Posts by BenWilson
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Paul Feyerabend had some interesting views on science's place in society . I rate Against Method as in the top 5 most influential books on my own thinking.
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And as important - some may say more so - for the understanding of science I heartily recommend this little piece.
It's a good piece. It's extremely hard to ignore the words of a great scientist when it comes to science, and when he fails completely to define the term, it makes you wonder if it is definable. Certainly he characterizes science, at least as it came to him, and that kind of anecdotal evidence is extremely compelling, unscientific though it is.
I do find his utter refusal to even know about philosophy of science a bit limiting, though. Someone so brilliant could surely have contributed at least a little to it.
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But Feynman's point was the same as mine: sometimes a brilliant insight precedes empirical data.
A lot of the time. Einstein was apparently in no doubt as to the outcome of many of his theories many years in advance of any ability to actually collect the empirical data, convinced by the mathematics alone. Naturally the experiments convinced everyone else, and that is really their place. Data as a source of inspiration is nowhere near as useful as many people think. I tend to agree with Popper that the 'Bold Claim' is where it's at. The claim that comes after the evidence is hardly scientific at all. It's just a summary of data. The claim that comes before the data, and leads to astonishing discoveries, that is the claim that seems to have hooked into some real truth about the universe.
It would have been quite possible for Ptolemaic physics to compete with Copernican, given enough epicycles - Copernicus used circles in all his calculations himself, and was no more accurate in predicting planetary movements. But his repositioning of the earths position in the model led to theoretical ramifications that could be explored - for example, a heliocentric model suggested that the planets closer to the sun should go through phases, rather like the moon. With the advent of the telescope, these phases could be clearly seen on Venus. There's something pretty convincing about a discovery like that.
How can you tell if it's a brilliant insight without empirical data?
By collecting the data, obviously. But you don't have to do that first . Sometimes it goes that way, but sometimes it doesn't.
Isn't the history of particle physics based on insights that are followed sometimes a great deal later (if at all) by actual empirical data, and does it not in fact remind us constantly of the ultimate limits of empiricism?
Every kind of physics has such a history. Newtonian physics was responsible for the discovery of Neptune, as it the presence of an unseen planet might account for some irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. They did the maths, looked hard for it, and hey presto, look, there's a big planet no one even knew was there before.
(Well, actually, not confirmation because you know, science never really confirms theories, merely fails to deny them, and especially with particle physics that's something to bear in mind.)
Well it seems to work that way in physics anyway...not so sure it's like that in every field that could be called scientific...
Unless you mean to contrast to a science that develops purely based on theories drawn from pre-existing data, which seems really rather a strange idea to me (and of course as any AI type will tell, just asking for trouble.)
Yup, for sure, that's my type. I use AI to block spam, and the data used to block it is out of date within a few days. An even better example would be in finance, in which technical analysis of trends is not certainly a better method than understanding 'fundamentals' of value. Both have their place in predicting price movements.
Not really: one is limited to one's instruments, and there are quite possibly fundamental limits on one's instruments, but that's not really a deep problem for the empiricist: here are things we can know, and the rest is metaphysics.
I tend to agree with Keir here, but it's a semantic discussion about what the word 'empiricist' means. My understanding was that they pretty much were defined by their opposite, rationalists, in that they believed knowledge of the world came 'from without' rather than 'from within'. They did not agree with Descartes that you could understand the world merely by thinking about it, no matter how logical you are.
But some readings of the term have it that it means 'Only believing in what can be observed'. Which is an extreme form, maybe. Some, like Locke, discounted any 'innate ideas', although it is not entirely clear whether he meant that we had no innate ideas, or whether he was only saying that innateness was no guarantee of truth.
But either way, he was never saying that there is no world but what we can observe. He was only saying that it was the only world we could know about . I think this is fairly consistent amongst empiricists, although logical positivists would seem to be trying to legislate against all discussion of the unobservable.
