Fidel Scratching His Head
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I am an idiot on many topics, including all the stuff in this thread and especially philosophy of science. But being the armchair(or in an alternate universe a real) lawyer, I am very good at spotting and avoiding logical fallacies. I know them inside and out! LOL.
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"Theories are not the end. Einstein's theory of general relativity explains a lot more than Newton's law of universal gravitation but it still yeilds plenty of currently unanswerable questions. We haven't even come up with theories about how to answer some of those yet. To say it's a "VERY long process" is an understatement. It is an infinitely long process. There is NO end." - Josh
You are right. It should be more like this...
"Modern scientific theories come at the very end of what is a VERY long project _but part of an endless process" - Fidel_We could call it process, but perhaps "project" is better since the scope is defined and falsification can eventually end within that scope, but the process is the big picture.
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Kuhn may have said it, but he said it after Popper, but AI doesn’t understand much about stealing and proper attribution, does it? Hence why I said “gamble with ChatGPT,” it’s just that: gambling with the words that make up explanations rather than understanding them and creating new ones.
It looks like Deutsch understood accurate sourcing though. (Page 10 of my copy)
But we both may agree with Josh that the process is infinite. Though you rejected that early by claiming the periodic table was nearly complete. What part of infinite don’t you understand?
Also, I prefer “problem” over project. Problems are inevitable, problems are soluble and solutions lead to bigger problems. Happiness is being in the process of solving a problem you want to.
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"Though you rejected that early by claiming the periodic table was nearly complete." - Cody
I never said it was complete or nearly complete. I said it wasn't wrong.
"Kuhn may have said it, but he said it after Popper, but AI doesn’t understand much about stealing and proper attribution, does it? Hence why I said “gamble with ChatGPT,” it’s just that: gambling with the words that make up explanations rather than understanding them and creating new ones." - Cody
I cross-referenced with Wikipedia. Kuhn was one of three strong proponents of the thesis. Pierre Duhem was the first to implicitly put forth the idea, not Popper.
"Also, I prefer “problem” over project." - Cody
Fine.
"Problems are inevitable, problems are soluble and solutions lead to bigger problems. Happiness is being in the process of solving a problem you want to." - Cody
In this sense, I prefer "questions". Questions are inevitable, questions are answerable and answers lead to bigger questions. Happiness is being in the process of answering a question you want to.
In any case, read below...
Although Thomas Kuhn, Popper et al., were applying the statement “all observations are theory laden” to the state of affairs in the scientific community, and not the average Joe on the street as Cody is attempting to do, I think there is a common ground I can find for us where we apply the principles to the average Joe as Thomas Kuhn applied them to the scientist. I will attempt to do so in 2 parts; establish terminology and definitions which will apply throughout the explanation, introduce examples to illustrate my way of understanding Cody.
**Terminology
**In order to avoid confusion, I will not use the word theory because it lends itself far too easily to two definitions that can leave red paint where blue paint goes. Instead I’ll use a super simplified synonymous term “connect the dots”. Since both in the scientific sense(i.e. Einstein’s calculations in math) and in the colloquial sense (a police detective pouring over crime evidence) they are literally connecting the dots.
In the place of “observation” I’ll use “reach a conclusion”. This can be easily used in both a scientific sense and colloquially with the same meaning.
In Science
Sam, Bob and Dave are Scientists. Sam is a meteorologist, Bob is an astrophysicist and Dave is an astronomer. Because they come from different disciplines of science when the see a bright light flash across the sky they all reach different conclusions. Sam says it’s lightning, Bob says it’s a supernova and Dave says it’s a pulsar. According to Thomas Kuhn, this is what he means when he says “all observations are theory-laden”. Or using my kid words, “All conclusions reached are full of dot-connecting.” because all three of them are starting from different dots(scientific theories) based on their fields of science.
For The Average Joe
Joe, Tom and Steve are just regular dudes. Joe is a war vet, Tom is a lawyer and Steve is wealthy stock trader. They all encounter a situation where a gunman is threatening to kill them...
Joe’s dot-connecting begins with his military training and reaches the conclusion that he must fight and disarm the gunman to survive.
Tom’s dot-connecting begins with his negotiating background as a lawyer and reaches the conclusion that he must talk the gunman out of killing him.
