Man, you're so insightfully right. It isn't remotely scientific to base any scientific theories on popularity. Wow. So have you just convinced yourself that science isn't a popularity contest of any sort?
Since they can never be proved, they never become facts, no matter how much evidence you collect.
As I said in the parent post to yours, this is to confuse truth and knowledge. Unless you're using 'fact' to mean 'known truth', it is not necessary that one have proof of some statement A for it to be true. Of course, we would need evidence (here, A is not a deductive statement) to believe and know that A is true, but our missing that knowledge does not diminish the facthood of A. This is the thrust of my exhaustive example. Either A or ~A is true. This is a demonstration that truth is a separate concept from knowledge. One *must* be true, but of course that has no bearing on whether we know (or can ever know) which.
On a total sidetrack, when you say 'if you want to regard "something else besides gravity" as a subcase of theory 2...', I'm not sure what you had in mind. If there is something that acts similarly to gravity that acts on all massive bodies in an attractive way, how is that not gravity? And if nothing in the underlying reality (yes, yes, this term is open to abuse) resembles gravity, ie. a force does not exist that even closely matches our understanding of the attraction between massive bodies (in other words, gravity does not exist), then both cases in my example are true and false, trivially.
All this has nothing to do with the epistemology of the scientific method per se, but that such terms as 'fact', 'truth', 'knowledge', 'theory', 'proof' can be comingled and bandied around erroneously, and is open to abuse by pseudoscienific groups and endevours (to bring us back to the topic!).
An observation is not a certainty about the external world. The fact is simply that a particular observation was made or reported to have been made.
So now an observation per se is not a fact, but that an observation is made is? I hope I am not being obtuse if I ask for clarification, or what it is your point is supposed to reveal.
All inferences about the world itself (including the degree of accuracy of specific observations) fall into the category of theory.
So you agree with me here? Realise this - trivial observations will only ever support trivial theories, trivial theories will be falsified by trivial observations, and theories that can not be falsified are not theories.
As for your last paragraph, nothing you mention contradicts the fact the "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity" and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity" are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. If "...you happen discover an object that does not appear to be subject to gravity, there could be some other interfering force or measurement error that is preventing you from detecting the influence of gravity", then case 1 is true. If there is "...no such thing as gravity (and the forces between objects are dictated by something quite different)..." then case 2 is true. In other words, I still question your assertion that "All generalizations (e.g. "objects fall when dropped") and explanations ("there is a force that attracts all masses to one another") are theories", since it is the case that there are generalisations that are true, even if the generalisation is 'the universe is not ammenable to any laws'. What I think we have helped to confound are epistomology and truth (though they are inherently intertwined).
I agree with most of what you say regarding laws. I merely designated "Newton's Theory of Gravitation" those parts of Classical Mechanics that deal with modelling massive bodies. I do not think it is unsuitable.
I also agree completely that those IDist's that put forward the argument of "merely a theory" are both shooting themselves in the foot (as you say, 'I think the best word for "Intelligent Design" is "speculation"'), and confounding a more informal usage of the word 'theory'.
What I do still contend is that saying that "evolution is just a theory" denies is that there are parts (inheritance, for example) that are true, whereas much of the framework (applying metrics to natural pressures on specific allele frequencies) can certainly be designated theory. Again, no one will deny that things fall on earth when released at a height above 'the ground', but that is simply not the theory part, it is fact. Note, also, that (as I have tried to expound in another part of this subthread) the distinction between theory and fact is not one of quality, but of degree.
Well, let us run with your example. Is the observation enough to deny [some theory of gravitation]? Yes, a theory that is only as specific as "Gravity does/doesn't make objects fall". Now let's say the pencil, starting at a height of 2.3m, was released and took 0.69s to reach the floor. Then we may falsify a distinguish between much more precise, accurate theories.
At this point, one should come to the realisation that facts are not unassailable certainties. Their accuracy, even their definition, are all part of whichever paradigm is being used to model them. Which is to say, points of data, observations, are subject to the same kind (though probably not degree) of doubt that theories themselves are.
Even if you do not agree with the above, let me pose this. "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity," and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity." One of these is a fact, since their disjunction is exhaustive. This would seem to contradict your notion that "The only facts are specific observations".
gravity is neither fact nor theory - it is what it is (phenomena, field, whatever).
