The Antecedent Probability Principle, the Proportional Principle & Carl Sagan

I don't think you've quite made your point. I'm sure that there are things that are true for which we currently have no evidence.At best you've demonstrated that it is unlikely that we will ever have proof that a miracle has occurred.And I'm not convinced that it is irrational to accept things without proof or strong evidence? What evidence/proof did Einstein have when he was working on general relativity? My understanding is that the missing science that Einstein perceived was more a product of aesthetics than of any disagreement with experiment. Was it rational for Albert to spend a decade working on general relativity under those circumstances?

I don't agree with your summation of my position. I agree that it would be rational to reject miracles for lack of sufficient, extraordinary evidence, but I don't agree that accepting that miracles exist despite the lack of such evidence is irrational. Perhaps that's true, but you haven't provided a line of reasoning that requires that conclusion.

No, not necessarily. Did you make your mom prove that an iron was hot before you elected to follow her advice about not touching it? Should you have done so? Was trusting your mom irrational? If the above is true, then perhaps the value of rationality is overstated.

Let's accept such to be the case. What then of that same mom's admonitions to trust in God?But I don't accept your characterization. In actuality, you trust your mom and accept that the iron is hot and that you should not touch the iron without considering evidence regarding the iron itself. That doesn't follow. Children who touch the iron anyway may not behaving rationally.

Well I would submit that the rational way to find out for yourself that an iron is hot does not involve touching it, but perhaps I did not create an example with sufficiently bad consequences.So let's instead make mom's warning be about something like not sticking hair pins in the electrical outlet.In any event, the idea here is that trusting mom can be very rational, despite the fact that the decision to act is not based on any evidence about the matter at hand. Similarly, it might be rational to believe a trustworthy mom even when she talks about thing that the child is unable to test for himself.I earlier gave the example of Einstein devoting a decade of his productive years to developing the theory of general relativity. Can we say that Einstein's pursuit was not rational?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You are ducking the question. Of course it matters, at least for the purposes of this discussion. Your claim is that it is only evidence based conclusions that we can rationally to hold to be true. I'm trying to explore that proposition.Einstein did indeed have legitimate reasons to continue, but those reasons were not evidence based. My point is that legitimate reasons for doing X, analogous to the reasons Einstein pursued general relativity means that doing X is rational. If we can agree on that, then it is worth discussing what Einstein's rationale was.Alternatively, we can conclude that Einstein was not rational, in which case we should conclude that irrationality is not a good reason to not believe in something.Related question: Are string theorists rational?I'll present a different but closely related argument. It is in fact rational to make decisions and to take action with incomplete information, because we seldom have complete information.Taking action in the face of incomplete evidence is particularly rational when the outcome for inaction is potentially dire, or the possible rewards for action are sufficiently great.

Actually, I think Chuck77 understanding of my point is more accurate than yours, although he takes things a bit further than I agree with. That always childlike stuff is 77's own work. That's decidedly not what I said. The child's decision to follow mom's advice was completely rational despite the fact that the child had no evidence of his own about the iron.It is only as an alternative that I discussed how we could view things if we did not agree that the child was rational. But given your own belief that the child's actions were rational, we need not pursue the alternative.I am having to do these kinds of corrections in every nearly response. I am confident that I was explicit about my position in my previous post, but I will endeavor to write more clearly. Exactly so. And people accept Biblical miracles for similar reasons. They have decided to trust the accounts of people who have written and testified about allegedly witnessed events. Further, with few exceptions, those who disagree don't claim that the events, had they actually occurred, would not be miraculous; instead those skeptics doubt that the miracles happened at all.

Wha?? We know that string theorists exist. Lol.Seriously. I request that you expand on the reasons why you believe the pursuit of string theory is rational. Or we can use general relativity. I think the discussion will tease out some nuances in your definition of rationality.

You are of course free to discuss what you will, and to avoid discussing what you wish not to discuss.But it is in fact the case that nothing we are discussing here matters one wit. The question is not irrelevant if we are actually discussing the general principle outlined in your OP.There is no real point in addressing my question re: string theory. It is as hypothetical as is the child/hot iron/electrical socket example.