Steve asks the gunman how much money he wants.
As Cody talks about problem solving, each of our characters here reached different conclusions as to how to solve the same problem. They reached different conclusions because they started from different points based on what they know and past experiences.
In my conclusion, no pun intended, is that the statement “All conclusions reached are full of dot-connecting.” is a way of mapping Cody’s “all observations are theory-laden” onto regular Joe Blow life, with the caveat that Kuhn, Popper and Deutsch weren’t talking about regular Joe Blows. But I think it gets me to Cody’s zip code, so to speak.
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I think we're still on different planets, maybe even different solar systems.
But, the weird thing is, you do seem to have come around to "all observations are theory laden," but only when Kuhn says it? That strikes me as odd.
Technically speaking, Popper stole the concept from from Hume. Which is why I keep mentioning the Problem of Induction. Which you haven't once commented on.Kuhn and Popper had a famous debate, by the way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn%E2%80%93Popper_debateI stand firmly with Popper. I think Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions was historicist. From Wikipedia, "Popper saw Kuhn's ideas as dangerous because they created theoretical laws out of trends that were not testable. It was a type of historicism based on the adage that history repeats itself." A mistake that Marx made as well. One that leads to pessimism, post-rationalism, postmodernism and so on because it makes self-fulfilling prophecies.
"The growth of knowledge depends entirely on disagreement," Popper said. On the contradictions between the theories in people's heads. The REAL problems people have, not just the problems scientists have. That means not just the examples you gave, but also whether or not Twinkies are healthy. Or whether or not keto is just a fad. Or whether or not Biden is fit for office. Or if there are actually multiple universes. And so on.
So on to whether the periodic table is wrong or not. It is wrong.
A periodic table that's missing an element is wrong. There are known unknowns regarding the periodic table—we know there are elements not listed, for one. But also, elements are made of subatomic particles which we don't know everything about. When we have more understanding of quantum particles and their interaction, we may find that an entire re-write of the periodic table is better. We may find that there are other aspects to quantum particles that no one has thought of yet, and that may, yet again, lead to a completely new periodic table. So, no, the table isn't "right," it's the best explanation we have, but that doesn't mean we have to concede that it's superior. Again, what part of infinite don't you understand?
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"Instead I’ll use a super simplified synonymous term “connect the dots”." - Fidel
Doesn't this compound the very problem we're trying to solve? The problem was that one term - 'theory' - was being used to refer to at least two different concepts. Now we have two terms - 'theory' and 'connect the dots' - that both refer to two different concepts.
Maybe one word is all we needed after all. Where exactly is the line drawn between the theories of Joe Scientist and Joe Blow? You gave two contrasting examples but don't they each occupy an arbitrary space on the same spectrum?
"In the place of “observation” I’ll use “reach a conclusion”. - Fidel
Please dont.
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"But, the weird thing is, you do seem to have come around to "all observations are theory laden," but only when Kuhn says it? That strikes me as odd.
" - CodyI don't even know who Kuhn is. I told you I checked Wikipedia. I'm trying to make sense of the concept and I found a source that attributed it to him. You mistakenly said that I got bad information from ChatGPT, which was not the case. Again, I don't care who said it, I care about understanding it.
"Which is why I keep mentioning the Problem of Induction. Which you haven't once commented on." - Cody
Like I said, I'm an idiot on this stuff. I don't know what I'm being presented with, much less can I comment on it.
"A periodic table that's missing an element is wrong." - Cody
Wrong? I think you're conflating incomplete with error. The periodic table is a compilation. You may find an error one day with a part of what's there, and then again you may not. that doesn't make it "wrong". Your wife says to you "I bought milk today". You check the refrigerator and see the milk but there's also a new pack of butter. Do you turn to your wife and say, "You're wrong!"? No. Her statement is error free. It may be incomplete, but we can verify that milk was indeed purchased.
There is no statement that is all inclusive of all things in the entire universe that is complete. That doesn't mean that it's wrong. Otherwise, we get nowhere. "The earth orbits the sun." "Wrong! You didn't mention Mars or the other planets!" sounds crazy.
