# Why do you know you're right and others are wrong? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 21, 2000, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161 "2000-08-21T14:52:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![oldscratch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ed655f/32.png) [@oldscratch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oldscratch)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161/21 "2000-08-22T16:06:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by IzzyR \* > \*\* > So the question is - how can any person be **objectively** sure that out of the different assesments of which position is actually supported by the facts their’s is **really** the true assessment? \*\* Well no. The question was how can science have the truth. As from the quote in Engels. > [@](#): > > In other words, the sovereignty of thought is realised in a series of extremely unsovereignly-thinking human beings; the knowledge which has an unconditional claim to truth is realised in a series of relative errors; neither the one nor the other can be fully realised except through an unending duration of human existence. Science has the “truth” although I don’t like to call it that, because facts mesh with experience. Any individual can have the wrong set of science. But, taken as a whole the truth is contained in it. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161/22 "2000-08-22T16:12:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \* > **. . . The unfortunate thing is that a lot of scientists do tacitly claim to have the truth. Until they’re caused to do so kicking and screaming, a lot of them don’t allow a glimmer of doubt. . . . If you had asked a scientist - for example, my best friend’s father, the physicist . . . they would have laughed in your face and then sworn up and down that it was preposterous. . . .** Um, matt\_mcl, you’re not talking about scientists. Judging from your description, you’re talking about _mad_ scientists. Seriously though, I think your characterization is grossly unfair and operatically exaggerated. The scientists I know take it as a given that no new discovery is an absolute but merely another step in the eternal process. Far from being forced “kicking and screaming,” and “laughing in your face,” “[swearing] up and down that it was _ **preposterous** _[!!!] (who was your best friend’s father, Vincent Price?), they maintain a moment-to-moment awareness that it’s doubt that drives science forward, not certainty. > [@](#): > > _continued_ > **. . . At my university, an alternative theories discussion group run by a graduate student in linguistics was shut down and its founder expelled. . . .** Shut down and expelled to stifle free speech and academic discussion? Even if this anecdote were entirely true (and of course I have no reason to suspect it’s not) and there were no more to it than that (were they also druggies? nudists? pyromaniacs?), I feel safe in insisting that a University that silences academic discussion is the exception, not the rule. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161/23 "2000-08-22T18:18:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lissener \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \* > > **. . . The unfortunate thing is that a lot of scientists do tacitly claim to have the truth. Until they’re caused to do so kicking and screaming, a lot of them don’t allow a glimmer of doubt. . . . If you had asked a scientist - for example, my best friend’s father, the physicist . . . they would have laughed in your face and then sworn up and down that it was preposterous. . . .** > > Um, matt\_mcl, you’re not talking about scientists. Judging from your description, you’re talking about _mad_ scientists. Seriously though, I think your characterization is grossly unfair and operatically exaggerated. You’re right. Good scientists do not behave as described, which is exactly what I said. So if we agree, why are we arguing? I am aware that there are plenty of really good scientists who conscientiously doubt all of their conclusions. There are also those who do not. As I was at pains to point out, the problem is not with science (a humanistic pursuit involving doubt), but with those scientists who behave as described. “It’s scientifically proven!” is such a commonly-used sentiment in defiance of the fact that it’s a contradiction in terms. The perception that “if you see it in _Nature_ it’s so” is far too widespead. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161/24 "2000-08-22T18:28:10Z")
I’m an atheist, but I am perfectly willing to admit that I might be wrong—may wake up in hell with Satan shaking his finger at me. How many religious people are willing to admit THEY might be wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161/25 "2000-08-22T19:51:49Z")
Well, me for one, Eve. Of course, where I stand is a slight variant on Pascal’s Wager in the moral arena. You see, what I believe is **right** – not in some abstract metaphysical sense that means everybody should subscribe to it – in fact, that is in some sense contrary to what I stand for. But the idea of love of all other people, non-judgmentalism, joy in life and creation as God’s gift to me and others, working for having everyone treated by everyone else with caring, justice, and dignity…these are traits that are right for me. In my world system, they are commanded by my God. However, even if that perception should be wrong, I’d stand by them. If the Divine Weasel wishes to damn me for not jumping through the right theological hoops, or if Cthulhu or the Purple Oyster of Doom determines that my soul is edible, I have stood for what I feel is right. I refer to it as a Pascal’s wager variant because any god worth worshipping IMHO is going to find this behavior positive. On balance, I find the likelihood of the loving-but-just god that Jesus taught the most likely. Second place would be a universal spirit of the sort the pagans seem to accord chief honcho position in their system (though it’s remarkably tough to pin down pagan metaphysics!) or a syncretic god based on the _philosophia perennis_. Third choice in my betting system would be the absence of a deity, a la the pragmatic atheist view…since none of these deities has done a particularly good job of making him/herself obvious outside the “eyes of faith.” I.e., while I can see God’s handiwork in the way the world is working out and my life in particular, I would be hard put to make a case for this that would be acceptable to you, Gaudere, or David. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161/26 "2000-08-22T20:14:02Z")
Well, bravo, Poly! That’s what I like about the SDMB—where else would an atheist and a whatever-religion-you-are person be able to agree on something as basic and esoteric as this? . . . I hope you’re wrong about the Purple Oyster of Doom, though . . . [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-you-know-youre-right-and-others-are-wrong/30161.md?page=1)