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Author | Topic: Is Science the Search for Objective Truth in an Objective Reality | |||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Does there need to be an objective reality with universal truths for the scientific method to be valid? No. The scientific method is just as predictive inside The Matrix as it would be in "real life". Science is the search for the predictive model, not the search for truth. A lot of people get that wrong, though. No surprise - the results of science are typically so useful that they seem so true.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
But is the matrix itself not formed within a physical reality that has laws that exist in objective reality external to the matrix? Yeah, but that doesn't mean using science within the matrix develops predictive models about reality. In fact, that's the point of the matrix - it's a set of rules that are different from reality, so therefore predictive models developed based on observations arising from the rules of the matrix are only valid under the rules of the matrix. Since the matrix insulates you from observations of the rules of reality, the scientific method within the matrix isn't able to develop models that would be valid under the "real" rules. (Did all that bake your noodle, or what?)
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
That is the reason that I don't find the lack of scientific evidence for anything 'supernatural' as sufficient to conclude that the supernatural does not exist (and especially when supernatural is defined as 'undetectable' a priori). I guess, but if you've defined the supernatural as undetectable, then by necessity it's irrelevant - there's no such thing as an undetectable effect, since its by effect that we know something happened. Define the supernatural to be undetectable is you wish, but in doing so, you've rendered the supernatural completely powerless in the natural world, and how is that fundamentally different than saying the supernatural doesn't exist?
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
On what do you conclude the success and progress of science if not an increasing understanding of reality. By how predictive the models are. Better models make more accurate predictions than lesser models. Technology is the ultimate "prediction" of any model; the predicition is "this will always happen under these circumstances." Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Predictive as compared to........reality? Predictive as compared to what we wind up observing and experiencing.
Superior predictive power has no meaning without reference to the objective reality it is predicting against? Why does it need meaning? Predictive power would seem to be pretty useful in it's own right.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I'm saying that it acted in a way that is directly scientifically observable, by relfecting or emitting photons of light, but that at a later point in time it no longer relects/emits light, so a person could see a ghost an then bust out there camera right after the ghost 'disappears' and take a picture of nothing even thought the ghost might still be right in front of them. So you videotape it. Science can deal with events that are sporadic.
Or, on top of that, it were really talking about 'supernatural' then they could possess properties where the light they use is detectable by human eyes but not cameras. Impossible, since eyes and cameras work the same way. (How do you think we invented cameras?)
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Why are it's predictions more accurate? Why? I don't know. Possibly, Einstein's model is closer to the "real" model, but I don't know how we could know that for sure, or really, what that would even mean.
Is it conceivable that there could be a theory that could predict every gravitational interraction completely accurately? It's concievable, sure; I don't know one way or the other whether or not it's possible. Perhaps the only way you can perfectly model the universe is with a universe. But at this point I think we're outside of science as scientists practice it.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I don't think its impossible, especially when supernatural, by definition, isn't constrained by natural laws. No, but light is. Unless you're saying ghosts emit supernatural magic light? Light that somehow is able to detect whether it's about to be absorbed by a human eye or something that is simply like a human eye? Flights of fancy disclaimered by a willingness to suspend what we know about the universe doesn't strike me as an effective way to determine what is true - rather, it's just a way to make up stuff. And the thing that's almost always true about things that are just made up is that they're false, which is why I think the supernatural is pretty well disproven. If there's no way to know anything about the supernatural except to make up things about it, clearly the supernatural is not something that can be said to exist.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I think my point was that its illogical to base a lack of belief in the supernatural on the inabilities of science to detect it when science is defining supernatural as unable to be detected. Science isn't defining the supernatural at all, because nothing supernatural has been put forward for science to have to deal with. The only people who have defined supernatural as anything, as far as I'm aware, is Wizards of the Coast:
quote: (Courtesy the brilliant guys over at Rockstars' Ramblings and the Monster Manual 3.5 edition.) Even the proponents of the supernatural can't really define what it is.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I don't think that all the people who believe in ghosts or claim to have seen them are just making it up. Without a specific experience to explain, any explanations of mine would also be making things up. I've never seen a ghost, and considering I've worked (and lived) in theatres all my life, that's quite noteworthy. (All theatres are haunted.) But I can say this - anybody who says something like "ghosts can do this" or "ghosts have these powers" is just making things up. Pure invention, pure fantasy. (If we're going to just choose our fantasies about ghosts, then I choose to believe everything the Monster Manual says about them, like their malevolence ability, their residence on the Ethereal Plane, and their +4 turn resistance.)
I think that science's failure to detect is a poor reason for the disbelief. That's not the only reason. The other reason is that all knowledge of ghosts comes from make-believe, and there is no reason to believe that make-believe is true. (You wouldn't think you would need to tell an adult that.)
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Don't you think the Ethereal Plane could exist outside of scientific observation? No, of course not. What do you have to be to cast ethereal jaunt? Something like 6th level? You just pop yourself into the Ethereal Plane with any number of spells that do that, and you can make all the scientific observations you care to. The issue here is that all the fantasy stuff described by the Dungeons and Dragons rules are only fantastic to us. To the deizens of that world, displacer beasts and blink dogs aren't animals with magic powers; they're animals with the powers that they have and that's completely natural. A beholder's eye rays are no more "supernatural" to the beholder than an electric eel is a supernatural creature to us. It's a normal part of our world; magic and the supernatural is an entirely natural part of that world, and perfectly ameinable to "scientific" study. That's how people become wizards, after all. (That's why wizards cast spells from their Intelligence attribute.)
And with ghosts temporarily entering the Prime Material Plane, we would get reports and observations similiar to what we do hear from people. Sure. But you'd also hear reports that you don't hear in reality - reports like "I cast dimensonal anchor to force the ghost to manifest, and then I stabbed it with my +1 ghost touch shortsword."
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1487 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
If scientific models are not simulations of an objective reality what are they simulations of? They don't need to be simulations of anything. A simulation, as defined by Baudrillard, is a copy of something with no original. When I play Dungeons and Dragons, I simulate the interactions between (for instance) a party of adventurers and some orcs or whatever. Neither wizards, nor halflings, nor orcs exist. The game is a simulation, but it's not a simulation of anything real. Video games are the same phenomenon.
Are you really saying that a model that provides a deeper understanding of a physical phenomenon is not superior to one that successfully makes predictions without adding a "why"? It's surperior if the understanding is testable. Otherwise, an untestable "understanding" is something to cut away with Occam's Razor. The testable, tested understanding leads to new avenues of research, usually, so it has some value there. But I'm not convinced that there's any difference between "understanding" and "being able to make accurate predictions." If you're making accurate predictions, in what sense do you not "understand" something?
Is a theory that provides a better understanding not one that is closer to the "truth" of reality? How would we know if it was or not? That's the issue.
I would suggest that such a theory (one that explains more deeply, that predicts more accurately and that enables us to ask even deeper questions) as more closely modelling an external objective reality. You can suggest it, but I don't see any reason to believe you. How would we know if it's the better predictive theory that most matches reality or not? Even if we had a model that perfectly matched reality, how would we know that it did? Couldn't a wrong model make accurate predictions?
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