"So, no, the table isn't "right," it's the best explanation we have, but that doesn't mean we have to concede that it's superior." - Cody
LOL. Okay. Let me know when you find a better one! I'll stick with it until such time.
"Doesn't this compound the very problem we're trying to solve? The problem was that one term - 'theory' - was being used to refer to at least two different concepts. Now we have two terms - 'theory' and 'connect the dots' - that both refer to two different concepts." - Josh
No. It was the only way to remove "theory" and replace it with something that CAN be used interchangeably. Otherwise, it can't be applied to the average Joe.
"Please dont." - Josh
No choice. I needed to dumb it down for myself because the word observation was not the scientific use.
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Don't take this as breaking the rule of posting after myself. I just want to take a back seat for now and let Josh go back and forth with Cody. No need to reply to my last post. I'm just gonna eat popcorn and see if Josh is getting it, and then maybe Josh can clear up what I'm not getting. I'll be quiet for now.
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There's a lot Cody and I could go back and forth about but I don't think the statement, "All observations are theory-laden" is one of them. I'm entirely comfortable with that concept and entirely comfortable using that statement to describe that concept. At first it sounded a bit jargony but I personally can't think of a more accurate and less jargony way to put it.
'Observations' is the subject of the statement so naturally we want to understand that first. But, since that's exactly what the statement aims to do, we should really be trying to understand what 'theory-laden' means. Well, what is a theory?
Maybe it's something that develops in the human mind sometime after a human observes something. Say, for example, that cell theory developed in the minds of people like Matthias Jakob Schleiden after observing organic tissue using a Carl Zeiss microscope.
For argument's sake, let's discuss Schleiden's very first observation of a cell and assume that he had no understanding of biology prior to to that observation. In essence, this first observation of a cell is in no way 'laden' with cell theory.
The observation is still laden with many other theories already in place. Why Carl Zeiss? Because, in the 1800s, Carl Zeiss revolutionized the microscope using optical theory which arose in the 1600s showing that certain configurations of glass lenses could allow humans to make observations at scales previously inaccessable to them. But, while other microscope manufacturers were using the empirical trial-and-error based approach to finding combinations of lenses, Zeiss hired Ernst Abbe to design his lenses using mathematical theory.
Of course, as a botanist, Schleiden did have some prior understanding of biology. Enough to encourage Zeiss to devolop a better microscope so that he could pursue cell theory. And, as a leading proponent of Darwinism, his cellular observations were at least laden with the theory of evolution.
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I'd heard of Carl Zeiss, and even own a branded lens. But Matthias, nope. Awesome.
That's a really cool example!
I do think it's difficult to separate out observation and theory, I think most people have combined them conceptually. And I agree that it's pretty difficult to find a less jargon-y way to put it. I mentioned earlier a someone's suggestion (actually Vaden from the Increments podcast): "All observations are idea laden." But, that kinda got washed over and never mentioned.
There's also the "all life is problem solving" Popper quote, which I think pairs well with the one we're talking about. Without a problem, there's nothing to observe—and the weird thing is, except on this planet, that's the natural state of the universe. To put it as Deutsch would “an unproblematic state is a state without creative thought. Its other name is death.” So, another way you could rephrase it is: "All observations are problem laden." Without a problem, there's no need to make guesses and improve. BUT, problems are solved. But part of the solution is first needing to have a problem solved, or else there's nothing to use the solution and the solution, regardless of how it's recorded, will eventually be destroyed (by entropy or whatever).
So, there's also "What is a problem?" Because I think it seems so obvious to us, much like "observation", but we don't even know what that is. There's only one place with problems in the known universe: Earth. So, what was the first problem? Where did it come from? What in tarnation was going on in ye' old primordial soup!?
And once you take this idea that this thing we point at with abstractions like ideas/theories/guesses/problems/etc we know where they come from (evolution and people), but we don't know how they come. But, people have all kinds of mistaken rules they make up to fill that how void. It's obvious that the color of someone's skin has no say on their creativity. But, it's not obvious that the contents of someone's mind ALSO has no say on their creativity. That's one of two mistakes school makes, the second being that you can force observation and induce knowledge creation.