There seems to be some catagorical confusion here. What you have parenthesized are not both the same thing. A field is not a natural phenomenon. It is an abstraction about the nature of that phenomenon. And saying that gravity is not a fact, just some phenomenon, is really semantic evasion, as I could easily convert "gravity is a fact" to "the existence of gravitational phenomena is a fact".
Indeed, I failed to mention aspects of falsifiability. Oh, and Occam's Razor. Invoking an undefined designer is probably the most flagrant flouting of it. Others have mentioned both of these in threads below, of course.
Bear in mind, though, that arguments by ID proponents include attempting to cast doubt on the validity of other sciences as science, but this is merely cheap abuse of the demarcation problem.
Gravity is a fact. What gravity is is still highly unknown and debatable.
Agreed, thought whether "What is gravity?" can, or will ever be, a scientific question is also debatable. Those who are familiar with the search for the Higg's boson, please note that the discovery of this would merely transfer the "What is gravity?" question one level down. As would any further 'explanation' of "What is the Higg's boson?"
But it's damn sure a hypothesis.
It may be a hypothesis, but I would not call it a scientific hypothesis. It lacks operational definitions, and, again, it does not make predictions. In fact, I have yet to read any ID paper that makes predictions, or models currently reproducible experiments that have not been thoroughly debunked, or that is not just a series of (usually unsophisticated) criticisms of current evolutionary biology. But please feel free to refer me to any.
Hmm. Two questions. Would you view Newton's theory of gravitation a theory, or a fact? Now, would you view gravity itself as a theory or a fact?
Evolution is a fact. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a theory, supported by cell biology, DNA analysis, geology, and probably all other hard science. It also makes localised predictions on the variation of alleles within a genome, as well as the traits of offspring generations of species (ones within a lab environment at any rate).
Intelligent design produces no models, makes no predictions, and explains no currently understood phenomena. It is neither theory, nor fact.
Haskell uses lazy evaluation. Lisp uses strict evaluation unless you explicitly ask for lazy evaluation.
Note that the opposite of 'strict' is 'non-strict' and the opposite of 'lazy' is 'eager'. Strict/non-strict is a semantic distinction. For example:
my_func x y = x
is strict on x, non-strict on y (in haskell, that is). Note, this is actually the definition of strict:
my_func _|_ y = _|_ my_func x _|_ = x
(where _|_ is 'bottom', the undefined value of every type)
Laziness/eagerness, on the other hand, refers to evaluation strategy. So, in haskell, non-strict semantics are achieved via lazy evaluation. Google for alternatives!
If you were to find every factor that made a difference in Open Source vs. Proprietary software (an impossible task indeed), all you'd find is that Sturgeon's Law still applies:
The reality is that software is software, and programmers are programmers. A really good piece of software will tend to get that way through the work of experienced and talented individuals. Projects lacking those individuals will produce poor software. Doesn't matter if it's open source or not.
But opensource software does have more visibility: More (and hopefully better) users/developers can find your project; the current project leader can hand over the project to a worthy programmer; etc, etc. Essential, open source projects don't have a CV/interview/hiring committee barrier. Of course, such a hiring process probably means the average programming standard in an arbitrary software company is higher than the overall population of opensource users.
But a lot has to be said for enthusiasm and invested interest.
I disagree. That the nature of thinking is so hard to define is exactly why this form of machine-intelligence testing is so interesting. Once we design a computer system with characteristics indistinguishable from intelligence, we will either
understand a/the mechanism of intelligent thought, or
realise that intelligence is some emergent property that deterministic systems can have.
Or, of course, we will not be able to create a program that convincingly passes the Turing test (or variations thereof), and have to believe in some kind of 'soul', or take a completely different tack in the analysis of the mechanisms of intelligence.
"The exception proves the rule" is my pet peeve too, and unfortunately, you've interpreted in exactly the wrong way.
The context is a legal one; wherein a law lists all excepted cases, this strengthens the law for all other applicable cases that are not excepted. To quote from the alt.usage.english FAQ:
"'Special leave is given for men to
be out of barracks tonight till 11.0 p.m.'; 'The exception proves
the rule' means that this special leave implies a rule requiring
men, except when an exception is made, to be in earlier. The value
of this in interpreting statutes is plain."
