Non-scientific evidence

When you use the term "reliable" what do you mean?Do you mean something that is more likely to be correct than incorrect? Something that has a greater liklehood of being correct than that achieved by random chance?Is that what we mean by "reliable"? Or are you meaning something else?

I'm trying to use it in the spirit of the OP, although I'm not exactly sure what that is (but I'm trying to figure it out!)Personally, I just use it in the normal sense... like my car is reliable. I can rely on it working when I need it. I expect it to work. When I try it, it does work.In Message 4 I wrote:

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Every time we dropped that weight in the physics lab (as a random example), it fell at 9.8 m/s²... reliably.

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We can rely on a dropped weight falling at that acceleration. Its gonna happen that way.The word "correct" never entered my mind.Am I using it wrong?What do you think the OP is asking for with a request for a demonstration reliability?

That Earthly data combined with observations of several other celestial objects leads us to make the prediction that the force of gravity is proportional to the amount of mass in the object. These conclusions can, and have, been shown to be reliable when examining newly observed bodies.Thus the reliability of our conclusion about the link between mass and gravitation is proven. I'm sorry, but I am having a hard time understanding what you are getting at. Are you making some point about my needing to hold your hand through every conclusion?Humans sift a lot of soil for a variety of reasons. Nobody has ever sifted up a concentration of gravity gnomes, in contradiction of prediction of the gnome theory. Thats an example of an unreliable prediction of the gnome theory. Because I have shown an example of how the predictions of the gnome theory are unreliable, we can by extension conclude that the gnome theory itself is unreliable. This is because it leads to unreliable predictions.Have I covered that step to your satisfaction or should I go over it in more detail? This doesn't tie in directly to the OP's request. Instead it ties into your response to RAZD's response to the OP, which is why I replied to your response to RAZD's response to the OP, rather than to the OP. This is why I quoted your response to RAZD, because that is what I intended my reply to address.At no point did I suggest that scientific evidence cannot be demonstrated to be reliable. I also specifically pointed out that the reliability of scientific conclusions (distinct from evidence remember) is their primary benefit, and largely independent of their accuracy in other respects.

Unless we know what you mean by "reliable" I don't see how anyone can meaningfully converse with you in a topic related to demonstrating reliability. Well when I hear the term "reliable" I find it impossible not to consider there to be some relation to likelihood. Yet I know (from many many previous discussions) that you have an issue with the idea of likelihood in this sort of context. That is why I asked you what you meant. When you say that your car is "reliable" I don't see how that means anything other than that it is more likely to function in the way predicted/expected (e.g. start) than not. You mean you predict it will happen that way and you consider it likely (indeed exceptionally likely to the point of near certainty in this particular case) that your conclusion will be correct. No? If you make predictions and that is the measure of reliability how can you not consider being correct the determining factor in demonstrating that reliability?How can you separate a reliable conclusion from one that is likely to be correct? That is what I don't get.

Yes, of course. That makes perfect sense. I wasn't sure what you were getting at, sorry for being a pain in your ass. Just give me a minute, I'll catch up! I honestly just wasn't following where you were going. I guess my confusion stemmed from you saying that the gnomes are invisible, which I took to mean that you would expect something like your sifting experiment to come up with nothing, thus making them analogous to those supernatural claims that are said to be "non-scientific".But I understand what you're saying now. (I'm feeling noticebly stupider from a slight hangover today) I agree. And that independence of accuracy is what causes my problem with things like Straggler brings up with 'liklihoods' and 'correctness'.So in that sense, it doesn't matter if there's invisible gnomes there or not... our scientific conclusions work with or without them, thus their irrelevance.

That's funny, I'm trying to figure out what they mean by reliable, and now you're having me define it. I've noticed Alright, that'll work. I guess (but its just not how liklihoods and correctness work in my mind). I don't think its going to go any other way so liklihood seems like poor word choice as its entertaining the idea that there might be something else that would happen. And as far as being correct, I guess we could use that word, but it can't be any other way. There is no wrong here to be opposed to. It is what it is. Because science doesn't acheive correctness. When things reliably work like we expect them to then we accept it whether or not its actually correct or not. Because all the weight dropping in the world isn't showing that those invisible gnomes aren't there. There's no way to determine the liklihood of whether or not the scientific conclusion that they are not there is correct or not. And it doesn't matter if it is because its reliable. It works regardless of the gnomes.