But, my guess is that this idea of observation theory-laden-ness is really useful in figuring how ideas come about. Guess about the physical structure of a thought may help us understand how they come about, and see something we've never seen before: creativity rather than just it's products.
Regarding that, Fidel's diagram is really interesting. If all of that stuff is an observation, than it's clearly made up of a bunch of physical stuff. A bunch of stuff working together. A bunch of solutions working together, exchanging energy through chemical reactions.
I guess we have some good ideas about what the full structure of an observation is, even if we don't know what a theory is. We don't really know how the brain stores *knowledge*. Like, we don't know the physical structure of a memory or a thought, we know where it happens and we know the physical structure of that thing (the brain and it's tendrils throughout our body), but we don't know how a thought works within that. In a computer we have a model of memory, but again, no model of thought.
This is something I think about a lot in my free time, haha. Like, what does a problem look like in physical terms, not just as it's infinite examples we can provide via description. What are abstractions in physical terms and how does that related to the physical structure of universes and so on.
In the case of Matthias, why did he even care about what he saw under the microscope? In the case of Zeiss, before he could even guess about ways to do it, first he had to want to. Why did he want to enlarge the small? And, how can we enlarge that?
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Yeah, I hadn't heard of Matthias Jakob Schleiden until I started that post. I was just looking for someone who did something cool with a Zeiss scope and, hey look!
Anyway, thought provoking stuff! Yeah, whatever is happening in the human brain is nuts. How much quantum shit is going on up there? Maybe I can get you to provoke my thoughts a bit further on a few things.
"There's only one place with problems in the known universe: Earth." - Cody
This is a very interesting idea and could be interpreted as being extremely unlucky
. But I'm happy to be here."Without a problem, there's nothing to observe." - Cody
I'm not sure where problems fit into observing a beautiful sunset. (I was going to say titties but those solve the problem of hungry babies.) Maybe you can expand on this?
"An unproblematic state is a state without creative thought. Its other name is death." - Deutsch
Nothing that lacks the capacity for creative thought lives? What definition of 'thought' are we using? What definition of 'life' are we using? ( Now there's a polysemous word! )
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Titties! lol. Yeah, titties, human titties are objectively beautiful, I think. Probably if we made a non-biological life-form and they didn't even need titties, they'd still find them beautiful. Same with pussies, IMO. Eat your heart out, Georgia Keefe.
The shape, the smoothness, what it provides and how it feels when you come into contact with it. There's an objective explanation.
So, if flowers evolved for the purpose of using bees to carry genetic data from one flower, why do we find them beautiful?
"I'm not sure where problems fit into observing a beautiful sunset. "
Hmmm... I think there are, because objective aesthetic value is a valid problem. There is such a thing as better and worse in art. Despite this being vehemently denied, especially by the Postmodernist movement.
Deutsch argues that it is easy to be misled by the empiricist view that there can be no objective philosophical or artistic knowledge. Empiricism is wrong in that it purports that we somehow derive knowledge from observation, when in fact all observation is theory-laden. Deutsch concedes that we never deduce moral maxims or aesthetic values from scientific theories, precisely because we don’t really deduce something from something else in building good explanations of anything. In reality, we conjecture and must seek to criticize our own conjecture, and seek out the criticism of others, thereby creating a new and better conjecture. This is the only route to good explanations that are “hard to vary,” (in which “changing the details would ruin the explanation” [p.32]), and therefore approximate reality better than explanations in which elements can be tweaked with little detriment to its elegance or reach. -Rebecca Wells Jopling
"Beauty is not a matter of content, but of form." There are many types of explanation besides words. Take photography. You can take a picture of titties that's shit. Or, you can take a photo of some titties, think about how it could be improved, throw the first picture in the trash, take another and repeat the process until you have a better explanation of the beauty of titties.
But this is all, again, steming from the idea that observations aren't first in the chain of improvement. Once we have a good picture of titties, no one has to see all the bad pictures of titties we threw in the trash to get to the good pictures. But if you think that observation leads to better knowledge, then you can justify making someone look at all the pictures of the titties in the trash before they get to the good one—so they can appreciate it. We don't need to suffer to appreciate beauty, or any other type of progress in any field. (Consider, school is predicated on the opposite view!)