Aaaargh, no! The phrase *is* very old, but 'prove' is not used in the sense of 'test' at all. It stems from a legal sense, eg:
All men are permitted to be out of the barracks past 10pm this Saturday.
This would imply, and one could infer (and this is the context of 'prove' here) that there is a rule, unsaid, that usually, men must be back in barracks no later than 10pm.
There is a more general legal maxim appealing to this idea. Laws that include examples tend to make the law weaker, expect for cases very much like those exaples, and laws that exclude examples tend to make laws stronger, unless cases are very much like those examples.
Accountability might result in more responsibility, which might eventually result in more security, but (as the succinct expression in the parent puts) this is not a necessary condition. The linux kernel has something much more fundamental to security:
I can totally understand the pressures you may be facing in a large corporation.
If your ungrammatical, abbreviated, unpuctuated messages are fully decipherable by your recipients, then I won't raise an eyebrow. But it seems to me that you are merely tranferring the effort of communication on to your readers, which is inconsiderate (though probably only slightly).
I agree to this wholeheartedly. I was just eyeing up a t42 the other day. Will they go out of business before I can save a little extra cash for one? Maybe it'll be cheaper *after* they sell out. Hmm.
Uh, yes. Of course I agree with you completely. I was replying to this comment:
I can RELY on a real work of reference. Wikipedia is useful, I use it all the time, but I don't treat it like an encyclopedia, more a "hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy". A place to start, but not to trust.
by Anoraknid the Sartor (9334), where I was trying to point out that the use of the word 'rely' in this context in referring to a real work of reference is in fact circular.
This really does beg the question. Wikipedia is not a real encyclopedia, so you can't rely on it, but you can rely on EB because it's real? What happens if you find an internal inconsistency in EB, or facts within that you know are not true?
For all the talk about labels vs. folders, I find labels are counter-intuitive. Here in my filing cabinet I sort documents into folders; I don't stick 3 or 4 different labels on documents and throw them all into the same drawer. It's crazy!
What a bizarre view. Since labels can be applied in such a way as to make them functionally isomorphic to folders, they can be no worse.
I think that you might have overlooked the utility and practicality of having a uniform, application-level communication mechanism. This is, I believe, what is included in the more common notion of 'sync', as in the phrase "Why won't it bloody sync with outlook properly?".
Palm OS offers this kind of sync support, and you might note that the number of Palm OS applications that have a complementary desktop component is very high (free, or otherwise). Also as a result of this well-established, consistent application data interface, many replacement applications exist for the Palm OS handheld PIM programs. And on the desktop, many alternatives exist that can sync with Palm OS data.
Of course, the idea of the handheld as a mere extension of the desktop was a dominant influence over the original PalmPilot design (from whence the venerable and still current HotSync was forged).
Slashdot Mirror
-Tez
On a total sidetrack, when you say 'if you want to regard "something else besides gravity" as a subcase of theory 2...', I'm not sure what you had in mind. If there is something that acts similarly to gravity that acts on all massive bodies in an attractive way, how is that not gravity? And if nothing in the underlying reality (yes, yes, this term is open to abuse) resembles gravity, ie. a force does not exist that even closely matches our understanding of the attraction between massive bodies (in other words, gravity does not exist), then both cases in my example are true and false, trivially.
All this has nothing to do with the epistemology of the scientific method per se, but that such terms as 'fact', 'truth', 'knowledge', 'theory', 'proof' can be comingled and bandied around erroneously, and is open to abuse by pseudoscienific groups and endevours (to bring us back to the topic!).
-Tez
As for your last paragraph, nothing you mention contradicts the fact the "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity" and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity" are mutually exclusive and exhaustive. If "...you happen discover an object that does not appear to be subject to gravity, there could be some other interfering force or measurement error that is preventing you from detecting the influence of gravity", then case 1 is true. If there is "...no such thing as gravity (and the forces between objects are dictated by something quite different)..." then case 2 is true. In other words, I still question your assertion that "All generalizations (e.g. "objects fall when dropped") and explanations ("there is a force that attracts all masses to one another") are theories", since it is the case that there are generalisations that are true, even if the generalisation is 'the universe is not ammenable to any laws'. What I think we have helped to confound are epistomology and truth (though they are inherently intertwined).
