Mijin: The whole point of using science is to increase our predictive ability. Therefore, things that don’t increase it are wrong to to the extent science is useful in helping us predict the world around us, which it is to a gigantic extent.
If something that didn’t increase our ability to predict the Universe was true, it means the end of our ability to understand the Universe and therefore wibble wibble womp. As we have done a good job understanding things so far, that can be pretty much ruled out.
We’re discovering that many things are complex in the mathematical sense of being irreducible, and therefore humanly unknowable by any means except direct one-to-one simulation and even computers may never have the capacity to simulate everything.
Actually, I think yours is something of a misconception. Though often it goes unsaid among scientists because in a very pedantic sense it is true it is the domain of philosophy, the failure to satisfy Occam’s razor is one of the prototypical hallmarks pseudoscience. Does the earth go around the sun or the sun around the earth? It turns out that if you really really wanted to, you could argue that the sun goes around the earth. Your theories would get a hell of a lot more complicated, but you could. Do scientists say “oh that is the domain of philosophy?” No! They call it pseudoscience! We call it a “scientific fact” that the earth goes around the sun, because Occam’s razor is implicitly a core part of science, despite what the most pedantic definition will tell you. Yes, there are cases where the difference between two different models is said to be “philosophical”, but that is generally only when the question of satisfying Occam’s razor is itself subject to philosophical debate.
You’ve clearly rushed that sentence and I think you’d realize that the point doesn’t stand up if you had written it out more fully.
Hypotheses that are untestable at this time (and therefore don’t have predictive power yet) are not necessarily wrong. Simple.
So it’s true?
Do you have a cite for a scientist describing any frame of reference other than the sun as pseudoscience?
The afterlife issue falls outside the bounds of the OP, since it specifies “things that are known to be real.”
“Consciousness” qualifies, since we know that exists, but that’s about as metaphysical as we can get under the question as asked. There’s no scientific evidence that the afterlife or souls, god, et al, exist, or that love, for instance, is anything other than a behavior. It doesn’t diminish them in terms of Questions just because they are outside the domain of “science,” but it does make arguing that they can’t be “explained by science” irrelevant.
I’d say the OP was a bit mangled early on by the inclusion of things like “The Bermuda Triangle Phenomenon,” which is, in fact, known to not exist at all, but at least that wasn’t a purely metaphysical item (just a bogus one).
Likewise, discussions of “what is science?” or “what is reality?” probably belong in their own threads.
Here is Wikipedia’s first paragraph on pseudoscience:
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. Pseudoscience is often characterized by the use of vague, exaggerated or unprovable claims, an over-reliance on confirmation rather than rigorous attempts at refutation, a lack of openness to evaluation by other experts, and a general absence of systematic processes to rationally develop theories.
I’ve bolded the part most relevant to Occam’s razor. If you look down further in the page you will see Occam’s razor mentioned specifically.
It is true what I said, that Occam’s razor is in the philosophical domain. But it is also an implicit fundamental premise in the scientific method. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The essential elements of a scientific method are operations, observations, models, and a utility function for evaluating models.
Operation - Some action done to the system being investigated
Observation - What happens when the operation is done to the system
Model - A fact, hypothesis, theory, or the phenomenon itself at a certain moment
Utility Function - A measure of the usefulness of the model to explain, predict, and control, and of the cost of use of it. One of the elements of any scientific utility function is the refutability of the model. Another is its simplicity, on the Principle of Parsimony more commonly known as Occam’s Razor.
As a practicing scientist, it is something I take for granted, but is sometimes left out of explicit, simplified descriptions of what science is. Most of the edifice of modern physics is built upon what one might call “philosophy” (I can elaborate on this if you wish), but the reason the particular models we choose are referred to as part of “science” rather than “philosophy” is because part of “science” is choosing the most parsimonious models that have minimally predictive power rather than choosing those that simply tickle our idiosyncratic philosophical preferences.
The point wasn’t about whether a belief in the afterlife is scientific; clearly it is not.
What I’m saying is this:
That science doesn’t actually rule out an afterlife, as an earlier poster had implied (you’ve agreed with this).
Not being part of science doesn’t necessarily make something pseudoscience. Pseudoscience implies something being dressed as science.
I would call homeopathy pseudoscience, but the belief, say, that they’ll be another world war this century is simply not science.
I’d put belief that we’re in a simulation in the second bracket.
Frankly I thought the same about your last couple of posts.
FWIW I’m not interested in engaging in a back and forth, I-must-get-the-last-word contest, as happens to so many threads.
OK, is the question about the existence of Bigfoot outside the domain of science? (Or “science”, if you prefer.)
Mijin: The part of my post you called out can probably be better explained in terms of the ‘Utility Function’ that iamnotbatman quoted from Wikipedia.
Second, your examples are still lousy: The belief that there will be another war in this century is under the heading of political science, sociology, and, to a certain extent, economics. In fact, it’s a great way to test certain hypotheses assuming you can wait around long enough to observe the final results. So, yes, science.
The belief in an afterlife falls under, as I mentioned, biology and physics, in that if consciousness is something that can survive without a brain to run it we have some major revising to do to all our quantum field theories. Imagine if software could run even after the only computer running it was torn down into pieces!
The belief we’re in a simulation is either testable by particle physics or it’s Russel’s Teapot in a new suit, in which case science (that very successful methodology) tells us to drop it entirely. In both cases, science has something to say about it.
I don’t think that’s necessary. From Mijin’s last post, I think it is clear the disagreement comes down to whether or not his simulation hypothesis is something ‘dressed as science’. I think it clearly is; he is proposing a scientific model of a soul, one that is possible but I think failing a certain scientific litmus test. He disagrees. Fine.
Starting to get back to the thread: I agree with you Mijin, that believing in a soul (as long as you don’t attempt to motivate or apologize for that belief on anything learned through science, something in practice I think impossible to avoid) is not pseudoscience: it is simply not science. What science is good at, however, is providing explanations for what might otherwise be considered evidence for the metaphysical. In this sense, science can “explain” the metaphysical to the extent that it can explain any “evidence” one might think they have for it. This leaves metaphysicians very little room to operate, for they are left only with their feelings and subjective experiences (which a scientist would argue can also be explained) from which to form a basis for their beliefs.
Yeah, I’m happy to leave it there.
I disagree with a number of points in Derleth’s post #250 FTR, but this whole tangent started because I disagreed with one thing Derleth said.
So…yeah another thread.
To give an example which *is *on-topic: ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. I don’t know if it’s fair to say science can’t explain them at all, but certainly there’s a pretty diverse set of hypotheses about the mechanism.