Our guesses about how to improve our explanations, in whatever form, of the beauty of titties lead to better explanations of the beauty of titties. There are without a doubt infinitely better ways to capture the beauty of titties that no one has ever observed. I guess if I was going to throw my last tit pic out and guess a better way to capture the beauty of titties after having read your post, I might try "titties in a sunset".
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"An unproblematic state is a state without creative thought. Its other name is death." - Deutsch
Nothing that lacks the capacity for creative thought lives? What definition of 'thought' are we using? What definition of 'life' are we using? ( Now there's a polysemous word! )
I think Deutsch was referring just to people here, and not evolution. But, it applies to other creatures as well. Like, 'if there's no need to respirate, there's no need for a respiratory system', and 'if you don't have the problem of distributing resources and information then you don't need a circulatory system,' 'if there are no problems to solve there's no need for energy'. Or whatever you can imagine. But on a more practical level, I think by "life" he may be referring to consciousness in people and it's unboundedness. For example, I don't think there's a way for evolution to create a solution to the problem of asteroids. So, I think evolution that doesn't accidentally stumble upon consciousness is doomed. So, evolution may be intrinsically bound to a single planet—where as people are not. And then, you could say "well evolution created people," sure, but each person is like one entire instance of evolution. Each person is like it's own Earth-biosphere, no it's own universe, worth of creative reach. So the meaning of "life" kind of breaks down.
But to get a bit crazy: My current guess is that evolution has something like thoughts, but it's distributed across the extended phenotype. That is a crazy statement to make, probably, and I could probably write a much much longer post about it, but let's try to keep it simple. Into the philosophical weeds:
So, maybe instances of animals are like parts of a thought. Animals are sets of solution processes ("things aren't really things, they're processes"). So, a propositional 'thought' might be like "wings fly" (in the philosophical sense of the word proposition [another example of a proposition is 'the sky is blue']). That philosophical proposition exists and is encoded as an explanation across all of the instantiations of animals (a.k.a ongoing processes) that can fly, and thus contains access to problems related to flight that weren't there before flight. In order for the proposition of flight to be have been unlocked, a linked prior proposition had to be mutated ('guessed') and shared amongst the existing solution processes of the entire phenotype. But, again this is a vague guess. We don't know how evolution works, really. If we did we could replicate it digitally, or on a non-carbon-based substrate. We have never replicated natural selection. So, if I could, in theory, find a way to do this with a computer, I could test it. But, I may read Dawkins "The Extended Phenotype" first. Anyway, if you've got a better theory of how to replicate natural selection (like start whatever happened in that primordial soup), let me know. lol
One other thing worth mentioning. Sometimes people talk about collective consciousness, romantically, in reference to people—especially on the internet. I think that if you just take a second to think about that you'll realize how terrifying it is. If that were how improvement is made amongst people, like evolution, just like in nature, error correction would require the death of individuals! Because evolution makes progress through the deaths of gene carrying instantiations to falsify bad mutations (guesses/theories/whatever you want to call it). AKA natural selection. Yikes. No thanks. So, yeah, in a way, from a creative potential standpoint, only people are really "alive" and then all of evolution is like one "alive". Which really puts into perspective the value of a human life and our cosmic significance.
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I guarantee that none of this philosophical jargon stuff is being pondered on the front burner for us if beautiful titties in a sunset suddenly appear
. I just had to ask ChatGPT for a movie scene!!**[Scene: A serene beach at sunset, with waves gently lapping at the shore. Josh and Cody are sitting on the sand, facing the ocean.]
**Cody: You know, Josh, David Deutsch talks about this idea that all our observations are, like, wrapped up in the theories we already believe. It’s like, our minds are always filtering what we see through this veil of cosmic knowledge.
Josh: (slightly confused but intrigued) So, you're saying we never see things as they truly are? Everything we see is influenced by our existing beliefs?
Cody: Exactly! Think of it like this: when you gaze at the sunset, you’re not just seeing the light. You’re experiencing it through the tapestry of your consciousness, woven with everything you’ve learned and felt about sunsets, colors, and even the universe itself.
Josh: (nodding slowly) I get it. So, it's like our brains are always filling in the gaps based on what we expect to see.