-Tez
I also agree completely that those IDist's that put forward the argument of "merely a theory" are both shooting themselves in the foot (as you say, 'I think the best word for "Intelligent Design" is "speculation"'), and confounding a more informal usage of the word 'theory'.
What I do still contend is that saying that "evolution is just a theory" denies is that there are parts (inheritance, for example) that are true, whereas much of the framework (applying metrics to natural pressures on specific allele frequencies) can certainly be designated theory. Again, no one will deny that things fall on earth when released at a height above 'the ground', but that is simply not the theory part, it is fact. Note, also, that (as I have tried to expound in another part of this subthread) the distinction between theory and fact is not one of quality, but of degree.
-Tez
At this point, one should come to the realisation that facts are not unassailable certainties. Their accuracy, even their definition, are all part of whichever paradigm is being used to model them. Which is to say, points of data, observations, are subject to the same kind (though probably not degree) of doubt that theories themselves are.
Even if you do not agree with the above, let me pose this. "All massive bodies are attracted to one-another by gravity," and "There exist massive bodies that are not attracted to eachother by gravity." One of these is a fact, since their disjunction is exhaustive. This would seem to contradict your notion that "The only facts are specific observations".
-Tez
-Tez
Bear in mind, though, that arguments by ID proponents include attempting to cast doubt on the validity of other sciences as science, but this is merely cheap abuse of the demarcation problem.
-Tez
-Tez
Evolution is a fact. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a theory, supported by cell biology, DNA analysis, geology, and probably all other hard science. It also makes localised predictions on the variation of alleles within a genome, as well as the traits of offspring generations of species (ones within a lab environment at any rate).
Intelligent design produces no models, makes no predictions, and explains no currently understood phenomena. It is neither theory, nor fact.
-Tez
-Tez
-Tez
But a lot has to be said for enthusiasm and invested interest.
-Tez
- understand a/the mechanism of intelligent thought, or
- realise that intelligence is some emergent property that deterministic systems can have.
Or, of course, we will not be able to create a program that convincingly passes the Turing test (or variations thereof), and have to believe in some kind of 'soul', or take a completely different tack in the analysis of the mechanisms of intelligence.Yes, I have been reading Goedel, Escher, Bach.
-Tez
The context is a legal one; wherein a law lists all excepted cases, this strengthens the law for all other applicable cases that are not excepted. To quote from the alt.usage.english FAQ:
-Tez
There is a more general legal maxim appealing to this idea. Laws that include examples tend to make the law weaker, expect for cases very much like those exaples, and laws that exclude examples tend to make laws stronger, unless cases are very much like those examples.
-Tez
Thank you
-Tez
Accountability might result in more responsibility, which might eventually result in more security, but (as the succinct expression in the parent puts) this is not a necessary condition. The linux kernel has something much more fundamental to security:
Transparency.
-Tez
If your ungrammatical, abbreviated, unpuctuated messages are fully decipherable by your recipients, then I won't raise an eyebrow. But it seems to me that you are merely tranferring the effort of communication on to your readers, which is inconsiderate (though probably only slightly).
-Tez
-Tez
by Anoraknid the Sartor (9334), where I was trying to point out that the use of the word 'rely' in this context in referring to a real work of reference is in fact circular.
-Tez
-Tez
What a bizarre view. Since labels can be applied in such a way as to make them functionally isomorphic to folders, they can be no worse.
-Tez
But A still has his asset, his can of Coke. So his net loss is zero.
-Tez
Palm OS offers this kind of sync support, and you might note that the number of Palm OS applications that have a complementary desktop component is very high (free, or otherwise). Also as a result of this well-established, consistent application data interface, many replacement applications exist for the Palm OS handheld PIM programs. And on the desktop, many alternatives exist that can sync with Palm OS data.
Of course, the idea of the handheld as a mere extension of the desktop was a dominant influence over the original PalmPilot design (from whence the venerable and still current HotSync was forged).
-Tez
6. What's the answer to this question?
7. Why don't I answer this?
8. How do I ask these?
-Tez