When we make predictions are you saying that we cannot determine whether or not those predictions have been verified as correct or not? You seem to be saying that all possible causes of gravity are equal. That space-time curvature can be considered as no more likely to be the cause than can invisible gnomes. Is that what you are saying? I have never said that it will have I?I have simply requested that the basis of a conclusion (e.g. that gnomes are responsible for gravity) be able to demonstrate itself as being superior to blind chance. Randomly plucking possible conceptual causes out of the air. Guessing. Call it what you will.That is what I think the OP means when it asks for demonstrations of the reliability of of non-scientific evidence. Why should we think that your gnomes are any more likely to be the cause of gravity than any of the other conceivable causes? Are we justified in saying that space-time curvature is a more likely cause on the basis of it's ability to make correct predictions?What do we mean when we say one theory is more reliable than another and how do we demonstrate that?

Correct as what we predicted, yes, but not necessarily correct in the sense of actually reflecting reality.Like, me predicting and verifying as correct that the acceleration would be 9.8 m/s² doesn't say whether or not those gnomes are involved.The scientific conclusion is that there are no gnomes involved and that is reliable but we don't know if its correct or not. Not quite, us not being able to determine the liklihood of a cause does not necessitate that they are equal. Space-time curvature as a cause is reliable and it works, but that is not necessarily correct and the scientific method cannot yield a liklihood of that cause being the correct one. If the verification of the predictions isn't showing that the gnomes aren't there then how are you determining a liklihood of them being there or not by the scientific method?We don't have any reason to suspect that they are there, and predictions based on them not being there are reliable, but this is not a determination of the liklihood of us being correct in our conclusion of their absence. They're irrelevant and science continues on working reliably whether they are there or not but science cannot verify itself like that by determining the liklihood of that conclusion as being correct. We mean that what it predicts is what we'll observe and we demonstrate it by testing it with the scientific method.

Is that what he's trying to do? Besides the usual tired old false "no morality except for God's absolute universal code", all I could see was him complaining that nobody would agree with him that science cannot deal with the supernatural, which is suspicious on the face of it -- and since he continues to make that complaint even after I agreed, I know for a fact that it's not true -- and adding that there are far better and more relevent ways to studying the supernatural. But then he completely ignored repeated requests for what those other ways are and how well they work, AKA "how reliable are they?" Finally after I had repeatedly pressed him for an answer, he angrily tossed out four candidates (I take his cry of "Philosophy!" as being his single answer, with the next four items being specific disciplines that are a part of philosophy), two of which do not even belong: Ethics does not belong on that list, because it deals with morality, not with the supernatural. Also, logic does not belong, because it likewise does not deal with the supernatural, but rather is a tool used by many other disciplines -- it would be like claiming that arithmetic deals with capitalism just because accountants need it to balance their books.I strongly suspect that that "list" was merely an angry outburst instead of something that he had actually thought through. As such, I would be surprised to see him support that list and discuss it.As for asking whether they are "reliable", by that I meant how much confidence we can have in the conclusions they offer us. What kind of testing do they use? To return to the navigation analogy I have offered sac??? and which he still does not understand, let's say that we have two aircraft, both of which are launched at sea with orders to find land (or to find the enemy fleet, as in the case of "Strawberry 5"), but without any charts to lead them. They both fly out at a random heading. The first pilot sets up a wide-area search pattern no knowing where they are and performs a visual search. Effectively, he tries to make educated guesses and then tests those guesses by "pulling his head out of the cockpit" and actually looking. OTOH, the second pilot covers up his cockpit so that he cannot look outside and reads from a crossword puzzle book for clues as to which way to turn and when. He might even do a critical analysis of certain letter intersections, but at no time does he ever look outside to test whether he's in the right place or not. Which pilot is more likely to accomplish his mission?Now, in trying to deal with the supernatural, both methods are hampered in that neither approach is able to deal with the supernatural. The scientific approach has nothing to observe nor any way to test hypotheses. Similarly, the philosophy way has no true premises that it can start with as well as virtually nothing to test. I say "virtually nothing to test", because there are only two cases I can think of for philosophy to put its conclusions to the test:

1. If a line of reasoning results in a logical contradiction, then that line could be disproven.
   
2. If a line of reasoning makes predictions about the natural universe, then those predictions can be tested and hence that line of reasoning as well, including its premises. This is what "creation science" does, those predictions have indeed been tested, and they have proven to be wrong.