Cody: Right! It’s like, every observation is a mystical dance between our inner world and the outer reality. Each moment is a hypothesis, a manifestation of our understanding blending with the essence of existence.
Josh: (smiling) It’s kind of mind-blowing when you think about it. We’re always interpreting, always theorizing.
Cody: Totally! And that means every time we look at something, we’re co-creating that experience with the universe. It’s all..it's...it...
[Suddenly, their conversation is interrupted by a stunning sight. Over the horizon, the sky is illuminated by the sunset and two aesthetically perfect titties side by side, casting a surreal, otherworldly glow over the ocean. The colors and shapes are more vivid and breathtaking than anything they’ve ever seen. The entire beach is bathed in an ethereal light.]
**[They both sit in silence, mesmerized by the incredible sight before them.]
****[Fade out as the camera lingers on the sunset and titties.]
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Okay, we're up to at least three threads' worth of subject matter here.
**Cody, can you please start a 'fuck school' thread and explain how to get good tittie pics without referencing any of your own previous shitty titty pics?
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"But if you think that observation leads to better knowledge, then you can justify making someone look at all the pictures of the titties in the trash before they get to the good one—so they can appreciate it. We don't need to suffer to appreciate beauty, or any other type of progress in any field. (Consider, school is predicated on the opposite view!)" - Cody**********
**Let me start a thread related to this.
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"error correction would require the death of individuals [...] evolution is like one 'alive'" - Cody**********
**As for things I think we should continue with in this thread...
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"Empiricism is wrong in that it purports that we somehow derive knowledge from observation, when in fact all observation is theory-laden." - Rebecca Wells JoplingMkay. Got the last part. How exactly do we derive knowledge? I guess I missed something.
"objective aesthetic value is a valid problem" - Cody
This isn't illuminating anything for me. I definitely see numerous problems with getting good photos - even ones of objectively beautiful things like sunset-laden titties. But I still don't see any problem without which there would be 'nothing to observe.' I could see that, without having evolved the tools that we needed to solve certain problems, we wouldn't have the means to observe other things that are non-problematic. Am I missing the point?
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Fidel, This is Gold. You're producer, nail the funding and start scounting locations. We can use my a7r to film this in 8k. I'll act, I only need 50% of expected proceeds up front, lol. But, you have to take out the line "wrapped up in the theories we already believe," because Deutsch doesn't think anyone believes anything—it's a bad explanation of explanations.
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We've already got a 'Fuck School' thread, and I recently posted in it
https://the-flying-dutchmen.herokuapp.com/forum/threads/taking-children-seriously?page=1#forum_post_416How exactly do we derive knowledge? I guess I missed something.
That's the whole thing. What is creativity? What is curiosity? What does a theory even look like (hence the last part of my last post)? If you figure that out, like come up with a good theory or explanation of how we make guesses and what that looks like, then we could replicate it digitally—which means we could create digital selves. We could live forever. Create digital children. No one would ever need to die. And so on. Here's a question inspired by this thread that I asked a philosopher researching that topic. (also shared a screenshot of a part of my response that I thought was relevant—maybe the dude will look at it and debunk me, heh, that'd be nice)
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But I still don't see any problem without which there would be 'nothing to observe.' I could see that, without having evolved the tools that we needed to solve certain problems, we wouldn't have the means to observe other things that are non-problematic. Am I missing the point?
Took me awhile to parse those first two sentences. There is no non-problematic observation. Observations aren't solutions. Observations are a way to falsify solutions, the never confirm anything. There is no justified true belief, and science is certainly not that. Likewise, solving problems leads to bigger problems. And when I say "bigger problems" I am also referring to the philosophical idea of emergence.
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_"Without a problem, there's nothing to observe." - Cody
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Although I pretty much understand everything that you've posted in response to my questions about this statement, none of it actually gives any explanation of this statement. Is there a different way to put this statement in case I'm just misinterpreting the meaning? -
'Without a problem, there's nothing to observe.'
[Eyes] originally came into existence to solve a problem, which they are in the process of solving, but they can be used to solve other problems, too.
You can replace [eyes] with anything. I think literally anything. Physical things, like eyes and optic nerves and so on. But also you could put any word in there in general, because words are abstractions and had to be created with a problem in mind.