So I don't think empiricism is refuted by Heisenberg. But empiricism is a long and twisting tradition, and pinning it down as a complete doctrine is probably misunderstanding it almost entirely.
So many schools of philosophy lay claim to science (not just empiricism - rather old fashioned as it is). So many practitioners do too. Many have convincing arguments. Many have little more than dogma. Some make incredible discoveries, yet others dedicate themselves to denying every discovery ever made. I tend to admire the first kind, but see the necessity for the second kind. Science is a deeply political process, like all of human thought and endeavor. It is not a completely systematized practice, it is not mathematically provable. It is full of dispute, and has undergone revolution after revolution. We could be wrong about nearly everything. I like to think that we are simply becoming less wrong. If we are every completely right about everything, we will never know it for sure. The future could, as Hume (noted Empiricist though he was) pointed out, not resemble the past, without any logical inconsistency at all. In that respect it is our modern religion - to speak of it with reverence is commonplace, to understand it almost impossible, to refute it unthinkable. It is powerful beyond all comprehension because it is us, it's what we do as humans, at least half of the time. The rest of the time we're trying to work out what we want from science, and why we want it, and what's wrong with just getting a nice back rub instead.
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And that seems to be what people in this thread are saying (I hope I'm not mischaracterising anyone here).
I'd concur. Essentially the debate is raging around some straw men. On the one hand, the straw man that people who are willing to try alternate remedies are anti-science or anti-mainstream-western-medicine at least. Most assuredly some are, but not all, and pretty much nobody here is. The other is the straw man that anecdotal evidence proves a general theory or set of techniques. No one has said that either. What people giving anecdotes of their treatments are doing is providing evidence against the general claim that everything to do with their selected treatment is totally bogus, nothing but placebo, does nothing and is expensive at best, harmful at worst. These claims take the arrogance of mainstream science far too far, and in doing so they are actually counter-scientific.
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I think of that thread as part of the Journey to the East. Many pilgrims came, and headed east or south, and then abandoned it, and spoke of it with reverence long after, of a time when many were motivated in one vast train of intellectual movement, weaving backwards and forwards like a great snake, always slightly ahead, just beyond the horizon, and finally ending at a time none could remember; perhaps it still continues out there, somewhere, in the darkness, join it if you will, you can be certain that your presence will be welcomed, your life changed, friends and enemies alike made and lost...I fell beside the way long ago, somewhere in cyberspace, lost the thread and only shadowy memories remain.
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ask Russell for my email address
Thanks
More generally, I think that one of the huge and almost entirely unsung successes of science (compared to, say, putting people on the moon or inventing the internet, not to mention curing smallpox) is the development of organized statistical methods and experimental protocols that allow us to sift data for causative relationships in an organized fashion. This is an incredibly powerful tool and it should stand as one of the towering achievements of our civilization, but it gets precious little attention, or respect.
To be honest, I don't think it's all that. I think the way in which scientific discoveries are made is incredibly mysterious, rather than organized and scientific. What scientific methodology provides is a way in which to verify these discoveries. This makes the outcomes of the discovery process public. The secrets of the discovery process itself is probably the most woowoo of all arts - deeply creative and intuitive. They're also highly secretive and jealously guarded, at times.
I'm also not sure that the scientific method itself is a particularly scientific thing. That would be circular, as Hume realized long ago. The reasoning must come from outside of the methodology, and it is a far more controversial subject than scientists appear to let on. To that end the calling of one set of theories scientific and others non is nowhere near so straightforward as it might seem. There are certainly some examples that fall into the easily categorized mumbo jumbo boxes, but there's an awful lot that fall in grey areas too. I tend to agree with Feyerabend that a formal methodology for science can do more harm than good, if it were exalted too much. It is quite possible that every science has its own methodology, that there is no general methodology, or even that each actual theory breaks new methodological ground. Certainly it would seem that very little actual science has ever come from philosophers of science, that the methodology lags behind actual science hugely.
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Roy & HG used to do awesome alternative radio commentaries for State of Origin and Grand Final games.
