theories is about protecting job-security. After all, if peer review were being handled empirically, the evidence would speak for itself, and the old guard would have no complaints about a new theory supplanting the one they built their careers on.

You're assuming that all new evidence is valid. I imagine that many of the arguments that grumpy old physicists levy against new research has to do with testing methodology and such, and it is difficult to consider the validity of those arguments without having some expertise. Suffice to say that the issue is not as cut and dried as you make it sound. In any case, whatever motivates these objections, they don't seem to be very effective, honestly. New theories hit scientific journals on a constant basis. It is just that most of them are either not yet tested well enough to supplant current theories, or are falsified upon further scrutiny.

[Gawdzilla]

Also, if we did not question and test established theory/belief regardless of who's it is, we would still believe the earth is flat

Please point to where I said that we shouldn't question established theory.
I simply said we should understand a theory before we pretend we can question it appropriately.

Through critical analysis of established theory and hypothesizing what could be, science advances much like Rad stated.

Science advances by both empirical and critical analysis, not only critical analysis, so you're wrong about how science advances.
Originally Rad argued that empirical analysis, and therefore science, was impossible, which he seems to now have recinded.
Which of Rad's outlooks do you agree with?

I also have to say that I share Rads sentiments in regards to being somewhat angered (more frustrated) by the statements regarding not needing to critically analyze what has consensus. Is this truely what higher learning has come to?

Once again.. where have I eschewed the value of critical analysis?

[Rad]

I haven't rescinded any of it, and if you can't see how thoroughly you've detoured form the empirical method into blind faith and dogma...

..well, the point is you *can't* see it. Or else you choose not to. Either way, there reaches a point where even I get tired of repeating myself to someone who doesn't hear. I just find it a bit sad--I have a perverse drive to try and open minds to their own inconsistencies and illogical prejudices. It rarely ends in a fulfilling manner.

[Dream79]

Please point to where I said that we shouldn't question established theory.
I simply said we should understand a theory before we pretend we can question it appropriately.

No understanding can be made without questions. Also, what determines an appropriate question from an inappropriate question? Last I checked all questions are valid, though maybe not all are necessarily productive. Learning and experience will refine this process of questions and answers on a individual level and beyond, but that is part of the learning process in and of itself.

[Gawdzilla]

I haven't rescinded any of it

Please explain to me, then, how you can talk about empiricism within a paradigm that says, quote:

It is impossible to independently verify the data of our senses because we have no other way of perceiving the world outside our skulls. Without independent verification, there can be no empirical evidence.

So you explicitly state that empirical evidence can't exist, and then subsequently use empiricism to "prove" your math book wrong when you:

checked it with two other sources to be scientifically rigorous, and empirically proved the math book to be wrong.

Ignoring that math is deductive and not empirical, your method is invalid by your very own argument!
Notwithstanding the fact that checking textbooks against each other isn't scientifically rigorous OR empirical, it is also the very thing you chided ME for doing. The difference between us is that I never pretended that what I was doing was scientific, I only suggested that it is valid as an inductive method for determining the accuracy of a textbook in representing a theory (not in representing reality). Yet here you are, asserting that checking the answer in a math book against other math books is an empirical method for determining the accuracy of a discipline that doesn't even require empiricism. What sense does that make? If you haven't rescinded anything you've argued, you're at least breaking your own rules.

if you can't see how thoroughly you've detoured form the empirical method into blind faith and dogma...

Where?
I've argued that checking textbooks against each other is good inductive method for determining if they have represented the theory correctly. You seem to think that I believe it is a good method for checking if the theory is true. I have done no such thing. Textbooks are not arbiters of truth, they only contain what we think is true, so that we can learn it and understand it before we test it empirically.

Also, using the term "blind faith" implies that I believe something regardless of evidence. Yet there is plenty of inductive support for my assertion that the textbook is a faithful representation of known theory, and if the textbook were shown not to be an accurate representation of physical theory, I would cease to support it. How is that blind faith? Methinks you're just trying to make me sound bad, now.

..well, the point is you *can't* see it. Or else you choose not to.

You're right, I don't see where I have eschewed empiricism. That was your deal, I was arguing for it.
All I did was assert that we don't need to personally verify every bit of information in any given textbook, because we have good inductively logical (although non-empirical admittedly) to suggest that our textbooks are good representations of the theories we want to test. I did not say that they are good methods for determining if the theories are accurate representations of reality. Doing science would be literally impossible if we had no way to build upon our predecessors, we would all have to start from scratch.

Either way, there reaches a point where even I get tired of repeating myself to someone who doesn't hear. I just find it a bit sad--I have a perverse drive to try and open minds to their own inconsistencies and illogical prejudices. It rarely ends in a fulfilling manner.

I have the same regret.
I'm aware that some of the sources that I learn from have not been proved as rigorously as a mathematical proof, nor individually tested empirically by me. The problem is that it is literally impossible to expect such a thing, nor would it be of much (if any) utility. We cannot be absolutely certain about everything; we need to use inductive logic for some things, we cannot get away from it. All I was doing is arguing that this is a valid way to proceed, you're arguing that it isn't (even if you yourself used inductive logic to verify your math textbook).

[Gawdzilla]

No understanding can be made without questions.

Okay, once again, I never disagreed with nor contradicted that rather obvious statement.
Also, if I may point out, you never did point out where I disagreed with that even though you implied that I did.

Also, what determines an appropriate question from an inappropriate question?

One that makes sense, and one that actually applies to the theory being tested.
For instance, if my theory says that cross-breeding blue flowers and red flowers makes purple flowers, then you can't invalidate my theory by crossing yellow and pink flowers. You also can't invalidate my theory by crossing a wolf with a cocker spaniel and seeing what comes out the other end. Those two questions are inappropriate for testing the theory.

Some questions also don't make any sense. Asking "how many kilometers are in a liter?" implies that you don't properly understand the concepts of volume or distance, or the units used to represent them. That is also an inappropriate question. People who don't understand theories often ask questions that don't make any sense in the context of that theory. That is why you must understand what a theory says before you can make any determination of its validity.

Last I checked all questions are valid, though maybe not all are necessarily productive.

Well, now you know better. Some questions are simply invalid (with respect to a particular theory).
It is actually more difficult to think of questions that are valid but unproductive.
If a theory predicts A and you find A, then you have confirmed the theory, even if it is for the millionth time.
If a theory predicts not A and you get B, then you know one more thing that will not invalidate the theory.
They may not provide you with any new knowledge, but at least they can be said to have tested the theory.