If an abstraction comes into existence somewhere (whatever that looks like?) but there's no people in the entire universe to use it, is it still an abstraction? My guess is no. There's something intrinsic to the process of the abstraction that requires interaction with reality in the sense that a problem is in the process of being solved.
So even patterns that we create that we think of as universal/multiversal, like say "gravity," we had to create for them to exist. The thing that "gravity" refers to exists, but the abstraction "gravity" is not that thing and never can be. A representations is a lossy compression of what's actually happening throughout the entire universe, This is an analogy, to be clear, I haven't thought much about compression as a literal explanation for abstractions. There's no "gravity" without people—because the thing that exists without people, that we refer to with the word "gravity" isn't theory-laden, and we can only capture the stuff we've already falsified with the word "gravity". Whatever the force or particle of gravity is and how it works is, we can only make guesses about it and refute them, and even if we had a "perfect understanding" of it we couldn't be sure of that because we only have the other imperfect theories that we used to get there to try and capture it.
What holds up the Earth? Some ancient societies said it was a giant turtle. So, what holds up the turtle? Another turtle? Nah. The thing that holds up the Earth is the thing we use, it's the theory of the turtle. It wasn't good so we improved on what a turtle is and renamed the aspect of the turtle that we thought was holding up the Earth "gravity." Then we kept improving that. It's not "turtles all the way down," It's problems and our best guesses all the way up.
Deja vu is the illusion that you are observing something you have never seen before for the second time. I love the concept of jamais vu, which is the realization that you are seeing everything for the first time. Every observable is different and happens for different reasons --Joscha Bach
We don’t need “Definitions”, at best, what we call definitions are actually just explanations that use common connections to inexplicit knowledge.
We have knowledge encoded in language, but not as definitions. They're encoded as ideas expressed in language. And the way children learn language is by guessing what words and grammatical structures mean. And when they guess wrong, they correct their guess. And when they guess right, they use the word and then perhaps correct it again. No two people end up with the same meanings of all the words. - David Deutsch (I encourage checking out the full quote and if you have time the source video).
More from that quote which I think REALLY informs Fidel and my back and fourth:
As soon as you get into any kind of detailed discussion of anything, you find that people have a different idea of what it means to exist, or what it means to be true, or just basic things like that. People have radically different intuitive ideas about which, if they are naive, they think that everyone else has them too, and are just being obtuse.
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Well, that post was a slice of fried gold!
"_A representation is a lossy compression of what's actually happening" - Cody
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I think this is an excellent analogy for observations/theories/knowledge/language."We don’t need 'Definitions', at best, what we call definitions are actually just explanations that use common connections to inexplicit knowledge." - Cody
So your definition of 'definition' is 'an explanation that uses common connections to inexplicit knowledge'? Sounds fine.
What is the fundamental difference between a definition and a theory? Every word that you observe me uttering is laden with your theories about what I'm saying and my theories about what you're interpreting. Just because words and definitions are lossy compressions of concepts doesn't mean we don't need them.
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Anyway, about this...
"Without a problem, there's nothing to observe."I'm just going to take it to mean something like 'Without a problem, the means to observe and therefore solve the problem could never have emerged.'
The means to observe a problem is a solution to the problem of not being able to observe the problem. This doesn't mean we can't use those means to observe other problems. This is what gives solutions 'reach', no? I just don't think everything in the observable universe is a problem. Isn't Earth the only place in the observable universe where problems exist anyway?
About that, I'd say Elon Musk sees a lot of problems when he looks at Mars. But he's still dealing with all the problems that exist in the vaccuum of space between Earth and Mars. Or is it that the problems are in his mind? All problems are in the minds of people and all people are on Earth (or in orbit around it). After all, gravity is not inherently a problem. Nor is the scarcity of oxygen molecules in interplanetary space.
Closing thought: How's this for optimism?
Without a solution, the means to observe and therefore solve the problem could never have emerged. -
Josh, I'm wondering if you've reached the point to where you can confidently summarize Cody in 100 words or less, where you steel-man him as best you can, for a 10 year-old to understand? (I've been following the thread but I think I'm just not equipped with the prerequisite philosophical tools with which to get it. So treat me like a 10 year-old.)
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