And what do you think is that logical basis?In any event, it seems to me that if you are not prepared to say that the reason for researching String Theory is based on evidence, then you are not being consistent with the approach described in your OP.Edited by NoNukes, : remove an extra negation...

I'm saying that general relativity was not evidence based prior to about 1915, and that Einstein's pursuit of it beginning in about 1907 or so was not triggered by evidence. It is the case that we currently have lots of experimental verification now.I'm saying that string theory is currently a mathematical, unevidenced pursuit. The term "theory" in the expression may very well turn out to be mere euphemism. String theory may very well turn out to be utterly untestable.

It's ok that you don't know that you don't know the details. But my point is that the exact reason does matter, at least for this discussion.Einstein was working on a problem, but the problem was not evidence based. Unlike the situation with special relativity, there were no unexplained experimental results that compelled Einstein to pursue general relativity. I agree that Einstein's pursuit was always logical, and in hindsight, we must surely agree that the pursuit was worthwhile, but initially the pursuit was logical without being evidence based.Which is my point. And skipping of the details with cursory talk about searches for the truth always being worthwhile doesn't get at the truth. Could you cite any of that evidence? I agree that pursuing string theory is rational, and that string theory guys need to report results, but so far results cannot be about the evidence 'cause there isn't any.

It would follow from the above that it would be reasonable to wait for the results to determine whether an activity was rational or not. That does not appear to be the standard you use for pursuits you have already decided are irrational.Alternately we can decide that your personal definition of rationality is such that calling someone irrational might be akin to calling them "Einstein-like"But ultimately, I disagree that the question of whether Einstein's pursuit of relativity was irrational is irrelevant. And I certainly don't agree that your personal lack of knowledge of the details is a valid excuse for ignoring the question.I think it is possible to evaluate whether Einstein's pursuit of general relativity was rational separately from reviewing his results, because we have available the thought experiments and other considerations that motivated Einstein. I find it easy to reach the conclusion that Einstein's pursuit was rational independent of the results, and despite the lack of an evidence based reason for the pursuit.Here is what wikipedia says about Einstein's pursuit:

quote:

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Soon after publishing the special theory of relativity in 1905, Einstein started thinking about how to incorporate gravity into his new relativistic framework. In 1907, beginning with a simple thought experiment involving an observer in free fall, he embarked on what would be an eight-year search for a relativistic theory of gravity. After numerous detours and false starts, his work culminated in the November, 1915 presentation to the Prussian Academy of Science of what are now known as the Einstein field equations. These equations specify how the geometry of space and time is influenced by whatever matter is present, and form the core of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

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Of course you don't know the details. I can accept that, but the implication is that your proposition should not be taken seriously as you have not considered, and are seemingly unwilling to consider some fairly obvious counter examples. Again, there is no evidence that string theory will correctly describe our universe. Your assumption is completely unfounded.And this line of reasoning is bogus anyways. Do you consider the fact that Ron Wyatt could get people to fund a trip to the middle east any kind of persuasive argument that Wyatt found evidence of the Red Sea crossing in Exodus.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I didn't say it was your position. But we seem to agree that Einstein's pursuit was rationale. But given that you've admitted to knowing nothing at all about that pursuit, I don't understand how you reached your conclusion. In short your personal conclusion is not evidence based.In any event, I'm simply attempting to use your metric to make that determination. Einstein understood his near decade long pursuit to be rational endeavor. Why cannot I use your proposition to investigate Einstein's belief? Really?? Then who the heck posted this sentence in this very thread??From Message 34
I'm finding it difficult to figure out what your position is. You state a belief that the pursuit of string theory is rational because it is evidence based, and it later turns out that you have no idea about the subject at all. If it isn't too meta for me to ask, how did you form that belief without looking at the evidence?I think I'm going to lurk for a while. I find the discussion interesting, but my part in the discussion does not seem to be very productive.

Do you know whether string theory has produced any answers?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.