Is My Hypothesis Valid???

well, i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that this will not be enough to convict. that would be an implausible link.are you implying that Plausibility is a function of Objective Evidence?in other words, if we had additional expert witnesses describe how, in the past, they correllated the witness' feelings of euphoria 100% to the defendant's acts of murder - never an exception, then the testimony might be admissable. probably still not enough to convict.fortunately this isnt a problem in my example of a number of reliable witnesses.

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- xongsmith

that is your job, not mine. it's your witness on Msg 44.subjectivity(S) is independent of plausibility(P).you keep on saying P = kS. or maybe P = f(S). i dunnogooglesplats, euphoria convulsions, chocolate teapots, IPUs...these are attempts by you to link implausibility with this mysterious "wholly subjective" evidence.subjective evidence can be very plausible. it can also be very implausible.and, in the past, objective evidence can appear as totally implausible, like what do you mean the earth goes around the sun?perhaps it's this term "subjective interpretation of objective evidence" versus the mysterious "wholly subjective evidence". at either end of the spectrum and all along it, the testimony is subjective, is it not? why are you so preoccupied with a particular extremity of a range? do you think RAZD is? i'm curious.

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- xongsmith

it's not that i'm unable! i have a whole spectrum of subjective evidence. from well-respected studious expert interpretations of objective evidence that is not present at the time to wild guesses from drunks or whatever.what do you mean by "wholly subjective evidence"? is it the stuff of dreams? for me it could be like the left end of a line segment starting at 0 and going up to 1.0. probably it is not a closed interval, in that 0 and 1 are not in the set. maybe 1.0 is the pure objective evidence that we also never quite have. now consider the line segment to be the base of a square and that the height is plausibility from 0 to 1. maybe 1 is certainty and 0 is nonexistable. since evidence in the form of testimony could come from anywhere in the square, shouldnt this vertical axis be the axis along which the admissability of evidence should be measured?

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- xongsmith

i would put only Wild Guesses in the Wild Guess bin. Depending on my own view of the reliability of the person providing the claim, i would put the claim in a bin near the Wild Guess bin as appropriate. in my case, i might have so many bins that to a distant observer it may appear that every once in a while i put one claim in the Wild Guess bin.for me, the "merely possible but not very probable" bin is different from the Wild Guess bin.is the Wild Guess bin equivalent to standing at ground level beside the zillion-rung ladder? if so, my "merely possible but not very probable" bin would be above the "faintly possible but extremely improbable" bin, which would be above the ground. actually my Wild Guess rung is above the ground. my ground level rung (or bin) could be for "no way, no how, not possible, never".

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- xongsmith

yes! the objective evidence rungs are just so many, many, many rungs above the subjective evidence rungs.

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- xongsmith

"simultaneously" can be roughly at the same time, like repeating a science experiment to confirm or not confirm the result. take the cold fusion experiment that was attempted around the globe with spotty and mostly unsuccessful results.so, in fact, requiring a majority of your social group to experience it is what happens.

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- xongsmith

each attempt to reproduce the experiment is, infact, usually NOT observed by a majority of the community. it's usually done in a lab somewhere with steenkin badges for access. the social group in this case is the peer group of 6 or 7 or whatever scientists trying to do the experiment. if they all get the same result, then the next step is to publish and gradually the acceptance of the new phenomenon works it's way into the world-view of the scientists. there is a trust that the peer group will independently confirm or reject the results in an honest way. but if no one else gets the result, then the result is discarded. so cold fusion was discarded. or if they all observe the light bending around the sun in the amount predicted, then the result is accepted. you dont have RAZD's position at all. reality is very much integral to forming his world-view. his world-view is continually being changed. in the beginning it undergoes huge changes. as you get older, the changes become refinements. now, if you believe in the scientific method, and a new phenomenon, confirmed by the peer group, comes up that requires a major change to the existing scientific theories describing reality, then what is happening in the world-view is at most a small tweak in the overall principles. the world-view is that the scientific method is the best, for this social group (of which it appears you & i are part). we are not going to throw it out to make the previous accepted system of equations still work and ignore the new phenomenon. we're gonna tweak the equations or replace them with new ones which do a better job of accounting for everything we have observed to date, plus this new guy. this is because there is an even bigger overseeing concept that we cannot abandon, and that is the superiority of the scientific method over alternate methods. the scientific method requires peer review for new results. these peers are accepted representatives for the scientific majority. which proposed alternative were you referring to?

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- xongsmith

no. your idea of "simple practicality" is a component of your worldview. your conclusion that there's absolutely nothing you can do is a result of your well-established worldview. and that is a very good position to hold. it isnt an OR - it's both (although before i say it's the MOST rational, i'd qualify that to allow for a better way to be found later) . and, yes, worldviews run the gamut of rationality.

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- xongsmith

Gods & deities are Off Topic, Straggler.

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- xongsmith

you are.but it's Off Topic.

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- xongsmith

by the way, when we are saying The 5 Senses, we also mean to include those other senses talked about in How many senses are there?, i presume. at least we should - just to cover our tracks. i think when we say The Five Senses, we mean senses that are physical, perhaps even quantifiable.

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- xongsmith

yes you did! my bad. i was thinking of the older other thread.

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- xongsmith

not true.what about the conscious, aware person who went for a walk in the woods and came back and told you what he experienced? this is subjective evidence. your original equation discounted it.(more coming after)

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- xongsmith

RAZD is only saying that there are lots of levels of non-empirical or subjective evidence. he gave you the example - the man coming out of the woods and telling you what he experienced. this is second-hand. it is subjective testimony. it can form the beginning of a hypothesis which can be further investigated. if the man says he saw a squirrel or if he says he saw an IPU then we can assign some importance to the evidence. but we have crossed outside the Venn Diagram's boundary of Objective Evidence either way.to your equation{objective evidence} + {logic} => hypothesisand your associated question "Is this valid?"in a nutshell, he answers "No."couldnt this thread have just ended there?naw - we gotta do a complete autopsy.
he eventually came up with a simplification for you:{evidence} + {logic} => {hypothesis}however, after long re-considerations of re-considerations, i have come back to one my first conclusions about this thread. this isnt about your question at all. it's all about getting RAZD caught in a trap. you wanted to use this thread to get him to trip over some detail in a different subject/thread whatever. you are repeatedly trying to get him to make a mistake, to miss a freethrow. he has stated that he doesnt want to get into that stuff here. he has seen through your deceit and refuses to fall for it. you keep asking him to shoot 10,000 freethrows in the hopes that he will miss one and you can lick your lips and move in for the KILL!you have already acknowledged that certain types of non-empirical evidence can form an acceptable basis for a tentative hypothesis that needs further investigation. that was all he trying to get you to admit. but then you keep asking him to shoot freethrows.you may now effusively say that you just want to know what his position on that other issue is, but that is not what you really want. you want to trip him up. he has seen through your thinly veiled attempt. give up. he is not going to the line here.i am also having trouble trying to understand the others who seem to support you and your crusade.p.s. - we should change the example to a woman coming out of the woods. because, as we all know, a man alone in the woods is _still_ wrong.

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- xongsmith

well yeah, but (Yabbet) it's still is outside of the Objective Evidence circle in your handy dandy Venn Diagram and the Objective Evidence circle is what is in Stragger's OP.the fact that Straggler himself allowed as to how such subjective evidence could be used to begin the formulation of a tentative hypothesis would mean that even he really didnt think the OP equation was a valid hypothesis.Edited by xongsmith, : typo

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- xongsmith