And for Formula One. I had some great nights in Melbourne watching that with my flatmate and listening to them on the Radio. I'd never been able to watch F1 before on account of the dry dullness of the commentary (not to mention the sport itself).
My secret shame is that I didn't read that thread
What mortal could?
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Heh, I read the same story Hayden. There are many versions of it, my favourite casts Seagal fully as the bad guy, who picks the fight by hurting someone during filming, claims demigod status, is beaten, can't accept it, tries to cheat with a squirrel grip, is thoroughly beaten, shits, is laughed at, runs to his manager and has the guy blackballed. There's something deeply plausible about all of it. It's one of those 'tales of the street' that have made martial arts history. It is possible that a much nicer spin on all of it could be made, in which he was victimized by his stuntmen, but that just doesn't seem likely to me.
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I am not wanting to offer advice, but have you tried hypnotherapy
Only self-hypnosis, which I have tried a hell of a lot of, ever since I was a teenager. It works, to a limited degree. Some have argued that hypnosis IS the placebo effect, that's exactly what a placebo does, makes a suggestion. My experience was that it worked but it didn't last - you had to keep doing it and doing it, and that is actually time consuming and mentally exhausting. To some degree it was actually depressing, and led to problems - telling myself something over and over and over led to 'self-distrust', when what you are telling yourself fails to eventuate. Eventually I think my ability to autosuggest diminished.
I'm not sure if listening to hypnosis tapes is technically self-hypnosis. Certainly they have had persistent good effects, not for what they purported to be about, changing habits etc, but actually as a form of pre-sleep meditation (eczema causes shocking insomnia sometimes). I typically found that the only valuable part was the 'induction' into a trance, after which I would lapse into excellent sleep. The bit where they try to place suggestions led to 'tape-distrust', again because the things they said failed to materialize.
I made some of my own recordings, and found that I have a fantastically hypnotic voice (some might say boring), and these are my most favourite recordings of all (who hasn't noticed that I love the sound of my own voice?), since I can tailor them to my own favourite mental imagery - I couldn't find any that used the idea of sinking down into water for induction, for instance, on account of the fact that so many people fear drowning. But I still only use them to get to sleep - I don't want to learn to distrust my own voice coming out of an mp3 player.
I've been extremely wary of letting any kind of therapist do it for me. Perhaps the time is nigh? I don't think I know anyone I trust enough to let them hypnotize me. I'm well aware that this is probably an irrational fear, that they can't easily make you do anything you don't want to do already, but still, its a fear all the same, and that is likely to make the experience expensive and worthless. But then again, it might not.
Anyone know a good hypnotist in Auckland?
there is nothing intrinsically woo-woo about it
I wouldn't care if there was. I leave the antiwoowooism to Peter Ashby and any others who have a taste for irrational hyperrationality. If woowoo helps then woowoo is good, that is my stance.
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Done a bit of that - mostly for getting out of headlocks or similar. Which, for bonus thread cross-pollination points, is usually how I put my neck out.
Curious...I was practicing chokes the other day and my neck felt the best it has in ages afterward. I never would have thought a massive munter strangling me would actually be good for me. Something about the traction that it was applying did an excellent job of loosening the muscles. Of course I didn't let them 'crank' my neck, nor is that an allowed move in BJJ or MMA. But it's pretty easy to crank your own neck trying to escape a choke -that's one of those "learn to tap out, dude" moments.
Just emulating his mate Sid, though.
That's a funny article about Seagal. He's the author of all his own ridicule, and not least from other Aikidoka. Most are somewhat happy about the exposure he got for Aikido, and his depictions of it as an effective martial art, but very few agree with his particular interpretation of O Sensei's teachings. His depictions are mostly anathema to the entire spirit of the art, which is meant to be about gentle conflict resolution (whilst carrying a big stick), rather than sadistic executions. That's the movies for you, I guess. Anecdotal evidence from students suggests that he is not actually a brutal sadist in reality. I'm not sure his stuntpeople would agree.
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