Other than that, I cannot think of any way that philosophy can deal with the supernatural any better than science could, which is to say that neither really can. All we know about the supernatural is what we and other people make up about it. So all that philosophy can do is work with stuff that people made up. They can analyze what had been made up and even make up some more stuff themselves, but the bottom line is that they are not dealing with the supernatural itself (which is also something that we've made up), but rather with stuff that people have made up.

I'm not sure that logical consistency can be counted on, considering it has not been shown to be true of the supernatural. Considering our data set is so small (nil) we shouldn't jump to conclusions.

And the scientist would ask, "Gnomes? What gnomes? What predictions does gnome theory make, and what is the null hypothesis for gnome theory?".When I think of evidence I think of a scenario where the data could be anything independent of what the theory states. Evidence FOR a claim necessarily includes lack of evidence that would be AGAINST the claim. IOW, if A is true then you should see B and not C. The "not C" part is as important, and perhaps more important, than "B". Using gnome theory, what should we NOT see if gnomes are producing gravity, and why? If any and all potential observations are consistent with a claim then you can not claim to have evidence. What you have is dogma, which itself is only evidence of your gullibility. Totally agree. All scientific conclusions are necessarily tentative given the fact that new experiments are always being done. Science can only produce human constructed models, backed by experimentation and evidence, of how we think reality works. To which the scientist would reply, "Then why are you bringing them up?".

Not much to disagre with here, Taq... Falsifiability... yes, important to science. I agree. Well, there's other stuff too. I brought up some examples in Message 5 where maybe we can better understand where we should be drawing the line between observed or not and reliable or not, and how that relates to what people refer to as "non-sceientific" evidence. They are:

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A few guys out together who all see the same ghost... If they all saw it, them they probably saw something actual. What it actaully was is unknown. Not "scientific", but "observed". Is that in any way "evidence"? How much can they rely on the similarities in what they saw to draw some kind of edjucated guess as to what it could not have been and what it might have been?

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A college student tripping his balls off wandering around in the amusement park of a subjective experience... Is that in any way "observed"? He's actually learned things from himself that have changed his life from that night on. How much can he rely on what he learned?

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The opinion of an Autralian Aborogine on how he feels about the European influences... Observed. Reliable?

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More and/or better examples would be nice. Hey, alright. Maybe you can help me explain that to Straggler.

These guys are jumping right to the conclusion by claiming it was a ghost. What did they actually observe? How did they confirm those observations through other means? How do they know that it wasn't an optical illusion? The question I often ask is if you observe David Copperfield levitating an object do you look for the wires or do you proclaim "Wow, that's magic!"?Approaching a problem/observation from as many angles as possible is a very big deal in science. In science circles there is a something called a "one hit wonder". It is used to describe a spectacular result produced through a single experiment and/or a single observation. These one hit wonders are looked upon with heavy skepticism. What scientists want to see is consilience of many different approaches to the same question. One of the questions a scientist is always asking himself is "I observed it, but is it real?". The "art" of science is figuring out how to try and prove yourself wrong while secretly hoping you are right.

Let's be absolutely clear here - Do you really consider curved spacetime as no more likely to be the underlying cause of gravity than magic gnomes? Really? Is curved space-time a superior explanation of gravity than magic gnomes or not? And if it is how can it not be considered superior in terms of accurately reflecting reality (i.e. being relatively likely to be correct)? Science is not just a predictive methodology. Scientific theories are also explanatory frameworks. The predictive ability of an explanatory framework is an indicator of how accurately that explanation reflects reality (as well as being a useful tool in itself).Curved space-time is the evidenced explanation for gravity and it has been verified as being an accurate model of reality by it's ability to make accurate predictions. To my knowledge the gravitational gnome theory remains both unevidenced and unable to make any verifiable predictions.Thus space-time curvature can be considered as relatively likely to be correct in terms of reflecting and modelling reality as compared to the competing notion that gnomes are responsible for gravity. How can you not factor in whether or not an explanation accurately reflects reality when considering competing theories? Is the theory of evolution correct in the sense of evolution having actually occurred? Or is it just a model that you cannot say is any more or less correct than any other model (e.g. the biblical creationist model)? Is the theory of evolution just a reliable predictor of results or is it an accurate description of reality?Is the theory of evolution more likely to be correct than the biblical creationist alternative? Why?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Do you really consider curved spacetime as no more likely to be the underlying cause of gravity than magic gnomes? Really?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.